4/27/2011 PERMALINK
Modding viruses to do things we want and make things we need. MIT's Angela Belcher speeks at TED about how her lab is programs viruses to make elegant nanoscale structures that humans can use. Selecting for high-performing genes through directed evolution, she's produced viruses that can construct powerful new batteries, clean hydrogen fuels and record-breaking solar cells. This research is one of the most powerful approaches to creating the bots necessary to fix the bugs in our bodies that allow us to get sick and to age. Viruses have spent millions of years getting very good at interacting with and reprogramming our cells. All we need to do is code them to enhance rather than damage our cells.

4/26/2011 PERMALINK
The plaques that clog your arteries form quickly and late in life. In a new study performed in humans, researchers from Karolinska Institutet have determined the age of atherosclerotic plaques by taking advantage of Carbon-14 (14C) residues in the atmosphere, prevailing after the extensive atomic bomb tests in the 50ties and 60ties. Their findings suggest that in most people plaque formation occurs during a relatively short and late time period in life of just 3 to 5 years. "We suspected that the plaque would be substantially younger than the patients, who were on average were 68 years old at surgery, but we were surprised when we found that the average age of these plaques was less than 10 years", says Associate Professor Johan Bjorkegren, who lead the study at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics.

4/26/2011 PERMALINK
Penn scientists develop a new way to re-grow cartilage damaged by injury or aging. A group of Penn scientists working across disciplines has developed a novel way to allow patients to re-grow cartilage in their own bodies, using their own cells, directly in the site that has been damaged through injury or disease. Penn Engineering Associate Professor Jason Burdick says the breakthrough offers more effective tissue regeneration therapies that offer longer-lasting results for the active as they age.

4/26/2011 PERMALINK
Viruses can deliver light-sensitive proteins to specific cells in the retinas of blind mice, allowing rudimentary vision, according to new research. To restore vision, researcher Alan Horsager of the University of Southern California and collaborators applied optogenetics, a genetic mod that makes neurons sensitive to light. They used a designer virus to deliver lots of copies of a gene that codes for a protein called channelrhodopsin to the eye. Previous studies had shown that the light-sensitive proteins can be beneficial, but the delivery methods used in those experiments were not practical for humans. The viral-delivery method used in this research, however, is similar to methods already successfully used in human gene therapy and should work to restore vision loss in humans due to disease or aging.

4/25/2011 PERMALINK
What if you could take a pill that doubled your IQ. That's the story explored in Limitless, the new movie staring Bradley Cooper and Robert De Niro. Here's the trailer for what the producers describe as "a paranoia-fueled action thriller about an unsuccessful writer whose life is transformed by a top-secret 'smart drug' that allows him to use 100% of his brain and become a perfect version of himself. His enhanced abilities soon attract shadowy forces that threaten his new life in this darkly comic film."

4/25/2011 PERMALINK
To dial your cell phone, just think of the number. Tzyy-Ping Jung, a researcher at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego, and colleagues have created a way to place a call on a cell phone using just your thoughts. Their new brain-computer interface is almost 100 percent accurate for most people after only a brief training period.

4/25/2011 PERMALINK
Researchers Construct RNA Nanoparticles to Safely Deliver Long-Lasting Therapy to Cells. Nanotechnology researchers have known for years that RNA, the cousin of DNA, is a promising tool for nanotherapy. But producing long-lasting, therapeutic RNA that remains stable and non-toxic while entering targeted cells has proven difficult. But now University of Cincinnati biomedical engineering professor Peixuan Guo has found better ways of producing large RNA nanoparticles and testing their safety in the delivery of therapeutics to targeted cells.

4/25/2011 PERMALINK
Is there an intrinsically safe nuclear power? Yes, say scientists. Kirk Sorensen tells TED attendees about the inherent safety of Thorium reactors. Kirk Sorensen is author of the blog 'Energy from Thorium.' He has helped grow an online community of thousands of technologists who support a renewed effort to develop thorium as an energy source. Thorium is more plentiful than uranium, and unlike the uranium designs we rely on today. If anything causes the reactor temperature to rise a little higher than normal, Tsunami, stupid operators, power failures, backup generator failures. Whatever the problem might be, a thorium reactor automatically shuts down, no electricity or human action required.

4/22/2011 PERMALINK
'Bernanke's Choice' is no choice at all. I keep reading in the financial media about 'Bernanke's Choice' of whether to keep printing money or not. The simple fact of the matter is that the Fed is buying $100+ billion per month of Treasuries. Because Congress is running even more than that in monthly deficits. And the Fed is Congress' banker of last resort.

There are no investors waiting in the wings to snap up all the Treasuries Bernanke is buying. Not at current interest rates, and there is simply no telling how high interest rates will spike if Bernanke stops buying the $100+ billion in Treasuries monthly that is necessary to keep funding Congress' obscenely destructive levels of deficit spending.

With the US Gov on the hook for over $20 trillion including Fannie/Freddie/FDIC debt, each 1% increase in interest rates, ultimately translates into an annual deficit increase of around $200 billion.

If Bernanke stopped buying, the country's finances would go into a textbook death spiral feedback loop. With each increase in interest rates ballooning the deficit further. Thereby raising the risk for investors ever higher, which will cause them to demand ever higher interest rates.

It is a path Bernanke wouldn't dare take us down. So until Congress stops running such obscenely high deficits. The only real choice Ben Bernanke has is whether to continue openly printing money to fund their massive deficits or try to figure out some clever financial gimmickry that covers up the fact that the Fed is funding Congress' ruinous irresponsibility.

4/21/2011 PERMALINK
Can Hobbyists and Hackers Transform Biotechnology? Following in the footsteps of revolutionaries like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, who built the first Apple computer in Jobs's garage, and Sergey Brin and Larry Page, who invented Google in a friend's garage, biohackers are attempting bold feats of genetic engineering, drug development, and biotech research in makeshift home laboratories. In Biopunk, journalist Marcus Wohlsen surveys the rising tide of the biohacker movement, which has been made possible by a convergence of better and cheaper technologies."

4/15/2011 PERMALINK
Scientists create human kidneys from stem cells. Scientists at Edinburgh University created the artificial organs in a laboratory using human amniotic fluid and animal foetal cells. The kidneys created are the same size as found in an unborn baby. Researchers hope they will grow into full-size organs when transplanted into a human. The breakthrough promises replacement organs with no risk of rejection.

4/06/2011 PERMALINK
Brains engineered to produce more new neurons discriminate better. Mice engineered to produce more new neurons in the hippocampus -— a structure involved in learning and memory —- are better at discriminating between similar choices. The study adds new evidence for a link between the development of new neurons in the hippocampus and cognitive functions in the brain, and it also suggests how these neurons may affect mood disorders.

4/01/2011 PERMALINK
What caused the financial difficulties that America faces today? I read a blog post this morning wondering exactly what caused the tremendous financial difficulties that America is in today, spending almost $2 for every $1 collected in taxes.

The blog concluded that the wave of deficit spending that began in 1975 caused the current situation to come about. But why did our politicos suddenly lose all their frugality in 1975, causing this plague of deficit spending to break out?

Could it have been Nixon taking the country off the gold standard just a few years before in 1971?

The great advantage of the gold standard is that it does enforce some frugality on politicos. If politicos spend too much and tax too little, either running up debts or printing money to cover the shortfall. Under a gold standard system, foreigners will soon begin redeeming that nations currency for the gold in their central bank's vault. The politicos are then left with a stark choice. Either they get frugal or watch their central bank vault empty out completely, plunging their nation into bankruptcy, and in a democracy, very likely getting them lynched by their constituents.

When France and other nations were doing exactly this to America in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Demanding gold for the excess of dollars they were accumulating. Instead of calling for more frugality from Congress, as would have been the wise move. Nixon, in an act of criminality far exceeding any of his more famous crimes, simply took the world's reserve currency off the gold standard. This act set in motion the wave of ever increasing peace-time deficits that has in recent years brought the nation that issues the world's reserve currency to its knees.

Other nations still have some restraint on their spending without a gold standard. As they must still be able to buy the reserve currency in order to trade with other nations for oil, food and other essential commodities. If their government spends too much, those vital commodities will get really expensive for their citizens to buy, and there will be a backlash against the overspending.

However, when the world's reserve currency nation goes off the gold standard, all external restraints on overspending are completely gone. That nation is left with only the self-discipline and frugality of their politicos to protect them from an eventual financial catastrophe. And this deterrent has proven itself to be vastly weaker than restrain on excessive spending imposed by the gold standard.

Moreover, since other nations will not want their currency to appreciate too much against the world's reserve currency, as this hurts their trade. When the reserve currency is debased, they can be counted on to debase their own currencies to keep that trade disadvantage from happening. This has the unfortunate effect of allowing a reserve currency nation to export to other nations much of the inflation that they have created by printing to much money. This is the effect that is currently causing food prices to rise so quickly in the developing world, that riots and demonstrations have broken out in hundreds of cities. Revolution across the middle east is hitting us now, rather than later, because of this effect.

This ability to export their inflation forcing the citizens of other countries to suffer much of the pain for their overspending makes the temptation for a reserve currency nation to print too much new money all but irresistible. When a reserve currency nation goes off the gold standard and loses its frugality, the overspending, excessive money printing and excessive debt accumulation becomes a worldwide contagion.

When they were all boys, your father, your grandfather and your great grandfather could all buy a Hershey bar at their neighborhood store for around 5 cents. To gage the negative impact of the removal of the restrain imposed by the gold standard on America's politicos. Simply buy a Hershey bar at your neighborhood grocery today. And compare the price to the stable 5 cent price that simple pleasure enjoyed for 100 years before Nixon's 1971 destruction of the only mechanism ever invented for successfully restraining excessive spending by politicos.