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Overview ↓

New method: Creating stem cells from fat cells

News: Stem Cells    February 8, 2010

Creating stem cells from adult cells – rather than using controversial embryonic material – is near the top of the list for stem cell research. So creating induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS – cells that can become almost any other kind of cell) from fat cells (yes, human fat cells, of which there is no short supply) would seem to be a good ticket. In fact, one of the researchers involved, Mark Kay of Stanford University School of Medicine (California, USA), was heard to say, “Why didn’t we think of this sooner?” More »

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New study: Genetic variations associated with aging

News: Extending Lifespan    February 8, 2010

Sometimes the shortest distance to new knowledge is a lot of repetitious work – like analyzing 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome. Researchers at King’s College London (UK), Leicester University (UK), and the University of Groningen (Netherlands) were on the trail of locating genes associated with aging. This is part of the (perhaps) surprisingly active effort to find out how and why we get old (and maybe do something about it). What they were after are genes that might be related to people having longer or shorter telomeres. More »

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Two new cancer-killing nanoparticles

News: Nanomedicine    February 7, 2010

To use an overworked phrase, it’s a paradigm shift: Cancer research is learning how to ‘think small’ with the potential of nanotechnology – nanoparticles specifically. It’s a shift because medical science has been accustomed to cancer-fighting techniques on the level of bringing cannons to kill a fly. Where doctors once treated cancer with a body-wide dose of chemotherapy, or maybe a targeted dose that still made a mess of the liver; nanotechnology makes it possible to think of killing individual cancer cells, or about sending in a squad of chemo-laden nanoparticles that can deliver a punch to specific kinds of cancer cells in places no other chemistry (or radiation, or scalpel) can reach. For example, here are two recently announced advancements in nanomedicine… More »

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To the Moon with reservations

Funnybone: February 7, 2010

The year is 1966. NASA is preparing the Apollo astronauts for a landing on the Moon. No opportunity to have realistic Moon-like experiences is too cumbersome or expensive, so the astronauts are trucked out to the desert near Tuba City in Arizona. They go a batch at a time to bake their spacesuits and wander about in landscape not all that different from the lunar surface.

On a small butte, not far from the area where the astronauts are training, an old Navajo shepherd and his son have squatted on the lookout side to observe the strange goings-on below. It reminds them of ants tending aphids, these few silvery bugs with a multitude of other creatures scurrying between them, carrying this and that. They recognize vehicles of some kind, but they are huge, ungainly contraptions guaranteed to sink into the sand forever, should they venture into the real desert. More »

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It’s not a ‘stream’ of consciousness…

News: Neuroscience    February 6, 2010

In song and story the mind works as a stream of consciousness. Maybe not. Maybe it’s like a film, 24 frames per second but we perceive it as a continuous stream? Maybe it’s something else…like waves perhaps? Or, according to a recently published study from the University of Illinois (USA), at least the visual function of the brain may ‘see’ in a rhythmic series – as waves and frames. More »

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Update: Quantum photosynthesis

Impact: Cell Biology    February 6, 2010

Just to underline the post Quantum mechanics in photosynthesis, oh my. there’s another take on the interpretation and significance of the research at Cosmic Variance. Here’s a sample:

We can think about this in terms of Feynman’s way of talking about quantum mechanics: rather than a particle taking a unique path between two points, as in classical mechanics, a quantum particle takes every possible path, with simple paths getting a bit more weight than complicated ones. In the case of the protein, different paths for the energy might be more or less efficient at any particular moment, but this bit of quantum trickery allows the energy to find the best possible route at any one time. Imagine at rush hour, if your car could take every possible route from your home to the office, and the time it officially took would be whatever turned out to be the shortest path. How awesome would that be?

[Source: Quantum Photosynthesis; Cosmic Variance]

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Prions bad. Prion shaping good – for memory

News: Proteomics    February 6, 2010

Understanding how memory in the brain works remains one of the most difficult and insight-resistant issues in neuroscience. Also, like most things about the brain (human brains, any brains), the more we look, the more complex it becomes. The research by a team from Kansas and New York (USA) on prion-like proteins is a good example. They found that while prions (a form of protein that behaves like a virus) produce mis-folded proteins and fatal diseases such as mad-cow disease (BSE) in cattle and Creuzfeldt-Jacob Syndrome in humans, the folding of proteins in this way may be an important component of memory. More »

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A lasing germanium

News: Communications    February 5, 2010

Germanium, a semiconducting element, is not supposed to lase. That is, when it gets its electrons excited, they go flying off as heat – not light. So the conventional wisdom in microelectronic circles (and textbooks) is that germanium does not lase – and can’t be made to work in a laser. This was unfortunate, because germanium is a very useful semiconductor, already employed in making computer chips and other similar circuitry. Now a new paper from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Electronic Materials Research Group (USA) describes how – theoretically and practically – germanium can be made to lase. More »

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Robonaut2 – Flexible, stronger, human compatible

News: Robotics    February 5, 2010

Androids, robots that look like and sometimes act like humans, are not (just) a figment of star treks in galaxies far far away. This one (below) is built by General Motors (U.S.) for NASA and is called, drolly, Robonaut2 or just R2. It’s been in the works for ten years. R2 is designed to be, obviously, humanoid in appearance; but this is more than just a hunky bod – it’s making the robot so it can use human tools and equipment, including those which are to be worn like clothes. It is also designed to be very flexible, which usually means that it doesn’t have much strength; but R2 can lift 20 pound weights (roughly 8 kilograms). It’s also designed so that it can ‘work along with humans’, side by side, without causing major adjustments in the human’s natural reactions. It has several built-in sensory capabilities – visual, auditory, tactile. Not in their human form, of course, but analogous. In short, this is one sophisticated robotic dude. NASA has yet to deploy one in space, but this is a reminder that robots are, in fact, becoming more real all the time.

R2-Flexible Humanoid Robot
Robonaut2 (R2) the flexible humanoid robot. Credit: NASA

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Graphene transistors

News: Computer Power    February 5, 2010

Start with the fact that digital computers run on transistors; transistors are key. Next, consider graphene, the nanotechnology cousin of graphite, a versatile material that has hit the news many times in the past several years. Finally, with regard to transistors and computers, graphene has already been dubbed the ‘successor to silicon’; now it looks like that may actually happen. IBM Watson Research Center (New York, USA) has announced an industrial process to produce graphene transistors that run at 100 MHz, or about ten times the speed of silicon. More »

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