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As we begin to scratch at the basic workings of life, we’ll also inevitably come up against the mechanics of death. Real life extension science is on the horizon, and we should have a belief in place about how to approach these areas of science, because progress is not going to wait while we grapple with imponderables.
Rethink doesn't want to be just a robot maker. It wants to use Baxter as platform that anyone can use to improve on existing applications as well as develop completely new ones. To achieve that, Rethink needs to open up its technology, and last week, the company announced a major step in that direction: a version of Baxter designed for researchers.
Emerging fields such as nanotechnology must resist the false dichotomy that says they're either marvellous or demonic
Our abilities in sequence-reading have been improving along an exponential curve since pretty much the day we published the molecule’s structure, and in that time we’ve made our reading about a hundred thousand times more efficient. It used to cost about $0.01 to sequence a base pair; now it costs about $0.0000001. Synthesis, on the other hand, used to cost about $3 per base pair; now it costs roughly $0.50.
This week, though, a talk by Cambrian Genomics at a DARPA-funded event brought widespread attention to a technology that promises to make DNA synthesis thousands of times cheaper, potentially offering the first real price drop the process has ever seen.
Aristotle first posited that the whole could be more than the sum of its parts. Ever since, philosophers, physicists, chemists, and biologists have periodically rediscovered the idea. But it was only in the computer age—with the ability to iterate simple rule sets millions of times over—that this hazy concept came into sharp focus.
There was a time when science could be broken down into neat-and-tidy disciplines — straightforward things like biology, chemistry, physics, and astronomy. But as science advances, these fields are becoming increasingly specialized and interdisciplinary, leading to entirely new avenues of inquiry. Here are 11 emerging scientific fields you should know about.
With rapidly evolving technology , it is inevitable that the future of humanity lies in machines. Traditionally, there has been a divide in the type of progress for humans to achieve an advanced state of being. On one hand, there are people who advocate the development of artificial intelligence technologies to imbue human cognitive abilities on robots. An alternate approach is one parallel to many science fiction fantasizes–the creation of cyborgs, or human-machine hybrids. The creation of cyborg technology has already been set in motion and this article will examine it’s evolution and benefits.
Working with patients with electrodes implanted in their brains, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) have shown for the first time that areas of the brain work together at the same time to recall memories. The unique approach promises new insights into how we remember details of time and place.
Forget solid, liquid, and gas: there are in fact more than 500 phases of matter. In a major paper in today's issue of Science, Perimeter Faculty member Xiao-Gang Wen reveals a modern reclassification of all of them.
When David Harel started the experiment, the petri dish of mouse cells looked just like any other. Genes were being expressed, proteins were being made, and the tissue was being perfused with oxygen-rich blood.
But then things started to change. First one cell changed position and moved across the plate, followed quickly by another. Eventually, through migration and other changes in cell functionality and signaling, the cells had differentiated, with the lucky ones becoming fully-fledged thymus gland T cells. And it all happened in a fraction of the time that biologists would have expected based on several decades of physiological and development studies; after all, this experiment was happening inside a computer, in virtual organs modeled by complicated diagrams, simulating their real-world counterparts.
Big Ideas presents Hod Lipson of Cornell University exploring his work in such areas as evolutionary robotics and programmable self-assembly, Lipson delivers a lecture entitled The Robot Scientist: Mining Experimental Data for Scientific Laws, from Cognitive Robots to Computational Biology.
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Biologists have successfully extended the life spans of some mice by as much as 70%, leading many to believe that ongoing experimentation on our mammalian cousins will eventually lead to life-extending therapies in humans. But how reliable are these studies? And do they really apply to humans?
An exciting new study published in the prestigious journal Nature shows for the first time that manipulation of a brain chemical in a single region influences lifespan. The authors conclude: "To summarize, our study using several mouse models demonstrates that the hypothalamus is important for systemic ageing and lifespan control. This hypothalamic role is significantly mediated by IKK-band NF-kB-directed hypothalamic innate immunity involving microglia–neuron crosstalk. The underlying basis includes integration between immunity and neuroendocrine of the hypothalamus, and immune inhibition and GnRH restoration in the hypothalamus or the brain represent two potential strategies for combating ageing-related health problems."
Just like finally seeing all the gears of a watch and how they work together, researchers from UCLA and UC Berkeley have, for the first time ever, solved the puzzle of how the various components of an entire telomerase enzyme complex fit together and function in a three-dimensional structure.
The creation of the first complete visual map of thetelomerase enzyme, which is known to play a significant role in aging and most cancers, represents a breakthrough that could open up a host of new approaches to fighting disease, the researchers said.
Via Dr. Stefan Gruenwald
On this anniversary, we should celebrate the incredible advances of the past 10 years, but we should also begin to prepare ourselves for the next decade. No one could have foreseen how far science has progressed. What seemed science fiction is now reality. Yet we now need not only research, but more public and professional education about it, and attention to how it is and should affect our lives. Sputnik prompted the federal government to support not only research, but science education, putting billions of dollars in our educational system.
The science of genetics is evolving more quickly than our understanding of it. We need to strive further to keep up.
A team of scientists at UC San Francisco has uncovered the neurological basis of speech motor control, the complex coordinated activity of tiny brain regions that controls our lips, jaw, tongue and larynx as we talk.
Published recently in the journal Nature, the work has potential implications for developing computer-brain interfaces for artificial speech communication and for the treatment of speech disorders. It also sheds light on an ability that is unique to humans among living creatures but poorly understood.
Dr. Miguel Nicolelis Explains Brain to Brain Interface Study Published in Scientific Reports, February 28, 2013
Take a walk through a human brain? Fly over the surface of Mars? Computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago are pushing science fiction closer to reality with a wraparound virtual world where a researcher wearing 3D glasses can do all that and more. In the system, known as CAVE2, an 8-foot-high screen encircles the viewer 320 degrees. A panorama of images springs from 72 stereoscopic liquid crystal display panels, conveying a dizzying sense of being able to touch what's not really there.
Ever since the days of Alan Turing, neuroscientists have, in increasing numbers, compared the human brain to a computer. It's an analogy that makes a hell of a lot of sense, and it's done much to help us understand this remarkable grey blob that sits between our ears. But as a recent essay by philosopher Daniel Dennett points out, while the brain should most certainly be considered a kind of machine — one with a trillion moving parts — its inner workings are far removed from anything we have ever developed. Consequently, scientists need to take note and update their models accordingly. Calling the brain a "computer," says Dennett, is accurate, but insufficient.
Stephen Wolfram, creator of the Wolfram|Alpha search engine and author of the books Mathematica and A New Kind of Science, is known all over the world for his contributions to our understanding of computation. In 2012, he received a lot of attention for something else: At the SXSW show, he revealed that he had a more than 20-year personal computational log of, basically, the life of Stephen Wolfram. This included everything from every e-mail he had sent, to when he had gone to bed, to how long his phone conversations lasted, and much more. He then released this data on his personal blog. So, what can one of the world’s foremost mathematical minds learn about life by examining his own computational data? THE FUTURIST called to ask.
In the basement of the Northwest Science Building here at Harvard University, a locked door is marked with a pink and yellow sign: "Caution: Radioactive Material." Inside researchers buzz around wearing dour expressions and plastic gloves. Among them is Kenneth Hayworth. He's tall and gaunt, dressed in dark-blue jeans, a blue polo shirt, and gray running shoes. He looks like someone who sleeps little and eats less. Hayworth has spent much of the past few years in a windowless room carving brains into very thin slices. He is by all accounts a curious man, known for casually saying things like, "The human race is on a beeline to mind uploading: We will preserve a brain, slice it up, simulate it on a computer, and hook it up to a robot body." He wants that brain to be his brain. He wants his 100 billion neurons and more than 100 trillion synapses to be encased in a block of transparent, amber-colored resin—before he dies of natural causes. Why? Ken Hayworth believes that he can live forever. But first he has to die.
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