Matches on DNA on state managed databases help find criminals but
their legality is being questioned.

-G

By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — A growing number of police crime labs are adding DNA
from suspects to databases that operate outside of state and federal
law by matching those suspects to unrelated crimes.
Proponents say the databases, which have solved more than 50 crimes,
are legitimate because no laws forbid them.


PERFECT MATCH?: Authorities turn to DNA databases

Defense lawyers and privacy advocates counter that the federal
government and all 50 states require individuals to be convicted or
in some cases indicted for a serious crime before their DNA can be
added to the FBI's national criminal database. Searching a suspect's
DNA, they argue, violates privacy rights.

"It's a cloudy area," says David Kaye, a law professor at Arizona
State University.

Few court rulings exist to say whether these databases are legal or
whether data contained in them can be used in criminal cases.

State legislators in Illinois and New York this year are among the
first to consider bills that would regulate or forbid the databases.

Since 1990, states and the federal government have matched DNA from
unsolved crimes to convicts or in seven states to some arrestees
through an FBI computer system.

That system, called CODIS, has matched DNA from convicted offenders
and arrestees to over 35,000 unsolved crimes since 1990, FBI
spokeswoman Ann Todd says.

However, there's a growing number of DNA samples the FBI can't
store. They include DNA taken from criminal suspects who are later
cleared and from persons who volunteer to give DNA to convince
police they are innocent.

Laboratories in at least five states — California, Florida,
Illinois, Missouri and New York — use local databases to store DNA
data ineligible for the FBI database.

New York state has at least eight local crime labs that keep over
2,000 DNA profiles of suspects, according to documents obtained
under a Freedom of Information request by the New York-based
Innocence Project, which specializes in overturning convictions
through DNA evidence, and shared with USA TODAY.

"They're rogue databases that operate without the public's knowledge
and without the security and privacy considerations of the
government databases," says Stephen Saloom, the Innocence Project's
policy director. "This is an issue the public ought to decide."

John Feinblatt, criminal justice coordinator for New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, says using suspect DNA is no different than using
fingerprints from one case to help solve another — a practice that
courts condone.

"Nothing happens to a person who has DNA on file unless they commit
a crime," Feinblatt says.

"The law has to catch up with science."

A passenger-carrying suborbital spaceliner and the airplane that will
serve as its first stage are starting to take shape on the factory
floors at Scaled Composites of Mojave, Calif.  Book your seat early!

Full article http:

//www.space.com/spacenews/businessmonday_070226.html

Human heart tissue grown from stem cells

Part of a human heart has been grown from stem cells for the first
time, a UK research team has announced. The small discs of tissue
could represent the first step towards building a whole heart from
stem cells.

The 3-centimetre-wide discs are made from the same tissue as heart
valves, and the team which created them at the Harefield Heart
Science Centre near London hopes to test prototypes of valves in
animals later this year.

The stem cells – extracted from bone marrow – were exposed to various
chemicals in the lab which caused them to differentiate into heart
valve cells. These were then grown into discs over scaffolds of
collagen – the connective tissue in limbs and organs.

Led by heart surgeon Magdi Yacoub, the team told Guardian newspaper
that the full results will be published in August in the journal
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Animal trials are planned for later this year and, if successful,
replacement tissue could be used in transplants for people suffering
from heart disease within three years, they said.

"Like everything published ahead of time, it's hard to work out
exactly what they've done," said Stephen Minger, a stem cell
scientist at King's College London in the UK. Yacoub told the
newspaper that similar valves could be fitted in patients within five
years, but it would take at least 10 years to build an entire heart.

Reminder--

Next Meeting:

What: Space -- A Settlement Option
Where: Las Vegas Planetarium @3200 E Cheyenne; CCSN Campus; North Las Vegas
When: April 12 on Yuri's Night (Thursday) 7:30pm

Are These Caves On Mars?

Science Daily — Applying techniques used to scope out caves on Earth to probe the possibility of caves on Mars is paying off.

NAU researchers Glen Cushing and Jut Wynne, working at the U.S. Geological Survey, propose that photos from the Mars Odyssey mission reveal football-field size holes that could be entrances to caves.

"If there is life on Mars, there is a good chance you'd find it in caves," said Wynne, an NAU graduate student in biological sciences and project leader for the USGS Earth-Mars Cave Detection Program.

He said the possible discovery could lead to more focused Mars explorations.

Martian caves are considered the "best potential havens for life" because they would be protected from surface radiation and other factors, he said.

"The Martian surface is an extremely harsh environment, so the significance of caves is in their protective nature," said Cushing, a graduate teaching assistant in NAU's Department of Physics and Astronomy, who was the first to spot the black areas on the photographs. "Caves on Mars could become habitats for future explorers, or could be the only structures that preserve evidence of past or present microbial life."

Cushing and Wynne, along with Tim Titus, an astrophysicist with USGS, and Phil Christensen, the chief scientist for the NASA imaging instrument and a researcher from Arizona State University, recently submitted their findings in a research paper at the 38th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference.

"We're suggesting that the seven black spots are skylights to areas where the surface may have collapsed into a chamber below," Wynne said. "Preserved evidence of past life on Mars might only be found in caves, and such discovery would be of unparalleled significance."

The claim for caves is based on an analysis of photographs from the Thermal Emission Imaging System aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter, which revealed seven black spots near a massive Martian volcano, Arsia Mons. Although this area of Mars is known for geological occurrences, the researchers said the dark spots do not look like impact craters because they don't have raised rims or blast patterns.

"This is a very interesting discovery with positive implications," said Nadine Barlow, an associate professor in physics and astronomy at NAU and expert on Martian impact craters. "Caves on Mars could be good places for long-term ice accumulation and that would make them ideal locations to look for life on Mars as well as valuable reservoirs for water to support future human exploration of the planet."

The Earth-Mars Cave Detection Program's overall objective is to develop techniques for systemically detecting caves on Earth in the thermal infrared and then applying these techniques to searching for caves on Mars, Wynne explained.

The team reported possible caverns ranging from 330 to 825 feet wide and 425 feet deep They've been named after loved ones of the researchers: Dena, Chloe, Wendy, Annie, Abbey, Nikki and Jeanne.

Christensen said the first avenue for further observations could be provided by NASA's latest Red Planet probe, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

"The spacecraft's high-resolution camera could take a closer look at the seven sisters—including sidelong glances that might show whether the features open up into wider chambers beneath," Christensen said.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Northern Arizona University.

Meat And Two Neutrons: The Key To A Longer Life

Science Daily — Indulging in an isotope-enhanced steak or chicken fillet every now and again could add as much as 10 years to your life. Scientists have shown for the first time that food enriched with natural isotopes builds bodily components that are more resistant to the processes of ageing. The concept has been demonstrated in worms and researchers hope that the same concept can help extend human life and reduce the risk of cancer and other diseases of ageing, reports Marina Murphy in Chemistry & Industry, the magazine of the SCI.

A team led by Mikhail Shchepinov, formerly of Oxford University, fed nematode worms nutrients reinforced with natural isotopes (naturally occurring atomic variations of elements). In initial experiments, worms' life spans were extended by 10%, which, with humans expected to routinely coast close to the centenary, could add a further 10 years to human life.

Food enhanced with isotopes is thought to produce bodily constituents and DNA more resistant to detrimental processes, like free radical attack. The isotopes replace atoms in susceptible bonds making these bonds stronger. 'Because these bonds are so much more stable, it should be possible to slow down the process of oxidation and ageing,' Shchepinov says.

The isotopes could be used in animal feed so that humans could get the "age-defying" isotopes indirectly in steaks or chicken fillets, for example, rather than eating chemically enhanced products themselves. Shchepinov says an occasional top-up would be sufficient to have a beneficial effect.

Ageing experts are impressed with the isotopic approach. Aubrey de Grey, the Cambridge-based gerontologist, says it could be very relevant to the rates of several chemical and enzymatic processes relevant to ageing 'It is a highly novel idea,' he says. 'But it remains to be seen whether it can be the source of practicable therapies, but it is a prospect that certainly cannot be ruled out.'

Charles Cantor, a professor of biomechanical engineering at Boston University, said: 'Preliminary data indicates that this approach can potentially increase lifespan without adverse side effects. If this is borne out by further experiments the implications are profound.'

Isotopes could also be used in pet food or as a means to protect workers or soldiers from radiation. Deuterium, a natural isotope of hydrogen (with 2 protons rather than one) could be used routinely.

Previous successes in extending lifespan have involved withdrawing food to the point of near starvation, a process called caloric restriction.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Society of Chemical Industry.

Time travel: Swiss Cern project could validate theories

By Dick Pelletier

            Welcome ladies and gentlemen to the Time Portal. In a few moments we will beam your minds to the year 2007, where you will each live a day in the life of your 21^st century self. Although your bodies remain here in the present, your minds will travel back in time and merge with your younger self. We hope you enjoy this unique learning experience.
 

            The above scenario is fiction of course, but researchers at the new Cern Particle Accelerator in Switzerland believe their machine can recreate conditions like the "big bang" which brought time and space into existence, and create baby black holes and wormholes; elements that many believe offer the best chance to validate or dispute the concept of traveling backwards in time.
 

            Princeton University's Richard Gott describes wormholes as shortcuts through space and time that connect two distant points, like a worm tunnel through an apple. "You jump into the wormhole and instantly pop out on Alpha Centauri; you've gone through a tunnel that connects two places in spacetime."
 

            Although today's laws of physics cannot rule out time travel, the idea is laden with problems. Say we travel back in time and stop our parents from getting together. This would prevent us from being born; we could not exist and our journey in time couldn't happen – scientists call this a paradox. We created a past different from the one that already exists.
 

            Clearly, mischievous time travelers cannot change the present. People are not suddenly disappearing because a rerun of events has prevented their birth. Therefore, something is stopping time travelers from changing our present, and physicists Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku, and others believe they know what it is – parallel universes.
 

This holds that we inhabit a universe with an infinite number of other worlds. If you travel through time and convince your parents to split, you will immediately be thrust into a parallel universe; one where you never existed. You become a visitor in this new universe, but you can never return to your original universe because you don't exist there anymore.
 

            The longing to hug a departed loved one or foil atrocities, are among the compelling reasons that keep the dream of time travel alive in the minds of many. However, assuming that nobody wants to get lost in a strange universe, an advanced civilization might find the following applications worth pursuing:
 

·         Glimpsing into the future could allow humanity to become aware of dangerous threats in plenty of time to find solutions.

·         Backwards time travel would enable us to scan minds of lost loved ones the night before they died, and with tomorrow's technology advances, allow them to continue living in our time.
 

Though wormhole construction is beyond today's knowledge, positive futurists believe that humanity will one day think with super-intelligent minds governed by physics, not biology; and over the next few millennia, could easily learn to harness these wonders.
 

We dream of breathtaking changes ahead as we approach the era when machines surpass human intelligence. We ponder how our "magical future" might unfold. What miracles will civilization accomplish? Will we develop exotic planets; discover aliens; travel through time? Only time will tell.
 

This article will appear in various print media and blogs; comments welcome. See other published work by Dick at http://www.positivefuturist.com/archive.html

Why not a home brew biofuel? Eric

Source

http://www.techreview.com/Biotech/18476/

Stroll the streets of San Francisco and you're likely to overhear someone talking about biofuels. It's the latest technology wave to hit the Bay Area, and scientists and investors are swarming toward any startup claiming a better way to make ethanol or biodiesels. Amyris Biotechnologies may actually have found one. Having previously reengineered microbes so that they would produce a malaria drug, the company is now drawing on its expertise at creating efficient bacterial factories to cheaply churn out novel types of biofuels.

Amyris is one of the first companies to spring from the relatively new field of synthetic biology. Unlike the conventional genetic engineering currently used in the manufacture of antibiotics and protein drugs such as insulin, synthetic biology involves hacking the entire metabolic system--changing the structure of some proteins, altering the expression of others, and adding in genes from other organisms--to create an efficient microbial machine. "We think of biological components as parts you assemble and try to get to function as a whole," says Jay Keasling, a bioengineer at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of Amyris's cofounders.

Plants and microbes naturally make small quantities of chemicals called terpenoids, which are the precursors of myriad products, including some pharmaceuticals and fuels. Several years ago, after developing new ways to boost bacteria's production of terpenoids, Keasling and three of his postdoctoral students founded Amyris to commercialize their work.

For its first project, the company selected artemisinin, a potent malaria drug derived from the sweet wormwood tree (see TR10 2005). By tinkering with yeast's metabolic processes, Keasling and his colleagues were able to boost its production of an artemisinin precursor a million-fold. After just two years of work, they are close to meeting their final goal for the drug--producing it in industrial quantities at prices affordable to developing nations. Now, having created microbial factories that can cheaply churn out carbon-based molecules, the group has turned its attention to biofuels.

Making fuel is different from making medicine. In most cases, pharmaceutical companies aren't concerned with how efficiently they make their drugs because they know they can charge premium prices for them. New fuels, on the other hand, must compete in price with petroleum. Rather than trying to find better ways to make ethanol--the aim of most new biofuel efforts--the researchers chose to create entirely novel biofuels, guided by their own ideas about what a fuel might look like if designed from scratch. "We looked at the Merck Index and said, If you could pick any molecule to use as fuel, what would you pick?" says Jack Newman, one of Amyris's cofounders and vice president of research.

The researchers selected several candidate compounds based on their energy content (ethanol has only 70 percent the energy of gasoline), their volatility (an ideal fuel shouldn't evaporate too fast), and their solubility in water (unlike ethanol, a water-insoluble fuel could be piped around the country like petroleum). After narrowing the list by determining which fuels could be both produced in the lab and used in today's engines, they were left with a selection of compounds including replacements for both diesel and jet fuel. "We've tested a lot of fuels with fantastic properties," says Neil Renninger, Amyris cofounder and vice president of development.

Amyris scientists are now designing metabolic pathways that yield these compounds and tinkering with them to make production as efficient as possible. "You have to walk down a cost curve of production," says Renninger. "At the bottom, you get a product so cheap you can burn it."

While the company is still a long way from having a practical biofuel, its progress will be under close watch. As ethanol is being used more and more for transportation fuel, biofuels have captured the attention of investors. Indeed, in 2001, when Keasling and colleagues first thought about making biofuels, Amyris found very little investor interest. That has changed. "We went out with the aim of raising $7 million [during a 2006 round of financing] and ended up with $20 million," says Newman. "We had to turn down multiple investors."

Optics-- A science that helps us see the future. Eric

A prototype optical transceiver from IBM is fast enough to download a high definition feature-length film in a single second. That compares to the current rate of 30 minutes or more.

IBM researchers built the optical transceiver with driver and receiver integrated circuits in current CMOS technology, the same standard, high-volume, low-cost technology used for most current chips. Then they coupled it with other necessary optical components made in more exotic materials, such as indium phosphide (InP) and gallium arsenide (GaAs). The whole assembly fits into a package measuring 3.25 by 5.25 millimeters.

By shrinking and integrating the components into a single unit and building them with standard chip manufacturing techniques, researchers believe they're making optical connectivity viable for widespread use.

"The explosion in the amount of data being transferred, when downloading movies, TV shows, music or photos, is creating demand for greater bandwidth and higher speeds in connectivity," said Dr. T.C. Chen, vice president, Science & Technology, IBM Research. "Greater use of optical communications is needed to address this issue. We believe our optical transceiver technology may provide the answer."

Learn more:
IBM Researchers Demonstrate World's Fastest Optical Chipset (press release)

CCSN map of the Planetarium

Here is a link ==>

http://www.ccsnfoundation.net/planetarium/Maps.html

Mind altering drugs? sounds like the 60's! I would hope if this can be developed it could enhance memory as well as treat memory loss. Better living through better chemistry! Eric

Mutation improves memory, may lead to memory-enhancing pill

A mind-altering mutation in mice results in an enhanced long-term memory, researchers report in the April 6, 2007 issue of the journal Cell, published by Cell Press. These findings point to a potential target for the development of a drug to treat memory loss, according to the researchers.

The researchers studied a gene that normally increases levels of a natural memory-blocking protein. Animals that carry a defective version of this gene showed improved performance in classical behavioral memory tests, they show. Moreover, animals treated with a small molecule that had the opposite effect—leading ultimately to an increase in the memory-blocker's concentration—showed signs of memory impairment.

"There are very few examples where you can increase memory, especially by deleting genes," said study author Nahum Sonenberg of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "It's a small, but important part of the big puzzle of how memory works."

"The next step, which is inevitable, is to look for small molecules that mimic this memory-enhancing effect," he continued.

"If such a pill could be generated, it might provide a new method for treating people with memory-related diseases such as Alzheimer's," said Mauro Costa-Mattioli, a senior postdoctoral fellow in Sonenberg's laboratory. "While a drug that worked in this way wouldn't cure the disease itself, it might rescue the symptoms of memory loss."

Memories are formed when the repeated activation of brain cells leads to a strengthening of neural connections, or synapses. This process, considered the cellular basis of learning and memory, is known as synaptic plasticity.

Both memory and synaptic plasticity have two components, the researchers explained. One, which is evoked by weak training protocols, yields only transient phenomena—including short-term memory, lasting for minutes to hours, or the beginning stages of longer-term memory storage, lasting for one to three hours. The second component, which follows strong or repetitive training, activates mechanisms that stabilize the memory and nerve connections, resulting in long-term memory, lasting days, weeks, or years.

"Quite different molecular machineries, widely conserved from sea slugs to rodents, are thought to underlie these two components. While modifications of pre-existing proteins are sufficient for the transient changes, new gene expression is required for those that are sustained," the researchers said, emphasizing that a gene's expression depends on both its transcription into messenger RNA and the translation of that messenger RNA into functional proteins.

Sonenberg and Costa-Mattioli earlier found the first genetic evidence that control over protein synthesis plays an important role in the formation of lasting memories.

"Most of the focus on gene control is at the level of transcription," Sonenberg said. "In contrast, here there is control at the level of translation—in making protein from messenger RNA, a less appreciated mode of regulation."

When the regulatory protein eIF2a is chemically modified with the addition of a phosphate to one of its amino acids, it switches on the protein synthesis of another factor that halts production of genes required for the long-term storage of memories. Sonenberg and his colleagues previously discovered that mice lacking the enzyme that performs the phosphorylation reaction have a superior ability to remember new things under certain training conditions.

"Those results led us to suspect that decreasing the phosphorylation of eIF2a enhanced memory storage," Costa-Mattioli said.

In an effort to validate their earlier findings, the researchers have now generated mice carrying a version of eIF2a that cannot be phosphorylated. The mutant mice have lower levels of phosphorylated eIF2a and showed an improved talent for spatial learning in a water maze test.

In the test, the mice were trained to swim to a hidden platform. After several days of training, the altered mice were able to find the platform significantly faster than normal mice could, they reported.

"For example, if a person were reading a page of a textbook, it might take several times to memorize it," Costa-Mattioli said. "A human equivalent of these mice would get the information right away."

The mutant mice also performed better than normal mice in a "fear-conditioning" test. In that test, animals are put into a cage followed by a mild foot shock or are exposed to a tone paired with a foot shock. Their memory for the earlier bad experience is determined based on how much they freeze in response to the "scary" place or sound 24 hr later.

Importantly, the researchers also showed that treatment of animals with a small molecule that increases eIF2a's phosphorylation led to poorer performance on the memory tests.

"These data strengthen the idea that eIF2a phosphorylation is a key, bidirectional point of memory control," with the ability to turn long-term memory formation on and off, Costa-Mattioli said.

"Taken together, these data strongly support the notion that, under physiological conditions, a decrease in eIF2a phosphorylation constitutes a critical step for the activation of gene expression that leads to the long-term synaptic changes required for memory formation," the researchers concluded. "These findings also raise the interesting possibility that regulators of translation could serve as therapeutic targets for the improvement of memory, for instance in human disorders associated with memory loss."

The researchers include Mauro Costa-Mattioli, Karine Gamache, Rodney Colina, Claudio Cuello, Wayne Sossin, Jerry Pelletier, Kresimir Krnjevic, Karim Nader, and Nahum Sonenberg of McGill University in Montrιal, Quιbec, Canada; Delphine Gobert, Jean-Claude Lacaille, of Universitι de Montrιal in Montrιal, Quιbec; Elad Stern, Kobi Rosenblum, of University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel; Randal Kaufman of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.

Gee for the last 30 years a 0.65 degrees C per year on Mars is a lot more than 0.17 degrees C per decade reported on Earth. Can we attribute this to the Sun? Men on Mars? Not so much! Eric

Scientists study climate change on Mars
MOFFETT FIELD, Calif., April 5 (UPI) -- NASA scientists have found variations in the radiation reflected from the surface of Mars are contributing to climate change on that planet.

Lori Fenton of the Carl Sagan Center, located at the National

Aeronautics and Space Administration's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., said the radiation variations produce increased dust transport and wind circulation, possibly causing that planet to be warming by approximately 0.65 degrees Celsius each year. That, theorize the scientists, might have in part caused the recent retreat of Mars' southern polar ice cap.

Fenton and her colleagues used predictions from a Mars global circulation model that show large swaths of the surface have darkened during the past three decades as they were swept free of dust, leading to elevated air temperatures and increased wind stresses. The authors said that that, along with other climate-influencing processes on Mars, should be considered as an important component in future atmospheric and climate studies of the planet.

The study is published in the current issue of the journal Nature.

Copyright 2007 by United Press International. All Rights Reserved.

Mind altering drugs? sounds like the 60's! I would hope if this can be developed it could enhance memory as well as treat memory loss. Better living through better chemistry! Eric

Mutation improves memory, may lead to memory-enhancing pill

A mind-altering mutation in mice results in an enhanced long-term memory, researchers report in the April 6, 2007 issue of the journal Cell, published by Cell Press. These findings point to a potential target for the development of a drug to treat memory loss, according to the researchers.

The researchers studied a gene that normally increases levels of a natural memory-blocking protein. Animals that carry a defective version of this gene showed improved performance in classical behavioral memory tests, they show. Moreover, animals treated with a small molecule that had the opposite effect—leading ultimately to an increase in the memory-blocker's concentration—showed signs of memory impairment.

"There are very few examples where you can increase memory, especially by deleting genes," said study author Nahum Sonenberg of McGill University in Montreal, Canada. "It's a small, but important part of the big puzzle of how memory works."

"The next step, which is inevitable, is to look for small molecules that mimic this memory-enhancing effect," he continued.

"If such a pill could be generated, it might provide a new method for treating people with memory-related diseases such as Alzheimer's," said Mauro Costa-Mattioli, a senior postdoctoral fellow in Sonenberg's laboratory. "While a drug that worked in this way wouldn't cure the disease itself, it might rescue the symptoms of memory loss."

Memories are formed when the repeated activation of brain cells leads to a strengthening of neural connections, or synapses. This process, considered the cellular basis of learning and memory, is known as synaptic plasticity.

Both memory and synaptic plasticity have two components, the researchers explained. One, which is evoked by weak training protocols, yields only transient phenomena—including short-term memory, lasting for minutes to hours, or the beginning stages of longer-term memory storage, lasting for one to three hours. The second component, which follows strong or repetitive training, activates mechanisms that stabilize the memory and nerve connections, resulting in long-term memory, lasting days, weeks, or years.

"Quite different molecular machineries, widely conserved from sea slugs to rodents, are thought to underlie these two components. While modifications of pre-existing proteins are sufficient for the transient changes, new gene expression is required for those that are sustained," the researchers said, emphasizing that a gene's expression depends on both its transcription into messenger RNA and the translation of that messenger RNA into functional proteins.

Sonenberg and Costa-Mattioli earlier found the first genetic evidence that control over protein synthesis plays an important role in the formation of lasting memories.

"Most of the focus on gene control is at the level of transcription," Sonenberg said. "In contrast, here there is control at the level of translation—in making protein from messenger RNA, a less appreciated mode of regulation."

When the regulatory protein eIF2a is chemically modified with the addition of a phosphate to one of its amino acids, it switches on the protein synthesis of another factor that halts production of genes required for the long-term storage of memories. Sonenberg and his colleagues previously discovered that mice lacking the enzyme that performs the phosphorylation reaction have a superior ability to remember new things under certain training conditions.

"Those results led us to suspect that decreasing the phosphorylation of eIF2a enhanced memory storage," Costa-Mattioli said.

In an effort to validate their earlier findings, the researchers have now generated mice carrying a version of eIF2a that cannot be phosphorylated. The mutant mice have lower levels of phosphorylated eIF2a and showed an improved talent for spatial learning in a water maze test.

In the test, the mice were trained to swim to a hidden platform. After several days of training, the altered mice were able to find the platform significantly faster than normal mice could, they reported.

"For example, if a person were reading a page of a textbook, it might take several times to memorize it," Costa-Mattioli said. "A human equivalent of these mice would get the information right away."

The mutant mice also performed better than normal mice in a "fear-conditioning" test. In that test, animals are put into a cage followed by a mild foot shock or are exposed to a tone paired with a foot shock. Their memory for the earlier bad experience is determined based on how much they freeze in response to the "scary" place or sound 24 hr later.

Importantly, the researchers also showed that treatment of animals with a small molecule that increases eIF2a's phosphorylation led to poorer performance on the memory tests.

"These data strengthen the idea that eIF2a phosphorylation is a key, bidirectional point of memory control," with the ability to turn long-term memory formation on and off, Costa-Mattioli said.

"Taken together, these data strongly support the notion that, under physiological conditions, a decrease in eIF2a phosphorylation constitutes a critical step for the activation of gene expression that leads to the long-term synaptic changes required for memory formation," the researchers concluded. "These findings also raise the interesting possibility that regulators of translation could serve as therapeutic targets for the improvement of memory, for instance in human disorders associated with memory loss."

###

The researchers include Mauro Costa-Mattioli, Karine Gamache, Rodney Colina, Claudio Cuello, Wayne Sossin, Jerry Pelletier, Kresimir Krnjevic, Karim Nader, and Nahum Sonenberg of McGill University in Montrιal, Quιbec, Canada; Delphine Gobert, Jean-Claude Lacaille, of Universitι de Montrιal in Montrιal, Quιbec; Elad Stern, Kobi Rosenblum, of University of Haifa in Haifa, Israel; Randal Kaufman of Howard Hughes Medical Institute and University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, MI.

In my opinion this Wiki write up illustrates that Global Warming is a controversy and far from settled.  Time will tell.  Remember many former 'truths' or concensus have latter proved premature at best- Eric

Wiki Link--

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_controversy

The global warming controversy is a debate about the causes of the increase in global average air temperature since the mid-1800s^[1], the prediction of additional warming, and the consequences of that warming. (See also: Global warming.) An additional issue is whether the modern warming period is unprecedented or within normal climatic variations.

This is an interesting piece from the Economist on the Future of
books and some of the things going on with Google and others.  Elaine

The future of books

Not bound by anything
Mar 22nd 2007 | MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIFORNIA
From The Economist print edition

Now that books are being digitised, how will people read?

Daniel Pudles
IN SECRET locations and using secret methods, human beings are
scanning lots and lots of books for Google, the world's largest web-
search company. That humans are involved is beyond doubt (fingers are
visible in the corners of many pages on books.google.com) although
this is uncharacteristic of Google, which has a fetish for purist
technology.

Google will not divulge exact numbers, but Daniel Clancy, the
project's lead engineer, gives enough guidance for an educated guess:
Google's contract with one university library, Berkeley's, stipulates
that it must digitise 3,000 books a day. The minimum for the other 12
universities involved may be lower, but the rate for participating
publishers is higher. So a conservative estimate has Google
digitising at least 10m books a year. The total number of titles in
existence is estimated to be about 65m.

Google's is not the only project of its kind. The Internet Archive,
for instance, is a non-profit organisation founded in 1996 by
Brewster Kahle, a San Francisco idealist who wants to re-create a
modern Library of Alexandria containing all public-domain texts and
videos. Amazon has been scanning books, as have Microsoft and Yahoo!,
Google's biggest rivals in web-search, and individual libraries
around the world. Eager not to be left out, publishers are also doing
the same. But Google's effort, in scale and ambition, is off the
charts.

As books go digital, new questions, both philosophical and
commercial, arise. How, physically, will people read books in future?
Will technology "unbind" books, as it has unbundled other media, such
as music albums? Will reading habits change as a result? What happens
when books are interlinked? And what is a book anyway?

Change is least likely in the physical medium of books. Electronic
books do exist; the best-known is the Sony Reader, a book-sized
gadget made by the eponymous consumer-electronics company. Sony
currently makes 12,000 books available online for download, but "our
mission is not to replace the print book," says Ron Hawkins, the Sony
Reader's marketing boss.

There is an obvious analogy between what Apple's iPods have done to
CD players and what electronic books may do to the printed page, but
the shift is unlikely to be quite so comprehensive. The simplest
difference is that transferring one's old music CDs onto iPods is
easy, whereas transferring one's old books onto an e-book is
impossible.

So who is going to read the millions of pages that Google and its
colleagues are so busy digitising? Some people will read them on-
screen, some will use Google as a taster for books they will then buy
in paper form or borrow from a library, and still more will use it to
look for specific snippets that interest them.

The biggest changes are likely to be seen in what becomes a book in
the first place. Here the internet may indeed be to some book genres
what Apple has been to music or what YouTube (now part of Google) has
been to video. Among younger listeners albums are dead. They have
been replaced by playlists of individual songs designed to be shared
with friends.

In books this has already happened for encyclopedias. Wikipedia,
which is free, collaborative and online, has eaten into sales of
paper-bound alternatives. So books that people would not
traditionally read in their entirety, or that require frequent
updating, are likely to migrate online and perhaps to cease being
books at all. Telephone directories and dictionaries, and probably
cookbooks and textbooks, will all fall into this category.

With non-fiction the situation is more nuanced. Many non-fiction
books express an intellectual idea. Traditionally, the only way to
deliver such an idea profitably involved binding it into a 300-page
book, says Seth Godin, a blogger and author of eight books on
marketing. "If you had a 50-page idea, you couldn't make any money
from it," he says, so a lot of non-fiction books end up on shelves
with 250 unread pages. Freedom from such rigidities may save a lot of
authorial time.

Non-fiction books will also benefit from another change that comes
with digitisation. Like web pages, digitised books can have incoming
and outgoing hyperlinks. On books.google.com at the moment, links are
only to entire books. But in future, says Google's Mr Clancy, links
will point to and from specific phrases or words inside books.
Footnotes, citations and bibliographies are obvious points for live
links.

This has several benefits. It will help scholarly research, since it
makes primary sources much more accessible. And it will reduce the
slog of academic book-worming—jotting down the location of a book,
trudging through the library, pulling it off the shelf, queuing for
the photocopier—to the negligible effort of clicking a mouse.

Such links will also make books much easier to discover, by helping
search engines. As link structures develop around books, search
algorithms can count incoming links as "votes", giving more weight to
incoming links from much-cited places and less to obscure ones. The
(offline) citation culture of academic literature already works this
way. This, in fact, is what gave Larry Page, one of Google's co-
founders, the original idea for his search algorithm, which he
cheekily called PageRank.

What about all the genres of books that fill a different human need?
Certainly, some types of fiction—novels as well as novellas—are also
likely to migrate online and to cease being books. Many fantasy fans,
for example, have already put aside books and logged on to "virtual
worlds" such as "World of Warcraft", in which muscular heroes and
heroines get together to slay dragons and such like. Science fiction
may go the same way, and is arguably already being created
by "residents" of online worlds such as Second Life.

Most stories, however, will never find a better medium than the paper-
bound novel. That is because readers immersed in a storyline want
above all not to be interrupted, and all online media teem with
distractions (even a hyperlink is an interruption). People do not
read fiction in order to accomplish a specific task in a limited
amount of time, as they read reference and schoolbooks. Random-access
dictionaries and cookbooks may be useful; random-access novels less
so.

What about short stories and poems? Being short, they fit the new
media, so some may do well online and need not be bound in paper.
Commuters could receive their daily haiku or sonnet on their mobile
phones while taking the bus to work. They might also use the new
media to enjoy poetry in a more traditional way. "Storytelling
started as oral history," says Adam Smith, the boss of Google's book
project, so a partial reversion to that form, through podcasting,
would be natural.

But even anthologies of short stories and poems, like longer novels,
are unlikely to disappear. People want to be guided by others. They
also want media suitable for unhurried reading in beds and bathtubs
and on beaches. Above all, they want paper books for what
digitisation is revealing them to be. Books are not primarily
artefacts, nor necessarily vehicles for ideas. Rather, as Mr Godin
puts it, they are "souvenirs of the way we felt" when we read
something. That is something that people are likely to go on buying.

Future automation offers much for humanity

Commentary by Futuretalk

Except for the Amish, there are few who wish for less automation in their lives. Most of us enjoy refrigerators that keep food from spoiling, stoves and microwaves that prepare food to our liking, and automatic heating and air conditioning systems that keep our bodies comfortable. We could go on and on – lawn mowers, vacuum cleaners, even pacemakers and cochlear implants – humanity loves inventions that help make life easier.

Personal robots are just an extension of this movement towards more automated systems. Yours truly grew up on a farm in the 1930s where we depended on horses and other farm animals for survival; later we replaced horses with tractors and automobiles; life became easier.

As for robots freeing us from drudge jobs, forcing us to learn new skills like IT, nano-engineering, or some other high-tech job – bring it on! Most people feel better knowing that they derive their livelihood more from use of brains than brawn.

In addition, there is no need to worry about robots taking control of our lives. Before our silicon cousins develop the ability to out-think us, human-machine merge will become possible, enabling us to transfer their knowledge and superior calculating systems into our brains. We will become them before they could ever become dangerous to us.

Automation is great. I have personally experienced its amazing benefits during my lifetime and can hardly wait until our "magical future" becomes reality. I welcome biotech advances that promise to replace my aging organs, bones, muscles, and skin; and molecular nanotech which many predict could place a home-replicator on my kitchen counter by mid-2020s or so.

There is much expected from automation over the coming decades, and this writer does not believe we will be disappointed.

Comments welcome.

Nanogenerator provides continuous power by harvesting energy from the
environment

Close-up image shows a prototype direct-current nanogenerator
fabricated by Georgia Tech researchers using an array of zinc oxide
nanowires. Credit: Georgia Tech Photo: Gary Meek

Researchers have demonstrated a prototype nanometer-scale generator
that produces continuous direct-current electricity by harvesting
mechanical energy from such environmental sources as ultrasonic
waves, mechanical vibration or blood flow.
Sponsored Links (Ads by Google)

Based on arrays of vertically-aligned zinc oxide nanowires that move
inside a novel "zig-zag" plate electrode, the nanogenerators could
provide a new way to power nanoscale devices without batteries or
other external power sources.

"This is a major step toward a portable, adaptable and cost-effective
technology for powering nanoscale devices," said Zhong Lin Wang,
Regents' Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering
at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "There has been a lot of
interest in making nanodevices, but we have tended not to think about
how to power them. Our nanogenerator allows us to harvest or recycle
energy from many sources to power these devices."

Schematic (top) showing the direct current nanogenerator built using
aligned ZnO nanowire arrays with a zigzag top electrode. The
nanogenerator is driven by an external ultrasonic wave or mechanical
vibration and the output current is continuous. The lower plot is the
output from a nanogenerator when the ultrasonic wave was on and off.
Credit: Courtesy of Zhong Lin Wang, Georgia Tech
Details of the nanogenerator will be reported in the April 6 issue of
the journal Science. The research was sponsored by the Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the National Science
Foundation (NSF), and the Emory-Georgia Tech Center of Cancer
Nanotechnology Excellence.

The nanogenerators take advantage of the unique coupled piezoelectric
and semiconducting properties of zinc oxide nanostructures, which
produce small electrical charges when they are flexed.

Fabrication begins with growing an array of vertically-aligned
nanowires approximately a half-micron apart on gallium arsenide,
sapphire or a flexible polymer substrate. A layer of zinc oxide is
grown on top of substrate to collect the current. The researchers
also fabricate silicon "zig-zag" electrodes, which contain thousands
of nanometer-scale tips made conductive by a platinum coating.

The electrode is then lowered on top of the nanowire array, leaving
just enough space so that a significant number of the nanowires are
free to flex within the gaps created by the tips. Moved by mechanical
energy such as waves or vibration, the nanowires periodically contact
the tips, transferring their electrical charges. By capturing the
tiny amounts of current produced by hundreds of nanowires kept in
motion, the generators produce a direct current output in the nano-
Ampere range.

Wang and his group members Xudong Wang, Jinhui Song and Jin Liu
expect that with optimization, their nanogenerator could produce as
much as 4 watts per cubic centimeter – based on a calculation for a
single nanowire. That would be enough to power a broad range of
nanometer-scale defense, environmental and biomedical applications,
including biosensors implanted in the body, environmental monitors –
and even nanoscale robots.

Nearly a year ago, in the April 14, 2006 issue of the journal
Science, Wang's research team announced the concept behind the
nanogenerators. At that time, the nanogenerator could harvest power
from just one nanowire at a time by dragging the tip of an atomic
force microscope (AFM) over it. Made of platinum-coated silicon, the
tip served as a Schottky barrier, helping accumulate and preserve the
electrical charge as the nanowire flexed – and ensuring that the
current flowed in one direction.

With its multiple conducting tips similar to those of an AFM, the new
zig-zag electrode serves as a Schottky barrier to hundreds or
thousands of wires simultaneously, harvesting energy from the
nanowire arrays.

"Producing the top electrode as a single assembly sets the stage for
scaling up this technology," Wang said. "We can now see the steps
involved in moving forward to a device that can power real nanometer-
scale applications."

Before that happens, additional development will be needed to
optimize current production. For instance, though nanowires in the
arrays can be grown to approximately the same length – about one
micron – there is some variation. Wires that are too short cannot
touch the electrode to produce current, while wires that are too long
cannot flex to produce electrical charge.

"We need to be able to better control the growth, density and
uniformity of the wires," Wang said. "We believe we can make as many
as millions or even billions of nanowires produce current
simultaneously. That will allow us to optimize operation of the
nanogenerator."

In their lab, the researchers aimed an ultrasound source at their
nanogenerator to measure current output over slightly more than an
hour. Though there is some fluctuation in output, the current flow
was continuous as long as the ultrasonic generator was operating,
Wang said.

To rule out other sources of the current measured, the researchers
substituted carbon nanotubes – which are not piezoelectric – for the
zinc oxide nanowires, and used a top electrode that was flat. In both
cases, the resulting devices did not produce current.

Providing power for nanometer-scale devices has long been a
challenge. Batteries and other traditional sources are too large, and
tend to negate the size advantages of nanodevices. And since
batteries contain toxic materials such as lithium and cadmium, they
cannot be implanted into the body as part of biomedical applications.

Because zinc oxide is non-toxic and compatible with the body, the new
nanogenerators could be integrated into implantable biomedical
devices to wirelessly measure blood flow and blood pressure within
the body. And they could also find more ordinary applications.

"If you had a device like this in your shoes when you walked, you
would be able to generate your own small current to power small
electronics," Wang noted. "Anything that makes the nanowires move
within the generator can be used for generating power. Very little
force is required to move them."

Source: Georgia Institute of Technology

Why not a Las Vegas Metropolitan Area-wide network? Eric

Cambridge to host first city-wide wireless sensor network

Computer scientists collaborate to create open-source research network

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., April 5, 2007 -- Harvard University, BBN Technologies, and the City of Cambridge have begun a four-year project to install 100 wireless sensors atop streetlights in Cambridge, Mass., creating the world's first city-wide network of wireless sensors.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the project is open-source, meaning it could eventually be accessible to researchers worldwide for everything from gathering meteorological data to monitoring traffic conditions and noise pollution.

Called CitySense, the wireless sensor network developed by computer scientists at Harvard and BBN Technologies, a technology solutions firm in Cambridge, will focus initially on monitoring air pollution and weather conditions, collecting data on a scale never before attempted.

"Wireless sensor networks have the potential to revolutionize the real-time monitoring of the environment, civil structures, roadways, and animal habitats," says Matt Welsh, assistant professor of computer science in Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. "This will be one of the largest projects of its kind, and the entire 100-sensor infrastructure will eventually be open to anyone with a computer and an internet connection. That could mean an atmospheric science researcher in Tulsa or a 10th grade high school teacher in San Francisco would only have to design an experiment and sign up for a time slot to run it on CitySense."

Welsh and his team are in the prototyping stage, but they hope to place up to 20 sensors in two years, 50 by their third year, and all 100 sensors within four years. The sensors, to be installed on and powered by public streetlights, will measure temperature, wind speed, rainfall, barometric pressure, and air quality, but the possibilities are endless. The ease with which additional sensors can be plugged in locally or tested remotely has led to long-term proposals for CitySense sensors including biosensors for airborne contaminants and microphones to study noise pollution.

"The sensors could become a springboard to providing city-wide wireless internet access, as well as for collecting data from mobile sensors mounted in buses and automobiles," says Welsh, who has previously outfitted his building on the Harvard campus with some 190 of the units, as well as deployed wireless sensors on active volcanoes in Ecuador. His use of the sensors in an outdoor setting should help researchers learn whether sensor network experiments performed in laboratory simulations -- as in most research to date -- are representative of those performed in an uncontrolled outdoor environment.

Josh Bers, Welsh's collaborator at BBN Technologies, is designing the wireless sensor nodes. By using multi-hop wireless networking software that links each node with its neighbors to form a mesh, Bers can ensure that CitySense remains available to researchers despite the harsh weather atop city streetlights.

The City of Cambridge is playing an important role in this project, supporting the sensor installation on light poles throughout the city.

CitySense's first task will be to monitor air pollution transport in a dense urban environment for Majid Ezzati, associate professor of international health in the Harvard School of Public Health. Ezzati hopes to gain valuable data on airborne pollutants' public health impact. Since data will be collected from multiple sources across the city, the sensors will provide a more complete picture of environmental data than current data collected locally from one center.

"This is really just a first step to make sure this interactive, visual, real-time sensor network is operational," Welsh says. "We think this can be more than a sensor network testbed for scientists across the country who want to design their own city-wide experiments. We also believe the network as a whole could provide the groundwork for cities looking to install universal wireless internet."

Welsh and Bers are working with Tufts University's Center for Engineering Educational Outreach to create a K-12 curriculum to accompany CitySense and make complex engineering concepts more easily understandable.

A friend clued me into this interesting site that has downloadable
talks on a wide variety of topics - most are about 20 minutes and are
available in audio and video.  Many are related to topics we've covered
at futurist meetings. Enjoy!!

http://www.ted.com/tedtalks/

For example:

The Jan 17th talks included one by Robert Wright (The Moral Animal and
speaker at the first Accelerating Change Conference).

November 15th features Ray Kurzweil.

October 25th has a talk by Burt Rutan.

NASA has developed ways to supply astronauts in space: recycle all
water (really, all water).  Here's how they plan to do it.

P.S.
This is probably more than you want to know.

16 March 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Hazel Muir

Enlarge image
Waste not, want notAT THE bar in any exclusive hotel, you expect the
price of your drink to sting. But $3000 for a glass of water? Ouch.
That's the price tag in the most exclusive hotel of all - the
International Space Station. Ferrying fresh water up to the
station's astronauts equates to a bar bill of millions of dollars
every year.

Now NASA says enough is enough. No longer will it shell out big
bucks to truck up all that water. As far as the agency is concerned,
the astronauts can just drink their own wee.

No, really. From 2009, space station astronauts will drink their own
urine, sweat, and even rat pee from the labs. Luckily, though,
that's only after they've installed a high-tech machine to recycle
this vile cocktail with other waste water to make purer drinking
water than any you'd get out of city taps on Earth.

Astronauts say they're fine with the idea. "When you talk about
drinking recycled urine, a lot of people get a little bit green just
thinking about it," says Layne Carter, an engineer at NASA's
Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. "But if you're
comfortable being strapped to a rocket and launched into space,
drinking a little recycled urine isn't going to bother you. The
astronauts are very professional and they don't really have an issue
with it."

From the start of the ISS project, engineers knew that supplying
sufficient water would be a bugbear. Each astronaut uses around 4.4
litres of water a day for drinking, washing and so on, and sending
up water from Earth on the shuttle or uncrewed supply ships costs
roughly $11,000 per litre.

At the moment, a Russian-built water processor replenishes some of
the drinking water by condensing humidity from the air. But
spacecraft still have to supply 2200 litres of fresh water to
maintain a crew of three for one year, at a cost of around $24
million.

Storing fresh water also takes up precious room, and given that the
astronaut crew is expected to increase to six in 2009, much more
efficient water recycling will be imperative. "Over the course of a
year they'll use up much more water than we can supply, so they'll
have to recycle it," says Carter.

NASA's solution is the "water recovery system", for which Carter is
the systems engineer. His team is putting the finishing touches to
the machine, which should fly to the ISS in October 2008 on the
shuttle Discovery. It will recycle 93 per cent of all water used on
the ISS, reducing the annual demand of a six-person crew to about
1700 litres.

A key part of the system is a process that can salvage about 85 per
cent of the water in urine. After taking a leak, astronauts will
flush the toilet with a little water - 0.3 litres of flush water for
every 1.2 litres of urine, to be precise. Then a chemical dispenser
will add a dash of chromium trioxide and sulphuric acid. This
prevents the chemical reactions and microbial growth that would
otherwise make the loo smell like a public toilet on a Saturday
night.

Then the mix is pumped into a distillation cylinder, which spins so
that the urine forms a thin film on the walls. Without this
spinning, the urine would simply form globs and float aimlessly
about in the microgravity. The cylinder wall heats the urine to
about 40 °C, and the pressure inside is kept so low - about 0.05
atmospheres - that the water evaporates.

A compressor then pressurises the water vapour in the space around
the cylinder so it condenses on the drum's outer surface. The heat
of condensation travels back through the cylinder wall to warm the
incoming urine, a cunning design trick that saves energy. "With any
process on the space station, you've got minimal resources in terms
of power, weight and volume - you have to be extremely efficient,"
says Carter.

Distilling water off the urine leaves behind a revolting liquid that
Carter generously calls "brine". The brine is recirculated through
the distiller again and again until 85 per cent of the water in the
urine is recovered. Astronauts will periodically remove a tank of
spent brine and bin it in a Progress vehicle, the uncrewed modules
used to ferry supplies up to the ISS. These serve as trash
containers while they are docked with the station, and afterwards
are jettisoned to burn up in the atmosphere.

Meanwhile, the more palatable distillate ends up in a 45-litre tank,
where it mingles with other waste water - reclaimed moisture
generated in the living area by the crew, via breathing, washing,
tooth brushing and shaving, and pee from lab animal cages. It is now
ready for a four-stage scrubbing in the "water processor assembly",
designed and built by Connecticut-based aerospace company Hamilton
Sundstrand.

First, a filter traps any particles bigger than about 0.5
micrometres wide. Then the water runs through a series of filtration
beds to remove dissolved contaminants. Adsorbent materials such as
activated carbon remove organic compounds like benzene and
caprolactam, a contaminant released from the abundant Velcro used on
the station, while an ion-exchange resin eliminates inorganic
compounds like common salt. The resin exchanges positive and
negative ions for hydrogen (H+) and hydroxyl (OH-) ions, which
combine to create pure H2O.

By this point, the only contaminants in the water are volatile
organics such as ethanol and acetone. To remove these compounds, the
water flows into a catalytic reactor that heats it to 130 °C and
injects a little oxygen gas. This oxidises the volatile organics to
carbon dioxide or organic acids, which are removed by further ion-
exchange beds, while the heat kills off any bacteria, fungi or
viruses.

Finally, the machine laces the water with 1 to 4 milligrams of
iodine per litre, just to prevent any microbes colonising the water
system later, then pumps it into a 57-litre storage tank. It can
purify nearly 6 litres per hour, so ISS astronauts will only have to
run it for around 5 hours a day. "They'll probably run it for 8 to
10 hours every other day to reduce the cycle life on the hardware,"
says Carter.

Carter is confident that the water recovery system will behave well
in space, thanks to rigorous testing. He and his colleagues rode on
NASA's "vomit comet" plane, which flies a series of parabolic arcs
to produce half-minute bursts of microgravity, and tested components
of the catalytic reactor and the distillation unit to make sure that
gases and liquids moved through them as expected. Tests on shuttle
missions were also successful.

Meanwhile, more than 120 staff at the Marshall centre queued up to
donate their bodily waste for the cause. Each day for six months
volunteers - from engineers to accountants - visited a mock-up of
the ISS for an hour to run on treadmills, microwave their food and
pee in the toilet. "They would exercise, take sponge baths, brush
their teeth and shave, just like the crew on the space station,"
says Carter.

The water recovery system scrubbed up their mucky water rather well.
Now something of a connoisseur of his colleagues' recycled waste,
Carter says there's not even a hint of sewage, just a
slightly "medicinal" tang from the iodine. The level of organic
carbon compounds is less than 2 per cent of that found in typical US
tap water. To make sure the astronauts don't drink harmful amounts
of iodine during long stays on the ISS, they will install a filter
that mops up the iodine just before it reaches the drinking tap.

How well the system fares when it is installed on the ISS next year
is sure to influence future designs. Urine recycling will become
essential when astronauts set up a base on the lunar surface, and
that's something NASA is already designing.

"Right now, we're starting the development work for that, and I'm
really excited about it," says Carter. After all, it will save NASA
millions of dollars. When astronauts set foot on the moon once
again, their pee may - quite literally - be worth its weight in gold.

From issue 2595 of New Scientist magazine, 16 March 2007, page 48-49

Virtual Reality for Virtual Eternity

Imagine having a discussion with Isaac Newton or Albert Einstein on
the nature of the universe, where their 3-D, life-sized
representations looked you in the eye, examined your body language,
considered voice nuances and phraseology of your questions, then
answered you in a way that is so real you would swear the images were
alive.

This was an opening scene from an episode of the TV show "Star Trek"
almost a decade and a half ago. A new research project between the
University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Central
Florida in Orlando may soon make such imaginary conversations a
reality.

Technology from computer games, animation and artificial intelligence
provide the elements to make this happen. The National Science
Foundation has awarded a half-million dollar, three-year grant to UIC
and UCF researchers to bring those elements together and create the
methodology for making such virtual figures commonplace.

UIC will focus on the computer graphics and interaction while UCF
will concentrate on artificial intelligence and natural language
processing software.

"The goal is to combine artificial intelligence with the latest
advanced graphics and video game-type technology to enable us to
create historical archives of people beyond what can be achieved
using traditional technologies such as text, audio and video
footage," said Jason Leigh, associate professor of computer science
and director of UIC's Electronic Visualization Laboratory. Leigh is
UIC's lead principal investigator.

EVL will build a state-of-the-art motion-capture studio to digitalize
the image and movement of real people who will go on to live a
virtual eternity in virtual reality. Knowledge will be archived into
databases. Voices will be analyzed to create synthesized but natural-
sounding "virtual" voices. Mannerisms will be studied and used in
creating the 3-D virtual forms, known technically as avatars.

Leigh said his team hopes to create virtual people who respond with a
high degree of recognition to different voices and the various ways
questions are phrased.

"Imagine a computer smart enough to have the avatar respond 'Do you
understand what I'm saying?' in the natural way humans communicate
with each other," said Leigh. "We're trying to tip towards being as
naturalistic as possible."

The project's test subject will be a senior NSF program manager known
for his wealth of institutional knowledge. A UIC graduate student
will shadow this official for several months making video and voice
recordings. His presence will be digitally reconstructed and
interviews used to glean his institutional insights will be stored in
the information database. It will allow NSF personnel to consult his
virtual counterpart whenever they want to tap his institutional
wisdom.

Leigh sees a commercial market for preserving virtual people whose
critical or unique knowledge is vital to operations of corporations
and other institutions.

Faster, more powerful computers in the future will likely enhance the
realism of these interactive avatars. How they will be used is
limited only by one's imagination.

"What's interesting to us is how this works in cycles," said
Leigh. "Advanced graphics/simulation research resulted in today's
gaming technology. A lot of the virtual reality techniques we now
take for granted in game systems like Nintendo Wii or immersive
environments like Second Life came out of labs like EVL. Now next
generation gaming technology is stimulating new applications for
advanced graphics/simulation research that can benefit gaming as well
as other fields."

Other principal investigators on the project include UIC computer
science professors Andrew Johnson, Luc Renambot and Thomas DeFanti;
communication professor Steve Jones; and EVL staffers Maxine Brown
and Lance Long. University of Central Florida principal investigators
include Avelino Gonzalez, professor and interim head of civil and
environmental engineering, and Ronald DeMara, professor of computer
science.

UIC News Release

University of Illinois at Chicago Office of Public Affairs (MC 288)
601 S. Morgan St., Chicago, IL 60607-7113, (312) 996-3456,
www.news.uic.edu

Release Date:
  March 12, 2007

Media Contact:
  Paul Francuch, (312) 996-3457, francuch@...
For more information about UIC, visit www.uic.edu.

UNPRECEDENTED SCREENING OF
UP TO 120,000 CHEMICAL COMPOUNDS
FOR LIFESPAN EXTENSION TO BEGIN

Grant Establishes
"Hillblom Chemical Biology of Aging Network"
at Buck Institute for Age Research 

A valuable resource is being developed for scientists world wide who are attempting to unravel the mystery of aging, the single largest risk factor for human disease in developed countries. A unique research network, funded by the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation and led by scientists at the Buck Institute, will screen as many as 120,000 chemical compounds over the next four years to discover which ones impact lifespan in four research models - yeast, nematode worms, fruit flies and mice. Results of the work, unprecedented in terms of scale for chemical screening, will be made public.

The research highlights a new area of science: the chemical biology of aging.  Using high-tech methodology, the network aims to identify potential "needles in a haystack" of chemicals, giving age researchers new starting points for experiments based on compounds that have never been considered as candidates for lifespan extension.

 "We believe this is the first true chemical exploration of lifespan extension across multiple species," said Gordon Lithgow, PhD, Buck Institute faculty member and project leader. "Our aim is to discover and develop novel compounds; at the very least we hope to identify 100 chemically distinct compounds that slow aging, opening up new avenues to treat, prevent or postpone age-related conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, cancer, arthritis, and diabetes, among others." A number of Buck Institute faculty members will be initial members of the network, including Robert E. Hughes, PhD; Simon Melov, PhD; and Pankaj Kapahi, PhD. Laura Dugan, MD, Professor of Geriatric Medicine at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine will also be included in the research project.

The Hillblom Chemical Biology of Aging Network will conduct its research in the style of an inverted pyramid. The largest number of compounds will be screened, in many cases via the use of robotics and other high-tech devices, in the simplest organisms - budding yeast (in the Hughes lab) and nematode worms (in the Lithgow lab). Chemicals that extend lifespan in those species will go on to be tested in the fruit fly (in the Kapahi lab). Chemicals that cause all three species to live longer will be looked at in mice, to see if there is a reversal of the molecular characteristics of aging (in the Melov and Dugan labs). The evolutionary distance between yeast and worms predicts that compounds active in both these species are likely to be relevant to mice and humans. Mice have the strongest similarity to humans of all of the animal models currently used in age research, sharing about 85 per cent of their genetic make up with Homo sapiens. 

The research is being organized as a formal network, as opposed to a number of collaborative agreements, given that the work cannot be done in a parallel fashion and the success of one group is dependent on the success of others in the network.

"The Hillblom Foundation is dedicated to supporting scientific studies of healthy aging and the treatment of diseases related to aging. The Buck Institute Network Research Project is a major step in this direction," said Peter Donnici, President of the Larry L Hillblom Foundation. "Based on the level of expertise of those involved in this research, we believe identifying the `Hillblom List' of 100 distinct life-extending chemical compounds is a realistic goal." Donnici added, "The fact that the results of this work will be made public will provide a boon to scientists world wide."

 The grant provides $1.7 million over four years. "The unique combination of interests, expertise and technologies puts the Buck Institute, perhaps exclusively, in a position to achieve this ambitious goal rapidly and effectively," said Dale Bredesen, MD, Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Buck Institute. "Many consider studies of the chemical biology of aging to be the next `frontier' in age research," added Bredesen. "We are grateful to the Larry L. Hillblom Foundation for supporting this effort."

The Buck Institute is the only freestanding institute in the United States that is devoted solely to basic research on aging and age-associated disease. The Institute is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to extending the healthspan, the healthy years of each individual's life.  The National Institute of Aging designated the Buck a Nathan Shock Center of Excellence in the Biology of Aging one of just five centers in the country.  Buck Institute scientists work in an innovative, interdisciplinary setting to understand the mechanisms of aging and to discover new ways of detecting, preventing and treating conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, cancer, arthritis and stroke.  Collaborative research at the Institute is supported by new developments in genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics technology

The April Meeting of the Las Vegas Future Salon will be held on
THURSDAY APRIL 12, 2007.

What: Monthly Las Vegas Future Salon in collaboration with the Las
Vegas Planetarium will host Kevin Greene  of Space Frontier
Fondation, to speak on "SPACE: a settlement option".

When: Thusday APRIL 12, 2007.  7:30pm to 9:30pm.

Where: CCSN Planetarium, at Cheyenne Campus, 3200 E. Cheyenne, North
Las Vegas.

The Planetarium is located on the Cheyenne Campus of the Community
College of Southern Nevada.

From I-15, take the Cheyenne Exit in North Las Vegas and head east
one mile.  The Planetarium is on the left in the building north of
the athletic field.  There's plenty of parking!

Here is a link ==>

http://www.ccsnfoundation.net/planetarium/Maps.html

At the April 12 meeting of the Las Vegas Future Salon at the Las Vegas
Planetarium at the CCSN - Cheyenne campus, Mr. Kevin Greene will lead
a presentation entitled:

Space Options:  the potential of space, the many ways in which
settling near-Earth space can help to save our world.

The theme of the evening:  Survive with Style!

This will be a special treat at a special venue where Mr. Greene will
wow us with room-sized displays at the planetarium.  He will discuss
and show us with graphics and Powerpoint visuals how space can be the
next frontier for human settlement.

Kevin Greene is a professional engineer, with over twenty-five year's
experience in large infrastructure projects of various types, from oil
platforms to urban transit systems.  Since 1992 he has also been
involved in the growing movement to develop and settle the space
frontier.  He is a leader in the American Society of Civil Engineer's
aerospace division, a board member of the Space Frontier Foundation
and an investor in entrepreneurial space enterprises.  He moved to Las
Vegas four years ago.

It's double treat as we cap off the evening with a late dinner/snack
at Quark's Bar at the Hilton.

As usual, we encourage to spread the word and bring a friend!

Futuristic nanotech advances predicted in U.S. Congress report

By Dick Pelletier

             Nanotechnology: the Future is Coming Sooner Than You Think is the title of a Congressional report published in March, 2007 by Representative Jim Saxton (R-NJ), Ranking Member of the Joint Economic Committee, U.S. Congress.

Authored by Georgetown University's Dr. Joseph Kennedy and accepted by the 5 Democrat and 5 Republican committee members from both the House and Senate, the paper lists nanotech advances expected over the coming decades and how they might affect the economy and society. The report divides products and ideas into groups that fall into the following timeline:

·         2000-2005: Mostly passive nano products were developed in this period, including more effective sunscreens without the white cream appearance associated with traditional lotions; lighter-weight tennis rackets with nano-reinforced strings that improve play; and stain/water-resistant clothing that requires less maintenance.

·         2005-2010: Active nano products that change their state during use are typical for this group. These include materials that sense when a product is strained (such as dents in car bodies) and will automatically repair itself when damaged; materials that respond to sunlight by emitting an electrical charge, which can be used to power appliances; and clothing and other objects that change color and texture on command.

·         2010-2015: Nanomaterials that assemble themselves together to achieve a final goal will become available in this period. Applications include proteins or viruses that build small batteries, nanostructures that create a lattice on which bone or other tissues could grow, smart dust strewn over an area that sense the presence of humans and communicates their location, and devices that find and destroy cancer cells without harming neighboring tissues.

·         2015-2020: Advances expected during this time include systems that render hazardous materials harmless; nano-chemicals that enrich farmlands by placing correct amounts of oxygen and nutrients into the soil; nano-devices that roam the body to repair damaged cells, monitor vital conditions, and display health information on skin cells (in a format resembling temporary tattoos); and computers that receive commands directly from human thought.

It may also become possible in this timeframe for scientists, with a better understanding of biological systems, to design new tissues and organs using strategies superior to the ones that life uses as it arranges atoms and molecules to build plants, animals, and us. This, some predict, could launch new technologies that would change forever our notion of what is life.

·         2020 and Beyond: As the future continues to advance exponentially, science and technologies will race forward at near-infinite speeds. This point is referred to as the "Singularity," which some define as a period when scientific advances aggressively assume their own momentum, resulting in the creation of sci-fi-like products and events. Possibilities by the 2030s could include far-reaching ideas such as one suggested by futurist Ray Kurzweil in his book, The Singularity is Near. Kurzweil says that humanity will one day transcend its biological limitations and gain abilities to interface directly with machines to absorb huge levels of intelligence created by powerful supercomputers.

            The report goes on to say, "Most of today's problems including material scarcity, human health, and environmental degradation can be solved with tomorrow's developing technologies."

            Welcome to what promises to be an amazing "magical future."

This article will appear in various print media and blogs; comments welcome. See other published work by Dick at http://www.positivefuturist.com/archive.html

Reminder for this Thursday April 12th:

Special Meeting at CCSN Planetarium &

NOTE

The after presentation get together will be at the Triple 7 in the Main street station. Main & Ogden in downtowne Las Vegas.

Triple 7 Restaurant and Brewery
Voted Best Microbrewery

BREW SPECIAL: Belgian Wit Beer, A Belgian Wheat Ale with a spicy fruitiness from the special Belgian yeast strain. A light, refreshing summer ale.

BREWMASTER'S RESERVE: Honey Bock, A strong lager brewed with honey. A pale, golden honey flavored bock with 7.5% alcohol. Suprisingly smooth for its strength.

Downtown's original microbrewery has quickly become one of America's best. Our brew is a national award winner and combined with an incredible array of restaurant goodies, Triple 7 Restaurant and Brewery is also a hot spot among locals and visitors from around the world. 

Choose from five varieties: High Roller Gold, Royal Red Lager, Market Pale Ale, Blackchip Porter and Triple 7's featured brew of the month. The freshest hand-crafted beers in town includes these award-winners:

Eric

Water Identified In Extrasolar Planet Atmosphere

Science Daily — For the first time, water has been identified in the atmosphere of an extrasolar planet.  Through a combination of previously published Hubble Space Telescope measurements and new theoretical models, Lowell Observatory astronomer Travis Barman has found strong evidence for water absorption in the atmosphere of transiting planet HD209458b.  This result was recently accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (http://lanl.arxiv.org/abs/0704.1114).

We now know that water vapor exists in the atmosphere of one extrasolar planet and there is good reason to believe that other extrasolar planets contain water vapor," said Barman.

Water vapor (or steam) has been expected to be present in the atmospheres of nearly all of the known extrasolar planets, even those that orbit closer to their parent star than Mercury is to our Sun.  For the majority of extrasolar planets, their close proximity to their parent star has made detecting water and other compounds difficult.

The identification reported here takes advantage of the fact that HD209458b, as seen from Earth, passes directly in front of its star every three and half days.  As a planet passes in front of a star, its atmosphere blocks a different amount of the starlight at different wavelengths.  In particular, absorption by water in the atmosphere of a giant planet makes the planet appear larger across a specific part of the infrared spectrum compared to wavelengths in the visible spectrum.

An analysis of visible and infrared Hubble data carried out last year by Harvard student Heather Knutson made possible a direct comparison to new theoretical models developed by Barman at Lowell Observatory. This ultimately led to the identification of water absorption in a planet 150 light years from Earth. 

"It is encouraging that theoretical predictions of water in extrasolar planets seem to agree reasonably well with observations," said Barman.

This research was supported by NASA's Origins of Solar System program.

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by Lowell Observatory.

http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-sci-stemcells11apr11,0,971736.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Thanks again to Kevin Greene for his presentation on space for the April future salon meeting on Yuri's night.  Here is a follow on story about DoD space based solar power R&D. Eric

Source=>

http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/070411_tech_wed.html

Pentagon Considering Study on Space-Based Solar Power By Jeremy Singer Space News Staff Writer posted: 11 April 2007 06:06 am ET

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April 13, 2007
In Startling Advance, Study Identifies Dinosaur Protein
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
In a retrieval once thought unattainable, scientists have recovered and
identified proteins in a bone of a well-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex that
lived and died and was fossilized 68 million years ago.

The scientists say the success, with advanced research techniques, opens the
door for the first time to the exploration of molecular-level relationships
of ancient, extinct animals, instead of just relying on their skeletal
remains.

Dinosaur fossil hunters are planning nine expeditions this summer to search
wide and deep for more specimens as promising candidates for similar tests.
A few large dinosaur bones already in laboratories may be examined for
surviving traces of organic matter.

The earliest previously identified ancient proteins were from mammoths that
died about 300,000 years ago. The oldest confirmed samples of DNA, a more
direct bearer of information of molecular evolution, but more degradable,
have come from Neanderthals that lived 30,000 to 50,000 years ago. The
extraction of DNA would be necessary for studies in dinosaur genetics and
for cloning experiments.

Repeated analysis of the T-rex proteins, the researchers said, uncovered new
evidence of a link between dinosaurs and birds, a widely held but
contentious hypothesis. Three of the seven reconstructed protein sequences
were closely related to chickens. The scientists resisted being drawn into
speculation on the likely taste of a T-rex drumstick.

Two research teams are reporting the findings in today's issue of the
journal Science. The principal investigators discussed the results with
reporters in a teleconference on Wednesday.

Speaking of the doubts she had had going into the work, Mary Higby
Schweitzer of North Carolina State University, leader of one of the groups,
said, "We had always assumed that preservation does not extend to the
cellular level" in ancient fossils.

Dr. Schweitzer described several tests conducted on soft tissues found deep
inside the tyrannosaur's femur, or thighbone, excavated in eastern Montana.
She reported the surprising tissue discovery two years ago.

Though barely detectable, proteins of collagen 1, the main organic component
of bone, were separated and examined. Fragments, or peptides, of the protein
were pieced together into strands of the seven sequences. Three of these
reacted with antibodies to chicken collagen. Two others appeared possibly
related to living creatures: a frog and a newt.

The findings, Dr. Schweitzer and her colleagues wrote, "suggested that,
under certain conditions, remnant organic constituents may persist across
geological time."

The second team, headed by John M. Asara of the Harvard Medical School and
Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, said its independent tests
had confirmed the presence of proteins in the tissue.

The researchers subjected samples of the material extracted by Dr.
Schweitzer to an examination by mass spectroscopy, which breaks down
material to its component parts to determine its mass and chemical makeup.
The technology is applied in medical research to analyzing more precisely
the nature of disease-causing agents.

Dr. Asara said the most difficult part of the research had been making sure
that all the "brown gritty contaminants" were separated out of the specimen.
After several steps in the purification process, the protein fragments were
separated from one another, measured for mass and joined in seven separate
strings of amino acid.

Lewis C. Cantley, a Harvard biology professor on the team, said he was
satisfied that the findings were "unlikely due to contamination."

In a press release from Harvard, Dr. Cantley said, "Basically, this is the
breakthrough that says it's possible to get sequences beyond one million
years," which had been thought of as the absolute time barrier for the
preservation of organic matter in animal remains. In the fossilization
process, minerals replace the constituents of bones, turning them to stone.

Similar tests by Dr. Asara's team also isolated and pieced together more
than 70 protein fragments from a mastodon estimated to be 160,000 to 600,000
years old. The researchers said this provided further evidence of the
staying power of ancient protein.

"We can now start to create relationships between extinct and living
organisms," Dr. Asara said, adding that the T-rex tests supported the idea
"that birds are derived from dinosaurs or are closely related."

Mark A. Norell, a dinosaur expert at the American Museum of Natural History
who was not involved in the research, said the importance of the findings
was in showing that "biomolecules could be stable over this long period of
time." The evidence for a dinosaur connection with chickens is less
significant, he said, contending that "all the data already confirm the
dinosaur-bird relationship."

The huge tyrannosaur thigh was discovered in 2003 by Jack Horner of Montana
State University, a longtime dinosaur paleontologist. It was excavated at a
depth of 60 feet in the Hell Creek Formation, a dinosaur-rich bed of
sedimentary rock underlying much of Montana and Wyoming.

Dr. Schweitzer, a biologist affiliated with Montana State as well as North
Carolina State, cut into the thick bone and recovered the soft tissues,
including blood vessels and possibly cells that, she said at the time,
"retain some of their original flexibility, elasticity and resilience." This
had never been found in a dinosaur before and prompted the investigations
into the nature of the organic matter.

Mr. Horner suggested that the size of the bone and the depth of its
entombment accounted for the unusual preservation of the tissues. Thick
bones, he said, afford interior matter more protection from environmental
degradation. Another factor was that this particular dinosaur was buried in
a virtually oxygen-free setting very soon after death. The depth may also
have insulated it over time.

Mr. Horner said paleontologists should look for other candidates for soft
tissue retrieval among remains of the largest dinosaurs resting under tens
of feet of rock. Such excavations, he conceded, will not be easy. But this
will be the quest of more than 100 fossil hunters fanning out this summer in
the American West and as far away as the Gobi Desert of Mongolia.

Stem Cells Tackle Paraplegia?

An Australian woman has taken her first steps since having a car
accident - after undergoing controversial treatment that uses stem
cells to tackle paraplegia. Sky's Alex Crawford reports from Delhi.

An Australian woman who was told she would never walk again after a
car accident, is up on her feet, weeks after getting controversial
embryonic stem cell treatment in India.

Sonya Smith, aged 45, has told Sky News correspondent Alex Crawford
her progress is nothing short of a miracle.

Her own doctors told her to prepare for life in a wheelchair and she
spent 18 months desperately trying to get help.

Then she heard about Dr Geeta Shroff in India and flew more than 6,000
miles from Brisbane to try out the treatment in New Delhi.

Dr Shroff is a one-woman operation who runs a private hospital where
she treats with human embryonic stem cells more than 300 patients who
have varying diseases and problems.

Now, after having about eight weeks of injections, Mrs Smith has
regained bladder and bowel control; her leg muscles are growing and
she says she can feel deep sensation in her thighs and feet.

Despite widespread scepticism, she is convinced: "It is definitely the
stem cells," she says, "I can feel my thighs where before I couldn't."

Dr Shroff's critics think it is too good to be true and the doctor has
not helped herself by refusing to fully explain her technique or how
she has come up with the formula.

They say she is being irresponsible; that with no proper human trials
using human embryonic stem cells is ethically wrong and that she is
using her patients as guinea pigs.

Dr Shroff says she has fully documented her findings, that she
conforms to her own country's guidelines and the proof is in her
patients.

'These are people who are desperate and who have no hope," Dr Shroff
says "I have given them hope. What is wrong with that?"

Sky News first reported on Dr Shroff's work in January 2006.

We interviewed dozens of her patients and have spoken to many several
times since. None complains of side effects. None has demonstrated any
side-effects and all have shown signs of improvement in their
respective
conditions.

Of her 300 patients, more than 50 are spinal cord injuries. Others
have Alzheimers, motor neurone disease, Parkinsons - and all believe
they are improving.

Dr Shroff will not give away her secrets just yet, but if her
techniques are doing what she is claiming, they are a huge
breathrough.

So far there are no known human clinical trials using human embryonic
stem cells - Britain is still at the research stage.