PHYSICS NEWS UPDATE
The American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News
Number 639 May 30, 2003 by Phillip F. Schewe, Ben Stein, and James
Riordon
OPTICAL PERISTALSIS. Part of the digestion process consists of the
massaging movement of powerful esophageal muscles urging food
particles along the alimentary track. The same sort of
"peristalsis" can also be carried out at the nanoscopic level with
small objects in the grip of cleverly crafted light pulses. David
Grier and Brian Koss at the University of Chicago use the optical
tweezer method of controlling particles with multiple laser beams,
but instead of a static array of beams, they use computer-generated
holograms to convert a single beam of light into large numbers of
optical traps. Each hologram may be considered to be a specialized
diffraction grating, producing intricately articulated networks of
hundreds of optical traps. Objects can fall into these light traps
and then the traps can be moved, thus transporting the objects. The
aim is to move and position sub-micron things in 3D space.
Applications include inserting the object into a microscopic
reservoir and pulling it back (parallelism is one of the technique's
strengths), or centering or rotating a biological cell in a
microscope's field of view. Grier's work has led to a commercial
version of this holographic optical tweezers, one in which a pattern
of 200 optical traps can be refreshed or modified at a rate of 100
times per second. (By the way, how forefront research is turned
into saleable products is an interesting story by itself. For
example, the company Grier started, Arryx,
Inc.---http://arryx.com---has a scientific advisory board (SAB) with
notable scientists from Princeton, NIH, the Whitehead Institute,
Harvard, and Northwestern.) In the "peristalsis" mode of
operation, particles are deliberately handed off from
one optical trap to another, as in a bucket brigade. In a separate
"thermal ratchet" mode of operation, the transfer from trap to trap
might involve intervals of free diffusion; this mode should be
useful for fractionating DNA molecules (see previous Update story at
http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2003/split/627-1.html ) as part of
the process of sequencing a gene.
Speaking as a physicist, Grier says the most important aspect of his
group's holographically generated tweezer patterns is the ability to
implement time-varying potential energy landscapes for moving tiny
objects in a "force-free" way. Speaking as a biophysicist, Grier
points to the ability to reach into a microscopic environment and to
position samples just where you want them. (Koss and Grier, Applied
Physics Letters, 2 June 2003; d- grier@..., 773-702-9176,
lab website at http://griergroup.uchicago.edu/~grier/hot/ )
A NEW OPTICAL GEOMETRIC PHASE has been measured for the first time,
by a group of physicists at Colgate University. The new geometrical
phase is associated with light beams carrying orbital angular
momentum. This development can be considered yet another step toward
understanding and exploiting the weirdness of quantum reality for
performing novel feats of computation. To see the meaning behind
the new effect, we shall break the explanation into parts,
considering in turn the issues of phase, orbital angular momentum in light, and
then geometrical
phase in light. First, phase. Many common periodic things have phase. The
orientation or phase of a minute hand on a clock is the amount by
which the hand has swept around the clock face: a quarter past the
hour, half past the hour, etc. Except when going into a new time
zone the phase of the clock regularly returns to its original
position every sixty minutes. The phase of a water wave specifies
where along the wave's crest-to-trough cycle it might be at any
moment. Now consider a different kind of phase. Picture a sign with
an arrow on it, oriented north. Starting at the equator, and
without changing its orientation, push the sign along the ground one
fourth of the way around the world. Next push the sign due north
until you reach the north pole, where, without changing the sign's
orientation, you move directly south again to return to your
starting point. Even though you will have traced a closed loop the
sign will now have a westerly orientation. In other words, because
of the intrinsic curved geometry of the path, a change in phase will
have occurred. This kind of phase change can occur in a quantum
system.
Second, orbital angular momentum. The ordinary forward momentum of
a particle of light is equal to Planck's constant divided by the
wavelength of the equivalent light wave. Furthermore, the light is
said to possess an intrinsic angular momentum, or "spin." The spin
angular momentum can be oriented by polarizers so that the electric
field of the light wave is oscillating vertically up and down, or
horizontally back and forth. Equivalently, if the light wave is
circularly polarized (the electric field precesses in corkscrew
fashion as the wave moves along) the two contrary states of the spin
would then correspond to the light wave's electric field precessing
clockwise (in a "right-handed" way) or anticlockwise (in a"left
handed" way). For the purposes of data processing a 0 or 1 bit can
be associated respectively with vertical and horizontal polarizations or,
equivalently, with
clockwise or anticlockwise polarizations. But what does it mean for
light to have "orbital" angular momentum? What is it that orbits?
To ponder this issue, picture the electric field values for a vertical planar
slice
of the light beam. For vertically-polarized light, the electric
field at all the points on the slice are vertically oriented. Look
at the sameslice at a later time and the fields are still vertically oriented.
For circularly polarized light, the fields in the slice will, at a
certain moment, also be oriented in the same way. A moment later,
however, the electric field will have precessed a bit (from the one o'clock
position, say, to the three o'clock position; another way of saying
this is that the phase of the electric field will have advanced a
bit) but the orientation of the field at each point on the vertical
slice will be the same. With the use of special gratings one can
produce an entirely different mode of light, one in which the
electric field phase coils around the beam axis, and the light is
said to possess an orbital angular momentum, or OAM. This condition
is visualized at the following website prepared by physicists at
Colgate University:
departments.colgate.edu/physics/research/optics/oamgp/gp.htm. This
extra property of "coiled light" might be exploitable for future
quantum computing. For instance, recently a group at the University
of Vienna used OAM in light to create a three-dimensional entangled
state, or "qutrit" (Vaziri et al., Physical Review Letters, 9 Dec
2002). Third issue: geometrical phase. When a light pulse is made
to follow a closed loop path in real space, the phase of the
returning beam might be slightly off from the phase of light
starting off at that point. This disparity (which can result in an
interference effect) can be modified by changing the path length.
It can also be modified by changing the path geometry. In addition,
the space does not need to be real space. When the "mode" (set of
standing waves in the beam) is changed, it can also produce a phase
when changing the geometry of the path in "mode space," and it is
this that the Colgate physicists have measured. (see a schematic of
the setup at this website:
departments.colgate.edu/physics/research/optics/oamgp/geomph.htm ).
The change in phase that a quantum system undergoes in going around
a closed path in a space of states or parameters is called a
"geometrical phase," and can be measured when the light emerges from
the path to form a spiral shaped interference pattern at an external
detector (Galvez et al., Physical Review Letters, 23 May 2003;
contact Kiko Galvez, egalvez@..., 315-228-7205). (For
further background, see Physical Review Focus item at
focus.aps.org/story/v9/st29 and an article on geometric phase in
Physics Today, Dec 1990.)
***********
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LONGEVITY MEME NEWSLETTER
June 02 2003
The Longevity Meme Newsletter is a biweekly e-mail containing news, opinions and
happenings for people interested in healthy life extension: making use of diet,
lifestyle choices, technology and proven medical advances to live healthy,
longer lives. To subscribe or unsubscribe from the Longevity Meme Newsletter,
please visit http://www.longevitymeme.org/newsletter/.
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METHUSELAH MOUSE PRIZE IS LAUNCHED
Aubrey de Grey and his team at Cambridge University, UK, have launched the
Methuselah Mouse Prize for anti-aging research. The official launch date is
later in the month, at the next meeting of the American Aging Association.
http://www.americanaging.org/
Here is the unofficial launch announcement I received a few days ago:
_____________________________________
This is to let you know about a new initiative designed to further the
development of truly effective anti-aging interventions, by promoting public
interest and involvement in research on mammalian life extension and by
encouraging more such research to be done. It's called the Methuselah Mouse
Prize, and it will be launched at the American Aging Association conference on
Sunday June 8th (11:45am at the Harbor Court Hotel, 550 Light Street, Baltimore,
Maryland 21202-6099), where we will make the inaugural award to Andrzej Bartke.
In brief, it is a prize for producing the world's longest-ever-lived mouse. The
amount awarded is determined by the size of the prize fund, to which anyone can
contribute, and by the margin by which the record is broken. For more details
see the Prize site:
http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/mmp/
The two things that the prize needs in its early stages are publicity and
donors. Even though we will not be trying to get huge sums into the prize fund
for a while, having a lot of small donations will add considerable credibility
to the enterprise. Contributions can be made up-front (by credit card online)
unless they are big (over $25,000) in which case we are taking legally-bound
pledges. All donors will be listed on the Prize web site unless they prefer to
remain anonymous.
Please publicize this initiative in any way you can!
Cheers, Aubrey de Grey
Dept. Genetics, U. Cambridge, UK
_____________________________________
A number of webmasters - including myself - and other groups are currently
working on publicizing this prize effort. To the best of my knowledge, this is
the first meaningful research prize in the anti-aging field. It must do well to
ensure that further, larger prizes follow.
Why prizes for research? Rather than repeat my thoughts on this topic from two
newsletters, I'll point you to an excellent article written by Simon Smith from
Betterhumans and published at the same time:
http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Forward_Thinking/column.aspx?articl\
eID=2003-05-05-2
In summary, prizes have been proven to invigorate poorly funded and
under-publicized fields of science. We can hold up the X Prize as the best and
most effective current research prize:
http://www.xprize.org/
For a mere $10 million in prize money, the X Prize has spurred investments of
more than $150 million in commercial aerospace development. This is a field that
was moribund and near dead up until very recently. This is a great success! I'm
sure that many of you have read articles in past months about the two or three
teams that are closest to winning the X Prize and deploying commercial, reusable
space vehicles.
It is worth noting that Dr. Diamandis, Chairman and CEO of the X Prize
Foundation, is an advisor to the Methuselah Mouse Prize. This is a very serious
effort, backed by serious, competent people.
HOW WE CAN HELP THE METHUSELAH MOUSE PRIZE SUCCEED
The Methuselah Mouse Prize is a first step. It is not a large prize yet, but
many wealthy people and organizations are watching to see how well the prize
meets its goals. Doing well means attracting attention from the press and
public, encouraging scientists to compete, and obtaining a large number of
modest, tax-deductible donations from people like you and me. If this prize
succeeds, there will be other, much larger prizes for anti-aging research in the
future.
This is a real chance for anti-aging research to become as successful as the X
Prize has made the nascent commercial space industry!
You and I, people of modest means, are unlikely to see another opportunity like
this: an opportunity to make a great difference to the future of healthy life
extension medicine with just a few dollars. Donating to the Methuselah Mouse
Prize is like starting a rockslide with a single pebble. You will be helping to
create many more prizes and far greater funding for research in the future. One
dollar now could encourage thousands of dollars in prizes and funding over the
next few years.
This Prize is a fulcrum, a lever, and an important point in the future of
anti-aging research. We can all help to make our future health better by
donating.
I, for one, am putting my money where my mouth is. I have donated $1000 to the
Methuselah Mouse Prize on behalf of the Longevity Meme. I encourage all of you
to donate a modest amount, as your means allow. Follow the link below for the
donation page at the Prize site:
http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/mmp/donate.htm
How else can you help? Those of you in the industry or who run industry websites
are encouraged to spread the world. Everyone here can help in attracting the
attention of the press, however. Talk to journalists if you know any. Send a
note to the editors at your favorite science magazine, or to the health section
of your favorite newspaper. Pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Together, we can make a real, meaningful difference to our future health and
longevity by acting now to improve anti-aging research.
FIN
That's all for my commentary this time: a news roundup for the past two weeks
follows below.
DISCUSSION
Have comments for us, or want to discuss the newsletter? Visit the Longevity
Meme forum at http://www.longevitymeme.org/forum.cfm, or send e-mail to
newsletter@....
Reason
reason@...
Founder, Longevity Meme
______________________________
RECENT NEWS
Step Forward For Regenerative Medicine (June 01 2003)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/05/31/health/main556381.shtml
CBS News reports on another advancement in the field of regenerative medicine.
Cells in the ear that normally do not regrow have been successfully regenerated
in adult guinea pigs. This is a good companion to recent successful trials on
regeneration in the eye in Asia. We can hope that as more specific applications
of regenerative medicine are demonstrated, opposition to these new tools of
medicine will vanish. There's certainly all too much opposition to stem cell
therapies right now, and this is blocking rapid advances towards healthy life
extension medicine.
Methuselah Mouse Prize Launched (May 31 2003)
http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/mmp/
The first in a series of research prizes for anti-aging research has been
launched. The Methuselah Mouse prize rewards researchers for discovering new
ways of extending healthy life in mammals -- and then applying them to us
humans. The project will benefit greatly from your tax-deductible donations, and
you are unlikely to see a better use of your money for aging research in the
near future. I have donated $1000 on behalf of the Longevity Meme, and I
encourage you to donate what you can. See this Betterhumans article for more
information on the enormous benefits that research prizes bring to scientific
endeavors.
Interview With Dr. Richard Miller (May 31 2003)
http://www.sagecrossroads.com/transcripts/052803transcript.pdf
The PDF format transcript of the latest SAGE Crossroads webcast is now up. It's
a wide-ranging interview with Dr. Miller, a gerontologist of note. If you want
to know what the aging research community does, thinks about and is working
towards, you'll find this article very informative. He touches on everything
from calorie restriction through to legislation and public opinion on aging
research. It's interesting to note that Dr. Miller runs into the same problem
that I see in the public: that people think aging research will prolong frail,
unhealthy elderly life, rather than extend healthy, active life. This is a false
perception, one that we have to fight.
Cloned Mule Gives Aging, Cancer Insights (May 30 2003)
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s868113.htm
I certainly wasn't intending to post about the recent scientific success in
cloning a mule, but it seems that this research has unearthed some useful
insights into cancer and the aging process. We will probably see more of this
sort of fortunate discovery. As researchers learn to manipulate cells and genes
more adeptly, they can't help but learn more about other processes in the body.
Brain Tangles and Memory Loss (May 30 2003)
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-05-30-1
In contrast to a recent article suggesting that "natural" memory loss due to
aging was a consequence of social differences, here is one from Betterhumans
proposing a new biochemical cause. In essence, researchers are suggesting that
an early symptom of Alzheimer's (these "brain tangles" made up of a damaging
protein) is more widespread than thought, and is largely responsible for minor
age-related memory imparement. This is certainly intriguing: as for any purely
physical cause, it is open to prevention and cure. It seems quite possible that
the fight against Alzheimer's may lead to the end of memory problems and a much
greater understanding of the underlying physic basis of thought and memory.
Key to Stem Cells Discovered (May 30 2003)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A55817-2003May29.html?nav=hptop_tb
>From the Washington Post: scientists have discovered the master gene in stem
cells that gives them the ability to form all other types of human cells. This
means we are closer to being able to create stem cells from any human cell,
which means we are closer to the grail of true regenerative medicine. If we can
understand the mechanisms that make stem cells work, therapies for many diseases
and conditions of aging will soon follow. All in all, even though it is early,
basic research, this is very good news. More on stem cell basics can be found at
InfoAging.org.
Could You Live To 100? (May 29 2003)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2946890.stm
>From the unusual starting point of Bob Hope, this BBC article lightly touches
on
all of the current major scientific developments in healthy life extension.
Calorie restriction, advances in general healthcare, genetic studies and
regenerative medicine. The cryonics industry even gets a mention near the end.
These are exciting times: we are very much at the beginning of the birth of a
new medical industry, one that will benefit all of us enormously. The promise of
longer, healthier lives is ahead of us, and we have to reach out to support the
research that will lead there. As one researcher says in the article: "We have
just opened the box - and now we are peering in."
Centenarians on the Rise (May 29 2003)
http://www.sacbee.com/content/lifestyle/seniors/story/6745838p-7696920c.html
>From the Sacremento Bee, an article on the rising numbers of centenarians. That
the number of centenarians is doubling each decade is a mark of rapid advances
made in medicine. The article discusses current research into the causes of
longevity: the genetics and lifestyles of centenarians are under scrutiny. This
will hopefully lead to a greater understanding of aging and the promise of
longer healthy lives for all. The existence of hale and active 90-year-olds
indicates that frailty and disease are not a fundamental part of the aging
process.
Secrets of Longevity (May 29 2003)
http://www.health24.co.za/news.asp?action=art&SubContentTypeId=5&ContentID=22496
Health24 tells us some of the not so secret secrets of longevity. In essence,
keeping your weight down and staying active are key to natural longevity. But we
all knew that already, right? Of course, natural longevity is only going to get
us so far -- we want more. Supporting medical research for healthy life
extension is vital! The key to much, much longer lives is the medicine of the
future, not the natural techniques of today.
Turning Off Genetic Disease (May 27 2003)
http://www.uiowa.edu/~ournews/2003/may/052703disease-causing-gene.html
A group from the University of Iowa have shown that it is possible to turn off
or silence mutant disease-causing genes without affecting the behavior of the
normal gene. This is a very important finding: it lays the groundwork for
genetic approaches to many, many different diseases and conditions of aging.
This includes cancer; so this is yet another possible cancer therapy in the
works (we're up to about ten or so announced in the last twelve months, I
think).
Bringing Stem Cell Therapies to Market (May 27 2003)
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-05-27-4
(From Betterhumans). There are many necessary steps in bringing a new therapy to
the market. One of the most basic ones is demonstrating that you can do many
times over what you have already accomplished a few times in early trials. It
looks like stem cell therapies are over this cost-effective mass production
hurdle, which is very encouraging. As you should all know by now, stem cells and
theraputic cloning look to be the strongest basis for powerful near-term
regenerative therapies: the medicine that will extend our healthy lives.
Facing up to Death (May 26 2003)
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/24/1053585744403.html
Continuing todays theme, here's a short article on attitudes towards death and
life extension from The Age in Australia. Once again, I disagree with the points
made: we should always fight to extend healthy life while respecting individual
choice. I think that the interesting thing to note here is that a series of
small professional meetings on life extension matters have been held over the
past few weeks in Australia. Kudos to the organizers; we certainly could see
more of that here in the USA.
Death and Immortality (May 26 2003)
http://www.betterhumans.com/Features/Columns/Transitory_Human/column.aspx?articl\
eID=2003-05-26-6
An article over at Betterhumans examines views towards death in the life
extension community. I have to say that I don't really agree with the author on
many of his points. I personally feel that death is an unacceptable risk to the
continuation of my existence. I want absolutely certainty in the future of my
existence, therefore I don't want to die. I am uncertain about religion,
afterlife and pattern identity theory, therefore I fear death in a sane and
rational way. This attitude doesn't render me any less capable than the author
of this article when fighting effectively for healthy life extension and the
medicine of the future.
Overview of Dendritic-Cell Cancer Vaccines (May 24 2003)
http://www.nj.com/newsflash/business/index.ssf?/cgi-free/getstory_ssf.cgi?f0061_\
BC_WSJ--CancerResearch&&news&newsflash-financial
An article from nj.com looks over the past decade of research and trials in a
particular -- and very promising -- class of cancer vaccine. I've said before
here that cancer is no longer a grave threat to life in developed countries. The
end result of decades of well-publicized research and high levels of funding has
finally come: numerous effective therapies are about to arrive in the market.
This success story can be repeated for anti-aging research and regenerative
medicine, but only if we manage to make these fields as popular and as well
funded. Activism and advocacy are very important.
UK Aging Research Program (May 24 2003)
http://icliverpool.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0100regionalnews/page.cfm?objectid=1\
2963845&method=full&siteid=50061&headline=Stay%20young%20with%20JMU
Here's one I missed from earlier in the month. The John Moores University in
Liverpool, UK is undertaking a large study on aging. The stated intent of the
research is to help in slowing or reversing the aging process. This is very
fundamental research aimed at filling in the gaps in scientific knowledge of the
aging process. It is good to see more projects like this one launching place
around the world. It is a sign that more and more people in science are taking
anti-aging research seriously.
SAGE KE (May 23 2003)
http://sageke.sciencemag.org/
The Science of Aging Knowledge Environment (SAGE KE) is an excellent resource
for anyone interested in the latest research and the people behind it all.
(You've no doubt seen links to the SAGE Crossroads sister site on the Longevity
Meme in past months). The articles and other information fall somewhere between
a popular science magazine and a scientific journal in readability, so it should
be of interest to a broad segment of the audience here.
Ovaries Play a Role in Mammalian Aging (May 23 2003)
http://www.lef.org/news/aging/2003/05/23/eng-ascribe/eng-ascribe_142519_50955257\
06333110500.html
>From the LEF News, a fairly brute-force study concludes that we should be
looking into the functions of the ovaries in mammals for more clues to
biochemical controls involved in the aging process. Scientists have already
determined that a small number of genetic changes (which lead to differences in
biochemical processes in the body) extend life in nemotode worms, flies and
mice. This research is complementary, indicating other avenues of investigation.
It's certainly a sign of the times that it seems crude to be performing
experimental transplants rather than genetic therapy or biochemical assays.
Stereotypes of Aging Memory (May 22 2003)
http://www.ncsu.edu/news/press_releases/03_05/151.htm
Quite the interesting find from NC State University News. Researchers have
looked into age-related decline in memory and are suggesting that it really
doesn't have as much to do with the mechanics of aging as we thought. Instead,
they suggest that it also has a lot to do with the way in which older people
think, react and interact with society. It also may be the result of artifacts
in the way in which memory tests are given and monitored by researchers. This is
a thought-provoking article, to say the least: but no reason to stop advocating
research on ways to reduce the harm done by aging, of course!
Alzheimer's: How Close is a Cure? (May 21 2003)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=P8&targetRule=10&\
xml=%2Fglobal%2F2003%2F05%2F20%2Fhalz20.xml
I talk about Alzheimer's fairly often here, since it's representative of a class
of conditions that are of great concern to healthy life extensionists.
Conditions of the brain, and conditions caused by buildup of misformed proteins
are worrying for those of us who want to live longer, healthier lives. As the
medicine becomes available to keep us healthy and physically younger, we have to
worry about encountering these aging conditions. This article from The Telegraph
gives a promising view of the current state of Alzheimer's research and
medicine.
The Personal Cost of Aging (May 21 2003)
http://www.osu.edu/researchnews/archive/helthsav.htm
This is an interesting article (from OSU Research News) about the costs of
managing failing health caused by aging. The personal costs (financial and
otherwise) are tremendous. This is exactly the sort of thing that younger people
try very hard not to think about. You should be thinking about this, however.
This is your future unless we all band together to help change it! While the
article focuses on health insurance, the real way to minimize the costs of aging
is the development and introduction of widespread, low-cost anti-aging medicine.
UTHSC To Expand Aging Research Center (May 20 2003)
http://news.mysanantonio.com/story.cfm?xla=saen&xlb=180&xlc=998827
I occasionally post administrative stories as they seem appropriate and
representative; this one caught my eye and I thought I'd share. The University
of Texas Health Science Center (in San Antonio) will add another $50 million
building to its center for the study of aging. It is good to see this sort of
article in the press, because it reminds me of similar articles about academic
nanotechnology research centers five years ago or so. Just look at where
nanotechnology is now! You can chart the course of research by the buildings
that go up -- so this article is an indicator of positive things to come.
Sympathetic Cryonics Article (May 20 2003)
http://australianit.news.com.au/articles/0,7204,6449109%5E15397%5E%5Enbv%5E,00.h\
tml
AustralianIT is carrying an introductory-level article on the current state of
human cryonic suspension. Gratifyingly, unlike many recent articles following
the suspension of a certain sports figure, it is positive and realistic in tone.
Suspendees recognize that cryonics is an experiment that may not succeed, but
any shot at a long, healthy future life is vastly better than decaying to
nothing in the ground. Those of us in the community over a certain age have to
give at least some serious consideration to cryonics: if anti-aging medicine
doesn't come fast enough, it's the best of the two remaining choices.
What's Next for Longevity Research? (May 19 2003)
http://www.sagecrossroads.com/news.cfm
A much better feature article is up this week at SAGE Crossroads. The current
state of aging, anti-aging and longevity research is examined, with an emphasis
on calorie restriction and understanding basic cellular mechanisms.
(Regenerative medicine doesn't get much of a mention). It's a good article: some
well-made points in there about the detrimental effects of snake-oil salesmen in
the "anti-aging" industry. I certainly can't argue with anyone who makes their
main point a call for more funding and legitimacy for longevity research.
Boost For Telomere Aging Theories (May 19 2003)
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-05-19-6
Betterhumans reports on research that gives more support for telomere theories
of aging. These state, in short, that telomeres -- junk DNA that caps the ends
of our chromosomes -- protect our DNA from damage until they are "worn away"
with the passing of time. After that, our cells start to accumulate defects and
damage more rapidly. A good explanation of the basics can be found over at
Wikipedia. It is interesting to keep track of the different theories of aging as
they move forward; it is very likely at this stage that all are correct in some
sense. The overall picture is still elusive, however.
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KURZWEILAI.NET NEWSLETTER
NEWS
====
*************************
Quantum dots boost tissue imaging
May 30, 2003
*************************
An ultra-high resolution technique
for imaging living tissue can
provide a thousand-fold increase in
resolution, thanks to the addition
of tiny nanocrystals called quantum
dots. Researchers ultimately hope to
use the technique to probe ovarian
tumours and other types of cancer
deep in the...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2002&m=7529
*************************
Nano-coated implants cut MRI scan
dangers
June 1, 2003
*************************
Biophan has developed a coating for
pacemaker implants made from
nanoparticles that reflect most of
frequencies of MRI radio waves. The
coating also prevents high currents
from flowing around the implant's
surface and heating nearby body
tissues. The technology should
protect such patients from...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2001&m=7529
*************************
Project Will Seek to Uncover
Genetic Roots of Major Diseases
May 29, 2003
*************************
Dr. J. Craig Venter has launched
the Genomic-Based Prospective
Medicine project, a large-scale
effort to identify the genetic roots
of common diseases. They will
sequence many genes from a large
number of patients, looking for
mutations that might be associated
with higher risk of...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2000&m=7529
*************************
Another Clone Milestone as a Mule
Is Born in Idaho
May 30, 2003
*************************
Scientists said yesterday that they
had cloned a mule for the first
time, raising the prospect that it
will soon be possible to produce
genetic carbon copies of related
animals, including champion
racehorses, and to repopulate
endangered equine species. Comment:
"This development has potential...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=1999&m=7529
*************************
Methuselah Mouse Prize announced by
de Grey
May 30, 2003
*************************
Aubrey de Grey announced today the
Methuselah Mouse Prize, for
producing the world's
longest-ever-lived mouse. The $5,000
prize is designed to "further the
development of truly effective
anti-aging interventions by
promoting public interest and
involvement in research on mammalian
life...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=1998&m=7529
*************************
Stem cell 'immortality' gene found
May 30. 2003
*************************
The key gene that keeps embryonic
stem cells in a state of youthful
immortality has been discovered. The
breakthrough may one day contribute
to turning ordinary adult cells into
those with the properties of human
embryonic stem cells (capable of
differentiating into the different
cells in the...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=1997&m=7529
NEW ARTICLES
============
*************************
Glitches Reloaded
Peter B. Lloyd
06/02/2003
*************************
In Matrix Reloaded, how can Neo fly
and use telekinesis if the Matrix is
supposed to a physics simulation?
Peter Lloyd decodes this and other
technical
enigmas--reverse-engineering the
design of the Matrix and the
"Meta-Matrix" of the underground
Zion. And he delves into the rich
philosophical and mythic elements of
the film, such as the question of
free will and who is the Architect
and what does his speech tell us?
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/artRedirect.html?artID=581&m=7529
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To see all news items and new articles, please visit http://www.kurzweilai.net
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(
nothing amazing, but not bad
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=1&u=/nm/20030601/\
sc_nm/health_cancer_wrap_dc
)
New Colon Cancer Data Stand Out at Doctors' Meeting
Sun Jun 1, 6:33 PM ET
Add Science -
Reuters to My
Yahoo!
By Toni Clarke
NEW YORK (Reuters) - New drugs for colorectal cancer are developing
apace after years in which new treatments have been few and far between,
according to data released at the annual meeting of the American Society
of Clinical Oncology (news - web sites).
Drugs from Genentech Inc., AstraZeneca and ImClone Systems Inc. showed
promise in shrinking tumors, slowing the progression of disease, and
potentially extending life, according to results from clinical trials.
"We've seen, at a single meeting, significant advances in more than one
product," said Robert Erwin, president of the Marti Nelson Cancer
Foundation, which helps patients enroll in clinical trials. "We still
have a long way to go and these drugs don't suggest anything like a
cure, but they certainly represent more important advances than we've
seen in a number of years."
Genentech's experimental drug, Avastin, appears to confer an average of
4.7 months of additional survival on patients treated in early stages of
the colon cancer.
Erbitux, a drug from ImClone Systems Inc. shrank tumors, when combined
with chemotherapy, in 23 percent of patients with end-stage disease who
had exhausted other options. It also slowed the course of the disease by
an average of 4.1 months.
Erbitux taken alone shrank tumors in 11 percent of patients.
AstraZeneca's Iressa, which has already been approved to treat lung
cancer, showed promise in treating early-stage colon cancer. In a small
trial, the drug helped shrink tumors in 75 percent of patients when
taken in conjunction with chemotherapy. Chemotherapy alone shrank tumors
in 38 percent of patients.
ImClone's drug was turned back by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(news - web sites) for lack of clear data in December 2001, sparking a
massive controversy that led to the company's former chief executive
being charged with insider trading.
A trial by the company's European partner, Merck KGaA, now appears to
confirm the results in the company's initial trial, raising the
possibility that the drug could be approved by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration early next year or sooner.
"Based on the seemingly friendlier FDA that we have these days, combined
with the publicity surrounding this drug, plus the fact it is obviously
active and apparently very safe, it would seem it would be difficult for
the FDA to not act," said Cory Kasimov, an analyst at Ryan Beck & Co.
Avastin is the most advanced in a new class of drugs that starve tumors
of blood and oxygen in a process known as anti-angiogenesis.
Iressa and Erbitux belong to a new class that block a protein known as
the epidermal growth factor. Iressa is a pill, while Erbitux is an
antibody that is delivered by injection.
Both new classes of drug attack their target without destroying healthy
cells, which is the main drawback of chemotherapy.
"As more people move toward combination therapy the idea that there are
biotech drugs effective at both ends of the disease, early and late, is
very exciting," said Erwin. (Additional reporting by Kim Dixon and Julie
Steenhuysen in Chicago and Deena Beasley in Los Angeles)
(
that's a lot of different cancer types
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1417&e=1&u=/nm/20030601/sc_nm/h\
ealth_genentech_omnitarg_dc&sid=95832452
)
Study: Genentech Antibody Shrinks Variety of Tumors
Sun Jun 1, 6:16 PM ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Early-stage clinical trials show that Omnitarg,
an experimental antibody-based cancer drug developed by Genentech Inc.,
can shrink a variety of tumors, researchers said on Sunday.
Investigators at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles presented
their findings at a meeting in Chicago of the American Society of
Clinical Oncology (news - web sites).
In the study, 21 patients with advanced cancers including breast,
prostate, lung, ovarian, colon, pancreas and sarcoma received Omnitarg
by infusion every three weeks at various dose levels. Nineteen patients
completed at least two cycles or six weeks of treatment, while two died
due to their disease.
Partial responses were observed in 14 percent of patients and another 38
percent achieved stable disease. Three patients achieved partial
remission and two remain in remission after over a year of therapy, the
researchers said.
"To see results that show activity in a Phase I safety trial is
remarkable, especially since these patients were in the advanced stages
of their disease and had no other treatment options available to them,"
said Dr. David Agus, the study's lead author.
Side effects included nausea, rash, fatigue and anemia.
Omnitarg is a monoclonal antibody, or protein, that enlists the body's
immune system to attack foreign invaders, such as viruses or bacteria.
It works by targeting HER-2/neu, a member of the HER kinase family of
proteins. The protein sits on the surface of cancer cells and receives
signals from growth factor molecules within the HER family, which in,
turn stimulate tumors to grow.
Genentech is currently conducting Phase 2 trials of Omnitarg in
prostate, ovarian and breast cancer (news - web sites). An additional
Phase 2 trial in lung cancer is slated to being this year.
(
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993785
)
Gecko tape will stick you to ceiling
18:00 01 June 03
Will Knight
A new material covered with nanoscopic hairs that mimic those found on
geckos' feet could allow people to walk up to sheer surfaces and across
ceilings, say researchers.
Andre Geim and colleagues at the UK's Manchester University say covering
a person's hand with the material would be enough to let them stick to
the ceiling. The tape could be detached from the surface by simply
peeling it slowly away from one side.
"Spiderman is science fiction and will remain in comics," Geim told New
Scientist. "But hopefully 'gecko-man' will become less science fiction
and more a reality in the near future."
Geckos can climb even the most slippery surface with ease and hang from
glass using a single toe. The secret behind this extraordinary climbing
skill lies with millions of tiny keratin hairs - called setae - on the
surface of each foot. An intermolecular phenomenon known as van der
Waals force is exerted by each of these hairs. Although the force is
individually miniscule, the millions of hairs collectively produce a
powerful adhesive effect.
Soft and flexible
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University recently announced that they
had made synthetic setae that exert a similar force. But Geim's team has
now gone further by demonstrating a material made of millions of such
artificial hairs.
The researchers found that the synthetic hairs had to be soft and
flexible enough to attach to uneven surfaces but not so weak that they
would break easily or bunch together. The substrate that the hairs were
mounted on also had to be sufficiently flexible for the material to
work.
"Flexibility comes from the hairs themselves and the base material,"
Geim says. "This flexibility can compensate for unevenness or dust on
contacted surfaces."
Each synthetic hair is made from a material called kapton and measures
2.0 microns in height and 0.2 microns in diameter - the same as gecko
hairs. The hair-covered tape is made using a mould created by a
lithographic process. A piece of tape one centimetre square holds around
100 million of these artificial setae and could support a weight of one
kilogram.
The researchers believe the material could have many applications, from
new types of vehicle tyre to robots that can climb up walls.
But Geim admits that the current fabrication method does not lend itself
easily to mass production of the tape. And a more serious concern is how
to make the artificial setae durable enough to be reapplied many times,
he adds.
Journal reference: Nature Materials (DOI: 10.1038/nmat917)
18:00 01 June 03
Return to news story
2nd Global Conference Making Sense of: Dying and Death
21st to 23rd November 2003, Paris, France
Call for Papers
(Please cross post where appropriate)
This inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary research and
publications project aims to create a forum for examining the links
between living and dying, and some of the contradictions and
paradoxes which arise that we appear to accept without question.
Areas of interest focus on different kinds of dying and death, the
experience of carers and health care workers, the changing role of
medicine, palliative care, the work of the hospice movement, the
work of the funeral industry, and the nature of grief and mourning.
The project also explores the philosophical, ethical, and legal
issues which surround the processes of dying and death, the role of
religion, and the diverse range of historical, social, and cultural
perspectives and practices.
Papers, presentations, reports and workshops are invited on any of
the following indicative themes:
* contradictions and paradoxes; indicative examples include
sudden death vs our ability to postpone death; horror at genocide vs
our appetite for films about ending lives in violent ways; cremation
vs internment; pain management vs our reluctance to facilitate
death.
* dealing with and responding to different kinds of death and dying,
for example, suicide, homicide, neonatal and infant death, violent
death, natural disasters, sudden death, terminal illness, capital
punishment, acts of terrorism; death of a child, parent, spouse; old
age and death.
* technology, dying and death; the impact of advances in medical
technology; types of medical technology; post war social and
cultural expectations of medical possibilities; the double-edged
sword - technology as helper vs technology as killer (e.g., lethal
injection, mass killing).
* Institutions, dying and death; problems of ageing populations;
ageing and dying; care homes vs waiting rooms for death; hospitals
and the limits of responsibility; intensive care; palliative care;
the hospice movement; limits to the humanising of death; whose
decisions?
* Issues confronting health care workers: 'fateful moments'; full
disclosure; genetics & stem cell research as these relate to
potentially terminal illnesses; emotion management;
unacknowledged euthanasia; alternative/complementary health care
practices and therapies; the value of aggressive treatments for
dying patients.
* legal issues in dying and death; legal definitions of death, court
rulings and decisions, the right to die, natural death and brain
death statutes, advance directives and living wills; organ donation;
organ transplantation.
* philosophical and ethical issues in dying and death; the nature of
dying and death (e.g., does an aborted foetus die?), philosophies of
dying and death, personal identity and sense of self, euthanasia
and the notion of 'dying well', death by choice, informed consent,
truth-telling, 'autonomy', 'dignity', and related issues;
understanding, justifying and/or condoning death (e.g., suicide);
what is the difference between seeking death and facing death
bravely? Is death to be feared more than living or vice versa?
Choosing death in order to kill others. The fear of death &
contemporary risk discourses.
* the management of dying and death; understanding the processes
of dying; first person issues ('I've been told I have two weeks left to
live') and the context and needs of the individual; second person
issues ('You've got two weeks left to live') and the role and place
of family, friends and carers; communication and interaction with
professionals; third person issues ('his funeral is on Thursday') and
the question of who deals with death. The management of and
changes within the funeral industry; funeral practices across
cultures; funerals, cards and wakes; the loss of ritual; the
sanitization of death; the hiddenness of death.
* who deals with bereavement? Religious and non-religious
counselling; bereavement, grief, and loss; the nature of grief,
'models' and theories of grief, 'stages' of grief and the grieving
process; can grief be shared? Grief counselling and grief therapy;
forms of remembrance, sites of remembrance.
* religious issues; concepts of afterlife and their influence on the
dying, rituals and practices in religious communities, theologies of
death, near death experiences; the role of hope.
* the representation of dying and death in media - art, cinema,
music, radio and television; the portrayal of dying and death in all
forms and types of literature; death and dying in children's
literature; children's concepts of mortality; the importance of
narrative.
Perspectives are sought from those engaged in:
* anthropology, art, creative writing, English literature, history of
medicine, law and legal studies, media studies, medicine, nursing,
the performing arts (dance, music, theatre), philosophy and ethics,
psychology and social psychology, social history and social
sciences, sociology, social work, theology and religious studies
* interested members of the public who have personal experience of
terminal illness and/or death; care providers, care workers and care
volunteers; GP's, geriatricians, oncologists, nurses, social workers;
health care professionals involved in palliative care, medical ethics
etc.; funeral directors and services; health and social services,
health professionals, hospice workers, members of the judiciary,
legal professionals, police and law enforcement agencies, mental
health professionals, monumental masons, policy makers,
government and non-governmental organisations, clerics and
members of religious traditions.
Papers will be considered on any related theme. 300 word abstracts
should be submitted by Friday 4th July 2003. 8 page draft
conference papers should be submitted by Friday 24th October
2003. Abstracts should be submitted to Dr Rob Fisher:
rf@...
Abstracts should be submitted by email in Word, WordPerfect, PDF
or RTF formats; alternatively the abstract may be placed in the body
of the email.
The conference is the second in an annual series of research
projects, run under the banner 'Making Sense Of:' Other 'Making
Sense Of:' projects include 'Making Sense of: Issues at the
Beginning of Life' and 'Making Sense of Health, Illness and
Disease'. It aims to create working 'encounter' groups between
people of differing perspectives, disciplines, professions, and
contexts.
An ISBN eBook and themed hard copy volume are in preparation
from the first conference. All papers accepted for and presented at
this conference will be published in an ISBN eBook. Selected
papers accepted for and presented at the conference will be
published in a hard copy themed volume(s).
For further details and information, please contact Dr Rob Fisher -
rf@... - or visit the project website at:
http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/dd/dd03cfp.htm
[More LifeLog discussion]
Pentagon Tool Records User's Every Sense
By MICHAEL J. SNIFFEN
Coming to you soon from the Pentagon: the diary to end all diaries -
a multimedia, digital record of everywhere you go and everything you
see, hear, read, say and touch.
Known as LifeLog, the project has been put out for contractor bids by
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the agency
that helped build the Internet and that is now developing the next
generation of anti-terrorism tools.
The agency doesn't consider LifeLog an anti-terrorism system, but
rather a tool to capture "one person's experience in and interactions
with the world" through a camera, microphone and sensors worn by the
user. Everything from heartbeats to travel to Internet chatting would
be recorded.
The goal is to create breakthrough software that helps analyze
behavior, habits and routines, according to Pentagon documents
reviewed by The Associated Press. The products of the unclassified
project would be available to both the private sector and other
government agencies - a concern to privacy advocates.
DARPA's Jan Walker said LifeLog is intended for users who give their
consent to be monitored. It could enhance the memory of military
commanders and improve computerized military training by chronicling
how users learn and then tailoring training accordingly, officials
said.
But John Pike of Global Security.org, a defense analysis group, is
dubious the project has military application."I have a much easier
time understanding how Big Brother would want this than how (Defense
Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld would use it," Pike said. "They have not
identified a military application."Steven Aftergood, a Federation of
American Scientists defense analyst, said LifeLog would collect far
more information than needed to improve a general's memory -
enough "to measure human experience on an unprecedentedly specific
level." And that, privacy experts say, raises powerful concerns.
DARPA rejects any notion LifeLog will be used for spying. "The
allegation that this technology would create a machine to spy on
others and invade people's privacy is way off the mark," Walker said.
She said LifeLog is not connected with DARPA's data-mining project,
recently renamed Terrorism Information Awareness. Each LifeLog user
could "decide when to turn the sensors on or off and who would share
the data," she added. "The goal ... is to `see what I see,' rather
than to `see me.'"
One critic sees a silver lining in the government taking the lead."If
government weren't doing this, it would still be done by companies
and in universities all over the country, but we would have less say
about it," said James X. Dempsey of the Center for Democracy and
Technology, which advocates online privacy. Because the government is
involved, "you can read about it and influence it."DARPA's Web site
says the agency investigates ideas "the traditional research and
development community finds too outlandish or risky."But in LifeLog's
case, some similar technology is already being funded and researched
by well-heeled outfits.
Professor Steve Mann of the University of Toronto has spent 30 years
developing a wearable camera and computer, progressing from intricate
metallic headgear to dark frame eyeglasses and a cellphone-sized belt
attachment. He's working with Samsung on a commercial version.
And Microsoft's Gordon Bell scans his mail and other papers and
records phone, Web, video and voice transactions into a computerized
file called MyLifeBits. The company may include the capability in
upcoming products.
Neither Mann nor Bell intends to bid on DARPA's project. Bell said
DARPA wants to go further than he has into artificial intelligence to
analyze data.
The Pentagon agency plans to award up to four 18-month contracts for
LifeLog beginning this summer. Contracting documents give a sense of
the project's scope.
Cameras and microphones would capture what the user sees or hears;
sensors would record what he or she feels. Global positioning
satellite sensors would log every movement. Biomedical sensors would
monitor vital signs. E-mails, instant messages, Web-based
transactions, telephone calls and voicemails would be stored. Mail
and faxes would be scanned. Links to every radio and television
broadcast heard and every newspaper, magazine, book, Web site or
database seen would be recorded.
Breakthrough software would automatically produce an electronic diary
that organizes the data into "episodes" of the user's life, such
as "I took the 08:30 a.m. flight from Washington's Reagan National
Airport to Boston's Logan Airport," according to the documents.
LifeLog's software also "will be able to find meaningful patterns in
the timetable, to infer the user's routines, habits and relationships
with other people, organizations, places and objects," DARPA told
contractors in an advisory.
Walker said DARPA has no plans to develop software to analyze
multiple LifeLogs. But DARPA advised contractors that ultimately,
with proper anonymity, data from many LifeLogs could
facilitate "early detection of an emerging epidemic."Dempsey, the
privacy advocate, says his concern is that users ultimately won't
control LifeLog data."Because you collected it voluntarily, the
government can get it with a search warrant," he said. "And an
increasing amount of personal data is also available from third
parties. The government can get data from them simply by asking or
signing a subpoena."He cites examples from current technology such as
traffic cameras and automated toll booth passes that police already
use to trace a person's path. Dempsey questions how LifeLog's
analytical software will interpret such data and how Americans will
be protected from errors."You can go to the airport to pick up a
friend, to claim lost luggage or to case it for a terrorist attack.
What story will LifeLog write from this data?" he asked. "At the very
least, you ought to know when someone is using it and have the right
to correct the `story' it writes."___
On The Net:
www.darpa.mil/ipto/Solicitations/PIP_03-30.html
Bell's Microsoft project:
http://www.research.microsoft.com/barc/MediaPresence/MyLifeBits.aspx
Professor Mann's page:
http://wearcam.org/
============================================================
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/APWires/tech/D7RDQ0CO0.html
-----Forwarded Message-----
From: Doug Skrecky <oberon@...>
To: extropians-digest@...
Subject: could lowering IGF-1 postpone "aging"?
Date: 02 Jun 2003 20:18:30 -0700
Med Hypotheses 2003 Jun;60(6):784-92
A low-fat, whole-food vegan diet, as well as other strategies that
down-regulate IGF-I activity, may slow the human aging process.
A considerable amount of evidence is consistent with the proposition that
systemic IGF-I activity acts as pacesetter in the aging process. A
reduction in IGF-I activity is the common characteristic of rodents whose
maximal lifespan has been increased by a wide range of genetic or dietary
measures,including caloric restriction. The lifespans of breeds of dogs
and strains of rats tend to be inversely proportional to their mature
weight and IGF-I levels. The link between IGF-I and aging appears to be
evolutionarily conserved; in worms and flies, lifespan is increased by
reduction-of-function mutations in signaling intermediates homologous to
those which mediate insulin/IGF-I activity in mammals. The fact that an
increase in IGF-I activity plays a key role in the induction of sexual
maturity, is consistent with a broader role for-IGF-I in aging
regulation. If down-regulation of IGF-I activity could indeed slow aging
in humans, a range of practical measures for achieving this may be at
hand. These include a low-fat, whole-food, vegan diet, exercise training,
soluble fiber, insulin sensitizers, appetite suppressants, and agents
such as flax lignans, oral estrogen, or tamoxifen that decrease hepatic
synthesis of IGF-I. Many of these measures would also be expected to
decrease risk for common age-related diseases.
Regimens combining several of these approaches might have a sufficient
impact on IGF-I activity to achieve a useful retardation of the aging
process. However, in light of the fact that IGF-I promotes endothelial
production of nitric oxide and may be of especial importance to
cerebrovascular health, additional measures for stroke prevention-most
notably salt restriction-may be advisable when attempting to
down-regulate IGF-I activity as a pro-longevity strategy.
Caloric restriction has been shown to increase longevity in organisms
ranging from yeast to mammals. In some organisms, this has been
associated with a decreased fat mass and alterations in
insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) pathways. To further explore
these associations with enhanced longevity, we studied mice with a
fat-specific insulin receptor knockout (FIRKO). These animals have
reduced fat mass and are protected against
age-related obesity and its subsequent metabolic abnormalities, although
their food intake is normal. Both male and female FIRKO mice were found
to have an increase in mean life-span of approximately 134 days (18%),
with parallel increases in median and maximum life-spans. Thus, a
reduction of fat mass without caloric restriction can be associated with
increased longevity in mice, possibly through effects on insulin signaling.
Nutr Cancer 2002;43(2):187-92
Dietary flaxseed inhibits human breast cancer growth and metastasis and
downregulates expression of insulin-like growth factor and epidermal
growth factor receptor.
Recent studies indicate that diets rich in phytoestrogens and n-3 fatty
acid have anticancer potential. This study determined the effect of
flaxseed (FS), the richest source of lignans and alpha-linolenic acid, on
growth and metastasis of established human breast cancer in a nude mice
model. Estrogen receptor-negative human breast cancer cells, MDA-MB-435,
were injected into the mammary fat pad of mice (Ncr nu/nu) fed a basal
diet (BD). At Week 8, mice were randomized into two diet groups, such
that the groups had similar tumor size and body weight. One continued on
the BD, while the other was changed to BD supplemented with 10% FS, until
sacrifice at Week 15. A significant reduction (P < 0.05) in tumor growth
rate and a 45% reduction (P = 0.08) in total incidence of metastasis were
observed in the FS group. Lung metastasis incidence was 55.6% in the BD
group and 22.2% in the FS group, while the lymph node metastasis incidence
was 88.9% in the BD group and 33.3% in the FS group (P < 0.05). Mean
tumor number (tumor load) of total and lymph node metastasis was
significantly lower in the FS than in the BD group (P < 0.05). Metastatic
lung tumor number was reduced by 82%, and a significantly lower tumor
trend (P < 0.01) was observed in the FS group. Lung weight, which also
reflects metastatic tumor load, in the FS group was reduced by 20% (P <
0.05) compared with the BD group. Immunohistochemical study showed that
Ki-67 labeling index and expression of insulin-like growth factor I and
epithelial growth factor receptor in the primary tumor were lower in the
FS (P < 0.05) than in the BD group. In conclusion, flaxseed inhibited the
established human breast cancer growth and metastasis in a nude mice
model, and this effect is partly due to its downregulation of
insulin-like growth factor I and epidermal growth factor receptor expression.
Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2002 Sep;11(9):852-61
Dietary correlates of plasma insulin-like growth factor I and
insulin-like growth factor binding protein 3 concentrations.
Plasma levels of insulin-like growth factor I (IGF-I) have been
associated with risk of several cancers. Although protein-calorie
malnutrition is known to decrease IGF-I levels, few published studies
have related diet to IGF-I levels in well-nourished humans. We examined
the cross-sectional association of plasma IGF-I and IGF-binding protein 3
(IGFBP-3) levels with intakes of alcohol, energy, macronutrients,
micronutrients, and specific foods in 1037 healthy women. Adjusted mean
hormone levels across categories of dietary variables were calculated by
linear regression. Results were adjusted for non-dietary factors found to
be associated with IGF levels. Total energy intake was positively
associated with IGF-I levels when adjusted for covariates. Adjusted mean
levels of IGF-I (ng/ml) across increasing quintiles of energy intake were
181, 185, 191, 199, and 195 (P for the linear trend = 0.006). In other
multivariate analyses, energy-adjusted fat and carbohydrate intake had no
association with IGF-I levels. The most consistent finding was a positive
association between protein intake with circulating IGF-I concentration
(174, 188, 201, 192, and 196 ng/ml across quintiles of protein intake; P =
0.002), which was largely attributable to milk intake. Adjusted mean
levels of IGF-I (ng/ml) across increasing quartiles of milk intake were
183, 189, 188, and 200 (P = 0.01). Higher fat intake, in particular
saturated fat, was associated with lower levels of IGFBP-3. We conclude
that higher energy, protein, and milk intakes were associated with higher
levels of IGF-I. These associations raise the possibility that diet could
affect cancer risk through influencing IGF-I level.
KURZWEILAI.NET NEWSLETTER
NEWS
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I Really Know What You Mean
May 29, 2003
*************************
A New York startup, Meaningful
Machines, hasd developed a new
approach to understanding and
translating natural language that
uses a statistical model of words
used in phrases instead of
rule-based approaches....
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2004&m=7529
*************************
Coming Soon: Smarter Soldiers
June 2, 2003
*************************
Soldiers of 2011 will step into
wired uniforms that incorporate all
the equipment they need. The
uniforms will monitor vital signs
and plug them into a massive network
of satellites, unmanned planes and
robotic vehicles....
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2003&m=7529
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(
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=570&ncid=753&e=8&u=/nm/20030602/\
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)
Gene Analysis Used to Project Cancer Drug Response
Mon Jun 2, 7:09 PM ET
Add Science -
Reuters to My
Yahoo!
By Deena Beasley
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - By analyzing old tumor samples, scientists have
developed tests that can detect gene patterns that show how a cancer
patient will respond to a drug or whether their cancer is likely to
recur, according to research presented at a key cancer meeting this
week.
"People have been saying that we won't reap benefits from the genomics
revolution for another five or 10 years, but in fact there is a lot of
excitement about this," said Randy Scott, chief executive of Genomic
Health Inc., which developed the experimental tumor tissue test.
The company uses high-throughput analysis of stored tumor biopsies
dating back to the 1980's to determine the molecular signature of
cancers for which the patient's history is already known, Scott said.
Researchers at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles used the
molecular test to identify a panel of genes that correlated with tumor
response to Iressa, a drug sold by AstraZeneca Plc, that shrinks tumors
in about 10 percent of patients with advanced lung cancer.
The early findings, presented at a meeting of the American Society of
Clinical Oncology (news - web sites) in Chicago, may lead to a new way
of selecting patients who will benefit from specific therapies based on
the genomics of their tumor.
Iressa is part of a new category of cancer drugs that target the
molecular switches turned on in cancer. It is designed to inhibit the
epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) -- a key growth signaling
pathway in cancer.
"Having a test that indicates whether a patient will or won't respond to
a given therapy ... will ultimately enable us to offer our patients the
most appropriate treatment," Dr. Ronald Natale, acting medical director
at Cedars-Sinai cancer center, said in a statement.
Out of 39 patient tumors analyzed with the molecular test, the
investigators found that seven patients responded to treatment with
Iressa, which directly correlated with a distinct pattern of genes. They
also identified a pattern of genes that correlated with the 32 patients
who did not respond to the drug.
"This method of examining genes provides us with a basic road map of the
genes involved in the EGFR pathway, so that we can see which genes are
in the 'on' position and which are in the 'off' position," said Dr.
David Agus, research director at Cedars-Sinai's prostate cancer (news -
web sites) center.
The test is also being used to foresee which patients with breast cancer
(news - web sites) who go into remission are at risk of having the
cancer return.
"Until now, the only indications we have had of long-term prognosis in
breast cancer were tumor size and the number of involved nodes," said
Dr. Melody Cobleigh, an oncologist at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's
Medical Center in Chicago. "This technology will allow us to tailor a
prognosis to an individual patient, using a small panel of genes
selected from thousands of genes."
Based on encouraging results in breast cancer recurrence trials, Genomic
Health has begun three large-scale clinical trials and expects those
results within the next 12 months, Scott said. The company also plans to
conduct similar large-scale trials looking at response to chemotherapy
and EGFR inhibitor therapy.
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Collaboration to Make Gene-based Medicine a Reality
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-02-6
A major gene-based medical practice will open soon to predict, detect and
prevent genetically influenced diseases.
Gene Therapy Could Be a Hearing Aid
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-02-5
Age-related hearing loss and even deafness may be treatable using gene therapy.
Protein Protects Brain Cells
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-02-4
A protein that could protect against neurodegenerative conditions such as
Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's has been discovered.
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Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene Therapy
http://www.betterhumans.com/Resources/Events_Calendar/event.aspx?eventID=2003-06\
-02-1
Starts: Wednesday, June 04, 2003
Ends: Sunday, June 08, 2003
Location: Washington, DC, USA
The sixth Annual Meeting of the American Society of Gene Therapy brings together
more than 2,000 researchers, academics and investigators from around the world
to discuss the latest research in gene therapy.
Frontiers in Bioinformatics
http://www.betterhumans.com/Resources/Events_Calendar/event.aspx?eventID=2003-06\
-02-2
Starts: Friday, June 06, 2003
Ends: Sunday, June 08, 2003
Location: Buffalo, New York, USA
World-class scientists in the fields of bioinformatics, structural genomics and
proteomics will gather next month at a symposium presented by the University at
Buffalo Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics to discuss the cutting-edge
science essential for advancements in genetic analysis and drug discovery in the
post-genomic era.
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Contact: Robert Sanders
rls@...
510-643-6998
University of California - Berkeley
Yeast, wormwood & bacterial genes combine in microbial factory to make
antimalarial drug
Berkeley -- By combining genes from three separate organisms into a
single bacterial factory, University of California, Berkeley, chemical
engineers have developed a simpler, less expensive way to make an
antimalaria "miracle" drug that is urgently needed in Third World
countries.
The drug, artemisinin, is one of the most promising next-generation
antimalarials because of its effectiveness against strains of the
malaria parasite now resistant to front-line drugs. It is now too
expensive for broad use in countries such as Africa where it is most
needed.
"By inserting these genes into bacteria, we've given them the ability to
make artemisinin quickly, efficiently and cheaply, and in an
environmentally friendly way," said Jay D. Keasling, professor of
chemical engineering at UC Berkeley. His research is being published
online June 1 in Nature Biotechnology and is scheduled to run in the
journal's printed edition in July.
Keasling's technique for transplanting yeast and plant genes to
construct an entirely new metabolic pathway inside bacteria can be used
generally to produce a broad family of so-called isoprenoids -- chemical
precursors to many plant-derived drugs and chemicals of interest to
industry, including the anticancer drug taxol and various food
additives. Isoprenoids, found widely in microbes, plants and marine
organisms, currently are very expensive for the chemical industry to
synthesize from scratch and nearly as expensive to extract from plant
material.
"This process could be of interest to everybody -- drug companies making
cancer agents, the government producing antibiotics against bioterror
agents, or industries making flavors and fragrances," Keasling said. "A
company could tweak the bacteria a bit, adding any number of plant genes
involved in making the chemical of interest, to get pretty much any
isoprenoid. It would be easy to do now."
Keasling's achievement is a big advance over the day-to-day practice in
today's biotechnology industry. There, protein drugs are produced
primarily through fermentation by recombinant yeast that seldom have
more than one gene inserted in them, perhaps with an additional piece of
DNA fused to that gene to make the yeast spit out the protein.
Scientists have found it much harder to transplant entire gene systems
to build new chemical assembly lines. Keasling, however, assembled 10
genes, including control elements, from three different organisms --
bacteria, yeast and wormwood-- and got them to work together
successfully.
The goal of Keasling's group was to create bacteria capable of producing
chemicals that can be used to make many kinds of isoprenoids, a class of
some 30,000 known compounds of immense interest to the chemical and
pharmaceutical industries. Isoprenoids are expensive to synthesize,
however, and natural isoprenoids like taxol are costly to isolate from
plant material. Often, too, these plants are rare and endangered, so
that harvesting causes environmental damage.
Keasling's approach leapfrogs the bulk of the laborious synthesis
necessary today, leaving only a few additional chemical alterations to
obtain the desired drug or chemical. The development took more than
three years and involved numerous people, primarily Keasling's UC
Berkeley coauthors: post-doctoral fellows Vincent J. J. Martin and Jack
D. Newman and graduate students Douglas J. Pitera and Sydnor T. Withers.
Other laboratories have tried to engineer the common intestinal
bacteria, E. coli, to make isoprenoid precursors that could be used to
produce drugs or industrial chemicals, but the methods involved
hijacking the cell's own production factory. E. coli produce chemicals
that can be used to make isoprenoid precursors, but diverting these
chemicals to make more of them entails overcoming control mechanisms
within the bacterial cell that are not fully understood.
Keasling's innovation was to leave E. coli's isoprenoid pathway alone,
but transplant a similar pathway from yeast. This pathway takes in a
common chemical in E. coli, acetyl co-enzyme A, and sends it down a
cascade of reactions resulting in isoprenoid precursors, primarily
isopentenyl pyrophospahate (IPP) and dimethylallyl pyrophospate (DMAPP).
In initial experiments, these isoprenoids accumulated in the cells and
threw then out of whack -- the cells either stopped growing or mutated
to avoid the toxins -- so he stuck in a wormwood gene for an enzyme that
converts them to amorphadiene, a chemical precursor of artemisinin that
the cells can deal with.
Artemisinin has been known to the Chinese for 2,000 years as an herbal
medicine, qinghaosu. Though highly effective at killing the malaria
parasite, currently it is expensive to manufacture because of the costs
of chemical extraction from wormwood (Artemisia annua, a relative of the
herb used to make absinthe) or total laboratory synthesis. The expense
stands in the way of its use in Africa, where resistance is rapidly
spreading to the first-line antimalarial drugs-- chloroquine and
sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine.
Since their first success, Keasling and his laboratory colleagues have
improved yield from the bacteria 10,000 fold, nearly to the level at
which industrial production of the antimalarial drug would be cost
effective. Another order of magnitude is doable, he said.
Keasling noted, however, that it is feasible to insert another chemical
step into the bacteria to produce a compound, artemisinic acid, that is
even closer to artemisinin. And one possibility is to let the bacteria
grow and evolve in a petri dish and see if they can produce derivatives
of artemisinin that have similar or improved effects on the malaria
parasite.
"With the ability to produce taxol or amorphadiene in E. coli, we can
easily encourage the bacteria to evolve a molecule not found in nature
that could be more effective in human disease," he said.
IPP and DMAPP are precursors to all isoprenoids, which means that the
bacterial strains Keasling's group produced "can serve as platform hosts
for the production of any terpenoid compound for which the biosynthetic
genes are available," they write in their paper.
The family of isoprenoids includes chemicals called terpenoids, which
give plants their aroma and which also include taxol from the Pacific
yew tree, and carotenoids, such as the compounds that give plants their
color. Aside from their importance in flavorings, colorings and
perfumes, isoprenoids from organisms as diverse as coral and fungi are
being identified as potential drugs.
"The ability to produce amorphadiene in a simple organism like E. coli
opens up a whole realm of possible molecular backbones that can later be
functionalized to make drugs," Keasling said.
Keasling's lab concentrates on metabolic engineering of microbes to do
complex chemical syntheses to replace current methods that are
expensive, polluting and wasteful of resources.
"Enzymes are very specific catalysts that can accomplish in far fewer
steps what takes us many complex steps in the laboratory," Keasling
said. "We are trying to put enzymes inside cells to create a
biosynthetic cascade using the cell's metabolites as starting material,
to provide essentially complete molecules in an aqueous environment
using no toxic reagents. We're taking an organism, co-opting its
metabolism, and using it for our benefit now."
"This is just a start," he emphasized. "I really want to push the limits
of the organism."
###
Keasling's work was supported by the National Science Foundation, UC
BioSTAR and Maxygen, Inc. of Redwood City, Calif.
---------------------------------------------
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QUICK SPACE
- Space Is The Ultimate High Ground
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-03p.html
- Banned missile programme found in Iraq: report
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030604022611.55194qse.html
- ATK Awarded $17.6 Million Contract To Build Arrow II Motor Components
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-03d.html
- Atlas V Team Begins Launch Preparations for AV-003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-03n.html
- Sea Launch Sails To Equator For The Launch Of Thuraya-2s
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/sealaunch-03b.html
- New Nanoscale Device Reveals Behavior Of Individual Electrons
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-03ze.html
- Log On And Retire
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/internet-03o.html
- New FPGA Program Offers New Programming Techniques
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/chip-tech-03j.html
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--------- stay wired to Earth 24/7 -------
- Lockheed Martin Supports Maglev Deployment for Southern California
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/future-03a.html
- CSA Awards $116 Million Contract To MD Robotics
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-03g.html
- Chemical Turns Stem Cells Into Neurons
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-03n.html
- NASA And USDA Partner To Help Farmers Apply Earth Science Technologies
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/farm-03f.html
- European Commission Awards Key Contract Space Imaging
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/eo-03zm.html
- Project Pairs Coal With Fuel Cells To Create Cleaner, More Efficient Power
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-03s.html
- Engineering A Solution To Our Waste
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/materials-03u.html
- British deputies to probe Iraq war decision
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603230204.v1ao2ch4.html
- Arms weekly claims scoop with pictures of new US bomber
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603182405.6ee6ua24.html
- Southern India on alert as temperatures soar, no signs of rain
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030604064359.ivxu73a0.html
- Indian heatwave toll soars to 1,100, towns and villages parched
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030603123951.yji2wy1r.html
- Australia set for human trials of HIV vaccine
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030604051249.rpq8tloi.html
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HEADLINES IN BRIEF
June 4, 2003
... putting your day into space every day ...
--------
SPACEWAR
- Space Is The Ultimate High Ground
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/milspace-03p.html
Washington - Jun 04, 2003 - Space is the ultimate high ground and gives American
forces a tremendous advantage on the battlefield, according to the Air Force's
director of space operations and integration at the Pentagon.
------------
MISSILE NEWS
- Banned missile programme found in Iraq: report
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030604022611.55194qse.html
London (AFP) Jun 04, 2003 - US and British experts have discovered that Iraq was
developing a banned missile, capable of reaching Israel and other parts of the
Middle East, the Times reported Wednesday, quoting "senior government sources".
- ATK Awarded $17.6 Million Contract To Build Arrow II Motor Components
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/missiles-03d.html
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LAUNCH PAD
- Atlas V Team Begins Launch Preparations for AV-003
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/launchers-03n.html
Cape Canaveral - Jun 04, 2003 - Lockheed Martin's Atlas team began preparing
last week the next Atlas V rocket for its scheduled launch of the Rainbow
satellite in July. AV-003 is distinguished visually by a 5-meter diameter
payload fairing, which encloses the satellite, and two Aerojet strap-on solid
rocket boosters (SRBs) to augment liftoff thrust and vehicle performance.
- Sea Launch Sails To Equator For The Launch Of Thuraya-2s
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/sealaunch-03b.html
Long Beach - Jun 04, 2003 - The Odyssey Launch Platform and the Sea Launch
Commander departed Sea Launch Home Port last week, for the launch of the
Thuraya-2 satellite. Liftoff is scheduled for June 10, in a 44-minute launch
window that opens at 6:56 am PDT (13:56:00 GMT).
---------
NANO TECH
- New Nanoscale Device Reveals Behavior Of Individual Electrons
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-03ze.html
Madison - Jun 04, 2003 - Laptop computers can generate enough heat that, in rare
cases, they actually catch fire. While engineers have a great grasp of how to
control electrical charge in circuits, they have a hard time getting rid of the
heat created by flowing electrons. What's missing is a fundamental
understanding of how individual electrons generate heat.
--------------
INTERNET SPACE
- Log On And Retire
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/internet-03o.html
League City - Jun 04, 2003 - Eagle Broadband has announced a deal to supply
settop box units to MOTEC N.V., a Belgium-based technology provider who will
install the boxes throughout retirement communities across Europe as part of a
project funded by the European Union (EU) to provide connectivity, security and
communications capabilities to the growing elderly population.
----------
TECH SPACE
- New FPGA Program Offers New Programming Techniques
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/chip-tech-03j.html
Anaheim - Jun 04, 2003 - Almost since they were first invented, the
reconfigurable computing platforms called "Field Programmable Gate Arrays" have
had a reputation: "Good idea in theory, but.." Now, a University of Southern
California computer scientist says two advances her team will report June 4
"will kick along" and help to bring FPGAs into the computing mainstream.
-----------
FUTURE TECH
- Lockheed Martin Supports Maglev Deployment for Southern California
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/future-03a.html
Santa Maria - Jun 04, 2003 - Lockheed Martin has announced its support for the
Southern California Association of Governments' (SCAG) efforts to ensure timely
completion of the high speed magnetic levitation (Maglev) project for Southern
California. SCAG is proposing an economic stimulus package that would secure
funding for several Southern California projects, including Maglev.
----------
ROBO SPACE
- CSA Awards $116 Million Contract To MD Robotics
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-03g.html
St-Hubert - Jun 04, 2003 - The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) has awarded a
four-year contract worth $116 million to MacDonald Dettwiler Space and Advanced
Robotics (MD Robotics) of Brampton, Ontario, to provide ongoing engineering
services for the Canadian-made Mobile Servicing System on the International
Space Station.
--------------
SPACE MEDICINE
- Chemical Turns Stem Cells Into Neurons
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-03n.html
La Jolla - Jun 04, 2003 - A group of researchers from The Scripps Research
Institute (TSRI) and the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation
(GNF) have identified a small chemical molecule that controls the fate of
embryonic stem cells.
-----------------
EARTH OBSERVATION
- NASA And USDA Partner To Help Farmers Apply Earth Science Technologies
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/farm-03f.html
Washington - Jun 04, 2003 - U. S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Ann
M. Veneman and NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today launched a partnership that
will use Earth Science technologies to enhance the competitiveness of American
farmers and ranchers and help protect the environment.
- European Commission Awards Key Contract Space Imaging
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/eo-03zm.html
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ENERGY TECH
- Project Pairs Coal With Fuel Cells To Create Cleaner, More Efficient Power
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/energy-tech-03s.html
Athens - Jun 04, 2003 - Ohio University engineers are leading one of the first
comprehensive efforts to examine how fuel cell technology could pave the way for
cleaner coal-fired power plants. Supported by a $4 million U.S. Department of
Energy grant secured by the Ohio Congressional delegation, the project aims to
find ways to use coal – the environmentally dirtiest but most abundant fossil
fuel in the world -- to harness high-efficiency fuel cells.
- Engineering A Solution To Our Waste
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/materials-03u.html
--------
WMD WARS
- British deputies to probe Iraq war decision
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603230204.v1ao2ch4.html
- Pacific island of Tonga joins anti-chemical weapons club
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603183502.237ywg92.html
- Pentagon-backed faction hits out at new US plans for Iraq
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603170218.brels7md.html
- Pro-US Iraq group denies phony intelligence on Saddam weapons
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603155625.5jic608h.html
- Arms weekly claims scoop with pictures of new US bomber
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603182405.6ee6ua24.html
-- end text briefs --
-----------------AEROASTRO.COM----------------
AeroAstro, Inc.: Making Space for Everyone
A world leader in small satellite development,
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for your application -- http://www.aeroastro.com
------------------------------------------------
------------------
YESTERDAY'S SPACE
(note: this list replaces the previous "this week" list which was
becoming too big to be maintained in the "this week" format.
Instead the previous issue's headlines will be listed here.)
- So Far, So Good For Europe's Mars Express -- But The Ghoul Awaits
http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030603112634.0g3q4gpd.html
- Europe Launches First Ever Mars Space Mission
http://www.spacedaily.com/2003/030602223329.9yzyx2ug.html
- Born Under The Sun: UV Light And The Origin Of Life
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/life-03zb.html
- New 3D Map Reveals Ours Suns Local Space
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/stellar-03b.html
- NIST Assists NASA in Columbia Accident Investigation
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/shuttle-03t.html
- In Support Of Galactic Unification
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cosmology-03s.html
- Three SSTL Spacecraft Complete Pre-flight Tests At RAL For DMC
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/microsat-03e.html
- Distant Doctors Make Their Rounds Via Satellite
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-03l.html
- Asian demand for gas to outpace rest of world: Japan industry leaders
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030603103815.6nrpxzt7.html
- South Asia boils, heatwave death toll nears 1,000
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030602135339.0bi776mn.html
- Snow in June: Russians put Bermuda shorts on hold
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030603062601.x00b0mf8.html
- China says SARS fight far from over
http://www.terradaily.com/2003/030603120258.ppqk5jee.html
- G8 leaders to pledge crackdown on weapons proliferation: Britain
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030601130829.bfnhekld.html
- New Zealand man building cruise missile in garage, posting details on Net
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603054417.8lg8lqpn.html
- India again test-fires surface-to-air missile
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030602120140.3p68yrc0.html
- Blair flies home into Iraq weapons storm
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603115104.9yt85fhe.html
- Russia tells Iran to allay concerns over nuclear programme
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030603082539.boypftnf.html
- WASP Prepares To Search For A Thousand New Planets
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/extrasolar-03i.html
- SpaceGrid Study Ends On An Optimistic Note
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/internet-03n.html
- Aircraft That Will Repair Themselves In Flight
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/materials-03t.html
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KURZWEILAI.NET NEWSLETTER
NEWS
====
*************************
New software helps teams deal with
information overload
June 4, 2003
*************************
Penn State researchers have
developed new software that can help
decision-making teams in combat
situations or homeland security
handle information overload by
inferring teams' information needs
and delivering relevant data from
computer-generated reports. The
software, called CAST...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2007&m=7529
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'Sims' creator inks TV deal with
Fox
June 3, 2003
*************************
Will Wright, creator of "The Sims,"
has signed a deal with Fox
Broadcasting Co. to develop a TV
show starring a robot. "I'd like to
fast-forward into the future a bit
and explore how machines and
artificial intelligence will impact
human beings and how robots will
help us define ourselves,"...
http://www.kurzweilai.net/email/newsRedirect.html?newsID=2006&m=7529
*************************
ROBO SPACE: How Space Perception
Separates Man From Machine
June 2003
*************************
Robots can't dance. Or navigate a
building and interact with physical
objects. Researchers in Sony
Computer Science Laboratory in Paris
and elsewhere are figuring out how
to teach them spatial cognition and
language, adapted to whatever
environment they find themselves...
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Mouse Prize to Spur Life Extension Advances
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-03-4
A prize for the world's longest-living mice will be awarded to hasten and
publicize the development of effective life extension therapies.
Genetically Modified Fat Points to Obesity Treatment
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-03-3
Deleting a gene involved in making fat has produced permanently lean mice and a
new target for obesity treatment.
Molecules Turn Stem Cells into Brain Cells
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-03-2
Molecules that modulate embryonic stem cell proliferation and fate have been
identified and used to turn stem cells into neurons.
Time Travel Gets Cheaper
http://www.betterhumans.com/News/news.aspx?articleID=2003-06-03-1
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(
had this one been done before? i'm loosing track of all the "done"
conversions
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-03n.html
)
Chemical Turns Stem Cells Into Neurons
La Jolla - Jun 04, 2003
A group of researchers from The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) and
the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) have
identified a small chemical molecule that controls the fate of embryonic
stem cells.
"We found molecules that can direct the embryonic stem cells to [become]
neurons," says Sheng Ding, who recently completed his Ph.D. work at TSRI
and is becoming an assistant professor in the chemistry department. Ding
is the lead author on the study, which is described in an upcoming issue
of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"This is an important step in our efforts to understand how to modulate
stem cell proliferation and fate," says Peter Schultz, Ph.D., TSRI
professor of chemistry and Scripps Family Chair of TSRI's Skaggs
Institute for Chemical Biology.
The Promise of Stem Cell Therapy Stem cells have huge potential in
medicine because they have the ability to differentiate into many
different cell types--potentially providing doctors with the ability to
regenerate cells that have been permanently lost by a patient.
For instance, the damage of neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's,
in which dopaminergic neurons in the brain are lost, may be ameliorated
by regenerating neurons.
Another example is Type 1 diabetes, an autoimmune condition in which
pancreatic islet cells are destroyed by the body's immune system.
Because stem cells have the power to differentiate into islet cells,
stem cell therapy could potentially cure this chronic condition.
However bright this promise, many barriers must be overcome before stem
cells can be used in medicine. Scientists have yet to understand the
natural signaling mechanisms that control stem cell fate and to develop
ways to manipulate these controls.
"We still have much to learn about how to direct stem cells to specific
lineages," says Ding.
In order to address this problem, Schultz and Ding sought to find small
chemical molecules that could permit precise control over the fate of
pluripotent mouse embryonic stem cells--which, like human embryonic stem
cells, have the ability to differentiate into all cell types.
The scientists screened some 50,000 small molecules from a combinatorial
small molecule library that they synthesized at GNF. Just as a common
library is filled with different books, this combinatorial library is
filled with different small organic compounds.
>From this assortment, Schultz and Ding designed a method to identify
molecules able to differentiate the cells into neurons. They engineered
embryonal carcinoma (EC) cells with a reporter gene encoding a protein
called luciferase, and they inserted this luciferase gene downstream of
the promoter sequence of a gene that is only expressed in neuronal
cells.
Then they placed these EC cells into separate wells and added different
chemicals from the library to each. If the engineered EC cells in any
particular well were induced to become neurons, the neurons would
express luciferase--which can convert a non-luminescent substrate to a
luminescent product. This product makes that well easy to detect from
tens of thousands of other wells with GNF's state-of-the-art
high-throughput screening equipment.
Once they found some cells they believed to be neurons by treatment with
certain small molecules, the scientists used more rigorous assays to
confirm this, including staining the cells for characteristic markers
and examining the shape of individual cells under the microscope.
Neurons have a characteristic round soma body and asymmetric multiple
processes.
In the end, Schultz and Ding found a number of molecules that were able
to induce neuronal differentiation, and they chose one, called TWS119,
for further studies.
When they examined the mechanism of TWS119 in detail, they found that it
binds to a cellular kinase enzyme called glycogen synthase kinase-3beta
(GSK-3beta). This is a multifunctional "signaling" enzyme involved in a
number of physiological signaling processes whereby it modulates other
enzymes by attaching a phosphate group to them.
The fact that modulating GSK-3beta leads the cells to become neurons
reveals basic information on the complicated signaling cascade that
turns a stem cell into a neuron. And the fact that TWS119 modulates the
activity of GSK-3beta suggests that TWS119 is likely to provide new
insights into the molecular mechanism that controls stem cell fate, and
may ultimately be useful to in vivo stem cell therapy.
Schultz and Ding are still working on describing the exact mechanism
whereby this binding directs the cell to become a neuron.
The article, "Synthetic Small Molecules that Control Stem Cell Fate" is
authored by Sheng Ding, Tom Y.H. Wu, Achim Brinker, Eric C. Peters,
Wooyoung Hur, Nathanael S. Gray, and Peter G. Schultz and will be
available online next week at:
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/10.1073/pnas.0732087100. The article will also
be published in an upcoming issue of the journal Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences.
(
good for whatever carriable app
http://news.com.com/2100-1041_3-1012235.html
)
Start-up brings hard drive to the masses
By Michael Kanellos
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
June 3, 2003, 4:00 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1041-1012235.html
Cornice wants to take the hard drive out of PCs and put it into your
camera.
The Longmont, Colo.-based start-up has developed a 1.5GB, 1-inch
diameter hard drive for consumer-electronics devices that the company
says will be cheaper, smaller and hold more data than some other
mini-hard drives or flash-memory cards.
And, while competitors are sure to challenge the company, electronics
manufacturers appear to be responding favorably at a time when drives
are increasingly becoming important and more prevalent in the
consumer-electronics world.
Samsung will release a digital video camera containing the company's
drive in the United States in August. The camera, which was shown at the
Consumer Electronics Show but not described in technological detail,
will cost less than $600 and is "about the size of a pack of
cigarettes," Cornice CEO Kevin Magenis said.
Twelve companies so far have plans to release products with the drive.
RCA/Thomson, Rio and five other manufacturers will come out with MP3
players with the Cornice Storage Element (SE), and a major U.S. retailer
will feature a Cornice-based player from Korea. The first products will
hit shelves this quarter, according to Cornice.
"I think it could have a big impact," said Cindy Wolf, an analyst at
In-Stat/MDR. "From an audio perspective, it could kind of help spur the
market. (Consumer-electronics makers) will be offering a hard-drive
player at a lower price than an iPod."
The Cornice drive is essentially a minimalist hard drive that has been
shorn of any materials not needed for portable electronics. The drive,
for instance, doesn't have its own internal, dedicated pool of memory;
instead, it uses the memory shared by the rest of the device to cache
data. The SE doesn't have rails, so it can't be removed from the host
device; by contrast, the drive is planted on the motherboard, and
transfers of files are accomplished through USB (universal serial bus)
ports.
"Mechanically, it has about one-third of the parts of a Hitachi
Microdrive," which is also a one-inch drive, Magenis said. The drive
contains only three screws, compared with 12 in similar mini-drives, he
said.
A reduction in components cuts costs. The 1.5-inch GB drive, which has
been in volume manufacturing since mid-April, sells for $65 in
quantities of 10,000. The company is aiming for $50, Magenis said. By
contrast, existing standard 1-inch Microdrives from IBM sell for $219 at
retail or more, while 1GB flash cards go for around $200.
The price versus density argument results in an interesting niche, said
Susan Kervorkian, a consumer-electronics analyst at IDC. Currently,
Flash-based memory players containing 256MB of flash sell for $175 to
$200, she said. The Cornice-based devices will sell for less than $200
but come with 1.5GB of storage.
At 1.5GB, the Cornice-based devices will hold far less than other hard
drive-based music players such as Apple Computer's 20GB iPod. However,
they will cost less and be smaller. RCA's planned MP3 player using the
micro-drive is about the size of a sports watch. The iPod and other hard
drive-based players, which come with 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drives, are
much larger.
Smaller devices are more popular. In 2003, 1.8 million hard-drive music
players will get shipped, compared with 1.9 million flash players and
10.6 million MP3/CD players, according to IDC.
"To date, there has been a real difference in form factor between
flash-based players and hard-drive players," Kervorkian said. "Even the
iPod is bulkier than the flash players."
Energy savings
Density also will increase, Magenis said. Along with stripping out
parts, the company has worked on engineering issues such as keeping
energy consumption down. The RCA device will be able to run 12 hours on
a single battery charge because the drive's motor shuts down between
tasks, Magenis said. Shock-absorbing materials in the drive case will
allow devices to sustain the shock from a 1-meter drop, he added.
Although a start-up, Cornice has been able to establish at least some
credibility early on with large manufacturers--in part because of its
pedigree, said In-Stat/MDR's Wolf. Engineers and executives from Maxtor,
Seagate, Quantum and other hard-drive makers largely staff the company.
Magenis, for instance, was a vice president of engineering at Maxtor.
Cornice's chief technology officer, Curt Bruner, served as chief
electronics architect at Quantum.
Some of Cornice's employees came from Dataplay, a once-promising
mini-disc start-up.
Established manufacturers also are helping the company. Texas
Instruments manufactures silicon for the SE, while the platters are made
by Hoya, which manufacturers the small, thin disks for a number of
companies. The drives are assembled in a factory owned by SAE, a
subsidiary of Japan's TDK.
"Fundamentally, SAE is carrying our working capital," Magenis said.
Venture investors include Nokia, CIBC World Markets and Texas
Instruments.
Competitors are pursuing the market as well. Hitachi Global Storage
Technologies, which took over IBM's hard-drive division, is coming out
with a line of 1.8-inch drives this year. Currently, only Toshiba
markets 1.8-inch drives, and one of the few products that contain the
drive is the iPod. The paucity of finished products containing these
sort of drives will change soon, said Bill Healy, general manager of the
mobile business unit at Hitachi.
Hitachi will come out with a 4GB Microdrive before the end of the year.
Flash-memory cards, which now hold 1GB of data, meanwhile, will continue
to boost density.
Magenis, though, claims it will be tough to beat Cornice on price. The
industry is moving away from flash and toward hard drives for storage,
and coming up with a minimalist hard drive takes time.
"It took us almost three years to do this," he said. "Anyone else is
literally looking at at least two years."
(
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59091-2,00.htmlhttp://www.iguana-robotics.com/
)
Imagine Machines That Can See
By Mark Baard
Story location:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59091,00.html
02:00 AM Jun. 04, 2003 PT
BOSTON -- Robotics experts are turning to nature for guidance in making
machines that see, hear, smell and move like living creatures.
Inspired by the neurobiology of small animals, they're learning to make
robot lobsters and other critters that might be able to clear minefields
or sniff out dangerous substances.
But mimicking lobsters and bugs is one thing. Making robots that can
match the intelligence and physical agility of humans is quite another.
Scientists are working in the emerging field of biomimetics, in which
machines are designed to function like biological systems. They have
only the foggiest idea of how the human brain perceives and acts on
information from the body's sense organs, even though they've known the
mechanics of those organs for many years.
"We have computer models of how the vision works in the (primary visual
cortex)," said Gaëlle Desbordes, a researcher at the Active Perception
Lab at Boston University. "Beyond that, everything becomes quite a bit
more mysterious."
Still, the Active Perception Lab is applying some new knowledge about
human vision to a system that will provide valuable 3-D visual
information to robots.
The system imitates small eye movements that humans use to gather
information about objects in their visual fields.
"The system," said the lab's director, Michele Rucci, "can be used by
robots for depth perception, which will help them better navigate and
manipulate objects within their environments."
Rucci and Desbordes used computers and an eye-tracking device to confirm
that the slight jittering of the eyes contributes not only to the
gathering of three-dimensional information in the human brain, but to
overall visual sensitivity as well. By stabilizing an on-screen image
within 1 millisecond of each eye jitter, Rucci and Desbordes found that
visual sensitivity declined by as much as 20 percent in the absence of
small eye movements.
The Active Perception Lab presented its findings at last week's
Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems, a meeting of cognitive and
neural scientists and roboticists sponsored by Boston University's
Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Center for Adaptive
Systems, or CNS, and the Office of Naval Research.
"Getting limbs to behave without conscious thought and under visual
guidance, as they do in humans, remains a challenge," said Lewis, CEO of
Iguana Robotics. The company is building a walking robot that runs on a
network of artificial neurons, densely packed computer chips that can
process data more quickly than conventional chips.
Iguana's robot uses a navigation system that mimics the way human beings
guide their movements by sight. For example, the robot senses the
objects it trips over, associates the bump with an image of the objects,
and remembers to step over them the next time.
"Where the robot bumps into something is where the learning should take
place," Lewis said.
Unlike conventional robotic designs, which specify where a robot should
be at each moment in its trajectory, Iguana's robot stumbles around and
learns from its environment.
"It is similar to when you stumble, or slip or activate any of those
low-level reflexes that keep you walking when you encounter something
unexpected," Lewis said.
He hopes Iguana can make a robot that will be able to adapt
spontaneously to any situation.
"The robot should be able to run into a burning building, climb in
dangerous regions to bring in medical supplies or be able to hang out at
grandma's and take her for her morning stroll," he said.
That day may come, but probably not right away. Robots will have to
think very quickly -- indeed chaotically -- to extricate themselves
safely from fires, or perhaps to get away from grandma after her morning
constitutional.
Conventional robots are deterministic and tend to bump into the same
obstacle over and over until their batteries run out. But animals vary
their movements in an attempt to avoid repeating their mistakes. An
animal trapped in a box, for example, might scratch and gnaw and flail
against all of the box's surfaces until it happens upon the best way
out.
"The difference between robots and animals is that if we get stuck, we
can wriggle out of it," said Joseph Ayers, director of the Biomimetic
Underwater Robot Program at Northeastern University and co-editor of
Neurotechnology for Biomimetic Robots.
Ayers is on sabbatical at the Institute for Nonlinear Science at the
University of California at San Diego, where he is trying to give his
own invention, a biomimetic robot lobster, the ability to vary the
levels of chaos in its neural network.
"Robots need this ability," Ayers said. "Because if they can't do this
out in the real world, they're toast."
Wi-Fi access is a breeze in tiny town
Half Moon Bay is a quiet coastal town south of San Francisco that
would be right at home north of Aberdeen or along the Kitsap
Peninsula shoreline.
What's different about HMB, as the locals abbreviate it, is that if
you're in town, you're on the Internet. A local Internet service
provider, Coastside.net, teamed up with a San Mateo, Calif.-based
wireless network vendor, Tropos Networks, to make the whole place a
Wi-Fi "mesh network."
...in Half Moon Bay you stay on the same uninterrupted connection no
matter where you go.
The Half Moon Bay experience helps dispel nagging doubts I've had
about potential demand for "any time, anywhere" computing. The
convenience is seductive. Everywhere is a potential
==================================================
Analysis
Does IT still make, break competition?
By Leslie Walker
The Washington Post
Silicon Valley is engaged in the sort of soul-searching that families
go through when a beloved elder starts teetering. Is this a passing
crisis, they whisper, or the onset of something more serious?
The valley's revered elder, in this case, is information technology,
and lately industry insiders have been debating whether the sector is
on the edge of strategic obsolescence.
The source of consternation is an article published last month in the
Harvard Business Review. In his provocatively titled "IT Doesn't
Matter," Nicholas Carr, editor at large, argues that since every
business uses information technology these days, maybe no one gains
strategic advantage from it anymore. As a result, he writes,
corporate managers should rethink their whole approach to buying
digital goodies.
It is Carr's prescription for corporations that has the titans in the
high-tech world up in arms. To remain competitive, he says, companies
today should spend less on information technology and delay adopting
the latest hardware and software, since the older stuff is often more
than adequate.
Carr says companies should worry more about safeguarding against
computer outages and similar glitches than about using technology to
exploit new business opportunities. etc.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/134868789_btb
igthink020.html
===================================================
Snooping software reveals any Web surfing at work
By A.S. Berman
Gannett News Service
Since the Internet first became an integral part of the workplace,
businesses have wrestled with how to limit employees' Web surfing
without hamstringing productivity.
More than one-third of U.S. employees who have Internet access,
roughly 14 million individuals, have their office e-mail accounts
continuously snooped upon by employers, according to a 2001 survey by
the Privacy Foundation, an advocacy group in Denver.
A worker who accesses a Web site or "downloads something they
shouldn't is really taking their job in their hands," says the
foundation's executive director, Stephen Keating.
Do you occasionally take a moment during the workday to check
ESPN.com or consult local theater listings online? Do you then delete
these little online excursions from your browser's "history" menu so
as not to arouse suspicion?
Once this might have been enough. But, thanks to innovations in
Internet monitoring and the low price of snooping software, your boss
may know a lot more about you than you ever thought possible.
Devices that plug into your keyboard, such as KeyKatcher by Allen
Concepts ($59 to $79, www.keykatcher.com), can preserve every
sentence you type.
ExploreAnywhere's NetObserve ($54.95, www.exploreanywhere.com) allows
whoever's at the controls to see what sites you've visited, record
your instant-messaging conversations, and even read, move or delete
any file on your computer.
Finally, if the boss wants to know absolutely everything you've been
up to on your PC, Spector Pro (www.spectorsoft.com) delivers complete
omniscience for $99.95.
Not only does your employer have access to your every e-mail and
instant message, everything that takes place on your PC screen is
recorded and can be played back like a VHS tape. For an additional
$99.95, the company's eBlaster software will send the boss a copy of
every e-mail you send immediately, and an hourly report on the rest
of your computer activities, too. etc.
====================================================
Inscent, Inc. has employed cutting-edge research to develop a series
of platform technologies enabling the rapid development of non-toxic,
highly efficient insect pest control products, each targeted against
a specific insect species. Inscent has taken advantage of the recent
Anopheles gambiae genomic sequence data in its product development.
Inscent's products do not harm the environment, do not interfere with
integrated pest management strategies that may already be in place,
and do not harm humans, pets, or even beneficial (e.g., predatory)
insect species.
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030603/latu145_1.html
====================================================
Despite the disappointing findings in people already diagnosed with
Alzheimer's, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as those
studied could still prove effective in preventing the disease in the
first place...
NIA researcher Lenore Launer said in an accompanying editorial that
it might be that when Alzheimer's has progressed to the point of
causing symptoms, it is too far advanced to be affected by anti-
inflammatory drugs...
=====================================================
By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Sunshine may be good for you
Shift work disrupts normal melatonin production and increases levels
of other hormones such as estrogen.
Women's cancers are often linked with estrogen, but... melatonin may
play a more important role.
"While this finding needs to be replicated in future studies, the
data is beginning to show that it may be melatonin, not estrogen,
that is influencing cancer risk,"
"If melatonin's anti-cancer properties are the source of our observed
effects, this research opens a whole new arena of potential
associations between exposure to light and a variety of cancers."
Melatonin is produced at night and regular exposure to sunlight
affects the production cycle, which peaks in the middle of the night.
Artificial light suppresses melatonin production.
"Melatonin has well established anticarcinogenic properties, and a
link between exposure at night and cancer risk through the melatonin
pathway could offer one plausible explanation for the increased risk
we observed,"
====================================================
Joel Kastner, of the Rochester Institute of Technology, presented
novel observations from NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory that show
dust disks around young stars go away inside 10 million years,
evidence he says supports Weintraub's suggestion that the dust has
coalesced into larger, invisible objects
====================================================
But something has happened between then and now. We've developed a
digital-storage mania. When in doubt, we store. We stash, and we
file, and we make folders and fill them up. Documents, music files,
graphics. We do it because we can -- because digital storage is as
easy as letting something sit there. When in doubt, we store on our
hard drives...
If we're hard-drive obsessed in our homes, our storage mania is a
terabyte tsunami when it comes to business
====================================================
"This version of CAST provides support for teams by anticipating what
information team members will need, finding commonalities in the
available information and determining how that information should be
processed," said John Yen, professor of information sciences and
technology. "Decision making is made easier because the software
offers only relevant data."...
With this research, the research team is taking smart software into a
new direction involving what he calls "shared mental models" to
support team activities or train teams. These can include shared team
goals, shared assumptions about the problem, and shared knowledge
about the team structure and process...
..."The more time-critical the environment in which a team operates,
the more effectively it needs to process information," Yen said. "A
computer program that acts as a team member may be more efficient in
processing information than a human teammate."
=====================================================
Scientists have inserted DNA coding for an antibody against the
rabies virus into tobacco plants. The plants, then, become factories
churning out antibody
=====================================================
Nuclei removed from mouse brain tumor cells and transplanted into
mouse eggs whose own nuclei have been removed, give rise to cloned
embryos with normal tissues, even though the mutations causing the
cancer are still present.
The finding demonstrates that the cancerous state can be reversed by
reprogramming the genetic material underlying the cancer
Unlike mutations, epigenetic modifications of DNA are potentially
reversible molecular events that cause changes in gene expression.
=====================================================
One of the papers, by Hall, Diniz and graduate student Heidi Ziegler,
describes analysis techniques to automatically translate programs
written in C, a standard language widely used for conventional
computers, into pipelined FPGA designs.
The other, by Hall, Diniz and graduate student Byoungro So, shows how
what has long been a painfully slow trial and error process to fit
the demands of an application to the characteristics of the software
in optimal fashion can be automated.
"Together, these two techniques offer a low-cost, high-speed bridge
from existing application software to the FPGA platforms," Hall said.
"The key innovation in our work results from borrowing and adapting
analysis and transformation techniques used in conventional
multiprocessor systems."
=====================================================
The researchers conclude it is feasible to "see" the orbitals by
sensing the forces created by the electrons as they whip around an
atom.
The supercomputer calculations showed that to detect an atom's
orbitals, the atomic force microscope's tip needs to be within 2 to 3
angstroms of the atoms being scanned -- less than the diameter of an
atom. At that distance, the microscope tip becomes sensitive to
forces exerted by wing-like orbitals extending at angles from the
silicon atom being scanned.
"To run these calculations took a half a year on a parallel
supercomputer," he says.
He and his colleagues used 64 "nodes" or individual personal
computers out of more than 300 PCs that comprise ICE Box, a "cluster"
supercomputer made by assembling numerous off-the-shelf PCs. The
individual PCs run together in "parallel" to perform complex
computations. Some of the work also was conducted on a Cray
supercomputer at a National Science Foundation supercomputer center
in Pittsburgh.
"In principle, it should be possible to see structure on the scale of
orbitals," says Clayton Williams, a professor of physics and an
expert on atomic-scale imaging. "There is not a fundamental
constraint saying it's not possible."
=====================================================
The dropout rate in space advocacy is probably comparable to that in
the local dojo: huge. Consequently, their memberships tend to have a
high volume of churn: rather than a core of "sempai," senior students
working towards mastery, they have an endless supply of "kohai,"
fresh meat who sign up for a while then quit when they aren't able to
dodge bullets after the first download, or live in the fantasy space
cities that they design in their conference workshops.
A discussion of the sempai/kohai relationship, holds that its basis
is in absolute truth (the red pill), as contrasted with comfort (the
blue pill).
...wishful thinking of any sort, be it bureaucratic denial, pie in
the sky space dreaming, viewgraph engineering or Matrix jiu jitsu,
can only produce consumers, not masters
=====================================================
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Sampling the Kalahari cactus diet
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2003 11:24:18 -0400
From: R. A. Hettinga <rah@...>
To: Clippable <rahettinga@...>
CC: johnmacsgroup@yahoogroups.com, fork@...
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/correspondent/2947810.stm>
BBC NEWS | Programmes | Correspondent |
Friday, 30 May, 2003, 09:56 GMT 10:56 UK
Sampling the Kalahari cactus diet
The San bushmen have eaten the plant for years
Correspondent's Tom Mangold travelled to Africa and sampled the appetite
suppressing Hoodia, a plant which may make Kalahari bushmen millionaires.
By Tom Mangold
BBC Two's Correspondent
Imagine this: an organic pill that kills the appetite and attacks obesity.
It has no known side-effects, and contains a molecule that fools your
brain into believing you are full.
Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows an ugly cactus called the
Hoodia. It thrives in extremely high temperatures, and takes years to
mature.
The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most
primitive tribes, had been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to
stave off hunger during long hunting trips.
When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered
the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been
christened P 57.
The license was sold to a Cambridgeshire bio-pharmaceutical company,
Phytopharm, who in turn sold the development and marketing rights to the
giant Pfizer Corporation.
Fortune cactus
A molecule in the cactus makes you feel full
When I travelled to the Kalahari, I met families of the San bushmen.
It is a sad, impoverished and displaced tribe, still unaware they are
sitting on top of a goldmine.
But if the Hoodia works, the 100,000 San strung along the edge of the
Kalahari will become overnight millionaires on royalties negotiated by
their South African lawyer Roger Chennells.
And they will need all the help they can to secure the money.
Currently, many bushmen smoke large quantities of marijuana, suffer from
alcoholism, and have neither possessions nor any sense of the value of
money.
The truth is no-one has fully grasped what the magic molecule means for
their counterparts in the developed world.
Blood sugar
According to the British Heart Foundation 17% of men and 21% of women
are obese, while 46% of men and 32% of women are overweight.
So the drug's marketing potential speaks for itself.
Phytopharm's Dr Richard Dixey explained how P.57 actually works:
"There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus. Within that mid-brain
there are nerve cells that sense glucose sugar.
"When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food, these cells
start firing and now you are full.
"What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000
times as active as glucose.
"It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as
if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to."
Clinical trials
Dixey organised the first animal trials for Hoodia. Rats, a species that
will eat literally anything, stopped eating completely.
When the first human clinical trial was conducted, a morbidly obese
group of people were placed in a "phase 1 unit", a place as close to
prison as it gets.
All the volunteers could do all day was read papers, watch television,
and eat.
Half were given Hoodia, half placebo. Fifteen days later, the Hoodia
group had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 a day.
It was a stunning success.
The cactus test
In order to see for ourselves, we drove into the desert, four hours
north of Capetown in search of the cactus.
Once there, we found an unattractive plant which sprouts about 10
tentacles, and is the size of a long cucumber.
Each tentacle is covered in spikes which need to be carefully peeled.
The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression,
poverty, social isolation and discrimination
Roger Chennells, lawyer
Inside is a slightly unpleasant-tasting, fleshy plant.
At about 1800hrs I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my
cameraman.
Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown.
The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I
have to say, we felt good.
But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains
really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception.
Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and
went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate
breakfast.
I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then
full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours.
The future
Mr Chennells is ecstatic:
"The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression,
poverty, social isolation and discrimination.
"We will create trust funds with their Hoodia royalties and the children
will join South Africa's middle classes in our lifetime.
"I envisage Hoodia cafes in London and New York, salads will be served
and the Hoodia cut like cucumber on to the salad.
"It will need flavouring to counter its unpleasant taste, but if it has
no side effects and no cumulative side-effects."
Unfortunately for the overweight, Hoodia will not be around for several
years, the clinical trials still have several years to run.
Do not travel to the Kalahari to steal the cactus as it is hard to find
and illegal to export.
And beware internet sites offering Hoodia "pills" from the US as we
tested the leading brand and discovered it has no discernible Hoodia in it.
So just be patient. Help is at hand.
--
-----------------
R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@...>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
--
Brian Atkins
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence
http://www.singinst.org/
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Bored With Drugs, Sex and Rock (Climbing)? Try 'Flow'
New York Times, 3.6.3
By RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.
We humans take our feelings very seriously. How else to
explain the theatrical dread most of us have of boredom?
After all, who among us hasn't threatened to die of it at
some time or another?
Recently faced with a long trans-Atlantic flight, I naïvely
assumed I could trot out an assortment of diversions to
beat the tedium of cramped confinement, airplane food and
wailing infants.
Shortly after takeoff, I pulled out a stack of magazines
and books, feeling impervious to the ennui that would soon
overtake my fellow passengers. Dead wrong.
Within three hours, I had succumbed to boredom. Well, if
you can't beat it, I told myself, at least you can write
about it.
Boredom has long been the province of psychologists: some
view it as a kind of mental smoke screen that obscures and
protects us against even more negative emotions like anger
and anxiety. Well, with defenses like that we hardly need
enemies.
Not be to outdone, the philosophers have weighed in, mainly
from the existential camp, claiming boredom is just the
human response to the meaninglessness of life.
More recently, neuroscientists have taken a crack at
boredom by studying the brain's arousal and reward systems.
Everyone, of course, knows what it's like to be bored.
Normally, boredom arises in response to monotonous and dull
situations, and it evaporates the moment the environment
changes.
But some people have pathological boredom, which is a
pervasive and painful mental state that seems to have a
life of its own. They are chronically bored, and can get
relief only from intense excitement.
As a psychiatrist, I frequently ask patients what they do
for fun. This is, of course, a sneaky way to find out,
among other things, how prone to boredom they are.
One patient, in response to this question, said that even
when she was not feeling depressed, she often felt bored
and empty. Nothing, including people, held her interest for
more than a few hours, so she would flit from one friend or
activity to another. Her greatest satisfaction, fleeting as
it was, came from bungee jumping off bridges. To escape
boredom and anxiety, she would also abuse opiates and
engage in unsafe sex.
Like others with borderline personality disorder, she had
intense and unstable relationships with people that veered
from adoration to intense hatred and jealousy the moment
she felt the merest slight.
Everyone has an optimal level of arousal, from the couch
potato who breaks a sweat just thinking of something as
normally unrisky as bicycling to the daredevil who doesn't
feel alive unless he's risking his life, say, climbing icy
sheer cliffs, on a routine basis.
What's intriguing is that there are fundamental biological
differences between people who seek sensation and novelty
and those who avoid it. Neuroscientists have known for
years that high-sensation seekers show augmented brain
electrical responses on EEG's in response to increasing
visual or acoustic stimuli. Low sensation seekers, in
contrast, show diminished EEG responses as the stimulus
intensity rises.
This suggests that high sensation seekers experience a
lower base line level of brain arousal, which may explain
their constant need for stimulation and intolerance of
monotony.
A further clue into the neurobiology of boredom comes from
the observation that thrill seekers self-medicate with a
variety of recreational drugs to stave off boredom. Favored
drugs, like cocaine, Ecstasy, opiates and alcohol, all
activate the brain's reward system, despite their diverse
pharmacology. And they all produce a sudden increase in the
reward circuit's main neurotransmitter, dopamine.
The curious thing is that there are drugs that can simulate
all kinds of emotional states like sadness, anxiety, fear
and euphoria, but none that can induce boredom.
The most effective drug for inducing a state of boredom is,
surprisingly, cocaine. Once cocaine has flooded the brain
with dopamine and the euphoria has evaporated, the neurons
become rapidly desensitized to dopamine. In short, the
brain responds by decreasing dopamine activity, producing a
state of crashing boredom.
Not only do certain drugs stimulate this dopamine reward
pathway, but so do natural reinforcers like sex and food.
This probably accounts for the fact that sensation seekers
are drawn to promiscuous sex and other exciting activities
like gambling and bungee-jumping.
In a recent study published in the journal Neuron, Dr. Hans
Breiter at Massachusetts General Hospital used functional
M.R.I. to examine a group of 12 normal men while they
played a computer game similar to roulette.
Subjects who only imagined winning a bet showed activation
of the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, core structures of
the brain's reward pathway. And this is the same brain
activation pattern seen in studies of subjects who use
cocaine.
We shouldn't be too hard, though, on thrill seekers. In
evolutionary terms, they may be among humanity's greatest
innovators, who advanced knowledge by their taste for
adventure. Where would pharmacology be, built largely as it
is on plant derivatives, without our intrepid hominid
ancestors who risked their lives trying out the medicinal
effects of plants and herbs on themselves?
Still, the antidote to boredom for most of us is not
thrill, according to Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the
University of Chicago psychologist; it's a phenomenon he
called flow. Flow happens when a person's skill and talent
perfectly match the challenge of an activity: playing in
the zone, where there is total and un-self-conscious
absorption in the activity. Make the task too challenging
and anxiety results; make it too easy and boredom emerges.
Flow also gets to the heart of fun. It's not hard to see
why the enforced tranquillity of a Caribbean vacation could
be a dreadful bore for a workaholic but bliss for a couch
potato; temperament, as well as talent, have to match the
activity or there is trouble in paradise.
So boredom has really gotten a bum rap: it's just the dark
neurobiologic twin of pleasure. And since they share the
same brain circuits, life without boredom would be, well,
no fun at all.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/03/health/psychology/03BEHA.html
From Distant Galaxies, News of a 'Stop-and-Go Universe'
New York Times, 3.6.3
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
NASHVILLE, May 30 - New observations of exploding stars far
deeper in space, astronomers say, have produced strong
evidence that the proportions of the mysterious forces
dominating the universe have undergone radical change over
cosmic history.
The findings, reported here at a meeting of the American
Astronomical Society, which ended Thursday, supported the
idea that once the universe was expanding at a decelerating
rate but then began accelerating within the last seven
billion years, scientists concluded.
"We are now seeing hints that way back then the universe
was slowing down," said Dr. John Tonry, an astronomer at
the University of Hawaii who is a member of one team
studying exploding stars, or supernovas, for signs of
cosmic expansion rates.
The new research by Dr. Tonry's group and another, led by
Dr. Saul Perlmutter of Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in California, confirmed the earlier surprising
discovery that the universe is indeed expanding at an
accelerating rate and has been for at least the last 1.2
billion years. But four supernovas, almost 7 billion
light-years away, appeared to exist at a time the universe
was slowing down, Dr. Tonry said.
"A stop-and-go universe" is the way Dr. Robert P. Kirshner
of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
characterized the phenomenon. Well, the expansion never
really stopped, he conceded, but it has certainly revved
up.
"Right now, the universe is speeding up, with galaxies
zooming away from each other like Indy 500 racers hitting
the gas when the green flag drops," said Dr. Kirshner, a
member of the Tonry team. "But we suspect that it wasn't
always this way."
The changing pace of cosmic expansion, combined with
recently announced measurements of the cosmic microwave
background, revealing conditions soon after the Big Bang,
encourages theorists in thinking that a tug-of-war has been
going on between dark forces of matter and energy no one
yet understands.
The combined gravitational pull from all matter in the
universe, most of which is beyond detection, has acted as a
brake on cosmic expansion. The so-called dark matter
apparently had the advantage when the universe was younger,
smaller and denser. Now the ever-increasing pace of
expansion suggests that something else even more mysterious
is at work. Theorists are not sure what the antigravity
force is, but they call it dark energy. It has apparently
gained the upper hand.
This is the latest turn of events in the unfolding story of
cosmic history. Once scientists believed the universe was
everlastingly static. Along came Edwin P. Hubble, who
discovered seven decades ago that the galaxies of stars are
rushing away from one another in all directions. The
universe, Hubble announced, is expanding.
Five years ago, astronomers were in for a surprise. They
had assumed that after an initial burst of rapid expansion
from the originating Big Bang the gravity of matter was
gradually slowing things down. Then the two supernova
survey teams found that the universe was accelerating
instead. This pointed to the existence of some kind of dark
energy permeating all of space.
For the current research, astronomers observe what are
called Type Ia supernovas, stellar explosions that at their
peak are brighter than a billion stars like the Sun. They
are thus visible across billions of light-years of space,
and a close examination of their light reveals the
distances, motions and other evidence of conditions. As the
light travels to Earth, the wavelengths are stretched by an
amount that reflects the universe's expansion when the star
exploded.
Dr. Kirshner said the four extremely distant supernovas
indicated that the universe seven billion years ago was "in
fact winning this sort of cosmic tug-of-war," but now dark
energy is more dominant.
Scientists said they assumed that with the stretching out
of space the proportion of dark energy to dark matter had
been reversed. In the earlier and denser universe, matter
of all kinds, the invisible dark matter and the visible
ordinary matter of stars and planets, predominated.
The team of Dr. Tonry and Dr. Kirshner estimates that about
60 percent of the universe is filled with dark energy and
30 percent of the mass is dark matter. The remaining 10
percent consists of ordinary matter, only 1 percent of
which is visible in the galaxies. Theorists offer roughly
the same estimates and surmise that the changeover from
dark matter to dark energy domination probably occurred
before 6.3 billion years ago.
Dr. Perlmutter said that much more research would be
necessary to determine whether the changing density of the
expanding universe was the only reason dark energy came to
rule cosmic dynamics. Or have the physical properties of
dark energy, whatever it is, changed?
Dr. Perlmutter said that in the words of Dr. Edward Witten,
a theoretical astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced
Study at Princeton, the true nature of dark energy "would
be No. 1 on my list of things to figure out."
The research teams are planning new observations of more
distant supernovas to determine when cosmic acceleration
began and to gather clues about the properties of dark
energy. Some observations will be conducted with
ground-based telescopes, others with the Hubble Space
Telescope. Dr. Perlmutter's group has proposed putting a
spacecraft in orbit with telescopes especially designed for
supernova hunting and pinning down the nature of dark
energy.
In "The Extravagant Universe," published last fall by
Princeton University Press, Dr. Kirshner wrote: "We are not
made of the type of particles that make up most of the
matter in the universe, and we have no idea yet how to
sense directly the dark energy that determines the fate of
the universe. If Copernicus taught us the lesson that we
are not at the center of things, our present picture of the
universe rubs it in."
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/03/science/space/03ASTR.html
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