Tag: science

Hiccups

Spasms in our diaphragms, hiccups are triggered by electric signals generated in the brain stem. Amphibian brain stems emit similar signals, which control the regular motion of their gills. Our brain stems, inherited from amphibian ancestors, still spurt out odd signals producing hiccups that are essentially the same phenomenon as gill breathing.

maybe we should (optionally) get gills back?

IGEM

The iGEM Competition gives students the opportunity to push the boundaries of synthetic biology by tackling everyday issues facing the world. Made up of primarily university students, multidisciplinary teams work together to design, build, test, and measure a system of their own design using interchangeable biological parts and standard molecular biology techniques. Every year 6000 people dedicate their summer to iGEM and then come together in the fall to present their work and compete at the annual Jamboree.

looks like fun

Protein Arrays

Existing protein arrays involve the tedious and lengthy process of expressing proteins in living cells followed by purifying, stabilizing, and spotting the samples. This process is a bottleneck in the preparation of the arrays. Moreover, functionally active proteins require careful manipulation, and the less that is needed the better. Our approach to developing a protein array, a Nucleic Acid-Programmable Protein Array (NAPPA), replaces the complex process of spotting purified proteins with the straightforward and much simpler process of spotting plasmid DNA. The system could produce any desired protein from synthesized DNA placed on the chip. It is another step in making protein production and engineering and biotechnology in general faster and cheaper.

Against Ethanol

Gasoline alternatives will boost CO2 levels and aggravate global warming.

Of course. fucking corn mafia

The prices mainly reflect changes in demand—not problems of supply, such as harvest failure. The changes include the gentle upward pressure from people in China and India eating more grain and meat as they grow rich and the sudden, voracious appetites of western biofuels programmes, which convert cereals into fuel. This year the share of the maize (corn) crop going into ethanol in America has risen and the European Union is implementing its own biofuels targets. To make matters worse, more febrile behavior seems to be influencing markets: export quotas by large grain producers, rumours of panic-buying by grain importers, money from hedge funds looking for new markets.

I can’t believe Obama is believing the ethanol nonsense.

“fuel-efficient cars and alternative fuels like E85, a fuel formulated with 85% ethanol, represent the future of the auto industry. It is a future American car companies can attain if we start making some tough choices now.”

The average Iowa farm has the potential to feed 3500 people per km2. But planted with nothing but corn — and with almost all of that corn going to ethanol production and the feeding of animals — the same land can only feed 744 people per km2.

On all the ethanol and similar nonsense.

The biomass industry—selling ground-up tree pellets to European power plants—is an economic boon to the South, but experts worry its growth is terrible for the planet. Will the Biden administration decide it’s climate-friendly?

2008-07-03:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75%

Subsidies kill.
2022-03-06:

But whatever the (slim-to-none) merits of that argument in 2007, its merits are 0 in 2022, when the United States has become the world’s largest producer of both oil and natural gas. And though ethanol may have some small environmental advantages over gasoline, those arguable benefits are nullified by ethanol’s terrible toll on world food output.

It may take some time and government assistance to rotate US farmland back from corn-for-fuel to food crops. But unfortunately, the war in Ukraine may last for a long time. If food-importing nations in Asia and the Middle East could be assured that more American wheat, barley, and sunflower oil would be heading their way in 2023, and that more corn would be available for animal feed rather than burned up as automobile fuel, wiser US farm policy could even help consolidate global support for Ukraine.

Ending the ethanol mandates and subsidies will boost world food supply. More food supply will reduce price pressures. Less pressure on food prices will remove a Russian weapon of intimidation.

Chimeric Immunity

Dr Sachs and Dr Cosimi tricked the body by transplanting a part of the donor’s bone marrow along with the organ. Since the cells of the immune system are derived from stem cells in the bone marrow, these patients go on to develop what is known as chimeric immunity, which blends elements from the immune systems of both the donor and the recipient.

Transplanting immune-system stem cells along with kidneys stops rejection, enables xenotransplantation.

Bionic eyes

Want

Engineers at the UW have for the first time used manufacturing techniques at microscopic scales to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an imprinted electronic circuit and lights. “Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is generating superimposed on the world outside. This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it’s extremely promising.”

2008-01-24: I am really impressed. I only learned about this last week myself. Either I am becoming mainstream or the Economist has a very good nose of what is going on 🙂

Contact lenses are good at correcting vision. That, however, is not enough for Babak Parviz. Dr Parviz wants to get them to provide information, too. His model is the “head-up” displays of useful information on the windscreens of aircraft. Putting such displays into lenses might be valuable for both soldiers and civilians, but shrinking the technology to the point where it could be done has proved hard. Dr Parviz revealed that he was getting close.

2008-03-13: Retinal implants

A bionic device the size of a pencil eraser – the labor of 20 years for a group of visionary Hub doctors and scientists – is offering hope that some forms of blindness could be alleviated within a few years. The Boston Retinal Implant Project is one of 22 programs around the world working to restore vision to the degenerative blind. Their work: a bio-electronic implant that delivers images to the brain via a connector the width of a human hair.

2015-05-28: That’s a quick surgery

The tiny Bionic Lens would be inserted into the eye during an 8-minute surgery where the patient’s sight would be corrected instantly

Future Bionic lens could also include projection systems that will give the user capabilities of projecting their phone screen, or integrating NASA technologies to allow for better focusing resolution than anything seen before, or even installing a system that allows for slow drug delivery inside the eye.

2021-11-07: Retina stimulation

Our research allows us to bypass the damaged light-sensitive cells and stimulate the pathways that lead to the brain with tiny bursts of electricity. We send electrical impulses to specific locations within the eye. A spot of light is perceived and patterns can be formed. If we are successful in our research, this pattern vision can give blind people sight again.

2023-05-06: Science Eye

In genetic diseases, such as retinitis pigmentosa or age-related macular degeneration, abnormalities in the layer of photoreceptors in the retina ultimately lead to their death. With the photoreceptors lost, light signals can no longer be translated to electrical signals, resulting in blindness. While the photoreceptors are lost in retinitis pigmentosa, the RGCs — and other cells in the retina — remain intact. The brain can still decode light signals. The idea behind the Science Eye is to modify these RGCs to become photoreceptive so they can be stimulated, by light, and send those signals to the brain.
Imagine a Science Eye implanted in a person with perfect vision. It might stimulate the brain in such a way that the person sees specific images or places, via fine control of the RGCs. You could see and interact with an entire world that isn’t there. It’s kind of like plugging in to a simulation, a virtual world plugged directly in to your eye. Alter the brain, alter reality.