Clipmarks | wildcat's 'biology' clips

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 15:08:58 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: Video games are reshaping how we perform and promote science. A review by Seed Mag

Clip Source: www.seedmagazine.com

The digital revolution now engulfing our world emerged from the events during and immediately after the Second World War, when intellectual titans such as Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, and Claude Shannon roamed the Earth. Many of the predictions they made for the future in those early days are now reality, or something close to it. Turing foresaw computers as artificial intelligences. Neumann imagined machines that could reproduce themselves. Wiener guessed at a merging of biology and technology, and Shannon predicted the primacy of pure information over physical matter. But were these "founding fathers" to somehow see the state of modern computer science, they might be surprised that some of their wildest dreams are being fulfilled not under the explicit auspice of research, but of recreation

Emergence & Complexity
Spore

www.spore.com

Brain-Computer Interaction
Emotiv Systems' EPOC headset

Crowdsourcing
Foldit

Science Education
Immune Attack

3D Virtual Creature Evolution

Tags: video games, digital revolution

The Future Of Code, Digital And Genetic Continued

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:15:56 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: spectrum.ieee.org

Simonyi talked about his “intentional software” concept. If the human genome can be encoded in a program that takes up less than 1 gigabyte, he asked, why does Windows require 15 or 16? So, instead of building software according to elaborate blueprints that detail every programming step, Simonyi is following what he called a recipe approach. His team at Intentional Software creates a set of programming tools, writes a very specific description of the problem they are attempting to solve, and then uses the tools to generate a software solution. It sounds like a software version of the directed self-assembly techniques used in chemistry and nanotechnology.

Over on the in vivo side of the house, Harvard’s George Church, biotechnologist and founder of the Personal Genome Project; Drew Endy, of Stanford University and a founder of the BioBricks Foundation; and Rodney Brooks, of MIT and iRobot, discussed what’s being called synthetic biology or synthetic life research.

Tags: future, code, digital, genetic

Pioneering Research in Neuromorphic Electronics that Function Like the Biological Brain

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:36:58 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: The HRL team's ultimate goal is to build a low-power, compact electronic chip combining a novel analog circuit design and a neuroscience-inspired architecture that can address a wide range of cognitive abilities--perception, planning, decision making, and motor control. In the initial two phases of the SyNAPSE program, the team will translate the neuronal and synaptic functions of the biological cortex into similar microelectronic functions.

Clip Source: www.alzheimer.ca

Clip Source: www.prweb.com

HRL Laboratories, LLC, will begin pioneering research to develop electronics that will simulate the cognitive capabilities and efficiencies of the biological brain.

The daunting undertaking is part of the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's (DARPA) SyNAPSE, or Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics, program. HRL will lead a group of industry and university research laboratories with expertise in core areas of neuro and cognitive science in the groundbreaking research.

Despite exponential advances in computing technology over the last decade, the limitations of hardware and architecture prohibit computers from functioning independently in real-world scenarios. The goal of the SyNAPSE program is to bridge biology and electronics and establish a new paradigm for creating more intelligent machines that can interact with, react to, and actually learn from their environments.

Tags: technology, neuromorphic electronics, electronics

What's wrong with science as religion

Fri, 01 Aug 2008 12:44:19 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Piercing a Communion wafer with a nail and throwing it in the garbage, as one crusading biologist recently did, does science no favors"

Clip Source: www.salon.com

Jul. 31, 2008 | PZ Myers is a true believer, a science crusader with the singled-minded enthusiasm of a televangelist. A biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris and a columnist for Seed magazine, Myers has earned notoriety with his blog, Pharyngula, in which he reports on new developments in biology and indiscriminately excoriates those he views as hostile to science, a pantheon of straw men and women that includes theologians, journalists and churchgoers. He is Richard Dawkins without the fame or felicitous prose style.

Religion is dangerous, he wrote; it breeds hatred and idiocy. It is our job to advance humanity's knowledge "by winnowing out the errors of past generations and finding deeper understanding of reality." There is no wisdom in our dogmas, Myers warned, just "self-satisfied ignorance." We find truth only in science, looking at the world "with fresh eyes and a questioning mind."

Tags: science, vs, religion

The Coming Death Shortage

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 11:33:49 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "Why the longevity boom will make us sorry to be alive" a must read.
Though I fail to agree with many of the premises of this article, the critical views it presents are important and the issues need be taken into consideration seriously

Clip Source: www.theatlantic.com

Stem-cell banks, telomerase amplifiers, somatic gene therapy—the list of potential longevity treatments incubating in laboratories is startling. Three years ago a multi-institutional scientific team led by Aubrey de Grey, a theoretical geneticist at Cambridge University, argued in a widely noted paper that the first steps toward "engineered negligible senescence"—a rough-and-ready version of immortality—would have "a good chance of success in mice within ten years." The same techniques, De Grey says, should be ready for human beings a decade or so later. "In ten years we'll have a pill that will give you twenty years," says Leonard Guarente, a professor of biology at MIT. "And then there'll be another pill after that. The first hundred-and-fifty-year-old may have already been born."

The critical issue, in Goldman's view, will be not the costs per se but determining who will pay them. "We're going to have a very public debate about whether this will be covered by insurance," he says

Tags: longevity, death, economy, future, public debate

How one day we may all be eternally young

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 12:44:09 GMT

clipped by: wildcat
clipper's remarks: "We found a normal developmental programme that works in young animals, but becomes unbalanced as the worm gets older. It accounts for the lion's share of molecular differences between young and old worms." If ageing is not a cost of unavoidable chemistry, but is instead driven by changes in regulatory genes, the ageing process may not be inevitable, he added.

Clip Source: www.independent.co.uk

Growing old may not be mandatory after all. Failing eyesight, loosened teeth and greying hair could be driven by regulatory genes that determine when it is time to shuffle off our mortal coil, rather than being indicators of the ravages of age.

American scientists have challenged the conventional view that ageing is caused by wear and tear – like rust on an old car. Instead, they suggest specific genetic instructions drive the process. If they are right, science might one day find ways of switching the signals off and halting or even reversing ageing.

Researchers at Stanford University Medical Centre raised questions about the conventional theory of ageing on the basis of observations in the animal world. Stuart Kim, a professor of developmental biology, said: "Everyone has assumed we age by rust. But how do you explain animals that don't age?" Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100, there are whales that live to be 200 and clams that make it past 400 years, he said.

Tags: aging, genetics, biology

“Metabolically Dominant Soldier.”

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:57:37 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: nextbigfuture.com

$3 billion super soldier program: 10 times muscle endurance, 7 foot vertical leap, wall crawling, personal flight and more

DARPA today has a long-term, $3 billion program to help make such a “Metabolically Dominant Soldier.” In other words, the military is studying how to use technology and biology to meld man and machine and transcend the limits of the human body. Described the project director, “My measure of success is that the International Olympic Committee bans everything we do" The $3 billion program is definitely trying to achieve transhuman performance goals.

The wearable gear would enable running at 100 meter olympic sprinter speed for hours and the 7 foot vertical leap, the wall crawling, personal flight, invisibility, greatly enhanced strength, better body armor and carrying bigger and more powerful weapons.

The drugs and genetic enhancements and some technology which gets applied would allow for regeneration, faster healing

endurance of an Alaskan sled dog

cognitive enhancement

Tags: super soldier, human body, enhancement

Herbal remedy reduces obesity and heart disease?

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:50:11 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.physorg.com

With unprecedented levels of obesity across the Western world, and incidence of associated heart disease, cancer and diabetes rising, there is a major drive to find new treatments. Scientists from Germany have recently discovered that extracts of a traditional herbal remedy derived from Tabebuia impetiginosa can act to delay the absorption of dietary fat in animal models.

They believe that the extract could be incorporated into a food supplement which may not only reduce obesity, but also lessen the risk of development of type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease. Dr Nils Roos from the Max Rubner Institute will present the results on Monday 7th July at the Society for Experimental Biology's Annual Meeting in Marseille.

Dr Roos and his team have shown that Tabebuia extract can reduce levels of triglycerides, a breakdown product of fat, in rats after they have been fed a fatty meal. "This result shows the extract may have a potential use in treating obesity," he observes.

Tags: health, obesity, diabetes, herbal remedy, heart disease

Build a synthetic lifeform

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 12:14:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: io9.com

Mad Science Contest: Build a Lifeform and We'll Send You to Hong Kong or Give You $1000

io9 wants to encourage mad scientists in every field, but especially in the area of synthetic biology. That's because synthetic biologists are the people who are going to build new life forms, like ligers and unicorns and people with claws and glowing eyes. OK, they might build bacteria that can clean up oil spills and repair damaged kidneys too. The point is, building new lifeforms is the science of the future and therefore you can never have too many garage laboratories and mad scientists devoted to it. That's why io9 is sponsoring a contest to find two of the best synthetic life forms you can design for us. The winners in our two categories will get either an all-expenses-paid trip to the kickass Synthetic Biology Conference in Hong Kong this October, or $1000 and a chance to have their creature drawn by a cool comic book artist. Find out more below.

Tags: science, building, life, synthetic

AUTOPOIESIS, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 13:19:14 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.oikos.org

The concept of autopoiesis has long surpassed the realm of biology. It has been used in areas so diverse as sociology, psychotherapy, management, anthropology, organizational culture, and many others. This circumstance transformed it in a very important and useful instrument for the investigation of reality. Years ago, Chilean scientists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela proposed the following question: to what extent human social phenomenology could be seen as a biological phenomenology? The purpose of this article is to look for an answer to this question. However, before getting to it I think that it is necessary to review some of the fundamental principles introduced by these two authors.

Autopoiesis

Poiesis is a Greek term that means production. Autopoiesis means autoproduction

In Maturana’s viewpoint, the term "autopoiesis" expresses what he called "the center of the constitutive dynamics of living systems"

Tags: autopoiesis, culture, society

Biologically Inspired Ocean Power Systems

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 01:49:15 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.biopowersystems.com

BioPower Systems is commercialising ocean power conversion technologies. Through application of biomimicry, we have adopted nature's mechanisms for survival and energy conversion in the marine environment and have applied these in the development of our proprietary wave and tidal power systems.

Our technologies inherit benefits developed during 3.8 Billion years of evolutionary optimization in nature’s ocean laboratory.The resulting systems move and sway in tune with the forces of the ocean, and naturally streamline when extreme conditions prevail. This leads to lightweight designs and associated low costs.

The inherently simple bioWAVE™ and bioSTREAM™ devices are designed to supply utility-scale grid-connected renewable energy using efficient modular systems. These systems will reside beneath the ocean surface, out of view, and in harmony with the living creatures that inspired their design.

Tags: biology, ocean, energy, biomimicry, wave, tidal, power

Penguin populations falling steeply

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:14:06 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.world-science.net

Like the proverbial canary in the coal mine, penguins are sounding the alarm for potentially catastrophic changes in the world’s oceans, a University of Washington biologist says.

The culprits are global warming, oil pollution, depletion of fisheries and rampant coastline development, which threaten breeding habitats for many penguin species, she argues.

These factors are behind rapid population declines among the birds, said the university’s Dee Boersma, an authority on penguins.

“Penguins are among those species that show us that we are making fundamental changes to our world,” she said. “The fate of all species is to go extinct, but there are some species that go extinct before their time and we are facing that possibility with some penguins.”

there are 16 to 19 penguin species, and most penguins are at 43 sites, virtually all in the Southern Hemisphere.

Tags: penguins, life, biology, ecology

New discovery proves 'selfish gene' exists

Sat, 21 Jun 2008 10:45:47 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.eurekalert.org

A new discovery by a scientist from The University of Western Ontario provides conclusive evidence which supports decades-old evolutionary doctrines long accepted as fact.

Since renowned British biologist Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion") introduced the concept of the 'selfish gene' in 1976, scientists the world over have hailed the theory as a natural extension to the work of Charles Darwin.

In studying genomes, the word 'selfish' does not refer to the human-describing adjective of self-centered behavior but rather to the blind tendency of genes wanting to continue their existence into the next generation. Ironically, this 'selfish' tendency can appear anything but selfish when the gene does move ahead for selfless and even self-sacrificing reasons.

"This basically provides a validation for a huge body of socio-biology," says Thompson, who adds the completion of Honey Bee Genome Project in 2006 was crucial to this discovery.

Tags: selfish gene, genetics, bees, genomes

The Face of Fear Explained

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:02:26 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.livescience.com

Everyone knows the face of fear.

Upon beholding the chainsaw-wielding ax-murderer in a slasher movie, the damsel in distress usually widens her eyes and flares her nostrils in horror.

It turns out this expression isn't merely for cinematic effect, but actually serves a biological function, scientists have found, by altering the way our senses perceive the world.

"Our hypothesis was that different changes on the face would lead to different amounts of sensory intake," said Joshua Susskind, a psychology graduate student at the University of Toronto who worked on a study testing the function of facial expressions. "The idea is that fear is for vigilance. You'd expect that changes on the face, such as opening the eyes, would be characteristic of fear, because you're trying to assess more information in your environment."

Squinty eyes and pinched nose

Tags: face, fear, biology, evolution

I See Doomed People

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:18:04 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.sciam.com

The director of The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan, talks about his scientific and environmental inspirations

In M. Night Shyamalan's film Signs, the protagonist suffers a crisis of faith so deep that it takes an alien invasion of Earth for him to work it out. In Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening, which opens today, the protagonist suffers a crisis of reason. Unfortunately, this time not even the looming extinction of humanity resolves it for him.

Given that it's mass entertainment, the film raises a lot of interesting questions about science, and it's clear from it that Shyamalan's interest in science goes much deeper than a superficial mining of ideas for plotlines. His protagonist, high school biology teacher Elliot Moore (played by Mark Wahlberg), lectures about the limits of science's ability to explain the world and applies his critical faculties to staying alive when the "happening" happens.

(Spoiler alert from here on!)

Tags: the happening, reason

Clipmarks | wildcat's 'biology' clips

Standing on the Shoulders of Giants

Emergence & Complexity Spore

Brain-Computer Interaction Emotiv Systems' EPOC headset

Crowdsourcing Foldit

Science Education Immune Attack

The Future Of Code, Digital And Genetic Continued

Pioneering Research in Neuromorphic Electronics that Function Like the Biological Brain

What's wrong with science as religion

The Coming Death Shortage

How one day we may all be eternally young

“Metabolically Dominant Soldier.”

$3 billion super soldier program: 10 times muscle endurance, 7 foot vertical leap, wall crawling, personal flight and more

Herbal remedy reduces obesity and heart disease?

Build a synthetic lifeform

Mad Science Contest: Build a Lifeform and We'll Send You to Hong Kong or Give You $1000

AUTOPOIESIS, CULTURE, AND SOCIETY

Biologically Inspired Ocean Power Systems

Penguin populations falling steeply

New discovery proves 'selfish gene' exists

The Face of Fear Explained

I See Doomed People

The director of The Happening, M. Night Shyamalan, talks about his scientific and environmental inspirations

Emergence & Complexity
Spore

Brain-Computer Interaction
Emotiv Systems' EPOC headset

Crowdsourcing
Foldit

Science Education
Immune Attack