Clipmarks | wildcat's 'biology' clips

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lab wants to capture minds... Literally!

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:15:51 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: memebox.com

The mega-billion dollar Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) recently developed a new state-of-the-art facility – Janelia Farm Research Campus – to learn how brain cells store and process information.

Today, biologists can only observe a cell’s activity by indirectly analyzing chemicals it produces in response to stimulus. But what if you could take a picture of a brain cell at the very moment it recorded a thought? HHMI researchers believe this worthy goal can be achieved and they are rounding up some of the top researchers in the world to make it happen.

Janelia Farm will provide its world-class science team with near unlimited funds in a mostly unsupervised environment. “The Institute’s core belief is that scientists who demonstrate creativity and imagination make lasting contributions to benefit humanity when they are given flexible, long-term support and the freedom to explore,” said former HHMI President Thomas Cech.

Tags: mind, biology, brain

Is life a gift?

Thu, 15 May 2008 20:55:30 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: ieet.org

Mike LaTorra

Ethical Technology

Harvard’s Michael Sandel argues in his book The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering that life is a gift and that we should accept the unbidden nature of this gift, working toward acceptance and solidarity with others rather than seeking unbridled mastery over human biology. But is life properly viewed as a gift?

The claim that life is a gift automatically entails a responsibility on the part of the recipient of that gift to respond with gratitude and without taking issue with the precise attributes and characteristics of what has been given and received. One is supposed to live by the aphorism “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” (or you might see a lot of rotten teeth). So to accept Sandel’s premise that life is a gift is also to accept that one is obliged to respond in a certain way and without closely scrutinizing the actual conditions of what has been received.

But is life a gift at all?

Tags: ethics, technology

Why Medicine Should Care Less About 'Sick,' More About 'Normal'

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:21:01 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.wired.com

If you had died 50 years ago, your body would have stood a pretty good chance of serving science. In the 1960s, autopsy rates at US hospitals exceeded 50 percent. Pathologists weren't necessarily looking for what killed people — they were taking advantage of the fact that a body was available and ready for inspection. There was still much to learn about normal human biology, the thinking went, so every corpse was an educational opportunity.

These days, autopsy rates have fallen below 10 percent, a decline that's symptomatic of a larger deficiency. Medicine has become all about finding a problem — a tumor, a heart attack, a failing kidney — and deploying advanced treatment technologies. In the process, we seem to have given up on measuring and tracking what constitutes normal. That's an alarming — and potentially dangerous — trend.

What's normal matters because we're entering a new era of health care

one in which we look not for causes of illness but for risks

Tags: health, medicine, normal, sick

Evolution Beyond Darwin — Way Beyond

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 11:06:53 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.wired.com

Highly complex honeybee communities are one example of phenomena that some scientists think can't be explained by the mainstream theory of evolution alone, but instead by a theory of self-organization.
Courtesy AlainB/Flickr

Nearly 150 years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, evolution has been widely accepted by scientists -- and, except for a few religious dogmatic types, the public -- as the blueprint for the engine of life.

But not every scientist thinks that evolution as it's now understood and applied is complete. They want to scale it up to the level of populations, even whole ecosystems. Moreover, they say evolution is intertwined with other dynamics that science is just starting to understand.

"The process of evolution is fundamental to the universe. Biology is the most obvious manifestation of it," said Carl Woese, a legendary microbiologist and one of the first proponents of this newly revised evolutionary framework.

Tags: complexity, evolution, darwin

Has Cultural Evolution Replaced Biology?

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 09:46:35 GMT

clipped by: wildcat

Clip Source: www.dailygalaxy.com

Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change.

Freeman Dyson -professor emeritus of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study

It has become part of the accepted wisdom to say that the twentieth century was the century of physics and the twenty-first century will be the century of biology.

Freeman Dyson predicts that the domestication of biotechnology will dominate our lives during the next fifty years at least as much as the domestication of computers has dominated our lives during the previous fifty years.

He underscores the radical observation that Darwinian evolution does not go back to the beginning of life

"Life was then a community of cells of various kinds,"

Tags: culture, biotech, tech domestication