Brent Kearney

I came across some great news today in MIT Review. The article, "Self-assembling Nanofibers Heal Spinal Cords," describes the successful test of an engineered nanofiber liquid that was injected into the spinal columns of mice with severed spines, and allows them to heal and regain the use of their hind legs.

This is great news not only for the millions of paralyzed people around the world, but also for the implications that it has for other applications involving nerve growth. According to the article, the substance promotes the myelination of nerve cells, which could mean that it has applications in degenerative brain diseases and brain injuries.

The density of myelinated cells in the brain has been linked to increased intelligence — what would this new substance do for a healthy brain?

This study marks a major breakthrough in the health sciences, and I look forward to hearing about future progress with this research!

This Times Online story, with the promising title, “Coming soon: superfast internet”, hit the Digg top ten today. It sensationally introduces CERN’s academic grid computing network — officially known as the European Commission project, Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) — as some type of shadow Internet that operates 10,000 times faster than the commercial Internet we all know and love, and will be coming soon to your ISP.

The reality is that private academic networks are nothing new, and have been in use for quite awhile. They are simply high speed networks reserved for academic research. They are not clogged by consumers surfing porn and downloading music and movies. In Canada, we have WestGrid, which is part of the nation-wide CAnet. Large corporations, such as Microsoft, also have “grids” of a sort; they call them virtual private networks.
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Thank you, Trey Parker & Matt Stone!