Brent Kearney

This is a slide from Melissa McEwen’s talk at AHS, illustrating the proportion of cells of microorganisms, primarily in our gut, as compared with the “native” cells of our body. Melissa’s excellent blog is Hunt, Gather, Love.

Last April, Scientific American published an article on a study that revealed the extent of the population of our microscopic passengers:

Princeton University scientist Bonnie Bassler compared the approximately 30,000 human genes found in the average human to the more than 3 million bacterial genes inhabiting us, concluding that we are at most one percent human. We are only beginning to understand the sort of impact our bacterial passengers have on our daily lives.

Findings along these lines are opening entire new areas of research. Indeed, one recent paper “proposes a new field of microbial endocrinology, where microbiology meets neuroscience”.

Sam Harris recently gave a talk at the TED conference on how the scientific method can be employed to answer moral questions. It was a wonderful and thought provoking lecture! I have no idea how it relates to one of technology, entertainment, or design (TED), but who cares? :) I will return and elaborate some of my thoughts on this subject, but for now I will simply post the video, and encourage you to leave comments at Sam’s Blog.

The question I have for Sam, which I will post on this blog and hope for a reply, is: what makes him think that a super computer will never be able to help us make moral decisions? Does he think that the field of artificial intelligence is a fool’s errand, or does he subscribe to some theoretical basis for it’s limits in this regard? (I know it’s completely unrelated to the point of Sam’s talk, but I just wondered where he’s coming from with this remark!)

A new study from UBC researcher Ana Mingorance-Le Meur, working with Professor Timothy O’Connor in the Department of Cellular and Physiological Sciences, has revealed the mechanisms that control neuronal growth in the brain. As we age, the growth of neurons slows and settles into a relatively fixed neural network for our adult lives. This is why the brain has trouble growing around injuries — nerves are naturally repressed from further growth, to prevent over-growth.

This new research, published in Nature’s EMBO Journal, identifies the mechanisms responsible for stimulating neural growth and for repressing neural growth. The repressive mechanism is the protein calpain, and the stimulating mechanism is the protein cortactin.

“The maintenance of neuronal connections is an active process that requires constant repression of the formation of nerve sprouts by the protein calpain to avoid uncontrolled growth,” says Mingorance-Le Meur, who is also a member of the Brain Research Centre at UBC and VCH Research Institute. “But a consequence of this role is that calpain limits neural plasticity and the brain’s ability to repair itself. The next step is to find a way to enhance neural plasticity without interfering with the good connections that are already in place.

Drugs that block calpain and/or enhance cortactin should lead to effective new treatments for brain injury patients.

Thanks to KurzweilAI.net for the link.

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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It’s been awhile since I’ve written anything, and I was hoping to have this blog redesigned before my next post. Oh well. I’ve been busy with all kinds of things in the past few months.

There has been a lot of cool developments in the news since Christmas, stuff I’d normally mention (this is, after all, a *web log*). So I thought I’d write a quick little summary of some interesting things I’ve recently read.

Underwater Breathing Device Invented

As reported on IsraCast, an Israeli engineer has invented a device that allows people to breath the oxygen stored in water, the way that fish do. It’s still experimental, but in a few years, “the new tankless breathing system will be operational and will be attached to a diver in the form of a vest that will enable him to stay underwater for a period of many hours.”

Science Gains Insights About Morality via Brain Injury and Primate Studies

The Science section of the New York Times has an interesting article on the study of primates and their altruistic behavior, which strongly overlaps our own. This research shows that morality evolved long before philosophy or religion. Also, a very interesting finding, as reported by Reuters, about a study on people with a particular frontal lobe brain injury: they were more likely to make utilitarian ethical choices. That is, when confronted with the choice of doing harm to an individual for the benefit of the larger group v.s. doing no harm to an individual despite consequences for a group of people, they would choose the former. Many people choose the latter. For example, would you kill your own child so that 10 other children could live? The subjects of this study would usually say “yes”. They should have titled the study, “How to fix a Kantian.”

British Research Shows that Alcohol and Tobacco are as Bad as Presently Illegal Drugs

“In the end, the experts agreed with each other — but not with the existing British classification of dangerous substances.” This article in Time details a study in the U.K. of 20 different drugs and their harmful effects on people and society. They came up with a danger ranking of substances that people use recreationally; alcohol placed 6th and tobacco 9th. Marijuana placed 11th, and surprisingly, Ecstasy came in last, at 20th. “The current drug system is ill thought-out and arbitrary,” argues the head scientist, however, his conclusion is rather obtuse: that alcohol and tobacco should be banned as well. I think many people would argue the opposite: that all of the other drugs should be legalized, or at least those below 5th on the list.

Skiing in Banff Still Rocks

Last but not least, I wanted to mention that despite the very warm temperatures lately, the ski conditions at Sunshine this week were superb. They got 37cm of snow in 3 days, and it was like mid-winter conditions up there. It stayed cold enough in the Village. Not too many people were around either, so there was plenty of fresh, fluffy powder to bomb around in. We’ve also had a string of sunny bluebird days, so it’s really quite excellent! :)

Scientists at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto have discovered a possible cure for type 1 and 2 diabetes.

Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

“I couldn’t believe it,” said Dr. Michael Salter, a pain expert at the Hospital for Sick Children and one of the scientists. “Mice with diabetes suddenly didn’t have diabetes any more.”

Inspired by some similarities between diabetes and multiple sclerosis, Dr. Hans Michael Dosch began researching the idea that diabetes is triggered by a nerve disorder, instead of the traditionally accepted view that it is an immune system problem. The early success is very promising, however, work remains to be done before they’ll know whether the technique applies to humans — they’re expecting results by early next year.

Today I read a story about a man who lost a hand 30 years ago, and recently underwent a hand transplant surgery to have it replaced with a donor hand. It is apparently the third hand transplant surgery to have taken place; the first one was done in 1999. Not only is the reality of hand transplants remarkable, but that it could be done after 30 years is really amazing. This will inspire amputees worldwide, and put extra pressure on the rest of us to sign that donor card…

Scientists in the U.K. have announced the successful cloning of a human liver. The breakthrough was pulled off using stem cells from human umbilical cord. A “baby liver” was grown; it is about the size of quarter. The techniques employed will be developed to clone a full-sized human liver suitable for organ transplant and repair.

Within five years, pieces of artificial tissue could be used to repair livers damaged by injury, disease, alcohol abuse and paracetamol overdose. And then, in just 15 years’ time, entire liver transplants could take place using organs grown in a lab.

Bottoms up!

New Scientist is reporting that a team of researchers from MIT, with colleagues at the University of Hong Kong, have produced “a solution of protein molecules that self-organise on the nanoscale into a biodegradable gel that stops bleeding” when applied to wounds. It works in seconds, and does not cause any harm to cells surrounding the wound. It has been tested and works on rodents on all arteries and blood vessels, the brain, liver and other organs.

This is especially exciting news for surgeons, first responders such as paramedics, and battlefield medics. The technology is still not completely understood, and will be further researched, with human trials starting in three to five years. Their paper will appear in the October 10 edition of Nanomedicine.

St. Lucie County, Florida, USA, has a plan to solve two problems with one solution. The problems are waste disposal and energy production, and the solution is to disintegrate trash using plasma arcs, and cultivate the gas to turn turbines. There will be emissions from the process, but the emissions are supposedly far less than conventional power plants, like natural gas. Given that it also eliminates trash, the emissions are probably acceptable. This process is also known as Plasma Gasification.

According to the USA Today article, the plasma facility will vaporize 3,000 tons of trash per day, and produce 120 megawatts of electricity (per day? per month? they don’t say) that can be contributed to the power grid. The plant itself will use 1/3 of the power that it produces, so once started, it is self-sustaining.

Aside from gas emissions, the plant will also produce 600 tons per day of a rock-like material called slag, which they plan to sell as a cheap material to be used in road construction. I wonder if the slag will have some environmental toxicity…

The company behind the project is Geoplasma LLC, of Atlanta, Georgia. They are funding the entire $450 million project themselves, and expect it to pay for itself over 20 years.

Although there are questions about the environmental impact of trash-gas and trash-slag, this technology seems like a great idea for reducing the amount of waste in landfill sites, and for producing electricity. An even better solution to the landfill problem would be to force manufacturers to use less packaging materials — 4.5 lbs of garbage per person per day is a crazy amount of garbage. In addition to reducing the amount of packaging materials that are used, we should enact legislation to force manufacturers to use biodegradable materials. Anyways, a very good application of plasma technology would be in sewage disposal. Instead of dumping our sewage into the ocean, it could be sent to a plasma facility and converted into electricity. Sewage would probably produce a lot less “slag” than trash, and given that it is organic, its gas emissions would probably be less toxic as well.