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”.

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!)

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.

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!

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.

Computing grids allow for the distribution of expensive computing resources across a wide geographical area. This allows, for example, a large parallel computing cluster to be maintained at one university while a large storage array is maintained at another, leveraging the resources of participating institutions. Scientists can then do computing on the cluster at one university and store the resulting data on the array at the other university. The imperative is that the network linking the two be fast enough to make this practical.

It is this imperative that makes it easy to see why home Internet users will not be using these grids to download the back catalogue of Rolling Stone. That would clog the tubes. What is interesting about grids is the idea of cloud computing.

Perhaps some day consumer ISPs will invest millions in ultra-high-speed networking equipment so that their customers can store all of their data on a remote server instead of at home, but still have lightening fast access to that data, as if it were at home. But it wouldn’t be; it would be out there, in the cloud.

Why would anyone want all of their personal data out there, in the cloud? Researchers are still trying to figure that one out…

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! :)

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.

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!

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.

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.

The embedded music is from Johnny Cash’s Ragged Old Flag album of 1974. Its amazing that, 32 years ago, he recognized that ‘we’re pouring every kind of evil in the sea’, yet the practice continues to this day. Cash was right: future generations would have to pay the penalty, and the bill, it seems, is due now.

(Click image to enlarge)

The highly toxic Red Tide normally blooms every decade in Florida’s Gulf Coast, but recently it has been coming back every year, and staying around for longer periods. With it comes piles of dead fish along the shores, brain-damaged and/or dead marine mammals, and an ocean breeze that causes severe respiratory problems and other illnesses in humans. Florida has seen a “19% increase in cases of pneumonia, a leading cause of death among the elderly.” Neurotoxins from the red algae have been detected in the air up to 3 miles inland.

The algae is fed by the billions of gallons of partially treated human sewage that we pump into the ocean, and by run-off of fertilizers from coastland farms.

Hundreds of visitors from the Midwest and New England have posted questions and complaints on websites, seeking to learn why, after a short beach vacation on the west coast of Florida, they suffered weeks of coughing, bronchial infections, dizziness, lethargy and other symptoms.

If you think breathing the toxic air sounds bad, try a mouthful of the algae-water directly, like this surfer did:

“I felt like I inhaled a garbage bag,” said Purdy, 33, a former high school swimming champion. “It locked up my lungs and throat like a paralysis.” The seconds ticked by. “I was thinking, ‘Is this the way it’s going to end?’ ”

Eventually, he managed to sneak in a little air. It was like sucking through a cocktail straw. He made his way to shore but didn’t feel much better until emergency medical technicians hooked him up to oxygen.

The dead fish that wash up on the shores are also a hazard to wildlife, and pets, that eat it. During one bloom of red tide, “local veterinarians treated 16 dogs — all twitching, vomiting and suffering from seizures. One died.” Pet owners in the area now know to keep them inside during a bloom. However, staying indoors isn’t enough: the toxin-rich air seeps in on the sea-side of the house, leaving “a metalic taste” in the back of the throat, and a dry cough that makes one sound “like a barking seal”.

Like the sea lions on the west coast, manatees, the “cows of the ocean”, are sucumbing to toxicity from algae around Florida. Greg Bossart, a veterinarian at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Fort Pierce, says the manatees are sentinels for human health: “[the manatee is] Florida’s 2,000-pound canary. We’ve opened a Pandora’s box of health issues.” Specifically, the manatees are dying because they inhale the air just above the algae, and the toxins in the air attack nerve tissue, causing their lungs to fill with blood.

Anyone want to go for a swim in the ocean?

Be sure to check out the videos and photography for Part 3 here.

Sea lions have been called the “sentinels of ocean and human health” — if there is something wrong with them, then there is something wrong with the ocean, and if there is something wrong with the ocean, we have a problem too. Sea lions have been found in odd places, disoriented and behaving strangely, some of them going into seizures. The Marine Mammal Care Center at Ft. MacAurthur in San Pedro has been overflowing with them.

The problem turns out to be that domoic acid causes neurological damage: it kills cells in the hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for short-term and spacial memory. Damage to this area impairs the ability to navigate. Thus, the reason they are turning up disoriented in strange places. More extensive damage apparently induces seizures and other serious health problems, as many of the sea lions must be euthanized, failing a response to treatment procedures.

Studies of clams along the same shores show high levels of domoic acid as well. Unfortunately the clams are a main part of the diet of a local Native American tribe, and harvested by thousands of others. Sea lions are fairly high level mammals, like us, and if they are getting poisioned from eating the fish in the ocean, then we probably are as well.

1. The technology has a coefficient of performance greater than 100%. 2. The operation of the technology (i.e. the creation of energy) is not derived from the degradation of its component parts. 3. There is no identifiable environmental source of the energy (as might be witnessed by a cooling of ambient air temperature).

It sounds like something that David Copperfield might do. It will surely revolutionize the world as we know it, if it turns out to be fact instead of fiction though! You can see what their CEO and marketing manager have to say in this interview.

As of 09:08 this morning, over 1000 scientists have signed up on Steorn’s website to participate in the debunking or confirmation of their technology. Steorn says that they will choose the twelve most qualified and most skeptical scientists to participate.

Some bloggers are speculating that it is an over-the-top marketing campaign of some sort. Thats an interesting idea. It reminds me of the ingenious campaign for the iRobot movie with Will Smith. The ads mentioned nothing of a movie, and indeed appeared to be a product launch for futuristic robots. It may have been the biggest viral marketing campaign to date, at the time. The only problem with the Hollywood theory is that Steorn has a history in the technology sector… or do they?

Other Blogs on this Subject:

• Steorn’s Free Energy Technology Challenge
• Steorn: inventors of infinite energy, destroyers of laws of thermodynamics?
• Free, clean energy or a marketing ploy?
• Irish Perpetual Motion Machine
• Steorn and free energy: the plot thickens
• Steorn, I’m all out of faith

… some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.

One example is the miles of “hairy growth” that appeared on ocean beds around Australia. Local fisherman have dubbed it, “fireweed”. It is so toxic that to come in contact with it causes skin inflammation and boils, searing welts that won’t stop burning, and leave scars. Residue from it is not a good thing to breathe:

When fishermen tried to shake it off the webbing, their throats constricted and they gasped for air.

After one man bit a fishing line in two, his mouth and tongue swelled so badly that he couldn’t eat solid food for a week.
…
“It’s like acid,” Tanner said. “I couldn’t believe it. It kept pulling the skin off.”

University of Queensland’s marine botany lab identified the toxic weed as “a strain of cyanobacteria, an ancestor of modern-day bacteria and algae that flourished 2.7 billion years ago.”

Plankton and algae were once consumed by swarming clouds of small fish such as sardines and anchovies. These small fish have been harvested to feed our fish farms, reducing their numbers dramatically, allowing algae to flourish.

…every day about a billion gallons of sewage in South Florida are pumped offshore or into underground aquifers that seep into the ocean. The wastewater feeds a green tide of algae and bacteria that is helping to wipe out the remnants of Florida’s 220 miles of coral, the world’s third largest barrier reef.

97% of elkhorn and staghorn corals, previously the most populous kind, are gone, and threatened with extinction. Marine life in general is dying off, as the algae suck the oxygen out of the water, leaving little for more complex organisms. As fish die and sink to the bottom, even more food for bacteria is created in rot, and a self-perpetuating downward spiral has been gaining momentum. As if our overfishing wasn’t a big enough problem for marine life.

You can (and should!) watch videos and see photographs here. Click the menu bar on the left side after you’re done watching one, and you can select the next video or photo.

The thing about vaccines though, is that they are preventative medicines. Normally one would get vaccinated before exposure to infection. How will this affect already obese people? The research is still in its early stages, so it will be years before we know. Pretty interesting though!

This advance, coupled with other brain disease models, could “offer unparalleled advantages in understanding pathological processes in real time, leading to potential new drugs and treatments for a host of neurological diseases and mental disorders,” said Nobel laureate Susumu Tonegawa, a co-author of the study.

The scientists’ new imaging system revealed that the Arc gene helps strengthen synapses in the hippocampus during the formation of visual memories, and also inhibits the activity of neurons with “low orientation selectivity” for the visual experience being remembered. The strengthening of neural synapses in this area has the effect of sharpening orientation selectivity as particular visual stimuli are experienced. They witnessed a hitherto unknown molecular filtering mechanism in action, the process by which visual memories are created.

The imaging system made use of a genetically engineered mouse and two-photon microscopy. The mouse was engineered so that part of the protein under investigation, Arc, was replaced by a phosphorescent jellyfish gene, which then left a fluorescent trace when neural activities that normally activate the Arc gene occurred. “This allowed the researchers to image neuronal activation patterns induced by visual experience, thus uncovering the Arc protein’s role in orchestrating neurons’ reactions to natural sensory stimuli.”

This will definitely not be the last that we hear of this technology. Many mysteries still remain in brain science, and this new imaging technique promises to unlock many of them. Here is the official MIT press release.