Towards 2020 Science

A good while ago, Microsoft assembled several dozens of respected scientists into the Towards 2020 Science Research Team to come up with a realistic vision of our scientific future.

Their findings have been put in a report (Adobe Acrobat Reader required).

From the report:

This report contains the initial findings and conclusions of a group of internationally distinguished scientists who met over an intense three days in July 2005 to debate and consider the role and future of science over the next 14 years towards 2020, and in particular the importance and impact of computing and computer science on science towards 2020.

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A scientific revolution is just beginning. It has the potential to create an era of science-based innovation that could completely eclipse the last half century of technology-based innovation; and with it, a new wave of global social, technological and economic growth.

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From our analysis and findings, we draw three conclusions about science towards 2020:

First, a new revolution is just beginning in science. The building blocks of this revolution are concepts, tools and theorems in computer science which are being transformed into revolutionary new conceptual and technological tools with wide-ranging applications in the sciences, especially sciences investigating complex systems, most notably the natural sciences and in particular the biological sciences. Some of us argue that this represents nothing less than the emergence of ‘new kinds’ of science.

Second, that this is a starting point for fundamental advances in biology, biotechnology, medicine, and understanding the life-support systems of the Earth upon which the planet’s biota, including our own species, depends. In other words, that the scientific innovation already taking place at the intersection of computer science and other sciences ranging from molecular biology, organic, physical and artificial chemistry and neuroscience to earth sciences, ecosystems science and astrobiology has profound implications for society and for life on Earth. Additionally, such advances may also have significant economic implications. The new conceptual and technological tools we outline here have the potential to accelerate a new era of ‘science-based innovation’ and a consequent new wave of economic growth that could eclipse the last 50 years of ‘technology-based innovation’ characterising the ‘IT revolution’. Economic growth from new health, medical, energy, environmental management, computing and engineering sectors, some of which are unimaginable today is not only entirely plausible, it is happening already. It is occurring as a consequence of the first stages of the scientific revolution now under way, a good example of which is the mapping of the human genome and the technological and economic innovation that has emerged from it.

Third, the importance and potentially profound impact of what is occurring already at the intersection of computing, computer science and the other sciences – the basics of which we summarise in this report – is such that we simply cannot afford to ignore or dismiss it.We need to act upon it. It is worth restating that our efforts have not been that of ‘forecasting’ or ‘predicting’. We have simply summarised the developments actually occurring now, together with what we expect to occur as a consequence of emerging advances in computing and science, and what needs to occur in order to address the global challenges and opportunities we are already presented with as we move towards 2020. Government leaders, the science community and policy makers cannot afford to simply ‘wait and see’ or just continue ‘business as usual’.

The report describes enabling tools for the upcoming scientific revolution, such as molecular machines and artificial scientists. That last one means: smarter computers and robots to do (part of) our research for us.

The report also touches on global challenges such as understanding biology, revolutionising medicine, understanding the universe and future energy.

If you check out the roadmap that accompanies the report, you will see several interesting goals such as in-vivo molecular computer diagnosis, individual (personalized) medicine, full model of a single cell, full model of a multi-cellular tissue/organ/organism, drug development in-silico, personalized in-situ molecular-computer smart-drug, understanding complex biological systems and understanding the make-up of the universe.

See also Computing the Future, another article on the 2020 Science Team and their findings.

If you are thinking all this stuff will take centuries as opposed to a decade-and-a-half, read The Law Of Accelerating Returns. Obtaining an understanding of the fact that our technological progress is accelerating exponentially will help you in understanding why everything will be going extremely fast in the years to come.

I myself have been doing research into our future for a long time. After all these years, I am convinced that we are headed towards a world in which we will have plenty of cheap energy, good health, more wealth and possibly eternal life.

Plug-In Hybrids Are On The Way

Plug-In Hybrids Are on the Way

Last week in Washington, DC -- even as top executives from Ford, Chrysler, and GM asked lawmakers to subsidize the installation of more ethanol pumps at filling stations -- makers of new battery systems were letting U.S. senators test-drive prototype cars that get over 100 miles per gallon, but don't require any new infrastructure.

The vehicles in this road show, which are called plug-in hybrids, were Toyota Priuses retrofitted with large advanced battery packs that can be charged overnight and used to power the cars electrically for short trips. "If you look at how people typically drive cars, about half of the driving that you use gasoline for you could be using the electricity that comes out of your wall," says Martin Klein, CEO of Electro Energy of Danbury, CT, which developed the battery pack and control system for one of the cars on display in Washington. What's more, he says, the existing power grid means that "the infrastructure is all in place."

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Ordinary hybrids get all their energy from gasoline, but they are much more efficient than conventional cars because extra energy from the engine and braking is stored in a battery pack, which powers an electric motor to boost acceleration and even fuel the car completely for short distances at low speeds. The boost allows hybrid automakers to use a smaller, more efficient internal-combustion engine without sacrificing performance. And hybrids also save gas by turning off their engines when stopped in traffic or at a stoplight. Overall, the fuel economy of a conventional Prius is around 50 miles per gallon.

Plug-in hybrids have a larger battery pack, which allows them to run on the electric motor much longer -- for 20-25 miles in the case of the Electro Energy car. The battery is charged from an ordinary electrical outlet. Thus, a commuter who drives 10 or 15 miles to work on city streets could recharge the battery at night and make the commute entirely on electricity. Others would need the gasoline engine at highway speeds, but could rely on the battery while driving in the city. When the energy stored up overnight runs out, the car slips into conventional hybrid mode until the next charge. This gives the vehicle an advantage over all-electric vehicles, which have been hampered by limited range due to limited battery storage capacity.

Let's calculate this back to liters and kilometers so I can get an idea about the mileage.

One US gallon is about 3.8 liters. One US mile is about 1.6 kilometers.

This car uses 3.8 liters to travel 160 kilometers. Then the mileage is 1 in (160 / 3.8) = 42.1.

Not too shabby. Cars that I know of get 1 in 18 at best.

Robots, Robots, Robots Galore

Android Science - Hiroshi Ishiguro makes perhaps the most humanlike robots around--not particularly to serve as societal helpers but to tell us something about ourselves.

Babybot takes first steps - BabyBot, a robot modelled on the torso of a two year-old child, is helping researchers take the first, tottering steps towards understanding human perception, and could lead to the development of machines that can perceive and interact with their environment.

Korean Scientists Develop Female Android - Standing 1.6 meters tall and weighing about 50 kilograms, she can understand others, speak, blink with her eyes and makes several facial expressions.

She's a robot - Movieclip of female android.

Robotic tentacles get to grips with tricky objects - Robotic "tentacles" that can grasp and grapple with a wide variety of objects have been developed by US researchers.

Robotic Action Painter - RAP (Robotic Action Painter), designed by Leonel Moura (with IdMind) for Museum or long exhibition displays, is completely autonomous painting robot that need very little assistance and maintenance.

Korea Unveils World's Second Android - Korea has developed its own android capable of facial expressions on its humanoid face, the second such machine to be developed after one from Japan.

October to See Venture Into Space-Age Robot Utopia - The government has its eye on a 15 percent global market share in robotics, industry production of $30 billion, $20 billion in exports, and the creation of 100,000 jobs in the industry by 2013, which would place the country third in robotics in the world. Currently, with a volume of $350 million, the country is in sixth place. In 2004 some 6,000 cleaning robots were sold, a number that jumped to a promising 30,000 last year. As the New York Times said, Korea is moving fast towards a science fiction lifestyle where each household has its own robotic helper.

Flying robot attack 'unstoppable' - It may sound like science fiction, but the prospect that suicide bombers and hijackers could be made redundant by flying robots is a real one, according to experts.

The Robotic Giraffe - It walks, it blinks, it seats six, and it blasts Kraftwerk: Meet one man’s 17-foot-tall pet project

Robot Carries Out Operation By Itself

Robot carries out operation by itself

For the first time, a robot surgeon in Italy has carried out a long-distance heart operation by itself.

"This operation has enabled us to cross a new frontier," said Carlo Pappone, who initiated and monitored the surgery on a PC in Boston, ANSA reported. Pappone is head of Arrhythmia and Cardiac Electrophysiology at Milan's San Raffaele University.

The 50-minute surgery, which took place in a Milan hospital, was carried out on a 34-year-old patient suffering from atrial fibrillation. Dozens of heart specialists attending an international congress on arrhythmia in Boston also watched.

Pappone has used the robot surgeon in at least 40 operations.

"It has learned to do the job thanks to experience gathered from operations on 10,000 patients," Pappone said, pointing out that the robot carries the expertise of several human surgeons used to boost its software.

It's already starting. Experience of several humans is being combined into one machine. One machine that will eventually be superior and take over more and more responsibility from us humans. One machine that can instantaneously share its knowledge with other machines.

We are truly headed for a robotic nation.

Can Computer Simulations Replace Animal Testing?

Can computer models replace animal testing?

As the public debate rages over the use of animals in drug development, a change is taking place in labs across the world. The first realistic software models of human and animal organs are starting to emerge - potentially replacing some of the 50 to 100 million animals used each year for scientific research.

The first models of how the heart works were built decades ago (New Scientist, 20 March 1999, p 24), but they are much more sophisticated now. The models couple mechanical contractions to electrical waves in three dimensions, for instance, to show thousands of molecular interactions and connect the heart to a virtual circulatory system. Models of other organs, including the lung, musculoskeletal system, digestive system, skin, kidney, lymphatic system and brain are also under construction.

Unfortunately, the rest of the article requires paid subscription, which I don't have. But it sure is interesting to read that realistic software models are now entering the mainstream.

I've said before that simulations are the future of medicine. They give you much more power than real life creatures do. In simulations, you have control over time (rewind, fast forward, etc.) and you get to define camera's and lightsources wherever you like. For that reason, virtual cells are much easier to study.

These simulations are a powerful tool in medicine and they will help to exponentially speed up the reverse engineering of our biology. This will in turn lead to a biotechnology revolution in the next decade.

Are you looking forward to more health, youth and cures for ailments?

I know I am.

Alzheimer Cured In Mice

Alzheimer Cured In Mice

In the study of Alzheimer's disease, the smallest steps forward have sometimes led to the most exciting breakthroughs.

In the case of a recent study from Novato's Buck Institute, it's a molecular step forward -- specifically, modifying a single amino acid in the brains of lab mice that could prevent the frightening memory loss and dementia associated with Alzheimer's disease.

While several scientists outside the Buck Institute were reluctant to call the study a true breakthrough, the results "are not a trivial step forward," said Stephen Snyder, an Alzheimer's disease specialist with the National Institute on Aging.

"This opens the door on a field of research. What these guys are showing, basically, is a new universe for us to look into more deeply," Snyder said. "We don't know much about the mechanisms. You could fault these people for rushing to print the study without knowing that, but in the Alzheimer's field, we accept a lot of this because these little incremental things could mean a lot."

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In the Buck Institute study, a protein was altered in the brains of lab mice. The mice that received the treatment showed all the pathological signs of suffering Alzheimer's disease -- most notably, a buildup of sticky plaque that scientists believe is related to the disease -- but had none of the memory-loss symptoms or brain shrinkage.

It's too soon to say whether the genetic alteration that seems to have worked on mice will also work on humans, but the research shines new light on the progression of Alzheimer's disease, said Dale Bredesen, chief executive of the Buck Institute.

"It gives you a completely different view of a disease you thought you understood. It points us in the direction of a new way to treat it," Bredesen said. "Because you cure the mouse, can you cure the human? Time will tell. But since we do have such a big impact on the mouse, it does lead us to new treatments options."

The next step for scientists is further research on the genetic alteration and, ultimately, drug therapy for humans, Bredesen said. A drug treatment is at least two years away, he said, and on average it takes 14 years for a drug to get FDA approval.

I don't have to tell anyone why this research is a good thing. After all... nobody wants to get Alzheimer.

Eventually, we will all develop Alzheimer provided we live (and keep aging) long enough.

So Alzheimer could be a problem if you have decided that you are going to make use of future rejuvenation technologies so you can live forever.

For the immortalists among us, curing Alzheimer is a must.

Nanotubes Sending Signals To Nerve Cells

Breakthrough: Scientists used nanotubes to send signals to nerve cells.

Texas scientists have added one more trick to the amazing repertoire of carbon nanotubes -- the ability to carry electrical signals to nerve cells.

Nanotubes, tiny hollow carbon filaments about one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair, are already famed as one of the most versatile materials ever discovered. A hundred times as strong as steel and one-sixth as dense, able to conduct electricity better than copper or to substitute for silicon in semiconductor chips, carbon nanotubes have been proposed as the basis for everything from elevator cables that could lift payloads into Earth orbit to computers smaller than human cells.

Thin films of carbon nanotubes deposited on transparent plastic can also serve as a surface on which cells can grow. And as researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and Rice University suggest in a paper published in the May issue of the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, these nanotube films could potentially serve as an electrical interface between living tissue and prosthetic devices or biomedical instruments.

"As far as I know, we're the first group to show that you can have some kind of electrical communication between these two things, by stimulating cells through our transparent conductive layer," said Todd Pappas, director of sensory and molecular neuroengineering at UTMB's Center for Biomedical Engineering and one of the study's senior authors. Pappas and UTMB research associate Anton Liopo collaborated on the work with James Tour, director of the Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory at Rice's Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Rice postdoctoral fellow Michael Stewart and Rice graduate student Jared Hudson.

This work is important because, at some point in time, we want nanotechnology to interact with our biology in attempts to cure our diseases and improve our health in general.

Internet At Light Speed

Accelerating the internet to the speed of light.

Australian scientists believe they are on the verge of a breakthrough in optical circuitry that may improve the speed of the internet by a factor of 1000.

The Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems, a research consortium of five universities, is trying to create a photonic chip that processes optical signals free of slow, silicon electronics.

Optical-signal processing allows unprecedented bandwidth - one optical fibre has a capacity of hundreds of terabits a second. At this speed, a high-definition movie could be downloaded in a fraction of a second, rather than the hours it takes with current technology.

Today, our international internet links are bedevilled by unavoidable lag - the time it takes for data to travel from the US to a user's PC in Australia.

For most of its journey, the data travels at the speed of light along optical fibres. But each time the information stream is switched, amplified, reprocessed or regenerated, it requires silicon-based electronics, which are much slower.

These bottlenecks stand in the way of a 1000-fold increase in the practical speed of the internet, the centre's researchers say. But they could be removed with optical computing, which uses light to switch light, without electronic interference.

Trends Hint At Golden Era For Nanotechnology

Trends hint at a golden era of nanotechnology.

Another exponential process is miniaturization. We’re showing the feasibility of constructing things at the molecular level that can perform useful functions. One of the biggest applications of this, again, will be in biology, where we will be able to go inside the human body and go beyond the limitations of biology.

Rob Freitas [a senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing] has designed a nanorobotic red blood cell, which is a relatively simple device — it just stores oxygen and lets it out. A conservative analysis of these robotic respirocytes shows that if you were to replace 10 percent of your red blood cells with these robotic versions you could do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or sit at the bottom of your pool for four hours. It will be interesting to see what we do with these in our Olympic contests. Presumably we’ll ban them, but then we’ll have the specter of high school students routinely outperforming Olympic athletes.

A robotic white blood cell is also being designed. A little more complicated, it downloads software from the Internet to combat specific pathogens. If it sounds very futuristic to download information to a device inside your body to perform a health function, I’ll point out that we’re already doing that. There are about a dozen neural implants either FDA-approved or approved for human testing. One implant that is FDA-approved for actual clinical use replaces the biological neurons destroyed by Parkinson’s disease. The neurons in the vicinity of this implant then receive signals from the computer that’s inside the patient’s brain. This hybrid of biological and nonbiological intelligence works perfectly well. The latest version of this device allows the patient to download new software to the neural implant in his brain from outside his body.

These are devices that today require surgery to be implanted, but when we get to the 2020s, we will ultimately have the “killer app” of nanotechnology, nanobots, which are blood cell-sized devices that can go inside the body and brain to perform therapeutic functions, as well as advance the capabilities of our bodies and brains.

A not too lengthy article which is very much worth your time if you are not familiar with Ray Kurzweil's message to the world, which is about exponentially accelerating progress.

Top 10 Strangest Robots

Top 10 Strangest Robots.

1. Cockroach Controlled Mobile Robot
2. Robotic Chair
3. RI-MAN
4. EveR-1 Female Robot
5. Mighty Morphin Rayered-X
6. Robonova-1 - King of the Robot Jungle
7. RunBot - The Fastest Robot On Two Legs
8. OmniZero.2
9. King Kizer
10. TomCat - The Quadrupedal Robot
    

Progress In Robotic Telesurgery

Researchers Make Progress with Robotic Telesurgery.

However science fiction-esque it may have sounded decades ago, using robots to perform delicate surgeries is decidedly science fact today. Looking toward future decades, researchers are now trying to find ways to take robotic surgery to the battlefield.

“We’re not talking about something that’s going to be immediately available, but if we don’t do this research now, we will not have the option of having surgical intervention remotely or robotically (on the battlefield). That’s the underpinning motivation for our getting into it,” said Dr. Gerry Moses of the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center.

A surgeon using a robotic surgery system in a hospital typically sits across the room from a patient. Looking through a three-dimensional monitor, the surgeon uses a joystick to control the robot, which is armed with surgical tools and a camera.

A subset of laparoscopic surgery, robotic surgeries are great for minimally invasive procedures, said Col. Noah Schenkman, chief of urology service at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In the past three years, he has performed almost 50 operations using a robotic surgery system to repair blockages between the kidney and the ureter, or to remove the prostate.

“Lap instruments are very current, but sometimes they’re not very ergonomic. They don’t allow you to make the complex, difficult maneuvers that you can make with just your hands,” he said. “The robot allows you to regain some of those complex movements because it has an articulating instrument that allows you to make those movements, (like) sewing, during reconstructive operations.”

Schenkman said robotic surgery offers a surgeon several benefits. Because it’s a machine, it eliminates the normal tremor associated with human hands performing fine motor movements. The system’s 3-D view also gives the operator increased vision and magnification, both of which are important in complex, intricate surgeries. And because the surgery is done from a sitting position, it’s doesn’t wear out the surgeon.

British Woman Carries Designer Baby

British woman pregnant with cancer-gene-free 'designer baby'.

A British woman has become the first in the country to conceive a "designer baby" selected specifically to avoid an inherited cancer, The Times said Saturday.

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The woman, who was not identified, used controversial genetic screening technology to ensure she does not pass on to her child the condition retinoblastoma, an hereditary form of eye cancer from which she suffers.

Doctors tested embryos created by the woman and her partner using in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) methods for the cancer gene. Only unaffected embryos were implanted in her womb, the newspaper said.

Ofcourse you're always gonna have people objecting to this, claiming it is not natural, that life is sacred and that we shouldn't mess with it.

Nonsense I say. Cancer is also natural. Should we keep that? Most people would be glad to get rid of cancer. In this case, cancer has been prevented. Which is even better then getting rid of it.

Oh sure, life is sacred. But we get to decide for ourselves which life is sacred and which isn't.

That's a pretty sweet deal isn't it? Know how we got it?

We made the whole f#cking thing up.

(courtesy of George Carlin, one of my favorite stand-up comedians)

Long live designer babies, genetic modifications, stemcell research, and all other things that piss off religiously insane, conservative, right-wing, fundamentalist nutjobs.

:)

Computers Can Read Us Like Books

Can A Computer Read You Like A Book?

We've all heard the phrase before: It's not what you say, it's how you say it. Several years ago, Alex Pentland, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab, decided to find out whether or not this piece of conventional wisdom is true.

After studying the psychological literature, Pentland began to develop several simple computer-based systems to measure what scientists call "social signaling"--nonlinguistic behavior such as vocal intonation, facial movement and gesturing--during a conversation. He settled on four basic markers, which he designated activity, engagement, stress and mirroring.

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In most scenarios, the predictions that Pentland and his colleagues were able to make turned out to be shockingly accurate. Using nothing but these simple, nonlinguistic clues--and analyzing conversations that lasted between five minutes and just over an hour, depending on the experiment--the researchers were able to calculate the likelihood of a given outcome with an average accuracy rate of almost 90%.

This is lots of fun. I've been hearing talk for years now about computers responding to our emotions in order to provide a more userfriendly experience.

It seems that day is drawing closer and closer.

The interesting thing about this is that the software program only needed little information. It seems evident that computers will read us perfectly if they were to receive lots more info to judge us by, such as facial expressions and body language.

Food for thought...

Hydrogen From Biomass

Hydrogen from Biomass.

A novel process for squeezing hydrogen out of biomass could mean a cheaper and easier way to make hydrogen for fuel cells.

A small company in Madison, WI has developed a novel way to generate hydrogen cheaply and cleanly from biomass.

In the next couple of weeks, the technology, developed by Virent Energy Systems, will be used for the first time to continuously produce electricity from a small 10-kilowatt generator at the company's facility in Madison. The unit is fueled by corn syrup, similar to the kind used by soft drinks manufacturers, says CEO Eric Apfelbach.

The company is also about to begin work on a $1 million U.S. Navy project to build portable fuel-cell generators. The goal is to make self-contained units capable of producing their own hydrogen from a biomass-derived glycerol solution or even antifreeze.

The vast majority of hydrogen is currently made from fossil fuels -- oil, coal, and, most commonly, natural gas, through a process called steam reforming. In this process, a mixture of steam and methane is heated to temperatures above 800 degrees Celsius, and then reacts with a catalyst to produce hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

Semi-related and also fun to read: Car that does 8000 miles to the gallon.

In 2021 You'll Grow A New Heart

In 2021 You'll Grow a New Heart.

Researchers are zeroing in on a long-sought goal of human healing: organs that can regenerate themselves from within.

Although doctors may someday heal weakened body parts by infusing them with stem cells that develop into specialized tissues, coaxing the body’s own cells to become self-repairing would be an even bigger biological coup. What if we could simply prompt damaged organs to repair themselves?

Glenn Larsen, the chief scientific officer at Hydra Biosciences in Boston, has been chasing this regenerative dream for the past four years. With help from a team of Harvard University researchers, Larsen and his colleagues are developing protein-based drugs that encourage the regrowth of muscle tissue that has died after a heart attack.

“The heart is constantly secreting chemical factors it needs to maintain itself,” Larsen explains. “All we’re doing is trying to enhance that.” Fair enough, but his company is likely to be the first to take the revolutionary step of harnessing these natural processes to grow new tissue where and when it is needed. With restored heart-muscle function, patients would be able to resume swimming, running or just gardening much sooner. They would also be less prone to congestive heart failure, which kills more than 50,000 Americans every year.

The strategy Larsen envisions is simple, though groundbreaking. Patients will use a self-delivery device, such as an inhaler or supersonic drug gun, to propel the regenerative protein molecules into their bloodstream. The circulating molecules will bind to receptors on the surfaces of their damaged heart-muscle cells, touching off a chemical reaction that mutes the activity of genes inhibiting cell division. Once this biological switch has been thrown, new heart cells will begin to develop, filling in the dead-tissue gaps. The result: Within a few weeks, heart-muscle function will be permanently restored.

A Cure For Cancer In Mice

Researchers Say They Can Cure Cancer In Mice:

Monday night brought stunning news about the battle against cancer.

Researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine said they have found a cure for cancer -- in mice, that is.

However, they are hoping that what they have learned will someday be applied to human treatments.

Three years ago, Wake Forest researchers discovered a mouse that could not get cancer no matter how hard they tried to give it the disease.

Now, they said white blood cells from that mouse's descendants were injected into ordinary mice with cancer and their disease was completely wiped out.

The treatment worked with a variety of cancers, including those similar to end-stage human cancers.

“This is a really remarkable recovery from a very aggressive tumor,” Wake Forest cancer researcher Dr. Zheng Cui said.

The mice did not suffer any side effects from the treatment. They had no problems with rejection.

The goal now is to find a human treatment that could avoid the rejection problem by using a patient's own cells.

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A cure is still a long way off, but they believe that, like mice, there are humans out there with genes to fight cancer.

Self Repair Gene Therapy Promise

Self-repair gene therapy promise:

Gene therapy experts say they have found a way to persuade cells to repair themselves.

Instead of replacing a faulty gene, the new approach harnesses the cells' own correctional mechanisms.

German researchers showed a drug could influence the way a gene behaved in patients with a debilitating genetic condition.

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The research focussed on spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a relatively common inherited disease, and the leading cause of death in infants, affecting about one in every 6,000 newborns.

Due to degeneration of the motor neurons in the spinal cord patients develop muscle weakness and atrophy of the legs, arms and trunk.

In patients with SMA the survival motor neuron gene (SMN1) is deleted, but they all carry a copy gene (SMN2).

However, this only produces about 10% of the correct protein which is insufficient to prevent the diseases.

The severity of the SMA is influenced by the number of SMN2 genes, which normally vary between one and four - the more copies there are the better the patient fares.

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The researchers, from the Institute of Genetics at the University of Cologne investigated a drug called valproate, which is already used to treat epilepsy.

Lab tests had shown it could increase levels of the SMN protein by up to four times.

Valproate was also found to raise SMN levels in brain tissue.

The team first treated 10 parents of children with SMA with valproate for four months.

It was found that using the drug significantly increased SMN levels in blood.

Following this, 20 SMA patients were treated with valproate.

Seven showed increased SMN2 levels in their blood.

The Virtual Office

A long time ago, I wrote The Future Of Working At Home, in which I predicted that we'll be hearing a lot more from the virtual office because it's superior to the physical office.

I spotted the article No Brick, No Mortar: Virtual Approaches To The Daily Grind, which goes into the benefits of working at home some more:

But despite the difficulties of virtual work, virtual employees all agreed that they feel they have a freedom in being able to work in a way that fits their lifestyle.

Mosley speaks about finding remote employees, some of the best in the field that may not have local opportunities.

"We've got really talented, smart people who are the best at what they do from the Boston area to New Hampshire to San Francisco. There aren't a lot of great PR opportunities in New Hampshire, so working virtually is an excellent opportunity for them."

"There are more fluffy perks, too, such as not having to dress up for a client meeting or day in the office. In addition, it satisfies your inner workaholic because you get back those hours you'd spend commuting."

Mosley added, "I work with better people now than I did when I worked at an organization with more than 100 people."

Gaebler calls his virtual office "a superior way to do business."

"It's easier to set up a new employee, we have lower overhead, and it allows us to tap into talent in other geographies," he said.

"The best part is the freedom to make your own schedule. Nobody tells you how to structure your day. While you have to be really disciplined in the work you do, it's easier because you also love your job more," said Samantha Morris, an affiliate program director at Partner Centric, who left her job at the Gap to work virtually.

Turner is probably the most idealistic about running his own company.

"Whenever we get someone who can work from home, I feel like we're changing the world. We're giving them some of their time back to them, and to their families."

As our society becomes more and more integrated through the evolving web (think live video streams), we will be working at home more and more often. Physical offices will gradually exit mainstream use. More and more businesses will become virtual, thereby transforming our society once again.

Regenerating Arms And Legs

Researchers Put Heads Together to Grow an Arm and a Leg.

Profs. Susan Braunhut and Kenneth Marx have teamed up to pursue a “mind-blowing” innovation—to cause a limb to re-grow in an adult mammal.

The UMass Lowell research group has joined groups from five other institutions and secured funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). The UMass Lowell portion of the DARPA grant is $1.2 million for the first two years, with an anticipated continuation of $1.4 million for the next two years.

The research groups expect that by working together they will gain a more complete understanding of the cellular and molecular processes that allow certain creatures, such as salamanders, to completely regenerate lost limbs, and be able to harness this capacity in mammals.

“As a consortium, we’re putting together our knowledge of stem cells, tissue development and healing, extracellular matrix, growth factors and the regulation of gene expression,” says Braunhut. “We’re encouraged by research results and recent discoveries and we believe this goal is attainable.”

The implications of such research are especially evident considering the wounded soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq include twice the number of amputees of previous conflicts and wars.

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The team will begin with intense study of salamanders and the super-healer mouse, MRL, to develop a comprehensive understanding of the mechanisms and processes—to obtain a blueprint—for regenerative growth. The team will then attempt to orchestrate the formation of a blastema in a non-healing mouse, where scar tissue would normally form.

Tiny Electrodes For The Brain

Tiny Electrodes for the Brain.

A new type of polymer nano electrode could make brain implants, including those used to treat severe cases of Parkinson's, far safer, and it could also make attempts to restore vision and movement with direct brain-machine interfaces more feasible. Rodolfo Llinas, professor of neuroscience at New York University, and researchers at MIT have developed a nanowire electrode just 600 nanometers wide that can send and receive signals to the brain.

The electrode developed by Llinas and coworkers is so small that it could be inserted through an artery, perhaps in the arm or groin, and threaded up to the brain. Because the electrode is a small fraction of the size of a red-blood cell and flexible, it can be snaked through the smallest blood vessels, getting close enough to neurons deep in the brain to detect and deliver electrical signals.

One current treatment for severe cases of Parkinson's, called deep brain stimulation, involves implanting electrodes that deliver high-frequency electrical pulses which shut down parts of the brain responsible for the disease's symptoms (see "Brain Pacemakers"). Such treatments, however, are risky and expensive, in part, because they require that a patient's skull be opened to surgically insert electrodes into brain tissue.

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"Not having to open the skull would be a clear benefit over what we're now doing," says Jeff Bronstein, neurologist at the UCLA Medical School, who says thousands of Parkinson's patients have undergone the deep brain stimulation procedures.

Skin Cancer Gel A Success

Peplin's skin cancer gel trial a success

Early clinical trials of a new gel to treat skin cancer have returned promising results.

The gel, developed by Brisbane-based company Peplin, can be rubbed on to the skin to treat certain types of skin cancer.

Initial trials show just two applications of the PEP005 Topical gel on two consecutive days cleared up 71 per cent of basal cell carcinomas, or BCCs, the most common type of skin cancer.

The trials on 60 people throughout Australia built on an early study by Peplin in 2002 using the common garden weed, petty spurge.

"That was a very different study and that was just using the raw sap of petty spurge," said Michael Aldridge, Peplin's managing director and chief executive.

"This is the same company and we have now identified the molecule responsible for that activity and we have put that into a formal development program, formulated a gel and developed a manufacturing technology.

"We ran a phase one study in the US, two phase-two studies looking at sunspots, and this is our third phase-two study looking at basal cell carcinomas."

Mr Aldridge said it was the first time the molecule from petty spurge had been used to treat BCCs, which are usually surgically removed.

"We've seen some very, very impressive results," he said.

"This is the first time two days of therapy have shown to be effective in clearing skin cancers."