Moving to Wordpress

I'm going to move my blogging to Wordpress as of today.
I've been with Blogger a long time and it seems to me that it hasn't really done me any wrong, so I really shouldn't walk out. However, people have been telling me just how wonderful it is over at Wordpress so I guess I'm moving over because I've been persuaded by promises of easier blogging. not that there was anything uneasy about this place. I like it here - but it's time to try something new again.

The new blog link is here: http://artneuro.wordpress.com/
So please come and join me there.

I'm going to attempt to bring back the SpaceFreaks side with the Flaming Horses side, so this is going to be a bit bumpy.

Cloning

Bringing Back The Extinct

Earlier back in the decade, the Australian Museum undertook a program to try and clone a Tasmanian Tiger from what remained of specimens in bottles. In 2005, this project as abandoned due to difficulty.

Yet, the notion of cloning the extinct animal lives on. A group of scientists have cloned one gene, and imported it into a mouse.

For the first time, researchers have inserted the genetic material of an extinct animal into a living one. The finding shows how lost information about species from the past can be retrieved, and also provides a glimpse into how long-gone creatures may someday get a second chance at life.

"Now that we've shown you can do this, it opens up the floodgates for all kinds of extinct species," says Andrew Pask, a fellow in zoology at the University of Melbourne in Australia and lead author of a paper published in the online journal PLoS ONE. The gene that the scientists activated in mouse fetuses contained instructions that helped produce cartilage in the rodent's developing skeleton.

The Tasmanian tiger DNA came from specimens that had been preserved in a museum for over a century. The researchers selected a gene called Col2a1 that is possessed by many vertebrates, ranging from mice to people. By attaching a marker to the Tasmanian tiger's version of Col2a1 that glows blue when stained by a chemical, scientists were able to see the where the mouse's body had expressed the gene of the departed beast.

"We saw the genetic information of an extinct animal get read out into a blue pattern," says co-author Richard Behringer, a professor of molecular genetics at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The blue tint is colouring from yet another species. The mouse is expressing the Col2a1 gene in its cartilage as you can see. With something like 30,000 genes, a full Tasmanian Tiger is going to be hard to recreate through this kind of gene technology, but it is interesting to see some parts of the Tasmanian Tiger that can be brought back.

PAPA!

Power Amplified Personal Armor

I think that's what it used to b called in the old Sci-Fi books. Turns out the US army is working on one about the time Iron Man is hitting the screens. Of course Iron Man's latest incarnation for the movies is the story of PAPA, but here is somebody working on something less comic book, but power-amplified all the same.

Rex Jameson bikes and swims regularly, and plays tennis and skis when time allows. But the 5-foot-11, 180-pound software engineer is lucky if he presses 200 pounds — that is, until he steps into an "exoskeleton" of aluminum and electronics that multiplies his strength and endurance as many as 20 times.

With the outfit's claw-like metal hand extensions, he gripped a weight set's bar at a recent demonstration and knocked off hundreds of repetitions. Once, he did 500.

"Everyone gets bored much more quickly than I get tired," Jameson said.

Jameson — who works for robotics firm Sarcos Inc. in Salt Lake City, which is under contract with the U.S. Army — is helping assess the 150-pound suit's viability for the soldiers of tomorrow. The suit works by sensing every movement the wearer makes and almost instantly amplifying it.

The Army believes soldiers may someday wear the suits in combat, but it's focusing for now on applications such as loading cargo or repairing heavy equipment. Sarcos is developing the technology under a two-year contract worth up to $10 million, and the Army plans initial field tests next year.

Before the technology can become practical, the developers must overcome cost barriers and extend the suit's battery life. Jameson was tethered to power cords during his demonstration because the current battery lasts just 30 minutes.

But the technology already offers evidence that robotics can amplify human muscle power in reality — not just in the realm of comic books and movies like the recently debuted "Iron Man," about a wealthy weapons designer who builds a high-tech suit to battle bad guys.

"Everybody likes the idea of being a superhero, and this is all about expanding the capabilities of a human," said Stephen Jacobsen, chief designer of the Sarcos suit.

The Army's exoskeleton research dates to 1995, but has yet to yield practical suits. Sarcos' technology sufficiently impressed Raytheon Co., however, that the Waltham, Mass.-based defense contractor bought Sarcos' robotics business last November. Sarcos also has developed robotic dinosaurs for a Universal Studios' "Jurassic Park" theme park ride.

And they still can't catch Osama in Laden.

Platypus Genome

Genetics Of The Weird Is Still Weird

Here is a NYT article on the Platypus genome.

In their investigation of the platypus genetic blueprint, the scientists found that its genome contains about 18,500 genes, similar to other vertebrates and about two-thirds the size of the human genome. The platypus shares 82 percent of its genes with the human, mouse, dog, opossum and chicken. Some repeated elements in the genome, the scientists noted, hold hints as to the chronology of changes in the platypus.

Of particular interest, the researchers reported, the analysis identified families of genes that link the platypus to reptiles (like those for egg-laying, vision and venom production), as well as to mammals (antibacterial proteins and lactation). The platypus lacks nipples; the young nurse through the abdominal skin.

One surprise was finding genes responsible for sensitive odor receptors. As a primarily aquatic animal, the platypus was already known to rely on electrosensory receptors in its bill to detect faint electric fields emitted by underwater prey. So why the considerable ability to sense odors? The scientists speculate that it may involve sexual communication or the use of water-soluble odorants in navigating and hunting underwater.

Richard K. Wilson, director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University, said that the comparison of the platypus genes to those of other mammals was the beginning of an examination of how “genes have been conserved throughout evolution.”

The project, involving scientists from eight countries, was primarily financed by the National Human Genome Research Institute in the United States. Its director, Francis S. Collins, said, “As weird as this animal looks, its genome sequence is priceless for understanding how mammalian biological processes evolved.”

It's interesting that they share as much with humans as they do. The venom thing, the egg-laying thing, the duck-billed thing make them so strange, and yet they are close as 82% to placental mammals.

The Big Drought In Pre-History

We Were Down To 2000 once

This an amazing article about what happened to the human population in Pre-history. Homo Sapiens came very close to extinction, 70,000 years ago.
IT WAS a very close call. If a devastating drought that gripped Africa had lasted just a little longer, or been a little worse, we would not be here today.

There would be no humans, no cities, no art and no science. There would be no wars and no human-induced climate change. The world would belong to the animals.

An international genetics project has found that modern humans almost became extinct 70,000 years ago.

The Genographic Project, led by American and Israeli researchers, made the discovery after undertaking the most extensive mitochondrial DNA survey ever undertaken in Africa.

In 1987 a study of mitochondrial DNA, passed down the generations via the maternal line, revealed that every person alive today is descended from one woman who lived in Africa 200,000 years ago.

The latest study shows that after the birth of humanity in eastern Africa, people quickly split into separate communities.

About 150,000 years ago humans, possibly pursuing animal herds, moved to settle throughout Africa. The number of people soared, peaking somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000.

But before the first person could venture out of Africa, the population suddenly crashed to just 2000.

"It could have been even fewer," said Spencer Wells, the Genographic Project director. "We were, in effect, hanging on by our fingertips.

"That's fewer people than there are Sumatra orang-utans today, and they are classified as extremely endangered and will probably go extinct in 20 years."

The crisis was probably caused by climate change. About 130,000 years ago the world started cooling and drying as it neared another ice age.

"There were massive droughts in Africa ... mega-droughts," Dr Wells said. With much of the continent barren and hostile, the tiny human settlements became isolated from each other.

As humanity hovered on the edge of extinction "a shift in culture began. People began making the better hunting tools they needed to survive the drought. Art makes its appearance. There is abstract thought," he said.

Then the drought broke. Isolated communities migrated and merged. With better skills and a friendlier climate, the population boomed again and people finally left Africa, spreading along the Asian coast, towards Australia.

Backed by National Geographic and IBM, the researchers, who have published their findings in The American Journal Of Human Genetics, identified humans' near demise after studying DNA mutation rates.

"By sampling people alive today, estimating how much genetic variation they have ... and knowing the rate at which variation accumulates we can say how long it took to accumulate the observed level of variation, and the size of the starting population," Dr Wells said.

The project aimed to discover what humans were doing before leaving Africa. "Three quarters of our history is virtually unknown," Dr Wells said. The research showed "there was lots going on".

He believes humanity's close shave should send a message to the 6.6 billion people alive today. "We should start to see ourselves as the lucky survivors."

Pretty interesting. Once upon a time, we were closer to extinction than the Orangutan population today.

Aliens!

Primitive Alien Lives May Exist According to Stephen Hawking

Here's the link.

Given the size of the universe, it is unlikely that Earth is the only planet to develop some sort of life, Hawking told an audience at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. He added that humanity must embrace space exploration, if only to ensure its long-term survival.

"While there may be primitive life in our region of the galaxy, there don't seem to be any advanced intelligent beings," said Hawking during a lecture as part of a series commemorating NASA's 50th anniversary this year.

The lack of success by the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) project to discover signals from an alien civilization suggests that none exist within several 100 light-years of Earth, Hawking said, though he offered three theories on the dearth of interplanetary communications.

The probability of primitive life developing on a suitable planet may be extremely low, or it may be high, but aliens intelligent enough to beam signals into space may also be smart enough to build civilization-destroying weapons like nuclear bombs, he said. More likely, he added, is that primitive life is likely to develop, but intelligent life as we know it is exceedingly rare.

"We don't appear to have been visited by aliens," Hawking said, adding that he discounts reports of UFOs. "Why would they only appear to cranks and weirdoes?"

I wonder what happens if Stephen Hawking had a UFO encounter. I wonder how his rationality would deal with it. :)

Bio-Crude

CSIRO - Our Tax Payer's Money At Work!
Here's something interesting.

AUSTRALIAN scientists have made a biofuels breakthrough, turning waste products like paper and wood trimmings, crop residue and garden clippings into a stable "bio-crude".

If successfully commercialised, the process could massively reduce the amount of waste going into landfills and help the biofuels industry steer clear of the controversial food versus fuel debate. Most of the world's biofuel is made from food crops such as corn and sugar. Many oppose biofuels because they believe they will lead to higher food prices and hunger among the poor.

The great hope is second-generation technology that enables fuel to be made from waste material like the stalks and leaves of food crops.

Using the process developed by the CSIRO and Monash University, bio-crude could be made on-site at the likes of timber mills then trucked or piped to a refinery to be turned into a petrol substitute.

Steven Loffler from CSIRO Forest Biosciences said the new process had taken 18 months to develop and the key breakthrough was producing a bio-crude that was stable enough to be stored and transported.

Until now, bio-crude made from waste quickly broke down and became useless.

"By making changes to the chemical process, we've been able to create a concentrated bio-crude which is much more stable than that achieved elsewhere in the world," Dr Loffler said.

"This makes it practical and economical to produce bio-crude in local areas for transport to a central refinery, overcoming the high costs and greenhouse gas emissions otherwise involved in transporting bulky green wastes over long distances."

Biofuel production in Australia is still minor. This sort of innovation could turn it all around.