Synthetic biology aims to design and build new biological parts and systems or to modify existing ones to carry out novel tasks. It is an emerging research area, described by one researcher as “moving from reading the genetic code to writing it.” Prospects include new therapeutics, environmental biosensors and novel methods to produce food, drugs, chemicals or energy. This POSTnote outlines recent developments, the possible applications and risks of synthetic biology and examines policy options for the development and governance of the research.
Donated hearts for lifesaving transplants are scarce, but now researchers may have hit upon a way to generate the blood-pumping organs in the lab--at least in rats. The approach, which involves transplanting cells from a newborn rat onto the framework of an adult heart, produced an organ that could beat and pump fluid. Further refinement will be necessary before the technique is ready for people, but it could also generate other organs.
Approximately 3000 patients in the United States are on the waiting list for a heart transplant, but only about 2000 donor organs become available each year. Stem cells, which can give rise to heart tissue, offer a potential solution. But to form an entire heart, the cells require a framework, or scaffolding, to grow on, and finding an adequate structure has proven difficult. Now, a team led by bioengineer Doris Taylor of the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, has shown that old hearts stripped of their cells may provide a fix for the scaffolding problem.
WHEN YOU READ something confusing, or work a crossword puzzle, or try to remember where you put your keys, what do you do with your body? Do you sit? Do you stand? Do you pace? Do you do anything with your hands? Do you move your eyes in a particular pattern?
How you answer questions like these, it turns out, may determine how long it will take for you to decipher what you're reading, solve your puzzle, or get your keys back.
ONE of life's little mysteries is why particular people fancy each other—or, rather, why they do not when on paper they ought to. One answer is that human consciousness, and thus human thought, is dominated by vision. Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder, regardless of the other senses. However, as the multi-billion-dollar perfume industry attests, beauty is in the nose of the beholder, too.
ScientificMatch.com, a Boston-based internet-dating site launched in December, was created to turn this insight into money. Its founder, an engineer (and self-confessed serial dater) called Eric Holzle is drawing on an observation made over a decade ago by Claus Wedekind, a researcher at the University of Bern, in Switzerland.
The story behind the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem
Topic: Science
7:41 am EST, Jan 18, 2008
Now days in the era of science research being measured by SCI, Impact Factors, funding committees etc., most researchers would not risk themselves to focus on some true problems which demand some deep insights and long commitments. This is a simple fact in our current funding system. No wonder, in a report to the US president by President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee, named as “Computational Science: Ensuring America’s Competitiveness”, a group of leading scientists expressed their concerns:
“Based on its analysis of Federal R&D agency activities, PITAC concluded that Federal support for computational science research has been overly focused on short-term, low-risk activities. In the long term, this is actually a high-risk strategy that is less likely to yield the high-payoff, strategic innovations needed for the future.”
Now we are in the age of competition: everything is required to be done faster; everybody is required to produce more with less time. Nobody knows what the end of this road is; Nobody knows whether it is the right way. It is more or less to make people to feel nostalgia about the golden days of science in the past time, before NSF or any other funding committees are established. For example, in Cambridge University, after becoming a member of the faculty, you have the freedom to do whatever you like to do within the university’s resources. You don’t need apply any special funding for it. Nobody will evaluate your research every 2~3 years. However, those golden time is gone. Now we can not undo what we had already done. More importantly, we can not back to the age of doing science without complicated devices and giant machines, which are essential for the progress of bio-science and nano-technologies etc.
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers.
Biobazaar: The Open Source Revolution and Biotechnology
Topic: Science
2:20 pm EST, Jan 12, 2008
Fighting disease, combating hunger, preserving the balance of life on Earth: the future of biotechnological innovation may well be the future of our planet itself. And yet the vexed state of intellectual property law--a proliferation of ever more complex rights governing research and development--is complicating this future. At a similar point in the development of information technology, "open source" software revolutionized the field, simultaneously encouraging innovation and transforming markets. The question that Janet Hope explores in Biobazaar is: can the open source approach do for biotechnology what it has done for information technology? Her book is the first sustained and systematic inquiry into the application of open source principles to the life sciences.
The appeal of the open source approach--famously likened to a "bazaar," in contrast to the more traditional "cathedral" style of technology development--lies in its safeguarding of community access to proprietary tools without discouraging valuable commercial participation. Traversing disciplinary boundaries, Hope presents a careful analysis of intellectual property-related challenges confronting the biotechnology industry and then paints a detailed picture of "open source biotechnology" as a possible solution. With insights drawn from interviews with Nobel Prize-winning scientists and leaders of the free and open source software movement--as well as company executives, international policymakers, licensing experts, and industry analysts--her book suggests that open source biotechnology is both desirable and broadly feasible--and, in many ways, merely awaiting its moment.
The most comprehensive one-volume guide of its kind, this indispensable reference work presents information on teratogenic agents in a ready-reference format. The revised and expanded twelfth edition contains approximately three hundred new entries -- including one hundred newly listed agents and developmental genes that cause syndromes or congenital defects. Also included are overviews of recent literature on clinical and experimental teratology, including important Japanese literature not easily available to English-language researchers.
As in previous editions, this volume emphasizes human data and covers pharmaceuticals, chemicals, environmental pollutants, food additives, household products, and viruses. A special effort has been made to obtain as much information as possible on drugs and other agents to which pregnant women should not be exposed. Substances are listed alphabetically and each entry briefly summarizes research procedures and results. In addition, a complete list of references is included for each agent.
From the archive:
“Think of the kids you don’t have,” Mr. Levchin quoted them as saying. “Think of your unborn grandkids.”
It is best not to wear a denim miniskirt so short that when seated it practically disappears beneath the protuberance of one's pregnant belly, producing an image that is more gynecological than fashionable.
Lauer: How far along are you? Spears: I don’t know. I think six to seven months.
Spears: That driving incident, I did it with my dad. I’d sit on his lap and I drive. We’re country.
Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes
Topic: Science
2:20 pm EST, Jan 12, 2008
And here I had dismissed Sunshine as pseudo-science.
This book investigates the idea that the distant future evolution of our Sun might be controlled (literally, asteroengineered) so that it maintains its present-day energy output rather than becoming a highly luminous and bloated red giant star a process that, if allowed to develop, will destroy all life on Earth. The text outlines how asteroengineering might work in principle and it describes what the future solar system could look like. It also addresses the idea of asteroengineering as a galaxy-wide imperative, explaining why the Earth has never been visited by extraterrestrial travellers in the past.
