Biology and Consciousness

Signature in the Cell

2011-03-19T10:18:00.000-07:00

Signature in the Cell This article on Meyer's book is filled with ideas and resources that deserve consideration. I would like to consider them further.

The Journal Science Interviews J. Craig Venter About the first "Syntheti...

2010-12-27T08:35:00.000-08:00

Dr. Venter has created a replication of an existing life form from four chemicals sequenced together artifically. The bacteria he created as a copy produces mastitis in goats. The experiment was to prove that life could be created in this manner. It was not to prove the viability of a new life form in addition to the technique of assembling life from discrete parts. Now that the method has been proven, the technique can be used to explore new and creative life designs.

irreligulous: BlueGene Blue Brain Neuron Supercomputer

2010-09-21T18:15:00.000-07:00

irreligulous: BlueGene Blue Brain Neuron Supercomputer: "10,000 neurons run by a room full of computers. A new 'Neurogrid' chips is about to come out that puts the same power into one single chip..."

The size of the computers used to simulate a portion of a rat brain tells us we have a fair way to go.

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

2010-05-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.

If you wish to contact Doug Axe, you can contact Robert L. Crowther, II Director of Communications Center for Science & Culture Discovery Institute, That information is from the Biologic Institute web site http://biologicinstitute.org/contact/ The Discovery Institute has a political and idealogical agenda of promoting intelligent design. They were involve in the Dove School Case where ID was rejected as a scientific viewpoint in court. The Discovery Institute was on the wrong side in that case.

Craig Venter Announces a living synthetic cell

2010-05-21T08:06:00.000-07:00

This podcast is possibly one of the landmark announcements of the century. Craig Venter clearly explains the process taken to synthesize a genome from the four chemical components in DNA and insert the resulting DNA in a pre-existing cell that had its own DNA removed previously. The announcement is very lucid with clear definitions of many new terms.

Venter also explains why this approach was taken and what the institute plans to do with the resulting tool

A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020? | h+ Magazine

2010-04-03T20:13:00.000-07:00

A Samsung Robot In Every Home By 2020? | h+ Magazine

Ray Kurzweil has an article on the convergence of information systems in Korea and their strengths in dealing with them by the year 2020. He also predicts a robot in every Korean home by that time.

New Study Shows Evolution can be Very Rapid.

2010-03-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

The practical significance of Magnus Karlsson's discoveries is broad and just as varied as his grasshoppers. He believes this new knowledge can be used in planning preservation projects for threatened species and to improve yields in agriculture.

"But the most important part of the dissertation is that I have shown that evolution sometimes proceeds incredibly rapidly. This is huge," says Magnus Karlsson.

His dissertation is titled Evolution in Changing Environments Revealed by Fire Melanism in Pygmy Grasshoppers.

Singing at America House on Linden Road

2010-03-25T17:00:00.000-07:00

We are getting to the point where we have regular fans among the people who watch our shows at America House on Linden Road. It is fun to see them every month or so. It is also fun to try to give them a song which they may not have heard in awhile. I do enjoy going over there.

We have another show at the Pines on Davison Road next Monday. I am looking forward to it. We are doing more four-part harmony. I really have to push my range to do first tenor at this age. *It would be better if I could go to second.

The Hobbit's Predecessors

2010-03-23T05:37:00.000-07:00

Long before a 'hobbit' species of human lived on Indonesia's Flores island, other human-like creatures colonised the area. That much was clear.
But scientists have now been able to date their presence to at least one million years ago - some 120,000 years earlier than previously recognised.
The team reports the discovery of these humans' tools in the journal Nature.

Possibly, the hobbit's ancestors were a more primitive humanoid which had migrated out of Africa at an earlier date.

Evolution of Mineral Species

2010-03-14T12:47:00.000-07:00

I do, however, want to emphasize one intriguing
insight: most of Earth’s thousands of minerals
owe their existence to the development of life
on the planet. If you think of all the nonliving
world as a stage on which life plays out its evolutionary
drama, think again. The actors renovated
their theater along the way. This observation
also has implications for the quest to find
signs of life on other worlds. Sturdy minerals
rather than fragile organic remains may provide
the most robust and lasting signs of biology.

Scientific American reported on most minerals evolving from life over the last 2 billion years. A few minerals had existed before the Sun's ignition about 4.6 Billion years ago. About 250 minerals formed at that time and still exist. The began to form planetesimals which grew as time passed and collusions took place. Finally, a massive collision took place between the primitive Earth and the Moon.

The Majority of minerals arrived after the great oxidation event about 2billion years ago. This was caused by photosynthesis from blue-green algae. About 2500 new minerals arose.

Then came a billion year period that was relatively quiet. That's called the Boring Billion. About 800 million years ago most of the Earth's continents were clumped along the equator in a land-mass called Rodinia. For the next 200 million years the Earth cycled from snowball to hot box and back. The Glaciation moved minerals around along.

About 460 million years ago, the first land plants, mosses, arose. By the Devonian period, 400 million years ago the Earth had a modern look. Earth's near surface minerology was strikingly modern too.

Conclusions for future research demand that only planets with life would have the oxygen for extensive ocidation.

Viewing minerals in an evolutionary context
also elucidates a more general theme of evolving
systems throughout the cosmos. Simple states
evolve into increasingly complicated states in
many contexts: the evolution of chemical elements
in stars, mineral evolution in planets, the
molecular evolution that leads to the origin of
life, and the familiar biological evolution
through Darwinian natural selection.

From Robert M. Hazen. in Scientific American March 2010

Scientists Program Blood Stem Cells To Become Vision Cells

2009-08-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

Scientists Program Blood Stem Cells To Become Vision Cells

University of Florida researchers were able to program bone marrow stem cells to repair damaged retinas in mice, suggesting a potential treatment for one of the most common causes of vision loss in older people.

This cure is almost too good to be true.

DNA and Learning

2008-12-02T19:39:00.001-08:00

The Posthuman Marxist

expression
Read Original Article>>

Powered by Qumana

Creationists declare war over the brain

2008-11-14T07:57:00.001-08:00

"YOU cannot overestimate," thundered psychiatrist Jeffrey Schwartz, "how threatened the scientific establishment is by the fact that it now looks like the materialist paradigm is genuinely breaking down. You're gonna hear a lot in the next calendar year about... how Darwin's explanation of how human intelligence arose is the only scientific way of doing it... I'm asking us as a world community to go out there and tell the scientific establishment, enough is enough! Materialism needs to start fading away and non-materialist causation needs to be understood as part of natural reality."

His enthusiasm was met with much applause from the audience gathered at the UN's east Manhattan conference hall on 11 September for an international symposium called Beyond the Mind-Body Problem: New Paradigms in the Science of Consciousness. Earlier Mario Beauregard, a researcher in neuroscience at the University of Montreal, Canada, and co-author of The Spiritual Brain: A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul, told the audience that the "battle" between "maverick" scientists like himself and those who "believe the mind is what the brain does" is a "cultural war".

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026793.000-creationists-declare-war-over-the-brain.html?full=true

New Scientist has raised a flag on a new area of discussion in the ID debate. The article is filled with names and ideas that could be followed up on. The discussion might even spread concepts on consciousness.

Tags: consciousness, ID, Mario Beauregard

Powered by Qumana

Blue Brain has a competitor

2008-11-05T15:27:00.001-08:00

Researchers have recently constructed a new computer model of the cortex of the human brain. This model is similar in principle to the more well known Blue Brain computer model, but it simulates a much larger area of the brain. It actually less detailed at the neuron level when compared to Blue Brain. The BluTags: Brain Simulation, Blue Braine Brain project has already simulated a section of the rat’s brain that is named the neocortex. The Blue Brain computer simulation has successfully modeled approximately 10,000 neurons including near 30 million synapses
This other computer simulation, however, has successfully modeled about a trillion neurons and almost a quadrillion synapses. This specific computer model is able to model the entire thalamo-cortical system of a mammillian brain. Apparently, the researchers have made of simulation of this brain region because is is involved in creating concious awareness.
his computer simulation of the human brain will allow scientists to carry out a variety of different experiments that are not currently possible to do. It will enable researchers to gain a much better insight into the workings of the brain. Things that are normally very hard to do on brain wetware may easily be done on the computer model. Researchers will have much more leeway in carrying out different experiments on this virtual brain. The computer model will allow scientists to carry out experiments that are impossible from a physical or ethical standpoint.
This computer model will enable the simulation of almost any type of brain disorder. This is a very exciting possiblity that could help a tremendous amount of people. Researchers intend to investigate disorders such as Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and other psychiatric disorders. The scientists also intend to investigate the effects of pharmaceutical drugs on this computer brain model. This may lead to faster FDA approval for brain drugs.
The researchers also want to learn more about consciousness and how it is constructed. I have serious doubts as to whether the computer model will actually be able to model consciousness. However, this new computer model will likely give scientists a much greater understanding of how the human brain functions. Overall, the research is extremely interesting and it has quite a few potential benefits in advancing our knowledge of the brain.

Powered by Qumana

Is a complex, large network likily to become conscious.

2008-10-28T17:13:00.001-07:00

I am not the first, nor the only one, to believe a superorganism is emerging from the cloak of wires, radio waves, and electronic nodes wrapping the surface of our planet. No one can dispute the scale or reality of this vast connectivity. What’s uncertain is, what is it? Is this global web of computers, servers and trunk lines a mere mechanical circuit, a very large tool, or does it reach a threshold where something, well, different happens?
My hypothesis is this: The rapidly increasing sum of all computational devices in the world connected online, including wirelessly, forms a superorganism of computation with its own emergent behaviors.
http://k21st.wordpress.com/

Tags: Consciousness, emergentPowered by Qumana

Darwin's Lab: Scientists on Brink of Creating Life -A Galaxy Classic

2008-08-21T19:51:00.001-07:00

"When these things are created," Bedau added, "they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen.

"We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways — in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

Darwin's Lab: Scientists on Brink of Creating Life -A Galaxy Classic

Never in my imagination, could one man, working for the US Government get control of anthrax and kill people with it. I have to wonder about the controls on this system.

Robot Fly Could Unlock Secrets Of The Human Brain (from Sunday Herald)

2008-08-21T12:58:00.001-07:00

One more step in understanding the Human brain.

THE HUMBLE
fruit fly may not look very clever, but its tiny brain has more in common with humans' than you might think - a fact that has encouraged scientists to attempt to create a "virtual fly brain" in the hope that it will lead to discoveries that could combat neurological diseases.

Robot Fly Could Unlock Secrets Of The Human Brain (from Sunday Herald)

Technorati Tags: Blue Brain,Dr. Charles Peck

The Frontal Cortex : James and Measurement

2008-08-21T12:32:00.001-07:00

This article seems to point at the inexactness of brain function. This is the other side of the blue brain argument

Notice his emphasis on the inherent unknowability of the mind, the way so many of our thoughts and sensations are constantly falling into the "abyss of oblivion". This was, in part, a reaction to the psychology of the day, which was so eager to measure the mind and quantify our thoughts. James, on the other hand, was convinced that the most interesting aspects of the mind were inherently unmeasurable. As he wrote in his Principles, "It is, in short, the reinstatement of the vague to its proper place in our mental life which I am so anxious to press on the attention."

And here is how I describe this Jamesian attitude in my book:

James always enjoyed puncturing the pretensions of nineteenth century science. He thought that we should stop thinking of scientific theories as mirrors of nature, what he called "the copy version of truth". Instead, we should see its facts as tools, which "help us get into a satisfactory relation with experience." The truth of an idea, James wrote, is the use of an idea, its "cash-value." Thus, according to the pragmatists, a practical poet could be just as truthful as an accurate experiment. All that mattered was the "concrete difference" an idea produced in our actual lives.
But before he became a philosopher, William James was a psychologist. In 1875, he established one of the world's first psychological laboratories at Harvard. Though he was now part of the medical school, James had no intention of practicing "brass instrument psychology," his critical name for the new scientific approach that tried to quantify the mind in terms of its elemental sensations. What physicists had done for the universe, these psychologists wanted to do for our consciousness. Even their vocabulary was stolen straight from physics: thought had a "velocity," nerves had "inertia," and the mind was nothing but its "mechanical reflex-actions." James was contemptuous of such a crude form of reductionism. He thought its facts were useless.

James also wasn't very good at this new type of psychology. "It is a sort of work which appeals particularly to patient and exact minds," he wrote in his masterpiece, The Principles of Pscyhology, and James realized that his mind was neither patient nor particularly exact. He loved questions more than answers, the uncertainty of faith more than the conviction of reason. He wanted to call the universe the pluriverse. In his own psychological experiments, James was drawn to the phenomena that this mental reductionism ignored. What parts of our mind cannot be measured?

The Frontal Cortex : James and Measurement

Technorati Tags: Blue brain

Rise of the rat-brained robots - tech - 13 August 2008 - New Scientist Tech

2008-08-14T10:40:00.001-07:00

This is no ordinary robot control system - a plain old microchip connected to a circuit board. Instead, the controller nestles inside a small pot containing a pink broth of nutrients and antibiotics. Inside that pot, some 300,000 rat neurons have made - and continue to make - connections with each other.

As they do so, the disembodied neurons are communicating, sending electrical signals to one another just as they do in a living creature. We know this because the network of neurons is connected at the base of the pot to 80 electrodes, and the voltages sparked by the neurons are displayed on a computer screen.

It's these spontaneous electrical patterns that researchers at the University of Reading in the UK want to harness to control a robot. If they can do so reliably, by stimulating the neurons with signals from sensors on the robot and using the neurons' response to get the robots to respond, they hope to gain insights into how brains function. Such insights might help in the treatment of conditions like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease and epilepsy.

Rise of the rat-brained robots - tech - 13 August 2008 - New Scientist Tech

Technorati Tags: Robots,Rat brain

NASA Mars Phoenix Data More Negative On Potential For Life | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

2008-08-04T14:49:00.001-07:00

An initial soil test by the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer (MECA) instrument indicated that the soil is highly Earth-like. The second test, however, is leading scientists to view the data as more inconclusive.

Other media outlets and websites around the world incorrectly reported that the "potential for life" meant that actual life on Mars had been detected. Coverage by Aviation Week states that the wet chemistry experiment can not detect life, nor can any other Phoenix instrument suchas the Thermal and Evolved Gas Analyzer (TEGA) organics experiment.

NASA disputes that any of the information was provided to the White House in advance. But such data are routinely passed between NASA and White House science staff when briefings are planned, as is the case with the new MECA data. A briefing is set for Aug. 5.

NASA Mars Phoenix Data More Negative On Potential For Life | SpaceRef - Your Space Reference

Rumors Abound About 'Potential for Life' on Mars | Wired Science from Wired.com

2008-08-04T14:26:00.001-07:00

Rumors are flying this weekend that Mars Phoenix has made a major discovery relating to the potential for life on Mars.

Wired.com reached Sam Kounaves, the mission's wet-chemistry lab lead, by cellphone this morning. He quickly directed us to speak with NASA's PR representatives, but not before he said, simply, "Rumors are rumors."

They stem from an article in Aviation Week and subsequent pickup on Slashdot and elsewhere indicating that the White House had been briefed on the potential for life on the planet.

"The White House has been alerted by NASA about plans to make an announcement soon on major new Phoenix Lander discoveries concerning the "potential for life" on Mars," wrote Craig Covault, citing anonymous sources on the Phoenix Lander's wet-chemistry lab team.

Rumors Abound About 'Potential for Life' on Mars | Wired Science from Wired.com

This might be the first ripple of very big stuff.

The Singularity

2008-06-04T09:42:00.001-07:00

The Singularity Report in IEEE Spectrum is a full issue dealing with Ray Kurzweil's idea that machines will pass human intelligence by 2030.

Tags: singularity, kurzweilPowered by Qumana

Brain Stimulant: Neuromorphic Brain

2008-05-28T12:02:00.001-07:00

DARPA has a five year program called Systems Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics or SyNAPSE for short. I already previously mentioned this project that the US military is undertaking in another blog post. Neuromorphic is basically the creation of digital neurons on a microchip that mimic the functioning of real neurons. Meaning they are creating computer hardware that can replicate how a neuron works and interacts with other neurons, like the synaptic connections and firing patterns. Ultimately it is hoped that neuromorphic chips will be able to process information in much the same way that a real brain can.

Brain Stimulant: Neuromorphic Brain

This article discusses another attempt to mimic the human brain. It seems to be more hardware oriented than 'blue brain' but the goal is similiar

Technorati Tags: DARPA,Blue Brain,neuromorphic chips,SyNAPSE

Blue Brain and Consciousness

2008-05-28T10:29:00.000-07:00

This podcast explains what is being done in the blue brain project to simulate the human brain. Markram's goal is to build a model of the human brain within ten years.

http://lis.epfl.ch/resources/podcast/mp3/TalkingRobots-HenryMarkram.mp3

Misreading the mind - Los Angeles Times

2008-04-27T18:53:00.001-07:00

Some of the most exciting endeavors in neuroscience right now are trying to move beyond reductionism. The Blue Brain Project, for example, a collaboration between the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, and IBM, is in the process of constructing a biologically accurate model of the brain that can be used to simulate experience on a supercomputer. Henry Markram, the leader of the project, recently told me that he's convinced "reductionism peaked five years ago." While Markram is quick to add that the reductionism program isn't complete -- "There is still so much that we don't know about the brain," he says -- he's trying to solve a harder problem, which is figuring out how all these cellular details connect together. "The Blue Brain Project" he says, "is about showing people the whole." In other words, Markram wants to hear the music.
One day, we'll look back at the history of neuroscience and realize that reductionism was just the first phase. Each year, tens of thousands of neuroscience papers are published in scientific journals. The field is introduced to countless new acronyms, pathways and proteins. At a certain point, however, all of this detail starts to have diminishing returns. After all, the real paradox of the brain is why it feels like more than the sum of its parts. How does our pale gray matter become the Technicolor cinema of consciousness? What transforms the water of the brain into the wine of the mind? Where does the self come from?
Reductionism can't answer these questions. According to the facts of neuroscience, your head contains 100 billion electrical cells, but not one of them is you, or knows you or cares about you. In fact, you don't even exist. You are simply an elaborate cognitive illusion, an "epiphenomenon" of the cortex. Our mystery is denied.

Misreading the mind - Los Angeles Times

Ovarian cancer stem cells identified, characterized

2008-04-18T07:41:00.001-07:00

This is another indication of stem cell involvement with cancer

“Present chemotherapy modalities eliminate the bulk of the tumor cells, but cannot eliminate a core of these cancer stem cells that have a high capacity for renewal,” said Mor, who is also a member of the Yale Cancer Center. “Identification of these cells, as we have done here, is the first step in the development of therapeutic modalities.”

Mor and colleagues isolated cells from 80 human samples of either peritoneal fluid or solid tumors. The cancer stem cells that were identified were positive for traditional cancer stem cell markers including CD44 and MyD88. These cells also showed a high capacity for repair and self-renewal.

The isolated cells formed tumors 100 percent of the time. Within those tumors, 10 percent of the cells were positive for cancer stem cell marker CD44, while 90 percent were CD44 negative.

Mor and his team were able to isolate and clone the ovarian cancer stem cells. They found that these cells were highly resistant to conventional chemotherapy while the non-cancer stem cells responded to treatment. “Isolating and cloning these cells will lead to development of new treatments to target and eliminate the cancer stem cells and hopefully prevent recurrence,” said Mor.

Ovarian cancer stem cells identified, characterized

Technorati Tags: Ovarian Cancer

Biology News Net - Email to a Friend

2008-04-18T07:31:00.001-07:00

http://www.biologynews.net/archives/2008/04/17/intelligence_and_rhythmic_accuracy_go_hand_in_hand.html

This is one more indicator of how the brain works

Biology News Net - Email to a Friend

Blue Brain Project

2008-04-16T09:41:00.001-07:00

The Blue Brain project is the first comprehensive attempt to reverse-engineer the mammalian brain, in order to understand brain function and dysfunction through detailed simulations.
In July 2005, EPFL and IBM announced an exciting new research initiative - a project to create a biologically accurate, functional model of the brain using IBM's Blue Gene supercomputer. Analogous in scope to the Genome Project, the Blue Brain will provide a huge leap in our understanding of brain function and dysfunction and help us explore solutions to intractable problems in mental health and neurological disease.
At the end of 2006, the Blue Brain project had created a model of the basic functional unit of the brain, the neocortical column. At the push of a button, the model could reconstruct biologically accurate neurons based on detailed experimental data, and automatically connect them in a biological manner, a task that involves positioning around 30 million synapses in precise 3D locations.
In November, 2007, the Blue Brain project reached an important milestone and the conclusion of its first Phase, with the announcement of an entirely new data-driven process for creating, validating, and researching the neocortical column.

Blue Brain Project

Wormtown Taxi: Chasing Down the Soul with Blue Brain

2008-04-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

Wormtown Taxi: Chasing Down the Soul

I found the reference to the article about Blue Brain in Seed Magazine on this post. The author is right in saying that the nine page article is very informative and will leave you thinking.

Seed: The Ghost in the Machine

2008-04-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

According to Markram, consciousness is the natural result of the way the human brain is constructed. It will emerge from simulations once those simulations approach reality.

There is nothing inherently mysterious about the mind or anything it makes," Markram says. "Consciousness is just a massive amount of information being exchanged by trillions of brain cells. If you can precisely model that information, then I don't know why you wouldn't be able to generate a conscious mind." At moments like this, Markram takes on the deflating air of a magician exposing his own magic tricks. He seems to relish the idea of "debunking consciousness," showing that it's no more metaphysical than any other property of the mind. Consciousness is a binary code; the self is a loop of electricity. A ghost will emerge from the machine once the machine is built right.

Seed: Out of the Blue

Technorati Tags: consciousness

Seed: Out of the Blue

2008-04-16T08:35:00.001-07:00

Markram proposes the use of a robotic rat to provide the body for his rat brain simulation which he hopes to have in two years.

Some philosophers, like Thomas Nagel, have argued that this divide between the physical facts of neuroscience and the reality of subjective experience represents an epistemological dead end. No matter how much we know about our neurons, we still won't be able to explain how a twitch of ions in the frontal cortex becomes the Technicolor cinema of consciousness.

Markram takes these criticisms seriously. Nevertheless, he believes that Blue Brain is uniquely capable of transcending the limits of "conventional neuroscience," breaking through the mind-body problem. According to Markram, the power of Blue Brain is that it can transform a metaphysical paradox into a technological problem. "There's no reason why you can't get inside Blue Brain," Markram says. "Once we can model a brain, we should be able to model what every brain makes. We should be able to experience the experiences of another mind."

When listening to Markram speculate, it's easy to forget that the Blue Brain simulation is still just a single circuit, confined within a silent supercomputer. The machine is not yet alive. And yet Markram can be persuasive when he talks about his future plans. His ambitions are grounded in concrete steps. Once the team is able to model a complete rat brain—that should happen in the next two years—Markram will download the simulation into a robotic rat, so that the brain has a body. He's already talking to a Japanese company about constructing the mechanical animal. "The only way to really know what the model is capable of is to give it legs," he says. "If the robotic rat just bumps into walls, then we've got a problem."

Installing Blue Brain in a robot will also allow it to develop like a real rat. The simulated cells will be shaped by their own sensations, constantly revising their connections based upon the rat's experiences. "What you ultimately want," Markram says, "is a robot that's a little bit unpredictable, that doesn't just do what we tell it to do." His goal is to build a virtual animal—a rodent robot—with a mind of its own.

Seed: Out of the Blue

Technorati Tags: Markram,Blue Brain,Thomas Nagel

Seed: Out of the Blue

2008-04-16T08:26:00.001-07:00

The article referred to in the link below describes how Blue Brain works. If the author's belief that the human brain can be made from a scaled up version of the virtual synapses we have now then we only wait for the arrival of much more powerful computers. Many experts point to around the year 2020.

Seed: Out of the Blue

In fact, the model is so successful that its biggest restrictions are now technological. "We have already shown that the model can scale up," Markram says. "What is holding us back now are the computers." The numbers speak for themselves. Markram estimates that in order to accurately simulate the trillion synapses in the human brain, you'd need to be able to process about 500 petabytes of data (peta being a million billion, or 10 to the fifteenth power). That's about 200 times more information than is stored on all of Google's servers. (Given current technology, a machine capable of such power would be the size of several football fields.) Energy consumption is another huge problem. The human brain requires about 25 watts of electricity to operate. Markram estimates that simulating the brain on a supercomputer with existing microchips would generate an annual electrical bill of about $3 billion . But if computing speeds continue to develop at their current exponential pace, and energy efficiency improves, Markram believes that he'll be able to model a complete human brain on a single machine in ten years or less.

Seed: Out of the Blue

Technorati Tags: Blue brain,synapse

Seed: Suspending Life

2008-04-15T08:51:00.001-07:00

We mammals, who evolved from the creatures that survived this inhospitable time, were marked by what happened. All animals bear the physiological scars left by the past greenhouse extinctions and hydrogen sulfide events, and we mammals are no exception. The difficulty is knowing where to look for the scars.

I believe the work of Mark Roth and his group may have finally uncovered the survival mechanism of our ancestors. While high levels of H₂S kill mammals, Roth's team has found that very low levels of the toxin can prolong their lives. H₂S reduces oxygen levels in the body, and though too much causes death by oxygen starvation, a bit less slows a creature's metabolism. This alone is an amazing finding. But Roth has gone further, inducing suspended animation in mammals. By exposing lab mice to small doses of H₂S, Roth and his team can put them into the deepest of sleeps--with very slow, or even no heartbeats--for several hours. In that time, the mice can be cooled to temperatures that would have killed them prior to the H₂S exposure.

Roth has already begun testing his work on other mammals. If he is correct, hydrogen sulfide may provide a way of saving lives so revolutionary that it will change trauma medicine forever. He is redefining what we thought we knew about death and dying. Death may not be as final as we think.

When we humans are cut or injured, our bodies naturally produce small quantities of hydrogen sulfide. In essence, the body may be trying to put itself into suspended animation to survive the injury, an instinct held over millions of years in our genes. Yet whenever one of us is dying, say from a heart attack, our first instinct is to give that person oxygen. The problem with this "life-saving" first response may be that the oxygenated red blood cells rush to the damaged cells and act like gasoline on a fire. Oxygen is one of the most chemically active substances on Earth, and though we need it to survive, it can ravage our bodies. The oxygen increases the reactions causing the heart attack in the first place; it tears up more cells and overwhelms the virtual suspended animation that the body-produced hydrogen sulfide created. Then it kills you.

Perhaps our first instinct in instances of a heart attack should be to cool the body and let hydrogen sulfide do its natural work. To save life, in other words, you may first have to effectively suspend it with hydrogen sulfide. This tactic may just be what got us so far in the first place.

There is no clear understanding yet of why our injured bodies are able to produce hydrogen sulfide or why H₂S puts some mammals into suspended animation. But I believe that Roth has found our body's own memory of the ancient events that nearly killed our distant ancestors. Some proto-mammals may have been exposed to H₂S, and instead of dying, they were placed into a state of suspended animation that allowed them to survive until the initial hydrogen sulfide levels subsided and they were reanimated. Some lucky evolutionary accident ensured the mammals' safety through a deep sleep, and that accident may still be dormant within us. That which allowed our ancestors to survive millions of years ago might also be a means of our survival now.

< Previous

Page all of 4

Next >

Seed: Suspending Life

Technorati Tags: Mark Roth,Suspended Animation,mass extinction,Permian extinction,hydrogen sulfide

Biologists find first lungless frog

2008-04-13T19:58:00.001-07:00

Biologists have found the first recorded species of frog that breathes without lungs in a clear, cold-water stream on the island of Borneo in Indonesia.

According to a report in National Geographic News, the frog, named “Barbourula kalimantanensis”, gets all its oxygen through its skin.

“Nobody knew about the lunglessness before we accidentally discovered it doing routine dissections,” said David Bickford, a biologist at the National University of Singapore.

Biologists find first lungless frog

Worm Turns Cricket Into Zombie!

2008-04-11T11:00:00.001-07:00

What does this say about the ability to induce behavior? Proteomics has many surprises I think

Technorati Tags: proteomics,zombie

BBC NEWS | Health | Daily caffeine 'protects brain'

2008-04-04T10:49:00.001-07:00

Coffee may cut the risk of dementia by blocking the damage cholesterol can inflict on the body, research suggests.

The drink has already been linked to a lower risk of Alzheimer's Disease, and a study by a US team for the Journal of Neuroinflammation may explain why.

BBC NEWS | Health | Daily caffeine 'protects brain'

Technorati Tags: dementia

Blue Brain Out-Thinks Its Critics

2008-04-03T11:54:00.001-07:00

We first posted about the Blue Brain Project back in 2005. The idea was to use massive computing power to accurately simulate enough biological neurons to reproduce part of a mammal brain's functionality. The project was widely criticized as "ridiculous". With the recent successful conclusion of the project's first phase, critics who claimed the project was "bound to fail" have been effectively proven wrong. The current system accurately reproduces the neocortical column of a two-week old rat, composed of 10,000 neurons with 30 types of ion channels and 30 million interconnections. Surprisingly, at least to the critics, the computational structure does what the biological structure does even at the level of individual neurons. But don't get too excited yet, the researchers believe reproducing an entire Human brain would require processing over 500 petabytes of data. A computer like that is 10 years away if Moore's law continues to hold. To build it using today's processors would result in a brain that costs $3 billion per year in electricity to operate (versus our meat brains that need only 25 watts!) Meanwhile, SEED magazine has an article about the recent achievements of the Blue Brain and the conscious entities blog has written some thoughtful commentary about the project.

Blue Brain Out-Thinks Its Critics

Technorati Tags: blue brain

Tiny Brain-Like Computer Created - Yahoo! News

2008-04-03T11:46:00.001-07:00

The most powerful computer known is the brain, and now scientists have designed a machine just a few molecules large that mimics how the brain works.

So far the device can simultaneously carry out 16 times more operations than a normal computer transistor. Researchers suggest the invention might eventually prove able to perform roughly 1,000 times more operations than a transistor.

The device is made of a compound known as duroquinone. This molecule resembles a hexagonal plate with four cones linked to it, "like a small car," explained researcher Anirban Bandyopadhyay, an artificial intelligence and molecular electronics scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science at Tsukuba in Japan. Duroquinone is less than a nanometer, or a billionth of a meter large. This makes it hundreds of times smaller than a wavelength of visible light. The machine is made of 17 duroquinone molecules. One molecule sits at the center of a ring formed by the remaining 16. The entire invention sits on a surface of gold.

Tiny Brain-Like Computer Created - Yahoo! News

Technorati Tags: duroquinone

Mummified dinosaur unearthed in North Dakota

2008-03-19T04:50:00.001-07:00

Unlike almost every other dinosaur fossil ever found, the Edmontosaurus named Dakota, a duckbilled dinosaur unearthed in southwestern North Dakota in 2004, is covered by fossilized skin that is hard as iron. It's among just a few mummified dinosaurs in the world, say the researchers who are slowly freeing it from a 65-million-year-old rock tomb.

CNN has reported on finding an Edmontosaurus with the fossilized skin still intact in the rock. This should add greatly to our knowledge of dinosaur skin and to the biology of that era.

Powered by Qumana

Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

2008-02-22T06:42:00.001-08:00

Tags: Dover School District

This set of resources is this site's archive for the Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District federal court case sometimes called "Scopes II" or the "Dover Panda Trial" by the media. At stake was a pro-intelligent design school board policy and the book Of Pandas and People that first introduced the term "intelligent design" as meaning a specific field of inquiry rather than incidental use as a descriptive term.

Powered by Qumana

Craig Venter Creates Artifical Chromosome

2008-02-22T06:21:00.001-08:00

Mr Venter said he had carried out an ethical review before completing the experiment. "We feel that this is good science," he said. He has further heightened the controversy surrounding his potential breakthrough by applying for a patent for the synthetic bacterium.

Pat Mooney, director of a Canadian bioethics organisation, ETC group, said the move was an enormous challenge to society to debate the risks involved. "Governments, and society in general, is way behind the ball. This is a wake-up call - what does it mean to create new life forms in a test-tube?"

He said Mr Venter was creating a "chassis on which you could build almost anything. It could be a contribution to humanity such as new drugs or a huge threat to humanity such as bio-weapons".

Craig Venter has moved the ball a long ways down the field. Ethicists are not going to be able to keep up. I believe we will have artifical life within two years. Little discussion has taken place on Venter's work so far.

Tags: Craig Venter, Bioethics, Pat Mooney

Powered by Qumana

RedOrbit Video News - RedOrbit

2008-02-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

RedOrbit Video News - RedOrbit

Debate over proposed Fla. evolution rules

2008-02-12T05:07:00.001-08:00

The Florida Department of Education Web site was flooded with comments after the Feb. 19 vote was announced, and many of the messages denounced the required teaching of evolution, which the proposed standards describe as the "fundamental concept underlying all of biology," which is "supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence," the Orlando (Fla.) Sentinel reported Monday.

"I have no problem with them hearing about evolution. I just don't want them to hear a one-sided fact," said LeVon Pettis, a Panhandle, Fla., father who said he may put his daughters in private school if the standards are adopted. "If you're going to teach evolution, then also throw in creationism and intelligent design."

I am amazed at the ease ID supporters allow themselves to be drawn onto the field of scientific debate. They feel that somehow that is a win for them, but the only way it would result in that is for ID to win in a fair game of scientific discovery. That's not a likily outcome.

Tags: Creationism, ID, Intelligent Design

Powered by Qumana

Edge: LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

2008-02-07T06:30:00.001-08:00

Freeman Dyson describes the origin of life in six stages.

Edge: LIFE: WHAT A CONCEPT!

Technorati Tags: Freeman Dyson

zidouta.com - Edge @ DLD: Life: A gene-centric View

2008-02-07T05:44:00.001-08:00

Dawkins and Vinter discuss open source biology, sexual reproduction and genetic information transfer. Dawkins, once again, sets a new standard for life as a pure form of information.

zidouta.com - Edge @ DLD: Life: A gene-centric View

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people - Yahoo! News

2008-02-06T12:26:00.001-08:00

LONDON - British scientists say they have created human embryos containing DNA from two women and a man in a procedure that researchers hope might be used one day to produce embryos free of inherited diseases

Embryos created with DNA from 3 people - Yahoo! News

The Scientist : home : Wednesday

2008-01-30T15:39:00.001-08:00

The Scientist : home : Wednesday

This magazine is about the life sciences

Longest Piece of Synthetic DNA Yet: Scientific American

2008-01-25T09:17:00.001-08:00

Researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI) in Rockville, Md., report in the online edition of Science that they pieced together the genes of Mycoplasma genitalium, the smallest free-living bacterium that can be grown in the laboratory and a common culprit in urinary tract infections.
"The 582,970 base pair M. genitalium bacterial genome is the largest chemically defined structure synthesized in the lab," lead author Daniel Gibson told ScientificAmerican.com via e-mail. (Base pairs are complementary linked nucleotide bases, such as adenine–thymine.)

Longest Piece of Synthetic DNA Yet: Scientific American

Intelligent Design and Vertebrate Eye Design

2008-01-02T10:41:00.001-08:00

“The vertebrate eye is the best example of structural perfection – as used by proponents of intelligent design to claim that something so complex couldn’t possibly have evolved,” Dr Young said.

“Part of the trouble in tracing the evolution of the eye is that soft tissues don’t tend to fossilise. But the eye cavities in the braincase of these 400 million-year-old fossil fish were lined with a delicate layer of very thin bone. All the details of the nerve canals and muscle insertions inside the eye socket are preserved – the first definite fossil evidence demonstrating an intermediate stage in the evolution of our most complex sensory organ.

“These extinct placoderms had the eyeball still connected to the braincase by cartilage, as in modern sharks, and a primitive eye muscle arrangement as in living jawless fish.” Dr Young said that this anatomical arrangement is different from all modern vertebrates, in which there is a consistent pattern of tiny muscles for rotating each eyeball.

Link

This is evidence against the irreducible complexity argument put forth by ID proponents. Their point is that the vertebrate eye is too complex to develop in stages. This evidence takes issue with that view.

ID, Intelligent Design, Evolution, Eye

Powered by Qumana

Massimo Pigliucci

2007-12-31T13:47:00.001-08:00

Massimo Pigliucci

This debate on Intelligent Design vx. Evolution is at good starting point in the debate. Several other presentations are given on the page which will add to the discussion.

YouTube - What The #$*! Do We Know!? - Part 1 of 10

2007-12-19T12:20:00.001-08:00

YouTube - What The #$*! Do We Know!? - Part 1 of 10

This is the anchor of a study based on this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 2 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 3 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 4 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 5 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 6 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 7 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 8 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 9 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

This is part 10 of this film. Thanks to work by others, the other parts of this film are on YouTube.

Technorati Tags: What the #$*! Do We Know!?,Quantum Physics

Synthetic DNA on the Brink of Yielding New Life Forms

2007-12-19T10:45:00.001-08:00

Scientists in Maryland have already built the world's first entirely handcrafted chromosome -- a large looping strand of DNA made from scratch in a laboratory, containing all the instructions a microbe needs to live and reproduce.

In the coming year, they hope to transplant it into a cell, where it is expected to "boot itself up," like software downloaded from the Internet, and cajole the waiting cell to do its bidding.
Some experts are worried that a few maverick companies are already gaining monopoly control over the core "operating system" for artificial life and are poised to become the Microsofts of synthetic biology. That could stifle competition, they say, and place enormous power in a few people's hands

At the core of synthetic biology's new ascendance are high-speed DNA synthesizers that can produce very long strands of genetic material from basic chemical building blocks: sugars, nitrogen-based compounds and phosphates.

"I see a cell as a chassis and power supply for the artificial systems we are putting together," said Tom Knight of MIT, who likes to compare the state of cell biology today to that of mechanical engineering in 1864. That is when the United States began to adopt standardized thread sizes for nuts and bolts, an advance that allowed the construction of complex devices from simple, interchangeable parts.

If biology is to morph into an engineering discipline, it is going to need similarly standardized parts, Knight said. So he and colleagues have started a collection of hundreds of interchangeable genetic components they call BioBricks, which students and others are already popping into cells like Lego pieces.

J. Craig Venter, chief executive of Synthetic Genomics in Rockville, knows what he wants his cells to make: ethanol, hydrogen and other exotic fuels for vehicles, to fill a market that has been estimated to be worth $1 trillion.

In a big step toward that goal, Venter has now built the first fully artificial chromosome, a strand of DNA many times longer than anything made by others and laden with all the genetic components a microbe needs to get by.

LS9 Inc., a company in San Carlos, Calif., is already using E. coli bacteria that have been reprogrammed with synthetic DNA to produce a fuel alternative from a diet of corn syrup and sugar cane. So efficient are the bugs' synthetic metabolisms that LS9 predicts it will be able to sell the fuel for just $1.25 a gallon.

At a DuPont plant in Tennessee, other semi-synthetic bacteria are living on cornstarch and making the chemical 1,3 propanediol, or PDO. Millions of pounds of the stuff are being spun and woven into high-tech fabrics (DuPont's chief executive wears a pinstripe suit made of it), putting the bug-begotten chemical on track to become the first $1 billion biotech product that is not a pharmaceutical.

Yet another application is in medicine, where synthetic DNA is allowing bacteria and yeast to produce the malaria drug artemisinin far more efficiently than it is made in plants, its natural source.

In the past year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been flooded with aggressive synthetic-biology claims. Some of Venter's applications, in particular, "are breathtaking in their scope," said Knight. And with Venter's company openly hoping to develop "an operating system for biologically-based software," some fear it is seeking synthetic hegemony.

In fact, government controls on trade in dangerous microbes do not apply to the bits of DNA that can be used to create them. And while some industry groups have talked about policing the field themselves, the technology is quickly becoming so simple, experts say, that it will not be long before "bio hackers" working in garages will be downloading genetic programs and making them into novel life forms.

Andrew Light, an environmental ethicist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said synthetic biology poses a conundrum because of its double-edged ability to both wreak biological havoc and perhaps wean civilization from dirty 20th-century technologies and petroleum-based fuels.

Tags: Snythetic Biology, Craig Vinter, Ethanol

It appears that synthetic biology is about to have practical applications.

Powered by Qumana

BadKaraoke: Tenth Dimension Live Broadcast - Rob Bryanton 10/30/2007

2007-12-11T17:09:00.001-08:00

BadKaraoke: Tenth Dimension Live Broadcast - Rob Bryanton 10/30/2007

YouTube link

I plan to review this site much more in the future

Mouse brain simulated on computer

2007-10-03T06:45:00.001-07:00

Half a real mouse brain is thought to have about eight million neurons each one of which can have up to 8,000 synapses, or connections, with other nerve fibres.

Modelling such a system, the trio wrote, puts "tremendous constraints on computation, communication and memory capacity of any computing platform".

The team, from the IBM Almaden Research Lab and the University of Nevada, ran the simulation on a BlueGene L supercomputer that had 4,096 processors, each one of which used 256MB of memory.

Using this machine the researchers created half a virtual mouse brain that had 8,000,000 neurons that had up to 6,300 synapses.

This article describes some of the work being done to simulate brain function. I'm adding it here because it is a different way to learn about biology and the new methods being used in it.

Link

Tags: supercomputer, IBM, mouse brain

Powered by Qumana

IBM's BlueGene L supercomputer simulates half a mouse brain

2007-10-03T06:31:00.001-07:00

Efforts to model the human brain (on IBM's Blue Gene, ironically) haven't reached the point of finality just yet, but it looks like the supercomputer has already tackled a smaller, albeit similar task at the University of Nevada. The research team, which collaborated with gurus from the IBM Almaden Research Lab, have ran a "cortical simulator that was as big and as complex as half of a mouse's brain on the BlueGene L," and considering that it took about 8,000 neurons and 6,3000 synapses into consideration without totally crashing, it remains a fairly impressive achievement. Notably, the process was so intensive that it was only ran for ten seconds at a speed "ten times slower than real-time," and while the team is already looking forward to speeding things up and taking the whole mind into account, it was noted that the simulation (expectedly) "lacked some structures seen in an actual brain." Now, if only these guys could figure out how to mimic the brain and offer up external storage to aid our failing memories.

The Singularity is nearer it seems.

Tags: Blue Gene, mouse brain, supercomputer

Powered by Qumana

Deepak Chopra

2007-09-09T17:02:00.001-07:00

Deepak Chopra clearly states what I have believed for many years. Death is the loose of personal consciousness. Good cannot exist without bad. Sin is its own punishment.

Tags: Deepak Chopra, Organized Religion, Consciousness

Powered by Qumana

Time Team 2001 episode 1

2007-08-24T05:49:00.001-07:00

Norman Liconshire

2007-08-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The New Biology - Where Mind and Matter Meet 1of2

2007-08-20T09:00:00.001-07:00

Bruce H. Lipton. Ph.D., cellular biologist, author, and former Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin's School of Medicine. His pioneering research on cloned human cells at Wisconsin and Stanford University's School of Medicine presaged the revolutionary field of epigenetics, the new science of how environment and perception control genes.

A New Blog Begins

2007-08-20T08:30:00.000-07:00

For many months, I have enjoyed following stem cell research on http://stemcellreport.blogspot.com/ . I kept finding general biology information that I wanted to report on that was outside of the scope of stem cell work. The result is the creation of this blog which will be wider in scope and will cover those interests