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'
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
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
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.
Powered by Qumana
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
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".
Tags: Craig Venter, Bioethics, Pat Mooney
Powered by Qumana
