Using DNA to Build Really Tiny Things

Nanotech holds some of the most radical and far-reaching promise for creating a future we can only dream about now. But how do you actually build things that small? You can't shrink yourself down like in the movies, and you can't make the tiny tools unless you know how to build really tiny things, which is where we started this erudite discussion. It so happens that evolution has already discovered the means. After all, it's been building really tiny things for billions of years, and getting better at it every million years along the way. In a huge leap forward, researchers have been able to take advantage of this fact.

In an achievement some see as the "holy grail" of nanoscience, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have for the first time used DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles (particles with dimensions measured in billionths of a meter). The ability to engineer such 3-D structures is essential to producing functional materials that take advantage of the unique properties that may exist at the nanoscale - for example, enhanced magnetism, improved catalytic activity, or new optical properties.

You don't have to understand the details to realize that we are moving very quickly now towards the technological singularity referred to in this blog's title. So hold on tight. It may be a bumpy ride, but it sure will be exciting.

Read the original article.

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Making Enhancement Acceptable

A possible way forward for transhumanists is emerging. Since there is such a strong bias in our politically correct society against the idea of making human enhancement available to humans, and since the negative bias tends to focus on the distinction between restoration of function and enhancement, transhumanists are beginning to use the word enablement and point out that there is no clear line between therapy and enablement.

Zack Lynch reports on this transformation and posts a link to a just-published report from a human enhancement workshop held in D.C. back in June 2006. He highlights this particular paragraph from the report:

The line between therapy or restoration and enhancement is another piece of ongoing debates about HE. After noting at the workshop that the line between therapy and enhancement is particularly faint and subjective, Zack Lynch, managing director of NeuroInsights, recommended the term “enablement” as a replacement for the current buzz-word “enhancement.” He believes the term enhancement is already politically charged in both its meaning and use among science policy players. He sees no hard line between “therapy” and “enhancement”; instead, there is a range of capacities already in normal distribution among the population, and enablement refers to maximizing each person’s latent potential. While these arguments are explored in greater detail later in this essay, this report will utilize the more familiar term of “enhancement.”

Could this be the way forward?

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Self-Enhancement Unethical?

Safety concerns over people taking drugs to improve themselves is fine, but this article seems to go beyond the issue of safely. It seems to imply that well people should not be trying to enhance themselves.

The ability of prescription drugs and medical procedures to improve intellectual performance is likely to increase significantly in the next 20 to 30 years as technology advances.

"We know that there is likely to be a demand by healthy individuals for this treatment," Dr Tony Calland, chairman of the BMA's Medical Ethics Committee said at the launch of a discussion paper on the issue.

"However, given that no drug or invasive medical procedure is risk free, is it ethical to make them available to people who are not ill?"

Why wouldn't it be ethical to make drugs or procedures available to people who are not ill? What is wrong with letting well people make themselves better? Perhaps it's competition they fear. Can't have the average idiots making themselves as smart as the cognoscenti, can we?

I am all for safety, but some folks seem to have a socialist view of medicine and do not want to see a day when people can make themselves more competitive by enhancing their "god-given" abilities. That wouldn't be "fair." But self-enhancing products do not remain out of reach for the average citizen for very long. Technology is always too expensive for most people in its early stages, but eventually everyone can have it. Computers and cell phones are just two examples of this phenomenon. So I say let the rich be the testers. Perfect the stuff with them and then, when all the bugs have been worked out, let me at it.

Brain-boosting drugs spark ethical debate in UK

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Scientists Shy Away from Human Enhancement...Again

I have written before about this phenomenon and wondered aloud about its psychological and sociological underpinnings. Here I go again. The article in question describes the creation of so-called super-mice: able to leap tall buildings, etc., but very quickly quotes the researchers as follows:

They emphasized that the aim of the research was not to prepare the way to enhance the genes of people.

And again:

"We humans have exactly the same gene. But this is not something that you'd do to a human. It's completely wrong. We do not think that this mouse model is an appropriate model for human gene therapy. It is currently not possible to introduce genes into the skeletal muscles of humans and it would not be ethical to even try."

No, no, no. We aren't even thinking of enhancing anybody. That would be wrong. We only want to help cure diseases:

Professor Hanson accepted that it was possible athletes might misuse any future drug developed in this way. He said: "It's very possible. It's a different approach to putting a gene into a human. I would only do that to help anyone who suffers from disorders such as cystic fibrosis."

Apparently it's politically incorrect to consider making humans better. We can only use science to bring everyone to the same level. I absolutely believe that we should find cures for diseases. I also believe that we should not shy away from enhancing ourselves.

How will the current mentality play itself out? I know there are researchers out there working at human enhancement, but when will it be seen as "ethical"? Will it ever?

The mouse that shook the world

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Humans and AI: A Symbiotic Relationship?

The idea that artificial intelligence will soon become super-intelligent and discover that humans are a nuisance to be exterminated forthwith is certainly a frightening vision of the near-term future. Some of the people who are actually engaged in what is transpiring take the position that the merest chance that this may actually happen should persuade us to cease and desist from all work on AI. Others, myself included, see the “us-them” separation between human and artificial minds as a disappearing distinction, and therefore beneath our concern. This, more optimistic, group envisions a symbiotic relationship that transforms into a complete melding of human with machine, until there are just minds, comprised of various amalgams of both.

In fact, symbiosis already exists between organic and non-organic intelligence. In my real-world occupation I am a financial aid adviser. At my finger tips are networks of schools, lenders, government agencies, and the machines and software applications that make the whole thing work. In a few minutes I can put together a financial aid package for a student so that their entire education at my school will be paid for. The machines could not do it without my mind’s assistance. I certainly could not do it without the technology, certainly not with the efficiency and productivity that is possible now. This symbiosis reminds me of Vernor Vinge’s excellent novel, A Deepness in the Sky.

In the novel, a race of humans called the Emergence develops a unique method of focusing the minds of humans to such an extent that, together with computers, they can transcend the power of either in previously unimaginable ways. This human-machine collaboration is not merely science-fiction, however. Some of the most effective search engines in existence today have humans in the loop. My prediction is that this symbiosis will continue, until technology arrives at literal physical blending, either by the instantiation of human minds into machines, or machine parts being connected directly with human neurons. Or both.

The result of this symbiosis/blending will be that there will exist no substantial distinction between humans and machines once AGI comes into being. I sure hope it turns out this way.

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Creation of Artificial Life to be Announced

We knew it was coming, but perhaps not this soon. Guardian Unlimited is reporting the imminent announcement of the creation of a completely man-made lifeform.

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

Will this be the development that finally captures the attention of the public? Will people begin to pay attention to the accelerating pace of technological progress? Will the idea of the singularity become firmly planted in the popular imagination? We will know soon enough.

The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming.

I can already hear the obtuse accusations that will be launched by the religious, and the ways that politicians will attempt to co-opt developments to the benefit of their own agendas. More's the pity. But no matter, the singularity will happen anyway. Stay tuned.

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The Call for Human Augmentation is Beginning

There have been innumerable occasions during my lifetime when I have wondered what it must have been like to be part of the beginning of something big. The 60s, for example. The sexual revolution. The birth of personal computing. I was not there at the beginning of many important, transformative periods. But this time, I am there. Or here.

I have written before about the absence of a hue and cry for technologies to augment the human animal. The last time I posted on this topic, a reader commented that cosmetic surgery was a kind of augmentation, but even there the goal is to bring people up to the standards of the super-beautiful, not really to go beyond what it means to be human. And I'm not talking about machines that exist outside of and separate from the body; we already have lots of those. I'm talking about enhancements to our senses that take us far beyond normal human ability, and to our powers of cognition, our durability, our ability to live underwater, etc. Almost no one in the mainstream of business or science is calling for that kind of augmentation. It is heartening, therefore, when someone with influence issues just such a call.

Ed Boyden, Assistant Professor in the MIT Media Lab and MIT Department of Biological Engineering, has written an excellent article called In Pursuit of Human Augmentation
The journey toward making "normal" obsolete. His central point:

It's arguably time for a discipline to emerge around the idea of human augmentation. At the MIT Media Lab, we are beginning to search for principles that govern the use of technology to augment human abilities--that make the idea of normal obsolete. As a codirector of the Center for Human Augmentation, I lead a lab, the Neuroengineering and Neuromedia Lab, that is developing devices that will hopefully eventually allow us to enhance memory, creativity, and happiness in humans.

Will his determination to be at the forefront of such a discipline catch on? I certainly hope so. Stay tuned.

Source article.

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Flexing Artificial Muscles

Combining biological and non-biological materials may allow researchers to use the best of both worlds to develop viable alternatives to worn out human parts. A great example of this trend has been announced on NewScientistTech: Muscular Films.

The term sounds more like gay porn than a scientific development, but it actually refers to the conjoining of thin sheets of polymer and living muscle tissue.

Thin sheets of polymer coated with living muscle could be used to test new drugs, repair damaged body parts, or even create life-like bio-machines, researchers say.

The Harvard University team created the "muscular thin films" by attaching muscle cells to elastic polymer sheets. By laying down striped patterns of proteins on these polymers, they were able to make the muscle cells arrange themselves into muscle fibres, similar to those in animals.

When shocked with electricity, the resulting hybrid material can be made to bend, roll up, or wriggle, at a rate that can easily be controlled.

To see video demonstrations of some of these muscular films in action, click here and here.

Confronting the Social Implications of the Singularity

Imagining the social implications and conundrums that humanity will be faced with in the coming decades with the development of machine consciousness and the uploading of human minds into machine substrates takes a special kind of mind. A mind like the one contained within the brain of Greg Egan.

Greg has both the technical knowledge, writing skills and penetrating imagination that, when combined, allow him to create fiction that examines many of the social dilemmas with which we will be confronted within a few tens of years. In his book of short stories, Axiomatic, Greg conceives some utterly captivating scenarios. Here are the gists of a few:

A ransom demand is made by a group that holds hostage a digital recreation of a man's wife. Does the virtual woman feel pain? Does she suffer? Should the man pay the ransom?

A man who has within his skull a "jewel" which has been matched with his own brain faces the prospect of turning over control of his body to the immortal jewel so that his biological brain can be disposed of. Is his consciousness that of the jewel, or the brain? When his brain is disconnected, will "he" die? Will the jewel be truly conscious, or will it be an imitation of consciousness? Is there a difference?

After an injury to his brain and its subsequent repair by nanobots, a man's perspective shifts to a position outside his body. Although he "knows" only that which his eyes can see, his mind builds a picture of reality as it might appear from a position a few feet above his physical body.

These are just a few of the stories within Axiomatic. If you want to think about what might actually happen when the singularity arrives, this book will certainly set you on the right path.

Axiomatic

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The Ethics of Enhancing Humanity

Not too long ago I raised the question, When will remediation become augmentation? In other words, when will medical science begin to use technology to enhance healthy people in addition to treating the sick? For the first time I have run across a notable figure actually urging medical researchers to do exactly that.

In Canberra, Julian Savulescu, professor of practical ethics at Oxford University and an eminent bio-ethisist, recently told a gathering there that Doctors are too focused on treating the sick and risk missing the enormous opportunities of using advances in medical science to "make happier, better people."

"If we cured all disease - cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. - we would only prolong life on average by 12 years," the Australian-born Savulescu said.

"So we have pretty much reached the ceiling of what we can do by treating and preventing disease."

The next frontier is enhancing life through medical intervention. We can be brighter, stronger, healthier.

He argued that many of us routinely use cognitive enhancers like caffeine and nicotine. Alcohol is another intervention, this time to improve mood and aid socialization. Prozac and Viagra are interventions.

Savulescu urged the medical profession to embrace new methodologies and not worry too much about ethical considerations.

"The sort of methodologies in science that I'm talking about are stem cell science, cloning and the new genetics," he said.

I predict that this sentiment will, unfortunately, be criticized by misguided people who will accuse scientists of "playing God," who alone, according to them, should have the right to improve humanity. But if a few visionary men and women see that there exists the potential for a massive market for such enhancements, the naysayers will just be whistling in the dark. At least this is what I hope. Let those who are against human enhancement remain as they are if that is their choice, but let them not claim the right to make that choice for me.

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Man-Made Life: Only 3 to 10 Years Away

Of course we will be inundated with cries of Who are you to play God, but nevertheless, man will create a completely new form of life in the lab, probably within 3 to 10 years. So says a recent report on Breitbart.com.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways—in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life—made from the basic chemicals in DNA—may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

When this announcement is made, unless there are a few equally groundbreaking developments occurring between now and then, I expect our public to begin to pay attention to the accelerating pace of technological progress. Will that be the beginning of a fierce, and perhaps violent debate over where we are headed? We may soon find out the answer to that question.

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I Have Set Before You Life and Death

These words, taken from the Bible, may have a meaning for us that is somewhat different to what the author intended. In a completely non-religious context, those of us who are still alive in the next 20 to 30 years may very well face this choice: Do I want to live forever?

In this BBC Channel Four documentary, the ideas of Aubrey de Grey, Ph. D., are examined. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, Aubrey de Grey is a biomedical gerontologist who is working on the goal he calls engineered negligible senescence.



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A Failure of Imagination

Is it just me? Or does this article, and many like it, strike you as exposing a stunning lack of vision on the part of scientists and the journalists who cover them? And if so, is this phenomenon part of a much larger problem in society as a whole?

Sorry to be so negative, but here's why I get the impressions mentioned above. Take a look at these quotes taken from this article in The University of Florida News.

Imagine a chip, strategically placed in the brain, that could prevent epileptic seizures or allow someone who has lost a limb to control an artificial arm just by thinking about it.

That's how the article begins. Is that the most you can imagine from the research that is being done as we speak? Chip implants are already being used to help control Parkinson's. Cochlear implants are helping deaf people hear. Now we're moving on to epileptics and amputees. That's excellent news, but it requires virtually no imagination at all, since these are merely the logical next steps. What would be a bit more imaginative would be envisioning chips that record and store all of our brains' signals and transmit them to a computer for analysis and decoding. I'm glad that there seem to be a few people who can see that actual potential of these developments, but why aren't there more?

“(Scientists have) realized that by going inside the brain we can capture so much more information, we can have much more resolution,” Sanchez said.

Really? They figured that out? How'd they do that? I think they figured that out in the 19th century.

The day may not be too far off when patients can control a prosthetic hand or leg just by thinking about it, Sanchez said.

Again, isn't this already happening? What would be new is when patients can move their prosthesis without thinking about it, just like you and I do. I don't think about moving my fingers to hit the keys that type out this sentence, I just do it. That's where we're headed.

Well, that's my rant for today. You can let me have it if you think I'm just being cranky.

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Researcher Hopes to Have the First Brain-Enhancing Implant

I stayed up far too late a couple of nights ago watching this video. I couldn't turn it off, it was so interesting. I bring it up to talk about one of the researchers featured in it who is currently developing a computer chip that he plans to connect directly to his own brain. He has already had surgery to connect leads to his own nervous system through his wrist, so I have little doubt he will do as he says.

Which brings me to a question I raised a couple of weeks ago in this blog: When will remediation become augmentation? In other words, when will implants move from helping the sick to enhancing the well? The answer may just lie with self-experimenters like the researcher in the film.

This raises an even more intriguing question: What will the experimenter experience? Imagine a chip designed to add processing power. How would such a chip, assuming that it is correctly designed, feel? Perhaps we should begin with a more simple implant, one that is designed to add to the experimenter's senses, maybe so that he can see in the infrared range. I would think he would have to learn how to mentally access the new linkage, then his brain would have to learn how to interpret the signals and how to integrate them into his field of view. Perhaps at first he would hallucinate, his mind not knowing how to decipher the new data stream.

Not being a neuroscientist myself, I am only indulging in wild speculation, and I am certain that trained professionals would be far better at this than I, but it is interesting to think about. I truly can't wait to hear about this brave man's experiences. Stay tuned.

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You Are What You Remember: Seeing Memories Form

For the first time ever, researchers have literally seen memories form in a brain. While the little aphorism in my title is overly broad, there is truth behind it, since the formation of memories (learning) is accomplished by changing the shape of the synaptic connections in certain regions of the brain.

Scientists at UC Irvine, led by Gary Lynch, professor of psychiatry and human behavior, have succeeded in viewing "the physical substrate, the ‘face,’ of newly encoded memory."

Working with advanced microscopic techniques called restorative deconvolution microscopy, the UC Irvine team found that the LTP-related markers appear during learning and are associated with expanded synapses in the hippocampus. Because the size of a synapse relates to its effectiveness in transmitting messages between neurons, the new results indicate that learning improves communication between particular groups of brain cells.

The findings open the way for one of the great objectives of the life sciences: mapping the distribution of memory across brain regions. The quest for the location of memory traces, or “engrams” as they are often called, preoccupied researchers for much of the 20th century but failed because there was no way to tag synapses modified by recent learning. The new results from the UC Irvine studies remove this obstacle.

Seeing the actual formation of memories is a huge step forward towards the eventual scanning and mapping of the contents of a human brain. Who we are as individuals is encoded in the physical structure and shape of our synaptic connections, along with the strength of those connections. Everything you know or have ever experienced, everything you are, will someday be containable and transferable within and between computer substrates.

We'll see how important regular backups are then.

[Source]

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Let There Be Light: Controlling Neurons with Photons

Researchers have learned how to control neurons with pulses of light.

The dancing worm in a German lab is actually a bioengineering project run by neurobiologist Alexander Gottschalk at the University of Frankfurt. Yellow light moved to forward, while blue light pulls it back. Why not green and red? Must be a technical issue. In any case, the differently-colored light pulses affect its neurons, which in turn operate its various muscles, resulting in the forward and backward motions.

The worm has been engineered so that its neurons can be turned off and on at will, using these flashed of light.

The worm is in the vanguard of a revolution in brain science - the most spectacular application yet of a technology that allows scientists to turn individual brain cells on and off at will. "It's really changing the whole field of neuroscience," says the worm's developer, neurobiologist Alexander Gottschalk at the University of Frankfurt.

One possibility is that the technology, coupled with a method of getting light into the human skull, could create a Brave New World of neuro-modification in which conditions such as depression or Parkinson's disease are treated not with sledgehammer drugs or electrodes, but with delicate pinpricks of light. In the long term it is even possible that such treatments could be modified to enhance normal brain function, for example improving memory or alertness.

The technology could also lead to spectacular advances in basic neuroscience, allowing researchers to tease apart the neural circuits that control everything from reflexes to consciousness with unprecedented accuracy. "We'll be able to understand how specific cell types in the brain give rise to fuzzy concepts like hope and motivation," predicts Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist at Stanford University in California, who is spearheading some of the work.

Everyone is already for any safe treatment for neurological diseases, but this article is one of the rare ones that also mention the possible use of the therapy to "enhance normal brain function." So the next time you have lights in your head, they may be doing you some good.

Source

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Future Technological Change: Evolutionary or Revolutionary?

Among the individuals making up the scientific community, according to Mike Treder of the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, there are two competing schools of thought concerning the near-term future changes in technology. One group, the majority, believes in a continued gradual slope of change. The other, a much smaller set of scientists, is expecting a discontinuity to occur fairly soon. They anticipate a change so transformative that society will not be the same subsequent to it. This transformation may be the result of advances in on of three possible fields: artificial intelligence, bioengineering, or nanotechnology.

Mike makes a compelling case for the idea that we will see a combination of the two futures. He posits that we are really talking about two different kinds of change: Societal and Technological. Technology often changes society, but not always immediately upon its invention. For example, the Internet was created some years before the World Wide Web made it accessible to most people. So Mike introduces the following graph:



He proposes several possible scenarios that could cause the sudden societal transformation shown in his graph:

• Significant improvements in software development and sophisticated user interfaces could produce a level of virtual reality that is close to indistinguishable from the real world.
• A combination of advanced neurotechnology and powerful supercomputing conceivably could enable consciousness uploading, in which a replica of an individual human mind would be recapitulated in cyberspace.
• Breakthroughs in computer programming could give rise to true artificial intelligence; if one or more such systems are capable of recursive self-improvement, this could lead to a superintelligence far surpassing human comprehension.
• In nanotechnology, the long anticipated development of exponential general-purpose molecular manufacturing could present tremendous opportunities for societal benefits while simultaneously bringing grave dangers such as economic meltdown, environmental havoc, or an unstable arms race.

Admittedly, there is a chance that none of this will occur. However, I wouldn't bet on it.

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Emergent Complexity and Biological Engineering: 21st Century Science

I have decided to add two fields of scientific research and development to my roster of subjects to keep up with on my Singularity Blog. As we have established a beachhead on the shores of the 21st century, these two fields have become, as some would put it, the new new things. As I continue to comb through large quantities of articles on current developments in order to bring to my readers relevant and interesting news, I will be including these two topics: Emergent Complexity and Biological Engineering.

Whereas, not too long ago, creationists were able to convince many that the complexity of life could not be explained by science and must therefore remain the province of a Creator, this realm alas has joined so many others in falling to the advancing armies of scientific investigation. Emergent complexity is now understood to show that complex systems do emerge naturally out of a large number of simple interactions, with no need for a controlling entity. With a few very simple rules for each ant to follow, the complex behavior of the colony emerges. The complex shapes of snowflakes emerge out of the simple interactions of water molecules. A flock of birds moves and shifts in the sky in highly complex and coordinated fashion, using only the simple rules followed by each bird. These are examples of emergent complexity. What does this have to do with Singularity?

As we build computers that approach the level of complexity of the human brain, the question arises: Is consciousness the natural result of complexity? When we are able to build systems with as many connections between transistors as there are synapses in the brain, will the first sentient machine be born? No matter what anyone thinks is the answer, we will all find out soon enough.

Bioengineering is coming to the forefront of science only recently, since we are approaching a degree of understanding and technological wizardry wherein we can engineer and transform our own biology. Of course a nightmare scenario will immediately come to mind, thanks to Mary Shelley, but we hope for better things, such as the eradication of genetic disease and even death itself.

So onward we go, and I hope you'll come along for the ride.

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Mouse Brains Examined Online

One of the expectations embedded in the Singularity is the creation of a computer with the power of a human brain, and one necessary (it seems) task to that end is to reverse-engineer the human brain. That means researchers need to be able to examine it in minute detail, at extremely high resolutions. Which is what makes this development such an important step forward.

A multi-institutional consortium including Duke University has created startlingly crisp 3-D microscopic views of tiny mouse brains -- unveiled layer by layer -- by extending the capabilities of conventional magnetic resonance imaging.

"These images can be more than 100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan," said G. Allan Johnson, Duke's Charles E. Putman Distinguished Professor of radiology and professor of biomedical engineering and physics. He is first author of a report describing the innovations set for publication in the research journal NeuroImage

The important elements that I see in this report are the increased resolution of the MRI technology and the availability for study of the resulting images.

The consortium has developed the computer infrastructure to collect a rapidly growing library of 3-D mouse brain data, and make all the data available on the web http://tinyurl.com/3cgj6z. The goal is to use mouse brains as surrogates for human brains to study the connections between genes and brain structure. Investigators from all over the world are sending their models to Duke where the 3-D images are acquired in a standardized fashion and made available via high speed web connections.

High resolution magnetic resonance imaging -- which the researchers call "MRI histology" provides distortion-free 3-D images with superb ability to distinguish subtle tissue differences in the brain, according to Johnson.

"The specimen is still actually in the skull," he said. "It hasn't been cut by a knife. It has not been dehydrated and distorted as it would be in conventional histological techniques."

Using computer-guided statistical methods, the data can be segmented into more than 30 anatomical structures with quantitative volume measurements. These structures can then be computer-enhanced to produce color-coded and labeled volume renderings of selected anatomical details in 3-D, seen at any angle.

MRI scanning is also quicker and costs less than conventional histology, he said. MRI histology permits study of an entire brain, which would be prohibitively expensive using conventional methods.

The specific research being done at Duke has to do with understanding the changes in phenotype (physical structure) that are associated with changes in genotype (gene expression). What happens if we don't allow this protein? How will that change the brain's structure? But this technology should also be useful to reverse-engineer the brain in order to simulate it effectively in a computer.

The fact that you have access to these images via the Internet is a major step forward. Not that you or I can learn anything from them, but the right scientists can. That's important. The power of multiple minds at work!

[Source: Eureka Alert]

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Precision Drug Delivery Achieved

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the key to nanotech's power is in its precision. Assembling structures one atom or molecule at a time, or delivering precise dosages of drugs to precise locations, it's about precision. Researchers at Iowa State University have made a major breakthrough in the latter by using nano-sized devices to "penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision."

Currently, scientists can successfully introduce a gene into a plant cell. In a separate process, chemicals are used to activate the gene's function. The process is imprecise and the chemicals could be toxic to the plant.

"With the mesoporous nanoparticles, we can deliver two biogenic species at the same time," Wang said. "We can bring in a gene and induce it in a controlled manner at the same time and at the same location. That's never been done before."

The devices themselves are amazing creations in their own right:

It is a porous, silica nanoparticle system. Spherical in shape, the particles have arrays of independent porous channels. The channels form a honeycomb-like structure that can be filled with chemicals or molecules.

"One gram of this kind of material can have a total surface area of a football field, making it possible to carry a large payload," Trewyn said.

Lin's nanoparticle has a unique "capping" strategy that seals the chemical goods inside. In previous studies, his group successfully demonstrated that the caps can be chemically activated to pop open and release the cargo inside of animal cells. This unique feature provides total control for timing the delivery.

Very little imagination is required to see where this research can lead in terms of the ability to deliver medicines and gene-therapies to the specific cells that need them. Even further, we can envision the development of nano-devices that will repair damaged cells and clean up the toxic waste products that our bodies fail to deal with. Radical life-extension, here we come.

Source

[via Nanosingularity]

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