Amazing science linkdump March 2013

One thing I really like about science is how we can use it to stop human misery. We could probably even use it help poor people too!

But I'll take helping the rich as a starting place.

Gel that stops bleeding instantly
I'm confused about why there's so much ballyhoo about this being used in wars. Drones don't bleed, right?

Another option is WE COULD STOP HAVING SO MANY FUCKING WARS.

Gene therapy cures leukemia in 8 days
For once, we're not curing mice. Actual people in actual remission.

Retinal implant gives sight to blind
If you have a certain kind of blindness to start with. But seriously, a much bigger deal than Google Glass.

Shake cancer off

Normally I save all these science-related links for one post, but, you know, oh well. In this article, the interesting bit is not only buried in the story, it also somehow escaped the headline:

Nanomaterials may help fight cancer

So might regular-size materials. So what? The cool part is here:

A team of scientists... developed a technique that uses gold-plated iron-nickel microdiscs connected to brain-cancer-seeking antibodies to fight cancer.


The discs posses a spin-vortex ground state and sit dormant on the cancer cell until a small alternating magnetic field is applied and the vortices shift, creating an oscillation. The energy from the oscillation is transferred to the cell and triggers apoptosis, or "cell suicide."

 They want to shake cancer cells to death. I hope we get diseases cured before the world ends. Because I'll be all like "In your face, infirmity! Woo!"

The latest in science!

SCIENCE! Every once in a while, I'm reminded that I don't read New Scientist magazine often enough. These articles have fascinated me lately:


Reality might be a hologram
When good science questions fundamental ideas about reality is when I really love science. There's no easy summary pullquote from this article, but try this on:

GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in.

 New strategy: Let the wookiee win.


From questioning reality, we move to questions of humanity:


Why you're only half-human
Your other half probably isn't what you thought it was.

The ability of viruses to unite, genome-to-genome, with their hosts has clear evolutionary significance. For the host, it means new material for evolution. If a virus happens to introduce a useful gene, natural selection will act on it and, like a beneficial new mutation, it may spread through the population.

 And as long as we're evoking "natural selection", please see:


Darwinism's limits
As much as I love science, I hate the sloppy equivocation of "Darwinism" with "science." Modern thinkers scrawl Darwin's name on their notebooks inside bubbly hearts. The lack of critical thinking -- and the schoolyard taunt of "ID-iot" for anyone who tries -- undermines the formidable utility of scientific methodology. We need more people criticizing and testing Darwinism and evolution without fear of ridicule or professional reprisal.


From the article:

Much of the vast neo-Darwinian literature is distressingly uncritical. The possibility that anything is seriously amiss with Darwin's account of evolution is hardly considered. Such dissent as there is often relies on theistic premises which Darwinists rightly say have no place in the evaluation of scientific theories. So onlookers are left with the impression that there is little or nothing about Darwin's theory to which a scientific naturalist could reasonably object. The methodological scepticism that characterises most areas of scientific discourse seems strikingly absent when Darwinism is the topic.

While I'm on the topic, there's an article I've saved for years from the Philadelphia Daily News entitled Darwinism: Right, But Beside the Point? The full online text is in a pay archive, but since I've got the paper copy in front of me, here's the money shot:

Darwinian evolution -- whatever its other virtues -- isn't the cause for experimental breakthroughs in biology. ...For students aspiring to benefit society through experimental biology, Darwinism is simply beside the point.

Time's up for Darwinism fetishism. Let's move on, Internet.


Finally, for the apocalypse lover in you:


Digital Doomsday: the end of knowledge
This is the monster in my closet, the reason I keep a copy of the US Army Survival Manual: FM 21-76 on my bookshelf.

Yet even as we are acquiring ever more extraordinary knowledge, we are storing it in ever more fragile and ephemeral forms. If our civilisation runs into trouble, like all others before it, how much would survive?

None of that helps if my glasses get smashed in the apocalypse though.


Happy science everyone!

More ooky science

I wish the future would hurry up and get here already. I'm tired of all this mortality.

Baby goop heals wounds 3x as fast
They call it "baby butter" in the story, but my term is more marketable, I bet.

Grow teeth like sharks
Wouldn't it be awesome never to have to brush your teeth again? M and I are both (unfortunately) dedicated teeth grinders. This would allow us to not have to solve our deep-rooted stressors! Great idea!

Synthetic lethality kills cancer tumors
I'm frightened and thrilled by the phrase "synthetic lethality." That's a dystopian term waiting for application. Who knew it wouldn't involve androids and laser pistols?

Le Voyage dans la BOOM

We shot a missile at the moon. We punched the moon.

I think we can all agree that humans in America got problems, but I'm gonna risk some hyperbole to say I don't think there's ever been a more amazing time to be conscious.

The future soon

I wish it would hurry up and be the future.

Students embed stem cells in sutures to enhance healing
Stem cells are so great. I want more stem cells in my life.

Pedal-powered mass transit
This has been making the rounds recently, and I usually try to avoid bandwagon-hopping here at QT, but what the hell.

Telescope implants
It's meant for people with eye problems, but I'm thinking: cyber-pirates.

Electronic tattoo runs on blood
As we join it, the future has been trending away from cyberpunk. But it's good to know that it's still lurking, under the skin.

Humans Ape Dolphins

It's been two weeks since I've written anything here, and I won't try to tell you my life is too boring to write about, because it isn't. I haven't said a thing about riding bumper cars in Atlantic City with Teller, or going to Boston for a weekend to play games with long lost friends, or the bizarre job I've been doing on Bible trading cards, or the monsters I've been cranking out and giving away lately.

And it isn't that I've been "too busy" to write. Here's a free bullshit detector tip: People who are genuinely busy don't tell you they're busy. They tell you what they're doing, because they're parietal lobe-deep in the work, and that's all they have to talk about.

As usual, I've got a few half-formed ideas about faith and games and the ongoing process of becoming productive that I haven't bothered to write down. But I haven't written any of them down, so you won't see those here either.

Instead, I'm breaking my electronic silence to link to an article about humans learning to function with echolocation. It had never occurred to me that people would be capable of it. Huh.

February Linkdump

Grammar of comic book lettering
This is the sort of detail that I read and try to memorize. I don't know what that says about me, but I'm afraid it might be bad.

Penn gets proselytized
My ground rule for evangelicals in America is, "Tell them you follow Jesus, and then don't be crazy." Here's a video of Penn telling a story about that guy.



Water that kills salmonella
According to the L.A. times, it's not too good to be true, but you'll think it is.

LiverBEST

Thanks to genetic diddling, senior citizen mice have livers that don't age.

Published in today's online edition of Nature Medicine, researchers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University in New York City also say the older organs function as well as they did when the host animal was younger.

The researchers, led by Associate Professor Ana Maria Cuervo, blocked the ageing process in mice livers by stopping the build-up of harmful proteins inside the organ's cells.

I am getting skeptical about reports of genetic efficacy though. I've been hearing this "only 20 years from now" story for... 20 years. When do I get to stroll through lava? When can I shoot lasers from my eyes? Where's my superpowers, dammit?

"Our findings are particularly relevant for neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's," she said. "Many of these diseases are due to 'misbehaving' or damaged proteins that accumulate in neurons. By preventing this decline in protein clearance, we may be able to keep these people free of symptoms for a longer time."

Oh well. Thanks to the sacrifice of millions of mice, I vote for their replacing dogs as man's best friend. Rover will get my slippers, but Squeaker's great-great-great-great grandpa cured Parkinson's.

Bad dog! Bad!

Nanogoo Stops Bleeding Instantly

More from the world of previously improbable science:

The new material can be poured over a site and will stop the bleeding almost at once.

Unlike other future-tech treatments, this one seems mostly ready. Just has to finish some tests and clear the FDA hurdles. Much more dangerous substances do that on a regular basis, so let's go already, FDA!

BlogaDay: Repost Month

I forgot to mention, I'm doing BlogaDay again this month, trying to post at least once a day for all of May.

I'm changing the rules, because I'm not bothering with all-original content this month. Many Mayposts will be pointers to things I found other places, with little or no commentary.

Posting more, saying less. It's like conservation of energy, only with teleology.

Speaking of energy, here's today's link:

We might be able to get biofuels from a microbe that we don't have to kill in the process, and that can live in seawater.

Go microbes!

Bacta: Within Reach

2-1B! Get on this!

In a few years, they think they'll be able to fix your spine with nanogoo.

Northwestern University researchers have shown that a nano-engineered gel inhibits the formation of scar tissue at the injury site and enables the severed spinal cord fibers to regenerate and grow. The gel is injected as a liquid into the spinal cord and self-assembles into a scaffold that supports the new nerve fibers as they grow up and down the spinal cord, penetrating the site of the injury.

When the gel was injected into mice with a spinal cord injury, after six weeks the animals had a greatly enhanced ability to use their hind legs and walk.

I wish all the cool medicine wasn't going to happen in 10-20 years. I'm led to believe that some people are in pain now.

Watch out Stomach, Here it Comes

More from the "grow your own" system of wonderful and creepy healthcare:

Finnish patient gets new jaw from own stem cells

Scientists in Finland said they had replaced a 65-year-old patient's upper jaw with a bone transplant cultivated from stem cells isolated from his own fatty tissue and grown inside his abdomen.

Understand, I don't want to live forever. I just don't want it to suck while I'm alive.

November Linkdump

Thursday ended before I got done with it.

Here's everything I've had open in a tab for the last month thinking I was going to get around to doing something with it.


Stem cell controversy: effectively over.
Now let's get on with the business of growing larger penises for insecure men.

Covering the Mouse.
A blog of covers of Disney songs. I like the idea, but this is like, a mini-series blog, right? Are there really that many cover tunes of Disney songs?

Update! Kurtis assures me that he has enough Disney cover tunes to last until the heat death of the universe. Go have a listen, whydoncha.

Heavy Ink.
This might be my new comic book store. I can't tell yet.

Photos and video of real-life Shaolin monks.

Tricksy military camouflage.
Rubber tanks! Neat!

How to make your own tact-tiles.
The manufacturer of this RPG aid apparently decided they were tired of making money or something. I emailed them six months ago asking when they might be selling their wares again, and they said they wouldn't make any more at least through the end of the year, and now their Web site is down. So screw it, I'll make my own.

Mice Get All The Cool Stuff

These days, every couple of months some lab coat issues a press release about how his or her team has used stem cells to replace livers or arms or something. This month, it's eyes. OMG I would totally marry stem cells if I wasn't already engaged.

The other day I was thinking about the maladies that accompany mortality, and I felt pretty capable of learning to accept cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, etc. But I get a case of the heebie-jeebies thinking that some day I could go blind.

So I'm glad they're developing the technology for seeing-eye mice when my vitreous humor dries up in about 20 years.