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neurosciencestuff: Stem Cells Could Extend Human Life by Over...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 17:09:23 -0500

Stem Cells Could Extend Human Life by Over 100 Years

When fast-aging elderly mice with a usual lifespan of 21 days were injected with stem cells from younger mice at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Pittsburgh, the results were staggering. Given the injection approximately four days before they were expected to die, not only did the elderly mice live — they lived threefold their normal lifespan, sticking around for 71 days. In human terms, that would be the equivalent of an 80-year-old living to be 200.

Chimera Monkeys Created from Multiple Embryos

While all the donor cells were from rhesus monkeys, the researchers combined up to six distinct embryos into three baby monkeys. According to Dr. Mitalipov, “The cells never fuse, but they stay together and work together to form tissues and organs.” Chimera species are used in order to understand the role specific genes play in embryonic development and may lead to a better understanding of genetic mutation in humans.

via 27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts In 2012

Merry Xmas All!

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 02:48:38 -0500

Merry Xmas All!

jtotheizzoe: Catalog of Habitable Planets The idea of what...

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:34:59 -0500

jtotheizzoe:

Catalog of Habitable Planets

The idea of what makes a planet “habitable” is one of temperature, distance from its parent star, composition, etc. It’s not really one of utility, i.e. “actually being able to go live there”.

The search for exoplanets via NASA’s Kepler project and others has perhaps not discovered life-rich alien worlds (the equipment they use couldn’t do that if they tried), but it has reinforced the idea that there are a TON of planets out there. Planets, like or unlike our own, are very common.

The Planetary Habitability Laboratory at Puerto Rico’s Aricebo observatory (the big crater telescope from Contact) put together this catalog of potentially habitable known exoplanets ranked by their “Earth Similarity”. Visit the link for a load more details.

As our techniques and equipment advance, this list will surely grow by leaps and bounds. It doesn’t mean that any of them will harbor extraterrestrial life, but it reminds us that while the scientific characteristics of our home might not be uncommon, the ability for one species on Earth to search for others like it surely is something special.

ichthyologist: Risky Sex Jeevan Jose on Flickr

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 20:16:52 -0500

ichthyologist:

Risky Sex

Jeevan Jose on Flickr

Honey bees trained to stick out their tongues for...

Fri, 14 Dec 2012 21:46:42 -0500

Honey bees trained to stick out their tongues for science

Biologists at Bielefeld University have trained honey bees to stick out their tongues when their antennae touch an object.

The tactile conditioning study was conducted by a team from the lab of Volker Dürr, professor for biological cybernetics at Bielefeld, and will allow researchers to investigate how the honey bees use touch in pattern recognition and sense memory.

“We work with honey bees because they are an important model system for behavioural biology and neurobiology,” explained Dürr. “They can be trained. If you can train an insect to respond to a certain stimulus, then you can ask the bees questions in the form of ‘Is A like B? If so, stick your tongue out’.”

The process by which a bee sticks out its tongue when faced with a stimulus is known as the proboscis extension response. It can be conditioned in the bees as a response to a particular textured surface using sugar water. Each time a harnessed honey bee’s antennae touched the surface, the bee was given sugar water. Eventually the bee extends its tongue whenever it touches the right surface.

Currently the biologists are hoping to use the response to find out more about how bees use antennae movements to gather information about their surroundings.

“It is clear that if a bee touches something with an antenna, a finely textured structure, the bee has to move it to get the information it wants,” adds Dürr. “We don’t fully understand the relevance of this movement.”

neurosciencestuff: Electronic brain hacks are turning...

Fri, 07 Dec 2012 12:11:05 -0500

neurosciencestuff:

Electronic brain hacks are turning insects into robotic helpers

We’re a long way from directly controlling human minds remotely, but recent years have seen a string of breakthroughs in hacking the minds of insects. Insect brains are probably the simplest interesting brains, as insects can perform a range of tasks (flying, smelling, carrying, etc.) with brains that have numbers of neurons orders of magnitude less than those in complex vertebrates. A fruit fly has around 100,00 neurons, compared to 85 billion in humans.

So at the conjunction of neuroscience and robotics lie insects — their tiny brains still too complex to model completely, but offering an easy way into modelling certain parts of the brain. It’s how engineers from Sheffield and Sussex universities can claim they’re preparing to upload the smell and sight parts of a bee’s brain into a bee-like flying robot, enmeshed with human-created software to create a completely new “brain”.

The hope is that the bee-bot could fly in areas that other robots can’t fit, like a collapsed building. And it makes sense to use nature’s own smell modules instead of developing new ones — their combination of efficiency in size and operation is so far unmatched by anything synthetic. A bee-bot could smell out explosives in a warzone, or drugs in shipping containers, or any of many other myriad uses, and actually go investigate. They can even be used as little spies. Who would notice a fly sitting on the wall of a meeting room?

A lot of research in the area of bug brains is being funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon agency which seeks out new technologies for military use. It’s not hard to imagine a future where drones are grown on farms, with extra controls implanted at the larval stage — a process developed by bionic researchers at North Carolina State University.

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Snapped this photo right as he was walking on stage. Still feels...

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 13:54:14 -0500

Snapped this photo right as he was walking on stage. Still feels like I hallucinated playing MSG with those guys. I remember learning Dream On when I was 11 in summer camp.

Check out the film Charlotte and I produced with our friends...

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 07:28:24 -0500

Check out the film Charlotte and I produced with our friends 3AS4 directed by Jessica Mitrani!

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 16:32:52 -0400

My favorite graphic novelist Chris Ware rare interview.

Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:11:48 -0400

My favorite graphic novelist Chris Ware rare interview.:

Happy Birthday Fela!

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 14:44:03 -0400

Happy Birthday Fela!

Nana Vasconcelos shredding the berimbau…

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 02:30:15 -0400

Nana Vasconcelos shredding the berimbau…

Airto explaining Miles Davis without words. Amazing.

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 01:40:10 -0400

Airto explaining Miles Davis without words. Amazing.

Miles Davis once said Hermeto was the greatest musician alive.

Sat, 13 Oct 2012 00:55:21 -0400

Miles Davis once said Hermeto was the greatest musician alive.

In the studio with Yuko Araki and Keigo Oyamada from Cornelius....

Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:11:50 -0400

Dueling Udus

Machine Melee

In the studio with Yuko Araki and Keigo Oyamada from Cornelius. Making the new Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band album to be released @Chimeramusic for 2013!

Long Island…

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 13:37:34 -0400

Long Island…

Bubble sword. I prefer film.

Sat, 22 Sep 2012 00:17:30 -0400

Bubble sword. I prefer film.

Hey everyone, come see Kemp and Eden tomorrow at Joe’s Pub...

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 20:20:48 -0400

Hey everyone, come see Kemp and Eden tomorrow at Joe’s Pub tomorrow night in NYC at Joe’s Pub.

My first Op Ed piece in the NYTimes!

Tue, 28 Aug 2012 01:02:17 -0400

My first Op Ed piece in the NYTimes!:

Cells are societies…

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 01:08:23 -0400

Cells are societies…