By Dr Aubrey de Grey
University of Cambridge

Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000. Here, he explains why.

Ageing is a physical phenomenon happening to our bodies, so at some point in the future, as medicine becomes more and more powerful, we will inevitably be able to address ageing just as effectively as we address many diseases today.

I claim that we are close to that point because of the SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) project to prevent and cure ageing.

It is not just an idea: it’s a very detailed plan to repair all the types of molecular and cellular damage that happen to us over time.

More . . .

The neurological basis for poor witness statements and hallucinations has been found by scientists at UCL (University College London). In over a fifth of cases, people wrongly remembered whether they actually witnessed an event or just imagined it, according to a paper published in NeuroImage this week.

read more

Article from Businessweek Online

Organic foods are increasingly popular and command premium prices. But it isn’t an easy switch for farmers, and that tightens the supply chain

Six months ago, Sheryl O’Loughlin, the chief executive of Clif Bar Inc., had a tough problem to crack. The head of operations at the Berkeley (Calif.)-based maker of energy and nutrition bars had just informed her that the company’s source of organic almonds had dried up. Having gone through the difficult and time-consuming process of getting her Clif and Luna health bars certified as organic barely two years, O’Loughlin wasn’t about to go back. She needed to get her hands on some organic almonds, even if that meant paying top dollar.

More at the site . . .

Becoming a father tends to change a man’s outlook, but now scientists are showing it might also change his brain. This ScienCentral News video explains that new research in father mice reveals how time spent with their young benefits the brain.

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Almost any radio in the world is available through this web site. Right now I’m listening to a high-bandwidth trance dance station in Hungary (and learning Hungarian, I might add, since that’s the language I SHOULD be studying )

If you have even a remote curiosity about what’s going on real-time in the rest of the world, you owe yourself a check-in on this site. It’s a hell of a lot of fun to listen in.

-Zack

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Ever wondered who your ancestors really are? Or, more importantly, are you really from the background that you think you’re from? On Saturday, 65 people got some surprising answers using the latest DNA technology at a workshop at the College of Alameda.

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Coffee may counteract alcohol’s poisonous effects on the liver and help prevent cirrhosis, researchers say. In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 percent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 percent.

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Monkeys fed a diet rich in trans-fat, commonly found in fast foods, grew bigger bellies than those fed a diet rich in unsaturated fats, but containing the same overall number of calories. They also developed signs of insulin resistance, which is an early indicator of diabetes.

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Contributed by Mike
Friday, June 9th, 2006 @ 11:27AM

from the one-way-to-look-at-things dept

One of the more annoying things we’ve found when discussing how the entertainment industry needs to adapt and change and embrace new technologies in place of their old business model, is the repeated claim that it’s impossible to make money if the content is given away for free. Impossible is a pretty absolute statement — and all you need is one example to disprove it. However, as we’ve shown, there are many, many examples of entertainers who have learned how to make more money out of giving away their content — which seems to disprove the whole “impossible” bit. However, the industry folks don’t seem to know how to respond to that, so they just keep saying it’s impossible.
(article continues . . . )

Read More (and check the links and comments at techdirt.com . . .)

Technically speaking, anyone can mine diamonds. But Apollo can GROW them. By the end of 2007, Apollo aims to be producing flawless 1-inch by 1-inch diamond cubes that could drive research into some very interesting areas!

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Recent research, shows that at the lowest temperature point at which the change of state occurs — called the Quantum Critical Point — the Han purple pigment actually loses a dimension: it goes from 3D to 2D.

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Teens diagnosed with bipolar disorder are more likely to interpret neutral facial expressions as hostile and react with fear, a new study shows.

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SCIENCE JOURNAL

Sharon Begley, November 5, 2004

All of the Dalai Lama’s guests peered intently at the brain scan projected onto screens at either end of the room, but what different guests they were.

On one side sat five neuroscientists, united in their belief that physical processes in the brain can explain all the wonders of the mind, without appeal to anything spiritual or nonphysical.

Facing them sat dozens of Tibetan Buddhist monks in burgundy-and-saffron robes, convinced that one round-faced young man in their midst is the reincarnation of one of the Dalai Lama’s late teachers, that another is the reincarnation of a 12th-century monk, and that the entity we call “mind” is not, as neuroscience says, just a manifestation of the brain.

It was not, in other words, your typical science meeting.

But although the Buddhists and scientists who met for five days last month in the Dalai Lama’s home in Dharamsala, India, had different views on the little matters of reincarnation and the relationship of mind to brain, they set them aside in the interest of a shared goal. They had come together in the shadows of the Himalayas to discuss one of the hottest topics in brain science: neuroplasticity.

The term refers to the brain’s recently discovered ability to change its structure and function, in particular by expanding or strengthening circuits that are used and by shrinking or weakening those that are rarely engaged. In its short history, the science of neuroplasticity has mostly documented brain changes that reflect physical experience and input from the outside world. In pianists who play many arpeggios, for instance, brain regions that control the index finger and middle finger become fused, apparently because when one finger hits a key in one of these fast-tempo movements, the other does so almost simultaneously, fooling the brain into thinking the two fingers are one. As a result of the fused brain regions, the pianist can no longer move those fingers independently of one another.

Lately, however, scientists have begun to wonder whether the brain can change in response to purely internal, mental signals. That’s where the Buddhists come in. Their centuries-old tradition of meditation offers a real-life experiment in the power of those will-o’-the-wisps, thoughts, to alter the physical matter of the brain.

“Of all the concepts in modern neuroscience, it is neuroplasticity that has the greatest potential for meaningful interaction with Buddhism,” says neuroscientist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. The Dalai Lama agreed, and he encouraged monks to donate (temporarily) their brains to science.

The result was the scans that Prof. Davidson projected in Dharamsala. They compared brain activity in volunteers who were novice meditators to that of Buddhist monks who had spent more than 10,000 hours in meditation. The task was to practice “compassion” meditation, generating a feeling of loving kindness toward all beings.

“We tried to generate a mental state in which compassion permeates the whole mind with no other thoughts,” says Matthieu Ricard, a Buddhist monk at Shechen Monastery in Katmandu, Nepal, who holds a Ph.D. in genetics.

In a striking difference between novices and monks, the latter showed a dramatic increase in high-frequency brain activity called gamma waves during compassion meditation. Thought to be the signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung brain circuits, gamma waves underlie higher mental activity such as consciousness. The novice meditators “showed a slight increase in gamma activity, but most monks showed extremely large increases of a sort that has never been reported before in the neuroscience literature,” says Prof. Davidson, suggesting that mental training can bring the brain to a greater level of consciousness.

Using the brain scan called functional magnetic resonance imaging, the scientists pinpointed regions that were active during compassion meditation. In almost every case, the enhanced activity was greater in the monks’ brains than the novices’. Activity in the left prefrontal cortex (the seat of positive emotions such as happiness) swamped activity in the right prefrontal (site of negative emotions and anxiety), something never before seen from purely mental activity. A sprawling circuit that switches on at the sight of suffering also showed greater activity in the monks. So did regions responsible for planned movement, as if the monks’ brains were itching to go to the aid of those in distress.

“It feels like a total readiness to act, to help,” recalled Mr. Ricard.

The study will be published next week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We can’t rule out the possibility that there was a pre-existing difference in brain function between monks and novices,” says Prof. Davidson, “but the fact that monks with the most hours of meditation showed the greatest brain changes gives us confidence that the changes are actually produced by mental training.”

That opens up the tantalizing possibility that the brain, like the rest of the body, can be altered intentionally. Just as aerobics sculpt the muscles, so mental training sculpts the gray matter in ways scientists are only beginning to fathom.

Reference: http://www.urbandharma.org/udharma8/monksmed.html

Original Research Link on PNAS

These are called mistakes, but I must say I enjoy reading these formations of language in the same way I enjoy good poetry. Enjoy . . .

===================================
Journalism 110
Grammar and language mistakes

The following are examples from around the world illustrating what happens when we misuse the English language.

In a Belgrade hotel elevator:
To move the cabin, push button for wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by national order.

In a Tokyo Hotel:
Is forbidden to steal hotel towels please. If you are not a person to do such thing is please not to read not is.

In a Rhodes tailor shop:
Order your summers suit. Because is big rush we will execute customers in strict rotation.

In a Yugoslavian hotel:
The flattening of underwear with pleasure is the job of the chambermaid.

On the menu of a Polish hotel:
Salad a firm’s own make; limpid red beet soup with cheesy dumplings in the form of a finger; roasted duck let loose; beef rashers beaten up in the country people’s fashion.

From a brochure of a car rental firm in Tokyo:
When passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet him melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage then tootle him with vigor.

Two signs from a Majorcan shop entrance:

English well talking.

Here speeching American.

Examples of English misuse found in various student papers from the United States:

* The patchwork guilts had been sown by Grandma Dee.

* I felt as if I had been trown into a room of hungry loins.

* You always new when he come in the room because of the smell of his strange colon.

* Next, break the eggs into two bowels.

* Teachers harassing students will continue because the authorities don’t care about the students body.

* He slipped into a comma and died.

– Richard Lederer’s, “Anguished English”

The Spaniards may have been right all along – a siesta after a hearty lunch is natural, new research suggests.
Scientists at The University of Manchester have for the first time uncovered how brain cells or ‘neurons’ that keep us alert become turned off after we eat.

The findings – published in the scientific journal Neuron this week – have implications for treating obesity and eating disorders as well as understanding levels of consciousness.

“It has been known for a while that people and animals can become sleepy and less active after a meal, but brain signals responsible for this were poorly understood,” said Dr Denis Burdakov, the lead researcher based in Manchester’s Faculty of Life Sciences.

“We have pinpointed how glucose – the sugar in food – can stop brain cells from producing signals that keep us awake.

Dr Burdakov’s research has shown exactly how glucose blocks or ‘inhibits’ neurons that make orexins – tiny proteins that are vital for normal regulation of our state of consciousness.

“These cells are critical for responding to the ever-changing body-energy state with finely orchestrated changes in arousal, food seeking, hormone release and metabolic rate to ensure that the brain always has adequate glucose.”

Malfunction of orexin neurons can lead to narcolepsy, where sufferers cannot stay awake, and obesity; there is also evidence that orexin neurons play a role in learning, reward-seeking and addiction.

“We have identified the pore in the membrane of orexin-producing cells that is responsible for the inhibiting effect of glucose.

“This previously unknown mechanism is so sensitive it can detect minute changes in glucose levels – the type that occurs between meals for example.

“This may well provide an explanation for after-meal tiredness and why it is difficult to sleep when hungry.

“Now we know how glucose stops orexin neurons ‘firing’, we have a better understanding of what may occur in disorders of sleep and body weight.

“This research perhaps sheds light on why our European friends are so fond of their siestas.”

Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2006-06/uom-wwc060106.php