Mekka

I'm retiring to Denmark!!!

Sexual Healing

The Danish government pays for the disabled and elderly to watch porn and have sex with prostitutes.

Caregivers in Copenhagen have found that pornography and prostitutes have a greater calming effect on their elderly patients thantraditional medical treatment such as drug therapy.

The caregivers have told Danish media that pornography is healthier, cheaper and easier to use than medicine, Lars Elmsted Petersen, a spokesman for the Danish seniors' lobby group Aeldresagen, said.

(Via Marginal Revolution)

[Found at Ottmar Liebert ]

Zero Emmissions in the Future?

"Smaller than a DVD player - small enough to sit comfortably under the hood of any truck or car - it could be big enough to solve the world's greenhouse gas emission problems, at least for the near future.

In fact, it could make the Kyoto protocol obsolete. "

[Found at MetaFilter]

Organic concrete

Organic concrete

BETÃO ORGÂNICO, by Lisbon-based architects and designers e-studio, is an organic concrete developed to conciliate the vegetable and the inorganic in a single element.

Exploiting concrete’s capacity to retain humidity, the material functions as a battery in which the water is released during dry periods. Applied as a surface, organic concrete makes it possible to obtain permeable living surfaces, offering a natural component for public urban spaces.

The work will be shown at experimenta design, Lisbon, Sep 16 - Oct 30.
More concrete: self-scrubbing buildings, bendable concrete, carbon-eating cement, communicating concrete, light-transmitting concrete.

[Found at we make money not art]

Another hydrogen pellet technology is announced

Another hydrogen pellet technology is announced

 

Researchers at the Technological University of Denmark have announced the creation of another solid-state form for  storing hydrogen. In this scheme, which differs significantly from  hydride storage techniques, ammonia is absorbed into a  tablet of sea salt in what appears to be a twist on the  ammonia borane concept. The  ammonia would be released from the salt in some unspecified manner (through heating, perhaps), and when passed over a  catalyst, it would release hydrogen. This would result in a relatively safe way to store energy, without high pressures  or risk of fire or explosion. Ammonia is already one of the most common industrial and agricultural chemicals (not to  mention its popularity with meth producers), and some feel strongly that it’s  suitable for use as an energy storage mechanism. A  thank-you goes out to our reader sine~language for the tip.

[Found via Autoblog]

New method for trapping light may improve communications technologies

New method for trapping light may improve communications technologies

A discovery by Princeton researchers may lead to an efficient method for controlling the transmission of light and improve new generations of communications technologies powered by light rather than electricity.

In an experiment, the researchers proved for the first time that quasicrystal structures are better for trapping and redirecting light than ordinary crystals  because their structure is more nearly spherical. The quasicrystal design can block light from escaping no matter which direction it traveled.

The finding represents an advance for photonics -- in which light replaces electricity as a means for transmitting and processing information -- and could lead to the development of faster telecommunications and computing devices. Photonics consumes less energy and is faster than electronics to channel information.

"Controlled light can be directed, switched and processed like electrons in an electronic circuit, and such photonic devices have many applications in research and in communications," noted physicist Paul Steinhardt.

The researchers are now exploring ways of miniaturizing the structure in order to utilize the device with visible light instead of microwaves. They also are examining whether the quasicrystal designs may be useful in electronic and acoustic applications.

Via PhysOrg. News @ Princeton.

[Found via we make money not art]

Anti-cancer smart bomb

Anti-cancer smart bomb

MIT researchers have designed a nanoparticle that can burrow into a tumor, seal the exits and detonate a lethal dose of anti-cancer toxins, all while leaving healthy cells unscathed.

Using ready-made drugs and materials, "we created a balloon within a balloon, resembling an actual cell," explains Shiladitya Sengupta, a postdoctoral associate.

The team loaded the outer membrane of the nanocell with an anti-angiogenic drug (that cuts off the blood supply to starve tumors to death) and the inner balloon with chemotherapy agents. The nanocells are small enough to pass through tumor vessels, but too large for the pores of normal vessels.

Once the nanocell is inside the tumor, its outer membrane disintegrates, rapidly deploying the drug. The blood vessels feeding the tumor then collapse, trapping the loaded nanoparticle in the tumor, where it slowly releases the chemotherapy.

When tested in mice, the nanocell shrank the tumor, stopped angiogenesis and avoided systemic toxicity much better than other treatment and delivery variations. However, the nanocell worked better against melanoma than lung cancer, indicating the need to tweak the design for different cancers.

Via MIT news.

Australians are also working on "smart bombs" that blast cancer tumours.

[Via we make money not art]

Applied Minds Think Remarkably

Applied Minds Think Remarkably

Xeni Jardin: I filed a report for Wired News today on the goings-on inside R&D firm Applied Minds, founded by former Disney Imagineers Bran Ferren (at right in the snapshot I took below) and Danny Hillis (left).

We walk through a series of curving white hallways punctuated with oddities -- remnants of spaceships over here, posters from turn-of-the-century traveling magic shows over there. We enter a dark room that vibrates with a quiet, electronic purr. In the middle stands a table covered with a vivid, full-color map bathed in light from an overhead projector.

"This is something I've always dreamed about," says Hillis, grinning widely. "I always loved big paper maps I could spread out on a table, but later I loved computer screens because you can make them dance for you. This combines both."

He taps the map surface and sweeps his hands apart, as if he's swimming. The Earth zooms closer. North America becomes California, then Los Angeles, then we see tiny parking spaces with human silhouettes. He drags a finger, and the map sweeps east; he drags it another direction, and the world follows.

Both hands scoop together, and we fly back out again. He squeezes the world into a ball and spins it. He pauses, and looks up at me. "Your mouth is dropping open!" he laughs.

A few paces away, Hillis demos another high-tech map table -- at the flick of a button, this one bursts into life. Mountains rise up, valleys drop down, seas flatten. Underneath the map's synthetic material surface, a system of pins raise or lower in groups to dynamically form shapes. I pet a mountain, then trace down a bumpy ravine with my index finger, and caress a smooth riverbed. My jaw remains open. The "Earth" feels alive.

Hillis explains that this device is called the 2.5-D display, and was developed with Northrop Grumman. "They've used the first ones internally," Hillis shrugs. "We don't know what we're going to do with it yet." 

Link

[Found via Boing Boing]

Robo-legs

Robo-legs

Xeni Jardin: A recent New York Times profile about a young man named Cameron Clapp. At the story link, you'll find photographs of the high-tech robotic prostheses that this young amputee uses for greater mobility. Below, a photo I took of Cameron at Wired Magazine's NEXTFEST last year (more pics).

BLOND and buff, Cameron Clapp is a teenage star. Dressed fashionably in a faded T-shirt, baggy shorts and sneakers, he recently strolled the crowded sidewalks of Times Square. He walked confidently, flashing the megawatt smile that brightens his Web site and various photographs in newspapers and magazines that have chronicled his story as he travels the country.

Few, if any, of the onlookers had little idea that he is the poster manchild of a new generation of people who are not only embracing all types of breakthrough technologies but also incorporating them into their bodies. For people who see Cameron Clapp for the first time, he is an object of wonderment: a young man walking and talking tall on shiny robotic legs.

"I make it look easy," said Mr. Clapp, who is 19 and still shows flickers of the cocky skater boy he was before he became what he calls "a severe case."

Mr. Clapp lost both his legs above the knee and his right arm just short of his shoulder after falling onto train tracks almost five years ago near his home in Grover Beach, Calif. After years of rehabilitation and trying a series of prosthetics, each more technologically sophisticated than the last, he finally found his legs.

"I do have a lot of motivation and self-esteem," Mr. Clapp said, "but I might look at myself differently if technology was not on my side." In the last few years, technology has definitely been on his side, in the form of the C-Leg. Introduced by Otto Bock HealthCare, a German company that makes advanced prosthetics, the C-Leg combines computer technology with hydraulics. It literally does the walking for the walker.

Link to story, and here is Cameron's website. (Thanks, Berny Clapp, and Susannah Breslin!)

And a friend of the Clapp family shares this link to Cameron's newly-minted flickr account, where he'll be posting snapshots from all the places his "robo-legs" take him. Link (thanks, Richard Boult!)

Previously on Boing Boing -- Xeni on NPR: Computer limbs help trilateral amputee run again, and After saturation coverage of Olympics, why no Paralympics TV coverage in US?

[Found via Boing Boing]

Human eggs may soon be created from stem cells

Human eggs may soon be created from stem cells

Scientists have taken the first step towards creating human eggs and sperm in the laboratory using stem cells, making it possible of one day growing sperm and eggs artificially for IVF treatment, therapeutic cloning and medical research.

Although much work needs to be done before human sperm and eggs can be grown in a laboratory, the research could be an "extraordinary breakthrough" for couples, by allowing them to produce a child with a mix of their genetic material even if both are infertile. The treatment of developing eggs and sperm from stem cells, which can be taken from anywhere on the body, would also be less invasive than current methods.

Anna Smajdor, from Imperial College London, said the work opened a potential Pandora's Box. "The technique can be used to generate eggs from a man's somatic cells, [so] gay couples could have children genetically related to both," she said. "Single men could even produce a child using their own sperm and an engineered egg, opening the way to a new form of cloning. Women's fertility would no longer need to be curtailed at the menopause.

"These possibilities raise new questions about how we define parenthood and about how we decide who has access to these new technologies."

Via Scotsman and New Scientist.

[Found via we make money not art]

Human brain cells and long-lasting blood vessels grown in labs

Human brain cells and long-lasting blood vessels grown in labs

Neuroscientists will soon be able to grow human brain cells in petri dishes.

"It's like an assembly line," says Bjorn Scheffler, at the University of Florida. "We can basically take these cells and freeze them until we need them. Then we thaw them, begin a cell-generating process, and produce a tonne of new neurons."

Scheffler collected stem cells from mice and doused them with chemicals to make them grow into different types of cell in the body, a process called differentiation. During the process, his team took pictures of the cells every few minutes.

The scientists confirmed that development of stem cells in the brain is similar to the way in which blood cells are produced from stem cells in bone marrow, which led to insights for bone marrow transplants. The new technique holds the promise of producing a supply of a person's cells that may be able to treat disorders such as Parkinson's disease and epilepsy and could lead to the development of new drugs to encourage damaged nerves to re-grow.

Via The Guardian. UF News.

Another team of scientists, at Duke University, have been able to make long-lasting blood vessels from human cells.

They have solved short life-span of the cells by infecting the donor cells with a harmless virus carrying an enzyme to encourage longevity.

All human cells have "inbuilt timers" called telomeres, which shorten every time a cell divides. Cells from older people have shorter telomeres and therefore can multiply far less than cells from younger people.

The scientists took samples of discarded vein from elderly men and treated the cells with a virus carrying the enzyme human telomerase reverse-transcriptase (hTERT). By blocking the telomere timers, hTERT helped the cells to keep on multiplying.

The researchers say the findings could help heart patients who need artery grafts. However, there is still some work to be done before engineered blood vessels can be used to treat patients.

Via BBC News. Duke News.

[Found via we make money not art]