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Singularity Summit 2008 Reviewed

Singularity Hub is proud to deliver the web’s most comprehensive coverage and analysis of the Singularity Summit 2008. The Singularity Summit is the premier annual event for those that are interested in the singularity. Below you will find our high level summary, followed by a link to a much more detailed description with pictures.

On Saturday October 25, 2008 I attended the Singularity Summit at the Montgomery Theatre in San Jose, CA. An impressive lineup of speakers, including Ray Kurzweil (de facto singularity advocate), Peter Diamandis (Founder/Chairman of Xprize Foundation), Vernor Vinge (famous science fiction author), and Justin Rattner (CTO of Intel) were on showcase for the roughly 500 attendees. The summit was thought provoking, inspiring, and overall a success.

The summit began promptly at 9:00am and continued throughout the day until 6:00pm with a few breaks in between and a one and a half hour lunch break. Here are the Hub’s major takeaways from the event:

1. When people become believers in a near term singularity (a singularity that may come in their lifetimes) they radically change their behavior in terms of risk tolerance, eating habits, and investment horizon. If large numbers of people begin to believe in a near term singularity this poses the possibility of enormous and potentially dangerous upheavals for society.

2. Even if a true singularity is not reached within our lifetimes the singularity summit reinforces the vision that tremendous technological change beyond our imagining is coming in the next 40 years. In the next 5 years an explosion in interest about the singularity and the pace of accelerating technology may occur.

3. According to Ray Kurzweil, solar energy is an information technology that is experiencing exponential growth. Solar energy production has doubled every year for the last 20 years and is now only 8 doublings away (that is about 10 years!) from providing nearly all of the world’s energy needs. The implications of this trend are huge and warrant careful consideration for the environment, investment, politics, etc.

4. Peter Diamandis announced that the Singularity University (SU) will be launched in the near future. The Hub’s Keith Kleiner will be a founding member of SU and we will have much more to say about SU soon!

5. According to Intel CTO Justin Rattner Intel has a solid roadmap that will ensure that Moore’s law will continue for at least another 10 years, by which time computers will be at least 1,000 times more powerful than today’s computers

6. Virtual worlds will continue to gain traction and functionality as people continue to recognize and leverage the unique advantages that these worlds offer versus the physical world.

7. Computers may be able to beat humans at chess and air hockey, but they are still a long way off from emulating human emotion and social behavior. Demonstrations today of the cutting edge in computer emulation of emotion and social ability were downright pitiful. Of course it is possible that we will make big leaps in the coming years, but today’s demonstrations were not encouraging.

Below is a breakout of the entire Singularity Summit:

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in artificial intelligence, bionic body, brain, computing, genetics, longevity, robotics, singularity by Keith Kleiner | 19 Comments »  

What Is Up With The Hub?

The Hub’s Keith Kleiner has been busy so there haven’t been many posts on the site lately.  Don’t despair though…in January Kleiner will be quitting his day job to work fulltime on Singularity Hub.  Starting in January 2009 the Hub will be THE place to keep up on the singularity.

Posted in singularity by Keith Kleiner | No Comments »  

The Rise of the Cyborgs

Discover Magazine has just blown me away with a fascinating story on the current state of brain-computer interfaces (BCI).  The story cites numerous projects underway across the globe in which electrodes implanted into the brain are being used to detect and transmit human intentions, and the progress being achieved is incredible.  Here at the Hub we have already seen monkeys that can control prosthetic arms through brain implants.  The story from Discover Magazine shows us that such achievements are just the tip of the iceberg, and that a host of other breakthroughs in the field of BCI are turning up all over the place.

The implications for BCI are absolutely stunning.  Paraplegics will regain the ability to move their own limbs (or prosthetic limbs) when signals from their brains can be extracted and interpreted.  Stroke victims who have retained their consciousness yet lost the ability to speak will regain their voices when signals from their brains are routed to a computer that will synthesize speech.  Normal humans will gain superhuman abilities as their brain is freed of its physical prison, allowing the brain signals that comprise human thought to be projected across a wire or even wirelessly to anywhere on earth or even beyond earth.  Imagine controlling objects anywhere on earth or transmitting thoughts and images to anyone or anything simply by thinking about it.

Many will say that BCI is in its infancy and that we are hundreds or even thousands of years from reaping its benefits, but this type of thinking ignores the reality presented by the story from Discover Magazine.  Paraplegics and monkeys are already controlling prosthetic limbs and computer screens.  Those who cannot speak have already been given a very rudimentary voice.  The next 10 to 30 years is likely to offer advances in BCI beyond most people’s wildest dreams.  Look at these key quotes from the story:

The ultimate aim is not just speech but restoration of full bodily
function. If Kennedy has his way, someday the blind will see and the
paralyzed will walk—and other researchers are racing him to make those
things happen.

Miguel Nicolelis says his quadriplegic sub­jects will walk again—not in 10 or 20 years, but in just a few.

The melding of man and machine appears inevitable, Kennedy believes.
“It’s not hard to imagine that eventually somebody’s brain will be
incorporated into a robotic body,” he says. “It could grant humanity a
kind of immortality and also make us redefine what a human is.”

In a few generations, Nicolelis speculates, brain implants will be
as socially acceptable as breast implants are today. “Implants will
happen in normals when there is a benefit and they are safe,” he
states. He agrees with others that the technology will shape the
evolution of Homo sapiens, and his perspective is unmistakably
philosophical.

Today, he says, we are all in a sense locked-in, but we won’t be for
long. “With these experiments we’ve accomplished something that nobody
has noticed yet: We have freed the brain from the body. We have created
a profound new paradigm for the brain—and not just the disabled brain—to enact its will without the limitations of the biological machinery that we call a body.

“My children probably will see the day when they can sit physically
on a beautiful beach in Brazil but at the same time control a rover on
Mars, experience Mars,” Nicolelis reflects. “Their bodies will be here,
but their brains will be free.”

Posted in bionic body, brain, robotics by Keith Kleiner | 2 Comments »  

Cook Biotech Offers Stunning Tissue Regeneration Capability

The Short:

It still seems like science fiction to many, but for more than a decade now mankind has had the technology to regenerate human tissue to repair large or complex wounds resulting from burns, gashes, and surgery.

Earlier we reported on a product from Lifecell called Alloderm that is one of the leaders in this space. Today we would like to introduce you to Cook Biotech, another player in the fascinating field of tissue regeneration medicine. Cook Biotech offers a family of tissue regeneration products that it markets under the name of Surgisis Biodesign.

Cook’s Biodesign family of products have been used to treat nearly one million patients worldwide, aiding in the regeneration of tissue for hernias, large wounds, plastic surgery, colon and rectal surgery, and a slew of other applications.

I found an excellent article here that clearly explains the Biodesign product for those of us that are not tissue experts. Also, here is a clean, short description of Biodesign from the Purdue Research Park. A few cool quotes follow:

“Once in place, Surgisis Biodesign provides a scaffold-like structure and communicates with the body, signaling surrounding tissue to grow across the scaffold. Over time, Surgisis Biodesign is remodeled into fully vascularized tissue, and becomes as strong as the patient’s own tissue. As part of the complete healing process the scaffold is slowly replaced by human tissue and becomes undetectable — providing a permanent repair without a permanent material.”

“According to the American Association of Tissue Banks, one of 20 people will need some sort of soft tissue transplant in their lifetime.”

The Long:

The human body is great at healing itself in the case of small wounds or incisions, but in the case of a severe burn or surgery, the wound is simply too large or complex for the body to regenerate the required tissue properly. For these situations you need a product like Biodesign, which is a thin sheet (called matrix) that serves as a scaffold for new skin to grow and regenerate upon. In the past, synthetic materials such as nylon have been used as a scaffold. These materials are quite limited in their ability to help new tissue grow, are highly susceptible to infection, and stay in the body forever which can cause future complications for the patient. Cook Biotech’s Biodesign product represents a new generation of products based on biological materials that are more capable and more versatile than the synthetic products of the past.

Surgisis Biodesign is a porcine (pig) derived acellullar matrix that can be purchased in different sizes and with different properties based on the desired application. The Biodesign acellular matrix is tissue taken from a very special part of a pig’s intestine that has had its cells removed, leaving behind a valuable collection of proteins, chemical signals, and structural material that human skin cells can populate and vascularize.

Inserting matrix derived from pigs into your body might seem a bit creepy, but keep in mind that the other major competitor in this market, Alloderm, comes from human cadavers! Whether from pigs or cadavers, these matrix products have an amazing ability to help the body regenerate tissue and they have saved or greatly benefited the lives of millions of people. Acellular matrix is a very safe product: it is sterilized through a vigorous process and devoid of any potentially harmful cells, dna, or microbes that may have resided in the originating host.

An advantage of the porcine based matrix from Biodesign is that it is cheaper and the supply is virtually unlimited as compared to human cadaver based solutions such as Alloderm. In order to be more competitive on price and quantity of supply Lifecell has recently launched a porcine based product called Strattice to compete with Cook Biotech’s Biodesign, yet Biodesign appears to be leaps and bounds ahead of Strattice. The secret behind the success of Biodesign is that it comes from a very special part of the pig’s intestine (submucosa) that has just the right chemical makeup to serve as an incredible tissue regeneration matrix in humans. Strattice, on the other hand, is obtained from pig dermis (skin) and although logically it seems as though this should be a superior strategy, it turns out that pig dermis is not nearly as versatile or as effective as intestinal submucosa when it comes to creating the ideal matrix.

Posted in medical by Keith Kleiner | 1 Comment »  

UK Company Creates Animated Humans That Look Like the Real Thing

Timesonline is reporting on a UK company called Image Metrics that has taken animation of human characters for games (Grand Theft Auto, Unreal Tournament) and films (Harry Potter, The Mummy) to an unprecedented level of realism. Not only are the animations fantastic, but the acquisition of facial details and expressions to create the animations is amazingly simple and fast compared to competing technologies.

Below is an amazing video of Image Metrics’ most advanced animation to date, which they call their Emily Project.  The woman in this video is a computer animation, NOT a real person!

If you want to learn more about this technology then take a look at this video interview from Leah D’Emilio.

Posted in computing by Keith Kleiner | 2 Comments »  

Open Source Project Aims to Create Human Level Artificial Intelligence

The Short:

Researches across the globe are making daily advances towards the development of human level artificial intelligence, but sadly the algorithms and the software that represent these advances often remain hidden within researcher’s computer labs, out of reach for others to review and build upon.

Enter OpenCog, an entire website dedicated to the development and distribution of artificial intelligence tools, software, and resources that are open source and freely available for anyone to use and modify.  Opencog’s ultimate goal is to develop true human level artificial intelligence, but even if Opencog fails to achieve this most ambitious of goals the project still seems poised to bring many other significant benefits to the AI community.

Opencog was only recently launched in 2008 and at present appears to have a small following.  The project offers the promise of an open and novel approach to developing and sharing new advances in AI, and it will be exciting to see it evolve and gain momentum in the coming years.

The Long:

Opencog is led by prominent AI scientist Ben Goertzel who will be presenting the opencog project at the Singularity Summit 2008.  Opencog is a multifaceted project with multiple goals and initiatives.  One of the most prominent components of the project is called the opencog framework.  From the opencog website:

The OpenCog Framework, which is part of the The OpenCog Project (a platform to build and share artificial intelligence programs), includes components for procedural and declarative knowledge representation (AtomTable), task scheduling (CogServer), AI algorithm containers (MindAgents), XML data import and export, connectors to instant messaging and virtual world systems, and other facilities. MindAgents and other add-ons under active development explore a wide variety of AI techniques including evolutionary program learning, probabilistic inference and reasoning, natural language processing, and others.

The OpenCog Framework will be released under an OSI-approved free software license in Summer 2008. To get involved, please post to the OpenCog general mailing list at http://groups.google.com/group/opencog/.

Interested C++ developers or other technically inclined individuals, please drop in at #opencog on IRC.freenode.net.

Here is an image showing where the the opencog framework sits on the computing stack:

Opencog is also developing a collection of specific AI tools (e.g. learning and reasoning components) to be used in creating AI systems.  From the site:

The key tools initially provided as part of OpenCog are

1. The RelEx natural language comprehension system
2. The MOSES probabilistic evolutionary learning system
3. The PLN (Probabilistic Logic Networks) framework
4. A system for Economic Attention Allocation and associative memory

Posted in artificial intelligence by Keith Kleiner | 1 Comment »  

Researchers Reprogram Pancreas Cells to Produce Insulin

The Short:

The Harvard Crimson and the LA Times offer some of the better articles reporting that researchers have genetically reprogrammed mice pancreas cells directly into a completely different type of cell called a B cell. B cells are responsible for creating the blood sugar regulating hormone insulin in humans, and it is the absence of these B cells that causes humans to suffer from type 1 diabetes, a currently un-curable disease that requires burdensome lifelong treatment.

With this breakthrough, the Harvard researchers have apparently offered “the first conclusive evidence” that it is possible to genetically convert one type of adult cell or tissue into another type of cell or tissue. Although still years into the future, this research could pave the way for major advances in the field of regenerative medicine where people’s bodies have lost certain types of cells or tissues to injury or disease.

The Long:

Mice suffering from type 1 diabetes were treated with a virus that
specifically infected their pancreas cells and converted them into B
cells. Ten days later, up to 20% of the pancreas cells had ceased
their normal function and instead begun producing insulin at levels comparable to
B cells from healthy, non-diabetic mice.

Although this is apparently the first demonstration of direct conversion of one adult cell type to another cell type, it should be noted that this is not the only route to creating a desired cell or tissue type. Therapies derived from stem cells and pluripotent cells have been used to create all sorts of cell types in numerous studies and in fact this breakthrough from the Harvard researchers complements rather than competes with these therapies. What is notable here is the proof of concept that mature cells such as pancreas cells can be genetically reprogrammed to do almost anything through the technique of intentional viral infection, changing their behavior or even changing their entire identity.

Human applications for this type of genetic reprogramming are still many years into the future. Not only will effort be required to apply this breakthrough to humans instead of to mice, but also the proteins required to induce the reprogramming, called transcription factors, require years of effort to pinpoint and are specific to the type of reprogramming desired.

Image from Royan Institute

Posted in genetics, medical by Keith Kleiner | 1 Comment »  

The Singularity Summit 2008

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) has just released details and opened up registration for its Singularity Summit 2008 (SS08).  This will be the third year of their annual summit, and it looks to be bigger and better than ever.  The summit will be held October 25, 2008 at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose, CA.

The Singularity Summit is hands down the premier event of the year for those that are interested in the singularity.  Many of the biggest players in the singularity space will be attending the summit to share ideas, network, and listen to an impressive array of speakers.  The Hub’s Keith Kleiner will be attending the summit and there will be extensive coverage of the event here at the Hub.

From the SS08 website:

“The Singularity Summit gathers the smartest people around to explore the biggest ideas of our time. Learn where humanity is headed, meet the people leading the way, and leave inspired to create a better world.”

Posted in singularity by Keith Kleiner | 1 Comment »  

Researchers Grow an Entire Rat Heart, Pig Heart Next Target

The Short:

In January 2008 University of Minnesota Researchers reported that they were able to grow an entire rat heart from scratch. The story is available here at npr, and there is also an audio clip of a segment that was run on npr radio.

The associated press reports that “An estimated 5 million people live with heart failure and about 550,000 new cases are diagnosed each year in the United States. Approximately 50,000 die annually waiting for a heart donor.” If we can learn to grow hearts we could save the lives of millions of people and also extend the lives of healthy people, giving them new hearts as their old hearts wear out.

There is still much work to be done before we can grow a human heart, but the University of Minnesota breakthrough shows that researchers are making significant progress towards this lofty goal. Below is a cool video documenting the development of the rat heart:

The Long:

Growing heart tissue and many other tissues of rats and other organisms is commonplace in laboratories across the globe, but growing tissue with the complex configurations and interconnectedness of organs is still a rare achievement. We recently reported on the progress being made at a company called Tengion and also in the lab of Anthony Atala at Wake Forest.

The University of Minnesota researchers offer a unique breakthrough in organ creation by creating a scaffold on which the heart can be grown. The researchers took a dead rat heart and removed the cells, leaving behind a matrix, or scaffold, of proteins and other materials. This scaffold was then injected with new cells and these cells self directed their own growth over the scaffold into a fully functioning heart.

The researches next plan to repeat their success with a pig heart. Successfully growing a pig heart would be a major breakthrough because a pig heart is very similar to a human heart in anatomy, size, and function. The hope is that the scaffold from a pig heart could be injected with cells from a human needing a new heart. The human cells would grow over the pig derived scaffold into a fully functional human/pig hybrid heart. This hybrid heart would not be rejected by the human immune system because its cells would have originated from the human that was receiving it.

Many will claim that success in growing a heart is still a dream that is many decades or more away. Perhaps they are right, but here at the Hub we argue that people too often underestimate the accelerating nature of human innovation and technology. Maybe custom grown hearts are not as far into the future as people think.

Posted in longevity, medical by Keith Kleiner | 1 Comment »  

Singularity Hub Reviews Intel CTO Justin Rattner’s IDF Keynote on the Future of Technology

Yesterday Intel CTO Justin Rattner delivered his keynote presentation about the future of technology and the coming of the singularity at Intel’s annual Intel Developer Forum (IDF). Although Rattner could use some tips on giving a more entertaining presentation, some of the ideas and technologies presented during the keynote were truly fantastic and we give the keynote a mild thumbs up.  Below is the Hub’s take on this exciting event:

The first thing that must be acknowledged about Rattner’s keynote is that it represents a symbolic endorsement of the singularity from a major player in the technology industry. Believers in the singularity are sometimes seen as crazy or over optimistic, but with Rattner’s keynote it is clear that the idea of a singularity occurring in this century is gaining serious momentum.

Rattner’s keynote began with a roughly 5 minute introductory video from singularity proponent Ray Kurzweil. During the rest of the keynote Rattner brought out a series of individuals to demonstrate futuristic technologies that are on the horizon. Some of these demonstrations were really cool…others not so much. Here is the breakdown:

1. Intel Scientist Dr. Mike Garner Presents the Future of Moore’s Law
Our Take: Nothing new here

In this segment Rattner discusses with Dr. Garner how the industry will be able to continue the doubling of computing capacity every year as it has done for the last 40 years. With current technology at the 32 nanometer scale, we are fast approaching limits on how small we can get with current semiconductor technology. Dr. Garner suggests a number of technologies and ideas for overcoming this hurdle (trigate transistors, quantum computing, carbon nanotubes, etc.), but in our opinion none of these ideas are new and no new light is shed on how and when any of these technologies will become a reality.

2. UCSB phD Brian Koch Presents Silicon Photonics
Our Take: pretty cool

Brian discusses a collaboration between Intel and UCSB to combine the speed and bandwidth offered by light (photonics) with the versatility and mass production capabilities of silicon. This marriage between silicon and photonics could offer a host of new capabilities and advantages in the future including huge bandwidth, decreased cost, and decreased energy consumption. Intel has a pretty good website dedicated to this entire technology here.

3. UCSB Professor Jan Rabaey Presents Massively Wireless Communication
Our Take: Interesting, but not revolutionary

Dr. Rabaey predicts that we will have 1000 radios per person in 10 years! This was the most interesting idea offered during Dr. Rabaey’s presentation and is definitely an exciting vision of what the future may hold. Dr. Rabaey stated that the three major problems with a massively wireless world are limited radio spectrum, limited energy for radio devices, and too many standards. Dr. Rabaey offers intresting ideas for overcoming these problems, but from our view this is simply a focus on improving the efficiency and the intelligence of how radios communicate. What we fail to see in this presentation is any revolutionary technology or capability for the future.

4. Alanson Sample from the University of Washington Presents Wireless Power Transmission
Our Take: Awesome!

Wireless power transmission technology debuted about a year or so ago, but nonetheless it is a stunning concept and the demo was great to see. Alanson was able to send 60W of energy wirelessly across a distance of two feet to power up a light bulb. Approximately 25% of the energy is lost during transmission, which is pretty good (Alanson claims this is more efficient than many wall warts)! From the standpoint of the singularity one of the more interesting applications of this technology would be the ability to recharge or power up devices that have been implanted into the human body. Jordan Robertson from the Associated Press in a recent article gives us more in depth information about the technology, and reveals that 90% efficiency of power transmission has actually been achieved at a distance of 3 feet.

5. Dave Ferguson and Siddhartha Srinivasa Present Autonomous Robots
Our Take: Not bad, but nothing revolutionary

David and Sidd demonstrate a robot named Herb that can enter an environment and autonomously find, navigate to, and then pickup any coffee cups in the vicinity. Many people underestimate the difficulty in such a task, but in truth it is actually quite difficult for robots to replicate the human ability to navigate a new and unknown environment that is also changing as people and other objects within it move. Herb did a commendable job of performing his task, but overall this demonstration is similar to many other projects occurring all over the world, most notably the DARPA Urban Challenge which is referenced during the presentation.

6. Joshua Smith from Intel Presents a Sixth Sense Called Pretouch
Our Take: Now This is Revolutionary!

Josh presents to us something completely novel, a sixth sense called pretouch in which a robot uses electric fields to sense its environment. The inspiration for this technology comes from certain species of fish that have this same capability. In the demonstration a robotic hand was able to use pretouch to create a 3 dimensional spatial model of an apple that it was presented with. The robotic hand was then able to grab the apple based upon this dynamically generated model. The entire task was performed without the aid of cameras (for vision) or any other conventional senses. MIT Technology Review wrote an article about pretouch nearly a year ago and it is a good place to start if you want to learn more. Pretouch gives us a glimpse of a future in which humans and robots will have capabilities that are completely different and novel from those that we have today.

7. Tan Le From Emotiv Presents Noninvasive Neural Interfaces
Our Take: Cool, but invasive neural interfaces are the real future

Emotiv demonstrates one of the most practical and well developed noninvasive neural interface applications we have seen. In the demonstration a human plays a game in which he is able to scare creatures away, change colors of the game, and even move objects (though with noticeable difficulty) simply by thinking alone. The gamer is wearing a helmet that detects electric field fluctuations emanating from his skull and these fluctuations are translated into actions within the game. Emotiv shows us a really cool possibility for enhancing gaming interfaces and a compelling pathway to many other novel applications. Despite this, we are only marginally excited about this technology because noninvasive neural interfacing is a poor substitute for the capabilities offered by truly invasive, direct neural interfacing. Noninvasive neural interfacing is error prone and limited in its ability to extract human intention. Lets go straight to the source and focus on direct neural interfaces into the brain…that is where the true link to human intention will be revealed.

8. Jason Campbell from Intel Presents Shape Shifting Materials
Our Take: This Rocks!

Jason Campbell presents an Intel initiative to build shape shifting materials composed of building blocks called catoms. Intel’s latest catom prototypes are currently 1/10 of millimeter in diameter nanobots with their own microprocessors and actuators that are capable of changing their color and other properties. Jason presents us with the vision of a matchbox sized cell phone composed of thousands or even millions of catoms that can morph on demand into a nearly full sized keyboard. Catom based shape shifting technology is still in the very early research phase and there does not seem to be any real world example of this technology to date. Nonetheless, it was fascinating to see real progress being made in a technology that has captured the imagination of science fiction writers for decades.

Posted in artificial intelligence, robotics, singularity by Keith Kleiner | 4 Comments »  

Researchers Produce Red Blood Cells From Stem Cells

The Short:
News outlets are reporting that researchers from Advanced Cell Technology, Inc have been able to differentiate human embryonic stem cells into red blood cells. This could be a major breakthrough in mankind’s quest to find a safe, unlimited source of blood that can be used for blood transfusions and other medical needs.

Currently the world’s blood supply is obtained from human donors in a system that is short on supply and fraught with complications related to sterilization, contamination, disease, storage life (typically less than 42 days), and collection logistics.

The Long:
First off, one can’t help but be a little skeptical here because of the financial condition of Advanced Cell Technology, which reportedly is on the brink of bankruptcy. Their website appears not to have been updated in several months, perhaps symbolizing the malaise that is happening over there.

Let us hope that this research truly is legit, however, because it would be a fantastic breakthrough for mankind. Other researchers have been able to derive red blood cells in the past from sources such as cord blood and bone marrow, but these sources are still donor limited. They are also rarely of type O(-) which is the universal blood type that virtually every person can accept. Embryonic stem cells can be multiplied infinitely, allowing for the generation of unlimited blood supply and theoretically can be developed into type O(-).

This breakthrough is still nowhere near to producing a clinical trial and has many technical hurdles to overcome, so don’t expect anything to come of it for many years. Still, it is exciting to see a breakthrough that might be taking us that much closer to an improved blood supply. Now, if someone could just make us a respirocyte then we would really be in business!

The research paper was published in the journal Blood at http://bloodjournal.hematologylibrary.org/papbyrecent.dtl

Posted in medical by Keith Kleiner | No Comments »  

Tengion - The Company That Will Grow You a Custom Organ

Earlier we reported here at the hub that growing tissue and organs is not a science fiction story about the future, but instead is a technology that exists today. A company called Tengion is at the forefront of this emerging field of growing custom organs. Tengion is essentially a corporate vehicle for the commercial development of the major breakthroughs that have been made at the leading institutions in the field of organ and tissue regeneration. Most notably Tengion has rights to develop the research of Dr. Anthony Atala from Wake Forest where the most stunning results in the field of regenerative medicine have been achieved to date. Anthony Atala’s lab has grown a whole host of human organs including bladders, blood vessels, and heart valves.

Tengion does not have a commercially available product yet, but they have a serious arsenal of technology and patents and they are focused on bringing a long list of custom grown organs to the market. Tengion’s lead product candidate is a custom grown bladder called the Neo-Bladder which is currently in phase II clinical trials. Since Tengion’s organs are grown from the patient’s own cells these organs are not rejected by the body’s immune system, a common and serious problem for the typical organ transplant from a foreign donor. Below is a video of Anthony Atala giving an inside look at his lab which is simply amazing (although the reporter clearly doesn’t know a thing about science):

Eye To Eye: Tissue Engineering (CBS News)

Posted in longevity, medical by Keith Kleiner | 2 Comments »  

Researchers Stop Decline In Organ Function Associated With Old Age

As humans age the systems in our cells for cleaning up unwanted proteins and other debris become less efficient. It is theorized that junk in our cells thus accumulates, leading to further deterioration in the health and function of our cells, ultimately leading to disease and aging.

Medical News Today reports that researchers have added support to this theory with the dramatic reduction of the aging of an entire organ in a mouse - the liver - by genetically enhancing the ability of cells in the liver to clean up the toxic accumulation of their cellular junk. From the article:

“When the mice were examined at 22 to 26 months of age (equivalent to
approximately 80 years old in humans), the liver cells of transgenic
mice digested and recycled protein far more efficiently than in their
normal counterparts of the same age - and, in fact, just as efficiently
as in normal six-month old mice.”

Posted in longevity by Keith Kleiner | No Comments »  

Monkey Controls Robotic Arm Using Brain-machine Interface

In May the New York Times and many other outlets reported on the “most striking demonstration to date of brain-machine interface technology”. From the article:

“The findings suggest that brain-controlled prosthetics, while not practical, are at least technically within reach.

In previous studies, researchers showed that humans who had been paralyzed for years could learn to control a cursor on a computer screen with their brain waves and that nonhuman primates could use their thoughts to move a mechanical arm, a robotic hand or a robot on a treadmill.

The new experiment goes a step further. In it, the monkeys’ brains seem to have adopted the mechanical appendage as their own, refining its movement as it interacted with real objects in real time. The monkeys had their own arms gently restrained while they learned to use the added one.”

Check out this awesome video of a monkey operating a robotic arm:

Robo-monkey uses brain power to feed itself

Posted in brain, robotics by Keith Kleiner | 2 Comments »  

Robots Controlled by Rat Brains

New Scientist released an awesome article describing how researchers are using rat brains to control a robot. Approximately 300,000 neurons from a rat fetus are deposited onto a sheet of nutrients and electrodes (and MEA, or multi-electrode array) and the neurons immediately begin to build connections to each other and to the electrodes.

The robot can send signals to the neurons via these electrodes and the neurons will over time fire off in predictable patterns. These patterns can be connected to output electrodes that can send signals back to the robot and cause it to react to its environment, such as avoiding a wall. The video is simply awesome so check it out:

Posted in artificial intelligence, brain, robotics by Keith Kleiner | No Comments »