DARPA plans to harness clusters of less expensive, smaller modules that are wirelessly connected in space, without sacrificing military effectiveness. The agency seeks a third party partner to develop a payload spacecraft module to test the F6 concept on-orbit. Just how feasible is this project?
Th
Can any scholar tell me how could someone earth without copper, coal, salt its a question asked by my friend.
Zoologist Mike Dickison throws his hat into the dinosaur comedy ring (yes, dinosaur):
[Hat tip to the brother in Jersey]
How many 2 ton AC does a 125kva gen. Set can power?
We have an Induction motor (7 KW, 400 V, 50 Hz, Delta, 15.5 A, P.F 0.75, 1465 RPM ) driving a conveyor belt. Motor is connected to the VFD ( ACS-800-01-0016-3, 8.1 KW, 3 X 400 VAC, 12 A, 50 Hz). Some values taken from the LCD of VFD at different times at different load
Power (in Percentage) Cu
I made a post earlier regarding melting the leak closed. Apparently it's being seriously considered, using, what I'm assuming is a controlled nuclear reaction, as opposed to a bomb. I heard on the radio yesterday that this idea came from the Russians, who supposedly used this technique successfully
What is the obvious difference between DHT(Dehydrogenation Heat Treatment) and ISR(Intermediate Heat Treatment)?
Understanding the physical basis of human memory will enable therapies to both enhance youthful memory and reverse its decline with age. From ScienceDaily, an example of present investigations into the biology of memory: "We found one of the key proteins involved in the process of memory and learning. This protein is present in the part of the brain in which memories are stored. We have found that in order for any memory to be laid down this protein, called the M3-muscarinic receptor, has to be activated. We have also determined that this protein undergoes a very specific change during the formation of a memory - and that this change is an essential part of memory formation. In this regard our study reveals at least one of the molecular mechanisms that are operating in the brain when we form a memory and as such this represents a major break through in our understanding of how we lay down memories. This finding is not only interesting in its own right but has important clinical implications. One of the major symptoms of Alzheimer's disease is memory loss. Our study identifies one of the key processes involved in memory and learning and we state in the paper that drugs designed to target the protein identified in our study would be of benefit in treating Alzheimer's disease."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100628101450.htm
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
Another study to show that transplanting young ovaries into old mice extends life quite significantly: "successful ovarian transplants increased the lifespan of the mice by more than 40% ... All the mice in both experiments that had received transplants resumed the normal reproductive behaviour of young mice. They showed interest in male mice, mated and some had pups. Normally, old mice stay in the corner of the cage and don't move much, but the activity of mice that had had ovarian transplants was transformed into that of younger mice and they resumed quick movements. Furthermore, the lifespan of the mice who received young ovaries was much longer than that of the control mice: the mice that had received two ovaries lived for an average of 915 days, and the mice that had received one ovary, for an average of 877 days. The newest of our data show the life span of mice that received transplants of young ovaries was increased by more than 40%. ... The average normal lifespan for this particular breed of mice [is] 548 days. ... it was not known why the ovarian transplant increased the lifespan of the mice, but it might be because the transplants were prompting the continuation of normal hormonal functions."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/esoh-otr062810.php
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
Following on from a demonstration of decellularized rat lungs, another team has produced similar work: "Researchers have been able to create tiny mouse lungs in the lab that are able to breathe. The lungs were created with stem cells and attached to a ventilator. ... They used a technique called decellularization, similar to the method used to create a beating mouse heart in a different lab at the University of Minnesota in 2008. In the cancer center, they took a mouse lung and stripped away all its cells. Then, injected the natural framework with stem cells. At first they used fetal mouse lung cells, but this year they had another breakthrough using adult stem cells called 'induced pluriopotent stem cells.' ... That's basically a cell that we can take from anybody and re-program to act like an embryonic stem cell ... The hope is one day human lungs could be re-created for transplant with a greater chance of success. Right now, there is no tissue matching for lung transplants. ... The beauty of that is that you can then create a tissue for an organ that's transplantable that is derived from the patient and therefore would not be recognized as foreign by the immune system and not rejected. By adding the ventilator to make the lungs breathe, the stem cells are further trained to act like lung cells. It's a huge success considering lungs are such complicated organs with some 60 different kinds of cells."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://wcco.com/health/lungs.stem.cells.2.1774895.html
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
A review paper: "Mitochondrial disorders can no longer be ignored in most medical disciplines. Such disorders include specific and widespread organ involvement, with tissue degeneration or tumor formation. Primary or secondary actors, mitochondrial dysfunctions also play a role in the aging process. Despite progresses made in identification of their molecular bases, nearly everything remains to be done as regards therapy. Research dealing with mitochondrial physiology and pathology has [greater than 20 years] of history around the world. We are involved, as are many other laboratories, in the challenge of finding ways to fight these diseases. However, our main limitation is the scarcety of animal models required for both understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the diseases and evaluating therapeutic strategies. This is especially true for diseases due to mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), since an authentic genetic model of mtDNA mutations is technically a very difficult task due to both the inability of manipulating the mitochondrial genome of living mammalian cells and to its multicopy nature. This has led researchers in the field to consider the prospect of gene therapy approaches that can roughly be divided into three groups: (1) import of wild-type copies or relevant sections of DNA or RNA into mitochondria, (2) manipulation of mitochondrial genetic content, and (3) rescue of a defect by expression of an engineered gene product from the nucleus (allotopic or xenotropic expression)."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571866
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
A new popular science book on the manipulation of metabolism to slow aging, the author inspired by the Longevity Dividend initiative: "No scientific advances inspire more media hype than ones in gerontology, the study of aging. Even the crustiest editors have been known to turn giddy when new light is shed on the topic and take to blowing raspberries at the Reaper with headlines suggesting immortality elixirs are just around the corner. Biologists aren't so easily wowed, though, and before the mid-1990s they generally saw gerontology as a dismal bog where once-promising peers sank out of sight, or worse, re-emerged clutching beakers of snake oil. ... Studying the details of this inexorable, chaotic decay seemed a waste of time to most life scientists. ... Then in 1988 a miracle happened - the University of Colorado's Thomas Johnson reported that a gene mutation in nematodes could more than double their life spans. Five years later, Cynthia Kenyon at the University of California, San Francisco, nailed a similar worm 'gerontogene' dubbed daf-2. These flabbergasting discoveries revealed that not everything about aging is intractable chaos - worms, at least, apparently possessed gene-encoded modules poised to oppose the ravages of advancing age when activated by a single mutation. Optimists soon speculated that similar modules exist in mammals."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57510/
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
From the MIT Technology Review: "Rats genetically engineered to lose their sight can be protected from blindness by injections of human neural stem cells ... a startup in Palo Alto, CA, plans to use the positive results to file for approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to begin human trials. The company is already testing the cells in children with a rare, fatal brain disorder called Batten's disease. ... The company's cells are isolated from human fetal tissue and then grown in culture. To determine whether these cells can protect against retinal degeneration, scientists studied rats that were genetically engineered to progressively lose their photoreceptors - cells in the retina that convert light into neural signals. These animals are commonly used to model macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa, two major causes of blindness that result from cell loss in the retina. Researchers injected about 100,000 cells into the animals' eyes when the rats were 21 days old. ... the cells migrate over time, forming a layer between the photoreceptors and a layer of tissue called the retinal pigment epithelium, cells which nourish and support the photoreceptors. ... the cells protected vision in the part of the retina in which they were implanted."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.technologyreview.com/biomedicine/25647/?a=f
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
Scientific American looks at the state of viral cancer therapies: "The adapted virus that immunized hundreds of millions of people against smallpox has now been enlisted in the war on cancer. Vaccinia poxvirus joins a herpesvirus and a host of other pathogens on a growing list of engineered viruses entering late-stage human testing against cancer. ... After a decade of development of so-called oncolytic viruses, the newest strains hold the most promise yet ... In a two-pronged attack, these viruses specifically target tumor cells while delivering a cargo of immune-boosting genes. In contrast, viruses that cause cancer, such as the human papillomavirus that is responsible for most cases of cervical cancer, disrupt a cell's genome, thereby triggering out-of-control growth. When the engineered viruses recognize and infect cancer cells, they replicate and sometimes destroy their hosts. Several of the viruses also release the gene for granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) an immune system protein. The GM-CSF attracts a swarm of white blood cells and other immune system operatives that mount a further attack on the tumor. ... The vaccinia virus has been developed by the biotechnology company Jennerex ... Later this year, the company plans to launch a phase III clinical trial in advanced liver cancer patients, in which the virus will be added to standard antibody treatment."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=tumor-virus-vaccines
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
A novel methodology in regenerative medicine: "The objective was to evaluate the utility of cryo-preserved human amniotic membrane (HAM) as a support for repairing human articular cartilage injuries, which have a very limited capacity for self-healing ... The results [show] that cryo-preserved HAM is useful as a scaffold for growing human chondrocytes in cell therapy and for repairing human cartilage injuries. ... It provides a more regular surface and fills in the cavities and fissures ... The authors cultivated the chondrocytes (cells that form part of the cartilaginous tissue), isolated from human articular cartilage, on the amniotic membrane over a period of three and four weeks. The amniotic membranes were used to develop 44 repair models of arthritic human articular cartilage in vitro, which was assessed between four and 16 weeks later. The HAM also bonds well with the native cartilage. ... In some models, we could not differentiate between where the native tissue stopped and the neo-synthesised tissue began. ... This tissue had a fibrous appearance and high cellular density (cellularity), which in some cases was greater than that of the actual native cartilage."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/f-sf-amu062310.php
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
Another reason why you really don't want to live a lifestyle that makes you overweight: "For individuals 65 years of age and older, obesity, excess body fat around the waist and gaining weight after the age of 50 are associated with an increased risk of diabetes. ... Adiposity [body fat] is a well-recognized risk factor for type 2 diabetes among young and middle-aged adults, however, the relationships between different measures of body composition and diabetes in older adults [65 years of age or older] are not well described ... [researchers] examined the relationship between measures of overall body fat, fat distribution, changes in these measures, and diabetes risk among 4,193 men and women 65 years of age and older. ... The researchers found that BMI at baseline, BMI at 50 years of age, weight, fat mass, waist circumference, waist-hip ratio, and waist-height ratio were all strongly related to the risk of diabetes. ... For each measure, there was a graded increase in the risk of diabetes with increasing quintiles of adiposity. Participants in the highest category of adiposity had an approximately 2- to 6-fold increased risk of developing diabetes compared with those in the lowest category."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2010-06/jaaj-owg061710.php
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
A review paper from Italian researchers who have been working on understanding inflammaging for a number of years: "Ageing is an inexorable intrinsic process that affects all cells, tissues, organs and individuals. Due to a diminished homeostasis and increased organism frailty, ageing causes a reduction of the response to environmental stimuli and, in general, is associated to an increased predisposition to illness and death. Actually, it is characterized by a state of reduced ability to maintain health and general homeodynamics of the organism. A large part of the ageing phenotype is explained by an imbalance between inflammatory and anti-inflammatory networks, which results in the low grade chronic pro-inflammatory status of ageing, 'inflamm-ageing'. It is strictly linked to immunosenescence, and on the whole they are the major contributory factors to the increased frequency of morbidity and mortality among elderly. Inflamm-ageing is compatible with longevity; even if centenarians have an increased level of inflammatory mediators in comparison to old subjects and they are very frail, they also have high level of anti-inflammatory cytokines together with protective genotypes. Actually, data on case control studies performed in Italian centenarians suggest that a pro-inflammatory genotype is unfavourable to reach extreme longevity in good health and likely favours the onset of age-related diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and Alzheimer's disease."
View the Article Under Discussion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20549353
Read More Longevity Meme Commentary: http://www.longevitymeme.org/news/
It turns out that not all the hairlike cilia projecting from the surfaces of many cells in the human body are equal--there are the myriad ones for sweeping, swimming and other functions, and then there is the until recently mysterious primary cilium.
Nearly all human cells contain these numerous microscopic projections. The more abundant variety of cilia are motile; they act like oars, paddling in coordinated waves to help propel cells through fluid, or to sweep material across cellular surfaces (as in the respiratory system, where millions of cilia lining the airways help to expel mucus, dead cells and other bodily debris). By contrast, cells also contain a single, nonmotile cilium known as the primary cilium. Its presence on cells has been known for more than a century, but many believed it was a functionless evolutionary remnant.
Cell - Biology - Cell biology - Cilium - Human body
It turns out that not all the hairlike cilia projecting from the surfaces of many cells in the human body are equal--there are the myriad ones for sweeping, swimming and other functions, and then there is the until recently mysterious primary cilium.
Nearly all human cells contain these numerous microscopic projections. The more abundant variety of cilia are motile; they act like oars, paddling in coordinated waves to help propel cells through fluid, or to sweep material across cellular surfaces (as in the respiratory system, where millions of cilia lining the airways help to expel mucus, dead cells and other bodily debris). By contrast, cells also contain a single, nonmotile cilium known as the primary cilium. Its presence on cells has been known for more than a century, but many believed it was a functionless evolutionary remnant.
Cell - Biology - Cell biology - Cilium - Human body
Alexander McQueen takes fashion advertising in a new direction with his Spring 2010 Eyewear ad campaign featuring skulls on top of snakeskin and flower patterns. I love that the house of Alexander forgoes using models and injects his signature fascination with skeletons into these ads.
[spotted by Rust]
