2/07/2010 PERMALINK
Breakthrough Alert Episode 3 Your briefing on the latest advances in the ultimate personal technology - human genetic & cyborg mods for regeneration and enhancement of your mind and body.

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Scientists at the University of Leicester have announced that they have identified for the first time definitive variants associated with biological ageing in humans. The team analyzed more than 500,000 genetic variations across the entire human genome to identify the variants which are located near a gene called TERC.

Biofab is putting bioengineers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University to work characterizing the thousands of control elements critical to the engineering of microbes, so that eventually researchers can mix and match these "DNA parts" in synthetic organisms to produce new drugs, fuels or chemicals.

The Parallellepipeda project at the new M museum in Leuven, Belgium is creating some amazing looking 3D art using a 3D printer.

ReWalk is a wearable, motorized quasi robotic suit. Partially concealable under clothing, ReWalk provides user-initiated mobility - leveraging advanced motion sensors, sophisticated bot control algorithms, on-board computers, real-time software, actuation motors, tailored rechargeable batteries and composite materials.

Northwestern University researchers are the first to design a bioactive nanomaterial that promotes the growth of new cartilage in vivo and without the use of expensive growth factors. Minimally invasive, the therapy activates the bone marrow stem cells and produces natural cartilage. No conventional therapy can do this.

Siri is actually a really useful virtual personal assistant bot for your phone. Here's a link to a clip demonstrating some of its many capabilities.

The era of gene doping is arriving in sports according to Dr Theodore Friedmann, chair of the World Anti-Doping Agency's Gene Doping Expert Group.

A patient in a vegetative state (persistent lack of awareness following brain injury) has been able to correctly answer a series of yes or no questions with his responses interpreted via brain imaging by researchers at University of Liege, in Belgium.

Peptides that target blood vessels in fat and cause them to go into programmed cell death (termed apoptosis) could become a model for future weight-loss therapies, say University of Cincinnati researchers.

Teams from the National Cancer Institute, The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and the University of Toronto have discovered that the protein MRG15, which previously had been known to affect cell growth and aging, also directs human gene-splicing machinery.

University of Michigan researchers have shown that tension on DNA molecules can affect gene expression - the process at the heart of biological function that tells a cell what to do.

Suppose, for instance, that the global financial system collapses, or a new virus kills most of the world's population, or a solar storm destroys the power grid in North America. Restarting an industrial civilization might be a lot harder the second time around, because we have used up most of the easily available resources, from oil to high-grade ores. Read Digital doomsday: the end of knowledge.

Researchers from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, UCLA, Harvard University, the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and Cornell University have teamed up to develop and test a broad-spectrum antiviral compound capable of stopping a wide range of highly dangerous viruses, including Ebola, HIV, hepatitis C virus, West Nile virus, Rift Valley fever virus and yellow fever virus, among others.

Investigators at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute have demonstrated in mouse models that transplanted stems cells, when in direct contact with diseased neurons, send signals through specialized channels that rescue the neurons from death.

Researchers at the University of Cambridge are calling their new artificial pancreas a "Holy Grail" breakthrough in the treatment of insulin-dependent diabetes. The artificial pancreas system is controlled by a bot that makes possible continuous real-time monitoring and adjustment of blood sugar levels.

Tiny circles of DNA are the key to a new and easier way to transform stem cells from human fat into induced pluripotent stem cells for use in regenerative medicine, say scientists at the Stanford University School of Medicine. Unlike other commonly used techniques, the method, which is based on standard molecular biology practices, does not use viruses to introduce genes into the cells or permanently alter a cell's genome.

Scientists at Georgia Tech and the Ovarian Cancer Institute have further developed a potential new treatment against cancer that uses magnetic nanoparticles to attach to cancer cells, removing them from the body. The treatment, tested in mice in 2008, has now been tested using samples from human cancer patients.

An investigational drug that inhibits serotonin synthesis in the gut, administered orally once daily, effectively cured osteoporosis in mice and rats reports an international team led by researchers from Columbia University Medical Center. Serotonin in the gut has been shown in recent research to stall bone formation. This new therapy can not only prevent more bone deterioration, it can actually build new bone.

Scientists at the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS), report that a genetic molecule, called Tbx3, which is crucial for many aspects of early developmental processes in mammals, significantly improves the quality of stem cells that have been reprogrammed from differentiated cells.

Kotura has announces a breakthrough in very low voltage, high speed silicon photonic modulation. This brings us closer to light computing wearware, pocket and implantable devices that can be powered by your body's heat or motion.

Your cells missegregate a chromosome approximately once every hundred divisions. Don't be too alarmed, new research from Dartmouth Medical School shows that your p53 tumor suppressor is able to limit the growth of cells with incorrect numbers of chromosomes and prevents them from progressing toward cancer.

New research from Johns Hopkins University has for the first time shown that your ability to orient yourself to the world around you and navigate through it is genetic in origin.

Add magnesium to your diet and get increased cognitive skills, or at least that is how it works in rats say researcher at Tsinghua University.

Spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything say researchers at Nanopool. The nano-scale glass coating bonds to the surface of most anything, due to the quantum forces involved.

Scientists have long known that high blood sugar levels from diabetes damage blood vessels in the eye, but they didn't know why or how. Now a Michigan State University scientist has discovered the actual process that causes retinal cells to die, which promises new treatments to halt the damage.

Penn State researchers have created a new bot with the ability to contain self-propagating worms, the malicious computer programs that can spread throughout networks, stealing or erasing hard drive data, interfering with pre-installed programs and slowing, even crashing, home and work computers.

Scientists at the University of Manchester have discovered and enzyme that 'cleans' cancer cells. The protease HtrA2 can 'clean' your cells of the oncogene WT1, which is found at high levels in many forms of cancer.

Neurobiologists at the University of Maryland have found that your brain is a lot more chaotic than previously thought, and that this might be a good thing. Their work challenges previous understandings of the auditory cortex, which had suggested an organization based on precise neuronal maps. In the first study of the auditory cortex conducted using advanced imaging techniques, a much more complex picture of neuronal activity has been observed.

Be sure to listen to the NPR segment on the science of why time seems to go by faster as you age.

That's your Breakthrough Alert for this week. Check the text version for links to any brief about which you wish to know more. Be seeing you.