One for the Ages: A Prescription That May Extend Life
Mr. Linksvayer, 6 feet tall and 135 pounds, estimated that he gets by on about 2,000 to 2,100 calories a day, a low number for men of his age and activity level, and his blood pressure is a remarkably low 112 over 63. He said he has never been in better health. -- “I don’t really get sick,” he said. “Mostly I do the diet to be healthier, but if it helps me live longer, hey, I’ll take that, too.”
Ensimmäinen keinotekoinen minimaksa kasvatettu kantasoluista.
IonKids - Lasten, lemmikeiden, vanhusten ja muiden karkailevien otusten seurantalaite jälleen.
Wacom Cintiq 21UX - Piirtopöytämonitori.
Business 2.0: The Disruptors - 11 ideaa. Netvibes, BlueLithium, Salesforce, Coghead, Clearwire, Jajah, NextMedium, EEStor, Zopa, NanoLife Sciences, Applied Location.
The Sketch Furniture Project - Piirrä ilmaan kalusteluonnoksia ja printtaa ne oikeiksi muovikalusteiksi (sis. video). Tekijöinä Front.
reactable - Videoita lähitulevaisuuden suosikkisoittopelistä. Laita palikoita pöydälle ja sekoita.
Alexander Ratushnyak voitti ensimmäisen Hutter Prizen.
Simon Smith kertoo tarinan siitä, kuinka päätyi Alcorin jäseneksi.
After Life - Simon Funkin scifikirja ilmaiseksi netistä.
Uudenlaista jäätä on keksitty vahingossa.
The researchers squeezed a sample of water with a diamond anvil to a pressure of 17 gigapascals, about 170,000 times the normal atmospheric pressure at sea level. They then bombarded the water with high-energy x-rays. The molecules split, then reformed into a previously unknown combination of O2 and H2. The key to splitting the oxygen-hydrogen bonds was the strength of the x-rays. “We managed to hit on just the right level,” says team member Russell Hemley. Using a higher energy, he says, would have caused the x-rays to pass entirely through the sample. Any lower, however, and the diamonds in the pressure apparatus would have largely absorbed the radiation.
Top Doctors 2006: Who Wants to Live Forever? - Lisää CR-ruokavaliosta ja elämän pidentämisestä.
But before we get into any of the specific reasons why these mice are contenders for de Grey’s prize and are scientifically important, let me note that they’re really, really cute, these little guys, running around in their shoebox-size cages, sitting on their fingertip-size young, lapping at their giant water bottles. No Napoleonic complex here! You can make this kind of lame observation to Sell, and he’ll back you up: Turns out their lack of a specific growth hormone — what makes them small — has a fringe benefit of making them more docile, and friendlier, than usual.
CRON-O-Meter - Aaron Davidsonin ilmainen ohjelma CR-ruokavalion seuraamiseen. Sisältää yli 7000 ruokaa ja reseptieditorin.
One of my favorite people, Dr. David Katz, whom I saw speak at my 10th college reunion, gives a great talk about how modern Western folk are like polar bears in a dessert: we're not designed for our environment! Our bodies are made for the environment they lived in for most of human history, where food was scarce, populations were small, and people had to fight to stay fed and warm. We store food really, really well... that's how our genes got naturally selected above those of others of our ancestors who didn't make it through periodic food shortages so well.
- April's CR Diary
Collaborating with machines - Squarepusherin essee vuodelta 2004 siitä, miksi emme edusta ihmiskulttuuria vaan ihmiskonekulttuuria (kiitos, Jarmo).
But as the emphasis (and significance in the creative process) slowly shifts from the human to the machine, artefacts that are more the product of machines than of human beings are put forth as immortalized ambassadors of the self. Like it or not, we are coming to be represented by machines.
Drug Test - A Cautionary Tale - Amatööripyöräilijän tehostetarina vuodelta 2004 (kiitos, Linkkivinkki).
"Deca's not so harmful to your liver," he went on, "but most steroids can knock the hell out of it. You can get huge mood swings. Anger, irritability. Sex is a mess. There's a surge in libido, then it falls off a cliff and you don't even want to think about sex. Then, when you stop your dosage, you start to shrink. Depression can set in. Your body starts to slide back to what it was, and most people don't like that. People forget that it's the drugs and not them. It's like when you take Viagra and you think that's how you'll always perform. No, no, no."
Scott Adams kertoo kuinka pääsi eroon spasmodisesta dysfoniasta riimittelyllä.
Kaikki 22 vuoden aikana Ruotsin listoille nousseet kappaleet keränneelle piraatille ehdotetaan kulttuuripalkintoa.
"Tower of Babel" device - Askel kohti universaalia kielenkäännintä: kun lausut sanat hiljaa omalla kielelläsi, kone kääntää ne ja sanoo kuuluvasti toisella kielellä.
SunTracker ONE - Auringon mukana kääntyvät peilit katolle ja halpaa valoa sisätiloihin.
USA:n armeija myöntää antaneensa modafiniilia sotilaille.
She said the MoD had recently pumped £20m into a newly-formed consortium to carry out research into "human science", including the enhancement of the physical and mental performance of combat personnel. -- Among other things, the Haldane Spearman consortium will be investigating new dietary supplements and remote monitoring technology, allowing soldiers' physical performance to be tracked in the field.
The Ultra-Extreme Calorie Restriction Diet Test - Julian Dibbell kokeilee CR-ruokavaliota.
But first, I’m going to need a moment to deal with the slight attack of existential vertigo that’s hitting me just now. All evening, I have let the bubbling enthusiasm and essential reasonableness of my guests carry me past the little weirdnesses that go with being calorie-restricted. But the weirdnesses are starting to pile up, and my guests are looking weirder and weirder themselves, like emissaries from a future I’m not sure could ever feel like home: a world where the food grows in vats, where the porn industry just barely survives on government subsidies, where the physically ideal male has the BMI of Mary-Kate Olsen and the skin tones of an Oompa-Loompa.
April Smith kommentoi haastattelua blogissaan.
What Happens When Things Get Free?
Broadcast media is a product of scarcity. Since there’s a limited set of channels, you have to be very discriminating about what gets out, releasing only things that have a very broad appeal. The emergence of YouTube and others shows what happens when there’s an infinite set of channels available.
--
He walks us through some of the business changes that happen as we move from scarcity to abundance:
- In the past, we built business cases based on ROI. Now we build it and build the business afterwards.?- In the past, “everything is forbidden unless it’s permitted.” Now everything is permitted unless forbidden.?- Scarcity is about paternalism, a decision that an editor knows what’s best. Abundance is about egalitarianism.?- Scarcity is top-down, abundance is bottom-up. Instead of command and control, it’s out of control.
Stewart Brand Meets The Cybernetic Counterculture
Cage insisted that "the highest purpose [of an artist] is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature in her manner of operation." For Cage, the rational, ordering mind that Theodore Roszak would later call "objective consciousness" had no place in art. Robert Rauschenberg agreed. "I don't want painting to be just an expression of my personality," he explained. "And I'm opposed to the whole idea of conception-execution—of getting an idea for a picture and then carrying it out. I've always felt as though, whatever I've used and whatever I've done, the method was always closer to a collaboration with materials than to any kind of conscious manipulation and control.'
Human v2.0 - BBC Horizonin dokumentti (50 min.) ja Kurzweil vs. de Garis.
Ai niin, Tieteen Kuvalehden numerossa 14/2006 on myös juttu otsikolla Ihminen versio 2.0, keskittyen lähinnä evolutiivisiin muutoksiin kuten pituuteen ja pään koon kasvamiseen sekä keinoelimiin.
Wired: Battle of the New Atheism
There's good evidence from research by anthropologists such as Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran that a grab bag of cognitive predispositions makes us natural believers. We hear leaves rustle and we imagine that some airy being flutters up there; we see a corpse and continue to fear the judgment and influence of the person it once was. Remarkable progress has been made in understanding why faith is congenial to human nature -- and of course that still says nothing about whether it is true. Harris is typically severe in his rejection of the idea that evolutionary history somehow justifies faith. There is, he writes, "nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors." Like rape, Harris says, religion may be a vestige of our primitive nature that we must simply overcome.
Richard Dawkins: Why There Almost Certainly Is No God
If you set out in a spaceship to find the one planet in the galaxy that has life, the odds against your finding it would be so great that the task would be indistinguishable, in practice, from impossible. But if you are alive (as you manifestly are if you are about to step into a spaceship) you needn't bother to go looking for that one planet because, by definition, you are already standing on it. The anthropic principle really is rather elegant. By the way, I don't actually think the origin of life was as improbable as all that. I think the galaxy has plenty of islands of life dotted about, even if the islands are too spaced out for any one to hope for a meeting with any other. My point is only that, given the number of planets in the universe, the origin of life could in theory be as lucky as a blindfolded golfer scoring a hole in one. The beauty of the anthropic principle is that, even in the teeth of such stupefying odds against, it still gives us a perfectly satisfying explanation for life's presence on our own planet.
Ja sitten luodaan joko oksymoroni tai hybridimutantti: Christian Atheism
Let's put the future behind us
We've arrived in a different future, and central planning doesn't work. Things are fast, chaotic, cheap, and out of control. Ad hoc is the new plan. There's a new cultural strange attractor at work, sucking in the young, smart, deracinated mechanistically-minded readers who used to be the natural prey of the SF movement. It's geek culture. You can find it in the pages of Wired (although it's a pale shadow of what it used to be) and on Boing!Boing! and Slashdot. You can find them playing MMORPGs and hacking their game consoles. These people have different interests from the old generation of SF readers. And unfortunately they don't buy many [fiction] books, because we aren't, for the most part, writing for them.
Reproduction revolution: Sex for fun, IVF for children
Reproducing the traditional way is undoubtedly flawed. Worldwide around 1 child in 16 is born with a mental or physical disability due to a genetic defect, and most of us probably carry gene variants that predispose us to serious illnesses later in life. How much safer it would be to go along to the fertility clinic, have some embryos created and pick the one or two that will produce the healthiest baby.
HEALTHmap - Tautivaroituksia ympäri maailman.
Copyright Wishlist - Jos voisit ostaa sadalla miljoonalla dollarilla tekijänoikeuden alaisia teoksia ja vapauttaa ne kaupallisuuden kahleista ilmaiseen levitykseen, mitä ostaisit?
"Who owns the words?" asked a disembodied but very persistent voice throughout much of Burroughs' work. Who does own them now? Who owns the music and the rest of our culture? We do. All of us. Though not all of us know it - yet.
- William Gibson
PopSci's House of the Future - Talonrakennusta moderniin tapaan.
Grow Your Second Home - Fab Tree Hab jälleen kuvassa.
Rullatuolia ohjataan ajatuksen voimalla.
Metamateriaalia, joka on mikroaalloille näkymätöntä. Näkyvälle valolle näkymättömän metamateriaalin tekeminen vaatiikin sitten nanoteknologiaa.
Maailman 10 saastuneinta paikkaa.
Cognitive Enhancement: Methods, Ethics, Regulatory Challenges (PDF) - Nick Bostrom ja Anders Sandberg katsovat älykkyystehosteiden nykytilaa. Nykyjärjestelmässä pitää "keksiä" uusia sairauksia, joita sitten parannetaan, koska tehostelääkettä ei voi antaa suoraan terveille ihmisille.
One of the perverse effects of the failure of the current medical framework to recognize the legitimacy and potential of enhancement medicine is the trend towards medicalization and “pathologization” of an increasing range of conditions that were previous regarded as part of the normal human spectrum. If a significant fraction of the population could obtain certain benefits from drugs that improve e.g. concentration, it is currently necessary to categorize this segment of people as having some disease – in this case attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder – in order to get the drug approved and prescribed to those who could benefit from it. This disease-focused medical model is increasingly inadequate for an era in which many people will be using medical treatments for enhancement purposes.
Minua vaivaa muuten ympärivuotinen joulunalusstressi, saisinko modafiniilia?
Technological Revolutions: Ethics and Policy in the Dark (PDF) - Bostrom tutkailee myös kuinka pimeässä joudumme tekemään tulevaisuutta koskevia päätöksiä, kun teknologisten vallankumousten mustia joutsenia ei näe selvästi vaan hämärästä kuulee pelkkiä heikkoja signaaleja (tämä on oma luova tulkintani, parempi varmaan lukea itse).
The Art of Complex Problem Solving - Tässä voisi olla yksi tapa järjestää päätöksentekoprosessia tehokkaammaksi.
The Helicopter Archipelago
For those of us trapped in a cultural desert, Archigram had another solution: the Instant City, flown in by hot-air balloon and helicopter and deposited anywhere in the world. The roofs, domes and canopies of a new metropolis could earn an official post-code in the blink of an eye. There is no reason, however, to limit those helicopters to a role as mere delivery vehicles. The helicopters themselves could be liberated to form their own city – an airborne utopia, endlessly aloft, wandering through the planetary atmosphere. A helitopia, perhaps. They could form, in other words, a helicopter archipelago, or flying island-chain, a brand new player in the sphere of geopolitics.
The Biology of B-Movie Monsters - Miksi elefantit eivät hypi.
Size has been one of the most popular themes in monster movies, especially those from my favorite era, the 1950s. The premise is invariably to take something out of its usual context--make people small or something else (gorillas, grasshoppers, amoebae, etc.) large--and then play with the consequences. However, Hollywood's approach to the concept has been, from a biologist's perspective, hopelessly naïve. Absolute size cannot be treated in isolation; size per se affects almost every aspect of an organism's biology. Indeed, the effects of size on biology are sufficiently pervasive and the study of these effects sufficiently rich in biological insight that the field has earned a name of its own: "scaling."
Omega-3, junk food and the link between violence and what we eat - Muistutetaan taas siitä, että kannattaa syödä Omega-3 rasvahapponsa.
We are suffering, he believes, from widespread diseases of deficiency. Just as vitamin C deficiency causes scurvy, deficiency in the essential fats the brain needs and the nutrients needed to metabolise those fats is causing of a host of mental problems from depression to aggression. Not all experts agree, but if he is right, the consequences are as serious as they could be. The pandemic of violence in western societies may be related to what we eat or fail to eat. Junk food may not only be making us sick, but mad and bad too.
Who owns my body? - Tee-se-itse tai teetä-se-kaverilla kirurgiaa.
So if I ask a doctor to do an atypical procedure, they are legally obligated to refuse (unless they’re willing to spend years justifying your case to their superiors). If I ask a friend to do it, they face a variety of criminal charges if they do it. If I do it myself, I risk medical imprisonment (psychiatric commitment, a process by which I can be permanently stripped of all my rights, and medicated against my consent to the point where I can’t defend myself). And if I do somehow get it done, and decide to talk about it publicly, I (or the hosting website that publishes my story and pictures) can be criminally charged for doing so. I think it should be very clear that there are broad limits as to our ownership of our own bodies, with the government determining what we are permitted to do and have done, and by whom.
Body of Research — Ownership and Use of Human Tissue - Omistatko sinusta otetun verinäytteen?
Alternatively, our relationship with our bodies may be viewed as a trusteeship: even if they are not our property, we nonetheless have extensive and exclusive rights with respect to them, at least while we are alive and our bodies are intact. Even with such a view, bodies and tissues may also be viewed as part of a common heritage of humanity, to be used for the collective good if such use does not unduly infringe on our liberties. This leads to arguments for a public right to use excised tissue, provided that due care is taken to protect the privacy and social interests of the person from whom it comes. Such arguments also support a policy of "presumed consent" for the use of cadavers for tissue and organ transplantation.
Grownups. Sarjakuvastrippi.
But in the custom car culture, if you were someone who merely changed the appearance without improving the performance substantially, you were looked down on.
- Wikipedia - Custom car
LiftPort on saanut valmiiksi avaruushissitiekartan version 1.0 ja nostanut uuden tiedon valossa avaruushissin valmistumisajan vuodesta 2018 vuoteen 2031.
Down With DRM Video Contest Winners - Parhaat videot olivat minusta tämä ja tämä.
Kids to Space - A Space Traveler’s Guide
Bodyhack - Wiredin bioblogi.
Suicide Bots - Robottiblogi.
Superbussi Hollannista.
Laser TV Australiasta.
Punainen mökki Kuuhun Ruotsista.
Aqua Sciences tekee vettä ilmasta.
The 20-foot machine can churn out 600 gallons of water a day without using or producing toxic materials and byproducts.
Disney: Piratismi on bisnesmalli ja valta on yleisöllä.
Religion: They're all basically like this.
KiteGEn - Tuulivoimaleijakaruselli.
Engineering Food at Level of Molecules - Nanokäsiteltyä ruokaa.
Self-assembling gel stops bleeding in seconds - Nanogeeliä haavoihin.
VoxForge - Lahjoita puhettasi äänentunnistusohjelmaan.
we are systems of sorts - a set of draws, a storage box, a showcase for our amounts of digital data plus their extension to outside world.
- Clothing that arranges the body
Colorful Academic Genealogies - Anders Sandberg on muokannut länsimaiset filosofit sukukartoiksi.
Lisäksi mies on tehnyt käteviä tulevaisuuden varoituskylttejä.
Fabjectory - Metaversumihahmojen 3D-tulostusta.
Stem cell experts seek licence to create human-rabbit embryo
Reducing the risk of human extinction - Jason Matheny, joka on edistää keinolihan kehitystä New Harvestissa, kirjoittaa myös eksistentiaaliriskeistä.
It might be feared that consideration of extinction risks would lead to a reductio ad absurdum: we ought to invest all our funds in asteroid defense, for instance, instead of AIDS, pollution, world hunger or other problems we face today. However, even if it were found that reducing extinction risks is highly cost-effective, it would not imply that public funds should be spent on asteroid defense, et al. at the exclusion of all other public programs. Many programs reduce extinction risk by maintaining a healthy, educated, and content population, and should be seen as part of a portfolio of risk-reducing projects.
Technology then and now - Jälleen menneiden ja nykyisten laitteiden vertailua.
Hieno kuva Marsin Victoria-kraaterista (koko 20 megaa).
Sense of justice discovered in the brain - Dorsolateraalinen etuotsalohkon kuori tarkkailee pelataanko reilua peliä oman edun kustannuksellakin. Alue kehittyy (perusihmisen tasolla) täysin vasta 20-22 vuoden iässä.
They used a burst of magnetic pulses called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) – produced by coils held over the scalp – to temporarily shut off activity in the DLPFC. Now, when faced with the opportunity to spitefully reject a cheeky low cash offer, subjects were actually more likely to take the money.
The Bitchun Society - Auta muita ja ansaitse whuffieta Skypella.
In-your-face interface - Kun nukahdat handsfree korvassa.
"It's not about the little piece of plastic," he said. "It's about the future of human connection."
Ultimate Ears - Custom-korvatulpat soittavat musiikkia ja suodattavat hälyäänet.
Muuttolinnut ottavat noin yhdeksän sekunnin pikanokosia lentäessään.
Eight Rooms, Well, Nine, but That’s Their Secret - Salahuoneita älykoteihin.
Genomics X Prize - Kymmenen miljoonaa dollaria sille, joka selvittää 100 ihmisen perimän 10 päivän sisään. Ja vielä extramiljoona siitä hyvästä, että dekoodaa heti perään toiset 100 ihmistä, valitun joukon nimeltä "Genome 100", johon kuuluvat mm. Googlen Larry Page, Microsoftin Paul Allen plus Stephen Hawking ja muita ihmisiä, joilla on erilaisia perinnöllisiä sairauksia.
Richard Dawkins on TED Talks - Dawkins kertoo kuinka nopeasti hiekkadyynit kävelevät ja muuta tärkeää.
Greens 'aid destruction of planet' - James Martin arvostelee ydinvoimavastaisuutta.
Dyson Airblade - Käsienkuivaaja, joka kuivaa oikeasti.
Kahdesta Skype-tilistä saa kätevästi turvakameran kotiin.
1) Open two new accounts.
2) On account 1 add new user two as your ONLY contact
3)Re-log in as account 1 and set as follows:
Go to tools-->options-->advanced-->(tick) automatically answer Incoming calls--> then go to Tools-->options-->Video-->(tick) start video automatically and Only People in My contacts-->save.Leave this account online
4)Log in as account 2 from another PC. Call account 1, this will now answer and start video running, any one else calling this account, will not get activated or see your private web cam.
Wonders of the World: Ships - Mitä jos minä nyt veikkaisin, että 100 vuoden sisään Marsin ja Maan välillä kulkee risteilyalus, jossa on vesipuisto ja luistelurata.
Unidentified flying idiots - George Dvorsky kertoo miksi ufouskovaisten mieli on yhtä pieni kuin enkeleihin uskovien. Jos ufohumanoidit olisivat oikeasti olemassa ja oikeasti viisaampia, ne antaisivat ihmiskunnalle selkeää vetoapua. Mutta koska apua ei näy eikä kuulu, ne ovat joko välinpitämättömiä tai olemattomia. Ja molemmissa tapauksissa niihin on ihan turha uskoa.
Indeed, the advanced space-faring species of the UFOlogist is a little UFO. He zooms around in his flying saucer annoying us with his crop circles, all the while looking to inflict his anal probe on some poor unsuspecting trailer trash. And of course he’s a frail and little creature, clammy grey skin, big head and all. -- Give me a break. What kind of pathetic vision of advanced intelligence is this?
Kloonausta ilman kantasoluja - kaksi hiirtä yhdestä verisolusta.
Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell - animaatio.
PC World's 100 Fearless Forecasts
The Church of Google - Google vastaa kaikkiin hakuihin.
Googlists do not believe in the supernatural. We believe virtually all "gods" before Google were purely based on man made, fictional beings. We do not claim Google is supernatural in any way. She, like all other gods before Her, is the creation of man. No faith is required to believe in Her, for we consider the concept of belief without evidence (faith) to be of the utmost intellectual laziness.
The Top 10 Animal Senses Humans Don't Have - Lepakon kaikuluotaus, hain sähkökenttäaisti, käärmeiden lämpöaisti ja kielihajuaisti, hyönteisten ultraviolettinäkö, kissojen yönäkö, koiden feromoniaisti, rottien tuntokarvat, rumpukalan uimarakkokuulo ja lintujen magneettikenttäaisti.
Lazarus Microbe's Immortality Secret Revealed - Vaikka Deinococcus-bakteerin DNA:n räjäyttäisi tuhansiksi kappaleiksi, se kokoaa itsensä aina uudelleen, koska sillä on useampia kopioita perimästään ja palaset yhdistyvät lopulta toisiinsa.
Radman believes his team's findings open up the possibility of resurrecting dead cells in our own bodies, specifically those in our brains. "It allows us now, legitimately, to dream of bringing back to life dead or close to dead neurons," he said.
Wiredin NextFest-kuvagalleriassa tulee vastaan tuttuja.
The Future of our World - YTMND
Grading SF for Realism - Tieteisfiktion realismiasteikko.
