In a pilot study of two patients monitored for two years, an international team of researchers slowed the onset of the debilitating brain disease X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD) using a lentiviral vector to introduce a therapeutic gene into patient’s blood cells. Although studies with larger cohorts of patients are needed, these results suggest that gene therapy …
From a research paper: “Probing Cold Dense Nuclear Matter”: The protons and neutrons in a nucleus can form strongly correlated nucleon pairs. Scattering experiments, where a proton is knocked-out of the nucleus with high momentum transfer and high missing momentum, show that in 12C the neutron-proton pairs are nearly twenty times as prevalent as proton-proton …
* Why start with the assumption that no current, emerging or future technology can solve a particular class of problem ? * Why assume that no technology can be a significant part of a solution or reduction of a problem ?* People say that it is Utopian and imply it is impossible to solve all …
Eric Drexler at Metamodern points out a two page roadmap to low cost DNA production by one of the top people in the field of DNA synthesis, George Church. George lays out a roadmap synthesize DNA material for dollars per kilogram of DNA. This price is about a billion times cheaper than current costs for …
J Storrs Hall has conceived of Utility Fog and a Space Pier and now his idea for nanotechnology enabled climate control. Version One: 1000 Times More Powerful than Global Warming You build a little balloon—my guess is the balloon needs to be somewhere between a millimeter and a centimeter in size. It has a very …
Using a mouse genetically altered to model lymphoma, extra copies of the sirtuin gene were applied or they were fed them the sirtuin activator resveratrol, which in turn extended their mean lifespan by 24 to 46 percent. SIRT1 Redistribution on Chromatin Promotes Genomic Stability but Alters Gene Expression during Aging Genomic instability and alterations in …
the Annals of Internal Medicine has a report of a drug MK-677 which has been found to boost the lean muscle of elderly people and reduce their frailty. Over 12 months, the ghrelin mimetic MK-677 enhanced pulsatile growth hormone secretion, significantly increased fat-free mass, and was generally well tolerated. Long-term functional and, ultimately, pharmacoeconomic, studies …
The zero energy future does not exist. This kind of future is often seriously discussed at peak oil sites, where they say that after say one hundred years there will be no more oil and civilization will revert to a pre-oil status. Biofuels are already here and can be scaled up. There is already over …
Sandia National Laboratory led by Sandia researcher Peter Van Blarigan that has been testing physical components of free-piston engines which could be 50% efficient. This is about twice as good as current gas combustion engines and about as efficient as fuel cells. Fuel cells are too expensive. He is assembling a complete free-piston engine prototype, …
PowerGenix makes a variation on nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries, which are often used in hybrid vehicles (which have a conventional engine to back up the batteries). The company has created a nickel zinc (NiZn) battery that has 35 percent higher power and energy density than NiMH, but is half the cost of a lithium-ion …
China has launched a supercomputer based on homegrown server standards that, at its peak, can make 230 trillion per second. The supercomputer, named Dawning 5000, was developed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Dawning Information Industry Co. Ltd. and has recorded a LINPACK speed of 160 trillion FLOPS (floating point operations per second), …