Transhumanisme

Via BBC:

A molecule designed to find, latch onto, then treat hardened arteries could offer a new way to tackle heart disease, say its inventors.

Nanoburrs, developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), target only damaged cells in blood vessel walls.

Once attached, they can release drugs in precisely the right place.

But the British Heart Foundation warned the technology was some years from being used in patients.

The hardening of the arteries which supply the heart, or atherosclerosis, can eventually lead to blockages which can cause heart attacks.

The study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal says specialists normally use tiny balloons to force open the vessels, then place a tube called a stent inside to keep it open.

Often the process triggers a rapid re-growth of tissue around the stent which can lead to the artery blocking again, and a recent advance has been a stent which releases drugs for a number of days after insertion to keep this process under control.

The MIT approach offers another way to get these drugs to exactly the right place.

Its nanoburrs are coated with proteins which can only stick to a structure in the blood vessel wall called the "basement membrane".

This is only exposed when the wall is damaged, so only damaged sections of blood vessel are targeted.

Once in place, a reaction takes place to release the drug over a prolonged period - up to 12 days so far.

lees meer..

Via NewScientist:

You can't get blood from a stone, but it seems you can make imitation red blood cells from polymers.
Just like real blood cells the pretenders can squeeze through spaces much smaller than their own diameter and absorb and release substances to order, including oxygen.
They could be used to disperse drugs, or the contrast agents used in medical imaging, throughout the body with fewer side effects than direct injection.
The fake cells could also be given to people who have lost blood instead of a blood transfusion.

Lees meer..

Artikel over Fereidoun M. Esfandiary, een belangrijke transhumanist.

Via CBS News: Morley Safer Reports On The Amazing Science Of Regenerative Medicine Growing Body Parts.

(CBS) It sounds like science fiction, but the fact is biotech companies and the government are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into research they hope will one day make it possible for us to grow new body parts.

Originele post via: R&D Daily Thursday, December 10, 2009

Invetech, an innovator in new product development and custom automation for the biomedical, industrial and consumer markets, today announced that it has delivered the world's first production model 3D bio-printer to Organovo, developers of the proprietary NovoGen bioprinting technology. Organovo will supply the units to research institutions investigating human tissue repair and organ replacement.

Dr. Fred Davis, president of Invetech, which has offices in San Diego and Melbourne, said, “Building human organs cell-by-cell was considered science fiction not that long ago. Through this clever combination of technology and science we have helped Organovo develop an instrument that will improve people’s lives, making the regenerative medicine that Organovo provides accessible to people around the world.”

(...)

”Scientists and engineers can use the 3-D bio printers to enable placing cells of almost any type into a desired pattern in 3-D,” said Murphy. “Researchers can place liver cells on a preformed scaffold, support kidney cells with a co-printed scaffold, or form adjacent layers of epithelial and stromal soft tissue that grow into a mature tooth. Ultimately the idea would be for surgeons to have tissue on demand for various uses, and the best way to do that is get a number of bio-printers into the hands of researchers and give them the ability to make three dimensional tissues on demand.”

(...)

Invetech plan to ship a number of 3D bio-printers to Organovo during 2010 and 2011 as a part of the instrument development program. Organovo will be placing the printers globally with researchers in centers of excellence for medical research.

Via Wired:

Forget about 20/20. “Perfect” vision could be redefined by gadgets that give you the eyes of a cyborg.

The tech industry calls the digital enrichment of the physical world “augmented reality.” Such technology is already appearing in smartphones and toys, and enthusiasts dream of a pair of glasses we could don to enhance our everyday perception. But why stop there?

Scientists, eye surgeons, professors and students at the University of Washington have been developing a contact lens containing one built-in LED, powered wirelessly with radio frequency waves.

Eclipse Phase is a pen & paper roleplaying game of post-apocalyptic transhuman conspiracy and horror.
An "eclipse phase" is the period between when a cell is infected by a virus and when the virus appears within the cell and transforms it. During this period, the cell does not appear to be infected, but it is.

Het ziet er erg mooi uit op de website. En de transhumanistische gedachte, Shock Level 4, wordt fraai uitgedrukt in de tagline:

Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Change it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is approaching. Fight it.

Ook voor een niet-gamer als ik een mooie website om vaker te bezoeken. De game zelf is uitgebreid besproken op het blog van Anders Sandberg.

A model that replicates the functions of the human brain is feasible in 10 years according to neuroscientist Professor Henry Markram of the Brain Mind Institute in Switzerland. ‘I absolutely believe it is technically and biologically possible. The only uncertainty is financial. It is an extremely expensive project and not all is yet secured.

Via Physorg.

Drexler, Hall, Merkle, Freitas and the Nanotechnology Roadmap.

Een artikel in het mooie en vrij nieuwe online h⁺-magazine over nanotechnologie. En vooral over hoe ver we nu zijn. Want hoewel er iedere keer enthousiaste berichten komen over wat er kan als we voorbij de "Breakthrough" zijn, echt veel nieuws lijkt er nog niet gebeurd te zijn sinds de publicatie Drexler's boek "Engines of Creation".

The pace of development toward these nanotech visions is accelerating. Here’s the mind-boggling list of recent nanotech developments.

Ja en dan komt die lijst met zaken die er echt toe doen en die al bereikt zijn, vooral op medisch gebied:

• DNA wrapped carbon nanotubes for artificial tissue
• Two ways to make large scale three dimensional structures out of DNA
1. Routing a single-stranded scaffold DNA (a virus genome) through every section of a tube template
2. DNA used to assemble sheets of metal nanoparticles, that could be the basis of nanocircuits and could be integrated with the 3D nanotechnology
• Large scale 3D nanotechnology with DNA that is integrated with carbon nanotubes, diamond nanorods, nanoparticle metal, graphene and other DNA compatible chemistry
• DNA to detect pathogens and be used for drug delivery
• Modified RNA so that it reliably enter cells for drug delivery
• Ultrathin diamond nanorods – only twice as thick as the diamond rod logic for the molecular computers described by Drexler.
Given the level of extremely rapid discovery and experimentation, it seems like we may be reaching a tipping point – and it certainly supports the case for Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns.

Een belangrijke organisatie voor Nanotech is het Foresight Institute.

The Foresight Institute is also helping to set the agenda for the beneficial applications of nanotechnology:

1. Providing Renewable Clean Energy
2. Supplying Clean Water Globally
3. Improving Health and Longevity
4. Healing and Preserving the Environment
5. Making Information Technology Available To All
6. Enabling Space Development.

Het laatste punt, Space Development, is wat ikzelf het interessantste vind - al moeten de medische toepassingen er eerst komen, anders zal ik het andere niet meemaken :-)
De Von Neumann-probe, een zelfreplicerend ruimtevaartuig, is ooit in theorie bedacht door de Hongaars-Amerikaanse wis- en natuurkundige John von Neumann. Robert Freitas, die o.a. twee dikken delen schreef over "Nanomedicine" "(er moeten er nog twee volgen, maar of die er ooit komen?), heeft zich ook verdiept in de Von neumann-probe. Dat is nog eens hoogst speculatieve natuurkunde.
Het artikel schetst slechts een paar hoofdlijnen, op de webiste van Eric Drexler is een complete Roadmap te vinden.
Ik kan niet wachten tot het zover is!