Singularity University Futuremed 2020

FutureMed is an educational program that will explore and drive the future of medicine through exponential, game changing technologies.

How will rapidly developing technologies such as low cost genomic sequencing, artificial intelligence, telemedicine, robotics, 24/7 body wearable monitors, smart pills, stem cells, synthetic biology, gene therapy, mobile phone apps and crowd sourced health data affect the future of healthcare and medicine?

The FutureMed Program educates, informs and prepares physicians, innovators, inventors, investors and senior healthcare executives to understand and recognize the opportunities and disruptive influences of exponentially growing technologies within medicine and healthcare, and to understand how many rapidly developing and converging fields affect the future of clinical practice and the biomedical industry.

Peptoid foldamer engineering technology for molecular nanosystems reviewed by Eric Drexler

“Peptoids at the 7th Summit: Toward Macromolecular Systems Engineering” [8 page pdf] kicks off the peptoid special issue of Biopolymers: Peptide Science. All the papers are open access.

In peptoid self-assembly, the most exciting development of the past year has been the synthesis of peptoid nanosheets, crystalline bilayers with a thickness of 2.7 nm and transverse dimensions that can exceed 100 microns.

In a fundamental physical sense, the enormous design space opened by modern foldamer technologies offers enormous potential, but to make effective use of that physical potential will require software tools to support what amounts to a new field of engineering. Biology-based evolutionary methods (such as SELEX and phage display) are unavailable in peptoid engineering, and this highlights the importance of developing design-based methods. Protein design provides a model that illustrates the nature of the problem and some of the solutions.

The key question for engineering, isn’t ‘‘What remains to be discovered?’’,
but rather, ‘‘What is visibly within reach?’’ The tool kit in hand for peptoid engineering is large and growing, and has already proved adequate for engineering protein-scale macromolecular objects. Exploiting side-chain diversity offers many ways to increase the predictability and stability of folds, many ways to link folded structures to form larger systems, and many ways to imbue those structures with new functions. This is enough to move forward, and with confidence that the path leads beyond today’s horizon.

Methods for engineering biomolecular systems based on DNA and protein are advancing rapidly, building a technology platform for engineering increasingly large and complex self-assembled nanosystems. A comparative review of the physical basis for DNA, protein, and peptoid engineering indicates that the characteristics of peptoids suit them for a strong role in developing self-assembled nanosystems. Physical parallels between peptoids and proteins indicate that peptoid engineering, like protein engineering, will require specialized software to support design. Access to novel side-chain functionality will enable peptoid designers to exploit novel binding interactions, including many that have been discovered and exploited in crystal engineering, a field that has extensively explored the self-assembly of small organic molecules to form well-ordered structures. Developments in DNA, protein, and inorganic nanotechnologies are converging to provide a technology platform for the design and fabrication of complex, functional, atomically precise nanosystems. Peptoid-based foldamer technologies can contribute to this convergence, expanding the scope of the emerging field of atomically precise macromolecular nanosystems

Folding of a single-chain, information-rich polypeptoid sequence into a highly ordered nanosheet

The design and synthesis of protein-like polymers is a fundamental challenge in materials science. A means to achieve this goal is to create synthetic polymers of defined sequence where all relevant folding information is incorporated into a single polymer strand. We present here the aqueous self-assembly of peptoid polymers (N-substituted glycines) into ultrathin, two-dimensional highly ordered nanosheets, where all folding information is encoded into a single chain. The sequence designs enforce a two-fold amphiphilic periodicity. Two sequences were considered: one with charged residues alternately positive and negative (alternating patterning), and one with charges segregated in positive and negative halves of the molecule (block patterning). Sheets form between pH 5 and 10 with the optimal conditions being pH 6 for the alternating sequence and pH 8 for the block sequence. Once assembled, the nanosheets remain stable between pH 6 and 10 with observed degradation beginning to occur below pH 6. The alternating charge nanosheets remain stable up to concentrations of 20% acetonitrile, whereas the block pattern displayed greater robustness remaining stable up to 30% acetonitrile. These observations are consistent with expectations based on considerations of the molecules' electrostatic interactions. This study represents an important step in the construction of abiotic materials founded on biological informatic and folding principle

Euro zone trouble - Italy bond yields soar and EFSF bailout fund seeing higher interest rates

Italian government bond yields soared to near 15-year highs, putting the euro zone's third largest economy front and center of the region's debt crisis, despite scrambling efforts by policymakers to stem the growing contagion.

Italy, the world's eighth largest economy, overtook Greece as the prime threat to the stability of the 17-country single currency zone, as finance ministers met to try to find ways of building a firewall around the two-year-old crisis.

The EFSF bailout fund is having trouble borrowing at lower rates The euro zone's rescue fund, the European Financial Stability Facility, has raised €3 billion for Ireland in a bond auction, but it had to pay a higher interest rate than in previous auctions. The EFSF auction had to be postponed last week due to the turmoil on the financial markets. But today, demand was only slightly more than the €3 billion on offer and the effective rate or return paid to buyers of the bonds was 3.59%, higher than anticipated. At the last such sale in June, the bonds were sold at rates around 0.8 percentage points lower.

The EFSF fund is supposed to borrow cheap so it could lend to EU countries that cannot borrow.

Nuclear power is India's gateway to a prosperous future and Uranium news

The Hindu - Nuclear power is India's gateway to a prosperous future

Energy is the most fundamental requirement of every society or nation as it progresses through the ladder of development. This is clearly reflected in the average energy consumption per person across nations — for instance, an average American consumes more than 15 times the energy consumed by an average Indian

Today, India finds itself going through a phase of rapid ascent in economic empowerment. Industries are evolving at a significantly higher rate since liberalization. Our focus for this decade will be on the development of key infrastructure and the uplifting of the 600,000 villages where 750 million people live, as vibrant engines of the economy. In 2008, we crossed the trillion-dollar mark, and it took more than six decades for us to reach that milestone. However, it is predicted that the Indian economy will double again, to reach the $2-trillion mark by 2016, and then again redouble, to reach the $4 trillion milestone by 2025. All this economic growth will need massive energy. It is predicted that the total electricity demand will grow from the current 150,000 MW to at least over 950,000 MW by the year 2030 — which will still be less than one-fourth of the current U.S. per capita energy need. In fact, by 2050, in all likelihood the demand could go even higher, and the per capita energy demand would be equal to the current French or Russian figure of about 6000 W per capita.

Africa is second after Asia Pacific in terms of mobile subscriptions

Africa has become the second most connected region in the world in terms of mobile subscription count, up from fourth place at end of 2010, according to new research by Informa Telecoms and Media. There were over 616 million mobile subscriptions in Africa at the end of September, which means that the mobile market on the continent is second only to Asia-Pacific in terms of mobile subscription numbers.

Africa’s mobile market is forecast to pass one billion mobile subscription in 2016 according to the latest forecast.

Michael Pettis says Germany Must Bail out Europe, Not China

Michael Pettis (professor at Peking University’s Guanghua School of Management and a Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) agrees with Arvind Subramanian (Peterson Institute) that China should use current events to play a bigger and more decisive role in global finance, and I certainly agree that as a surplus nation it is very much in China’s interest provide financing to the eurozone, I am not sure it makes sense for China to do anything that actually helps Europe.

[The concept of China bailing out Europe accord to Pettis is a] little bizarre, but not at all out of step with the thinking in Europe. I think the request for assistance from China and other developing countries shows how confused Europe’s leaders are and reinforces the claim made by Beth Simmons in her book (Who Adjusts) on the politics of the 1930s European debt crisis. Simmons argues that one of the problems with a debt crisis is that when debt levels are perceived as being too high, major stakeholders are forced into behaving in ways that reinforce credit deterioration and exacerbate the debt problem.

Foreign Policy Experts Agree With Ron Paul and China's Reaction to the Herman Cain Nuclear Mistake

1. Ron Paul is often chided by his Republican opponents for his extreme views on American foreign policy. His calls for ending all foreign wars and shutting hundreds of military bases across the globe have drawn howls from his GOP rivals, who have labeled the moves irresponsible and naïve. He also pledges to cut all foreign aid and withdrawing U.S. participation in the World Trade Organization and the United Nations has been at odds with even the most conservative members of his own party.

Paul, the Congressman from Texas, is finding support for his non-interventionist positions from a growing number of foreign policy experts.

“He’s attacking our rich lazy friends, why is that not more popular,” said Harvey Sapolsky, emeritus professor of public policy and organization at MIT. He backs Paul’s calls for reducing America’s military budget, arguing that much of it is used to defend wealthy nations’ security.

“He’s easily dismissed as a crank,” said Sapolsky, who says Paul has good ideas but can be an inarticulate messenger.

Like most aspects of running a national political campaign, style often outweighs substance and both Sapolsky and Preble said that Paul is neither a great orator nor does he break down large global situations well.

Furukawa Electric acquires SuperPower Inc., U.S. manufacturer of second generation high temperature superconducting wire

Furukawa Electric acquired one of the only two companies in the world with the capability for commercial production of 2G HTS wire today. Furukawa Electric plans to expand both its and SuperPower's business aggressively in the markets of the globally-expanding smart grid sector, alternative energy sector and industrial sector by providing superconducting wire as well as developing applied superconductor devices.

New Method for Making Neurons Reverses Parkinsons in Rats and tests are proceeding on Monkeys

Technology Review - A new method of synthesizing dopamine-producing neurons, the predominant type of brain cell destroyed in Parkinson's, offers hope for creating cell-replacement therapies that reverse the damage.

The method provides an efficient way of making functional cells. When transplanted into mice and rats with brain damage and movement problems similar to Parkinson's, the cells integrated into the brain and worked normally, reversing the animals' motor issues.

In the new study, researchers started with human embryonic stem cells, which by definition can differentiate into any cell type. To make a specific type of cell in high numbers, scientists expose the stem cells to a cocktail of chemicals that mimic what they would experience during normal development.

Printable "small-molecule" solar cells reach 6.7% efficiency and could reach 9% by the end of 2012 and 15% eventually

Technology Review - Polymer solar cells are inefficient compared to silicon solar cells, but they are much cheaper to make. Organic materials—whether made of polymers or so-called "small molecules," which are organic compounds with a low molecular weight—can be made into inks and printed over large areas. They're also lightweight and flexible, which makes them promising for applications like rooftop installations or solar-cell patches for charging portable electronics.

Using a new small molecule designed by Bazan, Heeger built a solar cell that converts 6.7 percent of the light energy that strikes it into electricity. Bazan expects to reach 9 percent efficiency within a year. Although efficiencies in lab tests tend to be much greater than those in a manufactured cell, this would put these materials on par with the best polymer solar cells on the market.

Nature Materials - Solution-processed small-molecule solar cells with 6.7% efficiency

Carnival of Space 222

1. Discovery Space News by Ian O'Neill - Those pesky physicists are at it again; they want to build a laser so powerful that it will literally rip spacetime apart.

The lasers planned by the Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility, known as "ELI," would concentrate 200 petawatts of power -- that's 100,000 times the world's power production -- and fire it at a single point for less than a trillionth of a second.

The combined power of 10 separate lasers would be focused down to a very small volume, creating conditions more extreme than in the center of our sun. It is hoped (yes, hoped) that this immense energy will punch a hole through the fabric of spacetime itself, heralding a new era of exotic physics discovery.

Left One schematic setup to probe collective and dynamical nonlinear and [Right] The Generation of higher harmonics from the quantum vacuum

The European Union website for the Extreme Light Infrastructure project

The ELI will have applications for studying the Quantum Vacuum and Quantum Dynamics

Greek PM to step down for new government

Greece's embattled prime minister and main opposition leader agreed Sunday to form an interim government to ensure the country's new European debt deal and oversee early elections, capping a week of political turmoil that saw Greece facing a catastrophic default and threatening its euro membership.

Papandreou "has already stated he will not lead the new government," the statement from the president's office said.

He is to meet again Monday with opposition leader Antonis Samaras to seek agreement on who will head the new government and who will be included in its Cabinet, the president's office said.

Fujitsu K supercomputer hits a record 10.51 petaflops and supercomputers in the United States and China

HPCWire - just three and half years after IBM broke the petaflop barrier with its Roadrunner supercomputer, Fujitsu's "K computer" has passed the 10 petaflops mark. Fujitsu and RIKEN announced on Tuesday that they have completed the final build-out of the system and achieved 10.51 petaflops on Linpack, reaching a major milestone of Japan's Next-Generation Supercomputing Project.

The completed K system, housed at RIKEN's Advanced Institute for Computational Science in Kobe, is powered by more than 88 thousand SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs. The 8-core SPARC64 VIIIfx chip was purpose-built for HPC, delivering 128 peak gigaflops at 2.0 GHz, while drawing a relatively modest 58 watts. Although each CPU represents a single node, four of the SPARC chips are glued to a single motherboard, 24 of which make up a rack. The whole system is comprised of 864 of these racks.

The peak petaflops for the final system is a whopping 11.28 petaflops, and thanks to the Fujitsu's 6D Tofu interconnect, the system was able to squeeze better than 93 percent Linpack efficiency from the floating pointing parts -- a rather remarkable feat. Total time for the Linpack run: 29 hours and 28 minutes.

Japan's "K Computer" does 10 quadrillion calculations a second (Photo: RIKEN)

Unlocking vast reserves of shale gas could solve the energy crisis, the jobs crisis, and the deficit

Business Week - shale production in the U.S. has increased from practically nothing in 2000 to more than 13 billion cubic feet per day, or about 30 percent of the country’s natural gas supply. That proportion is heading toward 50 percent in coming years. The U.S. passed Russia in 2009 to become the world’s largest producer of natural gas. An Energy Dept. advisory panel on which Krupp sits estimated in August that more than 200,000 jobs, both direct and indirect, “have been created over the last several years by the development of domestic production of shale gas.”

Natural gas is a cleaner fuel than coal but it is not as clean or safe as nuclear, wind and solar.

The US now gets 45 percent of its electricity from coal, 25 percent from natural gas, 20 percent from nuclear, 7 percent from hydro, and 2 percent from wind. Solar barely registers. With current technology, wind and solar probably can’t reach into double digits, let alone bear the bulk of the load.

Artificial diamond structure in crystalline silicon found to be a semiconductor for light

Optical computer now a step closer Researchers from the FOM Foundation, the MESA+ Institute at the University of Twente, Philips and ASML have designed a completely new method for manufacturing 3D structures in silicon, which function as a semiconductor for light. They publish their results in two leading journals. The use of standard equipment makes the integration in silicon chips possible and that is vitally important for their application in a future optical computer.

One way of making computers far faster still is the production of three-dimensional computer chips. The technology currently used for the manufacture of computer chips is not particularly suitable for the manufacture of three-dimensional spatial structures. The structures on a chip are built up layer by layer, as a result of which the production of an extensive structure is a time-consuming and expensive job. In two recently published articles in the journals 'Advanced Functional Materials' and 'Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology' former FOM researchers Johanna van den Broek, Willem Tjerkstra, Léon Woldering and Willem Vos described with their colleagues how they could make a three-dimensional structure in crystalline silicon that consisted of an orthogonal regular pattern of pores that crossed each other perpendicularly. The pores formed a diamond structure that was found to behave as a semiconductor for light: a photonic crystal

Figure 1- Electron microscope image of a three-dimensional diamond structure in silicon (encircled), consisting of identical pores in an orthogonal pattern that cross each other at an angle of 90º. The upper part of the figure shows the upper surface of the chip, in which a large quantity of pores have been etched. Top left a dust particle can be seen that ended up on the crystal after the process. In the side of the chip an orthogonal pattern of pores has been etched in a single go, perpendicular to the other pores. The scale at the top right is two micrometres, about 50 times as thin as a human hair.

Unified universal quantum cloning machine

Optimal asymmetric 1 → 4 quantum cloning in arbitrary dimension

We present an optimal asymmetric 1 → 4 quantum cloner. Our derivation generalizes the constructions of optimal asymmetric 1 → 2 and 1 → 3 quantum cloners in [Quantum Inf. Comput 5, 583 (2005)]. We explicitly prove the optimality of this cloner and give the maximum achievable fidelities. We also present the relation between the optimal quantum cloner with the multipartite entangled state which shows the singlet monogamy inequality in [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 050501 (2009)].

Arxiv - Unified Universal Quantum Cloning Machine and Fidelities (4 pages)

We present a unified universal quantum cloning machine, which combines several different existing universal cloning machines together including the asymmetric case. In this unified framework, the identical pure states are projected equally into each copy initially constituted by input and one half of the maximally entangled states. We show explicitly that the output states of those universal cloning machines are the same. One importance of this unified cloning machine is that the cloning procession is always the symmetric projection which reduces dramatically the difficulties for implementation. Also it is found that this unified cloning machine can be directly modified to the general asymmetric case. Besides the global fidelity and the single-copy fidelity, we also present all possible arbitrary-copy fidelities

Bioartificial Lung Engineering

American Journal of Transplantation - Bioartificial Lung Engineering

End-stage lung disease is a major health care challenge. Lung transplantation remains the definitive treatment, yet rejection and donor organ shortage limit its broader clinical impact. Engineering bioartificial lung grafts from patient-derived cells could theoretically lead to alternative treatment strategies. Although many challenges on the way to clinical application remain, important early milestones toward translation have been met. Key endodermal progenitors can be derived from patients and expanded in vitro. Advanced culture conditions facilitate the formation of three-dimensional functional tissues from lineage-committed cells. Bioartificial grafts that provide gas exchange have been generated and transplanted into animal models. Looking ahead, current challenges in bioartificial lung engineering include creation of ideal scaffold materials, differentiation and expansion of lung-specific cell populations and full maturation of engineered constructs to provide graft longevity after implantation in vivo. A multidisciplinary collaborative effort will not only bring us closer to the ultimate goal of engineering patient-derived lung grafts, but also generate a series of clinically valuable translational milestones such as airway grafts and disease models. This review summarizes achievements to date, current challenges and ongoing research in bioartificial lung engineering.

FightAging - has some background articles about the challenges of lung engineering and H/T to fightaging for the original article link

Internet Explorer drops below 50% browser market share

Ars Technica - Internet Explorer still retains a majority of the desktop browser market share, at 52.63 percent, a substantial 1.76 point drop from September. However, desktop browsing makes up only about 94 percent of Web traffic; the rest comes from phones and tablets, both markets in which Internet Explorer is all but unrepresented. As a share of the whole browser market, Internet Explorer has only 49.58 percent of users. Microsoft's browser first achieved a majority share in—depending on which numbers you look at—1998 or 1999. It reached its peak of about 95 percent share in 2004, and has been declining ever since.

Adaptive on-chip control of nano-optical fields with optoplasmonic vortex nanogates

Arxiv - Adaptive on-chip control of nano-optical fields with optoplasmonic vortex nanogates (11 pages)

A major challenge for plasmonics as an enabling technology for quantum information processing is the realization of active spatio-temporal control of light on the nanoscale. The use of phase-shaped pulses or beams enforces specific requirements for on-chip integration and imposes strict design limitations. We introduce here an alternative approach, which is based on exploiting the strong sub-wavelength spatial phase modulation in the near-field of resonantly-excited high-Q optical microcavities integrated into plasmonic nanocircuits. Our theoretical analysis reveals the formation of areas of circulating powerflow (optical vortices) in the near-fields of optical microcavities, whose positions and mutual coupling can be controlled by tuning the microcavities parameters and the excitation wavelength. We show that optical powerflow though nanoscale plasmonic structures can be dynamically molded by engineering interactions of microcavity-induced optical vortices with noble-metal nanoparticles. The proposed strategy of re-configuring plasmonic nanocircuits via locally addressable photonic elements opens the way to develop chip-integrated optoplasmonic switching architectures, which is crucial for implementation of quantum information nanocircuits.

An artificial molecular clock to control artificial molecular machines

Rsearchers use such a transcriptional oscillator as a molecular clock to time two other molecular processes. One of these is a DNA nanomechanical device, a DNA tweezers that gives different fluorescent signals when open and when closed. Different RNA molecules produced by the transcriptional oscillator act to either open or close the tweezers. The other process is the synthesis by the transcriptional oscillator of an RNA molecule that binds the dye molecule Malachite Green, changing its fluorescence.

(H/T foresight institute)

Foxconn will replace 500,000 workers with 1 million robots that they will produce themselves

Foxconn will mass produce their own robots

Robot Report - Taiwan-based Hon Hai Precision Industry (Foxconn) plans to invest $223 million to build an R&D and manufacturing facility in Taiwan to develop and produce an empire of robots.
... The project is expected to generate an estimated $4 billion in production value in the next three to five years and create about 2,000 jobs while replacing 500,000 mainland Chinese workers with 1 million robots.

Russia 2045 project aims to eliminate death and disease

Winston Churchill once said that Russia was "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma". The same thing could perhaps be said of the recently unveiled Russia 2045 project. The project appears to have goals so ambitious that they make even Ray Kurzweil's predictions seem tame by comparison. The Russia 2045 project is privately funded and has provided few details regarding the technologies to be developed. In an interview with Sander Olson, Russia 2045 founder Dmitry Itskov discusses avatars, robotic bodies, and reverse-engineering the human brain.

Question: You recently gave a talk at the Singularity Summit 2045. How did that conference go? What was the reaction to your talk?

This was the first Russian speech at such an important international conference and I would like to thank the organizers for the opportunity to give a talk. The audience reaction was certainly important to us. We monitored social networks, Twitter, blogs. The responses were varied—for instance, one user, apparently hinting at the achievements of Soviet science, wrote that “Whatever you might think about the viability of 2045 movement, Russian brute force engineering has accomplished breakthroughs before”. I would like to add something here: Russian engineering is famous not for a brute-force approach, but for inventive problem solving given limited resources. It is very Russian to implement a cheap and clever way of doing something instead of spending unlimited funds to achieve something through brute force.

Some viewers enjoyed my appeal to forget the long history of tense relations between Russia and the U.S. and to combine our efforts to achieve cybernetic immortality. Others expressed agreement with the statement that eternal life is our right and that if someone does not like it, they may remain in whichever world they choose, but that they should not question our right to be free and immortal. Americans have always respected man’s personal freedom, his freedom of choice. It is important for the modern Russian as well.

Red Camera finally releases its Scarlet-X with video camera

RED Digital Cinema has officially released its third industry-changing camera, the Scarlet-X. With burst modes up to 12 fps at full 5K resolution alongside 4K motion capture from 1-30 fps, the camera allows professional photographers and cinematographers to simultaneously capture motion footage and still content. Never miss a shot. Ever. Scarlet-X’s compact design, endless modularity and advanced feature set provide a future-proof solution catering to every shooter’s needs, leaving one-dimensional DSLRs and 1080p camcorders in its wake. Priced at under $10,000, Scarlet-X advances RED’s vision to democratize superlative cinema and professional photography.

With 4000 to 5000 lines of resolution it has 16 to 25 times the resolution of high definition. It has superior resolution to $200,000 35mm analog film cameras. Red Cameras other digital cameras have already been replacing 35 mm analog film cameras.

No Greek Referendum but bailout drama continues

After intense pressure from European leaders, the government confirmed it had dropped plans to hold a referendum on Greece's euro zone membership, which had threatened an immediate crisis in the bloc, but remained some way from saving the bailout deal.

Papandreou says he announced the referendum on Monday -- sending shockwaves through world markets -- to ensure political consensus for the deal. His opponents have since said they will back it conditionally but accuse him of clinging to power.

Opposition politicians want Papandreou's resignation and early elections as a price for their support for the bailout deal -- which aims not only to save Greece from bankruptcy but prevent its problems engulfing bigger euro zone economies.

For euro zone leaders -- and Greece's battle to avoid a debt default -- the worst possible outcome would be a stalemate, prolonging the agony over the 130 billion bailout which euro zone leaders agreed only last week.

Rumor that Navy SPAWAR is a Rossi Energy Catalyzer customer

1. Rossi's first customer who is now the proud owner of their very own 1 megawatt fusion reactor looks almost certainly military in origin, and could well be SPAWAR. Space And Naval Warfare Systems Command

The US Navy has a long history and association with cold fusion going back to the Pons and Fleischmann era, even studying cold fusion in secret for over a decade while mainstream science shrugged at it's very mention.

Fox News - Cold Fusion Experiment: Major Success or Complex Hoax?

Sterling Allan (PESN blog) hinted that an unnamed “customer” of Rossi's device is a military organization that starts with an N. Rossi said this customer measured and verified the test -- and told FoxNews.com that Paul Swanson with the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems unit (SPAWAR) can vouch for the demonstration.

Cancer is responsible for 40% of the premature deaths in the UK

Cancer is responsible for killing 40 per cent of all the men and women who die prematurely between the ages of 25 and 74 in the UK – according to a new analysis of the figures released today by Cancer Research UK.

This means cancer causes more untimely deaths than any other disease including coronary heart disease, stroke and AIDS as well as traffic accidents, suicide and murder.

But there is good news too. Despite the rise in the number of people developing cancer, death rates from the disease have fallen dramatically over the last forty years. And there are more people surviving cancer than ever before thanks to new research finding better treatments.

A Top Tier Venture Capitalist is bullish on Entrpreneurs in China but the future elite entrepreneurs are still expected from the USA

Silicon Valley venture capitalist Jim Breyer made $5 billion for his firm Accel Partners and earned himself billionaire status by taking a risky bet on Facebook in 2004.

Breyer says that over the next decade “you will see at least half of the top 10 or 20 Internet companies come from China. China remains a phenomenal mobile Internet consumer market.” He added that the entrepreneurs in China “are a bit more mercenary” than in the U.S., discussing in their business pitches how much money they expect to make for themselves. But Breyer explained that it is part of the culture in a different way from Silicon Valley, where technological success is the primary aim, with the financial success the secondary bit.

Economist magazine endorses removing senescent cells - one of the seven pillars of SENS

Dr Baker developed a drug that when given to genetically altered mice would kill cells which had reached their Hayflick limits while leaving other cells untouched. Hayflick limited cells had reach senescence.

The results were spectacular. Mice given the drug every three days from birth suffered far less age-related body-wasting than those which were not. They lost less fatty tissue. Their muscles remained plump (and effective, too, according to treadmill tests). And they did not suffer cataracts of the eye. They did, though, continue to experience age-related problems in tissues that do not produce P16INK4A as they get old. In particular, their hearts and blood vessels aged normally (or, rather, what passes for normally in mice with progeria). For that reason, since heart failure is the main cause of death in such mice, their lifespans were not extended.

The drug, Dr Baker found, produced some benefit even if it was administered to a mouse only later in life. Though it could not clear cataracts that had already formed, it partly reversed muscle-wasting and fatty-tissue loss. Such mice were thus healthier than their untreated confrères.

The most intriguing thing Dr Baker’s result provides is a new way of thinking about how to slow the process of ageing—and one that works with the grain of nature, rather than against it.

The new way of thinking about aging is one of the seven pillars of the SENS approach to antiaging. The way to think about is to remove and repair as much aging damage as we can.

Donate to SENS to hasten the development of research and therapies to implement this new approach to antiaging.

Petrobas plans for 5 million barrels of oil per day for Brazil in 2020

Economist - If the ambitious plans of Petrobras, Brazil's national oil company, come to fruition, by 2020 Brazil will be producing 5 million barrels per day, much of it from new offshore fields. That might make Brazil a top-five source of oil.

The government has established a complicated legal framework for the fields. It has vested their ownership in Pré-Sal Petróleo, a new state body whose job is merely to collect and spend the oil money. It has granted an operating monopoly to Petrobras (although the company can strike production-sharing agreements with private partners). The rationale was that, since everyone now knows where the oil is, the lion’s share of the profits should go to the nation. But this glides over the complexity in developing fields that lie up to 300km (190 miles) offshore, beneath 2km of water and up to 5km of salt and rock.

To develop the new fields, and build onshore facilities including refineries, Petrobras plans to invest $45 billion a year for the next five years, the largest investment programme of any oil firm in the world.

Bill Gates and saving millions of lives every year by altering the economics of Vaccines

Forbes - The metrics of success that Bill Gates is concerned about now are lives saved, kids who aren’t crippled.

Bill Gates’ vaccine-based giving is closing in on $6 billion to fight measles, hepatitis B, rotavirus and AIDS, among others—is part of the largest, most human-driven philanthropy in the history of mankind.

“A 23-cent vaccine,” he says, “and you’ll never get measles,” a disease that “at its peak was killing about a million and a half a year; it’s down below 300,000.” Gates rattles off milestones in the history of global health and the prices of vaccines down to the penny, but blanks on the name of one of his favorite vaccine heroes, John Enders, the late Nobel laureate, or Joe Cohen, a key inventor of the new malaria vaccine Gates helped bankroll.

He is using his the reputation, resources and determination to stamp out infectious disease. “I’d be deeply disappointed,” says Gates, if in the next 25 years he can’t lower the death toll by 80%. Otherwise, “we’re just not doing our job very well.”

Calls for Greek Prime Minister Papandreou to resign

Greek PM George Papandreou is facing calls from senior members of his own party to resign, amid uncertainty about a eurozone bailout deal. Earlier the BBC reported that the PM was preparing to resign but state TV said he had ruled this out. The opposition New Democracy party has said it would accept taking part in a coalition government if Mr Papandreou agreed to stand down.

UCLA developing stronger carbon nanotube materials

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science been awarded $4.5 million over four years by the U.S. Department of Defense to strengthen carbon nanotube yarns and sheets, materials that hold great promise for advancing satellite technology.

Since their discovery in 1993, carbon nanotubes have attracted great academic and industrial interest, but commercial applications have been slow to develop, primarily because of lingering technical problems that reduce the nanotubes' strength.

Now, a group of UCLA researchers led by Larry Carlson, head of UCLA's Easton Institute of Technology Advancement and director of new materials at UCLA Engineering, intends to correct various technical issues, potentially making the yarns and sheets 10 times stronger.

Nanocomp Technologies has carbon nanotube yarns with the following strength now

breaking strengths up to 3 GPa expressed or in other terms: 1.5 Nt/Tex or 450,000 psi and with fracture toughness that is higher than aramids (such as Kevlar® or Twaron®). Our CNT sheets have breaking strengths, without binders, that range from 500 MPa to 1.2 GPa depending upon tube orientation. Aluminum breaks at 500 MPa, carbon steel breaks around 1 GPa.

Chemically assembled metamaterials could lead to superlenses and cloaking

Nanomanufacturing technology has enabled scientists to create metamaterials -- stuff that never existed in nature -- with unusual optical properties. They could lead to "superlenses" able to image proteins, viruses and DNA, and perhaps even make a "Star Trek" cloaking device.

Other metamaterials offer unique magnetic properties that could have applications in microelectronics or data storage.

Two polymer molecules linked together will self-assemble into a complex shape, in this case a convoluted "gyroid." One of the polymers is chemically removed, leaving a mold that can be filled with metal. Finally the other polymer is removed, leaving a metal gyroid with features measured in nanometers.

Eradicating Aging Cells Could Prevent Disease which is part of SENS

For more than a decade, researchers have believed that aging cells damage the tissue around them, and that this damage underlies a number of age-related disorders. Now a new study in mice appears to confirm this. The study shows that selectively eliminating those aging, or "senescent," cells, could help prevent the onset of everything from muscle loss to cataracts

Scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, identified senescent cells in mice that had been genetically engineered to age rapidly using a biomarker, called p16Ink4a, specific to these cells. For the length of the animals' lives, they were injected with a drug that induced only those biomarker-containing senescent cells to commit suicide, while leaving others untouched.

The results were striking: in tissues that contained the labeled cells, including everything from fat to muscle to eyes, selective removal appeared to postpone age-related damage. Treated mice had no cataracts, and showed increased muscle mass, strength, and subcutaneous fat when compared to mice that hadn't received the drug.

Fightaging - At any given time a whole bunch of cells in your body need to be destroyed before they cause harm - cells that are past the productive stage of their life cycle and have become senescent, cells that are damaged and malfunctioning, and so forth. The majority of these cells are indeed destroyed, either by the immune system or through self-destruction mechanisms that evolved to trigger when vital cellular processes begin to run ragged. But this protective culling fails with age, and the accumulation of cells that should have been destroyed but were not is one of the driving forces of degenerative aging.

This fact is reflected in the proposed apoptoSENS research program, one of the seven branches of the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence. Where the body isn't keeping up with cells that should be destroyed, appropriate forms of biotechnology can could be developed to perform this necessary work - and thereby remove and reverse this contribution to aging. The first array of therapies will probably look much like the targeted cell killing strategies under development in the cancer research community: using bacteria, viruses, nanoparticles, or the patient's own immune system to selectively seek out and destroy cells based on their surface markers.

Fukushima reactor is not in critical state - xenon traces were from natural reactions

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said the No. 2 reactor at its destroyed Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear station isn’t in a critical state after the company detected signs of nuclear fission.

The discovery of xenon, announced yesterday, at the plant was caused by “natural” nuclear fission, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at the company known as Tepco, said today at a press briefing in Tokyo

Greek bailout loan withheld

The leaders of Germany and France told Greece on Wednesday it would not receive another cent in European aid until it decides whether it wants to stay in the euro zone.

They also made clear that saving the euro was ultimately more important to them than rescuing Greece

Carnival of Space 221

The Carnival of Space 221 is up at Habitation Intention.

India's thorium-fueled Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) design is ready

The basic physics and engineering of a thorium-fueled Advanced Heavy Water Reactor (AHWR) are in place, and the design is ready," said Ratan Kumar Sinha, the director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC).

Once the six-month search for a site is completed – probably next to an existing nuclear power plant – it will take another 18 months to obtain regulatory and environmental impact clearances before building work on the site can begin.

"Construction of the AHWR will begin after that, and it would take another six years for the reactor to become operational," Sinha added, meaning that if all goes to plan, the reactor could be operational by the end of the decade. The reactor is designed to generate 300MW of electricity – about a quarter of the output of a typical new nuclear plant in the west.

One problem is the "trigger fuel" the reactor needs to initiate operation. In the original design, this is a small quantity of plutonium. Instead the new reactor's trigger will be low-enriched uranium (LEU) – which India is permitted to import under the 2008 Indo-US deal.

"The AHWR will eventually have design flexibility, using as fuel either plutonium-thorium or LEU-thorium combinations," said Sinha. "The LEU-thorium version will make the AHWR very much marketable abroad, as it would generate very little plutonium ... making it suitable for countries with high proliferation resistance."

The LEU-thorium design is currently at pilot stage. For the first time last year, the BARC tested the thorium-plutonium combination at its critical facility in Mumbai, but is still some way from doing the same for the thorium-LEU combination.

Four Quadcopters fly a man - first manned multicopter flight

According to German aircraft developer e-volo, its multicopter is simpler in construction and mechanics than a helicopter, and safer - it can reportedly land even with up to four of its motors failed, and its propellers experience much less wear. Onboard computers running custom firmware control the rotational speed of the propellers, dictating the attitude (horizontal orientation to the ground), altitude and direction of travel of the aircraft. Potential flight times range from 10 to 30 minutes, depending on payload and battery capacity.

Four enlarged quadcopters with some rigging will be massively cheaper than a helicopter.

There are quadcopters that can fly about 40 mph now.

Larger quadcopters would cost about $1000-4000 each depending upon size and performance. This could make manned vertical takeoff and landing manned flight down to the cost of a regular car.

After the Energy Catalyzer test with Rossi

On October 28th of 2011, Sterling Allan, the founder of PESN, attended the test of the world's first one megawatt, E-Cat (Energy Catalyzer) cold fusion reactor. After the successful test, he attended a gathering in which the inventor, Andrea Rossi read the official public report about the test, and answered the questions of those who attended.

Mr. Sonya of has asked me if I think that the test of today is a breakthrough. I think yes because I think today we have seen enough.. no more small five or ten kilowatt unit, but we now have overcame the disconnected with the engineering to make something... to go in self sustaining mode and make 400 kilowatt hour per hour, to understand that this is a breakthrough you can also think that hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent to try and have a COP of 1.1 with hot nuclear fusion. Today we have made a theoretically endless COP, maybe 400 and something. 470 kilowatt hour per hour, totally free energy, free of fuel. Of course this is the first step, but a very important first step. Because now we are not looking at the plant from the top to the bottom, but the bottom to the high.

Computer Simulated Nurse

Technology Review - Researchers at Northeastern University have developed a virtual nurse and exercise coach that are surprisingly likable and effective Patients who interacted with a virtual nurse named Elizabeth said they preferred the computer simulation to an actual doctor or nurse because they didn't feel rushed or talked down to.

A recent clinical trial of the technology found that Elizabeth also appears to have a beneficial effect on care. A month after discharge, people who interacted with the virtual nurse were more likely to know their diagnosis and to make a follow-up appointment with their primary-care doctor. The results of the study are currently under review for publication.

Timothy Bickmore (seen here with his virtual nurse system) will use a new grant to develop agents that help cancer patients. Photo by Lauren McFalls

Hope of a breakthrough cure for high blood pressure that could save millions of lives every year

Professor Brian Morris and his team have carried out research that shows the role the enzyme renin plays in triggering high blood pressure.

Dailymail UK - A cure for high blood pressure that could save millions of lives every year appears to be just around the corner.

Researchers believe they may be able to control production of an enzyme that can trigger the condition.

The breakthrough by Australian scientists is likely to lead to the creation of targeted drugs, which will slash the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Hypertension journal - Gene Expression Profiling Reveals Renin mRNA Overexpression in Human Hypertensive Kidneys and a Role for MicroRNAs

DNA origami on a reusable chip

In the emerging field of synthetic biology, engineers use biological building blocks, such as snippets of DNA, to construct novel technologies. One of the key challenges in the field is finding a way to quickly and economically synthesize the desired DNA strands. Now scientists from Duke University have fabricated a reusable DNA chip that may help address this problem by acting as a template from which multiple batches of DNA building blocks can be photocopied. The researchers have used the device to create strands of DNA which they then folded into unique nanoscale structures. hey will present their findings at the AVS Symposium, held Oct. 30 – Nov. 4, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Many different methods of DNA synthesis have been developed, but each method has its drawbacks. Bulk DNA synthesis, which makes use of separate columns to house the reactions, can produce large amounts of material, but is costly and limited in the number of different DNA sequences it can create. The Duke researchers, by contrast, used an inkjet printer head to deposit small droplets of chemicals on top of a plastic chip, gradually constructing DNA strands of mixed length and composition on the surface. The team then used a biological photocopying process to harvest the DNA from the chip. To the researchers' surprise, they found they could reuse the chip to harvest multiple batches of DNA. "We found that we had an "immortal" DNA chip in our hands," says Ishtiaq Saaem, a biomedical engineering researcher at Duke and member of the team. "Essentially, we were able to do the biological copying process to release material off the chip tens of times. The process seems to work even using a chip that we made, used, stored in -20C for a while, and brought out and used again."

Greek government faced possible collapse over referendum call on bailout

The Greek government faced possible collapse on Tuesday as ruling party lawmakers demanded Prime Minister George Papandreou resign for throwing the nation's euro membership into jeopardy with a shock call for a referendum.

Caught unawares by his high-risk gamble, the leaders of France and Germany summoned Papandreou to crisis talks in Cannes on Wednesday to push for a quick implementation of Greece's new bailout deal ahead of a summit of the G20 major world economies.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is throwing in the towel and is looking for a graceful exit. By calling a vote, he wants the people to say that they don't want the euro rather than (saying it) himself,” said Axel Merk, president of Merk Investments and an expert on European fiscal policy.

It’s widely assumed that any further austerity measures required as terms of another Greek bailout would be rejected in a popular vote, regardless of how that “no” vote impacted Greece’s economic future and its relations with the rest of Europe.

“The people will say 'no,'” Merk predicted. “What Papandreou’s asking is, ‘Do you guys want to suffer and make the tough choices?’ Of course the answer will be 'no.' Then the country will fall into anarchy and (Papandreou) will say it’s not my fault, it’s what the people wanted.”

Papandreou has thrown that agreement into doubt and almost single-handedly revived the issue of contagion.

If Greece is cut off, default is all but inevitable, and the likelihood of Greece leaving the EU altogether increases, as well.

Merk believes default was inevitable “from the get go,” and that if there’s a silver lining to Papandreou’s startling announcement is that it will force Europe to contain Greece once and for all, and begin addressing emerging debt issues in Italy and elsewhere.

“There was no solution on Greece last week,” he said. “The bank recapitalization program is the one thing that’s for real. That’s one thing that’s being taken seriously and being pursued.”

AcuFocus KAMRA Inlay to correct near sightedness without bifocals

The AcuFocus KAMRA inlay is a thin, opaque ring perforated with 8,400 micro-holes to provide for nutrient transport. When placed in the cornea, the small-aperture technology of the inlay provides increased depth-of-focus and improved near visual acuity while maintaining good distance visual acuity.

Presbyopia

* Presbyopia is the clinical term for the loss of near vision
* Affects us all by the time we are in our 40s to 50s
* Over time, the eye’s natural lens becomes too stiff to focus up close
* Words and other nearby objects become blurry

When placed in the cornea, the small opening in the center of the KAMRA inlay blocks unfocused light and only allows focused light to reach the retina. With focused light rays, you can enjoy a wider range of improved vision for all distances – near, far and in between. The small-aperture technology is a superior alternative to options that use a multi-focal approach.

This microscopic ring has nearly ten years of research and development behind it. Furthermore, the KAMRA inlay received CE mark in 2005 and is now available in Europe, Asia and South America.

NASA examine three laser-based approaches to tractor beam for particles

BBC News- NASA has identified three possible options to capture and gather up sample material either in future orbiting spacecraft or on planetary rover.

One is an adaptation of a well-known effect called "optical tweezers" in which objects can be trapped in an area where two laser beams cross. However, this version of the approach would require an atmosphere in which to operate.

The other two methods rely on specially shaped laser beams - instead of a beam whose intensity peaks at its centre and tails off gradually, the team is investigating two alternatives: solenoid beams and Bessel beams.

The intensity peaks within a solenoid beam are found in a spiral around the line of the beam itself, while a Bessel beam's intensity rises and falls in peaks and troughs at higher distances from the beam's line.

The approach could be put to use in space and on planetary surfaces

NASA - Laser-Based Optical Trap for Remote Sampling of Interplanetary and Atmospheric Particulate Matter

California high speed rail cost estimates rise to $98.5 billion and new target completion is 2033 instead of 2020

LA Times - California has decided to stretch the construction schedule by 13 years, completing the Southern California-to-Bay Area high speed rail in 2033 rather than 2020. The price is nearly double any previous projection and one likely to trigger political sticker shock.

If this 800 some mile stretch of high speed rail gets built at this price (which it probably will not), then US high speed rail will be about seven times the cost of high speed rail in China and take 20 years longer. ($300 billion for 16,000 miles of high speed rail by about 2020. Already about half that money for half of the high speed rail lines in China.) The new price of nearly $100 billion would also escalate over the 22 years they are planning to take to build it.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority, the state agency running the project, plans to unveil the new business plan in a news conference Tuesday morning in Sacramento.

The authority's past two plans have been sharply attacked, not only by opponents but also by many supporters, for offering unrealistic construction cost and ridership figures.

New MRI algorithm could reduce the time patients spend in the machine from 45 to 15 minutes

New algorithm could substantially speed up MRI scans. Faster scans could reduce the time patients spend in the machine from 45 to 15 minutes. Using GPUs (graphical processing units) could improve the speed even more.

MRI scanners use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to produce images of the body. Rather than taking just one scan of a patient, the machines typically acquire a variety of images of the same body part, each designed to create a contrast between different types of tissue. By comparing multiple images of the same region, and studying how the contrasts vary across the different tissue types, radiologists can detect subtle abnormalities such as a developing tumor. But taking multiple scans of the same region in this way is time-consuming, meaning patients must spend long periods inside the machine.