Atlas Shrugged The Movie Part 1 In Theatres Today

Atlas Shrugged The Movie Part 1 website

Atlas Shrugged . com information site

Atlas Shrugged Spark Notes for those too lazy to read the book

Amity Shlaes: Why Atlas Shrugged is more relevant than ever

The film version being released to theatres today is updated to modern times, but the underlying theme is as timely as ever. It was produced on a tiny $20 million budget, and whether the other parts are completed most likely depends upon whether Part I can sell enough movie tickets and DVDs (and cable rights etc.) to keep the momentum going.

Leftist media outlets are using a mixture of ridicule and silence in order to minimise the impact of the film on the general public. Young minds (and superficial minds) in particular tend to be overly influenced by what is seen as "hot" or "the in thing."

The Washington DC premier of Atlas Shrugged Part 1

Word of mouth and new media are likely to draw more of a crowd to this film than mainstream reviews, to be sure.

Makers vs. Takers; Moochers vs. Producers

Makers are essential to life. Humans must exert effort to create the food, housing, clothing, and other things we need and want. Producers are the people who make that effort and deliver the goods.

Some think producers are limited to corporate moguls, but in fact, they include anyone on any level — from janitors to company presidents, in small or large organizations — who earn what they have and don’t steal from others.

Producers offer their goods through voluntary trade — capitalism. Whenever producers have been the freest, the result has been an explosion of wealth and prosperity and a high standard of living for everyone. Witness 19th-century America or today’s least-regulated fields, like technology.

The opposite type is the taker, who wants to forcibly live off others’ efforts. Looters are takers who jockey for positions in government in order to seize wealth and gain power over producers. Moochers vote the looters into power in order to receive government benefits like welfare, subsidies, grants, business advantages, or jobs.

Since its inception, America has been a land of producers. The world’s most can-do people cleared farms, opened shops, lived and traded with one another in harmony, and created the great middle class — the producer class. Now, many Americans take no responsibility for their lives. Instead, they line up for money that’s not theirs; it’s simply “Obama money.” _DC

From Madison, Wisconsin to Washington, DC, the battle of moochers vs. producers is being played out across the US. Interestingly, this contemporary battle was foreseen half a century ago by an author whose magnum opus is just now making it to the silver screen.

“Atlas Shrugged: Part I,” which opens April 15th, is a movie unlike any other. Based on Ayn Rand’s novel, it dramatizes the fundamental conflict gripping our world: the battle between those who create value and wealth through their own efforts (the producers) and those who seek them through force (the looters and moochers).

With eerie accuracy, Rand’s novel depicted — in 1957 — the very struggle between these diametrical opposites that we’re witnessing today. This battle couldn’t be more important because the fate of civilization rests on the outcome. Since this conflict inescapably affects everyone, it’s crucial to know which side you’re on.

In Atlas Shrugged, producers like railroad executive Dagny Taggart and self-made steel titan Hank Rearden create new products and services, offer them in free trade, and consequently become rich. They are exploited by looters and moochers like Dagny’s brother James Taggart and steel executive Orren Boyle, who seek government intervention that favors them and thwarts their competition. In the story, the producers are vilified and their property expropriated, until they disappear. Without them, the country collapses.

Sound familiar? Today, America is in decline. The Wall Street Journal reports that “the number of U.S. IPOs has plunged to an annual average of about 130 since 2001 from an average of 503 during the 1990s.” Our nation’s debt is skyrocketing. Government has seized unprecedented control over industries like healthcare and banking. Corruption, group warfare, and the sense of “entitlement” to other people’s money are rampant. As Steve Moore notes in “We’ve Become a Nation of Takers, Not Makers,” public jobs, money, and power are burgeoning while the private sector is shrinking _DC

More on how the US became a "looter state."
Producers may either generate something of value, or they may trade items of value on the open market. Moochers tend to beg, borrow, and steal with no intention of reciprocating value for value. When governments and government employees become net moochers, citizens often have nowhere to turn for redress of grievances. That is how life has been for the governed since the inception of central governments above a certain size.

As the above article states, the US was set up to benefit producers -- either creators of value or merchants of value. But the moochers have creeped into control over time, portraying themselves as protectors of the disenfranchised -- much to their own benefit, and to the gradual but accelerating ruination of the entire nation's economy and productive base.

Consider reading Atlas Shrugged, or seeing the movie, just to get your subconscious working on solutions to the problem. It will not be easy, because things have degenerated much too far. Start with planning a competent community able to pick itself up and take off from there. Then consider how such communities might work together over time to build entire regions that are more producer friendly.

The idea is too important to leave to just one nation.

Algae are Optimistic about the Future

More: A study from the Pacific Northwest National Lab outlines how the US could replace 17% of its petroleum imports with homegrown algal fuels.
Abstract from study

NewScientist
While human academics and analysts are all too quick to write off algae as serious contenders in the energy race, the algae themselves are completely optimistic about their own futures. Perhaps the algae know something that we do not know? Well, for one thing, algae is already a big business. For another, algae has a lot of potential for productive yield -- and is just getting started.

ALGAE are being put to work performing a unique double duty: cleaning up sewage waste while simultaneously producing biofuel.

All algae feast on phosphates and nitrogen-containing compounds, converting them to lipids. Some of these oils can be converted to biofuel, but only a few algal species produce lipids of the right type and quantity to be easily converted to fuel. In theory, though, algae are a perfect renewable fuel source. The main obstacle is that brewing the right nutrient mix can be prohibitively expensive.

Now, in work for a master's thesis, Eric Lannan, a mechanical engineer at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in New York and colleagues have identified three types of microalgae - Scenedesmus, Chlorella and Chlamydomonas - that efficiently convert nutrients to fuel on a diet of municipal waste water, while happily living in its harsh, salty environment. In a lab test, it took just three days for the algae to gobble up 99 per cent of the ammonia, 88 per cent of the nitrate and 99 per cent of the phosphates in a broth resembling that from a domestic sewage treatment plant, turning themselves into rich sources of fuel even as they purified the water.

"People had looked at algae to clean waste water, others to make biodiesel," Lannan says. "We're putting those ideas together." _NewScientist

The idea to use waste feedstocks for boosting algal production is not especially new, but it still needs to be demonstrated on a large scale. And the demonstration must show that the resulting algae can be used to produce valuable products to make the entire process self-sustaining and profitable.

Besides using wastewater, the use of high CO2 effluent from power plants and cement factories etc. would provide the carbon boost for rapid growth, which algae crave.

Algae do not need too much sunlight -- in fact too much sunlight can reduce yields for valuable algal products. Solazyme, for example, grows its algae in the dark by feeding them sugars from biomass for fuel. They claim an 80% lipid yield, which is quite high.

Artificially inflated prices for crude oil are driving a multitude of approaches to the production of alternative liquid fuels. Fuel from algae is but one of many alternative approaches to liquid fuels, and algal researchers are taking dozens of divergent approaches to create algal fuels. Other microbial fuels approaches appear equally promising at this time.

A lot of money is going into the effort to create microbial fuels and fuels from biomass. But the key discoveries will not necessarily come from the best-financed research labs. Time will tell.

Those who think "biofuel" means only maize ethanol, are going to be very surprised when they discover what is really happening.

A Closer Look at Rossi's Numbers for his LENR / "Cold Fusion" Device

NewEnergyandFuel
Both Brian Wang and Brian Westenhaus have been following the progress of the Rossi / Focardi low energy nuclear reaction device.

Rossi claims that the reactor is able to obtain large amounts of heat energy from the low energy nuclear transmutation reactions that transform Nickel into Copper. Here is a more detailed look at the energy numbers involved in such a transmutation:

MeV for each Ni transformation

Starting from Ni58 we can obtain Copper formation and its successive decay in Nickel, producing Ni59, Ni60, and Ni62. The chain stops at Cu63 stable.

For simplicity I assume all the Nickel in the reactor in the form Ni58.

For simplicity I suppose for each Ni58 the whole sequence of events from Ni58 to Cu63 and as a rough estimate I calculate the mass defect between (Ni58 plus 5 nucleons) and the final state Cu63.

Ni58 mass is calculated to be 57.95380± 15 amu

The actual mass of a copper-Cu63 nucleus is 62.91367 amu

Mass of Ni58 plus 5 nucleons is 57.95380+5=62.95380 amu

Mass defect is 62.95380-62.91367=0.04013 amu

1 amu = 931 MeV is used as a standard conversion

0.04013×931 MeV=37.36 MeV

So each transformation of Ni58 into Cu63 releases 37.36MeV of nuclear energy.


Nickel consumption
One hundred grams of nickel powder can power a 10 kW unit for a minimum of six months.

How much of Ni58 should be transformed, in six months of continuous operation, in order to generate 10 kW?

10 kW is thermal or electrical power. The nuclear power must be larger. Assume a nuclear power twice:
20 kW = 20,000 J/s = 1.25 x 10**17 MeV/s.

Each transformation of Ni58 into Cu63 releases 37.36MeV of nuclear energy.

The number of Ni58 transformations should thus be equal to (1.25 x 10**17)/37.36 = 3.346 x 10**15 per second.

Multiplying by the number of seconds in six months (1.55 x 10**7) the total number of transformed Ni58 nuclei is 5.186 x 10**22.

This means 5 grams.

The order of magnitude is not exactly the same but seems to be plausible. This means also 5 grams of Nickel in Rossi’s reactor transmuted into (stable) Copper after six months of continuous operation at the rate of 10 kW. _NextBigFuture

This may seem incredible to most persons who know how many tons of coal are required to provide the same amount of power as 5 grams of nickel. But nuclear energy is on a far different level of scale than chemical energies, such as combustion energy.

But if you consult this table of energy densities provided at Transtronics Wiki, you can clearly see the difference in scale between the energy of nuclear reactions and the energy from chemical reactions -- roughly 7 or 8 orders of magnitude, depending on the method of comparison.

Imagine the savings in fuel transportation costs alone!

Will this sparkling new form of energy prove to be true gold, or just a fool's flash in the pan? Time will tell.

Clear Genetic Links to Poor Impulse Control, Drug Dependency

University of Michigan medical researchers have identified genetic links to aberrant brain function leading to alcohol and drug dependencies.

The results, published online April 12 in Molecular Psychiatry, suggest that variations in the GABRA2 gene contribute to the risk of alcoholism by influencing impulsive behaviors, at least in part through a portion of the cerebral cortex known as the insula, says study senior author Margit Burmeister, Ph.D., research professor at U-M's Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute.

...Individuals under distress who also have the risky genetic variant tend to act impulsively, a behavior that may lead to the development of alcohol problems, says lead author Sandra Villafuerte, Ph.D., a research investigator at U-M's Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute and Department of Psychiatry.

"Developing deeper understandings of the various genetic and environmental factors involved in risky behaviors may guide prevention and treatment efforts in the future," Villafuerte says.

The study included 449 people, who came from 173 families – 129 of whom had at least one member diagnosed with alcohol dependence or abuse. Those with certain variations in the GABRA2 gene were more likely to have alcohol dependence symptoms and higher measures of impulsiveness in response to distress, the study found. Stronger associations were found in women than in men.

...Researchers also used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to observe changes of blood flow in the brains of 44 young adults from these families as they performed a task in which they anticipated winning or losing money.

"The neuroimaging allowed us to see for the first time how these genetic variants create differences in how the brain responds in certain situations," says Mary M. Heitzeg, Ph.D., a research assistant professor in U-M's Department of Psychiatry and U-M's Addiction Research Center.

They found that individuals with one form of the GABRA2 gene associated with alcoholism showed significantly higher activation in the insula when anticipating rewards and losses than those with other combinations. This higher activation was also related to a greater level of impulsiveness in response to distress.

..."We believe these results suggest GABRA2 exerts an influence on an underlying neural system that impacts early risk factors and, later, alcohol dependency," says Burmeister, also a professor of psychiatry and human genetics at the U-M Medical School. "In the future, we hope to further examine the effects of family environment and other behavioral and environmental factors." _PO

Genetic influences on behaviours are too numerous to count, yet are extremely difficult to pin down with specificity. That is because multiple causes at several different levels are influencing the events which we observe. It will take many years to sort the many levels of causation -- many of them circular (incorporating feedbacks) in nature.

Persons who are indoctrinated into the religion of political correctness tend to eschew all discussion of genetic influences on behaviour. Funding for research can be difficult to obtain if highly indoctrinated "ethicists" feel that the valid findings of the research may be misconstrued in a way as to contradict politically correct dogma.

But such a PC approach only dooms persons who suffer from genetic disadvantages of behaviour to lifetimes of suffering. Much better to learn everything we can about these phenomena, so as to be able to compensate for these genetically based behavioural and cognitive disadvantages on as many levels as possible.

One approach to compensating for genetic defects in brain functioning is to run a low level dc current through the skull into the brain.

Can Realtime fMRI Neurofeedback Help Us Learn Wisdom?

How can humans turn "the stampede toward Idiocracy" into a movement toward a wiser, more intelligent society? It seems obvious that there is a current shortage of both intelligence and wisdom at the highest levels of analysis and decision-making.

"Wisdom and intelligence aren't the same thing,"...only 5 percent of the population can be described as truly wise and that advanced insight begins after adolescence as the brain matures.... _Eurekalert

Real-time fMRI (functional MRI) neurofeedback allows a person to observe his brain activity as it happens. This gives him the ability to alter his own thinking, on the fly. By learning to perform thinking tasks more successfully, the brain can be trained to operate more efficiently at below-conscious levels.

"Just like athletes in training benefit from a coach's guidance, feedback from our brain can help us to be more aware of our thoughts," says co-author Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. "Our findings suggest that the ability to control our thinking improves when we know how the corresponding area in our brain is behaving."

For the study, published the current issue of NeuroImage journal, participants performed tasks that either raised or lowered mental introspection in 30-second intervals over four six-minute sessions. fMRI technology tracked real-time activity in the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (RLPFC), the region of the brain involved with higher-order thoughts.

Participants with access to real-time fMRI feedback could see their RLPFC activity increase during introspection and decrease during non-introspective thoughts, such as mental tasks that focused on body sensations. These participants used the feedback to guide their thoughts, which significantly improved their ability to control their thoughts and successfully perform the mental tasks. In contrast, participants given inaccurate or no brain feedback did not achieve any improvement in brain regulation. _SD

Wiser brains think more efficiently, and arrive at workable solutions to problems more quickly -- even in the midst of distractions. Neurofeedback allows persons to train their own brains to focus on the cognitive task at hand. Properly shaped exercises will allow for more efficient functioning of parts of the brain which work together to provide higher level thought, analysis, and decision making.

We know that much of our understanding of the world -- even our scientific understanding -- is based upon belief and "gut instinct". Our early beliefs are based upon the perceived credibility of the source of our "knowledge." Later beliefs are based at least partially on earlier beliefs -- regardless of their validity.

If we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that we accept the incredibly complex scientific phenomena in physics, astronomy, and biology through the process of belief, not through reason. We don’t practice the scientific method. We don’t rationally consider the evidence presented for a theory. We don’t learn science by doing science, we learn science by reading and memorizing. The same way we learn history. Do you really know what an atom is, or that a Higgs boson is a rather important thing, or did you simply accept they were what someone told you they were? _PartialObjects _ via _ Slashdot

The same sort of "house of cards" belief systems also come into play in a person's other belief-based "knowledge". Some scientists even claim that they can tell a "political conservative" from a "political liberal" on a brain scan. No doubt more than a little bit of the scientists' own belief systems are coming into play in the research design and interpretation, but scientists are only slightly advanced monkeys -- like everyone else. That is the point -- everyone uses his belief system in every aspect of his life. And all belief systems are prone to bias, irrationality, and prejudice.

Mere intelligence is no safeguard against biased belief systems. Wisdom, on the other hand, can be a safeguard if it is broad and deep enough. Since most people are not naturally wise -- no matter how intelligent -- it follows that if we want a wiser society, we will need to learn to train people to at least be wiser than they are at present.

Getting to the Bottom of IQ Differences

The old IQ comparison studies that looked merely at skull size or head circumference as proxies for brain size, have been superceded by more advanced brain imaging capable of precise measurements of whole brain, total grey matter, total white matter, specific brain centers, and specific brain pathways and networks. These volumes are, to a large extent, under genetic control. A new era in comparing group IQs is dawning, thanks to advanced brain imaging and matching analysis of brain genetics. And a new era in improving gene expression relating to cognition is near to dawning -- as long as the key research is carried out and not obstructed out of a misguided sense of "political correctness."

Brain size as measured by MRI correlates highly with IQ. Specific brain networks and brain centers are even more highly correlated to IQ than gross brain size. In fact, a particular type of MRI analysis -- diffusion tensor imaging -- may supersede traditional IQ tests as the most objective means of testing IQ.

Anyone who truly wants to get to the bottom of the question of IQ differences between population groupings, will want to see the best designed, executed, and analysed research possible done on the subject. Anyone who is afraid of having such research done, does not truly want the question answered, and is lying to himself and everyone else when he claims that "there are no IQ differences, and even if there were it wouldn't matter!" Such persons' voices should be ignored as mere noise by all of those committed to finding the best answers to important questions.

A recent UK study at UCL Institute of Child Health, finds that teens who were delivered premature at birth have significantly lower brain white matter and IQ. (Abstract Annals of Neurology) For this study, it would be helpful to match by ethnicity, sex, and SES.

Between species, a longer gestation and breast feeding, correlate with larger brains, higher cognition, and longer lifespan.

And on and on. As brain genetic expression is correlated with advanced brain imaging with greater precision, and further correlated with IQ (and executive function), the larger global picture of human brain development should become clearer. At that point it will be impossible to deny the glaringly obvious group differences in brain function, and how these differences manifest themselves on a societal and economic level.

Being an HBD denier is growing more untenable every day.

Atlas Shrugged, Dumbed Down Electorate, and Idiocracy

Wikipedia Commons
Atlas Shrugged, The Movie Part I, is due to be released to theatres in one week. The book Atlas Shrugged was written by Russian emigre' Ayn Rand, in the 1950s, published in 1957. It is set in a society where people have forgotten how to think rationally, and are thus at the mercy of powerful groups who tell them how to think and what to do. It is a society very much like our society, and the book is a powerful cautionary tale for persons bold enough to think for themselves.

Modern society is breeding generations of persons incapable of rational thought, regardless of the amount of "education" they are forced to endure. In spite of everything, university students cannot think, cannot read or do maths, cannot write, cannot spell -- one could be easily forgiven for thinking that most college students do not actually belong in college.

Here is the problem with societies whose brightest lights are not so bright -- for whatever reason: The persons and groups that are chosen to lead these societies tend to exacerbate the "brain dimming problem," rather than to generate solutions to it. And so the process of "dumbing down" progresses along the path of least resistance until -- before you realise it -- a full-blown Idiocracy is in session.

From the point of view of schooling, when children typically enter first grade at about age 6 years, only one third are able to use any logical reasoning. That means that they are not ready for much of what is usually taught at that grade. This issue of readiness is a significant one for schooling and this table gives the first general information about readiness. Some teachers and principals have estimated for me that about one-third of the matters in junior high school require formal reasoning. Yet, at those ages (12-14 years) no more than 20% have reached that reasoning level.


That means that most of the children cannot understand the most significant matters being taught in junior high school. In essence they are being taught in a foreign language. The result is that such children begin to pay no attention and begin, as is now well known, to consider dropping out of school. When they arrive in senior high school and the lack of understanding continues, drop-out behavior becomes a real alternative.


Teachers surely know that there is a spectrum of ability levels of the children in their classes, but they don't know how to handle it. If teachers were really aware of the data in the table, they would know that significant modifications of their instructional level are needed for these non-ready children. That still wouldn't tell them what to do.


What is needed is what can be called cognitive level matching (CLM): matching the level of instruction to the expectations of the individual students. Now that we have the Shayer/Adey test (and others developed since then), teachers can discover the reasoning levels of their students and interact with them accordingly.


There is no question but that this is an enormous strain on the teachers, and requires that the teachers, too, be tested for their operating cognitive levels. The need for such testing is evident from the last line of the table which gives the data for adults. Adults remain at the highest percentage reached at the end of high school: only one-third can reason formally. So, acceptance of applicants to higher education schools should be based on testing of the cognitive levels of prospective teachers in addition to the information gathered from the usual SAT test taken at the end of high school for those preparing to go on to higher education. _The Fourth "R"

I think you see the problem with the all-too-reasonable recommendations given at the conclusion of the essay above: Teachers' unions would never accept the requirement that teachers actually be capable of rational thought in order to be employed as teachers. If ordinary members of government unions in Wisconsin were willing to skip work to demonstrate and occupy public buildings, faking medical excuses and abandoning their responsibilities just for the right to be forced to have union dues deducted from their paychecks, how do you think they will react if regulations come along that require them to be able to think like intelligent beings?

Modern dialogue at the highest levels is chocked full of logical fallacies. Even the more intelligent students are not typically taught basic reasoning skills -- nor are they given the ability to detect the common fallacies and illogical modes of reasoning. This lack of ability to reason is reflected in much "research" -- including research in sciences such as climatology and psychology. Naturally the problem extends down the bell curve (see graph at top) -- to the less intelligent. Overall, fuggiduhbowdit!

When faced with such a society of madly proliferating dimwits, John Galt chose to chuck it all and abandon society to its Idiocratic tendencies -- and he invited all rational and ethically ambitious persons to join him in safety. Society would eventually fall apart of its own inconsistencies and inadequacies, allowing Galt and his co-conspirators to return and help put the pieces together more rationally.

But fiction is fiction, and reality is fiction too er, reality, although often "stranger than fiction." If all the bright, competent, rational, and ethical persons dropped out of modern societies, it might be difficult to find enough working pieces in the aftermath to put together a functioning society. Difficult to say.

It is obvious that resources are flowing from the productive to the unproductive, and that the rapidly expanding government-dependent sector is on a determinedly kamikaze course.

You may not be willing to "go Galt," but you should have at least one fallback position. Preferably more. Optimally, a community of ethical, competent, and rational persons would stand ready to form a focus of competent recovery, should the situation warrant.

There is an ongoing counter-reaction to the Idiocracy, but the sheer numbers of Idiocrats and government-dependent persons argues against the success of the anti-Idiocratic forces. In modern societies, brain-rot tends to set in from the earliest ages and progress from there, unless the parents are truly exceptional.

It is likely to take a number of years for the parallel trends of societal breakdown to reach a climax -- if Obama is re-elected the derailment is apt to come a bit sooner.

Scratching the Surface of Global Hydrocarbons

From Rogner(PDF 1997) via GWPF
It is odd that the vast size of global hydrocarbon resource is largely overlooked in the many discussions of "peak oil" and "resource depletion." It almost seems as if persons of influence would prefer to forget all about the huge resources which are out there waiting for humans to find, retrieve, and develop.

The image above was taken from a 1997 assessment of global hydrocarbon resources by Rogner (PDF). As you can see on the left, the amount of hydrocarbon already consumed by humans is negligible in comparison to all the hydrocarbon reserves and resources still remaining.

Recent large discoveries of oil off Brazil and Norway, plus the discovery of huge unconventional gas resources worldwide, added to the already incomprehensibly large resources of coal, unconventional oil, and methane hydrates -- and one's mind is in danger of boggling from all the hydrocarbon that has been sitting around waiting for someone to notice it.

But wait! That's not all. The planet itself is busy making more hydrocarbon, while you are sleeping -- deep in the hot pressured mantle. Some of this hydrocarbon is constantly migrating upward into the crust, providing vast future resources for intelligent beings to discover down the road.

And we have not even mentioned the immeasurable resources of uranium and thorium, waiting at our beck and call -- as soon as our bureaucratic obstructionists in government get out of the way of safe, new, more economical reactor construction.

What about enhanced geothermal? Orbital solar? Low energy nuclear reactions? etc etc. It is almost enough to make one forget about peak oil doom.

Is Mental Illness Preventable?

Of the 10 leading causes of disability in the world in 1990, five were mental disorders; specifically unipolar depression, alcohol use, manic depression, schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Murray and Lopez, 1996). It is clear that both the extent of mental health problems and the enormous associated personal, social and financial cost can not be addressed by treatment services alone. _Robinson et Pennebaker

Schizophrenia.com
Schizophrenia is one of the most debilitating and disabling of the mental illnesses. So if we could find a way to prevent schizophrenia -- even a substantial proportion of the disease -- we would be making impressive progress toward the goal of preventing mental illness.

Recent research findings from Duke and Johns Hopkins suggest that a proportion of schizophrenia with genetic causes could be prevented by early detection of susceptible persons in early childhood, with appropriate intervention before symptoms manifest themselves in late adolescence or early adulthood. Scientists have known for decades that brain structure in schizophrenia was not normal -- and even pointed toward an early developmental "lesion" as the cause of the structural abnormalities.

The critical network of signals which control early brain development is becoming better understood -- both in terms of general development and in terms of specific brain diseases when the signaling network goes awry. Here is more about the recent Duke et Johns Hopkins research:

Katsanis, who directs the Duke Center for Human Disease Modeling, and Akira Sawa, M.D., Ph.D., a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, were introduced to each other by a clinical colleague who thought that Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) proteins that are involved in transport duties within cells might have a role in schizophrenia. Katsanis is an expert in using BBS genetic mutations and proteins to learn more about other diseases. BBS is a complex genetic disease with autism-like symptoms, cognitive defects and depression. Sawa is an expert on DISC1, the protein named Disrupted in Schizophrenia 1, known to be a major susceptibility factor for schizophrenia and related disorders.

Together, they discovered that these proteins are involved in a key switch for neurons that is necessary for brain development. When DISC1 gains a phosphate group at a specific site, it recruits BBS1. When BBS1 is missing in this system, the team could observe defective neuron migration, while a model with no DISC1 at all leads to defects in both cell proliferation and migration.

...Katsanis predicts that, for perhaps 10 percent of psychiatric illness, the illness is primarily driven by defects in this switch system. "So we now have ways to interpret variation in humans, in a context that is relevant to their particular cases, to their physiology -- that is where medicine will move next," Katsanis said.

...The study was published by Nature journal on April 6 in its advance online publication. _SD

The researchers were looking at brain signaling which controls early brain development -- the multiplying of brain neurons and subsequent placement in proper locations, orientiation, and connectivity to other parts of the brain. But there is another "brain growth spurt" which occurs just before adolescence, which could be just as critical to the subsequent development of schizophrenia and other types of mental illness which first manifest in adolescence or early adulthood. This neuronal growth spurt is no doubt also under the control of brain signaling proteins.

Prevention comes into the picture when scientists learn to correct abnormal signaling in early stages of development, or to compensate for abnormal brain development, later in childhood. Some genetic abnormalities can be treated now, and the opportunities to treat more genetic problems are growing rapidly.

That means that besides mental illness, many disadvantages which are widespread in the third world and in disadvantaged ethnic groups -- and which are at least partially genetically mediated (such as low intelligence and poor executive function) -- should be amenable to treatment in the not so distant future.

It is the denial of such genetically mediated disadvantages and disabilities which dooms sufferers to lifetimes of misery and underachievement. Such HBD deniers likewise doom entire societies and regions to generations of misery, poverty, widespread disease, and hopelessness.

Offshore Oil Production Moving to Seafloor Robotic Cities: So What Can We Do With All Those Abandoned Oil Rigs?

Neal Asher
There are over 1.3 trillion barrels of untapped oil under the seafloors. But what is the safest way of retrieving all of that oil -- much of it at deadly crushing depths?

Brazil intends to replace its fleet of floating offshore oil rigs with 2,000 metre deep "underwater cities" of robotic oil workers, part automated and part controlled from a remote location by human operators. So far, so good. But what will be done with all the huge, obsolete floating oil rigs? Why not turn them into floating resorts and marine research centres?

Inhabitat

The idea is not new. In fact, the (disputed) world’s smallest country is an old oil platform. In the design by Ku Yee Kee and Hor Sue-Wern, the reclaimed oil rig is layered in rings of habitation units sharing center common and recreation areas. The stacked units share an incredible view of the vast ocean. Beneath the water are circular labs for marine research. The designers looked like they were having some fun, inserting a pleasure boat launch, cantilevered pool, and a huge domed assembly room crowning the rig. _Inhabitat_via_Dvice

Inhabitat
Notice the subsurface marine science research labs -- or are they undersea restaurants or hotel rooms? There is room for flexibility in design, depending upon the outfitters and management.

And there is no reason why serious and progressive-minded seasteaders should not substitute small modular nuclear reactors in place of unreliable and intermittent wind and solar power devices. The last thing you want is to be stuck in the middle of the ocean without enough power to make freshwater, keep the lights on, or to cook your seafood.

Always keep your eyes open for opportunities to go beyond the ordinary.

A Race Against the Idiocracy

“I think we’re getting closer to harnessing neurogenesis to improve cognition and mood in humans. This research may also help explain a bit of a mystery in the field, which we still don’t understand, regarding how the hippocampus can be involved with both cognition – which is its classic function – and in mood and anxiety-related functions. Perhaps the fact that pattern separation affects both the cognitive and mood domains is the beginning of an answer to that paradox,” said Dr. Hen. _StemCells

René Hen, PhD, professor of Neuroscience and Pharmacology, in the Departments of Neuroscience and Psychiatry at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute, has discovered a possible escape hatch by which some members of society might escape the Idiocracy. It involves the use of chemicals called "BAX inhibitors." Particular members of that class of drugs have the potential to preserve newborn stem cells in the brain's hippocampus. And doing that could make all the difference in the course of a person's life success and happiness.

After boosting the number of neurons in the hippocampus, an area of the brain involved in memory and mood, the researchers tested the mice in both learning and mood-related tasks and looked for changes in behavior. The researchers found specific effects on learning tasks that involve a process called pattern separation, which is the ability to distinguish between similar places, events and experiences.

“This process is crucial for learning because it enables us to know whether something is familiar or novel,” said Dr. Hen. “If it is familiar, you move on to the next bit of information; if it’s novel, you want to be able to recognize that it’s new and give it meaning. These mice, with just more adult-born neurons, and no other changes in the brain, basically learn better in tasks where they have to discriminate between similar contexts.”

Earlier strategies for manipulating neurogenesis, according to the investigators, were broader and less specific. “In addition to stimulating neurogenesis, these earlier methods exerted many other effects on the brain. As a result, you never knew with these older manipulations what’s due to neurogenesis, or what’s due to the other effects that these manipulations cause, and, indeed, what we find is that when you stimulate just adult neurogenesis, you actually get a subtle effect. Unlike broader manipulations, it does not affect all forms of learning, it’s very specific to tasks that require pattern separation,” said Dr. Hen.

Pattern separation is not only important for learning; it may also be important for anxiety disorders, including post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and panic disorder. People with PTSD, say the researchers, have a more generalized fear response, so that when they are placed in a situation that reminds them of even one aspect of their trauma, they frequently have a full fear response.

...The researchers say that the genetic strategy used to stimulate neurogenesis in their experiments can be mimicked pharmacologically, potentially leading to the development of new drugs to reverse pattern separation deficits. One such class of drugs the investigators are currently testing – BAX inhibitors – works by blocking cell death.

“These drugs are basically doing the same thing that we did with our genetic manipulation-namely, increasing the survival of the young neurons which normally undergo a process of cell death that eliminates at least half of these neurons. Now instead of dying, the neurons will go on to survive,” said Dr. Sahay.

Some BAX inhibitors have been developed for stroke research, where the goal has also been to prevent neurons from dying. The Columbia researchers plan to begin testing the BAX inhibitors in mice shortly. And if they produce cognitive benefits, the testing will be extended to clinical trials to determine if there’s also a beneficial effect in humans. _StemCells

This is all related to the length of time required before antidepressants are able to bring about a full "antidepressive response." The full effect of modern antidepressants requires new stem cell production in the hippocampus -- but that takes time to achieve. Drugs capable of rapid and prolonged increases of hippocampal stem cells could conceivably keep anxiety and depression at bay, while improving a person's cognitive capacity.

No, this is not NZT. As mentioned here previously, a drug that could achieve the effect of the fictional NZT would have to stimulate changes in gene expression on multiple levels, and across a wide range of brain centers.

Smart drugs alone will not achieve the goal of smarter, better-rounded, and happier humans. Educational and environmental interventions would also be necessary, to blunt the Idiocratic brainwashing effect of modern media, modern academia, and modern popular culture, while allowing the brain to develop newer, more functional pathways.

Realistically, it will take 15 years at the earliest to see the early promise of this type of medication come to fulfillment. But a single ray of hope in the distance is worth a lot to a person immersed in the modern rush to Idiocracy.

More 5April2001: An example of rapid brain plasticity in human adults
The PNAS Abstract from the actual study

Which Form of Energy is the Safest?

WaPo_via_NextBigFuture
At least a small part of the news media is finally moving away from nuclear hysteria. The Washington Post (via Brian Wang) has decided to break away from the pack and present a more honest look at the dangers associated with the different important forms of power generation.

History suggests that nuclear power rarely kills and causes little illness. That’s also the conclusion engineers reach when they model scenarios for thousands of potential accidents.

Making electricity from nuclear power turns out to be far less damaging to human health than making it from coal, oil or even clean-burning natural gas, according to numerous analyses. That’s even more true if the predicted effects of climate change are thrown in.

Compared with nuclear power, coal is responsible for five times as many worker deaths from accidents, 470 times as many deaths due to air pollution among members of the public, and more than 1,000 times as many cases of serious illness, according to a study of the health effects of electricity generation in Europe _WaPo

Of course, Brian Wang does a better job of explaining the issue than the Washington Post, as you might expect. Brian reveals that even wind, solar, and biomass energy production have killed many more than nuclear power.

The only two deaths associated with the Fukushima reactors incident were caused by the earthquake and tsunami. Compared to 9.0 earthquakes and 50 ft. tsunamis, nuclear power is as safe as a mother's arms.

It is important to point out that the damning statistics aimed at coal are computed by Lancet authors -- a journal which has not compiled the most trustworthy public health stats over the past 10 years. And yet, even if coal deaths are being over-estimated by a factor of 10, they are still significant when compared to nuclear.

Future use of integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal plants will slash pollution from coal use. And a new method of using waste fly ash from coal -- turning it into a high value, life-saving product -- will cause the informed public to look at even that ugly waste product differently.

Even with 40 year-old reactors, nuclear power is the safest source around by far. Imagine how much safer nuclear could be if Mr. Obama's NRC ever got off its fat, lazy, pompous arse, and did its job?

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

North Korea Pursues the "Easy Apocalypse": EMP

The North is believed to be nearing completion of an electromagnetic pulse bomb that, if exploded 25 miles above ground would cause irreversible damage to electrical and electronic devices such as mobile phones, computers, radio and radar, experts say. _abcnews

FuturescienceA specialised EMP nuclear burst high above the atmosphere, could knock out continental-sized power grids. Much of the entire continental US and parts of Canada and Mexico could be temporarily sent to the dark ages with a single EMP-customised nuclear device detonated in orbit.
Given the heavy dependency of modern societies on electric power, it has been estimated that long-term loss of electric power over a wide area could result in loss of up to 90% of pre-event population. Such a high mortality rate could occur due to a combination of long-term basic infrastructure breakdown combined with the inability to bring significant aid into the area from the outside.

Both the US and the USSR conducted experiments to determine the effects of EMP from high altitude nuclear detonations:

A few hours after the sun rose in Kazakhstan on [a] cloudy October morning, the Soviet Union detonated a 300 kiloton thermonuclear warhead in space at an altitude of 290 kilometers (about 180 miles) over a point just west of the city of Zhezkazgan in central Kazakhstan. The test was generally known only as Test 184 (although some Soviet documents refer to it as K-3). It knocked out a major 1000-kilometer (600-mile) underground power line running from Astana (then called Aqmola), the capital city of Kazakhstan, to the city of Almaty. Several fires were reported. In the city of Karagandy, the EMP started a fire in the city's electrical power plant, which was connected to the long underground power line.

The EMP also knocked out a major 570 kilometer long overhead telephone line by inducing currents of 1500 to 3400 amperes in the line. (The line was separated into several sub-lines connected by repeater stations.) There were numerous gas-filled overvoltage protectors and fuses along the telephone line. All of the overvoltage protectors fired, and all of the fuses on the line were blown. The EMP damaged radios at 600 kilometers (360 miles) from the test and knocked out a radar 1000 kilometers (600 miles) from the detonation. Some military diesel generators were also damaged. The repeated damage to diesel generators from the E1 component of the pulse after the series high-altitude tests was the most surprising aspect of the damage for the Soviet scientists. _FutureScience

And those effects in Kazakhstan resulted from the detonation of a bomb not particularly efficient at producing EMPs. A custom-designed EMP nuke would have done a far more thorough and devastating job of it.

It is not a question of "if," but of "when" and "where" such an attack will occur. If it occurs over a modern nation which has not prepared for it, the loss of life is likely to be severe. In addition, the target nation would temporarily lose its ability to operate effectively, internationally. The widely dispersed nature of the US military suggests that that country would maintain significant retaliatory capacity, but the civilian infrastructure would require massive immediate aid and a lengthy re-building of destroyed infrastructure. During that time of re-building, it is likely that many millions (or tens of millions) of people would die from a wide range of causes linked ultimately to the attack. If you have not been paying attention, you would be amazed how quickly civilisation can unravel in the absence of a strong order-keeping entity.

Good introductory article on EMP from FutureScience

Wikipedia entry on EMP

Federation of American Scientists article on EMP

EMPact America EMP resource

"One Second After" website for novel based on EMP attack over most of US, and subsequent aftermath

If the damage to the electrical infrastructure from a coordinated EMP attack were widespread enough, restoration of widespread grid power could take years. Over that time period, many large cities would likely revert to barbarism without overwhelming military presence. With hundreds of cities involved, it is unlikely that the US military could preserve order in more than a few.

That is why any hint at development of EMP weapons by North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, etc. must be taken seriously. While it is true that any nation launching an obvious EMP attack against the US would probably be obliterated by retaliation, it is possible to launch a satellite containing an EMP weapon -- but with a different primary use. Such a "sleeper" satellite could orbit for years until it was felt strategically opportune, by its owner, to detonate it. By the time a case could be made against the true culprit, the US (or Europe etc) may no longer be functioning as a viable civilised society.

As you can imagine, preppers and survivalists have taken an interest in the EMP phenomenon, with an emphasis on how to prepare to survive such a widespread disaster. Here is one PDF essay on that topic from Prepper.info

You will need to use your imagination here. What would happen to your neighborhood, community, town, city, etc. if it were to lose power for several months, without significant outside assistance? How long would it take for the stores to run out of food and supplies, or for the fueling stations to run out of fuel? How would you feed yourself and your family, if civil disorder set in -- preventing a cooperative community effort to share resources?

Such weapons may be in orbit overhead, even now, waiting for a designated time to inflict chaos on a targeted continent. What should you do?

Taken from an article at Al Fin, The Next Level

More 7 April 2011: The threat of cyber warfare is much broader, and successful attacks are much more deniable and difficult to prove. Cyber attacks can target power grids -- especially "smart" grids -- and every other piece of critical infrastructure including water systems, phone and other telecom, and much more.

Russia's Looming Population Crisis

Russia's population declined by nearly 3.4 million over the past decade, a census showed on Monday, offering more evidence that Russian economic growth will lag behind that of rival emerging powers China and India.

The Kremlin has tried to boost population growth, fearing that fewer births in an aging population will sap the economy, especially with a pension age of 55. The demographic black hole is expected to take 1 million workers out of the economy every year until 2017. _Sun

VOANews
The collapse of Russia's demographic infrastructure is nearly complete. Infections such as tuberculosis and HIV are running out of control. Alcoholism, mental illness, suicide, and poverty run rampant. Russian women are unwilling to bring children into this ugly world that Putin has made. In time, Russia's military will no longer be capable of defending the nation's rich and vast Eastern Siberian land holdings, and China's huge population will naturally spill over to inherit the energy, mineral, and lumber wealth.

Russia still has serious, serious public health problems, notably AIDS and multi-drug resistant TB. With regards to the latter, the WHO recently issued a report indicating that Russia has the third largest number of infections in the world. Consider. China has almost 10 times the population as Russia, but only about double the number of infections, meaning that Russia’s infection rate is about 5 times China’s. The ratio is only slightly better when compared to India. These problems are bad in themselves, but are symptomatic of deeper problems that have baleful implications for Russian health and the potential for population growth. _SeekingAlpha

Russia's population could shrink by more than 20 million over the next few decades. There will not be enough young Russian men to run the civilian economy, much less to man the military.

A report published by Standard & Poor's says Russia’s population might shrink from roughly 140 million people to 116 million people by the middle of the century. At current spending rates, this would increase government age-related expenditures from 13 percent to more than 25 percent of gross domestic product. And analysts warn that Russia's national debt could be nearly six times the country's GDP by 2050 as a result.

Sergei Zakharov, deputy director of the Institute of Demography in Moscow, says a high morbidity rate is one of the main reasons for the imbalance. "Our death rate from outside reasons, such as accidents, traumas, poisoning, murders, suicides - everything that is not connected to disease. The level of human loss here is similar to the countries at war such as Columbia, which is at war with is drug barons. So the first thing that needs to be dealt with is that," Zakharov said. _VOANews

High mortality and low fertility are burning Russia's demographic candle at both ends. Meanwhile, highly placed ex-KGB officials and other government thugs are sucking Russia's wealth dry, and sending it to private accounts out of the country.

Russia is wealthy, in terms of energy and mineral deposits, and other natural resources. But Russia cannot access and produce its vast wealth without outside help. And every time outsiders come in to develop Russia's resources, Russia steals all the infrastructure the outsiders bring in and develop. And so Russia's main export of note is its young, beautiful women -- both as mail order brides to the west, and as workers for the world's brothels.

Of course, women are exploited inside Russia as well -- which is why so many of them are desperate to leave. Neither is Russia a very child-friendly place. And men tend to die before the age of 60 -- never living long enough to reach retirement age.

The Russian tragedy is that Russia's people never grew out of serfdom and obeisance to authority. Putin's Russia is slipping back into the Soviet and Tsarist repressionism of ages past. But modern Russia has satellite TV, the internet, and many other connections to the outside world. Any Russians who bother to make comparisons between their own sad state of affairs, and conditions in the western world -- even a western world experiencing a prolonged economic downturn -- become progressively crushed under the weight of despair and hopelessness.

The News Media's Curious Slant on the Fukushima Incident

Due to the tragic earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, over 25,000 Japanese are dead or missing. At the Fukushima nuclear reactors, no one has died. Yet the news media has been stuck on full-hysteria mode over the Japanese nuclear reactors. The media is clearly focused on a goal other than reporting the important news of the day. What could it be?

As the situation at Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear powerplant slowly winds down, the salient facts remain the same as they have been throughout: nobody has suffered or will suffer any radiological health consequences. Economic damage and inconvenience resulting from the quake's effects on nuclear power have been significant, but tiny in comparison to all other human activities – the nuclear power plants in the stricken region have suffered less damage and caused less trouble to local residents than anything else that was there.

Despite this background, the details of which are now largely uncontested, hysteria continues to grip large sections of the news media and the internet. _Register

It is natural to be concerned about a disaster which might conceivably affect you or someone you care about. But intelligent people use such natural concerns as motivation to inform themselves on the facts. For a more balanced look at what is going on at the Fukushima reactors:

News roundup from Idaho Samizdat Nuclear Notes

A measured perspective on Fukushima from Brave New Climate

An interesting article published in The Atlantic suggesting that small modular nuclear reactors may receive a boost from higher level bureaucratic and political reaction to Fukushima. (H/T NEI Nuclear Notes)

The post-earthquake, post-tsunami incident at the Fukushima reactors is an economic and energy setback for the Japanese, as well as a public relations nightmare for the Japanese and the nuclear industry in general.

But the reason why the nuclear industry is being tarred so badly is because the world's media has focused its brightest lights on the reactors -- and decided to spew the most radioactively deceptive and misleading "reporting" as possible.

Yes, the world is becoming an Idiocracy -- it doesn't require a genius to see that. Corrupt and dysfunctional government school systems are not entirely to blame, either. Clearly the news and entertainment media play an even greater role in the education and informing of most citizens than the school systems, in the long run. If the media has chosen to dumb down and mislead the public, who will watch the watchers?

Am I saying not to worry about it, that nothing can go wrong? Just the opposite. I am saying to worry about it -- worry about everything. Worry so much that you are prepared for the worst that may come your way. Then hope for the best. Worry is just your brain's way of telling you to get off your lazy arse and learn what you need to learn, do what you need to do, and make whatever preparations you need to make.

No one should need to tell you to be very sceptical of anything you read or hear.

More on how the Fukushima incident may change the direction of the nuclear industry toward more "fail-safe" reactor designs.

Beware the Plastic Apocalypse!!!

Enviros See Armageddon In Every Plastic Bag
We are told the oceans are covered with floating plastic debris, clogging the ocean food chains and destroying free-swimming wildlife. But solid evidence of this eco-catastrophe is quite thin. And ever since a Canadian high-schooler (and another in Taiwan) in 2009 discovered species of microbes that thrive on eating plastic, most informed observers have been somewhat less concerned.

Since then, scientists in Ireland have begun to put microbes to work digesting waste plastics, and UK scientists have discovered plastic-eating microbes in ocean waters.

Sargasso SeaThe latest story in the long-running ocean apocalypse saga, involves scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts. Woods Hole scientists explored the Sargasso Sea, in search of plastic-eating bacteria.

Mincer and his colleagues examined bits of fishing line, a plastic bag and a plastic nurdle (a pre-production plastic pellet) fished out of the Sargasso Sea, an area of the North Atlantic where currents cause debris to accumulate. The region as a whole contains more than 1,100 tonnes of plastic1.

...Plastic-eating bacteria might help explain why the amount of debris in the ocean has levelled off, despite continued pollution. But researchers don't yet know whether the digestion produces harmless by-products, or whether it might introduce toxins into the food chain.

...Genetic analysis shows that the bacteria on the plastic differ from those in the surrounding seawater or on nearby seaweed, says microbiologist Linda Amaral-Zettler of the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole. So far, the DNA sequences obtained by her lab show that almost 25% of the bacteria on one polyethylene surface were vibrios, bacteria from the same group as the cholera bacterium.

...Amaral-Zettler and Mincer also found genetic and microscope evidence of eukaryotes — organisms with more complicated cells than bacteria — on the plastic. What she calls the "plastisphere" might contain complex living communities. "It may be a little world that we've created, for better or worse." _Nature_via_Impactlab

It is fascinating that particular ocean bacteria have adapted to using plastics as a food source. This is all quite reminiscent of the bacteria that have adapted to eating crude oil and methane gas around oil spills and and natural hydrocarbon seeps in the ocean floor.

To the bacteria, our discarded plastics are a feast and a windfall, allowing them to feed and reproduce to their microbial hearts' content. Of course the same phenomena occurs on land, except with a much wider range of microbes -- both prokaryotic and eukaryotic -- partaking of the cornucopian repast.

Environmentalists are concerned that the microbes may be releasing toxins into the seawater which will pollute larger sea creatures and perhaps get into the human food chain. A plastic apocalypse on the prowl, don't you see? And yet, in the middle of the ocean, nothing is wasted. If something can be seen as food, it will be used as food by something. That includes anything which humans may perceive as toxic.

Here is the amusing thing in all this: Waste plastics are increasingly being seen as valuable feedstocks in the production of synthetic fuels, chemicals, and other high-value substances. Gasification of solid wastes for production of power, process heat, and chemical/fuel feedstock is just getting started in the developed world. In the future, the only plastic wastes the oceans will see will be coming from places too primitive to know how to unlock their intrinsic value.

And no doubt there will be plenty of plastic-eating ocean microbes to take care of those remnants. Otherwise we will need to raise our seawalls quite high, to avoid the ocean plastic tsunamis that may come from Neptune, with a crashing vengeance.

Beware the plastic apocalypse.

More on plastic apocalypse 31March11: The death of the environment by plastic bags may have been exaggerated. (via Daily Bayonet)

Cyborg or Grobyc? You Be the Judge

Nanonerves
Human brains are amazing mental machines. As far as we know, there is nothing else quite like it in the universe. But we always wonder whether perhaps, we could build something just a bit better? Observe all the excitement and expenditure, over the past 60+ years, directed toward "artificial intelligence." What a disappointment that has been so far.

For all the different approaches that have been taken to achieve machine intelligence, most of the failures share the same feature: they rely on algorithmic digital silicon logic. This seems a bit odd, when the only proof of concept of conscious intelligence we know of -- the human brain -- utilises a distinctly and entirely different type of logic.

Here is an interesting twist on the conundrum: Why not design a neuronal scaffolding out of nanotubes made of germanium and silicon, then allow neurons to grow within the scaffolding? The neurons will naturally make networked connections with each other along the scaffold, but an added bonus may be the ability to interface the neurons with the silicon-germanium substrate of the scaffold itself.

Graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, led by Minrui Yu, have published an ACS Nano paper, "Semiconductor Nanomembrane Tubes: Three-Dimensional Confinement for Controlled Neurite Outgrowth," in which they show that they have been able to successfully coax nerve cell tendrils to grow through tiny tubes made of the semi-conductor materials silicon and germanium. While this ground-breaking research may not portend cyborgs or even human brains enmeshed with computer parts, it does open the door to the possibility of regenerating nerve cells damaged due to disease or injury.

Yu and his team, led by Justin Williams, a biomedical engineer, created tubes of varying sizes and shapes, small enough for a nerve cell to glam on to, but not so big that it could fit all the way inside. The tubes were then coated with nerve cells from mice and then watched to see how they would react. Instead of sitting idly, the nerve cells began to send tendrils through the tunnels, as if searching for a path to something or somewhere else. In some instances they actually followed the contours of the tubes, which means, in theory, that the nerves could be grown into structures. _PO

Indeed. The nerves could be grown into structures along prescribed pathways. But the possibility of a functional and powerful brain-machine interface is also being considered.

The hope of course, in this type of research, is that a way can be found to connect a computer of some sort to a group of nerve cells to reestablish communication that has been disrupted. The computer in this case could serve as a relay of sorts, allowing those who can no longer walk, for example, due to spinal injury or disease, regain their former abilities. In that regard, this particular research is even more revealing than it might at first seem, due to the fact that the tiny tubes that have been created, very closely resemble myelin, the outer insulating sheath that covers parts of normal nerve cells. _PO

This is the actual goal of the researchers in Wisconsin: to grow a nerve:computer interface. This is one approach to the brain:machine, or cyborg approach to extreme rehabilitation, or even augmentation for emergency workers or military personnel.

Another approach which is even more exotic than described above, would be to grow an intricate "nano-neural web" into the intact brain structure, to create millions of interfaces to all of the important centers of the brain. The idea behind such a grown nano-structure, besides providing an external brain:machine interface, would be to allow the conscious mind access to unconscious brain functions.

Emergent phenomena are likely to grow from the humble beginnings of such an approach. Growing a nano-neuro web interface inside an intact brain might be easier than growing one outside the brain, in some ways. The "growth front" of the web would merely need to follow pre-existing pathways, and could be assisted by internal and external feedbacks.

Alternatively, one could grow a scaffolding in vitro, according to the most advanced brain imaging, seed it with the appropriate proto-cells, and nourish it into an intricate, functioning, autopoietic neural:nano hybrid network. Any conceivable shape and combination of connections between artificially grown brain centers would be possible -- at any arbitrary and chosen level of complexity. Such an artificial -- but living -- brain could be provided with a rudimentary circulatory system, and implanted into the control structure of very sophisticated and highly connected machines and structures.

Cyborg or Grobyc? You be the judge.

Adapted from an article at Al Fin, the Next Level

Enlightening Video on Nerves into Brains

Starting with how neuroscientists mapped the brains of roundworms, the video moves ahead to the 3D mapping of a mouse retina and visual cortex. Finishing with the human brain connectome project, the video presents a useful introduction to how nerves fit together to make brains, for the curious.

Having a detailed 3D image of the static brain is just the beginning, of course. What you need is a dynamic 3D image of brain structure at all scales, superimposed by dynamic electromagnetic and blood flow data. In addition one would need dynamic detail at the molecular level for arterial, venous, lymphatic, CSF, intracellular and extracellular fluids and structures of the brain. Finally, one would need to know what was happening to the individual in real time -- both inside the body and outside the body.

At that point, one might begin to understand what was happening in the brain -- and perhaps take educated guesses about the mind. First person reports from the subject herself could refine one's approach.

From that preliminary position, you just take it from there, like in a jazz improvisation.

Video H/T neuropsychological.blogspot.com

The Limits of Smart Drugs

The Clear Pill
Why Smart Drugs Don't Work Like NZT

What are smart drugs? Pills that are supposed to enhance a person's cognitive abilities in some way. Anything from Ritalin to Amphetamines to Provigil might qualify, as well as a wide range of lesser known "nootropics."

These pills are not only popular among university students, but also among workers from truck drivers to pilots to fast-paced professionals who are pushing every synapse to its limit. They can enhance attention, prolong attention span, help keep the mind on topic. All very important when facing a deadline for a research paper, a big work project, or when cramming for an exam.

In one sense, advanced societies run on smart drugs. Western societies embraced coffee, tea, and chocolate as quickly as they could -- and significant battles were fought over the rights to market these early smart drugs.

Fast forward to today, and the "stimulant smart drugs" are being pumped onto the markets -- both legal and illegal -- at prodigious rates. But newer, more advanced generations of smart drugs may be on the horizon.

This Al Fin posting from 2007 is still one of the best summaries of the smart drug research pipeline I have found. Here is a more recent survey of the field from Gizmodo. Some of the newer drugs enhance attention, some enhance memory, some may enhance creativity.

But what about other approaches to getting smarter, besides drugs?

Instead of drugs, the first brain boosters to channel creativity could be electromagnetic devices designed to enhance cognitive skills. One fascinating proposal comes from Allan Snyder, director of the Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney in Australia. He theorizes that autistic savants derive their skills from an ability to access “privileged, less processed sensory information normally inhibited from conscious awareness.” For normal people, tapping that sensory well might lead to deeply buried creative riches. To test the idea, Snyder and colleagues exposed subjects to low-frequency magnetic pulses (the technology is called transcranial magnetic brain stimulation, or TMS) that suppressed part of their brain function. The researchers found that the subjects acquired savantlike skills, including the ability to render more detailed, naturalistic art. _Discover

Electromagnetic stimulation of the brain probably has a great future ahead of it. But caution is always wise, when working in and around the brain.

All of these drugs -- past, present, and future generation -- are relative sledge-hammers compared to the intricate workings of the human brain. But the real reason smart drugs won't work like "NZT" (from the movie "Limitless") is because none of them can make the necessary changes in both function and structure, to turn mediocrity into brilliance. To do that it is necessary to tweak gene expression at multiple levels.

NZT is an idea whose time has come. But ideas can only take you so far. Converting this idea into a dynamic reality will take more than a little thought.

From an earlier posting at Al Fin, the Next Level