Don't miss the last three minutes!

[GreyGeek]

[Simon]

"We are the Borg resistance it futile."

But seriously thanks for sharing this video. It is so sad it takes tragedy to motivate people into action. However I am no different. My personal tragedy was the loss of my grandfather to cancer. This is why I became a doctor of genetics and work in a cancer clinic. People have told me they are against cloning but fail to understand that today we have the technology to clone just a single body part. Due to laws enacted after Dolly, we cannot use this technology to save people. We could grow a side of beef without any bones, brain, or digestive track. Imagine feeding people around the world with perfect untainted beef. If you find this goes against your morals then you may wish to stop eating Chiquita bananas because they are in essence clones. We are allowed to clone fruit.They are basically clones, that is, genetically identical plants. This means they do not have seeds and are nicer to eat.

Sorry about the rant, but as you can imagine this video speaks to me on a high level. I do enjoy Star Trek and thus the joke at the beginning, but I find there are too many people in our society with irrational fears.

[GreyGeek]

Your "rant" is also my opinion on the matter, Doc. Keep up the good work.
BTW, I wish I could afford that exoskeleton for walking .... it seems so simple and affordable.

Many people die with their fears and prejudices, that's why some changes take the passing of a generation.

I'm surprised at how many people do not understand, for example, that farming is merely a way of using land to convert oil into food. It takes seven times as much oil energy to bring you a slice of toast for breakfast than the energy your body gets from eating that toast. Sooner or later the price of oil & gas will force us to use other means to generate editable foods directly, rather than trying to coax more produce out of the fixed amount of friable land, and limited fresh water that the Earth offers.

Even worse, far fewer understand the meaning of "exponential growth", thinking that we can climb out of economic or other troubles by increasing our "growth" rate for what ever.

[perspectoff]

Borg resistance



"Replication is the ultimate goal.
Assimilation improves the organism.
Resistance is futile."

from

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/User:Borg

[SteveRiley]

People have told me they are against cloning but fail to understand that today we have the technology to clone just a single body part. Due to laws enacted after Dolly, we cannot use this technology to save people. We could grow a side of beef without any bones, brain, or digestive track. Imagine feeding people around the world with perfect untainted beef.

I wish the world could experience a generation of scientists as politicians, rather than the gasbags we now get who appeal to ancient fairy tales. With a kickstarter like that, imagine how much better off the entire world could be.

[Simon]

Thanks guys, I understand the fears of bringing to life a "Frankenstein" to life, but in the back of my mind this behavior can and will happen without my help. I play the rules, but I can imagine there are others with power and money that don't.

I once read in a collection of short science fiction stories about a congressman getting a new mechanical heart. His surgeon tried in vain to convince him in getting a synthetic heart closer to human and less robotic. The surgeon's assistant asked him why he was so desperate to change his mind? He explained that AI robots were taking on more replacement parts meant for humans and more humans were taking on robotic parts made for AI. His assistant was shocked that he felt this way. He went on to explain that he wasn't in favor of the merging of robots and humans. He believed humans should remain human and robots should remain robotic. In the end the surgeon prepared for the surgery and it was then revealed that the surgeon was in fact a robot AI himself. I hope we all have that kind of choice to make someday. I for one would like to offer a cloned heart over the mechanical heart.

[SteveRiley]

I for one would like to offer a cloned heart over the mechanical heart.

Even over an LVAD?

http://www.popsci.com/science/articl...art?nopaging=1
http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/04/health...ificial-heart/

I dunno, but a continuously spinning turbine seems more mechanically efficient than a pump. But I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I could be completely wrong.

[Simon]

Left Ventricular Assist Device doesn't replace the heart, it only is an assist. If a person doesn't require the replacement, then a LVAD is a better option. In any case there still is no true "self contained" artificial heart. Meaning the patient of such a device would end up with external apparatus to wear all the time. If I needed a replacement heart with an active lifestyle, I would try my best to get the human heart from the donor list. I would rather be saddled with rejection medications than have to lug around a battery pack. The mechanical hearts are a great development but I guess I am like the doctor from that sci-fi story. The best replacement parts for us humans can be grown in a lab.

[GreyGeek]

I wish the world could experience a generation of scientists as politicians, rather than the gasbags we now get who appeal to ancient fairy tales. With a kickstarter like that, imagine how much better off the entire world could be.

I thought that too, and voted for Jimmy Carter because although he was not a scientist, he was a nuclear engineer. He gave me voter regret because he tried to mix his Faith with his politics, and because some political solutions are beyond a scientist's or engineer's training. Would I vote for another scientist turned politician? In a heartbeat. Carter wasn't a good representative and was not really a scientist. On the negative side, math is a scientist major tool, and Godel's Theorems place limits on math.

. ... I for one would like to offer a cloned heart over the mechanical heart.

... The best replacement parts for us humans can be grown in a lab.

The ability to "clone" tissues and organs is taking a giant leap and represents a pathway to avoiding rejection. For example, take a lung from a donor and remove all the lung cells (essentially using Ammonium Sulfate, Tide soap and enzymes), leaving only the lung "scaffold", then seeding the scaffold with new lung cells derived from the patient.

Take it a step farther. Analyze the scaffolding from many organs and create a 3D printer templates. Use a 3D printer to print the scaffolding when ever needed, properly scaled automatically to fit the patient, and seed it with tissue/stem cells from the patient. Heart, lungs, kidney, liver, bone, blood vessels, ... brain? Organs are composed of more than one type of tissue. Can the stem cells adapt and create the appropriate type in the appropriate locations?

. ... I dunno, but a continuously spinning turbine seems more mechanically efficient than a pump. But I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I could be completely wrong.

My wife had robotic open heart surgery in the fall of 2007. The Da Vinci Surgical Robot was used. Normally, such surgeries require the patient to be on the "heart-lung" machine for about 90 minutes. Because of complications she was on if for 330 minutes. After two tries at trying to repair her Mitral valve the surgeon had to replace it with a cow valve on the third try. She was slowly brought out of anesthesia 36 hours later. She couldn't talk nor move the right side of her body. She had a stroke during or after surgery. Fortunately, withing four days she had recovered 98% of her abilities but had lingering effects of what is called "pump head". It's the disturbance of vision and the feeling that the mind is foggy. At times people would look like penguins walking around in a bluish white Antarctic environment. She also dragged her right foot at times, and still does. The penguins rarely visit her, her speech is back to normal, and the only indication of foot dragging is that the sole of her right shoes are more worn along their right edges that those of the left. Other than that she's the same wonderful person she was before the surgery, and she has no propensity to either say "moo" or graze on grass!

"Pump head" is caused by the impellers of the heart-lung machine grinding up RBCs, WBC and other components in the blood, which reduce the flow of blood in the capillaries of the brain (and other organs of the body), according to my wife's cardiologist. The parts in contact with the blood are Teflon or Silicone (?) coated. Eventually enzymes remove the detritus and the "fog" goes away. For my wife, that took four or five months.

Earlier this year she was visiting a friend who had open heart surgery and met the cardiologist. She asked him if he used the surgical robot. He said that he and the hospital stopped using it because of too many complications. Now it is back to cracking open the Sternum.

A turbine obtains its efficiency by virtue of its high rotational inertia, which is due to its high rpm. That can result in sonic cavitation, which increases with density and viscosity of the fluid. The Navy developed special propellers on nuclear attack subs to minimize sonic cavitation, but it also requires limiting the speed of the propeller. Also, the shock wave of cavitation collapse will damage organisms even if the propeller doesn't. I suspect that the same impeller design is used in turbines that are used in heart pumps.

The attempt to develop a pump with no moving parts exposed to the blood stream is found in an artifical heart using a magnetohydrodynamic pump. The pump creates ions in the blood and use moving magnetic forces to move the ions along, which drags the blood with it (slip flow). The process heats the blood. The normal body temperature is 37C. If the blood temp is raised to over 42C components can began breaking down and proteins denature. The cells break down, leaving toxic free hemoglobin circulating in the blood. Not good.

Another problem is that artificial hearts aren't connected to the central nervous system, nor do they respond to hormones released in response to physiological changes. This one does.
The common handicap of such devices, including the one linked to, is the need to carry a power supply and backup at all times. Run out of power and you are five minutes away from being dead.

IMO, clones or regeneration are the only ways to go. Batteries not included because they are not necessary.

[Simon]

The ability to "clone" tissues and organs is taking a giant leap and represents a pathway to avoiding rejection. For example, take a lung from a donor and remove all the lung cells (essentially using Ammonium Sulfate, Tide soap and enzymes), leaving only the lung "scaffold", then seeding the scaffold with new lung cells derived from the patient.

Take it a step farther. Analyze the scaffolding from many organs and create a 3D printer templates. Use a 3D printer to print the scaffolding when ever needed, properly scaled automatically to fit the patient, and seed it with tissue/stem cells from the patient. Heart, lungs, kidney, liver, bone, blood vessels, ... brain? Organs are composed of more than one type of tissue. Can the stem cells adapt and create the appropriate type in the appropriate locations?

I think you watch more Star Trek than I do lol. In the very near future, we should be able do all that and more. I am not up on my US medical laws, but here in Canada we have access to stem cells and research has progressed. A lot of my stem cell therapy has paid off in remission for my patients and a few have signs of mass reduction. While you could clone the brain tissue the brain has mysteries that are yet unsolved as to how synapses store our memories. There has been some improvement made in the neurochip technology, the NRC developed, I read in an article about a month ago on Alzheimer’s Disease. I don't recall which magazine that was, but the article was expressing a lot of hope in the next 5 years.

Also I read about some French computer scientist and Harvard University working from the other end. DNA computers would require too much expensive equipment, but they were able to record the text of a 54,000-word book to DNA on a glass slide. To give you the idea of what kind of data storage you are talking about, you could record about 10 petabytes* on something the size of a paper clip. So in the near future the first computer to store it's data by chemical means could be in your home.

*I don't know if that term "petabyte" is the correct one but about 1,000,000 GB.

[GreyGeek]

I think you watch more Star Trek than I do lol. ...

My son and I are Trekkies!

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:...l.pone.0045308

Here is an article describing the seeding of lung scaffolding with donor cells:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/14/health...own/index.html

http://www.mercurynews.com/health/ci...ating-them-lab

http://www.popsci.com/technology/art...de-order-lungs

[Simon]

I guess bionics relates closely to sci-fi of Star Trek, so I won't go too far off topic explaining this here.

I call myself a "trekker" and others ask me, what is the difference between a trekker and a trekkie? Trekkies are mainly fans of the 1966-69 series and the movies that followed. Trekkers are fans of 1987-94 series and/or the spin-offs. There is a slight variation on how Trekkies and Trekkers think and behave. Trekkies never question the technology, bonk every alien babe on the show, and kill all computers with artificial intelligence. Trekkers ask tech questions, like how many many terrawatts of power a hand held phaser (PHotonic mASER) and how do the Heisenberg compensators work? Trekkers have been shown the trouble cause numerous times by having bonked with the wrong alien babe. Yes, Commander Riker's actions have actually caused more damage and almost lost the ship due to his love affairs. As far as computers and AI, a computer can be your best friend like Commander Data or your worst nightmare like Lore.

Over all the show has lightened up on "death to the machine" and shown us the good and evil it can be used for. It tried to make us think about the tech and not just toss random "magic" answers in our face. Finally it showed that you couldn't sleep with someone and expect that someone to do you bidding for you. I am a child of STNG (Star Trek the Next Generation) but I can also appreciate that without Kirk, Spock, and Bones it would not exist.

Fantasy fuels the imagination and without that we would never try to better ourselves and the world we live in.

[GreyGeek]

... I call myself a "trekker" and others ask me, what is the difference between a trekker and a trekkie? Trekkies are mainly fans of the 1966-69 series and the movies that followed. Trekkers are fans of 1987-94 series and/or the spin-offs. ...

mmm... I never made that distinction. I considered trekker the singular and trekkie the plural. Watching Star Trek was a requirement for my physics students, while I was teaching physics in college during that time the 60s version was showing in TV. I used it to discuss the difference between real physics and make-believe physics.

I continued to watch all the later Star Trek shows (TV & Movies) and their spinoffs. STNG was my favorite but I also liked the retro version starring Scott Backula, and Voyager ("Jane Hathaway") and Deep Space Nine. I also enjoyed the online Star Trek creations.
The first ones to appear:
http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/
One has "Sulu" from the orginal in "World Eought and TIme", and the one featuring several stars from the original is on its own site:
http://startrekofgodsandmen.com/main/

CBS has sued these guys but I never followed the outcome.