Just another Wednesday. From Nature:

The arduous work involved in building the system is almost as notable as the achievement itself, says Drew Endy of Stanford University in California who led the work, which is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹.

Synthetic biologists have long sought to devise biological data-storage systems because they could be useful in a variety of applications, and because data storage will be a fundamental function of the digital circuits that the field hopes to create in cells.

…

Endy’s group attempted to create a rewritable memory system by splicing genetic elements from a bacteriophage — a bacterium-infecting virus — into the DNA of the bacterium Escherichia coli.

The system consists of a stretch of DNA flanked by sites that signal to enzymes made by the bacteriophage, instructing them to cut out the DNA and paste it back into the chromosome in the reverse orientation. Endy’s group shows that the device can be set and reset repeatedly — up to 16 times. One advantage this system has over those using transcription factors is that it is truly digital, with forward and reverse orientations of the DNA acting like a ’0′ or a ’1′ in binary. Also, the cell expends no energy in storing the memory, beyond DNA maintenance, says Endy. He points out that combinations of such elements could be used to track cellular events, such as the series of cell divisions by which a stem cell becomes a differentiated adult cell.

“What Drew’s group can do that others haven’t demonstrated is the ability to cycle the memory element over and over, kind of like you can write a bit to a hard drive, read it and change it back over and over again,” says synthetic biologist Eric Klavins of the University of Washington in Seattle.

…

Endy’s group chose a particular bacteriophage element for the work because it seemed to have the potential to reliably change the orientation of DNA. But that didn’t turn out to be the case. As a result, Jerome Bonnet, the postdoctoral student who spearheaded the project, spent three years tweaking the system to make it work, ultimately creating 750 different designs in his attempts to troubleshoot various aspects.

“It’s a pretty sad criticism of the state of technology in synthetic biology where we’re trying to program the expression of half a dozen genes and it takes 750 design attempts to get that working,” Endy says. “It’s like trying to write a six-line code on a computer that takes 750 debug attempts to work.”

…

“The cheaper and easier gene synthesis becomes, the more easily we’ll be able to do this kind of thing,” Klavins says.

Endy also hopes that initiatives such as the BIOFAB, which he co-directs with Adam Arkin at the University of California, Berkeley, will streamline the process by delivering standardized, reliable biological parts for researchers to use.

As the Alchemists know, the first grind is the mind:

In this new RSAnimate, renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist explains how our ‘divided brain’ has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society.

This is a bit big. As Bruce Sterling reminds us, “Anything that can be done to a rat can be done to a human being.”

Researchers at the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), led by its director María Blasco, have demonstrated that the mouse lifespan can be extended by the application in adult life of a single treatment acting directly on the animal’s genes. And they have done so using gene therapy, a strategy never before employed to combat aging. The therapy has been found to be safe and effective in mice.

The results were recently published in the journal EMBO Molecular Medicine. The CNIO team, in collaboration with Eduard Ayuso and Fátima Bosch of the Centre of Animal Biotechnology and Gene Therapy at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), treated adult (one-­‐year-­‐old) and aged (two-­‐year-­‐old) mice, with the gene therapy delivering a “rejuvenating” effect in both cases, according to the authors.

Mice treated at the age of one lived longer by 24% on average, and those treated at the age of two, by 13%. The therapy, furthermore, produced an appreciable improvement in the animals’ health, delaying the onset of age-­‐related diseases — like osteoporosis and insulin resistance — and achieving improved readings on aging indicators like neuromuscular coordination.

The gene therapy consisted of treating the animals with a DNA-­modified virus, the viral genes having been replaced by those of the telomerase enzyme, with a key role in aging. Telomerase repairs the extreme ends or tips of chromosomes, known as telomeres, and in doing so slows the cell’s and therefore the body’s biological clock. When the animal is infected, the virus acts as a vehicle depositing the telomerase gene in the cells.

This study “shows that it is possible to develop a telomerase-­based anti-­aging gene therapy without increasing the incidence of cancer,” the authors affirm. “Aged organisms accumulate damage in their DNA due to telomere shortening, [this study] finds that a gene therapy based on telomerase production can repair or delay this kind of damage,” they add.

…

In 2007, Blasco’s group demonstrated that it was feasible to prolong the lives of transgenic mice, whose genome had been permanently altered at the embryonic stage, by causing their cells to express telomerase and, also, extra copies of cancer-­‐resistant genes. These animals live 40% longer than is normal and do not develop cancer.

The mice subjected to the gene therapy now under test are likewise free of cancer. Researchers believe this is because the therapy begins when the animals are adult so do not have time to accumulate sufficient number of aberrant divisions for tumours to appear.

Also important is the kind of virus employed to carry the telomerase gene to the cells. The authors selected demonstrably safe viruses that have been successfully used in gene therapy treatment of hemophilia and eye disease. Specifically, they are non-­‐replicating viruses derived from others that are non-­‐pathogenic in humans.

This study is viewed primarily as “a proof-­‐of-­‐principle that telomerase gene therapy is a feasible and generally safe approach to improve healthspan and treat disorders associated with short telomeres,” state Virginia Boccardi (Second University of Naples) and Utz Herbig (New Jersey Medical School-­‐University Hospital Cancer Centre) in a commentary published in the same journal.

…

With regard to the therapy under testing, Bosch explains: “Because the vector we use expresses the target gene (telomerase) over a long period, we were able to apply a single treatment. This might be the only practical solution for an anti-­‐aging therapy, since other strategies would require the drug to be administered over the patient’s lifetime, multiplying the risk of adverse effects.”

This is a good start. Read it in full at Science Daily.

Two very different forms of data viz:

1. From BERG and Ericsson’s UX lab:
   

   This is an experiment using projection mapping to visualise network activity in the spaces that the network actually inhabits.

   

   We use as inspiration a ‘murmuration‘ of starlings, a beautiful natural phenomenon. In this visualisation the ‘murmuration’ flits between devices revealing the relationships and the patterns of network traffic in the studio.

2. And as Tim Maly reports:http://www.vimeo.com/42106882
   

   Matthew Epler, a student in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at NYU, has designed a way to bring Michele Bachmann et al. a bit of pleasure. His Grand Old Party is a 3-D data-viz project based on the polling data of Republican presidential nominees. It is also a series of butt plugs.

This photo, taken with Google’s HUD+ prototype Project Glass, has been circulating around the net over the past few days. It keeps coming back to mind; mostly when I’m at the park trying to get that shot of my dog being super cute, to post on hipstergram.

The shorthand for HUDs has generally been “Terminator vision”, but this powerfully shows its most compelling use is just the opposite.

Remember when we used to call buildings to see if people were in them? Remember when we sent taps along wires to talk to our distant loved ones? Remember when we covered fires with blankets to send signals? We see things differently now.

From New Scientist:

Researchers at Autodesk, a software company in Toronto, Canada, checked to see whether the methods we currently use to interface with our gadgets work when the device is implanted in human tissue. The answer was a resounding “yes”.

A button, an LED and a touch sensor all functioned appropriately when embedded under the skin of a cadaver’s arm. The team was even able to communicate transcutaneously using a Bluetooth connection and charge the electronics wirelessly.

“That’s the bottom line,” says Christian Holz of the Autodesk team, who presented the work this week at the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Austin, Texas. “Traditional user interfaces work through the skin.”

…

There are also clear benefits to implanted electronics. “The device is always there,” says Holz. “You cannot lose it.” And implants provide new interface methods. A gadget similar to a smartphone could provide a calendar alert by means of a gentle sub-skin vibration, for example.

And that creepy feeling? It is a common reaction now, but may lessen as people become familiar with the technology. The idea of using a machine to assist a human heart was once deemed unnatural, for example, but the insertion of a pacemaker is now a routine procedure.

“In general, the trend has been that people are more and more willing to incorporate bits of the machine world into themselves,” says Sherry Turkle, a sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The perception [of this technology] 10 years ago would differ from today and from what we would get in 10 years’ time,” agrees Holz.

Turkle wants society to think seriously about the potential downsides of implanted electronics, including tracking. But she has also studied how people relate to their cellphones and notes that some talk about them as if they were cyborgs.

“People literally cannot be without this device,” Turkle says. “They don’t feel the same when they are not connected. We live with our phones as if they are part of our body.”

From the BBC:

Beaming, of a kind, is no longer pure science fiction. It is the name of an international project funded by the European Commission to investigate how a person can visit a remote location via the internet and feel fully immersed in the new environment.

The visitor may be embodied as an avatar or a robot, interacting with real people.

Motion capture technology – such as the Microsoft Kinect games console – robots, 3D glasses and special haptic suits with body sensors can all be used to create a rich, realistic experience, that reproduces that holy grail – “presence”.

…

Project leader Mel Slater, professor of virtual environments at University College London (UCL), calls beaming augmented reality, rather than virtual reality. In beaming – unlike the virtual worlds of computer games and the Second Life website – the robot or avatar interacts with real people in a real place.

He and his team have beamed people from Barcelona to London, embodying them either as a robot, or as an avatar in a specially equipped “cave”. One avatar was able to rehearse a play with a real actor, the stage being represented by the cave’s walls – screens projecting 3D images.

…this also raises the possibility of new types of crime.

Could beaming increase the risk of sexual harassment or even virtual rape? That is one of many ethical questions that the beaming project is considering, along with the technical challenges.

Law researcher Ray Purdy says you might get a new type of cyber crime, where lovers have consensual sexual contact via beaming and a hacker hijacks the man’s avatar to have virtual sex with the woman.

It raises all sorts of problems that courts and lawmakers may need to resolve. How could a court prove that that amounted to molestation or rape? The human who hacks into an avatar could easily live in another country, under different laws.

The electronic evidence might be insufficient for prosecution. Crimes taking place remotely might sometimes leave digital trails, but they do not leave forensic evidence, which is often vital to secure rape convictions, Purdy says.

“Clearly, laws might have to adapt to the fact that certain crimes can be committed at a distance, via the use of beamed technologies,” he says.

Sexual penetration by a robot part is another possibility. Current law may not go far enough to cover that, Purdy says. And what if a robot injured you with an over-zealous handshake? Or if an avatar made a sexually explicit gesture amounting to sexual harassment?

…

He argues that using a robot maliciously would be similar in law to using a gun – responsibility lies with the controller. “While it is the gun that fires the bullet, it is the person in control of the gun that commits the act – not the gun itself.”

…

The Kinect technology, capturing an individual’s gestures, is potentially a powerful tool in the hands of an identity thief, argues Prof Jeremy Bailenson, founder of the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, California.

“A hacker can steal my very essence, really capture all of my nuances, then build a competing avatar, a copy of me,” he told the BBC. “The courts haven’t even begun to think about that.”

…

Prof Patrick Haggard, a neuroscientist at UCL who has been examining ethical issues thrown up by beaming, says there is a risk that such a virtual culture could reinforce body image prejudices.

But equally an avatar could form part of a therapy, he says, for example to show an obese person how he or she might look after losing weight.

As beaming develops, one of the biggest questions for philosophers may be defining where a person actually is – just as it is key for lawyers to determine in which jurisdiction an avatar’s crime is committed.

Even now people are often physically in one place but immersed in a virtual world online.

Avatars challenge the human bond between identity and a physical body.

“My body may be here in London but my life may be in a virtual apartment in New York,” says Haggard. “So where am I really?”

Click through for more, including a video demonstration of the tech.

via io9

The ExoHand from Festo — an active manual orthosis with sensitive fingers

The ExoHand from Festo is an exoskeleton that can be worn like a glove. The fingers can be actively moved and their strength amplified; the operator’s hand movements are registered and transmitted to the robotic hand in real time.

From ABC4:

After participating in a DECA conference in Salt Lake City with several classmates last week, Savannah, who is a type one diabetic and wears an insulin pump 24 hours a day, says she ran into TSA agents who were not prepared to deal with her medical situation. “I went up to the lady and I said, I am a type one diabetic. I wear an insulin pump. I showed her the pump. I said, what do you want me to do? I usually do a pat down – what would you recommend?”

Savannah then showed agents a doctor’s note explaining that the sensitive insulin pump should not go through the body scanner. She says she was told to go through it anyway. “When someone in a position of authority tells you it is – you think that its right. So, I said, Are you sure I can go through with the pump? It’s not going to hurt the pump? And she said no, no you’re fine.”

The 16-year-old walked into the scanner with some serious reservations “My life is pretty much in their hands when I go through a body scan with my insulin pump on.” She was right to be worried. She says the pump stopped working correctly. “Coming off an insulin pump is rough. You never know what is going to happen when you are not on the insulin pump.”

via Cat Vincent | /.

From Yahoo!News:

Paralysed Claire Lomas has completed the London Marathon in a bionic suit 16 days after she began the race.

The 32-year-old was paralysed from the chest down following a horse riding accident five years ago, but with the aid of the limited movement of the suit she was able to negotiate the course at a rate of a couple of miles a day.

She crossed the line after 26.2 miles in front of a crowd of onlookers including her husband and 13-month-old daughter, and in the process became the first person in history to complete the marathon using a bionic ReWalk suit.

thanks to Bunny for the tip-off!

This “video of last year’s cyborg dance intervention at the Tijuana border crossing” comes via Chris N. Brown:

Today’s Pictures for Sad Children:

via @thedaniel

One of our current project investigating some of these themes is ‘Mutations’, in which we’re looking at new products and services at the intersection of synthetic biology and deviant globalization – a murky world of illegal, informal and pirate economies, new patent laws, cross-border flows of technology and expertise, and home DNA printing. Both here, and elsewhere, it is important to remember that science and technology do not emerge in a vacuum, but condition, and are conditioned by the social and political context in which they emerge.

Just a fraction of a great interview with Anab Jain on URBNFUTR.

via Boing Boing

Via Darkly Euphoric

Take the Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset, connect it to an AR Drone using the dark magix of computer science and you get this:

thanks Justin Pickard!

I fully endorse this message:

UPDATE: On reflection, it seems there’s a bit of THRIVE snuck into that vid. To balance that out, watch Guy Ritchie’s excellent #blankbadge movie REVOLVER.