Salamanders can do it, zebrafish can do it, why can’t we? Yes, back to the topic of tissue regeneration - it seems that, for zebrafish at least, the solution lies in their microRNA (something I’m not exactly au fait with,but that shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone!). Still, it’s another step towards limb and organ regeneration in humans…
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
I’m still going through some of the cool material available at TED, and have been blown away by Alan Russell’s talk on stem cell research. The real-world applications are far more advanced than I had realized.
I was particularly interested in what he had to say about skin and the treatment of burns. One project I worked on a few years ago was to develop an e-learning course in the field of tissue tranplantation; I had to edit a lot of very gruesome video, about burns victims being treated with pigskin, or grafts from elsewhere on their body - precisely the kind of treatment that stem cells may render outdated.
And as for being able to stimulate organs and limbs to regenerate themselves… fantastic! Let’s hope it becomes mainstream ASAP! Here’s the clip. I would embed it, but that seems to break Wordpress, and I haven’t got time to work out the fix 
Thursday, January 24th, 2008
See also this slightly tongue-in-cheek, but absolutely true all the same, article on 10 ways online gaming will change the future.
Saturday, January 19th, 2008
According to the London Times, scientists at the University of Minnesota have chemically stripped cells from a dead animal’s heart. This leaves only the inert protein base structure intact. This can then be used as the base for seeding with fresh, live cells from the patient. At the moment, it’s only been used on animals. However, in the future, we’ll be able to use hearts from cadavers, seed them with stem cells, and pretty rapidly - within weeks - have a functioning heart ready for transplant. It isn’t just hearts, either - almost any organ can be ‘created’ using this procedure.
Of course, the process still needs a real, human heart to provide the base. I suppose that it needn’t be as ‘fresh’ as the hearts currently used for transplant, so by providing a bigger time window between the death of the donor and the time the organ is removed from the cadaver. Also, all issues regarding compatibility and organ rejection become irrelevant.
The scientists who have developed the procedure say that it will be many years before this is ready for use on humans, but I’m not so sure - I think there’s such a huge demand amongst the boomer generation for it that money will be thrown at the problem, and the delivery date will arrive much sooner!
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
Anyway, the BBC reports that researchers at Boston University have developed a brain implant that is able to read thoughts and translate them into machine-generated speech.
The article reassures us:
“There is a huge difference between a technique like this, which is able to pick up signals the subject wants to be picked up, and being able to delve deep into the mind,” says Professor John Dylan Haynes of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences.
However, it wasn’t all that long ago that the technology to control mouse a computer by thought alone also required a chip to be implanted in the brain - now, though, it’s a $15 accessory. In the same way, I suspect that this thought-to-speech technology will also rapidly become a cheap peripheral - and no doubt governments around the world will soon have black labs working on using them in combination with truth drugs…
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
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