sci/tech sensation news magazine

In 'U.S. sees six disruptive technologies by 2025,' Computerworld reports that the National Intelligence Council (NIC) is preparing a report about disruptive technologies expected to have a major impact on the world. The NIC defines as disruptive 'a technology with the potential to cause a noticeable -- even if temporary -- degradation or enhancement in one of the elements of US national power (geopolitical, military, economic, or social cohesion).' According to a preliminary version of this report, the list of these disruptive technologies should include biogerontechnology, energy storage materials, biofuels and bio-based chemicals or service robotics. But read more for additional details about biogerontechnology...

This 'Global Trends 2025' report will be delivered to the next U.S. president in December 2008. It has been prepared by SRI Consulting Business Intelligence (SRIC-BI) for the National Intelligence Council (NIC). You can see above the process used by SRIC-BI to select these potentially disruptive technologies. (Credit: SRIC-BI/NIC)

The Computerworld article contains several comments made by Thomas Fingar, deputy director of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence during a speech given this month in Orlando, Florida. Here is what he says about climate change. "By 2025, 'it is not a good time to live in the Southwest because it runs out of water and looks like the Dust Bowl. It is not a good time to be along the Atlantic Seaboard, particularly in the South because of the projected increase and intensity and severity and frequency of severe weather -- more hurricanes, more serious storms, and so forth,' Fingar said."

Now, let's look at a preliminary version of the 'Global Trends 2025' report released online by the NIC in April 2008 under the title "Disruptive Civil Technologies." Here are two links to an a text version and a PDF one (48 pages, 602 KB) of this preliminary report. The illustration above has been extracted from this report.

Of course, this report is very interesting to read -- and some of you will read it in its entirety. But let's focus here on this relatively new concept of biogerontechnology (only 42 references by Google as I'm writing this post). But what is it? "Biogerontechnology offers the means to accomplish control over and improvement in the human condition, and promises improvements in lifespan. The advancement of the science and technology underlying the biological aging process has the potential to not only extend the average natural lifespan, but also to simultaneously postpone many if not all of the costly and disabling conditions that humans experience in later life, thereby creating a longevity dividend that will be economic, social and medical in nature."

Why is this a potential disruptive technology? Here are some answers from the report.

• The disruptive potential comes in the form of new treatment modalities, shifts in the cost, and resulting allocation and use of health care resources.
  
• Nations will be challenged as a result of changing demographic structures, new psychologies, activity patterns of aging yet healthy citizens, and the resulting requirement to formulate new national economic and social policies.
  

This report -- which is quite long -- gives more details about why biogerontechnology is potentially disruptive. "Since the start the twentieth century, when the average natural lifespan in the United States was 47 years of age, gains in life expectancy have been impressive thanks to a combination of medical interventions, lifestyle choices, and behavior modifications. In 2005, the average human life expectancy in the United States was 78 years, with life expectancy for women approximately five years longer than for men. The US Census Bureau estimates that life expectancy will increase by another six years by 2050. Biogerontechnology, which offers the means to accomplish control over and improvement in the human condition, promises even greater longevity gains. The advancement of the science and technology underlying the biological aging process has the potential to not only extend the average natural lifespan forecasts but also to simultaneously postpone many if not all of the costly and disabling conditions that humans experience in later life, thereby creating a longevity dividend that will be economic, social and medical in nature. The disruptive potential will also come in the form of new treatment modalities, and shifts in the cost, allocation and use of health care resources. Nations will be challenged as a result of the changing demographic structures and new psychologies, behaviors and activity patterns of aging yet healthy citizens and the concomitant need to formulate new national economic and social policies."

For much more information, please read this very instructive report before the final version is delivered to the next U.S. president.

Sources: Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld, September 10, 2008; and various websites

SEOUL (AFP) - An America woman blinked back tears of joy Tuesday as she cuddled puppies cloned in South Korea from her beloved former pit bull terrier.

"This is a miracle," said Bernann McKinney from Hollywood in California, hugging five clones of Booger at Seoul National University's veterinary school.

RNL Bio, the company which arranged the re-creation of Booger through his refrigerated ear tissue, hailed the event as the world's first commercial cloning of a pet dog.

"This is my first birthday present. These guys gave me the best present," said McKinney, a movie scriptwriter who turns 58 on Wednesday.

The five clones were born from two surrogate mothers on July 28, said Ra Jeong-Chan, CEO of RNL Bio which has launched a commercial dog cloning service in cooperation with the Seoul National University (SNU) scientists.

"They are perfectly the same as their daddy. I am in heaven here. I am a happy person," McKinney said, recalling her years with Booger who saved her life by chasing off a ferocious mastiff which bit her severely.

She said she would consider training some of the pups as service dogs for the handicapped or elderly when they arrive at her home in September.

McKinney said she had contacted South Korean experts after a US company failed to re-create Booger.

The operation was launched in May by a SNU team led by Professor Lee Byeong-Chun. He played a key role in creating the world's first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, on a non-commercial basis in 2005.

Ra's company originally charged 150,000 dollars to clone Booger. But it agreed to come down to 50,000 dollars to celebrate what it calls the first commercial deal for a pet dog.

Ra said Booger's case opens the way for global commercial cloning services for pet lovers since the success rate for dogs is high.

He said his company could clone up to 300 dogs next year for wealthy animal lovers in the US and elsewhere.

The RNL Bio CEO said he will contest claims by a US dog-cloning firm, BioArts International, that it is infringing on its patent.

Ra said the university would undertake an ethical review of his firm's business to prevent indiscreet cloning.

"For my next project, I will consider cloning camels for rich people in the Middle East," he said.

Source: YN

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SEOUL (Reuters) - Two South Korean labs are offering pet owners the chance to clone dogs, but for those looking to bring back a beloved beagle, be ready to wait in line and have plenty of cash on hand.

The Seoul-based labs -- one affiliated to RNL Bio Co and the other to Sooam Biotech Research Foundation -- are separated by about 30 km (20 miles) and bill themselves as the only places in the world where you can clone a cocker spaniel or retrieve a retriever, with costs running at about $50,000 to $100,000.

But the labs are turning out far more copies of working dogs and endangered breeds than pets.

Customers such as South Korea's customs service have cloned a champion sniffer dog, seeing the option as a cost-effective way to produce candidates for expensive training programs.

The customs service estimates the cost at 60 million won ($60,260) per clone. It costs about twice that to breed and train a normal sniffer dog, but only about 30 percent are good enough to make the grade, it said.

"This all came about from the question of how we could secure dogs with superior qualities at a low price," commissioner of the Korea Customs Service Hur Yong-suk said.

Near South Korea's main international airport, trainers have been putting seven Labrador retrievers cloned from a top drug sniffing dog named Chase through their paces.

The seven clones, all named Toppy for "tomorrow's puppy," were produced in October and November last year by RNL Bio and seem to have the right stuff for the job, their trainer said.

TOP DOG IN CLONING BATTLE

Both labs are staffed with researchers who worked with Hwang Woo-suk, once hailed as a national hero in South Korea for his work in human embryonic stem cells but who later fell from his perch when his research results were found to be fraudulent.

Hwang, who left Seoul National University in disgrace, went on to form Sooam in 2006, while the RNL Bio lab is largely staffed by researchers who stayed behind after Hwang left the prestigious university.

RNL says Hwang's team members, and not Hwang himself, developed the technology that resulted in the world's first cloned dog, an Afghan hound named Snuppy born in 2005 while Sooam says the technology belongs to Hwang.

"They can be our competitor or we can cooperate because our capacity is very small now. If we can make a partnership, we can make more dog clones for worldwide needs," said Ra Jeongchan, president and CEO of RNL Bio.

RNL, a biotech firm using dog cloning as a way to grow its international business, will soon produce its first cloned pet, copying a pit bull named Booger for a California grandmother who lost a few of her fingers and relied on the dog for help.

Ra said it costs as much to produce a single copy of a dog as it does to produce many clones.

Dogs are cloned using so-called somatic cell nuclear transfer, a technique for hollowing out the nucleus of a donor egg and injecting it with the donor's genetic material, which is typically skin tissue taken from the ear.

The canines are considered one of the more difficult mammals to clone because of their reproductive cycle that includes difficult-to-predict ovulations.

Sooam, which has brought Hwang back into the spotlight, made a splash when it said it produced the first clones of a pet dog, a mixed-breed called "Missy" that was the pet of the CEO of U.S. biotech firm BioArts International. Three clones were born in late 2007 and early 2008, it said.

U.S. biotech firm BioArts, which works with Sooam, is auctioning off five slots to people who want to clone their pets, with bids starting at $100,000.

RNL chief Ra said he expects to be able to clone about 100 dogs next year and for the price to drop as technology improves.

But Ra, the owner of a Maltese, has no plans to clone his own family pet. "It's too expensive," he said.

(Additional reporting by Kim Junghyun)

(Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Source: Yahoo News

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Imagine a tiny robot or drug-delivery device that could swim through your veins, using blood sugar as its fuel. Such a device could be powered by the same chain of chemical reactions that propel sperm toward an egg, according to researchers at Cornell University.

The researchers are trying to reproduce (pardon the pun) the steps whereby a sperm's whiplike tail generates energy. (Sperm also generate energy using the mitochondria in their midsection.) Running the length of the tail is a fibrous sheath with 10 enzymes attached to it. These enzymes act in series to break down glucose into ATP, the energy source for cells, in a process known as glycolysis.

So far, the Cornell researchers have managed to attach three of the 10 enzymes to a computer chip and confirm that the enzymes still work. If they can attach all 10 enzymes, they'll have a working version of a sperm engine, which could then be attached to nano-devices. The researchers presented their findings at the American Society for Cell Biology's annual meeting today.—Dawn Stover

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SEOUL, South Korea - A South Korean team led by disgraced stem cell scientist Hwang Woo-suk said Thursday it has created 17 clones of an endangered dog breed popular in China.

The Sooam Biotech Research Foundation said in a statement that the cloned Tibetan mastiff dogs were born in April, two months after being requested by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The foundation said it takes two months to produce cloned dogs from pregnancy, but it declined to discuss its success rate, citing internal policy.

The foundation also that all 17 dogs had been cloned from two Tibetan mastiffs — female and male — through six surrogate dogs, citing blind DNA tests by another institute.

However, an official of Kogene Biotech, the Seoul-based institute specializing in DNA analysis that did the tests, said it did not to take its own samples from the dogs and that the samples it tested were provided by the foundation.

Kogene Biotech said it did not know for certain if the samples came from cloned animals or the original dogs, or a combination of both, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.

In 2005, Hwang and his team of Seoul National University scientists successfully created the world's first known dog clone, an Afghan hound named Snuppy, an achievement that was independently confirmed.

Hwang scandalized the international scientific community in 2005 when his breakthrough human cloning research involving embryonic stem cells was found to have been faked.

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CANBERRA (Reuters) - Next time you crank up the volume, beware: an Australian government report said young people risk developing permanent hearing problems if they go to noisy bars and listen to loud music through headphones.

The report, released on Tuesday, found two out of three Australians suffered some degree of hearing damage, but 70 percent of people aged 18 to 34 years had reported ringing in their ears, or tinnitus, which can be a sign of permanent damage.

"This may reflect a lifestyle aspect, with younger Australians more likely to attend bars, pubs and listen to music through headphones," said the report, titled "Is Australia Listening."

The report said 41 percent of adults listen to music through headphones at least once a month, with 76 percent of young adults listen to music through headphones on MP3 players such as iPods.

It also found 60 percent of younger people who listen to music through headphones turn the volume up high enough to damage their ears.

The report urged people to listen to MP3 players at a moderate level to protect their ears from long-term harm.

Professor Harvey Dillon, from the government-funded Hearing Australia, said many young people did not realize that hearing damage was permanent.

"If it is loud, it can cause damage. and if it does cause you damage, it is permanent," Dillon told Australian television.

"Our rule of thumb is if people have to raise their voice or actually shout at you to make themselves understood while you are listening to music in your ears, then that is loud enough to be potentially damaging."

(Reporting by James Grubel, editing by Miral Fahmy)

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In a study of London stock traders, elevated hormone levels coincided with above-average profits.

A UK Trading Floor: Photo by HSBC

The researchers suspect that testosterone may increase a trader's confidence and willingness to take risks. However, too much testosterone could be dangerous. Previous studies have shown that testosterone injections can cause men to make irrational decisions.

The researchers also measured levels of cortisol, a hormone that is released in response to stress. The traders experienced spikes of cortisol during times of high volatility in the markets.

Measuring steroid hormones such as testosterone and cortisol may offer a way to predict how well a trader will perform on the job, says Professor Joe Herbert of the Cambridge Centre for Brain Repair. He and his colleagues are now exploring this in more detail.

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LONDON (Reuters) - A probiotic drink a day may help keep hay fever away, British researchers said on Tuesday.

A small study showed that probiotic, or "good" bacteria in a daily drink can change the immune system's response to grass pollen, a common cause of allergies, and balance antibodies in a way that may provide relief to people with the condition.

"These data show that probiotic supplements modulate immune responses...and may have the potential to alleviate the severity of symptoms," Claudio Nicoletti and colleagues at the Institute of Food Research in Norwich, Britain, reported in the journal Clinical and Experimental Allergy.

Probiotics contain live micro-organisms, so-called good bacteria that colonize the intestine. They are sold as supplements but are also found naturally in many fermented foods, including yogurt and certain juices.

Humans normally carry several pounds of bacteria in their intestines and they are key to digestion, immune system function and possibly play other beneficial roles. They can also out-compete "bad" bacteria that may cause disease.

"The probiotic strain we tested changed the way the body's immune cells respond to grass pollen," added Kamal Ivory, a researcher who worked on the study.

In the study volunteers with a history of seasonal allergies drank a daily milk drink with or without Lactobacillus casei -- a bacteria widely studied for its beneficial properties -- over a five-month period.

The researchers took blood samples before the grass pollen season, at its peak and after the end of season. They found that people who had been drinking the probiotic drink had lower levels of an antibody that help produce allergy symptoms.

At the same, these people also had higher levels of a different antibody, called IgG, that may play a protective role against allergic reactions.

These changes may reduce the severity of symptoms, something the researchers said they plan to test further. They also cautioned that the findings came from a small study and more work was needed.

(Reporting by Michael Kahn; Editing by Maggie Fox and Jon Boyle)

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An inventor at the University of Washington holds a flexible contact lens embedded with microcircuits. Researchers will place circuitry outside of the transparent part of the wearer’s eye. The lens will not obstruct a user’s sight when it isn’t activated.

Most advances in retinal implants concentrate on restoring, not enhancing, sight. But there’s hope yet for superhuman vision, and without surgery: A team at the University of Washington has created a contact lens assembled with functional circuitry and LEDs.

Potential uses include virtual displays for pilots, video-game projections and telescopic vision for soldiers. A working prototype of a lens-embedded antenna that draws power for the device from radio frequencies has also been created. The next steps are to build a version that can display several pixels—and then to test it on a person.

The UW team uses a technique called self-assembly to manufacture the eyewear. Researchers dust a specially designed contact lens with microscale components that automatically bond to predetermined receptor sites. The shape of each component dictates where it attaches.

“There’s a lot of room to expand,” Babak Parviz, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at UW, says of the technology. “You can let your imagination run wild.”

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OSLO (Reuters) - The world is failing in efforts to control an international biotechnology trade ranging from genetically modified crops to the building blocks of biological weapons, a U.N. University study said on Tuesday.

The study said a lack of controls was "a potentially contributing factor to the spread of bioterrorism" -- the deliberate release of naturally-occurring or human-modified bacteria, viruses, toxins or other biological agents.

It said just $135 million, a fraction of the amount needed, had been spent on helping developing countries to build up skills to monitor a rising use of biotechnologies in the past 15 years.

Lack of training and knowledge is "so pervasive and broad that there is no effective international system of biosafety at the moment," according to the 238-page report by the Japan-based U.N. University Institute of Advanced Studies.

"The use and prevalence of biotechnology seems certain to increase, not least in agriculture," it said.

More than 100 developing nations lack the ability to implement the U.N.'s 2003 Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety, meant to help regulate trade in genetically modified organisms (GMOs) including crops such as maize, tomatoes, rice or soybeans.

Biotechnology has been held out as a way of helping poor nations, for instance with crops with higher yields or genetic traits that can withstand droughts that may become more frequent because of climate change.

BIODIVERSITY

Some countries, worried about GMOs that some environmentalists brand "Frankenfoods," have banned all biotech imports.

"A country that lacks capacity is more likely to bring in very restrictive systems in order to counterbalance its deficiencies," the report said, released during a May 19-30 U.N. meeting about biodiversity in Bonn, Germany.

The findings raised questions about "the extent to which capacity deficits are undermining the promise that advances in biotechnology would directly address the needs of the poor," said A.H. Zakri, head of the Institute of Advanced Studies.

"There may also be broader implications ... These may include an impaired ability to meet the challenges of global issues such as climate change, or to protect humans and the environment against biosecurity risks," he said in a statement.

Sam Johnston, one of four authors of the study, said many countries lacked officials to check shipments.

"It's just not working," he told Reuters of the Cartagena Protocol. "Outside Europe there is nothing effective. You end up with an ineffective, dysfunctional international regime."

He said it was almost impossible to buy GMO-free soya anywhere in the world. "There is simply so much GM soy that it becomes contaminated," he said.

"Climate change will make marginal lands bigger...and you need technological answers, make crops that can resist stresses like drought and salinity," he said. "But even if you do develop those technologies, you'll find it difficult to roll them out without an effective regime."