Technology has immortality, cures for the worlds devastating diseases, quantum computing and a host of other science fiction notions in its grasp. Current trends in a number of areas indicate that over the next 10 years many of these technologies will come to fruition. "The Next 10 Years" tracks the trends that will transform our everyday lives in almost unimaginable ways.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

New Physics Device May Revolutionize Cancer Treatment

New Physics Device May Revolutionize Cancer Treatment: "Thomas R. Mackie, a professor at the University of Wisconsin and co-founder of the radiation therapy company TomoTherapy, will present this new design at next week's annual meeting of the American Association of Physicists in Medicine in Minneapolis.

Compared to the x rays conventionally used in radiation therapy, protons are potentially more effective, as they can deposit more cell-killing energy in their tumor targets and less in surrounding healthy tissue. However, to kill tumors, the protons must be accelerated to sufficiently high energies, which currently must be achieved in large, expensive devices called cyclotrons or synchrocyclotrons that cost hundreds of millions of dollars and occupy a room the size of basketball courts.

At the meeting, Mackie and his colleagues will present a proton-therapy design based on a much smaller device known as a 'dielectric wall accelerator' (DWA). Mackie is part of a multidisciplinary team that includes his institutions as well as Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California, Davis.

The DWA, currently being built as a prototype at Livermore, can accelerate protons to up to 100 million electron volts in just a meter. A two-meter DWA could potentially supply protons of sufficiently high energy to treat all tumors, including those buried deep in the body, while fitting in a conventional radiation treatment room. "

Tuesday, July 17, 2007

MIT finds cure for fear | Press Esc

MIT finds cure for fear Press Esc: "MIT biochemists have identified a molecular mechanism behind fear, and successfully cured it in mice, according to an article in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Researchers from MIT's Picower Institute for Learning and Memory hope that their work could lead to the first drug to treat the millions of adults who suffer each year from persistent, debilitating fears - including hundreds of soldiers returning from conflict in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Inhibiting a kinase, an enzyme that change proteins, called Cdk5 facilitates the extinction of fear learned in a particular context, Li-Huei Tsai, Picower Professor of Neuroscience in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and colleagues showed."

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Technology Review: The Secrets to Living Past 100

Technology Review: The Secrets to Living Past 100

A new project to partially sequence the genomes of 100 people age 100 or older could shed light on the genetic variations that allow some people to stay healthy decades beyond the average life expectancy. Dubbed the Methuselah Project, the endeavor will serve as a test bed for a new approach to sequencing developed at the Rothberg Institute, a non-profit research center in Guilford, CT. About 1 in 7,000 people live to be 100, many of them spry well into their 90s, but the reasons for their good health remain largely unknown.

"One of the women we'd like to look at is over 100, and up to two years ago, she was still playing tennis," says Jonathan Rothberg, founder of both 454 Life Sciences, a sequencing technology company based in Branford, CT, and the Rothberg Institute. "My dream is that we will find [genetic variations] that are enriched in this population that are protective."

comments: gene sequencing is revealing the underlying coding responsible for longevity. The Life Extension foundation, http://www.lef.org, is also doing research in the area of the genetic basis of longevity and is an excellent source for pharmaceutical grade supplements.

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Saturday, July 07, 2007

Prions prevent the progress of Alzheimer's - health - 07 July 2007 - New Scientist

Prions prevent the progress of Alzheimer's - health - 07 July 2007 - New Scientist:
IT IS a redemption of sorts. The much maligned prion proteins that cause mad cow disease and its human counterpart, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), also play a key role preventing the progress of Alzheimer's. In a separate development, a potential new treatment for vCJD has been developed in Japan.
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Monday, July 02, 2007

Stress can be fattening, study finds - Los Angeles Times

Stress can be fattening, study finds - Los Angeles Times

The fat on your belly may be there because of stress in your everyday life, and researchers think they may know how to get rid of it.

Studies of mice and monkeys show that repeated stress — and a high-fat, high-sugar diet — release a hormone, neuropeptide Y, that causes a buildup of abdominal fat, researchers from Georgetown University reported Sunday.

Manipulating levels of that hormone could melt fat from areas where it is not desired and accumulate it where it is needed, the researchers say in the journal Nature Medicine.

"These are eye-opening findings," said neuroscientist Arshad Khan of USC, who was not involved in the research.

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What Happened Before the Big Bang?

What Happened Before the Big Bang?

New discoveries about another universe whose collapse appears to have given birth to the one we live in today will be announced in the early on-line edition of the journal Nature Physics on 1 July 2007 and will be published in the August 2007 issue of the journal's print edition.

"My paper introduces a new mathematical model that we can use to derive new details about the properties of a quantum state as it travels through the Big Bounce, which replaces the classical idea of a Big Bang as the beginning of our universe," said Martin Bojowald, assistant professor of physics at Penn State. Bojowald's research also suggests that, although it is possible to learn about many properties of the earlier universe, we always will be uncertain about some of these properties because his calculations reveal a "cosmic forgetfulness" that results from the extreme quantum forces during the Big Bounce.

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