Life: A Tech-Centric View

Published in January 26th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Biotech, Future Tech, Sonia Arrison Columns
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At this week’s Digital Life Design (DLD) conference in Germany, renowned scientists Craig Venter, Ph.D., and Richard Dawkins wowed the audience with a conversation about genes and information technology. They discussed how evolution is becoming man-made, which brings up a number of interesting issues.
“Genetics has become a branch of information technology,” Dawkins opined. There’s a [...]

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Venter very close to creating artifical life

Published in January 24th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Biotech, Cool things
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Today, the J. Craig Venter Institute announced that they have created the first man-made chromosome. The next step will be to place it inside a living organism so it can replicate and they can claim to have created an artifical life form. Wow.

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Monkey controls robot — again

Published in January 17th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Cool things, Robots
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On Thursday, a monkey named Idoya made a 200-pound, 5-foot humanoid robot walk on a treadmill using only her brain activity.
She was in North Carolina, and the robot was in Japan. Dr. Miguel A. L. Nicolelis, a neuroscientist at Duke University carried out the experiment. It was his team that in 2003 demonstrated [...]

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New DNA test for risk of prostate cancer

Published in January 17th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Biotech, personalized medicine
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This is yet more step on the way to fully personalized medicine. The new test, which will analyzes blood or saliva samples, will soon be offered by ProActive Genomics. Here’s the full story from the NYT.

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Researchers create a new heart in the lab

Published in January 17th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Biotech, Cool things, General
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University of Minnesota researchers created a beating heart in the laboratory by injecting fresh heart cells into a non-living rat heart matrix. Amazing stuff.
“In the United States alone, about 5 million people live with heart failure, 550,000 new cases are diagnosed every year, and 50,000 die waiting for a donor heart. The work is [...]

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When Web 2.0 Meets Politics

Published in January 17th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Sonia Arrison Columns, politics
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Hillary Clinton is my friend. On MySpace, that is. If I were going to vote for the first candidate that responded to my social networking “friend” request, it would be her. Of course, that’s a silly idea, but with all the hoopla over politicians using new technologies, one might ask: How has Web 2.0 changed [...]

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Want to buy a brand new car for $2500?

Published in January 10th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Cool things
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Now you could — in India. Tata just released what they are calling the “people’s car.”

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Alzheimer’s symptoms reversed in human study

Published in January 10th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Biotech
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This new study on reducing the symptoms of Alzheimer’s looks promising.

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Command College links

Published in January 8th, 2008
Posted by Sonia in Cool things, Future Tech, Longevity tech, Robots
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I spoke at Command College today on future tech issues. Below is a list of links for the people in the room who want to read more on the issue areas.
Command College Links 2008
Virtual Reality and Intellectual property
Club Penguin: http://play.clubpenguin.com/
FlowPlay: http://world.flowplay.com/v10/teaser.jsp
Second life (trailer): http://secondlife.com/showcase/trailercontest_2006.php
How something is built in Second Life: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials#Content_creation
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mVSzh_QTE00&feature=related
DEMO
Not just a game – [...]

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