2009 June | Singularity Hub

Highlights From Day One At Singularity University

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by Keith Kleiner on June 30th, 2009

Yesterday was the first day of the Singularity University summer session. I was at the NASA Ames campus throughout the day to witness and record the event on video for the Hub (see highlight video footage at the end of this post). The energy at the University is absolutely thrilling. Its hard even to convey in words. Tons of smart, motivated people are gathered to discuss, debate, and learn about the intersection of genetics, solar energy, computer networking, and other accelerating technologies. Undoubtedly one of the highlights of the day was when Ray Kurzweil sat before the students and staff for more than an hour, allowing anyone to ask him questions and share ideas and thoughts. Such an opportunity to interact with the luminary is but a small sample of the rare and stimulating experiences that Singularity University will be able to offer its students this summer.

I hesitate even to call the 40 attendees of the University “students”, for this term brings to mind images of youths in high school or undergraduate studies that are still at the very beginning of their learning curves. Nearly all of the 40 attendees of Singularity University are at the Ph.D level or beyond in their professional and academic careers. Visiting scholar or simply professional might be a more appropriate term.

The University is a new entity, and as such it is creating traditions and customs as it goes along. In a presentation to the students and staff, Peter Diamandis presented several ideas aimed at creating a sense of community and tradition within the University. A class ring, inscribed with symbolism and geekiness (the year is written in binary) will be given to each of the students and staff. A class t-shirt will be designed and also a class poster. Will a school song emerge at the end of the summer? How about a student created yearbook, online or otherwise? It is up to the students and staff to decide on these traditions as they plot out the important first year of Singularity University.

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by Aaron Saenz on June 30th, 2009

It’s known as myostatin, but it might as well be called kryptonite, because it’s what keeps each of us feeling like Clark Kent. This protein tells your muscles when to stop growing, and in the last few years we’ve seen two babies born with a mutant gene that prevents them from producing enough myostatin. The result? Super Babies. And like any amazing mutation, scientists are studying it to see if, and how, we could all become as muscle bound as these tots.

Two super babies have the gene for rapid muscle growth.

Can a baby unlock the gene for strength?

The first super baby was born in Germany in 2004. Though his name was never released, pictures demonstrated that his young physique contained almost twice as much muscle as other infants. Look ahead to fall 2005 in Michigan, Mr. and Mrs. Hoekstra adopt a young boy named Liam. Soon he is growing muscle at an astounding rate. Hanging on rings in an iron cross position by 5 months, pull-ups by 9 months, Liam is the second super baby. His condition, now known as myostatin-related muscle hypertrophy, makes him hungry, lean, and strong. Check out his pic after the break.

With Liam, scientists had further proof that a genetic mutation could exist that causes a human to naturally build muscle. Without even trying, Liam has little to no body fat, can lift seven pound weights arms extended (he only weighs 30 lbs himself) and has a six-pack. Now nearly four, Liam is taking gymnastic lessons, but this is more of an outlet for his energy than an explanation for his physique. No doubts, it’s the lack of myostatin that’s helping him get ripped.

The Protein to End All Proteins

Blocking myostatin has been shown to have drastic effects in animals besides humans. Myostatin tests in labs have pumped up mice to Schwarzenegger proportions.

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by Andrew Kessel on June 30th, 2009

Earlier on Singularity Hub, we took a detailed look into the magic of heart replacement surgery (and even growing hearts with stem cells). It’s a great way to tack on a few extra years to patients who are suffering from heart failure, but what about the other people who are not eligible for a donor heart? Patients who are in immediate danger of death and have end-stage heart failure on both sides of the organ cannot currently be implanted with donor hearts but they can be given the AbioCor artificial heart. The AbioCor system uses hydraulic pressure to pump blood between two chambers, simulating the effect of the human heart. Could the artificial heart put an end to long waiting lists for donor organs?

The Abiocor artificial heart

The artificial heart has come a long way since its first clinical use in the 1960’s. Wireless technology and an internal microprocessor make the AbioCor better than its predecessors. The entire system is implanted during a procedure where the diseased heart is cut out and the arteries are clamped onto the thoracic unit. Wires are laid in the body down to the abdomen, where the controller and battery are implanted. Wires then connect the controller to a receiver planted in the chest called the TET, or Transcutaneous Energy Transfer. Wearing a similar device on the outside of the skin allows for an external battery to power the system without having wires breaking through the patients skin.

The internal battery allows the patient more mobility, as the external power source can disconnected for up to 45 minutes as the patient bathes or conducts other activities of that nature. Being hooked up to the power isn’t that bad either, as a fanny-pack portable battery system can provide up to four hours of continuous juice before needing to be recharged. Despite all these seemingly beneficial quality of life improvements, there are still some drawbacks.

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by Drew Halley on June 30th, 2009

The electronic revolution of the past century has been a tangled affair. Remember when phones were always wired into the wall? When the internet required one more cord from the back of your computer? Wireless is the future, which is all well and good for information transfer. But what about energy itself?

Intel powers a lightbulb, wire-free.

New research is bringing energy transfer into the wireless world. Soon, a central hub could be charging your batteries, laptop, televisions, electric cars, you name it… right through the air. You might never untangle a wire again. Cool, right?

Wireless energy is built on the principle of resonant coupling. The devices use copper coils that, if tuned to the same frequency, can resonate with one another. One coil is plugged into the wall, and creates an electromagnetic field; another coil nearby resonates with the first field, picking up some energy in the process to fuel your electronics. The magnetic field lets energy flow regardless of obstacles in the way, so the current can travel through walls. Currently, the type of radiation involved can only resonate within a few meters.

Over the past few years, a number of companies have been racing to put wireless energy on the market. Last week, researchers at Intel showcased a wirelessly charged iPod speaker. In 2007, researchers at MIT revealed a similar project that powered a lightbulb remotely. The physicist and project leader Marin Soljacic (winner of a MacArthur “genius grant” Fellowship) went on to found the start-up WiTricity, which is leading the pack in developing a commercially viable product.

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by Aaron Saenz on June 29th, 2009

Do I need to catch more sun and vitamin D?

The western world faces three very notorious killers: heart disease, cancer, and stroke. Just this week Michael Jackson (heart attack??) and Farah Fawcett (cancer) were struck down, and the media is waiting on baited breath for another celebrity to die and fulfill the “rule of threes.” Stroke, we’re looking at you. But what if it didn’t have to be this way? What if there were just a few simple things you could eat or take that would protect you from all three killers?

That’s what the U.S. government is going to find out. The National Institute for Health (NIH) is funding a $20 million dollar study with 20,000 test subjects to explore how vitamin D and fish oil affect health. The Vitamin D and Omega-3 Trial (or VITAL) will be a five year study and will be one of the first to specifically target African Americans as test subjects. With darker skin producing less vitamin D in the body from sun exposure, scientists theorize there may be a link between a vitamin D deficiency and higher rates of stroke, heart disease, and cancer in the Af.Am. community.

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by Andrew Kessel on June 26th, 2009

Insert heart here

You’ve heard a bit about heart transplants and they’re no piece of cake, but now there’s a company out there trying to make it a little bit easier. It’s not an off-color SNL skit, but it is a heart in a box. TransMedics Incorporated has designed a system that allows doctors to transplant still-beating hearts up to 12 hours after they are removed from the donor (compared to the standard 4 to 6 allowed by current technology where they freeze the heart). Yup. Scientists have invented a box that keeps the heart beating outside of the body. Holy crap!

This Massachusetts based company has raised $27.6 million in series B funding. Their proprietary machine pumps warm, nutrient-rich oxygenated blood through the donor heart until it is ready for transplant. The heart is kept in a sterile compartment that simulates the conditions within the human body, allowing it to function normally while outside the body. Along with the life-support systems, the TransMedics machine also has the capabilities for performing the necessary diagnostics that doctors require before the heart is transplanted through the use of a wireless monitor. Take a look at the video and prepare to… woah.

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by Aaron Saenz on June 25th, 2009

If you like controversy there’s nothing that will bring you more joy than yelling “stem cell research” in a mixed crowd and then sadistically sneaking out of the room. The debate over the use of the extremely potent little cells has led to massive regulation in all realms of stem cell transplants in the United States. That’s why stem cell research for diabetes has been centered in Brazil, and why your dog or horse can receive the newest stem cell treatments now, while you’re likely to have to wait years or decades.

C'mon girl, help me get a stem cell treatment!

What are these treatments promising? According to anecdotes, the results are amazing. Old dogs with bad hips frolic like puppies. Race horses with injuries come back to become world class winners. One such racehorse, Be A Bono, won 16 out of 24 starts, earned more than 1.3 million in prize money, and was the 2004 World Champion Quarterhorse. All after a stem cell treatment. The success stories with dogs are equally remarkable, if a little tinted by emotion; check out the video from Vet-Stem after the break.

Most animals that have been treated with stem cells suffer from joint ailments. Damage to cartilage, tendons, ligaments, or arthritic inflammation top the list. Stem cells are seen as a way to provide almost magical regenerative healing to combat these ailments. The process is actually pretty simple. Rather than embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells are used. These adult stem cells are harvested in a veterinary office from fat cells in the animal, and then sent to a lab. Processing separates out the stem cells from other cells, and a concentrated dose is sent back to the vet (The turn around time for processing is only a day). The adult cells are then injected into the animal in the area that needs regeneration.

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by Drew Halley on June 24th, 2009

Admit it: you wouldn’t mind winning a Nobel Prize. Well here’s a science project for you: reverse global warming, solve the world’s energy crisis, and pave the way for breakthrough antibiotics and vaccines… all in one fell swoop. The modest task before you? Create the world’s first synthetic life form, and make it dance.

creation-of-adam Now for the bad news. You’ve got competition. Some of the best scientists across the globe are chasing the holy grail of biology, and they’re making some serious headway. The prospect of man-made life is becoming less a question of if, and more a question of when. But can gene engineering really save the world? Can it destroy it?

Welcome to the wonderful world of synthetic genomics.

The Idea

The first step to cooking up your own life form is to understand the language it’s written in: DNA. The genetic revolution of the past few decades has allowed scientists to sequence whole genomes, from fruit flies and rats to our very own species. Once the genomes are mapped, the task becomes making a synthetic copy, A by T by C by G. DNA gets stitched together using a combination of different lab techniques, with the final goal of building a whole genome. Different research teams have taken different approaches, and the race is on to see who succeeds first.

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by Keith Kleiner on June 24th, 2009

With the official launch of the inaugural summer session of Singularity University just days away, the Hub sat down with the University’s Executive Director Salim Ismail to get an inside look at this exciting event (see video interview at the end of this post). For those who are a little behind on the story, 40 students from across the world have been chosen from a pool of more than 1,000 applicants to participate in the first ever 9 week summer session of Singularity University. The University will bring together some of the top names in genetics, aging, computing, and several other fields. The intent is to focus on the convergence of accelerating technologies and the promise and peril that these technologies hold for the future of mankind. The University is being hosted at the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley, and even now students and faculty are beginning to arrive.

The 40 students attending Singularity University represent an international sampling of individuals with serious credentials, most of them with Ph.D’s and many with real world experience as entrepreneurs and executives. These students are not coming to the University to learn the basics. Rather, they are hoping to take their already extensive backgrounds and mesh this with a broader view of the convergence of several accelerating technologies that are on the horizon.

With backing from Singularity advocate Ray Kurzweil, X Prize founder and Chairman Peter Diamandis, Google, NASA, and several high profile faculty and volunteers, the University is off to an strong start. For the first three weeks of the summer session, students will be bombarded with an intense regimen of daily lectures and workshops covering ten tracks as follows:

During the second three weeks of the session students will narrow their focus to only a few of these tracks, and the lectures will slowly fade away as workshops, discussions, debates, and field trips take over. Finally, in the last three weeks of the summer session, all 40 students will work together on a single team project called 10^9+ (ten to the ninth plus). The goal of the team project is to positively impact at least 1 billion people within a span of less than 10 years by proposing a framework to solve one of the many grand challenges facing humanity in the areas of climate change, public health, energy, or water. A website will be launched at the end of the summer session to promote the team project framework and hopefully galvanize governments, corporations, and individuals to get involved and bring a real solution to reality.

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by Andrew Kessel on June 23rd, 2009

Sorry, we just couldn't help ourselves

Singularity Hub has recently and unintentionally launched an unofficial expose into the world of vain medicine. We last covered the chemotherapy cream that kills wrinkles (among other things) and now it’s time to move from the face to the next lowest body part of interest. Yes, the American Association for Plastic Surgeons just released a report that bumped breast augmentation surgery to the number one spot of all plastic surgeries performed. Boob jobs just narrowly beat out liposuction for the spot, with eyelid surgery coming in a distant third. Looks like a lot of gamblers are going to be explaining to their unhappy bookies as to why they thought liposuction was the sure winner this year.

Even though the economy has been tight, plastic surgery has still been seeing some heavy activity. The statistical breakdown is fairly predictable, with 92% of plastic surgery patients being of the fairer sex. Of the women receiving plastic surgery, 22% were between the ages of 19 and 34 while a whopping 45% were aged 35 to 60. Take a look at the ABC news video below detailing the story and explaining the difference between saline and silicone implants.

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by Aaron Saenz on June 23rd, 2009

When you’re heart is broken, you’ll do anything to fix it. Even replace it with a pig heart. Scientists at the University of Minnesota have been working on stripping down hearts, removing much of the muscular and vascular tissue. What you get is a semi-translucent “decellularised” heart. Add some stem cells, and a new heart can be grown on this scaffold. A new heart that your body won’t reject, at least in theory. When Singularity Hub first brought you this story last year, researchers at UM were using the technique on rat hearts. Now, they’ve moved on to pig hearts and we’ve got a hold of some cool new pics and a short video from New Scientist. Check them out before and after the break.

At top, a rat's heart is decellularised until it becomes a scaffold. Stem cells from mice are then applied to the heart, and it is recellularised at bottom. Photo courtesy of University of Minnesota.

It's alive! This rat heart is being pumped in an artificial structure, allowing stem cells to grow into a new version of the organ. Photo courtesy of the University of Minnesota

The biggest problem is making sure that each heart grown is fully functioning and able to be transplanted. After being decellularised, each heart has to be recellularised by applying a coating of stem cells and having blood pumped through the heart scaffolding. Along with chemical signals from the scaffold cells, the blood allows the stem cells to specialize into the various needed tissues. Looking at the rat hearts in the pumping machine, it’s hard to believe that you are looking at a living, autonomous organ outside a body. Check out the video from New Scientist:

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by Aaron Saenz on June 22nd, 2009

Want to build a robot? Join the club. Want to improve the way we build robots? Join Willow Garage. This silicon valley based robotics company is not just designing robots, they’re working on how we design robots by building a programming language and a standard research bot. Best of all, their software is open source – able to be viewed by its users so that they can understand and upgrade it as needed. Imagine a future where each robotics developer can share hardware and software components with each other in a modular fashion. You could just build a robot like a plug and play computer. With open source techniques Willow Garage hopes to expand the boundaries of robotics, both in research laboratories and in our daily lives.

That wall outlet looks tasty...think I'll try it out.

And they’ve done a pretty amazing job so far. A few weeks ago they achieved their second major milestone: getting a robot to navigate it’s way around their labs, identifying and plugging itself into electrical outlets. Yep, plug a robot in and you’ve fed it for a day. Teach it how to plug itself in and you’ve fed it forever. The Personal Robot mark 2 (PR2) wandered around the labs, opening doors, and plugging in to 9 different outlets and identifying one that was unreachable. Check out the video after the break.

What was their first milestone? Getting the robot to move around the lab without breaking everything. Not a simple goal. As some of you already know, getting a robot to navigate a course, and to plug itself in, aren’t new accomplishments. What is remarkable is the autonomy, judgment, and persistence of the bot. The PR2 took minutes for it to plug itself in, but it got there with reliability. That’s part of the whole philosophy for Willow Garage: they’re not making perfect robots, they’re making it easier to perfect robotics.

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Highlights From Day One At Singularity University

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The AbioCor Artificial Heart

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The Wireless Future of Energy Tranfer

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Vitamin D and Fish Oil – Time to Put Up or Shut Up

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TransMedics: Transplanting a Beating Heart

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Why Your Dog Is Getting Better Stem Cell Treatment Than You

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Artificial Life on the Horizon

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Singularity University To Launch June 29 – Exclusive Interview With Executive Director Salim Ismail

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Breast Augmentation Balloons to Top Selling Plastic Surgery

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Stem Cells Used to Grow Hearts: Cool New Pics and Vid

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Willow Garage: The Personal Robot Will Be Open Source

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