2016 Wasn’t All Bad As Canadian Astronaut Chris Hadfield Explains. Humanity Did Some Good This Year.

Cutler Anderson Architects. Newberg Residence. Bellevue. Washington. USA. photos: Cutler Anderson Architect - Beautiful family residence & guesthouse with a strong connection to the living world.  

Evolutionary programming is a blast to watch

These computer programs taught themselves how to walk.

Generation 80 don’t give a shit.

Eugenics was massive in the US, however much we pretend it wasn't

The U.S. Supreme Court in 1927 decided, by a vote of 8 to 1, to uphold a state’s right to forcibly sterilize a person who was deemed unfit to procreate. The case  Buck v. Bell legitimized the eugenics movement – yes, the thing Hitler and the Nazis believed in – and directly led to the sterilizing of 70,000 American citizens against their will.

The wood siding could age badly unless it's well-treated, but otherwise cool.

Using the Power of Space to Fight Cancer

From cancer research to DNA sequencing, the International Space Space is proving to be an ideal platform for medical research. But new techniques in fighting cancer are not confined to research on the space station. Increasingly, artificial intelligence is helping to “read” large datasets. And for the past 15 years, these big data techniques pioneered by our Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been revolutionizing biomedical research.

Microgravity Research on Space Station

On Earth, scientists have devised several laboratory methods to mimic normal cellular behavior, but none of them work exactly the way the body does. Beginning more than 40 years ago aboard Skylab and continuing today aboard the space station, we and our partners have conducted research in the microgravity of space.  In this environment, in vitro cells arrange themselves into three-dimensional groupings, or aggregates. These aggregates more closely resemble what actually occurs in the human body. Cells in microgravity also tend to clump together more easily, and they experience reduced fluid shear stress – a type of turbulence that can affect their behavior. The development of 3D structure and enhanced cell differentiation seen in microgravity may help scientists study cell behavior and cancer development in models that behave more like tissues in the human body.

In addition, using the distinctive microgravity environment aboard the station, researchers are making further advancements in cancer therapy. The process of microencapsulation was investigated aboard the space station in an effort to improve the Earth-based technology. Microencapsulation is a technique that creates tiny, liquid-filled, biodegradable micro-balloons that can serve as delivery systems for various compounds, including specific combinations of concentrated anti-tumor drugs. For decades, scientists and clinicians have looked for the best ways to deliver these micro-balloons, or microcapsules, directly to specific treatment sites within a cancer patient, a process that has the potential to revolutionize cancer treatment.

A team of scientists at Johnson Space Center used the station as a tool to advance an Earth-based microencapsulation system, known as the Microencapsulation Electrostatic Processing System-II (MEPS-II), as a way to make more effective microcapsules. The team leveraged fluid behavior in microgravity to develop a new technique for making these microcapsules that would be more effective on Earth. In space, microgravity brought together two liquids incapable of mixing on Earth (80 percent water and 20 percent oil) in such a way that spontaneously caused liquid-filled microcapsules to form as spherical, tiny, liquid-filled bubbles surrounded by a thin, semipermeable, outer membrane. After studying these microcapsules on Earth, the team was able to develop a system to make more of the space-like microcapsules on Earth and are now performing activities leading to FDA approval for use in cancer treatment.  

In addition, the ISS National Laboratory managed by the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) has also sponsored cancer-related investigations.  An example of that is an investigation conducted by the commercial company Eli Lilly that seeks to crystallize a human membrane protein involved in several types of cancer together with a compound that could serve as a drug to treat those cancers. 

“So many things change in 3-D, it’s mind-blowing – when you look at the function of the cell, how they present their proteins, how they activate genes, how they interact with other cells,” said Jeanne Becker, Ph.D., a cell biologist at Nano3D Biosciences in Houston and principal investigator for a study called Cellular Biotechnology Operations Support Systems: Evaluation of Ovarian Tumor Cell Growth and Gene Expression, also known as the CBOSS-1-Ovarian study. “The variable that you are most looking at here is gravity, and you can’t really take away gravity on Earth. You have to go where gravity is reduced." 

Crunching Big Data Using Space Knowledge

Our Jet Propulsion Laboratory often deals with measurements from a variety of sensors – say, cameras and mass spectrometers that are on our spacecraft. Both can be used to study a star, planet or similar target object. But it takes special software to recognize that readings from very different instruments relate to one another.

There’s a similar problem in cancer research, where readings from different biomedical tests or instruments require correlation with one another. For that to happen, data have to be standardized, and algorithms must be “taught” to know what they’re looking for.

Because space exploration and cancer research share a similar challenge in that they both must analyze large datasets to find meaning, JPL and the National Cancer Institute renewed their research partnership to continue developing methods in data science that originated in space exploration and are now supporting new cancer discoveries.

JPL’s methods are leading to the development of a single, searchable network of cancer data that researcher can work into techniques for the early diagnosis of cancer or cancer risk. In the time they’ve worked together, the two organizations’ efforts have led to the discovery of six new Food and Drug Administration-approved cancer biomarkers. These agency-approved biomarkers have been used in more than 1 million patient diagnostic tests worldwide.

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Scientific Women You Haven’t Heard of (Yet): Louise Pearce

Louise Pearce is best known for her work that lead to a cure for sleeping sickness. Pearce traveled to what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo to test the arsenic based cure, tryparsamide, in cooperation with a hospital in Léopoldville that was coping with an outbreak of sleeping sickness. This trip helped establish parameters for treatment (such as safe and optimum dosages) of sleeping sickness with tryparsamide. Pearce also used rabbit colonies to study syphilis and cancer over generations.  Pearce was lesbian and a feminist and lived with Sara Josephine Baker and Ida A.R. Wylie. Pearce’s curriculum vitae is impressive and lists Standford University, Boston University and Johns Hopkins University as her alma maters.

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Vulcanize-Charles Goodyear and the Roman god of Fire

The early nineteenth century saw tremendous advances in chemistry, with scientists leading teams all across the world to improve both science in general and industrial processes in particular.  Leading the charge to improve rubber compounds was Charles Goodyear (born on this day, December 29, 1800, died July 1, 1860) who devoted his life and health to improving rubber compounds.  Self taugh Goodyear ran a hardware store in Philadelphia and realized early that improved rubber goods would transform manufacturing.

He toyed with the chemistry of rubber manufacturing for two decades before hitting upon heating the rubber as the most important part of the process by accident.  He was awarded a patent for vulcanizing rubber in 1844 for his efforts, though he still did not fully understand the process or what exactly was happening.  Enduring backruptcy, jail, and personal tragedy, Goodyear died at the age of 59, collapsing at the news of his daughter’s death and never recovering.  

The verb vulcanize was coined between 1820-1844 (several disputed dates are offered) to describe the process of changing something by adding heat or fire, from Vulcan, the Roman god of Fire.  By 1846, the word was in wide circulation thanks to Goodyear’s patent.  The company that bears his name today was actually founded almost 40 years after his death in honor of his contributions to the science of rubber compounds but also to capitalize on his fame and reputation.  Etymologically, the name Vulcan (Volcānus or Vulcānus) has unclear origins.  Some liguists connect the name with the Cretan god Velchanos, while others dispute this with no clear etymology.  Vulcan’s earliest temple in Rome dates to 8th century BCE.

Image of vulcanization of rubber showing polymer bonds and portrait of Goodyear both in the public domain.  Image of Vulcan at the Forge by Marco Dente (Italian, c. 1493 - 1527) in the public domain, via the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

Less pollution and lighter, more efficient bricks? Yes, please

Horsehead Nebula // Barnard 33

Should robots be gendered? | Robohub

Should robots be gendered? I have serious doubts about the morality of designing and building robots to resemble men or women, boys or girls. Let me explain why.

The first worry I have follows from one of the five principles of robotics, which states: robots should not be designed in a deceptive way to exploit vulnerable users; instead their machine nature should be transparent.

To design a gendered robot is a deception. Robots cannot have a gender in any meaningful sense. To impose a gender on a robot, either by design of its outward appearance, or programming some gender stereotypical behaviour, cannot be for reasons other than deception – to make humans believe that the robot has gender, or gender specific characteristics.

When we drafted our 4th ethical principle the vulnerable people we had in mind were children, the elderly or disabled. We were concerned that naive robot users may come to believe that the robot interacting with them (caring for them perhaps) is a real person, and that the care the robot is expressing for them is real. Or that an unscrupulous robot manufacture exploits that belief. But when it comes to gender we are all vulnerable. Whether we like it or not, we all react to gender cues. So whether deliberately designed to do so or not, a gendered robot will trigger reactions that a non-gendered robot will not.

Our 4th principle states that a robot’s machine nature should be transparent. But for gendered robots that principle doesn’t go far enough. Gender cues are so powerful that even very transparently machine-like robots with a female body shape, for instance, will provoke a gender-cued response.

My second concern leads from an ethical problem that I’ve written and talked about before: the brain-body mismatch problem. I’ve argued that we shouldn’t be building android robots at all until we can embed an AI into those robots that matches their appearance. Why? Because our reactions to a robot are strongly influenced by its appearance. If it looks human then we, not unreasonably, expect it to behave like a human. But a robot not much smarter than a washing machine cannot behave like a human. Ok, you might say, if and when we can build robots with human-equivalent intelligence, would I be ok with that? Yes, provided they are androgynous.

My third – and perhaps most serious concern – is about sexism. By building gendered robots there is a huge danger of transferring one of the evils of human culture: sexism, into the artificial realm. By gendering and especially sexualising robots we surely objectify. But how can you objectify an object, you might say? The problem is that a sexualised robot is no longer just an object, because of what it represents. The routine objectification of women (or men) because of ubiquitous sexualised robots will surely only deepen the already acute problem of the objectification of real women and girls. (Of course if humanity were to grow up and cure itself of the cancer of sexism, then this concern would disappear.)

What of the far future? Given that gender is a social construct then a society of robots existing alongside humans might invent gender for themselves. Perhaps nothing like male and female at all. Now that would be interesting.

Alan Winfield is Professor in robotics at UWE Bristol. He communicates about science on his personal blog… read more