i fucking love science

[blade1889]

As the mars water thread is going strong I thought it might be worth having a separate thread for new science advances.

Saw this yesterday which is hoped to cure 90% of cancers. As with all the best scientific advances it was discovered purely by chance as scientists were researching a vaccine against malaria. Malaria is known to attack the placenta and they found that the molecules it uses to recognise the placenta can also recognise cancerous cells. The hope is that they can combine this cancer-seeking mechanism with an 'attack and destroy' mechanism to effectively find and kill cancerous cells in humans.

http://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/abstract/S1535-6108(15)00334-7

 

[sl1k]

Now that would be amazing, especially with cancer rates expected to be/reach around one in two people iirc.

It's not just 'modern' science giving people another shot at life though, a recent nobel prize winner developed a cure for Malaria from ancient Chinese medicine said to be around 1600 years old. Fookin ell, ashame the knowledge never became more widespread earlier but hey better late than never! The recipe was apparently in a texted called "Emergency Prescriptions Kept Up One’s Sleeve”. Sounds like an interesting piece of text.

 

[blade1889]

Yeah I was reading about her, we had to learn about Artemisinin (the active ingredient she researched) and its manufacturing last year. Still amazes me the things we can do now and scares me at the same time.

Was something about gene editing in pigs (the most genes edited in one go) so that we could use their organs for human transplants. The editing is to remove 'viruses' that have incorporated themselves into our and other animals genomes, as they are in pig genomes though they are 'foreign' to ourselves and potential dangerous so removing them is key to using their organs to our own gains. Will try and find the link later.

 

[SALTIRE]

I read ScienceDaily well daily and the advances you hear in that is fantastic. I read just the other day that they teleported a photon 100km. I remember hearing someone say a while back that last century was the century of physics and that this one will be the century of medicine which i think will be the case. It's an amazing time we live in.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

Being a bit of a nerd, I was nerdingly excited about some news in Quantum computing the other day.

Our computers can crunch through millions of calculations a second, or in the case of modern super computers, many trillions of calculations per second. But in every current computer, those calculations are sequential, they have to be done one at a time. A transistor can be either 0 or 1, and then has to change from to the other for the next task. So whilst we've got our computers to be really bloody quick and crunching through problems one at a time, what if we could get computers to work with multiple calculations simultaneously? What if a transistor could be both 0 and 1?

That's the idea of Quantum computing, using the weird properties of a single electron in which it can be spinning in any number of directions, but the direction isn't set until you actually measure it.

How that could actually work and be applied in reality has until now been a mixture of ideas. The other week a bunch of Aussies only went and built working quantum transistors that are able to trap a single electron and work with it. They completed the first ever fully fledged quantum calculation. They even managed to do this using silicon, the stuff all our computers are already made out of. And they reckon they've figured how to scale that up from a couple of transistors to hundreds or thousands.

Those clever Aussie scamps.

And because they've done it using silicon, it could bring quantum computing into production much quicker than previously assumed, because there's less need to figure out a manufacturing process of some crazy new material.

The capabilities of the world's R&D and scientific departments would go through the roof over night.

It would bring some headaches though. For example our current encryption methods that secure your card transactions online, are based on scrambling up data to the point where so many sequential calculations would be required to de-scramble it, that it becomes impracticable to bother trying because it'd take years to decrypt each bit of data. A quantum computer would churn through the calculations required simultaneously and crack it in short time.

And yeah, Skynet and other AI doomsday scenarios might just get a little more creepy

But hey, pretty cool.

 

[SALTIRE]

Yeah I was going to bring up the encryption problem till I saw it in your post. If they do get a viable quantum computer on the go that could be a major issue for security and transactions online.

 

[voltage]

Science development is really very impressive and interesting. I personally found this field of science applications at medicine/biomedicine very stimulating.

And while reading IEEE Spectrum recently there was an article about artificial skin that could deliver the sense of touch directly to the brain. Some years ago there was something about a very sensitive artifical skin but only robots could receive and analyze its signals. Now they developed a material based at a pyramidal geometry of carbon nanotubes and used a optogenetics (as they wrote "light to control cells in living tissue") to transfer the sensing signals to the brain. They explained the operation as “The carbon nanotube sensor detects the stimuli and the compression of the composite reduces the resistance and increases the current [...]This signal is reported by coupling the sensor to an electrical oscillator that creates voltage pulses. As pressure is applied to the sensor, the frequency of the voltage pulses generated by the oscillator increases.”

The researchers are planning to otimize it more before applying it but it's already a very good knowledge to the prosthesis area.

 

[SALTIRE]

Science development is really very impressive and interesting. I personally found this field of science applications at medicine/biomedicine very stimulating.

And while reading IEEE Spectrum recently there was an article about artificial skin that could deliver the sense of touch directly to the brain. Some years ago there was something about a very sensitive artifical skin but only robots could receive and analyze its signals. Now they developed a material based at a pyramidal geometry of carbon nanotubes and used a optogenetics (as they wrote "light to control cells in living tissue") to transfer the sensing signals to the brain. They explained the operation as “The carbon nanotube sensor detects the stimuli and the compression of the composite reduces the resistance and increases the current [...]This signal is reported by coupling the sensor to an electrical oscillator that creates voltage pulses. As pressure is applied to the sensor, the frequency of the voltage pulses generated by the oscillator increases.”

The researchers are planning to otimize it more before applying it but it's already a very good knowledge to the prosthesis area.

I wonder if my mate knows of this. He's a prosthetist.

 

[silkyman]

Should keep religion out of science IMHO

 

[Red]

Ok boffins, there are many events in history I'd love to have witnessed first hand so my question to you is like Stewie did in Family Guy will we ever be able to make a time machine?

A few of the things I'd like to witness

Nelson Mandela's release from prison.
Henry VIIII's court
The assasination of Reinhard Heydrich
Bob Marley's Live at the Lyceum concert '79

 

[smat]

Ok boffins, there are many events in history I'd love to have witnessed first hand so my question to you is like Stewie did in Family Guy will we ever be able to make a time machine?

how is that your point of reference for time machines

 

[The Paranoid Pineapple]

H.G. Wells AGHAST

 

[ZianfrancoGoal]

go back five minutes and not get gravy down my top

 

[Stevencc]

I'd go back to Whitechapel in 1888 and find out who Jack the Ripper was, then keep it to myself.

 

[AFCB_Mark]

To the courts of the alleged craziest Roman emperors, probably Caligula or Nero, and see how they really were. See all the mad laws and stipulations, the plots etc.

Although it'd have to see be some kind of invisible onlooker, as the life expectancy wasnt great for anyone close to them.

On a totally completely different tangent, I'd like to have been old enough for the 90s rave / dance music scene, but was born a little too late. So I'd go back there for a bit!

 

[SALTIRE]

I'd like to have been old enough for the 90s rave / dance music scene, but was born a little too late. So I'd go back there for a bit!

It was a great time

 

[RavenBish]

I'd go back to Whitechapel in 1888 and find out who Jack the Ripper was, then keep it to myself.

You should read this. It's superb.

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/commen...er-revealed-they-all-love-jack-bruce-robinson

 

[The Alex]

You should read this. It's superb.

http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/commen...er-revealed-they-all-love-jack-bruce-robinson

Bloody fascinating that

 

[mnb089mnb]

Ok boffins, there are many events in history I'd love to have witnessed first hand so my question to you is like Stewie did in Family Guy will we ever be able to make a time machine?

A few of the things I'd like to witness

Nelson Mandela's release from prison.
Henry VIIII's court
The assasination of Reinhard Heydrich
Bob Marley's Live at the Lyceum concert '79

Henry the ninth?

 

[smat]

Henry the ninth?

Stop engaging with this obvious wind-up merchant.

 

[Red]

Henry the ninth?

Yeah, Henry the 9th, aka the secret king that only a few people know about. Don't you know anything about history?

 

[blade1889]

http://ideas.ted.com/the-promising-...k.com&utm_content=ideas-blog&utm_term=science

An interesting debate has been building for a few years now since the discovery of a gene editing system that is incredibly accurate. IMO its the biggest biological and genetic breakthrough since the discovery of DNA itself and I'd love to work on it in the future. In theory with this technology you could wipe our nearly all genetic disorders...but to do that you have to edit the genomes of human embryos, and here comes the debate!

Personally I'd be curious to use it to cure HIV. The system essentially replaces one gene with another and is so potent that it can spread through tissues like wildfire if necessary, thus removing all copies of the 'target' gene and replacing tem with another. I'd be intrigued to use this with HIV to eliminate a gene that helps HIV 'hide' in our bodies (which is one of the main reasons it is currently un-curable).

Regardless of the debate its and the possibilities are amazing to just think about.

For the first time we seem to actually have the ability to create 'designer babies'. Forget the rubbish previously, this is the first time it has become realistic. Designer babies automatically gets alarm bells ringing of people creating an Aryan race and I'd always stay well clear of that...however, we could cure Huntingtons, Cystic Fibrosis and numerous other genetic disorders. Is it worth it?

 

[SALTIRE]

'University of Utah biologists used cadaver arms to punch and slap padded dumbbells in experiments supporting a hotly debated theory that our hands evolved not only for manual dexterity, but also so males could fistfight over females.'

Just love the idea of corpse fists punching things in the name of science. Great stuff!

 

[Stevencc]

I can't help but think that whoever donated their body to science didn't have that particular experiment in mind when they made the decision!

 

[SALTIRE]

I can't help but think that whoever donated their body to science didn't have that particular experiment in mind when they made the decision!

Haha yeah, come to think of it, both my maternal grandparents donated their bodies to medical science when they went; I wonder what fun the students had with them!

 

[voltage]

Gene editing seems to be an effective way to avoid diseases but, as artificial intelligence, can be used for infinite stuff and I read something about scientists trying to not high disseminate or develop it to preserve the society values and jobs. The issue can really generate a good though somewhat polemical debate. In my opinion if it's used for healthy solutions and the risks are minimum it's a good and promising technology but still should be kind of restrict from some things as aesthetics determinations because it can get out of control.

 

[blade1889]

Evidence of a new universe?

Not even gonna try and pretend I understand this. My brain hurts.

http://www.iflscience.com/space/sci...e-other-universes-cosmic-microwave-background

 

[SALTIRE]

That's very interesting. The CMB has thrown up some fantastic ideas and science over the years, some theories confirmed, some not, but new stuff comes from studying it all the time even when you think nothing else can crop up through it.

 

[blade1889]

http://www.bbc.com/news/health-34857015

Times like these I really dont fucking love science.

We've been warned for many years now that this is coming but governments have been painfully slow to react and even now antibiotics are being handed out like sweets when they shouldn't be. Its a scary thought and could quite easily be the start of a human mass-extinction...which maybe wouldn't be a bad thing

 

[silkyman]

So... Organisms have reacted to pressures in their environment by adapting via minute changes from generation to generation to generation to the extent that they are now winning in an 'arms race' against another organism which is hunting them.

Anyone want to argue against Evolution again?