Nathan

Cellular Visions: The Inner Life of a Cell

                 

An amazing video showing what goes on in a white blood cell, which is seen in the beginning and end. This a shortened version from the original, which is worth watching, but does not contain anything other than extended versions of what you see here and labels. I find it interesting to parallel this to real life, especially during the part when the little motor proteins haul a big, bluish...blob up the outside of a tube. Cells sometimes seem to be made up of smaller cells.

Make sure to turn the volume up on the border of the video screen. It starts at around 15/100, and you can barely hear anything.

New Earth

Robert Zubrin, the founder of the Mars Society, a society unofficially responsible for colonizing Mars,  has an ambitious plan for terraforming Mars. Supposedly beginning about 150 years from now, the red planet will be turned into shades of blue and green and white. His terraforming plan has several steps.

1: Get to the position of being economically, geographically, and willingly ready to begin terraforming. This involves exploring the planet, establishing bases, and eventually independent colonies.

2. Warm it up: Mars has to be made, on average, a dozen dozen degrees warmer, and this can be accomplished in several ways. Two more impractical ideas involve giant mirrors and crashing asteroids full of ammonia, but the most controlled, efficient idea is to build plants to release greenhouse gas. There will be five nuclear plants devoted to the powering of these factories, which themselves will run on solar power. Over 30 years, at the rate of producing 1,000 tons of gas every hour, the planet will warm by 50 degrees.

3. Release gas trapped in the soil: The cold temperatures on Mars as of now make gas settle and be absorbed into the ground, but should it be warmed, the gas would be released, and the atmosphere would warm to Earth temperatures. Ice would begin to melt, creating the environment for oceans to form. After 100 years of step two and step three, you will be able walk on Mars without a space suit, though you will need an artificial air system.

4. Planting: Now that the conditions are ripe for bubble cities, massive farms of plants will also become integral parts of the terraforming process. This will create the setting for a human-suitable atmosphere. All the plants would have to be harvested and only allowed to decompose in controlled settings, though, because more carbon dioxide would only slow down the process of generating oxygen.

5. After waiting 1,000 years, continuing the farming process, the planet is ready to walk on!

Visit the Mars society website. 

Best of whats new 2006: The test tube organ

Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University has accomplished what many researches have been trying to do since they knew how to manipulate cells...he has created a human organ generated in the lab. He and his assistants created a biodegradable scaffold with girders too small to see, and then seeded it with human cells and cell food. The scaffold is inserted into the patient, and by the time the scaffold dissolves, the organ is mature and is ready to work. In his tests, Atala reports that none of his seven patients suffered any rejection symptoms from the new bladders he gave them.

Creating human organs in the lab:

Dont follow the link on the picture, follow the link in the text above.

Miracle milk

A new drug has come across, if you can call it a drug. Oxycyte is a white, milky substitute for blood, and although it may be a one-trick pony, it does it's trick well. Oxycyte is capable of carrying up to 50 times more oxygen than our inefficient blood system. One bottle of Oxycyte, about the size of a normal aspirin bottle, can carry as much oxygen as all the blood in our body, and then some.

Oxycyte particles are also far smaller than normal blood cells, and are able to easily pass though damaged capillaries and veins where red blood cells have no hope. Oxycyte has yet to be approved by the FDA, but it has very minor side effects, and it is the only known way to treat terminal brain trauma. Every time oxycyte has been used to treat patients with brain trauma or other maladies, the survival rate of those patients nearly triples, their recovery time is extremely fast, and they still retain all brains functions, tissue, and limbs.

The military also has a huge investment in Oxycyte, because 30% of all wounded soldiers suffer brain trauma, especially from explosions, car bombs, and terrorist works. Oxycyte is able to save the lives of many, many people who would not otherwise live.

Read the full article about Oxycyte at Popsci.com

Taken from the November 1st 2006 Popsci.com top article.