News

Rudi Hoffman is the man to go to for life insurance to fund a cryonics contract. Last I heard, he had cornered about 95% of the market in this small niche. In light of the recent Mary Robbins case, Rudi has written up a list of choices cryonicists can make to ensure that our hostile relatives don’t try to pull us out of the freezer, valiantly (according to some people, apparently) making our neural structures available for consumption by a variety of worms and bacteria. Here’s the intro:

Several of my clients and friends have asked me for observations regarding securing their cryonics arrangements even with contrary wishes of friends and relatives. Given the recent Mary Robbins case in Colorado, and multiple previous cases available in some detail on the websites of both CI and Alcor, structuring your affairs in the most secure manner currently has top of mind awareness for many who are serious about their cryonics plans.

The purpose of this article is to provide some insight into how serious cryonicists can structure their affairs to assure themselves they have done everything possible regarding funding and legal structures for their optimal suspensions.

I noticed that Rudi missed one thing that several cryonicists have suggested to me: putting a “certificate of religious belief” in your wallet that makes a concrete statement against autopsy for religious reasons. One friend of mine used a lamination machine to attach this directly to his ID. I am especially concerned about this for young cryonicists because I’ve heard that when a young person dies under circumstances even the slightest bit unusual, autopsies are common.

As soon as blood starts to coagulate, vitrification becomes impossible, seriously reducing the quality of the suspension. Though I am hopeful that even the most primitive suspensions will lead to revivals some day, it casually seems to me (as a non-scientist) that suspensions involving vitrification will require lower levels of technology for a successful revival.

Since I’m on the topic of cryonics, why not quote Ben Franklin:

I have seen an instance of common flies…drown’d in Madeira
wine…Having heard it remark’d that drowned flies were capable of
being reviv’d by the rays of the sun, I proposed making the experiment
upon these; they were therefore expos’d to the sun…In less than three
hours, two of them began by degrees to recover life…and soon after
began to fly, finding themselves in Old England, without knowing how
they came thither.

I wish it were possible…to invent a method of embalming drown’d
persons, in such a manner that they may be recall’d to life at any
period, however distant. For having a very ardent desire to see and
observe the state of America a hundred years hence, I should prefer to
any ordinary death, being immers’d in a cask of Madeira wine…to be
later recall’d to life by the solar warmth of my dear country!”

On one occasion, this caused me to remark to Michael Vassar, “do you think there are some people buried in caskets of Madeira wine in the ground that we just haven’t discovered yet?”, to which he replied, “I doubt it.” A pity… I am looking at a quarter right now, and I should think that in the long term, the world would be willing to trade every quarter in circulation (likenesses of Washington) for the actual preserved brain and body of George Washington. Whether he would care to be revived in the present, however, may be a separate question, but if he were, I can only imagine that he would enjoy some level of political influence in US politics.

Dr. Centeno is offering stem cell therapies for orthopedic damage with remarkable results. Is this the future of stem cells in the US?

The FDA has yet to approve stem cell therapies for general use in medicine, but that hasn’t stopped doctors in Colorado from providing them anyway. Chris Centeno and John Schultz have boldly formed Regenerative Sciences Inc. in Broomfield, Colorado. RSI provides its patients with the Regenexx procedure, an adult stem cell transplant that uses your own cells (autologous) to treat joint injuries and bone damage. There’s no surgery needed. A needle extracts bone marrow, RSI isolates the stem cells and cultures them in your own blood, and then these cells are injected into the area where they are needed. They’ve treated 348+ patients with 800+ injections and show no signs of slowing down. According to RSI’s own surveys, 89% of their knee patients showed marked improvement, as did 75% of their hip patients! Within months some patients can walk or run in ways they haven’t been able to in years. We’ve seen these kinds of results from stem cell treatments before, but only in horses and dogs. That’s because human stem cell therapies like this one aren’t approved by the FDA. How can Centeno and Schultz flaunt the lack of federal approval? They claim that Regenexx is solely used as a part of their medical practice, only within the state of Colorado, and as such is no more regulated by the FDA than it would be by the FAA or the Department of Motor Vehicles. I had a chance to talk with Dr. Centeno over the phone and learn more about Regenexx and RSI. For hundreds of patients, he and his team are providing a remarkable hope. They’ve brought lab-cultured medical stem cell therapies to the US. Finally.

Stem cells have been a focal point for hype and hope for years now. Besides healing horses and dogs, they have promising effects on diabetes, corneal blindness, even HIV. It’s pretty clear that they’re also the future of organ transplants. Just the news of a stem cell related development or patent will cause a biotech company’s stocks to soar. The FDA, which regulates all interstate drug sales and related clinical trials is not trying to keep Americans from these “miraculous” cures, it’s simply trying to make sure they are safe first. Apparently, that’s taking too long. Medical tourism agencies are starting to cater to those seeking stem cell treatments. Whether or not they are ready for widespread medical use, stem cell therapies are in high demand, not just in the US but around the world. It’s no longer a question of when we will have access to these treatments, it’s a question of how.

A severely damaged knee healed to a remarkable degree. Must be stem cells. RSI is offering adult stem cell therapies in the US. That's an important first, but what will happen without FDA approval?

Patient’s interested in the Regenexx procedure face what seems to be a fairly standard experience for autologous stem cell transplants. It takes 20-40 minutes to extract the cells from hip bone marrow with limited anesthesia, and blood is also taken. Over a month RSI’s lab will isolate mesenchymal (multipotent) adult stem cells and multiply them until they have 1 to 10 million. Typically, a patient will receive an injection into the treated area once a month for three months. Positive results are sometimes seen quickly (in 1 to 3 months) but will hopefully develop within 6 to 9 months. Importantly, there’s no down time as a result of the procedure. Patients can leave the clinic and go home after each injection.  A round of Regenexx (extraction, cultivation,  and 3 injections) costs $7000-$8500. Those who produce exceptional numbers of stem cells can use subsequent injections (even in other parts of the body) for around $3500. Most insurances will not cover the treatment.

The fact that RSI isolates and cultures (multiplies) the cells is a big difference from other clinics that offer stem cell therapies. That process allows the lab to create enough mesenchymal stem cells  to really have an effect on the area in which they are injected. Many clinics around the world will take blood, marrow, or tissue and then spin out the stem cells in a centrifuge, injecting them back in on the same day. That style  of therapy could possibly be effective, but it is far less likely than with a dose of millions of multipotent stem cells. There are several doctors around the US that will provide such ’single-visit’ stem cell therapies, but as far as I know RSI is the only that offers the lab cultured mesenchymal therapy in the US. Dr. Centeno has confirmed that he’s the only one, that he knows of, openly using this particular procedure in the US.

In the past, I have been very skeptical of stem cell treatment centers in other countries. I’d like to turn that same critical eye to Regenexx. It’s only fair. First, let’s look at the success RSI is selling. Autologous transplants are offered in the hands, hips, knees, shoulders, back (non-spinal cord injury), ankles, and bone fractures. For each of these procedures you can find many ardent and exceptionally encouraging patient testimonials on their website, or their YouTube channel, along with a flood of supportive media. Here’s a clip from a local news Channel which is pretty indicative of the rest:

Overall, RSI is claiming around 80% patient satisfaction according to its own surveys. That’s incredible, especially when you see some of their patients walking and running again on joints that have experienced years of chronic damage. It also seems Centeno and Schultz have the documented evidence to back up the claims for Regenexx’s success. RSI provides case studies for each of its treatments as well as published scientific research. According to my conversation with Centeno, RSI is currently working on a comprehensive statistical analysis of their more popular treatments so they can publish quantitative results in a peer review journal. In other words, they’ll soon publish the hard numbers – X% of patients feel Y% better Z months after the procedure.

Importantly, RSI seems to be upfront with patients about the limits of their own technique. The website FAQ clearly states that not all results will be like the testimonials, and they even have a dedicated page explaining that stem cell therapies won’t work for everyone. Furthermore, RSI has published the largest study of risks and complications associated with stem cell treatments yet produced in the US (N=227). That paper demonstrates the very low harm associated with stem cell therapies – much lower than the alternative surgery(published in Current Stem Cell Research & Therapy). Centeno told me that if we’re really worried that autologous stem cell therapies are going to hurt someone, this paper pretty much shows they won’t.

The concerns most people have with RSI are not medical, they’re political. Many applaud Centeno and Schultz for supplying the public with the cutting edge technology they demand, but worry about the manner in which it has been accomplished. Skirting FDA approval for a technique through the arguments they use opens the gate to a host of problems. If RSI can provide Regenexx because it is a doctor’s procedure not involved in interstate commerce, does that mean someone else can do the same for another treatment? What are the limits of such procedures? How does a patient know if a doctor’s therapy is safe, or effective, if it hasn’t undergone peer review and government inspection?

During my conversation with Dr. Centeno, he pointed out that doctors and surgeons are developing new procedures all the time. Surgeons will often create new devices for their own use in surgery, doctors routinely try out new dosing regimes, or therapies on their patients. This is part of the medical profession.

Still, it’s possible that even though RSI is doing what many other doctors routinely do (develop a new therapy for use in their own practice) that the federal government could try to bring them to court. The FDA seems to have taken the stance that all stem cells (whether used autologously or not) are drugs. As such, they would need FDA approval, and would likely only be developed by large pharmaceutical companies.

According to Lee Buckler of Cell Therapy Blog, Centeno’s already received a warning letter from the FDA. Centeno clarified that this is actually an “untitled letter” which has no bearing on regulation. He pointed me to this explanation on untitled letters. RSI has faced concerns from the New York Department of Health, and went so far as to pursue a provisional license, even though they are no where near NY state. Clearly RSI is hoping to avoid bureaucratic problems or at least be very prepared for them if they do arise.  Perhaps with enough positive results they can avoid legal battles and even convince insurance companies to cover Regenexx.

Hopefully so. Just look as these results. They’re pretty damn amazing. If you accept the success rates, and the possibilities for long term healing…I know people who need this. I really want them to be able to get it.

Centeno says he is working with others to provide the framework through which many more patients could receive mesenchymal stem cell therapies. He’s on the board of the International Cell Medicine Society (ICMS) which is working to track stem cell therapy patients through a registry, as well as certify stem cell clinics for practice. Through conferences and seminars, doctors are trained in IVF to work in fertility clinics. Centeno explained to me that a similar practice could instruct and track physicians interested in providing lab cultured autologous stem cell therapies. In other words, the technique used by RSI could become a regularly seen procedure in specialty clinics across the country. That may mean more patients could have access to stem cells soon.

One way or another, I know they will. FDA approval is slow, but it’s coming. Athersys has a patent for a stem cell derived drug, other companies have therapies in clinical trials. Those treatments will be here some day. In the meantime, RSI is filling in the gap. Their work may even catch on as a trend. If largely successful, insurance companies may pay for it and the federal government may end up grandfathering Regenexx in at some point. It could happen. What’s certain is that the public demand for stem cell therapies is real, growing, and seemingly justified. When that sort of pressure for a technology exists nobody can keep it down.

**Update: It has been pointed out that we have neglected to consider the long term effects of stem cell therapies. This is an oversight on our part, but the reality is that there is no conclusive understanding of what the long term effects of stem cells treatments will be. We do not know if a stem cell treatment will be effective 5-10 years after it is administered, and we know of no large study that has conclusively reviewed patients for cancer, or any long term side effect 5-10 years after a stem cell injection. I believe that part of what ICMS is trying to do (reviewing clinics, tracking patients results over the long term) may yield a better understanding in the future.**

[image credit: Denver Business Journal, Regenerative Science Inc]
[video credit: ABC 7 News in Denver via Regenexx (copyright status unknown)]
[Sources: Regenerative Sciences Inc, ABC 7 News in Denver, Lee Buckler , RSI Blog, Current Stem Cell Research & Therapy]

Related Posts:

• Geron Explains Why First Embryonic Stem Cell Clinical Trial is Stalled
• Fat From Liposuction May Be Good Source for Stem Cells
• Demand for Stem Cells Growing Fast, Many Turn to Medical Tourism
• Geron CEO Speaks About the Promise of Stem Cell Therapy, Great Damage Done By Bush Presidency
• Stem Cell Therapy Must Continue In Spite of Cancer Setback

The newest robot in Japan helps to save the environment by sorting plastic using lasers. This will allow for more than 45% of the total household plastic used to be recycled rather than burned.

Mitsubishi, IDEC, and Osaka University have teamed up to help with Japan’s recycling problems. They’ve built a 1.7m x 2.1m (5′6″ x 6′9″) robot that sorts plastic using lasers. In Japan, only about 13% of plastic (PET and PS) is recycled. The new robot would be able to sort six different plastic types, including PE and PP plastics which comprise 45% of the total, are not discernible by eye, and which are normally burned with other refuse. With millions of Japanese households generating millions of tons of plastic trash, adopting the robot for use in homes could make a big positive impact on the environment. According to the Telegraph, the recycling bot is undergoing test runs in Osaka and Nara. A smaller version of the robot for home use is under development by IDEC, with a target cost around ¥ 5 million (~$55,000).  Ouch!  Recycling plastic is just one more chore that robots have conquered on the path to creating a completely automated house.

The laser used by the recycling robot was developed by Osaka University’s Photonics Advanced Research Center. It accurately measures the reflectivity of the different plastics to be able to tell them apart. That’s a pretty mundane task for a complex laser system. I wonder if a similar technique would allow robots to eventually distinguish between biological and non biological objects, between different people, or even between healthy and unhealthy tissue.

Robots have taken over vacuuming floors, washing windows, and cleaning dishes. Slowly but surely these automatons are checking things off your To Do list. While most household robots don’t have the speed or precision of their industrial counterparts they’re able to handle the more chaotic needs of a family. What may be surprising to our future-looking 1950s ancestors, is that these robots are not humanoid, have no cute personalities, and still require a great deal of human interaction. Some, like a dishwasher, we usually don’t even consider to be robots. While the idea of a Jetsons’ style Rosie may be stuck squarely in the public conscious, it’s the robotic appliances that have shown up in our homes first. We may have to get used to the idea that by the time a humanoid robot comes around, all the real work will have been handled by the non-humanoid bots. That’s okay, let the giant robotic square handle the recycling, the androids and I can go play baseball.

[image credit: Osaka University Photonics Advanced Research Center]
[sources: Osaka PARC News, Telegraph.co.UK]

Related Posts:

• Robot Look Alikes Go On Sale in Japan (Video)
• Gape in Awe at these Super Fast Robot Hands
• The Robots Are The Chefs In This Japanese Restaurant
• Toyota Humanoid Robot Runs At 7 Km/hr
• The Remote Controlled Hummingbird Robot From Chiba (Video)

More wisdom from Hard Facts:

Merit pay for teachers is an idea that is almost 100 years old ahd has been subject to much research.  In one study conducted in 1918, “48 percent of U.S. school districts sampled used compensation systerms that they called merit pay.” … The evidence shows that merit-pay plans seldom last longer than five years and that merit pay consistently failes to improve student performance.  … [Researchers] also showed that cheating [by teachers] was quite sensitive to the size of the incentives provided for enhancing student scores.  … The same problems emerged when merit-pay systems were implemented in the 1980s. … “It is like policy makers suffer from amnesia.” (pp.22-24) …

The evidence strongly suggests that students learn better when they are not graded and certainly not when they are graded on a curve.  … When drill instructors were tricked into believing that certain randomly selected soldiers would achieve superior performance, those soldiers subsequently performacned far better on tasks like firing weapons and reading maps.  (p.38)

Ending social promotion harms students and schools, and the strongest negative effects are found in the best, most rigorous studies.  At least 55 studies show that when flunked students are compared to socially promoted students, flunked students perform worse and drop out of school at higher rates.  One of the most careful studies found that, after controlling for numberous alternative explanations indlucing race, gender, family income, and school characteristics, students held back one grade were 70 percent more likely to drop out of high school.  (p.51)

A new experiment conducted by researchers at the City of Paris Industrial Physics and Chemistry Higher Educational Institution (ESPCI) has shown that it's possible to focus light through opaque materials and detect objects hidden behind them, provided you know enough about the material. They produced a numerical model called a transmission matrix, which includes over 65,000 numbers describing the way that a material scatters light in a layer of material. They could then use the matrix to tailor a beam of light specifically to pass through the layer and focus on the other side. Alternatively, they could measure light emerging from the opaque material, and use the matrix to assemble of an image of an object behind it. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news187274527.html)

Sensecam, which contains a digital camera and an accelerometer to measure movement, can be used for life-logging and as a memory aid for people with Alzheimer's and other memory disorders. (Microsoft Corporation) (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/health/09memory.html?ref=science)

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University have developed a way to monitor the progress of a patient's cancer treatment using a new technique for rapidly sequencing, or decoding, large amounts of DNA. It uses mitochondrial DNA as markers of cancerous cells, based on the finding that more than 80 percent of cancers had mutations in their mitochondrial DNA. (Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/09/science/09gene.html?ref=science)

Superluminal (faster-than-light) hyprcomputers could be created by taking advantage of the nonlocal phenomenon (instant changes to a distant entangled particle), say Volkmar Putz and Karl Svozil at the Vienna University of Technology. For example, light traveling through a vacuum can be made to spontaneously form into an electron-positron pair--an entangled pair--which then recombine to form a photon again. This process happens instantaneously, allowing the photon to effectively "jump" across space. (Source: http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/24903/)

Google's new Public Data Explorer makes large datasets easy to explore, visualize and communicate. You can create dynamic, interactive mash-up line graphs, bar graphs, maps and bubble charts that can be embedded in Web pages. The visualizations are dynamic, so you can watch them move over time, change topics, highlight different entries and change the scale. (Source: )

Peggy McApline went paragliding on her 100th birthday. What will you do with yours?

The fastest growing age group in the industrialized world is the centenarian club. Pushing past 100 used to be a rare feat, but most demographic studies agree that by 2030 there will be about a million of us enjoying the three digit lifestyle. Those studies don’t even count on the revolutionary longevity treatments we could develop in the next 20 years. We could hit that million mark much sooner, and we may start getting people past the 150 or even 200 mark. Either way, baby-boomers are going to become elder-boomers and before that happens we all need to take a crash course on what it means to live to be really really old. Turns out, it’s not that bad. Judging by the centenarians scientists have studied all over the world, living beyond 100 isn’t about slipping into decrepitude. A good portion of these elders live independent, happy lives without long suffering illnesses. How can you live past 100? Well, for now becoming a centenarian is a much about luck and love as it is about lifestyle. As technology advances, it could be about choice.

My Lucky Genes

It’s no surprise that genetics play an important role in helping you live into very old age. What is surprising is how little it matters up until then. Scientists in Scandinavia studied more than 20,000 twins, identical and fraternal, to understand how their genes were helping them get old. They found that when it comes to longevity, genetics really only becomes a dominant factor when you live past 60. If you make it into your 60s, there’s a good chance your twin will too, and there’s not much difference between fraternal and identical. But if you live into your 90s, an identical twin has a much better chance of keeping up with you than a fraternal twin. The work, published in Human Genetics in 2006, suggests that having the exact same genes as someone nearing centenarian status makes you almost three times more likely than a comparable sibling to get past 100 yourself.

Of course, even being a non-twin sibling of a centenarian is a pretty good indication that you’ll live a long healthy life. Studies of centenarians in Okinawa Japan have shown that longevity definitely runs in the family. In that community, having a sibling past the age of 90 gives you about a 50-50 chance of making past 90 yourself. Not bad odds at all. Okinawa has become well known for its aged population, with some of the highest rates of centenarians in the world: about 58 for every 100,000. That’s more than five times higher than in the US (~1 in 10,000). The sibling studies in Okinawa highlight how the island’s relatively insular community may have selected for some remarkably lucky genes.

The Okinawa Centenarian Study found that having a long lived sibling was a good indication of your chances for longevity.

What are the genes responsible for longevity? We’re not exactly sure yet. There are some likely culprits: the Apolipoprotein E gene (ApoE), the human leukocyte antigen genes (HLA), FOXO3A, the Sirtuin genes, and several others. Most have at least one major study associated with them, some have several. Determining the exact gene, genes, or combination of genes that lets you live longer and healthier is going to take some time. Luckily, centenarians can provide much insight into which segments of DNA are essential to longevity. Projects like the MPrize, which rewards scientists who are able to extend the lifespan of mice, will take the centenarian insights and hopefully translate them into medical gold.

The rapid progress of whole genome sequencing will one day allow each of us to understand which (if any) longevity genes we possess. From there, genetic therapies or protein manipulation could give us the benefits of those genes we don’t have. In short, while current centenarians are lucky to have the genes they have now, we could all enjoy the benefits of those genes in the future.

Why Would I Die? There’s So Much to Live For

One of the things most overlooked in the pursuit of longevity is the importance of love, social bonds, and purpose. Wherever you see clusters of people who live longer than the norm, you find communities in which family bonds, customs, and affection play a significant role. While individual results vary, most centenarians have spent most of their years with a stress-free outlook on life, and the strong support of their friends and family. Studies in Okinawa, Britain, and New England have all found this correlation between social bonds and longevity.

Why does community matter? I mean, is it really something as sappy as ‘love makes life worth living’? Well, maybe…it depends. Though the exact impact of social bonds on your body hasn’t been rigorously explored, stress has. Protracted mental tension is detrimental to brain function, your cardiovascular system, and your immune system. It could be that communities that help people cope well with stress, and eliminate it from their daily lives, are acting as buffers to protect the body from tension related damage. Or it could be that living is just easier when you enjoy it.

I’m not sure if companion bots and sex androids will fill this need for community, so we’re going to have to keep trying to form human-human bonds in the future. Of course, community is undergoing a major shift as more and more of us login online. There’s both opportunity and danger in that trend. Being able to find huge social networks of people with shared interest can help you form new and meaningful connections. There are millions who have found good friends and spouses on the internet. Still, tuning in to the web can also mean dropping out of socialized contact. That’s not good for your health. What’s the solution? Find ways for the net to augment your socialization, not replace it. Oh, and read Singularity Hub with a loved one.

Ok, But Would You Want To Live Without Cigarettes, Liquor, and Partying?

As much as genetics and community ties may help you live longer, there’s no doubt that lifestyle plays an important role as well. You can find plenty of anecdotes of centenarians who never dropped their bad health habits. Jeanne Louisa Calment, arguably the oldest woman who every lived at 122, was a smoker. On the whole, however, centenarians smoke less, drink less, eat better, and get more exercise than their shorter lived compatriots.

Ok, so the oldest woman in recorded history smoked. Big deal. That's not an excuse for you to do the same.

That explains, in part, the huge gap between the populations of men and women as they reach 100. Both the Okinawa Centenarian Study and the New England Centenarian Study show drastic disparity between the genders – roughly 85% of all people over the age of 100 were female. In general, men tend to partake in riskier behaviors more often than woman, including increased use of tobacco and alcohol. Yet there’s a flip side as well. Most men who make it past 100 are towards the healthier and happier end of the spectrum. That seems to be because the risky behavior has eliminated all but the most genetically gifted males.

So, should you give up the little vices in life just to live past 100? I mean, why die old and bored when you can die young and excited, right?

Well it’s a gamble. There are developing stem cell treatments which may one day replace your organs with new ones made with your own DNA. You could smoke your lungs out and just get a fresh one. Eventually, we could even have nanobots roaming your body, repairing the damage you cause it as it happens. Those technologies aren’t here yet, however, so you’re better off behaving yourself today to get a good chance and seeing tomorrow.

Besides, the golden years are actually much more enjoyable than many of us would imagine. You’re not going to spend all your time in a nursing home staring at the walls. A University of Cambridge study found that out of 958 (British) individuals over the age of 90, only about 25% were institutionalized. The rest were living independently or semi-independently. The same is true for the New England Centenarian Study, which found that 40% of its 700+ elders were living on their own.

Researchers in Denmark studied an entire regional population that was born in 1905 and still living by 1998, some 3600 people. As discussed in the paper in PNAS, the Danish team followed this cohort up through 2005 (so from 92 to 100 years old). Of the Danes who lived past 100, about 33% were living independently. Just as important, 70% of those centenarians had been independent when the study began. So, if you live into your 100s not only are your chances of being healthy pretty good, your chances of having been healthy in your 90s are excellent.

Of course, “healthy” for a centenarian means something a little different than for a 50 year old. Vision loss, hearing loss, and arthritis are so prevalent that most studies don’t discuss them. But centenarians do enjoy lives fairly free of other old age diseases. The NECS found that 43% of centenarians get age related illnesses prior to 80, 42% get an age related illness after 80, but 15% have no age related illnesses up to 100. Not bad.

And there are many technologies which may compensate for the basic infirmities of old age. Stem cell joint therapies are already old news for horses and dogs, they may help human arthritis sufferers in the future. Likewise, there are many technologies aimed at improving hearing and vision loss. If you do become bedridden, there are likely to be exoskeletons, or even robotic beds to help you stay mobile, get outside, and enjoy the world.

Ready to Join the Super Senior Crowd?

Let’s be honest, when you’re young and thinking about getting old you probably worry about two things: will I still be coherent, and can I still have sex? The answer is yes to both if you live in Okinawa. The Okinawa Centenarian Study showed that their elderly had lower cases of dementia and higher levels of sex hormones than populations in the rest of Japan or in the US. In fact, Okinawan centenarians simply had better cardiovascular health, lower cases of hormonally related cancers, better bone density, and less Alzheimer’s.

The Okinawa Centenarian Study showed that local elderly had much lower rates of dementia.

Oh, and they kept high levels of sex hormones well into their twilight years. Naughty.

The answer probably lies in the longevity trifecta: genetics, community, and lifestyle. Okinawa is one of the Blue Zones, areas on the globe where these three factors come together and create a boom in the centenarian population. If you want to live longer, live like an Okinawan. First, build a strong community of friends and family and try to avoid needless protracted stress. Second, live healthy. Drink less, smoke less, eat better, and be active. Third, be born lucky so you have the best genetic advantages for long life. If that last one seems impossible, just remember the MPrize, genetic research, stem cell treatments, and countless other longevity studies going on out there. Scientists are working on ways to extend cell life dramatically and keep you living longer, but their research needs time to finish. If you want to make it to that point, or even to the Methuselarity, you can’t skip out on the first two steps. Hopefully, the lessons that centenarians can teach will allow all of us to live longer and healthier lives. I fully expect the human lifespan to keep increasing, maybe indefinitely. In a few years, I may be rewriting this article as “Get ready to live past 1000.”  The longer you live, the more chance you have to access technologies to extend your life.  It’s a good reason to take care of yourself. See you in the next century.

[image credits: Reuters, Okinawa Centenarian Study, Newspix /Rex Features, Sipa Press /Rex Features]
[sources: Okinawa Centenarian Study, Human Genetics, New England Centenarian Study, PNAS]

Related Posts:

• Want To Live Forever? Better Hope You Have the Right FOXO3A Gene
• World's Oldest Person Gertrude Baines Dies at Age 115
• Disabling a Single Gene Extends Mice Life by 20%
• Blue Zones - Places In the World Where People Live to 100 and Stay Healthy
• Blue Zones - Places In the World Where People Live to 100 and Remain Healthy

Back in December Nancy Lebovitz commented here that the book Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths And Total Nonsense: Profiting From Evidence-Based Management “may be may be of interest to any contrarian”  She is quite right.  So much so that I will do a series of posts quoting from it. Here is Hard Facts on mergers:

Study after study shows that most mergers – some estimates are 70 percent or more – fail to deliver their intended benefits and destroy economic value in the process.  A recent analysis of 93 studies covering more than 200,000 mergers published in peer-reviewed journals showed that, on average, the negative effects of a merger on shareholder value become evident less than a month after a merger is announced and persist thereafter. …

More thoughtful leaders might do what Cisco Systems has done – figure out the factors associated with successful and unsuccessful mergers and then actually use those insights to guide behavior.  … A Fortune article on bad mergers noted that “infrastructure giant Cisco has digested 57 companies without heartburn.” … Cisco figured out that mergers between similar sized companies rarely work, as there are frequently struggles about which team will control the combined entity.  … Cisco’s leaders also determined that mergers work best when companies are geographically proximate, making integration and collaboration much easier. … and they also uncovered the importance of organizational cultural compatibility for merger success.  …

You might think that companies would learn from all this experience … you would be wrong.  Business decisions … are frequently based on hope or fear, what others seem to be doing, what senior leaders have done and believe has worked in the past, and their dearly held ideologies – in short on lots of things other than the facts. (pp. 4,5)

Surfdaddy Orca

View the Digital Edition | Sign Up

Willow Garage is organizing a workshop at the IEEE Computer Society Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 2010 in San Francisco to discuss the intersection of computer vision with human-robot interaction.

Resources: 

Workshop on Computer Vision for Human-Robot Interaction
http://www.willowgarage.com/blog/2010/02/20/workshop-computer-vision-human-robot-interaction-cvpr-2010

A High-Throughput Screening Approach to Discovering Good Forms of Biologically Inspired Visual Representation
http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000579

Computer Vision Research Groups
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-groups.html

OpenCV
http://opencv.willowgarage.com/wiki/

I recently watched James Cameron's Avatar in 3D. It was an enjoyable experience in some ways, but overall I left dismayed on a number of levels.

It was enjoyable to watch the lush three-dimensional animation and motion capture controlled graphics. I'm not sure that 3D will take over -- as many now expect -- until we get rid of the glasses (and there are emerging technologies to do that, albeit, the 3D effect is not yet quite as good), but it was visually pleasing.

3D information visualization displays and interactive multitouch screens as featured in this scene from "Avatar" already exist and are in use today. (20th Century Fox)

While I'm being positive, I was pleased to see Cameron's positive view of science in that the scientists are "good" guys (or at least one good gal) with noble intentions on learning the wisdom of the Na'vi natives and on negotiating a diplomatic solution.

The Na'vi were not completely technology-free. They basically used the type of technology that Native Americans used hundreds of years ago - same clothing, domesticated animals, natural medicine, and bows and arrows.

They were in fact exactly like Native Americans. How likely is that? Life on this distant moon in another star system has evolved creatures that look essentially the same as earthly creatures, with very minor differences (dogs, horses, birds, rhinoceros-like animals, and so on), not to mention humanoids that are virtually the same as humans here on Earth. That's quite a coincidence.

Cameron's conception of technology a hundred years from now was incredibly unimaginative, even by Hollywood standards. For example, the munitions that were supposed to blow up the tree of life looked like they were used in World War II (maybe even World War I). Most of the technology looked primitive, even by today's standards. The wearable exoskeleton robotic devices were supposed to be futuristic, but these already exist, and are beginning to be deployed. The one advanced technology was the avatar technology itself.

But in that sense, Avatar is like the world of the movie A.I., where they had human-level cyborgs, but nothing else had changed: A.I. featured 1980's cars and coffee makers. As for Avatar, are people still going to use computer screens in a hundred years? Are they going to drive vehicles?

I thought the story and script was unimaginative, one-dimensional, and derivative. The basic theme was "evil corporation rapes noble natives." And while that is a valid theme, it was done without the least bit of subtlety, complexity, or human ambiguity.

From the movie "Dances with Wolves" (MGM)

The basic story was taken right from Dances with Wolves. And how many (thousands of) times have we seen a final battle scene that comes down to a battle between the hero and the anti-hero that goes through various incredible stages -- fighting on a flying airplane, in the trees, on the ground, etc? And (spoiler alert) how predictable was it that the heroine would pull herself free at the last second and save the day?

None of the creatures were especially creative. The flying battles were like Harry Potter's Quidditch, and the flying birds were derivative of Potter creatures, including mastering flying on the back of big bird creatures. There was some concept of networked intelligence but it was not especially coherent. The philosophy was the basic Hollywood religion about the noble cycle of life.

The movie was fundamentally anti-technology. Yes, it is true, as I pointed out above, that the natives use tools, but these are not the tools we associate with modern technology. And it is true that the Sigourney Weaver character and her band of scientists intend to help the Na'vi with their human technology (much like international aid workers might do today in developing nations), but we never actually see that happen. I got the sense that Cameron was loath to show modern technology doing anything useful. So even when Weaver's scientist becomes ill, the Na'vi attempt to heal her only with the magical life force of the tree of life.

Harry Potter rides Buckbeak the Hippogriff (Warner Bros.) while Jake Sully rides a Mountain Banshee / aka Ikran (20th Century Fox)

In Cameron's world, Nature is always wise and noble, which indeed it can be, but he fails to show its brutal side. The only thing that was brutal, crude, and immoral in the movie was the "advanced" technology. Of course, one could say that it was the user of the technology that was immoral (the evil corporation), but that is the only role for technology in the world of Avatar.

In addition to being evil, the technology of the Avatar world of over 100 years from now is also weaker than nature, so the rhinoceros-like creatures are able to defeat the tanks circa 2100. It was perhaps a satisfying spectacle to watch, but how realistic is that? The movie shows the natural creatures communicating with each other with some kind of inter-species messaging and also showed the tree of life able to remember voices. But it is actually real-world technology that can do those things right now. In the Luddite world of this movie, the natural world should and does conquer the brutish world of technology.

In my view, there is indeed a crudeness to first-industrial-revolution technology. The technology that will emerge in the decades ahead will be altogether different. It will enhance the natural world while it transcends its limitations. Indeed, it is only through the powers of exponentially growing info, bio, and nano technologies that we will be able to overcome the problems created by first-industrial-revolution technologies such as fossil fuels. This idea of technology transcending natural limitations was entirely lost in Cameron's vision. Technology was just something crude and immoral, something to be overcome, something that Nature does succeed in overcoming.

Unimaginative, non-futurist props in the supposed future world of the movie A.I. (Warner Bros.). Most sci-fi films depict a few truly clever technologies representing a probable human future, while leaving the rest too ordinary and undeveloped to be believable. The entire world of human technology will evolve in step, affecting all aspects of the way we work, live, play, heal, create, learn or defend. Advanced technology will be embedded everywhere, in even our most mundane objects, interconnected and always-on. In a future world capable of strong A.I. and inter-stellar travel, the landscape of technology merged with our daily activities will actually be far more advanced, and far more interesting than in the film depictions we see today.

It was visually pleasing; although even here I thought it could have been better. Some of the movement of the blue natives was not quite right and looked like the unrealistic movement one sees of characters in video games, with jumps that show poor modeling of gravity.

The ending (spoiler alert) was a complete throwaway. The Na'vi defeat the immoral machines and their masters in a big battle, but if this mineral the evil corporation was mining is indeed worth a fortune per ounce, they would presumably come back with a more capable commander. Yet we hear Jake's voice at the end saying that the mineral is no longer needed. If that's true, then what was the point of the entire battle?

The Na'vi are presented as the ideal society, but consider how they treat their women. The men get to "pick" their women, and Jake is offered to take his choice once he earns his place in the society. Jake makes the heroine his wife, knowing full well that his life as a Na'vi could be cut off at any moment. And what kind of child would they have? Well, perhaps these complications are too subtle for the simplistic Avatar plot.

See also:

REUTERS | Human exoskeleton suit helps paralyzed people walk

DISCOVERY NEWS | New exoskeleton gives soldiers super strength

CURRENT TECHNOLOGY | Lockheed Martin's HULC: hydraulic-powered, un-tethered, anthropomorphic exoskeleton (Lockheed Martin)

LOCKHEED MARTIN | The HULC: Dismounted Soldiers often carry heavy combat loads that increase the stress on the body leading to potential injuries. With a HULC exoskeleton, these loads are transferred to the ground through powered titanium legs without loss of mobility.

The HULC is a completely un-tethered, hydraulic-powered anthropomorphic exoskeleton that provides users with the ability to carry loads of up to 200 lbs for extended periods of time and over all terrains. Its flexible design allows for deep squats, crawls and upper-body lifting. There is no joystick or other control mechanism. The exoskeleton senses what users want to do and where they want to go. It augments their ability, strength and endurance. An onboard micro-computer ensures the exoskeleton moves in concert with the individual. Its modularity allows for major components to be swapped out in the field. Additionally, its unique power-saving design allows the user to operate on battery power for extended missions. The HULC's load-carrying ability works even when power is not available.

Lockheed Martin is a leading provider of advanced technology solutions for the Warfighter including ground Soldier systems such as wearable situational awareness equipment and mobility assistance systems. Future advancements in exoskeleton technologies will focus on specific user communities, shifting energy and performance requirements. Lockheed Martin is also exploring exoskeleton designs to support industrial and medical applications. (Source: )

Local news channels have started to pick up on the veterinary stem cell phenomenon. Could generate some interest in getting the same available to humans soon.

Chances are your dog has access to stem cell treatments more advanced than your own. A Fox News affiliate in Atlanta has picked up on a local story of a dog, named Behr, who could barely run a year ago, but who is now frolicking like a puppy. The secret to Behr’s success? He underwent stem cell therapy, effectively reversing the conditions of his hip dysplasia. Regular readers will recognize this therapy as one we discussed more than eight months ago. It is growing more common in veterinarian clinics across the US to treat horses and large dogs with joint problems using stem cells, often with miraculous results. Another local news channel, this one in New York, contacted me about a similar story set to air there. These treatments use the same autologous technique we covered before, the only difference is that now local news channels are picking up on the action. Hopefully that will lead to more people questioning why a medical treatment that has such a remarkable track record in animals has yet to be FDA approved for use in humans. Watch the Channel 5 Fox News segment below to see Behr’s joyful return to playing with his owner.

Behr’s experience was common for the procedure: a local vet removed fat tissue, sent it to a company (Vet Stem) that isolated the stem cells in the fat and sent them back, the vet then injected the stem cells into the dog’s hip and six months later the dog was greatly improved. This stuff really works!

There have been thousands of successful cases just like Behr’s across the US. There’s more than anecdotal evidence, too: researchers at UC Davis, Cornell, Colorado State University, and others have all shown that veterinarian stem cell treatments work well for joint problems in horses. FDA approval is slow, necessarily so, but it is very frustrating to see a dog prance around due to a stem cell treatment, and know that humans with similar conditions are out of luck for now. It’s little wonder then that there is a growing trend of medical tourism, including stem cell therapies. We even know of a few doctors operating in the US who have sidestepped FDA approval to provide joint related stem cell therapies to humans. More on them, later. For now, enjoy watching Behr happily play with his restored hip cartilage and know that stem cell therapies for the rest of us are coming soon.

[screen capture and video credit: MyFox Atlanta]
[Source: Fox News Atlanta, Singularity Hub, UC Davis, NCBI, CSU]

Related Posts:

• Geron CEO Speaks About the Promise of Stem Cell Therapy, Great Damage Done By Bush Presidency
• Hungary Raids Illegal Stem Cell Treatment Center - Arrests Four
• Fat From Liposuction May Be Good Source for Stem Cells
• Why Your Dog Is Getting Better Stem Cell Treatment Than You
• Demand for Stem Cells Growing Fast, Many Turn to Medical Tourism

"The Internet ... has increased not the quality but the quantity of the information we see," says David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale. "We know that the Internet creates 'information overload,' a problem with two parts: increasing number of information sources and increasing information flow per source... Integrating multiple information sources is crucial to solving information overload. Blogs and other anthology-sites integrate information from many sources.... But we won't be able to solve the overload problem until each Internet user can choose for himself what sources to integrate, and can add to this mix the most important source of all: his own personal information — his email and other messages, reminders and documents of all sorts. To accomplish this, we merely need to turn the whole Cybersphere on its side, so that time instead of space is the main axis. "If we think of time as orthogonal to space, a stream-based, time-based Cybersphere is the traditional Internet flipped on its side in digital space-time. The traditional web-shaped Internet consists (in effect) of many flat panels chaotically connected. Instead of flat sites, where information is arranged in space, we want deep sites that are slices of time. When we look at such a site onscreen, it's natural to imagine the past extending into (or beyond) the screen, and the future extending forward in front of the screen; the future flows towards the screen, into the screen and then deeper into the space beyond the screen. "Every month, more and more information surges through the Cybersphere in lifestreams — some called blogs, "feeds," "activity streams," "event streams," Twitter streams. All these streams are specialized examples of the cyberstructure we called a lifestream in the mid-1990s....There is no clear way to blend two standard websites together, but it's obvious how to blend two streams. You simply shuffle them together like two decks of cards, maintaining time-order — putting the earlier document first." (Source: http://edge.org/3rd_culture/gelernter10/gelernter10_index.html)

With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home. Using the electricity generated from a 30-square-meter photovoltaic array, Nocera's cobalt-phosphate catalyst converts water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen and oxygen. The process is similar to organic photosynthesis, except that in nature, plants create energy in the form of sugars instead of hydrogen. The hydrogen produced through artificial photosynthesis can be stored in a tank and later used to produce electricity by being recombined with oxygen in a fuel cell, even when the sun isn't shining. Alternatively, the hydrogen can be converted into a liquid fuel. With his start-up company, Sun Catalytix, which was awarded $4 million in government funding through the new ARPA-E agency, Nocera hopes to make the system affordable enough to allow individual homes to generate their own fuel and electricity on-site. (Source: http://www.physorg.com/news187031401.html)

MIT researchers have built the first sensor array that can detect single molecules produced by living cells, using a carbon nanotube sensor array that can detect hydrogen peroxide molecules and could help scientists learn more about that molecule's role in cancer. The sensor consists of a film of carbon nanotubes embedded in collagen. Cells can grow on the collagen surface, and the collagen also attracts and traps hydrogen peroxide released by the cell. When the nanotubes come in contact with the trapped hydrogen peroxide, their fluorescence flickers. By counting the flickers, one can obtain an accurate count of the incident single molecules. More info: MIT news (Source: )

The first official commercial for the Apple ipad aired today during the Oscars.  You can criticize or praise the ipad all you want, but here at the Hub our stance is that the device is innovative and we can’t wait to get our hands on one.  Apple announced last Friday that the ipad will officially sell in stores April 3, and pre orders will be available on the ipad website starting March 12.  Check out a Youtube video of the ipad commercial after the break:

Related Posts:

• Apple iPad Website is Live
• Steve Jobs' iPad Keynote Speech (Video)
• Apple Announces Tablet To Be Called ipad - Looks Beautiful, Pricing Starts $499
• Apple Announces Tablet To Be Called ipad - Looks Beautiful, Pricing Starts $499
• LiveU Puts the Power of a News Van in Your Backpack (Video)

Carbon nanotubes with a lit fuel coating generate an electrical current, the result of a fast-moving combustion wave (thermal wave) traveling along the length of the carbon nanotube that drags electrons along, MIT scientists have discovered. The system puts out about 100 times greater energy in proportion to its weight than an lithium-ion battery. In theory, says Michael Strano, MIT's Charles and Hilda Roddey Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, such devices could maintain their power indefinitely until used, unlike batteries, whose charges leak away gradually as they sit unused. And the nanowires could be made in large arrays to supply significant amounts of power for larger devices. He suggests that one possible application would be in enabling new kinds of ultra-small electronic devices — for example, devices the size of grains of rice, perhaps with sensors or treatment devices that could be injected into the body. Or it could lead to "environmental sensors that could be scattered like dust in the air." By using different kinds of reactive materials for the coating, the wave front could oscillate, thus producing an alternating current, the basis for radio waves such as cell phone transmissions. Artist's impression More info: MIT news (Source: )

NASA's WISE mission has spotted 16 formerly hidden near-Earth objects with orbits close to Earth's. WISE is expected to discover as many as 1000 near-Earth objects, but astronomers estimate that the number of unknown objects with masses great enough to cause ground damage in an impact runs into the tens of thousands. (Source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18616-dark-dangerous-asteroids-found-lurking-near-earth.html)