Future Ben

Freefall is an adorable science fiction webcomic. It tells the story of Florence, a geneticly anthropomorphized wolf, and her crewmates, an alien and a robot and their adventures on a newly terraformed planet. While Freefall is neither action packed nor hilarious it is always entertaining and endearing to the reader, while presenting compelling science fiction concepts. One of my favorite moments is when the terraforming robots let Florence come to their secret meeting because technically she is just another form of artificial inteligence.

I noticed a post on boingboing about computer designed antennas about to be used in a NASA experiment. It led me to The Evolvable Systems Group at NASA’s Ames research center. From their site:

“The Evolvable Systems Group investigates computer algorithms that automate the design and optimization of complex engineering systems for current and future NASA missions. Our overall goal is to dramatically increase mission reliability and science return through development and application of adaptive and evolutionary algorithms.”

This is the ultimate form of biomimicry. A human mind comes up with the specs and some seed designs for the algorithm and an evolutionary design and test series is played out virtually. To be clear about this, the algorithms can only optimize the parameters you have thought to model, so there are some limitations. This makes these methods immediately applicable to well worn models like molecular and electromagnetic force fields. I can think of dozens of engineering and systems biology problems that are still having their parameters worked out and would be great applications for these methods.

It is redundant to say that dirigibles are awesome. For me however they are even better than that. Blimps are so majestic, misunderstood, and underutilized. At one time they were a metaphor for our bold commitment to technology.

Then the Hindenburg happened and humanity showed its true face. Now blimps are a constant reminder of how spineless and sensationalistic we all are. Note that the Hindenburg did go up because of the hydrogen, but the powdered aluminum that coated the envelope didn’t help matters. And most people died from trying to jump out. Besides, come on! What do you want for 1937!
Anyway, Aeros may help lighter than air make a comeback. This one is helium filled, but it can still carry 1.6 million pounds of cargo. I am still waiting for a personal dirigible though.

This comes from the fabulous We-make-money-not-art. “In Keitai Girl (2003), Yamaguchi Noriko wears a body suit crafted from cell phone keypads, large headphones and is draped from head to toe with wires.”

I need more wearable cellphones/catsuits in my life. Although in 2006 I expect a little more from my wearable mobile technology. I want cameras you can access via your phone, or at least a soundtrack. This type of stuff, while appreciated by me, is the domain of my wifeCassandra. My job is usually to bug her about making these types of things for my pleasure until she rolls her eyes at me.

I have been getting buried under my project lately, but I wanted to quickly present Caltec’s Biological Imaging Center. The center, headed by Scott Fraser. The imaging part is interesting enough, but what fascinates me is how this group pioneers new ways of seeing.

I first learned of the center at a ASCII meeting here in New York. David Kremers is (or was) an artist in residence there. He presented several projects the center was working on. Namely showing more than 3 dimensions of data in a single image. At the time it made less sense to me, but now that I am working with MRI I understand much better the need to present a huge amount of information in a single image. Take the time to check out the center website, and Scott Fraser’s labpage.

Our president wants to illegalize all “human animal hybrids.” Clearly, I disagree. Human animal hybrids are real people, living and working among us. They could be your doctor, your physical trainer, even your favorite biotech futurist blogger.

I’m having fun, but therin lies the central phalacy of the president’s arguement. We are simply part of a spectrum of speciation that extends from us to whales to the tiny protoshrew we all decended from. Species occur only because there is a narrow threshold of tolerence for chromosomes to properly separate. The amount of genetic difference needed to cause speciation can be less than a percent. Even so, surprizing crossbreeding is possible as evidenced by Ligers, Beefalo, and even the probably mythical Humanzee.

Furthermore, what constitutes a hybrid? Is a transgenic mouse expressing a defective human gene a hybrid? Would all transgenic animals with human genes become illegal? What about human genes expressed in cell culture? In solving structures of human proteins those proteins are expressed in hamster, insect and most often in bacterial cells. Aren’t those hybrids too. This line of legislature could wipe our half of the NIH! Of course you could generate a gene de novo based on its sequence. Would it still be a human gene if you synthesized it base by base. The president’s statement that human animal hybrids should be illegal is beyond luddite, it is pure ignorance. The horrifying part is that a certain percentage of people will take it seriously.

Whether he is ignorant or not, is it the president’s place to decide what makes us human? Who can answer that question? The answer does not lie in genetics. (I wish it did.) This is the realm of philosophy or even theology. And for that reason I beleive that nobody has the right to define it for me. All I can say is that if the president can pass something that even remotely resembles what he proposes, I am turning to supervillany. Or leaving the country, whichever is more feasible at the time.

This week in lab I am presenting for lab meeting. Basicly, I ramble on about my weak conclusions based on weak data. That’s a little harsh, but nothing breaks down my confidence like having to tell somebody what I am up to. Especialy when they know more on the subject than I do. I am talking about MRI of course. When you are standing in a darkened room talking to a screen you can almost sense that your advisor really wants to correct you, but doesn’t want to embarass you in front of your lab mates. All in all it went pretty well.

What you are seeing is an array of bacterial cultures after being exposed to Manganese. The second top row is Mn in solution. What I am getting from this image is that Mn in a cell interacts with water much differently than when in a pure solution. There is a lot more to this image than just that, but that’s the gist of it. Next I will be putting my Mn binder through the paces and seeing how it compares to control cells.