http://www.futurepundit.com/ Future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics and evolution. en-us 2012-02-07T23:31:51-08:00 2012-02-08T12:57:30-08:00 Orthopedic implants dipped in growth factors stimulate bone, blood vessel, or cartilage growth. MADISON – When William Murphy works with some of the most powerful tools in biology, he thinks about making tools that can fit together. These constructions sound a bit like socket wrenches, which can be assembled to turn a half-inch nut in tight quarters, or to loosen a rusted-tight one-inch bolt using a very persuasive lever. The tools used by Murphy, an associate professor of biomedical engineering and orthopedics and rehabilitation at University of Wisconsin-Madison, however, are proteins, which are vastly more flexible than socket wrenches -- and roughly 100 million times smaller. One end of his modular tool may connect to bone, while the other end... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008509.html The growth in mortality rate does not flatten out at any point. The rate of death for a given cohort rises every year. Research just published by a team of demographers at the social science research organization NORC at the University of Chicago contradicts a long-held belief that the mortality rate of Americans flattens out above age 80. It also explains why there are only half as many people in the U.S. age 100 and above than the Census Bureau predicted there would be as recently as six years ago. The research is based on a new way of accurately measuring mortality of Americans who are 80 years of age and older, an issue that has proven remarkably elusive in... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008507.html At least in mice (and probably some day in humans) it is possible to separately tweak the expression of individual genes that are influenced by testosterone and estrogen. Now a team of scientists at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has uncovered many genes influenced by the male and female sex hormones testosterone and estrogen that, in turn, govern several specific types of male and female behaviors in mice. Imagine being able to create humans who have very rare combinations of both female and male traits. That'll be possible eventually. Some prospective parents will opt to do it for a variety of reasons. While testosterone and estrogen act to turn on and off groups of genes these scientists turned... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008505.html Self sabotage is just as easy and natural online as it is in real life. People with low self esteem drive people away with negativity. In theory, the social networking website Facebook could be great for people with low self-esteem. Sharing is important for improving friendships. But in practice, people with low self-esteem seem to behave counterproductively, bombarding their friends with negative tidbits about their lives and making themselves less likeable, according to a new study which will be published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. People who are really negative are less likable. Few want to be around Debbie Downer or Ned Negative. Each set of status updates was rated for how positive or... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008503.html Not sure if you are feeling enough mental pain to be classified as depressed? A blood test can detect depression. The initial assessment of a blood test to help diagnose major depressive disorder indicates it may become a useful clinical tool. In a paper published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry, a team including Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers reports that a test analyzing levels of nine biomarkers accurately distinguished patients diagnosed with depression from control participants without significant false-positive results. "Traditionally, diagnosis of major depression and other mental disorders has been made based on patients' reported symptoms, but the accuracy of that process varies a great deal, often depending on the experience and resources of the clinician conducting the assessment,"... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008502.html Could it be that all that flavor compromising is actually bad for you? Individuals who drink diet soft drinks on a daily basis may be at increased risk of suffering vascular events such as stroke, heart attack, and vascular death. This is according to a new study by Hannah Gardener and her colleagues from the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine and at Columbia University Medical Center. However, in contrast, they found that regular soft drink consumption and a more moderate intake of diet soft drinks do not appear to be linked to a higher risk of vascular events. The research¹ appears online in the Journal of General Internal Medicine², published by Springer. Join me as I laugh in... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008501.html Your friends getting along too well? Feeling like the group is stuck in a rut of conformity? Testosterone could give you the edge you need to break away and strike out on your own. Testosterone makes us place more value on our own opinions. Whether that is a good or bad thing depends on the quality of your opinions versus the opinions of those around you. Testosterone makes us overvalue our own opinions at the expense of cooperation, research from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) has found. The findings may have implications for how group decisions are affected by dominant individuals. Problem solving in groups can provide benefits over individual decisions as we are... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008500.html It is a mistake to allow import of animals that have the potential to wipe out lots of species. Pythons are making major in-roads in south Florida. When researchers struck out to count animals along a main road that runs to the southernmost tip of the park, more than 99 percent of raccoons were gone, along with nearly the same percentage of opossums and about 88 percent of bobcats. Marsh and cottontail rabbits, as well as foxes, could not be found. Look at the Asian carp spreading up and down the Mississippi and tributary rivers. That's an even bigger mistake in my view. I am curious to know whether in a few decades cheap and very cheap electronic monitoring systems... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008499.html If lots of volcanoes start erupting better buy good winter clothes. A new University of Colorado Boulder-led study appears to answer contentious questions about the onset and cause of Earth's Little Ice Age, a period of cooling temperatures that began after the Middle Ages and lasted into the late 19th century. According to the new study, the Little Ice Age began abruptly between A.D. 1275 and 1300, triggered by repeated, explosive volcanism and sustained by a self- perpetuating sea ice-ocean feedback system in the North Atlantic Ocean, according to CU-Boulder Professor Gifford Miller, who led the study. The primary evidence comes from radiocarbon dates from dead vegetation emerging from rapidly melting icecaps on Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, combined... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008498.html Two scientists, including David King, formerly chief scientific advisor to the British government, have come out with a paper in Nature arguing that we have a greater need to reduce fossil fuel use due to oil shortages than due to global warming. They see 2005 as the end of oil supply growth. Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy. That's the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008496.html The rate of advance of biomedical research is a matter of life and death for all of us. Therefore we should be concerned that biomedical research funding is under control of older scientists that younger scientists spend much of their career working for. A new study by Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy illustrates a disconnect between government funding of biomedical research by young investigators and a novel standard by which to judge it: the Nobel Prize. The study found the average age of biomedical researchers getting their first grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in 2008 was 42. Over the past 30 years, the average age of Nobel winners when they performed their groundbreaking research was... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008495.html Does depression help people do art? Does autism help people do science? Does the normal mind without enough of either come up short in creativity? Not sure. But relatives of those with depression have different intellectual interests than relatives of those who have autism. A hallmark of the individual is the cultivation of personal interests, but for some people, their intellectual pursuits might actually be genetically predetermined. Survey results published by Princeton University researchers in the journal PLoS ONE suggest that a family history of psychiatric conditions such as autism and depression could influence the subjects a person finds engaging. Although preliminary, the findings provide a new look at the oft-studied link between psychiatric conditions and aptitude in the arts... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008491.html Before car computers totally take over the task of driving they will continue to gain more capabilities for accident avoidance. The latest: use of wireless technology so that car computers can know distances and velocity and collision risk of nearby cars. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication—known as "V2V" in the industry—is eagerly anticipated because it could help reduce crashes. The Wi-Fi signals, which go out in all directions, would act like an alert passenger, warning the driver that another car is about to run a red light or that there's a motorcycle in the blind spot. U.S. government researchers estimate that V2V would let drivers avoid or make less serious around 80 percent of collisions. Just like anti-lock brakes (ABS) and other car... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008490.html Rising atmospheric carbon dioxide might cause so much heating that some countries will respond by releasing sulfate aerosols to reflect sunlight and cool the planet. If that happens the question arises: Will the net effect of less sunlight (which would reduce energy flowing to plants) be outweighed by the plant-boosting effects of lower temperatures and higher CO2? Some climate scientists did modeling that suggests globally crop yields would rise overall but fall in some areas. Although scientists know that climate change in recent decades has negatively impacted crop yields in many regions, the study by Pongratz and colleagues is the first to examine the potential effect of geoengineering on food security. Pongratz's team, which included Carnegie's Ken Caldeira and Long... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008489.html Why not a higher autism correlation between twins? birth weight is a key factor in determining autism risk. EVANSTON --- Although the genetic basis of autism is now well established, a growing body of research also suggests that environmental factors may play a role in this serious developmental disorder affecting nearly one in 100 children. Using a unique study design, a new study suggests that low birth weight is an important environmental factor contributing to the risk of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). “Our study of discordant twins -- twin pairs in which only one twin was affected by ASD -- found birth weight to be a very strong predictor of autism spectrum disorder,” said Northwestern University researcher Molly Losh. Losh,... http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008488.html