Jeez, it seems to me that Microsoft should be very careful about the marketing of this, because if ya gotta buy a new box to run Vista, then why not just simply make the switch? After all Aero Glass is mostly based on developments seen quite a while ago in OS X.
It has been said before, but welcome to George Orwell's 1984. The thing that gets me is the lip service paid to liberties. If governments are going to go to these lengths then why deal with the pretense of having "freedom"? What is next? Thoughtcrimes?
Why not just tell all communication corporations that they are taking them over and they will now be owned by the government so that surveillance can be conducted on the civilian populace? I'll tell you why..... It would be Revolution! So, our government(s) are slowly, methodically, chipping away at individual freedoms under the guise of "protecting" us. Benjamin Franklin had it right. If we are willing to give away all of this, we do not deserve freedom. The time is NOW to reverse these power grabs for Presidential authority and no oversight. Vote out those representatives and senators that have supported eliminating our rights and take back your lives.
Seriously, corporations are being saddled more and more with the burden of government oversight and expense which ironically, seems to be occurring more and more with Republican administrations. Government is larger now that it has ever been before and the US government is that largest bureaucracy in the history of the planet. There is a price for a government of this size and that is inefficiency and it is being sold to us under an umbrella of fear.
The other side of the coin is government subsidized corporations that are no longer having to compete in a fair and open market place as long as they agree to do the bidding of whoever is currently in power, further destabilizing the ideal of capitalism.
Remember people: The USA is only a couple hundred years old. If we want to stick around, we need to be more careful with how we allow ourselves to be governed. Because if we allow the infrastructure in place to arbitrarily discriminate those who may or may not agree with the overall power structure, then you could find yourself easily under investigation. Take a picture of the wrong thing? Say the wrong thing in an open forum like Slashdot? Support the "wrong" political candidate? Read the "wrong" books? Fail to conform in any way to the overall top 40 culture and you might find yourself on the wrong side of the "firewall" unable to get a job or participate fully in society or possibly worse.
The implant *may* help those with macular degeneration. You should know that there are two major forms of macular degeneration, a wet form and a dry form and both are surprisingly common. Both forms have different primary causes, and can also be genetically mediated. So, I would encourage you to be careful with your eyes, wear your sunglasses, eat fruits and veggies and exercise to minimize the chance of both forms. We are actively working on solutions for vision rescue that are biological and bionic approaches, but they will be years away and there are no current cures for vision loss.
Other potential applications of this technology include the ability to help people with retinal degenerative diseases prolong their useful vision by dynamically mapping projections of images to other areas of the retina that are not affected by degeneration. Of course this will do nothing for the degenerative process, but it could buy some folks a bit more time until we can perfect retinal interventions (biological and/or bionic) to rescue vision loss.
As an aside, this technology to measure the optics of the eye is currently used in many procedure to correct vision such as in LASIK. You can read a little bit about LASIK and see a movie of the procedure here.
1. Deutsch is young. True, while at 24, Deutsch is young, that really does not say anything about his ability to be a spokesperson for science policy....if he is capable of representing the science for NASA and not necessarily a political agenda.
2. Deutsch did not graduate college. The fact that he is not a college graduate does not in of itself eliminate him from a spokespersons job. However, the major issue is that he lied about his graduation and because of that lapse in integrity should not be trusted.
3. Scientific integrity. NASA is an organization that should be proud of its scientific accomplishments and should care enough to represent those achievements to the world through the best possible spokespersons possible. Having these positions as appointed posts rather than earned posts or hires based on merit circumvents this process.
4. Motivations. Placing limits on science by appointing sycophantic toadies who are carrying out a politically and/or religiously motivated agenda is becoming a recurring theme in this administration which leads one to suspect potentially other agendas.
There is a history of announcing big breakthroughs in science here in Utah by going to the press before appropriate peer review has taken place (Cold Fusion anyone?). Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this come through, but until it passes the peer review test, as a scientist, I will withhold my enthusiasm.
In fact, any time I hear something potentially huge being hyped in the mainstream press before I hear about it in scientific journals, my eyebrows tend to rise a bit and I tend to be perhaps even more skeptical.
"We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
Uh...... yeah. That is why I am reading about it in the Salt Lake Tribune before hearing about it in Science or Nature?
My bias would be to land on the dark side of the moon (cue music) in order to build an observatory that will be uninfluenced by the earths, radio/tv/light/RF pollution. It could be powered by a small nuclear reactor eliminating the need for solar panels and there may in fact be larger ice deposits on the far side of the moon anyway.
Also, what is this fascination with things on the moon that we can see? I would be much more interested in the things that we do not see as much of.
But I am a neuroscientist and not a rocket scientist, so what do I know?
While we are talking about the moon, I can understand and see the scientific payoffs of sending people back to the moon, but I am much less clear on the whole Mars thing. What is the scientific end game of sending people to Mars?
Perhaps, instead of focusing on the issues of others, you might choose to look closer to home - maybe you'll find out why you feel the need to take a personal swipe at someone who's trying to engage in a friendly discussion.
But....that is just what you were doing, right? Look, I was trying to keep it friendly, but you should know that while I don't really know Mr. Jobs, I have talked to him on occasion, and I do respect who he is and what he does.
That, my friend is the danger of talking trash about someone with another person who you may not know everything about.
Sanity has no real bearing on one's ability to fabricate and elude detection successfully and in fact, likely reduces one's ability to maintain a fabricated reality.
Sociopaths are the obvious first source of skilled liars
Ummmm, really? I thought the first source of skilled liars were politicians.:-) Seriously though, sociopaths are able to defeat many lie detection tests because they are emotionally detached. There is no "tell" involved in telling a lie to others. However, in order to be skilled at evading lie detection by many methods, they also need to be smart and have good memories.
I've heard it suggested that Steve Jobs is a sociopath of this sort. (And, I should note, that "sociopath" is being used in that case in a very specific meaning, not as a general "raging loony" sense [though Jobs is, no doubt, somewhat loony:)])
A sociopath of what sort? Why would you say this unless you yourself had unresolved issues....I am not sure what your agenda is with this statement as there is nothing that would suggest the man is a sociopath. Furthermore, sociopaths rarely are able to maintain a structure around them that would allow the extent of success that Mr. Jobs has achieved and when they are, it is typically maintained through violence and subjugation of others around them. Mr. Jobs life from what I have seen resembles nothing like that.
I imagine it would be hard to get a warrant for $*00,000 to get some guy tested on the fMRI.
MRIs are not quite that expensive. We (our family business) charge on average about $2000 with all the costs considered of operating them (electricity, cryogenic liquids, trained personnel, depreciation). fMRI is going to be a bit more expensive than that, but certainly not in the five to six figure range.
however, the very concept of the 100% accurate lie detector is scary. It would have a huge impact on politics, crime, and even personal issues. "Did you cheat on me? Do you look at porn a lot? Do you think I'm fat?"
What is more scary is the level of science education of those individuals who will be wanting to use these measures of veracity to determine truth. People are always looking for the quick answer and they are not always willing to put the time or effort into determining what is truth.
You raise an important point, but note that I said for those that are able to LIVE the lie, then it will be less effective. The ability to trap someone in a current lie is part of the interview process and in that case, it *might* be possible. However, to someone who has rehearsed the lie and is able to live it by recalling the lie from memory as if it had actually happened, then regionality of blood flow or glucose utilization in the brain becomes a much less useful measure.
But advocates for fMRI say it has the potential to be more accurate, because it zeros in on the source of lying, the brain, rather than using indirect measures
This is completely bogus. Look, if one can lie (and is good at it), it is going to be much more difficult to figure out whether they are telling the truth or not. To someone who knows what they are doing, polygraphs can be fooled and I would suspect that interpretation of fMRIs can also be confused by someone who "knows" how to lie. The trick is to avoid delivering "tells" that are physiologic manifestations of deception. The truth is that there is no foundation in physiology that mandates that one has to reveal anything when stating something that is not in fact, the truth. A good liar will be able to deceive the device and more importantly, the interpreter of the device because they are able to LIVE the lie.
Now, I am not saying that all means of determining lies by technology are doomed to fail. Rather, I believe that relying on any one (particularly trendy) method for determining lies will work. And the use of fMRI is simply a massively expensive and trendy polygraph, particularly because there are so many differences in cortical anatomy and regional differences between individuals. I would be much more comfortable with a derivative of cortical function such as the p300 cortical recognition waveform used as part of a more complete determination of truth using interview, cross checking of facts, polygraph and p300. Perhaps if the fMRI proves accurate to some degree, it could be integrated, but it should not be used exclusively.
And yes, I do know a little something about neurophysiologic monitoring as I teach neurophysiology labs to medical students.
but is this why it works as opposed to cryogenics? The fact that it's not quite frozen? IIRC, the reason cryogenics doesn't work, is that the freezing actually ruptures the cell membranes, am I correct?
You are partially correct. Cell membrane rupture due to ice crystal formation is certainly a huge part of the problem. However, it should be noted that there are organisms that manage to overcome this by including within their circulating fluids, an "anti-freeze" compound of sorts. Deep ocean cod are one type of organism that does this. The other issues have to do with genetic and protein integrity. Small molecules tolerate freezing quite well, but the larger a molecule is (peptide, protein), the more sensitive it is to large temperature alterations and freezing. If too much damage is done to proteins and/or genes, cells induce a termination sequence that essentially causes them to commit suicide (apoptosis).
Also, is the fact that the metabolic rate drops so much for every 10 degrees C the reason why the brain can "survive" without oxygen being pumped through via blood? If the metabolic rate slows, does it lessen the need for the brain to take in as much oxygen, and thus allowing it to be able to return to normal after this kind of procedure?
This is certainly a major part of why it is thought this technology works. It turns out that many metabolic processes have a cost. Oxygen is actually a little dangerous and the higher the partial pressure of oxygen, the greater the chance of damage by free radicals. Those pesky free electrons can cause all sorts of havoc and that is exactly why people should be careful with those air cleaners that "clean" through ozone generation. If oxygen is toxic, ozone is even more so.
Sorry if I sound stupid, but like I said, this stuff is beyond my knowledge, hence the questions.
Actually, the very act of asking questions demonstrates a degree of intelligence that is sorely lacking among far too many folks so, there are rarely any stupid questions and I am most happy to share any information I have here on Slashdot.
If a 1% cut makes labs cut their budgets by 12-20%, those labs are either unlucky or poorly run.
The 12-20% cuts were across the board as a result of Congress not deciding on a budget for this year as are a consequence of the NIH not knowing where the pay lines are going to be. Basically, the NIH went to everyone's grants and said "we are taking 20% off the top unless you can justify a less dramatic cut." We took a small hit, but many, many labs took a big hit. The problem with this is that most labs plan their budgets according to their grant funding and now are having to fire people or not hire them as a result of the budget cuts. These are real highly skilled jobs we are talking about here. It has nothing to do with how well (or not) lab budgets are being run or luck for that matter. It has more to do with politics and Congress accomplishing their jobs.
We are bridging multiple disciplines (bioscience and computer science and engineering), in an effort to get our work done. Because of this, we are also open to multiple funding sources and I do feel for you as being funded through the NSF as most of our computer science based grants are achieved through that mechanism.
Proton pumps are also "pumps" made of proteins. By saying protein pumps, I am referring to the multitude of membrane bound proteins that assist in the transport of various ions, molecules etc...etc...etc....
Well, it is not quite suspended animation as the subjects have been cooled to about 10C (50F), so some biological processes do indeed still occur. However, it is below the temperature for most coherent biological processes to continue to function. Furthermore, it has been known for some time that with certain traumas involving CNS or CNS function, cooling has been an effective means of controlling continued damage related to the CNS. For instance, in many CNS traumas such as stroke (ischemic or haemorrhagic), there are cascade reactions that follow the initial insult. These cascades involve Ca+2 mediated events that often result in or are the result of cellular apoptotic pathways being induced which causes further damage. Cooling of the body in a trauma unit tends to limit such damage for reasons that are not completely understood at the basic science level and the free radicals discussed in the article are not the only possibility for damage as there are many protein pumps whose physiology is dramatically altered by temperature and pH changes.
It's too bad that the NIH budget was cut this year (effectively below the rate of inflation) by the Whitehouse and further cut by Congress who, while managing to take care of their own salaries before going on vacation, could not work in the NIH budget to their schedule. As a result, many labs here in the US this year have had to slash this years budget by 12-20% which has a dramatic effect on the success of bioscience research such as this suspended animation work.
The effects of magnetic fields are actually an area of study here in the US with some groups funded through the DOD. Others in the Netherlands and Russia have been interested in them for a few years now.
Anyhow, it turns out that we are able to withstand pretty stunningly high magnetic fields. For instance, research magnets for MRI, fMRI and MRS are pushing 5-7 Tesla, but there are some absolutely stunningly high magnetic fields (starting at about 10 Tesla) that are contained in small areas that actually cause things to levitate. Right now there are folks that are looking at the biological effects on small organisms in those fields.
This should be a fun post. At any rate, the interest of the Air Force does not provide any more credibility to this story. I've seen some *really* whacky ideas based on science fiction rather than science fact move through the DOD that says more to me about the state of science education in the US than anything else.
Or, in another way : I love your work, may I work with
Cool. Thanks. We just brought on a medical student, another neuroscience student and two undergraduate students. Our total number of students are two neuroscience students, a medical student, two undergraduate students, and two computer science students. Also, our US legislators seeming inability to do their job screwed just about every NIH funded lab this year by 12-20% of their funding for the year. (they managed to take care of their own salaries though) So, that said, we likely will not be bringing anyone else on for this year at least.
However, we are always looking and if you would like to send me your CV, I would be most happy to keep it on file and get back to you. What program have you been studying? What are your research interests?
I should have added that ~ScuttleMonkey has been making up for some of the other Slashdot editors lately. His posts of submitted articles have been informative, unique and most welcome in the face of silly submissions and editorial abuses from ~Zonk. If we could get more material via ~ ScuttleMonkey, I would be more inclined to continue to invest time, energy and money in Slashdot.
You know you've got a jaundiced view on life when you read an interested researcher's real science comments, and instinctively feel disgusted by the blatant PR grab.
I hear you. I must say though that the link was included, because we really are enthusiastic about our work and the possibilities. Right now, we are totally funded through the NIH via taxpayer dollars and have been sharing any and all technologies gratis. I have even traveled to other labs to help them learn what it is that we do and will be giving another seminar about what we do at UCSB later this month.
On re-reading the parent comment, I almost feel obliged to visit the web site, to prove to myself that not everyone's just after the PR, but might actually have something relevant to say.
Please do. There is no advertising on our page and all associations are disclosed.
I will say however, that there may be more dollars available for this kind of research in the private domain and I am investigating those avenues. We have already met with VCs and state directors for economic development and are considering these approaches, but right now, it is open science.
It's been a tough few weeks for SlashDot readers, full of front-page advertorials. Now the editorial sloppiness is causing me to doubt even "Score: 5, Informative" comments.
Jeez, you should have seen some of the editorial censorship yesterday when ~Zonk used his unlimited mod points to mod down dozens of posts apparently because they were critical of him and the Slashdot system. I am very close to dumping Slashdot from my life completely because of stuff like this. Perhaps Technocrat will be a better place to spend some time provided the traffic could increase some.
I am not surprised as most immunohistochemical approaches to biomarkers are optimized for proteins that have notoriously variable levels depending upon sampling method and analytical method. Most basic scientists have known this for some time, and are very careful about interpretation of immunohistochemical results, but the medical field has been slow to pay attention.
As an outcome of our work in the visual system, we have been developing a new approach to biomarker analysis based upon quantitative small molecular molecular phenotyping called Computational Molecular Phenotyping (CMP) that is a much more sensitive and reliable assay for not just eyes, but just about any biological system. Small molecular signals are much more tightly regulated between subjects and even remarkably between species. CMP relies upon 1) quantitative immunohistochemistry 2) computational tools derived from methods originally developed by the CIA and NASA for remote sensing and 3) new technologies developed in-house to assist in the the data processing and analysis.
Applications are in not just in pathology such as histological analysis of oncological tissues, but also in drug development, pharmacology and basic science. Also, as an interesting aside, I have also looked not only at a variety of vertebrate and invertabrate organ systems, but I am also looking at plant tissues with these technologies and there are some very interesting results that could assist in agronomics and bioencryption.
I guess you have noticed the censorship of this thread by someone with unlimited mod points.... Previously, this was just a curiosity to me, but with the censorship on top, I've become fairly irritated by this. So much so that I've just sent a couple of emails to journalists I know that cover the technology beats for publications like Wired, Macworld and the New York Times. This may get absolutely no traction at all, but Slashdot has become a big enough resource to drive Internet traffic that this may in fact, become an issue.
Ok, so the very first post to this thread was modded up as +5, Informative and was somewhat critical of the Slashdot editors. This post and EVERYTHING underneath of it were completely and totally modded down by someone with unlimited mod points. This is blatant censorship on the part of one or more of the Slashdot editors. Most of the people that post here on Slashdot do so with the understanding that their posts are made in good faith, particularly those of us who are paid subscribers. I have been a Slashdot user for years (User ID# 18351) and have been a paid subscriber for some time. I object most strenuously to this censorship and request from the Slashdot editors a response to this matter.
Slashdot Mirror
Jeez, it seems to me that Microsoft should be very careful about the marketing of this, because if ya gotta buy a new box to run Vista, then why not just simply make the switch? After all Aero Glass is mostly based on developments seen quite a while ago in OS X.
It has been said before, but welcome to George Orwell's 1984. The thing that gets me is the lip service paid to liberties. If governments are going to go to these lengths then why deal with the pretense of having "freedom"? What is next? Thoughtcrimes?
Why not just tell all communication corporations that they are taking them over and they will now be owned by the government so that surveillance can be conducted on the civilian populace? I'll tell you why..... It would be Revolution! So, our government(s) are slowly, methodically, chipping away at individual freedoms under the guise of "protecting" us. Benjamin Franklin had it right. If we are willing to give away all of this, we do not deserve freedom. The time is NOW to reverse these power grabs for Presidential authority and no oversight. Vote out those representatives and senators that have supported eliminating our rights and take back your lives.
Seriously, corporations are being saddled more and more with the burden of government oversight and expense which ironically, seems to be occurring more and more with Republican administrations. Government is larger now that it has ever been before and the US government is that largest bureaucracy in the history of the planet. There is a price for a government of this size and that is inefficiency and it is being sold to us under an umbrella of fear.
The other side of the coin is government subsidized corporations that are no longer having to compete in a fair and open market place as long as they agree to do the bidding of whoever is currently in power, further destabilizing the ideal of capitalism.
Remember people: The USA is only a couple hundred years old. If we want to stick around, we need to be more careful with how we allow ourselves to be governed. Because if we allow the infrastructure in place to arbitrarily discriminate those who may or may not agree with the overall power structure, then you could find yourself easily under investigation. Take a picture of the wrong thing? Say the wrong thing in an open forum like Slashdot? Support the "wrong" political candidate? Read the "wrong" books? Fail to conform in any way to the overall top 40 culture and you might find yourself on the wrong side of the "firewall" unable to get a job or participate fully in society or possibly worse.
The implant *may* help those with macular degeneration. You should know that there are two major forms of macular degeneration, a wet form and a dry form and both are surprisingly common. Both forms have different primary causes, and can also be genetically mediated. So, I would encourage you to be careful with your eyes, wear your sunglasses, eat fruits and veggies and exercise to minimize the chance of both forms. We are actively working on solutions for vision rescue that are biological and bionic approaches, but they will be years away and there are no current cures for vision loss.
Other potential applications of this technology include the ability to help people with retinal degenerative diseases prolong their useful vision by dynamically mapping projections of images to other areas of the retina that are not affected by degeneration. Of course this will do nothing for the degenerative process, but it could buy some folks a bit more time until we can perfect retinal interventions (biological and/or bionic) to rescue vision loss.
As an aside, this technology to measure the optics of the eye is currently used in many procedure to correct vision such as in LASIK. You can read a little bit about LASIK and see a movie of the procedure here.
1. Deutsch is young. True, while at 24, Deutsch is young, that really does not say anything about his ability to be a spokesperson for science policy....if he is capable of representing the science for NASA and not necessarily a political agenda.
2. Deutsch did not graduate college. The fact that he is not a college graduate does not in of itself eliminate him from a spokespersons job. However, the major issue is that he lied about his graduation and because of that lapse in integrity should not be trusted.
3. Scientific integrity. NASA is an organization that should be proud of its scientific accomplishments and should care enough to represent those achievements to the world through the best possible spokespersons possible. Having these positions as appointed posts rather than earned posts or hires based on merit circumvents this process.
4. Motivations. Placing limits on science by appointing sycophantic toadies who are carrying out a politically and/or religiously motivated agenda is becoming a recurring theme in this administration which leads one to suspect potentially other agendas.
There is a history of announcing big breakthroughs in science here in Utah by going to the press before appropriate peer review has taken place (Cold Fusion anyone?). Don't get me wrong, I would love to see this come through, but until it passes the peer review test, as a scientist, I will withhold my enthusiasm.
In fact, any time I hear something potentially huge being hyped in the mainstream press before I hear about it in scientific journals, my eyebrows tend to rise a bit and I tend to be perhaps even more skeptical.
"We have some preliminary but very exciting results [but] we would like to formally show this before making any claims that would cause unwanted hype."
Uh...... yeah. That is why I am reading about it in the Salt Lake Tribune before hearing about it in Science or Nature?
My bias would be to land on the dark side of the moon (cue music) in order to build an observatory that will be uninfluenced by the earths, radio/tv/light/RF pollution. It could be powered by a small nuclear reactor eliminating the need for solar panels and there may in fact be larger ice deposits on the far side of the moon anyway.
Also, what is this fascination with things on the moon that we can see? I would be much more interested in the things that we do not see as much of.
But I am a neuroscientist and not a rocket scientist, so what do I know?
While we are talking about the moon, I can understand and see the scientific payoffs of sending people back to the moon, but I am much less clear on the whole Mars thing. What is the scientific end game of sending people to Mars?
Perhaps, instead of focusing on the issues of others, you might choose to look closer to home - maybe you'll find out why you feel the need to take a personal swipe at someone who's trying to engage in a friendly discussion.
But....that is just what you were doing, right? Look, I was trying to keep it friendly, but you should know that while I don't really know Mr. Jobs, I have talked to him on occasion, and I do respect who he is and what he does.
That, my friend is the danger of talking trash about someone with another person who you may not know everything about.
No hard feelings though, eh?
The question is, are these people insane?
:-) Seriously though, sociopaths are able to defeat many lie detection tests because they are emotionally detached. There is no "tell" involved in telling a lie to others. However, in order to be skilled at evading lie detection by many methods, they also need to be smart and have good memories.
:)])
Sanity has no real bearing on one's ability to fabricate and elude detection successfully and in fact, likely reduces one's ability to maintain a fabricated reality.
Sociopaths are the obvious first source of skilled liars
Ummmm, really? I thought the first source of skilled liars were politicians.
I've heard it suggested that Steve Jobs is a sociopath of this sort. (And, I should note, that "sociopath" is being used in that case in a very specific meaning, not as a general "raging loony" sense [though Jobs is, no doubt, somewhat loony
A sociopath of what sort? Why would you say this unless you yourself had unresolved issues....I am not sure what your agenda is with this statement as there is nothing that would suggest the man is a sociopath. Furthermore, sociopaths rarely are able to maintain a structure around them that would allow the extent of success that Mr. Jobs has achieved and when they are, it is typically maintained through violence and subjugation of others around them. Mr. Jobs life from what I have seen resembles nothing like that.
"You if believe it, it's not a lie."
This is exactly true.
I imagine it would be hard to get a warrant for $*00,000 to get some guy tested on the fMRI.
MRIs are not quite that expensive. We (our family business) charge on average about $2000 with all the costs considered of operating them (electricity, cryogenic liquids, trained personnel, depreciation). fMRI is going to be a bit more expensive than that, but certainly not in the five to six figure range.
however, the very concept of the 100% accurate lie detector is scary. It would have a huge impact on politics, crime, and even personal issues. "Did you cheat on me? Do you look at porn a lot? Do you think I'm fat?"
What is more scary is the level of science education of those individuals who will be wanting to use these measures of veracity to determine truth. People are always looking for the quick answer and they are not always willing to put the time or effort into determining what is truth.
You raise an important point, but note that I said for those that are able to LIVE the lie, then it will be less effective. The ability to trap someone in a current lie is part of the interview process and in that case, it *might* be possible. However, to someone who has rehearsed the lie and is able to live it by recalling the lie from memory as if it had actually happened, then regionality of blood flow or glucose utilization in the brain becomes a much less useful measure.
But advocates for fMRI say it has the potential to be more accurate, because it zeros in on the source of lying, the brain, rather than using indirect measures
This is completely bogus. Look, if one can lie (and is good at it), it is going to be much more difficult to figure out whether they are telling the truth or not. To someone who knows what they are doing, polygraphs can be fooled and I would suspect that interpretation of fMRIs can also be confused by someone who "knows" how to lie. The trick is to avoid delivering "tells" that are physiologic manifestations of deception. The truth is that there is no foundation in physiology that mandates that one has to reveal anything when stating something that is not in fact, the truth. A good liar will be able to deceive the device and more importantly, the interpreter of the device because they are able to LIVE the lie.
Now, I am not saying that all means of determining lies by technology are doomed to fail. Rather, I believe that relying on any one (particularly trendy) method for determining lies will work. And the use of fMRI is simply a massively expensive and trendy polygraph, particularly because there are so many differences in cortical anatomy and regional differences between individuals. I would be much more comfortable with a derivative of cortical function such as the p300 cortical recognition waveform used as part of a more complete determination of truth using interview, cross checking of facts, polygraph and p300. Perhaps if the fMRI proves accurate to some degree, it could be integrated, but it should not be used exclusively.
And yes, I do know a little something about neurophysiologic monitoring as I teach neurophysiology labs to medical students.
but is this why it works as opposed to cryogenics? The fact that it's not quite frozen? IIRC, the reason cryogenics doesn't work, is that the freezing actually ruptures the cell membranes, am I correct?
You are partially correct. Cell membrane rupture due to ice crystal formation is certainly a huge part of the problem. However, it should be noted that there are organisms that manage to overcome this by including within their circulating fluids, an "anti-freeze" compound of sorts. Deep ocean cod are one type of organism that does this. The other issues have to do with genetic and protein integrity. Small molecules tolerate freezing quite well, but the larger a molecule is (peptide, protein), the more sensitive it is to large temperature alterations and freezing. If too much damage is done to proteins and/or genes, cells induce a termination sequence that essentially causes them to commit suicide (apoptosis).
Also, is the fact that the metabolic rate drops so much for every 10 degrees C the reason why the brain can "survive" without oxygen being pumped through via blood? If the metabolic rate slows, does it lessen the need for the brain to take in as much oxygen, and thus allowing it to be able to return to normal after this kind of procedure?
This is certainly a major part of why it is thought this technology works. It turns out that many metabolic processes have a cost. Oxygen is actually a little dangerous and the higher the partial pressure of oxygen, the greater the chance of damage by free radicals. Those pesky free electrons can cause all sorts of havoc and that is exactly why people should be careful with those air cleaners that "clean" through ozone generation. If oxygen is toxic, ozone is even more so.
Sorry if I sound stupid, but like I said, this stuff is beyond my knowledge, hence the questions.
Actually, the very act of asking questions demonstrates a degree of intelligence that is sorely lacking among far too many folks so, there are rarely any stupid questions and I am most happy to share any information I have here on Slashdot.
If a 1% cut makes labs cut their budgets by 12-20%, those labs are either unlucky or poorly run.
The 12-20% cuts were across the board as a result of Congress not deciding on a budget for this year as are a consequence of the NIH not knowing where the pay lines are going to be. Basically, the NIH went to everyone's grants and said "we are taking 20% off the top unless you can justify a less dramatic cut." We took a small hit, but many, many labs took a big hit. The problem with this is that most labs plan their budgets according to their grant funding and now are having to fire people or not hire them as a result of the budget cuts. These are real highly skilled jobs we are talking about here. It has nothing to do with how well (or not) lab budgets are being run or luck for that matter. It has more to do with politics and Congress accomplishing their jobs.
We are bridging multiple disciplines (bioscience and computer science and engineering), in an effort to get our work done. Because of this, we are also open to multiple funding sources and I do feel for you as being funded through the NSF as most of our computer science based grants are achieved through that mechanism.
I believe you mean "proton pumps" don't you?
Proton pumps are also "pumps" made of proteins. By saying protein pumps, I am referring to the multitude of membrane bound proteins that assist in the transport of various ions, molecules etc...etc...etc....
Well, it is not quite suspended animation as the subjects have been cooled to about 10C (50F), so some biological processes do indeed still occur. However, it is below the temperature for most coherent biological processes to continue to function. Furthermore, it has been known for some time that with certain traumas involving CNS or CNS function, cooling has been an effective means of controlling continued damage related to the CNS. For instance, in many CNS traumas such as stroke (ischemic or haemorrhagic), there are cascade reactions that follow the initial insult. These cascades involve Ca+2 mediated events that often result in or are the result of cellular apoptotic pathways being induced which causes further damage. Cooling of the body in a trauma unit tends to limit such damage for reasons that are not completely understood at the basic science level and the free radicals discussed in the article are not the only possibility for damage as there are many protein pumps whose physiology is dramatically altered by temperature and pH changes.
It's too bad that the NIH budget was cut this year (effectively below the rate of inflation) by the Whitehouse and further cut by Congress who, while managing to take care of their own salaries before going on vacation, could not work in the NIH budget to their schedule. As a result, many labs here in the US this year have had to slash this years budget by 12-20% which has a dramatic effect on the success of bioscience research such as this suspended animation work.
The effects of magnetic fields are actually an area of study here in the US with some groups funded through the DOD. Others in the Netherlands and Russia have been interested in them for a few years now.
Anyhow, it turns out that we are able to withstand pretty stunningly high magnetic fields. For instance, research magnets for MRI, fMRI and MRS are pushing 5-7 Tesla, but there are some absolutely stunningly high magnetic fields (starting at about 10 Tesla) that are contained in small areas that actually cause things to levitate. Right now there are folks that are looking at the biological effects on small organisms in those fields.
This should be a fun post. At any rate, the interest of the Air Force does not provide any more credibility to this story. I've seen some *really* whacky ideas based on science fiction rather than science fact move through the DOD that says more to me about the state of science education in the US than anything else.
Or, in another way : I love your work, may I work with
Cool. Thanks. We just brought on a medical student, another neuroscience student and two undergraduate students. Our total number of students are two neuroscience students, a medical student, two undergraduate students, and two computer science students. Also, our US legislators seeming inability to do their job screwed just about every NIH funded lab this year by 12-20% of their funding for the year. (they managed to take care of their own salaries though) So, that said, we likely will not be bringing anyone else on for this year at least.
However, we are always looking and if you would like to send me your CV, I would be most happy to keep it on file and get back to you. What program have you been studying? What are your research interests?
I should have added that ~ScuttleMonkey has been making up for some of the other Slashdot editors lately. His posts of submitted articles have been informative, unique and most welcome in the face of silly submissions and editorial abuses from ~Zonk. If we could get more material via ~ ScuttleMonkey, I would be more inclined to continue to invest time, energy and money in Slashdot.
You know you've got a jaundiced view on life when you read an interested researcher's real science comments, and instinctively feel disgusted by the blatant PR grab.
I hear you. I must say though that the link was included, because we really are enthusiastic about our work and the possibilities. Right now, we are totally funded through the NIH via taxpayer dollars and have been sharing any and all technologies gratis. I have even traveled to other labs to help them learn what it is that we do and will be giving another seminar about what we do at UCSB later this month.
On re-reading the parent comment, I almost feel obliged to visit the web site, to prove to myself that not everyone's just after the PR, but might actually have something relevant to say.
Please do. There is no advertising on our page and all associations are disclosed.
I will say however, that there may be more dollars available for this kind of research in the private domain and I am investigating those avenues. We have already met with VCs and state directors for economic development and are considering these approaches, but right now, it is open science.
It's been a tough few weeks for SlashDot readers, full of front-page advertorials. Now the editorial sloppiness is causing me to doubt even "Score: 5, Informative" comments.
Jeez, you should have seen some of the editorial censorship yesterday when ~Zonk used his unlimited mod points to mod down dozens of posts apparently because they were critical of him and the Slashdot system. I am very close to dumping Slashdot from my life completely because of stuff like this. Perhaps Technocrat will be a better place to spend some time provided the traffic could increase some.
I am not surprised as most immunohistochemical approaches to biomarkers are optimized for proteins that have notoriously variable levels depending upon sampling method and analytical method. Most basic scientists have known this for some time, and are very careful about interpretation of immunohistochemical results, but the medical field has been slow to pay attention.
As an outcome of our work in the visual system, we have been developing a new approach to biomarker analysis based upon quantitative small molecular molecular phenotyping called Computational Molecular Phenotyping (CMP) that is a much more sensitive and reliable assay for not just eyes, but just about any biological system. Small molecular signals are much more tightly regulated between subjects and even remarkably between species. CMP relies upon 1) quantitative immunohistochemistry 2) computational tools derived from methods originally developed by the CIA and NASA for remote sensing and 3) new technologies developed in-house to assist in the the data processing and analysis.
Applications are in not just in pathology such as histological analysis of oncological tissues, but also in drug development, pharmacology and basic science. Also, as an interesting aside, I have also looked not only at a variety of vertebrate and invertabrate organ systems, but I am also looking at plant tissues with these technologies and there are some very interesting results that could assist in agronomics and bioencryption.
I guess you have noticed the censorship of this thread by someone with unlimited mod points.... Previously, this was just a curiosity to me, but with the censorship on top, I've become fairly irritated by this. So much so that I've just sent a couple of emails to journalists I know that cover the technology beats for publications like Wired, Macworld and the New York Times. This may get absolutely no traction at all, but Slashdot has become a big enough resource to drive Internet traffic that this may in fact, become an issue.
Ok, so the very first post to this thread was modded up as +5, Informative and was somewhat critical of the Slashdot editors. This post and EVERYTHING underneath of it were completely and totally modded down by someone with unlimited mod points. This is blatant censorship on the part of one or more of the Slashdot editors. Most of the people that post here on Slashdot do so with the understanding that their posts are made in good faith, particularly those of us who are paid subscribers. I have been a Slashdot user for years (User ID# 18351) and have been a paid subscriber for some time. I object most strenuously to this censorship and request from the Slashdot editors a response to this matter.
Ah, so that's what happened. I thought it was because I was a Republican . . . I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the two.
:-)
Wow. That's really funny, because I thought it was because I was a Democrat. . . I wouldn't be surprised if it was in fact the reason why....