John Munford proposed this week that much of the algae growing on the surface of the ocean could be harvested to produce biodiesel. Utah University has been studying fresh water algae, which can produce as much as 10,000 barrels of oil per acre. Munford says that seaborne algae has the advantage over this kind of pond scum by being self-maintained by existing ecosystems. An area similar to the North Sea could produce all the biodiesel currently used in transport across the world.
The protein type 5 adenylyl cyclase (AC5) seems to act as an amplifier of adrenaline response in the heart. Mutant mice that don’t make AC5 live up to 30 percent longer, weigh less as they age than normal mice, and may be more resistant to heart disease and cancer. Researchers are already developing drugs that inhibit AC5, but cardiologist H. Kirk Hammond cautions against hoping for a miracle cure for aging.
“I think first what I would do is get people to slow down on the highway, stop eating Big Macs and stop smoking.”
In order to protect its citizens from terrorist bioweapons, the United States government has undertaken a massive expansion in bioweapons research. I recall articles several years back that worried this kind of crash program might not be in our long-term best interests. Although nothing catastrophic has happened yet, it seems the authors of those articles might have been on to something. There have been a whole series of accidents at labs in the last few years, including accidental infections or exposures to tularemia, brucellosis, Q fever, anthrax, Valley Fever and tuberculosis. [image by tedsblog]
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Bioprinting – the re-purposing of inkjet technology for constructing biological tissues – is something we’ve remarked on before here at Futurismic. But it seems deserving of another mention, as a new method called "pressure assisted spinning" promises to handle the living cells more gently by using air pressure instead of mechanical force, enabling the construction of tissue scaffolds ready to act as a medium for growing new bones and organs – or for use as bandages. [Image by Suwan Jayasinghe; copied from NewScientist article]
The protein type 5 adenylyl cyclase (AC5) seems to act as an amplifier of adrenaline response in the heart. Mutant mice that don’t make AC5 