University of Michigan researchers led by chemistry professor Raoul Kopelman encapsulated voltage-sensitive dyes in polymer spheres just 30 nanometers in diameter. Testing these nanoparticles in the internal fluid of brain-cancer cells, Kopelman found electric fields as strong as 15 million volts per meter, up to five times stronger than the field found in a lightning bolt. However, this discovery goes beyond being incredibly interesting; the finding will likely change the way researchers look at disease.

Full story.

Mahkno’s posted a copy of Beyond Primitivism, the 2007 Anarchist Studies piece, on Infoshop.  Of course, as commentators point out, it’s not exactly addressing Primitivism directly and the “Science” it’s talking about is almost entirely Social Science, which reasonable people can have qualms about without rejecting the Natural Sciences.  But nevertheless, a good read.

Some tortoises lay eggs at the age of 100, he points out. There are whales that live to be 200, and clams that make it past 400. Those species use the same building blocks for their DNA, proteins and fats as humans, mice and nematode worms. The chemistry of the wear-and-tear process, including damage from oxygen free-radicals, should be the same in all cells, which makes it hard to explain why species have dramatically different life spans.

“A free radical doesn’t care if it’s in a human cell or a worm cell,” Kim said.

If aging is not a cost of unavoidable chemistry but is instead driven by changes in regulatory genes, the aging process may not be inevitable. It is at least theoretically possible to slow down or stop developmental drift.

From Stanford.

Monotonous duties switch our brain to “rest mode”, whether we like it or not, the researchers report in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

Infoshop.

From Ken Macleod comes the interesting idea of building a permanent presence on mars by sending successive one-way missions. It being cheaper to get folks there now, let them stay and run a station while we build the (more costly) return apparatus later.

Scientists have regrown 65-year old man’s upper jaw from fat cells in his abdomen.

“The open biohacking kit project contains information on important protocols in genetic engineering, stem cell research, microbiology and other fields of related interest. Additionally, the archive file — ready for immediate distribution and diffusion — contains numerous articles and designs for cheap DIY hardware such as incubators, centrifuges, oligonucleotide machines, microarray chip schematics, and so on. An integral part of the entire package is a cached copy of the BioBrick Foundation and synbio websites, such as OpenWetWare and the Parts Registry — some may know about these groups from the International Genetically Engineered Machine competitions. Short introductory files are also being included regarding methods of artificial gene synthesis, using online bioinformatics databases, transfections, running ecoli farms, synthetic biology (synbio), ES cell harvesting procedures, quick “where to buy” guides, and one-page documents introducing newbies into the arts.”

Via Anarcho-Transhumanism. [torrent]

AfriGadget has a video of an invention that supplies low-cost autonomous electrical power via sugar and yeast.

Developments anarchogeek is excited about.