Here’s something to smile about: a Japanese team has successfully grown replacement teeth and implanted them into the mouths of adult mice, suggesting that a similar technique could replace missing teeth in humans.

Takashi Tsuji at the Tokyo University of Science, Japan, and his colleagues took single-tooth mesenchymal and epithelial cells – the two cell types that develop into a tooth – from mouse embryos. They stimulated these cells to multiply before injecting them into a drop of collagen gel. Within days, the cells formed tooth buds – the early stage of normal tooth formation.

Full story. (via.)

Yes. Regrowable fingers too: Those superheroes just won’t stop.

There’s the guy who sliced off a fingertip but grew it back, after he treated the wound with an extract of pig bladder. And the scientists who grow extra arms on salamanders. And the laboratory mice with the eerie ability to heal themselves.

This summer, scientists are planning to see whether the powdered pig extract can help injured soldiers regrow parts of their fingers. And a large federally funded project is trying to unlock the secrets of how some animals regrow body parts so well, with hopes of applying the the lessons to humans.

Michael Ritter, an associate press science writer can almost smell the Pulitzer with this paragraph:

The implications for regrowing fingers go beyond the cosmetic. People who are missing all or most of their fingers, as from an explosion or a fire, often can’t pick things up, brush their teeth or button a button. If they could grow even a small stub, it could make a huge difference in their lives.

I see. I thought people who wanted their fingers were back were just selfish. Full story.

Elephants have joined a small, elite group of species, including humans, great apes, and dolphins, that have the ability to recognize themselves in the mirror, according to a new study by researchers at Emory University, Yerkes National Primate Research Center, and the Wildlife Conservation Society in New York. This newly found presence of mirror self-recognition in elephants, previously predicted due to their well-known social complexity, is thought to relate to empathetic tendencies and the ability to distinguish oneself from others, a characteristic that evolved independently in several branches of animals, including primates such as humans.

Full story. Elephants at Wikipedia. Can’t find an interesting elephant related video on youtube to save my life. Can you?

An article on Space.com questioning our obsession with celebrity and why scientists are increasingly seen as the ‘bad guys.’

Today, the threats posed by thinking machines or genetic engineering are the workaday staples of mad, bad science. That’s just moving with the times, but the public’s reaction is the same: this stuff could be dangerous, and besides I don’t understand it. Ergo, I’ll bolster my self-esteem by putting you down because you do.

They point to this image, taken by hubble. Fantastic. Full article.

Nice one Lee!

Wikipedia for Sulphur Hexafluoride.

Wind and solar energy could be used to set up mobile phone networks in rural areas of the world without power.
The world’s first mobile phone base station powered by wind and the sun’s rays will soon open in Namibia.

Thats cool. Story on the beeb.

The Life Extension Values Clarification Survey seeks to find out what you think about life extension technology.

The results page is interesting. Weird that most people taking the survey say they are atheist.

Also have a read of the Why Life Extension? or Why Live At All? article.

It’s all on the Ben Best website. Ben Best Wikipedia.

Thanks Si.

People that seem both nuts and genius-smart are really interesting. My favourite is Ray Kurzweil, who you may well be sick of hearing about on TCAL. I’m subscribed to his newsletter and it arrives in my inbox periodically, glowing energon-cube like with the latest weirdness in science. This issue informs me:

Raw algae can be processed to make biocrude, the renewable equivalent of petroleum, and refined to make gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and chemical feedstocks for plastics and drugs. Indeed, it can be processed at existing oil refineries to make just about anything that can be made from crude oil.

Story. How cool does biocrude sound?

Physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have devised an approach that may help unlock the hidden shapes of alternate dimensions of the universe.

Story. Physicists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, we salute you.

EoPlex is developing a revolutionary way to print objects in three dimensions: mass-produce tiny gears and switches using a process that builds 3-D objects by layering materials on top of each other, over and over, until a third dimension takes shape.

Story. Uh oh! Grey goo warning!

Futurists see a conflict forming over our dominion over the human body, and over the choices we make about our biological future, and that of our children. Some call it a clash between “bioliberals” and “bioconservatives,” and frame it as a debate over individual rights.

Story. I consider myeslf a bioliberal. You?

Loads more.

Humans are to blame for climate change and it will continue for centuries, the world’s leading scientists have said.

Its report projects global temperatures will rise between 1.8C and 4C by 2100.

Sea levels will increase by 18cm to 59cm by century’s end.

And it forecasts more rain, more powerful storms, droughts and heatwaves.

It’s 93 years before the day after tomorrow, we’re fucked people!!! Story on Skynews.

Thanks Choda

The main camera on the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has shut down after an electrical failure, Nasa has said.

Astronomers are calling the malfunction of the Advanced Camera for Surveys a “great loss” as it has taken the clearest pictures yet of the Universe.

US space agency engineers said only one-third of the camera’s functions were likely to be restored.

Bummer, it took some great photo’s. hurry up and spend a few billion on fixing it NASA Full Story the beeb.

Simon McGarr of tuppenceworth.ie sends in this interesting tidbit:

Academic journals are a shell game. You have to publish in them if you want to be believed or promoted as a researcher. And every large library must subscribe to them if it is to take its job seriously.

But the fees for these subscriptions are astronomical, and rising. Hence the new Free access to information sources such as the Public Library of Science.

In the face of being eaten by the internet, it seems the old publishers have decided to introduce old fashioned bluster to the mix.

Article at nature.com.

Now, Nature has learned, a group of big scientific publishers has hired the pit bull to take on the free-information movement, which campaigns for scientific results to be made freely available. Some traditional journals, which depend on subscription charges, say that open-access journals and public databases of scientific papers such as the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH’s) PubMed Central, threaten their livelihoods.

Information wants to be free, it’ll eventually route around bureaucracy just as it routes around censorship.

Microwaving kitchen sponges for just two minutes can kill 99% of living pathogens, a study in the Journal of Environmental Health claims.

Heat rather than radiation is responsible for the sterilising action on the sponges, say the US researchers.

Full BBC story. Bonus points for working out what Simpsons quote I rejigged for the post title; gold star if you have what Homer said next.

From today’s Observer:

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms - like the ones that battered Britain last week - will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries.

The good news is that the war between Inis Mor and Inis Oirr will be called off due to absurdity.

And, to add an angle that will fit into any pub in Ireland in 2007, long-term investment in low-lying and island property is, loike, totally not a good bet.

Although the final wording of the report is still being worked on, the draft indicates that scientists now have their clearest idea so far about future climate changes, as well as about recent events. It points out that:

· 12 of the past 13 years were the warmest since records began;

· ocean temperatures have risen at least three kilometres beneath the surface;

· glaciers, snow cover and permafrost have decreased in both hemispheres;

· sea levels are rising at the rate of almost 2mm a year;

· cold days, nights and frost have become rarer while hot days, hot nights and heatwaves have become more frequent.

And the cause is clear, say the authors: ‘It is very likely that [man-made] greenhouse gas increases caused most of the average temperature increases since the mid-20th century,’ says the report.

To date, these changes have caused global temperatures to rise by 0.6C. The most likely outcome of continuing rises in greenhouses gases will be to make the planet a further 3C hotter by 2100, although the report acknowledges that rises of 4.5C to 5C could be experienced. Ice-cap melting, rises in sea levels, flooding, cyclones and storms will be an inevitable consequence.

Past assessments by the IPCC have suggested such scenarios are ‘likely’ to occur this century. Its latest report, based on sophisticated computer models and more detailed observations of snow cover loss, sea level rises and the spread of deserts, is far more robust and confident. Now the panel writes of changes as ‘extremely likely’ and ‘almost certain’.

And in a specific rebuff to sceptics who still argue natural variation in the Sun’s output is the real cause of climate change, the panel says mankind’s industrial emissions have had five times more effect on the climate than any fluctuations in solar radiation. We are the masters of our own destruction, in short.

Shit.

“If people freak at evolution, etc.,” he wrote in an e-mail message, “how much more will they freak if scientists and philosophers tell them they are nothing more than sophisticated meat machines, and is that conclusion now clearly warranted or is it premature?”

Good article at The New York Times on the existence of free will.

Airlines aren’t taking climate change seriously?

Environment minister Ian Pearson branded Michael O’Leary’s firm “the irresponsible face of capitalism” and warned British Airways was “only just about playing ball” in the fight to reduce carbon emissions.

Mr Pearson described Mr O’Leary as “just completely off the wall” and stated the attitude of several American airlines was “a disgrace”.

Ireland.com news story.

What’s your carbon footprint? (You have to select UK to do it, no Ireland.)

Update: Ryanair have responded; breakingnews.ie story.

“While the minister has been talking nonsense we been spending in excess of $10bn (€7.6bn) over the last five years in buying the most modern, youngest and fuel-efficient fleet of Boeing aircraft that exists in Europe and in so doing reduced per passenger fuel consumption by 45% and CO2 emissions by 50% per seat,” he said.

5 rather cool robots, the best in 2006 according to NewLaunches.com.

Top 5 robots of 2006.

The number 1 robot has been featured on TCAL before.

I liked this one:

Coca Cola

Ketchup

Blueberry Muffin

A lot of American items but the sentiment is the same. Link

Times Link

Two parents of a severely disabled child opted to have her kept in a child-like state to avoid the complications of looking after an adult.

[…] her height is now expected to remain at about 4ft 5in (1.3m), and her weight at 75lb (34kg). Without the treatment, she would have grown into a woman of average height and weight, probably about 5ft 6in and 125lb, with a normal lifespan.

Seems like a pretty radical treatment to undertake for anything, and some of the justifications like stopping cancer seem contrived.

Parents Blog

Oh what shite is on TCAL today, some music, some US comedy of some sort, a bit of geeky shit.

WRONG!

It’s a video of an octopus escaping through a one inch hole.

The google video blurb about the video:

Octopuses have an amazing ability to squeeze through tiny crevices, cracks and holes. My fall BIOS independent studies student, Raymond Deckel is investigating just how small a hole Octopus macropus can fit through as well as how long it takes them to squeeze through different sizes of holes. CAABS intern Rowena Day, NSF-REU intern Jared Kibele as well as teaching assistant Abel Valdivia help wrangle the 232 g octopus, Ray times it’s escape through a 1 inch hole while I shot video clips for later analysis. Location: Whalebone Bay, St. George’s, Bermuda.

The video was tagged with:

omg, wow, octopus, escape, hole, cool

Wow based on this I think I like marineology scienticians the best I think. Let’s try an even smaller hole! Who knows what old squiggly legs will squeeze through next?

Previous octopus news at TCAL:
Giant Octopus Attacks Submarine
Octopus coolness

Unlike Time magazine’s retarded cop-out, the BBC journalist William Crawley (wikipedia) names Richard Dawkins as person of the year for 2006.

This has been a big year for so many people across many fields, but in the field of religion, ethics and ideas, this is one man’s year. Like him or loathe him, people are talking about him and his ideas. We recognise Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, as our Person of the Year 2006.

There’s loads of good reasons given over at the blog post.

Dawkins all over TCAL previously.

This years Edge Foundation question is “What are you optimistic about?”

What is the Edge Foundation?

The mandate of Edge Foundation is to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, as well as to work for the intellectual and social achievement of society. Edge Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

160 really smart people answer. Contributors include TCAL favourites Richard Dawkins and Ray Kurzweil.

Dawkins’ answer:

The Final Scientific Enlightenment

I am optimistic that the physicists of our species will complete Einstein’s dream and discover the final theory of everything before superior creatures, evolved on another world, make contact and tell us the answer. I am optimistic that, although the theory of everything will bring fundamental physics to a convincing closure, the enterprise of physics itself will continue to flourish, just as biology went on growing after Darwin solved its deep problem. I am optimistic that the two theories together will furnish a totally satisfying naturalistic explanation for the existence of the universe and everything that’s in it including ourselves. And I am optimistic that this final scientific enlightenment will deal an overdue deathblow to religion and other juvenile superstitions.

I disagree. I believe the deathblow to “religion and other juvenile superstitions” will not be a grand unified theory in physics. Rather, it will be driven by socio-politcal forces, and facilitated technologically. At some point this century, sectarianism will become redundant as technology facilitates true global collaboration. Human religion, in its sectarian form, will down tools and set aside its isolationist and oppressive components and we’ll realise that we operate much more productively as a collective. A final theory of everything in physics will go a long way in supplanting human tendencies to spiritualism and a desire for meaning but it won’t be the final nail in the coffin. If time is on our side, perhaps we’ll be the ones spoiling the prize for other intelligent species elsewhere in the universe.

Previously - the 2005 question.