ASC and Surgery

Exciting news from Science Daily:

"They stripped cells from a donated trachea, used it to replace the entire length of the damaged airway, and then used the child's own bone marrow stem cells to seal the airway in the body."

Global Warming

There is an elephant in the room when it comes to global warming. Science Daily has it in one:

"Even if all man-made greenhouse gas emissions were stopped tomorrow and carbon-dioxide levels stabilized at today's concentration, by the end of this century the global average temperature would increase by about 4.3 degrees Fahrenheit, or about 2.4 degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels, which is significantly above the level which scientists and policymakers agree is a threshold for dangerous climate change" (emphasis added)

I should go over the technical details at some point, but he is right. If the models are correct, we are already too late. There is no hope.

Which brings us to the interesting question: if it is already too late, why bother? Why turn our economies upside down, repent and sit in ashes to Mother Earth (that is, drive electric cars and buy carbon credits)?

My personal opinion is that the models are wrong. They are largely based on an old earth, which is all junk data. But, even, if they are right, my hope is not in this life - I was never promised to have it easy, to have everything go my way. It will certainly be interesting.

ASC Supply

Another article on Science Daily about increasing the supply of adult stem cells.

Intolerant Tolerance

An excellent article from Albert Mohler:

"At its heart, [tolerance] is a philosophy and moral commitment to accepting the rights of others to believe or behave differently from ourselves without excluding or penalizing. Don’t expect champions of tolerance to 'tolerate' acts of exclusion or bigotry that represent the very opposite of the principle they hold so dear."

This statement is self-refuting. If you can only be tolerant by accepting others who believe differently, then true tolerance cannot be intolerant of anyone - even those who are intolerant. Being intolerant of intolerance still makes you intolerant (which should then cause you to reject yourself).

The modern "tolerance" movement is not about tolerance at all (as shown by their intolerance). It is an alternative morality - one which rejects the Bible.

ESC Research

As I mentioned, most uses for ESC are in pure research (gaining understanding, not helping people).

ASC Research

A lot of work going on in adult stem cells:

1. One of the common uses of ESC is in pure research (finding out how things work), Science Daily has an article on similar research done using ASC.
2. More work on building blood vessels from ASC

Brain Optimizations

An interesting article at Science Daily:

"A study shows that it takes less effort for the brain to register predictable as compared to unpredictable images."

The article frames this in the context of the scientific method, however, I see things in terms of micro-architecture (design of microprocessors).

In an advanced microprocessor, there is a lot of what is called "speculation". This includes the branch predictor, caches (which are can be seen as a form of "reuse prediction"), and other structures (load-hit predictor).

When the predictions are correct, everything runs at maximum performance (which often uses max power). When a prediction is wrong, often power consumption goes down as structures get reset.

"If it is wrong, massive responses are required to find out why it is wrong and to come up with better predictions."

It's interesting that there is a nearly opposite effect in the brain. It's possible this is an interface issue. If a processor's caches suddenly stop being effective (due to "mispredicting" the access pattern), the memory bus will go from nearly idle to wildly active.

This property has been used in cryptography. A correct password uses less power to check than a wrong one. It can even take varying amounts of power, depending on how far off the password is.