Dispatches from a rapidly changing, rapidly improving world
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In honor of FastForward Radio’s one-year anniversary on Bog Talk Radio,
we present these nine good news stories — some of which were suggested by
FastForward Radio Listeners!
Today’s Good Stuff:
Quote of the Day
All appears to change when we change.
Henri-Frédéric
Amiel
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Item 1
Stem Cells without
Side Effects
Last year, researchers announced one of the most promising methods yet for
creating ethically neutral stem cells: reprogramming adult human cells to
act like embryonic stem cells. This involved using four transcription factor
proteins to turn specific genes on and off. But the resulting cells, called
induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells for their ability to develop into just
about any tissue, have one huge flaw. They’re made with a virus that embeds
itself into the cells’ DNA and, over time, can induce cancer. Now, scientists
at Harvard University have found a way to effect the same reprogramming without
using a harmful virus–a method that paves the way for tissue transplants
made from a patient’s own cells.
The Good News:
As we discussed on last week’s FastForward
Radio, recent advances in the technology of producing have been rapid and
significant. The ability to convert mature cells into pluripotent stem cells
solves a number of problems — availability of embryonic cells, ethical issues
associated with collecting them, and rejection issues resulting from the fact
that embryonic cells are not a true genetic match to a patient receiving stem
cell therapy. So the method for converting skin cells to stem cells initially
developed, even with the problems that the virus transport mechanism raised,
was a huge step forward.
Take away those problems, and we are now all the closer to widespread availability
of stem cell treatments for a potentially huge variety of illnesses and injuries.
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Item 2
Mobile
Phone Adoption in Developing Countries
International Mobile phone adoption is a source of tremendous growth in wireless
industry. Penetration rates for the U.S. cell phone market are greater than
75%, and in Western Europe, Japan and Hong Kong penetration has already exceeded
100 %(multiple cell phones per subscriber). Although there is still significant
growth to be found in these markets, much of this growth will take the form
of selling increasingly sophisticated services (e.g. video, GPS) to existing
customers rather than growing the overall number of subscribers. Meanwhile
developing countries/regions such as Brazil, India, China, Africa and Latin
America have demonstrated blistering cell phone growth in recent years. As
a result providing service and head set to developing countries has become
a substantial source of profits for several major carriers and headset producers.
Companies that manufacture chips for headsets also stand to benefit from this
trend.
The Good News
The widespread adoption of mobile telephones is one of the most visible signs
of economic development occurring at an unprecedented pace around the world.
I was personally involved in bringing wireless phone service to parts of Russia
and other Eastern Block countries in the early to mid 90′s. In those countries,
there was a fixed wireline network in place, but neither the infrastructure
nor the operating practices of the previously state-owned-and-operated service
providers were prepared to meet the demands of the emergent class of consumers
and small businesses. These folks suddenly found that being connected was an
essential aspect of their family, social, and professional lives. A few years
later, I was doing the same thing in Southeast Asia, although the existing fixed
network technologies there tended to be more up-to-date than anything found
on the far side of the old Iron Curtain. Those markets were quick to adopt new
new technologies in place of old new technologies — which required
that service providers be nimble and more adaptive than those operating in the
west. When I returned from Malaysia to the US in 1999, I actually had to take
a step down in the level of service and model of phone available to me.
In the intervening years, wireless phone service has continued to spread into
more and more markets. The simpler and vastly more more economical infrastructure
that wireless telephony requires, compared to land line, has made it not only
possible, but logical, for many parts of the world that had no telephone service
at all to leapfrog fixed line technology in favor of wireless. Wherever wireless
service is introduced, it is accompanied by an economic boom. Cause? Effect?
Enabler? There is probably an argument to be made for all three. But the correlation
is undeniable.
Hat tip to FastForward Radio listener Okay David Ray for suggesting this
story.
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Item 3
Japan
sets out plans for space elevator
A consortium of scientists and industrial firms has formulated a plan to
build a ‘space elevator’ that would dramatically lower the cost of getting
into orbit.
The Japan Space Elevator Association has published plans for the structure,
which it estimates could be put in place for as little as $9bn.
The group believes that the project would revolutionise the cost of satellite
communications systems, and make orbital manufacture economically feasible.
"Just like traveling abroad, anyone will be able to ride the elevator
into space," Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association,
told The Times.
The plan calls for the use of carbon nanotubes attached to a fixed platform
in orbit and extending to a base station on Earth.
These would need to be about four times as strong as existing nanotubes but
the strength of such materials has increased a hundredfold in the past five
years.
The good news…
One of the great joys of living in this age is witnessing the speed at which
ideas deemed "fantastic" and "impossible" begin to gain
mainstream acceptance. For that reason, the space elevator has been one of our
favorite topics at The Speculist and on FastForward Radio over
the years. My first
blog post on the subject was just a little over five years ago. Then, as
now, the initial reaction that you will get from someone who has never heard
of the idea is incredulity. Most people are still incredulous, but the (you’ll
pardon the expression) heavy lifting has been done in terms of creating a material
strong enough to make the idea feasible. We aren’t quite there yet, but we’re
on the home stretch.
Tensile strength is the main objection to the idea of the space elevator. It’s
not the only one, by any stretch of the imagination, nor is it the only big
one. As mentioned on our most recent discussion on the subject on FFR, there
are thousands of technical problems that will have to be solved in order to
implement this technology. What is the car made of? How fast does it go? How
big is the space station at the top? And there must be a number of ideas as
to exactly how you would go about hooking the thing up in the first place.
But the point is, if you have a material that’s strong and light enough to make
the cable, there is no theoretical reason why you can’t have a space
elevator. We’re closing in on making something strong enough to do it, which
is why the forward-looking Japanese are beginning to plan for how we can solve
the rest of those problems.
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Item 4
World’s First Commercial Wave Energy Farm Goes Live
Earlier this week, Portugal debuted the world’s first commercial wave
energy farm. Wave energy at the Agucadoura station is converted into electricity
with the use of three red “sea-snakes”, or cylindrical wave energy
converters, that are attached to the seabed off Portugal’s northern coast.
Energy captured by the sea-snakes is carried to an undersea cable station,
where it is then fed into the electrical grid.
The devices will generate 2.25 MW of electricity— enough to power 1,500
homes. Ultimately, the wave power station will expand to produce up to 21
MW of power.
The Good News:
Wave energy is a great idea. The driver is primarily tidal forces, which means
that we’re tapping into the effect of the moon’s gravity in order to generate
power on Earth. As long as we have a moon moving water around on the surface
of our planet,we might as well take advantage of it. Like solar power, it’s
free energy from space!
The Downside:
Unfortunately, wave power is not price competitive in Portugal at the moment.
The €9m project was only made possible by the country’s feed-in
tariff, which requires utilities to buy renewable energy from a wide range
of producers. However, proponents of the farm believe that wave energy could
be cost-efficient within 15 years.
So we might have to wait a while before wave power makes sense economically.
But deployments such as this one can only help us understand the process better
and make wave power more efficient and affordable.
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Item 5
Standing
on the Shoulders of Giants
Video games are reshaping how we perform and promote science.
The digital revolution now engulfing our world emerged from the events during
and immediately after the Second World War, when intellectual titans such
as Alan Turing, John von Neumann, Norbert Wiener, and Claude Shannon roamed
the Earth. Many of the predictions they made for the future in those early
days are now reality, or something close to it. Turing foresaw computers as
artificial intelligences. Neumann imagined machines that could reproduce themselves.
Wiener guessed at a merging of biology and technology, and Shannon predicted
the primacy of pure information over physical matter. But were these "founding
fathers" to somehow see the state of modern computer science, they might
be surprised that some of their wildest dreams are being fulfilled not under
the explicit auspice of research, but of recreation.
The good news:
So what examples of transformational games that are changing science does Seed
provide?
Spore is teaching us about
emergence and complexity.
Emotiv Systems Epoc
Headset is teaching us about brain-machine interactions.
Foldit is teaching us about
protein folding and how crowds can be mobilized to solve complex problems.
Immune Attack is teaching us how
students learn about science.
3D Virtual
Creature Evolution is teaching us about evolution.
I’m not surprised. Years ago, when I learned that a carpenter can make his
way up a series of ramps and ladders while an angry gorilla hurls barrels at
him as long as he jumps over those barrels, I knew we were on to something!
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Item 6
New
way to control protein activity could lead to cancer therapies
STANFORD, Calif. — Investigators at the Stanford University
School of Medicine have found a way to quickly and reversibly fine-tune the
activity of individual proteins in cells and living mammals, providing a powerful
new laboratory tool for identifying — more precisely than ever before —
the functions of different proteins.
The new technique also could help to speed the development of therapies in
which cancer-fighting proteins are selectively delivered to tumors.
The good news:
There are a few small structures that hold the promise for huge potential capabilities
as the separate fields of biotechnology and nanotechnology converge around the
treatment of illness, injury, and aging. These include white blood cells (and
other weapons in the body’s immunity arsenal), viruses, and proteins. Viruses
are considered to be one of the most powerful potential delivery mechanisms
for cancer treatment because of their ability to reproduce rapidly. Of course,
this volatility also means that there is considerable risk associated with using
viruses.
Proteins. provide an alternate route. While there are still risks involved
with using them as a delivery mechanism, this line of research provides for
critical "tuning" capability for the treatment given. After completing
their cancer-destroying tasks, the proteins. are encoded to begin to degrade.
It’s biotechnology that cleans up after itself.
Hat tip to FastForward Radio listener Matt Duing for suggesting this story.
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Item 7
Plastic-Munching
Bugs Turn Waste Bottles Into Cash
New Bacteria-Driven Process Could Make Recycling Plastic Bottles More Attractive
Newly discovered bacterial alchemists could help save billions of plastic
bottles from landfills. The Pseudomonas strains can convert the low-grade
PET plastic used in drinks bottles into a more valuable and biodegradable
plastic called PHA.
Although billions of plastic bottles are made each year, few are ultimately
recycled because the typical recycling process converts low value PET bottles
into more PET.
PHA is already used in medical applications, from artery-supporting tubes
called stents to wound dressings.
The plastic can be processed to have a range of physical properties. However,
one of the barriers to PHA reaching wider use is the absence of a way to make
it in large quantities.
The new bacteria-driven process – termed upcycling – could address
that, and make recycling PET bottles more economically attractive.
The good news:
While viruses and proteins. offer potential medical breakthroughs,
bacteria holds increasing promise for a variety of environmental solutions.
Making plastic an easier and more attractive target for recycling is just the
beginning. We’ve already noted
that research is being done into developing strains of bacteria that eat
garbage and excrete gasoline.
Personally, I’m looking forward to the development of a strain
of bacteria that will make something useful out of grass clippings, dog doo,
and other backyard waste. I’m not big on composting (and, yes, I know that you
wouldn’t put dog waste in a compost heap) primarily because it gives you soil
— there’s only room for so much extra soil in my yard. What we need is for
bacteria to convert that stuff into something consumable – fuel to run the lawn
mower is one good idea, dog food is another.
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Item 8
Rocket successfully
launched from South Pacific
An Internet entrepreneur’s latest effort to make space launch more affordable
paid off Sunday when his commercial rocket carrying a dummy payload was lofted
into orbit.
It was the fourth attempt by Hawthorne-based Space Exploration Technologies,
or SpaceX, to launch its two-stage Falcon 1 rocket into orbit.
"Fourth time’s a charm," said Elon Musk, the multimillionaire who
started up SpaceX after making his fortune as the co-founder of PayPal Inc.,
the electronic payment system.
The rocket carried a 364-pound dummy payload designed and built by SpaceX
for the launch.
"This really means a lot," Musk told a crowd of whooping employees.
"There’s only a handful of countries on earth that have done this. It’s
usually a country thing, not a company thing. We did it."
The Good News:
In addition to creating new capabilities, empowering human beings to do things
that were never possible before, technological development works hand in hand
with economic power to democratize and distribute power. I argued
a while back that today’s average joe is better off in just about every measurable
way than a king in the middle ages. When Elon Musk points out that something
that was once the exclusive domain of countries is now achievable by a company,
he is tapping into that same idea.
If the trend continues, we will live to see a world in which the ability to
pace objects (or ourselves) into orbit will work its way down to the individual
level, either by way of cheaper and more efficient rockets or by some
other means.
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Item 9
Against
all the odds, the world is becoming a happier place
Despite deepening economic gloom and impending climatic destruction*
the world is becoming a happier place, according to an analysis of quarter of
a century of data on well-being from 45 countries around the globe. The finding
goes against the received wisdom that a country’s economic advances do not translate
into increased welding among its citizens.
The researchers who compiled the data believe increasing levels of happiness
were not picked up until now because studies have tended to focus on rich
countries where increases in wealth make little difference to their citizens’
satisfaction with life.
The Good News:
We’ve just passed or five-year anniversary at The Speculist, and we’ve
been doing FastForward Radio for more than three years. Today marks the one-year
anniversary of FastForward Radio as a weekly show at BlogTalk Radio.
The story quoted above just about perfectly encapsulates why we do what we
do. The rapid increase in human happiness, and more importantly the potential
for greater human happiness, is the most ridiculously under-reported news
story in history. It’s interesting that we can at least see the change occurring
in the developing world. People in those parts of the world aren’t just getting
new cell phones and computers – they’re getting
new choices for their lives. Here in the west and elsewhere in the world where
technology and economic development have already worked together to give us
a lifestyle unimaginable a generation or two ago, we tend not to notice how
good we have it and — more importantly — how good we might just have it down
the road if we take advantage of opportunities that are opening up to us.
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Better All The Time was compiled by Phil Bowermaster. Live to see it!
* I would have been more inclined to add the word predicted or feared
or even expected to "impending climatic destruction," but
then, hey, that’s just how I am.
