Global Warming: Risk of Methane Release from Frozen Tundra

Now this is scary.

The linear rate of global warming, in and of itself, is scary only in the somewhat long term (100+ years or so).

The real risk with global warming is runaway feed-forward loops. E.g., one that you hear about often is that if the polar ice melts it will make the earth darker and absorb more heat (to the tune of maybe a few percent more).

Much more frightening than that particular feed-forward loop is the frozen methane trapped in clathrates at the bottom of the sea bed, in the frozen tundra in places like Siberia, and (not frozen, but dissolved) in peat bogs.

Methane is a green house gas orders of magnitude more powerful than CO2. It has a dramatic effect on heating (though it doesn't last long in the atmosphere).

Now there is evidence that the tundra is outgassing. That is pretty scary.

Any methane released would go away fairly quickly, but it could lead to an escalating spiral of heating and trigger other feed-forward effects that would lead to warming of actually civilization-threatening levels.

The link, from Nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081203/full/news.2008.1275.html

Anders Sandberg, Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom on Future of Human Aging

Three of my friends and fellow futurists commenting on the future of future of human aging.

Anders focuses on uploading the brain (the best preservation, but most challenging),

Aubrey de Grey on our attitudes on change.

And Nick Bostrom on the uncertainties implicit in the future.

All three honest and straightforward as usual (though I disagree slightly with Nick Bostrom on overpopulation).

Uncertainty and Conditioning

The article below quotes research stating that uncertain outcome produces more uncertainty than clear negative outcomes. That makes sense from an adaptive standpoint.

Makes me wonder if that is the the same mechanism underlying the advantage of inconsistent conditioning over consistent conditioning in operant behavior.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/uncertainty-can-be-more-stressful-clear-negative-feedback-17831.html

Woman Gets New Windpipe Grown from Her Stem Cells

Now this is really exciting.



New Scientist: Woman Receives Windpipe Built from Her Stem Cells


Organ transplants have lots of problems, from the number of donors and availability of the right organ, to the issues of transport and logistics, and especially immune rejection.


For a while researchers have dreamed of growing new organs using someone's own genetic material, so they can place them in the body and have them be exact genetic matches. That would eliminate the need for orgon donors and the risk of immune rejection.
We are not there yet, but this case is very close. The researchers used the connective tissue from a windpipe from a dead organ donor but removed all living cells. Then they used the female patient's own stem cells (extracted from bone marrow) to grow a fully functional windpipe on that scaffolding (in particular to grow new cartilage), which they then 'transplanted' into her.



In principle the same technique could be used to regrow all sorts of organs, though actually growing the organs and having the right scaffolding is still extremely tricky and has only been demonstrated for a few organs. Even so, progress is being made at a remarkable rate.

First Potential Anti-Aging Drug Clears Mouse Trials

Back in 1990 or so, Tom Johnson demonstrated that it is possible to slow the aging process in a multi-cellular organism.

Since then, our knowledge of the biology of aging and the interconnections of caloric restriction, the effects of red wine, mitochondrial function, and the genetics of aging have advanced tremendously.

Maybe. :)

In any case, the first drug created as an attempt to directly manipulate the underlying causes of aging is getting very close to human trials. It might not work - most drugs fail in trials - but it might just be found to be effective in, say, protecting against diabetes, or stabiliizing blood sugar, or helping people lose weight.

Note that in the mouse trials, this drug - which is a synthetic analog of resveratrol, a beneficial compound in red wine - keeps mice skinny and healthy even when they are on a high fat, high calorie diet. It also increases their endurance. Mice on this drug are more fit and can run longer than mice not on it. In short, it looks a lot like what happens to an animal under Caloric Restriction, except that the animals can still eat.

Sounds like something people might pay for, eh? Assuming of course that it works in humans, is safe, and doesn't have side effects that people would find intolerable. A lot of promising drugs that work in other animals fail to get to humans for those reasons.

Still: Whether this particular drug succeeds or fails, Pandora's box is open. Nothing about human lifespan or anything else about the human organism should be taken as fixed any longer.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/next-generation.html

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/drug-mimics-low-cal-diet-ward-weight-gain-boost-running-endurance-17725.html

Solar Prices Drop Exponentially for 30 Years

FuturePundit blogs about projections for $2 a watt photovoltaics by 2010, which would be a reduction in cost of about half from today's prices.

The interesting thing in this post for me is a link to an Earth Policy Institute page which shows an exponential decline in photovoltaic prices over the last 33 years, from $100 per watt in 1975 to $4 a watt today.





That's a highly encouraging long term trend. It reflects a "cut the price in half" time of about 5 years, which bodes very well in the long term.

Lots more stats available at the Earth Policy Institute Solar Power Indicators page.

mez

A Solar Grand Plan

The cover story of this month’s Scientific American is a proposal to build out solar power in the US to supply 70% of the country’s electrical needs by 2050. It looks like a pretty doable plan, actually, requiring no technological advances in solar power beyond what’s projected between here and 2020. The price tag the authors estimate is $420 Billion, which works out to $10B a year, or about ½ of 1% of the US federal budget.

Article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

Sidebar with a quick summary of the plan:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=us-plan-for-2050

Meditate - Why and How

At Foo Camp I did a 5 minute "learn to meditate" session for about 50 people. It was fun despite being a really noisy environment (due to a session next door, mostly). A lot of people came up later and gave me positive feedback.

I don't meditate all the time. I go through on/off cycles of a few months. When I am doing it, I think I'm both happier and more functional. It really increases my sense of mental well being. I feel more 'clear', like I'm more able to process information, focus on a task, perceive important patterns, see the outcomes I want, respond emotionally in the ways that I want, and so on.

That dovetails with a large body of research saying that even a few minutes of meditation reduces stress, boosts immune function, increases perceived well being, stimulates learning, and improves attention and memory.

The meditation technique I presented at Foo was basically a simplified version of Anapana meditation, a form taught directly by the Buddha.

Here are the steps:


1. Sit Comfortably

2. Close Your Eyes

3. Become Aware of Your Breathing

4. Allow it to Slow and Deepen

5. Let Your Breath Become the Center of Your Attention

6. When Your Mind Wanders -> Smile, Bring it Back To Your Breath




That's it. Pretty simple. The imporant thing is not knowing these steps, though: it's doing it.

Meditation skill, in my experience, is like a muscle - it gets stronger when exercised. When I first tried meditating, I had a tough time going more than about a minute, and my mind was racing constantly. After a week or two of meditating once a day I could do it for five minutes. Another month or two and I could meditate for a whole 20 minutes.

So if you try, just do it, and enjoy it, and don't get discouraged.

As someone once told me: There's no such thing as a bad meditation. If you meditate, and you find your mind constantly racing or wandering, that's just a sign that you really needed that meditation session.

-mez

FOO Camp Talks

This past weekend I was at FOO Camp which was fabulous. My head is still spinning from all the great information, ideas, and people.

My talks from this year and last year are online:

2007:

When Everything Becomes Information: The Convergence of Matter, Life, and Media

Learn to Meditate in 5 Minutes

2006:

The Wired Brain: Implanting and Interfacing Computers With Your Head (This is actually a version of the talk I gave at Transvision 2004, but which is very similar).

Great Boing Boing Review of Citizen Cyborg

James Hughes's Citizen Cyborg gets a fantastic review over at Boing Boing. I couldn't agree more!