Loyola University researchers have identified the key components of a protein called TRIM5a that destroys HIV in rhesus monkeys.

The finding could lead to new TRIM5a-based treatments that would knock out HIV in humans, said senior researcher Edward M. Campbell, PhD, of Loyola University Health System.

Campbell and colleagues report their findings in an article featured on the cover of the Sept. 15, 2010 issue of the journal Virology, now available online.

In 2004, other researchers reported that TRIM5a protects rhesus monkeys from HIV. The TRIM5a protein first latches on to a HIV virus, then other TRIM5a proteins gang up and destroy the virus.

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With growing interest in using nanoparticles for everything from antibacterial socks to medical imaging to electronic devices, the need to understand the environmental, health and safety risks of these particles also grows. Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have developed a simple process for producing nanocrystals that will enable studies of certain physical and chemical properties that affect how nanoparticles interact with the world around them.

Because nanoparticles behave differently from bulk samples of the same material, new tests to understand how they affect biological systems must be developed. Toxicologists determine the hazards posed by nanoparticles by introducing them to a biological system and monitoring the effects, but they currently lack a set of control particles whose size, shape and composition have been carefully produced and characterized.

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No tech news this time but a interesting point of view into the future.

Personally, I agree on most points mentioned, not all, but I like it when someone stands up and dares to think about the future in a bold way.

-Herman-

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Despair has many causes. Personal disability and mortality cause despair. People feel despair regarding disability or death of loved ones. The Singularity will create perfect eternal health therefore health-related despair will be vanish, but in the meantime poverty prohibits access to sophisticated healthcare. Money is the biggest source of despair for many reasons. Monetary despair desperately needs to be cured therefore we shall focus on remedying monetary despair. Post-Scarcity takes us beyond poverty and into utopia. Mass global awareness of Post-Scarcity will end all financial misery.

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The wheel in the sky keeps on turning — or at least it will if a Japanese renewable energy professor’s “Wind Lens” turbine design is realized. Resembling giant white rims, these offshore turbines have the potential to produce up to three times as much energy as a standard offshore one.

Yuji Oyha, a professor of renewable energy dynamics and applied mechanics at Kyushu University in Japan, and his team presented their wild vision for wind power recently at the Yokohama Renewable Energy International Exhibition. The “Wind Lens” design is essentially a hoop roughly 360 feet in diameter — a brimmed diffuser — that functions like a magnifying glass. Blades turn quickly within the diffuser, so quickly that they could increase the energy output two or threefold, according to CNN International. One of these “lenses” should be able to power a household.

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A video of the first Cyborg of the world.

It”s a (yet) simple machine with living neurons from a rat as the “brain” of the machine. It’s actually capable of learning while it’s driving around.

British scientists have decoded the genetic sequence of wheat — one of the world’s oldest and most important crops — a development they hope could help the global staple meet the challenges of climate change, disease and population growth.

Wheat is grown across more of the world’s farmland than any other cereal, and researchers said Friday they’re posting its genetic code to the Internet in the hope that scientists can use it as a tool to improve farmers’ harvests. One academic in the field called the discovery “a landmark.”

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A Los Alamos National Laboratory toxicologist and a multidisciplinary team of researchers have documented potential cellular damage from “fullerenes” — soccer-ball-shaped, cage-like molecules composed of 60 carbon atoms. The team also noted that this particular type of damage might hold hope for treatment of Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, or even cancer.

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Lots of facts and figures about Facebook and it’s history.

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Think of it as an autonomous, swarming, photovoltaic legion of seagoing Roombas (or don’t, if you’re easily upset). The Seaswarm project at MIT  takes a thin, hydrophobic material and drags it behind a robot outfitted with GPS and WiFi for determining its location and communicating within a swarm. When deployed, the group finds the outer edges of an oil spill, and works its way into the center, coordinating the cleanup with minimal human interference. The material itself can take on twenty times its weight in oil. And yes, the whole thing is re-usable. According to researchers, 5,000 of these relatively low cost devices could have cleaned up the BP oil disaster in a month — which is more than we can say for Kevin Costner! See it in action after the break.

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A Japanese research team said Thursday it had developed the world’s first 3D television system that allows users to touch, pinch or poke images floating in front of them.

“It is the first time that you can feel images in the air,” said Norio Nakamura, senior scientist with the research team at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. “You can have the sense of touch like poking a rubber ball or stretching a sticky rice cake” when manipulating images, he told AFP by telephone. The technology changes the shape of three-dimensional images in response to “touches”, aided by cameras that monitor how the fingers move, Nakamura said.

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