• Email to a friend • Article Search •

Hayworth’s brain-preservation and mind-uploading protocol

Before becoming “very sick or very old,” he’ll opt for an “early ‘retirement’ to the future,” he writes. There will be a send-off party with friends and family, followed by a trip to the hospital. After Hayworth is placed under anesthesia, a cocktail of toxic chemicals will be perfused through his still-functioning vascular system, fixing every protein and lipid in his brain into place, preventing decay, and killing him instantly.

Then he will be injected with heavy-metal staining solutions to make his cell membranes visible under a microscope. All of the water will then be drained from his brain and spinal cord, replaced by pure plastic resin.

Every neuron and synapse in his central nervous system will be protected down to the nanometer level, Hayworth says, “the most perfectly preserved fossil imaginable.”

Using a ultramicrotome (like one developed by Hayworth, with a grant by the McKnight Endowment Fund for Neuroscience), his plastic-embedded preserved brain will eventually be cut into strips, and then imaged in an electron microscope. The physical brain will be destroyed, but in its place will be a precise map of his connectome.

In 100 years or so, Hayworth says, scientists will be able to determine the function of each neuron and synapse and build a computer simulation of the mind. And because the plastination process will have preserved his spinal nerves, the computer-generated mind can be connected to a robot body.

“This isn’t cryonics, where maybe you have a .001 percent chance of surviving,” he said. “We’ve got a good scientific case for brain preservation and mind uploading.”

Chronicle Review - The Strange Neuroscience of Immortality

Kenneth J. Hayworth, Electron Imaging Technology for Whole Brain Neural Circuit Mapping, International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 2012, DOI: 10.1142/S1793843012400057

Read more »

Forbes - James Conca compares the cost for Japan of using fossil fuels in place of Nuclear or restarting all remaining nuclear power and uprating to make up for the loss of Fukushima.

Over the next two decades, the cost of replacing nuclear with fossil fuel generation in Japan will be about $1.2 trillion, most of it in the cost of natural gas. This cost does not include financing, insurance or other non-operating or non-construction costs. It will take about ten years to fully implement this new mix.

Over the next two decades, the costs of keeping the nuclear fleet afloat is about $225 billion, much less than the fossil fuel alternative

Materials and fuel are more costly in Japan relative to the U.S., and labor is slightly cheaper. So in $US, replacing Japan’s approximate 300 billion kWhrs/yr of nuclear with a mix of a third coal (twenty-one 750 MW plants with a capcity factor of 71% @ $2.5 billion each) and two-thirds gas (thirty-three 880 MW plants with a capacity factor of 80% @ $820 million each) will cost about $80 billion in construction. But the additional fuel costs for these plants will be about $4 billion/yr @ 4¢/kWhr for coal and $40 billion/yr @ 18¢/kWhr for gas, or about $44 billion/yr. Operating costs for these new plants would total about $15 billion/yr @ 0.5¢/kWhr for each fuel type.

Read more »

Researchers at the University of Tübingen and immatics biotechnologies GmbH – a start-up by Tübingen scientists – have published the results of two clinical studies using the kidney-cancer vaccine IMA901 in the latest edition of Nature Medicine.

IMA901 is used to treat patients with cancer of the kidneys. It is composed of ten synthetic tumor-associated peptides (TUMAPs), which activate the body’s own killer T-cells against the tumor. Unlike chemotherapy, this process targets the body’s immune responses and mobilizes them to attack the cancer. The studies show that this active immunization against cancer can be successful and extend the life of a patient for longer than even the latest chemotherapy techniques – with far fewer side-effects.

Nature Medicine - Multipeptide immune response to cancer vaccine IMA901 after single-dose cyclophosphamide associates with longer survival times

Read more »

The NIMS Photonic Materials Unit is developing an advanced self-assembly technique for semiconductor quantum dots called droplet epitaxy, which is an original NIMS technology, and recently succeeded in the development of a new self-assembly technique for quantum dots with the world’s highest surface density, greatly exceeding the previously reported value.

Quantum dots have attracted heightened attention in recent years as a technology for achieving substantial improvement in the properties of semiconductor lasers and development of ultra-high efficiency photovoltaic cells based on a new operating principle.

In the newly-developed technology,
(1) use of a substrate with a high index surface,
(2) formation and crystallization of gallium droplets at near-room temperature, and (3) suppression of the droplet coalescence by optimization of the amount of supplied gallium were introduced in the gallium arsenide (GaAs) quantum dot formation by droplet epitaxy.

As a result, the NIMS team succeeded in self-assembly of GaAs quantum dots with an extremely high surface density of 730 billion per square centimeter in a lattice-matched system. The team also discovered that defects originating in crystallization at near-room temperature can be restored by applying ingenuity to the heat treatment process for the crystallized quantum dots, and strong PL emission can be observed from the quantum dots.

Atomic force microscope (AFM) image of ultra-high surface density quantum dots formed by reducing the amount of gallium irradiation to 3 monolayer at a growth temperature of 30°C. An ultra-high surface density of 7.3 x 10^11/cm2 was achieved.
Read more »

Technology Review - Jie Zou et al at the University of Florida have carved a single device out of silicon that is capable of measuring the Casimir force between a pair of parallel silicon beams, the first on-chip device capable of doing this.

There are other forces at play here too, such as residual electrostatic forces. When Zou and co take these into account, their results more or less exactly match theoretical predictions for the Casimir force that beams of this shape should generate.

The device solves a number of problems. First, because both silicon beams are made in the same lithographic step, unwanted distortions are not a significant problem. And the positioning is easier to control too since the beams and actuator are all part of the same device and so need far less calibrating and alignment. Finally, there are the measurements themselves which are more straightforward to do on a single chip than in previous experiments.

All this adds up to a significant step forward. What these guys have built is the first on-chip machine that exploits the Casimir force generated by a specific geometric configuration.

Arxiv - Geometry-dependent Casimir forces on a silicon chip (11 pages)

We report measurements of the Casimir force gradient between two parallel silicon beams with near-square cross sections at separations down to 260 nm. Both the force-sensing element and the actuator that controls the distance are integrated on the same substrate, with no need for manual alignment. Taking residual electrostatic forces into consideration, the measured Casimir force gradient agrees with the theoretical calculation based on the exact geometry. This scheme opens the possibility of tailoring the Casimir force using lithographically defined components of non-conventional shapes.

The set-up of the experiment and device. (a) A simplified schematic (not to scale) of the beam, movable electrode and comb actuator supported by four springs, with electrical connections. The current amplifier provides a virtual ground to the right end of the beam. The suspended and anchored parts of the comb actuator are shown in dark and light colors respectively. The separation d between the beam and the movable electrode was controllably reduced so that the Casimir force can be detected. (b)-(e) Scanning electron micrographs of the entire micromechanical structure (b) and close-ups of: the doubly clamped beam (c), zoomed into the white dashed box in (b); the comb actuator (d) and the serpentine spring (e).

Read more »

Technology Review - A layer of nanomaterial that gives a liquid-crystal display the rich range of colors usually possible only with more expensive technologies will be commercialized later this year by the materials giant 3M and Nanosys, a private company in Palo Alto, California. Nanosys representatives say they are in talks with major display manufacturers to adopt the quantum-dot films, and that they will be in a 15.6-inch notebook computer available next year.

Liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) dominate the market for both televisions and portable electronics. For many years now, manufacturers have concentrated on making LCDs on a large scale at ever lower costs, to the point where they have become commodities. Meanwhile, more expensive display technologies based on organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) have come along, offering richer color and, in some cases, better power consumption, but at a higher price.

Representatives from Nanosys say their film—a sheet of plastic embedded with nanoscale spheres of indium-phosphide and cadmium quantum dots—makes it possible to match the color gamut of an OLED in an LCD, without any changes to the manufacturing process, and without adding much cost.

Nano boost: A film loaded with quantum dots (left) can be added to an LCD to improve its color gamut. The film converts some of the blue light emitted by the screen's backlight (right) into red and green light. Nanosys

Read more »

The Carnival of nuclear energy 115 is up at AtomicPowerReview.


NEI Nuclear notes - In April 2011, the Worldwatch Institute predicted a rocky future for nuclear energy, but the most recent report from the OECD shows the predicted slowdown never occurred.

Idaho Samizdat - The Department of Energy is reviewing proposals from B and W and several other SMR (small medium reactor) firms to be granted up to $452 million over five years to support SMR engineering and licensing work. The agency will make up to two awards by the end of September this year.

Read more »

Techradar and BGR report that the Samsung Galaxy note 2 will be officially launched August 15, 2012 It should be available for purchase in September.

Rumors have suggested that the Samsung Galaxy Note 2 will have a 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean and a quad-core Exynos processor, and it may have a 12-megapixel rear camera as well.

Read more »

WattsUpWithThat.com (Anthony Watts) reports on a new set of papers at Berkeley University on world temperature which shows half the temperature increase of previous IPCC studies.

A new paper authored by Anthony Watts, et al as part of the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature Project (BEST) (being submitted for publication) has now shown that the temperature guage site metadata (information about site changes like urban development, site moves, etc) used by NOAA and NASA's GHCN and resulting data adjustments overcompensated on high quality rural sites and undercompensated on poor quality urban sites, leading to overmodification of the temperature record, thus falsely showing a 0.308 C warming since 1979, when a new site rating methodology now shows the actual warming since 1979 has only been 0.15 C. Note the old, incorrect, exaggerated warming of 0.308 C has consistently been shown to be roughly half of the amount of warming predicted by the best computer climate models used by NOAA, NASA, and CRU to produce their predictions for the UN's IPCC report.

Anthony Watts, President, IntelliWeather, Chico, CA, USA

Evan Jones, IntelliWeather, Chico, CA, USA

Stephen McIntyre, Toronto, Canada

John R. Christy, Department of Atmospheric Science, University of Alabama, Huntsville, AL, USA

NY Times has an article by co-author physicist Richard Muller There seem to be at least two Berkeley Earth teams.

Call me (Richard Muller) a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

Read more »