Halloween is a-comin’ and this Sunday brings us AMC’s The Walking Dead. In honor of that, we’re discussing The Ethics of the Undead here at Science, Not Fiction. This is part II of IV. (Check out parts I, & III)

Before we can start investigating whether or not something that craves brains has a mind or should be pitied, we need to define just what, exactly, we’re talking about when we talk about zombies.

I’m going to start by ruling out the 28 Days Later zombies and the voodoo/demonic zombies of Evil Dead. First, the name of this blog is Science, not Fiction, which means any religious hokum is right out the door. Demon possession, souls back from Hell, and voodoo are not going to be considered in this investigation. On the other end of the spectrum, in 28 Days Later anything infected with “Rage” becomes a “fast” zombie. In essence, Rage is rabies only way, way scarier. Thus we aren’t dealing with the “undead” so much as the violently insane. So non-fatal pathogens don’t count either. If the pathogen doesn’t first kill you, then re-animate you, then you aren’t a zombie.

Which leads us to the next question: how does the pathogen work? I am not denying here the multitude of variations and nuances among zombie plague viruses, so we have to come up with a generic, realistic version to have our discussion. Zombies generally meet three important criteria. They are 1) stimulus-response creatures that seek flesh 2) continually decomposing and 3) contagious via bodily fluids. If we can explain, reasonably, how and for what reason a pathogen might cause/allow these conditions, we can describe a realistic zombie pathogen.

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Elmer Fudd might have been the only one not surprised that scientists can make mice  smell a nice sharp cheddar by shining light into their noses. Actually, he might be disappointed after having to wait an extra 10 years: In “The Old Grey Hare”, Fudd learned of “smellevision” from a newspaper in the year 2000.

But here in 2010, Venkatesh Murthy at Harvard led a team that replaced some of the chemical smell sensors in transgenic mouses noses with light receptors. So when a beam of light hits the mouse’s nose, the mouse will “smell” the light.

Why go to all the trouble? Light creates simplicity. Murthy wants to better understand how brains react to smell, and he wants to see precisely which parts of the brain “light up”, or become active, when the mouse smells something. But the actual smells are too diffuse, and too complex, to be administered efficiently in a controlled setting.

Light can be controlled with much more precision. Murthy can fire a pulsing beam right up the mousey nose, stimulating the receptors  so that mouse’s brain responds to the “smell”  (hopefully light smells like cheese. Or peanut butter).

Creating mice with light-stimulated neurons is part of a burgeoning field called optogenetics (PDF): The study of animals modified so that specific groups of neurons will respond to light. Optogenetics first broke into the news when Yale researcher Gero Miesenböck used it in 2005 to make fruit flies that flapped their wings when a UV light shone on them. Jay Leno even did a sketch on it (Though I couldn’t find it on YouTube).

For Murthy, the key innovation came a year later, when Karl Diesseroth at Stanford discovered he could adapt a protein called channelrhodopsin-2 from an alga (rhodopsins are also the first response to light in our own iris), could be bred into rats and mice. The rhodopsins responded to the signal faster, allowing the scientists to mimic brain functions when they stimulated the neurons.

No doubt scientists will continue improving optogenetics to refine how they can be used to study the brain —- they hope to run fiber optics deep into the mouse brain and watch some of the more hidden functions —- but probably they won’t be adapting the technology for smellevision any time soon. Which is probably for the best. McDonald’s would almost certainly be the first to try it during the Super Bowl, and I’m not sure I could handle that.

In Spider-Man 2—which I know isn’t canon, but work with me here—Dr. Octopus can only do his research thanks to some spectacular artificial arms: Each of his four bonus arms is heat resistant, incredibly precise, and has a brain of its own, so they can work independently. The arms join in a knapsack-sized device that connects directly to his spinal cord, so Dr. Octopus can send signals to the arms with his thoughts. He can think sends orders to the arms through a direct link into his spine. Now here in the real world, we have trouble linking robotic limbs directly to nerves because our bodies reject metal attachments to our nerves. So Doc Ock really achieved something there, setting aside the later problems with the arms’ AI (surely an easily fixed bug).

Now a crew of scientists at Southern Methodist University is working on their own technique for creating two-way communications between an artificial limb and a user’s brain. It uses non-metallic polymers, and at its core, it uses the same principal as whispering galleries of the sort that can be found in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, or at certain parts of Grand Central Station in New York. Indeed, they call it a “whispering gallery mode.”

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Many activitites, jobs, and pastimes have virtual mascots—mascots that just seem to get adopted over time. Gamblers have always courted lady luck. Absinthe drinkers talk about seeing the green faerie. Mars exploration has the Great Galactic Ghoul, to which we’ve alluded recently.

It’s on point related to that last one that I’d like to expand.  The fledgling space tourism is poised to explode. Seven people have already paid seven-figure sums to fly to the International Space Station. Like any airline, Virgin Galactic allows you to book your flight to orbit. The Russian Orbital Technologies Corporation has announced that it will build a space hotel by the year 2016. This is about to become a HUGE industry; I think space tourism needs a mascot.

Now I do a lot of public outreach, and talk to hundreds, even thousands, of people about space and space travel each year. A common desire among those who dream to slip the surly bonds of Earth is to ”float weightless, free of gravity.”  Almost as a rule, I find that these people are unaware of something called Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS).  Put more simply: space sickness.

For the first few days in space, most space travellers experience dizziness, disorientation, and/or nausea (sometimes very severe). Senator Jake Garn–a former naval avaiator and presumably used to motion-related sickness–was so sick that NASA astronauts named the unofficial unit of space sickness the “Garn”. An astronaut who is space sick at a level of one Garn is, essentially, useless as far as performing meaningful work. A space tourist at a level of one Garn would probably not be enjoying his or her “vacation.” One can almost envision space tourists, upon return to Earth, debarking from their spacecraft sporting the very same Transderm patches upon which some cruise ship vacationers rely.

So in some senses the industry already has a built-in mascot, one that has been with space travelers since the onset.  Unlike the virtual mascots already listed, I see space tourism’s virtual mascot as being different than those previously mentioned, and more similar to the virtual mascot of 400 meter dash runners.  As runners hit the 300 meter mark, and lactic acid builds up to a high concentration in their muscles, runers say that ”Rigor mortis sets in,” “You have a refrigerator on your back,” or “The bear jumps on your back.”  Some athletes merge two and  just say that “Riggy Bear” has jumped on your back.

Combining the spirit of the 400 meter dash mascot with the experience of Senator Garn and others, I propose that the mascot for space Tourism–one whose loving embrace you would prefer to avoid, but who will probably be your busom buddy whether you like it or not–be named Ralph^*.

I’m not sure what form Ralph should take, the best thing I’ve come up with to date is an amoeba (think of the behavior of liquid in microgravity). I know, that’s lame. So I’m throwing it out (pun partially intended) to you. In the talkback, what form should “Ralph the Mascot of Space Tourism” take?

^*For the uninitiated, to “Ralph”, or to “meet Ralph”  is a slang term meaning to vomit.

We have a ways to go before Dr. McCoy can run up to a patient, swipe a Tricorder over them and come up with an instant diagnosis, but we’re swiftly building a ladder to that future with wireless sensors and our smart phones.

Anyone who’s had an EKG knows they’re a moderately unpleasant experience: Electrodes dangling long wires must be taped to your chest (which includes getting a patchy shave from the nurse, for the hirsute among us), which of course makes moving around the room a challenge when it comes to stress tests or other related examinations.

We’ll dispense with most of that stuff, if engineering doctoral candidate Yu Mike Chi and Dutch biotech IMEC have their ways in the market place.  Chi, who is still studying at the University of California-San Diego, devised a sensor that can pick up the electromagnetic pulses from heartbeats through layers of cloth, eliminating the need for direct skin contact. The sensors relay medical quality heart rate data to a nearby computer. The sensors can be embedded in a hospital gown in a medical environment, or eventually in clothing for ongoing data collection.

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Ronald Bailey over at Reason Magazine has noticed a trend. When a new technology comes out, particularly if it impacts birth or death, people have a very powerful initial reaction: “Yuck!” However, within a few years, that “yuck” quickly shifts to “yippie!” A perfect example is Robert Edwards accepting the Nobel Prize in Physiology for developing the first successful in-vitro fertilization (IVF) techniques with his colleague, Patrick Steptoe, in 1978. Everyone knew IVF was a huge breakthrough at the time; everyone also freaked out at the idea. The scientific community took another 30 years after the birth of Louise Joy Brown to approve of IVF enough to award Edwards and Steptoe with the prize they so clearly deserved.

In an unrelated, but completely relevant article, the Washington Post’s Kwame Anthony Appiah triggered a debate over moral progress and history with his recent “What will future generations condemn us for?” His guesses are that our prison system, the industrial meat complex, elderly care, and environmental damage will bring the most intense “how could they do that?” from history students. Will Wilkinson adds that nation-states dividing up the world with their borders, tariffs, and limits on freedom of movement will look pretty awful to citizens of the next century. Tyler Cowen (who teaches at my alma matter) tried to figure out what we might condemn future generations for, worrying that torture, pre-emptive war, and anti-gay sentiment may make a comeback. What is going to help determine whether we’re moving towards utopia or dystopia?

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CLARICE: Zoe Graystone was Lacy’s best friend. A real tragedy for all of us. She was very special. I mean, she was brilliant.

NESTOR: At computer stuff, right? That’s my major. Did you know that there are bits of software that you use every day that were written decades ago?

LACY: Is that true? Oh, that’s amazing.

NESTOR: Yeah. You write a great program, and, you know, it can outlive you. It’s like a work of art, you know? Maybe Zoe was an artist. Maybe her work… Will live on.

From: Rebirth, Season 1.0 of Caprica

I’m excited that today Caprica is back on the air for the second half of its first season. As the show’s science advisor, I thought I’d pay homage to its reentry into our living rooms with some thoughts about how the show is dealing with the clash between the mortality of its living characters and the immortality of its virtual characters.

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In last week’s episode of Fringe , the man who is fast becoming my favorite mad scientist, Walter Bishop, tried to make a cow lactate chocolate milk by feeding it cocoa beans.

Obviously this doesn’t work. Which is too bad. I spent a lot of time trying to see if one could flavor milk by feeding cows different things, but unsurprisingly, their stomachs digest most of the flavor out of what they eat.

Not that feed is irrelevant. As it happens, putting turmeric and coriander into cattle feed may reduce the production of global-warming inducing methane, according to research from Newcastle University in the United Kingdom.  Methane is actually much more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide, so the vast quantity of methane produced by the world’s millions of cows and sheep is a significant contributor to global warming.

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On last week’s episode of Fringe, Dr. Walter Bishop, our resident mad scientist, remarked that he heard Massive Dynamics was developing wheel chairs that could be controlled with the mind.

Hey Walter, we can already do that. Check it out:

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For years, researchers have been using fluorescent proteins in bacteria and animals to study everything from gene therapy and neural development to cancer and limb regeneration (and create some very pretty pictures). The concept is fairly simple: by inserting the gene for GFP (green fluorescent protein, originally found in jellyfish) at the end of another gene—say the gene for hemoglobin—its glow can be used to measure how much hemoglobin is produced and where it is produced in the cell.

Inspired by the success of GFP as a research tool (it earned its discoverers the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2008), scientists have adopted a similar approach to identify and locate transplanted stem cells in animal models. Except in their case, they’ve begun to use the gene for luciferase, the enzyme responsible for the mesmerizing glow of the firefly. And if this method works, it could make stem cells a potent tool for addressing heart disease.

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