Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner‘s dead-tree forebear) opens with Deckard arguing with his wife about whether or not to alter her crummy attitude with the “mood organ.” She could, if she so desired, dial her mood so that she was happy and content. Philip K. Dick worried that the ability to alter our mood would remove the authenticity and immediacy of our emotions. Annalee Newitz at io9 seems to be worried mood manipulations will enable a form of social control.

The worry comes from recent developments in neuro-pharmaceuticals. Drugs are already on the market that allow for mood manipulation. The Guardian‘s Amelia Hill notes that drugs like Prozac and chemicals like oxytocin have the ability to make some people calmer, more empathetic, and more altruistic. Calm, empathetic, and altruistic people are far more likely to act morally than anxious, callous, and selfish people. But does that mean mood manipulation going to let us force people to be moral? And if it does, is that a good thing? Is it moral to force people to be moral?

The question is a strange one. Force people to be moral – what does that even mean? Let’s cast some clarity onto the issue of moral enhancement:

The field is in its infancy, but “it’s very far from being science fiction”, said Dr Guy Kahane, deputy director of the Oxford Centre for Neuroethics and a Wellcome Trust biomedical ethics award winner.

“Science has ignored the question of moral improvement so far, but it is now becoming a big debate,” he said. “There is already a growing body of research you can describe in these terms. Studies show that certain drugs affect the ways people respond to moral dilemmas by increasing their sense of empathy, group affiliation and by reducing aggression.”

That last sentence is a critical one, so I’m going to disassemble it. Some drugs affect, that is, influence or temper a person’s response to a moral dilemma. Your initial response might be, “I don’t want my decisions being influenced by a drug!” We see ourselves as rational beings in control of our emotions. But our mood is often critical to our decision making, particularly in regard to how we react to others.

We intuitively recognize that mood is often related to morality. When a person is upset or depressed, they can “snap” at a friend, being unjustifiably cruel, violent, or neglectful. Often a person who snaps at a friend will immediately apologize, offering “I don’t know why I did that. I’m in a bad mood, but not at you in particular. I’m sorry.” In these cases, mood creates poor conditions for moral behavior towards friends, let alone acquaintances or general strangers.

The important point is that mood creates conditions conducive to moral behavior. Mood does not determine moral behavior. Like many discussions around human enhancement, it is impossible to overemphasize the difference between determining and enabling a behavior or trait. Think of it like buying a pair of running shoes. Just because you own the shoes, or even if you choose to wear your running shoes every day, doesn’t mean you’ll go running. But you’re more likely to go running in running shoes than if you are wearing flip-flops or snow boots.

Mood enhancers work the same way. I might take a pill that makes me more more likely to be empathetic and altruistic, but it doesn’t guarantee that I will be any more than me having a crummy day will make me a jerk to others. Humans are able to exercise reason and willpower over our emotions and moods to control our actions.

The great thing about mood enhancers is that they make it so that our reason and willpower don’t have to overcome anger, fear, and angst to enable us to do the moral thing. A person in the right mood has an easier time making good choices when faced with moral dilemmas. There is, of course, a caveat:

Ruud ter Meulen, chair in ethics in medicine and director of the centre for ethics in medicine at the University of Bristol, warned that while some drugs can improve moral behaviour, other drugs – and sometimes the same ones – can have the opposite effect.

“While Oxytocin makes you more likely to trust and co-operate with others in your social group, it reduces empathy for those outside the group,” Meulen said.

As with every other technology in existence, mood manipulation and moral enhancement is a double-edged sword. Again, mood manipulation creates the conditions conducive to moral or immoral behavior, as the case may be. But, no matter how you look at it, mood manipulation is not mind control.

Follow Kyle on his personal blog and on facebook and twitter.

Image of pills that do who-knows-what by brains the head via Flickr Creative Commons

This futuristic method is based on a centuries-old observation that electric fields can do funny things (videos) to flames, making them sputter and even snuffing them out.

The researchers’ early-stage prototype consists of a 600-watt amplifier hooked up to a electric beam-shooting wand, according to their presentation at the American Chemical Society meeting earlier this week.  In tests, they were able to quickly zap out flames over a foot high.

A firefighting electric beam could probably be generated only using a tenth as much energy, estimated Ludovico Cademartiri, one of the researchers, meaning a much smaller amplifier would do the trick. They’re hoping to go after bigger fires, too, but the prototype has proven the concept. “Our research has shown that by applying large electric fields we can suppress flames very rapidly,” Cademartiri said.

While fighting fire with electricity seems to work, it’s not quite clear how it works. Charged particles of soot appear to respond to the electric field, throwing the flame off balance. It’s likely a bunch of other things are all happening at once—but no one’s sure yet what those processes are.

Whether it’s ye olde villagers passing buckets of water from the nearest well or modern-day firefighters with pressurized hoses and flame-quenching foams, putting out fires has has always been a matter of smothering them with some material. Zapping them with electricity instead could let firefighters do their work from farther away, and could be used to target a specific area—say, carving an escape route through the flames.

Image: Flickr / AMagill

The word “cheating” has another meaning, one that has nothing to do with competition. When someone has achieved an end through improper means, we might say that person has “cheated herself” out of whatever rewards are inherent in the proper means. The use of study drugs by healthy students could corrode valuable practices that education has traditionally fostered. If, for example, students use such drugs to mitigate the consequences of procrastination, they may fail to develop mental discipline and time-management skills.

On the other hand, Ritalin might enable a student to engage more deeply in college and to more fully experience its internal goods—goods she might be denied without that assistance. The distinction suggests that a blanket policy, whether of prohibition or universal access, is unlikely to be effective.

Instead, colleges need to encourage students to engage in the practice of education rather than to seek shortcuts. Instead of ferreting out and punishing students, universities should focus on restoring a culture of deep engagement in education, rather than just competition for credentials.

Lamkin’s argument is that cog-enhancers are an easy way out for those in school. Struggling to study builds character and good habits. Though he disapproves of cog-enhancers, I appreciate his hesitancy to involve the law. Lamkin doesn’t believe policing cog-enhancing drug usage is necessary, but would prefer honor codes opposing cog-enhancing drugs. He believes honor codes cause one to “internalize” the value of not using the drug. What is curious is that Lamkin doesn’t actually address what Ritalin and Adderall do for a student. As a person who has a legit prescription for Ritalin, and who knows his fair share of folks who’ve taken Adderall off-label, I believe I can speak to how cog-enhancers work in at least an anecdotal sense.

Simply put: cog-enhancers let you focus on one task very intensely, whether that task is organizing your music library or doing the dishes or (ahem) writing a master’s thesis in bioethics. To help clarify this, imagine the parts of a brain actively thinking as bright areas, and those areas not thinking as dim areas. A normal brain might look like the center brain pictured. The hot colors indicate active thought, the cool colors indicate calm parts of the brain. The above images are not scientific, but are a visual analogy for the felt effects of cog-enhancers.

Basic stimulants, like caffeine and the stuff found in energy drinks, cause the whole brain to get brighter – inactive and active areas brighten to the same degree. That is why you feel energized but unfocused after one too many cups of coffee. A rough simulation of what that might look like is the picture to the left. Everything is lit up. The brain is more awake but over-stimulated.

Alternatively, cog-enhancers like Ritalin and Adderall work by making bright areas much brighter while causing dim areas to go very dark. The result is one is able to focus on whatever task is at hand. As I can attest, it is just as easy to lose an hour studying xenomorphs on Wikipedia as it is to actually writing an essay for class. The image on the right is an approximation of what that might look like. Notice the areas of thought are not only brighter but more intense (indicated by darker red).

The key point is that whatever drugs you do or don’t take, a sense of discipline is still necessary to make the drugs useful. If a person takes Ritalin and then plays Call of Duty for hours, they won’t do any better in class. Furthermore, no matter how many pills you take, you aren’t going to know the facts and ideas necessary to write your paper or pass a test. Cog-enhancers enable those who might have trouble focusing or staying awake to do so on demand, but the drugs don’t put an iota of knowledge or a single original thought into a person’s mind. If Lamkin wants a culture that encourages in depth commitment to education, then cognitive enhancers are the way to go. Cog-enhancers allow a person to efficiently utilize the time they have to get the most studying/homework done. A ban on enhancers, as Lamkin notes, won’t do anything positive, but neither will an attitude of disapproval. Cog-enhancers allow a person who wants to study or write to be able to do so in a better, more productive fashion.

Follow Kyle on his personal blog and on twitter.

Image of delicious looking pills by RambergMediaImages via Flickr Creative Commons; Original image of brain scan by BlatantNews.com via Flickr Creative commons; edits to brain by Kyle Munkittrick.

Four Loko is in the news! For a caffeinated malt liquor drink that comes in an assortment of barely palatable flavors, it sure is generating a lot of controversy. The FDA is banning it! People are taking sides and making bathtub home-brew! Politicians are binge drinking it for SCIENCE! Some folks think the ban might be classist or infringe our freedom of speech! Why is everyone so upset over this disgusting fusion of energy drink and booze? The official answer:

The FDA says it examined the published peer-reviewed literature on the co-consumption of caffeine and alcohol, consulted with experts in the fields of toxicology, neuropharmacology, emergency medicine and epidemiology as well as reviewed information provided by product manufacturers. FDA says it also performed its own independent laboratory analysis of these products and listened to experts who have raised concerns that caffeine can mask some of the sensory cues individuals might normally rely on to determine their level of intoxication.

Allow me to translate: the caffeine, guarana and taurine make it so that you’re less aware you’re drunk, so you get more drunk. Caffeine and alcohol, what a novel combination! Apparently the FDA has never heard of Red Bull and vodka, Irish coffee, or even a whisky and Coke. More importantly (or more hilariously) the FDA seems to think that people who purchase drinks like Four Loko and Joose make a point to pay attention to “sensory cues” to “determine their level of intoxication.” My absolutely unscientific and unverifiable opinion is that it is very hard to rely on “sensory cues” when one is “blackout, fall-down drunk.”

But that’s not the real point, is it? If it was, we’d ban every possible combo of caffeine and alcohol. What’s at stake here is our society’s fear of cognitive enhancement.

Caffeine is one of our most basic cognitive enhancers. It’s in coffee, soda, and energy drinks. Most all of us depend on, nay, are addicted to it in some form. Most of us “need” our morning caffeine to function. I, for one, get a headache if I don’t have some coffee, because I am a blogger and by definition subsist on the bean. Now consider the following argument from my fellow NYU grad student, John, about how we consume caffeine. John noted that “the caffeine content in a cup of coffee is extremely variable. A drink of the same size and same type will vary in caffeine content not just from company to company or store to store, but from cup to cup. Why don’t we just determine how much caffeine we need to get going in the morning, say 100 mg, and take it in pill form? Why are we ok with the drink, but not the pill?”

That, sir, is a very good question. I couldn’t get it out of my head. Every time I pass a Duane Reade (aka CVS/Walgreens) here in the city I think about wandering in and picking up some caffeine pills. I want to do it so that I can cut down on my java intake and, concomitantly, my monthly contribution to Starbucks’ profit margin. Yet I feel weird and crazy when the urge strikes, so I pass on the pills and buy a Mountain Dew at a bodega instead. Why? Why do I, Mr. Transhumanist, have trouble with the idea of taking caffeine pills? They are safer, more precise, work better, and don’t have high-fructose corn syrup or require a half-gallon of creamer for me to consume them. The fear of caffeine pills is, on face, irrational.

The answer seems to be that we have a bias towards imperfection and inaccuracy in our enhancement. Coffee has random amounts of caffeine. Every Red Bull and vodka is a different mixture. Both taste, uh, “good.” On the flip side, Four Loko and Joose have the exact same amount of stimulants in each unit. Caffeine pills offer even more precision. Genuine cognitive enhancing drugs, like Ritalin, Adderall, and modafinil, are equally precise but significantly more potent. As such, those drugs are not just prescription only, but the prescriptions themselves are heavily regulated. As power and precision go up, our concern over the form of enhancement goes up as well.

Four Loko is just another victim of our bias towards imperfect enhancers. I need a third cup of coffee to think about this more. Or will it be my fourth?

Image via jameskm03 on Flickr

I have seen the future, and it is cilia. Yes, you read that right: those trillions of tiny hair-like extensions that carpet every inch of your body could bring scientists’ visions of a universal class of “smart” materials that change and adapt when subjected to various stimuli closer to reality. These artificial cilia could one day do everything from testing drugs and monitoring air quality to measuring glucose levels and detecting electromagnetic fields.

While largely ignored over the past century (or, at best, dismissed as being purely vestigial), scientists are finally beginning to appreciate the many vital functions they perform in and outside of our bodies. Much like an antenna or sensor, cilia gather information from their surroundings and react—by activating a cellular process or shutting down cell growth, for example—if something seems amiss. They can also act as miniature roads or railways, carrying dirt, bacteria and other noxious materials out of our lungs or shuttling a fertilized egg from the ovary to the uterus. And, perhaps most importantly, cilia make it possible for us to see, hear, smell, and otherwise feel the outside world.

Now some researchers believe that cilia-like structures could bring their sensory prowess to medicine, environmental monitoring and a number of other fields. Leading the charge is Marek Urban of the University of Southern Mississippi who has created a copolymer film with hair-like filaments that mimics the functions of normal cilia.

Each of these artificial cilia is equipped with an array of sensors that enable it to respond to the slightest fluctuations in temperature, pH, or light by folding over, shrinking or even changing colors. These unique behaviors are the direct result of molecular rearrangements and conformational shifts in the structure of the copolymers. For instance, when Urban and his colleagues exposed the cilia to hydrochloric acid vapors, they immediately bent towards them and changed colors from yellow to red.

A longer exposure resulted in further bending and a change of color from red to purple. Yet when the researchers switched to using ammonium hydroxide vapors (which have a much higher pH), the cilia reverted to their original shape and color. The cilia similarly responded to variations in temperature and different wavelengths of light by shrinking, modifying their surface morphologies, and becoming fluorescent.

Though more proof of concept than anything else, this work clearly demonstrates the “smart” potential of these copolymers. And, as the NSF release notes, it looks like Urban and his collaborators aren’t wasting any time putting them through more trials and dreaming up new applications. If scientists can further expand their functionality and incorporate them into other technologies (eventually even our bodies), the cilia could become a ubiquitous component of our future everyday lives—helping to treat diseases or simply supplementing our sensory tool set by granting us new abilities.

Images: University of Iowa and Zina Deretsky/NSF

While it may sound unheard of, scientists have been pressing bacteria into service in construction for years. The use of mineral-producing bacteria has already been explored in a variety of applications, including the hardening of sand and in repairing cracks in concrete. But there are two problems inherent to this approach. First, the reaction that these bacteria undergo to synthesize calcium carbonate results in the production of ammonium, which is toxic at even moderate concentrations. The other problem is a more prosaic one. Since the bacteria have to be applied manually, a worker or team of workers would have to go out every few weeks to patch up every little crack on every slab of concrete—nearly defeating the purpose of making the repair process simpler and more cost-effective.

Jonkers’ solution was to track down a different bacterial strain that could live happily buried in the concrete for prolonged periods of time. Because the bacteria would be mixed into the concrete from the start, they could immediately nip small cracks in the bud before they had a chance to expand and become exposed to water, rendering them vulnerable to further wear and tear. (Concrete structures are typically reinforced with steel bars, but these can easily become corroded when water seeps into the cracks.) Such a strain would have to endure the high pH environment of concrete and churn out copious amounts of calcium carbonate without also producing large quantities of ammonium.The researchers found just the right candidates: a hardy bunch of spore-forming bacteria belonging to the genus Bacillus that make a great living in the alkaline soda lakes of Russia and Egypt. Jonkers and his colleagues placed the spores and their food source, calcium lactate, into small ceramic pellets to prevent them from being activated prematurely by the wet concrete mix and adversely affecting the integrity of the material. The spores remained dormant until the formation of a crack allowed water to sneak in, waking the bacteria and their appetite. As they began to chow down, gobbling up the calcium lactate and water, they also began to pump out calcite (a very stable form of calcium carbonate), which quickly went to work filling up the holes. Now that they’ve successfully tested the bacteria’s mettle, Jonkers and his co-workers plan on comparing the strength of their natural concrete to that of the real thing. While not examined in the New Scientist story, I imagine that it should be possible to genetically tweak the bacteria into building a stronger form of calcite (or an even tougher material) that would match up more favorably to its man-made counterpart.

For those of you who would prefer to keep bacteria out of your walls (not that you need to worry, since these particular strains wouldn’t survive outside), there are other alternatives. Michelle Pelletier, an engineer from the University of Rhode Island, has created a microencapsulated sodium silicate healing agent that, like the bacteria, springs into action when a crack begins to appear. The sodium silicate reacts with the calcium hydroxide embedded in the concrete to form a malleable gel that covers the holes and hardens within a week of activation. According to Pelletier, the material may also help ward off corrosion by enveloping the steel bars in a thin, protective film.

Though their approaches to solving the problem may differ, both Jonkers and Pelletier tout the climate benefits of their inventions: Cement production already accounts for roughly 7 percent of worldwide carbon dioxide emission production, so any technology or procedure that could make concrete structures more durable would be a welcome development.

Image: sociotard/Flickr

At last week’s American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting, a group of scientists from the United Arab Emirates University announced that it had broken this trend by conducting the first large-scale survey of frog skin compounds. Over the course of a year, they managed to isolate close to 200 novel substances, as SciDev.Net‘s Christine Ottery reports, mostly from species endemic to African countries—a small drop in the bucket when compared to the 6,000 frogs (and thus many hundreds, if not thousands, of unique skin secretions they hope to collect) they have received from labs all around the world, but a significant step forward nonetheless.

These potent compounds, collectively known as antimicrobial peptides (which are strings of amino acids), are not only found in frog skin secretions, but in a range of other animals as well (us included) where they do triple duty warding off wave after wave of bacterial, viral, and fungal broadsides. Think of them as the body’s own antibiotics. And unlike those you buy from the pharmacy, which mostly only put a cap on further bacterial growth, these antibiotics consistently go for the kill—often dismantling their victims’ cell membranes, targeting vulnerable cell structures or destroying them outright.

This aggressiveness has proven to be something of a double-edged sword. While antimicrobial peptides work wonders against the legions of micro-invaders laying siege against our bodies, their zealousness can also work the other way around, attacking the very cells they are meant to protect. The UAEU researchers have been trying to mitigate this problem by tinkering with the peptides’ structure to make them less dangerous for humans but more deadly for pathogens.

Among the standouts they’ve already identified are one compound from the mink frog that fights “Iraqibacter” (Acinetobacter baumanii), a bacterium that inflicts drug-resistant infections on (surprise) wounded Iraq War veterans, and another from the foothill yellow-legged frog that could upend the formidable methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and other multi-drug resistant bacterial strains. Though only time will tell if these AMPs can be refined and turned into viable drugs, the second compound alone would easily justify the extensive testing required. And, who knows, there’s always the slight chance that we’ll really luck out and stumble upon some new miracle compound, or several, that could cure our most intractable diseases and potentially ward off future plagues.

The other, perhaps more important, question is whether these substances will work just as well in the human body as in the laboratory setting, where all of these experiments have been done. Even putting aside the peptides’ potential for mutual destruction, there is no way of knowing how altering them to make them compatible with our bodies will affect their efficacy. According to the researchers, clinical trials may only get underway 5 years from now. Let’s just hope there will still be enough frogs by then to sustain their work. Though it’s hard to put a number on it, I’d wager that we have already lost a significant number of promising antibiotic substances through our destruction of the rainforest and other highly biodiverse environments. Some day, the only thing standing between mankind and a devastating new pandemic could very well be a frog- or other animal-derived antibiotic substance.

Image: rainforest_harley/Flickr

Despite what you may think, this isn’t actually such an unusual pairing. By virtue of their simple design (most only contain enough genes to encode a few dozen proteins) and infinite capacity for manipulation, viruses have become the favored go-to tool for scientists seeking to explore cellular systems and tinker with their underlying components. Gene therapists have been infecting bacterial, plant, and animal cells with viruses for years in order to shuttle in new genes and repair malfunctioning ones. In one recent application, a team of researchers led by University of Pennsylvania ophthalmologist Arthur Cideciyan restored sight to two blind individuals by injecting a virus equipped with a retinal gene into their eyes.For others, the appeal of viruses lies in their aptitude for genetic engineering. A little over a year ago, a group of MIT scientists led by Angela Belcher successfully transformed the M13 bacteriophage, a virus harmless to humans, into the cathode and anode of a lithium-ion battery. In 2006, the same team had tweaked several of the M13′s genes to make it self-assemble into a negatively-charged paper-thin film that could be used as an anode.

Constructing the cathode proved to be more of a challenge because the materials used to make it needed to be highly conducting—and most such materials tend not to be. To get around that problem, Belcher and her colleagues imbued the viruses with the ability to attract iron and phosphate along their thin, filamentous bodies and paired them up with carbon nanotubes to create dense networks of conductive material.

Unlike conventional batteries, these can be molded to fit any shape and could eventually be sprayed onto a range of other devices. The virus batteries can also be assembled in a more environmentally friendly way: at normal room temperatures and without relying on toxic chemicals. The ease with which researchers can alter their properties—to change the battery’s design or, say, to switch to a better cathode—by simply turning on or off one gene or another only makes them more attractive. This week at the American Chemical Society (ACS) meeting, Mark Allen, a postdoctoral researcher from Belcher’s lab, reported that they had done just that—engineer the virus’ genetic code slightly differently to make an iron fluoride cathode. That’s important because the use of current lithium ion battery technologies is severely limited by their relatively low energy density. Metal fluorides have shown promise because they do a better job of maximizing energy density, particularly when used in the cathode. Their Achilles’ heel is their cycle life, which is much shorter than existing batteries, but some research indicates that infusing them with oxygen could resolve that issue.

Another research group led by James Culver from the University of Maryland announced that it had also made the parts for a lithium-ion battery by using the tobacco mosaic virus (TMV), which infects tobacco plants. In a study published this month, he and his colleagues demonstrated that their virus-built silicon anode had roughly 10 times the capacity of current graphite anodes. One advantage of Culver’s design is that the batteries could eventually be grown (quite literally) in the field by farmers—though that is at least several years away. And while these batteries will initially be developed for the military to lighten soldiers’ loads on the battlefield, there is no reason why they couldn’t eventually make their way into your next shirt or pair of shoes. Perfect for when that invisible dress goes out of style.

Image: Donna Coveney/MIT

The major challenge that scientists face is developing a sensor that is both long-lived and biocompatible. The human body is extremely picky about implants, and will quickly reject or react poorly to most materials found in everyday electronics. Even the materials that make peace with the body’s immune system, like those found in pacemakers, are not always ideal. Some require constant maintenance, while others need to be replaced every few days and are inconvenient to install, to say the least.

But external devices have their own problems. Patients often forget to wear portable devices like glucose monitors, making it more difficult for their physicians to evaluate their condition over extended periods of time. And imagine how annoying it would be to walk around with several monitors because your doctor wanted to track multiple vital signs. A much better alternative would be a single, unobtrusive, and long-lived implant that could detect and measure several chemicals in the body at once.

Fiorenzo Omenetto, a biomedical engineer at Tufts University, may have the solution: a tiny flexible biosensor wrapped in silk and gold. Long-time DISCOVER readers will already be familiar with the many benefits of silk and its numerous potential applications in medicine—there’s a reason we’ve been trying to mass-produce spider silk for years. In addition to being super-tough and stretchy, silk also happens to be a great fit for most tissue surfaces in the body.

What makes gold an appealing component is its unique electromagnetic properties. Along with a number of other highly conducting metals, including silver and copper, gold can be tweaked on a nanoscale level and combined with other materials to respond to frequencies in the terahertz range, which sits at the far end of the infrared range. These artificial composites, called metamaterials, have vaulted into the popular imagination in recent years due to their frequent association with the Harry Potter invisibility cloak.

As it turns out, enzymes and other proteins in the body resonate at specific frequencies within this range (they have their own “T-ray” signatures), making them easy to identify with the right type of antenna—the biosensors. To build the sensors, Omenetto and his colleagues took 1 square centimeter silk film squares and sprayed them with a gold-based metamaterial sheen. They then folded them up into small cylinders and implanted them into muscle tissue. Even buried under several thin slices of muscle, the sensors still resonated at their characteristic frequencies.

The sensor works by detecting subtle changes in the silk substrate that are caused by blood proteins and other chemicals floating around it in the tissue. Once the metamaterial picks up on the molecules’ distinct T-ray signatures, it transmits the information back to the researchers. In the case of a diabetic patient, for instance, the metamaterial would be able to track minute variations in glucose and insulin levels. As Omenetto puts it, the sensor is effectively “a lot of small antennas that behave as one.”

The possibilities of this sensor in research and medicine could be limitless. The ability to detect tell-tale signs of diabetes, cancer and a variety of other severe diseases would make treatments much more effective and tailored to the individual patients. Though the field is still in its infancy, startups like GlySens Incorporated and Physiologic Communications are hoping to capitalize early on the growing wave of interest in this technology. In addition to tracking small-scale changes in protein levels, the sensors could eventually be used as remotes to activate other devices in the body, such as a wireless defibrillator or insulin pump. And there may come a day when we can check our health status via an iPhone app. Of course, I’m still holding out hope for Fantastic Voyage-style mini-submarines to monitor the body, but that’s a different story.

Image: Hu Tao/Tufts University

We are a group of professionals. We treat each other with respect and we have a great working relationship. Personal relationships are not … an issue. We don’t have them and we won’t.

Hang on a second. I’m not sure that the concepts of “sex in space” and “professional” are mutually exclusive. I’m sure that, given what we’ve learned about human physiology because of spaceflight, that there are any number of cardiologists, internists, endocrinologists, OB/GYNs, and a whole host of other health-care professionals and researchers who would love to have physiological data taken of a couple before, during, and after a union in a microgravity environment. These researchers would be the Masters and Johsons, Kinseys, and perhaps even the Shere Hites of their time.

For me, though, when I first read Poindexter’s denial about sex in space, the first thing I thought of was Gene Cernan.

Wait, that came out wrong. Better elaborate.

Gene Cernan (the last human to leave the lunar surface, fellow Purdue Boilermaker, and one of my personal heroes) did one of NASA’s first spacewalks on Gemini 9. Unlike the previous EVA (extra-vehicle activity) of Ed White in Gemini 4, Cernan did not have a hand-held thruster unit — the goal of the EVA was for Cernan to make his way to the back of the spacecraft and don a much larger maneuvering unit, like the MMU operated almost 20 years later. Cernan had a very difficult time maneuvering his body in the airless/microgravity environment of space, his visor fogged, his suit overheated, and he never made it to the back of the spacecraft. Michael Collins had similar difficulties aboard Gemini 10. Learning of the low-gravity tribulations of Cernan and Collins, Astronaut Buzz Aldrin designed tools, handholds, and techniques for his flight aboard Gemini 12, and moved comparatively effortlessly.

NOW you can probably see where this is going.

On Earth, when it comes to the act of making love, gravity is a great enabler — certainly when it comes to the, uh, harmonic oscillations one normally associates with various sexual acts. In microgravity, a whole host of Newton’s Laws of Motion come into play, and clearly one would need a bevy of straps, velcro, and fasteners — and that’s WELL before even coming close to the realm of  kinky or B&D.

The book “Sex in Space” by Laura Woodmansee describes several potential positions by which low-gravity sex could be performed, but after reviewing the book (strictly for scientific curiosity, mind you), it looks like many of those positions would leave Barbarella and Buck flailing about — not unlike Gene Cernan on Gemini 9. Space.com did a review on the book, covering some of the topics explored within, but they didn’t discuss the topic of potentially enabling positions. (LiveScience did, however, discuss this notion briefly; so did Robert A. Freitas, Jr.)

On the reverse side of that, under the right conditions the microgravity environment of near-Earth orbit might allow a return to intimacy for people who, because of injury or disease, can’t have sex on Earth. So after the upcoming explosion of private space flight, after we’ve established lunar colonies, you can almost see that the Sandals Resorts will get into the game with a new resort called “Moon Boots.”

Humor aside, and as “clinical” as this sounds, it might not be a bad idea to consider monitoring people having sex when there are protocols and experimental controls in place, instead of allowing people who simply want to join the “Hundred Mile High Club” experiment haphazardly.

We’d learn a lot about human physiology, and imagine the spinoffs!

The Mythbusters set about testing the theory and found that it didn’t work. They handmade some half-decent gunpowder, but it didn’t have enough force to fire anything, and if it had, the bamboo tube couldn’t contain the explosion. The Mythbusters discovered the exploding bamboo  would have been more likely to kill Kirk then the gorn.

But it’s possible the Mythbusters didn’t use optimal ingredients in their low-energy gunpowder.

Like, maybe they used bad charcoal. Ulrich Bretscher is a retired Swiss chemist who turned his discipline and training to the art of homemade black powder, and he says the charcoal is the key element in determining the effectiveness of the gunpowder.

According to Bretscher, Kirk’s recipe was about right: Sulfur has the effect of lowering the ignition temperature by 130 degrees, which, since Kirk was lighting his gun with a spark from a stone, would have been important; and saltpeter acts as a catalyst for the flame, allowing it to burn hotter and more easily.

But the crucial ingredient for releasing the most energy from homemade gunpowder is  charcoal. Bretscher found that charcoal could be made effectively by heating wood under a sealed lid to a temperature of 400 degrees until the wood is thoroughly blackened. He yields 19 percent charcoal by weight, but a more effective technique could get that yield up to 60 percent. But he also found that the type of wood used for the charcoal was crucial. His measurements showed that the highest energy could be extracted from charcoal made from willow and balsa wood —- more energy than some commercial black powder he tested. The making of charcoal was so important, it was the most closely guarded secret of gunpowder makers.

So it seems to me that maybe Kirk found some really great charcoal, better than whatever they used in Mythbusters. Assuming he knew the optimal proportions (which he did, of course–he’s Kirk), he could have mixed up a pretty snappy batch of powder, and the diamond ammunition probably worked well enough. That left the problem of bamboo. Well, maybe it was alien bamboo. Superstrong alien bamboo. That must be it.

The composition was imagined by Evegenii Narimanov, a materials engineer at Purdue University, and then created by Mikhail Noginov, a materials physicist at Norfolk State University. (Narimanov recently made some news when he produced the first electromagnetic black hole, capable of slurping up the light waves that come near it.) The mesh is placed at intervals smaller than the wavelength of the radiation it needs to be absorbed. The new material reflected as little as less than one percent of the sub-infrared, 900-nanometer-wavelength radiation, though Narimanov said the effect would be the same at any wavelength —- including the visible light spectrum —- under other configurations. Narimanov told New Scientist he anticipates the material will find its use in coating stealth fighters to improve their invisibility to radar.

The battle for blackness has been going on for some years now. In 2003, scientists and the United Kingdom’s National Physical Laboratory created a coating that reflected 25 times less light than ordinary paint. The substance, made from a pitted surface of a nickel alloy, was intended to be used on the inside of binoculars and telescopes, to reduce interference. At the time, Dr. Richard Brown, lead scientist for the project, told the BBC, “It’s a very interesting surface to look at because it’s so black.”

Imagine how hard he’ll stare at  the new black.

Two world-class minds–Julian Savulescu, Uehiro Professor of Practical Ethics, and John William Devine, with the Oxford Center for Bioethics–will be debating the resolution “Performance enhancing drugs should be allowed in sport.” Savulescu is an absolute titan in the bioethics field (check this 2005 Guardian interview) and a huge proponent of human enhancement (he edited a book by the same name) so Devine is a brave man for taking him on. Given that Devine’s PhD thesis was on the “Challenges to Virtue in Political Office,” a pretty thorny topic, I believe he will rise to the occasion. The debate will consist of three parts, and the opening salvo has already occurred. Savulescu’s case for allowing drugs is quite convincing.

Using the World Cup and Le Tour de France as his examples, Savulescu contends that heavy “within the rules” modification and enhancement already occurs. After explaining just how easy it is to circumvent to drug tests and still get serious benefits, he concludes:

There are only two options. We can try to ratchet up the war on doping. But this will fail, as the war on all victimless crimes involving personal advantage have failed (look at the war on alcohol, drugs and prostitution). Or we can regulate the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

The regulate vs ban debate is a common one, but Savulescu goes on to specify it’s relevance to the unique world of sport:

The rules of a sport are not God-given, but are primarily there for 4 reasons: (1) they define the nature of a particular display of physical excellence; (2) create conditions for fair competition; (3) protect health; (4) provide a spectacle. Any rule must be enforceable. The current zero tolerance to drugs fails on the last three grounds and is unenforceable. The rules can be changed. We can better protect the health of competitors by allowing access to safe performance-enhancement and monitoring their health. We provide a better spectacle if we give up the futile search for undetectable drugs, and focus on measurable issues relevant to the athlete’s health.

Devine opposes using the example of the rise of the power-serve at Wimbledon ruining the game by drawing all the focus onto a single ability instead of well-rounded competition:

Doping poses a similar threat to the balance of excellence in different sports. Lifting the ban on doping would unduly elevate in importance the capacity to metabolise performance-enhancing substances. In addition, the effects of their use on the performance of athletes may elevate certain excellences like power and speed at the expense of others, in a similar way to that which occurred in Wimbledon. Thus, the importance of other excellences in performance would be diminished in a way that is inconsistent with the purposes around which the sport is organised.

Rebuttals from both sides are forthcoming on the 17th of June and a final exchange, complete with comments from readers, will go up on the 24th.

Will we use metal in the future? What else would we build things out of? Might we use organic technology (machines and buildings made of or from biological organisms) instead?”
In The Graduate, that iconic film from 1967, bewildered 20-something Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets some career advice from a businessman who leans close and intones “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.” Benjamin didn’t follow that advice, but the rest of the world did, and in spades. By 1979, global production of plastic had exceeded that of steel and is still growing, reaching over 200 million tons this year. There’s no doubt that plastic will continue to play a major role in how we make things, but it won’t replace everything.

In some ways, plastic is the material of the future, the latest step in humanity’s long upward trek through the ages of stone, bronze, iron, and steel. The word “plastic” comes from Greek roots meaning “capable of being molded.” Compared to metals and other materials, plastic is infinitely versatile. With its ability to shape-shift and to take on different mechanical and optical properties, it shows up in a huge spectrum of applications from packaging and plumbing to toys, medical supplies, and computers. And unlike iron and steel, plastic doesn’t rust.

But plastic also has problems that will prevent it from replacing metals any time soon. Its very durability can be an issue. Discarded plastic objects can survive for centuries in garbage landfills without degrading, and plastic artifacts have been found polluting the oceans far distant from any land. Also, what doesn’t seem to be widely appreciated, the raw material to make plastic comes from a resource we need to conserve, petroleum.

On top of this, metals do some things better than plastic—just try cutting up an apple with a plastic knife. Copper and other metals are needed to conduct electricity through power grids; all plastic can do is insulate the current-carrying wires. However, plastic is making inroads relative to some materials such as wood, which is being replaced by plastic “lumber” in certain applications.

Plastic also offers a possible way to actually construct things using biotechnology. Unlike metals, which are classified as inorganic, plastics are organic; they’re made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, the same constituents as living things, which links plastic to biological products. For instance, under the right conditions, certain microorganisms can synthesize compounds called polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). These display properties like those of artificial plastics, with the benefits that they’re not petroleum-based and are biodegradable. Researchers are investigating ways to mass-produce these bioplastics, for instance by bioengineering plants to create them.

If you want to speculate even further, way past the idea of growing plastic rather than making it in factories, think about the science-fictionish possibility of bioengineering plants to produce plastic exactly in a desired shape from a drinking cup to a house. Current biotechnology is far short of this possibility, but science fiction has a way of pointing to the future. If bioplastics are the materials breakthrough of the 21st century, houses grown from seeds may be the breakthrough of the 22nd.

We see nerve gas often enough on TV and the silver screen that it’s worth understanding out just how it works. VX gas can be deadly when ingested or when it makes contact on the skin. Depending on how much exposure a victim has suffered, it can kill in 10 minutes or a couple of hours. It functions by interfering with the break down of acetylcholine in the muscles. Normally when a nerve fires, acetylcholine is released to cause the muscle to contract. After the contaraction, an enzyme is released to break down the acetylcholine, allowing the muscle to relax. The phosphorous in the VX gas bonds with the enzyme, causing the acetylcholine to stay in place, leading to muscle contractions and spasming. Death can result from asphyxiation, but also from the victim harming themselves while in convulsions.

In the show, the brilliant Dr. Hood comes upon a victim seconds after she has been exposed to the chemical. He does exactly the right thing: He triggers the emergency shower immediately, stripes off the exposed clothing and gets as much of the VX off her as possible. The poison can be countered with an antidote, so people exposed to the gas can be saved if they’re treated in time. They’re only hope is that their exposure is low enough that they can get to the hospital. A high dose can kill in 10 minutes, a low one might take hours to kick in. VX, even in gas form, is heavier than air, so the key to surviving it is to get to fresh air and high ground (which means you have to do the opposite of what you would do in case of a dirty bomb or atomic explosion, where the goal is to avoid radioactive fallout by going inside and staying on the lower floors, as fallout can settle on roofs, so make sure you can tell your apocalyptic scenarios apart!)

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Early in the episode, the late Dr. Graiman tells Knight, via hologram, that he was actually KARR’s first driver. As we know, KARR started programming himself and became a killing machine, forcing the government to scrap the program and build KITT.  To prevent Knight from spilling the beans, they wiped Knight’s memory.  Induced amnesia is a classic of Sci Fi—and of soap operas, and who knows what all— but can it actually be done?

The current theory of memory formation is somewhat in flux, but generally there are four stages: acquisition, consoliddation, storage and retrieval. A 2007 study at the Scripps Research Institute found that the same clusters of neurons that activated during memory formation re-activated during memory retrieval in experiments on mice. the results lend credibility to the reconstruction theory of memory activation which says that when you summon a memory to the forefront of thought, it is actually reconstructed. And if memories are being reconstructed with each use, that process of formation can be interrupted.

After all, memory formation is disturbed by drugs all the time. Ever go on a bender and not remember what happened in the morning? That’s the alcohol interfering with memory formation. At Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Roger Pittman is using propranolol, a high blood pressure medication, to interfere with the creation of memories. In theory, if a patient describes a memory to a psychologist, the memory will be reactivated. But as the memory is reconstructed, the drug interferes with the memory’s formation, allowing the person to forget. Pittman describes his results as very preliminary, so, don’t go expecting to run to CVS for a forgetting drug any time soon.

Another early, promising result on this front comes out of the University of Georgia where Dr. Joe Tsien has found a way to interfere with an enzyme,  calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), crucial to memory formation. Tsien trained a mouse to be afraid of an object. They found that by overstimulating CaMKII, they caused the mouse to forget past associations with the object, even associations as much as a month old.

Of course, there are other, less precise ways to interfere with memory formation. Electroshock Therapy causes memory loss, but also brain damage. And some hypnotists say they can cause memory loss in a willing patient. But Knight was clearly not willing, and brain damage might not be desirable in an elite field operative.

Then again,  Michael Knight needed memories erased of having driven a talking car that could transform into a robot. Maybe they knocked hm out, woke him up, and convinced him that it was all a dream. You know, kind of like the end of Newheart.

But now a group of Dutch researchers at the University of Delft have created substances that behave like totally a new type of element. By heating a silver filament up to just below its melting point, silver atoms begin to evaporate from its surface. These atoms begin to clump together in very specific ways—clumps containing 9, 13 or 55 silver atoms are preferentially formed. These atoms all begin to share electrons. To understand the significance of this you have to understand that most of the chemical, magnetic and electrical properties unique to an atom are based on the behaviour of the outermost electrons that orbit an atom’s nucleus. When the silver atoms in a cluster start sharing electrons, to the outside world the whole cluster looks like one giant superatom with its own unique set of outer electrons—in effect, mimicking the behavior of a totally new, but stable and relatively lightweight, element. Scientists hope to one day make crystals from these types of superatoms, so who knows, we may be making our own mysterious artifacts in a few years.