Biotech resources like informative bioengineering articles, interesting bioengineering videos, and lively chatter and bioengineering news.
David Leonhardt asked:
I cracked open the fortune cookie and read the little slip of paper on the inside. Immediately I realized that it had been written by a weather forecaster.
“You will be approached in the late afternoon by a pink polka-dot octopus…”
It continued on the other side: “… and asked to provide details of your application for a yellow cloud mulching permit.”
Two things struck me about this particular fortune. The first is that they have come a long way in their ability to predict exactly what will happen and when, just like weather forecasters. This is undoubtedly due to recent technological developments. Laser technology, for example. Nano technology. Robotics. Bioengineering. And so many other specialized fields have been developed to points of precision unimagined just a generation ago.
And it’s not just the weather forecasters.
In London, Ontario, specialists are performing microscopic cardiac surgery on patients miles away using a robot named CSTAR (Can’t you just wait for new parents to start naming their children after the famous surgeon, CSTAR?). This has opened up the door to many benefits, such as sending robots to remote locations without having to worry about a surgeon replacing the wrong organs due to jet lag.
But the real benefit was revealed when one surgeon confided in me: “You know the world is a better place when we don’t have to scrub our hands before surgery anymore.”
I can call anybody in North America on the telephone and they will answer in real time. Not only is this a better response than I can give people face-to-face, but the telephone cables direct my call to the exact person I want, saving the other 400 million telephone subscribers the inconvenience of having to say, “Wrong number…again!” Just a few decades ago, Switchboard Suzie was manually connecting everybody.
“Janice Land? No problem. I’ll connect you.” CLICK.
“No, wait. I wanted to speak to Janet Lam. Hello?”
My father can pinpoint the exact amount of blood sugar he packs in his veins. Not very long ago, people could not care less how much sugar was in their blood, as long as they had plenty of it in their double-fudge sundaes.
Yes technology has come a long way, allowing us to send and received very specific information in great detail and in great volumes, allowing such thrilling 21st century innovations as spam (I know, I know, the great spam innovators you admire most did their heroic deeds in the 20th century, but you ain’t seen nothing yet!)
Despite the volume of information I receive in my inbox, there is one very disturbing element to all this extra free information, which brings me back to the second thing that struck me about my fortune cookie message.
It was wrong.
I waited all day for that pink polka-dot octopus to approach me, and it never did. Just because modern technology can deliver huge volumes of laser-detailed information, does not make that information valuable or even accurate.
Which brings me back to the revelation that a weather forecaster is now writing fortune cookies. Weather forecasts have become increasingly more precise. For instance, I am told that today it will hail in the town just east of here and be sunny in the town just west of here.
Once upon a time, the forecast would be simply “Sun and hail expected to pass through the region.” Less accurate and less wrong. Just as useless, though.
Maybe we should hire CSTAR to make the fortune cookies. Surely CSTAR would deliver fortunes that are not only precise but also accurate, right? As a bonus, the pastry chefs won’t have to scrub their hands before baking.
And I wouldn’t have to wait for a pink polka-dot octopus all afternoon.
bioengineering
Thank you for visiting Bioengineering Center. Bioengineering is the application of engineering principles to address challenges in the fields of biology and medicine. Bioengineering includes such fields as molecular biology, biochemistry, microbiology, pharmacology and others.
Bioengineers are engineers who use the principles of biology and the tools of engineering to create usable, tangible products. In general, biological engineers attempt to mimic biological systems in order to create products. Bioengineers also study the genetic modification of plants and other living things. This website is for the layperson, and includes articles, videos, and everyday chatter about bioengineering. Thanks again!
...Karen Royall asked:
I’m sure we all have one of those stories where we drank a little too much and spilled our guts about something we had no desire to say. In my social circle we lovingly refer to this phenomenon as ‘word vom.’ My favorite word vom story involves one of my now good friends, Allie. In my sorority, the newly elected leaders go to a conference at the end of January to learn some techniques and transition into their new role. As treasurer, I was paired in a hotel bed with the president, Allie. Sharing a bed obviously meant sharing a bathroom too. Allie had forgotten her contact case that weekend, so she put her contacts in two cups in the bathroom. The next morning, I was parched and blind because I didn’t put in my own contact yet. I fondled around for a cup on the counter, filled it, and drank. I noticed the water was a little foamier than usual (due to the contact solution) but kind of ignored it. Minutes later, as I became less groggy and recovered from sleep inertia, I remembered the misplaced contacts. *Gulp* indeed!
When Allie was in the bathroom I heard noises of frustration and did my best to play ignorance. She told me what happened and I pointed that it could have been one of our roommates from another school and helped her look for a bit. It was so hard to let her look for so long and not say anything, but I was terrified to mess up our newly formed friendship. She spent the rest of the day squinting at everyone through one contact, but I remained firm in my ignorance.
Of course, months layer I spilled the whole story while intoxicated…as intoxicated people will do. Even though I was terrified all this time to tell her, it weirdly made us closer. I still joke that part of her is always with me, since I ingested her contact.
The point of this tale is that even though word vom may make us squirm the next day, it has an uncanny ability to repair misunderstandings. Just this weekend a friend kind of confessed something to me that I had been sort of upset about. The situation ended up being different than what I had thought, and now it’s all good. We unsteadily hugged it out, and even though we’ll probably never talk about it again, the repair to our bond will always be evident. At the end of the day, spilling secrets through word vom makes us all closer. Cheers to that?
Bioengineering Center
Pavel Podolyak asked:
The process, of wrestling NATO’s control away from the Anglo-American partnership, should start immediately while the international recession is relatively young. American economic collapse is forcing US leadership to copy its former ideological colonies of Germany and Japan when it comes to implementing state capitalism. That, in turn, will result in a power vacuum created in central Europe and major risk involving NATO’s structure the way it is led presently.
US always had elements of state capitalism although private sector was far less regulated compared to US’s more state centered ideological colonies in Western Europe. However, decades of de-industrialization, social/structural decay, and military build up brought the need to accelerate ideological compromise. We now see an American president insist on the need for state champions in energy and car production as well as utilization of state organs to shape private sector development. US still has what it takes to pull that off peacefully. If De Gaulle’s France and Putin’s Russia managed to create successful state backed champions under conditions bordering on civil war, then Obama’s America can do the same.
There is sufficient amounts of managerial experience and efficiency enforcement talent to be found domestically. Subsidizing cars and green energy will do for those industries what subsidies for agriculture did. That is, create industrial base for mass cheap exports abroad after years of hard work and political coalition pressure. That will take time however and in the meantime it makes strategic sense to extend state capitalism to biomedical, natural resource extraction, electronics, and agriculture sectors. These three fields, have the most potential for economic stimulation since they are one of the few things US still has an edge on internationally. American oligarchal demands and semi-privatized medical system have created the most advanced pharmaceutical and bioengineering research and development in the world. Bioengineering, organ growing, genetic modification, and resulting transhuman augmentation and life extension, are the best potential kernels of a new American economy. As such, if US government wants to take serious stabilizing steps to save bits of the old capitalist system, it needs to nurture, subsidize, and promote the biomedical sector the way it wants to with the car industry. Biomedical product exports are potentially worth trillions of dollars long term, especially if Koreans and Japanese can be brought aboard as collaborative partners.
If Obama administration is smart and wants to really make US economic decline gradual (rather than sharp and potentially violent), it will also use increasing state capitalism to try to catch up or collaborate with Japan in robotics. A friendly US-Japanese competition in robotic exports, to aging Europe, will bring additional stream of steady revenue to claw out of future dollar default. State control of agriculture and resource extraction is self explanatory when it comes to additional money for disgruntled desperate population. Global warming will allow more land cultivation for crops and the land is rich in coal, uranium, and gas (especially if Canada is brought on board to collaborate in Arctic exploration/extraction). Obama has taken the first steps of taking control of strategic sectors and the pace of state acquisition will accelerate. Proper state subsidies and investments must be made immediately so the lifeline industries are nurtured before the default on the dollar occurs.
How does this relate to central Europe? Central European states have embraced American style free market capitalism with open arms. Legions of US capitalist commisars have flown to educate the fresh faced leaderships of Baltic states and dissolved Warsaw pact members. The Soviet collapse has been so rapid and demoralizing, that the ideology of minimal state capitalism has taken root deeply and broadly as far as the core states of the former Soviet Union itself. In many ways, central Europeans even outdid their American teacher (and new NATO master) in terms of lack of regulation, taxation, and lack of investment in real industry. The supposed success stories, of minimal state capitalism, have been shown in nearly double digit growth rates throughout the former socialist space. The small Baltic countries have shown their proud ability to stand tall next to other speculative paper tigers of Ireland and Iceland. Even the normally cautious American satellite of Germany got into the housing bubble creating action in the 1990s. Supposed post-industrial financial wizardry was so visible, that in 2003 Donald Rumsfeld even proposed to make central Europe the new ideological arm of American power projection.
Germany and France were no longer seen as reliable footholds to violently spread capitalism throughout the world. Franco-German leadership of Chirac and Shroeder were fine with the split between US and Western Europe since it allowed them to pursue their own independent state capitalism with European characteristics. They decided that US lacks the industrial production to continuously exert influence in central Europe. Leading Western European leadership decided to gradually play Americans and Russians against each other while competing with US and Russians in central Europe when it comes to financial investment. With no massive global ideological alternative to warn of the risks, even the neutral well managed Swedish banks poured money into”New Europe” states like Hungary and Latvia.
When the underutilized, communist built, infrastructure once again reached full capacity and when a run on the banks collapsed structural pillars of American union’s capitalism, central Europe went into an even deeper tailspin than United States. Not only did the ideology preached to them by America failed, but now America itself is heading into the state capitalist direction of Germany, France, and Russia. We saw what happens when, the core of an ideology promoting empire changes direction. The power elites of peripheral colonies, even those within the empire sponsored military alliance, often become disillusioned, demoralized, and run into increasing conflict with their own population. Khrushchev’s thaw caused social unrest and colonial rebellion. Then of course, Gorbachev’s top down restructuring and liberalization didn’t just pressure ideological satellites to split and pursue their own political development. It didn’t just result in development of cultural/ideological differences so great that a common military alliance was deemed undesirable. It actually caused backward conservative regions of the federal union itself to secede so they can be free from the betrayal and influence of the liberalizing “capitalist” center.
Now it’s unlikely that Obama’s move, towards restructuring of the state capitalist economy to make it more efficient, will cause anything as drastic as any American region wanting to secede. After all, the great American melting pot and intermingling of ethnic groups produced a much more durable artificial nationality compared to the violence born Soviet one. Surely American evangelicals, blacks, northeastern secular liberals, and Hispanics can work out a way to peacefully decline and restructure without resorting to Yugoslav style nastiness. The last statements are not meant as sarcastic or alarmist. US state capitalist political system allowed some social popular pressure to be released continuously at the polls without being angrily pressurized for decades.
However, the demoralizing effect and demonstration of the minimal state capitalist failure will mean another economic/ideological collapse in the heart of europe. We are seeing industrial drop offs in Hungary, Ukraine , and the Baltic states that resemble the early 90s and American reversals in the early 1930s. US never even had a large enough financial presence in their new ideological colonies since most of the housing bubble money came from EU heavy weights. That means that central Europe will drag economies Western Europe down with them to an undetermined degree as German and Scandinavian Banks find themselves in a Baltic subprime mess of their own. With decrease of EU’s economic support, American ideological betrayal, and Obama administration’s lowered priorities for NATO expansion, regional vacuum can only be filled rapidly by Russia. Kremlin has tangible natural resource and energy exports as well as over 200 billion dollars in saved wealth. China’s 500 billion bailout to create internal demand for its products is beginning to push oil price up again. This means that the oil based ruble is strengthening and can be used to rapidly exert political pressure in the region filled with devalued/ing currencies.
This is why the need for joint French/German take over of NATO is required. Rapid expansion of Russian influence, into a collapsing and socially unstable region (that is still overseen by American puppets like Yuschenko with approval rating of 4%), can result in a potentially violent confrontation with Anglo-American led NATO. US and England still have disproportionate influence within NATO’s structure. Many within the Anglo-American leadership are ideological capitalist internationalists who might not want an American regional rollback. We have already seen how even the puppet leadership of the NATO aspiring country of Georgia can create a hysterical American led reaction. We cannot rely, on Anglo-American internationalists within NATO, to properly handle the situation of minimal state capitalist collapse under the direct NATO umbrella itself. Potential for escalation and violence, would be much greater than during the daring NATO aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999. The world cannot rely on military leadership of an ideologically bankrupt and collapsing society to do the right thing and retreat when the dollar is devalued, social tensions are up, and elections are coming up.
French and Germans should begin efforts to become the new negotiating power center of NATO. If US decides to dissolve the alliance in retaliation, that is fine. Europeans already have protocols to make use of NATO facilities for a new European alliance. If US decides to stay and still provide a nuclear umbrella to augment those of France and England, that is the perfect outcome. It’ll show American people that they are still relevant and soothe England’s fears of being marginalizing completely. Berlin, Paris, and Rome can then pragmatically negotiate with Moscow on security arrangements for the continent. Only negotiation untainted by reactionary idelogy can bring results. This solution allows coordinated preservation of North-Hemispheric stability in a time when state capitalism faces serious challenges from economic and social stagnation. Situation that leads to serious Western infighting, further deterioration of investor confidence, and potential escalating violence must not be allowed to happen. That would allow only China to remain the biggest planetary center of influence with 1 trillion dollars of saved wealth and the only major growing economy. Even briefly, that risks giving an opening that might prove difficult to close.
bioengineering
Karen Royall asked:
Hello, my name is Karen, and I have seen the highly anticipated adaption of Stephenie Meyer’s vampire saga, Twilight, four times in theaters. Yes, i realize that this means I have basically shelled out 40+ dollars to see Robert Pattinson stare broodingly at me for two hours. Yes, I have spent 8+ hours that I should have been using to study for my finals watching scenes that I’d both seen and read before. So now that I’ve given you my credentials for being able to talk about this movie, let me give you some of my insights on how to properly enjoy this movie.
1. Realize that it isn’t Harry Potter
For my first viewing, I went with a group of sorority sisters for a midnight showing. Only about half of us really knew what we were going to see, the rest were basically just looking for a good way to get out of studying for a couple hours. I think the fact that the book is other worldly and popular with younger audiences made a lot of my friends expect the movie to be a big CGI-fireworks-explosions-etc. type of deal. As a result, a lot left disappointed. Expectations can make or break a movie-going experience. Viewers should realize this is a simple story, a love story first and foremost, not an action packed thrill ride.
2. Reading the book is critical
Twilight is actually a pretty slow book (time-wise) when you think about it. The majority of the book takes place in about a week. So much of the book is packed with descriptions of the thoughts of the main character, Bella. Getting into her mind and the love story is really what makes the book. With that being said, truly understanding the characters is important when watching the movie. My friends have criticized the movie’s acting saying the whole thing felt so awkward. Honestly, from my knowledge of the book, I feel the acting is pretty accurate. The book is filled with awkward encounters between Charlie and Bella and Edward and Bella. Reading the book will prepare you for this and understand that both Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson were actually pretty true to character.
3. READ MIDNIGHT SUN!
As you may know, Stephenie Meyer recently posted the first 257 pages of Midnight Sun on her website. The book narrates the events of Twilight in Edward’s point of view. Before I watched the movie for the second time, I read this and it really gave me new insights into Edward’s character and appreciate Pattinson’s portrayal so much more. I also picked up on little things like when Edward suddenly tells Alice to keep her thoughts to herself (she had just had a vision of Bella as a vampire) and why Alice was so creepy telling Bella they’d be friends (she had visions of their friendship!). Reading this will definitely add to your viewing experience and I really hope Stephenie decides to finish it.
4. Listen to the Soundtrack
Before later viewings, I bought the Twilight soundtrack, and I am very glad I did. It was surprisingly awesome. I love every song on the mix and it makes the prefect CD for driving. My personal favorite is the Muse Song (track 1) which is played during the baseball scene. Appreciating the music has really made this movie more enjoyable with repeated viewings.
5. Don’t be afraid to see it more than once
I have escorted many of my friends on their second viewing and they always tell me how much better it is! I experienced the same feelings too, and have even come back for my fourth viewing. So go to a Sunday matinee (and skip being ripped off as much by current box office prices) and treat yourself to seconds.
I really feel true understanding of the characters is the key for appreciating this movie. I was also very impressed with all the supporting characters’ performances and the casting of the Cullens was superb. I really hope their talents are utilized more in the sequels. Hopefully, this review will help you appreciate a movie I have come to love over the past month.
bioengineering
