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Aubrey de Grey can get $1.5 million for the Methuselah Foundation if enough people vote.

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The Methuselah Foundation Page with some more details if you are interested, to vote
though you only need click on the above link...

http://www.mfoundation.org/index.php?pagename=ufard

Cross posted from advancednano This is a follow up to my recent posting of the myostatin inhibitor drug result in mice.

As noted by the facioscapulohumeral muscular dystrophy (FSHD) society, myostatin inhibitor clinical trials have begun on humans. The first trials on humans actually started in Feb, 2005.

This is related to my article which indicated that testing on mice indicated that myostatin drugs had four times the muscle growth effect as high doses of steroids but with less side effects.


these are pictures of a German boy that naturally has the genes for inhibiting myostatin

There was also the discovery of a superstrong american boy who also has the natural genes for hypermuscles.

"He could do the iron cross when he was 5 months old," said his adoptive mother, Dana Hoekstra of Roosevelt Park. She was referring to a difficult gymnastics move in which a male athlete suspends himself by his arms between two hanging rings, forming the shape of a cross.


Liam has the kind of physical attributes that bodybuilders and other athletes dream about: 40 percent more muscle mass than normal, jaw-dropping strength, breathtaking quickness, a speedy metabolism and almost no body fat.

Liam can run like the wind, has the agility of a cat, lifts pieces of furniture that most children his age couldn't push across a slick floor and eats like there is no tomorrow -- without gaining weight.

Liam Hoekstra was hanging upside down by his feet when he performed an inverted sit-up, his shirt falling away to expose rippled abdominal muscles. It was a display of raw power one might expect to see from an Olympic gymnast. Liam is 19 months old.

The so-called myostatin blockade has generated tremendous interest in the bodybuilding community. Some nutritional supplements claim to block myostatin, but researchers have said the claims are not scientifically valid.

"If the myostatin protein is knocked out, muscles grow and rejuvenate much more quickly," Dr. Larson said. "It has potential for great abuse in the future as the new steroid."

[Despite being born to a troubled mother who gave him up for adoption at birth and Liam being born with a suite of medical problems not related to the muscle genes.] Liam being born four weeks early and had a small hole in his heart. He also had eczema, enlarged kidneys, was lactose intolerant and had severe stomach reflux that made him vomit several times each day, his mother said. Two days after he was born, Liam could stand up and support his weight if someone held his hands to provide balance.

His is one of roughly 100 known cases in the world, according to experts and medical literature.

The clinical study details

Each site will enroll 12 patients. 4 FSHD, 4 LGMD, 4 Becker MD.

Initial toxicity studies are done. There some side effects that are consistent with monoclonal antibody therapy.

This next stage of the trial is to determine dosing at three different levels and clinical efficacy.

Patients must be genetically confirmed.

The MSTN-inhibitor drug is administered via intravenous infusion.

Initial patient visit/transfusion may or may nor require an overnight stay. New infusion every other week for six months and three more months follow-up. Two muscle biopsies are optional.

Patients should have average muscle strength grade of 3. As general rule patient should be able to walk 30 feet unaided except for use of orthotic braces e.g. AFOs.

Phase I and phase II clinical trials are under way.

In Phase I clinical trials, researchers test a new drug or treatment in a small group of people (20-80) for the first time to evaluate its safety, determine a safe dosage range, and identify side effects.

In Phase II clinical trials, the study drug or treatment is given to a larger group of people (100-300) to see if it is effective and to further evaluate its safety.

In Phase III studies, the study drug or treatment is given to large groups of people (1,000-3,000) to confirm its effectiveness, monitor side effects, compare it to commonly used treatments, and collect information that will allow the drug or treatment to be used safely.

OTHER READING:
Other gene therapy and drugs can enhance endurance and longevity

Darpa is working on a variety of ways to augment soldiers.

A common enhancement that is performed now is the improvement of vision

Gene therapy has been used to enhance resistance to radiation.

The article on the muscle bound boy who naturally has the genes that inhibit myostatin.

Wikipedia on myostatin

MD Sports looks at different ways to enhance sports performance legally. They examine myostatin inhibitors.

Crossposted from advancednano.blogspot.com

MIT Technology Review reports: The drug ACE-031 has been found to reproduce the enhanced muscle growth effect caused by certain genes. Genetic manipulation in mice can cause 4 times the muscle growth. The drug mimics the effect of gene therapy and appears to be a super-steroid without the harmful effects and is using a different process than steroids.


The dog in the photo is supermuscular because of naturally occurring mutations that silence both versions of the myostatin gene. Called bully whippets, these dogs are rarely champion racers. However, animals with one mutated and one normal version of the gene are more muscular than typical animals and are among the breed’s fastest racers. Credit: Stuart Isett, Polaris

Mice given the new drug show a 30 to 60 percent increase in muscle mass, and mice with a version of muscular dystrophy show increased grip strength, a standard measure of rodent strength. Preliminary results from primate studies show that the animals on the drug bulk up at similar rates to those seen in rodents. "Before I became involved with Acceleron, if someone had told me you could increase muscle mass by up to 60 percent in a month, I never would have believed it," says CEO John Knopf.

While it's not yet clear if similar rates will be seen in humans, high doses of anabolic steroids, which carry serious side effects, increase muscle mass by a maximum of 15 to 20 percent. And because myostatin is found only in muscle, knocking it out does not appear to have the adverse effects of broader-acting steroids.

Says Evans, "I think these drugs, perhaps used in combo with exercise, might have great potential in reversing the trend toward increasing obesity and decreasing muscle mass."

Cross posted from advancednano

Craig Venter indicates his support of the goal of cognitive enhancement, a core transhumanist objective, while discussing the movie Blade Runner

Blade Runner was a landmark film that was prescient in anticipating globalization, genetic engineering, and biometric security. It also had influence in architecture and in movies and anime. It presented a plausible future environment. It projected the ethnodemographic (more asians and hispanics in the USA) shifts and that large corporations would have superior technology to what is available to law enforcement.

Craig Venter says:

The movie [Blade Runner] has an underlying assumption that I just don't relate to: that people want a slave class. As I imagine the potential of engineering the human genome, I think, wouldn't it be nice if we could have 10 times the cognitive capabilities we do have? But people ask me whether I could engineer a stupid person to work as a servant. I've gotten letters from guys in prison asking me to engineer women they could keep in their cell. I don't see us, as a society, doing that

Ray Kurzweil's comment on Blade Runner:

"The scenario of humans hunting cyborgs doesn't wash because those entities won't be separate. Today, we treat Parkinson's with a pea-sized brain implant. Increase that device's capability by a billion and decrease its size by a hundred thousand, and you get some idea of what will be feasible in 25 years. It won't be, 'OK, cyborgs on the left, humans on the right.' The two will be all mixed up."

Crossposted from advancednano

Some people have said that the Google Lunar Xprize cannot be won

I think winning the prize is doable. Note: the people (Spaceshipone) and teams who tried to win the last xprize collectively spent more than the prize amount. The winners alone spent 2.5 times the prize the amount.

$10 million to get to orbit with a Dnepr rocket. (A cheap SpaceX falcon launch is also possible) The rules do not say that you have to make your own rocket.

550 kg (with ST-1) to Trans Lunar Injection. Not sure how much the ST-1 stage costs. Probably better to just take the basic rocket to ISS level or slightly higher orbit with about 3000kg and then try to use low energy maneuvers from there.

Probably would have to use the Interplanetary transport network for lower power movement between the earth and the moon
A low energy transfer was achieved from the earth to the moon using the Japanese satellite Hiten


The Hiten spacecraft that made it from earth orbit to lunar orbit

Description of the three body method to get to the moon with one tenth the fuel or using ion drive propulsion

The basic look of the low energy solution route

There has been a fair bit of theoretical work on the interplanetary low energy gravitional tube system

Hiten weighed about 197kg fully fueled

A slow 5 month maneuver. You are then in lunar orbit. 500-2000kg.


the old lunar LEM, descent module was 10 tons but it was carrying the 5 ton ascent module.

You make a small descent lander. You can make it smaller than Apollo LM modules. No need to carry ascent module down. No need to carry two astronauts or life support.

Mars Sojourner weighed about 11kg.

You need to make a lineup the Dnepr ride, orbiter stage, plan out the low energy transfer from earth to lunar orbit, descent module and a rover.

There is already a Nasa challenge on the lunar lander. Armidillo seems likely to win that.

the Armidillo lander, which was developed for the 2 million lunar lander challenge

From the xPrize site: The hover times (for the lunar lander challenge) are calculated so that the Level 2 mission closely simulates the power needed to perform the real lunar mission.

So putting this together rocket to orbit, earth orbit to lunar orbit low energy transfer, lunar lander and rover is just a matter of assembling the pieces. My bet is that Armidillo Aerospace can win the Google challenge. The question is why NASA is not sending a constant stream of larger robot vehicles to the moon now using low energy transfers. There should also be ion drive tugs going between the earth and the moon and back again.

FURTHER READING Google's blog discusses the reasons for Google's sponsorship of the prize

Cross posted from advancednano

We are getting closer to cyborgs that are as strong and as fast as people. New rocket powered robotic arm is ten times more powerful than commercial versions available now.

The prototype rocket powered mechanical arm can lift (curl) about 20 to 25 pounds – three to four times more than current commercial arms – and can do so three to four times faster.

“That means it has about 10 times as much power as other arms despite the fact that the design hasn’t been optimized yet for strength or power,” Goldfarb says.

Rocket arm

The mechanical arm also functions more naturally than previous models. Conventional prosthetic arms have only two joints, the elbow and the claw. By comparison, the prototype’s wrist twists and bends, and its fingers and thumb open and close independently.

The Vanderbilt arm is the most unconventional of three prosthetic arms under development by a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) program. The other two are being designed by researchers at the Advanced Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who head the program. Those arms are powered by batteries and electric motors. The program is also supporting teams of neuroscientists at the University of Utah, California Institute of Technology and the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago who are developing advanced methods for controlling the arms by connecting them to nerves in the users’ bodies or brains.

Goldfarb’s power source is about the size of a pencil and contains a special catalyst that causes hydrogen peroxide to burn. When this compound burns, it produces pure steam. The steam is used to open and close a series of valves. The valves are connected to the spring-loaded joints of the prosthesis by belts made of a special monofilament used in appliance handles and aircraft parts. A small sealed canister of hydrogen peroxide that easily fits in the upper arm can provide enough energy to power the device for 18 hours of normal activity.

One of their immediate concerns was protecting the wearer and others in close proximity from the heat generated by the device. They covered the hottest part, the catalyst pack, with a millimeter-thick coating of a special insulating plastic that reduced the surface temperature enough so it was safe to touch.

To allow for thermal expansion, the engineers replaced the arm’s nine valves with a set machined to a slightly lower tolerance, approximately 100 millionths of an inch. “We were astonished at by the difference between 50-millionths and 100-millionths: It made all the difference in the world,” says Goldfarb.

Their biggest problem operating with hot gas turned out to be finding belt material that was strong enough and could withstand the high temperatures involved. They found a material that works: the engineering thermoplastic polyether ether ketone

Cross posted from advancednano

Michael Anissimov over at Accelerating Future discusses CNN polls that CNN presented as part of their future summit

One facet of enhancement that is not controversial but is widespread is vision enhancement. In the further reading section, I refer to my past articles on other methods of enhancement which are being developed such as regeneration, life extension and cognitive enhancement. I believe the most important and likely enhancements are those that provide a economic benefit and boosts individual and group productivity or reduce costs such as superior health.

This article at Slate discusses how LASIK eye surgery can provide a sports performance advantage.

McGwire's custom-designed lenses improved his vision to 20/10, which means he could see at a distance of 20 feet what a person with normal, healthy vision could see at 10 feet. Think what a difference that makes in hitting a fastball. Imagine how many games those lenses altered.

Tiger Woods, who had lost 16 straight tournaments before his [LASIK] surgery, ended up with 20/15 vision and won seven of his next 10 events.

In 2004, 69 percent of traditional LASIK patients in a study had 20/16 vision six months after their surgery, and new "wavefront" technology raised the percentage to 85. Odds are, if you're getting LASIK, you're getting enhanced.

This emedicine article discusses what perfect vision is

To the refractive surgery patient in year 2000, achieving an uncorrected visual acuity of 20/20 after refractive surgery was considered a success. Ongoing research in this field is focused on further improving these results. Realizing that 20/20 does not represent perfect vision is important because many young healthy adults have visual acuities of 20/15 to 20/12. If optical aberrations in the eye could be eliminated, the theoretical limit of foveal acuity would be 20/12 for a small pupil and up to 20/5 for a dilated pupil.

Achieving super vision by using custom ablation

In 100 eyes with 3-months follow-up, postoperative UCVA of 20/15 or better was 45.0%, 20/20 or better was 89.0%, and 20/40 or better was 99.8%. These compared favorably with those completed with conventional ablation, which showed postoperative UCVA of 20/15 or better was 29.0%, 20/20 or better was 84.0%, and 20/40 or better was 99.5%. Some other studies have achieved 29% with 20/12.5.

Using better lasers for LASIK

There is a reversible and correctable LASIK treatment in development called pai-lasik which uses a photoablative inlay The plastic inlay is sculpted by the excimer laser and, then, left in between the flap and the underlying stroma.

FURTHER READING Gene therapy status

January 2007, there are 1,260 gene therapy clinical trials in progress.

Millions will get gene therapy for disease treatment. Gene therapy, RNA interference and RNA activation will be used to restore vision to the blind, help control obesity and it will be used to enhance people so that everyone who so chooses can have what today are superior physical and mental gifts.

Here are some of my past articles on transhuman enhancement

Here are my past articles on advances that are leading to human regeneration

Here are my past articles on advances towards life extension

here are my articles on brain enhancement, brain/computer interfacing and brain science advances

Here are my past articles on cognitive enhancement

Here are my past articles on robotics

Crossposted from advancednano.blogspot.com

Synthetic biology and synthetic life are about to make several major milestones

Note: the synthesis of 580,000 base pairs of DNA is significant. 3 million base pairs make up a ribosome. Being able to synthesize 580,000 base pairs in 2007 suggests that we could be 1 to 2 years from synthesizing our own ribosomes. It could also mean that there may not be serious hurdles to very long synthesizing of millions and billions of base pairs. There is the question of error rates, but synthesize sequences could be error corrected. This could be a powerful bootstrapping method to achieving molecular manufacturing. DNA nanotechnology would see rapid leaps in capability.

Synthesizing and replacing a bacteria's genome and sequencing DNA 13-15 times longer than previous record:

Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute in Rockville, Md., hope to take a giant stride in synthetic biology by creating a piece of DNA 580,076 units in length from simple chemicals, chiefly the material that constitutes DNA’s four-letter chemical alphabet. This molecule would be an exact copy of the genome of a small bacterium. Dr. Venter says he then plans to insert it into a bacterial cell. If this man-made genome can take over the cell’s functions, Dr. Venter should be able to claim he has made the first synthetic cell.

Though human cells effortlessly duplicate a genome of three billion units, the longest piece of DNA synthesized so far is just 35,000 [I have seen papers claiming 45,000 base pairs] units long.

Synthetic biologists have lofty goals

Adherents of the [synthetic biology] held their third annual conference last month in Zurich but their creations are still at the toy rocket stage. A dish of bacteria that generates a bull’s eye pattern in response to the chemicals in its environment. A network of genes that synthesizes the precursor chemical to artemisin, an anti-malaria drug. “The understanding of networks and pathways is really in its infancy and will be a challenge for decades,” says James J. Collins, a biomedical engineer at Boston University.

That hasn’t stopped synthetic biologists from dreaming. “Grow a house” is on the to-do list of the M.I.T. Synthetic Biology Working Group, presumably meaning that an acorn might be reprogrammed to generate walls, oak floors and a roof instead of the usual trunk and branches. “Take over Mars. And then Venus. And then Earth” —the last items on this modest agenda.

“The real killer app for this field has become bioenergy,” Dr. Collins says. Under the stimulus of high gas prices, synthetic biologists are re-engineering microbes to generate the components of natural gas and petroleum. Whether this can be done economically remains to be seen. But one company, LS9 of San Carlos, Calif., says it is close to that goal. Its re-engineered microbe “produces hydrocarbons that look, smell and function” very similarly to those in petroleum, said Stephen del Cardayre, the company’s vice president for research.

FURTHER READING
Cost of DNA synthesis. 0.01 to 70 cents per base pair in early 2007 (maybe 0.01 cent per BP already for George Church process) and projected to be about one/2000th of a cent per base pair in 2016

Synthetic biology making viruses that are over 100 times more effecive at fighting biofilms

Crossposted from advancednano.blogspot.com

Quote from Deathrace 2000.
Machine Gun Joe VeTurbo: Frankenstein! You want Frankenstein? I'll give you Frankenstein!
[Joe opens fire into the stands]

From the times Online, the creation of insects (moths) whose flesh grows around computer parts – known from science fiction as ‘cyborgs’ – has been described as one of the most ambitious robotics projects ever conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the research and development arm of the US Department of Defense. The moth will be capable of landing in an area without arousing suspicion, all the while beaming video and other information back to its masters via what its developers refer to as a “reliable tissue-machine interface.”

Moths are creatures that need little food and can fly all kinds of places," he continued. "A bunch of experiments have been done over the past couple of years where simple animals, such as rats and cockroaches, have been operated on and driven by joysticks, but this is the first time where the chip has been injected in the pupa stage and ‘grown’ inside it. “Once the moth hatches, machine learning is used to control it

Debates such as those over stem cell research would “pale in comparison” to the increasingly blurred distinction between creatures – including humans – and machines, Mr Brooks, told an audience at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science.

“Biological engineering is coming. There are already more than 100,000 people with cochlear implants, which have a direct neural connection, and chips are being inserted in people’s retinas to combat macular degeneration. By the 2012 Olympics, we’re going to be dealing with systems which can aid the oxygen uptake of athletes.

Weaponized Insects

I would note that you could also use this technology to control poisonous insects.

Weaponization of insects:
Control bugs to spread disease in a more controlled way
Control poisonous bugs for assassinations
Control bugs and have them lay eggs to destroy crops (locusts)

Also, note you can use gene therapy, RNA interference and activation to enhance characteristics of your weaponized insect. Have your bug fly faster and farther, have its venom be more deadly, attach artificial poison sacks and needles etc...

Have your bug hitch a ride on your cyborg controlled falcon.

On the plus side you could control bees and stuff for more precise pollination for better agriculture.

This is related to the Chinese implanting a chip to control the flight of a pidgeon

A peer to peer network of cyborg moths

A point brought up by Jamais Cascio (how do they relay the information out): On the electronics side a lot of the smart dust work for low power systems can be ported over to the Hybrid insect-MEMS.

I would think that they could do some peer to peer transfers. A lot of moths. With peer to peer you can create redundancy so that if you destroy one moth and set of sensors you can still operate.

Also look at the optical communication options for smart dust.

For a major node with more power and range stick it onto a pidgeon or larger bird. It could also be the master long-range instruction receiver.

Crossposted from advancednano.blogspot.com

Some dismiss the view that the world and the technology that will be impacting it will be substantially different (or worse) in 2030 versus now. Even a thread on betterhumans has this discussion. The original poster is confused or purposely misinterpreting various predictions related the Singularity and to life extension.

I believe that we will see substantial progress in many areas and in this article I will focus on life extension. I am very confident in the power of specific social and technology changes that I see developing or spreading over the next 23 years. I will review what has happened from 1984 to 2007 (the same amount of time between 2007 and 2030). I will review the state of life expectancy in other places in the world now. I will look at some "mainstream" work to improve life expectancy and health. I will discuss what I expect from SENS.

Many might look at the differences between 1984 and 2007 and think that there will only be similar differences bettween 2007 and 2030.

Changing life expectancy shows that life expectancy in the USA at birth in 1984 was 74.7 years overall and 78.4 for women and 71 for men. In 2007, it is estimated to be 78 years overall and 80.97 for women and 75.15 for men

Some countries (Japan and Andorra) have a longevity advantage over the United States 2007 that the people in US have over people in the US livnig in 1984

Country	Overall	Men	Women
USA 1984	74.7	71	78.4
USA 2007	78	75.15	80.97
Andorra	83.52	80.62	86.62
Japan	82.02	78.67	85.56

4 to 5.5 years longer overall (for best countries versus USA 2007)
3.3 years overall (USA 2007 versus USA 1984)

3.4 to 5.5 years longer for men (best countries versus USA 2007)
4.1 years longer for men USA 2007 versus USA 1984

4.6 to 5.7 years longer for women in best countries versus USA 2007
3.5 year longer for women USA 2007 versus USA 1984

A Harvard study shows that there are eight large demographic groups of americans in terms of life expectancy. Asian Americans have life expectancies similar to what Japan has overall.

The primary cause of the disparities between racial and geographic groups is early death from chronic disease and injuries, an analysis of data from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics showed.

Asian-American women living in Bergen County, NJ, enjoy the greatest life expectancy in the US, at 91 years. American Indians in South Dakota have the worst, at 58 years.

The differences were attributed to a combination of injuries and such preventable risk factors as smoking, alcohol, obesity, high blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, diet and physical inactivity -- particularly among people from 15 years to 59 years of age. They were not due to income, insurance, infant mortality, AIDS or violence, said the study's lead investigator, Christopher J.L. Murray, director of the Harvard Initiative for Global Health.

Seventh day adventist claim their lifestyle choices enable 4-9 years of life expectancy increase for men and 2 to 7.5 years for women Lifestyle and health advisors and academic studies also seem to indicate that lifestyle and diet choices can add 4-10 years to life expectancy This is about 5-13%.

Life extension is discussed at wikipedia

I have discussed life extension in previous articles

I believe that by 2030 gene therapy will be widespread and fairly advanced. I base this on the 1200 some current clinical studies of gene therapy This would help people to get closer to the genetic advantages of the longest lived groups now and enable the mimicking of lifestyle longevity benefits using pills or other treatments.

Substantial progress against major pathological killers such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes and other diseases are occuring.

I believe that the Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence (SENS) is a good plan. SENS could help contibute to a far greater increase in life expectancy. However, SENS success is dependent on both successful science and development and on the funding that it receives.

For public health, we would need to clean up environmental air and water pollution using cleaner energy sources (solar, wind, geothermal, hydroelectric, nuclear etc...). I see this being achieved with the nuclear resurgence and other energy trends. We would also need to reduce traffic deaths. I see this being achieved with robotic cars and advanced collision avoidance systems.

Achieving three times or more progress in longevity from 2007 to 2030 versus 1984 to 2007 seems very achievable. This will be from public health improvements, disease cures or treatments, lifestyle improvements (from behavior or with medical assistance) and success from direct progress against the processes of aging. This would mean going from a life extension increase of 0.1 to 0.2 years each year to 0.5 years. For individuals, one needs to look at the progress being made for the age that you are. If you are 65 years of age in 2030, then what would effect you personally is the year after year improvement in life expectancy for those aged 65. Progress is also being made on that front.

Initial SENS success would go beyond what is described here to increase the maximum lifespan. Going from life expectancies of 90-95 years up to 120-125 years and maximum lifespans of 150 years with initial treatments. Continued progress would be from further advances such as from nanomedicine.