Is Optogenetics the Key to Solving Disorders of the Brain and Prosthetics?

I found this story though Engadget, but it’s a story coming from Wired, where it goes through the fledgling history of a relatively new field of neuroscience, Optogenetics. Its is the study of using light and modified genes (inserted using modified viruses) to try and alter the brain to cure disorders like Depression and Parkinson’s! The trials from Stanford haven’t gotten past the animal stages yet, but they have started working on rhesus monkeys (which have very similar brains to humans) and already got Parkinson’s mice literally up and running again. The whole thing is very new, but very cool, especially if we can start using blue light to activate brain cells, yellow light to quiet them and green light to send response signals by activating different forms of rhodopsin (Channelrhodopsin-1, Channelrhodopsin-2 and Halorhodopsin).

Check out the article here to get the details, this could be very cool for diseased brains very soon.

Thanks to Wired for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

The George Washington University, The Top Twittering College… Also THE Most Expensive College

Well, not only has my alma matter, The George Washington University, remained the MOST EXPENSIVE college/university in the USA, according to CNN Money, but it’s now the #1 Twittering college/university. The coolest part though is the Washington Post article points out that this was a trait noticed by our current Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates during lectures they gave to GWU students! I loved my time at GWU, I miss Washington, DC now.

Thanks to Brian for sending this article, he didn’t even GO to GWU! Also, thanks to Wikimedia Commons for the above pic.

Enjoy

Dany

*Update 10/15/2009 – Here is the official event details that brought both Hilary Clinton and Robert M. Gates to GWU, along with the video:

Another Week of The Daily Show

It’s been another week of The Daily Show, so I’ve rounded up the best segments from the week of October 5th, 2009.

Here is the United States Secretary of the Navy, Ray Mabus

Apparently the US President Obama is snubbing the Dali Lama and Tibet to appease China, most likely because we want them to side with us against Iran… oh yeah, also because we owe them a TON of money so that we can keep buying their goods

Here is a great story about William Kamkwamba, a boy who created a windmill in his back yard in Malawi, who wrote a book about it, spoke about it at TED and will get to go to college because of this

Enjoy

Dany

President Obama Speaks at Notre Dame and Arizona State Controversy Ensues – Full Video

Not without controversy, President Obama has been keeping busy by speaking at a couple of recent commencement ceremonies. He was first scheduled to speak at Arizona State University, but then news came out that they would not be presenting him with an honorary degree, so Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show did a great piece to suss out this story. Then President Obama was scheduled at the Notre  Dame University commencement, but many Notre Dame faithful were upset that he would be speaking and that he was being presented with an honorary degree. I’m posting the full video from both the Arizona State University and Notre Dame speeches below where you can see that even some people attending the commencements made their objections heard:

Here is his full speech at Arizona Statea:

Thanks to the lovely Jessica for finding that Daily Show video!

Enjoy

Dany

Sebastian’s Voodoo – 3D Animation

I love finding interesting short films, especially those made by enthusiasts. This short is called Sebastian’s Voodoo and was created by Joaquin Baldwin and scored by Nick Favola at the UCLA Animation Workshop. I found this video because of Boing Boing TV (subscribe here).

Watch as a brave voodoo doll tries to save its fellow voodoo dolls from harm. If you can, try and check out the high quality version to get a feel for some of the amazing detail work that went into this!

Enjoy a visually stunning 4 minutes created using Maya and After Effects.

Dany

College Musical From The Monkey Box

I know most have heard of High School Musical, but the sketch comedy gang The Monkey Box (subscribe here) created a somewhat darker comedy trailer for the musical College Musical.

Ahh, memories…

Dany

Research Robots Powered By Gecko Knowhow

There were two videos released on CNET TV (get the CNET News podcast here) where Kara Tsuboi interview the researchers at Stanford, who have been studying how geckos are able to scale walls without falling (watch the video here) and have taken that and adapted a robot they call Stickybot (watch that video here).

Maybe some day the idea of seeing Spiderman scaling walls will not just appear in comics and movies, a person could go to a store and pick up a gecko inspired suit and could add this to their set of rock climbing equipment or something.

Thanks to Stanford for the above pic.

Dany

Fun Physics and Good Cops… Amazing

Thanks to this week’s episode of the Digg Reel, I found two things I rarely get to see, physics made interesting and a good, honest to goodness police officer caught on camera!

The first video is a promotion for Walter Lewin’s amazing lectures he gives yearly at MIT. These lectures were crafted to keep his students having fun throughout learning all the complicated concepts underlying everything in our physical world, but the best part is that these lectures are available online for free from MIT, and also easily available through YouTube and iTunes. Physics I: Classical Mechanics (get it on iTunes or YouTube), Electricity and Magnetism (get it on iTunes or YouTube) and Physics III: Vibrations and Waves (get it on iTunes or YouTube) are all taught by Professor Lewin, who seems both crazy and a whole lot of fun to learn from!

The next video just makes me feel good.

There is always so much news about bad cops, but we rarely hear about police doing a good job and there are a lot more cops doing a good job, they just don’t make the news!

I’m not a huge fan of Jessica Corbin, but this week’s episode of the Digg Reel was hosted by Andrew Bancroft, which was a nice improvement.

Enjoy

Dany

Randy Pausch’s Inspirational “Last Lecture”

This is a lecture created by Randy Pausch from Carnegie Mellon University. He was invited to give this version of the lecture onto Oprah’s show after Dr. Mehmet Oz recommended him.

The lecture is both inspirational and tragic at the same time, but the whole thing is very interesting to see and hear. If you want to see more clips, there is an extensive archive of Randy’s lectures here.Thanks to The Digg Reel (get it here on iTunes) for serving up this clip based on it’s Digg ranking.

On a different note, last year I got to meet Dr. Oz at a NYC cardiology conference, he was an interesting guy who was a real presence everywhere he went.

Dany