Memory and Magic

I've never really paid much attention to magic tricks, but after considering the mastery it takes to understand and manipulate human psychology, perceptions and assumptions I think it is actually a really valuable art form. Our minds become lazy with assumptions and then our perceptions of the universe and the way things are become limited. It takes all kind of things to shake up our habitual frame of mind and if making something float or disappear cracks someones perspective wide open, then awesome!

To live is to know

I do agree that to live is to know. To believe that cognition is exclusive to systems with a brain seems like a limited perception. Afer all, if cognition involves the bringing forth of a world, aren't we just making judgements on the way things are, based on our own fabricated little world? In that case, there can be no absolute way that things are, because perceptions are always varied. Nonetheless we humans can sometimes tend to think that there is indeed an absolute way and usually it is a very human-centric perspective. If all living systems are a product of nature then it makes sense that they would be connected to their environment and if everything is in a constant state of change, then wouldn't it take cognizance to know how to adapt and evolve according to the varied conditions it experiences?

Spikes Gallery

Psychedelic beauty. I really love how photomicrography can visually illuminate us by showing us things in a way that we do not usually see with the naked eye. Above is a photomicrograph I found of a cancer drug- pretty wild!

Species in my environment

I live in a tiny cottage with a big garden so its more about what's outside than inside. An indoor desert rose plant, some rose bushes, a vine of jasmine, an apple tree, some chickens (belonging to the neigbour but they stick their heads under our fence all the time so I'm counting them), some hanging chillies (I live with a New Mexican) a couple of humans, some redwoods, a weeping cherry blossom tree, a cumquat tree, the occasional racoon, squirrel and opossom, spiders, ants, birds the list goes on..

Nanotech robots deliver gene therapy through blood

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. researchers have developed tiny nanoparticle robots that can travel through a patient's blood and into tumors where they deliver a therapy that turns off an important cancer gene.

Health

The finding, reported in the journal Nature on Sunday, offers early proof that a new treatment approach called RNA interference or RNAi might work in people.

RNA stands for ribonucleic acid -- a chemical messenger that is emerging as a key player in the disease process.

Dozens of biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies including Alnylam, Merck, Pfizer, Novartis and Roche are looking for ways to manipulate RNA to block genes that make disease-causing proteins involved in cancer, blindness or AIDS.

But getting the treatment to the right target in the body has presented a challenge.

A team at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena used nanotechnology -- the science of really small objects -- to create tiny polymer robots covered with a protein called transferrin that seek out a receptor or molecular doorway on many different types of tumors.

"This is the first study to be able to go in there and show it's doing its mechanism of action," said Mark Davis, a professor of chemical engineering, who led the study.

"We're excited about it because there is a lot of skepticism whenever any new technology comes in," said Davis, a consultant to privately held Calando Pharmaceuticals Inc, which is developing the therapy.

Other teams are using fats or lipids to deliver the therapy to the treatment target. Pfizer last week announced a deal with Canadian biotech Tekmira Pharmaceuticals Corp for this type of delivery vehicle for its RNAi drugs, joining Roche and Alnylam.

In the approach used by Davis and colleagues, once the particles find the cancer cell and get inside, they break down, releasing small interfering RNAs or siRNAs that block a gene that makes a cancer growth protein called ribonucleotide reductase.

"In the particle itself, we've built what we call a chemical sensor," Davis said in a telephone interview. "When it recognizes that it's gone inside the cell, it says OK, now it's time to disassemble and give off the RNA."

In a phase 1 clinical trial in patients with various types of tumors, the team gave doses of the targeted nanoparticles four times over 21 days in a 30-minute intravenous infusion.

Tumor samples taken from three people with melanoma showed the nanoparticles found their way inside tumor cells.

And they found evidence that the therapy had disabled ribonucleotide reductase, suggesting the RNA had done its job.

Davis could not say whether the therapy helped shrink tumors in the patients, but one patient did get a second cycle of treatment, suggesting it might be. Nor could he say if there were any safety concerns.

Davis said that part of the study will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in June.

Gene Therapy

My initial reaction to gene therapy is that it seems terribly wrong. Maybe its an old fashioned way of thinking, but it just seems so counterintuitive to be interfering with our make up to such a degree. How do you make sure it goes into the right place and only there? It kind of scares me to think what might happen if mistakes were made in this procedure. Our modern world is developing so many ways to cover up the inevitability of old age, sickness and death as part of the cycle of life. Not to say that one shouldn't seek out ways to help with illness, but the methods seem to be turning extreme in some search for an ultimate perfection. Ashanti's case is a positive example of how gene therapy can be very beneficial, however the fact that it is not a cure and is a process that requires repetition makes me question how sustainable it really is. Plus the fact that at the end of the day, they can't actually pinpoint that it was gene therapy that improved her health really sounds all too vague to say hooray for gene therapy yet.

Biochemistry definiton

Biochemistry is the chemistry of life, a bridge between biology and chemistry that studies how complex chemical reactions give rise to life.
I've noticed many crossovers in our different science classes and the more connections I see between them helps me to build a more useful understanding of how things come to be, how they function and what they look like when broken down to the tiniest level.