TR Editors' blog
Insights, opinions, and our editors' analysis of the latest in emerging technologies.
Blog Topics
Recent Posts
Recent Comments
- medison
: Have you considered Green Damn It and biz as usual in China? Mandatory. Not mandatory. Mandatory...
- appleann
: This touching sad short love story is amazing.Sometimes we lie to the ones we love because we are...
- jmaximus9
: The only thing this will do is send the last vestige of American manufacturing to China and...
- gognod
: Why should an employee have to spend an extra 2.5 hours a week at the office and not get paid for...
- chir0pter
: hahahaha
- jjbaulikki
: "While cautioning that the Berlin case could be a fluke" well of course it could be a Fluke
- plasticdoc
: Even though US politicians are aware of European failures in similar policies,they will repeat...
- Siroilas
: I hope you were not serious about altering the gene expression of animals just to create more...
- danbloom
: Do we need a new word for the kind of reading we do on a screen? by Danny Bloom OPED "Do we...
- ...
: Hopefully the use of composites in structural elements is not a mistake, but thanks for catching...
|
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
A new study suggests that hardy proteins may be the key.
By Emily Singer

Two long-lived species of bats appear to have proteins that
are especially resistant to stress, which may explain why they can outlive many
other similar-sized mammals.
According to a press release from the FASEB Journal:
[Asish Chaudhuri, a biochemist at the VA Medical Center, in
San Antonio] and colleagues made
their discovery by extracting proteins from the livers of two long-lived bat
species (Tadarida brasiliensis and Myotis velifer) and young adult mice and
exposed them to chemicals known to cause protein misfolding. After examining
the proteins, the scientists found that the bat proteins exhibited less damage
than those of the mice, indicating that bats have a mechanism for maintaining
proper structure under extreme stress.
Previous research covered by Technology Review
suggested a similar characteristic underlying the lengthy life span of the naked
mole rat, a rodent that can live for up to 30 years, compared to about 3 or 4
years for the average mouse.
The analyses showed that proteins in mole-rat
cells are more resistant to unfolding, making them more stable than those of
mice. The researchers also found evidence that the cells of mole rats have more
efficient mechanisms for getting rid of improperly folded or oxidized proteins . . . The results suggest that naked mole rats can withstand oxidative damage better
by keeping their proteins stable and quickly removing unfolded proteins before
they can accumulate.
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Helen Greiner's stealth-mode robotics company will focus on emergency response.
By Kristina Grifantini
We finally have a hint of what The Droid Works, a stealthy-mode start-up founded by Helen Grenier, one of the
cofounders of iRobot, will develop.
The NSF has given The Droid
Works a grant worth nearly $100,000 to develop indoor and outdoor unmanned air vehicles. According to the report, the UAVs will be used for emergency response:
Indoor applications would enable the UAVs to respond to emergency
situations that involve large steps, closed doors and rough terrain.
The NSF grant will be used to develop indoor flight control and safety
technology for the UAVs.
Other researchers are developing UAVs and other robots to assist with a rescue or survey an area following a disaster. Robin Murphy, a professor of computer science at Texas A&M University, is leading one effort to use snake-like robots to rescue people trapped beneath rubble. More recently she developed a way to use multiply UAVs to survey an area and locate survivors.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Will the cap-and-trade scheme work? Here's what the record in the EU shows.
By David Rotman
According to
most news report, the massive federal energy bill will go to the floor of the
U.S. House of Representatives today--or maybe not (the confusion is typical of
the political posturing that has bedeviled the legislation). The bill is an
admirable effort to try and control the emissions of greenhouse gases, using a cap-and-trade system
that is meant to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions. You can be forgiven,
however, if you haven't read all of the 1,201 pages. Actually,
you can be forgiven if you can't even keep track of who favors the bill and
who doesn't (many traditional environment groups back it, but this week Friends
of the Earth and Greenpeace have both said they oppose it as too weak to address climate change). Today's Washington Post has a good summary.
Perhaps the
most interesting and confusing part of the legislation centers on the details
of the cap-and-trade program. There is ample reasons to worry that the system,
as outlined in the bill, will not be effective in reducing greenhouse gases,
and, more specifically, will not be effective in spurring the development of
innovative new energy technologies. In the current issue of Technology Review, Peter
Fairley, an experienced environment journalist based in Paris looks at how a
similar cap-and-trade scheme has been a failure in Europe. Fairley documents how
the European Union system has given windfall profits to polluting industries and hasn't
spurred any real switch to cleaner energy technologies. The reason for the
failure: politics and special-interest groups meddling with the system to such
an extent that it could no longer function as designed. Says Fairley:
What is especially disappointing is that even as the
Europeans seek to undo many of the features that have made their carbon-trading
system weak and dysfunctional, legislators in Washington seem determined to
repeat their mistakes.
|
 |
Current Issue
- Search Me
- Inside the launch of Stephen Wolfram’s new “computational knowledge engine.”
|
More Technology News from 
|