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etoy: Eine Kunstfirma und die Ewigkeit
Mit etoy.MONOROM und etoy.ZAI
Moderation: Ania Mauruschat [MP3 | 39,9 MB]

MAKING A BIT OF ME
Feb 18th 2010, The Economist


A machine that prints organs is coming to market

THE great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be
able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a
patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable
donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The
ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve
suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with
the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing
human tissue and organs.

The new machine, which costs around $200,000, has been developed by
Organovo, a company in San Diego that specialises in regenerative
medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in
Melbourne, Australia. One of Organovo's founders, Gabor Forgacs of the
University of Missouri, developed the prototype on which the new 3D
bio-printer is based. The first production models will soon be
delivered to research groups which, like Dr Forgacs's, are studying
ways to produce tissue and organs for repair and replacement. At
present much of this work is done by hand or by adapting existing
instruments and devices.

To start with, only simple tissues, such as skin, muscle and short
stretches of blood vessels, will be made, says Keith Murphy, Organovo's
chief executive, and these will be for research purposes. Mr Murphy
says, however, that the company expects that within five years, once
clinical trials are complete, the printers will produce blood vessels
for use as grafts in bypass surgery. With more research it should be
possible to produce bigger, more complex body parts. Because the
machines have the ability to make branched tubes, the technology could,
for example, be used to create the networks of blood vessels needed to
sustain larger printed organs, like kidneys, livers and hearts.

PRINTING HISTORY
Organovo's 3D bio-printer works in a similar way to some
rapid-prototyping machines used in industry to make parts and
mechanically functioning models. These work like inkjet printers, but
with a third dimension. Such printers deposit droplets of polymer which
fuse together to form a structure. With each pass of the printing
heads, the base on which the object is being made moves down a notch.
In this way, little by little, the object takes shape. Voids in the
structure and complex shapes are supported by printing a "scaffold" of
water-soluble material. Once the object is complete, the scaffold is
washed away.

Researchers have found that something similar can be done with
biological materials. When small clusters of cells are placed next to
each other they flow together, fuse and organise themselves. Various
techniques are being explored to condition the cells to mature into
functioning body parts--for example, "exercising" incipient muscles
using small machines.

Though printing organs is new, growing them from scratch on scaffolds
has already been done successfully. In 2006 Anthony Atala and his
colleagues at the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine in
North Carolina made new bladders for seven patients. These are still
working.

Dr Atala's process starts by taking a tiny sample of tissue from the
patient's own bladder (so that the organ that is grown from it will not
be rejected by his immune system). From this he extracts precursor
cells that can go on to form the muscle on the outside of the bladder
and the specialised cells within it. When more of these cells have been
cultured in the laboratory, they are painted onto a biodegradable
bladder-shaped scaffold which is warmed to body temperature. The cells
then mature and multiply. Six to eight weeks later, the bladder is
ready to be put into the patient.

The advantage of using a bioprinter is that it eliminates the need for
a scaffold, so Dr Atala, too, is experimenting with inkjet technology.
The Organovo machine uses stem cells extracted from adult bone marrow
and fat as the precursors. These cells can be coaxed into
differentiating into many other types of cells by the application of
appropriate growth factors. The cells are formed into droplets 100-500
microns in diameter and containing 10,000-30,000 cells each. The
droplets retain their shape well and pass easily through the inkjet
printing process.

A second printing head is used to deposit scaffolding--a sugar-based
hydrogel. This does not interfere with the cells or stick to them. Once
the printing is complete, the structure is left for a day or two, to
allow the droplets to fuse together. For tubular structures, such as
blood vessels, the hydrogel is printed in the centre and around the
outside of the ring of each cross-section before the cells are added.
When the part has matured, the hydrogel is peeled away from the outside
and pulled from the centre like a piece of string.

The bio-printers are also capable of using other types of cells and
support materials. They could be employed, Mr Murphy suggests, to place
liver cells on a pre-built, liver-shaped scaffold or to form layers of
lining and connective tissue that would grow into a tooth. The printer
fits inside a standard laboratory biosafety cabinet, for sterile
operation. Invetech has developed a laser-based calibration system to
ensure that both print heads deposit their materials accurately, and a
computer-graphics system allows cross-sections of body parts to be
designed.

Some researchers think machines like this may one day be capable of
printing tissues and organs directly into the body. Indeed, Dr Atala is
working on one that would scan the contours of the part of a body where
a skin graft was needed and then print skin onto it. As for bigger body
parts, Dr Forgacs thinks they may take many different forms, at least
initially. A man-made biological substitute for a kidney, for instance,
need not look like a real one or contain all its features in order to
clean waste products from the bloodstream. Those waiting for
transplants are unlikely to worry too much about what replacement body
parts look like, so long as they work and make them better.

FLAT PACK
Mar 4th 2010, The Economist


Transport: A collapsible shipping container could help reduce the
environmental impact of transporting goods

OVERHAULING an industry of which you know little is not easy, but
neither is it impossible. In 1956 Malcolm McLean, a trucker from North
Carolina, launched the first "intermodal" shipping container, which
could be transferred easily between lorries, trains and ships. It
revolutionised the transport of goods by abolishing the traditional
(and back-breaking) system of "break bulk" loading, and thus helped oil
the wheels of globalisation. Now another outsider to the shipping
industry is trying to get a similar change under way.

Rene Giesbers, a heating-systems engineer from the Netherlands, has
invented a collapsible plastic shipping container which, he hopes, will
replace McLean's steel design. Because it is made of a fibreglass
composite, it weighs only three-quarters as much as a standard
container but--more importantly-- when empty, it can be folded down to
a quarter of its size. The composite is more resistant to corrosion
than the steel it replaces, is easier to clean and floats. It is also
greener to manufacture. Making one of the new containers produces 25%
of the carbon dioxide that would be generated by the manufacture of its
steel counterpart.

A collapsible shipping container would be useful for several reasons.
Patterns of trade mean that more goods travel from China to America,
for example, than the other way around, so ships, trains and lorries
inevitably carry some empty containers. If these were folded, there
would be more room for full containers and some vessels would be
liberated to ply different routes. If collapsed containers were bundled
together in groups of four, ships could be loaded more quickly, cutting
the time spent in ports. They would also take up less space on land,
allowing depots to operate more efficiently.

Mr Giesbers is not the first to invent a collapsible container. Several
models were experimented with in the early 1990s but failed to catch
on, mainly because of the extra work involved in folding and unfolding
them. There were also concerns about their strength. Mr Giesbers says
the Cargoshell, as he has dubbed his version, can be collapsed or
opened in 30 seconds by a single person using a forklift truck. It is
now undergoing tests to see if it is strong enough to meet
international standards.

There are currently about 26m containers in the world, and the volume
of goods they carry has risen from 13.5m "twenty-foot equivalent units"
in 1980 to almost 140m today. It is expected to reach 180m by 2015. Mr
Giesbers aims to have 1m Cargoshells plying the seas, rails and roads
by 2020, equivalent to 4% of the market.

Bart Kuipers, a harbour economist at Erasmus University in Rotterdam,
thinks that is a little ambitious, but he reckons the crate could win
2-3% of the market. He thinks it is the container's lower weight,
rather than its collapsibility, that makes it attractive. It will
appeal to firms worried about their carbon footprints--and if oil
prices rise, that appeal will widen.

Ultimately, the main obstacle to the introduction of the Cargoshell may
be institutional rather than technical. As Edgar Blanco, a logistics
expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, points out,
"Everyone is vested in the current system. Introducing a disruptive
technology requires a major player to take a huge risk in adopting it.
So the question will always boil down to: who pays for the extra cost,
and takes the initial risk?"

probably a very interesting approach to track and collect fundamental body data of our pilots:

---health monitoring tools get popular (and cheap)---

www.wired.com article mentioning products (listed at the end of this post)

another another wired article about the topic:
excerpt:
"...Self-trackers seem eager to contribute to our knowledge about human life. The world is full of potential experiments: people experiencing some change in their lives, going on or off a diet, kicking an old habit, making a vow or a promise, going on vacation, switching from incandescent to fluorescent lighting, getting into a fight. These are potential experiments, not real experiments, because typically no data is collected and no hypotheses are formed. But with the abundance of self-tracking tools now on offer, everyday changes can become the material of careful study.

When magnifying lenses were invented, they were aimed at the cosmos. But almost immediately we turned them around and aimed them at ourselves. The telescope became a microscope. We discovered blood cells. We discovered spermatozoa. We discovered the universe of microorganisms inside ourselves. The accessible tools of self-tracking and numerical analysis offer a new kind of microscope with which to find patterns in the smallest unit of sociological analysis, the individual human. But the notion of a personal microscope isn't quite right, because insight will come not just from our own numbers but from combining them with the findings of others. Really, what we're building is what climate scientist Jesse Ausubel calls a macroscope.

The basic idea of a macroscope is to link myriad bits of natural data into a larger, readable pattern. This means computers on one side and distributed data-gathering on the other. If you want to see the climate, you gather your data with hyperlocal weather stations maintained by amateurs. If you want to see traffic, you collect info from automatic sensors placed on roadways and cars. If you want new insights into yourself, you harness the power of countless observations of small incidents of change—incidents that used to vanish without a trace. And if you want to test an idea about human nature in general, you aggregate those sets of individual observations into a population study.

The macroscope will be to our era of science what the telescope and the microscope were to earlier ones. Its power will be felt even more from the new questions it provokes than from the answers it delivers. The excitement in the self-tracking movement right now comes not just from the lure of learning things from one's own numbers but also from the promise of contributing to a new type of knowledge, using this tool we all build..."

(self)tracking products:

sleeptracker: $179

fitbit / a clip that transfers activity data to computer
"Did I get enough exercise today? How many calories did I burn? Am I getting good rest?"
    for $99

zeo sleep phase tracker: for $350 (including sleep phase alarm clock system!?)

tracking your babies data: Rich, informative charts and striking visualizations provide insight to your amazing baby's needs and daily rhythms. Share your site online so that parents, family, nannies and caregivers can stay connected with each other. 

AXBO - SLEEP PHASE ALARM CLOCK (schlafphasenwecker) costs 179euro

eintritt frei: www.brainfair-zurich.ch
nach etoy.ALBERTOs Vortrag über NEUROSCIENCE hier  die spezialisten an der uni zürich: 
programm samstag 20.3.

und hier noch die diskussionsforen:

Universität Zürich, Rämistrasse 71, Gebäude KO2-Hörsaal 180 - Stock F

Erfüllte und enttäuschte Hoffnungen in den Neurowissenschaften und der Neurologie
Montag, 15. März, 18.30-20.30 Uhr
Mit Hanns Möhler (Neuropharmakologe), Hans-Rudolf Olpe (Neuropharmakologe, PD Dr. em. Universität Basel), Marco Mumenthaler (Neurologe)
Moderation: Steffen Lukesch, Redaktor Tagesschau SF

Bildgebung in der Psychiatrie: Einsichten und Erkenntnisse
Dienstag, 16. März, 18.30-20.30 Uhr
Mit Erich Seifritz (Psychiater), Klaas E. Stephan (Arzt & Neurowissenschafter) und Uwe Herwig (Psychiater)
Moderation: Marina Villa, Kommunikationsberaterin 

Fortschritte in den klinischen Neurowissenschaften beim Kind
Mittwoch, 17. März, 18.30-20.30 Uhr
Mit Eugen Boltshauser (Neuropädiater), Susanne Walitza (Kinder- und Jugendpsychiaterin), Anita Rauch (Medizinische Genetikerin)
Moderation: Barbara Reye, Wissenschaftsjournalistin Tages-Anzeiger

Virtuelle Welten, zusammen mit dem Theater COLORi
Donnerstag, 18. März, 18.30-20.30 Uhr
Mit Olaf Blanke (Neurowissenschafter, EPFL), Peter Brugger (Neuropsychologe), Theodor Landis (Neurologe, Universität Genf)
Moderation: Marina Villa, Kommunikationsberaterin

Grenzen und Möglichkeiten der Bildgebung
Samstag, 20. März, 10.00-12.00 Uhr
Mit Fritjof Helmchen (Neurophysiologe), Peter Boesiger (Physiker) und Martin Meyer (Neuropsychologe)
Moderation: Steffen Lukesch, Redaktor Tagesschau SF

After 8 years it's so liberating!

WE DO NOT SUPPORT IE6 ANYMORE.
Art is not made for old-fashioned browsers of past generations.

IE6 does not support PNG transparency.
IE6 does not know position:fixed;
IE6 does not know what to do with min-height;

Read more about the IE6 Funeral
check the funeral images on flicker
read the Official Google Enterprise Blog
CSS IE6 mess

When first exposed to the MISSION ETERNITY logo people frequently pronounce it as: "Moo". Today I learned that the Kanji 無 (Mu/"Moo") means Nothingness!

The only other significant meaning of this pronunciation refers to the sound of cows, Swiss cows!

Further reading:

The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitaro. By R.J.J. Wargo

Dilettantismus als Strategie und als Bergdisteln in der Schweiz leben und die Provinzialität ausnützen: Interview im persönlich

Auszug:

Herr Meier, am Dienstag sind Sie an den Swiss Music Awards gemeinsam mit Boris Blank mit dem Achievement Award ausgezeichnet worden. Wieso?
- Dies selbst zu beurteilen, ist nicht ganz einfach. Möglicherweise hängt dies damit zusammen, dass wir beide Dilettanten sind. Und dass wir aus diesem Dilettantismus heraus unsere eigene musikalische Welt geschaffen haben. Wir waren nie gefangen im Können, im Beherrschen eines Instruments, sondern haben einfach gemacht, was wir für richtig hielten. Deshalb wurde unsere Musik so etwas wie ein zweites Gesicht. Wir standen von Anfang an ausserhalb der Norm und haben uns selber definiert und gefunden.

Aber ist das vielleicht eine wichtige Regel? Dass man sich nicht speziell auf eine internationale Karriere ausrichten darf?
- Auf jeden Fall. Wenn man von der Schweiz aus mit Musik Erfolg haben will, muss man sich zu der Provinzialität und zu den Eigenheiten der Schweiz bekennen.

Wo liegt das Bekenntnis zur Provinzialität in der Musik von Yello?
- Das liegt darin, dass wir uns an nichts angelehnt haben und sozusagen wie Bergdisteln unser eigenes Leben geführt haben. Wenn man kein Instrument spielt und eigentlich nichts kann, dann ist man automatisch irgendwo provinziell, weil man dann ja nur aus sich selber heraus agiert.

hard to choose a categorie for this post.
we need a wishlist, a meeting, a decision, a plan to finance, an isolated etoy.TANK as garage.