Biodiversidad, la apuesta científica de Colombia

Colciencias busca poner al país entre los tres más innovadores de América Latina.

 Yaneth Giha, directora de Colciencias. Foto: Carlos Ortega / EL TIEMPO

Tener 3.000 nuevos doctores, lograr una tasa de patentes anual de 1.000, trabajar con 11.000 empresas y realizar la primera Expedición BIO son algunos desafíos de Colciencias, el Departamento Administrativo de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación, para hacer de Colombia el país estrella en innovación en América Latina para el 2025.

La biodiversidad será el eje transversal de esta ambiciosa política, en cabeza de Yaneth Giha, directora de la entidad, quien sueña con un gran instituto en el país que trabaje en enfermedades transmitidas por vectores y 12 museos interactivos para acercarnos a la ciencia.

Sabe que su tarea es compleja, pero asegura que los científicos, la academia, los empresarios y el Gobierno están sintonizados en este propósito. En entrevista con EL TIEMPO, Giha habló de cómo trabajará para sacar a Colombia del séptimo lugar en la región en producción científica, para ponerlo entre los tres primeros.

¿Por qué la biodiversidad como eje de su política?

Es lo que hace a Colombia un gran laboratorio para transformar el conocimiento mundial. Hay una frase del científico estadounidense de Harvard E. O. Wilson, que dice que “la biodiversidad es para Colombia lo que el petróleo es para Arabia Saudí”. Es el recurso, además renovable, más importante que puede tener un país. Es donde se encuentran posibilidades de hacer cosas para muchos sectores: para salud, cosméticos, energía, agro. Tenemos que aprovechar que somos el país más biodiverso por metro cuadrado.

Uno de sus retos es hacer la primera Expedición BIO, ¿de qué se trata?

Lo que intenta es que dejemos de hablar de que Colombia es el país más biodiverso y empecemos a usar esa biodiversidad como corresponde. Vamos a tener seis nodos en el país a donde enviaremos grupos interdisciplinarios para que hagan un inventario de la biodiversidad y empiecen a definir en qué se puede usar. Esos nodos van a estar en los 

• los Llanos, 
• el Amazonas, 
• el Chocó, 
• el Eje Cafetero, 
• el Tayrona y 
• Nariño.

¿Cómo está el país frente a la región en temas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación?

La gran visión que tenemos es que Colombia debe ser uno de los países más innovadores de América Latina en el 2025; por lo menos estar entre los tres primeros. Hoy, en producción científica estamos séptimos en la región. Debemos empezar a producir mucho más conocimiento de alto impacto, pero también debe haber más empresas innovadoras que saquen productos de manera permanente.

¿Seguimos viendo la ciencia como un tema lejano para nuestra realidad?

Con los resultados que vayamos teniendo a lo largo de los años este tema se irá poniendo cada vez más en primer nivel de importancia. Creo que ya lo es, pero falta que como sociedad le demos ese nivel para que de ahí en adelante sea como la típica bola de nieve con la que todo empieza a pasar.

¿Por dónde empezar?

En el país tenemos tres grandes actores en esta materia: 

• Por un lado están las universidades, de donde sale el 80 por ciento de la investigación del país. 
• El segundo son los centros de investigación y de desarrollo tecnológico, que son de alguna manera el vínculo entre las universidades y 
• el tercer actor, las empresas. 

Necesitamos de manera permanente fortalecer las tres instancias.

¿Cómo acercar a las empresas?

Hoy, las empresas colombianas no innovan, menos del 1 por ciento no lo hacen de manera permanente. Vamos a trabajar con 8.000 empresas en los próximos años; pasaremos de 800 en los años anteriores. Que incorporen en su ADN empresarial la innovación, pero además les vamos a enseñar cómo hacerlo. La segunda estrategia es aceleración de la innovación. Vamos a trabajar con 2.000 empresas -en el pasado lo hemos hecho con 100- que tienen proyectos que los pueden llevar a otro nivel. Les ponemos una empresa para que los ayude a llegar a ese nivel. Y si se revisa la tasa de patentes, también se requiere un incremento muy importante: 213 patentes en el 2012. Corea es un ejemplo que está lejano: en el 2012 pidió 150.000 patentes. Nuestra meta es lograr una tasa anual de 1.000.

¿Contempla estrategias para vincular a las empresas con la academia?

El año pasado armamos las Oficinas de Transferencia Tecnológica. Lo que estas hacen es coger el conocimiento que se tiene en un lugar, que en su mayoría es con los científicos, y lo transfiere a una empresa, que es la que lo puede usar. También estamos en la idea de sacar ‘Spin offs’, que resultan cuando una universidad y una empresa se juntan, generan nuevo conocimiento y se arma una empresa a raíz de esto. Vamos por 50 nuevas empresas de base tecnológica muy grande.

¿Cómo estamos en formación de nuestros científicos?

Necesitamos empezar a tener una base humana de alguna manera de más alto nivel y en disciplinas claves para que la producción científica se incremente. Más del 70 por ciento de la gente se está enfocando en estudios muy altos en ciencias sociales, eso se seguirá trabajando, pero trataremos de equilibrarlo con las disciplinas de STEM (por su sigla en inglés, ciencias, tecnología, ingeniería y matemáticas).

¿Qué falta para acercar más a los jóvenes a la ciencia?

Falta dar un poco más esa educación con contexto para que la gente entienda para qué es la ciencia, cómo hacer que los niños entiendan toda la gama increíble del conocimiento que hay allí. Esperamos tener una nueva generación en 10 años para que esté enganchada con la ciencia. También queremos crear 12 museos interactivos, es una manera más práctica de entender el valor de la ciencia y que se entiendan todos sus usos.

¿Y ese trabajo irá a las regiones?

Todo esto tiene que pasar allá. Colombia debe tener una estrategia en la que a nivel de país definimos cuáles son las regiones que tienen cosas listas que pueden llevarlas a otro nivel. Si bien hay tres o cuatro muy avanzadas, hay otras que están en un nivel medio que necesitan crear capacidades y estamos en el plan de generárselas. Y otras que están en niveles básicos, donde no hay grupos de investigación. En Antioquia, Atlántico, Valle del Cauca y Santander ya podemos empezar a trabajar, son lugares donde pueden pasar cosas increíbles muy pronto.

Para abrirnos campo entre los mejores tenemos que difundir lo que hacemos, ¿los científicos ven esto importante?

Se los dije, tengo que sacarles los secretos. Necesitamos que ellos sientan que los suyo es importante, que entiendan que el conocimiento que generan tiene una utilidad para la sociedad más allá de sus propios artículos. Colciencias será el gran articulador para visibilizar lo que pasa en el país en ciencia e innovación.

¿Se trabaja de cerca con los investigadores que están afuera en grandes proyectos?

Tenemos una base de datos de nuestros investigadores en el exterior, pero no solo se trata de eso sino de juntarlos. El año entrante vamos a hacer seis encuentros de temas importantes para el país, atrayendo a quienes están afuera y adentro.

Expertos señalan que la mejor política científica es crear oportunidades en abundancia, ¿lo estamos haciendo acá?

Creo que en el país las hay y las universidades son el espacio que las está ofreciendo. Sin embargo, hay que fomentar espacios en las empresas para que ese conocimiento también llegue a ese lado de la cadena, que se puede convertir en el gran detonador de cambios en el país a nivel de competitividad. Además, hay que convocar a los investigadores en torno a temas estratégicos que marquen al país.

En esa orden, plantea macroproyectos para vincularlos más a ello, ¿cuáles serían?

Sueño con tener un gran instituto en Colombia que trabaje en enfermedades transmitidas por vectores, porque tenemos unos desarrollos impresionantes en malaria, dengue, tuberculosis. Sueño con un gran proyecto de biorefinería y que Colombia se convierta en un país con centros especializados en temas agrícolas para que las cadenas sean mucho más productivas y eficientes. Las tres cosas en las que Colombia puede llegar a ser líder son las que el mundo pide: 

• salud, 
• energía y 
• alimentos.

¿Podremos asumir el costo de esta política tan ambiciosa?

Estamos haciendo unas revisiones profundas de cuánto nos cuesta cada una de las metas. Por ejemplo, tener el programa de doctorados, vamos a trabajar en 3.000 becas en los próximos años, lo que nos cuesta unos 100.000 millones de pesos anuales y vamos a hacer el esfuerzo para que Colombia tenga esto porque es la base humana que hace la investigación. Estamos revisando cuánto nos cuesta tener ese gran centro de investigaciones en enfermedades transmitidas por vectores. Así estamos haciendo con todas las estrategias que vamos a desarrollar.

VIDA

ORIGINAL: El Tiempo

Por: VIDA

12 de diciembre de 2014

10 IBM Watson-Powered Apps That Are Changing Our World

IBM is investing $1 billion in its IBM Watson Group with the aim of creating an ecosystem of startups and businesses building cognitive computing applications with Watson. Here are 10 examples that are making an impact.

IBM considers Watson to represent a new era of computing — a step forward to cognitive computing, where apps and systems interact with humans via natural language and help us augment our own understanding of the world with big data insights.

Big Blue isn't playing small ball with that claim. It has opened a new IBM Watson Global Headquarters in the heart of New York City's Silicon Alley and is investing $1 billion into the Watson Group, focusing on development and research as well as bringing cloud-delivered cognitive applications and services to the market. That includes $100 million available for venture investments to support IBM's ecosystem of start-ups and businesses building cognitive apps with Watson.

Here are 10 examples of Watson-powered cognitive apps that are already starting to shake things up.

Image courtesy USAA/IBM Feature Photo Service/Flickr

USAA and Watson Help Military Members Transition to Civilian Life

USAA, a financial services firm dedicated to those who serve or have served in the military, has turned to IBM's Watson Engagement Advisor in a pilot program to help military men and women transition to civilian life.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 155,000 active military members transition to civilian life each year. This process can raise many questions, like "Can I be in the reserve and collect veteran's compensation benefits?" or "How do I make the most of the Post-9/11 GI Bill?" Watson has analyzed and understands more than 3,000 documents on topics exclusive to military transitions, allowing members to ask it questions and receive answers specific to their needs.

Wayblazer

Sofie 

LifeLearn Sofie is an intelligent treatment support tool for veterinarians of all backgrounds and levels of experience. Sofie is powered by IBM WatsonTM, the world’s leading cognitive computing system. She can understand and process natural language, enabling interactions that are more aligned with how humans think and interact.

Implement Watson

Dive deeper into subjects. Find insights where no one ever thought to look before. From Healthcare to Retail, there's an IBM Watson Solution that's right for your enterprise.

Healthcare

Helping doctors identify treatment options

The challenge

Colombia: Minsalud ya firmó el decreto sobre medicamentos biotecnológicos

Si el Presidente lo suscribe, contenido de la controvertida norma se daría a conocer este miércoles.

Foto: Archivo / el tiempo

Biotecnológicos son aquellos que resultan de la manipulación de organismos vivos (células, bacterias y tejidos).

El ministro de Salud, Alejandro Gaviria, le aseguró a EL TIEMPO que el decreto de regulación de medicamentos biotecnológicos ya tiene su firma y está a la espera de la del presidente Juan Manuel Santos para ser expedido. Si supera este requisito, el contenido de la controvertida norma se daría a conocer este miércoles. (Lea también: Estados Unidos, preocupado por biotecnológicos, camiones y etanol)

El texto es fruto de varios años de debate y cinco borradores que han sido debatidos ampliamente por las partes interesadas; pese a eso, las multinacionales farmacéuticas siguen inconformes con algunos puntos, fundamentalmente con la llamada ‘ruta abreviada’.

Para entenderlo hay que decir que los biotecnológicos son aquellos que resultan de la manipulación de organismos vivos (células, bacterias y tejidos), mediante tecnologías muy avanzadas, y que se usan para tratar enfermedades como cáncer, artritis y otros males degenerativos. (Lea también: Proponen que bloqueo a genéricos sea delito de lesa humanidad).

Se trata de fármacos innovadores y costosos, cuyo mercado durante el primer semestre del 2014 representó el 20 por ciento del gasto farmacéutico nacional, aun cuando solo representan el 1 por ciento de todos los registros de fármacos vigentes en Colombia.

Quienes los crean aseguran que por sus características (derivados de organismos vivos) es imposible obtener medicamentos exactamente iguales, razón por la cual no podrían copiarse, sino obtener, a lo sumo, biosimilares.

Al no ser idénticos a los de la referencia, los biosimilares deben demostrar, con estudios clínicos comparativos, que tienen perfiles parecidos –en eficacia, potencia y seguridad– a los innovadores. Y esos no son procedimientos sencillos.

Para todos los biotecnológicos, el Ministerio de Salud propone en el decreto tres vías de registro: 

• la del innovador, que debe presentar evidencia clínica completa sobre sus beneficios, eficacia y seguridad; 
• la de los medicamentos altamente parecidos al fármaco de la referencia, cuyos fabricantes deben probar su biosimilitud, y 
• la ‘ruta abreviada’.

Esta ruta permite caracterizar moléculas al punto que se puede decir si una es similar a la otra mediante un proceso técnico, sin tener que hacer estudios clínicos en humanos. Se parte del hecho de que la molécula ya está estudiada.

Las multinacionales son contrarias a esta vía, porque consideran que por ella pueden colarse fármacos que no ofrecen la misma eficacia y seguridad. En el extremo opuesto están quienes aseguran que este argumento solo busca mantener el monopolio sobre los biotecnológicos y los precios altos.

Las dudas sobre la ‘ruta abreviada’ o ‘tercera vía’, y otros aspectos del decreto, fueron resaltadas por la Administración de Medicamentos y Alimentos de Estados Unidos (FDA), en una carta al Ministerio de Salud a la cual respondió Alejandro Gaviria, con otra misiva, dirigida a Margaret A. Hamburg, comisionada de la FDA.

En ella, el Ministro aclara las dudas de la agencia reguladora de ese país y acepta hacer algunos ajustes. No obstante, hace énfasis en que la ‘ruta abreviada’ responde a procesos que se ajustan al rigor técnico científico –de manera que evitan cualquier riesgo para la población– y en que, en términos generales, el decreto coincide con las perspectivas que sobre el tema tiene la propia FDA.

ORIGINAL: El Tiempo

Por: SALUD

14 de septiembre de 2014

Ciencia movida: Mis 10 noticias científicas de la semana (18-23)

1. El intestino tiene clave frente al cáncer

Una población de microorganismos que obtienen su comida y otros beneficios de otros organismos que viven en el intestino se requiere para una buena respuesta a la terapia contra el cáncer, según un estudio hecho con ratones por científicos del Instituto Nacional del Cáncer en Estados Unidos. Se encontró que ratones libres de gérmenes o tratados con antibióticos para eliminar las bacterias intestinales se afectaban en su capacidad de responder a la inmunoterapia que disminuye el crecimiento del cáncer y prolonga la supervivencia. Además, se reducía la capacidad de responder a drogas de quimioterapia como oxaliplatino y cisplatino. Los hallazgos fueron presentados en Science y comienzan a preguntarse si será igual en humanos.

2. La explosión más potente jamás registrada
Si hubiera sucedido cerca, la Tierra se hubiera achicharrado y ya seríamos materia muerta. Sí. En abril se detectó una poderosa explosión de rayos gamma, las más fuertes del universo. Análisis presentados esta semana indican que nunca se había visto una así. Ocurrió a 3.700 millones de años luz, o sea se produjo en ese momento pero su luz solo llegó ahora. Fue producida por una estrella que colapsó, 20 a 30 veces más masiva que el Sol metida en un tamaño solo dos veces más grande que nuestra estrella. Aunque se han detectado centenares de explosiones gamma, nunca ‘tan cerca’, por lo que se pudo registrar toda su intensidad. Además ha sido la de mayor duración. Los análisis indican que habrá que reescribir las teorías sobre esta clase de eventos cósmicos.

3. Al fin se les vio la cara
Cada segundo miles de millones de neutrinos atraviesan cada centímetro cuadrado de la Tierra, pero son tan esquivos que rara vez interactúan con la materia. Pues bien, el detector de neutrinos conocido como IceCube, una estructura enterrada en la Antártida, detectó 28 neutrinos de origen astrofísico en aceleradores cósmicos. Esas partículas pueden tener información sobre los fenómenos más energéticos y lejanos del universo como supernovas, agujeros negros, púlsares, núcleos galácticos activos y otros. La mayoría se origina en el Sol o en la atmósfera terrestre, por lo que el IceCube fue concebido para detectar los que provienen de otras regiones del espacio. Los observados tenían una energía de más de un millón de veces aquellos detectados tras la supernova de 1987 en la Gran Nube de Magallanes.

4. Este virus se especializó en crear cáncer
Tras años de estudio, Maura Gillison tuvo resultados concluyentes: No queda duda que personas portadoras del virus del papiloma humano en sus bocas o garganta son 15 veces más proclives a desarrollar cánceres de cabeza o cuello y sobre eso volvió un artículo aparecido en Nature. No solo los provocan sino que esa incidencia viene al alza de manera silenciosa. El hallazgo pone de manifiesto de paso el riesgo que podría tener el sexo oral. Ahora investigan si también causa otros tipos de cáncer.

5. El viaje fue hace 24.000 años
El estudio del ADN de un esqueleto de un joven que se cree vivió hace 24.000 años sugiere que 30% de los americanos modernos provino de este banco genético de personas que habitaban Siberia de acuerdo con un estudio publicado en Nature. Los primeros habitantes del continente habrían estado en aquella época en Beringia e ingresaron a Alaska, lo que además sitúa 10.000 años antes el poblamiento de América, que usualmente se ha situado alrededor de hace 14.000 años.

6. Nos dejaron los virus
Se fueron pero nos los dejaron: virus antiquísimos de los Neandertales han sido hallados en el ADN de los humanos modernos reveló un estudio publicado en Current Biology. Los investigadores compararon información genética de fósiles de Neandertales y otro grupo arcaico, los denisovanos y hallaron evidencias de que virus que estos portaban se encuentran en el genoma humano, habiéndose originado hace más de 500.000 años. El vínculo podría conducir a estudiar posibles relaciones entre los virus del pasado y enfermedades como el cáncer y VIH.

7. Le quitaron el manto de la invisibilidad
De los dos grandes tipos de VIH, solo el 1 causa sida en personas infectadas que no reciben tratamiento. Un estudio publicado en el journal Inmunity reveló cómo el VIH-1 escapa a la detección al hacerse invisible al sistema inmunitario de las personas, mientras el VIH-2 genera una respuesta inmunitaria. El entendimiento de cómo funciona ese manto de la invisibilidad del VIH-1 podría derivar en el desarrollo de vacunas efectivas. El virus usa una de sus proteínas para activar su ‘invisibilidad’. Los investigadores mostraron además cómo modificar el virus para que sea reconocido y genera una respuesta efectiva del sistema inmunitario.

8. Con frío funciona mejor
Un estudio publicado en Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reveló que los ratones en ambientes fríos combaten mejor el cáncer que en ambientes más cálidos. En un laboratorio con condiciones entre 30-31 grados no fueron tan efectivos para combatir el cáncer, pero en temperaturas entre 20 y 26 grados mostraron menor formación del tumor y menos metástasis. ¿Qué quiere decir eso? Todavía poco, pero podría ser un nuevo filón para investigaciones en humanos.

9. Dos genes bien fértiles 
Solo dos genes en el cromosoma Y permiten que los machos sean fértiles. En un estudio con ratones publicado en Science se encontró que ratones sin el cromosoma Y pero portando los genes Sry y Eif2s3y de ese cromosoma podían producir espermátidos (célula haploide masculina que resulta de la división de los espermatocidos secundarios) introducidos en los óvulos de la hembra mediante inyección, producían embriones que podían ser trasplantados en los oviductos de las hembras para producir descendientes vivos.

10. Los minirriñones 
Los minirriñones anunciados esta semana se unieron al grupo de órganos funcionales progenitores cuando científicos españoles y norteamericanos describieron la diferenciación de células madre humanas en células tipo progenitoras renales. El artículo apareció en Nature Cell Biology. Antes otros grupos habían descrito organoides cerebrales y estructuras hepáticas utilizando células madre. De a poco se arma el cuerpo.

ORIGINAL: Ciencia Al Día

noviembre 23, 2013

IBM Brings Watson to Africa for Project Lucy

Using cognitive systems to tackle a continent’s grand challenges

Lucy is the name given to the earliest known human descendant, whose remains were discovered in Africa 40 years ago. Today, IBM Watson, the first cognitive computing system, is coming to Africa as part of a 10-year, $100 million initiative to address the fast-growing continent's greatest business and societal challenges. With "Project Lucy", IBM researchers in Africa, together with their business and academic partners, will use Watson and related cognitive technologies to learn and discover insights from Big Data and develop commercially viable solutions to Africa’s grand challenges in healthcare, education, water and sanitation, human mobility and agriculture.

"In the last decade, Africa has been a tremendous growth story, yet the continent's challenges, stemming from population growth, water scarcity, disease, low agricultural yield and other factors are impediments to inclusive economic growth," said Kamal Bhattacharya, director, IBM Research - Africa.

"With the ability to learn from emerging patterns and discover new correlations, Watson's cognitive capabilities hold enormous potential in Africa - helping it to achieve in the next two decades what today's developed markets have achieved over two centuries."

To get the big picture of these challenges and opportunities, IBM asked people from every African country to send in photos of their environments. The response was overwhelming: more than 1,200 photos from 930 participants tell a diverse technology and innovation story. The slideshow below is a selection that-illustrates this diversity and the mission of IBM Research – Africa. Contest winners will be named on February 28, 2014.

Nairobi is a city hard at work 24 hours every day. It is obvious when you look at the city at night from any of the vantage points. I shot this from the KICC helipad one night. Seven out of the world's 10 fastest growing economies will be African nations over the next ten years; Nairobi is rapidly emerging as one of Africa's business and technology hubs. Photo Mutua Matheka, Kenya City Lights.

ORIGINAL: IBM Research

The Electricity-Generating Bicycle Desk That Would Power the World

The story of Pedal Power's bike machine is spreading quickly. The two-man company has more than tripled its crowd-sourced fundraising goal, and its bike desk is being used to power laptops, grind grain for beer, and churn butter.

 

Pedal Power

• Does one of your colleagues have a standing desk? 
• Maybe even a treadmill desk? 
• Do they talk about how it's adding years to their life, enhancing both productivity and the richness and clarity if their skin? 
• Do they ask you about how uncomfortable it must be to sit all day? 
• You want to wipe the smug superiority off their face once and for all? 

But not in a violent way. Too much at stake. This time it can't be violent.

How about beating them at their own game. Rising above is for people who can't compete. Show up at the office one day with this handmade bicycle desk that generates power — enough to run your computer or charge your phone, sure, but also enough to mill grain, churn your own butter, run an industrial sewing machine, or split a dang log. Watch it split a log. 

Yes, it is loud. The designers are working on a version with rubber belts for an office setting. But then, how would people know you are splitting the office logs?

Pedal Power is a tiny start-up (two guys) based in Essex, New York. A few weeks ago, photos of their bike machine spread widely across the Internet. "With an efficiency of 97 percent, bicycle technology is nearly perfect," they wrote in their pitch. "So why do we use it only for transportation?"

Or, even more wastefully, for spin classes or SoulCycle. That is kinetic energy just floating up into ether and steam and sweaty song. It's like pouring crude oil down the drain. The Internet agreed. Last week their Kickstarter campaign reached its $10,000 goal. Today it's over $30,000. This week they begin work on open-source plans; the stated goal of the crowd-funded project. 

 

Andy Wekin (left) and Steve Blood (right)

I spoke with the co-founders of Pedal Power, Andy Wekin and Steve Blood last week. Wekin is the mechanical engineer, and Blood describes himself as "the computer programming guy" who handles most of the business side. I asked what they're going to do with all of that money.

"So, if you open source your design for the bikes," I said, "and everyone starts building their own, then you won't sell any?"

"Well, most people don't know how to weld," Blood said.

"It's an interesting business case. With a tiny little project like this, it's about getting out there. Andy and I both have inclinations toward the open-source world. Given that we're never going to be a business with a million-dollar marketing budget, we figured if we could open source the design and there were 50 or 100 people around the world who go and build it, they would all be ambassadors for us," Blood said. "So here's a way we can market this cheaply and with a lot of goodwill."

Last year a company called FitDesk kindly sent me a bicycle desk. I liked the concept and worked on it for a bit, but it was lightweight and wobbly. I could read on it for about 20 minutes before I started to get a headache.

Wekin and Blood thought of that.

"Our first prototype was considerably more wobbly than we expected." Now the machines are substantial.

Working at my bike desk also left me sweaty. Not immediately, and even though I wasn't pedaling hard, but surreptitiously sweaty. The kind of heat that comes on slowly, and then you have a meeting and everyone is asking if you're okay.

"Could one power a laptop in a coffee shop without sweating through their shirt?"

"Yep, not a problem."

 

Talking more to Wekin and Blood, it becomes clear that Pedal Power isn't really about selling a lot of bikes. It's also not even really about or exercise or workplace superiority. It's about our relationship with energy.

"I would love to see Pedal Power machines in every coffee shop in every city in the country," Blood said in their Kickstarter video, "So that people who are working on their laptops, working on their iPads, are at the same time generating their own power for those devices. I want to connect people to the energy they use. I want people to understand how precious energy is, and how hard it is to come by."

"If everyone in the United States could ride on one of these things and feel what it's like to turn on the TV, or flip on the light switch, or turn on a video game," Wekin told Fast Company, "I think it would change how we use energy. We self-flagellate sometimes about our carbon footprint, but we don't even realize what that means."

 

Chrissy Raudonis, also of Essex, uses Pedal Power to grind soy grains for her chickens every morning. "We have it in there on a coarse setting," she explained, "because chickens can't eat the whole grain." For her there's art in keeping the blow of incoming beans apace with her pedaling.

"It's easy to want to go too fast on it," she said, "and have grain just splattering everywhere. It makes me feel different about my relationship to the work that I'm doing, and makes me feel good that I can get some exercise and produce a valuable product."

 

Maya Pedal

"In the desk world," Welkin said, "There are people sitting at desks all day who would like to be more active, and that's one side aspect. That's one potential market for ours. But we feel ours is also doing useful work. That's the most important function. Developing nations and people who are living off the grid; small farms and business that are trying to be energy-independent. There's one group called Maya Pedal in Guatemala that is doing great work, taking old bikes from the U.S. and turning them into machines to help pump water, blend food. It's amazing work that they're doing. We'd love to be able to get our machines out there."

Wekin said they have already been contacted by a Toronto physician who works with farmers in rural India and is interested in using their machines to pump water for irrigation there.

 

They have also had parents semi-jokingly talk about making their kids pedal for their video game time.

The plans will be available in the coming months. Wekin and Blood are starting work this week. They also sold eight machines during the Kickstarter. Only eight? Well, they cost $2,400, plus shipping.

"We've been a little bit surprised by the media attention," Blood said. "We're just a couple of guys who live in a small town in upstate New York."

Yes, two guys who built a bicycle desk that helps people understand their place in the world. And splits logs.


ORIGINAL: The Atlantic

By James Hamblin 

Jan 7 2014

Absurd Creature of the Week: Foot-Long, Sex-Crazed Snails That Pierce Tires and Devour Houses

Giant African land snails carry quarters with them everywhere they go in case they need to, like, use payphones and stuff. Image: Roberta Zimmerman, USDA APHIS

Ah, the innocence of children. So free of corruption and cynicism, so sweet and sincere. Laughing and playing and introducing supremely destructive monster snails to Florida, where the beasts eat almost anything that’s green and then crap all over houses — quite literally laying waste to whole neighborhoods.

This actually happened in the 1960s, when a boy vacationing with his family in Hawaii had pocketed a few giant African land snails (Lissachatina fulica), a mollusk that grows to a foot long and a full pound. Hawaii had been battling the pest, and so too would Florida, where the boy returned with his new friends. Once home, he quickly grew bored of the snails and handed them over to his grandmother, who set them free in her backyard.

What ensued was an invasion by rapidly reproducing critters that have over the last century spread out of their native East Africa into tropical climes all over the world, from Asia to South America, as stowaways on ships or as pets brought home by people with a thing for snails. In Florida, eradication took seven years. Other places, like Brazil, have not been so lucky in their efforts.

You see, the giant African land snail is a hermaphroditic love machine. “Snails have female bits and male bits,” explained biologist Robert Cowie of the University of Hawaii, “a single pore, through which if you’re acting as a male, a penis extrudes, or if you’re acting as a female, through which the other snail puts its penis in. And in some cases they can do it reciprocally.”

Thus the giant snail never meets another snail it can’t get busy with. Once fertilized, the snail will bury several hundred eggs a few inches below ground, and because of the incredible size of the species, the young will emerge far larger than native varieties, making them that much more resistant to predation.

As these eggs demonstrate, cash rules everything around the giant snails from a very early age. Image: Wikimedia

Alas, four decades after evicting this enormous, fecund snail, Florida finds itself overrun once again. The creature was reintroduced here in 2011, and this time, according to Cowie, it may well be “bizarre, voodoo-like religious proceedings” to blame. The snail’s slime, he says, is coveted in certain South American rituals, and practitioners may have released the giant snails into their Miami-area backyards, hoping they’d breed freely.

The USDA and U.S. District Attorney’s Office are investigating this. It probably doesn’t help the ritualists’ case, though, that the year before the current outbreak, authorities questioned a Florida man said to have convinced his followers to drink the fluid from live giant African land snails, which he sliced open before squeezing the slime into their mouths. If you can believe it, the victims fell violently ill — ironic, what with this being a healing ritual.

Anyway, if it was indeed the practitioners who released the snails so they (the snails, not the practitioners) could multiply rapidly, it worked. Big time. Florida agriculture officials have collected 137,000 giant snails in just over two years. Compare that to the relatively few 17,000 collected in the first eradication in the 1960s, and you soon see the magnitude of this problem.

Today, Miami is simply overrun with the things. Not only do the giant snails chow on some 500 economically important plants in the area, they’re devouring houses. It seems they have a taste for stucco, which contains precious calcium. Without a ready supply of the stuff to fuel their amazing growth, they’ll simply turn on each other — at least in captivity.

You may be getting the impression that the giant snail’s natural habitat is the human hand. It is. Image: fiddledydee/Flickr

“A long time ago I had some African snails in the lab, in an aquarium-type tank,” said Cowie, “and apparently I wasn’t providing a sufficient source of calcium, and they would just eat each other’s shells. These snails produce big shells, they need a lot of calcium, and a lot of people these days when they keep snails they’ll put a bit of cattle bone in the terrarium for the snails to chew on, just to get the calcium.”

And because I know you were wondering: Yes, you can eat giant African land snails. But cook them well. I mean really well. Just boil them for a month. Grill them with napalm if you have it. Because like many snails and semi-slugs, this species carries the deadly rat lungworm.

As its name suggests, the parasite attacks rats, which pass the larvae in their feces. Snails that eat this waste are infected, as are folks who eat the snails. In humans, the larvae attack the brain, leading to meningitis and often a pretty horrible death. This has been documented as a particular problem in China, where people may not be cooking giant snails sufficiently.

But for all the folks who cook their giant snails properly, still others ingest them accidentally. All manner of critters could very easily end up in your Caesar salad, for instance, since cooks don’t always peel apart the lettuce before chopping it. “And it could just as well be a little baby African snail,” said Cowie. “OK, it’s a bit crunchy, but so is the lettuce a bit crunchy, and you’d never know. So that’s the way people generally get infected in places where they don’t habitually eat raw snails.”

The giant snail’s shell can grow to 8 inches long. To grow such a home, it eats the calcium-rich stucco from our own homes. There’s some sort of symbolism there, but I can’t figure it out. Image: Wikimedia

With such health risks combined with the damage to agriculture and the snails just being a public menace — with shells so big and sharp that they can puncture tires that run them over, for instance — Florida is sinking millions of dollars into its eradication measures. The state has 50 full-time staffers assigned to the project, said Denise Feiber of the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which is leading the effort.

By deploying common over-the-counter snail poison and advertising a hotline residents can call to report sightings, authorities have so far been able to contain the critter to Miami. And no, pouring salt on them is in no way an acceptable option for homeowners. It’s a horrible death. Osmosis pulls the water out of the snail, killing it of dehydration. Just don’t do it. Ever.

But it’s possible, according to Cowie, that the giant snail could well spread to other Gulf states, though luckily they probably can’t tolerate the cooler weather in Georgia and other states farther north (contrary to popular belief, Hotlanta is not in fact always hot — most of the time it’s just Atlanta).

Cowie knows all too well the explosive population growth these things are capable of when left unchecked. In Hawaii, where he lives, the giant African land snail was introduced in the 1930s by Japanese immigrants who wanted to keep them as pets. They have since essentially assumed ecological control, tearing through agriculture and muscling out native species.

In 1950s Hawaii, “there were stories of on a rainy day, when the snails all came out and crawled all over the road,” Cowie said, “the cars would squish them and cars would end up skidding on the squished snail. Dead, crushed snail and slime, sort of all mish-mashed together by the cars. So that was when Hawaii got serious about trying to control them. And we’ve not been successful at controlling them.”

So come to Hawaii. Come to Florida. There’s plenty of sunshine and escargot. Just bring a fork, some butter, and maybe a French accent, if that’ll get you in the mood.

Browse the full Absurd Creature of the Week archive here. Have an animal you want me to write about? Email matthew_simon@wired.com or ping me on Twitter at @mrMattSimon.

ORIGINAL: Wired

By Matt Simon

This is what happens when a kid leaves traditional education

When 13 year-old Logan LaPlante grows up, he wants to be happy and healthy. He discusses how hacking his education is helping him achieve this goal.

"... for better or worse much of Education is oriented towards making a living rather than making a life..."

"...a lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parents basement and spread computer viruses but I'll see it that way. Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenge and change the system's to make them work differently to make them work better it's just how they think. It's a mindset. I'm going up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset..."

Hackschooling makes me happy: Logan LaPlante at TEDxUniversityofNevada 

ORIGINAL: Science Dump

by Jur

01/09/2014

IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

The old Watson that beat Ken Jennings. Now it can fit into a desk drawer. (Credit: Getty Images via @daylife)

IBM‘s Watson, the Jeopardy!-playing supercomputer that scored one for Team Robot Overlord two years ago, just put out its shingle as a doctor or, more specifically, as a combination lung cancer specialist and expert in the arcane branch of health insurance known as utilization management. 

Thanks to a business partnership among IBM, Memorial Sloan-Kettering and WellPoint, health care providers will now be able to tap Watson’s expertise in deciding how to treat patients.

Pricing was not disclosed, but hospitals and health care networks who sign up will be able to buy or rent Watson’s advice from the cloud or their own server. Over the past two years, IBM’s researchers have shrunk Watson from the size of a master bedroom to a pizza-box-sized server that can fit in any data center. And they improved its processing speed by 240%. Now what was once was a fun computer-science experiment in natural language processing is becoming a real business for IBM and Wellpoint, which is the exclusive reseller of the technology for now. Initial customers include WestMed Practice Partners and the Maine Center for Cancer Medicine & Blood Disorders.   

Even before the Jeopardy! success, IBM began to hatch bigger plans for Watson and there are few areas more in need of supercharged decision-support than health care. Doctors and nurses are drowning in information with new research, genetic data, treatments and procedures popping up daily. They often don’t know what to do, and are guessing as well as they can. WellPoint’s chief medical officer Samuel Nussbaum said at the press event today that health care pros make accurate treatment decisions in lung cancer cases only 50% of the time (a shocker to me). Watson has shown the capability (on the utilization management side) of being accurate in its decisions 90% of the time, but is not near that level yet with cancer diagnoses. Patients, of course, need 100% accuracy, but making the leap from being right half the time to being right 9 out of ten times will be a huge boon for patient care. The best part is the potential for distributing the intelligence anywhere via the cloud, right at the point of care. This could be the most powerful tool we’ve seen to date for improving care and lowering everyone’s costs via standardization and reduced error. Chris Coburn, the Cleveland Clinic’s executive director for innovations, said at the event that he fully expects Watson to be widely deployed wherever the Clinic does business by 2020.

Watson has made huge strides in its medical prowess in two short years. In May 2011 IBM had already trained Watson to have the knowledge of a second-year medical student. In March 2012 IBM struck a deal with Memorial Sloan Kettering to ingest and analyze tens of thousands of the renowned cancer center’s patient records and histories, as well as all the publicly available clinical research it can get its hard drives on. Today Watson has analyzed 605,000 pieces of medical evidence, 2 million pages of text, 25,000 training cases and had the assist of 14,700 clinician hours fine-tuning its decision accuracy. Six “instances” of Watson have already been installed in the last 12 months.

Watson doesn’t tell a doctor what to do, it provides several options with degrees of confidence for each, along with the supporting evidence it used to arrive at the optimal treatment. Doctors can enter on an iPad a new bit of information in plain text, such as “my patient has blood in her phlegm,” and Watson within half a minute will come back with an entirely different drug regimen that suits the individual. IBM Watson’s business chief Manoj Saxena says that 90% of nurses in the field who use Watson now follow its guidance.

WellPoint will be using the system internally for its nurses and clinicians who handle utilization management, the process by which health insurers determine which treatments are fair, appropriate and efficient and, in turn, what it will cover. The company will also make the intelligence available as a Web portal to other providers as its Interactive Care Reviewer. It is targeting 1,600 providers by the end of 2013 and will split the revenue with IBM. Terms were undisclosed.

ORIGINAL: Forbes

2/08/2013
IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare 

Scientists discover double meaning in genetic code

Scientists have discovered a second code hiding within DNA. This second code contains information that changes how scientists read the instructions contained in DNA and interpret mutations to make sense of health and disease.

Genome scientist Dr. John Stamatoyannopolous led
a team that discovered a second code hidden in DNA

A research team led by Dr. John Stamatoyannopoulos, University of Washington associate professor of genome sciences and of medicine, made the discovery. The findings are reported in the Dec. 13 issue of Science. The work is part of the Encyclopedia of DNA Elements Project, also known as ENCODE. The National Human Genome Research Institute funded the multi-year, international effort. ENCODE aims to discover where and how the directions for biological functions are stored in the human genome.

Since the genetic code was deciphered in the 1960s, scientists have assumed that it was used exclusively to write information about proteins. UW scientists were stunned to discover that genomes use the genetic code to write two separate languages.

• One describes how proteins are made, and the 
• other instructs the cell on how genes are controlled. 

One language is written on top of the other, which is why the second language remained hidden for so long.

“For over 40 years we have assumed that DNA changes affecting the genetic code solely impact how proteins are made,” said Stamatoyannopoulos. “Now we know that this basic assumption about reading the human genome missed half of the picture. These new findings highlight that DNA is an incredibly powerful information storage device, which nature has fully exploited in unexpected ways.”

The genetic code uses a 64-letter alphabet called codons. The UW team discovered that some codons, which they called duons, can have two meanings, 

• one related to protein sequence, and 
• one related to gene control. 

These two meanings seem to have evolved in concert with each other. The gene control instructions appear to help stabilize certain beneficial features of proteins and how they are made.
The discovery of duons has major implications for how scientists and physicians interpret a patient’s genome and will open new doors to the diagnosis and treatment of disease.

“The fact that the genetic code can simultaneously write two kinds of information means that many DNA changes that appear to alter protein sequences may actually cause disease by disrupting gene control programs or even both mechanisms simultaneously,” said Stamatoyannopoulos.

Grants from the National Institutes of Health U54HG004592, U54HG007010, and UO1E51156 and National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases FDK095678A funded the research.

In addition to Stamatoyannopoulos, the research team included Andrew B. Stergachis, Eric Haugen, Anthony Shafer, Wenqing Fu, Benjamin Vernot, Alex Reynolds, and Joshua M. Akey, all from the UW Department of Genome Sciences, Anthony Raubitschek of the UW Department of Immunology and Benaroya Research Institute, Steven Ziegler of Benaroya Research Institute, and Emily M. LeProust, formerly of Agilent Technologists and now with Twist Bioscience.

ORIGINAL: U of Washington

UW Health Sciences and UW Medicine

December 12, 2013

‘Dangerous Degrees’: Climate change risks prosperity, security and health

ORIGINAL: TCKTCKTCK
TckTckTck 

August 8, 2013

Dry lake bed caused by prolonged drought in Australia, Creative Commons: Denis Fox, 2006

Today, three Australian leaders, each from different backgrounds, came together in hard hats and fluoro vests to launch a new report by The Climate Institute warning of the ways in which climate change risks the health, prosperity and security of the world.

Entitled “Dangerous Degrees: Risking Australians’ prosperity, security, and health,” the report was released by Dr. John Hewson, former Liberal Party leader; Professor Tony McMichael, Australia National University’s Climate Change Institute; and John Connor, CEO of The Climate Institute on August 8th at a scientific symposium.

The three had a grave warning for their audience at the report launch:

Carbon pollution in the atmosphere has risen by 40% since the start of the Industrial Revolution. It’s now at levels greater than at any time for least 800,000, possibly millions, of years. We are stumbling blindly into utterly uncharted territory where a few degrees make a world of difference.

The report’s conclusions, supported by a number of other recent studies, show that failure to take prompt action to contain emissions risks the future prosperity, security and health of Australians and the rest of the world. According to research in Nature last month, climate change is projected to cost the world economy $60 trillion. Earlier this week, a report by the Australian Senate said that extreme weather in Australia will intensify, and has already cost the national economy between $900 million and $4 billion annually.

Of important note in “Dangerous Degrees” is the conclusion that Australia is more exposed to climate risks than any other developed nation. If the world remains on track to reach a 3°C of warming by 2050 and 4°C by 2100, Australia could become a net importer of food by 2050 and lose 90% of its irrigated agriculture in the Murray–Darling Basin by 2100. Around 2,000 more temperature-related deaths are expected by mid-century, and around 10,000 more by 2100.

Professor Tony McMichael said:
The symptoms we already see in people beleaguered by bushfire, storms, floods, and drought are the early warming signs. The risks to physical and mental health, as well as community morale, mount with every year we fail to act decisively. Yet, there is still time to avoid much additional human suffering, to realise the health benefits of action, and to restore hope.

While the risks become clearer by the day, the Climate Institute says the political framework for climate action and adaptation remains insufficient to address the challenges ahead — a conclusion reinforced by the Australian Senate report, which says Australia is underprepared for the impacts of just a few degrees of warming. While closing the gap between danger and relative safety is still within reach, it is only possible if action begins now.

Delay in ambitious climate action means higher social, environmental, and economic costs, as well as fewer options. While Australia can count itself among the growing number of nations moving to cut emissions, the political statements made in the run-up to the nearing Australian election aim to water down several important climate policies.

Check out the global climate impacts infographic released with “Dangerous Degrees.”

Credit: The Climate Institute, 2013. Click to see the full size infographic via The Climate Institute.

Salud y Felicidad. Conferencia.

ORIGINAL: Universidad de Antioquia

 2 de Agosto 11:30am Auditorio Facultad de Medicina.

Alejandro Jadad Bechara MD

Supercritical Sanitation Systems

ORIGINAL: Duke / U of Missouri

At supercritical water conditions, organics in sewage are converted to harmless carbon dioxide, clean water and energy in seconds.

Engineers at Duke University and the University of Missouri, with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are investigating the potential of Supercritical Water Oxidation (SCWO) and Supercritical Water Gasification (SCWG) in helping solving the world’s sanitation challenges.

The team is designing and building a demonstration unit that fits into a 20 ft. shipping container and will be ready for testing in a developing country in 2014.

Neighborhood-Scale Sewage Treatment. Image: Duke

Project Overview

primer.pdf

A Shared Vision

According to the World Health Organization, “2.4 billion people do not have access to any type of improved sanitation facility. About 2 million people die every year due to diarrheal diseases; most of them are children less than 5 years of age.”[i] The United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals Report from 2012 states that “sanitation coverage increased from 36 per cent in 1990 to 56 per cent in 2010 in the developing regions as a whole. Despite progress, almost half of the population in those regions … still lack access to improved sanitation facilities.”[ii] As sanitation goals remain out of reach, the associated health hazards and poor living conditions persist.

Unfortunately, established sewage system standards in developed countries do not provide a feasible model for developing countries which do not have sewage infrastructure, lack the economic means to build and sustain such elaborate systems, and do not have the water required to operate them. Resolving the sanitation issue in developing countries will require new, innovative sanitation solutions.

The Water, Sanitation and Hygiene program of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has identified the sanitation challenge as their top priority. The foundation fosters the development of new technologies and tools that can help deliver sustainable sanitation where it is needed. As part of this strategy it is funding numerous investigations into a wide variety of potential technologies by universities and commercial entities worldwide. In April, 2013, Duke University received a ‘Reinvent the Toilet Challenge’ grant from the Gates Foundation to develop a demonstration unit for community scale sewage treatment.

Our Project
The Gates Foundation diagram above depicts a sanitation solution that starts with the individual and the toilet, includes the storage, transportation and treatment of human waste, and ends, ideally, with safe, usable byproducts such as fertilizer, fuel or clean water. Engineers at Duke University and the University of Missouri are designing a unit that addresses the treatment of human waste and possible reuse of the system’s byproducts. It will sanitize the collected waste of approximately 1200 people—a neighborhood-scale solution. The goal of this project is to produce a demonstration unit that fits into a 20 ft. shipping container and will be ready for testing in a developing country by summer 2014. A successful design will have a running cost of less than 5 cents per person per day at commercial volumes.

The technology being employed to meet this challenge, supercritical water oxidation (SCWO), is promising because it works quickly and generates energy in the forms of hot water and steam from the treatment of human waste. Furthermore, it does not require prior dewatering or drying of fecal sludge, and it effectively eliminates all types of harmful organisms. SCWO technology has already been implemented in several research and commercial applications to treat waste products, including polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), chemical weapons and sewage sludge. Duke and the University of Missouri seek to demonstrate that both SCWO and supercritical water gasification (SCWG), a related technology, have prominent roles to play in solving the world’s sanitation challenges. In addition, we will produce a business model plan that quantifies and optimizes the economic, environmental and social benefits of the unit.

Our Team

Before and after pictures from a SCWO unit
at University of Missouri.

The project is being led by Marc Deshusses of Duke University’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering in collaboration with Jay Golden of Duke’s Center for Sustainability and Commerce. The Carbon Recycling Center, led by Bill Jacoby of the University of Missouri’s Biological Engineering Department, provides engineering expertise where the rubber meets the road. Some of the key challenges the team will be addressing include the corrosion associated with sewage at high temperature and pressure as well as designing a system that can be successfully operated in a low-tech environment. In parallel with the technology development, sustainability experts at Duke will be leading the environmental and socio-technological investigations of the value proposition and creating a business model for the sanitation solution. Throughout the project, existing research and first hand site visits to cities and neighborhoods in India, South Africa and possibly Ghana will be utilized to help inform the optimum design of the sewage treatment unit and lay out the best path toward commercial implementation.

Our Timeline
The experimentation and design phase, using process development units at Missouri, will take place in the spring and summer of 2013. Construction of the demonstration unit in an actual shipping container will take place at Duke in the late summer and fall of 2013. In the winter and early spring of 2014, the demonstration unit will be tested at a local sewage treatment plant near Duke University in North Carolina. By summer 2014, the unit should be ready for field testing in a chosen city in South Africa, India or Ghana.