Human can create something useful to their body or understand better and manipulate to produce better products.

Can we produce robotic to replace human hand, legs and others.

What is Biomechanics ?

The study of the mechanics of a living body, especially of the forces exerted by muscles and gravity on the skeletal structure.

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Biomechanics is mechanics applied to biology (Fung). This includes research and analysis of the mechanics of living organisms and the application of engineering principles to and from biological systems. This research and analysis can be carried forth on multiple levels, from the molecular, wherein biomaterials such as collagen and elastin are considered, all the way up to the tissue and organ level. Some simple applications of Newtonian mechanics can supply correct approximations on each level, but precise details demand the use of continuum mechanics.

Giovanni Alfonso Borelli wrote the first book on biomechanics, De Motu Animalium, or On the Movement of Animals. He not only saw animals’ bodies as mechanical systems, but pursued questions such as the physiological difference between imagining performing an action and actually doing it. Some simple examples of biomechanics research include the investigation of the forces that act on limbs, the aerodynamics of bird and insect flight, the hydrodynamics of swimming in fish, the anchorage and mechanical support provided by tree roots, and locomotion in general across all forms of life, from individual cells to whole organisms. The biomechanics of human beings is a core part of kinesiology.

Applied mechanics, most notably thermodynamics and continuum mechanics, and mechanical engineering disciplines such as fluid mechanics and solid mechanics, play prominent roles in the study of biomechanics. By applying the laws and concepts of physics, biomechanical mechanisms and structures can be simulated and studied.

It has been shown that applied loads and deformations can affect the properties of living tissue. There is much research in the field of growth and remodeling as a response to applied loads. For example, the effects of elevated blood pressure on the mechanics of the arterial wall, the behavior of cardiomyocytes within a heart with a cardiac infarct, and bone growth in response to exercise, and the acclimative growth of plants in response to wind movement, have been widely regarded as instances in which living tissue is remodelled as a direct consequence of applied loads.

Relevant mathematical tools include linear algebra, differential equations, vector and tensor calculus, numerics and computational techniques such as the finite element method.

The study of biomaterials is of crucial importance to biomechanics. For example, the various tissues within the body, such as skin, bone, and arteries each possess unique material properties. The passive mechanical response of a particular tissue can be attributed to characteristics of the various proteins, such as elastin and collagen, living cells, ground substances such as proteoglycans, and the orientations of fibers within the tissue. For example, if human skin were largely composed of a protein other than collagen, many of its mechanical properties, such as its elastic modulus, would be different.

Chemistry, molecular biology, and cell biology have much to offer in the way of explaining the active and passive properties of living tissues. For example, in muscle contractions, the binding of myosin to actin is based on a biochemical reaction involving calcium ions and ATP.

Wikipedia

Astronomy Picture of the Day

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

I like politics, one day i must win and stay in parliament.

Success in politics through real method give me real rewards. I start early to release the pain, eliminate the poor, give the spirit among people, and do some jobs.

I’m the leader. I just work for the living. Do research about science, engineering and human.

http://politik-malaysia.blogspot.com

Tempat saya ada elok saya bertanding satu… apa agaknya membolehkan saya bertanding? Nak join parti atau tidak? Nak kena kempen “Sikit-sikit lama jadi bukit” kata orang Melayu. Kiasu la katakan.

http://politik-malaysia.blogspot.com

I start with this reading…

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Immortality section:

If you take one life body.

We are not realised after our neuron is lost to supply their sensory function. But the memory still record in our mind.

Then mind uploading project open

In transhumanism and science fiction, mind uploading (also occasionally referred to by other terms such as mind downloading, mind transfer, whole brain emulation, whole body emulation, or electronic transcendence) refers to the hypothetical transfer of a human mind to an artificial substrate, such as a computer simulation.

Beside that, Blue Brain project is establish.

Blue Brain is a project to begin the construction of a simulated brain. The aim is to study the brain’s structure. Started in May 2005, the project is a collaboration between IBM and Henry Markram’s Brain and Mind Institute at the École Polytechnique in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Immortal species exist

Immortal species

* Bacteria (as a colony)—Although they can be killed by antibiotics, radiation, or starvation, bacteria, as a colony, appear to never age. Bacteria reproduce through cell division. A parent bacterium splits itself into two identical daughter cells. These daughter cells then split themselves in half. This process repeats, thus making the bacterium colony essentially immortal. However, a bacterium, as an individual, is mortal since it “dies” when it divides in half.
Recent research, however, suggests that even bacteria as a colony may eventually die since each succeeding generation is slightly smaller, weaker, and more likely to die than the previous.[2]


The Quest For Immortality
Want To Live 500 Years? One Scientist Says It May Be Possible One Day

I want open one immortality research project which will contribute to world immortality consciousness and their benefit to our humanity.

This film for you to watching…

Dear Cosmic Enquirer,

Yours is an old, perhaps ancient, and irresistible question. It’s another way of asking: “Are we alone here in the unimaginably vast cosmos?” Unimaginable as it may be, there is a remarkable and reasonable way to take a crack at imagining an answer to this question. In fact, there’s even a well-established scientific discipline to study the origin, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe–it’s called exobiology.

But closer to home, as recently as November 2006, we may have found a very reasonable place to go looking for life on our neighbor world–Mars, right down the cosmic alley, if you will. We’ll get to that a little further down. First …

How to calculate the likelihood of extraterrestrial life
A well-known astronomer named Frank Drake proposed a series of approximations back in 1961 to give us a reasonable estimate of the chances of having an extraterrestrial civilization “out there.” It’s simple. Just use the calculation N = R*fp nefl fi fcL. Easy, right? Here’s what it means:

Called the Drake equation, this calculation starts with total number of stars in a given part of space, say, our galaxy. At any time in the cosmos, some stars are forming. Others are using up their fuel and dying. Still others create more fusion energy than their gravity can contain; they’re exploding. So, astronomers often estimate the total number of stars using a term associated with a rate of star formation. We call it “R*” (R-star). For the Milky Way, it’s around 400 billion; hence the expression, “billions and billions” of stars. (This phrase was used by the extraordinary talk show host Johnny Carson, when he parodied the extraordinary astronomer Carl Sagan.)

Then we can consider the percentage or fraction of stars that would also have planets orbiting them. That’s fp.

Of those fp planets, what portion of them have conditions that could sustain life, akin to the conditions on our own planet? That’s ne, (”n sub-e” for “earthlike”).

Now, the fraction of planets on which self-aware, or “intelligent” life has evolved: fi.

How about the fraction of self-aware-ians (sic) that feel like communicating with other civilizations?: fc.

Then, an important and perhaps sobering one, the lifetime of such a civilization: L

So how many planets could have intelligent life? We write that total number with a capital N.

Again, the calculation N = R*fp nefl fi fcL gives us the likelihood of intelligent life “out there.”

Exobiologists have good estimates for just one of these terms: R* (representing the total number of stars, if you’ve forgotten). Because all the rest of the terms are still pretty unknown, you can go wild with this equation.

So what’s the answer already!?
Let’s say there are and were about 400 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy when ours came along. Then, let’s say only a tenth of them have planets (which is a low estimate). Of those, let’s say only a millionth of them are Earth-like. Looking around, life may not be that unlikely, so let’s say of these Earth-like planets, the chances of some kind of life happening are about one in ten. Then only a 10,000th of them have intelligent life. Of those, perhaps a 100th stumble on to radio-wave telescopes. Then let’s say, once a civilization comes into being, it doesn’t blow itself up, catastrophically disrupt its planet’s climate, or lose interest in radio astronomy, so it lasts about 10,000 years. So, let’s see:

N = (400 billion)(1/10)(1/1,000,000)(1/10)(1/10,000)(1/100)(10,000)
= 40 civilizations.

That’s not that many, seeing as how there is so much space in space.

On the other hand, what if these crazy-wild guesses are way off? What if life is very likely? Using clever techniques and telescopes, we have discovered hundreds of planets orbiting other stars, and the search for these planets is in its infancy. What if intelligent civilizations are common? It’s easy to use different guesses for each (fudge) factor, recompute this, and estimate that civilizations number not in the dozens, but in the millions. It’s quite an exercise.

So get this: If there is liquid water on Mars right now, well that might be a good place to go looking for fossilized forms of life–something like Martian bacteria. Oh, and what if those things living underground away from the sterilizing ultraviolet rays of sunlight were still alive?! If we found evidence of life on Mars, it would, dare I say it, change the world!

Meanwhile, the Phoenix is the next spacecraft we’ll be sending to Mars, this time to the north polar region of the planet. It will probably arrive in the late spring of our year 2008. See, the North Pole of Mars is a lot like the North Pole of the Earth. It’s cold. On Earth it’s covered with water–ice, frozen water. Well on Mars, there’s frozen water all right, but it’s below the surface. Phoenix has an arm that can dig down and sniff around. Who knows what it will discover a year from now. One-celled life on Earth is found in a lot weirder places than the Arctic or deep underground. Oooh, it’s exciting!

From time to time, people find meteorites on Earth’s surface that were blasted away from Mars by an impact there about 15 million years ago. The famous meteorite designated ALH84001 landed here about 13,000 years ago, and it’s from this inferred impact on Mars. Well, consider this: What if life actually started as some sort of single-celled organism or collection of amino acids on Mars, and found its way here by an impact not unlike the one that sent us the ALH84001 rock?

It’s not beyond imagining. You might not think it’s likely, but it is absolutely possible. It is, if I may, a cosmic connection. We may all be Martians …

There must be someone else out there
Whatever numbers you put in the Drake equation, and whatever you might wonder about the countless stars visible from Earth, you have to admit that it just doesn’t seem possible that there are no other civilizations out there, not one. It seems like there has to be somebody. I wonder often what they’re like. For our wealthy society with spacefaring robot capability, we just have to see what’s up on Mars.

If we discover life on Mars or anywhere else, everyone on Earth would have to stop and think about life elsewhere, about other forms of life. Then in turn, each of us would have to consider his and her own place here on Earth. Do we matter in the cosmic scheme of things? Are we just insignificant specks orbiting a speck in the middle of specklessness?

I often think about this, and I consider the size of a typical human brain. It’s pretty small. Yet with it, we can imagine and consider all of this. That, my friends, is remarkable. Yours is a wonderful question. It helps us ponder our place near our star, the Sun, and among all the stars of the cosmos.

Perhaps soon, members of the human species, the species that sends its robots to Mars, will change their world.

http://encarta.msn.com/

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - Flashing a big smile, teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan climbed aboard the space shuttle Endeavour on Wednesday for liftoff on a mission she hopes will realize the unfulfilled dreams of her predecessor, Christa McAuliffe.
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Good weather was forecast for the planned early evening launch.

Morgan beamed and waved at the cameras and crowd as she boarded the van that transported the shuttle crew to the launch pad. She stood at the base of the pad, looking up at the towering Endeavour, before riding the elevator up with her six colleagues.

Before crawling into the shuttle, Morgan sipped water from a bottle and tapped the shoulder of a crewmate who was waiting to board. She took the center seat in the cabin’s lower compartment, the same seat occupied by McAuliffe in 1986.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070808/ap_on_sc/space_shuttle

A kind of matter directly opposed to the matter known on earth
exists somewhere else in the universe, Dr Edward Teller has said . . . .
He said there may be anti-stars and anti-galaxies entirely
composed of such anti-matter. Teller did not describe the properties
of anti-matter except to say there is none of it on earth, and
that it would explode on contact with ordinary matter.
San Francisco Chronicle,

Well up beyond the tropostrata
There is a region stark and stellar
Where, on a streak of anti-matter,
Lived Dr Edward Anti-Teller.
Remote from Fusion ?s origin,
He lived unguessed and unuwares
With all his anti-kith and kin,
And kept macassars on his charis.
One moming, idling by the sea,
He spied a tin of monstrous girth
That bore thee letters: A. E. C.
Out stepped a visitor from Earth.
Then, shouting gladly o ’er the sands,
Met two who in their alien ways
Were like as lentils. Their right hands
Clasped, and the rest was gamma rays.

Your baby’s umbilical cord blood could give hope to a patient with leukemia, aplastic anemia or other blood diseases. The blood-forming cells found in cord blood are being studied under research protocols as a new method for treating patients in need.

Why Donate?

* Each year thousands of patients are diagnosed with life-threatening diseases that can be treated by rebuilding the patient’s hematopoietic (blood cell producing) system with blood-forming cells. Umbilical cord blood is being studied as one of the sources of blood cells.
* Donating cord blood is medically safe. The cord blood is collected from the umbilical cord after your baby is born.
* Donation does not change the birth process.
* The umbilical cord and placenta are usually thrown away after a baby is born.
* Donating cord blood is free to you and completely confidential.

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A Special Need for Diversity

Marrow and cord blood transplants (also called BMT) require matching certain tissue traits of the donor and patient. Because these traits are inherited, a patient’s most likely match is someone of the same heritage. American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black and African American, Hispanic and Latino, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and multiple-race patients face a greater challenge in finding matched donors or cord blood than White patients.

Patients’ Chances of Finding a Match Are Improving

The NMDP is committed to supporting the communities it serves. Through ongoing initiatives to increase the diversity of their cord blood listings, NMDP cord blood banks are working to raise awareness and recruit more cord blood donors in their communities. The NMDP has made great strides. In 2006, 26% of all receipients from diverse racial and ethnic groups received cord blood transplants.

The Need Remains

Even with more than 50,000 cord blood units listed, some patients are unable to find a match because of the rarity of their tissue traits. Some tissue traits are more likely to be found among people of a particular racial or ethnic heritage. That is why a pressing need remains for more cord blood donations from American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black and African American, Hispanic and Latino, Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, and multiple-race women.

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How to Donate

Any woman who is at least 18 years old (16 in some locations), in general good health and who lives in a community where cord blood donation is available may be able to donate her baby’s cord blood. If you would like to donate your baby’s cord blood, look for a participating hospital near you. Because cord blood donation is still a growing field, not all hospitals are prepared to receive a donation at this time.

Contact your cord blood bank before you deliver, ideally by your 34th week of pregnancy. The cord blood bank will ask you to:

* Complete a consent form agreeing to donate your baby’s cord blood.
* Complete a maternal and family health history form to confirm you meet health eligibility guidelines.
* Give a small blood sample for infectious disease testing.

You generally complete these steps before your baby’s birth, though timing can vary depending on your cord blood bank.

After your baby’s birth, the umbilical cord blood is collected. The donated cord blood is frozen and stored at the cord blood bank for future use. Doctors all over the world search the National Marrow Donor Program Registry of donors and cord blood units to find a match for their patients who need a transplant. If selected, the cord blood is transplanted to a matching patient.
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Cord Blood Donation is Different from Private Storage
Before deciding to donate your baby’s cord blood, be sure you understand the difference between donating the cord blood and storing it for your own use. For more information about the difference between donation and private storage, see the Cord Blood FAQs.

Last Updated: March 2007

http://www.marrow.org/HELP/Donate_Babys_Umbilical_CB/index.html

Mental stimulation and drug treatment could help people with degenerative brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s recover their memories, a study says.

Scientists found mice with a similar condition to Alzheimer’s were able to regain memories of tasks they had previously been taught.

A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found two methods - brain stimulation and drugs - both worked.

Their findings were published in British journal Nature.

The researchers used genetically engineered mice in which a protein linked to degenerative brain disease could be triggered.

Scientists had previously given the mice tests where they learnt to avoid an electric shock and how to find their way through a maze to reach food.

‘Playground’ test

After six weeks with the brain disease, the mice were no longer able to remember how to perform these tasks.

Some of the mice were then placed in a more stimulating environment with toys, treadmills and other mice.

The playground mice were able to remember the shock test far better than the mice in other cages. They were also better at learning new things.

Scientists then tested a class of drugs called histone deacetylase, or HDAC, inhibitors on the mice.

These also improved memory and learning, similar to improvements made by environmental stimulation.

Neuroscientist Li-Huei Tsai of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said the results could offer hope to people with diseases like Alzheimer’s.

“We show the first evidence that even if the brain suffered some very severe neurodegeneration and the individual exhibits very severe learning impairment and memory loss, there is still the possibility to improve learning ability and recover to a certain extent lost long-term memories.”

She said the study suggested that in people with degenerative brain diseases, memories were not erased from the brain, but rather could not be accessed because of the disease.

She added that while most treatments for Alzheimer’s targeted the disease’s early stages, this research showed that even after major brain damage it was still possible to improve learning and memory.

Dr Susanne Sorensen, head of research, Alzheimer’s Society, said: “These results cannot automatically be translated to people and a lot more has to be done to narrow the focus on the processes that are involved.

“However, by demonstrating that lost memories can be accessed again these results offer hope of a better understanding of what happens to memories as dementia develops.

“It highlights the role of both an ‘enriching environment’ and through its focus on biochemical processes could provide important building blocks for new treatments to alleviate the symptoms of dementia.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6606315.stm