Monthly Archives: March 2010

Gold Nanoparticles in Cellular Nuclei to kill Cancer

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Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have shown that by directing gold nanoparticles into the nuclei of cancer cells, they can not only prevent them from multiplying, but can kill them where they lurk. The research appeared as a communication in the February 10 edition of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

The team tested their hypothesis on cells harvested from cancer of the ear, nose and throat. They decorated the cells with an argininge-glycine-aspartic acide petipde (RGD) to bring the gold nano-particles into the cytoplasm of a cancer cell but not the healthy cells and a nuclear localization signal peptide (NLS) to bring it into the nucleus.

In previous work they showed that just bringing the gold into the cytoplasm does nothing. In this current study, they found that implanting the gold into the nucleus effectively kills the cell.

“The cell starts dividing and then it collapses,” said El-Sayed. “Once you have a cell with two nuclei, it dies.” The gold works by interfering with the cells’ DNA, he added. How that works exactly is the subject of a follow-up study.

“Previously, we’ve shown that we can bring gold nanoparticles into cancer cells and by shining a light on them, can kill the cells. Now we’ve shown that if we direct those gold nanoparticles into the nucleus, we can kill the cancer cells that are in spots we can’t hit with the light,” said El-Sayed.

Next the team will test how the treatment works in vivo

via Cancer Vaccine Progress and Nanoparticles in Cellular Nuclei to kill Cancer.

The Death of Oily Gas Prices

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Gazprom has finally accepted that shale gas changed the world. The Russian gas giant this week said it will allow up to 15% of its gas sales to Europe to be sold at spot gas prices on the continent. This is a big shift for Gazprom. Previously, the major insisted on selling gas to European users under long-term contracts. With gas prices linked to prevailing oil prices.

It’s long been usual practice in Europe to sell gas using an oil-linked price structure. Decades ago, when gas was just coming into widespread use, players in the industry decided that the fuel should be priced according to value of the other fuels it was displacing. If users were switching from oil to gas, the gas should cost roughly as much as the unused oil, on an energy-content basis.

This cost structure prevailed in Europe for a long time. But shale gas seems to have cut the legs out from under oily gas prices.

With America now producing above and beyond expectations thanks to shale gas development, gas exporters globally are scrambling to find markets. The world built liquefied natural gas plants thinking the U.S. would be the “market of last resort”.

But America is awash in its own production, and the high American prices that exporters were hoping for have vanished. Meaning that today there is a fleet of LNG ships looking for a home for their product.

This flood of global gas supply has depressed spot gas prices globally. To the point where the traditional 6 to 1 oil to gas price ratio has become more like 15 to 1. Gas is very cheap compared to crude.

The result being that European gas users would rather buy cheap LNG than pay high rates for oil-linked gas piped in by Gazprom.

Gazprom resisted re-pricing its gas for some time. But this week’s announcement suggests the company has finally capitulated. They are willing to sell some of their gas at lower, spot prices. Otherwise they will be largely priced out of the European market.

The interesting thing will be the knock-on effects of Gazprom’s decision. Suddenly, a lot of Russian gas is price-competitive with LNG. Meaning that fewer LNG shipments will be ordered to the continent.

The question is: where will these boats go? They may end up headed back to America. Asian gas buyers are busy sewing up contracts with new LNG developments in Australia. If Europe and Asia are out, the U.S. is the only game in town.

A spate of new LNG landings in the U.S. would have a downward effect on North American gas prices. At a time when prices in many parts of America are already falling below $5 per mcf. Just this week, gas major EnCana said it expects North American prices to remain in the $6 range for the foreseeable future.

This is progress. The gas industry did a great job over the last several years of developing new supply globally. Now we just have to find a place to put it all.

via Pierce Points.

Kazakhstan a better credit risk than California

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This may be more amusing than instructive, but here goes. This chart shows 5-year credit default swaps on bonds issued by the State of California and the government of Kazakhstan. As Bloomberg’s Chart of the Day notes, California would be ranked as the world’s eighth-largest economy, while Kazakhstan’s economy is only one-sixteenth as large. Yet the market is saying that California’s bonds are 50% more risky than those of Kazakhstan.

In case you’re wondering, similar credit default swaps on Greek government bonds are trading at 364 bps (only slightly higher than California’s 303). Iceland 524, Portugal 163, Spain 130, and Italy 128.

via Calafia Beach Pundit: Kazakhstan a better credit risk than California.

How Long Till Human-Level AI ?

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we surveyed a number of leading specialists at the Artificial General Intelligence conference (AGI-09) in Washington DC in March 2009. These are the experts most involved in working toward the advanced AIs we’re talking about. We asked the experts when they estimated AI would reach each of four milestones:

* passing the Turing test by carrying on a conversation well enough to pass as a human

* solving problems as well as a third grade elementary school student

* performing Nobel-quality scientific work

* going beyond the human level to superhuman intelligence

The range of best-guess time estimates for the AGI milestones without massive additional funding is summarized below:

Milestones of AGI

via How Long Till Human-Level AI? | h+ Magazine.

unravel the ‘lean mean machine’ that is cancer

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Scientists from Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research have published a paper, online today in Nature Cell Biology, describing gene expression in a prostate cancer cell: more sweeping, more targeted and more complex than we could ever have imagined, even five years ago.

The study shows that changes within the prostate cancer cell ‘epigenome’ (biochemical processes that target DNA and affect gene expression) alter the expression of many genes, silencing their expression within large regions of DNA nearly 3% of the cell’s genome.

Epigenetic ‘events’ include ‘DNA methylation’ and ‘chromatin modification’. Methylation occurs when a methyl group – one carbon atom and three hydrogen atoms – attaches to a gene, determining the extent to which it is ’switched on’ or ’switched off’. Chromatin, responsible for the physical coiling or structuring of DNA, can determine whether or not a gene is accessible for interaction with other molecules inside a cell.

Project leader Professor Susan Clark describes the typical cancer cell as a ‘lean mean machine’. “Epigenetic changes reduce the available genome to a point where only the genes that promote cell proliferation are accessible in the cancer cell,” she said.

“We can see that the epigenome is remodelled in a very consistent and precise way, effectively swamping the expression of any gene that goes against the cancer cell’s interests.”

“The swamping encompasses tumour suppressor genes, and all the neighbouring genes around them, as well as non-coding RNA, intergenic regions and microRNAs. Only those genes essential for growth activation are allowed to be active, while all the genes and regions that apply brakes are inactivated.”

“We now have an epigenomic map of the prostate cancer cell which we didn’t have before. That has taken three years to develop, including the technology and methods to interpret our tissue samples.”

“The map tells us that the tumour cell is very different from the healthy cell. It also tells us that it works in a programmed rather than a random way, and that it targets a significant part of the genome, rather than just single genes.”

“It tells us that treating cancer will be far more complex than we imagined, as it will first involve understanding and reversing epigenetic change.”

via What it might take to unravel the ‘lean mean machine’ that is cancer | BreakThrough Digest Medical News.

Bloom Reveals New Fuel Cells

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The up-to-now secretive startup Bloom Energy took the wraps off its technology this week, unveiling a fuel-cell system that the company claims can run on a variety of fuels and pay for itself in three to five years via lower energy bills.

The company’s founder and CEO, KR Sridhar, said at the official unveiling of the company on Wednesday that the technology–when it’s powered by natural gas–can cut carbon dioxide emissions in half compared to the emissions produced conventional power sources, on average. Several major companies, including Google, eBay, and Walmart, have already bought Bloom’s technology, and in the few months these fuel cells have been in operation, they’ve generated 11 million kilowatt hours of electricity (about enough to power 1,000 homes for a year).

via Technology Review: Bloom Reveals New Fuel Cells.

OTOH …

Sam Jaffe, Renewable & Distributed Energy Blog, gives us “Four Things Bloom Energy Forgot to Tell the World,” namely that the fuel cell ”does not produce electricity more efficiently than centralized generation, isn’t much cleaner than centralized generation, and is more expensive to produce than most other forms.  Finally, Jaffe notes the process theoretically has energy storage capability*, but it isn’t clear when the capability may be made available.

Most Greeks Endorse Government Fiscal Measures

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On Feb. 22, Papandreou referred to the government’s announced measures, saying, “Even though there are austerity measures and they do hurt, the government has the support right now of about 50 per cent to 60 per cent of the population. What we’re seeing here, and I haven’t seen this except during the Olympic Games in 2004, is a real sense of unity by the Greek people of wanting to make a change.”

Polling Data

Do you think the recent measures implemented by the government will lead the country out of the fiscal crisis?

Yes

 51.3%
No

 43.0%

Source: MARC / Ethnos
Methodology: Interviews with 1,000 Greek adults, conducted in February 2010. No margin of error was provided.

via Most Greeks Endorse Government Fiscal Measures: Angus Reid Global Monitor.

China insider sees revolution brewing

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China’s top expert on social unrest has warned that hardline security policies are taking the country to the brink of ”revolutionary turmoil”. In contrast with the powerful, assertive and united China that is being projected to the outside world, Yu Jianrong said his prediction of looming internal disaster reflected on-the-ground surveys and also the views of Chinese government ministers. Deepening social fractures were caused by the Communist Party’s obsession with preserving its monopoly on power through ”state violence” and ”ideology”, rather than justice, Professor Yu said.

He cited statistics showing the number of recorded incidents of ”mass unrest” grew from 8709 in 1993 to more than 90,000 in each of the past three years. ”More and more evidence shows that the situation is getting more and more tense, more and more serious,” Professor Yu said.

”Corrupt officials have such a high and urgent interest in controlling the media and especially the internet,” he said. ”The more they feel that their days are numbered due to the internet and free information, the more ferocious and corrupt they become, in a really vicious circle leading to final collapse.”

via China insider sees revolution brewing.