Replaceable You (and Other Free Stem Cells Courses)

in Science, Uncategorized | August 13th, 2008

Here’s anoth­er free, down­load­able course com­ing out Stan­ford, which will tell you how regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine can keep your body parts almost new. You can access it here on iTune­sU, and below we have post­ed the course descrip­tion. If stem cells hap­pen to pique your inter­est, then you may want to explore these two oth­er relat­ed Stan­ford cours­es: Straight Talk about Stem Cells and Stem Cells: Pol­i­cy and Ethics. Also remem­ber that you can down­load at least 200 free uni­ver­si­ty cours­es here.

Replace­able You: Stem Cells and Tis­sue Engi­neer­ing in this Age of Enlight­en­ment

“The good part about get­ting old­er is that we gain some wis­dom and patience. The bad part is that our bod­ies (knees, hips, organs, and more) start to wear out. But what if our bod­ies could be “repro­grammed” to grow new parts? The new field of regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine is try­ing to do just that, and it takes advan­tage of the process of regen­er­a­tion, which is nature’s solu­tion for repair­ing dam­aged tis­sues.

Although humans can­not re-grow their limbs like sala­man­ders and newts can, the capac­i­ty to regen­er­ate injured or dis­eased tis­sues exists in humans and oth­er ani­mals, and the mol­e­c­u­lar machin­ery for regen­er­a­tion seems to be an ele­men­tal part of our genet­ic make­up. The pre­vail­ing opin­ion is that the genes respon­si­ble for regen­er­a­tion have for some rea­son fall­en into dis­use, and they may be “jump start­ed” by the selec­tive acti­va­tion of key mol­e­cules. Using this knowl­edge, sci­en­tists are devel­op­ing new strate­gies to repair and, in some cas­es, regen­er­ate dam­aged or dis­eased tis­sues in both young and old patients. In this course, we will explore the excit­ing field of regen­er­a­tive med­i­cine and learn a lit­tle about what makes stem cells so spe­cial. We will also dis­cuss some of the recent dis­cov­er­ies that can poten­tial­ly allow us to be fit and healthy well into old age. Here, you will learn what is mere­ly sci­ence fic­tion and what, remark­ably, has become sci­ence fact in our new med­ical age.”

Jill Helms
Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor, Depart­ment of Plas­tic and Recon­struc­tive Surgery
Jill Helms joined the Stan­ford fac­ul­ty after eight years at UC San Fran­cis­co, where she was the Direc­tor of the Mol­e­c­u­lar and Cel­lu­lar Biol­o­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry in the Depart­ment of Ortho­pe­dic Surgery. Her research focus­es on the par­al­lels between fetal tis­sue devel­op­ment and adult tis­sue regen­er­a­tion. She received a PhD in devel­op­men­tal neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy and a clin­i­cal degree and spends the major­i­ty of her time in clin­i­cal­ly relat­ed research.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia: Diving at the ’36 Games

in Film, Video - Arts & Culture | August 12th, 2008

Pro­duced at the request of the Inter­na­tion­al Olympics Com­mit­tee (and not at the behest of the Nazi pro­pa­gan­da machine), Leni Riefen­stahl’s 1938 doc­u­men­tary, Olympia, is con­sid­ered one of the more impor­tant sports doc­u­men­taries of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Below, we have post­ed a well known sequence that recalls the div­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the ’36 Berlin Games.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Robotics, Artificial Intelligence & Other Goodies From Our Readers

in Uncategorized | August 12th, 2008

Over the past week, we’ve dis­cov­ered a num­ber of good items being put togeth­er by some of our read­ers.

The first is a new pop­u­lar pod­cast called “Robots” (iTunes — RSS Feed — Web Site). Assem­bled by a group of grad stu­dents asso­ci­at­ed with the Swiss Fed­er­al Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy in Lau­sanne (EPFL), each episode focus­es on a spe­cif­ic top­ic (e.g., robot soc­cer) and fea­tures inter­views with high pro­file guests in robot­ics and arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. Also, each episode high­lights news and views from peo­ple build­ing and pro­gram­ming robots inside and out­side uni­ver­si­ties.

Next, you may want to swing over to Nigel Beale’s site and lis­ten to his radio program/podcast called The Bib­lio File. The site hous­es about 100 audio inter­views with var­i­ous authors. Per­fect for the bib­lio­phile.

Last­ly, two quick men­tions: Tom Han­son, over at the “Open Edu­ca­tion” blog, rec­om­mends Zaid Alsagof­f’s free e‑book called “69 Learn­ing Adven­tures in 6 Galax­ies,” which essen­tial­ly offers a “resource for teach­ers seek­ing to be tech­no­log­i­cal­ly rel­e­vant.” And then, along sim­i­lar lines, you can find at SmartTeaching.org a help­ful post called “100 Awe­some Class­room Videos to Learn New Teach­ing Tech­niques.”

Keep them com­ing.…

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Top Ten Psychology Videos

in Psychology, Science, Video - Science | August 11th, 2008

Psy­ch­Cen­tral has post­ed its list of the ten best psy­chol­o­gy videos avail­able on the web. Below, we have post­ed links to the videos them­selves. But if you want a quick descrip­tion of each clip, then def­i­nite­ly read through the orig­i­nal post. Thanks to Kottke.org for bring­ing this to light.

1. An Unqui­et Mind: Per­son­al Reflec­tions on Man­ic-Depres­sive Ill­ness

2. The Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment

3. My Stroke of Insight

4. The Para­dox of Choice

5. Trapped: Men­tal Ill­ness in America’s Pris­ons

6. Teen Brain

7. Depres­sion: Out of the Shad­ows

8. Thin

9. I Am Not Sick, I Don’t Need Help: Research on Poor Insight and How We Can Help

10. The Psy­chol­o­gy of Glob­al Warm­ing

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

The Decline and Fall of the Roman (and American?) Empire: A Free Audiobook

in Audio Books | August 10th, 2008

Edward Gib­bon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire – It’s a major work of the Enlight­en­ment, a book that shaped how we mod­erns write his­to­ry (and, for that mat­ter, how we aspire to write in the Eng­lish lan­guage), and it’s now avail­able as a free pod­cast thanks to Lib­rivox. Or at least Vol­umes 1, 2, 3, and 4 are.  (Click on each link to down­load the full zip files, which include many hours of audio. And please note that the remain­ing vol­umes are forth­com­ing.)

Pub­lished first in 1776, just as the US declared its inde­pen­dence from Eng­land, Gib­bon’s Decline and Fall looked to offer an empir­i­cal expla­na­tion for why Ancient Rome fell as a pow­er, and he gen­er­al­ly point­ed to a decline in civic virtue among its cit­i­zen­ry (why both­er fight­ing the Empire’s wars when you can get mer­ce­nar­ies to do it?) and to the rise of Chris­tian­i­ty (why wor­ry about Rome when a bet­ter life, an eter­nal after­life, awaits you?).

In part, Gib­bon’s work has endured because it speaks to ques­tions that mod­ern pow­ers have on their minds. What brings Empires down, and what (implic­it­ly) allows them to endure? These ques­tions have a cer­tain amount of rel­e­vance these days in an anx­ious US. And indeed Gib­bon’s name was imme­di­ate­ly invoked in a pod­cast that asked whether Amer­i­ca, today’s empire, is on the brink. (Click to lis­ten.) The par­al­lels between Gib­bon’s Rome and the con­tem­po­rary Unit­ed States have also been direct­ly explored by the pro­lif­ic, young Har­vard his­to­ri­an, Niall Fer­gu­son. You may want to check out his Octo­ber 2006 piece in Van­i­ty Fair, Empire Falls. And depend­ing on what you think, you can give time to his two books on Empire — the first (and bet­ter) one focus­es on the British Empire, and a sec­ond one devotes itself to the US.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed - See our com­plete col­lec­tion of audio­books

Archaeologists Uncover Shakespeare’s First Theater

in Literature | August 6th, 2008

The BBC reports: “An archae­o­log­i­cal dig has recov­ered what is thought to be the remains of the the­atre where Shake­speare’s plays were first per­formed.” Get the rest of the big sto­ry here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

An Anthropological Introduction to YouTube

in YouTube | August 5th, 2008

Michael Wesch, a pro­fes­sor of cul­tur­al anthro­pol­o­gy, has become some­thing of an inter­net phe­nom­e­non, hav­ing pro­duced two won­der­ful videos that help demys­ti­fy the world of Web 2.0. (Def­i­nite­ly check them out here and here). Now he has a new video get­ting some play. Below you can watch a talk he recent­ly gave at The Library of Con­gress, where he uses video to dis­sect the new medi­as­cape that we’re liv­ing in, and how it’s chang­ing our rela­tion­ships … for bet­ter or for worse.

via John Bat­telle Search­blog

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

It Happened One Night: Frank Capra’s 1934 Classic

in Film | August 4th, 2008

Today we present Frank Capra’s Acad­e­my Award-win­ning com­e­dy from 1934, star­ring Clark Gable — It Hap­pened One Night. Grab some pop­corn. Dim the lights (even if you’re at work). And enjoy:

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

John Gielgud’s Hamlet

in Literature | August 4th, 2008

Here we have John Giel­gud’s first record­ing of a scene from Ham­let, “record­ed short­ly after he became the youngest actor to take the lead in the play, in the 1929/30 Old Vic sea­son.” It’s the audio that you will want to focus on here, not the video, even though there’s some­thing a lit­tle amus­ing about the whole idea of watch­ing an old record turn on YouTube. How quaint.

Sub­scribe to Our Feed

Solzhenitsyn Dies at 89; David Remnick Reflects

in Harvard, History, Literature | August 3rd, 2008

Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn, who chron­i­cled the abus­es of the Sovi­et regime and gained world­wide fame with A Day in the Life of Ivan Deniso­vich, has died at 89. (Get the New York Times obit here.) Once asked what Solzhen­it­syn means to lit­er­a­ture and the his­to­ry of Rus­sia, David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of The New York­er, had this to stay: “It’s impos­si­ble to imag­ine a writer whose affect on a soci­ety has been greater than Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn’s affect on the fate of Rus­sia  …” In the video post­ed below, Rem­nick elab­o­rates on Solzhen­it­syn’s con­tri­bu­tions, and it’s worth remem­ber­ing that Rem­nick won a Pulitzer dur­ing the 90s for his best­seller, Lenin’s Tomb.

(Note: you can read the lec­ture Solzhen­it­syn gave upon receiv­ing the Nobel Prize in 1970 here, and lis­ten to his 1978 Har­vard grad­u­a­tion speech here.)

Sub­scribe to Our Feed