Common Paradox Tech Blog

SubComdTaco writes “Harvard has announced their approach towards an implantable cancer vaccine (press release here). To anyone familiar with how the immune system works, this appears to be a synthetic lymph node, an intriguing bit of biomimicry. From the Science Daily article: ‘A cancer vaccine carried into the body on a carefully engineered, fingernail-sized implant is the first to successfully eliminate tumors in mammals, scientists recently reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The new approach, pioneered by bioengineers and immunologists at Harvard University, uses plastic disks impregnated with tumor-specific antigens and implanted under the skin to reprogram the mammalian immune system to attack tumors. The new paper describes the use of such implants to eradicate melanoma tumors in mice. … The slender implants… are 8.5 millimeters in diameter and made of an FDA-approved biodegradable polymer. Ninety percent air, the disks are highly permeable to immune cells and release cytokines, powerful recruiters of immune-system messengers called dendritic cells. These cells enter an implant’s pores, where they are exposed to antigens specific to the type of tumor being targeted. The dendritic cells then report to nearby lymph nodes, where they direct the immune system’s T cells to hunt down and kill tumor cells.’”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Race is still a sensitive topic in much of the world. And while most of us may like to think of ourselves as not being biased, a test designed by Harvard University, the University of Virginia, and the University of Washington looks to reveal what we might feel subconsciously.

It’s called “Project Implicit” and it’s an online test that takes about 10 minutes to complete (I just finished it). According to the site, the goal is to “examine thoughts and feelings that exist either outside of conscious awareness or outside of conscious control.”

The test starts by asking you about your race, and any biases that you may possess – as a Caucasian male, it asked me about my feelings and preferences towards white and black people. Then, you’re shown a series of pictures of white/black faces and good/bad words. You need to then associate those pictures and words with white/black and good/bad on the right and left of your screen.

As the test progresses, words will get swapped around, for example, putting “White People” and “Bad Words” on the same side and vice versa. The idea is that if this becomes tricky, it might mean you have a preference for one race or the other. Personally, I felt this seemed like a bit of an exercise in hand-eye coordination more than anything else, but I can see what the researchers are getting at.

At the end, you get some interesting perspective on what preferences you might have based on how you answered the questions. I’m not convinced the results aren’t going to be quite similar for most everyone that takes it, but if you’re bold enough to share your own findings, let us know how it goes in the comments.

Tags: race, research

Life, the BBC’s latest totally unbelievable nature documentary, is airing in 10 episodes between now and Christmas. Not only is the footage as incredible as you’d expect; the studio sent some production notes our way explaining how scenes were shot.

“Filming the bouncing toad was very challenging; the remote mountain plateau is one mile high and 26 square miles in area, whilst the toad is one inch long and very elusive. The tarantulas which prey on them are also very hard to find. To give the crew the best chance of finding and filming them, the expert on these creatures came on the shoot. He searched for a week before the crew’s arrival to find both species and a location where they could come together and where the toad would demonstrate its bouncing-ball method of escape. This allowed the cameraman to set up his slow-motion camera in the right place. The scientist was able to ensure that the toad was never in danger of being harmed by the tarantula as a result of us filming them. The technique was a total success – the toad tucked its legs in, rolled and bounced, allowing the crew to film its method of escape in slow-motion detail.”

“A Jesus Christ lizard running on water is so fast that a human would have to run at 65 miles per hour to achieve the same trick. The speed makes it an enormous challenge to film. After consulting with a scientist at Harvard University who has made a ground-breaking study of the lizard’s water sprint, the crew decided that as well as filming the behaviour at normal frame rates they would attempt to capture the close up details of the lizard’s run with a slow-motion camera filming at 2000 frames per second (i.e. slowed down by 80 times).

It’s very hard to predict exactly where and when a lizard will run, what’s more it’s all so quick that once the lizard is spotted it’s gone in a blur! Learning from the scientist’s observation methods was essential and as a result it was decided to film the details of the sprint would need some degree of control to ensure that the crew had some idea of where and when the lizard would run. They travelled to Belize, home of the lizard, to work with local animal experts who had some lizards in natural forest enclosures. If, and when, these lizards decided to run, they always ran along the same stretch of water, where the cameraman could station his camera.

The key to success was using the latest digital slow-motion camera that continuously records into a memory buffer, so that when the cameraman hits the trigger button he downloads the action that took place a second or so before that moment. Whenever a lizard sprinted past the cameraman over the water the cameraman hit the trigger, desperately trying to keep the lizard in the frame and in focus. The final end result of this was stunning, slow motion shots of the lizards, with every drop of water visible as they sprinted through the surface.”

OK, we don’t actually have any notes on how this was shot. But the macro shot of water beading up on the gecko’s hydrophobic skin is gorgeous.

The above clips are from Episode 2: Reptiles and Amphibians. The series is playing now on BBC One.