Would you clone yourself?

This will be a reality in a not so distant future, scientific and medical discoveries and improvements will allow us to clone ourselves and the question is “would YOU do it?”

There are lots of reasons for you to want to clone yourself; having an identical heir, an evil twin or even for organ transplantation. But of course you have to look at the ethical and moral barriers that this action would imply. For instance, some religious perspectives consider the hypothetical clone to be a soulless, empty, and synthetic body. Also, you would have to take into account that you would need a woman’s womb to fully create your clone. Money could also be a problem, because this may not be a very cheap procedure at first.

If the scientists really want to make human cloning possible I think they will have to look for a very good reason to do it other than “because we can”.  That is not an excuse to give life to a copied person, how would you explain that he or she is not an authentic human being? That is just an unnatural person? The questions remain open and someone in the future will have to answer.

For detailed information on the subject of human cloning, please visit this web page http://www.humancloning.org/

Blue Brain: Super computer!

Henry Markham's team in Switzerland have been working since 2005 with IBM to build a supercomputer using digital simulation of the human brain. The Blue Brain project tries to create realistic models of the human brain by parts and both healthy and diseased brains. Scientists of this team have successfully applied simulation to a rat cortical column, to find out how the neuronal network is connected.
The main idea is to discover the basic principles and functions of the human brain, to develop certain strategies that will lead them to build the complete brain.

Henry Markham has stated in several talks that the brain makes its own version of the universe, and then it projects it. This processes are the ones that they are trying to simulate to introduce even more powerful computers based on these processes and neuronal networks. It will also incorporate more data that neuro-scientists and biology will use to have a wider understanding of the brain. In this sense, it could also mean that neuroscience and medicine could find a cure or better treatments to mental conditions and diseases such as Alzheimer and autism.
Now, if you think about the ethics, is this project really trying to find a cure and make better treatments? Isn't it just a project to create super powerful computers and get rid of workers? what is going to happen when the whole brain is completed? are people going to be replaced by computers?

I'd like you to watch Henry Markham's talk on TED and reflect on how is this going to affect our future.

Life is not a movie or is it?

It can't be denied that movies are part of our lifes, movies are useful to have a good time with friends, to make us feel emotions through them and even to inspire us, not only emotionally, but also technologically. We can say that the seventh art has been a technological oracle, this is because many technological devices have emerged after their appearance in films, among which we can mention the following:

 1. Back to the Future - The legendary sneakers that adjust themselves were created by Nike, you just have to put your foot inside them and they will tie and adjust instantly. 

2. Minority Report -  In this futuristic film we can observe Tom Cruise seeing a future crime while he is using a screen which he doesn't touch. the prediction of the crime is still impossible, but nowadays thanks to Kinect of Microsoft and to a Pc it can be possible to manage programmes just by making specific gestures.

3. Star Wars - The holographic message that princess leia send to Obi wan is now possible  because scientists have discovered how to paralyze the light, which is the main step to create holograms, so maybe in a near future our messages will be sent by holographic images.

 4. Harry Potter - The newspaper with talking images that exists in Harry Potter's world is about to be part of ours too. This technological advance will be use for 90-seconds advertisements on the pages of the US Magazine Entertainment Weekly.

Sometimes it seems that there is nothing that technology couldn't do, all these inventions were just part of the imagination some years ago, but now they are here and we don't have to be a character from a movie to enjoy them.
There is any technological device present in movies that you would like to see in real life?

It all began with Dolly.

Fifteen years later Dolly sheep's clonation, cell nuclear transfer is back on lab tables.
generally speaking, cell nuclear transfer consists in replacing an embryonal cell's genes which nucleus was removed by the genes of an adult cell. 
Since then, many researches have clonated different animal species such as mice, pigs, horses and cows. equally, there has been scandals for example the case of Woo Suk Hwang who in 2004 announced that he cloned a human embryon, but it turned out to be false and of course there is the ethic dilemma over its use.
Human clonation is supossed to be useful to develop  new healthy cells or tissues and in this way help people treat incurable diseases such as parkinson by using the cellular reprogramming technique which consists in inserting one or more genes within an adult cell, for example the skin in order these elements to be the ones which start reprograming internally that cell with no need to use an embryo or an ovule, leaving behind any possible ethic debate. from this point of view clonation seems absolutely positive, the problem is when human ambition could raise the idea of clonating a whole human being. would this be ethic? would this person be as normal as you and me? some religious people think that cloned humans will have no soul, what do you think about this? would you like to have another you?

In this video there is a cloned cat which glows in the dark, maybe cloned people would have special features too.