By Peter Murray
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

The Food and Drug Administration has just approved a device that is integrated into pills and let's doctors know when patients take their medicine - and when they don't. Adherence to prescriptions is a serious problem, as about half of all patients don't take medications the way they're supposed to. But with patients doctors now becoming big brother, that statistic could change drastically.

The device, made by Proteus Digital Health, is a silicon chip about the size of a sand particle. With no battery and no sensor, it is powered by the body itself. The chip contains small amounts of copper and magnesium. After being ingested the chip will interact with digestive juices to produce a voltage that can be read from the surface of the skin through a detector patch, which then sends a signal via mobile phone to inform the doctor that the pill has been taken. Sensors on the chip also detect heart rate and can estimate the patient's amount of physical activity. More than just a way for doctors to look over their patients' shoulders, it will allow doctors to better assess if a person is responding to a given dose, or if that dose needs to be adjusted.

After clinical trials that began in 2009, the FDA approval follows approval from European regulatory approval in August 2010. Right now the FDA has only approved the chip for placebo pills, which were used in trials showing the chip to be safe and highly accurate. Proteus hopes to gain approval to use the digestible chip with other medicines. Andrew Thompson, chief executive of Proteus, says the chip has already been tested with treatments for tuberculosis, mental health, heart failure, hypertension, and diabetes.

The company is currently working with makers of metformin, a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes and the most commonly prescribed drug in the world. The company also plans on adding a wireless glucose meter to their device so that dosage amount and frequency can be correlated with changes in blood glucose levels.

They would also like to digitize the drugs taken to treat neurological disorders. Disorders such as Parkinson's Disease and Huntington's Disease often require patients to receive drugs regularly - sometimes several times per day - and for extended periods of time. Ensuring that these patients are adhering to the prescribed regimen could greatly improve quality of life for some.

Transplant patients, who often have to take immunosuppressive drugs for long periods following surgery, could also potentially benefit from digitizing their medicine.

Ingestible body sensors have been discussed for a while now, but Proteus' digital pills are the first ingestible sensor to be approved by the FDA, according to Nature. This first step toward regulated ingestible sensors will undoubtedly be followed by others. The Programmable Bio-Nano-Chip developed by Rice University scientists can detect heart disease or cancer from a saliva sample. If the chips were ever permanently implanted into the body, they could provide an early alarm system for these diseases long before symptoms are detected by the patient. Scientists at Tel Aviv University in Israel and Brigham & Women's Hospital in Boston are developing a pill-sized robot that is remotely powered by an MRI machine to swim through the gut and look for the molecular signs of gastrointestinal cancer.

The first demonstration involved a placebo, but surely drug companies are eager to digitize their pills - and make sure patients empty out their prescriptions when they're supposed to. Although possible, it is hard to imagine a complication would arise when the device is used with, say, Lipitor, that did not arise with the placebo. The usual FDA bottleneck could be loosened with the first incorporation into a bonafide drug.

The possible uses for ingestible sensors is as varied as the body itself. As with computer chips, ingestible chips will follow the exponential path of Moore's Law and be able to sense more with less in the future. The FDA ruling could do much to get the technology on the fast track.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

[image credits: Nature and Proteus Digital Health]
images: Nature and Proteus Digital Health

By Tarun Wadhwa
Research Associate, Singularity University.

To a computer, your face is a set of points and measurements between your features, but to advertisers, these data sets mean lucrative profits and a new way to connect with customers. Facial detection technology is making it feasible to do real-time measurement and analysis of advertisements in the physical world and predict the products you will want to buy, based on who you are or what you look like.  In a world full of cameras and ubiquitous gadgets, there are serious concerns of how far advertisers will take this. From the advertisements outside, to the televisions in your home - this technology will be coming to a screen near you.

Next time you are looking up at a billboard, there's a chance it may be looking back down at you.  Immersive Labs has developed software for digital billboards which can measure the age range, gender and attention-level of a passer-by, and quantify the effectiveness of an outdoor marketing campaign.  Beyond just bringing metrics to the outdoor advertisements, facial detection technology can tailor ads to people based on their features.  Plan UK, a children's charity group ran a bus-stop advertisement as part of their "Because I Am A Girl" campaign where women passing by would see a full 40-second clip, while if man saw the ad, it would only display a message directing him to their website.  The next generation of systems could take this data collection much farther - an algorithm could judge whether you look happy, sad, sick, healthy, comfortable or nervous, and direct personalized advertisements to you.

Vending machines have been making a high-tech resurgence, selling everything from iPods to high-end cupcakes - some now include cameras that are analyzing your face.   Facial detection technology can allow for the machine to present the customer with the items they would typically purchased, based on their physical characteristics. Kraft and Adidas use this to recommend macaroni recipes to busy mothers and walking shoes to older shoppers.  In Japan, machines using this technology have had three times the amount of sales than the non-interactive style.  Taiwanese researchers have developed machines able to determine a person's complexion, use of make-up, or frequency of shaving in order to recommend razors and beauty products they are statistically more likely to buy.  Even Jell-O has their machines scanning faces in their promotional campaign for an "adults-only" pudding line - their machines don't let children have samples.

In the United States, television advertising still accounts for the largest amount of advertising expenditures. Reaching an intended audience has never been a perfect science, but with today's internet-connected TVs and attached devices, companies have a chance to peek into the living room to see who's around. Microsoft Kinect, the popular motion-sensing gaming device, has advanced abilities to identify its users, and an entire advertising platform built around "audience engagement" - being able to tell who is in the room, how old they are and whether they are paying attention to what is on the screen.  Today, these types of sensors may be part of the television when you purchase it already; in the last year alone, Sony, Samsung, Lenovo and Toshiba have each introduced "Smart TVs" with facial recognition technology built-in.  Intel is reportedly making this technology a centerpiece of its new push into the commercial TV sector, using it as leverage to bring reluctant media companies on board to their platform.  At this rate, it won't be long before your TV is watching you as well.

These rapid changes raise important issues around permission and what consumers are willing to tolerate. Parents are not going to be thrilled about special advertisements that play for their kids only when they are out of the room.  It is very difficult to "opt-out" of a billboard camera scanning your features from above.  Measuring your our age and gender today could turn into marketing to your weight, race or emotional state down the line.  The underlying technology enables both passive measurement and actively targeted marketing, but the privacy issues surrounding both are markedly different.

These concerns are just the beginning, with the possibility of widespread automated facial recognition on the horizon.  With this, a person could be tracked and identified in a matter of seconds - complete with their shopping history and Facebook profile. But what is technologically possible is not necessarily socially and legally permissible.  Consumers will soon have to decide what they are willing to accept - some will be turned off by constant deeply personalized advertisements, but others will enjoy the greater relevance of the new offers presented to them.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom
Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom is the VP of Operations for Singularity University. She spent two decades in the private space sector working on program development and operations for companies and organizations like Space Adventures, Odyssey Moon and the International Space University. She co-authored the book Realizing Tormorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight.

After more than 8 years of planning, and a 254 day journey through the cold emptiness of space, NASA's Curiosity rover finally is set to land on Mars. Curiosity is the most advanced mobile robotic science lab to ever explore another planet and thus this is an exciting moment for NASA and the world. But robotics and artificial intelligence continue to advance at an exponential rate. As we look towards the future of space exploration in the next decade and beyond, we can expect the next generation of space robots to be orders of magnitude more powerful and intelligent, while at the same time costing a fraction of Curiosity's $2.5 billion price tag.

Regardless of the success of the Mars rover Curiosity, debates will rage again about robotic versus human space exploration. We don't have the budgets to build the right technology to send humans to the planets and beyond. So we've been sending probes out into the solar system as precursor missions for the day we step on another planet and explore other worlds ourselves. But the bigger question for now is about the technology we are using. How do we make sure what we send in space is current? True, Curiosity is the most advanced rover ever made. The development started over eight years ago. How does it compare to recent technological advancements?

Some of the technologies Curiosity carries are similar to what a person might carry on a vacation trip to an exotic destination - several cameras with 4 GB flash cards, a 200 MHz computer, and a transportation vehicle the size of a small rental car. Like a tourist in a remote location, most days you can only send messages back home at dial-up speeds (just enough to send emails and some twitter posts) but you only get broadband for 8 minutes a day to send HD images. At the beginning of Curosity's exploration of Mars, we look forward to the new images and discoveries. The rover aims to explore for a Martian year, but the power source may last for 14 years. What does the future hold for Curiosity?

If today's landing is successful, and I hope that it is, it will be followed by a step that has become routine on interplanetary missions - the software on the rover will be updated. Even though spacecraft travel at high speeds through the solar system, the travel times are long enough that software advances can be significant. The software has already been updated once during its 8 month flight.

Beaming software is one way robots throughout the solar system can take advantage of exponential advances on Earth. In a few more years, the computing systems on interplanetary robots will be able to run extremely complex AI programs due to further advances in exponential technology. Perhaps advanced chips will be sent out to be fitted to older spacecraft, and extend the life of rovers like Curiosity. Advancement in autonomous navigation systems, such as those used by the Google Cars, and intelligent data understanding (reacting to unexpected events) are current technologies. The rise of semantic technologies (such as a future version of Watson or SIRI on Mars) and machine learning will drastically change robotic missions in the near future. Advanced software could be hosted on the next generations of Mars rovers, or even retrofitted into rovers like Curiosity. Around the time AI systems are creating the next AI systems on Earth, we may be able to beam AI programs out to robots on Mars with a complexity beyond human understanding. When this happens, would there even be a reason to leave Earth to explore the Universe? Do we enhance our experience through the robots we send out into the cosmos with highly sophisticated exponential sensor technologies that will serve as our eyes and ears - beaming back fully immersive experiences, without traveling for years - or do we even get superseded by super robots who could one day think for themselves?

Through radical advances in processors including quantum computing, on-board decision making and exponential learning, a robotic intelligence on Mars may eventually "wake up". How will we know? A sign might be when we tell the rover to go a certain direction, and it disagrees, and then goes a different way based on its own interest. One day, Curiosity itself may become curious.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Peter Murray
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

It was only a few months ago that DARPA initiated their ambitious Robotics Challenge that reserves a cash prize for a (probably) humanoid robot that can drive to a disaster area and perform several rescue functions including breaking through rubble and closing off a leaky pipe. But a rescue robot won't be worth much if it runs out of power halfway through its heroics. In hopes of addressing future - and current - robotics power constraints, DARPA has launched their Maximum Mobility and Manipulation (M3) Actuation program, "with the goal of achieving a 2,000 percent increase in the efficiency of power transmission and application in robots."

Just as DARPA and other humanoid robot developers have drawn on biology for design inspiration, the agency hopes that robotic actuation can approach the efficiency of human and animal actuation where muscles, tendons, and bones cooperate in highly efficient ways. More efficient actuator technologies would benefit, not only robotics systems, but all actuated systems, such as prosthetic limbs.

There's much room for improvement. The Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) platform DARPA currently provides for the DARPA Robotics Challenge has a battery life of just 10 to 20 minutes. The explicit goal of the M3 Actuation program is to improve power longevity by 20-fold, affording the GFE in the range of 3 to 6 or 7 hours to complete the multi-tasked Robotics Challenge.

A 20-fold increase in efficiency is a tall order, to say the least. How much of an increase can really be squeezed from maximizing "variable recruitment of parallel transducer elements" or high-efficiency power transmission between joints?" The fact that the M3 Actuation program has two separate tracks implies that DARPA is aware that such a massive increase in efficiency may require entirely new technologies. For Track 1, teams will develop technologies to be tested with the GFE platform during the second live Robotics Challenge competition to be held December 2014. Track 2 teams are free to develop their own platforms from scratch without the pressure of actually having to apply it within the competition timeframe. Track 2′s open-ended strategy has the potential to generate the groundbreaking advances in nanotechnology, for example, to actually achieve the 20-fold increase. As is, the robots entering the Robotics Challenge will likely be tethered to a power source throughout the competition.

Given that the tasks required by the Robotics Challenge's simulated disaster obstacle course are - to say the least - complex, inefficient solutions from developers - even DARPA chums Boston Dynamics - should probably be expected. But the convergent approach of both robotics solutions and actuator efficiency that DARPA is taking should be applauded. It's a long-term approach of an agency with a history of game changing visions - not to mention the budgets to support those visions.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By David J. Hill
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

Think that only a tech giant like Google can make next generation augmented-reality glasses? Think again. A UK developer who has been hacking together his own Project Glass has now expanded its functionality to make a real-time speech translator. Will Powell, a 2010 graduate of the University of Oxford, has spent his spare time coupling Vuzix video eyewear with a few Raspberry Pis and an iPhone and iPad to allow for one person speaking one language to talk to someone speaking a different language with tolerable delays between translations provided by Microsoft's Bing.

The demonstration of his glasses from his website is pretty impressive, as you can see in the video posted to YouTube:

The video shows the translations as captions within a few seconds after the other person speaks. Now, some of the translations aren't exactly fluid or coherent, but that doesn't have to do with this technology but the inaccuracies of Bing Translator. The amazing thing about this setup is how this relatively simple prototype accomplishes such rapid speech recognition and translation at close to a conversational pace. Based on this video, it's quite easy to imagine a very streamlined translator being incorporated into something like Google Glass and could make the device essential for international businesspeople or travelers.

Powell has capitalized on his experience in augmented reality as he is also the lead developer at a business services company called Keytree that has developed the Kinect-hacked CEO Vision (which is worth checking out here). But it was after Google posted about Project Glass on their website that Powell set out to mimic the company's famous video and show that the same kind of interface and interactivity could be accomplished with Vuzix glasses. Here's that video that he posted: back in April:

Augmented-reality glasses are sure to become the buzz over the next few years, especially with Google suggesting that commercial versions of their Glass would be available in 2013.

When Google posted the video about Project Glass last spring, it effectively brought augmented reality to the public's attention and slotted glasses as the next evolutionary step in mobile communication, after the smartphone. But Powell's work here shows that there is lots of room within this space to explore different kinds of applications and functions. For years, theres bgeen a lot of talk about the potential of augmented reality, so it is exciting to watch that potential realized, whether at big companies like Google or DIY developers like Powell.

At the same time, these translation glasses show how rapidly we are advancing toward an actual universal translator. And that may very well mean that soon it won't matter what language you speak -- we'll be able to understand you with the right glasses on.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Russ Conser
Russ is the leader of Shell's global GameChanger team and is based in Houston, Texas. GameChanger is a Shell-created innovation program that invests in people in or outside of Shell to help mature their breakthrough energy ideas to proof-of-concept.

In 1957, Russia launched the unmanned satellite named 'Sputnik' into orbit.  Today, we refer to it as America's 'Sputnik moment' - an acute realization that something was changing in the competitive landscape that put a country's future at risk.  The USA responded, and although the next 12 years of the US space program were not a smooth ride, the US space program not only achieved success but inspired a generation.  As a child in the 60's, I remember getting up well before dawn to watch the launch of each new Apollo mission.

Recently, there was a new kind of launch.  This time something was very different.  This time, it was a small California startup company called SpaceX launching an unmanned capsule called "The Dragon" into orbit.  So I got up before dawn again to watch another truly epic moment, as the Dragon capsule successfully docked with the International Space Station.

In my view, the docking of the SpaceX Dragon with the International Space Station is a new Sputnik moment - signaling a major shift in the balance of power between small and large institutions.    Governments no longer have to be the only ones who can do really big things on their own, and neither do large companies like my own.

When the US space program got to the moon 12 years after Sputnik, the US had spent nearly $35 billion - or over $250 billion in today's dollars.  Over a period of 10 years, from founding to Friday's successful docking , SpaceX has spent around $1 billion.  Although that's a sum still too large for backyard astronauts, it is nonetheless a sum within reach of many of today's startups.  Until Friday, spaceflight was the last field of human achievement which was still a government only monopoly.  That monopoly wasn't broken by a traditional aerospace company, but a startup.

In 2004, another small company called Scaled Composites sent their 'SpaceShip One' into the upper atmosphere.  This was achieved for a total investment of roughly $20 million in pursuit of winning the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE.  This accomplishment led directly to the creation of the world's first commercial space plane passenger service by Virgin Galactic - on course for its own first commercial mission with a goal of first flights in 2013.  Today, 26 teams from around the world are competing to be the first to land a private unmanned mission on the moon in pursuit of the Google Lunar X PRIZE - something that could happen as early as 2014.  Thus the Dragon launch is not an isolated event, but part of an accelerating trend in the development of commercial enterprise in space.

With the SpaceX Dragon achievement, the cycle time and cost of creating very large breakthrough innovation has just been redefined.  This 'Dragon Moment' should remind us that big innovation is no longer the monopolistic playground of big institutions - whether governments or large companies.

Still, SpaceX didn't do this on their own.  They not only stood on the shoulders of the NASA giants who went before them, but they partnered with them.  For NASA's part, it would appear that they have realized that partnering with a small startup can be a highly productive way to achieve its own objectives.  So perhaps the real story of the day is that both the small Davids and big Goliaths can win by working together.  Businesses that ignore (or resist) this new reality put their own futures in peril.  Businesses that figure out how to tap into this new innovation dynamic stand to yield great rewards.

So let's call this achievement big industry's 'Dragon Moment,' and mark it as an important milestone in the changing landscape of institutional innovation.  The accomplishment points the way to a changing world where anyone, anywhere, anytime can do a lot with a little very fast.  Institutions who do not figure out how to work in these radically different ways are likely to become non-competitive.

In the old days, big things had to be done by kings and countries.  In the 20^th century, big things were accomplished by big companies.  In the 21^st century, big achievements can be pursued by startups founded by people like you.

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This blog post is brought to you by Shell, our Exploration Prize Group sponsor.

By Brian Hoffstein
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

Have you ever considered the consciousness, or unconsciousness, of your dog? Well, a group of neuroscientists have been thinking on the subject pretty seriously, and it was announced last week that "humans are not the only conscious beings in the universe."

Earlier this month, some of the leading scientists from around the world congregated at the Hotel Du Vin in Cambridge to discuss the evidence that has amassed over the years. The experts reached a unanimous decision that animals -- specifically mammals and birds -- are in fact conscious beings. Through advancements in brain imaging techniques such as fMRI and EEG machines, the scientists concluded that animals show a sufficient degree of characteristics that indicate they are not as non-human as some had believed. The official decision was reached late into the night after the Francis Crick Memorial Conference on July 7th.

Organized by Philip Low, CEO of NeuroVigil and inventor of the iBrain, the group consisted of 25 of the planet's top minds on the mind, including honorary guest Stephen Hawking.  The scientists discerned the key differences in human and animal brains, mainly found in the frontal cortex, do not play a role in the phenomenon we associate with consciousness. The decision does not in any sense define what consciousness is, which will be a debate that continues to rage on. But moving forward, there are many consequences to this finding that will need to be addressed as we look to develop a more humane relationship with animals.

This announcement arises in a manner similar to the Pluto files in 2006, when the world's leading astronomer's demoted Pluto from planet to "dwarf planet." Both of these events took place outside of the public sphere, and, while not necessarily groundbreaking conclusions, comprise much room for debate. It seems in this day and age, with prolific scientific discoveries being heralded left and right, it is time for some sort of established framework for making decisions of this order. The "philosopher king" mentality, where leading experts decide for the group, has emerged as the status quo -- but moving forward it will be interesting to see how the groupmind of the Internet will react.


As mankind continues to explore the universe, many more discoveries will prompt an official announcement such as the one Phillip Low delivered this week at Singularity University.  Concluding animals have consciousness might be news, but it's not as revolutionary as some of the things we can expect in the future. What happens when we build the first robot that passes the Turing Test? Would it be considered conscious too? Who would have the final say in the matter?

On another note, with the recent Higgs discovery, astronomers and theoretical physicists are entering their next phase of scientific inquiry. Super Symmetry, dark matter, dark energy and the multiverse are all questions waiting to be answered. Both in the microcosm of the quantum field and the macrocosm of the cosmos, there exist potential discoveries that could totally transform our perspective of life in the universe. All of these open-ended questions, in addition to the black swans we should (paradoxically) expect to encounter along the way, will need to be accounted by some type of bureaucratic standard. How this plays out is still up in the air -- but at this point it would be hard to bet against the Internet. Hypothetically speaking, if the old-school establishment says one thing but the powers-that-be on Wikipedia say something else, who would you listen to?

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By David J. Hill
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

A watershed moment in gene therapy has finally come to pass. This month, a committee from the European Medicines Agency recommended the approval of a gene therapy drug, named Glybera (alipogene tiparvovec), for the treatment of a rare inherited genetic disorder. Final approval is now in the hands of the European Commission, which could take up to 3 months to complete, but it is believed that the drug will be approved for sale, the first time ever in the Western world.

And with its approval, the floodgates for gene therapy could be opened.

Fundamentally, gene therapy supplies the body with healthy genes to compensate for missing, deficient, or defective genes. Humans are believed to have between 80,000 essential proteins coded by between 20,000 to 30,000 genes, and while some genetic mutations can be tolerated, others are incredibly detrimental.

Case in point: the familial disorder known as lipoprotein lipase (LPL) deficiency affecting 1 to 2 persons per million, which is caused by mutations in the gene that codes the LPL enzyme. The function of this enzyme is to hydrolyze triglycerides into free fatty acids, an essential step in the metabolism of fats from consumed food. However, the inefficient breakdown of triglycerides leads to a massive accumulation in the blood, so much so that Dr. Daniel Gaudet at the University of Montreal told The New York Times, "It's the equivalent of having 10 percent cream in your bloodstream."

These fats can fill macrophages to form small to large nodules under the skin called xanthomas. The condition also produces severe abdominal cramping and acute inflammation of the pancreas (pancreatitis) caused by clumps of fats particles blocking capillary flow.

To date, individuals who suffer from LPL deficiency have had little choice but to highly regulate their dietary fat intake lest they end up in the hospital.

But getting to this stage has been a challenging journey for Glybera as gene therapy has struggled to get traction among drug regulators. The drug's maker, Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics, ran clinical studies on the drug in both the Netherlands and Canada which showed that the drug performed well among the 27 patients tested. December 2009, the company filed for Glybera's approval, but after back-and-forths with regulators, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use decided that it couldn't back the drug because too few patients were enrolled in the trial to establish long-term data of its effectiveness and safety.

Reaction to the ruling caused the company's stock to plummet. After an attempt to raise funds, the company announced in February that part of its business would be acquired by a newly formed private company called uniQure and the public company would be liquidated. Two more attempts were made to get Glybera passed, both of which were rejected. But a compromise was found by limiting commercial availability of the therapy only to those individuals with the most severe manifestations of the disease (less then a thousand people worldwide), and the Committee reversed its last decision to give the drug the green light.

Unlike medications which are quickly metabolized, gene therapy incorporates the functional gene into the patient's DNA. In the case of Glybera, this means that a single injection of the drug can help produce the missing LDL enzyme for years, though it is not known exactly how long.

To demonstrate how gene therapy works, the University of Amsterdam commissioned an excellent animation, and though it is about the liver, it is highly applicable to the way Glybera works:

There's little doubt that gene therapy will be an important component in the future of medicine, but whether or not approaches can be developed that are as safe and effective as pharmaceutical drugs remains to be seen. In 2003, China's State Food and Drug Administration approved a gene therapy called Gendicine to treat head and neck cancer0, and since has approved two others, Oncorine and Rexin-G. However, skepticism about the safety of that drug has led to nearly a decade of failed attempts to get a gene therapy past regulatory hurdles in Western Countries.

Over the past year, studies with various gene therapies have shown them to be highly effective in stopping bleeding in hemophilia patients and treating Parkinson's symptoms. A recent follow-up on 43 HIV patients who received gene therapy 11 years ago found all of them to be healthy. There's even clinical trials demonstrating the success of gene therapy in helping the blind to see again.

Many of these treatments have been waiting in the wings because no gene therapy had received approval in Europe and North America, so Glybera's approval is reason for many drug companies and researchers to celebrate. Exactly how fast and how broadly applicable gene therapies will make it to the masses remains to be seen, but it will likely follow a familiar path for emerging technologies: slow at first followed by exponential growth.

The genetic modifications of the science fiction world are perhaps decades away for most but for a few hundred people in the world today suffering with LDL deficiency, it is a reality right around the corner.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom
Emeline Paat-Dahlstrom is the VP of Operations for Singularity University. She spent two decades in the private space sector working on program development and operations for companies and organizations like Space Adventures, Odyssey Moon and the International Space University. She co-authored the book Realizing Tormorrow: The Path to Private Spaceflight.

Space exploration has always been deemed too expensive and difficult for private enterprise, a realm that only massive government programs could hope to enter.  And now with the recent NASA Space Shuttle retirement, and thousands of displaced NASA employees wondering where the future of NASA will be, it is therefore easy for the world to paint a bleak future of space exploration. It turns out, however, that space exploration is now in the midst of an incredible transition as private enterprise is boldly taking over where big government has left off.

The seeds for this transition were planted a decade ago when a few very wealthy individuals such as Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, and Charles Simonyi bought access to the International Space Station through Russian spacecraft to begin commercial access. As a result, we are now witnessing the birth of a new era in space exploration that is more versatile and innovative than big government space programs ever could have hoped to achieve.

Last month, SpaceX launched the Dragon on a Falcon 9 rocket, an orbital transport system capable of ferrying astronauts and rendezvousing with the International Space Station.  Elon Musk's SpaceX was the first private company to ever attempt a round trip to ISS, and their success was a big triumph for commercial spaceflight .  The capsule used for low earth transport was designed by Mr. Musk's SpaceX for future interplanetary missions to Mars.  When former internet moguls - like Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Charles Simonyi, and now Sergey Brin - start making space their playground and invest their money in once science fiction endeavors as space exploration and asteroid mining - there is hope for the once cash strapped industry.

While the multibillionaires start working on varying designs to get us up in space cheaply, a second wave (akin to the maker community) have started to take it upon themselves to take the definition of "smarter, faster, cheaper" to a whole new level. Just like the rise of electronics hobbyists in the 1970's and the proliferation of garage manufactured personal computers, the do-it-yourself DIY movement is now making use of rapidly developing and exponential technologies to creatively come up with new ways to affordably spark the commercial space revolution. The first microcomputers, like the Apple I, were not impressive, but they eventually expanded far beyond the market for mainframes and minicomputers made by IBM and DEC in the early 80s.

Out of the woodwork, small projects like PhoneSat (developed in conjunction with NASA) and startup ArduSat are using off-the-shelf technology to accomplish at low cost what only big, massive satellite systems could do in decades past.

PhoneSat is a small (10 cm) cube satellite project that makes use of smartphones as the central processing unit.   With the computing power equivalent to big mainframe computers a couple of decades ago and with a wealth of sensors, cell phones are essentially supercomputers in our pockets - easy to hack and modify to serve many applications and uses.  Similarly, ArduSat has raised money in Kickstarter to make available open source platforms using a 1-2 kg cube satellite powered by an Arduino CPU.  Available sensor capabilities are being applied to photography, meteor detection, atmospheric remote sensing, and topography for the general public at a fraction of the cost and time to access.

Out of Singularity University's summer team projects, Made in Space is riding on the rise of 3D printing technology as the next disruptive phenomenon in the manufacturing industry.  They plan to 3D print in space parts that would otherwise have to be launched from Earth, cutting the cost and wait time for broken systems waiting for parts in space.  (Apollo 13 could have used such a 3D printer to fit their square CO2 filter into their round hole.) For interplanetary exploration, this would allow missions to just bring their own 3D printers, and make use of available materials (or even dirt) to manufacture what they need to live and survive once they reach their destinations.

Other groups are focusing on novel propulsion systems.   The microthruster program at EPFL in Lausanne is developing a micro engine for nano-satellites that can potentially send a satellite to the moon in six months using two shot glasses worth of fuel.

They are working on a project CleanSpace One to make use of these nano-satellites to clean space and capture debris.  Long time organizations like the Planetary Society are also working on using solar sails to propel nano-satellites through the solar system.  The project Light Sail-1, now in development will demonstrate that sunlight can propel a spacecraft to higher Earth orbits.

As we eagerly wait for the start of commercial human spaceflight with companies like Virgin Galactic, XCOR and Armadillo Aerospace to name a few, grass-roots start ups are innovating on their own with very little budget.  The notion to not wait on big bureaucratic organizations and government subsidy to move space exploration along brings a brighter future to the space industry. Decades ago, it took a great deal of vision to imagine that the simple Apple I that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak built could lead to the most valuable company in the world. Who has the vision to see where the current DIY space projects will lead?

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By David J. Hill
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

It may be time to jettison the notion that robots in the future will have grippers or claws for hands. The German robotics company Festo recently unveiled the ExoHand, a sophisticated robotic hand that is capable of the fine motor skills that allows the human hand to have a delicate touch or perform complex manipulations.

The ExoHand comes in two forms: as the extremity of a robotic arm or a wearable exoskeleton glove. The system is designed so that the glove can aid assembly line workers performing repetitive tasks with their hands or be used for the remote manipulation of the robotic arm by a user wearing the glove.

At this year's Hannover Messe industrial fair, which profiles the world's most innovative products, the ExoHand came in second for the Best-In-Show Hermes Award.

The motion of a human hand, which consists of 27 bones, is possible because of numerous muscles within the hand and forearm controlled by three different nerves, each of which has components for motor skills and sensory feedback. So mimicking the range of motion capable in a hand requires complementary components in a robotic version. The ExoHand contains eight double-acting pneumatic actuators (the black cylinders in the images) that act as the muscles of the hand, allowing for fingers to pivot and the thumb to rotate toward the palm. In each hand, eight linear potentiometers act as displacement sensors, and 16 pressure sensors provide feedback about the positions, angles, and forces of fingers. The system allows for two-way force feedback, so that a worker remotely manipulating the arm senses what the robot hand "feels".

The ExoHand was designed for three main purposes: enhance strength and endurance for a user, extend the scope of possible actions of a robotic arm, and secure an independent lifestyle for people with impaired hand function, whether due to age, injury, or disease. The glove could be worn by assembly workers to reduce muscle fatigue and joint stress, for example, or be used in rehabilitation therapy for hand muscles that have atrophied due to injury. In fact, the company's brochure describes a brain-computer interface that measures EEGs in the patient's head to open and close the hand, which could help retrain the brain of stroke victims or others who have suffered brain damage.

It's interesting that Festo opted to design a system in which the robot's hand and user's glove look identical, instead of creating a remote controller for the arm. Recently, researchers developed a robotic arm that can be controlled by the mind of a quadriplegic woman, which was possible in part because the areas of the brain that control the motor function of the hand are still active even if communication with the hand has been severed. By designing the ExoHand glove to look identical to the robot hand, users may forget that the robot hand isn't their own, which will likely aid remote use.

The company has developed a number of other types of robotic arms, such as the PowerGripper modeled after a bird's beak and the NanoForceGripper, which can handle delicate objects. Festo has also produced robotic arms that are inspired by elephant trunks and the AirArm, which mimics the range of motion possible in the human arm. Along with the company's efforts, as well as others interested in creating gentler robotic hands as seen in Honda's Asimo, robot hands are increasingly becoming more human-like.

Festo's ExoHand pointedly foreshadows the coming convergence of robotics and cybernetic augmentation, and that means people will be able to do more with their lives even as they grow older and succumb to the effects of aging.

Check out the demo that shows how ExoHand can be used for remote operations:

[Media: Festo, YouTube]

[Source: Festo]

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Gregg Maryniak
Gregg Maryniak is the Chairman of the Energy and Environmental Systems Track of Singularity University and the Secretary of the X PRIZE Foundation.

If you read newspapers, blogs and other popular reports on renewable energy, you are very likely hearing almost exclusively about power generation advances in solar cell or wind turbine efficiency or ways to reduce production costs.   But exciting as these steps are, an examination of where our energy comes from today shows that even after decades of improvement in renewable energy systems, more than 95% of the energy in the United States is still provided by fossil fuels, nuclear power and traditional hydropower.   So, what is missing from the present picture that could dramatically advance the use of renewable energy?  Economical energy storage.

The phenomenon of the world's so-called addiction to fossil fuels is actually an aspect of a greater underlying energy truth.  What society really wants and needs is energy on demand.

Some of my colleagues have observed the significant drop in capital costs of solar cells in recent years and concluded that the energy problem is solvable, if not essentially solved.  Many have suggested that we are now within a few cost factors of achieving renewable energy cost-parity with coal.   While it is absolutely essential that we continue to drive down the costs of generating electricity from solar (and wind, which is indirect solar energy,) doing so alone will not make these renewable energy sources competitive with traditional hydro, fossil or nuclear generated electricity.   What will enable renewables to assume the lion's share of society's energy generation portfolio is making that energy available wherever and whenever it is needed.   Transforming the energy situation so that renewables provide the majority of the world's usable power requires one essential missing element: energy storage.

Storage breaks out into two domains with radically different characteristics.  First, is portable storage, specifically batteries, of the sort that we use for our laptops and mobile phones. Large markets for portable devices have driven significant performance improvements in rechargeable batteries.  However, if we really want to transform the energy sector in a meaningful way, it will require attention to the other relatively ignored storage domain: grid scale power storage.

Today there is basically only one way to economically store electrical power at scale - essentially pumping water uphill to high elevation reservoirs during off peak periods.  When energy demand is high, the water is allowed to run back downhill through turbines.  While fairly efficient, as it gets back about 70% of the energy you put in, the number of places where this technique can be used is limited by geography.   Another possibility under study in various parts of the world, is compressing large volumes of air into caverns, salt domes or other subterranean features and retrieving energy from the released atmosphere as it escapes.  This method is also obviously limited by terrain and geography.

What we urgently need is a means of storing energy at large scale and low cost that can be adapted anywhere.   And it's important not to confuse lightweight mobile energy storage with large scale stationary storage.   I recently watched some very smart students at an excellent unnamed university (whose initials are MIT) as they found themselves trapped by the Silicon Valley product mindset that all consumer products should be small and lightweight in the design style of iPods.  They tried to force a household energy storage system to be a refrigerator-sized appliance. In doing so, they lost track of the most essential characteristic of a large-scale energy storage system: it must be cheap.

But just down the hall at MIT, Professor Don Sadoway is telling his students that "to make an energy storage system as cheap as dirt, it should be made from dirt."  Sadoway observed that the electrochemical methods used to make aluminum are similar in many respects to batteries. He and his students are now developing systems for grid-scale storage.   Their new Liquid Metal Battery Corporation is attracting investors that include Bill Gates and Vinod Khosla.

If solar and wind power are to break out of their present tiny niche positions, they will need to achieve systems parity with traditional energy supplies.  This means that the cost of conversion plus the cost of storage will have to be similar to the cost of providing energy on demand from the energy stored in chemical or nuclear fuels.    You can find some pretty shrill Internet rhetoric suggesting that the requirement for power on-demand (what the industry calls "baseload power") is an irrelevant argument concocted by "renewables deniers."  But the reality is that many solar energy pioneers themselves say that solar power will be severely limited in market penetration, unless competent energy storage is developed.

Our present fixation with energy generation ignores the "time value of energy."   Instead of concentrating all of our efforts on generation we need to pay increased attention to energy storage.   Only after the cost of generation and storage of renewable energy matches the cost of on-demand generation from fossil, nuclear and hydro we will we see a transformation of the energy industry.

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By David J. Hill
Contributing Writer, Singularity University.

Cameras in smartphones will inevitably replace nearly all portable cameras and camcorders, but could they also make basic medical instruments obsolete? A startup called CellScope plans to do just that by turning smartphones into digital first aid kits. To kickoff its campaign, the company is developing an iPhone attachment that turns the smartphone into an otoscope, providing a magnified view of the middle ear.

Why does the company want to make it easy for doctor's and parents to peer inside their kids' heads? Because ear infections are the number 1 reason children are taken to see pediatricians and often why they end up in the emergency room. According to the Journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, 93 percent of children before the age of 7 will have an ear infection and 6-8 percent will suffer with frequent infections, defined as 3 or more in a 12-month period. In the US alone, 30 million pediatrician visits each year are attributed to ear infections at a cost in the billions of dollars.

The peripheral attaches to the top of an iPhone and provides a 10x magnification. Using CellScope's web platform, users can upload captured images and pediatricians can remotely assess the severity of the infection. Doctors can then provide a diagnosis, prescribe antibiotics, or recommend the child be brought into the office for a more thorough examination. Additionally, the images enter into the patient's electronic medical records, so any susceptibilities to infection can be tracked through image comparison throughout the childhood years.

Because children who suffer from frequent ear infections may get fluid buildup that can lead to hearing loss, pediatricians frequently recommend implantation of tympanostomy (ear) tubes. But this requires major surgery (general anesthesia required) to get them in and out, if they don't fall out on their own.

The smartphone otoscope allows parents to easily monitor a child's ears closely, which may help provide greater insight into the kinds of infections that are occurring. The stored images also provide an easy way to get a second opinion to ensure that surgery is the best answer. Altogether, this may help lower the number of ear tube surgeries, which is estimated to be around 700,000 per year in the US, according to The New York Times.

For occasional ear infections, pediatricians can do little other than prescribe antibiotics, but a report from 2010 by CBS news indicates that in many cases, the best medicine for a child's ear infection is no antibiotics at all, that is, "watchful waiting." Coupled with a better understanding of the anatomy of the middle ear, parents can use the device to better manage the infection at home rather than immediately heading off to the doctor's office, which itself can be a source of additional bacteria and viruses that can add insult to injury. But pediatricians can equally benefit from having a digital record of the infections available in the medical records, allowing them to review images of past infections rather than just relying on written descriptions.

The technology for CellScope originated at the University of California, Berkeley, where researchers were focusing on the development of a fluorescence microscope peripheral that could help diagnose tuberculosis in patients in developing countries (the research was published in PLoS One here). CellScope was formed in order to bring smartphone microscopes to market, but to begin, it's aiming at microscopy applications that require lower magnification, such as the otoscope and another device in the pipeline, a dermascope to diagnose rashes and other skin ailments. Last year, Cellscope participated in the Rock Health incubator, which is an accelerator for digital startups in the health industry, and recently, the company raised $1 million from Khosla Ventures to work on this device.

Pediatricians in the Bay area and Atlanta have already been testing out the device, and a clinical study is underway to evaluate its diagnostic accuracy compared to traditional methods.

CellScope is just one of the companies that aims to utilize smartphones to bring more professional healthcare tools into the home. Erik Douglas, co-founder and CEO of Cellscope, said "It seems pretty obvious that this sort of thing is going to happen...5 years from now, 10 years from now, people will be able to do diagnosis from home. Patients will have more control over taking data and being a participant in their healthcare delivery."

Considering that nearly half of Americans now have smartphones, it's time we started using all that computational power to help reduce healthcare costs and keep kids healthier.

Check out the CellScope founders talking about their tech:

[Media: CellScope, YouTube]

[Sources: Cellscope, Launch, Technology Review]

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This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Vivek Wadhwa
Vice President of Academics and Innovation, Singularity University.

There is great concern about China's real-estate and infrastructure bubbles. But these are just short-term challenges that China may be able to spend its way out of. The real threat to China's economy is bigger and longer term: its manufacturing bubble.

By offering subsidies, cheap labor, and lax regulations and rigging its currency, China was able to seduce American companies to relocate their manufacturing operations there. Millions of American jobs moved to China, and manufacturing became the underpinning of China's growth and prosperity. But rising labor costs, concerns over government-sponsored I.P. theft, and production time lags are already causing companies such as Dow Chemicals, Caterpillar, GE, and Ford to start moving some manufacturing back to the U.S. from China. Google recently announced that its Nexus Q streaming media player would be made in the U.S., and this put pressure on Apple to start following suit.

But rising costs and political pressure aren't what's going to rapidly change the equation. The disruption will come from a set of technologies that are advancing at exponential rates and converging.

These technologies include robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), 3D printing, and nanotechnology. These have been moving slowly so far, but are now beginning to advance exponentially just as computing does.  Witness how computing has advanced to the point at which the smart phones we carry in our pockets have more processing power than the super computers of the '60s--and how the Internet, which also has its origins in the '60s, went on an exponential growth path about 15 years ago and rapidly changed the way we work, shop, and communicate.  That's what lies ahead for these new technologies.

The robots of today aren't the Androids or Cylons that we used to see in science-fiction movies, but specialized electro-mechanical devices that are controlled by software and remote controls. As computers become more powerful, so do the abilities of these devices. Robots are now capable of performing surgery, milking cows, doing military reconnaissance and combat, and flying fighter jets. And DIY'ers are lending a helping hand. There are dozens of startups, such as Willow Garage, iRobot, and 9^th Sense, selling robot-development kits for university students and open-source communities. They are creating ever more-sophisticated robots and new applications for these. Watch this video of the autonomous flying robots that University of Pennsylvania professor Vijay Kumar created with his students, for example.

The factory assembly that the Chinese are performing is child's play for the next generation of robots--which will soon become cheaper than human labor. Indeed, one of China's largest manufacturers, Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group, announced last August that it plans to install one million robots within three years to do the work that its workers in China presently do. It found Chinese labor to be too expensive and demanding. The world's most advanced car, the Tesla Roadster, is also being manufactured in Silicon Valley, which is one of the most expensive places in the country. Tesla can afford this because it is using robots to do the assembly.

Then there is artificial intelligence (AI)--software that makes computers do things that, if humans did them, we would call intelligent. We left AI for dead after the hype it created in the '80s, but it is alive and kicking--and advancing rapidly. It is powering all sorts of technologies. This is the technology that IBM's Deep Blue computer used in beating chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov in 1997and that enabled IBM's Watson to beat TV-show Jeopardy champions in 2011. AI is making it possible to develop self-driving cars, voice-recognition systems such as Apple's Siri, and the face-recognition software Facebook recently acquired. AI technologies are also finding their way into manufacturing and will allow us to design our own products at home with the aid of AI-powered design assistants.

How will we turn these designs into products? By "printing" them at home or at modern-day Kinko's: shared public manufacturing facilities such as TechShop, a membership-based manufacturing workshop, using new manufacturing technologies that are now on the horizon.

A type of manufacturing called "additive manufacturing" is making it possible to cost-effectively "print" products.  In conventional manufacturing, parts are produced by humans using power-driven machine tools, such as saws, lathes, milling machines, and drill presses, to physically remove material to obtain the shape desired. This is a cumbersome process that becomes more difficult and time-consuming with increasing complexity. In other words, the more complex the product you want to create, the more labor is required and the greater the effort.

In additive manufacturing, parts are produced by melting successive layers of materials based on 3D models--adding materials rather than subtracting them. The "3D printers" that produce these use powered metal, droplets of plastic, and other materials--much like the toner cartridges that go into laser printers.  This allows the creation of objects without any sort of tools or fixtures. The process doesn't produce any waste material, and there is no additional cost for complexity. Just as, in using laser printers, a page filled with graphics doesn't cost much more than one with text, in using a 3D printer, we can print sophisticated 3D structures for about the cost of a brick.

3D printers can already create physical mechanical devices, medical implants, jewelry, and even clothing. The cheapest 3D printers, which print rudimentary objects, currently sell for between $500 and $1000. Soon, we will have printers for this price that can print toys and household goods. By the end of this decade, we will see 3D printers doing the small-scale production of previously labor-intensive crafts and goods. It is entirely conceivable that in the next decade we start 3D-printing buildings and electronics.

In the next decade, we will see further advances. Engineers and scientists are today developing new types of materials, such as carbon nanotubes, ceramic-matrix nanocomposites, and new carbon fibers. These new materials make it possible to create products that are stronger, lighter, more energy-efficient, and more durable than existing manufactured goods. A new field--molecular manufacturing--will take this one step further and make it possible to program molecules inexpensively, with atomic precision. The materials we use for manufacturing and techniques for production will be nothing like the assembly-based processes that exist in China--and the U.S.--today.

Even if the Chinese automate their factories with AI-powered robots and manufacture 3D printers, it will no longer make sense to ship raw materials all the way to China to have them assembled into finished products and shipped back to the U.S. Manufacturing will once again become a local industry with products being manufactured near raw materials or markets.

So China has many reasons to worry, and manufacturing will undoubtedly return to the U.S.--if not in this decade then early in the next. But the same jobs that left the U.S. won't come back: they won't exist.  What will the new jobs be? We can only guess. Autodesk CEO Carl Bass says that just as we have created new, higher-paying jobs in every other industrial transition, we will create a new set of industries and professions in this one. Look at the new types of jobs and multi-billion dollar businesses that the Internet and mobile industries created--these came out of nowhere and changed our lives, Bass says.

Carl Bass is one of the leading authorities on 3D printing and digital manufacturing, and I share his optimism that we will create an era of abundance.  But I worry if we will create the new jobs fast enough and distribute the prosperity. Carl and I discussed this at Singularity University a few months ago. And I also discussed China manufacturing with The Economist China bureau chief, Vijay Vaitheeswaran. You can find these videos below.

This material published courtesy of Singularity University.

By Dr. Tom Perls (pictured) and Grant Campany
Dr. Perls is Director, New England Centenarian Study and Associate Professor of Medicine at Boston University School of Medicine. Grant Campany is Senior Director of the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts.

If you knew you were going to live to celebrate your 100th birthday, would you approach your everyday life differently? Would you change your exercise, diet, career and finances? Historically, the odds of achieving this chronological milestone were against you, but your luck may be changing. We are on the eve of significant technological breakthroughs with the potential to redefine not only the average life span but also the practice of medicine.

Why Centenarians?

Average life expectancy in most industrialized countries is now a remarkable 81 years. In 1900 it was about 45 years and in 1960 it was about 60 years. Clean water, ample food supplies, safe working conditions and major medical breakthroughs like antibiotics, vaccines, modern-day obstetrics, cardiac care and surgery continue to advance and enhance our lives.

Our "average" DNA, healthy diet, lifestyle and exercise habits, combined with medical advances, can result in a remarkable life expectancy - nearly 30 years beyond the age of 60, leading fully functional and independent lives. But how is it that some people live to 100 or even 110 years?

Decoding the Secrets of Centenarians

The New England Centenarian Study (NECS), led by Tom Perls, recently published findings from the study of several different groups of centenarians demonstrating that there is a very strong genetic influence to exceptional longevity, particularly for those living to 107 years or older. NECS research also revealed that these super agers possess "protective genes," which markedly increase their resistance to age-related diseases like Alzheimer's disease, heart disease, stroke and cancer, even at advanced ages well beyond 100 years.
We feel strongly that by studying centenarians we can begin to understand the underlying genetics of longevity. This research may offer tremendous insights, improving the quality of life for everyone.

We All Win From This X PRIZE

In order to identify and study these protective genes, we need the ability to quickly, accurately and affordably sequence the entire DNA strand, which is called the whole human genome.

This is where the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts comes in, with a $10 million incentivized competition designed to propel whole human genome technology forward, creating a faster, much less expensive and much more accurate method of sequencing.

Next year, the competition will give teams only 30 days to sequence 100 whole human genomes of vital centenarians, with an accuracy of 99.9999 percent and costing no more than $1,000 per genome. And today, we publicly announced the official entry by Ion Torrent. We are very excited about Ion Torrent's entry and encourage other companies to participate in this groundbreaking competition.

The 100 vital centenarians who are generously donating their DNA for this competition will be forever known as the Express Scripts 100 Over 100. These "genomic pioneers'" rare DNA will give researchers a gold mine of genetic information.

In order to increase the scientific utility of this Prize, we are attempting to recruit 100 ethnically diverse centenarians from around the world and wherever possible, super centenarians - those who live to 110 and beyond. The DNA provided by the Express Scripts 100 Over 100 is a key component of the $10 million Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts.

How Super is 115 Years Old?

Besse Cooper, at 115 years of age, is known as a super centenarian. She is the eldest of the Express Scripts 100 Over 100 genomic pioneers and currently the oldest living person in the world according to Guinness World Records. Her DNA, along with 99 other centenarians, will be sequenced by every team competing in the Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts in September 2013. Once the competition ends, the resulting genomic data will be provided freely, via the National Institutes of Health, to researchers around the world, thus creating one of the most robust sets of genomic data ever assembled.

Studying Health to Unlock the Mysteries of Disease

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) budgeted $32 billion in 2012 to support work by more than 325,000 scientists affiliated with approximately 3,000 organizations. One of the key objectives of the NIH is to support technologies that can accelerate discoveries, such as next generation genomic sequencing. We believe there is tremendous value in unlocking our understanding of the power of "protective variants." Giving researchers the first set of highly accurate genomes of centenarians is an opportunity to unlock the secrets these centenarians hold in their DNA, which protects them from disease and enables living exceptionally well to the century mark and beyond. Research, medical breakthroughs, new discoveries and therapies will be the lasting legacy to benefit humanity.

Why We Want Your DNA

The Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Express Scripts is looking for "genomic pioneers:" individuals born before September 5, 1913 willing to be part of the Express Scripts 100 Over 100.

They will be part of an exclusive group of individuals whose generous contribution of rare DNA will help researchers unlock the secrets of 10,000 years of life.

All we need is their DNA.
To answer the call and nominate a centenarian you know, go to:
http://genomics.xprize.org/join

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