Cancer T Shirts

so, this will be one ofthe last talks to cap off a very concentrated periodof thinking for us all. but i have a point to shareor a couple points actually that hopefully will not requirean intense focus from your mind but more a shift of perspective. now, the electric universe dialogue servesdifferent purposes to different parties but adds up to a stronger some witheach separate conversation within it. it is a gathering of evidence, evidence that widens the cognitiveperipheral vision of our species.

when i think of this group, i draw ananalogy to walking in the redwood forest. the paths there are usually wide enoughfor old logging trucks back in the day. so, instead of walking single filewith one person leading the rest, we would often be spread outacross the width of the path. and on different signs, peoplemight notice different things. on one side, the people might have agulley or they might have giant trees reaching up into the sky and theyget it they get an appreciation for the next straining height, thetrue scale of the highs and lows. the people on this side of the trail,they have a view of the big-scale

the grandness of life; theyoften feel small by comparison. then on the other side of thetrail, a rise in the terrain can bring many of the tiniest creatures andtheir intricate landscapes to eye level. and often we see some parallelsuch as the tiniest mosses can resemble the ferns that at ourscale are, you know, this high. and we see all of these tinyoften alien-looking creatures in their own little world. it's like lookinginside a fabergã© egg, and it's all a product of thesame molecules and atoms,

the same reality butit's utterly invisible when we are studying theselarger scales of reality. and through such advancement, you knowin our highly complementary discussions, highly varied but also complimentary,we advance the overall discourse of how scientists relate to their topicswhen we have this broad angle lens. and all of these different discussionson our different sides of the path were all advancingforward together. we can change. with a broad angle lens, we can overalladvance the cultural wisdom of our species.

so, just to take a look at physicallife forms from the eu perspective, not to be reductionistic even ifour title is "elegant simplicity" but to point out someinteresting things, to look at the supposedlyfamiliar creatures around us, and to see them with fresh eyes. say is there anything we shouldadd to the significant knowledge found in your averagebiology textbook? so, here is the general lego-pieceof all life-forms we see. starting in 1665with robert hooke,

humans have beencalling them cells, because in his time, theyreminded him of the cellula, little rooms thatmonks would live in. and to me, using a titlelike cell or room, it's a hallmark of when our understandingof these structures was also small. they're much more likekingdoms or [....] like castles or kingdoms evenbecause within all their organelles they manage a staggering complexityof the movement of the very the most basic moleculesand atoms of life,

operating at timescales thatseem otherworldly to us. and yet, this is happeningin every moment at surely astounding scales inevery finger digit of our body or every pigeon thatwe find annoying. this is this ever-presentscale of reality. we simply do not seewith the naked eye. so, i would like to help people visualize this layer of realitya little bit better as it is. i have a appreciation for itbecause no models in a classroom,

using plastic balls and sticks, willreally allow us to visualize the otherworldly time scales that we aremade of at this most fundamental level. national geographic mentioned one estimateof how many cells are in a human body -- just an average estimate, verywell researched -- about 37-trillion. so, 37-trillion. it's amazing what a single cell canbecome under the right conditions. so, we are much more likegalaxies of cells then our, you know, embodied humanperspective would appreciate. as we're interacting withpeople and creatures,

we are surely immensegalaxies of cells, only the galaxies when we'retalking billions of stars we're talking in thetrillions of cells. now, one discovery about cells that humanswill soon start to spread and utilize is the awareness that an organismregulates even the morphogenesis, the form of its cells and tissues, usingcharge gradients across cellular membranes. if a cell becomes depolarized, that is if it loses its healthyelectric membrane potential, say 60 millivolts across the membrane,it enters a state that we call "cancer."

so, depolarization ofthe cell is cancer. now, this might be because the shift inpotential causes many specific problems such as the inability to allowin particular charged molecules that can regulatecellular growth. there are many specific nuanced factorsthat can be occurring in this process. the levin lab at tufts university named afterits principal researcher, michael levin, has witnessed a revolution in our species'understanding of the electrical nature of cell morphologyand communication. first, they made greatstrides in cancer treatment,

showing that if membrane potentialsin cancer cells are returned to a healthy state of polarity, then cancers could simplybecome healthy tissue again. or they would recognize theyaren't supposed to be there and plant cell death what happened andthey would go [death noise--laughter.] though, because they didsome very excellent work and got some veryencouraging findings. but because this is still such a complexsubject, still a bit of art and luck, it's the science of it is soin the developing stages;

so many things we have yet to map out [that]their success rate is still very low. say in one experiment,curing just small animals, they had about a 30% success rate,using just the methods that they were seeking to show the efficacy of, justaltering flow through ion channels to change the polarity of cells. but still 30% in about 24 hours orso could possibly remiss cancers. that is already something that a lot ofpeople would like to try before they engage in a treatment that mightpossibly be the death of them so if nothing else would be very expensiveand difficult for their family.

so, this is already goodand highly promising, highly promising forfuture research. on their website, you'll seethey've been quite busy. so, looking at this layer ofcells in this new technology, since 2012 they've been publishing aboutan average of 19 papers every year. so, they are blazinga trail forwards. and now something equallyinteresting they discovered and far more shocking butin a very positive way: specific tissue typesor even full body parts

can actually be inducedto form on purpose in areas that were previously notthought capable of supporting them. by replicating thevoltage gradients associated with that organsnormal placement in the body, one can actually inducethat organ to grow. this was a, discussinga press release, researchers discover thatchanges in bioelectric signals trigger the formationof new organs. this is truly a world of the future forhuman technology in our relation to life.

now, this comes froma number of studies, including one where they madetadpoles grow an eye on their tail and also one inside their gut. and somehow the body of these creaturesdid all sorts of heavy lifting for them, not only with their admittedlyhighly specific and practiced regulation of cellular membrane potentialsto kick off this process, you know. it nonetheless the body did all ofthis work to form this complex eye just like you'd see on the outsideof the body, and furthermore, it neurologically connectedit to the brain.

so, these tadpolesapparently could see with this tail-eye orthis eye in their gut. and i know some scientists will probably wantto play around with this as soon as possible but let's be kind to ... and just remember, you know, going backthe many other researchers involved, i think i put a noteat the bottom here, it really takes a villageto raise an experiment as we've seen from thepresentations here. so once again,tadpole with an eye.

and i'm sure a lot of people when theyhear about experiments like this, their first reaction toscientists how they see how they see people doing this researchis something like this [cartoon.] cartoon: "i have created things thatwill change the world for the better. for instance, here's a monkeywith four asses. [groan] how did that makethe world better?" that is a very legitimate question.[laughter] but that research, just that littleexample of making tadpoles grow butt-eyes or eyes inside their stomachs,this has increased understanding

about neurology in the brain, and howwe could in the future be able to, you know, we the scientistswho specialize this, coordinating with the medicalinfrastructure of our age, we could heal birth defectslike the loss of an eye. lives could be changed through theseseemingly bizarre trivial experiments, well bizarre and intervalto some people, you know, sharing these experimentswith the wider public. in related regenerative work, theresearchers at tufts had been creating detailed computermodels of regeneration,

like this picture ofthe classic planaria. and i think it is very much in linewith the electric universe discussions to now think of, you know, ourselvesand other creatures we see as these galaxies of cells, thesebasically large, you know, to give humans that understanding, thevastness of what each person or creature is, galaxies of cells organized keenlyby electric charge gradients across cellular membranesall throughout this body. you're very intimatelyorganized by electrical forces and can be healed byelectrical forces.

and some of these beings, someof our fellow earthlings, can feel the earth'smagnetosphere, and this influences behaviorin a variety of ways. if you've watch myvideos the the turtles, as i discussed the leatherbackturtles, they create their nests in particular places in accordancewith the geomagnetic field, and their nest placement will shift basedon the shifting of the geomagnetic field. and if you've done research on yourown just looking across the internet, probably many of you have any of youinterested in the subject have come across

articles discussing how dogs,they were studied and found that many dogs they wouldpoop in accordance - they would like, i forgethow they tested this now - but yes indeed, howwould they test this - but finding that evenbehavior like that, of say, maybe where they wantedto mark their territory that this is such anintricate sense that these beings that wouldbe consulting this. and of course, the one thing thatwe humans have definitely noticed

when looking at the animalkingdom and even ourselves is the ability to navigate using thisconnection to the geomagnetic field. and yes, many humans underthe right conditions with the right sufficientlyskilled experimenter, you can do experiments andsee that humans can still, humans have not lost the sense, maybesome of us are not keyed into it as much, maybe we haven't been, you know, haven't had a need or haven't hada clean environment around us from some factors to feelthe geomagnetic field.

but from bacteria all the way up tosentient life-forms like ourselves, this is just an intricate, it's afact of life that one can study. now let's take a fresh look atsome of our many fellow organisms, just a small view of the varietythat inhabit this planet, keeping the mind that these areall just vast galaxies of cells organized by electricgradients in too many forms. this one practice is display andpretend like its watching they switch this goes on hours at a time during the dayfor months out of the year for many years. and so only then, when they transitioninto the first adult plumage,

do they start doing this thing that werecognize as the full courtship display. catania converted the eel'selectric pulses into sound. they were acting like a taser, essentiallycausing involuntary muscle contractions to freeze up the animalso it couldn't move. the eel is remotely activating motor-neuronoutput that activates muscles; so, they're essentially reachinginto the animal's nervous system with their electric charge andremotely controlling their muscles through their peripheral nervous system,which i think is pretty amazing. an eel's shock can beup to 600 volts...

five times the voltage of a u.s.wall socket. what was nature thinking? because they're awake all night, it's a little difficult taking careof them in a studio apartment. and then, occasionally at night, theybark if they'll want your attention like when they first wakeup they want to see you. so, i figured i wouldn't put anythingtoo savage up on a giant screen as you're forced to watch it, you know,no clockwork orange effect here. but yes, also the cuteness of naturedoesn't get seen enough sometimes.

now, considering that the human canhave around 37 trillion cells, just imagine these. i wonder what sort of pathologiesthey had in a body this large with so much distance forcellular communication to travel. with this mindfulness of the fundamentalunit of all organisms like ourselves, let's consider a different note. how do life-forms fit into the largerelectric universe that respond to them? are we, are we, they, are alllife-forms, are we just simply tangential, kind ofunconnected, an epiphenomenon?

or do we also complement largersystems and some interesting ways? now beavers arevery easy example of how organisms can have a substantialimpact on their surroundings. beavers build channels,waterways into new areas. they make waterways much deeper, and this causes water to remain duringhot seasons with a lot of evaporation, where all these liquids would beevaporating away on the planet's surface. and this is a bit of pressmaterial because it sometimes there are some places where they have hugedroughts in this would drastically affect farmers,

and the only places where theywould have water remaining are in ponds wherethere were beavers. so, we can already see how this isaffecting a supposedly much, you know, a much more advancedlife-form like ourselves. they are terraformers even atthis level of the animal kingdom. and they also, they do increasethe reach of waterways; so, they, within just a few decadesthanks to a family or two of beavers, you can suddenly have a patch ofearth that was arid and desert-like, and then these beavers will taketiny streams where there is barely,

you know, barely atrickle in most seasons. and when there is water there, theycan come in and dig it deeper and, you know, widen it andespecially just deepen it so that the wateris retained better. and they can suddenly, you know, ecologistscan come into an area that was just desert and cannotsustain life and then the traveling beavers comingin to do their thing. it has all of this grass; it's justlush [and] can support all of these forms of life that somehowfind their way there.

and it's a little oasis. and it's good to keepin mind for humans when we learn to more intelligentlyuse these relationships as we're all these you know creaturesborn of this particular world and all of its electrical terrain,all of its electrical atmosphere that we creatures can callon the skills of each other, such as for terraformingand making someplace lush and maybe we can grow food for populationsthat other otherwise would be starving. and you have to ship food in.

just something to consider. and before we considerthe largest scale at which organisms of trillions ofcells can reshape their surroundings, consider these effectsin a more complex case. movie: "one of the most exciting scientificfindings of the past half century has been the discovery ofwidespread trophic cascades. a trophic cascade is an ecological process,which starts at the top of the food chain and tumbles all the waydown to the bottom. and the classic example is what happenedin the yellowstone national park

in the united states when wolveswere reintroduced in 1995. now, we we all know that wolveskill various species of animals but press was slightly less awarethat they give life to many others. before the wolves turned up,they've been absent for 70 years. that the numbers of deer because there'snothing to hunt that built up and built up in the yellowstone park, and despiteefforts by humans to control them, they'd managed to reduce much of thevegetation there to almost nothing. they just grazed it away. but as soon as the wolves arrived,even though there were few in number,

they started to have themost remarkable effects. first of course, they killed some of thedeer but that wasn't the major thing. much more significantly they radicallychanged the behavior of the deer. the deer started avoidingcertain parts of the park, the places where they couldbe trapped most easily, particularly the valleysand the gorges. and immediately, those placesstarted to regenerate. in some areas, the height of thetrees quintupled in just six years. bare valley sides quickly became forestsof aspen and willow and cottonwood.

and as soon as that happened,the birds started moving in. the number of songbirds, of migratorybirds started to increase greatly. the number of beavers started to increasebecause beavers like to eat the trees. and beavers like wolvesare ecosystem engineers; they create nichesfor other species. and the dams theybuilt in the rivers provided habitats forotters and muskrats some ducks and fish andreptiles and amphibians. the wolves killed coyotes,and as a result of that,

the number of rabbits and micebegan to rise, which meant more hawks, more weasels,more foxes, more badgers, ravens and bald eagles came down to feedon the carrion that the wolves had left. bears fed on it too, and theirpopulation began to rise as well, partly also because there were more berriesgrowing on the regenerating shrubs. and the bears reinforcethe impact of the wolves by killing some of thecalves of the deer. but here's where it getsreally interesting. the wolves changed thebehavior of the rivers.

they began to meander less;there is less erosion; that channels narrowed more poolsformed; more riffle sections, all of which are greatfor wildlife habitats. the rivers changed inresponse to the wolves. and the reason was thatthe regenerating forests stabilized the banks so thatthey collapse less often; so that the rivers becamemore fixed in their course. similarly, by driving thedeer out of some places and the vegetation recoveringon the valley sides,

there was less soil erosion because thevegetation stabilize that as well. so, the wolves, small in number,transformed not just the ecosystem of the yellowstone nationalpark, this huge area of land, but also its physical geography. so, here we had rivers, thevery geography of the world affected in a way theyotherwise wouldn't be by the electric organismsthat evolved on it. and all of the trees onmountains, trees large and small, working to stabilize and alter how theliquids could flow upon this planet surface

and quite a exponential effect on lifewhere now you have other life forms evolved that can eat the treesand potentially disastrous ways but then these other life-forms canscare them off, alter their behavior so that the trees are maintainedin their populations, but continue to help craftthe planet's surface. now, i think this is a veryinteresting interaction effect. and humans are very mucha part of all of this. our species can be a self-regulatingone and highly directed too. now we have a long history of coming into astate of maturity towards our surroundings.

kind of like the deer, we can havethat urge to vacuum up all the foliage and for completely understandable, youknow, sometimes people can be greedy but then otherwise there's all sorts ofother reasons that people are socialized or are out of desperation of resourcesdriven to do these sort of things. so, as we grow as a species,we can help each other by taking the best practicesand best knowledge and the benefits or privileges fromone place or another and try to disseminate them more evenly. and humans can removeor add to the terrain;

we're great terraformers. we can also contaminatethe terrain. and our collective species can actlike beavers but on a planetary scale. so, here we are a creature born ofthis planet that can now reshape or change the conditions ofthis planet in remarkable ways. if you want to influence thestate of the earth biosphere, either depressing or inspiring thehuman species offers a direct route. so, once humans have become moreintelligently compassionate towards our own species and towards oursurroundings, towards our home planet,

we can evolve our technologyand our intellect for interplanetary creativeadventures one day. this seems like thetrajectory of our people. one day i'm sure we will introduceecosystems on once barren planets. and for all the rightreasons too, you know, say not just in pursuit of oneparticular atomic compound that a few people can sellto make a lot of money and still not find truehappiness, you know. now, i personally though i'm quitecontent to keep exploring this planet.

according to the researchof robert hazen, we have probably around -- andvery good research, i might add -- probably have around 1500 mineralsthat are as yet undiscovered. and around 20% of the world's vascularplants are still undocumented and not really known andunderstood to science, to say nothing of what littlesurprises can always come up in the supposedly familiar,supposedly known. and meanwhile, the number ofundocumented or fully unnoticed species is actually many times the amountthat we know and understand.

and each of these creaturesoften has remarkable -- well not every single one -- but each of these creatures couldpotentially have remarkable innovations, lessons that they could teach us inmedicine from their biochemistry, in engineering, inmaterial science. there are all sorts of things that we learnedfrom the evolutionary novelty around us, such as the classic case of, you know,spider silk and different things where when we're adapting materials tofrom one part of the animal kingdom trying to produce them differentlyand adapt them for some other use.

and one day, our degree of understandingof bioelectrical morphology and genetics will probably give us the power to replicatedesign elements from different creatures. we might augment ourselves orwe might augment other species with new degrees and types say of sensoryperception, like bat ears for instance. just pointing out what we're already seeing the beginningsof in some of these technologies. humans are probablydestined, you know, amongst all the emptinessof space we really ought to understand the value of ourhome planet's many life forms.

of all of the beautiful evolutionarynovelty that is living all around us, humans are just startingto also communicate with other intelligentanimals on this planet. there's just literally so many frontiersthat we are just beginning to explore and have yet to truly appreciateand prepare ourselves for. and we some day willprobably become terraformers of otherworlds like space beavers. but first, of course, we must continueto grow emotionally and intellectually, transformed by difficultchallenges into something wiser.

in the long run, we are ananimal perfectly suited to the stewardship of other animalsand the conscious management of all the treasures oflife on this planet, empowered by knowledgeof the physics of life. and i just want to say thank youall for lending your presence to this particularconference of science.