Future Salon

Adult Stem Cells from Whiskers

Well, I was tempted to do another tasteless title about adult stem cells and dandruff. I refrain.

Still it is interesting where on the body these adult stem cells are hiding and probably doing adult stuff until they get lured out by these excellent researchers.

This time stem cells from mouse whiskers, that can be used to grow tissue and smooth muscle cells, neurons and other nerve cells. [via The Register]

Update: While composing this post linstrum1 has posted about it already on the Future Salon Yahoo Group

Wow, Future Salon Feedster Feed of the Day Today :-)

Thanks, Scott and Team. We are honored and hope it introduces more people to our events and may be some want to be part of the digital revolution in fabrication on the 15th of April.

Neil Gershenfeld on C-Span: Internet Zero

I am so looking forward to our next Future Salon on Tax Day Friday 15th of April: FabLabs: Make Almost Anything. Personal fabrication brought to a garage/desk near you.

The presenter professor Neil Gershenfeld, heads MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms. His ETech talk got written up in Business Week:

Technology, he says, isn't the main obstacle anymore. It's money. There's not just a digital divide, but a tools and instrument divide. He thinks there needs to be "micro-VC," or small amounts of venture capital as lilttle as $10,000, to encourage entrepreneurs around the world to use these personal fabs to create interesting new products.

He is on C-Span right now:  Digital Futures Series on C-SPAN 6:30 e.t. talking about Internet Zero: Extending the internet protocol to give every electric device an address. 

At an opening event one of the architects of the high-speed Internet 2 project kept coming back to ask how fast data could be sent through the building infrastructure. After being reminded that light bulbs don't need to be able to watch broadband movies, he was jokingly told that the emerging network of everyday devices was part of an Internet zero, not Internet 2. The name stuck. I0 is not a replacement for the current Internet (call that Internet 1); it is a set of principles for extending the Internet down to individual devices.

You can read the draft Internet Zero paper from 2004 on the MIT site.

Neil Gershenfeld's book Fab is not out yet and I talked to Skip Barret from Books Inc today: They are getting 60 books on the 12th which he will bring to the Future Salon on the 15th, so you can be one of the first ones to get it signed. Please RSVP for the event.

P.S. If you are not in the Bay Area or just too lazy to get off your desk :-)

Webcast will be available:
Point your Quicktime player to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp

We will also have an IRC chat session running:
Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #futuresalon

Video of Digital Identity Future Salon Online

Finally the video of the Future of your Online Identity Salon is up for eternity :-) at the Internet Archive. We have to find a way to mark the spot where the different presentations start. At the beginning you are getting the round of introductions, which is also a good intro into the big problem space, but it would be good to be able to skip that if you like.

Thanks again to the presenters: Jeff Hodges from Liberty Alliance; Fen Labalme from Identity Commons and Eric Sachs from Google for having made that Future Salon such an interesting and memorable evening.

New Interesting AI Company: Numenta

Numenta a company developing a new type of computer memory system modeled after the human neocortex has just been formed by the team that brought you Handspring and the Treo: Donna Dubinsky and Jeff Hawkins.

The company is based on the insights described in the book On Intelligence that Jeff wrote last year together with New York Times science writer Sandra Blakeslee.

It describes a new theory of what intelligence is, a complementary theory of how the neocortex works, and how we can build intelligent machines.

And now they start to build them. A new approach to AI. Would love to know more about it. Anyone out there that can convince Donna, Jeff and or Sandra to present at a Future Salon? Or even better speak at the Accelerating Change Conference AC2005. After all this year's theme is Artificial Intelligence and Intelligence Amplification and it is in their backyard, at Stanford September 16-18.

Chris Scott said after the last Future Salon, your audience asks the best questions. Numenta should get out there too, to get to get some good questions asked and I know especially in AI we would shine.

So please if you know them, tell them about the Future Salon and AC2005 and ask them kindly to be part of the fun.

John Smart Gets Out There

John Smart is Founder and President of the Acceleration Studies Foundation. His late-night talk from Accelerating Change 2004, Simulation, Agents, and Accelerating Change: Personality Capture and the Linguistic User Interface, is up for free audio download at IT Conversations.

It's a must-hear for anyone interested in the deep direction of world systems and their social, technological, and business implications. Glad to work with you, John, and very happy to see your many original contributions and bold, critical synthesis getting out there (now finish writing your book! :-)

From the abstract (which doesn't do justice to the range and depth of the talk which explores many facets of accelerating change, developmental evolution, human experience, and coming technological emergences):

"One of the most important accelerating transitions occuring today is the emergence of the Linguistic User Interface or LUI. What will Windows (and the Google Browser) of 2015 look like? It seems clear that it will include sophisticated software simulations of human beings as part of the interface. First-world culture today spends more on video games than movies. These "interactive motion picture" technologies are more compelling and educating, particularly to our youth, the fastest-learning segment of society, than any linear scripts, no matter how professionally produced."

Make Almost Anything Future Salon

This one is very special. MIT Professor Neil Gershenfeld stops his Fab book tour at the Future Salon. You can't get it yet and official sale is only starting on the 30th of April, but we will have copies available.

What the PCs did to publishing Fab Labs are doing to the production process: Make it personal. Neil Gershenfeld is at the center of this revolution that goes way beyond production, it changes the way people learn, think and see the world.

Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs) currently still $20.000 but rapidly becoming cheaper enable you and me and the third world is three to produce almost anything. (Still hard working on the zero gravity room :-) What that all means at the next Future Salon.

Even the economist wrote an article about it with a nice little cartoon, and you know that the message is out when they cover it.

If you are not in the Bay Area that day, don't despair. For our Webcast point your Quicktime player to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp

We will also have an IRC chat session running:
Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #futuresalon

It's on the Tax Day: Friday 15th of April 6-7 networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP . From 7-9+pm presentation and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] As always free and open to the public. Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

Free and open to the public. We have a new RSVP Service. Please use it so that we can calculate the food and whether to use the larger room.

Soon more, I just wanted to give you a heads up.

Nose Boogers contain Adult Stem Cells

Australian Scientists Grow Adult Stem Cells from Nose

SYDNEY (Reuters) - With the help of the Catholic Church, Australian researchers have successfully grown adult stem cells harvested from the human nose, avoiding the ethical and legal problems associated with embryonic stem cells.

But nobody is taking about the new ethicals problems, where to put your boogers now? If you are not careful you may end up with Fleshy Creatures. Takes the fun out of flicking them, does it. Something tells me I didn't totally get that correctly with harvesting stem cells from the nose. :-)

And who would have thought my good old Catholic Church did some good with the billions they have horded.

It really smells promising.

Announcing The Second Life Future Salon

It's official: The date for the inaugural Second Life Future Salon is set for Thursday, April 28th. The user created 3D world of Second Life now joins Los Angeles, Palo Alto, San Diego, and Las Vegas as a home to the monthly foresight, networking and all-around-good-times mini-conferences known as Future Salons.

I have a more thorough post at Setpoint Originator for those who are interested. Stay tuned for specifics (speakers, times, and a preliminary practice event will be announced soon). And please write me at jerrypaffendorf [at] accelerating [dot] org if you'd like to get involved or have any ideas or questions.

If you're in Second Life and want to catch up with me, search for SNOOPYbrown Zamboni. If I'm not there, leave me an IM and I'll get back to you. Money-wise, Second Life has a free 7 day trial and $9.95 will get you in for life. Hope to see a bunch of you "in-world" for the first Future Salon foray into the metaverse frontier.

Three interesting SL resources (more in the Setpoint post):

•New World Notes, a blog by embedded SL journalist James Au aka Hamlet Linden
•Living the Dream: Business Community and Innovation at the Dawn of Digital Worlds, audio of keynote presentation by Cory Ondrejka at Accelerating Change 2004
•Snapzilla, Second Life's version of Flickr (amazing)

Below: Here I am keeping the future safe for Second Life (note my avatar's Accelerating Change 2004 t-shirt by Jeff Thompson—consider your mind blown! :-)

Power of an open API

You never know what crazy stuff people out there com up with:

Spell with Flikr (via Jeff Nolan)

RSS tracking of Fed Ex, UPS, USPS and soon DHL Packages

Yakov Shafranovich created the track2RSS project where you enter your tracking number and you get an RSS feed back that lets you stalk your packages in your favorite RSS reader. Sweet. At O'Reilly's xml.com Yakov gives some background to the program.

That is up there with the custom RSS feed for Ebay searches and of course Craig's list: Put in your search like: "Mountain Bike" scroll down the page and in the lower right corner there is the link with the RSS Feed. Subscribe and from now on the listings come to you. Sweet.

Status of the California Stem Cell Initiative

Scott briefly touched on the 3 Billion California Stem Cell initiative last Friday too. Turns out there is a Blog that is covering nothing else: California Stem Cell Report. David Jensen just posted his score card: Litany of Losses.

Also the perks that the different cities are shelling out to bit for the head quarters sounds a lot like the shenanigans that are going on when countries try to lure the Olympic games to their home. 

I stumbled over this on Chris Nolan's Blog. He also links to a Sacramento Bee editorial, that I was too lazy to sign up for.

More recent Stem Cell successes

JP Kikos was at the Stem Cell Future Salon last Friday and send me the following links to more recent research successes and investment opportunities in that area:

Especially the fact that VCs and angels are partnering with the clinics around the world (Russia, England, China, Korea) to open up Stem Cell Clinics in the Caribbean (Bahamas, and Barbados etc). Locally the FDA just expanded the Aastrom's (ASTM) Phase II bone graft trials. And their Replicell technology fully automates the culturing and commercial-scale production of Tissue Repair Cells.

There is a lot more to this story than the fog of morality. The big story is the money and who is going to get control of the billions Americans spend on medical therapies. If Americans are currently flying to Korea and China to spend $20K per stem cell treatment, how difficult would it be to get them to spend a few weeks R&R in Cozumel for the same money? How long can the AMA continue to support the current polices?

Remember the current administration only has 3.5 years left...

Anyway here are a few of the links:

Aastrom's 8K filing with the SEC. Look at the bone graft Xrays.
http://secfilings.nasdaq.com/filingFrameset.asp?FileName=0000936392%2D05%2D0
00059%2Etxt&FilePath=%5C2005%5C03%5C15%5C&CoName=AASTROM+BIOSCIENCES+INC&For
mType=8%2DK&RcvdDate=3%2F15 %2F2005&pdf=

This is the link about Dr Huang Hongyun's work in China
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianfilms/china

Song Chang-hun,Kang Kyung-sun and Han Hoon's work in Korea
http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200411/kt2004112617575710440.htm

University of Pittsburgh results of Stem Cell trial on heart repair
http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/news/article.asp?qEmpID=87

Stem cells reverse Parkinson's in monkeys
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6783024/

And this story, which is over a year old, makes the entire morality debate irrelevant.
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn3786
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-697630,00.html

German doctors use stem cells from FAT to regrow skull BONE.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6727466/

Finally someone from my home country :-) Great stuff.

Great Stem Cell Overview

Wow, that was an excellent presentation by Christoper Scott last night. Stem Cells is a complex issue from so many angels: Biology, politics, science, potential health benefits, moral issues, economics, international competition, ... Chris super cool and with loots of dry humor made the topic very accessible and kept us captivated throughout the presentation.

Things I learned last night in no particular order:

Chris' assessment regarding stem cell therapies and I think he even interviewed the Korean scientist who cured a paralyzed woman: These therapies are still years away. Especially for cures of complex organs like the brain: Forget about Alzheimer (Bad pun no donut :-)

Stem cells in the right environment can live forever.

In the moral question one should weight the actual suffering of for example thousands of diabetes patients against the harm and potential suffering that is done to the embryonic stem cells. (I was thinking the whole evening, what an unfortunate name. It invokes such strong emotions and is one of the reasons we are having these strong political problems.)

Australia has the best regulatory body where the research is permitted, but tightly controlled. While searching for that information I came across this map showing the permissive or flexible policy on human embryonic stem cell research throughout the world.

The US policies are hurting the scientific developments. He mentioned two examples, one young scientist about to switch the field because of uncertainty regarding next grant / job in the industry as well as an SF State (I think it was) professor picking up tend and leaving for London back in 2001 when Bush's politics where implemented.

Brownback Bill: Committee chair Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan) introduced legislation that would ban all human cloning. Brownback's bill mirrors one reintroduced in the House of Representatives by Dave Weldon (R-Fla) on January 8; Weldon's original version passed in the House in July of 2001 by a wide margin. The bills stipulate jail time and $1 million in fines for anyone attempting to clone a human being.

Allowed human embryonic stem cell lines are contaminated.

Adult stem cells not as easy to study in a lab environment. Scientists don't really understand adult stem cells.

In your body 50 million blood cells get replaced every minute. Wow.

Korean scientist asked for guidance from Buddhist monks regarding his research and got encouraged from them.

How Nuclear Transfer (therapeutic cloning) is done.

Last but not least: Game OPERATION patient's name is Cavity Sam.

Chris told me at dinner afterwords, that he forgot to talk about a dark time in Russian history where science was guided by ideology Lysenkoism:

Under Lysenko's guidance, science was guided not by the most likely theories, backed by appropriately controlled experiments, but by the desired ideology. Science was practiced in the service of the State, or more precisely, in the service of ideology. The results were predictable: the steady deterioration of Soviet biology. ...

It was due to Lysenko's efforts that many real scientists, those who were geneticists or who rejected Lamarckism in favor of natural selection, were sent to the gulags or simply disappeared from the USSR. Lysenko rose to dominance at a 1948 conference in Russia where he delivered a passionate address denouncing Mendelian thought as "reactionary and decadent" and declared such thinkers to be "enemies of the Soviet people" (Gardner 1957).

Let that be a warning.

I forgot to take pictures, but Marc Goodner did the one above from his camera phone. 

Yes, a Picture says more than a Thousand Stem Cells

Googling for a stem cell picture I stumbled over the artist's Patricia Piccinini - Fleshy Creatures.

It is this great combination of the innocent child play with this fleshy blobs where looking at them makes you stop breathing, if only for a brief moment. Yes stem cells for curing cancer making people walk again and all that, but will we also create toys out of them? When was it again that life starts? Does it matter?

Answers to these and other of life's timeless questions tonight at the Future Salon. Actually mostly it will be a good time to get over the St. Patrick's Day hangover and you probably will walk away with more questions then you came with, but these questions will be on a higher level of consciousness :-)

'Animal free' stem cells created

BBC: British researchers have been able to grow stem cells without using animal products, it has been revealed. 

That is quite a breakthrough if you ask me, but you better ask Christopher Scott THE Stem Cell Expert at tomorrows Future Salon. Here him talk about:

Criminals in White Coats
The future of human stem cell research

In a televised address on August 9, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that federal funding could be used only for embryonic stem cells isolated before his televised address at 9:00 p.m. Months later, the National Institutes of Health released a list of the ten worldwide organizations that were holding the 64 cell lines that met the president's criteria and, thus, were eligible for federal funding.

It is more than three years later.

What are the medical, ethical and economic consequences of America 's most controversial moral policy? When will we see the first cures from stem cell research? Will California 's new Institute for Regenerative Medicine reverse the effects of thirty years of Washington politics? What kind of life do we hold most precious? Should stem cell research proceed at any cost?

We are Webcasting the event again:
Point your Quicktime to the following address: rtsp://207.105.30.90/salon.sdp

We are also having an IRC chat session running:
Server: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #futuresalon

March 18th 6-7pm networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentations and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

Christopher Scott is a biologist, entrepreneur and author. His new book, The Stem Cell, (July, 2005) is on the science, morals and politics of human stem cells. Scott was the scientific founder of Acumen Sciences, a research and consulting company based in San Francisco. He was also a founding editor of the award-winning Acumen Journal of Sciences, a magazine focused on the business, economics and politics of life sciences.

Prior to Acumen, Scott was the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and for a decade was a senior administrator at Stanford University. With Nobel Laureate Paul Berg, he developed one of the nation’s first translational medicine programs. He is one of only a handful of executives awarded for his contributions to Stanford’s research enterprise. He has principal founding relationships with several Bay Area biotechnology start-ups. His undergraduate and postgraduate training is from Colorado University, and he is a graduate of Stanford’s Executive Management Program. He also has an MA from Stanford University with a focus on biomedical ethics.

Scott is a committee member for the International Society of Stem Cell Research and past member of the Stanford Program in Genomics, Ethics and Society, and the California Health Care Initiative. He is the author of many publications and lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University on ethics, science, and public policy.  He has recently been featured in national and local media coverage of these and other important issues, including NPR’s Talk of the Nation, KQED radio, UPI and Fox News.

As always the Future Salon is free and open to the public. Spread the word.

Addiction: The Future of Home Entertainment

Imagine a world where you can have whatever experience turns you on, anytime, all the time. Is that a recipe for addiction or what?

Monkeys Pay to See Female Monkey Bottoms
The rhesus macaque monkeys also splurged on photos of top-dog counterparts, the high-ranking primates.

Ok, but supposing female monkey bottoms aren't your thing. With advances in the internet, movie, and gaming/virtual reality environments, you could more and more have any experience you want. Travel virtually to any corner of the globe, exchange ideas on anything with anyone, solve clever puzzles. We all have some experiences we enjoy and some we don't. Imagine that you could have whatever sights, whatever sounds, whatever music, whatever interactions with the world or with other people you want anytime all the time.

Here's an interesting article, the Age of Egocasting, that explores what could happen to us as we become cocooned into our private little media shells. It's pretty long, but worth reading:

The Age of Egocasting
Remote controls, TiVo's, and iPod's. Where is it all leading us? Someday, we will all be connected directly to the internet and have programming plugged directly into our brains by hardware connected directly to our neurons, available wirelessly wherever we go. Eventually, we won't even bother going anywhere because it'll be easier to go in vitual reality, so we're going to end up as brains in vats with wires coming out that connect us to the internet. Right? Americans love junk. It’s not the junk that bothers me, it’s the love. -- George Santayana

It made me think: Hasn't the last election itself showed something about the effect the internet has on society? The righty people read the right-wing blogs and become more right-wing. The lefty people read the left-wing blogs and become more left-wing. People get concooned into their belief systems. It's the same thing that happens offline, with talk radio, direct mail, and Fox News, only amplified. Personally, I have some beliefs in common with the left-wing people and some in common with the right-wing people. So which am I, left or right? Is there a fundamental human tendency to stay within the belief cocoon to avoid cognitive dissonance -- and if so, should we not expect the political split in this country to amplify as well as people use the internet more and more people get on?

Here's an article about what happens to hardcore gamers when they play a bit too much. Don't think this could happen to you? Is it because you're not into games -- or because they just haven't come up with the kind of game experience that sucks you in? This question reminds me of the early days of the internet. We'd show people Netscape 2.0 and they'd say, "What good is it?" Well, until the internet has content *you're* interested in -- not much. But the internet has content on pretty much everything these days, and everyone wants to get on. Video games will evolve into virtual reality experiences, and the closer they get to reality, the more diverse, and compelling game experience will become, no?

Real World Doesn't Use a Joystick
Having a difficult time separating her real-life consciousness from that of her game playing is all too common among hard-core gamers.

Of course, this is exactly what you would expect. Video games (and other computer programs) grow the same neural circuits in the brain that you would have if the experiences were real -- whether those neural circuits turn out to be useful in the "real world" or not.

This article talks about virtual home theater -- so you can literally cuddle up in your cocoon and experience anything...

Virtual Home Theater Promises Immersion And Fits on Your Head
The eight-ounce visor, which is expected to go on sale by May at emagin.com for $900, is a personal display system that sits on your head like a pair of glasses.

Of course, I don't know whether this particular company and this particular product are going to take over -- but I do believe this trend will continue and eventually we will have effective personal display devices.

By the way, speaking of home theater -- this time the non-virtual kind -- I just heard that Sony released their black screen that lets you watch your projector during the day. Woohoo -- kiss that plasma screen good-bye! Up til now, you could only use a projector at night. Now you can have the big screen 24 hours a day.

Here's another trend in the direction of more and more compelling artificial experiences: high-definition video. "I have heard comments from people who say the images pop off the screen." Oh yes they do. I've seen "Step Into Liquid" in high-def (using Microsoft's Windows Media HD format). Trust me, it's quite eye-popping.

What high-definition will do to DVDs
First it was the humble home video, then it was the DVD, and now Hollywood is preparing for the next revolution in home entertainment - high-definition.

Of course, I can't talk about the future of entertainment without at least mentioning once the copy-protection conflict. Here's an artile about MythTV and the file sharing networks. Things like BitTorrent and MythTV are really just new twists on an old story. The war on copying will probably never end.

Steal This Show
And entrepreneurial souls are busily concocting even newer applications, including one that searches the Internet for illegal copies of any television shows you may desire and automatically downloads them to your computer. They're turning television - traditionally beamed into homes at the convenience of the broadcast and cable networks - into something more flexible, highly portable and commercial free.

Here's an article about future population projections:

World population 'to rise by 40%'
The world's population is expected to rise from the current 6.5 billion to 9.1 billion by 2050, the UN says.

The UN is failing to take into account that technological singularity -- the point at which cost-effective human-equivalent AI arrives -- will arrive around 2035 and after that the human population will decline rather than increase.

What does this have to do with entertainment? Because I think the decline will come in the form of low-fertility. Everyone will be off in their entertainment cocoons, and no one will be out there having babies -- except the muslims, I suppose. So to the muslims goes the future of the planet -- at least the human part.

So I started this whole thing with the subject of addiction. Basically, I'm asking the question, will humanity become addicted to ever-more compelling entertainment technology? Perhaps not everyone. Here's an article on brain research and addiction that suggests that addiction is not caused just by having a compelling pleasurable experience that you can make with a drug or some other way -- you also have to have "faulty brakes" in the brain to allow the addiction to take control. I'll let the article inself explain what this means:

Addicts have faulty brakes in brain
Scientists believe parts of the brain involved in slamming the brakes on potentially dangerous or inappropriate behaviours may be faulty in people with addictions. The theory challenges a long-held belief of an over-responsive reward system in the brain as the root cause of addictive behaviour.

So you see, it's not really about the pleasure centers in the brain. It's about the brakes.

THE Stem Cell Expert at the Future Salon

When I send out the first announcement regarding the Future Salon with Christopher Scott, Zack Lynch, whom long time regulars know from his excellent Future Salon presentation in August 2003. (Finish your book, we want to get an update :-) So Zack wrote me the next day: "Congrats.  Chris Scott is THE expert. I'll be there."

Can't say it better and you'll better be there too. Chis is not only THE expert, but I spend some time with him this week in Berkeley and he has a great dry sense of humor. I can't wait to hear the low down regarding Stem Cells science and politics. [more details]

Please RSVP right away so we can calculate food and drinks by sending an email to mona dot bhardwaj at sap dot com or to me.

As always free and open to the public. Spread the word.    

March 18th 6-7pm networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentations and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

Future Salon with Criminals in White Coats

Next Future Salon Friday March 18th I am very excited that stem cell expert, biologist, entrepreneur and author Christopher Scott will be talking about:

Criminals in White Coats
The future of human stem cell research

In a televised address on August 9, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that federal funding could be used only for embryonic stem cells isolated before his televised address at 9:00 p.m. Months later, the National Institutes of Health released a list of the ten worldwide organizations that were holding the 64 cell lines that met the president's criteria and, thus, were eligible for federal funding.

It is more than three years later.

What are the medical, ethical and economic consequences of America 's most controversial moral policy? When will we see the first cures from stem cell research? Will California 's new Institute for Regenerative Medicine reverse the effects of thirty years of Washington politics? What kind of life do we hold most precious? Should stem cell research proceed at any cost?

For the first time in a long while the Future Salon is back to the third Friday of the month: March 18th 6-7pm networking with light refreshments proudly sponsored by SAP. From 7-9+pm presentations and discussion. SAP Labs North America, Building D, Room Southern Cross, 3410 Hillview Avenue, Palo Alto, CA 94304 [map] Improve your commute by sharing it with a fellow Futurist. Check the Ride Board for opportunities.

Christopher Scott is a biologist, entrepreneur and author. His new book, The Stem Cell, (July, 2005) is on the science, morals and politics of human stem cells. Scott was the scientific founder of Acumen Sciences, a research and consulting company based in San Francisco. He was also a founding editor of the award-winning Acumen Journal of Sciences, a magazine focused on the business, economics and politics of life sciences.

Prior to Acumen, Scott was the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and for a decade was a senior administrator at Stanford University. With Nobel Laureate Paul Berg, he developed one of the nation’s first translational medicine programs. He is one of only a handful of executives awarded for his contributions to Stanford’s research enterprise. He has principal founding relationships with several Bay Area biotechnology start-ups. His undergraduate and postgraduate training is from Colorado University, and he is a graduate of Stanford’s Executive Management Program. He also has an MA from Stanford University with a focus on biomedical ethics.

Scott is a committee member for the International Society of Stem Cell Research and past member of the Stanford Program in Genomics, Ethics and Society, and the California Health Care Initiative. He is the author of many publications and lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, and Stanford University on ethics, science, and public policy.  He has recently been featured in national and local media coverage of these and other important issues, including NPR’s Talk of the Nation, KQED radio, UPI and Fox News.

Please RSVP right away so we can calculate food and drinks by sending an email to mona dot bhardwaj at sap dot com or to me.

As always the Future Salon is free and open to the public. Spread the word.