Wins my nomination for headline of the year.

And there’s a lovely picture accompanying the article, of a snarling dog-zombie.

Sadly the article is more about suspended animation than reanimation, so my lofty goal of creating an undead army of brain-hungry chihuahuas is still somewhat elusive. Still, with a procedure relying on exsanguination (to arrest bodily decay—the blood gets replaced with salt water) and bolts of electricity (to get the heart going again—after they put the blood back), this does rate pretty high on the godless-meddling-with-nature-o-meter.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,15739502-13762,00.html

Interestingly, there have been a couple of stories recently about using high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide to induce hibernation in mice, so it seems that science is perhaps only a few years away from being able to do proper human hibernation, like in the movies.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4469793.stm

The hydrogen sulphide thing seems to be capitalising on some kind of, normally dormant, mammalian hibernation feature. The one with the saline solution and the dogs is apparently making use of a built-in mammalian deep-sea diving facility:

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=154084&cid=12925633

(Pass the lightning conductor, would you Igor?)

The last time scientists decided to build an artificial brain, of course, they ended up with big boxes with flashing lights, whirring reels of tape… and enough processing power to count up to about 7.

Not that I’m complaining of course. The ‘electronic brains’ of 1960s turned into the almost-useful computers of today. And how would I waste time at work without computers?

This time, however, the high-foreheaded boffins, in thick glasses and lab coats really, really mean it. Chaps at IBM are actually attempting to build a simulation of a human brain, from the molecular level up:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7470

They say that they will be able to feed it visual stimulus and observe its reaction… which sounds a little callous when one is talking about a simulated human.

I mean, basically they’re talking about creating a live brain in a virtual jar. It’s very cool, but kinda creepy.

Estimated time to project completion: 10 years. Given that the next version of the Sony playstation already has a dedicated ‘volleyball’ processor to simulate the dynamics of women’s breasts, I figure that the video game industry is already working on simulated people, albeit from another direction, and as they’re better funded than IBM; they stand a good chance of beating them to the punch.

Now where did I put the lightning conductor and amniotic fluid?