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Note: There are many videos, podcasts and lectures relating to numerous topics residing on the internet these days; but I have selected below only those that I consider to be the best and the most interesting. And many of them are truly mind-blowing.

Forthcoming Virus Pandemics Laurie Garrett, author of "The Coming Plague," gave this powerful talk to a small TED University audience. Her insights from past pandemics are suddenly more relevant than ever. 22 min

Talking Bacteria Bonnie Bassler discovered that bacteria "talk" to each other, using a chemical language that lets them coordinate defense and mount attacks. The find has stunning implications for medicine, industry -- and our understanding of ourselves. 19 min

The Power Of Wisdom Barry Schwartz makes a passionate call for “practical wisdom” as an antidote to a society gone mad with bureaucracy. 20 min

"The Nature of Consciousness" - by philosopher Alan Watts - 1 hour - perhaps better entitled, "How we are all part of one wholeness and closely interconnected in some way." (This YouTube (audio) presentation is in 6 short parts.)

The Primacy Of Consciousness - a slightly mystical point of view - Peter Russell - 60 min

Regenerative Medicine Alan Russell studies regenerative medicine -- a breakthrough way of thinking about disease and injury by helping the body to rebuild itself. He shows how engineered tissue that "speaks the body's language" has helped a man regrow his lost fingertip, how stem cells can rebuild damaged heart muscle, and how cell therapy can regenerate the skin of burned soldiers. Alan Russell - 20 min

All About Depression - from the Times Newspaper

Synthetic Happiness Psychologist Dan Gilbert challenges the idea that we'll be miserable if we don't get what we want. Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel real, enduring happiness, he says, even when things don’t go as planned. He calls this kind of happiness "synthetic happiness," Dan Gilbert - 22 min

Slowing The Ageing Process - Video Lecture By Aubrey de Grey Aubrey de Grey believes aging and death are solvable problems, and we can live for centuries, if we approach the aging process as "an engineering problem." (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 23:31)

Myths About Obesity The obesity epidemic is a myth manufactured by public health officials in concert with assorted academics and special-interest lobbyists. 

Life Extension Kurzweil and Grossman’s approach to health and longevity combines the most current and practical medical knowledge with a soundly-based, yet awe-inspiring visionary perspective of what’s to come. Ray Kurzweil and David Jay Brown - 12 min

Can You Catch Cancer? Doctors now believe that other infections, even simple coughs and colds, can trigger everything from childhood leukaemia to cervical cancer. Should we be worried? Sarah Boseley

Controlling Cancer Cancer could be transformed within 20 years from a fatal disease to a manageable condition like diabetes, experts will announce this week.

Statins There is no longer any question of hanging around waiting for a suitable lightning strike, or even a surgery appointment, for now the life-preserving statin doesn’t even have to be prescribed by a doctor but can be obtained over the counter at the chemist.

Boosting Your Brain It doesn't matter how brainy you are or how much education you've had - you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn't have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them. 20 min

Fountain Of Youth The experiment proved that sugar switches on a genetic sequence that increases the amount of insulin produced by an organism, which in turn causes the body to demand more sugar. This not only adds flab to the waistline but also increases damage to cells in the body, speeding up the slow degradation of cells that contributes to aging. "It was a revelation," Kenyon says. She also drinks red wine and green tea, which her lab and others have shown help repair cells and contribute to an increased life span. David Ewing Duncan - 7 min

Farming Stem Cells From Embryos That Have Been Dehumanised Hurlbut advocates genetically altering cloned embryos so they wouldn't have the DNA necessary to become viable humans. For the first few days of existence, they would grow normally and produce stem cells, but then die when a critical embryonic component - say, a placenta - failed to emerge. "They would have no coherent drive in the direction of mature human form," Hurlbut tells the crowd.. Clive Thompson - 7 min

The Future Political Battles Over Life Enhancement Politics in the 21st century will cut across the traditional political left/right rift of the last two centuries. Instead, the chief ideological divide will be between transhumanists and bioconservatives/bioluddites. Ronald Bailey - 4 min

Do Genes Really Exist? What is a gene? Scientists eager to uncover genes for heart disease, autism, schizophrenia, homosexuality, criminality or even genius are finding that their quarry is far more nebulous than they imagined. Johnjoe McFadden 

Transhumanism Transhuman, short for transitional human, refers to the day when our species will be a blend of biology and machine. It's a step, some say, toward a "posthuman" era when we could become a different creature altogether. Since it emerged from the fringes of cyberculture in the late 1980s, the transhumanist movement has been known as much for its libertarian leanings as for its belief in the plugged-in, "four-arm" human of tomorrow. While today all the self-proclaimed liberal transhumanists could probably fit in the holodeck of the starship Enterprise, they count a number of influential scientists, bioethicists, and philosophers in their small but growing ranks. Alyssa Ford - 10 min

Zinc Finger Proteins Push to the back of your mind all the recent research identifying genes associated with disease. This landmark research is about actually re-writing genes. It opens up the prospect of making permanent repairs to any gene that is causing a disease or disability. Vivienne Parry

Happy People Are Healthier Whatever brings you happiness, it's hardly controversial to say that happy people are generally healthier than unhappy ones. That conclusion might be intuitively obvious, but just why are happy people healthier? Rowan Hooper

Interview With Aubrey de Grey People will have the option of looking and feeling the way they did at 20 for the rest of their lives, or opt for an older look if they get bored. Of course, everyone will be required to go in for age rejuvenation therapy once every decade or so, but that will be a small price to pay for near-immortality. Ker Than - 7 min

Faulty Sleep Rhythms Middlebrook suffers from what is known as familial advanced sleep phase syndrome, or FASPS. Her body's clock is out of sync with the sleep-wake rhythm most of the world lives by. John Roach

Lack Of Research On Passing Away How can it be that there is so little research about the end of life? June Lunney and Joanne Lynn - 4 min

Cryonics - Why Not? The longest period between storage and revival of human embryos took place after 21 years of cryopreservation resulting in the birth of a healthy boy. ... if you believe that a human embryo is a human being, then cryonics has already succeeded. ... Rather than accepting the failure to save a life and allow decay to take place, doctors could immediately begin cryonic procedures to secure as much of the person's structure as possible. 10 min

On Aubrey De Grey Were we to cure every disease that afflicts older people, human beings would still drop dead after 120 years or so. Paul Boutin - 4 min 

Strange Nanobacteria Olavi Kajander didn't mean to discover the mysterious particles that have been called the most primitive organisms on Earth and that could be responsible for a series of painful and sometimes fatal illnesses. Amit Asaravala - 4 min

Die in Britain, Survive In The US Which is better — American or British medical care? James Bartholomew - 7 min 

Living Forever Kurzweil writes of millions of blood cell-sized robots, which he calls "nanobots," that will keep us forever young by swarming through the body, repairing bones, muscles, arteries and brain cells. Improvements to our genetic coding will be downloaded from the Internet. We won't even need a heart. The claims are fantastic, but Kurzweil is no crank. 

Stem Cells For Spinal Cord Injuries Several scientists have used embryonic or fetal stem cells to help rodents with spinal cord injuries walk again. ... The question now is: When will the research transfer into helping humans? Kristen Philipkoski - 5 min

Transhumanists Transhumanists are far more complex and organized than one might imagine. Alyssa Ford 

Genetic Damage Through Inbreeding Analysis of the human and chimpanzee genomes by British scientists has revealed that damaging genetic defects accumulated in both species because both are descended from a common ancestor that existed in very small numbers. 

War Against Dietary Supplements At a time when the Food and Drug Administration is under criticism for approving unsafe drugs, and when pharmaceutical companies are being called to task for not disclosing negative studies of their products, a concerted effort is being launched against dietary supplements. Bill Sardi 

Heart Pill Scientists are developing a pill to stop people suffering heart attacks and strokes. The drug would be taken regularly by middle-aged men and women to prevent their arteries clogging up or developing fatal blockages in later life.

The Health Benefits Of Laziness Everybody has a limited amount of "life energy" and that the speed with which it is consumed determines their life span. 

Just One Gene Change To Cure AIDS? Scientists say they have uncovered an important clue to understanding the origins of the Aids epidemic. 

Dietary Supplements We spend millions each year on food supplements. These are not scientifically regulated and some, far from helping us, may even endanger health. Suzi Godson 

AIDS Hype? There is no convincing evidence that millions of Africans are infected with HIV, the putative cause of AIDS, or that African AIDS is heterosexually spread. Vin Suprynowicz 

Women's Hearts Keep Pumping Women's hearts age differently to those of men and do not lose their pumping power as they get older. 

Couch Potato Pill An “exercise pill” that could allow couch potatoes to build muscle and burn fat without getting up from the sofa is being tested on patients. 

Poly Meals Cut Heart Disease Heart disease could be cut by 76% and men could expect to live more than six years longer if they simply ate the right meal once a day. 

Vitamin C Supplements Are Very Valuable If every physician in the country prescribed a 1000-milligram vitamin C pill to their patients regardless of their state of health, mortality rates would tumble. Bill Sardi

Live To Be 1000 Life expectancy is increasing in the developed world. But Cambridge University geneticist Aubrey de Grey believes it will soon extend dramatically to 1,000.

Foetal Cell Cures? "Huang isn't a charlatan," says Cooper who runs the spinal neurosurgery programme at New York University medical centre. "What he is doing is very impressive. I don't understand it, but I've seen the results. He's not raising people from the dead, but people who have had no movement in legs could move them, people who couldn't sit up sat up, people who couldn't hold a cup held a cup." Jonathan Watts - 6 min

On the other hand, ...

+ The Shohams' joy was short-lived. "After just three months," said Mrs Shoham, "the slurred speech and paralysis returned, and very quickly he was back to where he started." - 4 min

Cure For Wrinkles? Two doctors believe they have the cure for wrinkles - infra-red light therapy.

Seasonal Affective Disorder Dark days mess with the balance of chemicals that affect a person's moods.

Stem Cells “This is a world first. The production of billions of (stem) cells that are stable and fully functional has never been achieved before.”

+ Only two of the 10 or so embryos created in a Petri dish during each episode of in vitro fertilisation will be implanted back in the woman who hopes to become a mother. The remaining eight are then frequently just thrown away. One alternative to discarding them is to use them to create stem cells. Alasdair Palmer

Political Hype And Medical Research Political hype matters when it comes to government funding of science. William Anderson 

Is Approaching Immortality Immoral? Doubling healthy human life expectancy would create some novel social problems, to be sure, but would they really be so hard to deal with? Ronald Bailey

Addiction More people quit addictions than maintain them, and they do so on their own. Stanton Peele - 3 min

Brain Gain In 100 years we'll have currently unimaginable cognitive abilities on tap through technology. Gregory Lamb

The Black Death For years the Black Death in all its gory horror has been blamed on one animal - the rat. But a new analysis of more than 100 plague epidemics which swept Europe for hundreds of years concludes that it was not spread by rodents running between villages and towns but by man himself, usually travellers unaware of their infection who moved between communities in search of work. Jo Revill

The Secrets Of Sleep  The need for sleep is so strong that without enough of it "people can't even muster enough willpower to stay awake to save their lives. Nell Boyce and Susan Brink - 16 min

Cancer Cure In 5 Years? Scientists in Manchester say a cure for all types of cancer could be available on the NHS within five years.

Indefinite Lifespans With regard to an infinite lifespan, the approach that I think most likely to appear is "slow teleportation."  Aubrey de Grey - 12 min

Failing War Against Bacteria And Viruses? We are, to put it bluntly, locked in permanent evolutionary war with the earth's bacteria and viruses. Robin McKie - 7 min