From the February 1932 issue of Survey Graphic:

Where do most of the unemployed live? If you go through the smaller communities of New York and Connecticut you will find no starvation, no evictions, few people who have not got an overcoat or a pair of shoes. And if you go into the farming areas you will not find people starving on the farms. On the contrary. There is suffering, there is deprivation; but in the smaller communities and on the farms, there is not the same kind of being up against it, of not knowing where you are going to sleep tonight or where you are going to get the next meal that you find in cities. I venture the assertion that at least three quarters, and probably more of the dependent unemployed throughout the United States today, are in the cities.

Are we not beginning now to visualize a different kind of city? Are we not beginning to envisage the possibility of a lower cost of living by having a greater percentage of our population living a little closer to the source of supply?…

We hope blindly that government in some miraculous way can prevent any future economic depression, that government or some great leader will discover a panacea for the ills that have been hitting the world ever since history has been recorded….

From the October 1932 issue of , Survey Graphic:

“Half of us live in or within twenty-five miles of ninety-five metropolitan cities. And we live badly. They are obsolete.”

I came across the above quotes as I was doing research on America’s historic homestead communities. During the darkest depths of the Great Depression, food was becoming scarce because of a drought, and because of the cost of transporting it to urban areas. As the economy heaved and then buckled under financial pressure, the Federal government decided people would be better off in intentional communities that they built themselves. One such community was the Tillery Resettlement Community, one of only 15 black New Deal Era homestead communities.  Here’s a quick introduction:

BOSTON, Mass. (June 20, 2010) – By emulating nature’s design principles, a team at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard Medical School and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute has created nanodevices made of DNA that self-assemble and can be programmed to move and change shape on demand. In contrast to existing nanotechnologies, these programmable nanodevices are highly suitable for medical applications because DNA is both biocompatible and biodegradable.

The work appears in the June 20 advance online Nature Nanotechnology.

Built at the scale of one billionth of a meter, each device is made of a circular, single-stranded DNA molecule that, once it has been mixed together with many short pieces of complementary DNA, self-assembles into a predetermined 3D structure. Double helices fold up into larger, rigid linear struts that connect by intervening single-stranded DNA. These single strands of DNA pull the struts up into a 3D form—much like tethers pull tent poles up to form a tent. The structure’s strength and stability result from the way it distributes and balances the counteracting forces of tension and compression.

This architectural principle—known as tensegrity—has been the focus of artists and architects for many years, but it also exists throughout nature. In the human body, for example, bones serve as compression struts, with muscles, tendons and ligaments acting as tension bearers that enable us to stand up against gravity. The same principle governs how cells control their shape at the microscale.

“This new self-assembly based nanofabrication technology could lead to nanoscale medical devices and drug delivery systems, such as virus mimics that introduce drugs directly into diseased cells,” said co-investigator and Wyss Institute director Don Ingber. A nanodevice that can spring open in response to a chemical or mechanical signal could ensure that drugs not only arrive at the intended target but are also released when and where desired.

Further, nanoscopic tensegrity devices could one day reprogram human stem cells to regenerate injured organs. Stem cells respond differently depending on the forces around them. For instance, a stiff extracellular matrix—the biological glue surrounding cells—fabricated to mimic the consistency of bone signals stem cells to become bone, while a soupy matrix closer to the consistency of brain tissue signals the growth of neurons. Tensegrity nanodevices “might help us to tune and change the stiffness of extracellular matrices in tissue engineering someday,” said first author Tim Liedl, who is now a professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

“These little Swiss Army knives can help us make all kinds of things that could be useful for advanced drug delivery and regenerative medicine,” said lead investigator William Shih, Wyss core faculty member and associate professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at HMS and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. “We also have a handy biological DNA Xerox machine that nature evolved for us,” making these devices easy to manufacture.

This new capability “is a welcome element in the structural DNA nanotechnology toolbox,” said Ned Seeman, professor of chemistry at New York University.

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This research was funded by the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, National Institutes of Health, Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst Fellowship, Swedish Science Council Fellowship and Claudia Adams Barr Program Investigator award.

Written by Elizabeth Dougherty

Citation:

Nature Nanotechnology, online publication, June 20, 2010
“Self-assembly of 3D prestressed tensegrity structures from DNA”
Tim Liedl, Bjorn Hogberg, Jessica Tytell, Donald E. Ingber, William M. Shih

The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (http://wyss.harvard.edu) uses nature’s design principles to create breakthrough technologies that will revolutionize medicine, industry and the environment. Working as an alliance among Harvard’s Medical School, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Faculty of Arts and Sciences, and in partnership with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School and Boston University, the Institute crosses disciplinary and institutional barriers to engage in high-risk, fundamental research that leads to transformative change. By applying biological principles, Wyss researchers are developing innovative new engineering solutions for healthcare, manufacturing, robotics, energy and sustainable architecture. These technologies are translated into commercial products and therapies through collaborations with clinical investigators, corporate alliances and new startups.

Harvard Medical School (http://hms.harvard.edu) has more than 7,500 full-time faculty working in 11 academic departments located at the School’s Boston campus or in one of 47 hospital-based clinical departments at 17 Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals and research institutes. Those affiliates include Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cambridge Health Alliance, Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Forsyth Institute, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Hebrew SeniorLife, Joslin Diabetes Center, Judge Baker Children’s Center, Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, Mount Auburn Hospital, Schepens Eye Research Institute, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital and VA Boston Healthcare System.

The Deepwater Horizon explosion, otherwise known as “the oil spill,” has won. We have surrendered unconditionally without a fight,  just like we always do when action would mean discomfort and disruption to our lifestyle. This is just a partial list of oil spills that the US has surrendered to in recent years:

• The 2010 Port Arthur Spill
• 2008 New Orleans Oil Spill
• The COSCO Busan Oil Spill of 2007
• The Citgo refiners spill of 2006
• The Prudhoe Bay Oil Spill of 2006

Some of us might remember, vaguely, hearing something about these and the many other environmental disasters caused by oil, but it happens so often that we forget about one as soon as the next one comes along. And since these sorts of human-assisted incidents worsen exponentially with frequency, no one is really surprised by what’s happening in the Gulf.

In fact, it’s happening just like it’s supposed to. BP is in full PR mode, spending $10,000 a day to make sure that if you google the term “oil spill” the first links you will see are theirs. The US government is also working the PR machine hard. And as superficial as this flurry of bureaucratic action is, it suffices for action. And while we are watching the scenario play-out, we are surrendering. It’s evident in the lexicon. We no longer search for information on the Deepwater Horizon explosion. We search simply for “oil spill.” As the language becomes generic, the response becomes lethargic, and we just give up and accept these sorts of catastrophes as an acceptable cost of doing business and living.

We still don’t know the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, and we probably never will.  Both the clean-up efforts and the investigation are being systematically stalled and stymied. Soon we won’t remember the pesky details of this oil spill. You can bet good money that there’s another one right behind it to take our attention off of this one.