Another article from E4 : Engineering caught my eye, this one about new techniques for fast freezing food. It reminded me of an article I read the other day in the waiting room of my doctor's office. The magazine was from the AARP (retired folks) and discussed some of the cyrogenic people freezers out there. I didn't realize this was still being actively done and found some more details off it in this The Brain in a Jar Company article.
In the magazine one of the detractors points out that we aren't even able to successfully freeze and thaw out an orange without irreparable damage. The act of freezing tends to explode cells, which results in a gooey mess upon thaw out. I can attest to this after seeing what happened to the frogs which "wintered" in my small pond this year. Oddly enough two red spotted newts seemed to have survived the event; either they stepped out to winter elsewhere and returned in early spring or somehow found a way to live through the solid freeze. They are a shy pair, I found them under a rock in the pond and hadn't seen them since the summer before. The frogs were all volunteers, btw, some kind of phsycic frog network drew them to the little (4x5x2 foot) pond in the middle of our yard and at least an eighth of a mile from the nearest body of water. Well, back to the cyrogenic freezing story, it turns out that most of their clients are techies who tend to think of the body as a badly designed machine anyways and figure their brain can be moved into a more suitable and durable device at some point in the future.
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