Nanoscale magnetic discs actually physically wreck cancer cells. Nanotech is offering a lot of medical treatments, particularly in cancer research.

From the link:

Laboratory tests found the so-called “nanodiscs”, around 60 billionths of a metre thick, could be used to disrupt the membranes of cancer cells, causing them to self-destruct.

The discs are made from an iron-nickel alloy, which move when subjected to a magnetic field, damaging the cancer cells, the report published in Nature Materials said.

One of the study’s authors, Elena Rozhlova of Argonne National Laboratory in the United States, said subjecting the discs to a low magnetic field for around ten minutes was enough to destroy 90 percent of cancer cells in tests.

Nanotechnology is the technology of building structures from atoms, molecules or molecular clusters to make materials and devices that have new properties. It is a new field in agriculture and food production, but it offers a wide variety of applications that can help overcome a number of problems we are facing today. They can help improve food safety, traceability, reduce the use of chemicals and reduce waste.

Thanks to nanotechnology, agriculture and food production will be able to use very efficient devices and sensors that can help make better and faster decisions.

For instance, in “Controlled Environment Agriculture”, which is an intensive hydroponics greenhouse system used in the USA, in the European Union and in Japan, nanotechnology is a great fit for the already sophisticated computerized management that optimizes growing conditions.

There is also a lot of potential for precision farming, in which nanoparticles can be used to store and release pesticides and herbicides in a targeted and controlled manner. Nano-clay capsules can store fertilizers and release them slowly, allowing only one application during the cycle of the crop, thus saving time and fuel to the farmer. This helps reducing the use of chemicals, too. Further, nanosensors can be used to measure crop growth, help diagnose diseases even before the farmer can visually notice them, or help him carry out microbiological tests and get results within an hour. The use of nanosensors also helps the farmer make better decisions and act effectively faster than today, as they can help him monitor soil moisture, temperature, pH, nitrogen availability, and in the future could open the path toward a remote farm surveillance system.

In the area of pest control, using nanocapsules is useful in the system called “Integrated Pest Management”. Not only, the problems can be identified earlier, but also plants can be treated much more effectively. Giving treatment to farm animals also can benefit from this technology, which is already used in human medicine.

Nanotechnology is already used for water treatment, and there seem to be many possibilities in that particular field to help solve existing environmental problems. For instance, the American firm Altairnano from Reno, NV produces lanthanum nanoparticles that have the ability to absorb phosphates in water, which offers interesting possibilities to reduce algae growth in ponds and rivers.

Similar applications of nanotechnology can be used to decontaminate soils and groundwater by using iron particles that help break down dioxins and PCBs into less toxic carbon compounds. They also can help remove arsenic from drinking water, a problem that occurs in many regions.

Agriculture is not the only field where this technology can bring benefits, but the food production industry is very interested by the possibilities, too. Some nanodevices can be used to tags food items. This can be of great use to ensure traceability and to help optimize the supply chain. Large retailers like Wal-Mart and Tesco are investigating such devices made out of silicon, but it appears to be too costly at this early stage. We can be sure that this will change in the future.

Food packaging is an area with interesting potential, and there are new packaging materials in development. The nanotechnology helps reducing the risks of food contamination. Some systems reduce the ability for oxygen and gases to travel through the plastic wrap, which extends the shelf life of the product. Other food packaging systems are aimed at controlling the level of humidity, of oxygen, as well as reduce bacteria counts and eliminate any problems of odor and flavor. Antibacterial packaging using nanosilver particles is in development and the applications range from plastic cling wrap to plastic bags, containers, even teapots and kitchenware. Packaging containing nanosensors are made of carbon nanotubes or of titanium dioxide that can be activated by UV help detect microorganisms, toxic protein or food spoilage. The firm AgroMicron, from Hong Kong, has developed a spray which contains a luminescent protein that has been engineered to bind to the surface of microbes such as Salmonella and E. coli. When it is bound, it emits a visible glow, which allows the detection of contaminated food or beverages much more easily.

Developing “molecular food manufacturing” which consists of building food from component atoms and molecules is already a possibility that some are considering. Although such a development is far into the future, such a technology could allow a more efficient and sustainable food production in which less raw materials are consumed, and food that would be obtained would have a higher nutritional quality.

Nanotechnology obviously offers interesting possibilities for food production. Yet, some people express a number of concerns. This is what can bring the next controversy in the food business.

The problem is that nanotechnology in food is relatively new, and we know very little about the long-term effects of using these components. Moreover, because it is so young, food safety regulations are not properly written to deal with this, and the status of the nanoproducts is unclear. One of the concerns is that such particles are very active and very reactive because of their size; and by the nature of the chemicals that they are made of; they could bring health risks as well.

There are new very promising possibilities, but we must be vigilant and address the risks as well, and true progress is about to use this new technology, for our benefit.

Copyright 2009 The Happy Future Consulting Group Ltd.

Wrinkles are bad, right? A sign of advancing age, a devil to try and get out of that smart shirt you need for your big important meeting, generally unsightly and always unwelcome…  Not according to Michelle Khine and her co-workers at the University of California, who have been hard at work giving wrinkles a bit of a facelift.  Sadly, this isn’t a cure for ageing, so Advanced Materials can’t claim to hold the secret of eternal youth just yet.  However, I can at least indulge my inner child by enjoying the idea of creating nanostructures using children’s toys called Shrinky-Dinks as a substrate  (and yes, I’m grinning from ear to ear as I type…).

As a structural entity, wrinkles are potentially useful in a wide variety of applications such as flexible electronics, biological assays, sensor, optical devices, and actuators.  For most of these applications, metal wrinkles are desirable, but previous processes for their manufacture have been painstaking and time-consuming, involving careful preparation and sometimes the use of expensive microfabricated molds or equipment (ion or electron beams).  Using Shrinky-Dinks, which are essentially sheets of shape-memory polymer (pre-stressed polystyrene), Michelle and her team have come up with a quick, cheap and easy method of manufacturing nanoscale metal wrinkles.  Even better, they can tune the wavelength and direction of the structures as desired.  The process is simple: deposit a sheet of metal onto the polymer, and heat it at 160°C in the oven.  The polymer sheet will shrink to about half its original size under these conditions, and because the metal is nonshrinkable, it buckles to cope with the strain, forming wrinkles.  The wavelength of the wrinkles can be adjusted by varying the thickness of the metal layer, and specific directionality can be conferred or constrained by clamping the sheets along specific edges.  Using gold as the metal layer produces structures that can be used for surface plasmon resonance and metal-enhanced fluorescence studies, which can be used in biomedical diagnostic devices, and combining the wrinkled structures with microfluidic systems inscribed into the polymer is a neat, quick way of producing lab-on-a-chip devices.

This is a great paper, harking back to my love of simple, elegant solutions. And while in this instance I can’t take any particular credit for the cover design, the cover image was so stunningly eye-catching that I think ‘glee’ probably best sums up my initial reaction to it.  The lower part of the image depicts some uniaxial gold nanowrinkles, and rolling down the axis are a series of cleverly designed insets showing different patterns that the technique has been used to create.  The 3D rendering and lighting effect on the insets gives a dynamism to the whole image, and the colors are screaming for your attention. There’s a faint biaxial patterning in the background, just before it fades out to black, giving a bit of depth. Choosing the color match for the title was all I had to do here, and I opted to keep it simple – there’s enough going on in the main image to get you hooked – it doesn’t need any help from me.

DOI: 10.1002/adma.200902294 

With all the news about nanotechnology and wiring that’s been coming out over the last year or so, this release is no surprise.

The release:

November 26, 2009

Nanowires key to future transistors, electronics

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -

Nanowire formation
Download photo
caption below

A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California at Los Angeles.The researchers have learned how to create nanowires with layers of different materials that are sharply defined at the atomic level, which is a critical requirement for making efficient transistors out of the structures.

 

“Having sharply defined layers of materials enables you to improve and control the flow of electrons and to switch this flow on and off,” said Eric Stach, an associate professor of materials engineering at Purdue.

Electronic devices are often made of “heterostructures,” meaning they contain sharply defined layers of different semiconducting materials, such as silicon and germanium. Until now, however, researchers have been unable to produce nanowires with sharply defined silicon and germanium layers. Instead, this transition from one layer to the next has been too gradual for the devices to perform optimally as transistors.

The new findings point to a method for creating nanowire transistors.

The findings are detailed in a research paper appearing Friday (Nov. 27) in the journal Science. The paper was written by Purdue postdoctoral researcher Cheng-Yen Wen, Stach, IBM materials scientists Frances Ross, Jerry Tersoff and Mark Reuter at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y, and Suneel Kodambaka, an assistant professor at UCLA’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

Whereas conventional transistors are made on flat, horizontal pieces of silicon, the silicon nanowires are “grown” vertically. Because of this vertical structure, they have a smaller footprint, which could make it possible to fit more transistors on an integrated circuit, or chip, Stach said.

“But first we need to learn how to manufacture nanowires to exacting standards before industry can start using them to produce transistors,” he said.

Nanowires might enable engineers to solve a problem threatening to derail the electronics industry. New technologies will be needed for industry to maintain Moore’s law, an unofficial rule stating that the number of transistors on a computer chip doubles about every 18 months, resulting in rapid progress in computers and telecommunications. Doubling the number of devices that can fit on a computer chip translates into a similar increase in performance. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to continue shrinking electronic devices made of conventional silicon-based semiconductors.

“In something like five to, at most, 10 years, silicon transistor dimensions will have been scaled to their limit,” Stach said.

Transistors made of nanowires represent one potential way to continue the tradition of Moore’s law.

The researchers used an instrument called a transmission electron microscope to observe the nanowire formation. Tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were first heated and melted inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon gas was introduced into the chamber. As the melted gold-aluminum bead absorbed the silicon, it became “supersaturated” with silicon, causing the silicon to precipitate and form wires. Each growing wire was topped with a liquid bead of gold-aluminum so that the structure resembled a mushroom.

Then, the researchers reduced the temperature inside the chamber enough to cause the gold-aluminum cap to solidify, allowing germanium to be deposited onto the silicon precisely and making it possible to create a heterostructure of silicon and germanium.

The cycle could be repeated, switching the gases from germanium to silicon as desired to make specific types of heterostructures, Stach said.

Having a heterostructure makes it possible to create a germanium “gate” in each transistor, which enables devices to switch on and off.

The work is based at IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center and Purdue’s Birck Nanotechnology Center in the university’s Discovery Park and is funded by the National Science Foundation through the NSF’s Electronic and Photonic Materials Program in the Division of Materials Research.

PHOTO CAPTION:
Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became “supersaturated” with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires. (Purdue University, Birck Nanotechnology Center/Seyet LLC)

“One of my favorite things to do is to take a set of facts and use them to imagine how the world might work. In writing about some of these ideas, my aim is not to be correct — how can I be, when the answer isn’t known? — but to be thought-provoking, to ask questions, to make people wonder. ” Olivia Judson on the influence of science and biology on modern life – NY Time online opinions

…Among the most famous stories – of not wondering – is  that of Rosalind Franklin and her non-discovery of the structure of DNA.

What part does wondering take in your life?

Frank van der Most, reseacher at CIRCLE, defended his doctoral thesis on November 13th at the University of Twente, The Netherlands.

Title of the thesis is ‘Research councils facing new science and technology – The case of nanotechnology in Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland’

Frank currently holds a post-doc position at CIRCLE where he works on a project on research policy with a special focus on evaluation of research and innovation policy.

Download the full thesis here!

The picture shows Frank’s supervisor, Arie Rip, handing over the diplom. (Photograph courtesy of Mirjam van der Most)

This research from the Georgia Institute of Technology changes things:

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created the world’s first 3-D photovoltaic solar system that actually works underground.

Using optical fibers common to the telecommunications industry, researchers seeded them with zinc oxide nanostructures–much like the white stuff found on a lifeguard nose. Those nanostructures were then coated with a dye-sensitized material that converts light into electricity. The electricity is then captured using a liquid electrolyte surrounding the nanostructures.

So only the very tip of the cable needs to be exposed to actual sunlight.

This technology could really displace many panel-based solar systems and is a formidable accomplishment for the southeastern engineering school, away from nanotechnology and sustainability academic enclaves like MIT or the west coast:

This 3-D system can be easily concealed, leaving rooftops panel-free. It gives architects and designers new options for incorporating PVs into buildings. For each cable is only 3-times the width of a human hair.

“This will really provide some new options for photovoltaic systems,” Dr Zhong Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology said. “We could eliminate the aesthetic issues of PV arrays on building.”

Did you know McDonalds was going to become, or Microsoft was going to become, or QVC was going to become the household names they did?  How could you have known they were destined to be staples of the American economy? Everyone has hind sight but few have foresight. If only I had a way or someone to direct me on how to identify a unique growth business poised to dominate a mass market. I don’t have a crystal ball but I can tell you to read and you may start to get the picture of the future.

Steve Squires is HGUE/Solterra Renewable Technologies, Inc.’s CEO. This is his take on the future of Quantum Dots & Solar power from Quantum Dots, look at the Oct. issue, pages 56, 57 & 58   http://www.interpv.net/ebook/ebook_03.asp

What he doesn’t tell you is there is a lot more potential from Medical http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43821676, Waste Heat Recovery (Could be as big as solar) http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=43767056, Biotechnology, Semiconductor http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090401102946.htm, Optoelectronics, Military and Aerospace research fields and finally, OLED/LED’s http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayRe…5066582&EDATE= . What was that about identifying a unique growth business poised to dominate a mass market?

This was my take months ago  and still is,  HGUE is to be a global play that will pay: 

http://solterra1.wordpress.com/2009/06/15/hgue-re-inventing-solar-with-solterra-renewable-technologies/

Helping the environment stay green and clean for our children through innovative science!

After six months of nearly round-the-clock work by consultants and campus planners, Nebraska Innovation Campus’s final business development strategy and campus master plans were presented and approved today by the University of Nebraska Board of Regents.

Lincoln, Neb., November 20th, 2009 —

(read more UNL News Release)

For more information about Nebraska Innovation Campus and to view the most up-to-date versions of the plans, go to http://innovate.unl.edu.

In the coming decades, a radical upgrading of our body’s physical and mental systems, already underway, will use nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs. We already know how to prevent most degenerative disease through nutrition and supplementation; this will be a bridge to the emerging biotechnology revolution, which in turn will be a bridge to the nanotechnology revolution. By 2030, reverse-engineering of the human brain will have been completed and nonbiological intelligence will merge with our biological brains.

The paragraph above is the abstract for the chapter by Ray Kurzweil in the book “The Scientific Conquest of Death“.  In that chapter, Ray sets out a vision for a route to indefinite human lifespans.

Here are a few highlights from the essay:

It’s All About Nanobots

In a famous scene from the movie, The Graduate, Benjamin’s mentor gives him career advice in a single word: “plastics.”  Today, that word might be “software,” or “biotechnology,” but in another couple of decades, the word is likely to be “nanobots.”  Nanobots—blood-cell-sized robots—will provide the means to radically redesign our digestive systems, and, incidentally, just about everything else.

In an intermediate phase, nanobots in the digestive tract and bloodstream will intelligently extract the precise nutrients we need, call for needed additional nutrients and supplements through our personal wireless local area network, and send the rest of the food we eat on its way to be passed through for elimination.

If this seems futuristic, keep in mind that intelligent machines are already making their way into our blood stream.  There are dozens of projects underway to create blood-stream-based “biological microelectromechanical systems” (bioMEMS) with a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications.  BioMEMS devices are being designed to intelligently scout out pathogens and deliver medications in very precise ways…

A key question in designing this technology will be the means by which these nanobots make their way in and out of the body.  As I mentioned above, the technologies we have today, such as intravenous catheters, leave much to be desired.  A significant benefit of nanobot technology is that unlike mere drugs and nutritional supplements, nanobots have a measure of intelligence.  They can keep track of their own inventories, and intelligently slip in and out of our bodies in clever ways.  One scenario is that we would wear a special “nutrient garment” such as a belt or undershirt.  This garment would be loaded with nutrient bearing nanobots, which would make their way in and out of our bodies through the skin or other body cavities.

At this stage of technological development, we will be able to eat whatever we want, whatever gives us pleasure and gastronomic fulfillment, and thereby unreservedly explore the culinary arts for their tastes, textures, and aromas.  At the same time, we will provide an optimal flow of nutrients to our bloodstream, using a completely separate process.  One possibility would be that all the food we eat would pass through a digestive tract that is now disconnected from any possible absorption into the bloodstream.

Elimination

This would place a burden on our colon and bowel functions, so a more refined approach will dispense with the function of elimination.  We will be able to accomplish this using special elimination nanobots that act like tiny garbage compactors.  As the nutrient nanobots make their way from the nutrient garment into our bodies, the elimination nanobots will go the other way.  Periodically, we would replace the nutrition garment for a fresh one.  One might comment that we do obtain some pleasure from the elimination function, but I suspect that most people would be happy to do without it.

Ultimately we won’t need to bother with special garments or explicit nutritional resources.  Just as computation will eventually be ubiquitous and available everywhere, so too will basic metabolic nanobot resources be embedded everywhere in our environment.  In addition, an important aspect of this system will be maintaining ample reserves of all needed resources inside the body.  Our version 1.0 bodies do this to only a very limited extent, for example, storing a few minutes of oxygen in our blood, and a few days of caloric energy in glycogen and other reserves.  Version 2.0 will provide substantially greater reserves, enabling us to be separated from metabolic resources for greatly extended periods of time.

Once perfected, we will no longer need version 1.0 of our digestive system at all.  I pointed out above that our adoption of these technologies will be cautious and incremental, so we will not dispense with the old-fashioned digestive process when these technologies are first introduced.  Most of us will wait for digestive system version 2.1 or even 2.2 before being willing to do dispense with version 1.0.  After all, people didn’t throw away their typewriters when the first generation of word processors was introduced.  People held onto their vinyl record collections for many years after CDs came out (I still have mine).  People are still holding onto their film cameras, although the tide is rapidly turning in favor of digital cameras.

However, these new technologies do ultimately dominate, and few people today still own a typewriter.  The same phenomenon will happen with our reengineered bodies.  Once we’ve worked out the inevitable complications that will arise with a radically reengineered gastrointestinal system, we will begin to rely on it more and more.

Programmable Blood

As we reverse-engineer (learn the principles of operation of) our various bodily systems, we will be in a position to engineer new systems that provide dramatic improvements.  One pervasive system that has already been the subject of a comprehensive conceptual redesign is our blood…

I’ve personally watched (through a microscope) my own white blood cells surround and devour a pathogen, and I was struck with the remarkable sluggishness of this natural process.  Although replacing our blood with billions of nanorobotic devices will require a lengthy process of development, refinement, and regulatory approval, we already have the conceptual knowledge to engineer substantial improvements over the remarkable but very inefficient methods used in our biological bodies…

Have a Heart, or Not

The next organ on my hit list is the heart.  It’s a remarkable machine, but it has a number of severe problems.  It is subject to a myriad of failure modes, and represents a fundamental weakness in our potential longevity.  The heart usually breaks down long before the rest of the body, and often very prematurely.

Although artificial hearts are beginning to work, a more effective approach will be to get rid of the heart altogether.  Designs include nanorobotic blood cell replacements that provide their own mobility.  If the blood system moves with its own movement, the engineering issues of the extreme pressures required for centralized pumping can be eliminated.  As we perfect the means of transferring nanobots to and from the blood supply, we can also continuously replace the nanobots comprising our blood supply…

So What’s Left?

Let’s consider where we are.  We’ve eliminated the heart, lungs, red and white blood cells, platelets, pancreas, thyroid and all the hormone-producing organs, kidneys, bladder, liver, lower esophagus, stomach, small intestines, large intestines, and bowel.  What we have left at this point is the skeleton, skin, sex organs, mouth and upper esophagus, and brain…

Redesigning the Human Brain

The process of reverse engineering and redesign will also encompass the most important system in our bodies: the brain.  The brain is at least as complex as all the other organs put together, with approximately half of our genetic code devoted to its design.  It is a misconception to regard the brain as a single organ.  It is actually an intricate collection of information-processing organs, interconnected in an elaborate hierarchy, as is the accident of our evolutionary history.

The process of understanding the principles of operation of the human brain is already well under way.  The underlying technologies of brain scanning and neuron modeling are scaling up exponentially, as is our overall knowledge of human brain function.  We already have detailed mathematical models of a couple dozen of the several hundred regions that comprise the human brain.

The age of neural implants is also well under way.  We have brain implants based on “neuromorphic” modeling (i.e., reverse-engineering of the human brain and nervous system) for a rapidly growing list of brain regions.  A friend of mine who became deaf while an adult can now engage in telephone conversations again because of his cochlear implant, a device that interfaces directly with the auditory nervous system.  He plans to replace it with a new model with a thousand levels of frequency discrimination, which will enable him to hear music once again.  He laments that he has had the same melodies playing in his head for the past 15 years and is looking forward to hearing some new tunes.  A future generation of cochlear implants now on the drawing board will provide levels of frequency discrimination that go significantly beyond that of “normal” hearing…

And the essay continues.  It’s well worth reading in its entirety.  A short websearch finds a slightly longer version of the same essay online, on Kurzweil’s own website, along with a conceptual illustration by media artist and philosopher Natasha Vita-More:

Evaluating the vision: the questions

Three main questions arise in response to this vision of “Human Body Version 2.0″:

1. Is the vision technologically feasible?
2. Is the vision morally attractive?
3. Within what timescales might the vision become feasible?

Progress: encouraging, but not rocket-paced

A recent article in the New Scientist, Medibots: The world’s smallest surgeons, takes up the theme of nanobots with medical usage, and reports on some specific progress:

It was the 1970s that saw the arrival of minimally invasive surgery – or keyhole surgery as it is also known. Instead of cutting open the body with large incisions, surgical tools are inserted through holes as small as 1 centimetre in diameter and controlled with external handles. Operations from stomach bypass to gall bladder removal are now done this way, reducing blood loss, pain and recovery time.

Combining keyhole surgery with the da Vinci system means the surgeon no longer handles the instruments directly, but via a computer console. This allows greater precision, as large hand gestures can be scaled down to small instrument movements, and any hand tremor is eliminated…

There are several ways that such robotic surgery may be further enhanced. Various articulated, snake-like tools are being developed to access hard-to-reach areas. One such device, the “i-Snake”, is controlled by a vision-tracking device worn over the surgeon’s eyes…

With further advances in miniaturisation, the opportunities grow for getting medical devices inside the body in novel ways. One miniature device that is already tried and tested is a camera in a capsule small enough to be swallowed…

The 20-millimetre-long HeartLander has front and rear foot-pads with suckers on the bottom, which allow it to inch along like a caterpillar. The surgeon watches the device with X-ray video or a magnetic tracker and controls it with a joystick. Alternatively, the device can navigate its own path to a spot chosen by the surgeon…

While the robot could in theory be used in other parts of the body, in its current incarnation it has to be introduced through a keyhole incision thanks to its size and because it trails wires to the external control box. Not so for smaller robots under wireless control.

One such device in development is 5 millimetres long and just 1 millimetre in diameter, with 16 vibrating legs. Early versions of the “ViRob” had on-board power, but the developers decided that made it too bulky. Now it is powered externally, by a nearby electromagnet whose field fluctuates about 100 times a second, causing the legs to flick back and forth. The legs on the left and right sides respond best to different frequencies, so the robot can be steered by adjusting the frequency…

While the ViRob can crawl through tubes or over surfaces, it cannot swim. For that, the Israeli team are designing another device, called SwiMicRob, which is slightly larger than ViRob at 10 millimetres long and 3 millimetres in diameter. Powered by an on-board motor, the device has two tails that twirl like bacteria’s flagella. SwiMicRob may one day be used inside fluid-filled spaces such those within the spine, although it is at an earlier stage of development than ViRob.

Another group has managed to shrink a medibot significantly further – down to 0.9 millimetres by 0.3 millimetres – by stripping out all propulsion and steering mechanisms. It is pulled around by electromagnets outside the body. The device itself is a metal shell shaped like a finned American football and it has a spike on the end…

The Swiss team is also among several groups who are trying to develop medibots at a vastly smaller scale, just nanometres in size, but these are at a much earlier development stage. Shrinking to this scale brings a host of new challenges, and it is likely to be some time before these kinds of devices reach the clinic.

Brad Nelson, a roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EHT) in Zurich, hopes that if millimetre-sized devices such as his ophthalmic robot prove their worth, they will attract more funding to kick-start nanometre-scale research. “If we can show small devices that do something useful, hopefully that will convince people that it’s not just science fiction.”

In summary: nanoscale medibots appear plausible, but there’s still a large amount of research and development required.

Kurzweil’s prediction on timescales

The book “The Scientific Conquest of Death“, containing Kurzweil’s essay, was published in 2004.  The online version is dated 2003.  In 2003, 2010 – the end of the decade – presumably looked a long way off.  In the essay, Kurzweil makes some predictions about the speed of progress towards Human Body Version 2.0:

By the end of this decade, computing will disappear as a separate technology that we need to carry with us.  We’ll routinely have high-resolution images encompassing the entire visual field written directly to our retinas from our eyeglasses and contact lenses (the Department of Defense is already using technology along these lines from Microvision, a company based in Bothell, Washington).  We’ll have very-high-speed wireless connection to the Internet at all times.  The electronics for all of this will be embedded in our clothing.  Circa 2010, these very personal computers will enable us to meet with each other in full-immersion, visual-auditory, virtual-reality environments as well as augment our vision with location- and time-specific information at all times.

Progress with miniaturisation of computers – and the adoption of smartphones – has been impressive since 2003.  However, it’s now clear that some of Kurzweil’s predictions were over-optimistic.  If his predictions for 2010 were over-optimistic, what should we conclude about his predictions for 2030?

The conflicting pace of technological progress

My own view of predictions is that they are far from “black and white”.  I’ve made my own share of predictions over the years, about the rate of progress with smartphone technologies.  I’ve also reflected on the fact that it’s difficult to draw conclusions about the rate of change.

For example, from my “Insight” essay from November 2006, “The conflicting pace of mobile technology“:

What’s the rate of improvement of mobile phones?  Disconcertingly, the answer is both “surprisingly fast” and “surprisingly slow”…

A good starting point is the comment made by Monitor’s Bhaskar Chakravorti in his book “The slow pace of fast change”, when he playfully dubbed a certain phenomenon as “Demi Moore’s Law”.  The phenomenon is that technology’s impact in an inner-connected marketplace often proceeds at only half the pace predicted by Moore’s Law.  The reasons for this slower-than-expected impact are well worth pondering:

• New applications and services in a networked marketplace depend on simultaneous changes being coordinated at several different points in the value chain
• Although the outcome would be good for everyone if all players kept on investing in making the required changes, these changes make much less sense when viewed individually.

Sometimes this is called “the prisoner’s dilemma”.  It’s also known as “the chicken and egg problem”.

The most interesting (and the most valuable) smartphone services will require widespread joint action within the mobile industry, including maintaining openness to new ideas, new methods, and new companies.  It also requires a spirit of “cooperate before competing”.  If adjacent players in the still-formative smartphone value chain focus on fighting each other for dominance in our current small pie, it will prevent the stage-by-stage emergence of killer new services that will make the pie much larger for everyone’s benefit.

Thankfully, although the network effects of a complex marketplace can act to slow down the emergence of new innovations, while that market is still being formed, it can have the opposite effect once all the pieces of the smartphone open virtuous cycle have learned to collaborate with maximum effectiveness.  When that happens, the pace of mobile change can even exceed that predicted by Moore’s Law…

And from another essay in the same series, “A celebration of incremental improvement“, from February 2006:

We all know that it’s a perilous task to predict the future of technology.  The mere fact that a technology can be conceived is no guarantee that it will happen.

If I think back thirty-something years to my days as a teenager, I remember being excited to read heady forecasts about a near-future world featuring hypersonic jet airliners, nuclear fusion reactors, manned colonies on the Moon and Mars, extended human lifespans, control over the weather and climate, and widespread usage of environmentally friendly electric cars.  These technology forecasts all turned out, in retrospect, to be embarrassing rather than visionary.  Indeed, history is littered with curious and amusing examples of flawed predictions of the future.  You may well wonder, what’s different about smartphones, and about all the predictions made about them at 3GSM?

With the advantage of hindsight, it’s clear that many technology forecasts have over-emphasised technological possibility and under-estimated the complications of wider system effects.  Just because something is technically possible, it does not mean it will happen, even though technology enthusiasts earnestly cheer it on.  Technology is not enough.  Especially for changes that are complex and demanding, no fewer than six other criteria should be satisfied as well:

• The technological development has to satisfy a strong human need
• The development has to be possible at a sufficiently attractive price to individual end users
• The outcome of the development has to be sufficiently usable, that is, not requiring prolonged learning or disruptive changes in lifestyle
• There must be a clear evolutionary path whereby the eventual version of the technology can be attained through a series of incremental steps that are, individually, easier to achieve
• When bottlenecks arise in the development process, sufficient amounts of fresh new thinking must be brought to bear on the central problems – that is, the development process must be both open (to accept new ideas) and commercially attractive (to encourage the generation of new ideas, and, even more important, to encourage companies to continue to search for ways to successfully execute their ideas; after all, execution is the greater part of innovation)…

Interestingly, whereas past forecasts of the future have often over-estimated the development of technology as a whole, they have frequently under-estimated the progress of two trends: computer miniaturisation and mobile communications.  For example, some time around 1997 I was watching a repeat of the 1960s “Thunderbirds” TV puppet show with my son.  The show, about a family of brothers devoted to “international rescue” using high-tech machinery, was set around the turn of the century.  The plot denouement of this particular episode was the shocking existence of a computer so small that it could (wait for it) be packed into a suitcase and transported around the world!  As I watched the show, I took from my pocket my Psion Series 5 PDA and marvelled at it – a real-life example of a widely available computer more powerful yet more miniature than that foreseen in the programme.

As I said, the pace of technological development is far from being black-and-white.  Sometimes it proceeds slower than you expect, and at other times, it can proceed much quicker.

The missing ingredient

With the advantage of even more hindsight, there’s one more element that should be elevated, as frequently making the difference between new products arriving sooner and them arriving later: the degree of practical focus and effective priority placed by the relevant ecosystem on creating these products.  For medibots and other lifespan-enhancing technologies to move from science fiction to science fact will probably require changes in both public opinion and public action.

Flawed carbon nanotubes may lead to supercapacitors.

From the link:

Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this.

In recent research, published in Applied Physics Letters, Prabhakar Bandaru, a professor in the UCSD Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with graduate student Mark Hoefer, have found that artificially introduced defects in nanotubes can aid the development of supercapacitors.

“While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but typically have limited capacity. However, supercapacitors/electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages of both,” Bandaru said.

Of course I mostly ran this post just to add to the excuse for running this awesome image of a carbon nanotube. Earlier this week I featured an incredible image of graphene. We’re getting some just simply amazing looks into the atomic world right now. And it’ll only get better.

Carbon nanotubes could serve as supercapacitor electrodes with enhanced charge and energy storage capacity (inset: a magnified view of a single carbon nanotube).

Credit: UC San Diego

Science Fiction (SF) literature, artwork and films are works of imagination, but often contain some elements of plausibility, with the story revolving around some known facts as well as inventions and possibilities that are to all intents and purposes beyond our current technologies. Although Science Fiction is not about predicting the future, several SF authors have taken modern technology and concepts (of their own time) and anticipated with some accuracy how new technologies would change our lives, well before these technologies were actually possible.

Source: ESA.

Rachael loved her sparkly new nanodiamond ring. Illustrated by Mike McRae

From CSIRO Science by email. If you had a watch with glowing hands in the early 20th century, there is a good chance it was painted with a newly discovered element called ‘radium’. Radioactive chemicals such as this were used in everything from clocks to toothpaste to health tonics. The technology might have been new and exciting, but was also potentially dangerous. Workers who painted those watch hands fell ill, most of them dying of cancer.

Of course, today’s world wouldn’t be the same had we never discovered radioactivity. It’s used in medical diagnostics, scientific research and technology such as smoke alarms. However it’s vital that we remain cautious about new discoveries to reduce any possible risks they pose.

Amanda Barnard was presented with one of the 2009 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science for her work on nanotechnology. Researchers have understood for a long time that a material can behave differently depending on whether you have a big chunk of it, or a tiny piece. For example, specks of gold only a few nanometres across look purple rather than bright yellow.

Amanda’s computer models attempt to predict what certain nanoparticles will do in different environments. Knowing how chemicals behave when they are so tiny is important as we find more applications for them. While they might be safe in some circumstances, combining them with UV light, changing the temperature or adding other chemicals could lead to unforeseen problems.

Her current work involves exploring how tiny diamonds might be used to deliver drugs to the right part of the body. Modelling the way nanoparticle diamonds move in an electrical field might help reduce the amount of chemotherapy cancer patients need.

Technology always poses a range of problems as well as useful outcomes. With the help of super computers and researchers like Amanda, it’s possible to avoid the dangers while still getting the benefits from new discoveries.

The singularity approaches us quickly and we should embrace it. Trends are increasing exponentially and at some point in time, a singularity will inevitably occur. These are some very cool future projects: X seed 4000, ultima tower, space elevator, nanotechnology, bug spies, Dubai s underwater hotel, world sports center, UAVs, solar sails, future ziggurats, moon and mars base, the Illinois, mega city pyramid and many many more..

Source

Morph is a concept demonstrating some of the possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices.

This has to be one of the coolest things, I’ve ever seen. Space shuttle Atlantis was about 600 feet from the International Space Station, when Commander Charles “Scorch” Hobaugh initiated this spectacular back flip rotation, known as the Rendezvous Pitch Maneuver (RPM), about 30 minutes prior to docking.

You can see a stunning view of the Earth in the background, when Atlantis’ nose is upwards. Beautiful!!!!

Via KurzweilAI.net — This sounds like good news. I’m looking forward to lower cost solar options to hit the market. There’s a lot of news in the space, but not much has translated to the real world. The general public will eventually tire of hearing about the latest and greatest solar ” breakthrough” (and I know I’m as guilty as anyone on that front) without seeing anything tangible. People can only be told the turn at the corner is coming soon so many times.

Thin-Film Solar with High Efficiency

Technology Review, Nov. 19, 2009 Solar cells made from cheap nanocrystal-based inks have the potential to be as efficient as the conventional inorganic cells currently used in solar panels, but can be printed less expensively, says Solexant, which expects to sell modules for $1 per watt, with efficiencies above 10 percent.   Read Original Article>>

Solar cells made from cheap nanocrystal-based inks have the potential to be as efficient as the conventional inorganic cells currently used in solar panels, but can be printed less expensively. Solexant, a company in San Jose, CA, is currently manufacturing solar cells to test the technology. In order to compete with other thin-film solar companies, Solexant is banking on simpler, cheaper printing processes and materials, as well as lower initial capital costs to build its plants. The company expects to sell modules for $1 per watt, with efficiencies above 10 percent.

Nanocrystal solar: The solar cells at top were made on a roll-to-roll printer from an ink consisting of the rod-shaped inorganic semiconducting nanocrystals shown below. The cells were printed on a flexible metal foil and will be topped with a glass plate. Credit: Solexant

The company has licensed methods for growing nanocrystals and making them into inks from Paul Alivisatos, professor of nanotechnology at the University of California, Berkeley and interim director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. (Alivisatos is on Solexant’s board of directors.) Alivisatos says the advantage of these materials is their potential to combine low cost with high performance. Solar cells made from crystalline silicon are efficient at converting sunlight into electricity, but they’re expensive to manufacture. To bring down the cost, companies have been developing thin-film solar cells from semiconductors that don’t match crystalline silicon’s performance but are much less expensive to make.

Solexant’s goal is to make cheap thin-film solar cells with relatively high efficiencies. It would not disclose what the nanoparticle inks are made of, but the company says they are suspensions of rod-shaped, semiconducting nanocrystals that are four nanometers in diameter and 20 to 30 nanometers long. The Solexant cells are printed on a metal foil as the substrate. Nanocrystal films are simple to print but have poor electrical properties. Electrons tend to get trapped between the small particles. “The trick with these cells is how to deposit the materials on the fly in a way that makes a very conductive surface,” which in turn ensures decent light-to-electricity conversion, says Alivisatos. Solexant begins with nanocrystals because they’re easier to print, and heats them as they’re printed, causing them to fuse together into larger, high-quality microcrystals that don’t have as many places for electrons to lose their way.

The remaining parts of the solar cell, including the electrical contacts and a light-absorbing layer, are also printed on the flexible metal films. This process allows Solexant to print very large areas. When complete, the cells are cut and then topped with a rigid piece of glass.

Making the entire cell using a roll-to-roll process gives the company an advantage over other thin-film photovoltaic companies that print on glass, which is heavier and limited to smaller areas, says Solexant CEO Damoder Reddy. “The cost benefit is dramatic, allowing us to produce cells for 50 cents a watt,” he says. First Solar, a thin-film company that uses vacuum deposition to print its cells onto glass, has manufacturing costs of 85 cents per watt. Nanosolar, another company making nanocrystal solar cells, uses a different semiconductor that requires chemical reactions to take place during printing, which increases the complexity and expense of the process. “We print a preformed semiconductor,” which eliminates such steps, says Reddy.

Solexant has raised $22.5 million in venture funding to build its two-megawatt pilot plant, and is seeking $40 million more over the next year to build a 100-megawatt facility. Solar startups typically seek about $250 million in capital to build such a plant, says Reddy.

The company’s first product, which Reddy says will sell for $1 per watt next year, will contain a single layer of the nanocrystals. The company is currently developing other types of nanocrystals that are more responsive to different bands of the solar spectrum in the hopes of boosting its cells’ efficiency. “Ultimately we want to make a multilayer, broad-spectrum cell,” says Reddy.  [Source:  ]http://www.technologyreview.com/business/23980/?nlid=2536

You can’t avoid germs and viruses entirely! Wherever people congregate, whether it’s on airplanes, conference rooms or on a train, viruses and germs will spread!

Latest Facts

FACT: Most people who catch the H1N1 virus have recovered without needing medical treatment

This means that catching this flu is not quite as serious as once feared, unless you already have an underlying medical condition such as:

• Asthma
• Diabetes
• Weakened immune system
• Heart disease
• Kidney disease
• Pregnant

FACT: The flu virus can live on surfaces for up to eight hours.

It’s likely that you’ll come in contact with H1N1 or other viruses that exist on money, door handles, keyboards and when shaking hands.

This means you need to:

• Wash your hands often
• Use hand sanitizer (alcohol-based)
• Keep your fingers away from your eyes, nose and mouth

FACT: People can spread H1N1 for 24 hours before the onset of symptoms and for a number of days after symptoms appear.

This means you:

• Stay away from others if you have the flu
• Do not return to the workplace until you are completely fever-free for 24 hours, without the use of any fever-reducing medication.

Things You Can Do

1) Take care of yourself

Eat lots of fruit and vegetables, get enough sleep, exercise and take an effective nutritional supplement.

A good multi-vitamin, mineral and herbal supplement is the foundation of health and nutrition. If you are looking for a high quality liquid multi-vitamin, mineral and herbal supplement, we suggest that you take a look at dailysource™.

2) If you do experience flu-like symptoms, stay home.

Don’t try and be a hero by showing up to work. If you have sick days available that’s exactly what they are intended for!

3) Get vaccinated

This could be your best protection against the flu. The H1N1 vaccine is being released in ever increasing amounts.

Check out the Flu Shot Locator. Input your zip code and see the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccines for your area!

Additional Resources

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