466 replies to this topic

[Luna]

I still don't see with current technology and it's speed of progression, especially in biology- How we would soon be able to cure aging, death, cancer, brain disease.. we can barely fend off infections and I will be silly but everyone always say "Oh! we haven't even cured the common cold!" Well, we might be able to do that soon but have you seen how the body works? reacts with so many different things in chain reactions which we still don't understand completely at all?

My cousin is a neurobiologist with PhD in the field and he says we barely understand anything about the brain.. "We don't even know how a single neuron works".

Technology seems to me very linear in its progression is some fields. I do programming, part of it is 3D programming and I am not sure how much the computer power "exponentially grew" at all. Although we did get some software tricks to allow us fake better results.

And in biology, we are still fighting the same diseases and really small things regarding aging we haven't even touched the big things yet.

The Singularity might happen, but why will we benefit from it? Someone has a computer smarter than human, well, someone has an organ printer but I don't see much printing in the hospital.
And besides, humans aren't all that smart! that AI better get smarter exponentially or we're screwed anyways.

And even if it were all that smart, how can it figure something out without enough data? we still can't see the atoms and molecules in the body, we don't have a scanner for that. We don't even know if our theories are true in many cases!!! What if our whole theory of chemistry is somewhat wrong?

All these are problems. There is also the problem of "Will the Singularity actually happen?". I don't see any really intelligent AI. And the AI needs to learn to adapt and learn new things as it goes and then change its learnings to something new all the time.

And then even if we got that, who said it will figure those things out, it needs tools, it needs to be smart enough. And then why would we benefit from it?
How do you solve all of this?

[hotamali]

I think that a lot of our understanding of the brain in the next decade will come from computer simulations of neurons in action i.e. Blue Brain and others like it. If we can model a brain, we can reverse engineer it into software algorithms. With that in mind, The biggest change that is now happening in our society is the fact that information is becoming increasingly available. Science doesn't progress narrowly like it used to, now more and more sciences are feeding into eachother and working off eachother. Most medical fields are becoming increasingly reliant on information technologies, I saw a commercial about a service that archives doctor's work with specific patients. That is what will truly bring about a singularity.

[valkyrie_ice]

I still don't see with current technology and it's speed of progression, especially in biology- How we would soon be able to cure aging, death, cancer, brain disease.. we can barely fend off infections and I will be silly but everyone always say "Oh! we haven't even cured the common cold!" Well, we might be able to do that soon but have you seen how the body works? reacts with so many different things in chain reactions which we still don't understand completely at all?

Yes, there are enormous problems left to solve, but those problems are all basically daisy chained like a series of dominoes. We solve one, and that leads us to the next set of problems. But there is a huge difference between today and forty years ago in how quickly those problems are beginning to be solved. And there is a huge difference between what we CAN do, and what is widely available, but the speed with which cutting edge is becoming mainstream is also accelerating. If anything it is being artificially delayed with an over cautious FDA, and a corporate Pharma industry which is more interested in symptom suppressors than cures, due to the fact that you can keep profiting off suppressors whereas cures are a single time profit. However, regulatory change is coming, regardless of how much money they spend in lobbying, because the system as it has been is failing, and in an age of information, that fact is becoming increasingly obvious to the general public. While it will take time for a shift in the processes to occur, that change is also happening much faster than it did 40 years ago. I may indeed be overly optimistic in thinking that it is possible we will see a dramatic improvement in the next decade, but it is going to happen pretty quickly compared to the 70's and 80's.

The second factor in this is the massive improvements in communication between researchers. 40 years ago, it took months to years for a discovery to be published, looked at by other researchers, and incorporated into other research. Now that process can take hours due to briefs being published online prior to publication in journals. Despite the flaws in the peer review process as is, it is still getting a massive amount of data spread to an ever increasing number of researchers. If I tried to compare the number of breakthroughs in biology I've read about just in 2009 and compared it to 2005, I would have to say there was probably 5 to 10 times the number in just 4 years. If I could accurately count the numbers you would probably be shocked. There are more people, with better data, collaborating more frequently, with quicker results than at anytime in history, and it's only getting faster. Do we know everything? No. But we know enough to accomplish miracles compared to just 40 years ago. And we've improved that ability by nearly an order of magnitude each decade.

My cousin is a neurobiologist with PhD in the field and he says we barely understand anything about the brain.. "We don't even know how a single neuron works".

Also true. But compared to 40 years ago, we've made the same kinds of advances.

Technology seems to me very linear in its progression is some fields. I do programming, part of it is 3D programming and I am not sure how much the computer power "exponentially grew" at all. Although we did get some software tricks to allow us fake better results.

I'm a technician, hun. My first computer was a Timex Sinclair T1000. It was about the size of a hardcover book, and was a state of the art machine that could use your TV as a monitor, and be expanded with an external memory card to a whopping 4k of ram. That was in the early 80's. In high-school, I learned BASIC, on an Apple 2E, and I was the lucky guy with the sole 80 column, 16 color ultra high end video card upgrade. That was 1988. You've grown up never knowing a computer that strained to display 8 bit graphics, or where the best computer you could buy was one with 8mbs of ram, running Dos4gw in order to be able to run DOOM. I grew up when 3D was an impossible dream. When I first became a computer geek, you had to know long arcane codes just to get a program to run off a hard drive on a C64. I doubt you've ever had to live with a computer that didn't have a mouse, and GUI.

Yes. Programming has slowed down somewhat over the last decade. They hit a barrier on processor speed and had to shift to multi-core, and parallel processing is still a relatively hard process for a human mind and it's linear thought processes to think in, but while programming has been progressing more slowly than hardware, don't let the that fact lull you into missing the massive amount of advancement being made. It's not just processors which comprise the exponential explosion. It's the invasion of computers into every aspect of human existence. Your car will no longer run without a computer. Your grocery store would shut down without them. You can't even make a phone call anymore without them. Almost nothing in the advanced nations of the world is done without the aid of a computer anymore. I doubt you could go into your kitchen and disassemble any electric appliance that was bought in the last five years and not find a circuit board in it. Same with your living room. Even your electric toothbrush is going to have one. "Computers" in and of themselves are only the tip of the iceburg.

And in biology, we are still fighting the same diseases and really small things regarding aging we haven't even touched the big things yet.

Actually, hun, we are fighting an ever shrinking set of diseases. The worst, hardest to beat, and most intractable ones. We've overcome hundreds of thousands of others. As the rest of the world advances into the modern era, we are beginning to eliminate some of the causes of disease as well. Our response times are faster, our ability to reduce the number of victims is growing, and indeed it is only our ability to spread information at ever faster speeds which seem to make many threats far greater than they are. Take last years Swine Flu. Big panic. Immediate response. Where is it now?

We are making progress, I know it's hard to see if you are not looking for it specifically, but it is there, and it's all a series of small little advances that merge to a larger whole. Did you hear that recently a group of scientists discovered that a single gene is responsible for the mammalian LACK of a regenerative ability? When the gene was removed, mice gained the ability to regenerate missing tissue and limbs http://nextbigfuture...-mammalian.html. Think about that. We may not even NEED to solve EVERY problem associated with aging if we find the RIGHT solutions to certain issues. Regeneration is one major advance that could change the human race enormously. Who knows, by the end of the decade, we may no longer have handicapped people needing cybernetic limbs. Imagine a world where everyone has Wolverine's "healing factor", where the damage done by aging never happens because our bodies repair themselves faster than aging occurs.

The Singularity might happen, but why will we benefit from it? Someone has a computer smarter than human, well, someone has an organ printer but I don't see much printing in the hospital.

And besides, humans aren't all that smart! that AI better get smarter exponentially or we're screwed anyways.

And even if it were all that smart, how can it figure something out without enough data? we still can't see the atoms and molecules in the body, we don't have a scanner for that. We don't even know if our theories are true in many cases!!! What if our whole theory of chemistry is somewhat wrong?

All these are problems. There is also the problem of "Will the Singularity actually happen?". I don't see any really intelligent AI. And the AI needs to learn to adapt and learn new things as it goes and then change its learnings to something new all the time.

And then even if we got that, who said it will figure those things out, it needs tools, it needs to be smart enough. And then why would we benefit from it?
How do you solve all of this?

I would say that the majority of people don't truly understand that the Singularity is nothing more than a point in time beyond which we cannot as yet make predictions. As such, as our knowledge continues to grow, it will continue to recede. It's a nebulous term that is used to cover far too many possible futures. In my opinion, we are already involved in the Singularity, and have been since the Internet was created.

The stages of development between where we are and the singularity is not going to be a period in which humanity stagnates until a savior AI comes along. AI is unlikely to be created before we understand FAR more about not only our biology, but our brains. And every step of the way to AI is a double edged discovery. We already effectively augment our intelligence with computers. We Wiki information to support our conversations, we keep track of our friends with Facebook, we use the internet to expand our knowledge of the world beyond our physical environment. As we discover each step towards true AI, we immediately put it to use to augment ourselves. By the time AI comes we may simply no longer be able to tell the difference between an AI and ourselves.

Also, it takes time for technology to disseminate. Organ printing is a new technology, only made available this year. It is also still limited in the size and types of tissue it can print, and as such costs enormously more than it will in five years, once it has been refined, improved, and many more of them are available. By the end of the decade, I believe it will be usable for almost any internal organ, and within twenty able to print almost any form of biological tissue. Long before then, it is likely to become so common that organ transplants will never be needed again because they can simply replace them or regrow them.

As for the state of our knowledge, we will never know everything. What we know now may indeed prove to be wrong, especially in the field of physics, which has ceased to be constrained by physical reality in favor of mathematical mysticism. But Chemistry is grounded in the real world, and empirical evidence. While we may learn it is incomplete, or even that what we think is happening is different than what actually happens, it is a trial and error science, built upon hundreds of years of experiment. Unlike physics, it either works or it doesn't, and no amount of theory saying it should work will change that. Most sciences which deal with retail products are restrained by that same cold hard reality, and as such are far more likely to be correct, or at least correct enough to be workable.

In the end, no-one can say with absolute certainty what the future is going to bring, but my personal experiences and observations show me trends which lead me to make the predictions I make, and lead me to the optimism I have.

[Luna]

I heard of MRL mice.
I wonder why that P21 gene was "selected" then, as in, why the ones without it died until it became the one who's left?

[valkyrie_ice]

And on the nanofront:

http://nextbigfuture...emand-from.html

Composites are combinations of materials that produce properties inaccessible in any one material. A classic example of a composite is fiberglass – plastic fibers woven with glass to add strength to hockey sticks or the hull of a boat. Unlike the well-established techniques for producing fiberglass and other macroscale composites, however, there aren’t general schemes available for making nanoscale composites.

Now, researchers at Berkeley Lab’s Molecular Foundry, in collaboration with researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown how nanocomposites with desired properties can be designed and fabricated by first assembling nanocrystals and nanorods coated with short organic molecules, called ligands. These ligands are then replaced with clusters of metal chalcogenides, such as copper sulfide. As a result, the clusters link to the nanocrystal or nanorod building blocks and help create a stable nanocomposite. The team has applied this scheme to more than 20 different combinations of materials, including close-packed nanocrystal spheres for thermoelectric materials and vertically aligned nanorods for solar cells.

Highly organized composites from a molecular scale up could lead to such advances as cars with nearly indestructable shells which also act as solar panels, ultracapacitance batteries, and frame all in one, meaning the possibility of electric cars weighing less than a person, yet which can be driven all day without needing to be recharged. That's just one tiny possibility, as it can also create building materials capable of making earthquake proof buildings, hurricane proof houses, even possibly deep sea worthy habitat shells that cannot be crushed. This is one to watch people, it may not sound like much, but it's one HUGE leap towards real nanotech.

Also in Nanonews:

http://nextbigfuture...r-lego-kit.html

The researchers chose a ‘wheel-shaped’ polyoxometalate molecule, containing a 1-nanometre wide hole, which acts like a ‘window’ to the molecule. The cyclic compounds self-assemble in water to form beautiful cubic single crystals.

The ‘windows’ of the ring-shaped building blocks lead to very large internal pores meaning that these new compounds can effectively act like storage boxes for ions and small molecules.

Well-defined chemical architectures are essential for many functional materials; therefore very large POM frameworks could be used as ion fuel cells, batteries, sensors, catalysts and other new nanotechnologies.

Professor Lee Cronin, Gardiner Chair of Chemistry, who led the study, said: “The ability to build highly-robust inorganic structures in a LEGO-like fashion is a huge boon to chemists, presenting many potential applications.”

Molecular legos. i.e. a molecule that enables the directed assembly of an infinite scale regular lattice of hollow boxes. Use, lots of potentials, but no solid applications yet. What is truly is though is proof that directed assembly on a molecular scale is possible on a massive level, i.e. you CAN build structures of an arbitrary size using just molecules.



In the printed electronics news:

http://nextbigfuture...based-rfid.html

Rice University and Korean collaborators produce printable tag that could replace bar codes Cho and his team are developing the electronics as well as the roll-to-roll printing process that, he said, will bring the cost of printing the tags down to a penny apiece and make them ubiquitous. It should be commercialized in five years. The roll-to-roll carbon nanotube electronics would be the first of increasingly complex and more capable inexpensive printable electronics.

Did you get that? Roll to Roll Electronic Printing. That's not an inkjet, thats INDUSTRIAL SIZED HIGH VOLUME PRINTING PRESS tech, you know, the million pages of newsprint a day kind of presses. Today it's RFID tags. Five years from now when it's "commercialized", it's going to be cellphones, video wallpaper, and who knows what other embedded electronic devices we will come up with. That animated Tony the Tiger cereal box is looking more likely by the day. Disposable electronics? You betcha. Electronic paper replacing printed paper? It's coming.

[valkyrie_ice]

I heard of MRL mice.
I wonder why that P21 gene was "selected" then, as in, why the ones without it died until it became the one who's left?

“In normal cells, p21 acts like a brake to block cell cycle progression in the event of DNA damage, preventing the cells from dividing and potentially becoming cancerous,” Heber-Katz said.

Looks like at some point it was beneficial, possibly due to a period of time in which radiation or DNA damage could have been higher, like say, post iridium asteroid impact which killed off the Dinos. However, while it might have served a useful purpose once, it doesn't seem to be as needed:

“In these mice without p21, we do see the expected increase in DNA damage, but surprisingly no increase in cancer has been reported.”

In fact, the researchers saw an increase in apoptosis in MRL mice – also known as programmed cell death – the cell’s self-destruct mechanism that is often switched on when DNA has been damaged. According to Heber-Katz, this is exactly the sort of behavior seen in naturally regenerative creatures.

“The combined effects of an increase in highly regenerative cells and apoptosis may allow the cells of these organisms to divide rapidly without going out of control and becoming cancerous,” Heber-Katz said. “In fact, it is similar to what is seen in mammalian embryos, where p21 also happens to be inactive after DNA damage. The down regulation of p21 promotes the induced pluripotent state in mammalian cells, highlighting a correlation between stem cells, tissue regeneration, and the cell cycle.”

In young mammals, the body routinely kills off cancer cells. It's only as the self repair mechanisms become less efficient that cancers become highly prevalent. While cancer can strike at any age given the correct conditions, enhanced self regenerative abilities could lead to cancer becoming a rare disease, or even a treatable one.

We're getting closer and closer to immortality daily, Luna. While efforts DIRECTLY STATED as researching life extension may not be as high as we like, ALL MEDICAL RESEARCH is nonetheless dedicated to life extension, however indirectly.

[Luna]

Really hope we do defeat aging soon, hopefully when my mother and father can benefit from it too.

But still seems quite complicated.. today I was in biology class, my teacher is a cancer researcher and the subject of telomeres came up and she was like "yeah some people think it's related to aging but I am not so sure, like in cancer they do just fine and there is no DNA damage." and I said (it wasn't an aging related discussion it was as btw, she brought dna replication and I was like "I heard when there is no more telomeres the dna gets damaged") later that "yeah, it's probably not the only thing, I mean, the body gathers junk and stuff.." and she said "not really, the body isn't supposed to get junk, it's just that the body could do something and then for some reason it stopped." and that's pretty much where it ended.. so I think there might still be problems, hope not.

Do you have something really cool to show us like how not to waste energy/cause entropy to rise? it came in chemistry and we were like "let's build a dome around the earth :D" but the teacher again said she doesn't think it would work, and well, yeah, won't the dome's inner entropy rise insanely? and can particles start fading off from it out to space until it finally goes away? :/

Our biology classes are so fun sometimes! apparently everyone in my class is thinking about aging in some way. Or energy problems.

[Luna]

that indestructible material (is it?) sounds nice, they shows in Braniac what happens when you drop "a whole cloud" on a car at once, ouch But then again, a collision of such car doesn't mean the driver is indestructible, all the shock and force going through the driver is still deadly. Like the guy here who jumped in to the water, stomach first.. had internal organs rupture, OUCH!

[valkyrie_ice]

Really hope we do defeat aging soon, hopefully when my mother and father can benefit from it too.

But still seems quite complicated.. today I was in biology class, my teacher is a cancer researcher and the subject of telomeres came up and she was like "yeah some people think it's related to aging but I am not so sure, like in cancer they do just fine and there is no DNA damage." and I said (it wasn't an aging related discussion it was as btw, she brought dna replication and I was like "I heard when there is no more telomeres the dna gets damaged") later that "yeah, it's probably not the only thing, I mean, the body gathers junk and stuff.." and she said "not really, the body isn't supposed to get junk, it's just that the body could do something and then for some reason it stopped." and that's pretty much where it ended.. so I think there might still be problems, hope not.

Do you have something really cool to show us like how not to waste energy/cause entropy to rise? it came in chemistry and we were like "let's build a dome around the earth :D" but the teacher again said she doesn't think it would work, and well, yeah, won't the dome's inner entropy rise insanely? and can particles start fading off from it out to space until it finally goes away? :/

Our biology classes are so fun sometimes! apparently everyone in my class is thinking about aging in some way. Or energy problems.

It's easiest to think of telomeres as a ticker for how often the cell can divide. As the cell divides, a link of the telomere chain is lost. Once all the links are gone, a cell can no longer divide. It's this loss of divisibility which more or less is the component related to aging. As we age, greater and greater numbers of cells reach their "end of division" phase, which means that they no longer replace themselves if they die. This is how telomeres control cancers. A cancer cell is simply a normal cell which is dividing endlessly. Many cancers get killed off by telomere exhaustion, but those which become dangerous have developed a DNA error which makes the cell replace a telomere link every time one is lost, meaning the cell can divide with no consequences. This allows them to divide into more and more cells, and basically steal all the bodies resources into providing these endlessly dividing cells blood, food, space, etc. It's this which we call cancer.

The speculation is that if the DNA modification can be duplicated WITHOUT causing the cell to go into spontaneous division, then the cell can continue to divide normally and aid in basically allowing the body to retain the body in the peak of development, i.e. young adulthood, when the body reaches maturity but prior to the onset of age related damage.

Note, this does not address ALL the ways in which cells age and get damaged, but it is one of the more promising areas of age research.

Now, combine cells which retain their youthful ability to divide, mixed with the regenerative possibilities of the removal of the p21 gene, and you have the potential that we may be able to rejuvenate people by a simple genetic tweak, enabling the elderly to regenerate their own bodies into the health of young adulthood and maintaining youth for the indefinite future. If we can keep people at the physical state of youth permanently, we may not have to defeat EVERY cause of aging. If rejuvenation and telomere extension prove to be the keys to immortality that they could potentially be, then death by any cause but misadventure could cease.

And as you saw, the p21 research came from something totally unrelated to life extension. Any medical research, in any field, has the potential to lead to effective life extension technology.

[Luna]

Well I dunno, my teacher is a cancer researcher and she said that she isn't convinced about telomeres theories because she sees how cancer duplicates fine and how there is no dna damage in many cell types which can duplicate on and on..

[valkyrie_ice]

Well I dunno, my teacher is a cancer researcher and she said that she isn't convinced about telomeres theories because she sees how cancer duplicates fine and how there is no dna damage in many cell types which can duplicate on and on..

Yes, Cancer duplicates just fine. BECAUSE TELOMERES ARE RE-ADDED AS THEY ARE LOST. So a cancer cell doesn't lose telomere links. Only in normal cell division does a link get lost. DNA damage exists in EVERY cancer cell, it's what causes it to become cancerous. The latest research I have read indicates that all successful cancers have 2 DNA errors. One which causes continual division, and one which re-adds telomere links as they are lost to prevent the cells running out of telomere links and being unable to reproduce.

[valkyrie_ice]

More in nanonews:

http://nextbigfuture...e-or-close.html

Technical Takeoff
-Embodies the essential function of the proposed technology
-is proof that the concept works
- focuses technical effort
-is a vehicle for practical experience
- attracts financial (etc) resources
-forms a crack in the dam

Nanotechnology

Inspiration - Life
Theoretical Underpinnings - molecular biology, chemistry, mechanical engineer
Experimentation - nanodevices, poistional chemistry, atomically precise fabrication (we are here)
Technical takeoff point - molecular machine tools
Economic take off point - nanofactories, molecular-level recycling, cheap devices

From a presentation by JoSH. Technical takeoff for real nanotech is here. There are true working proof of concepts in the lab, real progress being made on creating macroscale objects via nanotech, and companies lining up around the world to exploit the research.

It's only going to get wilder from here peeples. It might take decades, it might come next year, but the fact that it WILL be developed can no longer be in doubt. The question is now WHEN, not IF.


And in graphene news:

http://nextbigfuture...can-create.html

The missing atom as a source of carbon magnetism. By removing individual atoms from a graphite surface, they can create local magnetic moments in the graphite.

Atomic vacancies have a strong impact in the mechanical, electronic and magnetic properties of graphene-like materials. By artificially generating isolated vacancies on a graphite surface and measuring their local density of states on the atomic scale, we have shown how single vacancies modify the electronic properties of this graphene-like system. Our scanning tunneling microscopy experiments, complemented by tight binding calculations, reveal the presence of a sharp electronic resonance at the Fermi energy around each single graphite vacancy, which can be associated with the formation of local magnetic moments and implies a dramatic reduction of the charge carriers' mobility. While vacancies in single layer graphene naturally lead to magnetic couplings of arbitrary sign, our results show the possibility of inducing a macroscopic ferrimagnetic state in multilayered graphene samples just by randomly removing single C atoms.

Carbon based magnets. While this may not sound like much, it's a proof of how atomic scale manufacture can produce materials with previously impossible properties.


And in the VR front:

http://nextbigfuture...de-leap-in.html

Ushering in a new era of high-performance image sensors, InVisage Technologies, Inc. – a venture-backed start-up that is revolutionizing the way light is captured – today announced QuantumFilm. Harnessing the power of custom-designed semiconductor materials, QuantumFilm image sensors are the world’s first commercial quantum dot-based image sensors, replacing silicon. InVisage delivers 4x higher performance, 2x higher dynamic range and professional camera features not yet found in mobile image sensors. The first QuantumFilm-enabled product, due out later this year, solves the crucial challenge of capturing stunning images using mobile handset cameras. QuantumFilm covers 100 percent of each pixel.

How is this VR you ask? Think about it. Quantum dot pixels. You could pack a quantum dot pixel, a QD camera, and a QD solar cell side by side on a flat panel, making a display that can also act as a camera, and a solar cell simultaneously, and still possess a resolution far beyond the human eye's ability to discern. Visualize a VR lens with QDs. Powered by any ambient light source, able to not only capture the entire environment around you and transmit it to the display side in absolute perfect detail, but which could also track your eyes for an AR interface. Or a set of clothes which perfect mirror the surroundings for a Ghost in the Shell therm-optic camouflage suit.

Cameras now. VR in five years.

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 22 March 2010 - 08:40 PM.

[valkyrie_ice]

And three news stories for your perusal. First in VR tech:

http://nextbigfuture...s-now-real.html

HP and Arizona state university have Demonstrated flexible displays that can be rolled up This should be on the market in 2012 and in mass production in 2013.

The flexible displays can be mass produced by using a production method called Self-Aligned Imprint Lithography (SAIL). By manufacturing the displays in the form of rolls instead of sheets makes the production method more cost effective.

Th-th-th-th-that's right, folks! Video Wallpaper is now a REALITY. Video displays that can replace newspapers. Able to be rolled up like newspaper. PRINTED LIKE NEWSPAPER.

Imagine every wall in your home being a high resolution display. Imagine being able to build houses without windows which are far more structurally sound against weather damage, and yet still have wall to wall windows inside. Imagine living in a WoW elven village, or having your very own cabin on the Enterprise. Imagine watching the Big Game on a 19 foot diagonal display, or creating a dozen separate displays for your computer on a single sheet.

Then imagine that display as a pair of cheap, lightweight, disposable wraparound shades.

"We have the technology", it's simply a matter of putting the pieces together.



And on the nanotech front:

http://nextbigfuture...res-enable.html

By combining a new generation of piezoelectric nanogenerators with two types of nanowire sensors, researchers have created what are believed to be the first self-powered nanometer-scale sensing devices that draw power from the conversion of mechanical energy. The new devices can measure the pH of liquids or detect the presence of ultraviolet light using electrical current produced from mechanical energy in the environment.

I also linked this in the Zero Point Energy thread, but as it's a nanotech development, it's applicable here too. Basically, here is a device to power nano machines, harvesting energy from the surroundings. It might also prove to be a device to replace batteries, power cybernetic implants, limbs, and upgrades, power our personal electronics, and who knows what else.


And from J Storrs Hall, on the nanotech Singularity

http://www.hplusmaga...-nanotech-or-ai

It is generally assumed that a self-improving super-human level of AI is part and parcel of the Singularity, and indeed, such was the basis of I. J. Good’s and Vernor Vinge’s conception of the “intelligence explosion.” But let’s assume, for the sake of a scenario, that creating self-improving AI is just a lot harder than we think, and that we aren’t going to invent it until well after we have flat-out molecular nanotech with the ability to build fast self-replicating diamondoid nanomachines. What then?

Interesting read, especially if you are one of those like me who think it is highly probable that nanotech will be developed a LONG time prior to True AI.

Michael A. disagrees with me in the comments, but time will tell, No?

[niner]

Imagine every wall in your home being a high resolution display. Imagine being able to build houses without windows which are far more structurally sound against weather damage, and yet still have wall to wall windows inside. Imagine living in a WoW elven village, or having your very own cabin on the Enterprise. Imagine watching the Big Game on a 19 foot diagonal display, or creating a dozen separate displays for your computer on a single sheet.

I'm imagining my house no longer looking like it was decorated by vandals...

[Luna]

http://www.ohio.edu/...erconductor.cfm

Thought val might like it :3

[Luna]

this is quite pessimist though:
http://www.physorg.c...s125321581.html

[valkyrie_ice]

this is quite pessimist though:
http://www.physorg.c...s125321581.html

Actually, it's quite positive. What they are dealing with here is a low level AI. Extremely useful for home robotics. An AI capable of, say, running a roomba that knows enough to move your clothes out of the way when it's vacuuming, and can tell the difference between trash and your earrings.

It's also a step towards robots intelligent enough to take your order at the counter at a fast food joint, or able to check you out at the supermarket. One capable of adapting to the various issues such jobs take, while LACKING the ability to get pissed at a customer and strangling them.

Several years away yet, but definite progress. Give it five years and we might be seeing the first models, possibly as dolls or pets, eventually working up to Humanoid clerks and other low intelligence devices.

Like I told someone on H+ recently, don't look at the Holy Grails of technology, and dismiss exactly how huge an impact interim tech can have.

Edited: Especially with such other news as this from NBF:

http://nextbigfuture...ules-based.html

The probabilistic approach to artifical intelligence has been responsible for most of the recent progress in artificial intelligence, such as voice recognition systems, or the system that recommends movies to Netflix subscribers. But Noah Goodman, an MIT research scientist whose department is Brain and Cognitive Sciences but whose lab is Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, thinks that AI gave up too much when it gave up rules. By combining the old rule-based systems with insights from the new probabilistic systems, Goodman has found a way to model thought that could have broad implications for both AI and cognitive science.

Church programs did a significantly better job of modeling human thought than traditional artificial-intelligence algorithms did. Chater cautions that, while Church programs perform well on such targeted tasks, they’re currently too computationally intensive to serve as general-purpose mind simulators. “It’s a serious issue if you’re going to wheel it out to solve every problem under the sun,” Chater says. “But it’s just been built, and these things are always very poorly optimized when they’ve just been built.” And Chater emphasizes that getting the system to work at all is an achievement in itself.

Which is, in essence, a similar development in Software to match the hardware one.

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 30 March 2010 - 09:28 PM.

[Luna]

I said it is pessimist because the guy working on that project doesn't expect adult level AI in the next 100 years.

[valkyrie_ice]

And more on Graphene:

http://nextbigfuture...-germanium.html

IBM Research has demonstrated an optical link using a graphene photodetector fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrate.

The 10 Gbit per second receiver uses a novel interdigitated source and drain on a field-effect transistor (FET) with graphene as the channel.

The vertical-incidence metal-graphene-metal photodetector achieved 6.1 milliamps per watt at the communications wavelength of 1.55 microns, but was shown to be useful over a very wide bandwidth of 300 nanometers to 6 microns, making the graphene optical link a promising candidate not only for communications, but for remote sensing, environmental monitoring and surveillance.

IBM demonstrated that graphene could be used to fabricate photodetectors that run as fast as 40 Gbps and predicted that by going to palladium electrodes near terahertz speed could eventually be achieved.

To achieve the world's first optical data link using graphene, IBM fabricated an asymetrical metal-graphene-metal FET that used palladium and titanium as the source and drain electrodes, respectively, and graphene as the channel.

Confused as to what this is? It's about fiberop networks. Data pipes capable of moving terabytes of data in seconds. Movies flashed to you in less than a second, Massive pipelines that can transfer the Libraray of Congress every few seconds. A World Wide Web with a million times the current speed.



And in other news:

http://nextbigfuture...sh-cost-of.html

Princeton researchers have developed a new way to manufacture electronic devices made of plastic, employing a process that allows the materials to be formed into useful shapes while maintaining their ability to conduct electricity. In the plastic transistor pictured here, the plastic is molded into interdigitated electrodes (orange) allowing current flow to and from the active channel (green). (Image: Loo Research Group)

A new technique developed by Princeton University engineers for producing electricity-conducting plastics could dramatically lower the cost of manufacturing solar panels.

That's right, Plastic Electronics. Solar Panels is just a start, Think of all the 3rd world nations that could benefit from cheap solar... not to mention an all plastic tablet PC. Flexible, indestructable, no moving parts, touch screen controlled, and solar powered.



And more solar news:

http://nextbigfuture...tate-solar.html

A newly discovered path for the conversion of sunlight to electricity could brighten the future for photovoltaic technology. Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have found a new mechanism by which the photovoltaic effect can take place in semiconductor thin-films. This new route to energy production overcomes the bandgap voltage limitation that continues to plague conventional solid-state solar cells.

Working with bismuth ferrite, a ceramic made from bismuth, iron and oxygen that is multiferroic – meaning it simultaneously displays both ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties – the researchers discovered that the photovoltaic effect can spontaneously arise at the nanoscale as a result of the ceramic’s rhombohedrally distorted crystal structure. Furthermore, they demonstrated that the application of an electric field makes it possible to manipulate this crystal structure and thereby control photovoltaic properties

And as you can see Solar power is getting rapidly more efficient and cost effective.

[valkyrie_ice]

More on Graphene:

http://nextbigfuture...reate-tiny.html

USF researchers has now found a way to create a well-defined, extended defect several atoms across, containing octagonal and pentagonal carbon rings embedded in a perfect graphene sheet. This defect acts as a quasi-one-dimensional metallic wire that easily conducts electric current. Such defects could be used as metallic interconnects or elements of device structures of all-carbon, atomic-scale electronics.

And yet another step to fully functional nanoscale electronics. Isolating conductors without having to separate it from the sheet could mean circuits separated by merely an atom or two that are still fully shielded electrically to prevent crosstalk between wires. i.e. one step closer to a supercomputer smaller than a human skin cell.

[valkyrie_ice]

And I warned you this would come:

http://gizmodo.com/5...3d-ipod-glasses

Remember those old silhouette iPod adds that were soooo cool? I can't wait to see how marketing sells these babies—3D video glasses with a HUD—from Apple.

According to a patent app for a "Head-Mounted Display Apparatus For Retaining a Portable Electronic Device With Display" filed in August of 2008, Apple is at least exploring the possibility of video glasses—a wearable display that would stream A/V content from a pocketable device (like an iPod or iPhone) wirelessly, that would support "stereoscopic imaging" and that could be equipped with lenses coupled with "mirrors, diffusers, optics, lasers or any other suitable optical component" to create an actual HUD. Coupled with an integrated camera, the glasses can recognize head movement, allowing you to perform a bit of navigation hands-free.

Yes, it's April 1st. But AppleInsider, who broke the story, assures us that the filing is legit (and we spotted the actual filing, which would be an epic prank indeed, at another source).

The iGlasses are coming.

[hotamali]

And I warned you this would come:

The iGlasses are coming.

I'm glad a big name like apple is developing these, if apple gets practical AR glasses on the market we'll see commercial incentive for innovation and competition.

[valkyrie_ice]

A lot of stories today:

In Printed Manufacturing News:

http://nextbigfuture...igh-volume.html

Large-scale print-manufacturing of complex 3-D structures is going to the next level using a new additive manufacturing technology called High-Volume Print Forming

Charles S. Taylor, the grandson of Boston Globe publisher Charles H. Taylor, developed manufacturing technology in which converted commercial printing equipment produces tiny layers of materials that stack up to produce complex designs with multiple functions.

That technology is now in the final qualification stage for antennas used in cell phones and is on the verge of becoming a major player in IC packages for portable electronics. Other potential applications include fluidic parts, energy harvesters, fuel cell parts and sensors.

* Variations in design can be manufactured simultaneously without added cost
* Design modifications can be made quickly without expensive hard retooling
* EoPlex devices are in the size range of 5 microns to 50 millimeters and are usually referred to as miniature (not nanotechnology). There are other techniques for creating parts in this size range, but they all have limitations in handling multiple materials in the same part or in degree of geometric complexity. EoPlex fills this gap.

Translation? Exactly what I have been predicting about the advances in printing technology. Building up layers to create a complete complex device. i.e. a Cellphone that is a single solid, waterproof, unbreakable, edge to edge display, and amazingly cheap to make wafer the thickness of your credit card. Making the entire device as a single unit in a single processing step.

Want more Proof?

http://nextbigfuture...rect-laser.html

Direct Laser Sintering of Titanium will make aerospace components cheaper and with less waste

What is direct metal laser-sintering (DMLS), and does titanium pose any unique technical challenges for this technology?

A: DMLS is an emerging technology for rapid, additive manufacturing of metal parts. Among other applications, it is well suited to production of high-strength, low-weight components at low manufacturing volumes. As such, it has exciting potential for aerospace and often involves less cost than conventional manufacturing processes.

Laser-sintering prototypes and fixtures already achieves significant cost and time savings over other processes, but more importantly, DMLS offers a new age of innovative design freedom. Engineers no longer need to be concerned with draft angles, parting lines, corner radii, and the minutiae of turning complex models into matter.

Laser-sintering offers the potential for design-driven manufacturing – the creation of a component based solely on a vision of its ultimate function, without the compromises imposed by process limitations. Instead, designers can focus on creating products that most efficiently and effectively meet the utmost performance goals.

That's right, a laser printer for making METAL PARTS. Using a fine dust of the metal, precisely fused via the laser, to make a complete part. Printed on demand. In ten years, your classic muscle car needs a new crankshaft? A new one could be made on the spot, out of superior materials.

Printing. Until we achieve full nanotech, keep an eye on this and see if we don't come closer and closer to the Holy grail of desktop nanofactories. We may not have to wait till full nanotech to start an age of abundance.


And now on to the supercomputing front:

http://nextbigfuture...e-chip-bob.html

A conversation with the developers of the 100-core chip I have talked about previously

http://nextbigfuture...-fpga-like.html

Nanoletters - Memristor-CMOS Hybrid Integrated Circuits for Reconfigurable Logic

Hybrid reconfigurable logic circuits were fabricated by integrating memristor-based crossbars onto a foundry-built CMOS (complementary
metal-oxide-semiconductor) platform using nanoimprint lithography, as well as materials and processes that were compatible with the
CMOS. Titanium dioxide thin-film memristors served as the configuration bits and switches in a data routing network and were connected to
gate-level CMOS components that acted as logic elements, in a manner similar to a field programmable gate array. We analyzed the chips
using a purpose-built testing system, and demonstrated the ability to configure individual devices, use them to wire up various logic gates
and a flip-flop, and then reconfigure devices.

Translation? A chip that can reconfigure itself. Need more video processing? Changes made to convert part of the processor to video display could be done. Need a emulator? The chip could duplicate the hardware instead of emulate it. Need a self adjusting neural network capable of rewiring it's own hardware like a brain? This could be a big break for AI.

http://nextbigfuture...osition-of.html

Direct deposition of graphene on various dielectric substrates is demonstrated using a single-step chemical vapor deposition process. Single-layer graphene is formed through surface catalytic decomposition of hydrocarbon precursors on thin copper films predeposited on dielectric substrates. The copper films dewet and evaporate during or immediately after graphene growth, resulting in graphene deposition directly on the bare dielectric substrates. Scanning Raman mapping and spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy confirm the presence of continuous graphene layers on tens of micrometer square metal-free areas. The revealed growth mechanism opens new opportunities for deposition of higher quality graphene films on dielectric materials.

Translation, the steps to making all carbon chips are coming quicker and quicker.



And in organ printing, The Methuselah Foundation is offering a prize that is likely to accelerate the development of the organ printer for replacing organ donors with printed organs.

http://nextbigfuture...-new-organ.html

The Methuselah Foundation has launched a new prize to advance life extension and regenerative medicine.

The NewOrgan Prize will be given for successfully constructing a whole new organ – heart, kidney, lung, pancreas or liver - from a patient's own cells. The organ must be transplanted and have functioned properly for two years in order for the award to be granted. The dollar amount of the prize will grow with donations from the general public.

Maybe we'll see some quick improvements in the organ printer due to this.



On the nanotech side of things, we have bacteria building pyramids:

http://nextbigfuture...nopyramids.html

Many science fiction novels have envisioned swarms of artificial microrobots capable of performing complex collective tasks. Unfortunately, today’s technological constraints have prevented such powerful concept to be a reality when considering artificial microrobots. In this paper, we show that a swarm of computer-controlled flagellated Magnetotactic Bacteria (MTB) acting as natural microrobots of approximately 1 to 2 micrometers in diameter can perform many of the same complex collective tasks envisioned with these futuristic self-propelled artificial microrobots. To prove the concept, magnetotaxis-based control has been used to coordinate a swarm made of thousands of these self-propelled natural microrobots to build in a collective effort, a miniature version of an ancient Egyptian pyramid.

Computer controlled flocks of bacteria used to manufacture something. Pyramids now, what next? Well we leapfrog Nanotech by using bacterial assemblers?

http://nextbigfuture...igh-energy.html

Monolithic cathodes of optimized porosity prepared by sintering LiCoO2 powders provide high volume utilization and surprising stability under electrochemical cycling. Combined with a novel packaging approach, ultrahigh energy densities in small volumes are enabled. The microbatteries have volumes < 6 mm3 and provide sustained 2.5 h discharges with energy densities of 400-650 W h L-1.

Ultrasmall, ultracapacity, nanobatteries. Nanoelectronics powering nanobatteries. More solutions to powering our ever smaller machines.


And in notes of interest:

http://nextbigfuture...weight-and.html

Researchers at the University of South Carolina, collaborating with others from China and Switzerland, drastically increased the toughness of a T-shirt by combining the carbon in the shirt’s cotton with boron – the third hardest material on earth. The result is a lightweight shirt reinforced with boron carbide, the same material used to protect tanks.

“The currently used boron-carbide bulk material is brittle,” Li said. “The boron-carbide nanowires we synthesized keep the same strength and stiffness of the bulk boron carbide but have super-elasticity. They are not only lightweight but also flexible. We should be able to fabricate much tougher body armors using this new technique. It could even be used to produce lightweight, fuel-efficient cars and aircrafts.”

The resulting boron-carbide fabric can also block almost all ultraviolet rays, Li said.

Yes folks... you heard that right. Bulletproof t-shirts.

[Mind]

The only problem is their closed development environment. Experiment with your Iglasses (or Ipod, or Ipad) and you are negating your warranty (at the least) and breaking the law (at the most). I wish Apple would be more open like Google. They have so much potential to spur new innovators (like Jobs and Waz themselves back in the 70s), but seem to be focused more on profit margin. I have nothing against people making money - the more the better - but I think they could make money and benefit future society by being more open.

And I warned you this would come:

The iGlasses are coming.

I'm glad a big name like apple is developing these, if apple gets practical AR glasses on the market we'll see commercial incentive for innovation and competition.

[valkyrie_ice]

The only problem is their closed development environment. Experiment with your Iglasses (or Ipod, or Ipad) and you are negating your warranty (at the least) and breaking the law (at the most). I wish Apple would be more open like Google. They have so much potential to spur new innovators (like Jobs and Waz themselves back in the 70s), but seem to be focused more on profit margin. I have nothing against people making money - the more the better - but I think they could make money and benefit future society by being more open.

And I warned you this would come:

The iGlasses are coming.

I'm glad a big name like apple is developing these, if apple gets practical AR glasses on the market we'll see commercial incentive for innovation and competition.

That closed development environment is going to kill them. Jobs has become that old man on the screen in his 1984 commercial, and wants complete control of everything Apple. He's marginalizing his market and appealing to the lowest common denominators. Far from saving the print media, his policies and plans for the iPad look like they were designed to doom them. He's trying to keep up the walled garden of the industrial era industries, and is likely to follow the RIAA into oblivion over the next decade. He's become everything he once despised.

I don't know which tablet is likeliest to dominate eventually, but while iPad may be a big initial splash, it's already looking primitive compared to several other pads coming on the market.

I expect a lot of ups and downs in popularity and use of pads over the next five years, before the next big thing is VR lenses.

[Reno]

The only reason the Kindle took off was because of its easy on the eyes black and white display. It appealed the the old folks with money who read and can afford such a novelty. The problem with the ipad is there is no real reason for it. You can get a more powerful easier to use everything with a keyboard you can actually feel for a hundred dollars less. The Ipad is a gimmick. In two years it will go down in history right next to segway.

Jobs has become a CEO. All he does is lead his company towards profit. If that means stepping on the little guy so be it. His only goal is keeping up with the demands of his stockholders.

Edited by bobscrachy, 07 April 2010 - 02:04 AM.

[valkyrie_ice]

The only reason the Kindle took off was because of its easy on the eyes black and white display. It appealed the the old folks with money who read and can afford such a novelty. The problem with the ipad is there is no real reason for it. You can get a more powerful easier to use everything with a keyboard you can actually feel for a hundred dollars less. The Ipad is a gimmick. In two years it will go down in history right next to segway.

Jobs has become a CEO. All he does is lead his company towards profit. If that means stepping on the little guy so be it. His only goal is keeping up with the demands of his stockholders.

Actually, I see this evolving into the device I call a intelligent notepad. In a few years it will indeed be a replacement for notebooks... real notebooks that are made of paper today. For artists it will be a boon, but most real computer use is going to be through VR interfaces. Tablets will be very popular for the near future, especially with students, but lose out to VR interfaces within a few years.

The walled garden Jobs is making is a sure fire method to ensure other, more flexible, more open devices, will eventually dominate the market. Apple lovers will buy it simply for the name, but it's lack of vital features like usb, removable memory, and camera will pretty quickly make it less desirable to tablets which have them, for lower cost.

[KalaBeth]

I can't fault the guy for wanting to make money for his company, that's his job.

But the "walled garden" approach just... ugh. Like Val, I just don't see that working out well for anybody - Apple included. There's just too many other alternatives. I mean... AOL? Haven't we learned this lesson already?


Still.. that we're getting PADDs in twenty years instead of four hundred just rocks. I remember as a kid in the 80s/90s watching an old (original) Star Trek episode with my Dad, and mentioning how outdated the control panels looked. He said something like "yup... and in another twenty years the ones on the new show will look just as ancient." And honestly... yup. Near-monochrome? Really?

What was that XKCD joke?

"Actually, the future arrived three years ago..."

Edited by KalaBeth, 07 April 2010 - 10:36 PM.

[Reno]

The only reason the Kindle took off was because of its easy on the eyes black and white display. It appealed the the old folks with money who read and can afford such a novelty. The problem with the ipad is there is no real reason for it. You can get a more powerful easier to use everything with a keyboard you can actually feel for a hundred dollars less. The Ipad is a gimmick. In two years it will go down in history right next to segway.

Jobs has become a CEO. All he does is lead his company towards profit. If that means stepping on the little guy so be it. His only goal is keeping up with the demands of his stockholders.

Actually, I see this evolving into the device I call a intelligent notepad. In a few years it will indeed be a replacement for notebooks... real notebooks that are made of paper today. For artists it will be a boon, but most real computer use is going to be through VR interfaces. Tablets will be very popular for the near future, especially with students, but lose out to VR interfaces within a few years.

The walled garden Jobs is making is a sure fire method to ensure other, more flexible, more open devices, will eventually dominate the market. Apple lovers will buy it simply for the name, but it's lack of vital features like usb, removable memory, and camera will pretty quickly make it less desirable to tablets which have them, for lower cost.

I doubt they will replace anything at all.. If the tablets were something that we were going to move towards you would have watched them test it in the japanese and korean markets first instead of rolling it out over here where they know they can pinch a few dollars out of us gullible Americans.

A more likely outcome probably lies with the smart phones. They are only becoming cheaper and more powerful. Given a few years you're going to see them slowly become integrated into store checkouts, advertisement displays, and interactive entertainment like wii etc. We're already seeing labs experimenting with dermal displays and optical prosthetics. Give it 10 years and you'll see dermal displays, and personal HUD displays across a person's field of vision become common.

Edited by bobscrachy, 08 April 2010 - 02:53 AM.

[valkyrie_ice]

I don't really expect them to replace anything but paper for a lot of creative types who draw paint write by hand, etc. As an artist, I can see the value of a device which I could draw on and which would need to be about the size of a standard drawing sheet. For day to day use? I do see them becoming intelligent paper in a variety of sizes for various industrial uses. Clipboards, waitress order pads, etc. Personal entertainment devices? Not so much. Phone sized devices are at a major advantage there, and VR lenses will rapidly eradicate the usefulness of large displays outside the home by providing HUDs which could have any apparent sized display you wish. Their true utility in a modern nation will be in business where they may enable a massive reduction in the use of paper products.

Where they WILL make a huge impact is in third world countries once they are being cheaply made via printing as one piece, solar powered, environment proof net capable computers, not glorified iPhones. Such tablets could be little more than internet surfers and still make an enormous impact in education and uplifting such populations to higher living standards. They could also be highly beneficial in education by allowing students to carry a single pad for books and assignments instead of 50lb of dead trees.

Tablets do have their uses. Sadly the iPad is trying to sell all the wrong ones. It's a pretty, expensive toy. In three years, there are going to be tablets using flexible displays, printed electronics, and ultracapbatteries which will be lighter, open access to connect to most networks, and far cheaper than Apple will ever allow their "babies" to be sold for.

And dropping them won't matter at all.

And now on to some news:

http://nextbigfuture...omic-layer.html

In the wake of the breaking news of new findings in barrier coatings manufactured by atomic layer deposition (ALD), Beneq is developing the equipment that will take ALD firmly into the field of Roll-to Roll industrial production.

Beneq already offers the world’s first and only research equipment for continuous ALD (CALD), the TFS 200R Thin Film System. In an article published by the Finnish Broadcasting Company (YLE), research scientist Terhi Hirvikorpi tells about superior barrier layer properties enabled by ALD: ALD-coating has the potential to reduce the need of aluminum in juice cartons by more than 99%. The thin film coating applied by ALD efficiently replaces the need for the present solution, which is a thick layer of aluminum on the inside of the carton.

Confused as to what this has to do with anything? Being able to lay down an atom thick, continuous sheet in a industrial sized R2R process? It's aluminum now, next it could be graphene, or a layer of nanoscale circuits... It's yet one more developmental step showing that the manufacturing paradigm is shifting towards printing for many things.

Or, it could be printing out billions of sheets of this: http://nextbigfuture...-memristor.html

NY Times reports Stan Williams said that H.P. now has working 3-nanometer memristors that can switch on and off in about a nanosecond, or a billionth of a second

* memristor memory will be a competitor to flash memory in three years that would have a capacity of 20 gigabytes a square centimeter.
* memristor memory will be faster and use less memory than phase-change memory. In Phase change memory, heat is used to shift a glassy material from an amorphous to a crystalline state and back.
* in the two years since announcing working devices, HP had increased memristor switching speed to match today’s conventional silicon transistors. The researchers had tested them in the laboratory, he added, proving they could reliably make hundreds of thousands of reads and writes.

UK Register also has coverage

HP thinks it can do even better and scale the technology to far lower process geometries than flash. The HP target is to double the density of flash in 2013 and have faster speed.

20 gigs per CM. That's approx 9 square cm per flash, potentially meaning 180 gig flash in the not to distant future. But Memristors can also act as processors with built in memory, enabling more efficient computers that don't have to do memory read/writes.

Massive memory + massive speed + High speed printing = Cheap, powerful computing devices that will be the backbone of the age of VR.

But th-th-th-th-that's not all folks! From Brian Wang himself over at NBF: http://nextbigfuture...20-million.html

What looks possible by 2020 if the research from five different research groups can be combined ?

Here is the five things to combine -

1. Montreal researchers have created computer controlled bacteria to make nanopyramids.

Magnetic nanoparticles under computer control - determine how the cilia operate.

2. Other researchers have placed 3 micron X 3 micron by half a micron chips inside living cells and

3. in the same article as number 2 other researchers have used magnetized nanoparticles to control cells and hold them in desired positions and shapes

4. From the exclusive nextbigufuture interview with an executive from Tilera, a company that makes One hundred core CPUs that use 7 times less energy for the same processing power as Intel chips.

Tilera forecast making 3D cube chips with 1000 cores by 2020.

5. Memristor-CMOS hybrid chips are close - probably first one commercial within 3 years.

FPGA like processes can make memristor-CMOS chips.
Memristor nanowires scale down to 5 nanometer feature size.
Each memristor can do the work of 10 transistors

Therefore the 2020 possibility combining the above - 5 nanometer feature size, 20 layer chips with only half micron thickness.

300 by 300 by 20 layers of memristors would be equal to about 2 million memristors with a performance of 20 million transistors implantable into a
living cell. If the living cells have flagella they would have with computer controlled movement.

So, what we have here is a bootstrap to nanotech. Controlled bacteria capable of performing as nanobots. Or more generally, computer controllable cells. Imagine your doctor taking some of your white blood cells, implanting controls in them, and directing them to destroy cancers, or trigger their abilities to become other cells for repairing damaged tissue? Howsabout bacteria that can build true nanoassembly factories? Since the computer controls and devices are not genetic additions to the cells, even if some escape in the wild, once they have divided, they are simply normal cells again. But they could enable everything that free assemblers could, without the "grey goo" problem, and allow us to make the first true nanofactories.


Now on the biotech front: http://nextbigfuture...uman-cells.html

BioTime and its collaborators reported on March 16, 2010 in a scientific paper titled “Spontaneous Reversal of the Developmental Aging of Normal Human Cells Following Transcriptional Reprogramming” the reversal of human cellular aging (Journal of Regenerative Medicine)

* The Company reported that by selecting for cells with sufficient levels of the immortalizing protein telomerase, they were able to reset the clock of aging back to the embryonic state.

* Using the new technologies of reprogramming, BioTime scientists showed that time’s arrow of development, as well as aging, could be reversed.

* BioTime revealed why existing Induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cell lines being studied showed signs of premature aging, and a means to overcome that roadblock.

* This new capability does not require the use of human embryos or egg cells.

* BioTime’s reversal of developmental aging may be the seed for future technologies that will one day allow young cells of any kind to be produced that might be useful for aging patients in repairing the heart, the blood system, the brain, and the retina, as well as many others applications. In this way, we might increase the “healthspan,” that is, the years free from expensive and debilitating disease.

Now before you get too excited, what this means is that they have figured out how to reverse the developmental "age" of cells to revert them from adult form back to embryonic stem cells.

Remember Dolly the Clonesheep? Her health problems stemmed from the inability of the cloners to reverse the developmental age of the source cells. This made her prone to cancer due to the premature aging tags her cells started with. This is also one of the problems with current stem cell research on adult cells, and why embryonic cells are desirable for research. Adult cells reverted to stem cells have much higher risks of going cancerous.

However, it seems this problem is now solved. Which is likely going to mean that stemcell research is about to enter a massively accelerated period of advancement. If any cell can be reverted to embryo stage, then there are no longer constraints on research due to religious objections. No embryo's will be needed for research on them anymore. Anyone can provide them.

It also will mean a massive speedup of their use in therapy, a massive reduction in the cases of cancer from stem cell therapies, and speed the development of organ printing, and other bioprinting technologies.

And it could also lead to advances in industrial and agricultural cloning. Imagine a meat processing plant without animals, where cloned steaks are grown from stemcell stock, or a farm which produces clones of prize winning tomatoes. Or even vast printing farms, which use bioprinters to print thousands of steaks at a time.

And that is in addition to it's potential for rejuvenating our elderly, and ourselves.