• Log in with Facebook Log in with Twitter Log In with Google      Sign In    
  • Create Account
  LongeCity
              Advocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans


Adverts help to support the work of this non-profit organisation. To go ad-free join as a Member.


Photo
* * * * * 8 votes

Val's Nanotech discussion thread


  • Please log in to reply
466 replies to this topic

#151 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 19 May 2010 - 02:30 AM

It'll take a huge revolution in the way we manufacture, copyright, or govern ourselves before we will really start seeing real advances in life extension.

If everything I have written in this thread and others haven't illustrated that such a revolution is already beginning, I don't know what else to tell you.

That may apply to manufacturing, but copyright (IP) and governance? Those are murkier. I don't actually agree with Reno's premise, though. I expect advances in LE to come under our present manufacturing, IP, and governance regimes. That doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see all three changed in various ways...

#152 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 20 May 2010 - 08:47 PM

While this has already been reported in the bioscience thread allow me to relink the article here: http://news.bbc.co.u...nt/10132762.stm

This is not just a bioscience breakthrough, but for nanotechnology as well. Programmable bacteria are another way to produce nanofactured goods.

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 20 May 2010 - 08:48 PM.


#153 Reno

  • Guest
  • 584 posts
  • 37
  • Location:Somewhere

Posted 21 May 2010 - 04:10 AM

While this has already been reported in the bioscience thread allow me to relink the article here: http://news.bbc.co.u...nt/10132762.stm

This is not just a bioscience breakthrough, but for nanotechnology as well. Programmable bacteria are another way to produce nanofactured goods.


I can see the use in creating specific nanostructures, but most of the practical uses that I've heard mentioned can be done today by breeding today's bacteria for specific traits. That's more or less how the drug companies manufacture drugs, and how they created bacteria to eat plastics out of garbage dumps and crude oil from oil spills. Why spend all that money to engineer the bacteria when you can let nature do it for you with fewer hiccups through several thousand generations of selective breeding.

Edited by Reno, 21 May 2010 - 04:13 AM.


sponsored ad

  • Advert

#154 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 21 May 2010 - 04:39 AM

While this has already been reported in the bioscience thread allow me to relink the article here: http://news.bbc.co.u...nt/10132762.stm

This is not just a bioscience breakthrough, but for nanotechnology as well. Programmable bacteria are another way to produce nanofactured goods.

I can see the use in creating specific nanostructures, but most of the practical uses that I've heard mentioned can be done today by breeding today's bacteria for specific traits. That's more or less how the drug companies manufacture drugs, and how they created bacteria to eat plastics out of garbage dumps and crude oil from oil spills. Why spend all that money to engineer the bacteria when you can let nature do it for you with fewer hiccups through several thousand generations of selective breeding.

How would you selectively breed the ability for a bacterium to produce human insulin?

#155 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 21 May 2010 - 07:31 PM

While this has already been reported in the bioscience thread allow me to relink the article here: http://news.bbc.co.u...nt/10132762.stm

This is not just a bioscience breakthrough, but for nanotechnology as well. Programmable bacteria are another way to produce nanofactured goods.

I can see the use in creating specific nanostructures, but most of the practical uses that I've heard mentioned can be done today by breeding today's bacteria for specific traits. That's more or less how the drug companies manufacture drugs, and how they created bacteria to eat plastics out of garbage dumps and crude oil from oil spills. Why spend all that money to engineer the bacteria when you can let nature do it for you with fewer hiccups through several thousand generations of selective breeding.

How would you selectively breed the ability for a bacterium to produce human insulin?


It requires splicing. Can't be bred for. Thus artificial DNA has some advantages.


Now on to the News!

In Graphene news:

http://nextbigfuture...smarons-in.html

At Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source, scientists working with graphene have made the first observation of the energy bands of complex particles known as plasmarons. Their discovery may hasten the day when graphene can be used to build ultrafast computers and other electronic, photonic, and plasmonic devices on the nanoscale. Understanding the relationships among these three kinds of particles—charge carriers, plasmons, and plasmarons—may hasten the day when graphene can be used for “plasmonics” to build ultrafast computers—perhaps even room-temperature quantum computers—plus a wide range of other tools and applications.

“The interesting properties of graphene are all collective phenomena,” says Rotenberg, an ALS senior staff scientist responsible for the scientific program at ALS beamline 7, where the work was performed. “Graphene’s true electronic structure can’t be understood without understanding the many complex interactions of electrons with other particles.”

The electric charge carriers in graphene are negative electrons and positive holes, which in turn are affected by plasmons—density oscillations that move like sound waves through the “liquid” of all the electrons in the material. A plasmaron is a composite particle, a charge carrier coupled with a plasmon.


I have no idea what this means, but it seems important. Going to have to research some I guess.



Then we have high speed data news:

http://nextbigfuture...munication.html

Quantum dot laser featuring an active layer containing high-density arrays of quantum dots
Fujitsu Limited, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., and the University of Tokyo today announced the world's first quantum dot laser-based 25 Gbps high-speed data transmission.

Quantum dot lasers are a type of laser being anticipated as a next-generation semiconductor laser capable of handling high-speed data transmissions while consuming minimal power. As increasing the number of quantum dots is known to improve a quantum dot laser's operation speed, layers of quantum dots with a higher density than conventionally employed were stacked, thereby doubling the laser's operation speed and enabling a significant improvement over previous technologies. This new technology is expected to be employed for optical sources for next-generation high-speed data communications that aim to achieve data transmission speeds of 100 Gbps, ten times faster than current data transmission speeds.


High speed data transmissions for high speed computers.

#156 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 22 May 2010 - 05:08 AM

How would you selectively breed the ability for a bacterium to produce human insulin?

It requires splicing. Can't be bred for. Thus artificial DNA has some advantages.

yeah, it was a rhetorical question...

The electric charge carriers in graphene are negative electrons and positive holes, which in turn are affected by plasmons—density oscillations that move like sound waves through the “liquid” of all the electrons in the material. A plasmaron is a composite particle, a charge carrier coupled with a plasmon.

I have no idea what this means, but it seems important. Going to have to research some I guess.

I didn't know what a plasmon was, so I looked at it. God Damn, this is pretty awesome stuff. When I think about how far technology has moved in the past three or four decades, it's pretty amazing. And we've just started to exploit such quantized fluid phenomena. Much much more to come. Here's a nice little plasmon thing if you want to read about it. The superscripting in the article is broken (at least in my version of FF) so read numbers like 106 as 10^6.

#157 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 22 May 2010 - 05:58 PM

Thank you Niner. Now to share some tidbits from wikipedia.

Plasmons play a large role in the optical properties of metals. Light of frequency below the plasma frequency is reflected, because the electrons in the metal screen the electric field of the light. Light of frequency above the plasma frequency is transmitted, because the electrons cannot respond fast enough to screen it. In most metals, the plasma frequency is in the ultraviolet, making them shiny (reflective) in the visible range. Some metals, such as copper and gold, have electronic interband transitions in the visible range, whereby specific light energies (colors) are absorbed, yielding their distinct color. In semiconductors, the valence electron plasma frequency is usually in the deep ultraviolet[1][2], which is why they too are reflective.


This shows how useful this could be for optics and displays. If graphene can be tuned to vary it's plasma wavelength, there is a huge potential as an optical metamaterial.

Possible applications

Position and intensity of plasmon absorption and emission peaks are affected by molecular adsorption, which can be used in molecular sensors. For example, a fully operational prototype device detecting casein in milk has been fabricated. The device is based on detecting change in absorption of a gold layer.[4]

Plasmons have been considered as a means of transmitting information on computer chips, since plasmons can support much higher frequencies (into the 100 THz range, while conventional wires become very lossy in the tens of GHz). For plasmon-based electronics to be useful, an analog to the transistor, called a plasmonster, must be invented.[5]

Plasmons have also been proposed as a means of high-resolution lithography and microscopy due to their extremely small wavelengths. Both of these applications have seen successful demonstrations in the lab environment. Finally, surface plasmons have the unique capacity to confine light to very small dimensions which could enable many new applications.

Surface plasmons are very sensitive to the properties of the materials on which they propagate. This has led to their use to measure the thickness of monolayers on colloid films, such as screening and quantifying protein binding events. Companies such as Biacore have commercialized instruments which operate on these principles. Optical surface plasmons are being investigated with a view to improve makeup by L'Oréal among others.[6]

In 2009, a Korean research team found a way to greatly improve OLED efficiency with the use of plasmons.[7]

A group of European researchers led by IMEC has begun work to improve solar cell efficiencies and costs through incorporation of metallic nanostructures (using plasmonic effects) that can enhance absorption of light into different types of solar cells: crystalline silicon (c-Si), high-performance III-V, organic, and dye-sensitized solar cells. [8]


The bold face in mine. But think about that. Graphene used conventionally could be 3 to 10 THz. Graphene plasmonic computers could be 300 to 1,000 THz.

#158 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 22 May 2010 - 06:45 PM

And in the feild of robotics:



Little Dog. Big Dog's little sibling.

From Gizmodo, where the "Skynet is going to kill us" BS was so sickening that I won't even provide the link.

And for Quantum Computer stuff:

http://nextbigfuture...d-nanowire.html

One exciting application at the forefront of diamond research is in quantum science. Nonclassical (single-photon) light sources based on individual color centers in diamond, most notably the nitrogen-vacancy (NV) center have been used for secure communication based on quantum-cryptography protocols. Coupling between the NV center's electronic spin and nearby nuclear spins can be used to form a large qubit register an essential ingredient for a quantum computer. Recently, techniques designed to manipulate the NV center have been applied to nanoscale magnetic-field sensing based on single spins. But practical implementations of these technologies require efficient excitation and extraction of single photons from NV centers using a simple optical system. This is a challenge because of the high refractive index of the diamond host, so that the majority of photons emitted from an embedded color center are not accessible even to sophisticated setups.

Diamond nanowire with an embedded NV center acts as an antenna that enables efficient incoupling of the pump power used to drive the NV center's optical transition, as well as efficient outcoupling of emitted photons to an objective lens: see Figure 1(a). The diamond nanowires, ~2μm long and ~200nm in diameter, are fabricated from type Ib diamond (which contains randomly distributed NV centers) using electron-beam lithography and reactive ion etching see Figure 1(b).


More efficient quantum optical devices. Woot!


And High speed internet:

http://nextbigfuture...s-128-tbps.html

Sydney University demonstrated a photonic chip components and demonstration of terabit internet.

The chip enables optical time division multiplexing (OTDM) and could increase the efficiency and capacity of current optical systems by processing communications optically, rather than electrically. By avoiding the usual electrical-optical-electrical conversion in fibre networks, the researchers expect to achieve a hundredfold increase in network speeds. Lead Researcher Vo set up a Tbps network with optical chips installed at the transmitter and receiver. One chip generated a high bit-rate signal at the transmitter, and another successfully received and demultiplexed the data at 1.28 Tbps. The chip is at least five years from being commercially ready.


Read that as "in a worst case senario, five years"

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 22 May 2010 - 06:45 PM.


#159 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 23 May 2010 - 06:48 AM

Little Dog. Big Dog's little sibling.

OMG. Wow, it is so "the future" now; the hell with the flying cars. Little dog is so scary-smart, I can honestly understand where the Skynet paranoia comes from. The answer to it is that our military has had the ability to annihilate us for decades, and they haven't done it yet. It would behoove us to stay on top of some of the creepy strains of politics that are floating around, and make sure the sane remain in control.

Read that as "in a worst case senario, five years"

Everything in the entire history of the commercialization of technology would suggest that we apply 's/worst/best/' to this.

#160 chris w

  • Guest
  • 740 posts
  • 261
  • Location:Cracow, Poland

Posted 23 May 2010 - 05:50 PM

Little Dog. Big Dog's little sibling.

OMG. Wow, it is so "the future" now; the hell with the flying cars. Little dog is so scary-smart, I can honestly understand where the Skynet paranoia comes from.


Haha, my thought's exactly, I just watch it over and over, that is one mofo graciously walking puppy, I love how it always strives to keep the "belly" at the most possible distance from the surface.


The answer to it is that our military has had the ability to annihilate us for decades, and they haven't done it yet. It would behoove us to stay on top of some of the creepy strains of politics that are floating around, and make sure the sane remain in control.


I agree and hope Alex Libman doesn't hang around here because that would so trigger his paranoia driven flame - thrower. THEY are comming !

Edited by chris w, 23 May 2010 - 05:57 PM.


#161 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 23 May 2010 - 06:47 PM

And from Technology prediction news:

http://nextbigfuture...everything.html

Scientific American looks at 12 events (mostly technology) that would change everything before 2050. Scientific American gets the probability and impact of those events completely wrong. They also miss important events and technology. http://www.scientifi...ange-everything

Overcoming Bias takes note of the vastly underrating of importance by Scientfic American of machine self-awareness. http://www.overcomin...rld-remade.html


The Scientific American list and my brief comments:

Machine-self awareness (likely) [Very Important but not likely until after 2030 without other breakthroughs]

Creation of life (almost certain) [synthetic DNA cell reboot already happened and there is more work to make the synthetic cell membrane.]

Room-temperature superconductors (50-50) [Improved superconductors helps in many ways and just getting to room temperature is not the only way things bust out with superconductors. Vast price breakthroughs will happen by 2016 - articles on Super Power Inc superconducting wire. As noted here, superconducting wire can be placed in orbit to enable the efficient generation and capture of multi-gram quantities anti-matter.]

Fusion energy (very unlikely) [almost certain and before 2025. Even partial success can allow fission to close its fuel cycle by allowing transmutation of uranium 238 and enable single stage to orbit space planes. Note vastly better superconductors helps progress to fusion energy. Totally successful commercial nuclear fusion can reduce energy costs by 5-100 times and trigger and economic boom which enables faster technology development]


Disasters and events Where the Response is create mitigating technology and take preventive and mitigating actions
Nuclear exchange (unlikely) [Any action involving less than 100 nuclear bombs is very bad but is about like world war 2. Building construction should be improved to mitigate impact.]

Asteroid collision (unlikely) [still need to develop space and get control]
Deadly pandemic (50-50) [need to develop and deploy the sensors to track Microbial developments in real time and create general immunity enhancement and as close to instant as possible on-the-fly immune system upgrades to react to pandemics]

Polar meltdown (likely) [glaciers are not melting that fast and othre technology will allow mitigation]

Pacific earthquake (almost certain) [so what]


Irrelevant

Extraterrestrial intelligence (unlikely) [we need to get hypertelescopes up to directly image other worlds and could then see the artifacts of extraterrestial intelligence. It would be psychologically important to mankind. The likelihood relates to how well we develop space and vastly better telescopes]

Cloning of a human (likely) [Yes, it will happen but irrelevant]

Extra dimensions (50-50) [Maybe we prove them but unless they can be used for technology then only of theoretical relevance]

Technology that will happen and change Everything by 2050 that are Not on the Scientific American List

Molecular nanotechnology - we already have early DNA nanotechnology and advancing self assembly. The computational chemistry work of Freitas and Merkle is being experimentally tested. There is a lot of activity in this area.

Quantum dots and Quantum Computers

Carbon nanotubes and graphene and the new material revolution

Advanced Metamaterials

Plasmonic and optical computing

Memristors (reconfigurable hyperlenses and other enabling technology)

Synthetic biology

Life Extension, human regeneration and tissue engineering


It never fails to amaze me how narrowly some of the supposed best minds tend to think. Brian does a good job of pointing that out.

#162 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 24 May 2010 - 03:57 AM

It never fails to amaze me how narrowly some of the supposed best minds tend to think. Brian does a good job of pointing that out.

Well, they aren't the best minds anymore. SciAm used to be for real scientists; now it's going the route of Discover. Humanity is on the verge of transforming itself from animals to gods, and they list stuff like Human Cloning? Room temp Superconductors? Yawn.

#163 AdamSummerfield

  • Guest
  • 351 posts
  • 4
  • Location:Derbyshire, England

Posted 24 May 2010 - 08:52 PM

May I insert a shameless plug?
Molecular Nanotechnology in the Real World: How Feasible is a Nanofactory?

Talk by Philip Moriarty, first man to move an individual atom.

#164 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 26 May 2010 - 06:58 PM

[quote name='AdamSummerfield' post='409764' date='May 24 2010, 03:52 PM']May I insert a shameless plug?
Molecular Nanotechnology in the Real World: How Feasible is a Nanofactory?

Talk by Philip Moriarty, first man to move an individual atom.[/quote]

*yawn* the same old objections to Drexler that have been being made since EoC was published. And yet step by step it's still being done.



So, in response let me repost in full this:

[quote]Perceived Ludicrousness Levels - How People React To Technology

by Joseph Friedlander.

I was looking up NASA Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) from 1 to 9 to better characterize the state of some upcoming inventions, and I thought about using them to comment upon how ordinary mental resistance to new inventions proceeds. Note that the order parallels the order of the Technology Readiness Levels scale for ease of comparison. (Literally, I took parts of the defining phrases from the NASA paper by John C. Mankins of the Advanced Projects Office—hat tip to him. )



Technology Readiness Levels Summary

TRL 1 Basic principles observed and reported
TRL 2 Technology concept and/or application formulated
TRL 3 Analytical and experimental critical function and/or characteristic proof-ofconcept
TRL 4 Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment
TRL 5 Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment
TRL 6 System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment (ground or space)
TRL 7 System prototype demonstration in a space environment
TRL 8 Actual system completed and “flight qualified” through test and demonstration (ground or space)
TRL 9 Actual system “flight proven” through successful mission operations

Perceived Ludicrousness Levels

A parody and comment upon Technology Readiness Levels

PLL 1 Basic principles observed and mocked— the very concept of space flight declared impossible, unthinkable etc. ‘My head hurts so it can’t work’. ‘I’d feel better in a universe where that was not possible, so go away, etc’.

PLL 2 Technology concept and/or application formulated and disrespected—People cannot get their heads around a specific thing and so instinctively reject it—the idea of one small engine putting out in a few cubic meters, more power than an ocean liner. Or the idea that you can tell the Moon’s distance to a millimeter (vs. a few kilometers) etc. When people say ‘I can’t imagine that could work!’ the proper response is ‘You are making a comment about your mind, not the proposal at hand.”

PLL 3 Analytical and experimental proof-of concept rejected—especially one that is built on at least 3 or 4 nested levels of needed inventions, ONE of which since developing it needs 3 or 4 levels of inventions successfully. But folks, really, this is not like multi-level marketing http://en.wikipedia....level_marketing where you need to find many levels of superb salesmen (hard to do) picked from random contacts among the general population (darn near impossible) and then they must find willing customers (even less probable than the above.) Here, you are inventing separate inventions and then combining them to a super invention. Many of the biggest projects have been of this sort, at least to make the industrial capabilities for the final project. The atomic bomb required Teflon (as insulation against uranium hexaflouride corrosion) klystrons and Yagi antennas. But unlike multi-level marketing, the inventions (if possible at all) have no power to resist you. They can be made or they can’t. So the combined chances of all working are low, but higher than people’s prejudiced instincts would suggest. In fact, I would argue that such multi-level tech architectures are risky but hold up the prospect of gain in proportion to their risk. http://en.wikipedia....lders_of_giants which gives perspective on the nested nature of scholarship and invention itself. http://en.wikipedia....eview_Technique for when you don’t know how long a multi-level development project will take. With the first nuclear subs, the inertial navigation, reactor and air recycling systems all were the equivalent of inventions themselves—the systems as a whole, involving many separate inventions..

PLL 4 Component and/or breadboard validation in laboratory environment—disrespect for “With THIS you’re going to do real challenge X in environment Y?”

PLL 5 Component and/or breadboard validation in relevant environment—contempt for-- ‘Good against remotes is one thing, boy—good against the living is something else…”

PLL 6 System/subsystem model or prototype demonstration in a relevant environment (ground or space) --contempt for a working model as just a toy.---The best example of this was Andrew ‘Slipstick’ Libby’s star drive in Methusaleh’s Children by Robert HeinleinBut prior to the test, pilot Lazarus Long thought it was just a lab-bench toy. . It was a little gizmo carried into space and attached to any part of the relevant ship’s mass—and it took an ocean sized generation ship to the stars. Consider that the first atomic bombs were hand-assembled on the tower or in flight for safety reasons (‘Not on my base you don’t…’) Doesn’t that make them prototypes? That doesn’t mean they cannot be perceived as ludicrous…

PLL 7 System prototype demonstration in a space environment—lack of respect for a fully operational system without a track record. Now there can be reasons for this, based upon the learning curve of the early Space Race era.

Since the original TRL system was written for NASA space devlopment, this is just a better version of number 6. Note the fact of ‘flown hardware’, and the cult of ‘man rating’. How can you prove a negative? The best way would be to buy rockets which have been flown by the CEOs of the development companies as a vote of confidence. That will either weed out the incompetent or provide a bureaucracy free way of telling if a rocket company is serious or desperate enough to make it work.

Note also my ‘bucket test’. I once saw an estimate of a billion dollars for a simple crane for lunar use given the ‘cost plus’ environment of the major aerospace contractors. Just a crane to lift lunar station modules (based upon the space station) off of a lunar lander.

The thing to recognize here is that for certain systems enormously cheap substitutes can be provided at a certain level of risk. My test for this is, you want to take this steel bucket for use on the Moon. ‘Will the bucket hold regolith?’ (moon dirt/sand/rocks). How much would that bucket cost put through their aerospace cost-plus model? I would not bet against a million dollars for a custom lighter, better, more useful bucket—that holds the exact same amount of regolith. PLL7 has sunk many a space company proposal, often with the deadly words, ‘’unflown hardware.” Many times that is a real concern. Sometimes it is not.

PLL 8 Actual system completed and “flight qualified” through test and demonstration (ground or space) –pointing out the dangers of using the new capability-- ‘It will always be far more expensive to do things this way instead of old way X.’ ‘Do we really need to do this when our cities are in crisis/bankruptcy/open street war/etc.’ (The last can be modified to instead include the pet funding need of anyone else, including fellow scientists who hate manned space flight under the ‘fungibility delusion’ as I call it—that funding for X can be substituted to cause Y. Really, it goes back to the budgetmakers who start from scratch, and those scientists are betting they can outlobby every connected Wall Street firm, every retired ex General working for a defense contractor, every retired Senator working for a political action committee as a door opener, etc.

PLL 9 Actual system “flight proven” through successful mission operations –Credit grabbing combined with niche-displacement and rent-seeking. “I always said it can be done. Now let’s junk this obsolete system and fund my favorite social program which ignores heroic engineering challenges and focuses on subsidizing failure…? And once more the engineers are the first to be fired and the last to be fired are the budget cutters themselves.

I will end this article by gently noting that if Wall Street and Washington people had to meet the same accountability/liability standards as architects and engineers do for structures that fall or hardware that dosen’t work – it would be a different (and better) world. Imagine a Wall Street CEO losing his job because his products were deceptive or a Washington lawmaker being stripped of his membership in Congress because what he said his law would do did not happen?

Edited by valkyrie_ice, 26 May 2010 - 07:03 PM.


#165 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 26 May 2010 - 09:00 PM

Now, for some real news:

http://nextbigfuture...antum-dots.html

Quantum dots are crystalline molecules from a few to many atoms in size that interact with light and magnetic fields in unique ways. The size of a dot determines its band gap – the amount of energy needed to close the circuit – and makes it tunable to a precise degree. The frequencies of light and energy released by activated dots make them particularly useful for chemical sensors, solar cells, medical imaging and nanoscale circuitry.

Singh and Penev calculated that removing islands of hydrogen from both sides of a graphane matrix leaves a well with all the properties of quantum dots, which may also be useful in creating arrays of dots for many applications.

Their work revealed several interesting characteristics. They found that when chunks of the hydrogen sublattice are removed, the area left behind is always hexagonal, with a sharp interface between the graphene and graphane. This is important, they said, because it means each dot is highly contained; calculations show very little leakage of charge into the graphane host material


Now, if you are a reader of science fiction, in particular that of Wil McCarthy, you will have read about a substance called WELLSTONE. Also called Claytronics as well as Programmable Matter. Or according to wiki a variety of computronium.

Need I go on?

Now there are far more applications that will be exploited much sooner than the possibilities of wellstone, such as quantum dot transitors, LEDs etc. So imagine a carbon display with pixels smaller than the rods and cones in your eyes built into a contact lens.

Such an amazingly useful material carbon is.

#166 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 27 May 2010 - 01:18 AM

Hummm, due to looking up info on Wellstone I was lead to this: http://www.wilmccarthy.com/hm.htm

Hacking Matter, his non-fiction book on the use of quantum dots both present and future. I've just started reading it and can already say it's provided plenty of food for thought.

http://www.wilmccart...ediaEdition.pdf

#167 Delorean

  • Guest
  • 78 posts
  • 23

Posted 27 May 2010 - 02:58 AM

Thanks for that

#168 Reno

  • Guest
  • 584 posts
  • 37
  • Location:Somewhere

Posted 27 May 2010 - 04:07 AM

"Magical" isn't the word I would use. If Kurzweil's predictions pan out we'll see it in a matter of decades. But, to tell the truth I think making predictions about the possibilities of programmable matter is like a cave man predicting the impact of the wheel or fire.

Edited by Reno, 27 May 2010 - 04:08 AM.


#169 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 27 May 2010 - 04:36 AM

Hacking Matter, his non-fiction book on the use of quantum dots both present and future.

Looks like a keeper. Thanks, Val.

#170 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 27 May 2010 - 05:35 PM

Hacking Matter, his non-fiction book on the use of quantum dots both present and future.

Looks like a keeper. Thanks, Val.


Your welcome. Just finished the book, and found myself noting over and over and over how many times he posed a question to which graphene provided an answer. I wanted to write to him to discuss this for a possible article, but can't locate a contact email.

#171 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 27 May 2010 - 07:07 PM

And just for sheer fun!




Wonder what ole Zeus would say to using his weapons as musical toys?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

#172 chris w

  • Guest
  • 740 posts
  • 261
  • Location:Cracow, Poland

Posted 27 May 2010 - 07:42 PM

I agree. I did the same for a friend in NYC a few years back. He was being treated for hogkins limphoma, and I was trying to give him hope by suggesting he get into the rexin-g trials. I can remember myself saying cancer would be a memory in a few years. He laughed and told me the pharmaceutical companies would never let it get to the public. They make too much money off the treatment of the disease to cure it. He died a few months later, and now a few years after the fact I'm starting to agree with him. It'll take a huge revolution in the way we manufacture, copyright, or govern ourselves before we will really start seeing real advances in life extension.

I've had two friends die of Hodgkins. One was 13, the other was 30. I hope you don't go down that paranoid path about the pharmas suppressing cures. For a number of reasons, that isn't going to happen. We haven't cured cancer yet because it's a really tough constellation of diseases. It's just a hard problem.


I wouldn't be that quick on the trigger with the Pharma conspiracies, Niner. I also try to avoid this kind of thinking, but remember that it doesn't have to look like a couple of sweaty guys plotting in a half dark, smoke filled room. Even profit driven neglect without deliberate maliciousness is enough here. In India they have had a problem with the bacteria causing tuberculosis, as it has become immune to the presently used medications and had to turn to Open Source two years ago ( and with good results announced the last month from what I read ) to crack down on the bacteria's proteonome because the state was too poor to fund such a venture on its own and the western pharmaceutical sector simply wasn't interested in this particular research - no sufficient financial incentive.

Edited by chris w, 27 May 2010 - 07:44 PM.


#173 Reno

  • Guest
  • 584 posts
  • 37
  • Location:Somewhere

Posted 27 May 2010 - 08:05 PM

I wouldn't be that quick on the trigger with the Pharma conspiracies, Niner. I also try to avoid this kind of thinking, but remember that it doesn't have to look like a couple of sweaty guys plotting in a half dark, smoke filled room. Even profit driven neglect without deliberate maliciousness is enough here. In India they have had a problem with the bacteria causing tuberculosis, as it has become immune to the presently used medications and had to turn to Open Source two years ago ( and with good results announced the last month from what I read ) to crack down on the bacteria's proteonome because the state was too poor to fund such a venture on its own and the western pharmaceutical sector simply wasn't interested in this particular research - no sufficient financial incentive.


It wasn't Niner.

#174 chris w

  • Guest
  • 740 posts
  • 261
  • Location:Cracow, Poland

Posted 27 May 2010 - 08:46 PM

Anyway - greedy asholes they are.

Edited by chris w, 27 May 2010 - 09:13 PM.


#175 Reno

  • Guest
  • 584 posts
  • 37
  • Location:Somewhere

Posted 29 May 2010 - 07:12 PM

And just for sheer fun!

Wonder what ole Zeus would say to using his weapons as musical toys?

Bwahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!


I wonder if he could still father children after that show.

Edited by Reno, 29 May 2010 - 07:13 PM.


#176 niner

  • Guest
  • 16,276 posts
  • 2,000
  • Location:Philadelphia

Posted 29 May 2010 - 08:36 PM

I agree. I did the same for a friend in NYC a few years back. He was being treated for hogkins limphoma, and I was trying to give him hope by suggesting he get into the rexin-g trials. I can remember myself saying cancer would be a memory in a few years. He laughed and told me the pharmaceutical companies would never let it get to the public. They make too much money off the treatment of the disease to cure it. He died a few months later, and now a few years after the fact I'm starting to agree with him. It'll take a huge revolution in the way we manufacture, copyright, or govern ourselves before we will really start seeing real advances in life extension.

I've had two friends die of Hodgkins. One was 13, the other was 30. I hope you don't go down that paranoid path about the pharmas suppressing cures. For a number of reasons, that isn't going to happen. We haven't cured cancer yet because it's a really tough constellation of diseases. It's just a hard problem.

I wouldn't be that quick on the trigger with the Pharma conspiracies, Niner. I also try to avoid this kind of thinking, but remember that it doesn't have to look like a couple of sweaty guys plotting in a half dark, smoke filled room. Even profit driven neglect without deliberate maliciousness is enough here. In India they have had a problem with the bacteria causing tuberculosis, as it has become immune to the presently used medications and had to turn to Open Source two years ago ( and with good results announced the last month from what I read ) to crack down on the bacteria's proteonome because the state was too poor to fund such a venture on its own and the western pharmaceutical sector simply wasn't interested in this particular research - no sufficient financial incentive.

The problem of pharma not being interested in diseases of the poor is quite real, but that's just the Free Market at work, doing what it does best; maximizing the profit of corporations. That sort of profit-driven decision is very different from suppressing cures in order to make more money on horrible treatments. Is big pharma evil? Yeah, but then so is big oil, big junk food, big retail, big anything. They are evil to a point, but they could not suppress a "cure for cancer" if they tried. There are far far too many people who would enjoy the fame and fortune of being the Jonas Salk of cancer; the information would leak out.

#177 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 01 June 2010 - 01:49 AM

Okay... Wow.

http://nextbigfuture...g-libraries.htm

Biological systems that are capable of performing computational operations could be of use in bioengineering and nanomedicine, and DNA and other biomolecules have already been used as active components in biocomputational circuits. There have also been demonstrations of DNA/RNA-enzyme-based automatons, logic control of gene expression, and RNA systems for processing of intracellular information. However, for biocomputational circuits to be useful for applications it will be necessary to develop a library of computing elements, to demonstrate the modular coupling of these elements, and to demonstrate that this approach is scalable. Here, we report the construction of a DNA-based computational platform that uses a library of catalytic nucleic acids (DNAzymes), and their substrates, for the input-guided dynamic assembly of a universal set of logic gates and a half-adder/half-subtractor system. We demonstrate multilayered gate cascades, fan-out gates and parallel logic gate operations. In response to input markers, the system can regulate the controlled expression of anti-sense molecules, or aptamers, that act as inhibitors for enzymes.


If I am reading this right, this is a proposal for a DNA based GENETIC COMPUTER. i.e. a computer that uses genes as programming language.

For analogy, if current genetics is equivalent to assembly language, this is DOS 6.11

Remember way back in Engines of Creation, when Drexler talked about nanocomputers in every cell of the body? Those were based on diamonoid construction and rod logic. This is the DNA equivalent, and could be used to create a bacteria with a brain that will allow it to be controlled as if it's a nanoscale robot. Think about programmable white blood cells capable of being directed to eliminate cancer cells, without drugs, just taking your own cells, adding control systems, and directing them precisely to target ONLY cancerous tissue. If the control systems aren't integrated into your DNA, then as soon as the cell divides it reverts back to a normal cell.

This could allow the creation of assemblers which can only function in contained environments. Any modified cells which might escape revert right back to normal at their first division, preventing a runaway event.

interesting possibilities no?

#178 valkyrie_ice

  • Topic Starter
  • Guest
  • 837 posts
  • 142
  • Location:Monteagle, TN

Posted 02 June 2010 - 06:56 PM

Watch this. Get used to it. You're going to see a LOT more of this in the future.



#179 Luna

  • Guest, F@H
  • 2,528 posts
  • 66
  • Location:Israel

Posted 03 June 2010 - 12:36 PM

I have a level 80 blood elf mage too :-D it's interesting most of the guys there have a female character!

What do you mean we'll see a lot of this in the future? we don't have people being their characters just yet.

#180 Reno

  • Guest
  • 584 posts
  • 37
  • Location:Somewhere

Posted 03 June 2010 - 03:20 PM

I have a level 80 blood elf mage too :p it's interesting most of the guys there have a female character!

What do you mean we'll see a lot of this in the future? we don't have people being their characters just yet.


Hehe, female characters are just more customizable. :-D




0 user(s) are reading this topic

0 members, 0 guests, 0 anonymous users