13 replies to this topic

[lightowl]

Nanobots may very well be the final stage in our quest for immortality, so what is the deal ?

http://nanobot.blogs...biomedical.html

[Live Forever]

Saw this link to Forsight over at Betterhumans, and found it interesting. (here is the PCMag article they are discussing)

Interesting as they go through some of the technologies currently being developed, and the potential applications. The timeframes seem quicker than most transhumanists even predict:

At a NASA nanotech meeting in August 2004, Prof. Sitti gave his timing projections: 5-10 yrs: nanoassembly, nanomanufacturing, hybrid biotic/abiotic robots. After 10 years: atomic and molecular scale manufacturing.

Neato! [thumb]

[ameldedic2]

I would like to discuss the applications of nanorobots and nanomedicine in the future. Allow me to list some:

1. Nanobots would repair DNA/Mitocondrial mutation (once the technology is mature, precision and accuracy would increase)
2. Monitor health 24/7 and alert of any infections, bacteria, virus, cancer development, etc. in the body (while also destroying it efficiently).
3. Monitor health nutrition and excercise, and report organ condition/functioning
4. Nanobots would remove particular toxic chemicals, promote healthy cell division, remove extra/interior celluar "junk," etc.
5. Scan the brain and internal organs to be reported wirelessly on a device/computer one would be carrying with him/herself.
6.Please list more if you know them.

Well, once we have nanobots available to the public and capable of carrying out most of the activities mentioned above (and perhaps more), wouldn't that give an individual say 20-50 (maybe even hundred years) extra years of life, which would be beyond capability of biotechnology? Theoritically, a person with nanobots in the bloodstream wouldn't be required to go to the doctor since all health information will be reported through wireless communication to the patient through a computer, while simultaneously the service is inexpensive and very productive.

Edited by ameldedic2, 06 November 2006 - 05:34 AM.

[bgwowk]

According to Rob Freitas, the preferred term is "nanorobots." "Nanobot" has become a term of derision in some circles.

[ameldedic2]

Yes, thank you. I really want to get Freitas's volume I nanomedcine book, but it's $168 (used) on Amazon.com and $89 + shipping at his website. :(

EDIT:

For people who are interested in the potential of nanomedicine in the future, Freitas's volume I book is free online http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI.htm, which I just figured out.

Edited by ameldedic2, 12 November 2006 - 11:55 AM.

[Athanasios]

http://www.physorg.c...s115907805.html

A midsection between the head and the long tail of sperm contains mitochondria, organelles that generate a cell's power. But sperm have also developed a second energy source to power their long tail. They employ a process known as glycolysis, which breaks down glucose to derive ATP, which cells use for energy.

The pathway for glycolysis requires 10 enzymes. Using special "targeting domains," sperm tether these to a fibrous sheath that runs the length of the tail. In this study, the researchers are trying to re-create this glycolytic pathway by modifying each protein's targeting domain so that they can instead bind to nickel ions on a manufactured chip.

So far, they have successfully attached three of the 10 enzymes required to make ATP from glucose, and each has remained functional. If they manage to attach all 10 enzymes, each enzyme will in principle act in a series to ultimately generate ATP to power a nano-device. In the body, such a device could conceivably use readily available blood glucose as fuel.

I would love to hear about other powering and propulsion mechanisms, please share!

Edited by cnorwood, 06 December 2007 - 04:16 AM.

[Johan]

Awesome! Glycolysis would be one of the easiest ways of powering nanobots, since the fuel is already in the body. No need for fuel cells, recharging, etc.

Here's a discussion mentioning nanobot propulsion.

[...]A step toward this method was developed by scientists at the University of Texas. They came up with a nanobot-size fuel cell that produces electricity directly from the glucose-oxygen reaction in human blood. It is capable of producing suffient electrical power to run conventional electronics and a similar system under development in Japan is said to have a theoretical potential to produce a peak of one hundred watts from the blood of one person, which is far more power than nanobots would actually require to function.[...]

I asked my Biology teacher about this about a month ago (wondering how hard it would be to utilize ATP for powering devices) and she said researchers probably won't do that for some time. I guess she was wrong

But there's the question of how much glucose this would use. If I were to have glycolysis-powered nanobots in my blood stream, would I need to constantly keep my blood glucose levels higher than normal?

Edited by namingway, 07 December 2007 - 04:19 PM.

[technico]

MSNBC Article on current research

[Athanasios]

Physorg also had an article on this:
http://www.physorg.c...s115907805.html

[Ethan]

By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News


The researchers have already built larger 'brains'A tiny chemical "brain" which could one day act as a remote control for swarms of nano-machines has been invented.

The molecular device - just two billionths of a metre across - was able to control eight of the microscopic machines simultaneously in a test.

Writing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists say it could also be used to boost the processing power of future computers.

Many experts have high hopes for nano-machines in treating disease.

"If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there," explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan.

"But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place."

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

"That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain," he told BBC News.

Computer brain

The machine is made from 17 molecules of the chemical duroquinone. Each one is known as a "logic device".

How nanotechnology is building the future from the bottom up
In pictures


They each resemble a ring with four protruding spokes that can be independently rotated to represent four different states.

One duroquinone molecule sits at the centre of a ring formed by the remaining 16. All are connected by chemical bonds, known as hydrogen bonds.

The state of the control molecule at the centre is switched by a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM).

These large machines are a standard part of the nanotechnologist's tool kit, and allow the viewing and manipulation of atomic surfaces.

Using the STM, the researchers showed they could change the central molecule's state and simultaneously switch the states of the surrounding 16.

"We instruct only one molecule and it simultaneously and logically instructs 16 others at a time," said Dr Bandyopadhyay.

The configuration allows four billion different possible combinations of outcome.

The two nanometre diameter structure was inspired by the parallel communication of glial cells inside a human brain, according to the team.

Robot control

To test the control unit, the researchers simulated docking eight existing nano-machines to the structure, creating a "nano-factory" or a kind of "chemical swiss army knife".

Scientists believe nano-machines could have medical applications

The attached devices, created by other research groups, included the "world's tiniest elevator", a molecular platform that can be raised or lowered on command.

The device is about two and a half nanometres (billionths of a metre) high, and the lift moves less than one nanometre up and down.

All eight machines simultaneously responded to a single instruction in the simulation.

"We have clear cut evidence that we can control those machines," said Dr Bandyopadhyay.

This "one-to-many" communication and the device's ability to act as a central control unit also raises the possibility of using the device in future computers, he said.

Machines built using devices such as this would be able to process 16 bits of information simultaneously.

Current silicon Central Processing Units (CPUs) can only carry out one instruction at a time, albeit millions of times per second.

The researchers say they have already built faster machines, capable of 256 simultaneous operations, and have designed one capable of 1024.

However, according to Professor Andrew Adamatzky of the University of the West England (UWE), making a workable computer would be very difficult at the moment.

"As with other implementations of unconventional computers the application is very limited, because they operate [it] using scanning tunnel microscopy," he said.

But, he said, the work is promising. "I am sure with time such molecular CPUs can be integrated in molecular robots, so they will simply interact with other molecular parts autonomously."

[mentatpsi]

All i can say is thank you... this is insane. It's news articles like these that shifts me a bit towards optimism .

Edited by mysticpsi, 19 March 2008 - 08:28 AM.

[Mind]

New motors for nanobots.

The video is cool - getting down closer to what was envisioned by Kurzweil, Drexler, Freitas, etc... However, I think at this point they only have the motor, the rest is an artists conception of what could be built.

[Shepard]

Singularity Hub comments on that topic.

[Lazarus Long]

I read this article earlier today on this subject of nanobots in medicine in Scientific American

http://www.sciam.com...lecular-checkup

A Molecular Checkup: The Nano Future of Medicine
Scientific American Editor in Chief John Rennie introduces the February 2009 issue
By John Rennie

Not long ago cancer medicine in the U.S. passed a hopeful milestone: for the first time, the incidence rates for both new cases and deaths in men and women declined, according to an annual report issued in late November from the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and other leading organizations. Between 1999 and 2005 diagnosis rates dropped annually by about 0.8 percent. Although deaths from some specific conditions have gone up, overall mortality from cancer is on the decline for both men and women of almost all ethnic groups, as it has been since the early 1990s, in large part because of a shrinking toll from malignancies of the lung, prostate, breast and colon.

That good news invites some cautious interpretation. Incidence rates might have fallen because fewer patients are going for mammograms, prostate screening tests and other diagnostic procedures; if so, physicians may not yet be aware of cases that will eventually surface. The drop in the mortality statistics may largely reflect the population’s healthier way of life—most significantly, its decision to kick the tobacco habit. That development is highly welcome, but it may be hard to maintain as a trend: How many other changes can people make that will be so beneficial?

To keep this anticancer momentum, therefore, health care will surely need to step up prevention and treatment in ways that are more tolerable (and affordable) for the general public. The evolving clinical field of nanomedicine may hold many of the answers, as biomedical researchers James R. Heath, Mark E. Davis and Leroy Hood describe in their article.

The term “nanomedicine” still conjures up images of teams of microscopic robots performing lifesaving surgery inside our tissues, like the miniaturized submarine crew in the 1966 movie Fantastic Voyage. Given the state of the relevant technologies, any such possibility seems at least decades away. (Personally, I will have more confidence in nanobot surgical teams sometime well after engineers can build, say, crews of autonomous dog-size robots that can keep bridges and tunnels in good repair.) But this does not mean nanomedicine is as vaporous.

Rather, in the same way that nanotechnology is better understood as the application of quantum mechanics to engineering, not the use of atoms as building blocks, nanomedicine might best be viewed as a systemic approach to understanding and maintaining health at the molecular level. As Heath, Davis and Hood explain, the accelerating advance of genomic science makes it easier to identify the hallmarks of illnesses even when no symptoms may be apparent to the patient or clinician. Not only could new blood tests diagnose a nascent liver tumor, for example, but they could also determine to which subcategory of brain tumor it belonged and suggest which gene-focused treatments might be most effective.

Such measures could not always guarantee a cure, but they might someday be able to make often fatal diseases such as cancer and AIDS manageable, much as diabetes is now. The brilliant paradox of nanomedicine is that by focusing on what is extremely small, it can provide a better way to treat a whole person.