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Note from tribe.net: please assign a moderator

touguy — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 19:57:50 GMT

Hey there, "New Tech" members--

This Tribe doesn't have a moderator, but as a matter of policy, Tribe.net likes all groups to have a leader. Can you collectively choose someone to moderate your Tribe?

When you've reached consensus, have the new moderator send a note to help@tribe.net, with the words "Moderator Change – New Tech" in the subject header, letting us know that you've selected a new leader. Please be sure to include a link to this discussion thread!

Thanks--

TOU (Terms of Use) Guy

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Bio Programming

podOmatic — Sun, 11 Sep 2005 01:01:35 GMT

http://technologyreview.com/articles/05/10/issue/forward_bio.asp

The next step after reading genetic code is writing it. In June, biotech pioneers J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith launched Synthetic Genomics, a Rockville, MD-based "synthetic biology" startup aimed at creating custom-made micro-organisms.

The new company's president is Juan Enriquez, former director of Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project and CEO of the Wellesley, MA, investment partnership Biotechonomy, which funds Synthetic Genomics.

How is what you're doing different from conventional genetic engineering?
Genetic engineering mostly has been about taking a few genes, shooting them at random at cells, and seeing if anything sticks. What we're doing is very different--synthesizing entirely new DNA strands with the aim of controlling a particular life function. We then insert those into cells and have them execute that function.

What kinds of functions?
We've made a decision to focus on big problems with global impact, initially energy and global warming. Specifically, we're looking at how to optimize microorganisms that generate ethanol and hydrogen. But there's potential application for any carbon-based industry, including chemicals, carbon sequestration, and pollution remediation. To the extent that you can program how individual cells function, you can change global industries on a very large scale.

Even so, critics will take one look and say, "Frankencells!"
We're working to look at the ethical issues. You don't want to put something on the market and then have people start asking all these questions. One way of looking at this is it's the next stage in the Green Revolution. Or alternatively it's the next stage of the Industrial Revolution. I think it's both.

How does Synthetic Genomics plan to make money?
We're not trying to take over the world. We're a bleeding-edge technology company that will make its money by licensing. But I expect you'll see us announcing partnerships with some very large companies. -- By Spencer Reiss

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Liquid Polymer Could Heal Spinal Cord Injuries

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 02:33:19 GMT

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/Liquid-Polymer-Could-Heal-Spinal-Cord-Injuries-38677.html

Indiana researchers have found a way to heal spinal injuries in dogs using injections of a liquid polyme known as polyethylene glycol (PEG)

The Purdue University scientists, in a study summarized in the December issue of the Journal of Neurotrauma, found if PEG was administered within 72 hours of serious spinal injury, it could prevent most dogs from suffering permanent spinal damage.

Even when the spine is initially damaged to the point of paralysis, the PEG solution prevented the nerve cells from rupturing irrevocably, enabling them to heal themselves.

"Nearly 75 percent of the dogs we treated with PEG were able to resume a normal life," said Richard Borgens of the team.

"Some healed so well that they could go on as though nothing had happened."

It has been known for decades that two cells that touch each other can become one big cell if PEG is added to the fluid they live in. Because of this surprising ability, PEG is sometimes called a "fusogen."

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Nano Life

Tue, 16 Nov 2004 04:53:28 GMT

Santa Barbara Researchers Discover Living Nanoscale
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/11/041114235354.htm

The scientists studied microtubules from the brain tissue of a cow to understand the mechanisms leading to their assembly and shape. Microtubules are nanometer-scale hollow cylinders derived from cell cytoskeleton.

In an organism, microtubules and their assembled structures are critical components in a broad range of cell functions -- from providing tracks for the transport of cargo to forming the spindle structure in cell division. Their functions include the transport of neurotransmitters in neurons. The mechanism of their assembly within an organism has been poorly understood.

In the paper, the researchers report the discovery of a new type of higher order assembly of microtubules. Positively-charged large, linear molecules (tri-, tetra- and penta-valent cations) resulted in a tightly bundled hexagonal grouping of microtubules -- a result that was predicted. But unexpectedly, the scientists found that small, spherical divalent cations caused the microtubules to assemble into a "necklace." They discovered distinct linear, branched and loop shaped necklaces.

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Experimental evolution

Mon, 27 Sep 2004 16:19:30 GMT

"Experimental evolution develops into thriving scientific field"
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/9766995.htm

Until recently, the young field of experimental evolution - also known as evolutionary microbiology - was considered to lie on the lunatic fringe of real science. But now it hosts a thriving community of researchers in academia and industry, with increasing support from the federal government.

Besides helping to illuminate the process of evolution, their work has practical goals in medicine, agriculture, manufacturing and the environment.

Experimental evolution "is being used in many contexts to create new drugs and industrial enzymes," reported Holly Wichman, a biologist at the University of Idaho.

For example, Wilfred Chen, a chemical engineer at the University of California, Berkeley, is trying to evolve an enzyme that renders toxic pesticides harmless. Andrew Ellington, a biochemist at the University of Texas, Austin, has his sights on a molecule that acts as a decoy for the HIV virus, preventing it from developing into AIDS.

Not all experiments succeed. Huimin Zhao, a biochemical engineer at the University of Illinois, tried using evolutionary techniques to improve a natural anti-freeze protein that keeps fish alive in icy Antarctic waters. Zhao hoped such a protein would help develop frost-resistant plants, but the process didn't work, he said.

Humans, of course, have been tinkering with evolution since they first domesticated plants and animals 10,000 years ago. By selective breeding, they improved varieties of corn, wheat, dogs and goats that far surpass their wild ancestors.

That kind of progress takes centuries or millennia, however. The new laboratory experiments speed up the evolutionary clock enormously. "We're learning just how remarkably fast evolution can accomplish many things," said Lenski.

"Short-term adaptation to the environment can be observed in real time," Wichman wrote on her Web site. "It is short-term evolution that contributes to health problems such as drug resistance and host switching." (Host switching is the dangerous trick by which a lethal flu virus, for example, hops from chickens to people.)

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entertainment industry tries to block new technology

Mon, 30 Aug 2004 19:35:58 GMT

"Reining in tech
Learning from the Napster case, the entertainment industry is trying to block new technology before it takes off "
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/08/30/BUG688F1UF1.DTL

When the original Napster program became an instant consumer hit five years ago, it blindsided the music business.

Today, the entire entertainment industry -- hoping to avoid being caught off guard again -- has stepped up efforts to nip potential problems with emerging technologies in the bud, before the public gets its hands on them.

For example, Hollywood movies studios and the National Football League recently teamed up to try to block a proposal from digital video recorder company TiVo Inc. to let subscribers view recorded TV programs over the Internet. The move surprised officials of the Silicon Valley firm, who weren't even ready to introduce that feature to the public.

Meanwhile, the music industry has asked federal regulators to take action to prevent future digital radio receivers from being able to automatically compile libraries of free CD-quality songs that can be shared on the Internet. This comes despite the fact that digital radio is barely off the ground.

Technology companies and public advocacy groups criticize these moves, saying the entertainment business is trying to stifle innovation to increase its own profits.

"It strikes us as a really bad idea to regulate new technologies in their infancy, in utero if you will,'' said Fred von Lohmann, senior intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco digital rights advocacy group. "That logic could be used to justify legislation on any technology.''

But entertainment industry officials say they are just trying to strike a fair balance between allowing innovation and stopping piracy.

"We are not against technology,'' said Fritz Attaway, executive vice president for government relations for the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood's powerful Washington trade organization. "Our objective is not to stop technology, but to ensure that technology can provide a secure environment for our content.''

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HD DVDs

jmathew — Fri, 13 Aug 2004 05:58:09 GMT

I was watching some DVDs at my parents house who recently purchased an HDTV. Right now, we have a standard DVD player with progressive scan and connected with component cables. The quality of the DVDs are nice, but they aren't as 'breath-taking' as HDTV companies claim they will be.

And since it's probably going to be another year or so before Hollywood starts producing their movies onto HD-DVDs (or Blu-ray..whoever wins that format war), I was wondering that in the meantime, if its worth buying one of the few current DVD players (such as the Zenith DVB318 1080i Progressive-Scan DVD Player or the Samsung DVD-HD841 HDTV DVD player) that has an upconverter that brings the 480 resolution to 1080? I know that these players don't produce a "true" HD picture, but they must be a lot better than what I'm currently seeing, right? Has anyone seen the quality or can provide me with more info so I can decide whether its worth buying or waiting?

posted in New Tech - 2 replies

Face Recognition Technology

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 01:48:12 GMT

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/31/technology/31face.html

May 31, 2004

Technology Strains to Find Menace in the Crowd
By BARNABY J. FEDER

Face-recognition technology, often touted as a promising tool in the fight against terrorism, earned a bad reputation after it failed miserably in some well-publicized tests for picking faces out of crowds. Yet, on simpler challenges, the technology's performance is improving and business has been growing.

Major casinos now use the technology to spot card counters at blackjack tables. Washington is planning to require the technology in the next generation of American passports. Several states are using face-recognition systems to check for individuals who have obtained multiple driver's licenses by lying about their identity. And Pinellas County, Fla., recently began deploying the system in police cars so officers can check the people they stop against a database of photographs without having to go back to the office.

Face-recognition systems, using cameras and computers to map someone's facial features, collect the data for storage in databases or on a microchip on documents like passports. Making the technology work has required nearly perfect lighting and cooperative subjects, conditions that are not present when trying to spot suspected terrorists and criminals in a crowd.

That kind of application, however, remains a goal. This summer, the National Institute of Standards and Technology will stage a competition, challenging vendors to cut error rates on systems it tested in 2002 by at least 90 percent, with the results to be published next year. The prize for top performers - bragging rights based on impartial tests - is a valuable marketing tool in an industry filled with small companies.

For now, sellers of the technology have to deal with much skepticism. "The companies have not done a good job of positioning it, and as a result the technology has gotten a black eye," said Thomas J. Colatosti, a security consultant who was formerly the chief executive of Viisage, one of the few publicly traded companies in the business.

The most damaging publicity came from tests of face-recognition software and video-surveillance cameras used to spot criminal suspects on the streets of Tampa, Fla., and Virginia Beach. Those programs have not led to a single arrest, but have angered privacy advocates. Another face-recognition system that scanned 100,000 football fans entering the 2001 Super Bowl in Tampa picked out 19 people with criminal records, but none were among those being sought by the authorities.

Nonetheless, major integrators of security technology for governments, like the Unisys Corporation, Honeywell International and I.B.M., all support face-recognition technology for some uses. Viisage, based in Billerica, Mass., has seen its stock price double this year, and shares of its major domestic rival, Identix, based in Minnetonka, Minn., have also risen sharply. Viisage closed Friday at $9.81 a share, down 26 cents, or 2.6 percent, on the Nasdaq.

Though the sector remains volatile, some of the strength of those two stocks reflects the success of the companies in diversifying away from dependence on face recognition, said Joel P. Fishbein Jr., who follows security technology for Janney Montgomery Scott, a brokerage firm in Philadelphia that makes a market in the stocks but does not own any of them. Mr. Fishbein added that there is a high percentage of short sellers in the market, who are betting the prices will tumble.

Skepticism has also made it hard for entrepreneurs attempting to break into the field with new innovations.

"It soured the whole market," said Lawrence Schrank, co-founder and chairman of 3DBiometrics, a recent start-up in Boulder, Colo., that is pursuing the use of lasers to map facial structures. Dr. Schrank, a former researcher at Xerox Parc, said that the technology, currently used in medical-imaging equipment, could help the military identify individuals at long distances.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, there have been numerous trials of identity-verification technologies at airports. Some trials involved matching volunteers posing as terrorist suspects to file photos of them on a watch list. Others tried to match authorized personnel like flight crews with photo databases.

The biggest problems were the large number of "suspects" and unauthorized people who passed through control points undetected. Critics, like the American Civil Liberties Union, have also complained that the systems routinely generate a smaller number of "false positives," which mistakenly identify innocent people as suspects.

Analysts and many industry officials say that too much is being expected from the technology, which is still one of the newest methods in biometrics, a field that includes analysis of fingerprints, voices, hand shapes, gait and patterns of the iris.

The total biometrics market this year will reach about $1.2 billion, with face-recognition systems accounting for $144 million, according to projections by the International Biometric Group, a research company in New York. Face-recognition revenues should double next year and climb to more than $800 million by 2008, according to International Biometric.

Advocates of face-recognition technology have long promoted it as one of the least intrusive biometrics, and potentially the most powerful because it can make use of a huge amount of existing data.

"There are 1.2 billion digitized photos of people in databases around the world," the chief executive of Identix, Joseph J. Atick, said.

In the late 1990's, entrepreneurs in the field raced to come up with the best mathematical formula for accurately describing a face and the software for quickly measuring it against databases. Pioneers like Dr. Atick played down the difficulty of getting useful images, contending the systems measured so many variables that they would be hard to deceive.

Experience showed otherwise. Performance plummeted in poor lighting, when subjects moved past control points without staring directly into the cameras and when eyeglasses or other objects covered part of the face. Success rates also declined as the databases of potential matches grew and as the photos used got older.

Government-sponsored testing revealed other unexplained anomalies, like the tendency of the systems to identify men more accurately than women, and Asians more accurately than other races.

Technology sellers are pursing a variety of strategies to improve the results. Some are developing systems that start with three-dimensional images taken by multiple cameras, allowing more varied head angles as a person walks through a checkpoint. Others are developing complex mathematical functions to transform two-dimensional images into three-dimensional models. They are also using software to compensate for poor lighting and to take shadows off a face.

The technical advances are having an impact. Viisage, for example, struggled to achieve a 50 percent recognition rate in tests last year at Boston's Logan International Airport. But Mohamed Lazzouni, the company's chief technology officer, claimed that Viisage's results would improve to better than 90 percent if it repeated the trial with its latest technology, including elements brought in when it acquired ZN Vision Technologies of Germany in January.

Combining face recognition with other biometrics or even nonbiometric security measures could also improve the success rate. Identix hopes to meet the goal set by the National Institute of Standards and Technology by combining a technology for measuring skin texture with its FaceIt feature mapping system, Dr. Atick said.

Last year, the International Civil Aviation Organization, a division of the United Nations, adopted the use of dual biometrics in passport standards. That agency's decision to have face-recognition technology and fingerprints incorporated in all passports has been endorsed by the United States, which recently began laying the groundwork for adding face recognition to fingerprinting in all visa applications.

Those documents will eventually contain microchips recording lasting facial characteristics like the distance between eyes and shape of the jaw. Scanners at check-in counters could then check whether the face of the traveler bearing the document matches the data on the chip.

But the challenge of including the technology in passports is still enormous. The Bush administration told Congress that neither the United States nor any other country could comply with the Oct. 26 deadline Congress had set for all travelers who do not require a visa to enter the United States to have the new biometrically equipped passports.

Most experts say including face data on microchips in passports will take at least another year, and deploying the systems needed to analyze the data at every port of entry could be delayed for years.

posted in New Tech - 1 reply

Biology Enters Fourth Dimension

Thu, 12 Aug 2004 20:54:25 GMT

http://wired.com/news/medtech/0,1286,64545,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_4

A new microscope that lets scientists peer deeper into living organisms than ever before has been developed by researchers at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.

"I've seen some very striking movies from them," said Scott Fraser, professor in the bioengineering department at Caltech and director of the Biological Imaging Center.

"Right now, the study of developmental processes like organogenesis (origin and development of organs) is based on a series of snapshots taken, sometimes at great labor, of what the structure of a forming organ might be," Fraser said. "Then the researcher had to almost guess how snapshot one became snapshot two. What (the new microscopes) will allow people to do is actually watch that process take place. Every time that's happened, new insights have occurred."

The technology is called Selective Plane Illumination Microscopy, or SPIM, and it allows scientists, for the first time, to study relatively large (2 to 3 millimeter) live organisms from many different angles, under real conditions and with minimal disruption to the specimen.

A paper detailing the new device will appear in the journal Science Friday.

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Software Brain

Sat, 10 Jul 2004 22:55:14 GMT

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stories.nsf/0/C9BD3ADE7C3022AD86256EC50037B64D?OpenDocument&Headline=Programmer+seems+to+have+a+technology+that+does+everything

Programmer seems to have a technology that does everything
By Rachel Melcer
Of the Post-Dispatch
Monday, Jul. 05 2004

Steven Thaler, founder of Imagination Engines Inc. in Maryland Heights, says he
has a unique challenge: figuring out what to do with a technology that does
everything.

He and his supporters say his creation, a computer program called the
Creativity Machine, has huge economic potential. It could be the first
successful form of artificial intelligence, a machine that learns and thinks by
simulating the human brain's activity.

Thaler, 52, has used the program to compose music, to coin words, to invent a
new type of toothbrush and to detect patterns in seemingly random series of
events. It has enabled a cockroach-like robot to learn to walk, and it shows
potential for instantly spotting structural problems in items rapidly rolling
off a manufacturing line.

"This is vast technology," Thaler said. "With it, you can get into any
conceivable human enterprise. ... But how do you write a business plan for a
company that wants to do everything in the world?"

He has lots of ideas. And the pool grows on the fourth Friday of each month,
when he invites potential partners for a technology briefing. The sessions
typically end with a few new business concepts, but Imagination Engines lacks
the resources to pursue all of them.

The company, with about eight local employees, expects to bring in nearly $4
million this year. Ninety percent of the cash is coming through
technology-development contracts from government agencies, with the rest from
private-sector projects.

Imagination Engines also is experimenting with spinoff companies that license
the core technology and adapt it for specific uses. Thaler said these are
structured and managed by his "business architect," John Stann, president of
Stann Financial LLC in Sunset Hills.

The first spinoff, Synaptrix Financial Prediction LLC, was created last year as
a partner for Stann Financial. It aims to analyze a real-time flow of
information on trades in the financial markets to predict the best time to buy
or sell a particular stock.

The project showed early promise, reaching a 60 percent to 65 percent accuracy
rate, but it stalled over problems with the information feed and the need to
refine its programming, Stann said. If he can persuade Thaler to devote the
needed resources, Stann said, it still can be made to work.

"He's a smart guy, but he's not very business oriented," Stann said. "If we
could get him to focus for six months on something, I'm sure we could get him
to be successful."

Thaler admits that he's spread "molecule thin."

He wants to see his technology developed and used, but he doesn't want to spend
time running each venture. "This is the problem, writing business plans for all
these different companies and going out and getting investment."

Most investors don't understand the Creativity Machine, he said, and those who
do want to take it over. Each potential partner who comes along wants to be his
only priority.

"They don't want ideas; they want management," he said.

Thaler, more scientist and dreamer than entrepreneur, said he sees running a
business as a financial necessity. It is the means to his end: spreading a
revolutionary technology that he believes will change life for humankind.

"He's a science-fiction kind of guy," Stann said.

Still, Thaler is finding real-world applications.

Synaptrix Parts Inspection LLC, another of his spinoffs, combines an ordinary
video camera with the Creativity Machine's neural network and custom software
to perform quality-control checks in manufacturing. The system is "shown" a
variety of objects that it can learn to instantly identify for sorting or to
use as an ideal to spot defects and variations.

A manufacturer of fittings and parts for water and natural gas flow-control
systems is in talks with Synaptrix Parts Inspection, Thaler said. Though he
could not yet identify the company, he expects it to be Synaptrix Parts' first
customer.

A company in Troy, Mich., that makes advanced systems for the auto industry is
interested in developing a system that can detect and identify objects around a
vehicle, Thaler said. It could prevent accidents by "seeing" and warning of a
small child or animal in a car's blind spot as a driver backs up or of a hazard
in the road ahead.

A contract for the system has been drawn up and awaits signatures, Thaler said.

On the government side, Imagination Engines is part of a consortium developing
an airport-security system for the Department of Homeland Security. The group
recently got an 18-month, $800,000 grant to design and test a series of smart
sensors at an airport in Butte, Mont.

The system would be able to identify vehicles on airport property, monitor
them, spot and warn of suspicious activity, Thaler said.

Richard Donovan, an assistant professor of engineering at Montana Tech of the
University of Montana, is overseeing the business consortium through the Rocky
Mountain Agile Virtual Enterprises Technical Development Center. He saw Thaler
speak at an international conference on neural networks.

"I immediately saw the value of what Steve is doing," he said. "His approach
has a unique feature in that it can really analyze by itself and classify
things that you didn't even think were in the set" of items to watch for.

Existing sensor networks can detect specific items if a programmer has input
information on the item and classified it as a concern. But programmers cannot
anticipate every type of vehicle and variable at a busy airport, Donovan said.

Thaler's network has the potential, for example, to identify a truck as a
rental, notice that its tires are compressed and the engine is laboring -
indicating a heavy load - and see that the driver has left it idling for an
unusual amount of time.

"It's real fun stuff to do, but it's also really important work," Donovan said.

The Butte airport has nine flights a day. Yet under federal law, it must have
the same security features as a major hub, but with a much smaller budget.

"There are special challenges for these small airports. They don't have the
resources to throw people at it. So, what we're trying to do is throw
technology at it," Donovan said.

Imagination Engines' technology could fill in for people in a variety of
important ways, Thaler said.

The company recently got a Phase II grant of nearly $750,000 from the Defense
Department to continue developing bunker-buster robots. These robots, combined
with Thaler's neural network, eventually could replace soldiers in infiltrating
unfamiliar or hazardous areas, he said. They could map safe routes, identify
and count munitions and troop strength or find individuals of concern.

Thaler said these applications are just the tip of the iceberg. The true
potential of his technology will take decades to develop, and he doubts that he
will live to see it realized.

"I'll make a comfortable living, but I won't reach my goal," he said. "My
objective is to be the company that does everything in the world."

Reporter Rachel Melcer
E-mail: rmelcer@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 314-340-8394

posted in New Tech - 2 replies

Elevator to Space

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 00:58:02 GMT

"Scientist Sees Space Elevator in 15 Years"
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&u=/ap/20040625/ap_on_sc/space_elevator_3&printer=1

Edwards is not just some guy with an idea. He's head of the space elevator project at the Institute for Scientific Research in Fairmont, W.Va. NASA (news - web sites) already has given it more than $500,000 to study the idea, and Congress has earmarked $2.5 million more.

"A lot of people at NASA are excited about the idea," said Robert Casanova, director of the NASA Institute of Advanced Concepts in Atlanta.

Edwards believes a space elevator offers a cheaper, safer form of space travel that eventually could be used to carry explorers to the planets.

Edwards' elevator would climb on a cable made of nanotubes — tiny bundles of carbon atoms many times stronger than steel. The cable would be about three feet wide and thinner than a piece of paper, but capable of supporting a payload up to 13 tons.

The cable would be attached to a platform on the equator, off the Pacific coast of South America where winds are calm, weather is good and commercial airplane flights are few. The platform would be mobile so the cable could be moved to get out of the path of orbiting satellites.

posted in New Tech - 3 replies

Biohackers

Thu, 08 Jul 2004 21:02:00 GMT

"Experts worry that synthetic biology may spawn biohackers"
http://www.eet.com/at/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=22102744
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/08/1356258

Design of molecular machines is analogous to doing system-on-chip work, and hackers 'will not need a detailed knowledge of biochemistry to effectively create complex biochemical machines.' A Harvard genetics professor says, 'Even if we don't have bioterrorists and teen-age biohackers, we will still create things that do not have the properties that we thought they would . . . Even if you are genetically resistant and recently immunized, you will have problems with artificial biological agents.' He also says that there are two big differences between this risk and nuclear weapons: (1) building weapons is harder; (2) synth-bio work is more accident-prone. Oh great, just great: script-kiddies with smallpox . . ."

posted in New Tech - 0 replies

Body-Activated Cell Phone Commands

Sat, 26 Jun 2004 02:23:29 GMT

http://www.local6.com/news/3457167/detail.html

Japan's top phone producers want to develop cell phones into an extension of your mind and body.
Cell Phones: The Next Generation

Inventors said phones of the future will not just get smaller, but they will use your body as an extension of the phone. The finger whisper is a wearable phone in development that will send vibrations up your finger to make and receive calls.

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Nanotechnology improving energy options

Thu, 03 Jun 2004 01:44:41 GMT

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040520-044040-2981r

By Charles Choi
United Press International
Published 5/24/2004 9:39 AM

NEW YORK, May 24 (UPI) -- Nanotechnology could help revolutionize the energy industry, producing advances such as solar power cells made of plastics to environmentally friendly batteries that detoxify themselves, experts told United Press International.

Nanotechnology deals with tools at the level of atoms and molecules, on the scale of nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Because nanomaterials have far more surface area for chemical reactions or storage, they can become super-catalysts. Electrical and thermal properties and strength of materials also can improve dramatically.

One nanotech firm, mPhase Technologies in Norwalk, Conn., is partnering with Lucent Technologies to commercialize nanotechnology by creating intelligent batteries, with the intent of bringing the devices to the marketplace within the next 12 to 18 months.

"We were looking at how to take existing batteries, using chemicals and chemistry, and improve them using nanotechnologies," Steve Simon, mPhase executive vice president for engineering, research and development told attendees at a recent nanotechnology business conference in New York.

Batteries consist of metal electrodes that sit in chemicals known as electrolytes. When a battery is activated, the electrolytes react, with electrons streaming through the electrodes. Over time, the electrolytes react anyway, which is why batteries suffer from power drain even when not in use.

"Science suggests if you can separate the electrolytes from the metal part of the battery, it could last for a very long time -- very long shelf lives," Simon said.

Normal batteries also suffer from the fact that they are incompatible with semiconductor processing, which means they cannot be integrated with chips. They also are relatively slow in powering up, Simon added.

The company is seeking to develop a battery containing millions of silicon nanotube electrodes, sitting upright like a bed of nails. Atop each nanotube sits a droplet of electrolyte. The droplets rest atop the nanotubes without interacting, much like an Indian fakir can rest atop a nail bed. But when a voltage change pushes the droplets down into the spaces between the tubes, they react, causing current to flow.

"This can give them a very long storage life of years and years, by only activating when in use," Simon explained. The silicon-based devices are compatible with semiconductor processes, are easy to miniaturize, have a quick ramp up to full power, are inexpensive to mass produce and have high power and energy density.

The nanobatteries also can contain droplets that can neutralize the often-toxic electrolytes when it comes time to dispose of them. "This green effect means when thrown away, it does not pollute the environment," Simon said.

Another potential energy application involves powders of nanoparticles that can serve as fuel additives and catalysts for energy recovery, Randy Bell, president and CEO of Nanotechnologies, a company in Austin, Texas.

"Our fuel cells use nano-aluminum, and are highly energetic, producing hydrogen when put in water," Bell said. The aluminum produces more rapid and efficient burning than other existing powders, rendering it of interest for applications in rocket fuels, high-energy explosives and lead-free gun primers.

Konarka Technologies of Lowell, Mass., makes plastic devices that absorb sunlight and indoor light and convert them into electrical energy.

The devices resemble gift-wrapping paper in their thinness and flexibility, and can be integrated into fabrics and roofs. They are made using nanoscale titanium dioxide particles coated in photovoltaic dyes. When light hits the dye, they generate electricity.

"They're lightweight and flexible, more versatile than previous generations of solar cells," said Daniel McGahn, Konarka's executive vice president and chief marketing officer.

Investors in the technology include Electricité de France and ChevronTexaco, respectively the first and fifth largest energy companies in the world.

"We can get to the point where the initial cost can be competitive with the electric grid," McGahn told UPI. "If we had a 10-mile-by-10-mile square, we could power the country."

Traditionally, solar power cells are built of crystalline silicon or glass. "Coating them on plastic is fundamentally different from silicon-based semiconductors. Ours is inherently low cost," McGahn said, adding that Konarka already has sold the devices to the military for use on tents.

"You look at a soldier today. A regular field soldier carries 1.5 pounds of batteries now. A special operations soldier has a longer time out, has to carry 140 pounds of equipment besides his or her body mass, 60 to 70 pounds of which are batteries," McGahn said. "So we hope to come down on that weight."

Another energy technology that could shrink a soldier's battery load comes from Nanodynamics in Buffalo, N.Y. The company manufactures a 50-watt, solid oxide fuel cell roughly the size of a loaf of bread that can generate 3,000 watt-hours of electricity from just five pounds of propane fuel. A conventional solid oxide fuel cell given that amount of propane would generate only one-half to one-third as many watt-hours.

"We can think of replacing about 80 percent of the batteries a soldier carries with a cylinder of fuel, and literally give them months and months of operating time without recharging or getting to base camp," said Keith Blakely, CEO of Nanodynamics. He said the device basically takes conventional fuel cell components and miniaturizes them, using nanosized powders, microtubules and nanocoatings.

"It's to be launched later this year," Blakely said.

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DNA computer could fight cancer

Thu, 29 Apr 2004 22:32:42 GMT

http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20040428-125426-1817r

NEW YORK, April 29 (UPI) -- New computers made of biological molecules that react to DNA hold the promise to diagnose and treat diseases such as cancer by operating like doctors inside the body, Israeli scientists said.

The devices, used in test-tube experiments, already have demonstrated the ability to identify and then destroy prostate and lung cancer cells, but their creators cautioned it could be decades before such biological computers find their way into medicine.

"The hope is that someday this direction will help lead to a new concept of 'smart drugs,'" said researcher Ehud Shapiro, a computer scientist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovat, Israel.

"Today's drugs are like carpet bombing -- you take a large amount of drug molecules and they go all over the body," Shapiro told United Press International from Brussels. "A smart drug would only operate where the condition of disease holds."

Shapiro and colleagues have created a series of biological computers in the past five years -- several trillion of which can fit in a drop of water. Their software is made of DNA, while the hardware is made of DNA-manipulating enzymes.

The computers work on genetic material, specifically ribonucleic acid or RNA, the smaller cousin of DNA. The body uses RNA often to transmit messages in the cell. Strands of DNA and RNA can bind if the sequences of molecules that make both up match.

Diseases such as cancer leave their own chemical fingerprint in the body, including over-producing or under-producing specific RNA sequences. The computer's enzyme hardware chops up the RNA it finds. If those bits bind to a computer's DNA software -- which is encoded to look for cancer sequences -- the computer then can release a drug.

In the lab experiments at the Weizmann Institute, the drugs in question were short DNA molecules known to interfere with tumors by suppressing key cancer genes, making those diseased cells self-destruct.

"I think it's really a wonderful landmark piece of work. It certainly merits a lot of interest," computer scientist John Reif at Duke University in Durham, N.C., told UPI. "The goal would be to do this in a cell, to have a doctor in a cell. This experiment doesn't do that. It does it in a test tube -- sort of a doctor in a test tube -- so it's a really cool idea but there's a major hurdle next.

"This is the first step, the biggest and most significant piece of work to date that indicates DNA computing techniques can be really important to therapeutic medicine," Reif said.

The scientists presented their findings Wednesday in Brussels at a symposium where Nobel laureates discussed the future of the life sciences. Their data also appears in the April 29 issue of the British journal Nature.

"We're sort of running ahead of ourselves. Had you asked me a year ago when we started how long it would take to reach the milestone we reached today, I'd have said 10 to 15 years," Shapiro said. "We are still overwhelmed by what we achieved. It took us less time than we thought."

The research team ensured more than just one chemical marker of a disease is required to activate drug output from one of the microscopic computers. A lone symptom could just be a temporary, insignificant phenomenon in the body.

"In our particular design, we can diagnose the presence of a disease by looking in a relatively straightforward way for eight symptoms of a disease, and can go up to 16," Shapiro said.

Shapiro's team originally designed biological computers to compete against electronic computers. The field began in 1994, when computer scientist Len Adleman at the University of Southern California proposed how DNA could be used in solving certain important mathematical calculations, such as the so-called "traveling salesman problem," critical in planning any kind of deliveries in a complex network, from shipping freight to scheduling airline flights to transmitting data packets on the Internet.

The problem is that although a single drop of water can have trillions of biological computers working on a single problem, they moved slowly compared with electronics "and unreliably also," Bennett explained.

Because the biological computer concept did not look as if it could vie with electronics on general computing and win, Shapiro said he decided to "go back and do something useful with it."

"Electronic computers can talk very easily with other electronic devices -- a printer, a DVD player -- but they cannot talk very easily with biological molecules. We opened with biological computers instead to talk with biological molecules," he explained.

The new computers still have a long way to go before they can find use in the body, Shapiro cautioned.

"What we demonstrated is just small enough and smart enough to do the job in a test tube. Making sure it works inside a tissue culture, let alone a living organism, is going to be a challenge," Shapiro said.

"They're not packaged right now," he added. "They'd probably degrade too soon in the body to be active or effective. They'd have to be protected in some way. Also, the enzyme we used here as hardware, Fok1, cuts DNA. If it finds its way into the nucleus of a cell, it'd just chop the entire genome to pieces, and that particular cell would not be too useful afterwards," Shapiro said.

"It's a very cute idea to have chemicals within the system you're working on doing computations on that system," said physicist Charles Bennett of IBM Research in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. "Instead of having to stick a probe into a mixture of cells to find out what's happening inside, these have the advantage of having computations right in there. The thing that's doing the measuring is already part of the mixture."

Bennett also suggested expanding the range of molecules the computer could process and the types of drugs it could make.

The Weizmann team envisions future versions that could even release proteins or other compounds.

--

Charles Choi covers research for UPI Science News. E-mail sciencemail@upi.com

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Tracking Scientific Progress

Tue, 13 Apr 2004 00:48:24 GMT

"Knowledge has left books and libraries and is now changing more rapidly than ever before, say researchers. New ways of mapping science offer the prospect of new discoveries, they add."

"Science is specializing at high speed, which leads to increasing fragmentation and reinvention,"

"Researchers maintain that the very nature of knowledge is different in the digital age because information held on computers can be cross-referenced and linked. That opens new possibilities and presents new problems of extracting meaningful and relevant information from largely unorganised data collections."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3608385.stm

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Cheap Hydrogen Power

Sat, 14 Feb 2004 21:14:48 GMT

Let's hope we get this before the global oil supplies to run out...

"This points to a way to make renewable hydrogen that may be economical and available,"

"Scientists Advance Hydrogen Tech"
http://wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,62290,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3

posted in New Tech - 2 replies

Look Before You Leap

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:33:49 GMT

This article is a good illustration of the need to keep technology growth in check. Nano-tech looks great for business, but looking at the bigger picture brings red flags.

This is a really critical part of technology growth: checks and balances. As technology gets more powerful, we need to carefully adapt to managing the power. Fire, splitting the atom, transistors: all disruptive technology that brings potentially dangerous repercussions.

Nano-tech seems like it could produce dooms-day scenarios worse than nuclear winter.

"Nanotechnology Linked to Organ Damage"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A31403-2004Mar28.html

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Artifical Life Forms

Tue, 30 Mar 2004 01:21:43 GMT

This story is incredible! I didn't realize this was state of the art. Wow.

"Science on verge of new `Creation'
Labs say they have nearly all the tools to make artificial life"

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/chi-0403280359mar28,0,4395528.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

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Exoskeletons

Wed, 10 Mar 2004 23:46:33 GMT

Its amazing they can do this stuff already!!

"Robotic Legs Could Produce Super Troops"

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=624&u=/ap/20040310/ap_on_sc/human_exoskeleton&printer=1

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Holy Shit: Disposable Computers!

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 03:26:40 GMT

It had to happen. But its really only just the beginning of some huge deluge.

http://www.techweb.com/wire/story/TWB20040304S0005.

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Careful What You Say....

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 19:29:35 GMT

To people wearing sunglasses !!

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20040116S0050

This story was the last straw for me: I need a tribe to post this type of stuff. I love hearing about new technologies that come about almost every day.

Happy Posting!

posted in New Tech - 1 reply

OLEDs

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 09:56:19 GMT

This technology is going to really be a paradigm shift on information displays.

http://arstechnica.com/news/posts/1075140852.html

As long as the costs are low enough, that is :-)

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Basic Research

Sat, 31 Jan 2004 02:55:13 GMT

Like, a whole new form of matter! I have the feeling this will yield some impressive technology...

http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2004/21.html

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2004 Networking Predictions

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:05:51 GMT

http://www.nwfusion.com/columnists/2004/0105edit.html?fsrc=rss-vpns

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Warmer Gloves

Thu, 22 Jan 2004 22:04:49 GMT

A not-too-high-tech nifty new thing:
http://atmizzou.missouri.edu/jan04/glove.htm

New Tech's topics - tribe.net

Note from tribe.net: please assign a moderator

Bio Programming

Liquid Polymer Could Heal Spinal Cord Injuries

Nano Life

Experimental evolution

entertainment industry tries to block new technology

HD DVDs

Face Recognition Technology

Biology Enters Fourth Dimension

Software Brain

Elevator to Space

Biohackers

Body-Activated Cell Phone Commands

Nanotechnology improving energy options

DNA computer could fight cancer

Tracking Scientific Progress

Cheap Hydrogen Power

Look Before You Leap

Artifical Life Forms

Exoskeletons

Holy Shit: Disposable Computers!

Careful What You Say....

OLEDs

Basic Research

2004 Networking Predictions

Warmer Gloves

10 emerging technologies that will change your world