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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Month: December 2001

UQ establishes Australian Institute of Bio-Engineering and Nanotechnology

from the World-Watch dept.
According to a University of Queensland (Australia) news release (11 December 2001), the Queensland Government and the University of Queensland have formally announced the establishment a $50 million Australian Institute of Bio-Engineering and Nanotechnology at the UQ St. Lucia campus in Brisbane. Queensland Premier Peter Beattie said the Institute was the first project to be funded through the $A 100 million Smart State Research Facilities Fund established in this yearís State Budget. Although the new institute will initially focus on biotechnology-related research and development, Beattie said, ìNanotechnology will provide the building blocks of the future. Itís the ëSmart Stateí technologies that will drive employment opportunities in Queensland in the years ahead.î

The announcement said the Queensland Government, the University of Queensland and "an overseas philanthropic organization" are funding the new institute. Beattie said the Australian national Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) would also be a key contributor to the institute. Beattie had announced plans to establish the center at a biotechnology conference in June 2001. The St. Lucia campus is already home to the University of Queensland NanoMaterials Centre (NanoMac) and Nanotechnology and Biomaterials Centre.

In a related development, on 18 December 2001 Premier Beattie also invited the collaboration of researchers in New Zealand with the new University of Queensland institute. "The NEST group (the Nanostructure Engineering, Science and Technology group) at the University of Canterbury [in New Zealand] is highly regarded by their colleagues in Queensland. . . . Links with the new Australian Institute would be a natural fit and could be beneficial to both parties," Beattie said.

NASA Ames Center may be closed; maybe NT Center, too

from the penny-wise… dept.
According to an article from the Gannett News Service (ìNASAís future in balance; closures seem imminentî, by Larry Wheeler, 26 December 2001), the Bush Administration is conducting a thorough review of the core needs and capabilities of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). According to the article, the review will include consideration of the possibility of closing down one of NASAís ten major regional centers. The report states that one of the centers that is considered vulnerable to closure or conversion to a private, non-government research park is the Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, in the south San Francisco Bay area. NASA Ames is home to the Center for Nanotechnology. The impact that closure of the Ames Center, and any other cuts that might result from the review, would have on NASA nanotechnology efforts is unclear.

Historical Interest: Transcript of 1999 U.S. House hearing

from the Blast-from-the-past dept.
Those of you with an interest in history may be interested in the transcript of the hearing held by the Subcommittee on Basic Research of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Science on 22 June 1993. The transcript is available from the U.S. Government Printing Office website as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file. Caution: it weighs in at a whopping 5.7 Mb.

These hearings, titled "Nanotechnology: The State of Nano-Science and Its Prospects for the Next Decade", included testimony by Nobel laureate Richard Smalley of Rice University and nanotechnologist Ralph Merkle, then at Xerox PARC and now a researcher at Zyvex Corporation. The House hearings were held in response to an interagency workshop that called for establishment of an integrated federal program to support nanotech-oriented research and development efforts, and were important in solidifying support for the proposed U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which was then under consideration by the Clinton Administration. The NNI was formally presented as part of U.S. federal policy in February 2000 with the FY2001 budget request. NNI is now being funded at about $US 500 million annually.

Small Times reports Lieberman will introduce nanotech bill in U.S. Senate

According to an article on the Small Times website ("Lieberman working on U.S. Senate bill that would ensure nanotechg funding", by Doug Brown, 26 December 2001), Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman is working with several U.S. senators to craft the nationís first broad nanotechnology bill, which will probably be introduced in February or March. The article cites an unnamed senior aide to Sen. Lieberman as its source. Other senators involved in drafting the bill were not named.

According to the article, Lieberman is pushing a bill to ensure that nanotechnology receives as much money and overall federal support as it needs and will likely call for some changes in the way nanotechnology gets federal funding, the Lieberman aide said. Federal investments in nanotechnology education and infrastructure, too, will be addressed in the bill. The bill is also intended to ensure that the federal government is aware of precisely what types of nanotechnology research other countries are conducting and how much they are spending. Finally, the bill will also address potential societal and ethical implications of nanotechnology.

ASNTR issues guidelines for neural repair studies in humans

According to a press release (21 December 2001), the American Society for Neural Transplantation and Repair (ASNTR) has issued a set of recommended guidelines "promoting ethical and rigorous research on investigational treatments for brain repair. "

The "Considerations and Guidelines for Studies of Human Subjects" was published in the 24 December 2001 issue of the journal Cell Transplantation. The guidelines were endorsed by the society's full membership, which includes most of the world's researchers working on applications of fetal tissue, stem cells and gene therapy for brain repair.

Red Herring names nanotech a "Top Trend" in 2001

An article in a special issue of Red Herring Magazine on the "Top Ten Trends 2001" names nanotechnology as one of the developing trends to watch ("Small Worlds: Nanotechnology wins over mainstream venture capitalists", by Stephan Herrera and Lawrence Aragon, 18 December 2001):
"Nanotechnology is coming in from the fringe. Once dismissed as just so much science fiction and Silicon Valley hokum, nanotechnology now represents no less than the next industrial revolution."

The article also quotes Richard Smalley of Rice University: "To the extent that there are solutions to practical problems like disease, feeding the world, and reconciling scarce energy resources with increasing consumption, a remarkable number of them can only be solved through nanotechnology."

Haseltine: regenerative medicine may lead to immortality

from the The-long-view dept.
An excellent article in the New York Times ("Apostle of Regenerative Medicine Foresees Longer Health and Life", by Nicholas Wade, December 18, 2001) profiles Dr. William A. Haseltine, chief executive of Human Genome Sciences, a biotechnology company in Rockville, Md., and his views on the potential for regenerative medicine, the concept of repairing the body by developing new tissues and organs as the old ones wear out. The article describes how Haseltine sees the field advancing in four stages. Some excerpts:

The first, making use of the body's own signaling factors to stimulate healing processes, is already being implemented. According to the article, the second phase of regenerative medicine, in his view, "kicks in when the body is injured beyond the point of repair, at which point you want to put in a new organ," he said. Tissue engineers have already learned to grow sheets of skin and are starting to learn how to grow replacement organs such as blood vessels and more complex tissues.

"Further in the future, he believes, biologists may learn how to fashion new organs outside the body from adult stem cells, the body's guardians and regenerator of adult tissues. These would be taken from the patient's body so as to avoid problems of immune rejection. . . . This, he says, is the point at which regenerative medicine merges into rejuvenative medicine. . . . ëSince we are a self-replacing entity, and do so reasonably well for many decades, there is no reason we can't go on forever,í Dr. Haseltine said."

"In the fourth phase of regenerative medicine, according to Dr. Haseltine's timetable, nanotechnology ó microscopic-scale mechanical devices ó will merge with biological systems. Humans are already becoming partly inorganic when they receive organ- mimicking machines like the AbioCor artificial heart. Artificial devices are likely to improve to the point that they will eventually interface with evolution's form of engineering. . . . Some people find immortality disturbing, seeing it as transgressing the line that separates people from gods. Dr. Haseltine sees it as an inherent property of life. . . . ëWhat distinguishes life from other forms of matter is that it is immortal — we are a 3.5-billion-year-old molecule,í he said, referring to the time when life on earth began. ëIf it were ever mortal, we would not be here. The fundamental property of DNA is its immortality. The problem is to connect that immortality with human immortality and, for the first time, we see how that may be possible.í "

Science editors name molectronics top science story of 2001

from the current-events dept.
The editors of the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and one of the leading scientific journals worldwide, have highlighted the field of molecular electronics as this yearís "Breakthrough of the Year" in the a special issue of the journal (20 December 2001). As usual, you cannot access their announcement or coverage online unless you are a subscriber.

However, some spot news coverage is available in articles from Reuters News Service and Associated Press (via the New York Times). Advances in the field have also been covered extensively here on nanodot. Just use the keyword "molectronics" in the search field.

VA Tech scientists receive NSF grants to explore nanotech

from the Small-stuff dept.
According to a press release (20 December 2001), two Virginia Tech research projects — to develop new sensors for detecting pathogens and DNA, and to improve molecular devices in electronic applications — received Nanoscale Exploratory Research (NER) grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Research by Massimiliano Di Ventra of Virginia Techís Department of Physics and a joint effort of Randy Heflin of physics and Kevin Van Cott of chemical engineering is exploring the nanoscale world through computer simulations and a combination of optics, thin-film technology, and analytical biochemistry.

U. of Colorado researchers identify switch that controls aging in worms

from the The-worm-turns dept.
According to a press release (10 December 2001), two University of Colorado at Boulder researchers working with GenoPlex Inc. in Denver have identified a biological switch that controls lifespan in tiny worms, a finding that could have applications for mammals, including people.
The switch, known as DAF-16, is a protein that can either lengthen or shorten the lifespan in the eyelash-sized roundworm, C. elegans, said CU-Boulder psychology Professor Thomas Johnson. Johnson, who is a fellow in the universityís Institute for Behavioral Genetics, or IBG, said DAF-16 is a critical part of a complex signaling pathway that involves insulin and glucose. Henderson has identified a molecule that embodies a trade off, said Johnson. "If DAF-16 is ëon,í it triggers less reproduction, more efficient cell repair and longer lives. On the other hand, if DAF-16 is ëoff,í the result is more reproduction, worse cell repair and a shortened lifespan," he said.
There is a good possibility scientists could develop a pharmaceutical intervention that would trigger translocation of DAF-16 into the cell nucleus of a variety of animals, including humans, said Henderson. This would cause organisms to lower their reproduction level and fight off the negative impacts of free radicals.

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