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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Author: Foresight Editor

Reason correspondent rages against "neo-Luddite movement"

from the meme-wars dept.
A lengthy commentary by Reason Magazine science correspondent Ronald Bailey ("Rage Against the Machines: Witnessing the birth of the neo-Luddite movement", July 2001) recapitulates his passionately-expressed concerns over what he has called a "global anti-technology movement". Previous diatribes more specifically focused on nanotechnology appeared in February and July of 2001. In this latest piece Bailey concludes: "The hopeful future of humanity freed from disease, disability, hunger, ignorance, poverty, and inequity depends on beating back the forces of neo-Luddite reaction . . . The struggle for that future begins now."

Designer drug may help treat Alzheimer

from the molecular-medicine dept.
Demonstrating the wisdom of attacking some medical problems at the molecular level, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago announced on 2 August 200 that they have designed and synthesized highly potent inhibitor compounds that could lead to an effective treatment for Alzheimerís disease. The researchers designed an inhibitor that blocks the action of a protein-cutting enzyme, or protease, thought to be responsible for Alzheimerís disease. This enzyme, called memapsin 2, severs a longer protein in the brain called amyloid precursor protein, or APP, to produce beta-amyloid, which accumulates in the brain and forms plaques that lead to the development of Alzheimerís disease. The synthetic inhibitor compound blocks memapsin 2 and keeps it from cutting APP, which could halt accumulation of beta-amyloid in the brain. The paper describes the inhibitor, designed and tested in the laboratory, which is comparable in size to HIV protease inhibitor drugs now being prescribed. "Designing a smaller, more potent inhibitor is an important step in the development of an effective treatment for Alzheimerís patients, " said one of the researchers.
The work was reported in the American Chemical Societyís Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

EU initiative aims at integrated systems with "life-like perceptions"

from the blue-sky-research dept.
The Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) division of the European Union's Information Society Technologies (IST) Program has launched a new research initiative to develop "life-like perception systems". The objective of the initiative is "to create integrated perception-response systems that are inspired by the sophistication of solutions adopted by living systems. 'Perception' is meant to include sensorial, cognitive, control and response aspects, whether it refers to vision or hearing, or to any other type of interaction with the environment by a biological organism. Such systems would extend the capabilities of machines or be used to augment the human senses."
More information about the program can be found on the CORDIS website at http://www.cordis.lu/ist/fetbi.htm .

Venor Vinge profiled in NY Times

from the proficient-prognosticators dept.
A profile of computer scientist and noted science fiction author Vernor Vinge appeared in the New York Times ("A Scientist's Art: Computer Fiction", by K. Hafner, 2 August 2001): "Vernor Vinge, a computer scientist at San Diego State University, was one of the first not only to understand the power of computer networks but also to paint elaborate scenarios about their effects on society. He has long argued that machine intelligence will someday soon outstrip human intelligence." Vinge also developed and popularized the concept of a technological singularity — the lower slopes of which many now believe we are climbing.

Note: Access to the NYT website is free, but may require registration.

Concerns, opportunities for nanotech in S. Korea

from the World-Watch dept.
South Korea needs to encourage investment in new fields of technology to avert a collapse of the country's manufacturing sector, according to comments by Park Sung-rok, a researcher of the Korea Economic Research Institute (KERI) in a discussion of a government development program for the next 10 years. Referring to the government's efforts to foster the four future technologies – information technology, biotechnology, environmental technology and nanotechnology – Park said that of the four, nanotechnology would be the core technology. Pointing out that Korea's investment in these future technologies is less than one tenth that of the United States or Japan, he expressed concerns about Korea's future status in these technological fields. His comments were reported in the Korea Herald ("Expert warns of manufacturing sector collapse", 24 July 2001).
However, another KH report ("Sukgyung AT Co. zooms in on nanotechnology application market", 27 July 2001) shows that private sector firms in South Korean are beginning to move into the field: "Although the government and some companies have just begun to realize the importance of nanotechnology, few Korean firms have jumped into this next-generation technology," said Lim Hyung-sup, CEO of Sukgyung AT Co., a venture startup that produces basic materials used in electronic parts.

Stem cells used to produce heart, insulin-producing cells

from the progress-and-paranoia dept.
Pointing up some of the reasons why many researchers are excited about the prospect of using embryonic stem cells to produce different types of tissues — such as heart tissue to repair damaged hearts — two teams of scientists at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Israel have produced tissue cells derived from human embryonic stem cells.
One team of researchers has for the first time succeeded in growing precursors of heart cells from human embryonic stems cells, puting the researchers considerably closer to clinical application in humans. Their report appears in the August 2001 issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. In a second study, another team demonstrated that human embryonic stem cells can produce insulin, a result that could signal an important step toward a cure for type 1 diabetes. Their research was published in the August 2001 issue of Diabetes.

Additional coverage can be found in this article from United Press International.
An interesting editorial commentary appeared in the Los Angeles Times on 29 July 2001: "Science is far ahead of the public debate, and scientists need to educate the public about what they are doing. Otherwise the public debate will be fueled by fear."

Getting at the basics of replicating machines

The August 2001 issue of Scientific American has an interesting article ("Go Forth and Replicate", by M. Sipper and J. A. Reggia) on machine replication. (Unfortunately, it is not available online). The article describes attempts to develop a general understanding of self-replicating systems, with its roots in the work of John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam, and others. The article covers research into cellular automata simulations before moving on to describe more recent work by the authors and others that often employ evolutionary methods, including self-replicating systems that do not include an explicit self-description. They also mention the pioneering 1980 NASA study on complex replicating machine systems led by Robert A. Freitas Jr., now a researcher at Zyvex Corp. and author of Nanomedicine.

The authors, aware of the implications, state: "Researchers in the field of nanotechnology have long proposed that self-replication will be crucial to manufacturing molecular-scale machines . . . Recent advances have given credence to these futuristic-sounding ideas." They add that the study of such systems presents a "twofold challenge of creating replicating machines and avoiding dystopian predictions of devices running amok. The knowledge we gain will help us separate good technologies from destructive ones."

Read more for links to a few items related to nanotechnology and self-replicating systems.

U.S. House votes to ban all forms of human cloning

from the penny-wiseÖ? dept.
The U.S. House of Representatives voted on 31 July 2001 to ban human cloning and to prohibit the practice of cloning human embryos for medical research. The vote would ban cloning not only for reproduction but also for medical research. The measure passed by a wide margin, 265-to-162. The House also rejected a less restrictive measure that would have prohibited making babies by cloning while allowing research into "therapeutic cloning". The rhetoric of the debate was impassioned, and often based on religious or moral grounds, rather than scientific or medical issues:
"Cloning treats human embryos — the basic elements of life itself — as a simple raw material," House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, said. "This exploitative, unholy technique is no better than medical strip mining."
Others said the bill would derail possibly vital medical breakthroughs. "This would stop ongoing studies to help people suffering from a whole litany of life-threatening diseases," House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, D-Mich., said

Coverage of the vote is available from UPI and the New York Times.

Medicinal Buckyballs

TanMauWu writes "Wired has an article ("Buckyballs Make Fantastic Voyage", by Jill Neimark, 1 August 2001) about using buckminsterfullerenes as tiny drug dispensers. Advantages of buckyballs as cited by the article include size (they're small), reactivity (they're not), and toxicity (also not). There's even a quote from R.A. Freitas, Jr., author of Nanomedicine."

The article focuses on the work of C-Sixty, a Toronto-based company that is applying to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for Phase I testing and fast-track status on a novel fullerene drug for HIV that has shown great promise in animal studies, even against drug-resistant forms of the virus.

Scripps researchers test artificial peptide nanotubes as antibiotics

from the self-assembling-bug-busters dept.
A research team at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) led by M. Reza Ghadiri have developed antibiotic agents based on self-assembling cyclic peptide nanotubes that which stack inside the cell membranes of bacteria and poke holes in the membranes, killing the cells. They reported on their research in the 26 July 2001 issue of Nature. The team synthesized rings of amino acids, the building blocks of peptides, which stack up to form tubes in bacterial cell walls. These self-assembling peptide nanotubes cleared infections of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in mice, even when injected far from the site of infection. Early work in this research project won Ghadiri Foresightís 1998 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for Experimental Work.

Read more for links to additional media coverage of this research.

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