Forbes describes work at IBM Zurich: IBM researchers in its Zurich lab have drawn–or rather, carved–a three-dimensional map of the world that’s 22 micrometers east to west by 11 micrometers north to south. At that size, about 15 of the maps could be wrapped end to end long-ways around a strand of human hair, by… Continue reading IBM makes world map 1000 times smaller than grain of sand
Longtime Foresight supporter John Gilmore writes: “I noticed a story that reminded me of something Foresight wanted to encourage in society. Wired reports that the CIA uses decision analysis software ‘Analysis of Competing Hypotheses’, and has funded a rewritten version for shared networked analysis by many people. But the gov’t contractors got into a hassle… Continue reading "Science court"-style software from the CIA
Many of you have an interest in human longevity in general and in being healthier and living longer personally. If we want to help develop and guide nanotech and other advanced technologies, we need to stay healthy. I am organizing a conference on this topic, October 9-10, here in the Bay Area: http://lifeextensionconference.com You will… Continue reading Life extension conference: $100 off discount code
Many of you will recall Bill Joy’s famous article in Wired called Why the future doesn’t need us, where he expressed concern about various technologies including advanced nanotech. Apparently he gave an update of his views on this in his talk for TED, viewable here. An excerpt: So if we can address, use technology, help… Continue reading Bill Joy on steering the future to lower-risk
An article in New Scientist with the optimistic title “Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence” gives an update on how two specific examples of computational artificial life is doing in terms of evolving to have more interesting behavior. An excerpt: Brains that have been evolved with HyperNEAT have millions of connections, yet still perform a… Continue reading Can "artificial life" evolve intelligence? An update
The Space Studies Institute will hold Space Manufacturing 14 on Oct. 30-31, 2010 at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley. Topics to be covered include: Session 1: Space Transportation Architecture Session 2: Closed Environment Life Support Systems Session 3: Robotics and Space Manufacturing Session 4: Extraterrestrial Prospecting Session 5: Engineering Materials from Non-Terrestrial Resources Session 6: Space… Continue reading Space Manufacturing Conference: Abstracts due Aug. 16
Nanowerk describes a recent advance toward the “e-nose” by an international team of researchers. Team member Andrei Kolmakov explains: Our approach demonstrates the potential of combining bottom-up nanowire fabrication protocols with state-of-the art microfabrication methods to design prospective simple sensing arrays which, in principle, might be scaled down to the size of few micrometers and… Continue reading Nanotech-based electronic noses getting smaller
We’ve received an update on work by our friend Anirban Bandyopadhyay at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. Here’s the abstract of his recent Nature Physics paper: Modern computers operate at enormous speeds—capable of executing in excess of 1013 instructions per second—but their sequential approach to processing, by which logical operations are… Continue reading Cellular automata used for 700-bit parallel processing
Foresight Research Analyst and Technical Editor James Lewis has tracked the careers of those receiving Foresight’s student award. Here are his findings on the careers of a few of these gifted young researchers: We at Foresight find it gratifying to track the subsequent careers of those who have won our nanotechnology-related prizes and awards, in… Continue reading Foresight's student award-winners go on to great things
The Open Science Summit on July 29-31 in Berkeley is looking better and better. Topics include OpenPCR, DIY biology, open source hardware, brain preservation, synthetic biology, gene patents, open data, open access journals, reputation engines, crowd-funding and microfinance for science, citizen science, biohacking, open source biodefense, cure entrepreneurs, open source drug discovery, patent pools, tech transfer, and… Continue reading Don't miss the Open Science Summit, July 29-31, in person or live webcast
