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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: Nanodot

U.S. totally unprepared for bioterrorism

from the one-such-incident=disaster-in-more-ways-than-one dept.
Senior Associate Charles Vollum writes "In a UPI story headlined U.S. totally unprepared for bioterrorism, Dr. Tara O'Toole, deputy director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies, makes a case that 'The technology to manufacture biological weapons of mass destruction is now widely available through open literature and the United States is totally unprepared to cope with a bio-terrorist attack…' This is a crude precursor to the dangers nanotechnology will potentiate. Will stories like this lead towards the kind of reasoned debate the Foresight Institute is working to create, or will they just scare people into wild over-reactions?"

SETI: nanotech/AI, organic, or non-existent?

from the we're-so-very-lonely dept.
A long article on SETI looks at "where are the aliens?", including the effect of nanotechnology on this question. The assumption seems to be that, given nanotechnology, the aliens exist but are hiding. Another possibility is that they just aren't there at all: Whatever superior intelligence emerges from human ingenuity will be the first that the Milky Way has seen, asserts physicist Frank J. Tipler of Tulane University. "Weíre it as far as intelligence, but one-cell organisms are probably all over the place in the solar system and possibly the entire spiral arm" of the galaxy in which Earth is situated.

A branch of the comments on this story was deleted due to pilot error. The deletion could also be credibly blamed on poor user interface design, or poor system documentation. I'm looking forward to being able to work on Nanodot and related stuff full-time to make such occurrences less likely. — Dave
The "pilot" was me; sorry. –ChrisPeterson

Mir visitor to be selected on reality TV

from the OK-we're-amused dept.
From the press release: MirCorp announced today that it has signed an agreement with Mark Burnett, executive producer of the internationally known Survivor television series, for the creation and marketing of a TV program in which the winner will travel to Mir…"Destination Mir" will be a multi-week televised story of the selection process that the TV program's civilian "guest cosmonauts" will undergo. Russian space officials will make the determination of who has "the right stuff." See also the article in Florida Today; thanks to Space Frontier Foundation for the pointers.

Australian University Offers Undergraduate Degree Program in Nanotechnology

from the Groves-of-academe dept.

Flinders University, located in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia (about 750 km northwest of Melbourne) is offering a Bachelor of Science program in Nanotechnology. The BSc degree is an honours specialization of a general science degree program, adding nanotechnology-related courses to a curriculum that includes math, physics, chemistry and biology. A description of the program can be found on the Flinders web site, along with an overview of the coursework required for the program. There are apparently not yet any similar post-graduate programs in place.

This is the second degree-oriented academic program directly targeting nanotechnology that has come to our notice; the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) has initiated a doctoral (PhD) program in nanotechnology.

protein mechanics from neutron diffraction

from the atomic-age-MNT??? dept.
Neutron scattering has been used to quantify thermal positional disorder in proteins. In myoglobin, there is a transition at ~200K from a "harmonic" regime where all the atoms are trapped in single potential wells to an anharmonic regime where jumps between wells become important. The anharmonic regime is important for the biological function of myoglobin (O2 binding), but may cause problems for use of proteins as mechanical elements in nanotechnology.

"RNA World" theory strongly supported

from the sing-repeatedly-"It-Was-an-RNA-World-After-All" dept.
Foresight chairman EricDrexler points out this story from Chemical & Engineering News: "The best evidence yet that, before there were proteins, there was once a world in which RNA both provided genetic information and catalyzed chemical reactions comes from a trio of papers in the current issue of Science. In a tour de force of X-ray crystallography, chemists at Yale University have located most of the atoms in the gigantic apparatus that cells use to link amino acids together into proteins. The heart of the apparatus where peptide bonds form, they find, is composed entirely of RNA." See also The RNA World book.

Nanotech education via comic book

from the whatever-it-takes…even-if-it's-fun dept.
Senior Associate PatSalsbury writes "Alan Moore, a long-time (and fantastic) writer of comics and graphic novels, and Dan Jurgens recently co-wrote a story ("Tom Strong", #7) set in the year 2050, where nanotech was part of the daily world…I think comics are an excellent way of reaching youth…" So do we. Read More for Pat's full post. To better understand this communication format, Foresight chairman Eric Drexler highly recommends the appropriately-named book Understanding Comics.

Crackdown on Napster = problem for democracy?

from the let's-not-worship-"IP" dept.
A really long article in The Atlantic thoroughly explains the Internet vs copyright issue, quoting Lawrence Lessig, a former Harvard Law professor now at Stanford: By granting a temporary monopoly on distribution to creators, the Founders hoped to stimulate the creation of new ideas. "The creator was rewarded for a little while, but then the idea passed into the commons, where people could do what they liked with it," Lessig says. Now, he says, the campaign against piracy is pushing toward "a massive increase in regulation over the distribution of culture, which is inconsistent with the conception of the commons that lies at the root of democracy." In the American tradition artists, writers, musicians, and audiences work together, creating the intellectual ferment that has helped this country adapt to change for more than two centuries. "People hear the cries of the industry about piracy, which are real and justifiable," Lessig says. "But they don't realize that simply giving the industry what it wants will have an impact on the entire public sphere." Thanks to slashdot for the pointer.

Nanotech seed fund: MMEI

from the from-acorns-large-oaks-will-grow-by-self-assembly dept.
Senior Associate StevenVetter is quoted in this piece from the Seattle-area Eastside Journal: "Where the real progress is made is when you get the people that can bridge the gap [among disciplines],'' said Steven Vetter, president and CEO of St. Paul, Minn.-based Molecular Manufacturing Enterprises Inc. Molecular Manufacturing Enterprises Inc., a firm that invests in nanotechnology companies…Vetter of Molecular Manufacturing is on the front line of commercialization. The company provides seed funding for nanotechnology projects. With assets of $1 million, Molecular Manufacturing has funded a few undisclosed ventures that are still considered too high-risk for venture capitalists. The returns on investing in nanotech are 10 or 20 years away, which is why backers have shied away. With the National Nanotechnology Initiative, however, and universities and other research organizations putting up matching funds, “traditional money is getting more interested,'' Vetter said. The piece also quotes Foresight advisor Ralph Merkle, and, er, me.

UCLA team reports advance in molectronics

from the bits-and-pieces dept.

According to an article in the New York Times (18 August 2000), chemists at the University of California at Los Angeles are reporting a further advance in the effort to produce electronic circuitry on a molecular scale. (Note: access to the Times site is free, but requires registration. To avoid logging in, read instead this version at the San Jose Mercury News.)

In an article published in the 18 August 2000 issue of Science, the U.C.L.A. team, led by James Heath and J.Fraser Stoddart, says it has succeeded in using a molecule to create an electronic switch that can be reconfigured — turned on and off, and on again — like a transistor.

UPDATED: UCLA has also posted a lengthy press release in which the researchers discuss their work in some detail. It's a useful overview of the work, straight from the source.

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