Trans-Future: Nanotechnology - Upcoming stories

Nanopolitics

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

Two reports out this week hint at a new political alignment in the coming decades. Both reports focus on nanotechnology, but have implications well beyond. Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison shows a strong correlation between moral doubts about nanotechnology and embrace of religion.

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Eric Drexler's New Blog Metamodern and Belated H+ E-Magazine

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

Metamodern isn’t intended to be “a blog about nanotechnology”; its scope includes broader issues involving technologies with world-changing potential. For example, looking well downstream in technology development, I will sketch the requirements for large-scale systems able to restore the atmosphere to its pre-industrial composition. Closer to hand, social software and the computational infrastructure of our society are high on the list.

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"Smart Dust" -Space Explorers of the Future

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

The future of space exploration will witness a revolutionary change vwith a new breed of planetary explorer being designed by engineers at the University of Glasgow which are as tiny as dust particles These tiny, "Smart Dust" shape-shifting devices can be carried on galactic wind like dust particles, and are smart enough to communicate, fly in formation and take scientific measurements (image shows a "nano submersible" used for expeditions into the hidden space of the human body and beyond to outer space.).

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Warning on Nanometerials

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

UK study on nanometerials has concluded with a warning about the dangers posed by the new materials and recommendations for industries using them (BBC News - Action urged over nanomaterials): Urgent regulatory action is needed on nano-scale materials widely used in industry, the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has concluded. The materials have so far shown no evidence of harm to people or the environment, the commission found. However, it said there was a "major gap" in research about the risks posed by the materials, which are found in some 600 products globally. [...] The commission added that it saw no reason to implement a blanket ban or moratorium on the development and implementation of nanomaterials, because of the societal benefits they represented, for example, to medicine and the renewable energy industry. Instead, it urged co-operative, international action to establish tests for their dangers and regulatory oversight. They also suggested changing the industrial reporting of the use of nanomaterials from voluntary to mandatory, with an industry "checklist" to flag up the products that posed the highest potential risk.

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Future Factory

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

SAP TV shows us how new technology such as 3D printing and the IPhone in daily use. SAP is discovering the new possibilities by combined research and development with other companies.

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Nanobots on Mars

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

Beginning more than a hundred years ago, science fiction writers, early filmmakers, and, later, serious scientists explored the possibilities of human beings expanding beyond Earth to dwell in the Solar System. Whether on the Moon, on Mars, in hollowed-out asteroids, or in constructed space stations, the dream of our species breaking free from this wet rock on which we evolved has been a source of fascination. We're getting closer now to having the technological capability to make the attempt. Some would argue, in fact, that we could have had thriving colonies on the Moon for decades now, had the US and the USSR not cut back on their space programs in the 1970s.

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Sex and the aging brain

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

Aging is one of the most complex biological processes we know of, and the human brain the most complex biological system. Unsurprisingly, that makes figuring out how aging affects our brains – affects those processes we really care about like learning, behaviour, and memory – enormously difficult. A whole host of gross-level neuroanatomical changes take place as we get older, but it’s unclear to what extent these can explain the cognitive deficits that characterize normal aging and diseases of age like Alzheimer’s. For example, while some parts of the hippocampus (a brain structure crucial for the formation of new memories, and linked to dementia) lose neurons as we age, other parts only grow more and more synaptic connections.

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New Stem Cell Studies for Heart Therapies Begin

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

In studies scheduled to begin at Cedars-Sinai, autologous (derived from patients themselves) stem cells will be used to treat heart attack and heart failure. Studies in these areas are advanced and are expected to provide clinical results within a few years. The goal is to have stem cells providing healthy new heart cells to replace those damaged by disease.

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Nutrigenomics: Healthy Eating

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

Ever wonder if all your vitamins, cholesterol and blood pressure pills are really necessary? Just as genetic differences between individuals determine one’s susceptibility to disease, genes also determine the body’s reaction to different nutrients in food and medicine. This pioneering field of how nutrition and genes interact and the implications for dietary modification is called “Nutrigenomics.” As doctors and dieticians become more knowledgeable in this new field, they will be able to prescribe diets that exactly match individual genetic needs. A strong link between genes and food was evidenced recently when University of Wisconsin researchers knocked out a gene called SCD-1 from mice which created a foodie’s dream – a mouse that couldn’t get fat, no matter how much of a high-fat diet it ate. Human equivalent of SCD-1 exists and might someday be harnessed to eliminate obesity.

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Structural DNA nanotechnology in living cells

transfuture — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 03:35:44 GMT

Despite the rapid progress of structural DNA nanotechnology, one limitation has been the expense and labor involved to construct complex DNA nanostructures step-by-step in the laboratory. In a collaboration between the laboratories of Hao Yan at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University and Nadrian C. Seeman at New York University, two basic structural motifs of DNA nanotechnology have been efficiently and inexpensively replicated in bacterial cells. The fact that these artificial DNA nanostructures are tolerated in living cells was surprising, and may open new avenues for synergism between nanotech and synthetic biology. From Arizona State University , via AAAS EurekAlert “Using living cells as nanotechnology factories“:

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