Homebrewing Genes

This is from Wired:

As the tools of biotechnology become accessible (and affordable) to a wider public for the first time, hobbyists are recapturing that collaborative ethos and applying it to tinkering with the building blocks of life.

Eugene Thacker is a professor of literature, culture and communications at Georgia Tech and a member of the Biotech Hobbyist collective. Just as the computer hobbyists sought unconventional applications for computer circuitry, the new collective is looking for "non-prescribed uses" of biotechnology, Thacker said.

The group has published a set of informal DIY articles, mimicking the form of the newsletters and magazines of the computer hobbyists -- many of which are archived online. Thacker walks readers through the steps of performing a basic computation using a DNA "computer" in his article "Personal Biocomputing" (PDF). The tools for the project include a $100 high school-science education kit and some used lab equipment.

Other how-to articles guide readers through cultivating skin cells and "Tree Cloning" -- making uniform copies of plant tissue.

Thacker calls the spirit of his article "playful," but adds that it's entirely possible that hobbyists could be part of the future of important biotechnology.

Take this technology to parts of world where they get mail (e.g. equipment and supplies); and have electricity (to power the doo-dads); and lax regulations with a less puritanical approach to DNA. A team of kids in Mumbai could hack their way into the next technological revolution: desktop genetic engineering. People could literally cook their own critters. The parable from mainframes to desktops could be repeated for genetic engineering: from lab coats to t-shirts.

Gene hackers could publish the how-tos for free and then get a piece of the hardware pie. Maybe they could publish the information on line and use a Google affiliate program to get the cash. I'm sure gene splicing equipment manufacturers out there don't have affiliate programs... yet.

Cool Phones: None Will EVER Cost Less Than $50

This from Silicon Valley News:

What will your mobile look like in 2015? Like a necklace, some specs, or a ring? See the photos here.

Those are just some of the ideas dreamt up by 26 design students from London's Central St Martins College of Art and Design, tasked by phone maker Nokia with coming up with the next must-have device for 2015's users.

As part of the union, Nokia set the designers a brief of creating a mass market mobile - with the winner seeing their design made up by the Finnish firm and receiving an internship with the company this summer.

(the gallery is here)

I think some of these innovations are like food pills. Possible, handy and cool: we may never see them. People sometimes weigh value by the pound. Look at laptops vs. desktop computers. You can put a huge amount of computing power into the space of an LCD monitor. Desktops still rule.
Cellphones will (continue to) be huge. Why? The answer: cellphone dealers. The profit margin has to yield enough dollars for the phones to be worth selling. Too cheap and they're in the realm of disposable cameras. Too much and a predator will come in with a cheap product. By packing features, you can keep the price point stable and keep the dollar flow stable to resellers. Discreet devices will carry little value because of their size.

I'm Thinking Of A Letter...

From http://www.physorg.com/news69039322.html:

"B-O-N-J-O-U-R" he writes with the power of his mind, much to the amazement of the largely French audience of scientists and curious onlookers gathered at the four-day European Research and Innovation Exhibition in Paris, which opened Thursday.

Brunner and two colleagues from the state-financed Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York were demonstrating a "brain Computer interface (BCI)," an astounding technology which digitalizes brain signals emitted as electrical impulses -- picked up by the electrodes -- to convey intent.

While no spoons were bent, this was definitely mind over matter.

Without recourse to nerves or muscles, BCI "can provide communication and control to people who are totally paralyzed" and unable to unable to speak or move, explains researcher Theresa Sellers, also from Wadsworth.

Dr. Sellers estimates there are some 100 million potential users of BCI technology worldwide, including 16 million sufferers of cerebral palsy, a degenerative brain disease, and at least five million victims of spinal cord injury. Another 10 million people have been totally paralyzed by brainstem strokes, she said.

Scientists have been experimenting with ways to translate thought directly into action for nearly two decades, but BCI has only recently begun to move out of the laboratory and into the daily lives of those trapped inside bodies that no longer respond to their will.

Possible applications extend beyond the written word into physical movement -- it is only a matter of time, Sellers says, before the same technology is used to operate motorized wheel chairs. "We can do already. But it is a complex problem, and for now it would be unsafe," she says.

Read more from http://www.physorg.com/news69039322.html

Viral Batteries

This from http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1628408.htm:

Genetically manipulated viruses could replace standard lithium-ion batteries, packing two to three times more energy than other batteries, researchers say. Cool! Battery acid create a chemical reaction. Viruses and bacteria can do the same-- after all, look at the amount of heat and carbon dioxide created by yeast cultures.

The virus batteries could be thin, transparent, and lightweight, according to a US study published online recently in the journal Science by Professor Angela Belcher of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and team.

Because less material is devoted to packaging, more of the battery is used just for generating power.

"What we're trying to do is have all of the mass and volume be used for the purpose it is to be used for, which is to power the device," says Belcher.

The researchers say such a battery should last as long as conventional batteries. And it could power anything from microelectronics, including chemical and biological sensors, 'lab on chip' devices, and security tags to larger items such as mobile phones, computer displays and even electric cars.

Building batteries, like building anything, requires assembly. The smaller the battery, the more challenging that is.

Read more...

Robotoriffic : A Digging Robot

This from: National Geographic:
Manuel Salinas, a 39-year-old inventor, claims he has built a machine that has extraordinary capabilities for finding buried objects.

In less than a year, Salinas says, he has helped solve two of the highest profile criminal cases in this South American country. And now that university lab tests seem to confirm that his robot works, mining and oil corporations are flooding him with business plans, Salinas says.

How this machine functions is still an "industrial secret," Salinas said. But ask him for proof that it works and he'll hand you a pile of press clippings on the device, called Geo-Radar or Arturito (a play on the name of Star Wars robot R2-D2).

The first public use of the Geo-Radar technology was in the case of Luis Francisco Yuraszeck, a Chilean businessman who had been missing since March 2004.

In July 2005 Policía Investigaciones de Chile, the local equivalent of Scotland Yard, asked Salinas to help on the case.

Salinas took his robot to a rural farmhouse selected by the police. With reporters watching, the robot scanned the landscape. Within two hours, Geo-Radar provided an exact location of Yuraszeck's body, buried under 12 feet (4 meters) of cement.

Arturo Herrera, general director of Investigaciones de Chile, publicly acknowledged the effectiveness of the Geo-Radar technology in locating the body.

Tiny Metals in the Coolant

This from the Globe and Mail:

Engineers in Britain have created a new type of coolant that could dramatically increase the speed of computers, improve the efficiency of car engines, lower the cost of residential heating and even change the way surgery is performed.

However, when scientists have tried adding millimetre-sized, or even micrometre-sized, particles of metals to water, the metals tended to clump together and damage the walls of their container. Now, they have learned to overcome this limitation by using particles that are only a millionth of a millimetre -- a nanometre -- in size.

One of the more rapidly expanding areas of research today is nanotechnology. Nanofluids could make heating homes much more efficient, translating into cheaper bills and lower greenhouse-gas emissions to boot. The same goes for vehicle efficiency -- engines could use less fuel. Computer chips could become even smaller and faster with small reservoirs of nanofluids connected by thin tubes tracing the circuits.

more...

Sand skiff or Tank?

This tank is totally cool. For only $19,999.95, the JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank
from NAO Design can be yours. To me, it looks like one of the sand skiffs from Return of the Jedi. All that aside, this sucker will drive. NAO? If you want to send me one for a test drive, I would consider this task to be a very good cause.

tags: JL421, Badonkadonk, Land Cruiser/Tank,
NAO Design

How to Reduce Third World Poverty and Extend First World Longevity

This article came out a short while ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4719374.stm

Sell off the organs of people in the third world to people in the first world. Callous yes: but if someone in the UK is going to buy a kidney for £23,000 why not let someone in the Kenya (per capita income of $1,100) sell it?
I know, I know. The argument is that if people are motivated by money, they will do things they wouldn't normally do. They'll kill people to harvest organs. They will offer non-human organs in a desperate attempt to grind out cash. The poor will offer up their dead. A century ago, Europeans landed in Africa and took their land and their economic destiny. Now, we're back for their corneas and lungs.
Opportunities come when possibilities butte into conventions. If the North revolutionizes their organ transplant system to presume harvesting, this opportunity will disappear. If research yields the ability to clone individual organs, we will never need a donor organ and again the opporunity will disappear. There is maybe a 10 year window where people need organs and they could be obtained through sales. Take just the UK as an example: of the 400 per year who die for lack of transplants what if 200 could get those organs? Say the going rate for these organs is £2o,000 each. That's £4,000,000 (+/- $7,000,000 Cdn)/year of money that could land in the Third world. Multiply that by the 10 or so nations who have the means to pay for purchased organs and the window of opportunity before technology makes this as viable as the 8-track. $700 million dollars could go to donors in the South in exchange for approximately 5,000 donors who each gave up kidneys, liver, heart, lungs and a grocery list of needed organs. Do you think 5000 people in the South who could serve as viable donors won't die in the next decade?
The best way to end poverty is to cut down on the number of poor people. If you give a poor household 40 years of income, they are no longer poor. More than that, we're talking about $40,000 for a kidney. Multiply the yield by all of the organs up for salvage and a donor could yield a half million dollars. This tremendous in flux in cash could certainly help a local economy as so-n-so down the street now has a house, a car and so do their ten relatives. There will be some fraud. Nouveau Riche will have gunmen show up at their house and drive away with their cars. Hucksters will keep their cash for safe keeping and never give it back. Depsite the chances that the money will end up in the wrong hands, I like the idea that some of the money will end up in the right hands.
Because it will take too long to ship an organ: donors and recipients will have to be brought closer to one another. Hospitals/resorts in the South will pop-up. They will have to be surgically clean and stable (e.g. running water and 24x7 electricity). That stability requires infrastructure. These hospital resorts will need to make that stability for themselves. The side effect is that once you build the system, others can use it. This could almost make for transplant tourism. A Casablanca for kidneys.

3D objects with lasers

According to this site:

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology uses lasers to project "real" 3D images into the ether. A special projector can cast three-dimensional shapes of white light between 2 and 3-meters into the air -- previous devices only tricked the eyes into thinking the image was 3D. The images are created by blasting the nitrogen and oxygen in the air at fixed points resulting in glowing plasma emissions which hang-out just long enough to etch an ephemeral image.

Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope...

A Stirling Engine from Pop cans

Stirling engines are super-cool innovation-- well a very old innovation. This project ( http://www.physics.sfasu.edu/astro/courses/egr112/StirlingEngine/stirling.html ) shows how to build a stirling engine from pop cans and powered by a tea light. For the doubting Thomases: here is an MPEG of the Stirling Engine at work.

tags : engineering viridian green engines

Turning Clay Into Nanotech

The people at Natural Nano have found that hallousite clay can yield a natural source of nanotubes.The clay, found in Utah, is a natural nanomaterial with remarkable properties. Now, NaturalNano's team of scientists is developing methods of separating out the nanotubes and processing them for use in some 200 commercial applications, such as additives in polymers and plastics, electronic components, cosmetics, and absorbents.

A Car That Makes Its Own Gravy

How would you like a car that makes it own fuel? A unique system that can produce Hydrogen inside a car using common metals such as Magnesium and Aluminum was developed by an Israeli company. The system solves all of the obstacles associated with the manufacturing, transporting and storing of hydrogen to be used in cars. When it becomes commercial in a few years time, the system will be incorporated into cars that will cost about the same as existing conventional cars to run, and will be completely emission free.

Truism on War

In war:
The winner is one war behind technologically.
The loser is two wars behind.

You Thought The Smart Cars Were Small

This from Nature:

They measure just 3 by 4 nanometres: a million of them parked bumper to tail would cover the length of a flea. And they are stripped down to the absolute basics: just a chassis and two axles with wheels at either end.

But they move. Using a powerful microscope, James Tour and his coworkers at Rice University in Houston, Texas, have watched their 'nanocars' trundle over a layer of gold¹.

The axles and chassis are made primarily of carbon atoms linked into rigid rods that form an H shape. At each axle tip, the researchers attached a ball-like wheel made from the football-shaped carbon molecule C₆₀.

The key question was whether these diminutive vehicles truly roll over a surface, or just skitter about because of their thermal energy, as many molecules do.

Tour and his colleagues claim that the wheels must indeed be turning. When they used the fine tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope, a device normally used for imaging at the atomic scale, to attract the nanocars and pull them along, the cars moved forward but not sideways. That's just what you would expect to happen if the C60 molecules were rotating on an axis. Occasionally the cars pivoted and took off in a new direction, making zigzag paths.

Three-wheeled nanocars with tripod axles could only turn in circles, again as would be expected if the wheels were revolving.

"This is really exciting", says materials scientist Henry Hess of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who has used biological molecular motors to drive nanoscale objects over surfaces.

Open Source Energy

The Open Source Energy Network is a great resource for all of the freelance power generation concepts. More than that, they talk about current topics. This week, they're all about the Katrina spawned oil shortage and gas price gouging.
There, I learned about this wild device: the Stirling Engine (2). A single wheel driven by part of a piston's action from a heat differential. The rest of the drive comes from the remainder of it's action. It's very smart and it's a centuries old idea:

Devices called air engines have been recorded from as early as 1699 around the time when the laws of gasses were first set out. The English inventor Sir George Caley is known to have devised air engines c. 1807. Robert Stirling's innovative contribution of 1816 was what he called the 'Economiser' now known as the regenerator which acts to retain heat in the hot portion of the engine as the air passes to the cold part and thus improve the efficiency.

During the nineteenth century the Stirling engine found applications anywhere a source of low to medium power was required , a role that was eventually usurped by the electric motor at the century's end.

It was also employed in reverse as a heat pump to produce early refrigeration.

In the late 1940's the Philips Electronics company in The Netherlands were searching for a versatile electricity generator to enable worldwide expansion of sales of its electronic devices in areas with no reliable electricity infrastructure. The company put a huge R&D research effort into Stirling engines building on research it had started in the 1930s and which lasted until the 1970's. The only lasting commercial spin-off from this for Philips was its reversed Stirling engine: the Stirling cryocooler.

Electronic Paper

I saw that the tide was coming when I saw the XML specification for electronic paper display, I thought it was close. Then I saw the development kit. The kit itself is kind of ugly-- but imagine what the kit for first TV would have looked like. There will have to be several passes of failed experimental models in the marketplace before someone comes out with transistor radio equivalent of electronic paper: cheap, ubitiqitous and handy. To augment the power of electronic paper, gumstix computers will likely play a large role.
Where is this going? I remember the most common complaint of books on computer: they're not as handy as books. Well, what if you either take 500 sheets of electronic paper, plug the book into a USB connection and the pages are zepped with new static text. This week your book is Moby Dick; next week, it's the Art of War. What is more likely is that you will take one sheet of paper that has a bulge for a USB port and four more bubbles. Plug in the paper, the book is zapped into the electronic paper: one sheet of electronic paper. Then, the bubble buttons are for backwards and forwards movement. The problem is that model takes power to rewrite the paper. So that model will take some time.
If electronic paper can become very cheap and widespread is may give a new woe: revisionism. The progress of the DMCA and digital rights management may mean that you can only commit the official source of a document to electronic paper. When they revise the book, you can get a free revision. When they revise the material with a double-plus revision, your old version will be illegitimate; you won't be able to commit it to electronic paper. Voila! Already, people who are trying to free their own cellphones from manufacturer and reseller lockdowns are getting slapped with DMCA violations.
With the tap of some keys a futuristic Winston Smith can remake your edition. You won't keep copies you pay for on your own machine--- not when you have wide open access to the Internet and you can get the document from the source whenever you want it. They'll handle versioning for you. Before you know it, your electronic paper will have nothing but good speak.
More information

FAA clears way for Space Elevator testing.

From from Space.com and TechZonez

The LiftPort Group, the space elevator companies, announced September 9 that it has received a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to use airspace to conduct preliminary tests of its high altitude robotic "lifters."

The lifters are early prototypes of the technology that the company is developing for use in its commercial space elevator to ferry cargo back and forth into space.

The tests, which are planned for early fall, will simulate a working space elevator by launching a model elevator "ribbon" attached to moored balloon initially up to a mile high. The robotic lifters will then be tested in their ability to climb up and down the free-hanging ribbon, marking the first-ever test of this technology in the development of the space elevator concept.

According to Michael Laine, president of the LiftPort Group in Bremerton, Washington, the FAA go-ahead is a "critical step" in the ultimate developing of the group's LiftPort Space Elevator concept.

Nanoshells: Using Nanotechnology To Harvest Light for Biomedicine

USING NANOTECHNOLOGY TO HARVEST LIGHT FOR BIOMEDICINE

<>Professor Naomi Halas, from Rice University in Texas, is a leader in practical applications of nanotechnology in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. She has received the Breast Cancer Innovator Award from the U.S. government and her research includes development of nanoshells, a new type of nanoparticle designed to selectively absorb or scatter light in a special wavelength region where light penetrates several inches into the body, making virtually all soft body tissues optically accessible. Halas will discuss these non-invasive applications and how they may change the way doctors practise medicine.

Wednesday, 14 September at 7:30 p.m.

Matthews/McQueen Theatre, Strong Building, Room C103

Media Contacts:
Dr. Matthew Moffitt (Chemistry) at (250) 721-7162 or mmoffitt@uvic.ca

Patty Pitts (Communications) at (250) 721-7656 or ppitts@uvic.ca

UVic media releases and other resources for journalists are available at communications.uvic.ca/media

From: uvicnews <uvicnews@uvic.ca>

Making Ice Without Electricity

According to SlashDot:
Time Magazine is running an article telling us how Dave Williams is trying to make ice for third-world applications using the Hilsch-Ranque vortex-tube effect (first developed in 1930 by G.J. Ranque-- then improved in 1945 by Hilsch), where swirling air is split into hot and cold components." The method is horribly inefficient but Williams is hoping it could yield helpful results in areas where electricity is really not an option."

Cooling is a small deal for people nowadays but think of what cooling can do: keep food safe; keep medicine safe; cool tired people in the third world. Also, traditional air conditioners and refridgerators have something in common: they're lousy heaters. Run a fridge and it will raise the temperature of the room a little in exchange for cooling its interior alot. All those air conditioners that run in the summertime do three things: expend electricity; dump heat; and cool rooms. It would be nice if there were a device that had the net effect of lowering the temperature.

More information is available from my new favorite source for info: the Wikipedia.

Rollable Screens

I think I would officially, like to have one of these. The Philips Concept Readius is a prototype of a connected consumer device for business professionals. The device implements a pocket-sized e-reader withouth sacrificing readability, mobility, performance, or weight.