As part of its special report on the singularity last year, IEEE Spectrum published a Who’s Who in the Singularity poster documenting the major players in the singularity space. No sign of the Hub’s Keith Kleiner in the poster, but I guess we can forgive them for that 
See thumbnail below, followed by link to full sized pdf afterward:
Technology review has one of the better reports about the army’s success in creating a remote controlled cyborg beetle in collaboration with the University of California – Berkeley. From the article:
“The beetle’s payload consists of an off-the-shelf microprocessor, a radio receiver, and a battery attached to a custom-printed circuit board, along with six electrodes implanted into the animals’ optic lobes and flight muscles. Flight commands are wirelessly sent to the beetle via a radio-frequency transmitter that’s controlled by a nearby laptop. Oscillating electrical pulses delivered to the beetle’s optic lobes trigger takeoff, while a single short pulse ceases flight. Signals sent to the left or right basilar flight muscles make the animal turn right or left, respectively.”
This is far from the first success in remote controlled insects. Flies and moths are other notable examples of other insects that have been “cyborged”. Check out some awesome pictures of the beetle below and then be sure to follow the link to the technology review video to see the beetle in action:
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Cyborg beetle: Shown here is a giant flower beetle carrying a microprocessor, radio receiver, and microbattery and implanted with several electrodes. To control the insect’s flight, scientists wirelessly deliver signals to the payload, which sends electrical signals through the electrode to the brain and flight muscles.Credit: Michel Maharbiz, technology review |
The initials for Stanford University are written in electron waves on a piece of copper and projected into a tiny hologram.
“Stanford researchers have reclaimed bragging rights for creating the world’s smallest writing, a distinction the University first gained in 1985 and lost in 1990.”
Thus begins an article from Stanford that chronicles the history of nanoscale (atomic and now subatomic) sized writing. Nanoscale writing could have many uses for labeling objects large and small with identifying information (serial numbers, ownership rights, tracking information, etc.), but it is also a barometer of man’s ability to harness the world at the nanoscale. For the full dirt, read the article. Otherwise, see below for summary:
So how small is the writing recently created at Stanford? “The letters in the words are assembled from subatomic sized bits as small as 0.3 nanometers, or roughly one third of a billionth of a meter.”
The article from Stanford highlights three major milestones in the history of nanoscale writing:
The new small writing technique from Stanford, called Electronic Quantum Holography, actually creates a hologram that can be read with a scanning tunneling microscope. Each letter, or image, is stored and viewed at a particular electron wavelength. The researchers read them separately, like stacked pages of a book.
In June 2008 DARPA solicited proposals from interested institutions to participate in a project to develop fracture putty:
A dynamic putty which, when packed in/around a compound bone fracture, provides full load-bearing capabilities within hours, creates an osteoconductive bone-like internal structure, and degrades over time to harmless resorbable by-products as normal bone regenerates.
This week the University of Texas and the Baylor College of Medicine have both announced that they have been chosen as part of a consortium that will attempt to bring the vision of fracture putty to reality.
In a testament to the new capabilities that are a direct result of accelerating technological change, the consortium’s success on this initiative will depend heavily on recent advances in nanotechnology, material science, and biology that were only a dream earlier this decade. According to the Baylor and University of Texas releases:
The putty will have the texture of modeling clay so that it can be molded in any shape in order to be used in many different surgical applications including the reconnection of separated bones and the replacement of missing bones. The putty will harden into a nanoporous silicon scaffold strong enough to support the patient’s weight while new bone tissue is being regenerated. The putty will be infiltrated with a gel containing cells that produce bone morphogenic proteins (BMP), which are a group of growth factors and cytokines known for their ability to induce the formation of bone and cartilage. Over time the putty will degrade naturally as healthy, new bone grows in to replace it.
According to DARPA, current treatment for bone fractures requires internal or external fixation with plates, screws, and rods. These therapies are plagued with long healing times, multiple surgeries, high risk of infection and amputation, and overall sub-optimal healing. There is huge demand worldwide for enhanced bone repair capability. Approximately 30% of all battlefield trauma cases involved bone fractures, typically due to high energy events such as blasts or gunshots. Civilians injured in traffic accidents and other traumatic events also commonly suffer from severe bone fractures.
It should be noted that this project is in its very earliest stages. The pursuit of a concept, not the release of an actual product, is the exciting news today.
A picture diagram from the University of Texas has been provide below:
Panel 1: The fracture putty (or BioNanoScaffold) composite material is implanted in the site of the shattered bone. Growth factors are released from the implant and recruit the patient’s cells. The putty is load-bearing, so the patient is able to walk while the bone heals. |
 Panel 2: The fracture putty is infiltrated by cells which begin to create new bone. At the same time, the material constituting the fracture putty, starts degrading. |
Panel 3: The degradation of the fracture putty gradually transfers the weight of the patient to the regenerating bone, aiding in its functional recovery. |
Panel 4: Several months after injury, the architecture and function of the bone are fundamentally restored. |
We just uncovered this awesome 3 minute video of Geron CEO Thomas Okarma explaining the promise of stem cell therapy as well as the damage that has been done by the Bush administration over the last 8 years. Just a few days ago we posted that Geron has won approval for the first ever FDA clinical trial of stem cell therapy. Here are some choice quotes from the video:
“Geron has spent as much money on stem cell research as the entire NIH over the last 10 years”
“In the future, when you have heart attack, you instead of coming home with a damaged heart, you will come home with a heart that has been repaired with new heart cells”
The first clinical human trial using embryonic stem cells as a medical treatment in the United States has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Roughly ten patients will be treated about 2 weeks after they have suffered from acute spinal cord injuries that would normally result in permanent paralysis without the new therapy. The hope is that the stem cell therapy will help the body to heal itself from the spinal cord injury, allowing the patients to regain some or even most of their ability to walk and move.
In a landmark study published in 2005, this same therapy was shown to allow mice who were paralyzed as a result of an acute spinal cord injury to walk again. Should similar results be achieved in these human trials it will represent a major advance in efforts to heal what have historically been devastating and untreatable human injuries.
Geron, the company behind the trials, has a long history as a pioneer in scientific discovery. In 1999 Geron acquired the patents and intellectual property behind Dolly the lamb, the world sensation that was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult somatic cell, using the process of nuclear transfer. (wikipedia). In the stock market today, Geron’s stock price surged in enthusiasm for the FDA approval. (Stock Chart: source). Geron has an entire website dedicated to the announcement which includes this very instructive video:
So how does this stem cell therapy from Geron work?
P.W. Singer just launched his latest book titled Wired For War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century. This looks to be a must read book for those that are interested in all aspects of robotics, whether it be cutting edge innovations in the pipeline, political ramifications, ethical battles, and more. The official website for the book offers an array of resources, including a well stocked archive of youtube robotics vidoes.
Just yesterday, P.W. Singer was interviewed on NPR and it is well worth a listen
Listen Now [38 min 47 sec]
Here is a summary of the book from the official website:
What happens when science fiction becomes battlefield reality?
An amazing revolution is taking place on the battlefield, starting to change not just how wars are fought, but also the politics, economics, laws, and ethics that surround war itself. This upheaval is already afoot — remote-controlled drones take out terrorists in Afghanistan, while the number of unmanned systems on the ground in Iraq has gone from zero to 12,000 over the last five years. But it is only the start. Military officers quietly acknowledge that new prototypes will soon make human fighter pilots obsolete, while the Pentagon researches tiny robots the size of flies to carry out reconnaissance work now handled by elite Special Forces troops.Wired for War takes the reader on a journey to meet all the various players in this strange new world of war: odd-ball roboticists working in latter-day “skunk works” in the midst of suburbia; military pilots flying combat mission from their office cubicles outside Las Vegas; the Iraqi insurgents who are their targets; journalists trying to figure out just how to cover robots at war; and human rights activists wrestling with what is right and wrong in a world where our wars are increasingly being handed over to machines.
Props to our reader, Bruce Colthart, who suggested this story
Need a good laugh? The onion has a funny spoof about computers taking over the world below:
Each year since 1985, the editors of The Futurist have collected their most thought-provoking ideas and forecasts into an annual Outlook report. The Outlook 2009 report was recently released and we have published it below along with our own comments inlined:
1. Everything you say and do will be recorded by 2030. By the late 2010s, ubiquitous, unseen nanodevices will provide seamless communication and surveillance among all people everywhere. Humans will have nanoimplants, facilitating interaction in an omnipresent network. Everyone will have a unique Internet Protocol (IP) address. Since nano storage capacity is almost limitless, all conversation and activity will be recorded and recoverable. -Gene Stephens, “Cybercrime in the Year 2025,” July-Aug 2008, p. 34
The Hub’s Take: For many of us, we took more photos and short videos of ourselves and our friends and family in 2008 than we did in all previous years of our lives combined. As the tools for recording our lives get smaller, easier to use, and easier to wear and as the cost of storing massive amounts of data continues to plummet the days of recording all or nearly all of what we say, do, see, and hear seems inevitable. Sites like justin.tv are already enabling thousands of individuals to continuously stream live video of themselves to the internet 24×7.
2. Bioviolence will become a greater threat as the technology becomes more accessible. Emerging scientific disciplines (notably genomics, nanotechnology, and other microsciences) could pave the way for a bioattack. Bacteria and viruses could be altered to increase their lethality or to evade antibiotic treatment. Another long-term risk comes from nanopollution fallout from warfare. Nanoparticles could potentially cause new diseases with unusual and difficult-to-treat symptoms, and they will inflict damage far beyond the traditional battlefield, even affecting future generations. -Barry Kellman, “Bioviolence: A Growing Threat,” May-June 2008, p. 25 et seq.; Antonietta M. Gatti and Stefano Montanari, “Nanopollution: The Invisible Fog of Future Wars,” May-June 2008, p. 32
The Hub’s Take: Sadly this threat is real. Technology has always been a double edged sword, providing benefits to those who seek to help others, but also to those who seek to do harm. The internet has brought wonderful positive changes to our lives and is widely seen as a net gain for society even though it has enhanced the capabilities and destructive power of those with ill intent. We can only hope that the coming age of nanotechnology and bioscience will also provide a net gain to society in spite of the threats that they enable.
Just recently we posted about a story in which researchers from Carnegie Mellon were able to read people’s actual thoughts with a machine. The machine uses a technique called fMRI to noninvasively monitor a person’s brain activation patterns as they think about different objects. Today we would like to followup on this story with new information about how it works. Science Central has a decent article, but more importantly to our delight we have discovered that the actual paper published by the Carnegie Mellon researchers is freely available online.
First, a short (1:30 min) movie to prime us on the subject:
So how does fMRI work anyway?
The media is abuzz with the announcement of a 250 micrometer motor that could someday be used to power tiny robots that swim through human blood vessels. Will tiny nanobots or man-made molecular structures travel the human body performing marvelous medical miracles in the coming decades? Absolutely! In fact they already are doing this in the laboratory, but not in the way most people think. The first generation of nanobots use the same mechanism already used by the human body for transport – floating – and are unlikely to resemble Fantastic Voyage inspired dreams of tiny vehicles “driving” around in our blood vessels any time soon.
The tiny motor published today by researchers from the Micro/Nanophysics Research Laboratory at Australia’s Monash University is neat, and the accompanying video is a fun journey for our imaginations, but this motor is very far from fulfilling our nanobot ambitions.
Enjoy the video below, then see our followup afterward as to why this motor is not all it is hyped up to be.
The 250 micrometer motor is a Piezoelectric ultrasonic resonant motor with the potential to directly drive a flagellum for swimming within the viscosity of human blood. The motor works, and it could potentially serve many uses for small scale needs in machines outside of the human body. But what use is it as a nanobot component? Not much if you ask us! The motor was driven by an external power source. For the motor to be useful as a nanobot we would first need to design a nano-sized battery to power it, an innovation that still seems a ways off. Even ignoring the battery problem, there are several other challenges associated with steering the nanobot, getting it unstuck or untangled from vascular debris, and keeping the nanobot from degrading within the biologically active “wet” environment of human blood.
To truly shuttle tiny man-made objects through the blood stream, we will likely emulate the techniques that the human body already uses. Instead of robots with motors and flagella, the first generation of successful nanobots aren’t doing anything like “swimming”. Instead they float through the blood stream, carried along by the pressurized flow maintained by our hearts, attaching and detaching themselves to target molecules and cells as they go about achieving their objective.
This first generation of nanobots may not fulfill our Fantastic Voyage inspired dreams of vehicles driving around inside the human body, yet they are every bit as effective in providing the medical breakthroughs that we are all hoping for. These nanobots don’t have microprocessors in them that think and act according to a program. They don’t swim intelligently to a desired target in a straight line path. Instead they float around, exhibiting simple behaviors such as releasing a chemical agent, attaching to something, or destroying something based on their geometries and chemical constituents. When used in proper quantity and with well defined objectives, these “boring”, “dumb” nanobots have the potential to attack cancer in new ways, target malfunctioning proteins, repair damaged tissues, and much more.
image source
heart disease
The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute today published a press release presenting the discovery of a gene mutation in roughly 1% of the world population that virtually guarantees the onset of heart disease in its carriers. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in the United States and in many other developed nations. Nearly 700,000 Americans die every year from heart disease, accounting for nearly 1 in 3 U.S. deaths (1).
The mutation, a deletion of 25 letters of genetic code from the heart protein gene MYBPC3, is virtually restricted to people from the Indian subcontinent. Roughly 4% of those with a genetic lineage from the Indian subcontinent carry the mutation, which equates to about 60 Million people, or 1% of world population.
The discovery of this gene is just the tip of the iceberg of what is to come in a new era of cheap and fast genetic analysis. Armed with the exact gene and therefore the exact mechanism by which 60 million people are destined to acquire heart disease, we can now work on therapies for saving them.
From the press release:
Scientists express this genetic risk as an odds ratio, where 1.2 would be a small effect and 2.0 a large one. For the MYBPC3 mutation, the odds ratio is almost off-scale, a staggering 7.0. Carriers usually show few symptoms until middle age, but after that age most are symptomatic and suffer from a range of effects, at worst sudden cardiac death.
“The mutation leads to the formation of an abnormal protein,” explained the study leader, Kumarasamy Thangaraj from the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Hyderabad, India. “Young people can degrade the abnormal protein and remain healthy, but as they get older it builds up and eventually results in the symptoms we see.”
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