The Future Is Here Today...Robots, Genetics, AI, Longevity, Singularity

healthBase Medical Search Engine has Wins and Epic Fails

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by Aaron Saenz on September 10th, 2009

According to healthbase, hynopsis may be evil. Definitely a CON.

According to healthbase, hynopsis may be evil. Definitely a CON.

Surf the Internet these days and you’re likely to drown in a sea of information. New “better than search” engines like Bing, and Wolfram Alpha hope to provide users not just with content, but with the power to use that content to reliably answer questions and make decisions. Netbase, a Silicon Valley based startup is vying to be the new dominant aggregate information site. Their code is supposedly able to review millions of documents and actually understand what it is reading. To prove their point, Netbase established healthBase, a medical search engine that will scour the web to address your medical inquiries. As many users soon came to find out, however, healthBase is definitely still in beta. Check out the demonstration video and some of the screen shots to see some fun examples of how Netbase’s technology produces powerful and humorous results.

Even if healthBase is experiencing its birth pangs, the concept behind it is promising. There’s simply too much content on the web for anyone to understand on their own. Sifting through that content is a painstaking process rife with pitfalls. Searching for a recipe for lady finger cookies can get you a cookbook, a sex toy shop, a discussion of okra, or the homepage of a rock band. That’s fine if you’re just out to explore the Internet, but it can be horribly frustrating if you need an answer quickly about topics related to your health. Aggregating and filtering information is going to be a necessary tool as we start to explore the next generation of the web.

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Stanford Creates World’s Smallest Writing, Less Than a Nanometer

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by Keith Kleiner on January 29th, 2009
The initials for Stanford University are written in electron waves on a piece of copper and projected into a tiny hologram.

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:

  1. In 1985, Stanford grad student Tom Newman used electron beam lithography to engrave the opening page of Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities in such small print that it could be read only with an electron microscope.
  2. In 1990 IBM researchers famously spelled out the letters IBM by arranging 35 individual xenon atoms.  Singularity Hub reported on this here
  3. Now, in a paper published online Sunday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the Stanford researchers describe how they have created letters 40 times smaller than Newman’s effort and more than four times smaller than the IBM initials.

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.

IBM Research Creates 3D Microscope With 100 Million Times Finer Resolution Than Current MRI

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by Keith Kleiner on January 14th, 2009

IBM Research issued a major press release today announcing the creation of a microscope that can determine the 3-Dimensional structure of large molecules, bacteria, viruses and other nano sized structures with a resolution of 4 nanometers.  This breakthrough, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), represents a powerful addition to the growing arsenal of tools allowing scientists to “see” the 3-Dimensional structure of the nanoworld.

The new microscope uses a technique called magnetic resonance force microscopy (MRFM) to achieve 100 million times the resolution of standard MRI.  Using this new device researchers were able to build a 3D image of the tobacco mosaic virus.  Although the current results are impressive, the researchers are confident that they can make the microscope a further 10 times more powerful in the coming years, allowing for resolution of 1 nanometer or less.

This microscope from IBM is an incredible scientific achievement that is poised to accelerate the ongoing revolution in the fields of biological research, new medical treatments, and nanotechnology.   3-Dimensional shape is crucial to the proper function of proteins, enzymes, and other molecules in the human body and thus several human diseases result from their malformation.  3-Dimensional shape is equally important in the manufacture and function of nanomachines and nanomaterials where atoms and molecules must be arranged in very specific locations. 

Below is a video of the microscope released by IBM, followed by further analysis:

 

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Captivating Review of the Emerging Field of Nanotechnology

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by Keith Kleiner on January 13th, 2009
nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

Canada’s Globemail has an article titled “Science of tiny raises big hopes, big fears” written by Dean Bennet that gives a captivating view of the emerging field of nanotechnology.  If you have the time and interest then please give this article a read.  If not, then check out our shorter summary and review below:

The article begins by reminding us that nanotechnology is already pervasive in our daily lives.  From a previous Hub post we note that last year $174 billion worth of products were created that incorporated some sort of nanotechnology into their manufacture and this figure is projected to jump to $3 trillion in a decade or less.

A sampling of how nanotechnology has creeped into our lives:

“Goodies tumble in from all points of the compass: stink-free socks from Taiwan, spray-on condoms and germ-resistant chopsticks from China, deep-penetrating skin cleanser from Canada, dirt-repelling windshields from Australia, more-breathable bed sheets from the United States, super bandages from Britain and graffiti-busting paint from Mexico.”

The article then moves on to give a fascinating description of Canada’s National Institute for Nanotechnology (image below ), the country’s front-line command post in nano’s new world order:

“Completed two years ago at a cost of $52-million, this box-like construction of concrete, glass and steel is engineered to ruthlessly eliminate the slightest vibration that could wreak havoc on the particles being scanned and sectioned.canada's national institute for nanotechnology

A ribbon of rubber on the ground floor reduces the hum of elevators, heating and lighting equipment on one side from affecting the lab equipment on the other.

If you talk in the hallway, you are shushed and shooed to prevent sound waves from penetrating the labs. Heat does not blow into the lab; it gently bleeds through overhead tubes. The temperature remains constant to prevent expansion and contraction.

There are 200-plus staffers from more than 30 countries”

Nanotechnology holds great promise for mankind, but also great risk and several legal and moral challenges:

“What about ethics and privacy? What happens when cameras get so tiny you can barely see them, or marketers implant microscopic tracers in every item and sell to the highest bidder a list of what you bought when and where? If new technology can clean up the world’s water supply, does anyone have the moral right to withhold it? And no one wants to imagine the future if al-Qaeda gets hold of this stuff.”

Image from top: source

Solar Power Game-Changer: Near Perfect Absorption of Sunlight, From All Angles

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by Keith Kleiner on January 6th, 2009

nano material surface coating refelctionA huge leap has been made in the creation of high efficiency, cost effective solar power with the announcement of the world’s first material that absorbs the entire spectrum of sunlight (UV, visible, and infrared) from virtually any angle with near 100% efficiency.  This nano material from researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute drastically improves the efficiency of solar panels by allowing them to capture nearly all of the sunlight that hits them.  Current solar panels only capture about 70% of incoming light that hits them (the other 30% bounces off) but when coated with Rensselaer’s new material solar panels were shown to capture 96.21 percent of incoming sunlight.   (image credit: Credit: Rensselaer/Shawn Lin)

There is easily enough solar energy coming from the sun to provide all of man’s current energy needs, but today’s solar panels are inefficient at capturing and then converting this sunlight into energy.  The new material from Rensselaer takes us a huge step forward by solving the problem of sunlight capture, but conversion of this captured sunlight into usable energy still needs improvement.  As we continue to improve solar panel efficiency and cost, solar energy has the potential to replace fossil fuel based energy use and solve a large portion of the global warming epidemic.

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Intel: Human and computer intelligence will merge in 40 years

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by Keith Kleiner on July 31st, 2008

Add Intel’s CTO and senior fellow Justin Rattner to the growing list of singularity proponents according to an article from computerworld. According to Rattner:

“…perhaps as early as 2012 we’ll see the lines between human and machine intelligence begin to blur. Nanoscale chips or machines will move through our bodies, fixing deteriorating organs or unclogging arteries.  Sensors will float around our internal systems monitoring our blood sugar levels and heart rates, and alerting doctors to potential health problems.”

Rattner will be presenting his talk entitled “Crossing the Chasm Between Humans and Machines” at the Intel Developer Forum Aug 21, 2008. Come back here to the hub in August to see our review!

Nanotechnology Overhyped in the Past…Booming Today!

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by Keith Kleiner on July 25th, 2008

In a press release Lux Research reports that nanotechnology is in the midst of a phenomenal boom, predicted to find its way into an astonishing $3.1 trillion worth of products by 2015. In a 135 page report Lux Research reveals that nanotechnology has quietly moved from an over-hyped phenomenon to a real and established industry that found its way into $147 billion worth of products in 2007 alone.

From the press release:

“Nanotech isn’t a new market or industry – it’s an enabling technology that improves many types of products,” said Jurron Bradley, Ph.D., Senior Analyst at Lux Research. “For example, you find it in coatings boosting the efficiency of automobile engines, in nano-enabled finishes protecting electronic devices, and nanoparticulate reformulations that make cholesterol-reducing drugs more effective. These innovations aren’t always visible to consumers, but they improve products and boost margins. That’s why nanomaterials’ use is only going to keep growing.”

A synopsis of the report can be found here.

Birth of nanotechnology documented by this historic IBM photo

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by Keith Kleiner on July 16th, 2008

From the IEEE report on the singularity I found a cool reference to the birth of nanotechnology in the article titled “Rupturing The Nanotech Rapture” By Richard A.L. Jones:

“The birth of nanotechnology is popularly taken to be 1989, when IBM Fellow Don Eigler used a scanning tunneling microscope to create the company’s logo out of xenon atoms.”

By working with xenon and nickel at very low temperatures, an IBM
scientist was the first to use a tiny needle to position individual atoms
on a surface.

IEEE special report on the singularity

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by Keith Kleiner on July 16th, 2008

IEEE produced a special report on the singularity in its June 2008 issue located here:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/singularity

This is a comprehensive report, representing many diverse views about the singularity from a selection of tech luminaries and scholars in singularity related fields. It is a must read if you are at all interested in the singularity. In a few separate posts I will be highlighting some of the cool insights to be found within this report.

Image from the cover of the report

Physicists tweak quantum force, reducing barrier to nano sized devices

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by Keith Kleiner on July 14th, 2008

The University of Florida today reports that scientists have reduced the Casimir force between two metal plates by changing the surface of the plates from a flat surface into a corrugated or comb-like structure.

The Casimir force occurs in the quantum world of very small objects, causing two metal plates placed almost infinitesimally close together to spontaneously attract each other. For everyday large objects the casimir force is virtually nonexistent, but this research may someday play a part in the design of MEMS devices and other nanoscale devices in which the Casimir force cannot be ignored.

The research was published in the Journal of Physical Review Letters here. Below is a picture of the corrugated surface created by the University of Florida researchers:

Scanning electron micrograph

A scanning electron micrograph, taken with an electron
microscope, shows the comb-like structure of a metal plate