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Gallery – A joyride through the nanoscale – Image 1 – New Scientist. Five essential things to know about evolution – Ars Technica. The evolution of science moves, in Kuhn’s famous theory, not in a smooth accretion of knowledge but in a series of punctuated equilibria. This means that before a paradigm shift happens, there is an overhang where the majority of scientists believe something that the mojority won’t a scientific generation later. Over at the Moral Machines blog, there’s a pointer to an AP story about the recent DC train crash: Investigators looking into the deadly crash of two Metro transit trains focused Tuesday on why a computerized system failed to halt an oncoming train, and why the train failed to stop even though the emergency brake was [...] There is at Technology Review’s arXiv blog an article “How to find bugs in giant software programs.” It’s an overview of a paper on arXiv which is a statistical study of program sizes and bug distributions in the Eclipse dataset of Java programs. “Codex Futurius” is a project of Discover Magazine’s Science Not Fiction blog in which they ask science questions raised by science fiction.. Then they ask the National Academy of Sciences’ Science and Entertainment Exchange to reccommend them experts to answer the questions. Their first question came to me, and it was about gray goo … [...] The highly anticipated Wolfram|Alpha site came online over the weekend, and here are some first impressions: They need a little work on the html — this was Firefox, but it looked the same on Konqueror. A nice display of serendipitous artistic images found while doing science, at Princeton: Hat-tip to Eurekalert. I suspect many readers have seen Neil Gershenfeld’s TED talk on fab labs, or read his book. In particular, notice the part where he comments that fabs are following the track of computers, currently in the minicomputer stage. You can see the same progression in my keynote for a SME meeting a couple [...] 20 years ago, in the wake of the cold fusion excitement-turned-debacle, I noticed an interesting fact. The people doing the experiments were divided into two classes: The electrochemists who believed that fusion was happening were doing their experiments in plastic tubs and glassware, whereas the physicists who believed that no fusion was really happening were [...] Once upon a time, or so the story goes, there was a young man who was hauled up before the court on charges that he had killed his father and mother. He readily confessed to the crime, but nevertheless pled for clemency: after all, he pointed out, he was an orphan. Recently on his blog Soft [...] The answers of 151 thinkers and visionaries to the Edge Annual question for 2009 have been posted. The question: “WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?” As phrased by John Brockman, Editor and Publisher, “What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?” In his answer, nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler points to a role [...] One of the main reasons that we are confident in the overall predictions of molecular manufacturing is that there are many pathways to it from current technology and using currently understood science. It is thus something of a milestone that we have arrived at a fork in the road about which there is room for [...] Two stories report new tools that should accelerate nanotech development by providing scientists with faster determination of molecular structures. Keith Gillette writes "Nanotechnology research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison provides the subject for the cover story of the Spring 2005 edition of On Wisconsin , the UW-Madison alumni magazine. From the examples used, the article appears to use the term nanotechnology in its popular sense, drawing no distinction with molecular nanotechnology." The World Peace Herald and the Meridian Institute are discussing on the problem of whether nanotechnology will reach the poor. Given years of history with open source software we already know how to solve this problem. This is pointed out by Bryan Bruns, a sociologist with the Foresight Institute, who promotes better policies on intellectual property, including full publication of publicly-funded research in ways that are accessible and affordable. This feeds into a complex development problem. In an ideal world developments paid for by the public should be available to the public. At the same time business will be disinclined to push those developments to the marketing stage without some exclusive rights on the market. How does one resolve this problem? Richard A. L. Jones, author of Soft Machines: nanotechnology and life is documenting a debate about the feasibility of mechanosynthesis between Philip Moriarty, a nanoscientist from Nottingham University, Chris Phoenix, Robert Freitas with some comments by Hal Finney. There may have even been some comments by Eric Drexler though he appears to requested those not be included in the documented exchanges. The debate with archived discussions and current comments is here. Dr_Barnowl writes "A somewhat dubious product was recently released by BatMax (See here for technical details.) It was apparently convincing enough to be posted by a Slashdot moderator (here). The company basically claims it can drastically improve the performance of your mobile phone battery with what amounts to a stick-on decal. The spurious and unscientific descriptions of the technology (allegedly) involved are nothing special, apart from the association with nanotechnology. It would seem that it's not just manufacturers of sunblock, tennis rackets and trousers that have cottoned on to the "magical" properties of putting a *10-9 in your product blurb. If this becomes commonplace, what kind of damage will it do to the funding prospects of projects promising similarly outrageous (but scientifically feasible) benefits as a result of genuine MNT?" Ed. Note: Hmmm… a "nano-ceramic" — aren't most ceramics "nano-" in nature? SpaceDaily based on UPI is covering how scientists from Luc Jaeger at UCSB to Ned Seeman at NYU (and others) are creating grand plans to use DNA and related chemical molecules to do everything from assembly to analysis. Sounds like the combination of the fact that the hardware to do the synthesis of these molecules exists and the fact that there are a lot of things these molecules can manage via self-assembly is giving these methods a lead in the "real" molecular nanotechnology arena. The LANL/Sandia "Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies" is providing a database of solicitations for future funding by the government (including DARPA and military) for nanotechnology R&D. This will give you some idea of where all of those $ billions will be going… |
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