|
||||||
|
Foresight ally Jeff Ubois has a new book out, published by Fondazione Giannino Bassetti, Conversations on Innovation, Power, and Responsibility. Yours truly is quoted. An excerpt: In Popular Mechanics, longtime Foresight friend Prof. Glenn Reynolds looks at the future of nanotech and artificial intelligence, among other things looking at safety issues, including one call that potentially dangerous technologies be relinquished. He takes a counterintuitive stance, which we’ve discussed here at Foresight over the years: Ted Greenwald continues his Singularity University executive program coverage over at Wired: Ted Greenwald posted yesterday at Wired about Foresight member Ralph Merkle’s presentation on nanotechnology at the Singularity University’s first Executive Program, which has just convened over at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley: Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel: Here’s a talk happening next Tuesday at UCLA: From The Atlantic: Don Eigler: Two decades of nanotech – opinion – 14 October 2009 – New Scientist. Has nanotechnology trickled down into everyday life yet? Josh Hall, on his way to catch a plane, sends us this news from Technology Review’s Katherine Bourzac: Recent advances in nanoplasmonics, h/t arXiv blog: Here at Foresight our main focus is on longer-term technologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we keep an eye on what’s arriving along the nearer-term pathways as well. In 2007 I attended a workshop on “Nanotechnology for Chemical and Biological Defense” and the proceedings volume of that meeting, with the same name, is now available. [...] Two recent publications provide more evidence of the growing capability of DNA scaffolds to support complex and interactive functions. A new modular method of constructing DNA nanotubes provides control of the geometry of the nanotube cross-section and may enable real-time modulation of the stiffness and porosity of the nanotube. A nanotech-based gene-therapy method that dramatically improved the efficiency of conventional cancer therapy in animal models is now undergoing clinical trials. Two research groups have published two different ways to unzip carbon nanotubes to create graphene ribbons. Using a magnetic bead to slowly pull a DNA molecule through a solid-sate nanopore looks promising as the basis for a very fast and efficient nanotech DNA sequencing method. MIT scientists have demonstrated the usefulness of biological frameworks for combining distinct functional elements to make a device. Two papers in a recent issue of Science suggest that graphene is rapidly moving from being “just” a nanotech wonder material to becoming relevant to atomically precise nanotechnologies. A catalyst can be switched on and off using mechanical means. Scientists have succeeded in coordinating the movements of the biped’s legs so that it can walk in one direction along a DNA track without the need of intervention at each step. |
|
|||||
|
Copyright © 2010 the Foresight Institute - All Rights Reserved |
||||||
