Via KurzweilAI.net — Synthetic biology is here to stay and is branching out.

DNA 2.0: A new operating system for life is created

New Scientist Life, Feb. 14, 2010 University of Cambridge scientists have created a new way of using the genetic code, allowing proteins to be made with properties that have never been seen in the natural world. The breakthrough could eventually lead to the creation of new or “improved” life forms incorporating these new materials into their tissue. For example, they could help make drugs that can be taken orally without being destroyed by the acids in the digestive tract, or produce entirely new polymers, such as plastic-like materials; organisms made of these cells could incorporate the stronger polymers and become stronger or more adaptable as a result. In the genetic code that life has used up to now, there are 64 possible triplet combinations of the four nucleotide letters; these genetic “words” are called codons. Each codon either codes for an amino acid or tells the cell to stop making a protein chain. The researchers have created 256 blank four-letter codons that can be assigned to amino acids that don’t even exist yet. Read Original Article>>

It sure seems like it. This is akin to the credit industry going draconian in advance of increased regulation only to prod DC into pushing the date of all that regulation up quite a bit.

Of course, the health insurance industry stands to gain a lot if health care reform with mandatory insurance and no public option is in place. Maybe the move of drastically raising individual health insurance premiums is a ploy to force something close to the current set of bills in Congress through and stifle any new debate on how to fund reform and cover the uninsured. I’m guessing the industry sees its future as something of a complete spin of the roulette wheel with a lot of possible outcomes and just a few that are favorable to its interests. Crazy moves with this bad of PR strike of a desperate attempt to influence that spin.

From the first link:

AP reports that insurance companies in at least four states are raising their premiums for individual insurance policies (those that people have to buy themselves, because they don’t get coverage from an employer) by 15% or more. To give you a sense of what we are talking about if these rates go into effect, a family of four in Maine (which is a relatively poor state) can expect to pay $1,876 a month–about $22,500 a year–for health insurance, starting in July.

And this is just the beginning of what we can expect to see pretty much everywhere:

Premiums are far more volatile for individual policies than for those bought by employers and other large groups, which have bargaining clout and a sizable pool of people among which to spread risk. As more people have lost jobs, many who are healthy have decided to go without health insurance or get a bare-bones, high-deductible policy, reducing the amount of premiums insurers receive.

The event will be held at the SculptCAD office near downtown Dallas next Wednesday, February 24. This seminar on 3D technology for the aerospace industry involves 100 percent inspection and reverse engineering for maintenance, repair and operations (MRO). Topics include exploring Steinbichler’s White Light Scanning technology and how it differs from laser scanning, CMM measurement and why white light scanning is a better scanning option with more value and speed, and discussing the inspection and reverse engineering features of the GeoMagic Studio and Qualify software package.

Here’s what SculptCAD founder and president Nancy Hairston told me about the upcoming seminar, “This event will be a great opportunity to view the newest white light scanner from Steinbichler and the pairing of GeoMagic for aerospace applications. GeoMagic’s inspection, reverse engineering and parametric exchange toolsets enable fast and accurate workflows with seamless transfer into CAD systems.”

This “lunch & learn” includes demonstrations of the Steinbichler Comet 5 digital sensor and  GeoMagic’s Studio 11 3D modeling software.

Details on this “lunch & learn”

• Date: Wednesday February 24, 2010
• Time: 11 am – 2 pm
• buffet lunch provided
• Cost: free!
• registration required in advance

From the first and last links in this post:

Topics expected to be covered but are not limited to include:

· The use of 100% noncontact inspection complementing traditional CMM inspection including the use of robotics
and automatic geometrical dimensional & tolerance report generation

· “Best practices” regarding the scanning of physical objects directly into your CAD system

· How to digitally recreate, modify and/or repair existing tooling

· Examples of applying cost saving 3D technologies to structure, engine, systems and interior components by
Engineering, QA and Inspection departments

… may lead to some serious nanotech applications in medicine, data protection and supercomputing.

The release:

Digging deep into diamonds, applied physicists advance quantum science and technology

Diamond nanowire device could lead to new class of diamond nanomaterials suitable for quantum cryptography, quantum computing, and magnetic field imaging

		IMAGE: A diamond-based nanowire device. Researchers used a top-down nanofabrication technique to embed color centers into a variety of machined structures. By creating large device arrays rather than just “one-of-a-kind ” designs,… Click here for more information.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., By creating diamond-based nanowire devices, a team at Harvard has taken another step towards making applications based on quantum science and technology possible.

The new device offers a bright, stable source of single photons at room temperature, an essential element in making fast and secure computing with light practical.

The finding could lead to a new class of nanostructured diamond devices suitable for quantum communication and computing, as well as advance areas ranging from biological and chemical sensing to scientific imaging.

Published in the February 14th issue of Nature Nanotechnology, researchers led by Marko Loncar, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), found that the performance of a single photon source based on a light emitting defect (color center) in diamond could be improved by nanostructuring the diamond and embedding the defect within a diamond nanowire.

Scientists, in fact, first began exploiting the properties of natural diamonds after learning how to manipulate the electron spin, or intrinsic angular momentum, associated with the nitrogen vacancy (NV) color center of the gem. The quantum (qubit) state can be initialized and measured using light.

The color center “communicates” by emitting and absorbing photons. The flow of photons emitted from the color center provides a means to carry the resulting information, making the control, capture, and storage of photons essential for any kind of practical communication or computation. Gathering photons efficiently, however, is difficult since color-centers are embedded deep inside the diamond.

“This presents a major problem if you want to interface a color center and integrate it into real-world applications,” explains Loncar. “What was missing was an interface that connects the nano-world of a color center with macro-world of optical fibers and lenses.”

The diamond nanowire device offers a solution, providing a natural and efficient interface to probe an individual color center, making it brighter and increasing its sensitivity. The resulting enhanced optical properties increases photon collection by nearly a factor of ten relative to natural diamond devices.

“Our nanowire device can channel the photons that are emitted and direct them in a convenient way,” says lead-author Tom Babinec, a graduate student at SEAS.

Further, the diamond nanowire is designed to overcome hurdles that have challenged other state-of-the-art systems—such as those based on fluorescent dye molecules, quantum dots, and carbon nanotubes—as the device can be readily replicated and integrated with a variety of nano-machined structures.

The researchers used a top-down nanofabrication technique to embed color centers into a variety of machined structures. By creating large device arrays rather than just “one-of-a-kind” designs, the realization of quantum networks and systems, which require the integration and manipulation of many devices in parallel, is more likely.

“We consider this an important step and enabling technology towards more practical optical systems based on this exciting material platform,” says Loncar. “Starting with these synthetic, nanostructured diamond samples, we can start dreaming about the diamond-based devices and systems that could one day lead to applications in quantum science and technology as well as in sensing and imaging.”

###

Loncar and Babinec’s co-authors included research scholar Birgit Hausmann, graduate student Yinan Zhang, and postdoctoral student Mughees Khan, all at SEAS; graduate student Jero Maze in the Department of Physics at Harvard; and faculty member Phil R. Hemmer at Texas A&M University.

The researchers acknowledge the following support: Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team (NIRT) grant from National Science Foundation (NSF), the NSF-funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center at Harvard (NSEC); the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. All devices have been fabricated at the Center for Nanoscale Systems (CNS) at Harvard.

Cheney openly declared himself a “big supporter of waterboarding.”

Waterboarding is considered torture under U.S. and international law, and the imposition of, or ordering from a leadership position of, torture constitutes a war crime.

There is no possibility Cheney was confused and didn’t realize he was admitting to criminal activity. He clearly is either playing chicken with the Obama Justice Department on the potential for legal action on his admission, or he’s truly gone around the bend and sees himself far enough above the law that legal statutes no longer apply to to his activities.

At any rate I doubt he travels to many first world nations around the globe for the rest of his days.

From the link, Andrew Sullivan on this admission:

The question is therefore not if, but when, he is convicted as a war criminal – in his lifetime or posthumously.

In fact, the attorney general of the United States is legally obliged to prosecute someone who has openly admitted such a war crime or be in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention on Torture. For Eric Holder to ignore this duty subjects him too to prosecution. If the US government fails to enforce the provision against torture, the UN or a foreign court can initiate an investigation and prosecution.

These are not my opinions and they are not hyperbole. They are legal facts. Either this country is governed by the rule of law or it isn’t. Cheney’s clear admission of his central role in authorizing waterboarding and the clear evidence that such waterboarding did indeed take place means that prosecution must proceed.

Cheney himself just set in motion a chain of events that the civilized world must see to its conclusion or cease to be the civilized world. For such a high official to escape the clear letter of these treaties and conventions, and to openly brag of it, renders such treaties and conventions meaningless.

Had the chance to watch a pre-release DVD of “Black Dynamite” tonight. It is simply great.

Kung fu treachery? Pool hall fight? Crooked politicians? The Mob? Kung fu action from the 37th President? Count me in.

It’s touted as a cinematic satire of blaxploitation flicks from the 70s, but it goes far beyond mere satire in production and entertainment value. Michael Jai White (creator/co-writer/titular actor) is simply awesome as Black Dynamite, and period details are spot-on. The film was shot in 16mm color reversal and the film stock truly provides the look and feel of a 1970s movie.

Hit this link to head to Amazon for the “Black Dynamite” DVD.

Hope everyone’s having a fun/relaxing/romantic/sexy/or whatever floats your boat kind of day.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yes, it’s the hated milk machine from the first season of Mr. Show with Bob and David. And yes, that is a young Jack Black.

(Number two of two posts on nanotechnology and electricity. Hit this link for part one)

The idea of smart clothes has been around for ages. Looks like this might just be a breakthrough to electric clothing becoming a reality.

That oughta bring a whole new meaning to “social networking.” Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all weekend. Be sure and come back tomorrow for the complimentary Saturday buffet and half-price happy hour.

The release:

New fiber nanogenerators could lead to electric clothing

By Sarah Yang, Media Relations | 12 February 2010

BERKELEY — In research that gives literal meaning to the term “power suit,” University of California, Berkeley, engineers have created energy-scavenging nanofibers that could one day be woven into clothing and textiles.

These nano-sized generators have “piezoelectric” properties that allow them to convert into electricity the energy created through mechanical stress, stretches and twists.

“This technology could eventually lead to wearable ’smart clothes’ that can power hand-held electronics through ordinary body movements,” said Liwei Lin, UC Berkeley professor of mechanical engineering and head of the international research team that developed the fiber nanogenerators.

Because the nanofibers are made from organic polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF, they are flexible and relatively easy and cheap to manufacture.

Although they are still working out the exact calculations, the researchers noted that more vigorous movements, such as the kind one would create while dancing the electric boogaloo, should theoretically generate more power. “And because the nanofibers are so small, we could weave them right into clothes with no perceptible change in comfort for the user,” said Lin, who is also co-director of the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center at UC Berkeley.

The fiber nanogenerators are described in this month’s issue of Nano Letters, a peer-reviewed journal published by the American Chemical Society.

The goal of harvesting energy from mechanical movements through wearable nanogenerators is not new. Other research teams have previously made nanogenerators out of inorganic semiconducting materials, such as zinc oxide or barium titanate. “Inorganic nanogenerators — in contrast to the organic nanogenerators we created — are more brittle and harder to grow in significant quantities,” Lin said.

The tiny nanogenerators have diameters as small as 500 nanometers, or about 100 times thinner than a human hair and one-tenth the width of common cloth fibers. The researchers repeatedly tugged and tweaked the nanofibers, generating electrical outputs ranging from 5 to 30 millivolts and 0.5 to 3 nanoamps.

Furthermore, the researchers report no noticeable degradation after stretching and releasing the nanofibers for 100 minutes at a frequency of 0.5 hertz (cycles per second).

Lin’s team at UC Berkeley pioneered the near-field electrospinning technique used to create and position the polymeric nanogenerators 50 micrometers apart in a grid pattern. The technology enables greater control of the placement of the nanofibers onto a surface, allowing researchers to properly align the fiber nanogenerators so that positive and negative poles are on opposite ends, similar to the poles on a battery.

Without this control, the researchers explained, the negative and positive poles might cancel each other out and reducing energy efficiency.

The researchers demonstrated energy conversion efficiencies as high as 21.8 percent, with an average of 12.5 percent.

“Surprisingly, the energy efficiency ratings of the nanofibers are much greater than the 0.5 to 4 percent achieved in typical power generators made from experimental piezoelectric PVDF thin films, and the 6.8 percent in nanogenerators made from zinc oxide fine wires,” said the study’s lead author, Chieh Chang, who conducted the experiments while he was a graduate student in mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley.

“We think the efficiency likely could be raised further,” Lin said. “For our preliminary results, we see a trend that the smaller the fiber we have, the better the energy efficiency. We don’t know what the limit is.”

Other co-authors of the study are Yiin-Kuen Fuh, a UC Berkeley graduate student in mechanical engineering; Van H. Tran, a graduate student at the Technische Universität München (Technical University of Munich) in Germany; and Junbo Wang, a researcher at the Institute of Electronics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China.

The National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency helped support this research.

Shown is a fiber nanogenerator on a plastic substrate created by UC Berkeley scientists. The nanofibers can convert energy from mechanical stresses and into electricity, and could one day be used to create clothing that can power small electronics. (Chieh Chang, UC Berkeley)

(Number one of two posts on nanotechnology and electricity. Hit this link for part two)

This sounds like a tech with a range of applications.

The release:

Penn material scientists turn light into electrical current using a golden nanoscale system

		IMAGE: Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. Click here for more information.

PHILADELPHIA –- Material scientists at the Nano/Bio Interface Center of the University of Pennsylvania have demonstrated the transduction of optical radiation to electrical current in a molecular circuit. The system, an array of nano-sized molecules of gold, respond to electromagnetic waves by creating surface plasmons that induce and project electrical current across molecules, similar to that of photovoltaic solar cells.

The results may provide a technological approach for higher efficiency energy harvesting with a nano-sized circuit that can power itself, potentially through sunlight. Recently, surface plasmons have been engineered into a variety of light-activated devices such as biosensors.

It is also possible that the system could be used for computer data storage. While the traditional computer processor represents data in binary form, either on or off, a computer that used such photovoltaic circuits could store data corresponding to wavelengths of light.

Because molecular compounds exhibit a wide range of optical and electrical properties, the strategies for fabrication, testing and analysis elucidated in this study can form the basis of a new set of devices in which plasmon-controlled electrical properties of single molecules could be designed with wide implications to plasmonic circuits and optoelectronic and energy-harvesting devices.

Dawn Bonnell, a professor of materials science and the director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center at Penn, and colleagues fabricated an array of light sensitive, gold nanoparticles, linking them on a glass substrate. Minimizing the space between the nanoparticles to an optimal distance, researchers used optical radiation to excite conductive electrons, called plasmons, to ride the surface of the gold nanoparticles and focus light to the junction where the molecules are connected. The plasmon effect increases the efficiency of current production in the molecule by a factor of 400 to 2000 percent, which can then be transported through the network to the outside world.

In the case where the optical radiation excites a surface plasmon and the nanoparticles are optimally coupled, a large electromagnetic field is established between the particles and captured by gold nanoparticles. The particles then couple to one another, forming a percolative path across opposing electrodes. The size, shape and separation can be tailored to engineer the region of focused light. When the size, shape and separation of the particles are optimized to produce a “resonant” optical antennae, enhancement factors of thousands might result.

Furthermore, the team demonstrated that the magnitude of the photoconductivity of the plasmon-coupled nanoparticles can be tuned independently of the optical characteristics of the molecule, a result that has significant implications for future nanoscale optoelectronic devices.

“If the efficiency of the system could be scaled up without any additional, unforeseen limitations, we could conceivably manufacture a one-amp, one-volt sample the diameter of a human hair and an inch long,” Bonnell said.

###

The study, published in the current issue of the journal ACS Nano, was conducted by Bonnell, David Conklin and Sanjini Nanayakkara of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Penn; Tae-Hong Park of the Department of Chemistry in the School of Arts and Sceicnes at Penn; Parag Banerjee of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland; and Michael J. Therien of the Department of Chemistry at Duke University.

This work was supported by the Nano/Bio Interface Center, National Science Foundation, the John and Maureen Hendricks Energy Fellowship and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Here’s the lede in an article about the banking industry and the ongoing credit crunch:

Those wicked bankers–refusing to lend to small businesses! So say the pols. The reality is something else.

You read that and think, man this whole credit crunch thing is just some sort of hoax cooked up by the mainstream media or opportunistic politicians. Then you hit the link up there, read the article and realize the gist of it is a lot of businesses have drastically cut expenses and are now self-capitalizing because profitability is up and operating costs are down.

The problem there is those companies drastically cut expenses — those pesky things like salaries for jobs that no longer exist and such — because the banking industry completely screwed Main Street and continued a ridiculous credit squeeze long after receiving billions in Federal bailout money. And trust me, the credit crunch is still going on.

It’s great some companies managed to pare down to the point of self-capitalizing. But I bet both the newly unemployed from those companies, and the now overworked employees doing a job that once was covered by two, or more, workers would prefer for those companies to hoard a little more cash (something like what banks are still doing) and dip into the credit market to cover operating costs. I bet some of the companies would love to do just that, but can’t — why?, because of that still overly tight credit market

A very good question, and the current answer is a bit unsettling.

From the link:

Is it safe to buy Chinese-made computer equipment?With Google and the National Security Agency now teaming up to investigate supposed Chinese hacking and most of our PC hardware coming from China, it’s a fair question. And a hard one to answer with certainty.

It is made more urgent by a report in the Sunday Times newspaper that Chinese spies in the U.K. have been handing out bugged memory sticks and cameras to targeted businesses in an attempt to steal the companies’ intellectual property.

Headlined, “China bugs and burgles Britain,” the story quotes a classified report from MI5–their equivalent of our CIA–and says, “The gifts–cameras and memory sticks –have been found to contain electronic Trojan bugs which provide the Chinese with remote access to users’ computers.”

My friend, security blogger Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, yesterday posted an item suggesting it wouldn’t be too difficult for Chinese PC manufacturers to build backdoors into their products and use them to spy on pretty much anyone.

“If China’s government really is hell-bent on keeping an eye on American and European businesses, why not just incorporate 21st century backdoors into their products? Then, you could just have them automatically call home to do a data dump of documents. If there’s anything interesting in the files, it can be set to monitor its user on a regular basis,” Vaughan-Nichols wrote.

“There’s nothing difficult about doing this. Not only are backdoors easy to create, running an automatic check for words of interest, even in terabytes of documents, just requires some servers. After all,Google does it every day with far more data than such a plot could ever uncover.”

Amazing make-up work by MAC artist Karin Stone of Chicago:

Hit the link for more photos of the make-up work in progress.

(Hat tip: Boing Boing)

… may well be a little electronic device in your pocket. It shouldn’t be shocking, but I never cease to be amazed at the unconstitutional power grabs the Federal government continues to attempt and take in terms of civil liberties and personal privacy. New technology is wonderful, but it is very important to track, and reign in, the long, sneaky arm of the Fed.

From the link:

If you own a cell phone, you should care about the outcome of a case scheduled to be argued in federal appeals court in Philadelphia tomorrow. It could well decide whether the government can use your cell phone to track you — even if it hasn’t shown probable cause to believe it will turn up evidence of a crime.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology will ask the court to require that the government at least show probable cause before it can track your whereabouts.

And:

There’s no question that cell phones and cell-phone records can be useful for police officers who need to track the movements of those they believe to be breaking the law. And it is important for law enforcement agents to have the tools they need to stop crimes. However, it is just as important to make sure such tools are used responsibly, in a manner that safeguards our personal privacy.

But documents obtained by the ACLU and the EFF as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit show that the government takes advantage of this technology to track cell phones as extensively as possible — often without first obtaining warrants — except in states where courts step in to establish boundaries.

And here is the absolutely ridiculous government argument for retaining this right to breach your privacy:

The government has argued that “one who does not wish to disclose his movements to the government need not use a cellular telephone.” This is a startling and dismaying statement coming from the United States. The government is supposed to care about people’s privacy. It should not be forcing the nation’s 277 million cell-phone subscribers to choose between risking being tracked and going without an essential communications tool.

What’s at stake in the case is not whether it’s OK for the government to track the locations of cell phones; we agree that cell-phone tracking is lawful and appropriate in certain situations. The question is whether the government should first have to show that it has good reason to think such tracking will turn up evidence of a crime.

Update 2/13/10 — the above link and quotes are from the ACLU. Here’s the Cato Institute’s take on this issue. As with many, many public policy issues, Cato and the ACLU are in total agreement here.

From credible accounts coming out of Iran on 22 Bahman, an expected day of renewed green wave protest, the totalitarian state in Iran exposed its cravenness. And that Iran is no longer a democratic state by any definition.

Here is a great round-up from Sully and his under-bloggers at the Daily Dish with links to plenty of video and tweets from Iran.

A release from the World Gold Council and Cientifica Ltd., smoking hot from the inbox this morning (the crazy formatting is from the original and I didn’t feel like fixing it, so apologies for reading difficulties):

Gold at Forefront of ‘Nanotechnology Revolution’

LONDON, February 11/PRNewswire/ –

– World Gold Council Research Paper Demonstrates Important Applications
in Development Using Gold Nanoparticles

World Gold Council (WGC) has today published ‘Gold for Good: Gold and
nanotechnology in the age of innovation’, a research paper detailing new
scientific and technological innovations using gold. The report, which was
produced in conjunction with Cientifica Ltd, the world’s leading source of
global business and investor intelligence about nanotechnologies,
demonstrates how gold nanoparticles offer the potential to overcome many of
the serious issues facing mankind over the coming decades.

Gold nanoparticles exhibit a variety of unique properties which, when
harnessed and manipulated effectively, lead to materials whose uses are both
far-ranging in their potential and cost effective. This report explores the
many different applications that are being developed across the fields of
health, environment and technology.

Trevor Keel, Nanotechnology Project Manager at World Gold Council said:

“The opportunities and possibilities identified in this report are just a
subset of the amazing scope to use gold in the era of nanotechnology. As a
readily available and well understood material, gold nanoparticles are ideal
for use in a vast array of applications that improve our lives. WGC is
looking to promote and invest in the development of gold-based innovations
through Innovations Partnerships, so that the full benefits of gold
nanotechnology can be realized.”

Tim Harper, founder of Cientifica Ltd, said:

“Over the last decade, almost $50 billion of government funding has been
invested into nanotechnologies, and this investment is now starting to bear
fruit with a steady stream of commercially viable nanotechnologies which are
positively impacting human health, the environment and technology. This paper
demonstrates the many varied applications in which gold nanotechnology can
improve society’s standard of living.”

Health: Gold has a long history in the biomedical field stretching back
almost five thousand years. However the dawn of the ‘nano-age’ has really
broadened the potential of gold in biomedical applications and today, gold
nanoparticles are being employed in entirely novel ways to achieve
therapeutic effects.

Tumor targeting technologies which exploit gold’s inherent
bio-compatibility are being developed to deliver drugs directly into
cancerous tumours. Additionally, simple, cost effective and sensitive
diagnostic tests are being developed for the early detection of prostate and
other cancers.

Environment: Environmental concerns have never been more prominent –
energy and clean water scarcity, global warming and pollution are all major
issues that need to be addressed. Gold nano-particle based technologies are
showing great promise in providing solutions to a number of environmentally
important issues from greener production methods of the chemical feedstocks,
to pollution control and water purification.

Gold-based catalysts are being developed that can effectively prevent the
release of highly toxic forms of mercury into the atmosphere, the reduction
of chemicals from green feedstock, and also for water purification and
contaminant detection. In addition, gold is being used in meeting the
challenge of constructing cost effective and efficient fuel cells, a key
‘clean-energy’ technology of the future.

Advanced technology: Gold is already a well established
material in the electronics industry and the use of gold can only increase as
the worlds of electronics and nanotechnology interact further in the future.
Gold is being developed for conductive nanoparticle inks for plastic
electronics because of its material compatibility, inherent durability and
proven track record of reliability. Gold nanotechnologies have also been
shown to offer functional benefits for visual display technologies like touch
sensitive screens and potentially for use in advanced data storage
technologies including advanced flash memory devices.

The full paper can be downloaded from:

http://www.gold.org/assets/file/rs_archive/gold_and_nanotechnology_in_the
_age_of_innovation.pdf

(Due to the length of this URL, it may be necessary to copy and paste
this hyperlink into your Internet browser’s URL address field. Remove the
space if one exists.)

OR

http://cientifica.eu/blog/white-papers/gold/

Innovation Partnerships

World Gold Council works directly with partner companies via Innovation
Partnerships. These support research and development of new practical
applications for the metal, drawing on a genuine commercial market
requirement for innovation. Partner organisations include (but are not
limited to) precious metal, chemical, electronics, materials and biomedical
companies, ranging from small enterprises through to established
international businesses. Interested companies are invited to contact World
Gold Council for further details.

During 2009-2010 World Gold Council is particularly interested in
receiving proposals relating to the following areas:

Industrial catalysts (including catalysts for pollution control and
chemical processing)

Biomedical applications (including medical diagnostics, therapeutics and
materials)

Advanced electronics (including any technology or component likely to be
used in next-generation devices)

Fuel cell systems (including applications both within the fuel cell
structure and hydrogen processing infrastructure)

Optical materials (including nanotechnology, chemicals and coatings)

Companies interested in collaborating with World Gold Council
are invited to make contact.

Notes to Editors:

World Gold Council

World Gold Council’s mission is to stimulate and sustain the demand for
gold and to create enduring value for its stakeholders. It is funded by the
world’s leading gold mining companies. For further information please visit
http://www.gold.org.

Cientifica

Cientifica Ltd, based in London, is one of the world’s best-respected
consultancy companies in the field of emerging technologies and technology
commercialization. It provides global business intelligence and strategic
consulting services to industry, governments and investors worldwide.

http://www.cientifica.eu

DARPA’s energy innovation cousin finally received funding last year and by all accounts has been a success. The current economy and the White House’s recent stance on holding the line on domestic spending could cut the legs out from under ARPA-E before it can ever start to hit its stride.

From the link:

A year after it first received funding, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) got high marks from the congressional committee that spearheaded its creation in its “first annual checkup.” In a hearing of the House committee on Science and Technology, the new agency, which is designed to promote the research, development and commercialization off “game-changing” energy technologies, received praise for quickly sorting through 3,700 applications to make 37 awards in its first round of funding. It also fine-tuned its awards process, with the second round of funding going into specific areas of research identified in a series of workshops. Some of the projects that ARPA-E funded have since attracted private support.

The agency’s fate, however, remains unclear. It’s funding so far has come from last year’s stimulus package, not the regular budget, and Congress denied its request for funds for the current fiscal year. The President’s 2011 budget includes nearly $300 million for the agency, but at a time when Congress is facing pressure to cut spending, that money might not make to the final budget.

There’s been a lot of solar energy news to blog about lately. Nestled in this spate of announcements is a breakthrough at IBM — solar cells created from abundant materials, well a higher proportion of abundant elements, than previous cells. The practical result? Cheaper to produce cells that don’t lose anything in the efficiency department, and cost and efficiency are the two issues that will determine when solar power becomes a viable alternative energy source.

From the second link:

Researchers at IBM have increased the efficiency of a novel type of solar cell made largely from cheap and abundant materials by over 40 percent. According to an article published this week in the journal Advanced Materials, the new efficiency is 9.6 percent, up from the previous record of 6.7 percent for this type of solar cell, and near the level needed for commercial solar panels. The IBM solar cells also have the advantage of being made with an inexpensive ink-based process.

The new solar cells convert light into electricity using a semiconductor material made of copper, zinc, tin, and sulfur–all abundant elements–as well as the relatively rare element selenium (CZTS). Reaching near-commercial efficiency levels is a “breakthrough for this technology,” says Matthew Beard, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, who was not involved with the work.

Copper power: This prototype solar cell uses a copper-based material and has achieved record efficiencies for a cell of its kind.

Credit: IBM Research

Update — head below the fold for IBM’s release on the new solar cell.Made in IBM Labs: IBM Sets World Record by Creating High-Efficiency Solar Cell Made from Earth-Abundant Materials

Breakthrough holds potential to deliver more energy at a fraction of the cost

ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — IBM (NYSE:IBM) today announced it has built a solar cell — where the key layer that absorbs most of the light for conversion into electricity, is made entirely of readily-available elements — that set a new world record for efficiency and holds potential for enabling solar cell technology to produce more energy at a lower cost. Comprised of copper (Cu), tin (Sn), zinc (Zn), sulfur (S), and/or selenium (Se), the cell’s power conversion demonstrates an efficiency of 9.6 percent — 40 percent higher than the value previously attained for this set of materials. In order to achieve progress in solar cell research, IBM is leveraging its world-class expertise in microprocessor technology, materials and manufacturing.

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“In a given hour, more energy from sunlight strikes the earth than the entire planet consumes in a year, but solar cells currently contribute less than 0.1 percent of electricity supply — primarily as a result of cost,” said Dr. David Mitzi, who leads the team at IBM Research that developed the solar cell. “The quest to develop a solar technology that can compare on a cost per watt basis with the conventional electricity generation, and also offer the ability to deploy at the terawatt level, has become a major challenge that our research is moving us closer to overcoming.”

The IBM researchers describe their achievement of the thin-film photovoltaic technology in a paper published in Advanced Materials this week, highlighting the solar cell’s potential to accomplish the goal of producing low-cost energy that can be used widely and commercially.

The solar cell development also sets itself apart from its predecessors as it was created using a combination of solution and nanoparticle-based approaches, rather than the popular, but expensive vacuum-based technique. The production change is expected to enable much lower fabrication costs, as it is consistent with high-throughput and high materials utilization based deposition techniques including printing, dip and spray coating and slit casting.

Currently available thin film solar cell modules based upon compound semiconductors operate at 9 to 11 percent efficiency levels, and are primarily made from two costly compounds — copper indium gallium selenide or cadmium telluride. Attempts to create affordable, earth abundant solar cells from related compounds that are free of indium, gallium or cadmium have not exceeded 6.7 percent, compared to IBM’s new 9.6 efficiency rating.

Over the past several years, IBM researchers have pioneered several breakthroughs related to creating inexpensive, efficient solar cells. IBM does not plan to manufacture solar technologies, but is open to partnering with solar cell manufacturers to demonstrate the technology.

For additional insight regarding today’s announcement, visit: http://asmarterplanet.com/

For more information about IBM Research, please visit: www.ibm.com/research

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Source: IBM

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KurzweilAI.net — Maybe by 2050?

How Long Till Human-Level AI?

H+, Feb. 5, 2010 A significant numbers of individuals informed about AI believe it is likely that artificial general intelligence (AGI) at the human level or beyond will occur around the middle of this century, and plausibly even sooner, probably integrating a wide range of approaches, according to a survey of 21 AGI-09 conference participants. The experts were asked when they estimated AI would reach each of four milestones: passing the Turing test by carrying on a conversationwell enough to pass as a human solving problems as well as a third grade elementary school student performing Nobel-quality scientific work going beyond the human level to superhuman intelligence Read Original Article>>

The well-known Drake equation, created by Dr. Frank Drake in 1960 to predict the number of extraterrestrial civilizations in the Milky Way, gets an upgrade to take into account the concept of multiple universes. Turns out our knowledge is so limited as to make the exercise essentially impossible.

From the second link:

But there’s a problem: this is not an equation. To form a true Drake-like argument, Gleiser would need to assign probabilities to each of these sets allowing him to write an equation in which the assigned probabilities multiplied together, on one side of the equation, equal the fraction of universes where complex life emerges on the other side.

Here he comes up against one of the great problems of modern cosmology–that without evidence to back up their veracity, many ideas in modern cosmology are little more than philosophy. So assigning a probability to the fraction of universes in the multiverse in which the fundamental constants and laws satisfy the anthropic principle is not just hard, but almost impossible to formulate at all.

Also:

Gleiser’s take on the Drake equation for the Multiverse is an interesting approach. What it tells us, however, is that our limited understanding of the universe today does not allow us to make any reasonable estimate of the number of intelligent lifeforms in the multiverse (more than one). And given the limits on what we can ever know about other universes, it’s likely that we’ll never be able to do much better than that.