This is a critical step. After its discovery nearly a century ago, heparin remains almost impossible to create in a laboratory, and so is still made from pig intestines – a procedure susceptible to sometimes lethal contamination.

Fake cell: This microfluidics chip can replicate the activity of one of the eukaryotic cell’s most important, yet least understood, organelles–the Golgi apparatus. Researchers hope that it can help them understand how to create synthetic versions of important drugs such as heparin. Credit: Courtesy JACS

The central mystery is the process by which a cellular organelle called the Golgi apparatus, converts proteins to sugar-studded glycoproteins. To emulate the Golgi’s workings, researchers created their very own artificial cell organelle – a small microfluidics chip – that acts as a precise, controllable, (eventually) automated Golgi analogue.

Funding and serendipity aligned, bioengineered heparin may enter clinical trials within five years.

University of Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminum (across the pond, it’s “alumimium”) by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. ‘Transparent aluminum’ is an exotic new state of matter that previously existed only in science fiction – specifically, in the original TV series, and again in Star Trek IV.

Aa short pulse from the  FLASH laser -  a new source of radiation ten billion times brighter than any existing synchrotron – “knocked out” a core electron from every aluminum atom in a sample, leaving the metal’s crystalline structure intact but turning the aluminum nearly invisible to extreme ultraviolet radiation. Potential applications include planetary science, astrophysics and nuclear fusion power.

A report of the research, “Turning solid aluminium transparent by intense soft X-ray photoionization,” appears in Nature Physics. (Note: abstract only if you don’t have a subscription or don’t purchase access.) The research was carried out by an international team led by Oxford University scientists Professor Justin Wark, Dr Bob Nagler, Dr Gianluca Gregori, William Murphy, Sam Vinko and Thomas Whitcher.

The premier dialog on the Singularity, the first Singularity Summit was held at Stanford in 2006 to further understanding and discussion about the Singularity concept and the future of human technological progress. It was founded as a venue for leading thinkers to explore the subject, whether scientist, enthusiast, or skeptic.

Start by scanning and mapping the brain’s electric signals via EEG. Analyze said signals and convert ‘em into words. Beam these to the soldier of your choice. Voila! Instant telepathy for only $4 million in R&D.

The ghost in the machine is subvocalization - word-specific neural signals that fly around the brain before the word itself is actually spoken. If these are (or can be made to be) the same for more than just the person whose brain was scanned, we’re in business.

But wait – there’s more!

DARPA is also applying the idea to – wait for it – mind-reading binoculars that would communicate a soldier’s thoughts about what s/he was seeing much faster than having to speak (which has now become SO 20th century).

Talk about (no pun intended) the end of privacy….

While the possibility of this happening is remote and preventable (as described by Drexler and Chris Phoenix), the fact that it is even possible was enough to generate a new batch of fervent end-of-the-worlders. They’re so obsessed, in fact, that nobody’s discussing the next great wave of computer viruses that I poetically call blue goo.

Wazzat?

Allow me to explain: First, we need to take a quick trip to the emerging threat of hardware trojans – intentionally-place, impossible-to-detect defects that would drastically reduce the relibility and life expectancy of processors and memory chips. It’s serious enough that, among others, the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is tracking the issue.

In my view, however, this is a weak hardware trojan (as in weak encryption or weak AI). So, you may well wonder, what would a strong hardware trojan be like?

Glad you asked. By exploiting the software that will control nanofabricators – which, by the way, use basic molecules as feedstock – such future micromonsters would commit technophagy by commandeering computer (or phone, or whatever) resources to create a small army of self-replicating nanonbots that devour the device from the inside out. Like parasitic wasps. (Warning: not for the queasy.)

No way!

Way.

Be afraid…be very afraid. And this time I mean it.

Summary:
Smith et al., 10.1073/pnas.2237126100

Press Release:
Institute for Biological Energy Alternatives

3.1.1 The XML Repository

We store pointers to published documents as XML records. By working with XML records, we gain the ability to change the information associated with their respective documents, which we cannot do with the proprietary databases. Indeed, the XML records should be seen more as dynamic objects rather than static documents. Not only do we gain the ability to change the original keywords and citation information from the respective documents, but also the ability to add annotations, links to other records, associations with other types of media (e.g. sound clips), etc. Furthermore, XML records can even have associated procedures to compute relevant algorithms. We can think of XML records as archival objects, “buckets” of pointers, links, data, and code, which are not affiliated with any one particular information resource, as defined by Nelson et al.

By transforming records from passive documents into active objects, we start our construction of the biologically motivated enabling substrate at the lowest level of information systems: the source data. This is an essential step to set up a distributed design. In centralized systems, documents can be passive since it will be up to a higher level program to decide if a certain document is relevant or not. In contrast, in distributed systems, much of the decision-making is off-loaded to lower-level components, which need to be endowed with computing capabilities. In this sense, records become active objects that store changing information, communicate with other components, and even perform actions (run code) on the information they store.

Here’s the paper:
Biologically Motivated Distributed Designs for Adaptive Knowledge Management

…and related material:
Active Recommendation Project

Artificial Organs and Prosthetics

Computer models are already being used to design artificial hips, hearing aids, prosthetics and other devices fitted precisely to the requirements of individual patients. The Digital Human will provide a reference model that would increase the accuracy and validity of these designs, as well as speeding the development of a much wider variety of devices. By combining a vast amount of measured information into a single model, the Digital Human simulations would provide a powerful tool for learning how to mimic the operation of human organs – whether the heart, or kidneys, or the ear. They would also help ensure an accurate interface between artificial organs and the environment in which they will function (including their performance under extreme conditions that would be otherwise difficult to test).

Read the project summary:
http://www.fas.org/dh/publications/consortium3.doc.

The scientists then coated the DNA with gold, producing a simple electronic device consisting of the nanotube connected to gold wires at each end. Current through the nanotube could be switched on or off by applying an electric field — the definition of a transistor.

Smaller Computer Chips Built Using DNA as Template