Sunday, February 17, 2008

Picture of the day

More from NanoArt 2008

My next favorite four (click to see large version):



Title: Nano Woods
Artist: Renata Spiazzi



Title: Infinite Exploration
Artist: David Hylton



Title: Seal
Artist: Geert Lenssens



Title: Thought Form
Artist: David Derr



What is NanoArt?

Artist and scientist Cris Orfescu presents NanoArt, reflecting advances in the arts related to nanoscale technologies.

One goal of the NanoArt series is to raise the public's awareness of Nanotechnology and its impact on our lives, which by even conservative measure will be significant.

Who?

37 nanoartists from 13 countries and 4 continents, presenting 121 NanoArt works to this second edition of the international competition.

www.absolutearts.com/nanoart

To vote for your favorite NanoArt work you can also visit directly the competition site at:

http://nanoart21.org/nanoart2006/index.php?cat=9

Follow these 3 easy steps:

1. click on the album’s thumbnail to open album
2. click on the artwork’s thumbnail to see the large image
3. click on the number of stars you would like to rank that artwork


To see more examples of “taking it to the next level” see http://future-is-here.com/Desktops.htm

Jump The Curve

Once again, my favorite technology author Jack Uldrich makes complex topics accessible to the general reader. In his latest book, Jump The Curve: 50 Essential Strategies to Help Your Company Stay Ahead of Emerging Technologies, Uldrich explains how, “in the next decade, exponential trends in computers, data storage, bandwidth, gene sequencing, and other fields will transform the global economy.”

“With fifty vital strategies at its core, Jump The Curve teaches managers and organizations how to simultaneously adopt and stay ahead of both technology and trend.”

Insightful, thought provoking, and inspiring.

What you should take away from this bit

Get your hands on a copy, find a quiet place to read, and learn how you can Jump The Curve by taking advantage of the tremendous growth in technologies.

http://www.jumpthecurve.net/

This is one that I'll read a 2nd and 3rd time.

Is nanotechnology morally acceptable?

The Next Bit comes to us from The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN)

“For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small.” The survey, by Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, shows that “religion exerts far more influence on public views of technology in the United States than in Europe.”

To understand where the nano-nay-sayers come from, note especially this paragraph describing just what nanotechnology is, and see if in fact it differs from any other set of technologies, hundreds of which enable our current life style:

“Nanotechnology is a branch of science and engineering devoted to the design and production of materials, structures, devices and circuits at the smallest achievable scale, typically in the realm of individual atoms and molecules.”

Hmmmmmm… just science. Can’t blame the science, nor the resulting technologies, for things we don’t like. Blame perhaps each of us for not participating in the decisions that can enable or stifle new technologies.

“In a sample of 1,015 adult Americans, only 29.5 percent of respondents agreed that nanotechnology was morally acceptable.”

Let me go out on a limb and state that these folks equate anything “not occurring in nature” as unnatural. Have they given even the smallest bit of thought to the many “unnatural” bits and pieces found in everyday 21st Century life? Things such as, oh, let’s see….. most modern medicine (diagnosis and treatment), the vast majority of technologies that create functional items from base materials and components, etc. Almost everything we do and see and eat owes some part of its existence to one or more “unnatural” elements.

My point? Do not equate the science nor the resulting technologies with how they will be used and how they effect society. Science is neither good nor bad. (Geez, how many times have we heard that. Did we all pay attention? Apparently not everyone.) Good and bad come from our use of technologies, for instance by allowing some to be used to impinge on another’s rights. Just google “Genocide” to get an idea of what I mean.

Are there some technologies that we should ban? Excellent question, glad I asked. Absolutely. The world, as a body, has banned the use of some weapons of mass destruction, such as nerve gas. So yes, we can make “morality-based” decisions, as an informed group. Have we made mistakes, allowing some bad technologies to live and some good ones to die on the vine? I’ll leave that up to each of you to decide.

Where are we now?

Once again we find ourselves at a crossroad, trying to decide which of many technology-paved paths to take. Many of them could lead us to a nanotech-enabled, globe-spanning, prosperous future, where no person is treated as having less value than another. A future where the few don’t get to decide for the many. Where everyone is heard, anyone can speak, and decisions-makers listen.

Because more and more of us are paying attention to and participating in the debate surrounding nanotech-enabled technologies, I am hopeful that we are traveling down the better paths.

In Closing, let me hammer home this point, yet again (I will undoubtedly do so again, and probably many times, right up to the point where it doesn’t matter, one way of the other):

No informed person doubts that developments at the nanoscale will be significant. We debate the time frame, the magnitude and the possibilities, but not the likelihood for large-scale societal change. The least-speculative views suggest that we're in for changes of an order that justifies--if not demands--our undivided and immediate attention.

Will we be ready?

One of the best places to stay informed about preparing for advanced nanotechnologies is at The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (crnano.org).

Find news and information about nanotechnologies at Nanotech Now (nanotech-now.com)

Read entire article at
http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2008/02/religion-nanote.html

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

Picture of the day

NanoArt 2008

My favorite four:



Title: Nano Depths
Artist: Renata Spiazzi



Title: Blossom
Artist: David Hylton



Title: Tekeli-li
Artist: Bjoern Daempfling



Title: Micro/Macro
Artist: Eva Lewarne


To be fair, my favorite eight are by artists Renata Spiazzi & David Hylton. Spiazzi’s work continues to impress with it’s novelty and eye-catching fantastical flavours. Hylton’s is a dive into the sublime, and a welcome splash of cool clear water in the face of modern sensibilities. With their highly interpretive versions of modern science-art, these artists take it to the next level, mirroring the awe-inspiring advances being made in nanoscale technologies.



NanoArt

Artist and scientist Cris Orfescu presents NanoArt, reflecting advances in the arts related to nanoscale technologies.

One goal of the NanoArt series is to raise the public's awareness of Nanotechnology and its impact on our lives, which by even conservative measure will be significant.

Who?

37 nanoartists from 13 countries and 4 continents, presenting 121 NanoArt works to this second edition of the international competition.

www.absolutearts.com/nanoart

To vote for your favorite NanoArt work you can also visit directly the competition site at:

http://nanoart21.org/nanoart2006/index.php?cat=9

Follow these 3 easy steps:

1. click on the album’s thumbnail to open album
2. click on the artwork’s thumbnail to see the large image
3. click on the number of stars you would like to rank that artwork


To see more examples of “taking it to the next level” see http://future-is-here.com/Desktops.htm

Nanotechnology catches the EPA’s eye

“The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) published this week in the Federal Register its plan for the Nanoscale Materials Stewardship Program under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). The plan takes a first step by offering industry, non-governmental organizations and other groups the opportunity to voluntarily submit safety data on engineered nanoscale materials. “

The key word here is “offering.” Nobody is quite ready to regulate nanoscale materials just yet (it’s way too slippery a slope at this time). However, if industry does volunteer the information, it should mean that their new nanoscale materials are safe, tested and regulated, as well as being profitable to company shareholders.

Featured in R&D magazine (*) as well as many others, regulation of nanoscale materials has been on the minds of industry and potential regulatory agencies across the globe for several years. It is just now starting to catch the eye of the general public due to the rapid growth of products containing nanoscale materials, as well as those that only claim to.

What you should take away from this bit

Nanoscale materials are the catalysts for humankind’s next great step forward in future products. Man-on-the-street (along with Woman-on-the-street) are beginning to have to pay attention, if for no other reason than the recent media-induced saturation of “nano” news. Nanoscale materials impact on society is potentially the most revolutionary humankind has seen; more so than all previous eras put together. From lighter auto bodies (for increased gas mileage) to high-tech composites used in the aerospace industry (for decreased launch costs) and in all cases where strength-to-weight ratios count most, nanoscale materials will play an enabling role in the vast majority of all next-generation technologies, as they are doing now everywhere where computational devices are used.

This is another topic that will remain contentious, and worth reading about.

(*)http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000100&ISSUE=0801&RELTYPE=MS&PRODCODE=0000000&PRODLETT=JN&CommonCount=0

Nano-sized “Trojan horses” get government funding

“The Department of Defense has commissioned a nine-month study from Rice University chemists and scientists in the Texas Medical Center to determine whether a new drug based on carbon nanotubes can help prevent people from dying of acute radiation injury following radiation exposure. The new study was commissioned after preliminary tests found the drug was greater than 5,000 times more effective at reducing the effects of acute radiation injury than the most effective drugs currently available.”

Good news for anyone destined to having cancer in his or her lives.

Summing it up: From James Tour, Rice's Chao Professor of Chemistry, director of Rice's Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory (CNL) and principal investigator on the grant:

"Ideally, we'd like to develop a drug that can be administered within 12 hours of exposure and prevent deaths from what are currently fatal exposure doses of ionizing radiation.”

Coupled with the many other advances being made in detection and treatment of cancers, I am hopeful that within the next decade that cancer will go the way of other easily diagnosed and treated diseases, if not the dodo.

CRN at 5 years

The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (CRN) at five years.

An overview of their accomplishments, disappointments, and plans for the future.

“We chose to go back and review what we believed and what we said when we started CRN, and to ponder and report on what we have learned since then.”

Well worth your time reading. In fact, please read this update on CRN and it’s mission.

The most telling paragraph:

It’s interesting to note that while CRN’s time frame for the expected development of molecular manufacturing has shifted back by approximately five years, the mainstream scientific community’s position has been moving forward, from a point of ‘never’, to ‘maybe by the end of the century’, to ‘not until at least 2050’, and now to ‘perhaps around 2030 or so’. These projections might not yet match up exactly with CRN’s, but the gap is steadily shrinking.

If I have said it once I have said it a thousand times:

No informed person doubts that developments at the nanoscale will be significant. We debate the time frame, the magnitude and the possibilities, but not the likelihood for large-scale societal change. The least-speculative views suggest that we're in for changes of an order that justifies--if not demands--our undivided and immediate attention.

Will we be ready?

http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2008/02/crn-at-five-yea.html

One of the best places to stay informed about preparing for advanced nanotechnologies is at The Center for Responsible Nanotechnology (crnano.org).