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What are Australians doing in nanotech?

For some insight, the Australian Nanotechnology Alliance has compiled a series of case studies on Aussie companies to check out.

Growing beyond oil with biofuel

CSIRO Podcast: Oz, UK team up to turn waste plant material into a sustainable, low-emission fuel.

Tomorrow’s technologies today! (with yesterday’s sexual politics)

This is an eerily predictive ‘World of Tomorrow’ film from somewhere in the 60s/70s. Accurately predicts online shopping and banking. Misses the boat on social change.

The singularity will come with phat beats

It’s a little old now, and worth a fact check as some of the dates mentioned approach us – but here’s some stellar stats on the speed of progress.

Carbon nanotube desalinate water

Carbon nanotubes have been incorporated into membranes to improve desalination and generate clean water.

New Jersey Institute of Technology: 14 March 2011

Nanocomposite creates high-capacity hydrogen storage

Nanoparticles of magnesium metal in a matrix of a plexi-glass-type polymer can rapidly absorb and release hydrogen.

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab via Eurelalert: 13 March 2011

Image: This schematic shows high-capacity magnesium nanocrystals encapsulated in a gas-barrier polymer matrix to create a new and revolutionary hydrogen storage composite material.

Credit: Image from Jeff Urban

Low-Power Memory from Nanotubes

A rival to flash memory that requires one percent as much power could improve battery life in mobile devices.
MIT Technology Review: 11 March 2011

Image (from MIT Technology Review): Itty bitty bits: Three low-power phase-change memory bits are positioned between carbon-nanotube electrodes that have been colorized. The middle bit is “off” and the other two are “on.” The bits are arrayed on a silicon substrate that has been colored light blue.
Credit: Feng Xiong and Alex Jerez

Be Amazing!

Learn how to stand out from the crowd with some dubious advice on nanotechnology.

Surviving the information age, and cyborgs

By Jason Major

TechNyou

The period 2000 to 2050 will be the age of information, and an awful lot of it, according to Professor Terrence Sejnowski who gave the Graeme Clark Oration two nights ago, in Melbourne.

Proj Sejnowski’s expertise is in the field of computational neuroscience and his research has given insight into memory, emotions and disorders such as autisms, epilepsy and schizophrenia. Stemming from this is research leading to artificial intelligence and spare parts for humans. He revealed lots of cool stuff that we can expect from his field of research in the not too distant future: the bionic eye and the rise of the social robot – one that interacts with humans, learns from experience and can recognize human emotion. Prof Sejnowski believes the bionic eye will be a reality in our lifetime – not sure if he was referring to his or mine. See below for more detail.

Info overload…maybe

What struck me most, however, was his prediction about all the information that was going to come from this and other research. The sheer volume of knowledge being generated and the computing power that will be needed to makes sense of all this data is immense. I started to wonder just how much data we as humans can handle before we get overwhelmed, and important stuff, stuff integral to our survival, slips through the cracks with detrimental consequences, or is this is already happening?

When I was a boy…

My Dad tells stories of how my grandfather would spend much of his day yakking to his neighbour on the boundary fence of our farm. These and other stories from my elders seem to suggest that time went at a more leisurely pace back then. The world’s problems could be solved over a good yarn and a cigarette, back when we had time to reflect and debate the issues of the world, even if the world only extended to the edge of the local district – unless it involved world wars, flu pandemics or losing the Ashes to England. There is no doubt that today we have more information at our fingertips, but we don’t have time to find, digest, reflect and discuss the information, or is that just me?

I wasn’t living 60 years ago to compare, but today we are forever rushing; we seem to exist on sound bites, pithy quotes and Tweets. And those in the political sphere are one group that have become especially adept at delivering us this.

The amount of information we are bombarded with is growing exponentially and we are going to have to be more and more selective about what we take in and use to form opinions. Even today, we seem to be forming an opinion about important stuff on just a few headlines’ worth of info.

This is not a complaint or a wish to hark back to the old days, though having time to have a good yarn over the boundary fence does seem appealing. I accept that this is the way it is; I just wonder how we will cope with this onslaught of knowledge, how we integrate it in a way that we extract meaning out of it and use it appropriately?

Some of the computing and artificial intelligence technologies predicted by Prof Sejnowski suggest that these are the tools we will rely on to do this. Will humans, to some extent, be taken out of the decision-making equation? It is starting to sound like HAL in 2001 a space odyssey. Geez, I might actually get my wish of having the time to solve world peace over a good yarn at the boundary fence.

And for a speculative trot into the near future, here is some of the cooler stuff Prof Sejnowski talked about:

Neomorphic engineering. What the…Think robots and cyborgs

Neomorphic engineering is what will be bring us the bionic eye. It is a new multi-disciplinary research area using nano, IT, biology, physics, chemistry and informatics to understand the human brain and use that knowledge to design artificial neural systems that will restore lost function in humans (or even enhance exiting ones?), or reverse engineer these to create that robot that will learn, develop common sense and detect and respond to human emotion, though there are some serious computing power issues to overcome before we get a robot with these capabilities, let alone what we need to understand about the human brain and how it works to provide these traits. Asimov, where are you?

To give you an idea here is a link to a story – though it’s a bit technical:

Adaptive, brain-like systems give robots complex behaviors

And another one slightly more reader-friendly from CalTech

Caltech Researchers Train Computers to Analyze Fruit-Fly Behavior

And a link to the Institute of Neomorphic Engineering, of which Prof Sejnowski is a member

Unstoppable

Research and the generation of knowledge will continue to surge ahead and the more powerful our computers, the more knowledge we will generate. There is no stopping this. Somewhere in this I hope there is a way to extract meaning from it all.

It’s the weekend; time for a drink chat about the footy with the lads.

Nanotech-enabled Consumer Products Continue to Rise

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has released a list of over 1300 nanotechnology enabled products that are available.

PEN, 10 March 2011