What a day! Just as I'm getting ready to attend Aubrey de Grey's talk at Google, I find out that a martial arts training buddy of mine, Dr. Pete Lohstroh, recently left his research position at UC Davis to take a senior scientist position at Telomolecular Nanotechnologies, specializing in the application of nanocircles to telomere extension therapy (one of several approaches they're taking). Congratulations Pete!
Recently in Nanotechnology Category
Nanomedicine opens the way for nerve cell regeneration
"The ability to regenerate nerve cells in the body could reduce the effects of trauma and disease in a dramatic way. In two presentations at the NSTI Nanotech 2007 Conference, researchers describe the use of nanotechnology to enhance the regeneration of nerve cells. In the first method, developed at the University of Miami, researchers show how magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) may be used to create mechanical tension that stimulates the growth and elongation of axons of the central nervous system neurons. The second method from the University of California, Berkeley uses aligned nanofibers containing one or more growth factors to provide a bioactive matrix where nerve cells can regrow..."
Nanoparticles Delivery of 'Suicide DNA' Kills Prostate Tumors
"...using nanoparticles developed by members of the Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer, a team of investigators at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, in Philadelphia, has developed a DNA-based therapeutic agent that has the potential to treat both enlarged prostates and localized prostate tumors. When tested in mice, this new agent specifically targeted prostate tissue, producing no toxic effects in surrounding tissues..."
K. Eric Drexler informs me that his book "Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology" has a new home on his website (migrated from its previous hosting at the Foresight Institute).
Check out the attribution on the entry page... I did the work 10 years ago, but I deeply appreciate the continuing credit.
Frank Bieser writes:
> Perry E. Metzger wrote:
>> Without enough people working on the problem, we won't finish in
>> time. Right now, I'd say smart people are the biggest missing resource.
>
> And why might that be? Where did all the smart people go?
They didn't "go" anywhere. They've never been in the field.
How many smart people were working on orbital rocketry in 1920? A half
dozen, perhaps. Lots of people claimed the whole idea was bunk, too,
including the New York Times. Later on, lots of people joined up.
Today, not many people are working on Drexler's vision. That doesn't
mean it isn't worthwhile -- it just means that the field is young and
lots of people are still skeptical about it. I suspect that the number
of people actively working on it numbers less than 20, and possibly
less than 10.
There is enough work for thousands of people to push on this for many
years to come. At some point, we'll get IA or AI and the pace will be
able to pick up, but that point still seems pretty distant. Meanwhile,
direct molecular manipulation and molecular manufacturing pose a very
hard set of problems -- possibly the hardest engineering problem yet
faced by mankind -- and we need more minds to make progress. On the
flip side, MNT will also bring the biggest revolution in civilization
yet experienced, dwarfing everything that came before, so I see it as
a worthwhile problem to attack.
Still, we lack enough smart people working on it. As any good VC can
tell you, money is something of a commodity, but smart people are
rare. More smart people are needed.
Perry
An interesting blog article about the use of dendrimers in targetted drug delivery systems, sent me by Tom Burroughes in London.
University of Michigan scientists have created the nanotechnology equivalent of a Trojan horse to smuggle a powerful chemotherapeutic drug inside tumor cells – increasing the drug's cancer-killing activity and reducing its toxic side effects.
Previous studies in cell cultures have suggested that attaching anticancer drugs to nanoparticles for targeted delivery to tumor cells could increase the therapeutic response. Now, U-M scientists have shown that this nanotechnology-based treatment is effective in living animals.
This type of news carries a special type of urgency for me, as I've recently been informed that my good friend Chris Tame, in London, has been diagnosed with epithelioid angiosarcoma of the bones (spine & hip so far.) His oncologists are working hard to find the primary source of the cancer. In the meantime, any new developments in the effectiveness of chemotherapy with short & medium term time horizons are of great personal interest to me and my friends.
...the digital (PDF) version I'm reading now, but Charlie Stross tells his readers not to do so. I will, however, be buying several copies from Amazon as gifts to friends. Damn it's good!
I would much rather see transhumanists delve into real research or produce real results rather than just recruiting "believers". I [would] rather have fewer people working on the right things than a much larger number who believe in mistaken ideas.
...sadly, the transhumanists themselves will be a large part of the faulty advertising that lead humanity astray with outrageous claims, false beliefs, and preferring quantity over quality. I see nothing in most of our PR efforts that will actually help us attain our goals. Having a couple of hundred people join a science fan club worldwide will have little to no effect on progress.
Cambridge biogerontologist Aubrey de Grey will be speaking next week at Stanford University, on "Why the prospect of dramatic life extension matters now." Talk will occur Wednesday evening 7:00-8:30 PM, 8 June 2005, at the Clark Center Auditorium. Thanks to Tyler Emerson for forwarding this to me; I do plan to attend.
My old friend Perry Metzger gave in today and finally started a blog. Now to convince him to add a comment mechanism...
Courtesy of Perry Metzger today: "New Technique for Imaging May Improve Study of Proteins" and its related story direct from IBM, "IBM Scientists Make Breakthrough in Nanoscale Imaging."
IBM scientists have achieved a breakthrough in nanoscale magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by directly detecting the faint magnetic signal from a single electron buried inside a solid sample.
A big thanks to James and Steph for their gift of the Springer title Name Reactions by Jie Jack Li, a compact atlas of 331 reactions in organic chemistry, from "Abnormal Claisen rearrangement" to "Zenin benzine rearrangement." This should be truly useful from the fall term onwards; thanks guys!
Recommended by Monica White: the blog "Bizarre Science."
When the war finally came to an end, I was at a loss as to what to do... I took stock of my qualifications. A not-very-good degree, redeemed somewhat by my achievements at the Admiralty. A knowledge of certain restricted parts of magnetism and hydrodynamics, neither of them subjects for which I felt the least bit of enthusiasm. No published papers at all... Only gradually did I realize that this lack of qualification could be an advantage. By the time most scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things... Since I essentially knew nothing, I had an almost completely free choice...
Francis Crick
What Mad Pursuit, Basic Books, New York, 1988, pp 15-16.
In chemistry lecture, and studying outside class, I often use a molecular modelling kit made by Darling Models to help me visualize the stereochemistry of various molecules. I like my kit, but it's rather bulky, so I don't always have it immediately at hand. A few days ago, one of my classmates showed me the kit she carried, which is very much more compact and does most of what we need to know (in respect of linear and branched hydrocarbons and some of their halogenated derivatives): a Student Organic Chemistry C-set from Hinomoto Plastics. The Hinomoto kit fits in a small pocket pouch, and is very solidly constructed. Some of the components look amusingly like dice from the game Dungeons & Dragons, by the way.
Here's an interesting short article by Ralph Merkle written when he was working for Zyvex (before he moved on to Georgia Tech): "Nanotechnology and Medicine".
Another source of concise information on the respirocyte concept.
My thanks to my longtime friend (I avoid the term "old friend" for such a young woman) Kennita Watson for alerting me to this lecture at Stanford on 23 June 2004: "The Artificial Synapse Chip: Towards an Electronic Prosthetic Retina" by Harvey A. Fishman, M.D., Ph.D, Stanford University School of Medicine, the Director of Ophthalmic Tissue Engineering and Chief Ophthalmology Resident in the department of Ophthalmology.
Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is the most common form of severe and irreversible blindness in the U.S. Our research program consists of a highly interdisciplinary effort between physicians, engineers, and scientists to develop a neural interface that will connect the output from a digital camera to individual retinal cells in patients with AMD, thus bypassing injured cells.
I really wish I could make this lecture, but I have a bioanthropology final exam during the very time slot this lecture occurs (6:15pm for dinner at the hospital cafeteria, 7:30-8:30pm for the lecture). If you, the reader, can attend I'd love to hear your impressions of the event.
By the way, this sounds like a skillset for the type of research physician I find really interesting:
Dr. Fishman's area of expertise is translational research that uses a multidisciplinary approach to develop novel therapies for blinding diseases in the eye – in particular, Age-Related Macular Degeneration. His research bridges the gaps between tissue engineering, surface science, nanofabrication, chemistry, neuroscience and retinal transplantation biology in Ophthalmology. His background in new technologies and medical science is diverse including bioMEMS, chip-based microfluidics and confocal and time-lapse microscopy, neuroscience/nerve cell regeneration and macular diseases in Ophthalmology. He has made contributions in the fields of microfluidics, laser-induced fluorescence detection, separation science, and biosensors.
I imagine respirocytes as minuscule objects consisting of roughly 18 billion atoms arranged in small balls about a thousandth of a millimeter in diameter. Each respirocyte is a tiny pressurized gas tank equipped with small pumps. Respirocytes are nanobots that move with the blood. In the body's periphery, they release oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide. In the lungs, they do the opposite, recharging themselves with oxygen. The exchange of gases is regulated by minute sensors. Though the respirocytes are modeled on red blood corpuscles, they transport oxygen two hundred times more efficiently than the natural item. A small syringe-full of respirocytes could carry as much oxygen as your entire bloodstream.
Robert A. Freitas Jr
28 July 2000
I crashed late last night, and woke early this morning, and am ready to do it all again today: the Foresight SAG continues.
I'm at the Foresight SAG today through Sunday, so postings will be light.
The advice below can easily be applied to many different academic endeavors, including use in non-science classes. Here's a recipe. First, buy these pens:
- The Bic brite liner, of course. Avoid excessive markup with this. Really. Some of you may need to be told this, so here goes: what good is text that is mostly highlighted?
- The classic Bic "4-color pen": you can't survive without this!
- At least one Sharpie pen (keep one in your labcoat pocket) for marking test tubes and centrifuge vessels. I know, these have nothing to do with the method below, but a good lab geek always has one in her pocket anyway.
- A set of colored pencils. I use the erasable Sanford Col-Erase, but non-erasable Crayola colored pencils are cheaper and color adequately too.
The classic Bic 4-color pen should be in any student's pocket anyway. Annotating your own notes is so much easier when you use different colors. Here's an application to chemistry: you can draw much more easily understandable molecular orbital "balloon diagrams" (using the 90% probability surface standard or other representation of choice) if you assign colors to orbitals and stick with those colors.
The "balloon diagram method" I use:
Continue reading Structural molecular orbital diagrams: some tools and a method.
Michael Reed strongly recommends to me in email Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan as "an absolutely knock-out sci-fi novel", so I've put it in my queue. I've not read it yet, so I'd welcome opinions.
I don't generally read science fiction nowadays, having gotten increasingly picky as time goes by (and science fact often holds more fascination for me the better educated I become). I did however take a weekend recently to relax with Ken Macleod's Dark Light and Engine City, which were a mixture of disappointment and amusement for me. I've read all his work so far, and will continue to do so, but the man seems to be afflicted recently with the problem Heinlein had during the late period of his life when he was stricken with a cerebral arterial blockage: at some point near the end of each story, he seems to simply get tired, and tries to wrap up the story abruptly.
My bedside reading the last couple of days: Thomas Sowell's Basic Economics: A Citizens Guide to the Economy, Revised and Expanded, a fantastic book I very highly recommend.
On Friday during his office hours, my chem prof was deeply surprised to find that I didn't yet own a copy of Zumdahl's "Chemistry", which is not our school's official text... so he gave me one of his, a new copy, the Instructor's Annotated Edition (5th)! He had an extra, so it became mine... a good, good man, and deeply flattering.
A couple of people in a chemistry forum I frequent had recommended Linus Pauling's "General Chemistry". I saw a copy in my local Border's - the 1989 Dover reprint of the 3rd edition (the last, 1971) - and flipped through it. I was impressed, so I took note of its ISBN. The shelf price was $20, but I found a pristine copy on Amazon Marketplace for half that price and ordered it. Can't wait to get it.
A caveat, by the way - and this is no hit on the book, given its age - if you're going to study coordination compounds of metals, you'll need to supplement your reading with Zumdahl, or another modern source. Although Pauling mentions the work of Alfred Werner in a sidebar of a couple of pages on the matter, he (quite understandably) doesn't mention crystal field theory & d-shell splitting (of course he wouldn't). Very highly recommended.
I'll be attending all 3 days of the 14-16 May 2004 Foresight Senior Associates Gathering in Palo Alto, California. I very highly recommend this event to anyone interested in molecular nanotechnology. If you're not intimately familiar with nanotechnology, but want to learn, I enthusiastically recommend the 8-hour "Fundamentals of Nanotechnology" tutorial session on Friday: I'll be attending myself to dust off and deepen my own understanding.
Mark Miller informs me via Orkut that K. Eric Drexler now has a personal nanotechnology website, e-drexler.com.
There is a central myth about British science and economic growth, and it goes like this: science breeds wealth, Britain is in economic decline, therefore Britain has not done enough science. Actually, it is easy to show that a key cause of Britain's economic decline has been that the government has funded too much science...
Post-war British science policy illustrates the folly of wasting money on research. The government decided, as it surveyed the ruins of war-torn Europe in 1945, that the future lay in computers, nuclear power and jet aircraft, so successive administrations poured money into these projects--to vast technical success. The world's first commercial mainframe computer was British, sold by Ferrranti in 1951; the world's first commercial jet aircraft was British, the Comet, in service in 1952; the first nuclear power station was British, Calder Hall, commissioned in 1956; and the world's first and only supersonic commercial jet aircraft was Anglo-French, Concorde, in service in 1976.
Yet these technical advances crippled us economically, because they were so uncommercial. The nuclear generation of electricity, for example, had lost 2.1 billion pounds by 1975 (2.1 billion pounds was a lot then); Concord had lost us, alone, 2.3 billion pounds by 1976; the Comet crashed and America now dominates computers. Had these vast sums of money not been wasted on research, we would now be a significantly richer country.
Terence Kealey
Wasting Billions, the Scientific Way
The Sunday Times, October 13, 1996
I got voicemail from Alcor alerting me to this a few minutes ago:
In spite of our conciliatory actions and assumption of good intentions on the part of Representative Stump, he has decided to move forward with a House vote on his bill TOMORROW (Thursday) without allowing the affected parties to complete negotiations. Apparently, it doesn’t matter to him that the primary parties impacted by this legislation agree that passing new law is unnecessary when an administrative solution can easily be achieved. Nor does it seem to matter to him that his bill is also strongly opposed by other organ donation groups, including the local Science Care, the Organ Donation Network, Life Legacy, and others. Furthermore, the University of Arizona, Midwestern University, and other academic organizations will be negatively impacted by this hasty legislation.
I first got wind of this about 3 weeks ago. I'll be writing a protest letter tonight, ASAP. I urge you to do the same.
It looks like the lawgivers in Arizona are trying to shut down something they fear:
As you may have heard, Alcor is currently engaged in a serious legislative matter. Representative Bob Stump has introduced a bill to the Arizona House of Representatives that proposes to regulate cryonics. HB 2637 (embalmers; funeral establishments; storing remains) proposes cryonics be regulated under the Funeral and Embalmer's Board and that Alcor's use of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA) be stripped.
Even if you're not a member of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, I urge you to contact the legislators mentioned in the alert to assist the organization. Your own life may eventually depend on the outcome.
Yesterday I received a notification from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation telling me that my $250 dues paid on my suspension membership in tax year 2003 are up to 90% deductible, given their 501(c)3 status. Nice surprise!
I have a bit of the matchmaker in my blood. Some months ago I mentioned FuturePundit; recently I mentioned SciScoop. Those blogs really should get together for drinks and dinner sometime soon, maybe catch a movie afterwards.
If any student comes to me and says he wants to be useful to mankind and go into research to alleviate human suffering, I advise him to go into charity instead. Research wants real egotists who seek their own pleasure and satisfaction, but find it in solving the puzzles of nature.
Albert Szent-Györgi
(1893-1986)
It's great to get feedback on one's blog postings, especially when it results in the personal discovery of a great resource. Blog commenter Ricky James runs the compendious and incredibly interesting SciScoop: Exploring Tomorrow, which I strongly recommend telling all your friends about. So much to explore!
I couldn't resist this: phenol.
G'nite.
I'm playing with RasMol, a molecular visualization tool. I'm starting with small inorganic molecules right now; since I was talking sulfites today, here's sulfur dioxide (SO2) for you, in the standard space-filling model:
I'll be playing with RalMol some more. Visualization of macromolecules should be interesting in this tool...
I was going through some of my personal papers. I found an original copy of my buddy Dr. Ralph Merkle's seminal 1989 Xerox PARC paper "Large Scale Analysis of Neural Structures". I'm not surprised to find that Ralph has put it online. Check it out.
Assemblers will take years to emerge, but their emergence seems almost inevitable: Though the path to assemblers has many steps, each step will bring the next in reach, and each will bring immediate rewards. The first steps have already been taken, under the names of "genetic engineering" and "biotechnology." Other paths to assemblers seem possible. Barring worldwide destruction or worldwide controls, the technology race will continue whether we wish it or not. And as advances in computer-aided design speed the development of molecular tools, the advance toward assemblers will quicken.
To have any hope of understanding our future, we must understand the consequences of assemblers, disassemblers, and nanocomputers. They promise to bring changes as profound as the industrial revolution, antibiotics, and nuclear weapons all rolled up in one massive breakthrough.
K. Eric Drexler
Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology
The world needs uninhibited thinkers, not afraid of far out speculations; it also needs conservative hard-headed engineers who can make their dreams come true.
Arthur C. Clarke
I'm testing out a new scanner (an Epson 1260 Photo) which I've obtained to help bring a bit more order to my archives: I'm digitizing as much of my archives as I can manage. I hate paper, but I have too much of it.
I found a 12-13 year old pamphlet from the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, entitled "Why Cryonics Can Work". I'm a member of the organization, and before I moved to Europe for a few years in the early 90's, I was pretty active as a weekend volunteer. Here's a bit of that history, the front of the aforementioned brochure:
I believe this is one of those "what I did on my spring vacation" types of photos: to the best of my recollection, this happened in the spring of 1991 when I was back in the States for a couple of weeks from London. Instead of taking it easy - which I have a hard time doing anyway - I heard that Alcor was in need of, um, warm bodies to help move a cold one from storage in an old style dewar to one of the recently manufactured Bigfoot units. The guy in the sleeping bag was the first man successfully frozen and maintained continuously since 1967.
From left: Dr. Michael Perry, Mike Darwin and (back to camera) me. I believe, from the hair, that the 4th person may be Steve Bridge. Notice the heavy gloves and my care in reaching around the body: the sleeping bag was saturated with liquid nitrogen. Cold.
This is a great resource: "FuturePundit: future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics and evolution". This is one of the incredibly productive Randall Parker's 4 well-separated specialist blogs, and I plan to refer to it often.
School has consumed me the last few months, since the dot.com bust interrupted several years of I/S programming career arc. I've been spending some time evaluating my work future, trying to determine the best ways to combine at least a couple of my passions into a revised career path.
One of those passions is biology, ranging from Darwinian evolutionary theory, physical anthropology, and evolutionary psychology (AKA the oft-misunderstood "sociobiology"), to Dawkinsian "selfish gene" theory, to Drexlerian nanomedicine.
As both an experienced information processing guy, and a biology watcher, I've been looking into the field of bioinformatics for clues in that search. I just now ran across a transcript of a talk given at an O'Reilly conference by Lincoln Stein, "Bioinformatics: Gone in 2012", in which he gives bioinformatics "10 years to live".
Jack W. Boone has some interesting things to say about personal responsibility and survival:
The overseers won't protect us. They never could, they never will. Whether the problem is earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, volcanic eruption, or terrorist attack, we are, and must be, responsible for our own survival. I find the popular TV show "Law and Order" instructive. It almost always begins with the discovery of a dead body, after which the overseers find and punish the perpetrator(s). Great, but it doesn't do me much good if I represent the "body".So everyone is, in the long run, responsible for his own (and his family's) life. Dial 911 and your death will be professionally investigated, when they get time.
I'm really in the mood to think about these things recently, especially after having attended an Alcor Life Extension Foundation Northern California meeting yesterday...
I personally, then, had decided that cryonics is worth the gamble. I could spend the time collecting stamps, yes, but I doubt if I am going to find a stamp as interesting as an endeavor that may be one of the greatest adventures that human beings have ever undertaken. After all, who knows? If we - the first and second generation of cryonicists - succeed in our efforts, some of us may well end up on stamps ourselves one day. And if that happens, consider; we'll be the only people on U.S. stamps to ever be able to take pride in being there.
Steven B. Harris, M.D./PhD
May 1989
I just found out about HighLift Systems today. Looks like someone is trying seriously to make a business out of the space elevator concept.
I've just now posted this to my other blog.
Japan has extropians and cryonicists, and a language capable of expressing our ideas. Oh, and it's a country of latent gun nuts. There's hope... on a singularitarian timescale.
Those of you interested in learning the why and what of the concepts of molecular nanotechnology should consider attending the Fundamentals of Nanotechnology Tutorial, 2 May 2003, Palo Alto, California, hosted by the Foresight Institute. Lecturers include K. Eric Drexler, Ralph Merkle, Scott Mize, and Ed Neihaus.
The single most important thing to know about Americans -- the attitude which truly distinguishes them from the British, and explains much superficially odd behavior -- is that Americans believe that death is optional.
Jane Walmsley