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The Pocket Pen Protector Patrol Blotter

By Brian Filed in Links, Tech Tagged with , , , , , , , , April 11th, 2011 @ 11:45 am

Assorted bulletins from the world of geekery:

MIT Technology Review has a post this morning about research into nanostructured metal “foams” that could be engineered into new battery technologies that would completely recharge a device like a cell phone or laptop in just a couple of minutes. Even the lead researcher on this idea admits that there’s a long way to go before this tech might pay off with real-world products, and some naysayers argue that it might not ever work out, so don’t throw away your power bricks just yet. Next Big Future.com’s related story includes plenty of supplemental links to explain the technologies involved, for those of you who want the SCIENCE!

Anyone who has done their time in tech support will appreciate these “Achievement Unlocked” badges from the tech blog Evilrouters.net. Some of them, like “Stars Are Aligned” (successfully restore files from a tape backup) are, of course, simply impossible in this universe. Others happen so regularly that even the noobiest IT guy can rack them up the first week on the job (“get asked an IT question from a guy in the next urinal over”, “get a ticke to fix a problem after 4:30 p.m. on a Friday). And some are purely the province of wizened veterans (“resist killing your fellow employees”). I larfed.

Proof that sometimes technology really is for the betterment of mankind: the New York Times recently featured this article about how computer software is replacing lawyers.

This post at MetaFilter would like you to know that today is the 20th anniversary of Linus Torvalds’ debut of a little operating system he was putting together in his spare time that became known as Linux.

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Take Two Robots And Call Me In The Morning

By Brian Filed in Science, Tech Tagged with , , , , May 26th, 2010 @ 11:49 am

Remember the movie “Fantastic Voyage” about a submarine that was reduced to microscopic size and injected into a dying man’s body so the tiny scientists could operate on him from inside? It had Raquel Welch in a skintight suit and everything!

Now, advances in nanotech and robotics have made it possible for doctors to use ingestible surgical robots so they can operate on patients without having to open up the body even minimally. It’s a technology still in its infancy, and might yet benefit from other rapidly advancing techs such as haptics (touch feedback), but likely to be used more frequently in the near future.

Big-boobed assistants in revealing garments are not covered by your insurance, however, so too bad there.

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Damascus Steel

By Brian Filed in Science, Tech Tagged with , , , , , May 6th, 2010 @ 11:09 am

For centuries, blades made of Damascus steel were know to be among the sharpest and strongest in the world. The steel itself, called wootz, bears distinctive patterns created during the forging of the metal, and the understanding was that impurities in the iron ore used to make the steel were the cause of these patterns. The technique for making Damascus steel was discontinued in the 18th century, but many examples of the metal and the craftsmanship involved in turning it into blades remain.

The journal “Nature” reports that researchers at Dreseden University in Germany have subjected some sample blades to electron microscopy and have discovered that the steel actually contains a type of carbon nanotubes and also nanowires that come from the use of the mineral cementite. The nanostructures are responsible for the added strength of the material, according to the researchers, however there are critics who discount the findings.

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In The Future, EVERYTHING Will Be A Battery

By Brian Filed in Science, Tech Tagged with , , December 10th, 2009 @ 1:09 pm

nanopaper

Imagine being able to dip a piece of paper into a solution made up of nanotubes and microscopic wires and coming away with a super battery that can last through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles. That’s the promise of Stanford University’s Yi Cui, who has developed the basic process and is ready to take it to commercial development. Being able to use ordinary paper as the substrate material for long-use batteries addresses many of the engineering limitations of current battery technologies for the automotive industry, among others. The batteries even work if the paper is crumpled or even soaked in acid. Paper has an advantage over other materials because of its ability to bond with the nanoparticles, but it’s also likely that other materials could be treated with the nano-ink and turned into batteries or supercapacitors.

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I’m Blinding You With SCIENCE!

By Brian Filed in Science Tagged with , , , , , , August 28th, 2009 @ 1:55 pm

molecular photo

Science geeks all over the web are talking about the story on New Scientist.com about atomic force photography. Researchers at IBM have taken the first ever photos of an object at its molecular level. The image above shows an organic compound called pentacene and its five benzene rings (ugh, I just had a painful flashback to the organic chemistry section from high school).

Pentacene is pretty cool in and of itself; it’s used along with our old friend buckminsterfullerene (“Buckyballs”) to make organic photovoltaic devices, and turns up in things like the ultra-thin plastic OLED video display Sony showed off at CES this year. (link goes to YouTube video). But that’s another topic entirely.

Being able to photograph molecules and atoms at the level of resolution IBM has achieved will someday pay off in terms of being able to arrange individual molecules into microscopic computing devices that could make almost any object “smart”.

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Nanopants 2: Electric Boogaloo

By Brian Filed in Science Tagged with , , , May 18th, 2009 @ 3:13 pm

electric_nanofibers

I haven’t been reading much on the nanotechnology front lately, but this article in The Economist’s technology section was worth a quick look: researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a process for applying a solution containing nanotubes made out of a chemical called Nafion (which is a derivative of Teflon) to cotton fabric. Multiple applications to the fabric allow the nanotube solution to bind to individual cotton fibers. Nafion is conductive, and so the adherence of the nanotubes to the cotton fibers makes the fabric itself conductive. In tests, the researchers have discovered that the coated fabric can detect the presence of blood from its albumin levels, suggesting the possible application for the fabric in sensor garments that can monitor the physical status of medical patients or even soldiers in the field.

The fabric conducts enough electricity to power a single LED, so it doesn’t take much imagination to come up with all the stupid and frivolous applications of “electric cotton”. It also doesn’t take much to think up a variety of scenarios where wearing electrically conductive clothing might be rather less than desirable. So I hope this particular breakthrough gets a good, long, hard look before electric underpants start selling at Sears.

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Nanobiology

By Brian Filed in Science Tagged with , , , , March 26th, 2009 @ 2:13 pm

Just a couple of links to share about the convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology

badtattoo

There are a lot of bad tattoos in this world. I don’t get the thinking that makes people want to have them in the first place, nor why the fad has gone on as long as it has, but that’s for another day I guess. The biotech firm Draper Laboratories in Cambridge, MA has announced that they’ve developed an ink that contains nanoparticles which can sense blood glucose levels and change color to indicate the blood sugar level of a person with diabetes. The particles can be embedded in the skin like a tattoo, making it significantly easier for diabetics to monitor their blood sugar and eliminating the need for the irritating needle-pokes they must do with existing monitors. It will probably be a good ten years or so before this could actually be turned into a marketable product, due to the long time frames for medical device research and testing, but a great application of nanotech.

Of course, if you’re going to get a nanotattoo, you’ll need to make sure you don’t put it on the arm with the nanotube bionic muscles. Scientists at the University of Texas in Dallas have published their results with work on developing artificial muscles using carbon nanotubes pulled into ribbons and then twisted into bundles. When stimulated by electricity, the bundles can expand and contract like muscle tissue. There have been other efforts to make artificial muscles out of carbon nanotubes and silicon polymers previously, but these particular experiments show much greater elasticity and hardness, making the material a better candidate for use in prosthetics.

One of the major concerns as nanotechnology continues to be applied to biology and medicine is the lack of understanding about possible interactions between nano-sized objects and living tissue. Much of what is known about toxicity and long-term side effects of many substances is simply not applicable at the sub-molecular level. Much attention in the biomedical world is being given to the use of nanoparticles as drug-delivery devices particularly as a way to more effectively target cancer cells with chemo and radioactive medications without harming healthy surrounding tissue. Researchers at University of California in San Diego have developed a silicon nanoparticle that glows temporarily and then biodegrades harmlessly after a few days. These particles, combined with targeted chemotherapeutic medication, can attach themselves to tumors and cancerous cells, allowing for easier detection by doctors, without some of the lasting harmful effects of other luminescent chemicals currently in use.

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Buckminsterfullerene — Is There Anything It Can’t Do?

By Brian Filed in Tech Tagged with , , , October 21st, 2008 @ 2:12 pm

I can’t find the post right now, but some time ago I know I had a link to an article about some scientists who had formed a sheet of material made from nanothreads made up of billions and billions of buckyballs. They ended up with a single sheet that was as strong as steel but ten times thinner than paper.

Today, this blog post at Discover magazine says that researchers think they will be able to produce a sheet of what they now call “buckypaper” that will rival the strongest composite materials in production and do it before the end of this year. They think they can have a commercially-usable version of buckypaper developed sometime in 2009 that would be suitable for military applications such as lighter armor or some aviation uses; dreams of building cars, airplanes or even space vehicles out of buckypaper are a bit farther down the road but could happen in less than a decade.

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Nanohazard Redux

By Brian Filed in Tech Tagged with , , , , May 21st, 2008 @ 1:57 pm

I’ve posted previously about the potential biological hazards of nanotechnology and how little is understood about the possible dangers that could result from indiscriminate use of this technology.

Now there is evidence that long, straight nanowires can cause mesothelioma exactly in the same way that asbestos fibers do. Nanotubes in other form factors do not seem to pose the same threat, so clearly there is something about the physical properties of the nanowires and not some underlying molecular-level chemical reaction, but this should put the brakes on a lot of R&D work trying to commercialize nanotube-based innovations while studies are done to determine what sort of exposure risk there really is. In the case of asbestos, natural degradation of asbestos-containing materials over time caused the release of fibers, and the widespread use of asbestos in insulating and fire-proofing materials made the risk of exposure very high. It may be possible that the ways in which long, straight nanotubes could be applied could be restricted to uses which reduced the likelihood of exposure. With asbestos, even a single inhaled fiber is sufficient to cause mesothelioma, so total prevention is impossible. I presume much the same will be true of nanotubes.

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Sci-Tech Link Dump

By Brian Filed in Tech Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , April 23rd, 2008 @ 2:48 pm

Time again to blow through a bunch of assorted but unconnected links to things I’ve read in the science and tech worlds recently:

Mother Jones magazine featured this quasi-interview with MythBuster Jamie Hyneman about alternative energy technologies. I say “quasi-interview” because his responses to their questions are so terse that it’s hard to tell if he actually said them or not, except that Jamie is rather short-spoken in the first place. The piece says that he’s really into alt-energy, and on the show the MythBusters have repeatedly demonstrated that most of the “free energy” stuff you see is total hogwash. Something to think about, since this morning everybody has a link to this “$1/gal Ethanol” story in Popular Mechanics.

RetroThing had me all nostalgic the other day for the very first computer I ever owned, the Sinclair ZX81. Mine was not a kit, it came fully-assembled. I bought it second-hand from my high-school best friend Andy, who had moved on to such cutting edge technology of the day as the TRS-80. It even came with the add-on 16K memory module. The post includes a link to this page which tells you how to build your own ZX80/81 with a couple dozen ICs and a circuit board, but if you don’t feel like building one, you can just download an emulator here.

The science journal Nature has this news article about understanding metabolism as a genetic condition. British researchers re-used some urine samples originally collected for another study and used a new form of spectroscopy to completely identify all the chemicals in the samples. They then identified the geographies of the test subjects and graphed specific metabolites and were able to determine that different populations have unique metabolic rates. People in Southern China, they conclude, have the best metabolisms in the world. People in South Texas have the worst metabolisms in the world. Yet more scientific evidence as to why one should stay away from Texas, if you ask me.

You knew I would have at least ONE nanotech link, right? Of course right! Today’s nano-news is this bulletin that tries to sex up the story with the headline “Nanotechnology paves way for super iPods”. Nice try. The underlying story is that a team at University of Glasgow have figured out how to make molecule-sized switches, which in turn will allow for as many as 1 billion transistors to fit on a single chip (up from 200 million today). That, in turn, would increase the density of electronic storage devices without increasing their physical size: 500 terabytes per square inch (compared to about 3 gigabytes now). No actual mention of iPods anywhere in the article. You just have to make the leap of assumption that someday this technology would be used in some future iPod so that you could store every song ever recorded.

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