Brain Archive

Los Alamos, Tachyon to develop 3D chips based on wafer-stacking

Semiconductor Business News, June 14, 2002

Tachyon Semiconductor Inc. and Los Alamos National Laboratories are planning 3D integrated devices using a new wafer-stacking process that allows different circuitry elements to be stacked, bonded, and interconnected on several separate wafers.

I.B.M. Advance Connects Layers of Tiny Wafers

New York Times, November 11, 2002

IBM researchers plan to announce on Monday a new approach to building three-dimensional integrated circuits using thin (.5 micron) slices of a circuit. The technique would allow for interconnecting separate layers directly at thousands or even hundreds of thousands of points, increasing chip density and communication speeds.

Researcher says 3-D SoC could restore Japan's luster

EE Times, October 14, 2002

Japanese researcher Tadahiro Ohmi is developing three-dimensional systems-on-chip VLSI chips he claims have ten times better performance than today's chips and squeeze design and production time to 1/40, clean room space to 1/5 and production cost to 1/10 of what's now required.

"As one of the target systems-on-chip, Ohmi described a 3-D SoC that integrates everything but the kitchen sink: all of the silicon processors, silicon memories, polysilicon functional semiconductors, amorphous-silicon image sensors, piezoelectric sensors, biosensors and communications blocks. By packing all these functions, Ohmi said, one chip can have a human's five senses and will be able to provide a truly interactive interface for that person."

Another Dimension

Forbes, July 22, 2002

Two chipmakers are developing 3-D chips to increase semiconductor power and speed by a factor of 10&#8212at no additional cost.

Tohoku University professor Fujio Masuoka, who invented flash memory, and a small team of researchers plan to have a 3-D chip ready in five years.

Matrix Semiconductor, with has raised $80 million, says it has already created a 3-D chip that it will start selling by year-end, mainly to replace flash memory in digital cameras.

Games to take on a life of their own

BBC, February 11, 2002

Video games of the future could have characters with almost human intelligence, capable of understanding and acting on your commands.

Scientists from King's College in London have created a technology called the Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which emulates the functions of the brain's frontal lobes, where humans process language and emotion.

At the moment, the LAD prototype has the learning ability of an 18-month old child. Professor John Taylor and his team are confident it could have the intelligence of six-year-old child by the end of next year.

The system works by using neural networks to mimic brain function. It then learns language as children do, not through rules and vocabularies, but through association and example.

Taylor sees potential uses for the technology in areas such as disability learning, home automation, data retrieval and gaming.

Artificial Intelligence Early Warning System Installed at the Olympics For Bioterrorism Surveillance

KurzweilAI.net, February 13, 2002

An artificial intelligence computer system that analyzes state-wide patient data from emergency rooms and instant care facilities has been installed in most of the state of Utah for the Olympics. If it detects a significant pattern suggesting an outbreak, it pages the on-call state public health physician.

The Realtime Outbreak and Disease Surveillance (RODS), developed by the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, is a protoype system that collects and analyzes relevant data automatically and in real-time, including emergency room registration data, microbiology culture results, reports of radiographs, and laboratory orders.

It uses several AI techniques for machine learning, natural language and data mining, including case definitions, automatic detection algorithms that can be attached to specific data streams, and data analytic tools that support temporal and spatial data analysis and visualization.

RODS was initially installed in Western Pennsylvania in August of 1999 for public health surveillance for the 3 million residents of 13 counties. So far, the system has detected only a naturally occurring outbreak of influenza. It is now being extended to all of Pennsylvania. Other public health departments in the U.S. are now showing interest in RODS. Given how quickly it was installed in Utah, RODS principal investigator Michael Wagner, M.D., believes it could also be implemented in other states fairly quickly.

Research funding has come from DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Library of Medicine, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

Neural net programs diagnose colon tumors

KurzweilAI.net, March 4, 2002

Researchers at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center in Baltimore have devised a new method to differentiate and diagnose several types of colon tumors, using artificial neural networks to analyze thousands of genes at one time.

The program could ultimately help doctors to identify the cancers earlier and spare some patients from unnecessary, debilitating surgery, says Stephen J. Meltzer, M.D., professor of medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in a study to be featured on the cover of the March issue of Gastroenterology, the journal of the American Gastroenterological Association.

Patients with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis, the two forms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), have an increased risk of developing cancer, but the cancer can be one of two forms. "Sporadic," or common, colon cancers can often be removed without radical surgery, while IBD-related
growths and cancers are much more aggressive and are generally treated by taking out the entire colon.

"Until now, we had no reliable way to discriminate between these two types of lesions, especially in their early stages," says Dr. Meltzer, who is also associate director for core sciences at the University of Maryland Greenebaum Cancer Center and director of the cancer center's Genomics Core Facility.

'We're building a brain!'

Silicon.com, March 21, 2002

Lobal Technologies of London is building a natural language processing system called LAD (Language Acquisition Device) that understands sentences word by word and builds its replies word-by-word, rather than just reading a script.

The system is based on a model of the human brain, with emulators for the five brain areas that are most important for language processing, built using neural network technology

Lobal's roadmap for developing LAD is based on the development of a human child. He's about 18 months old now. The company hopes to give LAD the linguistic skills of a six-year-old child with a 1,000 word vocabulary by this time next year.

The company next plans to work on building the technology into computer games.

Seeing Around Corners: artificial societies

The Atlantic Monthly, April 2002

The new science of artificial societies (A-societies), using computer techniques similar to A-life (artificial life), may suggest where to look for surprises and small interventions in society that may have large, discontinuous consequences.

A Human Touch for Machines

Los Angeles Times, May 7, 2002

"The radical movement of affective computing is turning the field of artificial intelligence upside down by adding emotion to the equation."

For example, UC San Diego psychologist Javier Movellan is developing pattern-recognition software to identify hundreds of facial emotions.

Affective computing uses include better collaboration with machines, improved clinical diagnosis, and market research.

Artificial Intelligence May Help Spot Future Terrorism Attacks

ABCNEWS.com, May 22, 2002

New, smarter techniques promise to make AI solutions more accurate in finding useful terrorism data. These include data mining (patterns of phone calls, for example) to spot future terror activity and distributed computing—running smart programs in various computer or electronic information systems to automatically find and share patterns that point to potential terrorist behavior.

An Electronic Cop That Plays Hunches

New York Times, November 2, 2002

CopLink, a new AI-based investigative tool, is being used to help trace the Washington-area sniper suspects' movements across the country. It was designed by Hsinchun Chen, director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the University of Arizona.

Coplink allows police departments to establish links quickly among their own files and to those of other departments. It works by linking and comparing data from new and existing files and also allows users to look at lists of data or create graphs and charts showing affiliations among different criminals.

Deep Fritz Draws: Are Humans Getting Smarter, or Are Computers Getting Stupider?

KurzweilAI.net, October 19, 2002

IBM's Deep Blue chess computer defeated Gary Kasparov in 1997, so why did Deep Fritz only achieve a draw in its recent chess tournament with Vladimir Kramnik?
Because Deep Fritz has only about 1.3% as much brute force computation power as Deep Blue, says Ray Kurzweil in an article published today on KurzweilAI.net. Despite that, "it plays chess at about the same level because of its superior pattern-recognition-based pruning algorithm."

With the ongoing acceleration of computer power, "In six years, a program like Deep Fritz will again achieve the ability to analyze 200 million board positions per second that was provided by Deep Blue's specialized hardware. Deep Fritz-like chess programs running on ordinary personal computers will routinely defeat all humans later in this decade."

In The Age of Intelligent Machines (MIT Press, 1990), Kurzweil accurately predicted that a computer would defeat the human world chess champion by the end of the 1990s, and most likely by 1998.

Read Ray Kurzweil's article on KurzweilAI.net

Nanoscale neural net aims to emulate brain

KurzweilAI.net, Sept. 18, 2002

A patent application for a physical neural network using nano-sized conducting particles to form a synapse array chip that mimics biological neural network processes has been announced by KnownTech.

With more than 1 billion synapses per square centimeter, a hypothetical "Knowm Network" would overcome the computational constraints of software-based neural networks and achieve partial emulation of a biological nervous system (which requires neurons and connections numbering in the billions and trillions) by using nano-sized particles, according to the company's Web site.

"When nano-sized particles in a dielectric solution are exposed to an electric field, the particles align with the electric field," the site explains. "As the particles align, the resistance between the respective electrodes decreases and any connection formed becomes stable after the electric field is removed.

"As the strength or frequency of the applied electric field is increased, the connection becomes increasingly aligned and the resistance further decreases. By applying a perpendicular electric field, one can also decrease the strength of the connections.

"Because of the small size of nano-particles in the dielectric solution, extremely dense physical synapse arrays can be built. The result is a fully modifiable nano-connection that can be used to build a high density synapse chip for neural network processors."

Radio emerges from the electronic soup

New Scientist, Aug. 28, 2002

A self-organising electronic circuit with evolutionary computer program to "breed" an oscillator circuit has stunned engineers by turning itself into a radio receiver. Researchers discovered that the evolving circuit had used the computer's circuit board itself as an antenna, picking up a signal from a nearby computer and delivering it as an output.

Wanna Bet?

New York Times, September 1, 2002

The Web site Longbets.org has published 11 bets to sharpen long-term thinking on issues of social or scientific significance. The biggest bet (so far): $10,000 that "a computer or 'machine intelligence' will pass the Turing test (be able to successufully impersonate a human) by 2029, pitting Ray Kurzweil (yes) vs. Mitchell Kapor (no). The longest bet (so far): "At least one human alive in the year 2000 will still be alive in 2150."

Also see: A Wager on the Turing Test: Why I Think I Will Win by Ray Kurzweil.

Windows, lose, draw

National Post, July 30, 2002

University of Alberta researchers have developed a poker-playing computer program that successfully guesses whether an opponent is bluffing, wavering or playing his hands straight.

It records a player's habits or biases as the game progresses and uses algorithms to mix that information with baseline probabilities, creating the effect of both reason and intuition. The program now defeats 90% of opponents.

Computer a celebrity for beating Kasparov

Edmonton Journal, July 26, 2002

Deep Blue, the IBM chess-playing computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, was the "single most important contribution to artificial intelligence to date," said Murray Campbell, who headed the project at IBM.

But Campbell said he doesn't consider Deep Blue to be intelligent in the human sense and has little relation to the psychological processes or the "broad spectrum of abilities" that humans possess.

The value of computers won't be in whether or not they emulate human intelligence, but in their success at solving complex problems, he said.

Artificial intelligence tackles breast cancer

New Scientist, July 25, 2002

Researchers have used neural network program and fuzzy logic to achieve nearly 90 per cent accuracy in predicting the extent of spread of breast cancer and whether patients would survive for five years. This significantly outperformed conventional statistical analysis techniques.

Signs of Fraud Go Beyond Signature

Washington Post, July 21, 2002

Credit card companies are using artificial intelligence to thwart credit card fraud, which costs the industry about a billion dollars a year.

Is Anti-Virus Software Obsolete?

InternetNews, July 19, 2002

Traditional desktop anti-virus software, based on the signature-based reactive approach, is no longer an adequate defense, say analysts. The new direction is "digital watchtowers": scanning engines with artificial intelligence that look at patterns and unusual characteristics within e-mails before they come into a customer's network.

Future Tech: Faking Intelligence

DISCOVER, August 2002

A sociable robot doesn't have to be smart'-it just has to fool us into believing it is, as animatronic Horatio "Doc" Beardsley, developed at the Entertainment Technology Center at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University, is demonstrating to audiences in performances.


Doc Beardsley (photo: Bill Mitas/Carnegie Mellon University)

Doc is programmed to respond to spoken keywords with canned lines. Its software compares the words with a stored list of questions a person is likely to ask and selects a response that scores the closest match. It uses prerecorded sounds for more realistic inflections than synthesized speech.

"Someday the line between fake and genuine intelligence may begin to blur for real."

Scientists build DNA nano-devices

KurzweilAI.net, January 4, 2002

New York University researchers claim to have taken a major step in building more controllable machines from DNA. The researchers say that the new device may help build the foundation for the development of sophisticated machines at a molecular scale, ultimately evolving to the development of nano-robots that might some day build new molecules, computer circuits or fight infectious diseases.

The research team was led by NYU chemistry professor Nadrian C. Seeman. Their findings are reported in the January 3, 2002 issue of Nature.

"DNA devices can provide models for the development of nanorobotic applications —provided the individual devices can be manipulated separately," Seeman said in a statement. "Our findings have taken the first definitive step in localizing movement within molecular scale DNA machines, introducing independence of movement within a wider structure."

In January 1999, Professor Seeman's lab announced the development of a machine constructed from DNA molecules, which had two rigid arms that could be rotated from fixed positions by adding a chemical to the solution. However, the chemical affected all molecules within a structure uniformly. The new findings allow movement of molecule pairs without affecting others within the larger structure. This is done by inserting DNA "set" and "fuel" strands into individual molecule pairs.

Viruses may help make microchips

UPI, January 29, 2002

Viruses with molecules of gold and antibodies studded on their surfaces may one day invade tumors in pinpoint cellular surgery and help assemble electronic wires thinner than visible light wavelengths for handheld supercomputers.

Researchers at Scripps Research Institute have discovered a way to attach molecules to the surface of a virus.

One particularly tantalizing possibility scientists are investigating on behalf of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington is building circuits of electrically conducting molecules on viral surfaces to form molecular computers.

Scientists develop protein nanoarrays for biological detection

KurzweilAI.net, February 11, 2002

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new detection technology on the nanometer scale that could lead to the next generation of proteomic arrays and new methods for diagnosing infectious diseases and biological weapons.

The researchers utilize a process invented at Northwestern's Institute for Nanotechnology called Dip-Pen Nanolithography to make arrays of proteins with features more than 1,000 times smaller than those used in conventional arrays. This leads to nanoarrays with more than 1 million times the density of current commercial microarrays.

The process allows researchers to use an atomic force microscope tip as a nano-pen to write out a tiny protein array on a gold surface. With an array of protein "dots" as small as 100 nanometers in diameter, the gold surface in between the dots is processed to prevent it from absorbing target proteins and disturbing the readings. When an array on a chip is exposed to protein targets in solution, the protein on the substrate binds its complementary proteins. The atomic force microscope then reads the chip and records a match where a change in height is detected.

Protein Nanoarrays Generated By Dip-Pen Nanolithography

Biological Engineers Design Breakthrough Molecular Motor

Scientific American, March 13, 2002

Cornell University Biological engineers have designed a groundbreaking molecular motor, only billionths of a meter in scale.

The invention, which was only theoretical just a few years ago, heralds what futurists describe as the next industrial revolution: molecular machines. This type of self-propelled device powered by molecular-scale engines could function inside individual cells.

The research team, headed by Carlo Montemagno, modeled their molecular stator and rotor after an enzyme found in nature called ATPase, which is responsible for converting food to usable energy in plants and animals. The ATPase molecular motors naturally occur on the membranes of mitochondria and in plant chloroplasts. The moving part of ATPase is a central protein shaft (or rotor), less than 12 nanometers in diameter, that rotates in response to electrochemical reactions.

Montemagno, an assistant professor of agricultural and biological engineering, harvested the ATPase molecules from Escherichia coli bacteria that were genetically altered to create the enzyme.

To turn ATPase into a motor capable of mechanical work, he separated the molecules from the cell membrane. He then attached them, using a synthetic peptide, to metallic substrates of nanofabricated patterns of gold, copper or nickel. These metals are the standard contact materials in integrated circuits.

This type of connection may allow engineers to one day integrate nanoengines with the logic of integrated circuits.

The researchers bonded propeller-like filaments, made from polymerized proteins to the top of the motor shaft. The protein "props," ranging from 0.5 to 8 microns long, were made of a material that would fluoresce under certain wavelengths of laser light so their motion could be viewed.

After bathing the motor in a solution of ATP—the rotor spun for 40 minutes at 3 to 4 revolutions per second, according to the team's report in the September issue of the journal, Nanotechnology.

While science is still in the very early stages of proving the feasibility of such molecular machines, the design is a breakthrough proof-of-concept. Nanoengines that can pump fluids, open and close valves and provide nano-mechanical drives could be a reality sooner than we imagine.

Virus' Protein Coat Suggests Nanotech Design Concept

Scientific American, March 14, 2002

Upon close examination of the virus named HK97, scientists have discovered a protein coat that exactly resembles Medieval chain mail&#8212according to a report in the journal Science. The virus, part of a class called bacteriophages, only infects bacteria and not humans.

Using electron microscopy and x-ray crystallography, the researchers found the virus' protective coating was made up of 72 interlocking rings of protein.

Scientists theorize that the design benefits of the coat's structure&#8212a strong protective shield without inhibiting freedom of motion—may give nanotechnologists design concepts, especially in engineering container-like structures.

Researcher proposes nanorobotic platelets and phagocytes

KurzweilAI.net, April 15, 2002

Zyvex research scientist Robert A. Freitas has proposed bloodstream nanorobotic devices that would allow for dramatic improvements in clotting speed and eradication of bacteria and other pathogens in the blood.

Nanorobotic artificial mechanical platelets ("clottocytes") could allow for complete hemostasis in as little as one second ' to 1000 times faster than the natural system and 10,000 times more effective in terms of bloodstream concentration.

They could also work internally. Using acoustic pulses, a blood vessel break could be rapidly communicated to neighboring clottocytes, immediately triggering a progressive controlled mesh-release cascade.

Nanorobotic "microbivores" traveling in the bloodstream could be 1000 times faster-acting than white blood cells and eradicate 1000 times more bacteria, offering a complete antimicrobial therapy without increasing the risk of sepsis or septic shock (as in traditional antibiotic regimens) and without release of biologically active effluents. They could also quickly rid the blood of nonbacterial pathogens such as viruses, fungus cells, or parasites.


Clottocytes: Artificial Mechanical Platelets


Microbivores: Artificial Mechanical Phagocytes

Nanobiotech Makes the Diagnosis

Technology Review, May 2002

Nanobiotechnology researchers are producing a variety of tools with important implications for medicine and biotechnology, including faster and easier diagnosis of complex diseases and genetic disorders.

This is a "new class of devices that combine the ability of biological molecules to selectively bind with other molecules with the ability of nanoelectronics to instantly detect the slight electrical changes caused by such binding."

DNA nanoballs boost gene therapy

New Scientist, May 12, 2002

Researchers have developed a way to pack a DNA molecule into 25 nanometer particles, small enough to enter the nuclear pores or cells and make gene therapy safer and more efficient. The technique is now being tested on people with cystic fibrosis.

"In cells grown in culture, there was a 6000-fold increase in the expression of a gene packaged this way compared with unpackaged DNA in liposomes."

Nanoscale gene chips possible

KurzweilAI.net, June 6, 2002

Scientists at Northwestern University have demonstrated a technique that takes gene chips to the limit of miniaturization &#8212down to the nanometer scale of the DNA molecules themselves &#8212and could have a major impact on genomics and proteomics research.

The "dip-pen nanolithography" method uses an atomic force microscope tip as a pen and different single-stranded DNA as inks to produce spots of DNA down to 50 nanometers in diameter. It may make it possible to one day have a gene chip with an array of 100,000 different diagnostic tests in an area the size of the tip of a needle and take only a few seconds to make.

The technique takes advantage of the ability of DNA to self-assemble into a pre-programmable structure.

"Our direct-write patterning of multiple DNA strands also opens up new possibilities for building and studying nanoscale architectures," said Chad A. Mirkin, director of Northwestern's Institute for Nanotechnology. "By taking advantage of DNA as a type of biochemical Velcro, we should be able to build a circuit, a catalyst, a sensor or a transistor from the bottom up, instead of the top down."

Writing nanopatterns with DNA inks

Laser pulses propel micro-aircraft

UPI, June 10, 2002

Japanese scientists reported Monday they have used lasers to propel a small paper airplane. It could lead to new airborne &#8212and blood-borne—monitoring technologies.

The researchers said lasers could be used to accelerate large aircraft to supersonic speeds, for light-driven robots, and micro-doctors that "fly" through the blood vessels to operate within the body.

Biology aiding nanotech researchers

UPI, Dec. 12, 2002

The latest avenue in nanotechnology involves harnessing biological structures and processes, scientists said Wednesday at a National Science Foundation conference.

Bugs trained to build circuit

Nature Science Update, Oct. 8, 2002

Researchers are developing bacteria to form nanoscale microbial machines that could eventually repair wounds or build microscopic electrical circuits.

Researchers at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute in Ibaraki, Japan trained the bacterium Acetobacter xylinum to exude ribbons of cellulose, a biological building material, laying down strips at a rate of 4,000ths of a millimetre per minute.

They are also exploring the use of genetically modified bacteria to exude other materials.

Radio-controlled DNA act as gene switches

UPI, January 14, 2002

MIT researchers say newly developed radio-controlled DNA may one day act as electronic switches, allowing scientists to turn genes on and off by remote control.

The scientists attached tiny radio-frequency antennas— gold crystals made up of less than 100 atoms—to DNA.

When a RF magnetic field is transmitted into the tiny antennas, the molecules the crystals are attached to are zapped with energy.

The radio technique can unzip double-stranded DNA in a matter of seconds, a reversible process that leaves neighboring molecules untouched. It may one day prove possible to hook the antennas into living systems and control DNA via electronic switches, the scientists say.

The nanoscale crystals can be attached to proteins as well as DNA. This opens up the possibility of controlling more complex biological processes such as enzymatic activity, protein folding and biomolecular assembly.

Biological machines may one day be used to perform computation, assemble computer components or become part of computer hardware or circuitry.

Computer 'life' said possible

UPI, June 12, 2002

Scientists are developing a simulation of the E. coli bacterium to re-program it into a "smart pill" to carry anti-cancer drugs to tumors.

The "CyberCell" project will have "a profound influence on the way we do life sciences in the future," said Michael Ellison, director of the Institute for Biomolecular Design at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

The computer-based model cells could speed up research because scientists would no longer have to spend weeks growing bacterial cultures to test their ideas.

Mouse cell transplants for Huntington's patients

New Scientist, February 11, 2002

Transplants of mouse stem cells into the brains of patients with Huntington's Chorea could help slow the associated dementia and loss of coordination, says UK company ReNeuron.

Huntington's is caused by an inherited genetic mutation, which leads to a destruction of cells in a part of the brain called the striatum. ReNeuron has transplanted cells from its mouse neural stem cell line into monkeys designed to act as models of Huntington's patients.

There are theoretical concerns that potentially deadly viruses from the donor animal cells could be passed to the human recipients.

Other groups of researchers are transplanting fetal tissue into the brains of Huntington's patients.

In theory, an unlimited number of cells for treatment could be generated from the mouse, and from the human, stem cell lines. At the moment, ReNeuron's human line is too genetically unstable, with unpredictable chromosomal abnormalities appearing as the cells repeatedly divide.

Saving Skin

MIT Technology Review, February 11, 2002

Bioengineered skin—grown in the lab using small samples of human cells—offers an alternative to animal testing.

Proponents argue that tissue models provide both ethical and scientific advantages. Scientists don't have to extrapolate human responses from animal-derived data and test results are easier to reproduce from lab to lab.

While limited, bio-engineered models are finding a niche as tools to screen out drugs likely to fail in clinical trials.

Just 2.5% of DNA turns mice into men

New Scientist.com, May 30, 2002

Mice and men share about 97.5 per cent of their working DNA, just one per cent less than chimps and humans. Scientists are hopeful that the close match will enable researchers to more rapidly determine the genetic roots of human diseases.

Claim GM Rice Withstands Drought, Salt Water

November 27, 2002, ABC News

Scientists say they have genetically modified rice to withstand drought, salt water and cold temperatures by borrowing a gene from the E. coli bacteria. They hope the new stress-tolerant rice will help farmers in poor countries grow more food under the worst conditions. The research team added to the rice a gene for trehalose, a sugar that helps plants withstand stress.

Fifth Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension to profile cryonic breakthroughs

KurzweilAI.net, Sept. 25, 2002

Cryonic breakthroughs in preventing tissue damage from freezing, human therapeutic cloning to replace damaged or missing tissue, and radical new techniques for life extension will be among the topics addressed at the Fifth Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension in Newport Beach, CA, November 15-17.

Michael D. West, President & CEO of Advanced Cell Technology; Ray Kurzweil, CEO, Kurzweil Technologies; and Gregory Benford, science fiction writer and Professor of Physics at the University of California, Irvine will keynote the conference.

Speakers will profile breakthroughs in brain cryopreservation research (Greg Fahy, Chief Scientific Officer and Vice President of 21st Century Medicine); research on slowing down aging (Aubrey de Grey, research associate, University of Cambridge); radical nanorobotics to arrest and reverse effects of aging (Robert A. Freitas, Jr., J.D., Research Scientist at Zyvex Corp.); post-resuscitation cooling to prevent brain damage (Steven Harris, M.D.); biological immortality (Michael Rose); gene-chip profiling to test effects of caloric restriction in slowing aging (Stephen Spindler, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of California, Riverside); new systems for long-term tissue storage (Brian Wowk, staff scientist, 21st Century Medicine); nanotechnology for repair of cryopreserved tissue (Ralph Merkle, Vice President, Technology Assessment, Foresight Institute), and practical techniques for living longer (Kat Cotter, D.C., director of "The Longevity Bootcamp").

Registration is $475 before Sept. 30 (a $100 savings). Call 800-482-6791 for more information.

Forward in the Face of Danger

November 25, 2002, BetterHumans

Using information pulled off the Internet and materials available by mail order, Dr. Eckard Wimmer, a University of New York microbiology professor and his team attempted to reconstruct the polio virus in their lab just to see if it could be done. Never before had a genome been reconstructed without a natural virus to build from. As work commenced, the researchers recognized that accomplishing their goal would introduce the world to a new reality. Several paralyzed mice later, they were forced to acknowledge their success. Eckard's experiment begs the question: What impact does this have on future bioterrorism? "I think it would be wrong to close our eyes to this," he says. "The world had better be prepared."

Scientists unravel secrets of long life

BBC, Aug. 2, 2002

Longevity is related to body temperature, and to levels of insulin and DHEAS (dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate) circulating in the blood, according to researchers at the National Institute of Ageing in Baltimore.

Men with lower temperature and insulin and those maintaining higher DHEAS levels have greater survival than respective counterparts.

'Junk DNA' Contains Essential Information

December 4, 2002, Washington Post

The huge stretches of genetic material dismissed in biology classrooms for generations as "junk DNA" actually contain instructions essential for the growth and survival of people and other organisms, and may hold keys to understanding complex diseases like cancer, strokes and heart attacks, researchers have reported. The new results suggest that the genomes of both humans and mice contain at least twice as much critically important genetic material as previously believed, a finding that promises to upend decades of scientific dogma and rewrite the rule book for how nature builds complex creatures.

Darwin's Theory May Explain Ill Health

October 12, 2002, BBC News

Professor Randolph Nesse believes that conditions like heart disease, obesity and drug abuse can all be explained by the fact that the human body was not designed for the 21st Century. Nesse, professor of psychiatry at the University of Michigan, is one of the leading proponents of evolutionary or Darwinian medicine. Evolutionary medicine examines why some diseases still exist. According to Nesse, our bodies are designed to like things that are not good for us, from cigarettes to fatty foods. Similarly, we are not designed to follow advice encouraging us to change the way we live.

Missing Limb? Salamander May Have Answer

September 24, 2002, New York Times

Salamanders are the superstars of regeneration. They can grow back not only limbs but also tails, parts of their hearts and the retinas and lenses in their eyes. Humans cannot do any of that. So scientists hope that the salamander's tricks may one day be applied to people. Natural regeneration, which might be accomplished with drugs or genes, would be easier than transplanting, researchers say. And the tissue would be the patient's own, doing away with the problem of rejection.

Scientists Hope to Create New Form of Life

November 21, 2002, ABC News

Gene scientists Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith hope to create a single-celled, partially man-made organism with the minimum number of genes necessary to sustain life in a project funded by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Energy Department. If the experiment works, the microscopic man-made cell would begin feeding and dividing to create a population of cells unlike any previously known to exist. The scientists acknowledged the project could lay the groundwork for creating new biological weapons and that they have to be selective about publishing technical details.

DNA as Destiny

November, 2002, Wired

DNA is not only the book of life; it's also the book of death. In the future we may be able to read it cover to cover. Here's a first-hand account of what it's like to take the world's first top-to-bottom gene scan. "Everyone has errors in his or her DNA, glitches that may trigger a heart spasm or cause a brain tumor. I'm here to learn mine." It may be technologically straight forward; it's not so emotionally simple.

Germs Develop a Deadly Defense

November 12, 2002, Detroit Free Press

Doctors have discovered a virulent new strain of the bacterium staphylococcus aureus, or staph aureus. By stealing genetic material from another bug, the new strain became totally resistant to vancomycin, the longtime drug of last defense against it. Staph aureus is a common pathogen that infects about 400,000 U.S. hospital patients a year. About one-quarter of them die. For decades, scientists have been dreading-but expecting -a staph aureus strain to emerge that is resistant to vancomycin.

Venter to Bio World: Exa-Byte Me

November 14, 2002, GenomeWeb

Craig Venter, delivering the opening address yesterday at the BioITWorld conference here, said that computer power will be the limiting factor in crunching, storing, and manipulating the data necessary for linking the promise of genomics to insights into gene function, protein interaction, and personalized medicine. To underscore his point, he said the Celera computers that sequenced the human genome-the 1.5 teraflop, 120 terabyte machines that took up 6,000 square feet of space-are relics.

Sick? DNA Scanner Tells What Ails

Wired News, Dec. 24, 2002

A prototype diagnostic tool under development by two London companies offers rapid genetic analysis of infectious diseases, delivering results in a half hour rather than the usual two weeks with DNA labs.

The box takes a DNA sample directly from saliva. DNA is extracted from the sample and then multiplied in a miniature polymerase chain reaction, which clones DNA strands rapidly. Once enough DNA is present, it can be matched against a suspected infection.

Infant rat heads grafted onto adults rats' thighs

New Scientist, Dec. 3, 2002

Infant rats are being decapitated and their heads grafted onto the thighs of adult rats by researchers in Japan. The purpose is to investigate how the transplanted brain can develop and maintain function after prolonged total brain ischemia (no blood flow). The controversial research may have value in studies of brain injury in newborn babies.

Scientists Hope to Create New Form of Life

Reuters, Nov 21, 2002

Gene scientists Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith hope to create a new life form in a laboratory dish in an experiment that raises ethical and safety questions.

Funded by a $3 million grant from the U.S. Energy Department, the experiment could create a new set of tools to make biological weapons, Venter warned.

DNA as Destiny

Wired, Nov 2002

Personalized medicine current being developed prefigures a day when everyone's genome will be deposited on a chip or stored on a gene card tucked into a wallet.

Physicians will forecast illnesses and prescribe preventive drugs custom-fitted to a patient's DNA, rather than the one-size-fits-all pharmaceuticals that people take today. Gene cards might also be used to find that best-suited career, or a DNA-compatible mate, or, more darkly, to deny someone jobs, dates, and meds because their nucleotides don't measure up.

Race for the $1000 genome is on

NewScientist.com, Oct. 12, 2002

In less than a decade, people will be able to get their own genomes sequenced for about $1000, leading to a whole new industry of personal genomics.

Thousand-chamber biochip debuts

TRN News, October 2/9, 2002

California Institute of Technology researchers hope to replace large chemistry equipment with devices based on a fluidic storage chip that can store 1,000 different substances in an area slightly larger than a postage stamp.



The technology could eventually allow experiments that involve hundreds or thousands of liquid samples to run on desktop or even handheld devices, potentially reducing the cost and complexity of medical testing, genetics research and drug development.

U.S. Agriculture Vulnerable to Bioterror Attack

Environment News Service, September 20, 2002

A large scale agricultural bioterrorism attack would quickly overwhelm existing laboratory and field resources, warns a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. The report warns that the nation cannot rapidly detect and identify many pests and pathogens, and needs a comprehensive plan to defend against bioterrorism.

Millionaires Lining Up to Buy Personal Gene Maps

ABC News, Sept. 23, 2002

A service to map a person's entire genetic code is being offered by America's genome entrepreneur Craig Venter, priced at $621,500.

The information would identify genetic abnormalities associated with a few dozen diseases. Some scientists are skeptical about the value of the procedure.

Bettering Ourselves Through Biotech: Greater Productivity, Sharper Memories, Hair Feathers

Knowledge@Wharton, Aug 14-Aug 27

Beefing up muscle without steroids or hormones; rejuvenating damaged skin and heart tissue; ratcheting up memory function, and other therapies that promise to enhance human abilities are nearing the marketplace, thanks to ever-faster breakthroughs in biotechnology

First language gene discovered

BBC News, Aug, 12, 2002

Scientists think they have found the first of many genes that gave humans speech. The gene, FOXP2, is thought to be linked to an ability to control facial movements&#8212a faculty crucial to language, which would give bearers a survival advantage because they were able to communicate more clearly.

Genome Pioneer Will Start Center of His Own

New York Times, August 15, 2002

J. Craig Venter plans to build what he believes will be the nation's largest genome sequencing center to introduce new technology that vastly decreases the time and cost required to determine the DNA code of people, animals and microbes.

One goal, he said, is to get the cost down to $2,000 to $3,000 to analyze a person's entire genome, compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars it took to determine the first human genome sequence.

At that price, probably not reachable for 10 years, it will become practical to tailor medical care to each person based on genetic makeup, he said.

Laser delivers DNA

Nature, July 18, 2002

Lasers can open a temporary doorway into cells so that DNA can get inside, researchers at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany report. This technique might hasten gene therapy by making it easier to get new genes into living cells without harming them.

Ebola virus could be synthesised

New Scientist, July 17, 2002

The technique used to create the first synthetic polio virus, revealed last week, could be also used to recreate Ebola or the 1918 flu strain that killed up to 40 million people, according to experts.

The real worry is that bioterrorists could use the method to recreate viruses such as Ebola and smallpox.

Stem cell hopes double

Nature, June 21, 2002

Scientists from the National Institutes of Health have reversed the symptoms of Parkinson's disease in rats using stem cells from mouse embryos. Another team of scientists from the University of Minnesota Medical School has isolated a stem cell from adult human bone marrow that can produce all the tissue types in the body, from blood to muscle to nerve.

The new reports may re-fuel the debate in the US Senate over whether to permit the cloning of human embryos for medical research.

Both papers are available free on the Nature site (registration required).

McKay, R. et al. Dopamine neurons derived from embryonic stem cells function in an animal model of Parkinson's disease. Nature, 417, published online 20 June; doi:10.1038/nature00900, (2002).

Verfaille, C.M. et al. Pluripotency of mesenchymal stem cells derived from adult marrow . Nature, 417, published online 20 June; doi:10.1038/nature00870 (2002).

Human Clone Unlikely Say Experts

November 27, 2002, BBC News

The controversial Italian doctor Severino Antinori has announced that the first human baby clone will be born in January 2003. Speaking at a news conference in Rome on Tuesday, the researcher said three women he has treated are now carrying foetus clones in the advanced stages of pregnancy. Later on Wednesday, a company in the US claimed it too had women that were pregnant with baby clones-one of which would be presented to the world before the end of the year. But in the absense of any real proof, not all scientists are convinced.

'Functional' kidneys grown from stem cells

New Scientist, January 29, 2002

US scientists claim to have grown functional kidneys using stem cells taken from cloned cow embryos.

Robert Lanza of biotech company Advanced Cell Technology told New Scientist that his team, working in collaboration with a group at Harvard University, coaxed the stem cells into becoming kidney cells, and then "grew" them on a kidney-shaped scaffold.

The two-inch-long mini-kidneys were then transplanted back into genetically identical cows, where they started making urine, Lanza says.

Men redundant? Now we don't need women either

The Observer, February 10, 2002

Doctors are developing artificial wombs in which embryos can grow outside a woman's body. The work has been hailed as a breakthrough in treating the childless.

The research is headed by Dr. Hung-Ching Liu of Cornell University's Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility. Liu's work involves removing cells from the endometrium, the lining of the womb.

After this Liu and her colleagues grew layers of these cells on scaffolds of biodegradable material which had been modelled into shapes mirroring the interior of the uterus. The cells grew into tissue and the scaffold dissolved. Then nutrients and hormones such as estrogen were added to the tissue.

"Finally, we took embryos left over from IVF programmes and put these into our laboratory engineered tissue. The embryos attached themselves to the walls of our prototype wombs and began to settle there."

The immediate aim of this work is to help women whose damaged wombs prevent them from conceiving. An artificial womb would be made from their own endometrium cells, an embryo placed inside it, and allowed to settle and grow before the whole package is placed back in her body.

The experiments were halted after six days. However, Liu now plans to continue with this research and allow embryos to grow in the artificial wombs for 14 days, the maximum permitted by IVF legislation.

Artificial wombs raise major ethical headaches which will be debated at a major international conference titled "The End of Natural Motherhood?" in Oklahoma next week.

Ethical and social issues include abortion, the prospect that gay couples could give "birth" to their own children by combining artificial wombs with cloning, and unexpected consequences for working women and health insurance (materity leave would no longer be needed and artificial wombs insurance companies might prefer safer environments than natural wombs, which can be invaded by drugs and alcohol from a mother's body).

First cloned cat makes debut

UPI, February 14, 2002

The first cloned cat has been successfully created at Texas A&M University and appears healthy and robust, researchers said Thursday.

The Texas researchers isolated adult fibroblast cells from an adult male cat and froze the genetic material. They then thawed it, fused it with cat ova that had matured in vitro which had metaphase chromosomes removed, and these cloned embryos were then transferred to female cats.

A total 188 nuclei were transferred, 87 cloned embryos were formed and transferred to eight female cats resulting in one live birth and one failed pregnancy.

Some believe it may pave the way for the future cloning of pets, according to a paper to be published in the Feb. 21 issue of the journal Nature.

Designer Baby or Problem?

Wired News, February 28, 2002

Designer babies can now be achieved without cloning, Gattaca-style.

"It's much more important than the debate about cloning people, which is a sideshow," said Arthur Caplan, director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania. "While we're all spending a lot of time thinking about cloning, that is not the main area where genetics is going to force hard choices."

Key Component of Neural Stem Cells Discovered

New Scientist, March 14, 2002

A team at the Max-Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Germany has discovered a molecule they think is a key component of brain cells which have the ability to act as neural stem cells.

Evidence suggests that specific fetal cells, called radial glial cells, and adult cells called neurogenic astrocytes, can act as neural stem cells—which create neurons. It has been unknown to scientists what gives these special cells their stem cell capacity.

In experiments, the molecular component "Pax6" was added to normal astrocytes—which do not typicaly act as stem cells. The cells began to function as neurogenic atrocytes, able to produce neurons. Pax6 is a molecule called a transcription factor, which regulates which genes are transcribed and then translated into proteins.

Researchers hope the discovery of this key component may someday allow scientists to utilize stem cells to repair a damaged brain.

Dozens of human embryos cloned in China

New Scientist, March 6, 2002

Chinese scientists at Xiangya Medical College have cloned dozens of human embryos advanced enough to harvest embryonic stem cells to make tissues for transplant patients and for research. If verified, the work is a major step forward.

Another team based at Shanghai No. 2 Medical University claims to have derived stem cells from hybrid embryos composed of human cells and rabbit eggs. Embryonic stem cells are able to develop into any cell type in the body.

Cloning research is bogged down by political and ethical concerns in the U.S. and Britain, but regulations are far less restrictive in China.

Method May Transform Cells Without Cloning

New York Times, May 1, 2002

A team of scientists at the University of Oslo Medical School and Nucleotech say they are developing a technique that transforms one type of cell from the body into another type without using cloning or embryonic stem cells.

The scientists made human skin cells in a test tube behave as if they were immune system cells and previous converted skin cells to nerve cells. The work promises a new approach to tissue replacement therapy while avoiding controversial therapeutic cloning.

New Stanford Institute Is to Study Controversial Stem Cell Manipulation

New York Times, December 12, 2002

A new stem cell institute being set up at Stanford University will study human diseases through two advanced but controversial techniques of cell manipulation: nuclear transfer (also used in cloning animals) and generating new lines of human embryonic stem cells.

Stem Cell Mixing May Form a Human-Mouse Hybrid

New York Times, November 27, 2002

Proposed stem cell experiments would involve creating a human-mouse hybrid to test different lines of human embryonic stem cells for their quality and potential usefulness in treating specific diseases.

Any animals born from the experiment would be chimeras— organisms that are mixtures of two kinds of cells, such as a mouse with a brain made entirely of human cells or a mouse that generated human sperm. However, Dr. Irving L. Weissman of Stanford said these undesirable outcomes could be avoided by deleting certain genes from the human cells before injecting them into a mouse.

Professor who cloned Dolly seeks license to go to work on a human egg

The Independent, Nov. 25, 2002

Professor Ian Wilmut, who cloned Dolly the sheep, has applied for a British government license to work with human eggs in an experiment that prepares the way for human cloning.

The experiment would allow scientists to carry out parthenogenesis (a technique in which an unfertilized egg is stimulated in the laboratory to develop into an early embryo) and then extract embryonic stem cells for further study.

Interview With a Humanoid

New York Times, July 23, 2002

Five clone calves in Wisconsin have been born with 0.1 percent human DNA. They are expected to produce a human protein, C-1 Esterase Inhibitor, in their milk to treat humans suffering from angioedema.

Infigen, a biotech company in DeForest, Wisconsin, is cloning cows with human DNA to produce products such as human collagen, human fibrinogen (used to treat wounds), and human factor VIII, used for blood clotting.

The company also plans genetically modified pigs to produce livers, kidneys, hearts and pancreases for ailing patients.

Upside of Downsizing Analog Chips

Wired News, Feb. 20, 2002

Impinj has found a way to make analog devices employing the same CMOS technology currently used for making digital chips and fine-tuning them after they are produced. The result is analog devices that can be scaled down to tiny sizes and work better than the current generation of analog chips.

The "self-adaptive silicon" technology is modeled on how the human brain adjusts nerve cells; it can monitor the chip's functioning and adjust it to adapt to changes in temperature or battery power. It promises to improve battery life in wireless systems, enable low-power adaptive sensors, and allow for silicon chips that learn from experience.

Company co-founders Carver Mead and his former student, Christopher Diorio, developed the process while at Cal Tech in the 1990s.

The Shape of Computer Chips to Come

NewsFactor Network, May 01, 2002

As chips continue to shrink, researchers are combining the amazing properties of silicon with communications network research.

Computers reach one billion mark

BBC News, July 1, 2002

One billion personal computers have been sold across the world, according to Gartner Dataquest. The number will reach the two billion mark by 2008, with greatest growth expected in China, Latin America, eastern Europe and India, predicts Gartner.

The Billionth PC Ships, Gartner Dataquest report, 28 June 2002

Light turns into glowing liquid

New Scientist, July 7, 2002

"Liquid light" created by concentrating a laser beam into a tight column in nonlinear materials, would be an ideal medium for an optical computer, researchers believe.

One Terabyte On a 12-cm Disc

Slashdot, July 16, 2002

At InterOpto'02-international optoelectronics exhibition hold in Chiba, Japan-OPTWARE Co. Ltd. demoed a super-high speed optical disk system that uses a hologram and stores 1 terabyte data in a 12-cm-CD-size disc, with 100Mbps-1Gbps transfer rate. Available in 2003 as 19-inch rackmount, 2005 for PC.

Xerox Says New Material Will Allow Plastic Transistors

New York Times, December 3, 2002

Xerox researchers are developing an experimental polymer that can be used to make organic transistors on a plastic substrate and could be easier to manufacture at lower cost.

Sales of Computer Chips Rise for Third Consecutive Quarter

New York Times, Nov. 29, 2002

Worldwide semiconductor sales increased to $12.52 billion in October, a 1.8 percent jump from September and a 20 percent rise from 2001.

Major segments: chips for personal computers and wireless devices, flash memory and digital signal processors.

Software aims to put your life on a disk

New Scientist, Nov. 20, 2002

Engineers at Microsoft's Media Presence lab in San Francisco are aiming to build "MyLifeBits,"
a multimedia database that chronicle people's life events and make them searchable.

Each media file saved in MyLifeBits can be tagged with a written or spoken commentary and linked to other files. Spoken annotations are also converted into text, so the speech is searchable, too.

The system could also help us preserve our experiences more vividly for posterity.

The concept was first proposed by presidential technology adviser Vannevar Bush as "Memex."

Tiny optical disc could store five movies

NewScientist.com, Oct. 18, 2002

Philips has been secretly developing the world's smallest optical disc, which will record, play back and erase data using the same precision blue lasers that are being developed for the next generation of high-definition video recorders.

The first versions of the three-centimeter disc (with the same thickness as a DVD) will store one gigabyte on each side, but the dual-layer coating already used for DVDs will double the capacity to four gigabytes in total.

Imprinted patterns boost hard drive capacity 200 times

Nature Science Update, Oct. 11, 2002

A new magnetic data storage system could offer 200 times the data storage capacity of current state-of-the-art systems. The magnetic film, devised by IBM researchers, stores 200 gigabytes per square inch.

The technology, which requires further development before commercialization, magnetizes bits on the thin-film recording medium perpendicular to the film surface instead of parallel, doing away with flipped magnetic fields from neighboring magnetic fields. It also writes data on discrete islands of magnetic material to avoid demagnetization from heat.

"Recording performance of high-density patterned perpendicular magnetic media," Applied Physics Letters, October 7, 2002—Volume 81, Issue 15, pp. 2875-2877

On a Single Chip, Intel Joins Realms of Analog and Digital

New York Times, Sept. 15, 2002

Manufacturing processes are converging. Intel has announced a new manufacturing process to blend digital and analog functions on a single silicon chip. In the future, all functions of a cellphone, for example, could be consolidated on a single chip.

Intel pushing to develop 1-billion transistor processor

EE Times, September 10, 2002

Intel Corp. has announced it is developing a 1-billion-transistor chip that will integrate logic, graphics and security. It is part of Intel's "convergence" push to accelerate the development of computing and communications.

HP Labs Creates Densest Memory Chip

AP, September 9, 2002

Using molecules as building blocks, Hewlett-Packard Co. researchers have created 64-bit memory unit that fits inside a square micron.

Rival replacement for DVDs announced

New Scientist, August 29, 2002

A high-capacity replacement for current DVD technology has been announced by NEC and Toshiba. It would increase data storage capacity from the current 4.7 to 8.5 gigabytes to between 15 and 30 gigabytes.

The competing Blu-Ray discs are expected to hold between 40 and 50 gigabytes of data. Both formats are expected to be available in 2004.

The Even-More-Compact Disc

New York Times, August 29, 2002

The new miniaturized DataPlay digital media offers CD performance and 500 MB storage at a tiny size but at expensive prices initially for media and players.

DataPlay discs will be available in blank, recordable form as well as prerecorded, copy-protected albums.

New Hard-Drive Tech Overcomes Magnetic Memory Problems

NewsFactor Network, August 28, 2002

Seagate researchers now believe they can store as much as 50 terabits per square inch&#8212equivalent to the entire printed contents of the Library of Congress—on a single disk drive for a notebook computer.

Currently, the highest storage densities are around 50 gigabits per square inch.

The new techniques involves heating the memory medium with a laser-generated beam at the precise spot where data bits are being recorded, overcoming the "superparamagnetic limit" &#8212a memory boundary based on data bits so small they become magnetically unstable.

Related news: Nano research challenges storage limit

Faster Chips That March to Their Own Improvised Beat

New York Times, August 22, 2002

Self-timing, or asynchronous microprocessors will lead to improved computer performance, providing faster operations and reduced power consumption and electromagnetic emissions.

Sun Microsytems and Phillips Research are pioneering developments in this area.

Intel introduces major upgrade of Pentium 4

KurzweilAI.net, Aug. 13, 2002

Intel announced today a major upgrade to the Pentium 4 platform, due out in 2003 and code-named Prescott. The new chip will bring higher clock speeds, a 1MB L2 cache, Hyper Threading and new instructions to the Pentium 4, according to Anandtech.

"Many of these enhancements will be made possible through the use of a new manufacturing process for the transistors that make up the Prescott core," which will use Intel's 0.09-micron (90nm) process, it said.

The new 90 nm process, which Intel describes as "the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing process in the industry," is the next generation after the 0.13 micron process, which Intel is using today to make the bulk of its microprocessors.

One Terabyte On a 12-cm Disc

Slashdot, July 16, 2002

At InterOpto'02-international optoelectronics exhibition hold in Chiba, Japan-OPTWARE Co. Ltd. demoed a super-high speed optical disk system that uses a hologram and stores 1 terabyte data in a 12-cm-CD-size disc, with 100Mbps-1Gbps transfer rate. Available in 2003 as 19-inch rackmount, 2005 for PC.

Quantum wormholes could carry people

New Scientist, May 23, 2002

"Quantum wormholes offer a faster-than-light short cut to the rest of the cosmos&#8212at least in principle. Now physicists believe they could open these doors wide enough to allow someone to travel through."

But matter travelling through a wormhole adds positive energy to it, which collapses it into a black hole, so any would-be traveller would be crushed.

"Ghost radiation" could be used to offset the positive energy of the travelling matter, but keeping the wormhole open wide enough to send a person would take a negative field equivalent to the energy liberated by converting the mass of Jupiter.

NASA studies lasers to divert asteroids

UPI, Oct. 18, 2002

Scientists at NASA's Marshall National Space Science and Technology Center and Langley Research Center are studying using a laser to shift the orbit of dangerous asteroids.

Throwing Einstein for a Loop

December, 2002, Scientific American

Physicist Fotini Markopoulou Kalamara has developed a way to connect relativity with quantum theory—while making sure that cause still precedes effect. The unification of Einstein's general relativity with quantum theory to explain the nature of space and time is probably the single greatest challenge of modern physics. Kalamara's work suggests networks that do not live in space and are not made of matter. Rather their very architecture gives rise to space and matter.

Black Holes Are Double Trouble for Galaxy

New Scientist, November 20, 2002

Two monstrous black holes are jostling for power in the same galaxy, the Chandra X-ray satellite has revealed. The pair will slam into each other in a few hundred million years, giving the fabric of space-time a good shake. "Today for the first time, thanks to the Chandra X-ray observatory's unparalleled ability to spot black holes, we see something that is a harbinger of a cataclysmic event to come," said a NASA official.

Speed of light broken with basic lab kit

New Scientist, Sept. 16, 2002

Electric signals can be transmitted at least four times faster than the speed of light using only basic equipment, Tennessee State University physicists have discovered.

However, signals also get weaker and more distorted the faster they go, so in theory no useful information can get transmitted at faster-than-light speeds.

Black hole theory suggests light is slowing

NewScientist.com, August 8, 2002

Observations of the light from distant, superbright galaxies suggest that the "fine structure constant" was slightly smaller 10 billion years ago, which implies that the speed of light has decreased over time, according to Paul Davies of Macquarie University in Sydney.

If proved right, this would challenge the theory of relativity and the theory of inflation, which says space expanded extremely rapidly in the first split second after the big bang.

Team demos 'first quantum crypto prototype machine'

The Register, July 17, 2002

The "first fully integrated quantum cryptography prototype machine" has exchanged encryption keys across a 67km fiber optic network.

The advance was achieved by a team from the University of Geneva and Swiss electronics company id Quantique. In contrast to methods based on codes, the keys formed by quantum cryptography can, in principle, be completely uncrackable because the legitimate receiver of a message can test whether it has been intercepted or altered by an eavesdropper during transmission.

New Light Shed on Unbreakable Encryption

November 15, 2002, ZDNews

Scientists at Northwestern University say they have harnessed the properties of light to encrypt information into code that can be cracked only one way: by breaking the physical laws of nature. There is growing interest in using quantum cryptography for commercial and military applications because of the technology's apparent ability to guarantee invulnerability. Quantum cryptography, however, still suffers from one major limitation. As it stands today, all quantum cryptography techniques only work over dedicated fiber-optic lines—not over the Internet&#8212and over distances no greater than about 90 kilometers from one point to another. That may be changing.

Face Scans Set Up at Lady Liberty

AP, May 25, 2002

A new surveillance system is taking pictures of visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and comparing them to a database of terror suspects.

The American Civil Liberties Union criticized the system.

Technology Gives Sight to Machines, Inexpensively

New York Times, June 16, 2002

Researchers are developing an inexpensive system that produces real-time three-dimensional images.

The 3D-Aware system from Palo Alto-based Tyzx can be used for surveillance of individuals in a crowd, security systems, games. It uses two inexpensive video cameras linked at high speed to a custom processing card in a standard PC.

Many Tools of Big Brother Are Up and Running

New York Times, December 23, 2002

Most of the technical prerequisites for the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness national surveillance system are already in place. Computerized data sifting and pattern matching that might flag suspicious activities are not much different from programs already in use by private companies.

Review: 'Minority' tech mostly on target

UPI, Dec. 17, 2002

The seeds already have been planted for much of the technology portrayed in Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report," including biometrics, ads that call you by name, holographic displays, motion capture, and swarm robotics.

Human or Computer? Take This Test

New York Times, December 10, 2002

Yahoo and Carnegie Mellon have developed the "Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart" (Captchas) to block bots that post spam and collect personal data.



To stymie bots, it presents distorted words displayed against a complicated background or distorted sound clips, requiring humans to enter the correct information for admittance to chat rooms.

Future Watch: Autoimmune computer systems

Computerworld, December 9, 2002

New intrusion-detection software is being developed that mimics biological immune systems, learning to watch for unusual events. Other software randomly generates "detectors," throws away those that match normal behavior, and retains those that represent abnormal behavior.

Massive database dragnet explored

Mercury News, Nov. 20, 2002

The Pentagon's Total Information Awareness System, which would sift through a variety of commercial and government databases in the United States and abroad to identify terrorist plans, is raising privacy concerns.

Light at End of Encryption Tunnel

Wired News, Nov. 21, 2002

Quantum encryption is about to make life much more difficult for Internet spies.

U.S. Hopes to Check Computers Globally

Washington Post, November 12, 2002

The Pentagon's new Information Awareness Office is designing a global computer-surveillance system to give U.S. counterterrorism officials access to personal information in government and commercial databases around the world.

Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) at about $200 million a year, the system will use "transformational" technology to sift through almost unimaginably large amounts of data and visually represent it.

Good Morning, Dave . . .

Computerworld, Nov. 11, 2002

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is accepting research proposals to develop a "cognitive system" that would reason, learn from experience and adapt to surprises, be aware of its behavior and explain itself, anticipate different scenarios, and predict and plan for novel futures.

"It's all moving toward this grand vision of not putting people in harm's way," says Raymond Kurzweil. "If you want autonomous weapons, it's helpful for them to be intelligent."

Cognitive systems could assist or replace soldiers on hazardous duty or civilians responding to toxic spills or disasters.

Special Report: Quantum Cryptography Arrives

PC Magazine, August 6, 2002

Quantum cryptography has arrived, as Swiss company id Quantique introduces a commercial quantum cryptography system and an American company, MagiQ Technologies, plans to unveil a second.

A New Cryptography Uses the Quirks of Photon Streams

New York Times, November 4, 2002

MagiQ Technologies plans to offer a cryptogaphy system using quantum key distribution in 2003.

Keys to the code are transmitted as a stream of photons, sent over a fiber optic cable. Security is based on quantum physics: observing the transmission would alter the photons, rendering their information useless to any eavesdroppers.

Powerful Attack Upset Global Internet Traffic

New York Times, Oct. 22, 2002

The "largest and most sophisticated assault on the servers in the history of the Internet" on Monday briefly crippled 9 of the 13 computer servers that manage global Internet traffic.

British Concern to Help U.S. Track Terrorists

New York Times, October 21, 2002

Autonomy information retrieval software will be used to provide an analysis system to help the United States government track suspected terrorists. The software is based on Bayesian statistical techniques, which can search for patterns of information across large masses of data.

Software predicts user behavior to stop attacks

NewScientist.com, Oct. 11, 2002

New computer-monitoring software designed to second-guess the intentions of individual system users could be 94 per cent reliable in preventing security breaches, say researchers.

The software generates a profile for each individual on a network by analyzing the specific commands they enter at their terminal. It then monitors their activity and sounds the alarm on detecting suspicious behavior.

Quantum cryptography takes to the skies

New Scientist, Oct. 2, 2002

Quantum cryptography keys encoded in polarized photons of light have been transmitted more than 23 kilometers through air, British researchers have announced. They say the breakthrough is an important step towards a satellite-based global communications system that is completely secure and expect to have a system design by March 2003.

Quantum cryptography guarantees that keys cannot be intercepted without the sender and receiver knowing by using the quantum properties of individual photons (or particles) to encode the key&#8212any measurement of a photon will alter its quantum properties, betraying an interceptor.

Nature (vol 419, p 450)

UK Scientist Calls for DNA Database of Everyone

Reuters, Sept. 12, 2002

The British inventor of DNA fingerprinting has called for the establishment of a DNA database for every person in the country to fight crime.

There would be three databases, one with DNA samples, another with names and addresses, and a third to match the first two. A DNA sample from a crime scene would be checked with information in the first database. If a match was found, a court order would have to be obtained by the police to connect the profile to a name.

The Gattaca movie was based on this premise.-Ed.

Eerie possibilities

InfoWorld, September 6, 2002

Saudi Arabia is planning to issue an RFID (Radio Frequency ID) tag to visitors for logistics, crowd control, and security.

The tag includes name, country of origin, where they are staying, and what language they speak. RFID readers around Mecca will pick up the data on each passerby for the purpose of monitoring crowd flow and predicting where people are going and how situations might unfold, coordinated by a command center.

First permanent wireless retinal prothesis implanted

KurzweilAI.net, April 30, 2002

Ophthalmologists at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California have implanted the first permanent wireless microelectronic retinal prothesis.

Visual signals from a video camera will be sent to the 16-electrode intraocular electrode array attached to the retina via a receiver implanted behind the patient's ear.

Researchers hope the retinal prosthesis, intended to stand in for the damaged retinal cells in people suffering from such blinding diseases as retinitis pigmentosa and macular degeneration, will one day be able to restore some degree of vision to these patients.

USC ophthalmologists announce launch of permanent retinal implant study

Enter the Cyborgs

U.S News, May 13, 2002

The recent report of "roborats" and other developments suggest that brains could meld with machines faster than most think. The prospect has some concerned about the "neuroethics" of brain implants and other neural enhancements that could turn people into cyborgs.

First Humans to Receive ID Chips

Los Angeles Times, May 9, 2002

Eight people in Florida will be injected with ID chips on Friday May 10. The "VeriChip" implants will allow hospitals to scan Alzheimer's patients and others to quickly determine identification and medical information.

Three of the implantees are the Jacobs family, whose operation will be covered live on Good Morning America.

Applied Digital Solutions Inc. says it has a waiting list of 4,000 to 5,000 people who want a VeriChip and plans to operate a "chipmobile" that visits Florida senior citizen's centers. The company also plans to have a prototype soon of a device to receive GPS satellite signals and transmit a person's location.

We Are Becoming Cyborgs

Scientists test first human cyborg

FDA approves implantable chip

Eyes write

Nature, August 22, 2002

New software called Dasher could allow computer users with disabilities or busy hands to write nearly twice as fast, more accurately and more comfortably than before and could also speed up writing on palm-tops and typing in Japanese and Chinese, its developers say.

The software lets users select letters from a screen and calculates the probability of one letter coming after another. It then presents the letters required as if contained on infinitely expanding bookshelves.

Ward, D. J. & MacKay, D. J. C. Fast hands-free writing by gaze direction. Nature, 418, 838, (2002).

Bionic people with artificial muscles: NASA JPL

KurzweilAI.net, June 14, 2002

"We may see one day either bionic people, namely individuals with artificial muscles, or robots that mimic biology," according to Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen, senior research scientist at NASA JPL.


Electroactive Polymer Artificial Muscles

Bar-Cohen has been developing technologies based on electroactive polymers. These "artificial muscles" bend, stretch and contract like biological muscles when an electrical charge is applied to them.

"In the future, insect-like robots might relieve their manufacturer's burden by packing themselves for shipping. Intelligent robots might read books aloud, discuss stock options and even replace dogs as man's best friend," according to a NASA JPL statement.

Scientists 'Muscle' Sci-Fi into Reality

Artificial vision device stimulates the visual cortex

KurzweilIAI.net, June 14, 2002

A neurosurgeon has become the first U.S. doctor to implant an artificial vision device that allows a blind patient to see using a video camera's image that stimulates the visual cortex of the brain.

Kenneth R. Smith Jr., M.D., professor of neurosurgery at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, performed the two- to three-hour surgical procedure in Lisbon, Portugal, in April.

Patients use special sunglasses fitted with a miniature television camera and a microcomputer and stimulator. The gear attaches by cable to a tiny fire hydrant-like device implanted in the back of the skull that connects to electrodes on the surface of the visual part of the brain.

Patients don't have "normal" vision. Instead, they see white flashes of light and learn to interpret the patterns so they can gain mobility.

The system is designed for patients who have lost their vision from an injury and are not candidates for retinal implants.

The artificial vision system is being presented June 13 at the 48th annual meeting of the American Society for Artificial Internal Organs in New York.

Futuristic System Brings Vision to Blind

Program lets blind 'see' and draw

UPI, June 30, 2002

Hesham Kamel, a blind engineering student at the University of California at Berkeley, has designed a computer-drawing program that permits the visually impaired to create and visualize illustrations, graphics and other images on the screen.

Replacing menus, the program divides (and sub-divides) the screen into nine squares corresponding to a telephone keypad for controlling commands, shapes, lines and colors. Audio feedback can name the location of the square or describe the shapes or pictures.

The Ultimate Running Machine

Wired, August 2002

Inside a Soviet-style training camp, corporate scientists are reengineering neuro-mechanics, blood chemistry, and brain waves. Welcome to the Oregon Project, where Nike is rebuilding the US marathon team one high tech step at a time.

Bionic Eyes

Science@NASA, January 3, 2002

Using space technology, scientists have developed extraordinary ceramic photocells that could repair malfunctioning human eyes.

Scientists at the NASA-sponsored Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center (SVEC) in Houston are experimenting with thin, photosensitive ceramic films that respond to light much as rods and cones do. Arrays of such films, they believe, could be implanted in human eyes to restore lost vision by serving as substitutes for bad rods and cones.

Artificial retinas constructed at SVEC consist of 100,000 tiny ceramic detectors, each 1/20 the size of a human hair. The assemblage is so small that surgeons can't safely handle it. So, the arrays are attached to a polymer film one millimeter by one millimeter in size. A couple of weeks after insertion into an eyeball, the polymer film will simply dissolve leaving only the array behind.

The first human trials of such detectors will begin in 2002.

Scientists aren't yet certain how the brain will interpretb unfamiliar voltages from the artificial rods and cones. They believe the brain will eventually adapt, although a slow learning process might be necessary—something akin to the way an infant learns shapes and colors for the first time.

Injectable chip opens door to 'human bar code'

EE Times, January 4, 2002

The VeriChip, a controversial radio-frequency identification chip (RFID), injected through a syringe, could be used as a sort of "human bar code" in security and medical applications.

Applied Digital Solutions initially plans to sell the chips in South America and Europe for use with pacemakers and defibrillators. Medical personnel could identify and monitor a patient's implanted devices merely by running a handheld scanner over the patient's chest. They expect FDA approval for U.S. sales later this year.

The VeriChip includes memory that holds 128 characters, an electromagnetic coil for transmitting data and a tuning capacitor, all encapsulated within a silicone-and-glass enclosure. The passive RF unit, which operates at 125 kHz, is activated by moving a company-designed scanner near the chip.

Applied Digital Solutions implanted its first human chips in September. A New Jersey surgeon, Richard Seelig, injected two of the chips into his arm and leg.

The company says the chips could have security tracking uses, implanted in young children, adults with Alzheimer's disease, prisoners, and parolees.

Analysts said the chip might be too large for easy adoption and needed more memory and other features, such as global-positioning satellite receive capability and induction-based power-recharging techniques. GPS might help find lost children and adults, while larger memories would enable doctors to store vital patient information.

Japan scientists 'grow artificial eyeball'

CNN.com, January 5, 2002

Japanese scientists have succeeded in growing artificial eyeballs in tadpoles using cells taken from frog embryos.

"Since the basics of body-making is common to that of human beings, I think this might help enable people to regain vision in the future," said research team leader Makoto Asashima, biology professor at Tokyo University.

Biomimicry: Super Fly

New York Times, January 13, 2002

Researchers are trying to replicate the incredibly accurate hearing mechanism of a rare fly—the Ormia ochracea&#8212and use it to create everything from the world's most sophisticated hearing aid to tiny microphones that might help catch the future Osama bin Ladens of the world.

The incredibly accurate hearing mechanism of the Ormia ochracea's ears have evolved the ability to pinpoint the location of chirping crickets, thanks to its two eardrums. The one closer to the sound vibrates more loudly than the other, detecting a noise's direction within one or two degrees.

Ron Miles, a vibrations and acoustics expert at SUNY at Binghamton, has created a silicon design based on the fly's uncanny ability to extract the direction of a sound. It will overcome the limits of in-ear hearing aids, which don't let you ''focus'' your listening by providing cues on the direction of sounds.

A cluster of them dropped over enemy terrain would be able to detect the origin of sounds through triangulation and then wirelessly transmit the information back to a listening station.

A powered exoskeleton could transform the average joe into a supersoldier

Discover, February 2002

Exoskeletons&#8212essentially a powered suit of armor&#8212are being developed under DARPA funding to give soldiers a huge advantage in battle, especially in urban environments. There are civlian spinoffs too.

DARPA is awarding the first grants from its $50 million Exoskeletons for Human Performance Augmentation project to Sarcos, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Human Engineering Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. The mandate: a legs-only exoskeleton ready for trials by 2003 and a whole-body version by 2005.

The exoskeleton will allow a soldier to lift 400 pounds, including bigger weapons, bulletproof armor, better communications devices, and more food, and remain continuously active for at least four hours.

Exoskeletons could be optimized for other combat tasks, too, such as running much faster than ordinary humans, jumping over fences, picking up rubble during rescue efforts, and with AI, save its wearer if he is wounded.

Nonmilitary uses include cnstruction work, cargo handling, search and rescue, assisting the elderly, and allowing paraplegics to walk.

Tiny sensors to be implanted in hearts

UPI Science News, January 23, 2002

Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation will begin implanting tiny, experimental microchip sensors into the hearts of patients, hoping the wireless, battery-less devices will provide early warnings of danger.

The device can give doctors daily reports on pressure in the heart chambers. A change in pressure is one of the first events that occurs when patients with congestive heart failure start the slide toward hospitalization.

The micro-electrical mechanical system device folds up like a flower and can be placed into a catheter, which is inserted into the jugular vein. Under X-ray guidance, the catheter is advanced through blood vessels into the heart. A screw at the base of the microchip anchors the chip into the heart wall.

When a handheld transmitter/receiver is activated outside the body, the microchip delivers a signal that can be picked up and recorded.

Implants for vision

Neuroscion (requires free registration), February 11, 2002

Scientists have demonstrated that they can stimulate the visual cortex in the brain while bypassing the retina itself.

Several teams of scientists are trying to develop a device that would electrically stimulate the visual system in seeing-impaired individuals. Although serious problems must be overcome before a useful device is developed, a review in Science concludes that "a number of international groups are tackling the remaining problems associated with epiretinal and subretinal implants, and we await the outcome of clinical trials to determine the value of refined nanotechnology for treating blinding eye diseases."

Science 295(5557):1022-1025

Boca Raton family volunteers to be first for microchip implants

Miami.com, February 12, 2002

A family in Boca Raton have volunteered to be implanted with microchips, which would make them the first family imbedded with the identification devices.

Derek Jacobs, a 14-year-old computer whiz, is poised to become the first child to receive the implant, which can be scanned for identification and medical information. Derek, who runs a small Web site business out of his bedroom and uses his home computer to listen for extraterrestrial life in space noise, said he wants to ride the wave of the future.

Inventor of artificial hand sees 'bionic' replacement parts becoming more human

KurzweilAI.net, February 14, 2002

Bionic limb replacements that look and work exactly like the real thing could be realized within a decade, thanks to fast advances in human-to-machine communication and miniaturization.

Writing in Science, Feb. 8, Rutgers biomedical engineer and inventor William Craelius, whose Dextra artificial hand is the first to let a person use existing nerve pathways to control individual computer-driven mechanical fingers, says "bionic technologies can be adapted for restoring some degree of almost any lost function," and that if progress continues at its present pace, "human-machine communication could soon lose its distinction as the No. 1 obstacle to bionics."

He described a wireless implant the size of a grain of rice developed at UCLA by a team led by Dr. Gerald Loeb. This can be injected under the skin to provide independent communication between nerves and bionic devices.

Craelius said while it may require more than 1,000 connections between the brain and bionic devices to communicate the data for a complex action like walking, it is probably achievable, even if most of the necessary computer processing is done outside the body.

Miniaturization of components will soon bring even that processing inside the body, Craelius said. "The number of transistors we can fit onto an integrated circuit doubles about every 18 months," he said. "At this pace, within the decade, the processing for complex bionic activity will be implantable in the brain or elsewhere in the body."

While scientists are eliminating obstacles to communication and miniaturization of bionics, they still need to devise ways to protect the tiny devices from electromagnetic interference and corrosion from bodily fluids, Craelius said. Battery capacity and recharging are also concerns as the devices handle an increasing number of tasks.

"Finally, users who subject themselves to brain implantation of hundreds of electrodes are not going to want bulky plastic sockets for their new bionic limbs. Creating a more natural integration between the limb and existing bone is going to be vitally important. A human feel is a crucial part of bionic restoration."

Human feel is an area Craelius is addressing in his own work with Dextra, an artificial hand he developed along with a team of Rutgers students and Nian-Crae, Inc. The prosthesis gives a person who has lost a hand natural control of up to five independent artificial fingers, controlled by electrical signals generated by the user's remaining muscles and tendons.

Dextra has been demonstrated to permit such complex hand activities as typing and piano playing. It has a plastic socket that encases an amputee's upper limb and some of the processing and communication is handled by a device worn outside the body.

High-tech soldier envisioned

KurzweilAI.net, February 24, 2002

A high-tech soldier with 20 times the capability of today's warrior by about 2010 is envisioned by the Army and a team from Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Concept design teams met last year, composed of futurists, systems engineers, biologists, military experts, human factors specialists, writers and others met late last year to propose a plan of attack to the Army for the "Objective Force Warrior."

Computer Screen Controlled with Monkeys' Brain Signals

BBC News, March 18, 2002

Researchers at Brown University have demonstrated that brain patterns can be used to control machines. The development could lead to techniques that allow paraplegics to articulate artificial limbs through thought alone.

In the experiment, which resembled a computer game, monkeys initially used a joystick to chase red and purple dots around a screen.

Then, unknown to the monkeys, the joystick was disconnected &#8212but the animals were still able to control the dots using only thought.

How? The monkeys' brains had been implanted with pea-sized electrodes that recorded signals from an area of the brain that controls movement, called the motor cortex.

While the monkeys moved the joystick, the recorded brain signals were analyzed with a mathematical formula and translated.

Scientists then fed these signals into the computer, which recognized them as directions.

Mijail Serruya, who led the Brown University scientists, said: "Our goal is to make sense of how brain [signals] move a hand through space and to use that information as a control signal for someone who is paralyzed."

Researchers say this particular experiment is groundbreaking: The thin wires used significantly reduced bulkiness and successfully measured fewer neurons than in previous experiments.

Scientists test first human cyborg

CNN.com, March 22, 2002

Professor Kevin Warwick of the University of Reading became the world's first cyborg when surgeons implanted a silicon device about 3mm wide into an incision in Warwick's left wrist and attached 100 electrodes into the median nerve.

Wires from the electrodes will be linked to a transmitter/receiver device to relay neural messages to and from a computer by radio signal.

Warwick hopes the procedure could lead to a medical breakthrough for people paralyzed by spinal cord damage or limb amputation.

Project Cyborg 2.0

FDA approves implantable chip

Wired News, April 4, 2002

The Federal Drug Administration has ruled that the Verichip, an implantable microchip used for ID purposes, is not a regulated device, so it can now be sold in the United States.

Applied Digital Solutions has been marketing the VeriChip in the U.S. as a device to allow hospital workers to access patients' health records, by scanning the chip and cross-referencing the device's ID with a patient database.

In South America, the device has been bundled with a GPS-unit and sold to potential kidnapping victims.

Some Christians fear it may be the "Mark of the Beast" described in the Bible and privacy advocates are concerned about the chip's involuntary implantation or its use to track government dissidents.

Image processing chip has potential as artificial retina

KurzweilAI.net, April 9, 2002

A new type of analog processor that is compact while offering extremely fast computations for image processing may lead to the creation of an artificial eye to replace damaged human retinas.

The cellular nonlinear network (CNN) analog computer chip is integrated with a camera to produce an image processor. The 1 cm-square CNN chip can increase processing speed while reducing the power requirements over standard digital chips by two to three orders of magnitude.

Other potential medical applications include real-time diagnosis for heart monitoring and ultrasound imaging of the heart and analyzing electroencephalogram (EEG) data, allowing researchers to predict the occurrence of epileptic seizures.

The research is funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).

'Perfect mirrors' could create photonic fabrics

KurzweilAI.net, April 25, 2002

MIT researchers have created high-performance mirrors in the shape of hair-like flexible fibers that could be woven into cloth or incorporated in paper to serve as embedded "bar codes" that identify the wearer (for future soldiers), to reflect radiation, protect from blasts of heat, and as filters for telecommunications applications.

The work builds on the omnidirectional dielectric reflector (dubbed the "perfect mirror"), created in 1998 by MIT scientists, which can reflect light from all angles and polarizations and can also be "tuned" to reflect certain wavelength ranges while transmitting others.

Mirror fibers could create photonic fabrics

Plastics with 'shape memory' promise new medical uses

KurzweilAI.net, April 29, 2002

New biodegradable, biocompatible plastics with "shape memory" and many potential medical applications are being developed at MIT and the University of Technology, Aachen, Germany.

The new plastics, reported in the April 25 online edition of Science, could first be shaped as a string, for example, then when heated could "change into a sheet (to prevent adhesion between two internal tissues after an operation), a screw (for, say, holding bones together), a stent or a suture," said Robert Langer, MIT's Germeshausen Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering.

Smart suture is first application of novel MIT polymer

Uzbek inventor creates eyesight substitute

UPI, Dec. 26, 2002

A video signal received from an electronic eye and converted to sound and mechanical oscillations can be used as an eyesight substitute for the blind.

The device uses an electronic light sensor and emits sounds and vibrations according to the composition of the object. For example, the pitch of the sound becomes higher if the object is light in color and lower if the object is dark. Users can become accustomed quickly to the signals from the device as it "sees" familiar objects.

Laser leads nerve growth

Nature Science Update, Nov. 27, 2002

A laser beam can guide nerve cells to grow in a particular direction, researchers have shown. The technique might help damaged nerves to regrow or could connect them to electronic implants, such as artificial retinas and prosthetic limbs.

Shoes and sheets get wired

Nature Science Update, Dec. 6, 2002

"Electrotextiles" woven with wires and electronic devices are being fashioned into speedometer shoes, chameleon curtains. singing shirts, and to measure footfalls, detect explosions and spot smuggling. "Soft keypads" allow wearers to control remote devices. And antennas can be woven in.

Gadgets could be next: clothes and woven-in sensors could record athletes' heart rate, hydration and blood sugar levels.

A Few Good Toys

Forbes, Dec. 9, 2002

The Army's goal is to come up with a uniform by 2008 with helmet that enhances hearing and protect ears from battle cacaphony and heads-up display built into the visor to display infrared images. A wheeled robot "mule" would follow a soldier around with equipment for purifying water and recharging batteries.

The Army warfighter of 2025 will have lightweight body armor made with nanomaterials to deflect a bullet with an electrical charge. Polymers in the uniform will "read" their wearer's surroundings and change color and pattern to render him nearly invisible. Boots may contain a liquid that hardens if the solider steps on a land mine. Coin-size silicon microturbines will power the soldiers' computer systems.

MRI Safe Shielding Technology Developed

KurzweilAI.net, Nov. 22, 2002

Biophan Technologies has successfully tested a method for shielding implanted and inter-operative medical devices against interference from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

The RF energy from an MRI is known to be the cause of dangerously high tissue heating and other performance problems in electronic medical devices used in the body, such as implantable pacemakers, cardioverter-defibrillators, and neurostimulators, and interventional devices such as guidewires and catheters.

Biophan's new technology uses thin-film nanomagnetic and carbon composite coatings, and novel shield designs, each of which can be used individually or together to meet the specific shielding requirements of a wide range of medical devices.

Photonic Crystals in Uniforms

NY Times, November 11, 2002

Photonic crystals may one day revolutionize optics the way the semiconductor revolutionized electronics.

Optical communications systems might someday be woven into our clothing and computers might rely as much on optics as on electronics.

MIT received a $50 million contract the Defense Department to enhance the supersoldier fighting uniform with polymer threads that&#8212by selectively reflecting or absorbing different wavelengths of light—would silently flash an optical bar code. Troops wearing specially tuned night-vision goggles would be able to distinguish between foe and friend during a night firefight.

Tech helps blind 'see' computer images

UPI, Oct. 24, 2002

A simple touch display for the visually impaired soon could provide access to computer-generated images.

The prototype tactile display is a set of 3,600 small pins, about 10 per inch, which "prints" an image by using an extendable pointer to raise selected pins into a line drawing of the image.

The device is being developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology. The tactile display also would provide dramatic benefits in education.

ID Chip's Controversial Approval

Wired News, Oct. 23, 2002

The Food and Drug Administration has decided to permit the use of implantable VeriChip ID chips in humans if it is used for "security, financial and personal identification or safety applications."

Chip manufacturer Applied Digital Solutions said the FDA has not determined whether the controversial chip can be used for medical purposes, including linking to medical databases. The company now plans to aggressively market the chip for security and ID uses.

Docs outline artificial vision progress

UPI, Sept. 23, 2002

Artificial devices that may allow the blind to see could be available for human use within a decade.

Harvey Fishman, director of ophthalmic tissue engineering at Stanford University School of Medicine, is developing a high-resolution neural chip that connects a signal from a digital camera to individual nerve cells in the retina.

Raymond Iezzi, assistant professor of ophthalmology at the Kresge Eye Institute at Wayne State University, is developing "caged" neurotransmitters&#8212a drug delivery system that would unleash molecules activated by light. When exposed to light, the molecules would respond in less than a nanosecond, releasing chemicals that transmit signals to the brain.

Controlling Robots with the Mind

Scientific Amercan, October 2002

People with nerve or limb injuries may one day be able to command wheelchairs, prosthetics and even paralyzed arms and legs by "thinking them through" the motions.

Scientists have developed implantable microchips that will embed the neuronal pattern recognition now done with software, thereby eventually freeing the brain-machine interface devices from a computer. These microchips will send wireless control data to robotic actuators.

Scientists Create Biological Heart Pacemaker

Reuters, Sept 11, 2002

Scientists have made a breakthrough that could revolutionize heart surgery in the future by replacing electronic pacemakers with genetically engineered "biopacemakers."

Johns Hopkins scientists discovered that by altering the potassium balance in ordinary heart cells in guinea pigs, they could trick them into behaving like pacemaker cells.

A biologic pacemaker should also be able to adjust to the body's changing needs, unlike electronic pacemakers.

Parents look to microchip children

CNN.com, September 3, 2002

Worried UK parents are asking to have tracking microchips implanted into their children following the murders of two 10-year-old girls, says scientist Kevin Warwick, who has implanted a chip in his arm that is connected to a computer in an ongoing experiment.

The operation would involve implanting a small transmitter about one inch long into the child's arm or stomach, Warwick said. Tracking options include using a mobile phone network and transmitting a signal linked to a global positioning system.

Watches that perform a similar function are already commercially available in the United States, but they can be too easily removed and discarded, Warwick said.

Prototype glass sheet computer unveiled

NewScientist.com, Oct. 22, 2002

A transparent computer processor has been printed on to a flat plate of glass by researchers at Sharp's Japanese laboratory. Their success suggests ultra-thin computers and televisions could in the future be built entirely on a single sheet of glass.

The new "sheet computer" uses a relatively new material called continuous grain silicon, which conducts electrons up to 600 times faster than the amorphous silicon used in liquid crystal displays. Sharp says continuous grain silicon could eventually approach the efficiency of the single crystal silicon used inside today's computer chips.

Wireless Views Into Home PCs

ABCNews.com, Nov. 15, 2002

At COMDEX, Microsoft and computer display makers are demonstrating "smart displays" that wirelessly communicate with personal computers. The surface will be touch-sensitive, allowing you to interact using a finger or stylus.

Liquid crystal displays 'painted on'

New Scientist, May 2, 2002

Philips laboratories researchers are developing ways to paint liquid crystal displays on surfaces instead of between two layers of plastic or glass. The method could allow manufacturers to make displays more quickly.

Flexible Displays Gain Momentum

Technology Review, January 22, 2002

Researchers at Cambridge, MA-based E Ink have completed the first working prototype of an electronic ink display attached to a flexible, silicon-based thin-film transistor backplane, the sheet of electronics that controls display pixels.

This proof-of-concept prototype confirms that it will soon be possible to mass-produce reams of self-erasing electronic paper that combine sheets of electronic ink with flexible silicon circuitry.

The company estimates that by sometime in 2005 they'll be building fully-flexible displays for commercial use. For now, the company is working with Philips Electronics to produce displays using electronic ink against rigid, glass backplanes, to be built into mobile, handheld devices starting next year.

Fuel Cells That Fit in a Laptop

Wired News, January 23, 2002

Smart Fuel Cell GmbH of Bavaria has developed a micro fuel cell that runs on methanol and provides much longer life than any other portable battery. It is the first to not require any standard batteries.

The fuel cell is aimed at power-hungry devices such as notebook computers, camcorders and specific applications for environmental and transportation markets.

A fuel cell is an electrochemical device that produces electric power from either hydrogen or alternative fuels such as methanol, propane, butane or natural gas.

By the year 2004, Smart Fuel Cell expects to produce at least 100,000 units, enough for mass production, and expects the micro fuel cells to become competitive with Lithium-ion batteries.

The prototype cartridge holds 120 ml methanol and generates about 150 Watt-hours.

Fuel Cells: Japan's Carmakers Are Flooring It

Business Week, Dec. 23, 2002

On Dec. 2 in Tokyo, Toyota and Honda rolled out the world's first commercially available cars running on hydrogen fuel cells. The current cost: $1 million per car; it will take at least 10 years to bring prices down to $100,000.

Ford expects to launch a fuel-cell compact in 2004. General Motors has three different fuel-cell prototypes; commercial models won't be ready until 2010.

Fuel Cell Powered by Human Bodily Fluids

Robots.net, Nov. 12, 2002

University of Texas, Austin scientists have developed a new fuel cell that generates electricity from the glucose-oxygen reaction that occurs in human blood. Purpose: powering medical sensors and animal tracking devices.

Radioactive battery provides decades of power

NewScientist.com, Oct. 22, 2002

Tiny batteries that draw energy from nickel-63 radioactive isotopes could provide 50 years of power for micro-devices and electronics, says Amil Lal, who developed the system with colleagues at Cornell University.

"It might be possible to make really tiny microelectronic sensor systems that can be embedded in a building or even in the body," he says.

Forget Nature. Even Eden Is Engineered.

New York Times, August 20, 2002

Aided by satellites and supercomputers, and mobilized by the evident environmental damage of the last century, humans have a real chance to begin balancing economic development with sustaining earth's ecological webs, said Dr. William C. Clark, a biologist at Harvard who heads an international effort to build a scientific foundation for such a shift.

The prospect of managing the planet is attracting more than 100 world leaders and thousands of other participants to the United Nations' World Summit on Sustainable Development, which starts on Monday in Johannesburg.

As Chips Reach Speed Limit, Makers Tap Into 'Clockless' Logic

International Herald Tribune, December 17, 2002

A worldwide community of private and academic researchers are perfecting a kind of lateral-thinking, anarchic method of chipmaking based on asynchronous logic, which does away with the clock altogether.

Clockless chips, in addition to being more energy efficient, can also work faster, more quietly and more securely than synchronous chips. All of which makes them perfect for applications such as computer networks, mobile phones, smart cards and embedded medical devices.

Where the synchronous processor waits for a clock cycle to finish before starting the next task, an asynchronous one can do multiple tasks at different speeds.

Collision Course: Beating Moore's Law by 2006 will take teamwork

SF Gate, February 14, 2002

CERN's Large Hadron Supercollider will begin generating more than 10 million gigabytes of data each year when it becomes operational in 2006&#8212beyond the capabilities of any computer CERN scientists had at their disposal, or any supercomputer that could be built. The solution: the European DataGrid.

The European DataGrid is an ambitious project based on an emerging distributed-processing technology known as grid computing. Instead of relying on mainframe makers like IBM to produce ever more powerful boxes, grid computing lets scientists achieve the same effect by combining the computational power of separate machines—in this case, several thousand machines.

Industry Says Limits on Moore's Law Far Off

EE Times, March 18, 2002

Limits predicted by Moore's Law won't be reached until after 2028, according to a semiconductor industry leader.

Calvin Chenming Hu, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation's Chief Technologist, said 9 nanometer devices "can be ready more or less on time, in 2028 according to long-term forecasts or 2024, according to the 2002 (industry roadmap)."

If Hu's view is correct, fundamental limits on current two-dimensional integrated circuit technology are still far off. In that timeframe, the industry would have 25 years to reduce current lithography by a factor of 10, compared to 15 years for the last reduction. "There's a lot of time," Hu said.

Previous roadblocks to Moore's Law scaling have included design productivity, fabrication costs, reliability, lithography, leakage, and materials.

The Future of the Microprocessor Business

IEEE Spectrum, April 2002

There are signs the microprocessor industry focus on keeping up with Moore's law is about to change, say Michael J. Bass, Hewlett-Packard Co. & Clayton M. Christensen, Harvard Business School.

For a majority of PC users, they say, high-end microprocessors are overkill; middle-and lower-range microprocessor performance will be sufficient for growing numbers of applications. Quick creation and delivery of customized chips to customers will become more important than performance and transistor density.

Internet Insight: Moore's Law & Order

eWeek, April 15, 2002

Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns forsees faster growth in computational power over the next several decades than Moore's Law predicts. Kurzweil said we can "expect the process to accelerate at a double exponential rate."

"The next paradigm, the sixth, will be three-dimensional molecular computing," Kurzweil said. "In the past year, there have been major strides, for example, in creating three-dimensional carbon nanotube-based electronic circuits."

Lucent Technologies and IBM have already succeeded in fabricating molecular-scale computing elements.

Bell Labs breaks through on Moore's Law

Reuters, April 26, 2002

Scientists at Bell Labs have developed a way to image a single impurity atom in silicon to understand how impurities affect the properties of microchips.

The finding will help in creating new manufacturing technologies for smaller chips. Impurities are introduced into silicon to provide charge carriers that control a chip's electrical properties.

As components continue to shrink, just a few atoms of impurities could determine the function of a device.

The research is described in an article published April 25, 2002 in the journal Nature.

At Los Alamos, Two Visions of Supercomputing

New York Times, June 25, 2002

Heat may be a limiting factor to Moore's law. By 2010, scientists predict, a single chip may hold more than a billion transistors, giving off 1,000 watts of thermal energy&#8212far more heat per square inch than a nuclear reactor.

Already, Los Alamos National Laboratory's 30-teraops Q computer, designed to provide full-scale, three-dimensional simulation of the physics involved in a nuclear explosion, will require 5 megawatts of energy. A coming 100-teraops machine will require even more.

In contrast, the cooling sytem for the lab's 160 gigaops Green Destiny, using Transmeta chips, consumes only five kilowatts.

Intel's Grove warns of the end of Moore's Law

The Inquirer, Dec. 11, 2002

As chips become increasingly dense, heat developed by current leakage from chips "will become a limiting factor in how complex we can build chips," said Intel chairman Andy Grove.

Chips constructed of increasing numbers of transistors can suffer power leakage of up to 40 per cent; chips made up of a billion transistors may leak between 60 and 70 Watts of power, he warned.

Fate of Moore's Law tops ISSCC agenda

EE Times, November 11, 2002

We have at least another decade of exponential growth of semiconductor integration, Gordon Moore is expected to argue at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco on Feb. 10.

3-D nanotubes grown

KurzweilAI.net, April 5, 2002

Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have grown the first three-dimensional nanotubes, which are essential for next-generation computer chips and integrated circuits.


3-D nanotubes

The method is based on a selective growth process that allows the nanotubes to grow perpendicular to the silica-coated substrate. By chiseling the silica into predetermined shapes, researchers can precisely control and direct the nanotube growth.

Nanotubes have properties that make them attractive as active nanoscale electronic components, such as transistors, sensors, and interconnecting wires.

"Because of the small size of nanotubes, a large number of them can be packed in a given space and will enable very high (e.g., factor of 10 to 100 greater than possible with conventional materials and technologies) device-density processors and memory-storage modules that are presently not possible with currently available technologies," Ganapathiraman Ramanath, assistant professor of materials science told KurzweilAI.net.

"In order to create such device assemblies, however, one needs to first controllably create assemblies of nanotubes in well defined orientations. For example, if we want nanotubes to interconnect devices placed at two locations A and B on a silicon wafer, we need to devise a process that will force the nanotube to grow from A towards B and terminate at B.

"Also, one needs to be able to do this in millions of locations on a silicon wafer all at once (bottom-up approach) to create a device assembly (placing one nanotube at a time after creating them will not be industrially scalable).

"Until now, people have been able to achieve only random growth of nanotubes, or oriented nanotubes in one direction. Our work is the first demonstration wherein we can force the nanotube to grow at specific locations in any predetermined directions we want them to grow and in a single deposition process.

"The impact of our work is well beyond nanotubes. This is the first step toward making complex networks comprised of molecular units. By manipulating the topography of the silica blocks, and utilizing the selective and directional growth process, we have been able to force nanotubes to grow in predetermined, multiple directions, with a very fine degree of control."

The researchers used gas phase delivery of a metal catalyst, essential for nanotube growth, to make their growth process more flexible and more easily scalable than conventional methods.

Their research is reported in the April 4 issue of the journal Nature.

trillionIBM demos trillion-bit storage density

KurzweilAI.net, June 11, 2002

IBM scientists have demonstrated nanotech-based data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch󈟤 times higher than the densest magnetic storage available today.



IBM Millipede nanomechanical storage device: tips create indentations in a polymer surface, similar to punched cards

IBM achieved the density&#8212enough to store 25 million printed textbook pages on a surface the size of a postage stamp—in a research project code-named "Millipede."

Rather than using traditional magnetic or electronic means to store data, Millipede uses thousands of nano-sharp tips to punch ten-nanometer-wide indentations representing individual bits into a thin plastic rewriteable film.

"Since a nanometer-scale tip can address individual atoms, we anticipate further improvements far beyond even this fantastic terabit milestone," said Nobel laureate Gerd Binnig, an IBM Fellow and one of the drivers of the Millipede project.

"While current storage technologies may be approaching their fundamental limits, this nanomechanical approach is potentially valid for a thousand-fold increase in data storage density."

The 1,024-tip experiment achieved an areal density of 200 gigabits (billion bits, Gb) per square inch, which translates to a potential capacity of about 0.5 gigabytes (billion bytes, GB) in an area of 3 mm-square. The next-generation Millipede prototype will have four times more tips: 4,096 in a 7 mm-square (64 by 64) array.

IBM puts new spin on nano-storage

IBM's 'Millipede' Project Demonstrates Trillion-Bit Data Storage Density

TSMC Details New Type of Transistor

Electronic News, June 11, 2002

Anew type of CMOS transistor as small as 9 nanometers— about 10 times smaller than current production technology —has been announced by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

The company said this size would allow for the computational power of a supercomputer in a space smaller than a fingernail.

Transistors Reach Molecular Level

Wired News, June 13, 2002

Researchers at Harvard, UC Berkeley, and Cornell have developed single-atom transistor switches.

Since lithography has a lower limit of about 10 nanometers &#8212about five times too large to connect single molecules —the researchers instead applied current through a tiny gold wire to break it (like blowing a fuse) to produce nanoscale gaps to serve as electrodes.

However, single-molecule electronic components are still a decade or more away.

Last October, a Bell Labs researcher also announced single-atom transistors, but the integrity of his work has been questioned.

Nanotechnology: Electronics and the single atom, Nature 417, 701'702 (2002); doi:10.1038/417701a

Chips' future cast

Nature, June 20, 2002

A new laser-stamping technique could produce computer chips with 100 times more transistors on a chip, according to Stephen Chou of Princeton University.


Image A shows a quartz template used to press ultrasmall patterns into silicon. Image B shows the pattern as it appears in silicon.

The research could lead to patterns imprinted with features only 10 nanometers wide onto a silicon wafer, compared to the lower limit of about 130 nanometers wide with photolithography.

The technique is derived from a similar method used to print compact discs.

Chou, S. Y., Keimel, C. & Gu, J. Ultrafast and direct imprint of nanostructures in silicon. Nature, 417, 835-837, (2002).

SCIENTISTS ARE A WHISKER AWAY FROM SEMICONDUCTING NANOWIRES

UPI, June 20, 2002

Boron crystalline nanowires ("nanowhiskers") may replace carbon nanotubes as nanoscale semiconductors.

Magnetic Future

Technology Review, July/August 2002

Researchers at GE and IBM are developing "patterned media"-based disks that hold between 30 and 40 gigabits per square centimeter, ten times the density of today's products, and the storage density might be pushed to more than 150 gigabits per square centimeter.

The technology involves physically isolating a disk's magnetic grains from one another on nanoscale "islands." Currently, several hundred magnetic grains are needed to store a bit clearly, and if the grains become too small and densely packed, they lose their magnetic orientation. On an island, a bit might be stored stably with just one grain, allowing bits to be spaced more closely.

Nano device could result in 1000:1 increase in storage density

KurzweilAI.net, June 27, 2002

University at Buffalo materials researchers have developed an extremely sensitive nanoscale device that could shrink ultra-high-density storage devices factor of a 1,000.

The magnetic sensor, made of nickel and measuring only a few atoms in diameter, could ultimately increase data storage capacity to a terabit per square inch.

University at Buffalo Materials Researchers Develop Device for "Ultrasmall" Data Storage (press release)

Scientists Get Atoms Ready for a Close-Up

New York Times, May 14, 2002

Scientists at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have developed a microscopy technique that can image individual atoms within a silicon sheet, allowing for precision analysis of dopant distribution.

As transistor sizes shrink, they require higher concentrations of electrons to work and are more sensitive to problems with dopant distribution.

The Lucent microscope shoots a narrow beam of high-energy electrons and measures deflection angles to locate individual atoms.

Nano breakthrough charges science world

CNET News.com, May 19, 2002

IBM researchers have created carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNFETs) that suggest that CNFETs may be competitive with Silicon MOSFETs for future nanoelectronic applications.

CNFETs deliver more than twice the amount of electrical current at a faster rate than silicon transistors. Increased current can lead to faster transistors and integrated circuits, so carbon may become a building block of computing in the future.

"Vertical scaling of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors using top gate electrodes," Applied Physics Letters—May 27, 2002
Volume 80, Issue 21, pp. 3883-4065

Nanopods could create smaller circuits

UPI, January 4, 2002

University of Illinois at Champaign researchers have discovered a way to manipulate the electronic properties of atomic-scale "peapods," made of buckyballs (carbon molecules) packed inside one-atom-wide nanotubes&#8212an important step towards creating radically smaller computers.

A nanotube-based computer processor could have hundreds of times more circuits that a silicon chip of similar size, but nanotubes have unpredictable electrical resistance. Buckyball-filled and hollow nanotubes can be designed for consistent resistance properties, making them suitable as reliable components for computer circuits.

Atom-thin silicon films for supercomputers

UPI, January 15, 2002

Atomically thin layers of crystalline silicon called "quantum wells" may help lead to hand-held supercomputers and a light-speed fast Internet.

A quantum well is made of sandwiched layers of electrically insulating material and semiconductive films, each only a few nanometers thick. The electrons packed together in the atomically thin semiconductor layers remain confined by the insulating nanofilms, forcing the electrons to increase each other's energy levels and emit bright light.

Quantum wells can therefore prove invaluable in light-based electronics. Scientists predict these simple devices will prove key components of many futuristic inventions, such as microchips and computer networks that use lasers and optical fibers.

The scientists whittled the crystalline silicon down to a half-nanometer. Since, the quantum wells are so thin, they also hope they can exploit the quantum properties matter displays on the atomic level to develop ultrafast transistors.

The researchers reported their results in Applied Physics Letters.

Patent for molecular computing awarded

KurzweilAI.net, January 23, 2002

Hewlett-Packard and UCLA today announced they have received a U.S. patent for technology that could make it possible to build very complex logic chips—simply and inexpensively &#8212at the molecular scale.

Previously, HP demonstrated in the laboratory how some rare earth metals naturally form themselves into nanoscopic parallel wires when they react chemically with a silicon substrate. Two sets of facing parallel wires, oriented roughly perpendicular to each other, could then be made into a grid. The problem is that on a single large grid, all the electrical signals would interfere with each other.

The solution proposed by the patent (US 6,314,019 B1, "Molecular-Wire Crossbar Interconnect (MWCI) for Signal Routing and Communications") is to cut the wires into smaller lengths by turning some "intersections" into insulators.

In a related experiment, researchers from the collaboration crossed wires the size of those used in today's computer chips and sandwiched them around a one-molecule thick layer of electrically switchable molecules called rotaxanes. Simple logic gates were then created electronically by downloading signals to molecules trapped between the crosswires.

"All of this work demonstrates that, in the future, programming could replace today's complex, high-precision method of fabricating computer chips," said Kuekes, a senior scientist and computer architect at HP Labs. "Once a basic grid has been assembled, programming could be used to implement a very complex logic design by electronically setting the appropriate configuration switches in the molecular-scale structure."

HP/UCLA announcement

Molecular Memory

Building Chips, One Molecule at a Time

Circuitry in a nanowire: Novel growth method may transform chips

Science News, February 9, 2002

In a feat of nanometer-scale engineering, researchers have produced semiconductor filaments that are as thin as viruses but contain working electronic and optical devices. Alternating bands of different semiconductor materials in the superthin wires serve as the electron and photon manipulators. Someday, such striped strands may form the basis of a new type of circuitry that is far tinier, faster, and more energy efficient than conventional chips will ever be, the scientists say.

A Harvard University team led by Charles M. Lieber and two other teams-'one led by Peidong Yang at the University of California, Berkeley and the other led by Lars Samuelson of Lund University in Sweden—have unveiled striped nanowires resembling submicroscopic barber poles. Each stripe has a different composition, and thereby different electronic properties.

Electrical measurements by the Harvard and Lund groups show that the junction of just two adjacent stripes within one wire can be a diode that guides electrons. Lieber and his colleagues also report making within a single wire a type of diode that emits light and constructed a prototype, one-wire "nano'bar code" that fluoresces under green light in alternating dark and bright stripes. It's possible, they claim, to make stacks of multiple colors that would be leaner than any microscopic bar code rods created so far and might label and track individual proteins and other biomolecules.

New world of nanoelectronics may arrive in the near future, AAAS speakers say

KurzweilAI.net, February 14, 2002

A future filled with tiny, molecule-sized computers&#8212fast and powerful enough to do things like translate conversations on the fly or calculate complex climate models—may be closer than people think, top nanotechnology researchers said at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting in Boston today.

"We may be five to six years ahead of schedule in nanoelectronics, and some of today's research is nearing the stage where it could be turned over to industrial production," said James Ellenbogen of the Mitre Corporation.

Powerful electronic and computing devices, built at the molecular scale, moved to the forefront of scientific research in 2001, as several research teams hooked up tiny devices such as transistors, wires, and switches to form working circuits for the first time.

Researchers close to delivering molecular circuits

EE Times, February 19, 2002

Molecular electronics researchers are converging on viable circuit-fabrication methods.

A Hewlett-Packard and UCLA team are tackling one universal problem with molecular circuits: the inherent defects created by any chemical reaction. They're designing a molecular equivalent of an FPGA (floating point gate array) that can be used to implement a redundant wiring scheme in which defective cells are simply switched out of the network.

The team is also working on the I/O problem, with a patent on a means for multiplexing between CMOS-level signals used in conventional electronics devices and molecular signals.

Nanotubes Self-assemble into Circuit Elements

EE Times, March 28, 2002

Researchers at Purdue University have created Nanotubes measuring just 100 atoms in diameter.

Nanotube "parent" molecules were developed. These molecules self-assemble in water to form tiny rings, which then snap together, forming long tubes.

The outside of these tubes has "hooks" on which to hang other molecules. This allows the resulting nanotube to be used for specific electronic applications ' virtually forming angstrom-sized circuit elements.

Professor Hicham Fenniri's research group has experimented with two parent molecules. One grows conventional wires for electricity and one grows light-processing, photonic devices. They intend to focus next on electronic components.

Fenniri has applied for a patent for his "rosette nanotubes" as a new class of self-assembling organic structures.

So far, the team has verified the ability to control the diameter and length of the nanotubes, as well as how to introduce metallic molecules that conduct electricity and photonic molecules that process light. Electronic components, such as transistors, are in development.

The group hopes to grow working circuits on electronic substrates by "writing" nanotube structures onto the wafers using nanolithography.

Multiple Devices Fabricated in a Single Nanowire

Semiconductor International, April 4, 2002

Harvard University researchers are growing superlattices &#8212a series of silicon p-n junctions—in a single nanowire. These could be useful for creating highly integrated logic circuits, nanoscale LEDs, and photonic waveguides for improved fiber optic communications.

The advantage of this approach is that it eliminates the need for conventional lithography, opening the possibility of bottom-up assembly of complex functional structures.

Scientists Get Atoms Ready for a Close-Up

New York Times, May 14, 2002

Scientists at Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs have developed a microscopy technique that can image individual atoms within a silicon sheet, allowing for precision analysis of dopant distribution.

As transistor sizes shrink, they require higher concentrations of electrons to work and are more sensitive to problems with dopant distribution.

The Lucent microscope shoots a narrow beam of high-energy electrons and measures deflection angles to locate individual atoms.

Nano breakthrough charges science world

CNET News.com, May 19, 2002

IBM researchers have created carbon nanotube field-effect transistors (CNFETs) that suggest that CNFETs may be competitive with Silicon MOSFETs for future nanoelectronic applications.

CNFETs deliver more than twice the amount of electrical current at a faster rate than silicon transistors. Increased current can lead to faster transistors and integrated circuits, so carbon may become a building block of computing in the future.

"Vertical scaling of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors using top gate electrodes," Applied Physics Letters—May 27, 2002
Volume 80, Issue 21, pp. 3883-4065

Genes, Neurons, and the Internet Found to Have Some Identical Organizing Principles

November 6, 2002, EurekAlert!

A team headed by Dr. Uri Alon, of the Weizmann Institute of Science's Molecular Cell Biology Department has found several organizational patterns—"network motifs"—underlying genetic, neural, technological, and food networks. The mathematical technique was first proposed by Alon earlier this year and has now been shown to be applicable in a wide range of systems. Surprisingly, the team found two identical motifs in genetic and neural systems.

Fractal Magnets May Fracture Old Technologies

NewsFactor Network, December 13, 2002

Plastic magnets with fractal magnetic field may one day be the heart of computer hard drives small enough to power nanotechnology-based devices.

Plastics with fractal magnetic fields "may provide ways to store a high density of information" in a very small space because of their intensely ordered structure, says Arthur Epstein, director of the Center for Materials Research at Ohio State University.

I.B.M. Plans a Tiny Transistor

New York Times, December 9, 2002

IBM researchers have designed the world's smallest transistor, nine nanometers in length. The development would allow for high-capacity memory and faster processors in the future.

It would also extend today's rate of progress in scaling down chips (Moore's law) through at least 2016.

Digital image stored in single molecule

New York Times, Dec. 1, 2002

University of Oklahoma researchers have found a way to store 1,024 bits of information in 19 hydrogen atoms in a single liquid-crystal molecule. The data are stored in the interactions of the protons' magnetic moments, activated by firing an electromagnetic pulse containing 1024 different radio frequencies (each with amplitude modulation on or off) at the molecule.

Researcher Bing Fung hopes the "molecular photography" technique could one day be used to pack massive amounts of digital information into a tiny space.

Coax goes nano

TRN News, November 13/20, 2002

Researchers at Harvard University have made nanoscale wires from layers of different materials using the semiconductor manufacturing processes used to construct computer chips. The nanowires could be used to make faster computer chips, higher-density memory and smaller lasers.

Nanowires within nanowires

PhysicsWeb, Nov. 2002

Harvard University researchers have synthesized nanowires that are only 50nm in diameter, containing a germanium core surrounded by a silicon shell. They also made "triple decker" wires of silicon, silicon oxide and germanium.

They have used these approaches to prepare new devices called nanowire field-effect transistors. Working with researchers from Intel, the team also plans to integrate these transistors with conventional semiconductor processing to produce advanced hybrid devices.

Molecules power nanoscale computers

PhysicsWeb, Oct. 24, 2002

IBM Almaden Research Center researchers have developed a new kind of computing process that relies on the motion of molecules rather than the flow of electrons. The logic gates use cascades of carbon monoxide molecules to transfer data.

Devices made in this way have dimensions on the scale of nanometers, several orders of magnitude smaller than existing silicon-based components.

The researchers demonstrated a three-input sorter that uses several AND gates and OR gates, as well as the crossover and fan-out units needed to connect them.

A. J. Heinrich, C. P. Lutz, J. A. Gupta, and D. M. Eigler, "Molecule Cascades," Science, zdoi;10.1126/science.1076768, published online Oct. 24, 2002 (requires paid registration)

Scientists Shrink Computing to Molecular Level, New York Times, Oct. 25, 2002

Superconducting nanotubes

KurzweilAI.net, Sept. 3, 2002

Researchers have discovered a way to convert nanotubes into superconductors by placing hydrogen on the exterior, leading to dense concentrations of charge-carrying electrons.

Carbon nanotubes are considered to be building blocks of future electronic and mechanical devices.

References:

NIST press release: "Can Nanotubes Be Engineered to Superconduct?"

"Effects of hydrogen adsorption on single-wall carbon nanotubes: Metallic hydrogen decoration," by O. Gulseren, T. Yildirim, and S. Ciraci, was published in Physical Review B, Vol. 66, Article121401. A copy of the paper, in Adobe Acrobat PDF format, is available from Mark Bello at mark.bello@nist.gov.

More information on Nanotube Research Team's research

Single atom memory device stores data

Newscientist.com, September 10, 2002

A workable atomic memory that uses individual atoms to store information has been developed by physicists, representing a density equivalent to 250 terabits of data per square inch.

In the experiment, each single silicon atom was added or removed from a block of twenty others using a scanning tunnelling microscope.

According to Tom Theis, director of physical sciences at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center, it may one day be possible to use such techniques to mimic the memory capabilities of biological systems such as DNA.

AMD fabricates double-gate transistor for 10-nm designs

Semiconductor Business News, Sept. 10, 2002

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. here today announced it has fabricated the world's smallest double-gate transistors, measuring 10 nanometers.

Intel to unveil nanotechnology plans

News.com, September 4, 2002

Intel will unveil its plans for making chips with elements that measure less than 100 nanometers next Thursday morning at the Intel Developer Forum Sept. 9-12 in San Jose, California.

Intel will also provide details on the upcoming 3GHz Pentium 4 and other developments.

Nano research challenges storage limit

UPI, August 26, 2002

Research in nanomagnetics is challenging conventional wisdom about the limits to how small magnetic storage can get before becoming susceptible to loss of information—the "superparamagnetic" effect.

If true, the finding would allow hard-drive designers to pack more information into their magnetic media materials before having to try more complicated technological approaches.

Nanotubes speed up

nanotechweb.org, August 2002

Transistors fabricated from carbon nanotubes now have electrical characteristics that can rival silicon devices. For example, IBM researchers have developed a carbon-nanotube FET (field effect transistor) that can compete with the leading prototype silicon transistors currently available.

Progress has also been made in reducing the resistance at the nanotube-electrode interface. This has allowed different nanotubes to be assembled into basic logic circuits, an important step towards nanoelectronics.

Limitations in manufacturing techniques don't yet allow for mass production, however.

DARPA researcher pursues 'nanomemory'

UPI, August 4, 2002

Kwan Kwok, a program manager with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, said he plans to have a working nanoscale computer memory ("nanomemory") by 2004 that stores 100 gigabits per square centimeter, using individual molecules as electrical components, or "moletronics."

Nanomemory's most likely immediate use would be in processor cache memory, since it holds hundreds or thousands of times more data than current memory devices, allowing for smaller, cooler and more power-efficient processors and instant-on computers.

In the future, nanomemory could be built into objects to allow any factory capable of reading the information to make a perfect copy.

An entire computer in a single molecule?

KurzweilAI.net, July 10, 2002

That's the vision of Dr. Christian Joachim, Director of Research at CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique).

His reasoning: Even with nanotechnologies and nanomaterials, progress in microelectronics will slow down by 2015 to 2020 because of clock speed, the number of transistors and interconnects, and required power dissipation, he says.

So we'll have to reduce computers to intramolecular dimensions and develop picotechnology (1/1000th the size of nanotechnology) to cope. But "real-space" design at the intramolecular level will also present major challenges. Rather than spatial designs, he recommends computing in the time domain, using quantum states.

Bonding more atoms together for a single molecule computer, Institute of Physics Nanotechnology journal, March 13, 2002.

Nanotech Tubes Could Form Basis of New Drug Purification Techniques

Scientific American, June 21, 2002

Researchers have developed a smart membrane containing tiny silica nanotubes that is capable of separating beneficial from useless or even harmful forms of a cancer-fighting drug molecule.

Nanotech: Big Dreams, Small Steps

Business Week, June 18, 2002

Diagnostic tools and sensors for bioscience and materials to enhance the fabrication of complex materials (such as gene chips) are the most likely nantechnology products to emerge in the next five years, according to experts.

These will followed by diagnostic technologies to help researchers better understand and measure nanoscale interactions, mainly in biotech, then nanotherapeutic devices that will carry stores of drugs through the blood stream, and further off, nanoscale electronics.

Nanoparticles Cut Tumors' Supply Lines

Science, June 27, 2002

Cancer researchers packed a tiny particle with a gene that forces blood vessel cells to self-destruct, then "mailed" the particle to blood vessels feeding tumors in mice. A single treatment erased large tumors in mice in about 6 days.

Synthesis of nanoparticles coming into focus

EE Times, July 16, 2002

Scientists are fast gaining control over the building of tiny particles, accomplishing nanoparticle synthesis in both inorganic and organic chemistries.

Examples include:

* University of Arkansas researchers are developing a "green" chemical process that offers tight control over the size of nanoparticles and eliminates toxic by-products.

* NASA is building a comprehensive biomonitoring system using complex nanomachines called "tecto-dendrimers" for diseased-cell recognition (implanting optically active nanoparticles inside white blood cells to monitor human cell damage from radiation), diagnosis of disease states, drug delivery, location reporting and reporting the outcome of therapy.

Related article:

Microbivores: Artificial Mechanical Phagocytes

Nano-based DNA detection

KurzweilAI.net, February 24, 2002

Microelectrodes and gold nanoparticle probes are being used to create lower-cost, faster and more accurate DNA detection.

Northwestern University scientists used a synthetic sequence of DNA that models the anthrax lethal factor to test a technology that could displace polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and conventional fluorescence probes in clinical diagnostics and make point-of-care DNA testing possible in the doctor's office and on the battlefield.

A simple electrical signal indicates that target DNA has been detected. Hundreds of pathogenic agents could be monitored simultaneously.

Results will be published in the Feb. 22 issue of the journal Science. The new DNA detection method eliminates the expensive and the current necessary step of heating the gene chip and also improves upon optical detection methods reported previously by Northwestern in Science.

Microchips in the Blood

September 19, 2002, Economist

Many of the promised genomic drugs will be impossible to swallow as pills. Instead, they will have to be injected in minute quantities at precise intervals for months at a time. Just the job for an implantable syringe-on-a-chip. Researchers in this field refer to their goal as intelligent drug delivery. The intelligence is derived from a piece of silicon one centimetre square. Etched in the silicon is a matrix of tiny wells, each designed to hold 150 nanolitres (billionths of a litre) of medicine.

Buckymedicine: Coming soon to a pharmacy near you?

Science News, July 13, 2002

Fullerenes' (aka Buckyballs) unique qualities—small size, spherical shape, hollow interior, and cage of 60 carbon atoms at which to attach chemical groups in almost any configuration have led to the development of drug candidates for treating diseases including HIV, cancer, and neurological conditions, and new diagnostic tools.

Getting in touch with molecules

KurzweilAI.net, July 17, 2002

Using haptic technology, researchers are literally getting in touch with molecules in hopes of finding new cures for diseases.

"To design a new drug, you have to see how a chemical compound will fit. With this device not only will you see it, but you can feel it," said Dr. Edgar Meyer at Texas A&M University.

With decades of molecular research experience aimed at human diseases, his team wondered how the molecule of a disease would "feel" when a substance was applied in order to block its ability to cause illness.
"Molecules have bumpy surfaces, so you feel what it is like to go over the rough places in order to get it to fit into the right place," he said. "There is a noticeable repulsion when you are pushing against a molecule in the wrong place."

TEXAS SCIENTISTS REACH OUT AND TOUCH MOLECULES

Asia to spend billions in nanotech research

KurzweilAI.net, March 11, 2002

Asia is investing big in nanotech. South Korea plans to spend US $1.3 billion over the next 10 years, said Professor Y. Kuk, Professor of Physics at Seoul National University, speaking at the recent Inaugural Conference of the recent Asia Pacific Nanotechnology Forum in Tsukuba, Japan.

Japan, Taiwan, and China are also making substantial investments.

Taiwan will spend about $600 million over the next six years and make nanotech a national priority, according to Professor M.K. Wu, Vice Chairman of Taiwan's National Science Council.

Japan's projected national budget for nanotechnology-related project grants is slated to increase by 63 percent during 2002 to approximately '59 billion (US $444 million), according to Dr. Y. Tokumasu, Planning Director of Research and Development, METI.

About 35 percent of the funds from the Japanese government will go for nanotech-related information technology, 30 percent for nanomaterials, and the balance for "analysis processing," energy and medical research, said Professor T. Kishi, President, National Institute Materials Sciences, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology.

Overall, Japan plans to commit 1% of its GDP ('24 trillion or $180 billion) to R&D for 2001-2005, a 41% increase over last year, Tokumasu said.

China's national government will spend about CNY 2 billion (approximately US $242 million) in nanotech research over the next five years. China's nanotech research now spans more than 50 universities, 20 institutes, and more than 100 enterprises, said Dr. Y. H. Ma of the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology.

nAbacus Ltd. of Hong Kong produced the conference, with high-level support from Japanese government agencies METI (Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Japan), AIST and NRI.

—Nathen Fox, KurzweilAI.net correspondent

Nanotubes could lengthen battery life

KurzweilAI.net, January 10, 2002

Experiments suggest carbon nanotubes could store more than twice as much energy as conventional graphite electrodes.

Researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have found carbon nanotubes may allow for longer-lasting batteries.

"In our experiments, we used both electrochemistry and solid state nuclear magnetic resonance measurements, which show similar results," said Dr. Otto Z. Zhou, an associate professor at UNC's Department of Physics and Astronomy. "We can store, reversibly, one charged lithium ion for every six carbon atoms in graphite, but we found that with nanotubes, we can store one charged lithium ion for every three carbons, also reversibly."

Most rechargeable batteries in portable electronics today are lithium-ion batteries, which use graphite or carbonaceous materials as one of the electrodes. Nanotubes could hold twice as much energy as graphite.

A report on the findings appears in the Jan. 7 issue of Physical Review Letters.

Tiny silicon grains for lasers on a chip

UPI, January 14, 2002

Nanoscale silicon grains that emit laser light may in the future serve as the backbone of an optical computer network light years faster than today's Internet.