Using DNA to Build Really Tiny Things

Nanotech holds some of the most radical and far-reaching promise for creating a future we can only dream about now. But how do you actually build things that small? You can't shrink yourself down like in the movies, and you can't make the tiny tools unless you know how to build really tiny things, which is where we started this erudite discussion. It so happens that evolution has already discovered the means. After all, it's been building really tiny things for billions of years, and getting better at it every million years along the way. In a huge leap forward, researchers have been able to take advantage of this fact.

In an achievement some see as the "holy grail" of nanoscience, researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have for the first time used DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles (particles with dimensions measured in billionths of a meter). The ability to engineer such 3-D structures is essential to producing functional materials that take advantage of the unique properties that may exist at the nanoscale - for example, enhanced magnetism, improved catalytic activity, or new optical properties.

You don't have to understand the details to realize that we are moving very quickly now towards the technological singularity referred to in this blog's title. So hold on tight. It may be a bumpy ride, but it sure will be exciting.

Read the original article.

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Time Travel Can Be Educational and Fun!

I used to think the following: Either time travel is never going to be possible, or the world will end before it becomes possible. How did I come to such a depressing conclusion? Simple. We haven't been visited by people from the future. Ergo, what I said before. If time travel ever becomes possible, we'd have been visited.

But now I see the flaw in my logic. There's another possibility: Perhaps time travelers from the future are just really sneaky. If so, and they've been here in our time, how would we know? So maybe they're all around us and are just not letting us in on the secret, not out of meanness, but because they don't want to destroy their own present by introducing the dreaded time travel paradox.

That's the problem caused when you go back in time to kill your grandfather, only to discover this means you were never born. Oh well. Maybe the instruction manual on the time machine makes this clear: Do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, interact with the old-timers, or you'll screw up everything here!

Well, it turns out that math has come to the rescue, as it usually does:

Parallel universes really do exist, according to a mathematical discovery by Oxford scientists that sweeps away one of the key objections to the mind boggling and controversial idea.

The work has wider implications since the idea of parallel universes sidesteps one of the key problems with time travel. Every since it was given serious lab cred in 1949 by the great logician Kurt Godel, many eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes: a time traveler could go back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place.

But the existence of parallel worlds offers a way around these troublesome paradoxes, according to David Deutsch of Oxford University, a highly respected proponent of quantum theory, the deeply mathematical, successful and baffling theory of the atomic world.

He argues that time travel shifts between different branches of reality, basing his claim on parallel universes, the so-called "many-worlds" formulation of quantum theory.

The new work bolsters his claim that quantum theory does not forbid time travel. "It does sidestep it. You go into another universe," he said yesterday, though he admits that there is still a way to go to find schemes to manipulate space and time in a way that makes time hops possible.

If you do kill dear old granddad, no worries, mate. You won't disappear like Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future. You'll just cause a fork in the road, as it were, whereby the new branch of the universe where you aren't born (because you killed your grandfather, you idiot) goes off on its merry way, while the old one where you were born, unfortunately goes on.

So time travel could well be possible. And it may be coming sooner than you think:

The first time travelers from the future could materialize on Earth within a few weeks.

Physicists around the world are excitedly awaiting the start up of the £4.65 billion Large Hadron Collider, LHC - the most powerful atom-smasher ever built - which is supposed to shed new light on the particles and forces at work in the cosmos and reproduce conditions that date to near the Big Bang of creation.

Prof Irina Aref'eva and Dr Igor Volovich, mathematical physicists at the Steklov Mathematical Institute in Moscow believe that the vast experiment at CERN, the European particle physics centre near Geneva in Switzerland, may turn out to be the world's first time machine, reports New Scientist.

The debut in early summer could provide a landmark because travelling into the past is only possible - if it is possible at all - as far back as the point of creation of the first time machine.

That means 2008 could become "Year Zero" for temporal travel, they argue.

Time travel was born when Albert Einstein's colleague, Kurt Gödel, used Einstein's theory of relativity to show that travel into the past was possible.

Ever since he unveiled this idea in 1949, eminent physicists have argued against time travel because it undermines ideas of cause and effect to create paradoxes: a time traveler could go back to kill his grandfather so that he is never born in the first place.

But, sixty years later, there is still no fundamental reason why time travellers cannot put historians out of business.

But the Russians argue that when the energies of the LHC are concentrated into a subatomic particle - a trillionth the size of a mosquito - they can do strange things to the fabric of the universe, which is a blend of space and time that scientists called spacetime.

While Earth's gravity produces gentle distortions in spacetime the LHC energy can distort time so much that it loops back on itself. These loops are known to physicists as "closed timelike curves" and they ought, at least in theory, to allow us to revisit some past moment.

So keep your eyes peeled and your ears to the ground.

Original articles one and two.

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Creation of Artificial Life to be Announced

We knew it was coming, but perhaps not this soon. Guardian Unlimited is reporting the imminent announcement of the creation of a completely man-made lifeform.

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

Will this be the development that finally captures the attention of the public? Will people begin to pay attention to the accelerating pace of technological progress? Will the idea of the singularity become firmly planted in the popular imagination? We will know soon enough.

The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming.

I can already hear the obtuse accusations that will be launched by the religious, and the ways that politicians will attempt to co-opt developments to the benefit of their own agendas. More's the pity. But no matter, the singularity will happen anyway. Stay tuned.

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Flexing Artificial Muscles

Combining biological and non-biological materials may allow researchers to use the best of both worlds to develop viable alternatives to worn out human parts. A great example of this trend has been announced on NewScientistTech: Muscular Films.

The term sounds more like gay porn than a scientific development, but it actually refers to the conjoining of thin sheets of polymer and living muscle tissue.

Thin sheets of polymer coated with living muscle could be used to test new drugs, repair damaged body parts, or even create life-like bio-machines, researchers say.

The Harvard University team created the "muscular thin films" by attaching muscle cells to elastic polymer sheets. By laying down striped patterns of proteins on these polymers, they were able to make the muscle cells arrange themselves into muscle fibres, similar to those in animals.

When shocked with electricity, the resulting hybrid material can be made to bend, roll up, or wriggle, at a rate that can easily be controlled.

To see video demonstrations of some of these muscular films in action, click here and here.

Confronting the Social Implications of the Singularity

Imagining the social implications and conundrums that humanity will be faced with in the coming decades with the development of machine consciousness and the uploading of human minds into machine substrates takes a special kind of mind. A mind like the one contained within the brain of Greg Egan.

Greg has both the technical knowledge, writing skills and penetrating imagination that, when combined, allow him to create fiction that examines many of the social dilemmas with which we will be confronted within a few tens of years. In his book of short stories, Axiomatic, Greg conceives some utterly captivating scenarios. Here are the gists of a few:

A ransom demand is made by a group that holds hostage a digital recreation of a man's wife. Does the virtual woman feel pain? Does she suffer? Should the man pay the ransom?

A man who has within his skull a "jewel" which has been matched with his own brain faces the prospect of turning over control of his body to the immortal jewel so that his biological brain can be disposed of. Is his consciousness that of the jewel, or the brain? When his brain is disconnected, will "he" die? Will the jewel be truly conscious, or will it be an imitation of consciousness? Is there a difference?

After an injury to his brain and its subsequent repair by nanobots, a man's perspective shifts to a position outside his body. Although he "knows" only that which his eyes can see, his mind builds a picture of reality as it might appear from a position a few feet above his physical body.

These are just a few of the stories within Axiomatic. If you want to think about what might actually happen when the singularity arrives, this book will certainly set you on the right path.

Axiomatic

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The Ethics of Enhancing Humanity

Not too long ago I raised the question, When will remediation become augmentation? In other words, when will medical science begin to use technology to enhance healthy people in addition to treating the sick? For the first time I have run across a notable figure actually urging medical researchers to do exactly that.

In Canberra, Julian Savulescu, professor of practical ethics at Oxford University and an eminent bio-ethisist, recently told a gathering there that Doctors are too focused on treating the sick and risk missing the enormous opportunities of using advances in medical science to "make happier, better people."

"If we cured all disease - cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, etc. - we would only prolong life on average by 12 years," the Australian-born Savulescu said.

"So we have pretty much reached the ceiling of what we can do by treating and preventing disease."

The next frontier is enhancing life through medical intervention. We can be brighter, stronger, healthier.

He argued that many of us routinely use cognitive enhancers like caffeine and nicotine. Alcohol is another intervention, this time to improve mood and aid socialization. Prozac and Viagra are interventions.

Savulescu urged the medical profession to embrace new methodologies and not worry too much about ethical considerations.

"The sort of methodologies in science that I'm talking about are stem cell science, cloning and the new genetics," he said.

I predict that this sentiment will, unfortunately, be criticized by misguided people who will accuse scientists of "playing God," who alone, according to them, should have the right to improve humanity. But if a few visionary men and women see that there exists the potential for a massive market for such enhancements, the naysayers will just be whistling in the dark. At least this is what I hope. Let those who are against human enhancement remain as they are if that is their choice, but let them not claim the right to make that choice for me.

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Man-Made Life: Only 3 to 10 Years Away

Of course we will be inundated with cries of Who are you to play God, but nevertheless, man will create a completely new form of life in the lab, probably within 3 to 10 years. So says a recent report on Breitbart.com.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Around the world, a handful of scientists are trying to create life from scratch and they're getting closer.

Experts expect an announcement within three to 10 years from someone in the now little-known field of "wet artificial life."

"It's going to be a big deal and everybody's going to know about it," said Mark Bedau, chief operating officer of ProtoLife of Venice, Italy, one of those in the race. "We're talking about a technology that could change our world in pretty fundamental ways—in fact, in ways that are impossible to predict."

That first cell of synthetic life—made from the basic chemicals in DNA—may not seem like much to non-scientists. For one thing, you'll have to look in a microscope to see it.

"Creating protocells has the potential to shed new light on our place in the universe," Bedau said. "This will remove one of the few fundamental mysteries about creation in the universe and our role."

And several scientists believe man-made life forms will one day offer the potential for solving a variety of problems, from fighting diseases to locking up greenhouse gases to eating toxic waste.

When this announcement is made, unless there are a few equally groundbreaking developments occurring between now and then, I expect our public to begin to pay attention to the accelerating pace of technological progress. Will that be the beginning of a fierce, and perhaps violent debate over where we are headed? We may soon find out the answer to that question.

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This MULE Needs no Rider

It is truly eye-opening to find out what kinds of gadgets and weapons are being developed as we sit here thinking nothing is going to change. And the stuff we find out about is only the tip of the iceberg, you can count on that. This military robotic vehicle, unfortunately named the MULE (Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment), developed by Lockheed Martin, is an advanced unmanned vehicle.

Lockheed Martin's Multifunction Utility/Logistics and Equipment (MULE) offers extraordinary capability in unmanned vehicle technology. The MULE's highly advanced 6x6 independent articulated suspension, coupled with in-hub motors powering each wheel, provides extreme mobility in complex terrain, far exceeding that of vehicles using more conventional suspension systems. It climbs at least a 1-meter step, and can cross 1-meter gaps, traverse side slopes greater than 40 percent, ford water to depths over 0.5 meter and overpass obstacles as high as 0.5 meter while compensating for varying payload weights and center-of-gravity locations. The MULE includes three variants: Armed Robotic Vehicle - Assault (Light), Transport and Countermine.

The military has the big bucks, and so will usually be the most advanced in terms of what it's developing, but just as with the Hummer, these things usually find their way into non-military contexts.

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A Failure of Imagination

Is it just me? Or does this article, and many like it, strike you as exposing a stunning lack of vision on the part of scientists and the journalists who cover them? And if so, is this phenomenon part of a much larger problem in society as a whole?

Sorry to be so negative, but here's why I get the impressions mentioned above. Take a look at these quotes taken from this article in The University of Florida News.

Imagine a chip, strategically placed in the brain, that could prevent epileptic seizures or allow someone who has lost a limb to control an artificial arm just by thinking about it.

That's how the article begins. Is that the most you can imagine from the research that is being done as we speak? Chip implants are already being used to help control Parkinson's. Cochlear implants are helping deaf people hear. Now we're moving on to epileptics and amputees. That's excellent news, but it requires virtually no imagination at all, since these are merely the logical next steps. What would be a bit more imaginative would be envisioning chips that record and store all of our brains' signals and transmit them to a computer for analysis and decoding. I'm glad that there seem to be a few people who can see that actual potential of these developments, but why aren't there more?

“(Scientists have) realized that by going inside the brain we can capture so much more information, we can have much more resolution,” Sanchez said.

Really? They figured that out? How'd they do that? I think they figured that out in the 19th century.

The day may not be too far off when patients can control a prosthetic hand or leg just by thinking about it, Sanchez said.

Again, isn't this already happening? What would be new is when patients can move their prosthesis without thinking about it, just like you and I do. I don't think about moving my fingers to hit the keys that type out this sentence, I just do it. That's where we're headed.

Well, that's my rant for today. You can let me have it if you think I'm just being cranky.

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Stop Thinking Lifespan and Start Thinking Healthspan

It is devilishly difficult to change the meanings we have associated with words and had reinforced over years and even decades. At the moment I am in the middle of an Accounting for Management class as part of an MBA program. In accounting, debits and credits mean only one thing: items to the left and items to the right of the line. They have no meaning as so subtraction or addition. I know this, and yet my long-held beliefs about these words still intrude into my cold calculations.

Similarly, I think we associate age with infirmity, which is quite understandable, since we have seen people get old, get sick, require lots of medicines and expensive medical procedures to keep them alive, and then die. It is rare to find someone older than 65 who has no illnesses and is hale and healthy.

Because the idea of old age is so firmly wedded to the idea of sickness and costly medical care, when transhumanists speak about the goal of radical life-extension, people seem to envision a world full of cane-using, wheelchair-riding, social-security-needing, 200-year-old parasites who are blithely sucking the last bit of the marrow out of the Earth's resources before finally kicking the bucket. I can see them thinking, Man, die already! I mean how long can someone play golf and eat dinner at 4 PM?

This is where it helps to understand that transhumanists are not interested in extending our number of dying years. They are interested in extending the number of years (perhaps indefinitely) we are completely healthy. No osteoporosis. No diabetes. No cancer. No heart disease. No inch-thick bifocals. No need for life-support. Just every 20 years a fresh round of rejuvenation therapy and many, many years of productive life. We're not talking about living off social security and Medicare. Won't need it.

So try that picture and see if it helps any.

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Researcher Hopes to Have the First Brain-Enhancing Implant

I stayed up far too late a couple of nights ago watching this video. I couldn't turn it off, it was so interesting. I bring it up to talk about one of the researchers featured in it who is currently developing a computer chip that he plans to connect directly to his own brain. He has already had surgery to connect leads to his own nervous system through his wrist, so I have little doubt he will do as he says.

Which brings me to a question I raised a couple of weeks ago in this blog: When will remediation become augmentation? In other words, when will implants move from helping the sick to enhancing the well? The answer may just lie with self-experimenters like the researcher in the film.

This raises an even more intriguing question: What will the experimenter experience? Imagine a chip designed to add processing power. How would such a chip, assuming that it is correctly designed, feel? Perhaps we should begin with a more simple implant, one that is designed to add to the experimenter's senses, maybe so that he can see in the infrared range. I would think he would have to learn how to mentally access the new linkage, then his brain would have to learn how to interpret the signals and how to integrate them into his field of view. Perhaps at first he would hallucinate, his mind not knowing how to decipher the new data stream.

Not being a neuroscientist myself, I am only indulging in wild speculation, and I am certain that trained professionals would be far better at this than I, but it is interesting to think about. I truly can't wait to hear about this brave man's experiences. Stay tuned.

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Let There Be Light: Controlling Neurons with Photons

Researchers have learned how to control neurons with pulses of light.

The dancing worm in a German lab is actually a bioengineering project run by neurobiologist Alexander Gottschalk at the University of Frankfurt. Yellow light moved to forward, while blue light pulls it back. Why not green and red? Must be a technical issue. In any case, the differently-colored light pulses affect its neurons, which in turn operate its various muscles, resulting in the forward and backward motions.

The worm has been engineered so that its neurons can be turned off and on at will, using these flashed of light.

The worm is in the vanguard of a revolution in brain science - the most spectacular application yet of a technology that allows scientists to turn individual brain cells on and off at will. "It's really changing the whole field of neuroscience," says the worm's developer, neurobiologist Alexander Gottschalk at the University of Frankfurt.

One possibility is that the technology, coupled with a method of getting light into the human skull, could create a Brave New World of neuro-modification in which conditions such as depression or Parkinson's disease are treated not with sledgehammer drugs or electrodes, but with delicate pinpricks of light. In the long term it is even possible that such treatments could be modified to enhance normal brain function, for example improving memory or alertness.

The technology could also lead to spectacular advances in basic neuroscience, allowing researchers to tease apart the neural circuits that control everything from reflexes to consciousness with unprecedented accuracy. "We'll be able to understand how specific cell types in the brain give rise to fuzzy concepts like hope and motivation," predicts Karl Deisseroth, a psychiatrist at Stanford University in California, who is spearheading some of the work.

Everyone is already for any safe treatment for neurological diseases, but this article is one of the rare ones that also mention the possible use of the therapy to "enhance normal brain function." So the next time you have lights in your head, they may be doing you some good.

Source

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Return of the (Robotic) Fly

We have already heard about the remote controlled moths being developed by implanting control chips into moth larvae. On a sort of parallel course, we have now learned that Harvard University has designed and built a fully robotic fly. And it does fly.

A life-size, robotic fly has taken flight at Harvard University. Weighing only 60 milligrams, with a wingspan of three centimeters, the tiny robot's movements are modeled on those of a real fly. While much work remains to be done on the mechanical insect, the researchers say that such small flying machines could one day be used as spies, or for detecting harmful chemicals.

Of course DARPA is funding this research, in hopes of using the robotic Musca domesticas for stealth surveillance operations.

Recreating a fly's efficient movements in a robot roughly the size of the real insect was difficult, however, because existing manufacturing processes couldn't be used to make the sturdy, lightweight parts required. The motors, bearings, and joints typically used for large-scale robots wouldn't work for something the size of a fly. "Simply scaling down existing macro-scale techniques will not come close to the performance that we need," Wood says.

Some extremely small parts can be made using the processes for creating microelectromechanical systems. But such processes require a lot of time and money. Wood and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, needed a cheap, rapid fabrication process so they could easily produce different iterations of their designs.

While these developments are a major achievement, there remains quite a bit more to be done before this fly will be turned loose. It needs an onboard power supply, tiny sensor equipment and flight control computer chips. But having taken wing, one can have little doubt that this little robot will eventually be on the job.

Source

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Emergent Complexity and Biological Engineering: 21st Century Science

I have decided to add two fields of scientific research and development to my roster of subjects to keep up with on my Singularity Blog. As we have established a beachhead on the shores of the 21st century, these two fields have become, as some would put it, the new new things. As I continue to comb through large quantities of articles on current developments in order to bring to my readers relevant and interesting news, I will be including these two topics: Emergent Complexity and Biological Engineering.

Whereas, not too long ago, creationists were able to convince many that the complexity of life could not be explained by science and must therefore remain the province of a Creator, this realm alas has joined so many others in falling to the advancing armies of scientific investigation. Emergent complexity is now understood to show that complex systems do emerge naturally out of a large number of simple interactions, with no need for a controlling entity. With a few very simple rules for each ant to follow, the complex behavior of the colony emerges. The complex shapes of snowflakes emerge out of the simple interactions of water molecules. A flock of birds moves and shifts in the sky in highly complex and coordinated fashion, using only the simple rules followed by each bird. These are examples of emergent complexity. What does this have to do with Singularity?

As we build computers that approach the level of complexity of the human brain, the question arises: Is consciousness the natural result of complexity? When we are able to build systems with as many connections between transistors as there are synapses in the brain, will the first sentient machine be born? No matter what anyone thinks is the answer, we will all find out soon enough.

Bioengineering is coming to the forefront of science only recently, since we are approaching a degree of understanding and technological wizardry wherein we can engineer and transform our own biology. Of course a nightmare scenario will immediately come to mind, thanks to Mary Shelley, but we hope for better things, such as the eradication of genetic disease and even death itself.

So onward we go, and I hope you'll come along for the ride.

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Our Final Century?

Sir Martin Rees, professor of cosmology and astrophysics, and one of the world's most eminent astronomers, speaks on the question, Earth in its Final Century? In this video presentation he points out that we are living in an extremely important time in the history of the earth, a century within which we will attain the power to transform ourselves and our planet.

We know that our sun, which has existed for 5 billion years, will die in another 6 billion years. Rees explains that it won't be humans who will be here to witness this death, but creatures "as different from ourselves as we are from bacteria." Another interesting tidbit from the video is Rees' identification of complexity as the science of the 21st century.

In a taut soliloquy that takes us from the origins of the universe to the last days of a dying sun 6 billion years later, renowned cosmologist Sir Martin Rees explains why the 21st century is a pivotal moment in the history of humanity: the first time in history when we can materially change ourselves and our planet. Stunning imagery of cosmological wonders show us the universe as we know it now. Speaking as "a concerned member of the human race," Rees harkens to the wisdom of Einstein, calling for scientists to act as moral compasses, confronting the coming developments and ensuring our role in "the immense future."

This is a short (only 17 minutes) presentation that is well worth the watching. See it here by clicking on the frame below.



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Mouse Brains Examined Online

One of the expectations embedded in the Singularity is the creation of a computer with the power of a human brain, and one necessary (it seems) task to that end is to reverse-engineer the human brain. That means researchers need to be able to examine it in minute detail, at extremely high resolutions. Which is what makes this development such an important step forward.

A multi-institutional consortium including Duke University has created startlingly crisp 3-D microscopic views of tiny mouse brains -- unveiled layer by layer -- by extending the capabilities of conventional magnetic resonance imaging.

"These images can be more than 100,000 times higher resolution than a clinical MRI scan," said G. Allan Johnson, Duke's Charles E. Putman Distinguished Professor of radiology and professor of biomedical engineering and physics. He is first author of a report describing the innovations set for publication in the research journal NeuroImage

The important elements that I see in this report are the increased resolution of the MRI technology and the availability for study of the resulting images.

The consortium has developed the computer infrastructure to collect a rapidly growing library of 3-D mouse brain data, and make all the data available on the web http://tinyurl.com/3cgj6z. The goal is to use mouse brains as surrogates for human brains to study the connections between genes and brain structure. Investigators from all over the world are sending their models to Duke where the 3-D images are acquired in a standardized fashion and made available via high speed web connections.

High resolution magnetic resonance imaging -- which the researchers call "MRI histology" provides distortion-free 3-D images with superb ability to distinguish subtle tissue differences in the brain, according to Johnson.

"The specimen is still actually in the skull," he said. "It hasn't been cut by a knife. It has not been dehydrated and distorted as it would be in conventional histological techniques."

Using computer-guided statistical methods, the data can be segmented into more than 30 anatomical structures with quantitative volume measurements. These structures can then be computer-enhanced to produce color-coded and labeled volume renderings of selected anatomical details in 3-D, seen at any angle.

MRI scanning is also quicker and costs less than conventional histology, he said. MRI histology permits study of an entire brain, which would be prohibitively expensive using conventional methods.

The specific research being done at Duke has to do with understanding the changes in phenotype (physical structure) that are associated with changes in genotype (gene expression). What happens if we don't allow this protein? How will that change the brain's structure? But this technology should also be useful to reverse-engineer the brain in order to simulate it effectively in a computer.

The fact that you have access to these images via the Internet is a major step forward. Not that you or I can learn anything from them, but the right scientists can. That's important. The power of multiple minds at work!

[Source: Eureka Alert]

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Letting AIs Take the Wheel

As Ray Kurzweil like to say, "People keep asking me, where is all the AI I've been hearing about? That's like visiting the rain forest and asking where are all the different species? when there are 50 different species of ants within 50 feet of them. AI is so deeply embedded in the environment that you don't see it but it's all around you." Well, pretty soon it'll be in the wheels of your car.

Scientists at the University Portsmouth have been using the latest advances in artificial intelligence to make "the world's first thinking wheel."

University scientists are providing the artificial intelligence systems for the wheels on the company's prototype eco-friendly electric super-car. The wheels use microcomputers to perform 4000 calculations per second and 'talk' to each other. The wheels use AI to think and learn as the car is being driven, making calculations and adjustments according to travelling speed and road conditions.

It is the first time artificial intelligence has replaced fundamental mechanics within a motor vehicle and will mean tighter control, a smoother ride and a safer drive, yet the driver remains in control of the car.

"Conventional wisdom says you can't reinvent the wheel. We have done just that. We have taken the wheel, given it brains and the ability to think and learn. It's a huge breakthrough," said Dr David Brown of the University of Portsmouth's Institute of Industrial Research.

Artificial Intelligence controls the suspension, steering and breaking systems, teaching it to adapt to bends in the road, potholes and other potential hazards, and compensating by adjusting the car's reactions. The information is retained in the computer's memory and used the next time the car encounters similar road conditions. The car is learning as it drives and adapting its performance accordingly.

Will the AIs controlling your car's wheels suddenly decide to drive you where they want to go rather than the destination you had in mind? Well, that probably won't happen for a while yet. Stay tuned.

[via Herself's AI]

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Precision Drug Delivery Achieved

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the key to nanotech's power is in its precision. Assembling structures one atom or molecule at a time, or delivering precise dosages of drugs to precise locations, it's about precision. Researchers at Iowa State University have made a major breakthrough in the latter by using nano-sized devices to "penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision."

Currently, scientists can successfully introduce a gene into a plant cell. In a separate process, chemicals are used to activate the gene's function. The process is imprecise and the chemicals could be toxic to the plant.

"With the mesoporous nanoparticles, we can deliver two biogenic species at the same time," Wang said. "We can bring in a gene and induce it in a controlled manner at the same time and at the same location. That's never been done before."

The devices themselves are amazing creations in their own right:

It is a porous, silica nanoparticle system. Spherical in shape, the particles have arrays of independent porous channels. The channels form a honeycomb-like structure that can be filled with chemicals or molecules.

"One gram of this kind of material can have a total surface area of a football field, making it possible to carry a large payload," Trewyn said.

Lin's nanoparticle has a unique "capping" strategy that seals the chemical goods inside. In previous studies, his group successfully demonstrated that the caps can be chemically activated to pop open and release the cargo inside of animal cells. This unique feature provides total control for timing the delivery.

Very little imagination is required to see where this research can lead in terms of the ability to deliver medicines and gene-therapies to the specific cells that need them. Even further, we can envision the development of nano-devices that will repair damaged cells and clean up the toxic waste products that our bodies fail to deal with. Radical life-extension, here we come.

Source

[via Nanosingularity]

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Free Will is a Magic Trick

One of the arguments posed by some against the feasibility of creating consciousness in a machine is the claim that the human mind and personality could not possibly arise out of material stuff, atoms and molecules. Since those kinds of things are either random (on the subatomic scale) or deterministic (on the scale of everyday objects), and since human minds are neither random nor deterministic (that is, they operate by free will), QED, they cannot arise strictly from material stuff.

Stated simply, they assert that free will cannot arise from only a material substrate. If not material, then the mind must be immaterial. Hence we are led to the idea of the soul or spirit to explain the phenomenon of mind.

But there is a problem with this reasoning. (Actually there are several, but let us focus on only one for now.) And that problem is that free will is appearing more and more to be a trick, an illusion, albeit a very persistent and convincing one. The illusion is simply the result of an extremely complex system, rather than an otherworldly "soul."

In a wonderful and witty essay, NYT writer Dennis Overbye explores some of the most recent findings on the subject of free will. I'll give you a bit of it here.

Having just lived through another New Year’s Eve, many of you have just resolved to be better, wiser, stronger and richer in the coming months and years. After all, we’re free humans, not slaves, robots or animals doomed to repeat the same boring mistakes over and over again. As William James wrote in 1890, the whole “sting and excitement” of life comes from “our sense that in it things are really being decided from one moment to another, and that it is not the dull rattling off of a chain that was forged innumerable ages ago.” Get over it, Dr. James. Go get yourself fitted for a new chain-mail vest. A bevy of experiments in recent years suggest that the conscious mind is like a monkey riding a tiger of subconscious decisions and actions in progress, frantically making up stories about being in control.

As a result, physicists, neuroscientists and computer scientists have joined the heirs of Plato and Aristotle in arguing about what free will is, whether we have it, and if not, why we ever thought we did in the first place.

Mark Hallett, a researcher with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, said, “Free will does exist, but it’s a perception, not a power or a driving force. People experience free will. They have the sense they are free.

“The more you scrutinize it, the more you realize you don’t have it,” he said.

Experiments have repeatedly shown that the brain signals associated with making any random motion occur half a second before the subject is conscious of deciding to make them. First comes perception of motion, then decision. That's certainly not the order in which we assume things happen.

In short, the conscious brain was only playing catch-up to what the unconscious brain was already doing. The decision to act was an illusion, the monkey making up a story about what the tiger had already done.

Many who vehemently disagree with the conclusion that free will is only an illusion say that if this is so, there can be no moral or legal judgment, since our choices are not really choices at all. How can we castigate Hitler if he never chose to kill six million Jews in the holocaust? This is one of the arguments.

To this I reply: Whether or not Hitler is responsible for his actions is irrelevant. The fact is, for the good of others he must be destroyed. Sexual predators must be isolated. Serial killers must be removed from among us. A mentally disturbed lioness must be ostracized from the pride so that she cannot kill the cubs. There is not a naturalist alive, I would think, who would claim that the cub-killing animal is wicked. Nevertheless, her presence in the pride constitutes a threat to its survival and cannot therefore be allowed.

Even though we may not be morally culpable, the fact of negative, unpleasant consequences to harmful actions will play a part in our future actions, whether we have free will or not. Punishment, or the fear of punishment, results in behavior modification. This does not require the existence of free will.

Does my thinking that this may be true mean that I would not be angry at someone who harmed someone I care about? Don't count on it.

Dr. Wegner said he thought that exposing free will as an illusion would have little effect on people’s lives or on their feelings of self-worth. Most of them would remain in denial.

“It’s an illusion, but it’s a very persistent illusion; it keeps coming back,” he said, comparing it to a magician’s trick that has been seen again and again. “Even though you know it’s a trick, you get fooled every time. The feelings just don’t go away.”

I now come full circle back to the thrust of this post: The idea, backed by experimentation, that free will is a useful illusion, allows us to put mind back into the realm of the natural, rather than the supernatural, and therefore there is no impediment to the conclusion that conscious machines are possible.*

* If you choose to argue that conscious machines are not possible, I ask that you do not use classical computers as your basis. We are not asserting that classical computers could harbor consciousness any more than your TV remote could simulate protein folding. What we are asserting is that computer technology will become complex and powerful enough to achieve consciousness within the next 2 or 3 decades.

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Augmented Reality and Ubiquitous Ultra-Fast WiFi

Looks like I'm on an AR roll here, but it can't be helped. For AR to work, it seems to me that ubiquitous, ultra fast wireless connectivity will be required. At this point, even wired broadband is far too slow for a believable augmented reality overlay system. Much higher bandwidth wireless will have to be made virtually omnipresent.

A few city centers have made free wireless access available, but it will have to be present in every nook and cranny, every field and forest. Which will come first, the chicken or the killer app? I think the infrastructure and the application will have to encourage each other to be created, perhaps by the same company. (Could this be why Google is quietly buying unused pipes?)

As far as the hardware is concerned, here is a little fellow who doesn't yet exist, but may be developed in time to play a part in the task of making wifi reach every cubic centimeter of livable space on earth. Right now it's called the LANdroid, and it looks like this...



Apparently these guys are on DARPA's wish list. So after they are built and battle-tested, perhaps they can be deployed for peacetime use. Stay tuned.

[via Herself's AI]

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