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MINIATURE
MEMORY
THE TELEPATHY
CHIP
REALLY FAST
MOST MINUTE
MOTORS
FOUNTAIN OF
YOUTH
TURBOSAURS
THE HIDDEN LAKE
FAITH VERSUS
SCIENCE
AIDED BY NEW
ROBOT, MINING BOOM MAY DESTROY UNKNOWN LIFEFORMS
Ten or twenty years from now the information stored on
one million CD-ROMs should be able to be stored on just
one, according to news out of Copenhagen.
This should be possible because of the work of Danish
scientists, who revealed on October 26, 1998 that they
had created a computer chip in which a single atom
jumping back and forth--at room temperature--produced
binary code.
This type of code is the foundation of digital
information as processed by computers.
Team leader FranÇois Grey, by phone, informed the
Reuters news agency that while previous scientists had
made individual atoms leap back and forth, they had only
done so with material at a temperature near absolute
zero.
In the present case, a four-person team at the Danish
University of Technology's microelectronics center
utilized a scanning-tunnelling microscope to help them
take--off a silicon chip's hydrogen layer surface--one of
two hydrogen atoms attached to an individual silicon
atom, so the lone hydrogen atom remaining would leap as
needed.
With their warmish work, practical applications are
closer to fruition.
Source: ABCNEWS.com, 10/26/98; CNN.com, 10/27/98; Smart
Computing, February 1999 (all from Reuters 10/26/98);
"UGeek: This Just In!" (www.ugeek.com), 1/28/99
Kevin Warwick, a British professor, has already been
the world's first cyborg; a radio transmitter chip was
implanted in his arm on August 24, 1998. This was a glass
capsule approximately 23 millimeters long and 3
millimeters wide within which were a silicon chip and an
electromagnetic coil. It enabled him to activate certain
doors and lights. When he approached these doors, they
said, "Good morning, Prof. Warwick," his
computer switched on, and his movements within the
building were trackable. The capsule has since been
removed, for safety's sake.
Surely, employees of large corporations will someday
have much to say about Warwick's work.
The professor is now working on a device to transmit
physical movement, pain and even emotions between two
people. And he has volunteered to be the initial human to
try out what could be called a telepathy chip. This first
chip to be wired to a person's nervous system is
scheduled for implantation into him during 2001.
A half-inch microprocessor chip will be put into the
upper part of his left arm, where a sensor collar will be
clamped onto a nerve. (Also in preparation is a version
of greater sensitivity in which a number of prongs would
be clamped onto a nerve core.) Both versions will contain
a transducer to deal with the sending and reception of
radio signals to transmit pain and movement.
The objective is that the electrical signals which
control his movements and feelings will be stored in a
computer and then played back, so that he will subject
himself to a takeover by his earlier self. He wonders
whether his brain will register this as strange or not.
Since the basic procedure of these implants has been
solved, according to him, present work emphasizes the
lessening of the risks of nerve damage.
Warwick, who heads the University of Reading's
Cybernetics Department, stated to the British Association
festival in September 1999 that his ultimate quest is to
be able to send thought communications between human
beings--an ability he believes to be only "a few
years away."
He is not the only person willing to go the limit in
this special quest. If the test of sending signals
between his nervous system and a computer is successful,
with no problems, an implant will be placed into his wife
Irena. Warwick said, "The way she puts it is that if
anyone is going to jack into my limbic system--to know
definitively when I'm feeling happy, depressed,
angry...she wants it to be her." Internet
transmissions between them, from separate countries, may
follow.
The present experiments could, prior to those future
developments, provide a way for people to help disabled
persons learn control of their limbs.
They could also lead to the operation of workable cars
without using steering wheels and other components.
Not mentioned in the known media reports about his
efforts is that a workable telepathy technique could
erase humanity's last privacy barrier--and be abused by
unscrupulous and/or ideologically obsessed persons in
many ways. Worse, people's motions could be controlled by
others, a coercion that could be horrific when applied in
authoritarian or wartime situations.
Warwick's worries and concerns about machines becoming
dangerously more intelligent than people, delineated in
his book In the Mind of the Machine, as well as in
quotes he has given the media, provide an interesting
contrast to his cutting-edge cyborg work, where man
transforms partly into what he may fear.
Sources: CNN.COM, 2/18/98; ABCNEWS.com, 8/25/98; Wired,
February 2000; Dispatch Online (www.dispatch.co.za/),
8/27/98; Sydney Morning Herald online
(www.smh.com.au), 9/16/99 and 11/5/99 (from the Daily
Telegraph, London; and The Guardian); also
www.cyber.rdg.ac.uk/K.Warwick/
If people think computers are efficient now, will they
be ready in the future for computers that perhaps make
use of a processor 100 billion times more powerful than a
present-day Pentium chip?
An announcement on July 15, 1999 told of the
accomplishment by scientists of a "logic gate"
on a molecular level. Made on a crystalline structure,
molecular computers will someday be portable indeed,
perhaps even usable as part or parts of clothing, and
will require less power to operate than do present
systems. Such vast amounts of data will be able to be
stored on them that erasing files will become entirely
unnecessary--except for those with something to hide.
In a phone interview, Phil Kuekes, a Hewlett-Packard
computer architect, spoke of how two teams working
together built extremely simple working logic gates.
James Heath, a chemistry professor at the University of
California at Los Angeles, heads one of these teams. The
other team is at the Palo Alto-based Hewlett Packard
Company.
The latter team compounded rotaxane, which, as stated,
grows in a crystalline structure. The molecules of
rotaxane, in between metal electrodes, work as the
aforementioned logic gates. The journal Science
reported their development, likely to eventually replace
silicon chips.
There are even mightier computers in the offing.
Recent experiments which successfully teleported photons
may well lead to computers in the future which will be
powerful beyond present conceptions.
Source: The Washington Post, 7/16/99
One of the smallest motors built so far consists of
only 78 atoms, but four years of work was involved in its
construction.
T. Ross Kelly, a Boston College professor of
chemistry, thought it would be "neat" to
fabricate a molecule that operated like a motor. He
published a report about his and his Boston College
colleagues' rather successful results in the September 9,
1999 issue of Nature.
Similar things exist in nature, such as corkscrew
flagella on mobile bacteria, but they are little
understood. Kelly, in his creation, offers just one
scenario among many for such biological machines. His
molecular motor is in need of improved configuration
though, since its "paddle water wheel" jams
after rotating only 120 degrees. According to Trinity
College chemist Anthony Davis of Ireland, "It's
really just a proof of principle."
Yet Kelly is sure that continuous rotation is possible
and will be achieved.
In the same issue of Nature, a 58-atom
molecule, which spins continually when light is applied
to it, is described by Dutch and Japanese scientists.
Their motor is a very slow one, taking several minutes to
revolve. And, at present, 140 degrees Fahrenheit is the
minimum heat requirement for its operation. Viability at
room temperature is, of course, sought.
There are potential computing and medical applications
for further-developed molecular motors, but they are
likely decades away from fruition.
Source: ABCNEWS.com, 9/9/99
A gene therapy technique has proved more successful
than anticipated on aged Rhesus monkeys, and will
hopefully eventually assist Alzheimer's disease sufferers
to recover more youthful brains and brain functions.
On September 14, 1999, a study appeared in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences that revealed
some promising results. The study's senior author, Dr.
Mark H. Tuszynski of the University of California, San
Diego, mentioned how the experiments made clearer the
newer understandings that brain neurons do not die, they
just shrink and atrophy. In the aged Rhesus monkeys
studied, genes for nerve growth factor (NGF) were put
into their brains and their basal forebrain cells were
restored to near their youthful size and number. (Basal
forebrain cells could well be called air traffic
controllers for the organ.)
A promising detail in these Rhesus monkey tests was
that, after NGF genes were applied into the non-control
monkeys, the modified cells themselves began
manufacturing NGF. In a follow-up endeavor, another group
of senior rhesus monkeys is being used to ascertain
whether this NGF-application technique can bring back
memory and thinking abilities as well. In June 1999, the
researchers applied to the FDA so that, if given
permission, they can test the NGF gene technique on
people suffering from Alzheimer's disease. According to
Tuszynski, the first phase would only involve a small
group, for safety-determination reasons.
In the meantime, according to the September 15 Journal
of Neuroscience, humans wanting better memory should
probably eat blueberries. Boston and Denver researchers
obtained promising results after feeding old rats a
blueberry-heavy diet.
Sources: CNN.com, 9/14/99 (from the Associated Press);
The Washington Post, 9/20/99; PNAS Online
Were dinosaurs cold-blooded or hot-blooded? In other
words, were they like reptiles or like mammals and birds?
New evidence shows that they may have been cold-blooded
after all--but turbocharged for maximum sustained levels
of activity.
According to a late January 1999 media report, Oregon
State University's John A. Ruben and his associates
utilized ultraviolet light to study fossilized
impressions found in Salerno, Italy. These imprints had
been made by a baby Scipionyx, a little carnivorous
therapod of 110 million years ago which resembled
velociraptors, and were very useful, as they showed
indications of not usually preserved soft tissues, such
as of muscles, intestines--even the liver. More
importantly, they showed a partition which kept apart the
liver and guts from the heart and lungs--a sort of
rudimentary diaphragm. This feature allowed the lungs to
be ventilated at times of heavy activity.
Previously, Ruben had maintained that the respiratory
structures of dinosaurs were so simple that they would
not work with a warm-blooded system. The new evidence
indicated to Ruben that they had especially effective
cold-blooded physiologies, giving them the metabolism for
the types of activities of which both birds and
mammals--being makers of their own body heat--were and
are capable. This worked for dinosaurs as long as Earth's
climate was of a high enough temperature. When global
cooling came, they could no longer compete.
Terry D. Jones, another member of the team at Oregon
State University, called the amazing fossil of the
Scipionyx to be "like a Rosetta stone for
palaeontology, and [it] shows us more about dinosaur
biology than we ever knew before."
Source: The Independent, 1/22/99; The
Washington Post, 1/25/99; Science magazine
website
Antarctica's Lake Vostok is enormous but has not been
seen by humanity. Nor will it be drilled into by
machinery until risks of contamination can be eliminated.
Vostok's liquid water is thought to resemble that beneath
the ice of Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Like that
location, Vostok is cut off from light, heat and a known
nutrient supply. It is underneath two miles of South
Polar Plateau ice. Drillings of ice in its vicinity are
to approach no closer than 393 feet above it.
In the December 10, 1999 issue of Science,
University of Hawaii and Montana State University
scientists wrote about the hidden lake in a number of
articles. One of these was entitled "Microorganisms
in the Accreted Ice of Lake Vostok, Antarctica."
Written about were the many types of bacteria found in
some ice 11,700 feet below surface level. The bacteria
had managed to survive millions of years in the dark and
cold. Their existence bids well for the probability of
life in Vostok itself.
Source: New York Times, 12/13/99;
www.sciencemag.org
During July 1998, the Russian Orthodox Church declined
to recognize the remains of Czar Nicholas II as being the
real article, despite the results of DNA tests and other
evidence.
Yet in August 1998 an Associated Press report revealed
that the church deemed authentic the remains of Alexander
of Svira, a 16th-century saint.
This was because there were drops of a substance
resembling honey between the toes of the mummy, which
priests, including Patriarch Alexy II, who is the head of
the Orthodox church, claim is myrrh.
Olga Bykhovskaya, who is deputy head of the Forensic
Examination Service in St. Petersburg, said, "The
church had doubts about the royal remains, when all of
science had proven their authenticity. And here they have
no doubts when science has not proved it."
In December 1997, the mummy had been found in a
cupboard in the Anatomical Museum at the Military Medical
Academy in St. Petersburg. Initial tests were suggestive
that the remains were those of the saint, whose relics
had been confiscated in 1919, but were hardly conclusive.
The Orthodox faithful have what they need, since to
them the apparent myrrh is proof positive of sainthood.
Source: Austin American-Statesman, 8/23/98
PROD, a newly developed remotely operable drill
recently tested off Perth, Australia, is expected to help
find a great harvest of minerals on the seafloor, and to
aid research. It may also disrupt ecosystems that humans
know little or nothing about--and perhaps lead to the
extinctions of as yet unknown lifeforms.
The robotic drill, controlled from the surface, can
prospect deeply, even two kilometers below the water's
surface. The device, most of it created by Benthic
Geotech of Sydney, is likely to be deployed in a volatile
area near Papua New Guinea, where continuous volcanic
underwater activity creates heated water, which carries a
polymetalic wealth of silver, gold, copper and zinc. Also
present there are unusual forms of life, some as yet
unknown to science and others previously thought to be
extinct.
The non-living things are what are apt to start a
mining boom. Dr. Ray Binns, the CSIRO Exploration and
Mining chief research scientist, told a Sydney Mining
Club luncheon not long ago about worldwide commercial
interest. Binns is one of the few people to actually have
been present at "way down under" smoking vents
and metal-bearing "chimneys" when riding in the
Shinkai-6500 deep-water submersible in 1994.
Odd fish, prawns, snails and crabs, as well as the
newly discovered tubeworms, are among the creatures off
the New Guinea vents. One of these vents is called the
Roman Ruins, another is termed Snowcap, while a
black-smoke-emitting one is named in the plural as the
Satanic Mills.
During February 1999, in Madang, Papua New Guinea
(PNG), an international workshop on seabed mining, where
both the possible economic gains and the potential
environmental losses were debated, attracted Pacific
Islands nations' participations. Since just one important
"strike" could change the economy of any of
their economies, a gold-rush mentality was on the
increase.
Organizations like Greenpeace became involved, since
the fates of the world's oceans were concerned. They were
and are worrying about tampering with ecosystems before
their true functions in the world are understood.
Benedict Southward, Greenpeace's Australian campaign
manager, said, "They will carve up the deep oceans
in the same way they have carved up the lands."
The financial possibilities of deep-water marine mines
may push aside other concerns--in PNG and elsewhere.
Most of Australia's large sea floor area is a mystery,
and decisions are being made to protect some of these
areas so that exploitation will not ruin them all.
A portion of the Tasmanian Seamounts, for example, has
been made a deep-sea marine reserve. The other 80% of
them are open to exploitation, and for possible PROD-ing.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald online
(www.smh.com.au), 6/4/99
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