The World Future Society makes forecasts which show that the forecasters do not seem to really understand some of the technology that they are forecasting. Forecast #2: The era of the Cyborg is at hand. Researchers in Israel have fashioned a “bio-computer” using the DNA of living cells instead of silicon chips. This development may …
New lighter ceramic armor with some nanotechnology material aspects may appear in Iraq in 2007 They intend to mimic sea snail shells. By alternating very thin layers of a hard chalk-like material with layers of its own sticky proteins (snail spittle, if you will), sea snails create shells that are tough, light and durable. “We’re …
George Church predicts 2007 as the year of personal genomics The price to sequence the 1% of the genome that differentiates people will drop to a street price of $3000 in 2007. Momentum is thus building for millions of people to volunteer to have their genome data correlated with their physical-traits to benefit the billions …
A link from CrNano, a paper called Making molecular machines work which surveys recent advances in the achievement of control of motion at the molecular level including solid-state and surface-mounted rotors, and its natural progression to the development of synthetic molecular machines. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger …
DNA computers are likely more than a decade away so they will not be used and minimally useful. The performance will probably not be more than traditional computers of that time and for massively parallel comparison searches it will be faster to use quantum computers. Analog Quantum computers should start to see introduction in 2007 …
MIT Technology review discusses nanotechnology developments in 2006 Nanotech is enabling several new kinds of flat panel displays. Carbon nanotube displays are coming out of the lab. MIT spinoff QD Vision, of Watertown, MA, is developing ultrathin and potentially flexible displays based on nanoscale semiconductor crystals called quantum dots. These would require much less energy …
A pdf by Nick Bostrom and Anders Sandberg that surveys the state of cognitive enhancement in 2006 Nick Bostrom’s website The paper reviews ways to train ourselves to be more intelligent/expert, drugs for enhancement /nootropic drugs, genetic modification, enhancing devices like computers, and brain /computer interfaces. I think collaboration and collective productivity as in corporations …
three Stanford researchers proposed that a new state, called the quantum spin Hall effect, could be realized without applying an external magnetic field. Since quantum wells in mercury telluride/cadmium telluride sheets can be readily fabricated, it is possible to experimentally test the theoretical predictions of Zhang, Bernevig and Hughes. A research group at the University …
Researchers at Samsung, one of the leading producers of flash-memory chips, recently announced a new chip that can hold twice as much data as before, and without an increase in its footprint on a circuit board. They were able to double the data capacity by building chips with multiple layers of silicon, creating 3-D structures. …
In Physical Review Letters, Oxford student Avinash Kolli and his coauthors suggest a new way to create entanglement, by identifying two different stable states of a quantum dot (call them ‘A’ and ‘B’) and then targeting two such dots simultaneously with a laser. A lot of work still needs to be done to flesh out …
‘Top-10’ forecast list released today by Elie K. Track, Ph.D., senior partner, HYPRES Inc., a leading developer of superconducting microelectronics technology. 1. Lab demonstrations that can lead to an advanced, low-cost MRI machine that leverages superconducting technology. Ultimately, this will make it easier and cheaper to screen for many serious medical conditions, such as breast …