Can We Find Natural Nanotechnologies?

The field of nanotechnology deals with a world so small that we can't see it through a light microscope. At this scale, we're working with basic building blocks like molecules or organic cells. Mankind's experience in this realm is limited, while nature has been building at the molecular level for billions of years.

But can we say there are natural nanotechnologies? From the strictest definition, technology refers to practical application of knowledge or using technical processes to accomplish a task. In that sense, the question about natural nanotechnology is more philosophical than practical. Taking a strictly scientific approach, we wouldn't say that there is such a thing as natural nanotechnology.

Nature still plays a very important role in many nanotechnology projects. Some nanotechnologists study cellular biology, although most cells are much larger than the nanoscale. For example, oncologists are looking into nanotechnology as a potential way to treat cancer patients. The basic idea is to create tiny vessels -- perhaps just 100 nanometers wide -- to carry minute doses of an anti-cancer drug.

Currently, most anti-cancer drugs can affect healthy and cancerous tissue. That's why the side effects of chemotherapy can be so dramatic and difficult to endure. But if doctors could create a device that could target specific cancer cells, they could use medicine in such a precise way that only the cancer would be affected. As a result, patients would experience fewer side effects.

While we may have to spend decades to learn enough to create a device that can find and target particular cells, nature has already figured it out. Many viruses seek out specific types of cells. By studying viruses, oncologists hope to create the perfect cancer-seeking delivery device. Some are even planning to use virus shells as the delivery device itself. The nanotechnologists will coat the virus with proteins designed to lock with cancer cells while ignoring everything else. Inside the shell is a tiny payload of medication. When the virus finds a cancer cell, it latches on and injects the medicine -- which is technically poison -- directly into the cancer cell.

That's how viruses have worked for millions of years and it's just one example of how nanotechnologists are looking to nature for insight on how to work at the molecular level. Combining cellular biology and nanotechnology may lead to a future in which disease is largely eradicated. So even if we can't say there's such a thing as natural nanotechnology, nature will always play a prominent role in our understanding of this tiny world.

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Posted in: anti-cancer,Can We Find Natural Nanotechnologies?,device,future,molecular level,nanotechnology,technology,viruses

The Future of Green Architecture

Physalia A museum, nightclub and filtration system, Physalia uses its hull and rooftop plants to scrub away pollution. Physalia is half-boat, half-building, and all green. This mammoth aluminum concept by Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut is meant to travel Europe’s rivers, making filthy water drinkable. At the same time, the ship generates more energy than it uses. 

A coat of titanium dioxide paint brushed onto the silvery shell will neutralize pollution by absorbing ultraviolet rays, enabling a chemical reaction that decomposes organic and inorganic toxins. (It’s the same technology used in certain high-tech concrete that breaks down airborne particulates.)

As the vessel whips along, purifying waterways, it can draw on both solar and hydro power. Turbines under the hull transform water movement into electricity, and rooftop photovoltaic cells harness energy from the sun. The roof doubles as a nursery, whose carefully selected plants help filter river gunk, whether from the Thames, Rhine or Euphrates. 

But Physalia isn’t just designed to be a working ship. The vessel will also be a floating museum of sorts. Scientists who study aquatic ecosystems can hole up in the dedicated “Earth garden” lab, and tourists can visit temporary exhibits in a “water garden” or settle into a submerged lounge that could easily pass for a London nightclub.

Callebaut, 33, dreamed up the idea after last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen shone a long-overdue spotlight on global water issues. He has some lofty terms for his project: It’s a “nomadic hydrodynamic laboratory,” a “fragment of living earth,” and a “floating agora” on a “geopolitical scale.” Others might just call it a cool idea.

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Posted in: architecture,boat,building,climate change,future,green,hydro power,water

2020 Vision

Future Cities! In the year 2020, cars will fly, cities will power themselves with sunlight, biofuels, and minerals mined from the moon, computers will be more powerful than the human brain, and everything will be a touchscreen! Perhaps!

Robotic moon bases, chips implanted in our brains, self-driving cars, and high-speed rail linking London to Beijing. According to a dazzling number of technology predictions that single out the year 2020, it's going to be to be one hell of a year. Here, we take a look at some of the wonders it holds in store.

2020, of course, is just a convenient target date for roughly-ten-years-off predictions. "It's not any more particularly interesting, in my opinion, than 2019 or 2021," says Mike Liebhold, a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future, and an all-around technology expert with a resume that includes stints with Intel, Apple, and even Netscape. "There's a continuum of technological development, and that's just an easy date for an editor or a writer to get a handle on.

After spending decades helping various top-tier tech companies develop and deploy their cutting edge technologies around the world, Liebhold now helps clients take a long view of their businesses so they can make better decisions in the short term. He and his colleagues at the Institute for the Future don't help clients read tea leaves (predictions are for soothsayers and crystal ball gazers) but they do help them read what he calls the signals -- those things you can see in the world today that allow you to make reasonable forecasts about what the future holds.

"We help people think systematically about the future," Liebhold says. "We don't give them answers, we give them foresight."
In other words, the year 2020 (and 2019, and 2021) is Liebhold's business. And he forecasts a pretty interesting world a decade from now. For instance, given the current forward momentum of mobile technology and the ever-present forces of economies of scale, Liebhold says it's conceivable that most of the world's population will be able to afford a Web-enabled smartphone or tablet device by 2020, offering everyone on the planet geo-location services and access to global information and communication (the forces working against this, he notes, are political rather than technological).
Facial recognition and other biometrics will be commonplace, he says. High-performance data visualizations that currently require supercomputing power will become commonplace as well, driving technological and scientific innovation at even faster rates. We'll see wider distribution of things like AI and immersive media experiences like viewpoint-independent 3-D. We'll finally have some decent augmented reality glasses.
And what won't happen? We won't be uploading the human mind to a machine by 2020, a la Ray Kurzweil. We won't be cruising the streets in self-driving vehicles, and while robots may be rolling around on the moon, we won't be mining minerals from extraterrestrial sources.
So what will the world look like in 2020? With Liebhold riding shotgun, we took a quick spin through 2020 to see what the future might hold.

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Posted in: 2020,cities,future,world

Algae Airships

 

               
Architect Vincent Callebaut likes to dream about the future. And when he does so he thinks about green architectural and technological solutions that will deal with global warming, greenhouse gases and the rise of ocean and sea levels.
             This Hydrogenase Project is based upon the futuristic thinking that one day there will be bio-hydrogen airships that use sunlight and algae to create H2 for power. This bio-hydrogen photosynthesis will allow these heavier than air, airships to fly partly because of their unique helix design.

             Callebaut states “Able to produce electricity and biofuel without emit CO2 or other polluting substances, the hydrogen especially is nowadays such as a very promising clean energy source. Therefore (its production that respects the environment and in sufficient quantity) is a study theme that interests the biggest scientific international groups.
              “Actually, at the end of the 90s it has been discovered that the private sulphur micro-seaweeds go from the oxygen production (classical photosynthesis) to the hydrogen production. Such as a growing tree uses the solar radiance to manufacture organic material, we aim today at producing by photosynthesis some dihydrogen (i.e. gaseous hydrogen) from living micro-organisms as seaweeds from the Chlamydomonas reinhardtii family that owns enzyme of hydrogenase type.”


              He goes onto say that by the year 2020, “Hydrogenase is thus a jumbo jet vessel (DGP) that flies at an average of 2 000 meters high. This cargo measures almost 400 meters high for 250 000m3. It can carry up to 200 tons of freight at 175 km/h (i.e. twice the speed of a ship and more than one and a half time than the one of a truck). Seven times slower than an airplane, it has an action potential between 5 and 10 000km and re-teach our contemporary travelers the long time of sea cruises and the praise of the slowness. The history of the transports which was until now summarized in a study that reveals to always go faster, is soon finished for the benefit of ‘better travel’ in airship!”

              Callebaut also has an idea for “Lilypad Cities” that will address the need to replace islands that have been overtaken by global warming and sea level rise. Here is a video of his amazing design.
This is not to say that these futuristic design ideas will ever come to fruition. But, the fact that someone is dreaming, developing new ideas and thinking outside the box now may inspire others to come up with more practical solutions for using hydrogen to address climate problems and energy independence in the future.
 www.hydrogencarsnow.com/

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Posted in: algae,future,hydrogen