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Category: nanotechnology – Page 224

As transhumanists, we aim at the so-called continuity of subjectivity by the means of advanced technologies. Death in a common sense of the word becomes optional and cybernetic immortality is within our reach during our lifetimes. By definition, posthumanism (I choose to call it ‘cyberhumanism’) is to replace transhumanism at the center stage circa 2035. By then, mind uploading could become a reality with gradual neuronal replacement, rapid advancements in Strong AI, massively parallel computing, and nanotechnology allowing us to directly connect our brains to the Cloud-based infrastructure of the Global Brain. Via interaction with our AI assistants, the GB will know us better than we know ourselves in all respects, so mind-transfer, or rather “mind migration,” for billions of enhanced humans would be seamless, sometime by mid-century.

By 2040, mind-uploading may become a norm and a fact of life with a “critical mass” of uploads and cybernetic immortality. Any container with a sufficiently integrated network of information patterns, with a certain optimal complexity, especially complex dynamical systems with biological or artificial brains (say, the coming AGIs) could be filled with consciousness at large in order to host an individual “reality cell,” “unit,” or a “node” of consciousness. This kind of individuated unit of consciousness is always endowed with free will within the constraints of the applicable set of rules (“physical laws”), influenced by the larger consciousness system dynamics. Isn’t too naïve to presume that Universal Consciousness would instantiate phenomenality only in the form of “bio”-logical avatars?

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A new design for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) developed by a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may hold the key to overcoming a long-standing limitation in the light sources’ efficiency. The concept, demonstrated with microscopic LEDs in the lab, achieves a dramatic increase in brightness as well as the ability to create laser light—all characteristics that could make it valuable in a range of large-scale and miniaturized applications.

The team, which also includes scientists from the University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, detailed its work in a paper published today in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. Their device shows an increase in brightness of 100 to 1,000 times over conventional tiny, submicron-sized LED designs.

“It’s a new architecture for making LEDs,” said NIST’s Babak Nikoobakht, who conceived the new design. “We use the same materials as in conventional LEDs. The difference in ours is their shape.”

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Most of the time, a material’s color stems from its chemical properties. Different atoms and molecules absorb different wavelengths of light; the remaining wavelengths are the “intrinsic colors” that we perceive when they are reflected back to our eyes.

So-called “” works differently; it’s a property of physics, not chemistry. Microscopic patterns on some surfaces reflect light in such a way that different wavelengths collide and interfere with one another. For example, a peacock’s feathers are made of transparent protein fibers that have no intrinsic color themselves, yet we see shifting, iridescent blue, green and purple hues because of the nanoscale structures on their surfaces.

As we become more adept at manipulating structure at the smallest scales, however, these two types of color can combine in even more surprising ways. Penn Engineers have now developed a system of nanoscale semiconductor strips that uses structural color interactions to eliminate the strips’ intrinsic color entirely.

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What if you could solve two of Earth’s biggest problems in one stroke? UC Riverside engineers have developed a way to recycle plastic waste, such as soda or water bottles, into a nanomaterial useful for energy storage.

Mihri and Cengiz Ozkan and their students have been working for years on creating improved materials from sustainable sources, such as glass bottles, beach sand, Silly Putty, and portabella mushrooms. Their latest success could reduce plastic pollution and hasten the transition to 100% clean .

“Thirty percent of the global car fleet is expected to be electric by 2040, and high cost of raw battery materials is a challenge,” said Mihri Ozkan, a professor of electrical engineering in UCR’s Marlan and Rosemary Bourns College of Engineering. “Using from landfill and upcycling could lower the total cost of batteries while making the battery production sustainable on top of eliminating plastic pollution worldwide.”

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The terrorist or psychopath of the future, however, will have not just the Internet or drones—called “slaughterbots” in this video from the Future of Life Institute—but also synthetic biology, nanotechnology, and advanced AI systems at their disposal. These tools make wreaking havoc across international borders trivial, which raises the question: Will emerging technologies make the state system obsolete? It’s hard to see why not. What justifies the existence of the state, English philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued, is a “social contract.” People give up certain freedoms in exchange for state-provided security, whereby the state acts as a neutral “referee” that can intervene when people get into disputes, punish people who steal and murder, and enforce contracts signed by parties with competing interests.

The trouble is that if anyone anywhere can attack anyone anywhere else, then states will become—and are becoming—unable to satisfy their primary duty as referee.

In The Future of Violence, Benjamin Wittes and Gabriella Blum discuss a disturbing hypothetical scenario. A lone actor in Nigeria, “home to a great deal of spamming and online fraud activity,” tricks women and teenage girls into downloading malware that enables him to monitor and record their activity, for the purposes of blackmail. The real story involved a California man who the FBI eventually caught and sent to prison for six years, but if he had been elsewhere in the world he might have gotten away with it. Many countries, as Wittes and Blum note, “have neither the will nor the means to monitor cybercrime, prosecute offenders, or extradite suspects to the United States.”

Technology is, in other words, enabling criminals to target anyone anywhere and, due to democratization, increasingly at scale. Emerging bio-, nano-, and cyber-technologies are becoming more and more accessible. The political scientist Daniel Deudney has a word for what can result: “omniviolence.” The ratio of killers to killed, or “K/K ratio,” is falling. For example, computer scientist Stuart Russell has vividly described how a small group of malicious agents might engage in omniviolence: “A very, very small quadcopter, one inch in diameter can carry a one-or two-gram shaped charge,” he says. “You can order them from a drone manufacturer in China. You can program the code to say: ‘Here are thousands of photographs of the kinds of things I want to target.’ A one-gram shaped charge can punch a hole in nine millimeters of steel, so presumably you can also punch a hole in someone’s head. You can fit about three million of those in a semi-tractor-trailer. You can drive up I-95 with three trucks and have 10 million weapons attacking New York City. They don’t have to be very effective, only 5 or 10% of them have to find the target.” Manufacturers will be producing millions of these drones, available for purchase just as with guns now, Russell points out, “except millions of guns don’t matter unless you have a million soldiers. You need only three guys to write the program and launch.” In this scenario, the K/K ratio could be perhaps 3/1,000,000, assuming a 10-percent accuracy and only a single one-gram shaped charge per drone.

Will emerging technologies make the state system obsolete? It’s hard to see why not.

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NUS physicists have demonstrated the control of magnetism in a magnetic semiconductor via electrical means, paving the way for novel spintronic devices.

Semiconductors are the heart of information-processing technologies. In the form of a transistor, semiconductors act as a switch for , allowing switching between binary states zero and one. Magnetic materials, on the other hand, are an essential component for information storage devices. They exploit the spin degree of freedom of electrons to achieve memory functions. Magnetic semiconductors are a unique class of materials that allow control of both the electrical charge and spin, potentially enabling information processing and memory operations in a single platform. The key challenge is to control the electron spins, or magnetisation, using electric fields, in a similar way a transistor controls electrical charge. However, magnetism typically has weak dependence on electric fields in magnetic semiconductors, and the effect is often limited to .

A research team led by Prof Goki EDA from the Department of Physics and the Department of Chemistry, and the Centre for Advanced 2-D Materials, NUS, in collaboration with Prof Hidekazu KUREBAYASHI from the London Centre for Nanotechnology, University College London, discovered that the magnetism of a magnetic semiconductor, Cr2Ge2Te6, shows exceptionally strong response to applied electric fields. With electric fields applied, the material was found to exhibit ferromagnetism (a state in which electron spins spontaneously align) at temperatures up to 200 K (−73°C). At such temperatures, ferromagnetic order is normally absent in this material.

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Circa 2018 could be used on viruses too :3.

On application of a focused magnetic field, zinc-doped iron oxide nanoparticles with targeting antibodies attached are shown to activate cell death signalling in a spatially controlled manner. This triggering of apoptosis signalling, via the magnetically activated aggregation of receptors, is observed in both in vitro and in vivo systems.

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Imagine tiny crystals that “blink” like fireflies and can convert carbon dioxide, a key cause of climate change, into fuels.

A Rutgers-led team has created ultra-small dioxide crystals that exhibit unusual “blinking” behavior and may help to produce methane and other fuels, according to a study in the journal Angewandte Chemie. The crystals, also known as nanoparticles, stay charged for a long time and could benefit efforts to develop quantum computers.

“Our findings are quite important and intriguing in a number of ways, and more research is needed to understand how these exotic crystals work and to fulfill their potential,” said senior author Tewodros (Teddy) Asefa, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. He’s also a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the School of Engineering.

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Washington State University researchers have made a key advance in solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs) that could make the highly energy-efficient and low-polluting technology a more viable alternative to gasoline combustion engines for powering cars.

Led by Ph.D. graduate Qusay Bkour and Professor Su Ha in the Gene and Linda Voiland School of Chemical Engineering and Bioengineering, the researchers have developed a unique and inexpensive nanoparticle catalyst that allows the to convert logistic liquid fuels such as gasoline to electricity without stalling out during the electrochemical process. The research, featured in the journal, Applied Catalysis B: Environmental, could result in highly efficient gasoline-powered cars that produce low carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

“People are very concerned about energy, the environment, and global warming,” said Bkour. “I’m very excited because we can have a solution to the energy problem that also reduces the emissions that cause global warming.”

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