Lifeboat Foundation EM Launch Competition
The EM Launch Competition grant has been funded. Special thanks go to 2005 Guardian Award winner Ray Kurzweil and to Jim Rutt, inventor of the term "snail mail" and former CEO of Network Solutions, for their generous contributions. You can learn details about this grant at http://lifeboat.com/ex/grant1
Lifeboat Podcast for iTunes
The intent of this proposal is to develop an entertaining and
informative commercial for Lifeboat Foundation that will be a free
podcast on iTunes. The grant page is at http://lifeboat.com/ex/grant2
and you can make donations at https://lifeboat.com/ex/donations
We are looking for someone to pledge a $2,500 matching grant to help
launch this grant!
Bio
Mark Ricketts has been a designer, illustrator, cartoonist, art
director, and creative writer for the last 30 years.
Mark has served as Art Director for Healthcare Magazine, The Academy of
Anti-Aging Medicine, the High Tech Fitness Research Institute and the
National Academy of Sports Medicine.
As an illustrator/designer, his clients have included Playboy magazine,
The University of Illinois, Island Pictures/Taft Entertainment,
Zanhausen Designs, Checkered Past Records and August House Books.
As a comic book artist/writer he has had works published by Caliber
Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Chaos! Comics, Mojo Press and, most recently,
Image Comics.
Mark was the winner of the Klasky-Csupo (Rugrats, Wild Thornberries,
Duckman) script writing competition for 2000 and worked on point of
purchase campaigns for Canfields Beverages, Jolt Cola and Cajun Cola.
He was the voice of "Little Bear" for the children's recording "The
Cumulus Cuties Christmas."
Looking for Grant Requests
At Lifeboat Foundation, we are running low on grant requests. To
encourage grant requests, we have now raised our grant limit from
$10,000 to $25,000.
Submit grant requests at https://lifeboat.com/ex/grants
Scientific Advisory Board News
Ben Wang, developer of buckypaper, and Hao Yan, inventor of the autonomous DNA walker, are some of the recent people to join the Lifeboat Foundation Scientific Advisory Board.
Dr. Ben Wang, Fiie, Fsme, Fwif
The article "FSU researcher's 'buckypaper' is stronger than steel at a
fraction of the weight" said "Working with a material 10 times lighter
than steel — but 250 times stronger — would be a dream come true for any
engineer. If this material also had amazing properties that made it
highly conductive of heat and electricity, it would start to sound like
something out of a science fiction novel. Yet one Florida State
University research group, the Florida Advanced Center for Composite
Technologies (FAC2T), is working to develop real-world applications for
just such a material.
Ben Wang, a professor of industrial engineering at the Florida A&M
University-FSU College of Engineering, serves as director of FAC2T which
works to develop new, high-performance composite materials, as well as
technologies for producing them.
Wang is widely acknowledged as a pioneer in the growing field of
nano-materials science. His main area of research, involving an
extraordinary material known as 'buckypaper', has shown promise in a
variety of applications, including the development of aerospace
structures, the production of more-effective body armor and armored
vehicles, and the construction of next-generation computer displays."
Dr. Ben Wang, FIIE, FSME, FWIF is Simon Ostrach Professor of Industrial
Engineering, and U.S. Department of Energy Massie Chair of Excellence in
Engineering. He currently serves as Assistant Vice President for
Research in Engineering at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering. He is
Fellow of the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE), Society of
Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and World Innovation Foundation (WIF).
In 1998, Ben founded the Florida Advanced Center for Composite
Technologies (FACCT), a research institute sanctioned by the Florida
Board of Education. As a direct result of his developing partnerships
between universities and industries, in 2002, FACCT was selected by the
National Science Foundation to join the NSF Industry/University
Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) program. Through the I/UCRC
program, FACCT partnered with Ohio State University and University of
Wisconsin-Madison to form a synergy with industry and government in
producing stronger, lighter, more versatile composite fibers at a
minimum cost.
He is an editorial board member for the Journal of Multidiscipline
Modeling in Materials and Structures, Composites B Journal,
International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology, Journal of
Manufacturing Systems, and Journal of the Chinese Institute of
Industrial Engineers. He was elected to the US Council of the Japan-US
Conference on Composite Materials in 2005.
He is a coinventor on six U.S. patents. In addition to being the author
or coauthor of more than 130 refereed journal papers and 60 conference
articles, he is coauthor of "Computer-Aided Manufacturing"
(Prentice-Hall) and "Computer-Aided Process Planning" (Elsevier Science
Publishers). These books are currently being used worldwide.
"Computer-Aided Manufacturing" won the IIE 1992 Joint Publishers
Book-of-the-Year Award and the 1992 SME M. Eugene Merchant Manufacturing
Textbook Award.
He coauthored the innovative Amazon download "Robust design of assembly
and machining tolerance allocations". In addition, he edited "Integrated
Product, Process and Enterprise Design" (Manufacturing Systems
Engineering Series), "Concurrent Design of Products, Manufacturing
Processes and Systems" (Automation and Production Systems) and coedited
"Computer-Aided Maintenance: Methodology and Practices" (Manufacturing
Systems Engineering Series).
Ben received his B.S.I.E. degree from Tunghai University (Taiwan) in
1976 and M.S.I.E. in 1985 and Ph.D. in 1986 from the Pennsylvania State
University. All degrees were in Industrial Engineering.
Dr. Hao Yan
The "Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology" by Ray
Kurzweil said that "The ultimate self-replicating molecule from biology
is, of course, DNA. Duke University researchers created molecular
building blocks called 'tiles' out of self-assembling DNA molecules. They were able to control the structure of the resulting assembly,
creating 'nanogrids'. This technique automatically attaches protein
molecules to each nanogrid's cell, which could be used to perform
computing operations. They also demonstrated a chemical process that
coated the DNA nanoribbons with silver to create nanowires. Commenting
on the article in the September 26, 2003, issue of the journal Science,
lead researcher Hao Yan said, 'To use DNA self-assembly to template
protein molecules or other molecules has been sought for years, and this
is the first time it has been demonstrated so clearly.'"
The Technology Research News article "DNA machines take a walk" said
"Unlike the bipedal DNA walkers, which require DNA strands to be added
at each step of the process, the Duke device operates continuously
because none of its components interfere with each other and so can all
be present in the environment. 'Our walker operates in an autonomous
fashion while previous constructions by other groups require... the
adding and removal of fuel DNA strands to drive the walker', said Hao
Yan, a Duke University researcher who is now an assistant professor of
chemistry and biochemistry at Arizona State University.
Hao Yan is Assistant Professor at the ASU Department of Chemistry and
Biochemistry as well as The Biodesign Institute. He received his PhD
degree in Chemistry at NYU in 2001, his Master of Science in Chemistry
at NYU in 1998 and his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry at Shandong
University in 1993. His research interests center on self-assembly of
nanostructures, particularly using DNA as an assembly element. He would
like to use this new technology to develop molecular motors, sensors,
and templates for more complex nanostructural systems. His research
program is highly interdisciplinary, and combines chemistry, biology,
physics, and materials science.
The goal of his research is to achieve programmed design and assembly of
biologically inspired nanomaterials and to explore its applications in
nanoelectronics, controlled macromolecular interactions, and biosensing. His research has been focused on the following four themes:
(1) Bionanotechnology. Design novel DNA nanostructures and implement the
designed structure in the construction of patterned DNA arrays and
nanomechanical devices. Develop modular methods to achieve biomimetic
molecular motors.
(2) Nanoelectronics. Utilize rationally designed DNA nanostructures to
template nanoelectronic components such as nanoparticles or carbon
nanotubes into functional nanodevices.
(3) Macromolecule structure elucidation. Develop methods to
self-assemble 2D and 3D protein arrays for structural determination
using electron microscopy or X-ray crystallography.
(4) Biomolecular imaging. Investigate protein — DNA interactions using
high-resolution imaging technology such as atomic force microscopy and
electron microscopy. Major techniques used in the research include:
DNA/RNA/protein manipulation (gel electrophoresis, labeling,
hybridization, PCR and footprinting, cloning), electronbeam lithography,
atomic force microscopy (AFM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM),
transmission electron microscopy (TEM), electron microscopy (EM),
fluorescence spectroscopy, UV-Vis, circular dichroism (CD), and chemical
synthesis.
Hao has written for numerous publications, has completed many conference
presentations, and was coinventor of the patent "A Polynucleic Acid
Nanomechanical Device Controlled by Hybridization Topology" filed in
2003 and is coinventor of the patent "Paranemic Cohesion of
Topologically-close DNA Molecules" whose application is being processed.
