Smart Economy

From copper wires to superconducting wires through nanodots

According to March 30th 2006 issue of New Scientist, Nanodots may unlock power of superconducting wires

The next generation of superconducting wires, which could operate efficiently at the high temperatures needed to make applications such as levitating trains feasible, has been created by researchers.

For 20 years, researchers have worked to develop the perfect high-temperature superconducting wires to replace today's copper-based power grid.  But the secret, it now seems, is to build flawed ones.  The key may be to position non-conducting nanodots at strategic points within the wire.

Electrical current flowing through superconducting materials experiences virtually no resistance, enabling wires of the material to carry high current loads very efficiently.  However, such a powerful current will disrupt itself because it produces a strong, fluctuating magnetic field.

By depositing lines of 10-nanometre-wide, non-conducting dots of barium zirconate at fixed distances along the wire, researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tennessee, US, have found a way to disrupt current flow in just the right way to tone down these fluctuations.

Killer App:

"However, Selvamanickam says, the "killer app" for these wires will be as the infrastructure of tomorrow's electrical grid.  A typical modern electrical grid based on copper wires can ferry current along with just under 90% efficiency.  A grid based on an infrastructure of high-temperature superconducting wires could be more than 97% efficient."

Barriers:

Right now, that is too small a change to merit the cost of installation, says Paul Grant, one of the patent holders of YBCO and a consultant for the US government's department of energy.

"This change, in the end, is going to be moved by governmental policy," he says.  "So it may be politics now that's slowing things down more than technology."

Not that the remaining technological challenges are insignificant.  The method Oak Ridge used to produce the wires only spins out lengths measured in inches, rather than miles.  There are two techniques for producing longer wires, but it is unclear how they could accommodate the inclusion of nanodots.

ETA 2015 -2020 ? 

See Full Story >>

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Success Factors for Complex Collaborative Smart Technology Innovations> Designing an Innovation Ecosystem for your Smart Technology

Problem:

The success of any smart technology innovation is increasingly dependent not on the lone inventor but on a complex collaborative innovation effort among various innovators and other stakeholders along the value chain.

The less then spectacular market entry of High-definition televisions (HDTVs) can be a good predictor of what can go wrong with other complex smart technology launches and the difference between launch success, a mediocre appearance on the market or a total category failure.

Smart Solution: Innovation Ecosystems

According to Ron Adner who writes in the current issue of Harvard Business Review (HBR)*"( see Innovation Ecosystems ):

"High-definition televisions (HDTVs) should, by now, be a huge success.  Philips, Sony, and Thompson invested billions of dollars to develop TV sets with astonishing picture quality.  From a technology perspective, they've succeeded: Console manufacturers have been ready for the mass market since the early 1990s.  Yet, the category has been an unmitigated failure because critical complements such as studio production equipment were not developed or adopted in time.  Underperforming complements have left console producers in the position of offering a Ferrari in a world without gasoline or highways--an admirable engineering feat, but not one that creates value for customers. "

The HDTV story exemplifies the promise and peril of innovation ecosystems--the collaborative arrangements through which firms combine their individual offers into a coherent, customer-facing solution. 

When they work, innovation ecosystems allow companies to create value that no one firm could have created alone. 

The benefits of these systems are real.  But for many organizations, the attempt at ecosystem innovation has been a costly failure.  This is because, along with new opportunities, innovation ecosystems also present a new set of risks that can brutally derail a firm's best efforts. 

Innovation ecosystems are characterized by three fundamental types of risk:

1. initiative risks--the familiar uncertainties of managing a project;
2. interdependence risks--the uncertainties of coordinating with complementary innovators; and
3. integration risks--the uncertainties presented by the adoption process across the value chain.  Firms that assess ecosystem risks holistically and systematically will be able to establish more realistic expectations, develop a more refined set of environmental contingencies, and arrive at a more robust innovation strategy. 

Collectively, these actions will lead to more effective implementation and more profitable smart technology innovations.

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

The Future of the Science of Science

The Edge.org blog features a thought-provoking discussion on the future of science entitled SPECULATIONS ON THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE by Kevin Kelly and reviewed by Stewart Brand

According to Brand:

Science will continue to surprise us with what it discovers and creates; then it will astound us by devising new methods to surprises us.  At the core of science's self-modification is technology.  New tools enable new structures of knowledge and new ways of discovery.  The achievement of science is to know new things; the evolution of science is to know them in new ways.  What evolves is less the body of what we know and more the nature of our knowing.

Science, says Kevin Kelly, is the process of changing how we know things.  It is the foundation our culture and society.  While civilizations come and go, science grows steadily onward.  It does this by watching itself.  Recursion is the essence of science.  For example, science papers cite other science papers, and that process of research pointing at itself invokes a whole higher level, the emergent shape of citation space.  Recursion always does that.  It is the engine of scientific progress and thus of the progress of society.  A particularly fruitful way to look at the history of science is to study how science itself has changed over time, with an eye to what that trajectory might suggest about the future. 

Kelly chronicled a sequence of new recursive devices in science...

• 2000 BC - First text indexes
• 200 BC - Cataloged library (at Alexandria)
• 1000 AD - Collaborative encyclopedia
• 1590 - Controlled experiment (Sir Francis Bacon)
• 1600 - Laboratory
• 1609 - Telescopes and microscopes
• 1650 - Society of experts
• 1665 - Repeatability (Robert Boyle)
• 1665 - Scholarly journals
• 1675 - Peer review
• 1687 - Hypothesis/prediction (Isaac Newton)
• 1920 - Falsifiability (Karl Popper)
• 1926 - Randomized design (Ronald Fisher)
• 1937 - Controlled placebo
• 1946 - Computer simulation
• 1950 - Double blind experiment
• 1962 - Study of scientific method (Thomas Kuhn)

• 2005 - Defined Benefit Funding  (like the DARPA Grand Challenge Contest)           [my contribution to this list-Walter Derzko]
• 2005 - Computer Aided Reasoning generating multiple future scenarios (CARS)                   [my contribution to this list-Walter Derzko]
• 2006 - WikiScience - perpetually refined papers with thousands of co-authors                       [my contribution to this list-Walter Derzko]
• 2010 - tools for managing paradox, contradiction, anomalies in Science            [my contribution to this list-Walter Derzko]
• Between now and ??? according to Kelly 

( Compiled Negative Results,Triple Blind Experiments, Combinatorial Sweep Exploration, Evolutionary Search, Multiple Hypothesis Matrix (similar to CARS), Pattern seaking software, Pattern Augmentation, Adaptive Real Time Experiments, AI Proofs  (Artificial intelligence will derive and check the logic of an experiment), Wiki-Science, Defined Benefit Funding; Zillionics (dealing with zillions of data flows; Ubiquitous always-on sensors in bodies and the environment); Deep Simulations; Hyper-analysis Mapping

Projecting forward, Kelly had five things to say about the next 100 years in science...

1) There will be more change in the next 50 years of science than in the last 400 years.

2) This will be a century of biology. 

It is the domain with the most scientists, the most new results, the most economic value, the most ethical importance, and the most to learn.

3) Computers will keep leading to new ways of science. 

Information is growing by 66% per year while physical production grows by only 7% per year.  The data volume is growing to such levels of "zillionics" that we can expect science to compile vast combinatorial libraries, to run combinatorial sweeps through possibility space (as Stephen Wolfram has done with cellular automata), and to run multiple competing hypotheses in a matrix.  Deep realtime simulations and hypothesis search will drive data collection in the real world.

4) New ways of knowing will emerge. 

"Wikiscience" is leading to perpetually refined papers with a thousand authors.  Distributed instrumentation and experiment, thanks to miniscule transaction cost, will yield smart-mob, hive-mind science operating "fast, cheap, & out of control."  Negative results will have positive value (there is already a "Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine").  Triple-blind experiments will emerge through massive non-invasive statistical data collection--- no one, not the subjects or the experimenters, will realize an experiment was going on until later.  (In the Q&A, one questioner predicted the coming of the zero-author paper, generated wholly by computers.

5) Science will create new levels of meaning. 

The Internet already is made of one quintillion transistors, a trillion links, a million emails per second, 20 exabytes of memory.  It is approaching the level of the human brain and is doubling every year, while the brain is not.  It is all becoming effectively one machine.  And we are the machine.  "Science is the way we surprise God," said Kelly.  "That's what we're here for."  Our moral obligation is to generate possibilities, to discover the infinite ways, however complex and high-dimension, to play the infinite game.  It will take all possible species of intelligence in order for the universe to understand itself.  Science, in this way, is holy.  It is a divine trip.

N.B. KEVIN KELLY helped launch Wired magazine in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999.  He is now Editor-At-Large for Wired. From 1984 to 1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review.  In the late 80s, Kelly conceived and oversaw the publication of four versions of the Whole Earth Catalogs.  He was a founding board member of the WELL.

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Gold nanoparticles emit intense heat

Image on the Left

A cluster of gold nanoparticles 50 nanometers in diameter created a much larger crater in the ice sample, shown here.  The cluster is represented in this image by a small black dot that is actually 100 times the actual size of the nanoparticles.

Nanoparticles of gold can act as tiny, precise and powerful heaters, which potentially could be used in biomedical applications, according to a new study.

When stimulated with the right frequency of laser light, a small collection of metal nanoparticles, such as gold, can heat an area up to 1,000 times its size, according to Ohio University scientists Hugh Richardson and Sasha Govorov.

The heating properties were observed in ice, water and a polymer shell that was designed to mimic material in biological systems.  Though the ice did not melt when heated by low-intensity laser alone, it dissolved once a gold nanoparticle was embedded, said the scientists, whose findings have been published online by the journal Nano Letters.

"The gold particle is 50 nanometers, which is 200,000 times smaller than an object 1 centimeter in size," Govorov said.

The process not only generates a considerable amount of heat at much larger scale than the nanoparticle, but also is very precise, the researchers report.  By using bio-linkers, the nanoparticles can be designed to affect specific targets.  Bio-linkers are special, sticky molecules that are created to link with only certain types of cells.  In a biomedical application, a few gold nanoparticles could be used to generate heat to impact a single macro-scale object, such as a tumor cell.

"What's amazing is that we're taking particles that you can't even image with a light microscope, and all of the sudden they cause a huge change in a macroscopic system," said Richardson, whose project was funded by Ohio University's NanoBioTechnology Initiative, one of three major research priorities of the institution.

"The scientists will collaborate with other researchers to continue to test and design efficient nanoscale heaters in more complicated systems, such as in the cells from living organisms," Govorov said.

Richardson is a professor of chemistry and Govorov is an associate professor of theoretical physics at Ohio University.  Other collaborators in the project include Zachary Hickman, Alyssa Thomas, Wei Zhang and Martin Kordesch, all of Ohio University.

Press Release

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment	X
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	X
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment	X

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Discovery > New Human Retrovirus Originated in Mice

Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers and their colleagues have discovered a new retrovirus in humans that is closely related to a cancer-causing virus found in mice. 

Their findings describe the first documented cases of human infection with a retrovirus that is native to rodents.

The researchers discovered the virus in patients with a rare type of prostate cancer, raising the possibility that increased susceptibility to viral infection may play a role in development of some cancers. 

The patients in the study have a genetic mutation that compromised some of their natural defenses against viral infection.  However, they emphasized that their findings by no means implicate the virus, dubbed XMRV, in causing prostate cancer.  The virus may well have flourished as a result of the failure of the defense mechanism; and other factors such as chronic inflammation may play a more direct role in the cancer.

"This finding was a big surprise because most of these endogenous viral genomes have undergone such mutation and deletion that they are incapable of giving rise to viruses any more."  said Don Ganem

The research is published in the March 30, 2006, issue of PloS Pathogens.

Press Release

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Pulling & Pushing Assumptions to the Surface

Over the past three  days, I've been attended one of the best organized workshops on Foresight, Scenario planning and gaming that I have ever attended.

It was run by the Jack Smith and his competent team of helpers and experts in the Canadian Federal Government in Ottawa.

Although this Foresight exercise was focused on security, safety and emerging Science and Technologies (S&T) that we will likely see in 2015 and 2020, many  participants at the end of the exercise had concerns about issues that were more generic in  nature and common to all sector--the military, the government, the business world  and the NGO community.

One concern was: in a rapidly changing world ( such as the one we are in today, where smart technologies are being introduced daily, and under most people's radar screen), how do we identify the mostly tacit assumptions and worldviews that our managers, leaders and executives operate under when they are make decisions.

Everyone across all disciplines seems to be struggling with sensing, sense-making and what I call sense-portraying.

Here's an 8 step framework of a workshop that I created on the topic.

What do we take for Granted (WDWTFG) Pulling & Pushing Assumptions to the Surface  © 1985-2006 

by Walter Derzko

Stage	Description	Key issues and questions	Process
1.0	Situational Analysis	Mapping traditional and current worldviews and surfacing emerging anomalies, paradoxes and contradictions. What makes us increasingly uncomfortable? What keeps us up at night?	Individual interviews and group exercise
2.0	Assumption Surfacing	Mapping individual tacit and explicit assumptions, Why do we think the way we do?	Individual interviews
3.0	Group & Team Comparison	What’s the mental landscape of our team, our group, our corporate culture?	Group exercise
4.0	Assumption Testing	Testing our Assumption Landscape against the above anomalies, paradoxes and contradictions	Group exercise
5.0	Assumption Validation,	The first Step. Which assumptions are still valid (robust among various worldviews) and which ones seem unstable, questionable or challengeable?	Group exercise
6.0	Assumption Challenge	Moving forward. What cognitive, lateral thinking skills can we use to challenge our previous assumptions and design new ones? Where to next?	The Idea Lab exercise
7.0	Assumption Design & Reaffirmation	Creating the new path forward, The  new worldview? Sensing and Sense-making and Sense-portraying; Designing the new narrative and  the new story line	Group exercise
8.0	Assumption Fitting and Balancing	Managing In the Transition; Living in a  world of parallel /dual or multiple worldviews and assumptions	Group discussion and breakouts

If your organization is struggling with changing worldviews and hidden assumptions, send me an email.

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Smart Nanoporous 'sponge' removes mercury other heavy metals from offshore produced waters

Problem:

Contaminated water resulting from offshore oil and gas platform drilling contains mercury and other toxic heavy metals.  Mercury concentrations in these retrieved waters can be as high 2,000 parts per billion, therefore they need to be treated before they can be safely discharged to the environment.  The complex mixture of constituents including salts and petroleum hydrocarbons presents a challenge for mercury removal using currently available conventional technologies.

Smart Solution: Smart Nano Sponge

Researchers at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) have developed a novel nanoporous sorbent thiol-SAMMS, or thiol-functionalized Self Assembled Monolayers on Mesoporous Supports, to specifically remove mercury and other contaminants such as cadmium and lead from produced waters and condensate liquids from natural gas.  Working with a filtration equipment company in Texas, PNNL recently demonstrated that thiol-SAMMS was effective in removing more than 99 percent of mercury from gas condensate liquids containing approximately 800 ppb mercury.

The thiol-SAMMS technology is a recipient of a R&D 100 award and recently received the 2006 Federal Laboratory Consortium award for successful technology transfer for commercial use.

ETA:  2006

Steward Advanced Materials in Chattanooga, Tenn., is now licensed to commercially produce thiol-SAMMS.

SAMMSTM is a registered trademark.

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment	x
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	x
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Carbon nanotube absorption measured in worms, cancer cells

Problem

One of the key barriers that the fledging nanotech industry has to overcome is the fear of health effects from unintentional absorbtion of nanoparticles.

Smart Solution

University of Michigan researchers have discovered how to measure the absorption of multi-walled carbon nanoparticles into worms and cancer cells, a breakthrough that will revolutionize scientists' understanding of how the particles impact the living environment.

A team led by U-M chemical engineering professor Walter J. Weber Jr.  Tagged multi-walled carbon nanotubes-one of the most promising nanomaterials developed to date-with the carbon-14 radioactive isotope, which enabled the nanotubes to be tracked and quantified as they were absorbed into living cells.

Researchers used cancer cells called HeLa cells, and also measured nanotube uptake in an earthworm and an aquatic type of worm.

"Carbon nanotubes were discovered in 1991, and hold great promise in several areas, including pharmacology and for hydrogen storage in fuel cells, Weber said.  But despite their promise, a big problem is that it's not known how multi-walled carbon nanotubes will impact the living environment, Weber said." 

"While everyone is concerned about this issue, there has been no really adequate way before this development to examine the extent to which they may get into human cells, and what will result if they do," Weber said.  "Nobody has been able to do quantitative research on this because no method to measure them has existed until now.  We were able to detect them, but had no way to determine how much was there."  In tagging the nanotubes with the isotope, researchers found that about 74 percent of the nanotubes added to a culture of cancer cells were assimilated by the cells after 15 minutes, and 89 percent of nanotubes assimilated after six hours, according to the paper.  And the uptake was nearly irreversible, with only about 0.5 percent of the nanotubes releases from the cell after 12 hours.  It's important to understand if and how the multi-walled carbon nanotubes accumulate in living cells, because before the materials can become widely used in society scientists must understand if they'll pass through the food webs and possibly threaten the health of ecosystems and lead to uptake by humans, Petersen said.  "This approach has virtually limitless potential for facilitating important future investigations of the behaviors of carbon nanotubes in environmental and biomedical applications," Petersen said.

The findings were presented Sunday at the 231st American Chemical Society National Meeting in Atlanta.  Co-authors of the presentation are graduate student Elijah Petersen and postdoctoral research assistant Qingguo Huang.

Full story >>

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment	x
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	x
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

How to tell a fender bender from a serious pile-up?

How to tell a fender bender from a serious pile-up?

Problem

Automatic crash notification systems that broadcast alerts to call centres when a car has crashed need to get much smarter, according to researcher in Boston.  Such systems risk wasting paramedics' time who could arrive to the scene only to find a scraped fender.

Smart Solution

The team say it's possible for on-board computers to process information during a crash to find the likelihood of head injury.  This should be information that is sent in the broadcast alerts.

It should be possible for a car's computer to give a much clearer idea of how serious a crash is, say researchers

The latest issue of New Scientist magazine contends:

"At issue are the automatic crash notification systems (ACNSs) being installed in some top-of-the-range cars in the US and Japan by General Motors, Toyota and others.  These sense when the airbag is activated and use a cellphone link to broadcast the car's GPS location to a call centre.  There, an operator contacts the driver through a dashboard loudspeaker and microphone to ask if they need help.  Scientists say there is a fundamental problem with this notion.  "Often, the driver cannot answer because they either have a head injury or are outside shouting at the other driver," researchers say.  Paramedics sent to the scene may then find only a fender scrape and an argument.

ACNSs need to be able to not only relay the location of a crash, but also the possibility of severe injury.  Researchers have demonstrated that the sensor and recording technology built into many modern cars can help predict the likelihood of critical head injury.  From an analysis of car-crash data collected by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration between 1993 and 2001, scientists found four factors that correlated strongly with a driver head injury: whether they are wearing a seat belt, vehicle rollover, whether the driver is ejected from the car, and the rate of deceleration during the crash.  Information on all these factors is already collected by the on-board computers of many top-of-the line cars.  The computer could process this information and provide an assessment of the likelihood of head injury in the broadcast message."

See Full Story >>

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment	X
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	X
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations	X
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page

Smart biochemical metal detector & biosensor measures the start of the disease process

Smart biochemical metal detector & biosensor measures the start of the disease process

Problem:

Levels of free zinc available inside body cells have been implicated in Alzheimer's disease, stroke, and other health problems.  Until now, researchers have been unable to measure those levels in healthy cells

Smart Solution:

Now, a group of scientists have developed an ultra-sensitive biosensor that can do so, opening the way toward deeper understanding of how the body regulates zinc levels.

Zinc may be a familiar dietary supplement to millions of health-conscious people, but it remains a mystery metal to scientists who study zinc's role in Alzheimer's disease, stroke and other health problems.  They are just beginning to fathom how the body keeps levels of zinc under the precise control that spells the difference between health and disease. 

Researchers now have developed a biochemical metal detector to help crack the mystery.  It is a biosensor that has yielded the first measurements of the tiny amounts of zinc ordinarily present inside living cells. 

"The question of how much zinc is available in a cell has emerged at the forefront of chemical biology," Amy R. Barrios, Ph.D., of the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, wrote in an accompanying Point of View in ACS Chemical Biology.

Barrios described the new research as "a critical step forward," and predicted "many more exciting breakthroughs" in measuring levels of metals in human cells. 

Just 2-3 grams of zinc (the weight of a penny coin) exist in the entire human body. 

The metal is a key building block in enzymes and other substances involved in functioning of the nervous system, the immune response, and the reproductive system. 

"We believe this new technique can help us understand how zinc is involved in plaque formation in Alzheimer's disease, how prolonged seizures or stroke kill brain cells, and how the cell normally allocates zinc to different proteins," say researchers.

Scientists explained that almost all zinc inside cells is incorporated into proteins, where it plays many vital roles, such as helping to read the genetic code of DNA. 

"We know that if there is much zinc in the cell that is not attached to protein or otherwise encapsulated - so-called 'free zinc' -the cell is stressed or may be undergoing programmed cell death." stress researchers.

"  In the past, scientists could only measure the relatively high levels of zinc in sick cells.  The new sensing technology can measure very low free zinc concentrations in healthy cells."

"This is an important discovery," said Sarah B. Tegen, Ph.D., managing editor of ACS Chemical Biology.  "We need to know how the body controls levels of zinc inside cells.  Too much zinc can kill nerve cells.  With too little, nerve cells will not work properly. 

Source: The study appears in the current issue of ACS Chemical Biology, published by the American Chemical Society

Full press release >>

Intelligence Level:  Smart biochemical metal detector & biosensor measures the start of the disease process

Intelligence Level (1)	Adapting:	Modifying Behaviour to Fit the Environment
Intelligence Level (2)	Sensing:	Bringing Awareness to Everyday Things	X
Intelligence Level (3)	Inferring:	Drawing Conclusions from Rules and Observations
Intelligence Level (4)	Learning:	Using Experience to Improve Performance
Intelligence Level (5)	Anticipating:	Thinking and Reasoning about What to Do Next
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-creating,	Ability to reproduce itself, regenerate
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-organizing	Ability for components to self-organize
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (A)	Ability to replicate components
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (B)	Ability to process information
Intelligence Level (6)	Self-sustaining (C)	Ability to steadily consume energy from the environment

 

© 2005-2006

Walter Derzko

Expert, Consultant and Guest Speaker on emerging Smart Technologies, Strategic Planning, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "

To explore the opportunities and threats of any new smart technology in your industry - Contact Me

.....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"

- old Japanese proverb

P. S. if this is your first visit to my blog, please go to our Welcome page