Nanogirl news~as such
*FLOATING SMART BALLS IN SPACE
Don’t swat that fly buzzing around your head – it might just be a robot!
NASA scientists are said to be working on Star Wars-like personal robots
that astronauts will use in space. They look like those floating orbing that
tested Luke Skywalker's light-saber skills in Star Wars. But that’s where
the similarities end. NASA’s flying robots will monitor life-support
systems, take pictures, and fix minor problems. They’ll also have a range of
sensors on them, including sonar to keep them from bumping into things. And
they’ll be smart – able to respond to voice commands and offload complex
processing to the spacecraft's central computers. And no, it can’t play
light-saber games.
*THE BLOCK BOX INVADES CARS
The infamous airplane black box is getting closer to home – and it could
change everything from accident investigation to the insurance business. The
Black Box, which is actually neon orange in colour, is a very rugged
recording machine that logs flight data and communications in an airplane.
If that plane crashes, investigators recover the black box and can trace
what happened. Well, you may already have a Black Box in your car! General
Motors has been quietly installing black boxes into 1999 Buick Century,
Cadillac Eldorado, and other high-end cars. The data includes the car's
speed, if seat belts were worn, and if the brakes were used prior to the
crash. While everyone agrees it’s a great idea for finding out why a car
crashed, privacy advocates are concerned a device that can remember
everything might be used improperly. For instance, could someone else use
your data to prove that you caused an accident? Time will tell.
(From Tod Maffin's Future Files)
*Scientists compose HIV-suppressing compound
Kyodo News Service/Associated Press
SENDAI, July 17 (Kyodo) -- A group of scientists said Saturday it has
composed a nucleic acid compound which effectively prevents AIDS-causing HIV
from multiplying.
A research group led by Hiroshi Orui, professor at Tohoku University, and
Shiro Shigeta, professor at Fukushima Medical College, said the compound was
especially effective against multiple-drug resistant HIV, whose infection is
particularly hard to fight.
The composition of the compound is expected to lead to development of new
AIDS-fighting drugs. The scientists also said they are preparing to conduct
joint research on the substance with the U.S. National Institutes of Health.
Orui composed 4'ethynyl-2'deoxycytidine, a nucleic acid compound similar to
azidothymidine (AZT), a typical anti-AIDS drug.
Shigeta added the composed chemical to multi-drug resistant HIV, and found
the substance synthesized by Orui to be about 50,000 times as effective as
AZT in stopping the virus from multiplying.
Mixtures of several chemicals that arrest the action of HIV are now
routinely prescribed for people with HIV as the most effective way to combat
AIDS, but HIV often quickly becomes resistant to some of the chemicals.
The compound's efficacy for ordinary HIV proved to be about five times that
of AZT, Shigeta said.
HIV, whose genes are carried by ribonucleic acid (RNA), not by DNA which
serves as a carrier of most creatures' genetic information, takes over
healthy cells by weaving its viral genetic material in with the cell's DNA,
and rapidly makes multiple copies of itself.
An HIV enzyme called reverse transcriptase which converts HIV's RNA into
DNA, helps the virus crawl into human cells.
Orui found that AZT and other nucleic acids inhibit the enzyme from
functioning.
Orui said he believes the new compound works well for multi-drug resistant
HIV, because it functions differently from AZT. He said he hopes it would
help develop nontoxic anti-AIDS drugs.
Treatment using several drugs often causes toxic side effects.
The researchers are scheduled to report on their findings at a symposium on
nucleic acid chemistry to be held in Maebashi, Gunma Prefecture, in
November.
*Letter: Threat of gene tests
The Guardian
The recommendations of the human genetics advisory commission (Go- ahead for
genetic testing on employees, July 15) may lead to a genetic underclass
excluded from work and have a negative impact on wider public health goals,
if, as they suggest, responsibility for health and safety shifts from the
employer to the individual employee.
The HGAC argues that employers should test employees for genetic variations
that would put them at increased risk of developing a disease if they worked
in a particular job. What would this mean in practice? For example,
approximately one in 20 people who are heavily exposed to asbestos will
develop the rare lung cancer, mesothelioma. If we follow the recommendations
of the HGAC, then employers would be encouraged to identify and exclude
those workers with a predisposition to lung cancer, instead of being obliged
to remove or reduce carcinogenic substances from the workplace.
Though the HGAC says genetic data should be covered by data protection,
elsewhere you warn that new technology is threatening personal privacy in
the workplace. Without statutory protection against discrimination (the
disability discrimination act does not cover predisposition to a disease),
workers could be excluded from employment in the industries for which they
are skilled. Fear of potential discrimination may also deter people from
taking genetic tests of benefit to them and their families.
Jo Lenaghan Senior research fellow, IPPR
*Date: Posted 7/19/99
UCLA Chemists, Hewlett-Packard Labs Colleagues Report Significant Advances
Toward Chemical Computers
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/990719082047.htm
*Self-Assembly Of New Microstructured Material Defies Textbook Physics
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/07/990719081526.htm
*Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Researchers suggest new mechanism to explain DNA charge transfer process
A research team from the Georgia Institute of Technology has proposed a new
explanation for how electronic charge transfer occurs in strands of DNA. In
the July 20 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
the researchers report that electrical charge moves through the DNA bases by
creating temporary distortions in their structure as the strands naturally
flex.
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/gatech-rsn071599.html
*Meteor contains new form of carbon
(CNN) -- A new form of carbon previously made in the laboratory also exists
in nature and might have played a part in the origin of life on Earth, U.S.
researchers say.
Luann Becker of the University of Hawaii and scientists at NASA report that
they found "buckyballs" in a crushed piece of the Allende meteorite that
landed in Mexico in 1969.
Buckyballs are soccer-ball shaped molecules first synthesized in the
laboratory in 1985.
"It's not every day that you discover a new carbon molecule in nature," said
Becker in a statement. "If it played a role in how the Earth evolved, that
would be important."
Robert Curl and Richard Smalley of Rice University and Harold Kroto of the
University of Sussex in England received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in
1996 for accidentally synthesizing the pure carbon in vaporizing
experiments.
They named the molecules, the third form of pure carbon along with diamonds
and graphite, "buckminsterfullerenes" after Buckminster Fuller, the engineer
who designed geodesic domes. The name usually is shortened to buckyballs.
*Scientists are using X-ray vision to focus on mysteries that the comic-book
heroes of the 1930s didn’t even know existed: black holes, dark matter and
the most violent explosions in the universe. The Chandra X-Ray Observatory,
ready for launch on the space shuttle Columbia, should make that superhuman
vision at least 10 times sharper.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/291386.asp
*Does an 80 mpg car sound like a distant promise? Well Honda has announced
it will sell them in U.S. showrooms by December. The two-seat coupe will be
America’s first mass-marketed hybrid vehicle, combining a traditional gas
engine with a small electric motor. And it should save consumers big bucks
at the gas pump, while reducing emissions of ozone and carbon dioxide, the
latter seen by many scientists as a contributing factor to global warming.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/287377.asp
*Scientists following Einstein's theoretical footsteps — including Stephen
Hawking and Princeton University's Edward Witten — will pick up where he
left off during an international conference this week that starts Monday.
Physicists are gathering at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational
Physics in Potsdam — recently given the additional title of the Albert
Einstein Institute — just miles from where the century's greatest mind
worked before leaving his native country forever in 1932.
"The idea is that somehow we want to take up that broken tradition again,"
said Professor Hermann Nicolae, one of the directors of the institute, which
is playing host for the first time to the annual physics conference.
Lectures and papers at the six-day conference will focus on proving string
theory, which would allow scientists to unite the two primary theories in
physics: Einstein's theory of general relativity and quantum theory. That
would mean physicists could explain how the world works in a single theory,
possibly unlocking the secrets of black holes or the Big Bang.
"It's not that we think of Einstein when we work, but we certainly have this
towering figure in the background from whom much of the subject originated,"
said Michael Green, a conference participant and professor in the department
of applied math and theoretical physics at Cambridge University in England.
A unifying theory was something Einstein worked on in Germany, and then
later after he came to the United States to teach at Princeton University.
It was a problem he would never solve.
"The attempt of unifying things would be something like a grand continuation
of Einstein's work," said Professor Emeritus Juergen Ehlers, the founding
director of the Planck-Einstein institute.
"If one could get around that and have a unified picture again, nobody would
be happier about that than Einstein himself."
In Caputh, away from the hustle of city life in nearby Berlin, Einstein felt
he could contemplate the physics problem that remains unanswered today.
"He wanted to have a place where no one would disturb him," said Erika
Britzke, the caretaker of Einstein's summer home, located just outside the
city of Potsdam on the outskirts of Berlin.
When Hitler came to power in 1933, Einstein was out of the country. Friends
warned him of the danger he faced as Jew if he returned. He never did.
The wooden summer house is one of the few relics of Einstein's time in
Germany. His apartment in Berlin was destroyed in World War II, and most of
his papers are at Hebrew University in Jerusalem or at Princeton.
The paint is peeling off the sides of the dark red, Bauhaus-influenced home
that was designed especially for the Einstein family. After Einstein left,
the home was given to a Jewish boarding school but later confiscated by the
Nazi party.
For decades, the house was used as a residence owned by the community of
Caputh. It was not until 1979 that the house was named a historic landmark
and restored — down to the spartan desk that furnished Einstein's
bedroom-office, rebuilt after the architect who originally designed the
house recalled the plans from memory, Britzke said.
On a recent weekday afternoon, a group of tourists crowded by the gate to
the summer home, but Britzke turned them away: The house is only open on
weekends by appointment. During the week, the private Einstein Forum hosts
seminars for scientists in exchange for paying maintenance costs.
Einstein never wanted a museum dedicated to his life, Britzke said. In any
case, his legacy lies more in the work of the scientists attending this
week's conference, for many of whom the image of Einstein's wiry hair and
intense gaze will always be watching over their work.
"I've been fascinated with Einstein and his work most of my life," said Gary
Horowitz, a conference participant from the physics department at University
of California at Santa Barbara. "I'm happy to be continuing his work."
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
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