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Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
I was watching a video, and in the comments I found that someone said, ” If you want someone to learn about something, why don’t you turn it into a video game? So many people play video games! “ And I find that I can’t really disagree with him.
It’s not necessarily true for everyone, but I think there are many people who would much rather throw themselves into an interactive world then delve into a textbook. Sure, there would be many subjects that would be very difficult to put into game format, but I think it could be done.
Instead of reading a textbook, a person could learn ” the rules of the game”, and then be put into a semi- realistic scenario where they could use their best judgement and apply that knowledge.
People do this with video games all the time. You have to learn how the video game works before you can play it, and then you are ready to go. And you are not an expert right away, but with practice, and with being challenged with progressively harder scenarios, you become better at the game.
I know I would play a video game that taught me things about different fields.
While there would be problems like ” the game scenarios are predetermined, and it doesn’t vary, it’s already programmed into the game”, it would still be interesting, maybe even useful.
What’s more important than understanding what something is, is to understand why something is. What’s a hovercraft? Well, it’s a mechanism that hovers over the ground. But why does it hover over the ground? If you understand why, then you begin understand how. To understand why something works, means you truly understand the properties at hand, and as a result you understand how to do it yourself. If you understand the steps to recreate, then you truly understand the object.
A lot of the answers to our questions lie right in front of us. The perfect model is Nature itself. Nature has been around longer than us, it already has constructed properties based on the effects of forces around it. We are a part of it. If we can understand the what, why, and how of Nature, then we can solve a lot of problems that we face.
How will nanotechnology change our lives?
Imagine feeling like you’re lifting a 50-kilogram weight just by pulling at thin air. That’s just one of the possible applications of new “smart fingertips” created by a team of nanoengineers. The electronic fingers mold to the shape of the hand, and so far the researchers have shown that they can transmit electric signals to the skin. The team hopes to one day incorporate the devices into a smart glove that creates virtual sensations, fooling the brain into feeling everything from texture to temperature.
Is a VR future closer than we imagine?
(Source: Wired)
Micron-Scale Swimming Nanobots Can Carry “Cargo,” Deliver Drugs Inside Body
The simple swimmer designed by Alexeev and collaborators Hassan Masoud and Benjamin Bingham consists of a responsive gel body about ten microns long with two propulsive flaps attached to opposite sides. A steering flap sensitive to specific stimuli would be located at the front of the swimmer.
The responsive gel body would undergo periodic expansions and contractions triggered by oscillatory chemical reactions, oscillating magnetic or electric fields, or by cycles of temperature change. These expansions and contractions — the chemical swelling and de-swelling of the material — would create a beating motion in the rigid propulsive flaps attached to each side of the micro-swimmer. Combined with the movement of the gel body, the beating motion would move the micro-swimmer forward.
The trajectory of the micro-swimmer would be controlled by a flexible steering flap on its front. The flap would be made of a material that deforms based on changes in light intensity, temperature or magnetic field. “The combination of these flaps and the oscillating body creates a very nice motion that we believe can be used to propel the swimmer,” said Alexeev.
“To build a device that is autonomous and self-propelling at the micron-scale, we cannot build a tiny submarine. We have to keep it simple.”
“We are using the state-of-the art in materials science, changing the properties of the material,” explained Masoud, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Mechanical Engineering. “We have combined the materials with the principles of hydrodynamics at the small scale to develop this new swimmer.”
(via How micron-scale swimming robots could deliver drugs and carry cargo | KurzweilAI)
New from me at Wired, a graphene inspired photovoltaics breakthrough:
Two things hold back the mass adoption of solar energy as a source of sustainable energy. One is the need to store and transmit excess power, a problem people like Danielle Fong are working on solving by developing innovative new ways to store power. The other is the high cost of solar panels. One of the reasons solar panels are so expensive is that it’s tricky to extract electric currents from semiconductors, the materials used to convert solar radiation into electrical energy.
Up til now, this could only be done with a few materials — usually silicon. But a new breakthrough will enable manufacturers to make efficient photovoltaics using almost any semiconductor, including cheap and abundant materials like metal oxides, sulfides, and phosphides.
A typical photovoltaic cell is built with silicon and treated with chemicals. This treatment is called “doping,” and it creates the driving force needed to extract power from the cell. Photovoltaics can also be built with cheaper materials but many of these can’t be doped chemically. But a method developed by Professor Alex Zettl’s research group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley makes it possible to dope nearly any semiconductor by applying an electric field instead of chemicals. The method is described in a paper published in the journal Nano Letters.
Wired Enterprise: Nano Breakthrough Paves Way For Super Cheap Solar Panels
See also: Real-Life Steampunk Wants to Hack the Power Grid
Photo courtesy of Paul Takizawa, the Zettl Research Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California at Berkeley.
Bolded.
By blending optical and atomic force microscope technologies, Iowa State University and Ames Laboratory researchers have found a way to complete 3-D measurements of single biological molecules with unprecedented accuracy and precision.
Existing technologies allow researchers to measure single molecules on the x and y axes of a 2-D plane. The new technology allows researchers to make height measurements (the z axis) down to the nanometer – just a billionth of a meter – without custom optics or special surfaces for the samples.
Just as radio antennas amplify the signals of our mobile phones and televisions, the same principle can apply to light. For the first time, researchers from CNRS and Aix Marseille Université have succeeded in producing a nanoantenna from short strands of DNA, two gold nanoparticles and a small fluorescent molecule that captures and emits light. This easy-to-handle optical antenna is described in an article published in Nature Communications on 17 July 2012. This work could in the longer term lead to the development of more efficient light-emitting diodes, more compact solar cells or even be used in quantum cryptography. (via Bio-inspired nanoantennas for light emission)
Researchers at the Institute for Agrobiotechnology (a mixed research centre set up by the Public University of Navarre, the CSIC-National Scientific Research Council, and the Government of Navarre) are designing, by means of laser application, nanostructured reliefs on surfaces so that they acquire antibacterial properties and are more resistant to the formation of bacterial biofilms. Researchers say that in the preliminary tests carried out so far with the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus there has been a 65-70% reduction in bacteria adhesion.
Currently, large doses of chemotherapy are required when treating certain forms of cancer, resulting in toxic side effects. The chemicals enter the body and work to destroy or shrink the tumor, but also harm vital organs and drastically affect bodily functions. Now, University of Missouri scientists have found a more efficient way of targeting prostate tumors by using gold nanoparticles and a compound found in tea leaves. This new treatment would require doses that are thousands of times smaller than chemotherapy and do not travel through the body inflicting damage to healthy areas.
The study is being published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
Researchers at the University of Florida (UF) have developed a nanoparticle that has shown 100 percent effectiveness in eradicating the hepatitis C virus in laboratory testing…
An international research team has received a $2.9 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to design nanomaterials whose internal structure changes shape in response to stimuli such as heat or light.
Each of these novel materials will be constructed from three types of components: inorganic nanoparticles with desired optical or electrical properties; peptides that bond to these nanoparticles; and special molecules called spacers, which sit between the peptides and bend in the presence of heat, light or other triggers.
Whoa.
Silver Nanowires Make Elastic Conductors, Flexible Devices
Researchers from North Carolina State Univ. have developed highly conductive and elastic conductors made from silver nanoscale wires (nanowires). These elastic conductors could be used to develop stretchable electronic devices. Stretchable circuitry would be able to do many things that its rigid counterpart cannot.
Caption: The silver nanowires can be printed to fabricate patterned stretchable conductors. Image: North Carolina State Univ.
Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Conductive-Elastic-Conductors-Made-Using-Silver-Nanowires-071312.aspx
I need inspiration just as much as anyone else, so if anyone ever wants to just send me a message and talk to me about anything science/philosophy/engineering/ nanotech/ robotics / futurism/etc, go ahead. I love talking about those things; and I feel like I haven’t been able to find people who actually do for awhile.
I need help.
Since nanotechnology is not a major in most universities, since it’s still kind of ’ new ‘, I need to take classes that will lead to me telling them my specific direction ( being nanotechnology). I was thinking that I would have to take engineering courses, since it is, technically, a type of engineering. I was thinking that taking chemistry/biochemistry classes would be necessary; Physics classes too, I think. But what about biology?
Any ideas? Opinions? It’s hard to say, with nanotech.
I’m thinking a dual major engineering + Physics with a biochemistry minor would make sense.
