Technology has immortality, cures for the worlds devastating diseases, quantum computing and a host of other science fiction notions in its grasp. Current trends in a number of areas indicate that over the next 10 years many of these technologies will come to fruition. "The Next 10 Years" tracks the trends that will transform our everyday lives in almost unimaginable ways.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Study: The human brain is still evolving: "'Our studies indicate the trend that is the defining characteristic of human evolution -- the growth of brain size and complexity -- is likely still going on,' said lead researcher Bruce Lahn, an assistant professor of human genetics.

'Meanwhile, our environment and the skills we need to survive in it are changing ... (and) I would expect the human brain, which has done well by us so far, will continue to adapt to those changes,' said Lahn. "

Magnetic Microchips Replaces Electronic Semiconductor: "
The combined efforts of researchers from Durham University, Imperial College, London and the University of Sheffield have fructified. Till now the basic computer is usually made by using semiconductor electronics. The researchers have gone ahead and have successfully created a computer by using magnetic microchips rather than semiconductor electronics. "

Tuesday, September 27, 2005

Can proteins perform logic? (September 2005) - News - PhysicsWeb: "The main role of many proteins is to transmit and process information in living cells. These processes involve other molecules called regulatory ligands that bind to specific sites on the surface of the protein. It has been known for almost 50 years that a typical protein can switch between an inactive and an active state as the concentration of the ligand varies. These states could be used to represent the '0's and '1's of binary logic, but proteins are not true logic gates because a large change in concentration is needed to switch them from one state to another. "

Friday, September 23, 2005

Michigan State University Newsroom - MSU researchers receive $4 million grant to uncover gene functions: "EAST LANSING, Mich. ? A collaboration of Michigan State University researchers will use a $4 million grant from the National Science Foundation to uncover the functions of genes in a plant � research which may ultimately lead to improvements in human health and agriculture.
In a collaborative effort spanning several departments, MSU scientists will determine the functions of roughly 4,400 nuclear genes from the Arabidopsis plant. Arabidopsis is a flowering plant whose entire 29,000 gene sequence is known. "

Scientists implant human chromosome in mice - Yahoo! News: "LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists have transplanted a nearly entire human chromosome in mice in a medical and technical breakthrough that could reveal new insights into Down's syndrome and other disorders.
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The genetically engineered mice carry a copy of the human chromosome 21. It is the smallest of the 23 pairs of human chromosomes with about 225 genes."

Thursday, September 22, 2005

Political Bloggers Demand Speech Freedoms - Yahoo! News: "WASHINGTON - Political bloggers who offer diverse views on Republicans and Democrats, war and peace argued on Thursday that they should be free of government regulation.
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The notion was echoed by some members of the government agency trying to write rules covering the Internet's reach in political campaigns.
Amid the explosion of political activity on the Internet, a federal court has instructed the six-member Federal Election Commission to draw up regulations that would extend the nation's campaign finance and spending limits to the Web."

Report says global warming could spark conflict - Yahoo! News: "CANBERRA (Reuters) - Rising world temperatures could cause a significant increase in disease across Asia and Pacific Island nations, leading to conflict and leaving hundreds of millions of people displaced, a new report said on Thursday.
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Global warming by the year 2100 could also lead to more droughts, floods and typhoons, and increase the incidence of malaria, dengue fever and cholera, the report into the health impact of rising temperatures found."

Wednesday, September 21, 2005

Nanotech News - Multifunctional Magnetic Nanocrystals Provide Dual Imaging of Cancer Cells: "Magnetic nanocrystals have shown promise as tools for detecting cancer using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Now, new research from a team of investigators led by Jeon-Soo Shin, M.D., Ph.D., and Jinwoo Cheon, Ph.D., both of Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea, demonstrates that antibody-labeled magnetic nanocrystals used with MRI can rapidly detect breast cancer cells in a living animal. This work was published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society."

Tuesday, September 20, 2005

A Company Looks to Wean Computers Off the Wires - New York Times: "But Greg Raleigh, chief executive of Airgo Networks in Palo Alto, Calif., said his four-year-old company, which released two earlier generations of high-speed wireless technologies, had 'broken the wire speed barrier' with its latest chips and embedded software. Mr. Raleigh said that the first products using Airgo's new chips - notebook computers, wireless cards, routers and other peripherals - should be commercially available late in the fourth quarter of this year.
'Basically, this changes everything by removing the reason to stay wired,' Mr. Raleigh said of his company's technologies, called third-generation True MIMO. He said that Airgo had production orders from a number of partners. In the past, companies including Belkin, Netgear, Sohoware and Samsung have used Airgo's wireless technologies.
He said that Airgo's latest iteration of True MIMO, an acronym for Multiple Input Multiple Output that appears on product labels using it, operates at as much as 240 megabits a second, easily surpassing standard Wi-Fi rates of as much as 54 megabits a second. Mr. Raleigh said the technology also outperformed wired Ethernet networks, which generally move data at as much as 100 megabits a second."

Nature's Design Workshop - Newsweek Technology - MSNBC.com#storyContinued/print/1/displaymode/1098/#storyContinued/print/1/displaymode/1098/

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Daily Record - Warren Boroson: "Driehaus has a history of being right in identifying 'inflection points': when the market is about to change.
In general, he believes that both stock-market bulls and bears are going to be disappointed and that investing in the future is not going to be easy -- apart from certain favored sectors.
He still likes energy, mentioning coal and even uranium as well as oil-related stocks.
In health care, he likes biotechnology and medical service stocks."

Friday, September 16, 2005

Concrete's future looks lighter, greener | csmonitor.com: "ncrete is probably used more widely than any other substance except water, yet it remains largely unappreciated.
'Some people view the 20th century as the atomic age, the space age, the computer age - but an argument can be made that it was the concrete age,' says Hendrik van Oss, a cement specialist with the United States Geological Survey. 'It's a miracle material.'"

EETimes.com - Mobile fuel cells set to take off in 2006: "Adoption of long-lasting and renewable fuel cells for powering mobile devices will start to accelerate significantly in 2006, according to a study released Thursday by market research firm NanoMarkets.
The study claimed that sales of the fuel cells will reach $1.6 billion by 2010. The growth will be spurred by the fact that mobile devices are becoming more sophisticated and require ever-more power, according to the study. This problem has actually slowed down release of new mobile devices. "

HHMI News: Computers Make Big Strides in Predicting Protein Structure: "Computers can predict the detailed structure of small proteins nearly as well as experimental methods, at least some of the time, according to new studies by Howard Hughes Medical Institute researchers. "

Commentary: this is an exciting article. Determining the structure of proteins will be a huge advance and a necessary step towards disease mitigation and real anti-aging technologies.

Thursday, September 15, 2005

09.14.2005 - Researchers recover typed text using audio recording of keystrokes: "BERKELEY � A new security threat revealed by computer scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, may be enough to drive some people away from their computer keyboards and back to pen and paper. The researchers show that a simple audio recording of those keyboard clicks can betray the text you just entered, from passwords to secret love notes.
'Acoustical spying' using an audio recording of the sounds generated by typing on a computer keyboard is a potential security threat identified by UC Berkeley researchers."

Commentary: whoa - type softly grasshopper!

Companies urged to move beyond passwords | CNET News.com: "Companies are 'fiddling while Rome burns' by continuing to put their faith in passwords to guarantee user authentication, a Gartner analyst has warned.
Speaking at the Gartner IT Security Summit in London on Wednesday, Ant Allan said that 'passwords are no longer adequate, as threats against them increase.' "

Wednesday, September 14, 2005

Bio Programming: "The next step after reading genetic code is writing it. In June, biotech pioneers J. Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith launched Synthetic Genomics, a Rockville, MD-based 'synthetic biology' startup aimed at creating custom-made micro-organisms.
The new company's president is Juan Enriquez, former director of Harvard Business School's Life Sciences Project and CEO of the Wellesley, MA, investment partnership Biotechonomy, which funds Synthetic Genomics. "

Purdue scientists treat cancer with RNA nanotechnology: "WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. � Using strands of genetic material, Purdue University scientists have constructed tiny delivery vehicles that can carry anticancer therapeutic agents directly to infected cells, offering a potential wealth of new treatments for chronic diseases."

Tuesday, September 13, 2005

Scotsman.com News - Sci-Tech - 'Bionic eye' has potential to cure blindness: "SCOTTISH scientists are developing an electronic implant that will be capable of curing two of the most common forms of blindness.
Dr Keith Mathieson, from Glasgow University's Department of Physics, is using digital camera technology to create the 'bionic eye'.
He has developed a microchip that can replicate the role played by the retina, the sensitive lining at the back of the eye that converts light into a signal that is sent to the brain. "

Analyzing the Circuitry of Stem Cells - New York Times: "How are the 25,000 genes of a human cell controlled and orchestrated? How does a stem cell in the embryo develop into a mature cell of the brain or heart or liver? A possibly deep insight into all these questions has been gained by mapping the top-level circuitry that controls the human embryonic stem cell.
Scientists at the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Mass., have developed a technique for uncovering the interactions of transcription factors. These are the agents that switch genes on or off in the cell. By figuring out these interactions on a genomewide scale, they have reconstructed the top level of the controls that govern a human embryonic stem cell."

Commentary: this line of research can change everything in medicine.

Monday, September 12, 2005

CNN.com - Water crisis looms as Himalayan glaciers melt - Sep 9, 2005: "It's a scary thought, but scientists say the 40 percent of humanity living in South Asia and China could well be living with little drinking water within 50 years as global warming melts Himalayan glaciers, the region's main water source."

Commentary: And the US government didn't sign the Kyoto agreement and the tax was repealed on gas guzzling Hummers. I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore!

Friday, September 09, 2005

Zinc Oxide ( ZnO ) Nanorings � Potential Nanoscale Piezoelectrics and Sensors - News Item: "Researchers at Georgia Tech have produced the latest nano-sized structure, adding to the existing buckyballs, nanotubes, nanobelts and even nanosprings. Nanorings are complete circles formed by a self-coiling process.
The nanorings produced by Georgia Tech are based on single crystals of zinc oxide (ZnO). Zinc oxide is also significant in that it is semiconducting and possesses piezoelectric properties. This means that the nanorings could be used as sensors, resonators and transducers.
The nanorings are made up of fine nanobelts that are rolled up as coils layer by layer with as many as a hundred loops, forming a seamless ring structure. They consist of a uniformly deformed single crystal of zinc oxide."

Tourist Pays $20M to Go to Space Station - Yahoo! News: "STAR CITY, Russia - U.S. space tourist Gregory Olsen joined a Russian cosmonaut and an American astronaut for training outside Moscow Friday in preparation for their Oct. 1 launch to the international space station from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Russian cosmonaut Valery Tokarev and U.S. astronaut William McArthur, who are to spend six months at the station, will be accompanied on their flight by Olsen, a scientist who is paying the Russian space agency $20 million for a weeklong visit."

Commentary: Space tourism will boom over the next 10 years. If you can lock in great rates now, just do it!

Thursday, September 08, 2005

Tiny computers go where no computer has gone before: "Tiny computers go where no computer has gone before
A major breakthrough in the use of molecules as information processors is to be announced at this year's BA Festival of Science in Dublin.
Nanotechnology experts are exploring the capabilities of molecules that act like conventional computers but can operate in tiny places where no silicon-based chip or semiconductor can go. Now, for the first time, they have used these molecules to perform logic operations and process information in spaces a few nanometres across. "

Wednesday, September 07, 2005

Sustaining Military Capabilities in the 21st Century: Rethinking the Utility of the Principles of War: "As the global biotechnology industry expands, nonproliferation efforts will have a difficult time keeping pace with the opportunities available to field a bioweapon.6 And weapons are not the only potential contribution of this sector to new ways of war. Biotechnology may reshape medical practices (on and off the battlefield) and human performance, allowing for unprecedented levels of individual achievement and endurance."

Sustaining Military Capabilities in the 21st Century: Rethinking the Utility of the Principles of War: "As the global biotechnology industry expands, nonproliferation efforts will have a difficult time keeping pace with the opportunities available to field a bioweapon.6 And weapons are not the only potential contribution of this sector to new ways of war. Biotechnology may reshape medical practices (on and off the battlefield) and human performance, allowing for unprecedented levels of individual achievement and endurance."

Sustaining Military Capabilities in the 21st Century: Rethinking the Utility of the Principles of War: "As the global biotechnology industry expands, nonproliferation efforts will have a difficult time keeping pace with the opportunities available to field a bioweapon.6 And weapons are not the only potential contribution of this sector to new ways of war. Biotechnology may reshape medical practices (on and off the battlefield) and human performance, allowing for unprecedented levels of individual achievement and endurance."

Sustaining Military Capabilities in the 21st Century: Rethinking the Utility of the Principles of War: "As the global biotechnology industry expands, nonproliferation efforts will have a difficult time keeping pace with the opportunities available to field a bioweapon.6 And weapons are not the only potential contribution of this sector to new ways of war. Biotechnology may reshape medical practices (on and off the battlefield) and human performance, allowing for unprecedented levels of individual achievement and endurance."

Future Trends - Event Overview: "Across every single trend category that you can name: Communications, Design, Consumer Behavior, Retail, Marketing, Creativity, Product Innovation, Entertainment, Media, Globalization, Politics, Interactivity, etc � there is a trend that will impact your business in some way, perhaps a significant way. But how? And exactly HOW do you take action?"

The Seattle Times: Business & Technology: Safecrackers open up the "deep Web": "The Web is made up of hundreds of billions of Web documents, far more than the 8 billion to 20 billion claimed by Google or Yahoo! But most of these Web pages are largely unreachable by most search engines because they are stored in databases that Web crawlers can't access.
Now a San Mateo, Calif., startup, Glenbrook Networks, says it has a way to tunnel far into the 'deep Web' and extract this information."

Wired News: The Next Mother Lode: Mars: "Space entrepreneurs eyeing Mars as a hub of some future solar system economy launched a startup on Tuesday to mine the red planet for building materials.
The new company, 4Frontiers, plans to mine Mars for building materials and energy sources, and export the planet's mineral wealth to forthcoming space stations on the moon and elsewhere. "

Exploring News & Features - Odd behavior and creativity may go hand-in-hand: "Often viewed as a hindrance, having a quirky or socially awkward approach to lifemay be the key to becoming a great artist, composer or inventor.
New research on individuals with schizotypal personalities � people characterized by odd behavior and language but who are not psychotic or schizophrenic � offers the first neurological evidence that they are more creative than either normal or fully schizophrenic individuals, and rely more heavily on the right sides of their brains than the general population to access their creativity. "

High Doses Of Vitamin E Boost Rat Survival Rate 40%; Brain Function, Neuromuscular Gains: "BETHESDA, Md. (Sept. 4, 2005) � Studying how much longer and �better� mice will live on high doses of vitamin E involves much time and work � two years of feeding, testing and studying. But based on earlier results, a joint team from the University of Cadiz, Spain, and the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, figured the payoff would be worth the effort. "

Nanotech advance may hasten molecular machines - Yahoo! News: "Chemists at Edinburgh University said on Wednesday they had built molecules that can move objects larger than the size of an atom in an advance in the technology that deals with manipulating materials on a minuscule scale."

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Dark matter highlights extra dimensions: "Welcome to the fourth dimension. And the fifth, and the sixth. A team of astrophysicists claims to have identified evidence that space is six-dimensional.

Joseph Silk of the University of Oxford, UK, and his co-workers say that these extra spatial dimensions can be inferred from the perplexing behaviour of dark matter. This mysterious stuff cannot be seen, but its presence in galaxies is betrayed by the gravitational tug that it exerts on visible stars."

New Scientist Breaking News - 4G prototypes reach blistering speeds: "Cellphones capable of transmitting data at blistering speeds have been demonstrated by NTT DoCoMo in Japan.
In experiments, prototype phones were used to view 32 high definition video streams, while travelling in an automobile at 20 kilometres per hour. Officials from NTT DoCoMo say the phones could receive data at 100 megabits per second on the move and at up to a gigabit per second while static. At this rate, an entire DVD could be downloaded within a minute. DoCoMo's current 3G (third generation) phone network offers download speeds of 384 kilobits per second and upload speeds of 129 kilobits per second. "

Monday, September 05, 2005

Risk from 2029 asteroid now more remote: "The rogue rock, 2004 MN4, measures 320 metres (1,000 feet) across, making it big enough to wipe out a large city if it ever collided with Earth.

Last December, there were a few nail-biting days when NASA calculated, from early optical observations, that the asteroid had a more than one-in-50 chance of hitting Earth on April 13, 2029. "

Tiny Enceladus May Hold Ingredients of Life: "Brown and other Cassini scientists attended a meeting in London last week and are at the 37th annual Division of Planetary Sciences meeting at Cambridge University this week.

'Enceladus is without a doubt one of the most spectacular things Cassini has seen,' Brown said in a phone interview Thursday. 'It's one of the biggest puzzles. It'll be a long time before anyone comes up with a good explanation of how Enceladus does what it does, and for a scientist, that's pure, unmitigated fun. Solving the biggest puzzles is the thrilling part of doing science.' "

Herald.com | 09/05/2005 | THE GAMBLE PAYS OFF: "Thanks to American gambling enthusiasts, a bright future could be in the cards for BetOnSports.com, one of the largest sports gambling companies in the world.
Licensed on the Caribbean island of Antigua, BetOnSports.com was one of the first firms to bet that online gambling was more than just a fad. It launched an initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in July 2004.
The gamble paid off. The company's customer base -- 90 percent from America -- and stock price have both increased sharply."

Ummmm - 3 days of downtime, Bonona family, loss of talent - a stock surge based on what?

Sunday, September 04, 2005

For engineers, the trends are just not adding up - Business - Business: "Professor Broadbridge said mathematics was just as important in biotechnology, the social sciences, and electronic security."

Commentary: Mathematics - a skill for the Next 10 Years.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

The Role of Titanium in Hydrogen Storage: "'A hydrogen-storage material must be able to store hydrogen quickly under 'normal' conditions -- that is, without very high temperatures and pressures,' said Chaudhuri. 'In tiny amounts, an appropriate catalyst, such as titanium, can speed up the reaction and make the hydrogen-storage process suitable for practical applications. Our study has helped us better understand the role of these catalysts.' "

Commentary: buy titanium stocks! SWC STILLWATER MNG CO COM (NYSE)

Friday, September 02, 2005

Breakthrough in Development of Quantum Computers: "The world's most powerful supercomputers could be made obsolete in the future, by a totally different approach to processing information. In a classical computer, the basic unit of information is the 'bit', which can exist in one of two possible states, 0 or 1. Quantum computers make use of quantum bits (qubits), which can exist in a superposition of both states - a mixture of both 0 and 1 simultaneously. Qubits are also subject to quantum entanglement. When two or more are entangled, they behave as one system, so that the state of one qubit depends directly on the state of the others. Thus the potential processing power of a quantum information system increases exponentially rather than linearly with the number of qubits. "

New 'Alien Nanofiber' Has Potential Anti-Counterfeiting Applications: "NC State�s Dr. Juan Hinestroza, assistant professor of textile engineering, chemistry and science, and Dr. Carlos Rinaldi, assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, created novel nanoscale fibers that can be placed inside a garment or paper document and serve as a �fingerprint� that proves the garment or document is genuine. Graduate student Carola Barrera and high school student Aldo Briano are also involved in the research. "

Wired News: Sonic 'Lasers' Head to Flood Zone: "EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE, California -- Air-raid sirens, Frank Sinatra songs and Muhammad Ali trash talk blared over the Southern California desert in a demonstration of new acoustic technology for crowd control and disaster communications. "

'Miracle mouse' can grow back lost limbs - Health news - Times Online: "SCIENTISTS have created a �miracle mouse� that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals.
The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail. "

Thursday, September 01, 2005

Accelerating Change 2005 - AI and IA: "Artificial intelligence ('AI'), broadly defined, improves the intelligence and autonomy of our technology. Intelligence amplification ('IA') empowers human beings and their social, political, and economic environments. As in previous years, a collection of today's most broad-minded, multidisciplinary, and practical change leaders will consider these twin trends from global, national, business, social, and personal foresight perspectives. "

New techniques study the brain's chemistry, neuron by neuron: "Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed tools for studying the chemistry of the brain, neuron by neuron. The analytical techniques can probe the spatial and temporal distribution of biologically important molecules, such as vitamin E, and explore the chemical messengers behind thought, memory and emotion."