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, March 30, 2006

New Scientist Tech - Breaking News - 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."

Inside the Brains of Smart Kids - Yahoo! News: "Smart kids don't necessarily have bigger brains than their peers, but the parts of their brains involved in thinking change more during adolescence.

As children grow up, the outer mantle, or cortex, of their brains thicken and thin as new neural connections are being made and then pruned to become more efficient. Using brain scans, researchers have found that the cortices of kids with high IQ scores thickened faster and for a longer period of time than children of average intelligence. "

Wired 14.04: Geekonomics: "What if everything in life were free? You'd think we'd be happier. But game designers know better: We'd be bored.

Economics is loosely defined as choice under scarcity. After all, in the real world, there's only so much to go around. You can't always get what you want, and unfulfilled desires give rise to markets. But in a game world, there's no inherent reason for scarcity. Game designers have given us plenty of utopias where we can have all the mithril we want, to buy whatever we want whenever we want it. Problem is, those worlds turn out to be dull. For example, the developers of Active Worlds made everything in the game free. Players built enormous houses - in which there was nothing to do. The game never quite caught on. That's why today's newer massive synthetic worlds make life hard. It's why we have to scheme, fight, and occasionally beg for food, shelter, transportation, and great big flaming swords. Games show us that scarcity can be fun."

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Nano-Guns, Nano-Germs, and Nano-Steel: "Conflicts, clashes, battles, and wars: this is the stuff of which history is made. The world as we know it today is largely a product of wars fought and peoples conquered.

We like to look back admiringly on other things our species has produced: great works of art, brilliant inventions, sage philosophers, brave explorers, and selfless peacemakers. But the real star of the human story is war. In fact, very often those things we admire—philosophy, technology, leadership, superb writing and speechmaking—are put to maximum use in the service of war."

Tuesday, March 28, 2006

New Scientist Breaking News - Chip ramps up neuron-to-computer communication: "A specialised microchip that could communicate with thousands of individual brain cells has been developed by European scientists.

The device will help researchers examine the workings of interconnected brain cells, and might one day enable them to develop computers that use live neurons for memory."

Monday, March 27, 2006

A Web Site So Hip It Gets Laddies to Watch the Ads - New York Times: "'This will be over faster than your last relationship' and '.001% of your daily ad intake' are the sorts of wisecracks users see right above the video commercial that greets them when they visit Heavy.com."

Sunday, March 26, 2006

Scientists Find Skull of Human Ancestor - Yahoo! News: "Scientists in northeastern Ethiopia said Saturday that they have discovered the skull of a small human ancestor that could be a missing link between the extinct Homo erectus and modern man. "

Fool.com: Biotechnology Subsectors: "Biochips
Genetic Analysis Tools (either as the main business or subordinate to main focus -- arrays, lab on a chip, etc.) "

2020 ComputingThe creativity machine : Nature: "This creativity machine is the Internet. It has already changed the way we do science, most importantly by enhancing collaboration between researchers. The present-day Internet provides convenient connections between computerized labs, simulations and research databases. It also represents an enormous financial investment that is driven by the demands of hundreds of millions of consumers. As such, the total Internet software and infrastructure investment dwarfs the budgets of scientific research programmes and even of many government defence programmes. And more than any megaproject of the past, the essence of the Internet is to provide coordinated processing of information. For researchers seeking resources, these are facts worth considering."

2020 ComputingExceeding human limits : Nature: "The collection and curation of data throughout the sciences is becoming increasingly automated. For example, a single high-throughput experiment in biology can easily generate more than a gigabyte of data per day, and in astronomy automatic data collection leads to more than a terabyte of data per night. Throughout the sciences the volumes of archived data are increasing exponentially, supported not only by low-cost digital storage but also by the growing efficiency of automated instrumentation. It is clear that the future of science involves the expansion of automation in all its aspects: data collection, storage of information, hypothesis formation and experimentation (see table). Future advances will have the ability to yield powerful new forms of science that could blur the boundaries between theory and experiment. However, to reap the full benefits it is essential that developments in high-speed automation are not introduced at the expense of human understanding and insight."

2020 computingChamping at the bits : Nature: "Five years ago, if you'd have asked anyone working in quantum computing how long it would take to make a genuinely useful machine, they'd probably have said it was too far off even to guess. But not any longer.

'A useful computer by 2020 is realistic,' says Andrew Steane of the quantum-computing group at the University of Oxford, UK. David Deutsch, the Oxford physicist who more or less came up with the idea of quantum computation, agrees. Given recent theoretical advances, he is optimistic that a practical quantum computer 'may well be achieved within the next decade'."

Future of Computing: Web focus : Nature: "In the last two decades advances in computing technology, from processing speed to network capacity and the internet, have revolutionized the way scientists work. From sequencing genomes to monitoring the Earth's climate, many recent scientific advances would not have been possible without a parallel increase in computing power - and with revolutionary technologies such as the quantum computer edging towards reality, what will the relationship between computing and science bring us over the next 15 years? "

Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Need For Limits: "Molecular manufacturing will give its wielders extreme power and has the potential to remove or bypass many of today's limits, including laws. That could lead to a planet-wide dictatorship, or to any of several forms of irreversible destruction. Perhaps the biggest problem of all will be how to develop a system of near-absolute power that will not become corrupt. "

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - 'Sterile' neutrinos may solve cosmic conundrums: "An as-yet undetected type of neutrino could explain a host of astrophysical conundrums, from the nature of dark matter to the ignition of the first stars, a new study suggests. But verifying the particle's existence could prove difficult."

New Scientist SPACE - Breaking News - Photon detector is precursor to broadband in space: "US researchers have nearly trebled the efficiency of a miniscule detector capable of capturing single photons of light – the technology could one day be used to receive information through a laser stream of data sent from Mars to Earth. The finding could lead to speedier, reliable relays of huge amounts of data across interplanetary distances, setting up a form of broadband communication in space."

Missile Scientists in Short Supply at Pentagon - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "The Pentagon risks running out of scientists to operate and upgrade the nation's arsenal of intercontinental nuclear and conventional missiles, according to a report released this week by the Defense Science Board. "

IBM Researchers Build Molecular Circuit - Science & Innovation - NewsFactor Network: "Thus far, researchers have focused on fabricating carbon nanotube transistors, but the IBM breakthrough demonstrates that complete molecular circuits can be built, an innovation that marks a critical step toward integrating the technology with existing chipmaking techniques. "

SpaceX private rocket flight a bust - Yahoo! News: " The debut flight of a low-cost launcher developed and financed by Internet billionaire Elon Musk lasted about a minute before the rocket failed due to unknown technical reasons on Friday."

Friday, March 24, 2006

Key Found to Birth of Super-Galaxies - Yahoo! News: "Astronomers have spotted what they think is evidence for the ignition switch that turns on super-bright galaxies called quasars.

The trigger was likely the merger of two galaxies, researchers said today."

Monday, March 20, 2006

VeriSign Warns of Massive Net Attacks - Yahoo! News: "There is a new kind of denial-of-service (DoS) attack hitting the Internet these days, and it has VeriSign and others responsible for handling the Internet's infrastructure very worried. "

Thursday, March 16, 2006

hNASA probe peers back to an instant after Big Bang - Yahoo! News: "A NASA space probe has peered back in time to a bare instant -- less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second -- after the Big Bang, astronomers reported on Thursday. "

NASA Reviews Canceled Asteroid Mission - Yahoo! News: "In an unusual move, NASA is reviewing a recent decision by an agency head to scrap a mission to orbit two asteroids. The Dawn project was canceled on March 2, five months after it was put on hold because of cost overruns and technical problems. "

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Scientist does "origami" folding with DNA - Yahoo! News: "Paul Rothemund of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena said on Wednesday he had woven strands of DNA into two-dimensional shapes that could be important in the design of nanodevices measuring only a few billionths of a meter across."

Researchers develop foundation for circuitry and devices based on graphite: "Graphite, the material that gives pencils their marking ability, could be the basis for a new class of nanometer-scale electronic devices that have the attractive properties of carbon nanotubes – but could be produced using established microelectronics manufacturing techniques."

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Big news on a very small scale csmonitor.com: "Advances in nanotechnology bring blessings as well as warnings of possible hazards. Two breakthroughs reported this month show how significant the blessings can be. One promises to become the first major alternative to chemical batteries in 200 years. The other opens a way to boost solar-cell efficiency."