Slashdot Mirror
Algae Can Carry Cargo
Steve Nixon writes "Recently, a team of scientists devised a way to make single-celled algae bear loads over distances of several centimeters--a tactic that the researchers say could prove useful in tiny machines. Algae and other single-celled organisms power their movements with molecular motors. 'Scientists have long coveted these motors for use in micromachinery,' notes chemist Douglas B. Weibel of Harvard University.
Microscopic DNA robots will be delivering sublime advertising messages. The whole concept would be of course garbage since you wouldn't be able to see them anyway, but it wouldn't stop the bastards convincing potential investors in spamming you. You know who am I talking about, the shady 4.22% :)
Cute little bastards, lugging cargo around.
Buy yourself a rock melon or honeydew melon. Cut a round hole in one end a bit smaller than your dick. Scoop out a little of the inside but not too much. Heat the melon in a microwave (be careful!) and squirt in some baby oil. If you've done it right you'll get a heap of suction when you fuck it. This method comes as close to the feeling of a real pussy or anus as you're ever likely to get! You'll start to get a hard-on whenever you walk past a fruit shop!
At last, I have something to do with my massive collection of algae: teach them to do tricks! Although the name "Chlamydomonas" is a little too close to "chlamydia" for my tastes. If I have to have an STD do work for me, I'd prefer to use syphilis.
I am scientifically inaccurate.
Please tell a geek deeply rooted in electrical and software systems, why this is helpful and why it couldnt be replaced with a simpler solution...
and go on strike. Can't you just see the little picket signs circling around the pond?
And stoners can again get pizza and Mountain Dew delivered directly to their sofa by this tireless algae crew (better than the old slime molds that used to do the job!)
I'm getting married Sept 17th and will need help moving furniture and boxes of geek books...
my geeklog
... but can you get a teensy, tiny corporate logo on their sides?
Dog is my co-pilot.
Has anyone tried this with ants? Ants are known to be capable of carrying several times their own weight (witness the dead insects they cart around). Now I wonder, would a trail of sugar do...?
I, for one, welcome our new cargo-carrying slaves.
But the real question is if they can make tiny pyramids.
Old and busted: TCP/IP
New Hotness: TCP Over Algae!
unless they get a strong union like the Teamsters.
....
Just imagine a picket line of these guys
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
new meaning to red tide!
Bacterial motors? Micromachinery? It sounds like they're doing William Dembski's research for him!
Maybe, but it's only a matter of time before Balco reps meet algae at the lab and give them "the cream." Wait til algae get buff on 'roids... watch what they can carry then.
Ignorance is not a crime; neither should it be a way of life
Congress control $ = inmates run the asylum
oh nevermind. its just much easier to tell cowboyneal to suck my dick
They for one welcome their new light emitting, load passing overlords.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
with the contents of my shower.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
Did they fire Zonk ? Is ScuttleMonkey same as Zonk ? Wondering.
There is an interview with chemist George Whitesides, one of the authors of the paper in question, at sciencefriday.com for those interested.
Dowload the show http://www.sciencefriday.com/ or the podcast on date 8-19 with George Whitesides. He is the administrative lead of the project and he talks about other interesting things besides Algae toting around loads.
-FlynnMP3
PETA = People for the Ethical Treatment of Algae
Recently, a team of scientists devised a way to make single-celled algae bear loads over distances of several centimeters
With this kind of gas prices any help we get will be appreciated. Thanks Algae. I have a request, Could you please carry me and my car to the work everyday?
Yeah, but can they carry Linux?
Dance Dance Revolution.
...Algae?"
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I slipped and wrenched my back this morning, so I've taken some pain medication, but the first thing that popped into my head when i saw the headline was a vast raft of algae carrying standard size shipping containers across the ocean. I must be in pretty bad shape.
just don't tell Plankton
or we'll have another stoner SpongeBob SquarePants movie on our hands
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
a cluster of these... :)
Mush there! Mush you... mushies?
...gone to far...
I think We have bigger concerns today... like the price of gas to move alot more in a day than algie ever will.
What's an algae bear? Is this one of those UK things? Like a 'loo' is really a toilet? Is an 'algae bear' a goatee or something?
Imagin the prospect of alge cell organisms moving under tiny motors on top of a water's surface. Then close both of your eyes and see THE FUTURE.
I suggest you read Slashdot
I guess Xeno's law is true: the average IQ of marketers decreases monotonically over time.
...
Just call me old fashioned, but in my day, we only had corporate logos on our clothing, accessories, houses, as the name of our town, put on tombstones (and I don't mean the free pizza that came with TMNT for the NES), plastered all over company vehicles, mousepads, coffee mugs, implanted in RFID chips, written in bar codes, etched into ICs, tattooed on foreheads and asses (... of asses), all over video games, ballparks, sporting event names, written into crop circles, put on the sky in laser light shows, skywriting and blimps, etched onto windows, watermarked on paper, in microscopic yellow print on every copy from some copiers and printers, digitally watermarked in files, on books, in magazines, and (no doubt soon) the CocaCola [TM][R][SM][whatever else] logo permanently engraved on the face of a Moon turned blood-red,
... but we did NOT have it in our algae, dammit!
Greencasting.
(looking into a microscope...)
...
Ah, yes - there goes a 1, a 1, a 0, another 0, a 1, a 0
A bit slow on the bandwidth, but your software is environmentally friendly!
Betting at all the usual places.
Relax, dude, nobody moved your cheese. It just got moldy, and then it was like "hey, there's more sunlight overe there", and it crawled over by the window.
I may twist orthodoxy to partly justify a tyrant. But I can easily make up a German philosophy to justify him entirely.
What's an algae bear? Is this one of those UK things? Like a 'loo' is really a toilet? Is an 'algae bear' a goatse or something? ps. pretend this was anonymous... slashdot dosent' like my subnet anymore...
Gravity Sucks
To be honest, this particular piece of research is almost a footnote in his career. Most of the things he does will never end up in something the average person ever comes into contact with, but the salient ideas will change the landscape of technology 20 years down the road. If you're at all interested in nanoscience, this is a guy to watch.
I've seen this exact same effect years ago with small children and CrazyGlue.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Can they reach low Earth orbit?
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
we could teraform any world!
What happens when they demand reparations? Each individually won't want much but together? Watch out!
Go down to the shoreline and step on an inclined algae-covered rock.
I asure you that they'll bear your load a lot further than a few centimeters. (Although getting your ass to the emergency room afterward is your problem)
I can't wait for a beowulf cluster of these!
Sweet, my first ./ meme!
This sounds like the perfect way to make a space elevator
...
anybody know where can i buy algae by the kilometer?
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
Could you please carry me and my car to the work everyday?
Here you go.
Middle-age has not been kind.
... being a well-known ball of slime, could be useful in organizing the algae to toil in your underground sugar caves.
this is just so cruel.
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
I can see their slogan alread: LIQUIDARITY!
Though, I h4ve to You. The tireless
eukaryote!
Bring me food, minions!
"Bob, we've got some bad news for you. You're being replaced at the factory."
"What! %$^&#, it's outsourcing, isn't it. Or you've brought cheap labor from some country, didn't you!"
"Actually, no. You're being replaced with algae. Don't you read Slashdot?"
"........?"
Don't post in typerighter font! Its annoying!
"When the cells reached their destinationswimming as much as 20 centimeters, or 20,000 of their own body lengths, from start to finishthe researchers flashed UV light to break the chemical bond that attached the beads. Visible light shining from the track's opposite end coaxed the organisms back to the start."
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
man I loved that site. I loved having DVDs delivered to my office in SF after purchasing them online - within an hour.
Is there anything like this around any more?
This reminds me of http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085017/
-Alex. http://bit.ly/1iVPtfA
carries mexican bacteria and viri across border 2) ??? 3) Profit!
I am growing algae that moves to the surface on new moons and full moons.It has the ability to feel gravity in a closed jar.I think that the poch marks on the bottom of lake superior are produced by this algae. The Lake superior donut mystery is an article that has pictures of these marks.The marks are 75 meters ,they are in groups of four.Some form parellel lines They do not seem to be randomly placed,Almost UFOish
Only low density stuff could be produced this way, but maybe it is more environmentally friendly ?
H.P. Lovecraft was right after all!
He describes those algae in "At the Mountains of Madness"!
We are all doomed!!!!11
UnNetHack: NetHack Improved!
African or European Algea?
'Scientists have long coveted these motors for use in micromachinery,'
Scientists should not be concerned with "use" of anything. they should simply observe things and record those observations!
engineers and architects should be concerned with "use" and those guys are not Scientists, they are artists!
this is whats wrong with science, its being sold as something its not, thats why we end up with scientists making the same mistake.
I say nay, Thats just more and more outsourcing as far as I'm concerned ;) only this time its with single-celled organism's. What's this world coming to!?
Working to make this world a darker place...
They are called my feet...and they get me around a lot farther then a few centimeters.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Sure they can carry cargo, but can they carry a tune?
I for one welcome our new load-bearing algae overlords.
Education is the silver bullet.
When correcting your anonymous, pedantic quibbles, don't forget to check the "Post Anonymously" box.
(apologies if this comes off as a troll)
When I became disillusioned with the Creationists, my single dominant thought was, "if you're right and this isn't junk science, DO SOMETHING with it." I proposed specifics like manufacturing opals and stalagtites on shortened time frames. (Wouldn't it be cool to build a game room with real stalagtites?)
I also read Michael Behe's book "Darwin's Black Box" wherein he describes the "irreducible complexity" of things Mr. Dawkins would call designoids like mousetraps and specifically the molecular motor that powers the flagella of single celled organisms.
Since the guys doing "genetic algorithms" have had some success applying evolutionary thinking, perhaps this is an opportunity for Darwin fans to DO SOMETHING demonstrating how to overcome Mr. Behe's objections to Darwinism. Specifically, use some form of guided evolution (such as we see with dog or horse breeding) to develop the molecular motors discussed here.
(am I a Creationist/Darwinist? I am skeptical of both. and damned few people can decouple emotions enough discuss the issues rationally. maybe i AM trolling?)