Part of the problem is being precise enough. "Molecular nanotechnology" does exist in the form of every enzyme which catalyzes a reaction in biochemistry. All of the DNA polymerases, RNA polymerases and the Ribosome can be considered "limited purpose" nanoassemblers in that they assemble multiple components into larger molecular aggregates which form more complex structures (genomes, ribosomal, messenger and transfer RNA and all proteins). What is missing is a 4-8 million atom complete general purpose molecular nanoassembler design, a simulation on a supercomputer proving it will work and the means of using a variety of methods (e-beam machining, nano-imprint lithography, chemical retrosynthesis, and computer aided enzyme design) to build the parts to put it together (Do you think George Stephenson, Nikolaus Otto (among others), Henry Ford, William Boeing, William Shockley, Gordon Moore, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, etc. started with all the pieces they needed "off the shelf"?!?).
One can understand the vision and understand the path toward achieving it without knowing all of the details. Your argument is nothing more than another way of saying "Everything is easy once you know how to do it."
I believe there have been studies done on wind extraction and don't remember the concerns being very significant. The problem with wind, tidal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, geothermal, space power, etc. is that they all shift the energy flow equation for the planet. However I believe humanity is still such a small part (~16 terawatts) of that equation (and will be until we are at 0.01 x Kardachev-Type-I civilization energy level (which is ~170 petawatts) so that our impact gets lost in the noise. The most significant part of the equation regarding our impact is taking tens to hundreds of millions of years of activity by cyanobacteria, algae and plants removing carbon from the atmosphere and putting it back into the atmosphere in a few centuries. That is what we have to stop and stop soon.
Being sustainable means "no new net CO2 additions to the atmosphere", preferably removal of what we have already put there. That is the only way to shift us back to a state close to what the world as we know it evolved within over the last 60 million years [1].
1. Disclaimer, if you really understand molecular nanotechnology you realize that it could remove *all* of the carbon from the atmosphere relatively quickly (in decades) resulting in the death of all photosynthetic species and the animals that depend on them (humans don't "have" to do so if robust bio/nanotechnology is available) and so one of the more interesting problems facing humanity is that we could go from facing a deadly CO2 excess to a CO2 shortage in only a few decades. If you want to worry about unintended side effects a good place to start a good place to start is handing every human being 10kg of nanorobots [2] (functioning a replicators (presumably of the Star Trek type, not the grey goo type)). 2. 10 kg of nanorobots operating at max capacity is the amount you can give each human without exceeding the hypsithermal limit of the Earth.
If one used the spare power to transmute the nuclear waste into useful non-radioactive materials then it wouldn't be "waste" anymore. The concept that the U.S. is power limited is completely false. A recent PNAS paper showed that the U.S. could supply 14x its *entire* electricity production using only high value wind power sites. Use the extra electricity to transmute the nuclear waste and one of the entire arguments against nuclear power disappears [1]. Then it becomes a simple economic discussion as to whether its better to build remote wind farms and superconducting cables to make the power available at distant cities, or build nuclear reactors closer to the cities where one could take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. If you want to give a gift to ones children start thinking in terms of "free" green energy.
1. Also worth noting is that either laser or tokamak fusion power might come into the mix over the next decade. But that doesn't minimize the advantages in U.S. jobs and infrastructure that would result from building up wind, tidal & solar generating capacity as well as superconducting transmission infrastructure. What is required is to break the coal, oil & gas monopoly mindset. If its taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere it is *not* sustainable. Not unless your definition of "sustainable" involves killing off a lot of species and a fair number of humans.
The individual who submitted this item and the/. editor who approved it should be accused (and presumably flogged) for spreading buzzworditis. We have had "nanomedicine" using the definition of "medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing disease or repairing damaged tissues" (using sub-100 nm particles) since the discovery of penicillin 80+ years ago (and even earlier if you count some less well known drugs). The only thing offered by most current "claims" of nanomedicine involve more focused targeting, usually using antibodies combined with some focused radiation (heat, light, etc.) and is only the result of the fact that we have a somewhat greater knowledge of which proteins may be more highly expressed by cancer cells combined with somewhat less toxic radiation therapies (IR or visible light vs. X-rays). There isn't anything "new" here. This is simply a refinement of what we have been doing for 30 or more years. If you wanted to call this "nanomedicine" then you should also call the use of the chemotherapeutic drug "Gleevec" (which is now 8 years old) "nanomedicine".
I was at the conference in the early part of this decade when NIH announced to great fanfare that it was launching a program involving "nanotechnology" and "nanomedicine". It was clear at the time that they didn't know what they were doing (and I stood up in the NIH auditorium and told them so -- and pointed out that they would have to read Drexler & Freitas before they would reach that point). They have gotten somewhat better but by and large they are still doing more of the same (which is a well known problem with the standard medical grant approval research process -- one gets approved by making small incremental improvements, not by really innovating). As a result what goes by the name of "nanomedicine" is really nothing more than fancy chemotherapy.
It should be noted that we came much closer to real nanomedicine in the 1990's when there was a lot of activity with gene therapy research. Unfortunately due to a few deaths and the FDA squashing such efforts, gene therapy research is largely at a standstill. The work by Sangamo and others is making slow progress but it could have been much further along by now (we could have had virus based "limited intelligence" therapies that would sense what cells are cancerous and caused them to commit suicide).
Cancer and aging are both very simple. In terms/.'ers will appreciate, "the code becomes corrupted". Cancer is a subset of aging in that a specific subset of the genome (involving those genes regulating cell replication and migration) become corrupted. To fix these problems you have to eliminate the bad code and replace it with good code. In theory what chemotherapy and radiation therapy attempt to do is eliminate the bad code (but grossly -- think using an atom bomb when one would like to use a precision implosion to bring down a Las Vegas hotel). Replacing the cells with good code is what stem cell therapies (if one could use pristine stem cells -- those with unmutated/unaged genomes) would do. Even better would be using bacteria sized nanorobots to scan the code and fix the errors. That is what Robert Freitas has envisioned "chromallocyte" nanorobots doing. But their implementation is so far from the limited NIH vision of "nanomedicine" (think going to the moon vs. launching a bottle rocket in ones back yard) that it is a gross abuse of the term "nanomedicine" when used to describe enhanced chemotherapy.
Now, for those few who are nanoliterate among the readers... Drexler described a nanoassembler in 1992 (in Nanosystems). Freitas mentioned chromallocytes (and what they could do) in 1999 (in Nanomedicine V I and in more detail in a subsequent technical paper). Drexler and Merkle designed ~5000 atoms of a 4-8 million atom nanoassembler in the 1993 time frame (it took several person-months). We now have supercomputers capable of molecular simulations of nanoassemblers (the ribosome was simulated at Los Alamos in ~2003). After the design and simulate stages one has the build, assemble and test stages. No different from what we have been doing with cars and planes for decades. But we will not get there by seeing if we can build better bottle rockets.
The question will be whether you can uninstall it? I've got better things to do with my disk space and network bandwidth than support/tolerate adware. Do I have to pay for the Ads to be downloaded if my Internet access is over a 3G network???.
For that matter is it possible in Windows 7+ to uninstall IE (or the anti-virus/Windows update/big-brother/similar software)?
Can one get back to the state where it is more like a Windows 2000 system (I still have my Win2K install disks...) or even Windows 98 or 95 [1]?
Sigh, when will someone sue computer manufacturers (HP, Dell [2], Apple, etc.) so they will all provide hardware without software and end the paternalistic (monopolistic) HW+SW bundling practices?
1. Though in theory one really wouldn't want to run 95 or 98 because their unprotected nature is presumably what started the madness... 2. Though I recently noticed Dell may be returning to providing a Linux option...
Encouraging people to provide Email addresses for ones ISP, potentially for sending electronic bills, would likely be more secure than web-site visits that can be hijacked. Who can't setup an email account to sort bills if you want to ignore them?
Now, that said I would not object to ISPs sending customer's email notices, or potentially even initial browser connection/request "popup" notices, of the form -- "Your machine has demonstrated Internet usage patterns that suggest that it has been infected by a virus". Your machine's access of various Microsoft web sites and/or browser agent fields demonstrate that you are using Microsoft Windows. You could end your enslavement to the Microsoft pseudo-monopoly by upgrading to one of the various Linux based operating systems, see http://www.distrowatch.com/ for various sources of free Linux distributions which would eliminate this problem."
Comcast would benefit because the machines would discontinue loading down the network with various Microsoft and/or virus manufacturer update requests.
The basis for this is that the Internet is a "shared public resource", just like the roads, the atmosphere, the public airwaves, etc. are. And just as it is reasonable for society to say "Friends don't let friends drive drunk," or "you cannot spew out atmospheric pollutants which are potentially harmful to others," or "you cannot build a house that represents a fire hazard to your family or neighborhood," or children which have potentially come down with H1N1 can be banned from school, etc. it is *NOT* unreasonable for society (and ISPs acting as the observers for society) to enact policies which make the Internet a safer place. Presumably that means a documented shared database of "typical" and "infected" usage patterns.
That said, obviously Comcast had better be intelligent about it what they are screening for, if I choose to contact lots of sites to download gigabytes of genetics databases (FTP, HTTP), get software updates (SVN), support various software pakages of interest (Folding@Home, Freenet, SecondLife, gaming, cloud computing), or even continuously download P2P Linux distributions (or anything else for that matter) up to the bandwidth I am paying for 24/7, then I should be free to do that. Any actions have to be based on public safety rationales and not on network load minimization rationales (or even worse "police-state" restriction rationales). Though it might be reasonable to switch 24/7 Internet pricing to 18/6/7 Internet pricing. Using the Internet significantly more than 75% of the other users during the 18 hour "peak" window could subject you to "peak period" user fees. (Either that or one moves to metered usage payment plans (just like other public utilities).) But metered payment plans are not likely to reduce the level of virus/bot infected machines given the sophistication of viruses/bots today [1].
Ultimately the bandwidth problem isn't going to get corrected until one has 3-4 ISPs in any region and that is going to require some combination of DSL + Cable + 4G wireless + WiMax + Satellite -- *then* one ought to see competitive rather than monopolistic pricing.
1. Truth be told, I doubt anything will eliminate the viruses short of replacing the installed Windows OS base with non-Windows systems.
You may want to consider the recently published "Year Million" by Damien Broderick. It isn't really Science Fiction or Fantasy since it is a number of chapters (short stories) regarding what life might be like in year 1 million.
You would be hard pressed to find a better collection of thinking about current technological trends which are going to have to meld together things like advanced biotechnology, molecular nanotechnology, radical lifespan extension, mind uploading, virtual reality, transhumanism / posthumanism, etc. One of the problems with almost all historical science fiction is that it failed to treat the human mind as "software" that can be moved between hardware support systems. Some recent films have begun to touch on this, e.g. the "Matrix" series and perhaps the forthcoming "Surrogates" and "Avatars". While the "Terminator" series dealt with intelligent superhuman robots, the science is fundamentally flawed or dated even today.
You might want to engage the class in real "hard science" (see Note 1) near term (next 100 year) transitions which have tremendous social impact.
1) Biotechnology and medical advances leading to multi-thousand year healthy lifespans (not 100 year lifespans). If you can live long enough everyone gets to be a millionaire (compund interest) which changes the human social condition/dynamic/politics a *lot*.
2) Molecular nanotechnology making living for "free" a reality (see my "Sapphire Mansions" paper (short read) or fully comprehend "Engines of Creation 2.0" (or Nanosystems for the real hard core scientists)). What is society like when Star Trek "replicators" become "real"?
3) Molecular nanotechnology combined with the transition from a pre-KT-I level of civilization to a KT-II level of civilization (a Matrioshka Brain) presumably linked with nanomedicine, mind-computer links and eventually mind uploading, lead to a transformation of society unlike anything ever experienced (humanity moves from a physical realm to a virtual realm). That becomes interesting because it implies that much of what is currently found in Science Fantasy or Virtual Reality can become the primary reality.
It is also worth noting that there is a significant probability (50-90%) that #3 transition *will* take place in the 21st century so many students taking the course and writing stories based on such concepts will have the opportunity to surf the rapids that will be involved in such stories ("You must begin first by being there").
I would stress that to think or write about these concepts requires at least a 1 period class about what these advanced technology concepts entail, what fraction of them is here now, or coming towards us very rapidly and what we can foresee but could be viewed as "over the horizon". Broderick's "The Spike" and "The Last Mortal Generation" or for the hard core Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" are good background in these areas.
Disclosures: I am the author of Chapter 7: "Under Construction" in "Year Million"
Note 1: By "hard science" I mean science which doesn't violate (or really really stretch) known laws of physics. It could be argued that the Star Trek programs (e.g. faster than light travel), Stargate programs (worm holes not "crushing" people, unknown magical elements), Ringworld (unknown materials), (most current "mystical" TV shows (Medium, Ghost Whisperers) all fall into the category of "will never be realized" fantasy. In contrast, transitions 1-3 (above) all involve complex engineering (like "rocket science") but not "magic" (undiscovered or likely undiscoverable) physics.
I would agree with this. There aren't many skills one can teach which are guaranteed to save an individual thousands of dollars (primarily in Microsoft or other proprietary software vendor fees) over their lifetime.
While I agree with the comments that that Ubuntu is easy and Gentoo a little trickier, the real "light-bulb" effect relates to people knowing what an operating system is and that they are implicitly paying for it when they buy a Windows or Mac PC. Linux opens other windows (e.g. Perl, Python, Xen, Android, browser independence, application specific Linux derivatives, the ability to look under the hood, the idea that one might be able to do it better, etc.)
Is the school in some way prohibiting the students from using alternatives? I.e. Linux + Firefox + OpenOffice? I would consider a $500 notebook or a $200-250 netbook to be a small price to pay (that ~2-5 college textbooks) to prevent the "public" education system from enstupiding my children for the rest of their lives.
I imagine that the press would have a field day with a group of parents that got together and threatened to sue the local school board (or pull their kids from school and home school them) over the brainwashing / disabling aspects. The headlines would be too good "Government uses tax money to handicap students"... etc. Or do they not have such feedback opportunities with the local papers or governments in AU (as we do here in Massachusetts)?
I wonder what definition for "life" they happen to use? I'll bet its a fairly standard one and that White Dwarf Matrioshka Brains, which are presumably the longest lived (and perhaps the most knowledgeable) civilizations in the Universe (to date), would score fairly low on a "Habitablity Equation".
The problem with almost all discussions related to non-Earth life, habitability, SETI, etc. is that they all start with the fundamental (and highly questionable) assumption that there is nobody "out there" significantly more advanced than we are.
It would be nice if news submissions to *science*.slashdot.org contained hard data URLs, rather than simply paraphrasing other press releases. I would like for example to know precisely *what* us being measured and how it is being measured (brightness vs. radial velocity, spectroscopic planet "light" frequency shifts, etc.). If you only know the orbital period and a radial velocity shift then it would be complete "fiction" (or "certitude" based on dead universe physics). With only a couple of parameters (the star type/age isn't even specified) it is entirely speculation to label an "object" a "planet" rather than say something like a Jupiter Brain.
The problem with any approach using "bulk" cell therapies, particularly from older individuals, is the lack of quality control over the cells involved. With large cell numbers harvested from individuals the cells will have accumulated a variety of mutations, some of which are likely to make the cells cancer prone. Anyone undergoing therapy using large volumes of cells which may not have been subject to multiple levels of quality screening is asking for cancer. Any physician performing therapies using such cells is asking for a malpractice suit. You may be able to get away with this in 40 year old patients where the accumulation of mutations is lower, but with 60+ year old patients the risks will be higher and the success rate of the therapies will be lower. You have to ask why a company, such as Regenexx, which is actually performing human stem cell therapies, is (a) using marrow derived stem cells (which have lower mutagen and free radical exposure compared with adipose tissue); and (b) makes clear distinctions between the GOOD/FAIR/POOR prospects of people undergoing therapies. There are several cases in the literature and conference reports that stem cell therapy success becomes progressively poorer with the age of the donor. For example bone marrow transplants from old mice into young mice have a well deserved reputation for failure.
It is useful to note that all living humans are the product of a single cell, and that those humans are subjected to some fairly rigorous quality control tests (conception and gestation) and that if 60-70% of human conceptions end in miscarriages (as currently is believed) then the quality control is fairly ruthless. If one is playing with numbers of cells which may exceed the number of humans on the planet [1] it is reasonable to start discussing that they have a natural (cumulative) "mutational load" equal to that of all of humanity (plus all of humanity that has ever been conceived). I think the odds may be better at Russian roulette.
Disclosure: I am the author of a pending patent on methods to identify "pristine", e.g. "least mutated", stem cells which can be used for therapeutic purposes.
1. Dealing with billions of cells is not uncommon in bulk therapies if one considers that the human body by various measures probably contains 10-100 trillion cells.
While the point of "What motivates superintelligences?" is well taken, it isn't particularly new. This was dealt with to some degree on the Extropy Chat list from 1997-1999 [1] and discussed at several Extropy Institute conferences in that time period. It is interesting to note that academics and even Technology Review are finally catching up.
The example of the sun burning out is a poor one however. If one is familiar with David Criswell's "Star Lifting" concept then one realizes that all of the "doom and gloom" predictors (typically shows on the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, etc.) have terribly limited (and incorrect) perspectives. The probable lifetime for intelligent technological civilizations as we can imagine them is measured in *trillions* of years (not billions of years). The really interesting questions (which might keep one busy for some time) involve how one retains some intelligence and thought capability *after* all the stars have burned out, whether one can trump the laws of thermodynamics, whether it is possible to transfer ones essence into alternate "do over" or "do differently" universes, etc.
1. Lookup the concepts of "Matrioshka Brains" and "Jupiter Brains".
If you are 27, then you must have heard about Eric Drexler and Molecular Nanotechnology. Indeed Eric's master's thesis at MIT was on the subject of solar sails and Eric wrote a number of papers [1] about how MNT would enable inexpensive space access.
If you really wanted to go to space you might consider spending less time on wishful thinking and more time on constructive activities. If you were to use the existing (free) Nanoengineer-1 molecular design software to design the nanoscale parts which are elements of a nanoassembler (Nanosystems, pg 401) we would all get there much faster. Once we have a complete nanoassembler design, it can be simulated on a supercomputer to verify that it will function as described and then the race will be on to figure out how to build one [2].
Of course inexpensive access to space and molecular nanoassemblers (or disassemblers) opens up a different can-o-worms like "Which planets we should disassemble to build a Matrioshka Brain for the Kardashev Type II level civilization?" But I suppose if you are still thinking along "vacation in suborbital space" lines that you may not have gotten to that point yet.
1. http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/Authors/Engineering/Drexler-KE/index.html 2. It would take more space than is available here to explain what directed molecular nanoassembly enables but if you consider that DNA polymerase, RNA polymerase and the ribosome are three examples of specific molecular nanoassemblers that produce everything that is considered to be "living", you might get the general idea.
This is good news. Now maybe the string theorists, such as Michio Kaku, will spend a little more time back at the drawing board and a little less time pretending to be Carl Sagan crossed with Alan Alda.
Also, knocking the wind out of the theories that tend to be playing with fabric of the universe (e.g. string theory) is good, as it is one step away from knocking the wind out of those other dark denizens of "magic physics", namely "dark matter" [1] and "dark energy"!
1. Especially when at least dark matter can be explained by the evolution of advanced technological civilizations based on *known* physics (through molecular nanotechnology and extreme engineering) and the construction of Jupiter and Matrioshka Brains. "Look Ma, no hand waving, just putting those I have to work doing something useful" [2]. 2. For those of you who do not understand this statement, answer the question, "Why 17 years after "Nanosystems" was published do we still not have an complete atomic level design for a molecular nanoassembler?" [3] 3. For those who are uneducated in molecular design, "Nanosystems" sketches the broad outline of a mechanical nanoassembler arm which requires 4-8 million atoms. In 1992-3, Merkle and Drexler showed that the design of simple molecular machines of several thousand atoms was possible even using the primitive software available in those days. So the design of a simulatable molecular assembler doesn't require "magic physics" -- it simply requires the dedication of enough people to doing the design (or the automation thereof) that it gets done. For the last 3-5 years supercomputers have been been powerful enough to simulate such a complete design to "prove" it would work. Show a design, show it will work and the only remaining barrier is building one [4]. For those who doubt the ability to build molecular machines (and eventually nanorobots), I'd suggest that you go read a textbook or two on cellular biology or microbiology. 4. For those who are uneducated in nanotechnology "enabling" in general and are thinking "Why should I care?" -- well, such things as "real" Star-Trek type replicators, the ability to live for "free" (given a few sq. m of land), indefinite lifespan extension, elimination of most causes of premature death (viruses, bacteria, starvation, etc.), elimination of the "problem" of global warming, inexpensive colonization of the solar system, etc. all come to mind.
I agree that if you need long term storage the equation shifts fairly significantly. But I'm assuming any "reasonable" site would be in an equator where ice would likely be found and one can easily consider alternative solutions to a 14-day light-dark cycle (mirrors come to mind). I have seen proposals for generating O2 from moon dust so one may also have brought along a fair amount of H2 for H2O production. In which case one is dealing with fuel cell mass rather than flywheel/battery mass. But it would be nice if such tradeoffs were all laid out side by side (energy / mass / sustainability / etc.) so one could have a more complete discussion.
Somebody doesn't seem to have done the math here. 2.3 kW of power, assuming ~1100 W/m^2 insolation, a 30% conversion efficiency, gives something like an array of solar panels less than 9 ft by 9ft (2.7 m^2). Does the article discuss how much the reactor plus the engine might weigh? I have a hard time believing its lighter than a solar array (unless they intend to launch it cold and bury it on site to shield people from the radiation).
Note any lunar sites are likely to be in places where there is a mixture of sun/shade and where long term oxygen/water production is likely to be handled on-site (so they are likely to have gas storage and/or electrolysis capabilities) for energy storage during any dark periods.
Mars is a different problem where planetary rotation and reduced insolation (esp. during dust storms) may come into play. But given the increased abilities one can expect from semi-intelligent robots over the next 10-20 years we have no business sending fragile humans on risky missions to Mars anyway. The only humans who should be going to Mars are those who can afford to pay for the trip themselves and stupid enough to want to take the risks involved in doing so. At the risk of being flamed -- you might wish to keep in mind precisely *who* came up with the humans should visit Mars plan (ignoring the bright people who might have been involved who presumably have vested interests in human space exploration) [1].
1. And don't give me the "humans need a refuge site" song and dance. Give me a cost comparison per person study between a Mars colony and self-sustaining terrestrial sub-surface ocean/land colonies. Anything that represents a significant threat in the near future (millions of years) to sub-surface colonies on Earth probably represents a threat on the moon or Mars as well.
Such predictions of "habitability" by astronomers and astrophysicists, implicitly rely on a strong assumption that the universe, *is* and *must* remain "dead". They completely ignore such concepts as the evolution of intelligence, the development of technology, transitions from pre-KT-I level civilizations to KT-II+ level civilizations and the developments that push up against the limits of physical laws, e.g. Matrioshka Brains, Star-Lifting, etc. which can completely alter the picture of the universe -- e.g. the "Earth" is much more likely to be dismantled before it becomes "uninhabitable", Matrioshka Brains contain the "missing mass", civilization lifetimes are limited the maximum lifetimes of small stars (trillions of years), etc.
Here are some tipping point questions. When will humanity reach the point when the annual mass being launched into space exceeds the mass being absorbed from space (meteorites, space dust, etc.)? How long will it take to dismantle the asteroid belt and construct a Dyson Shell which enables the use of KT-II energy levels (presumably using nanorobotic spacecraft)? If one hasn't looked at questions like these then ones ability to offer an even semi-informed opinion on the "habitability" lifetime of planets is open to significant doubt.
Of course astronmers don't get as much press from pronouncing "Don't worry, be happy" as they do from pronouncing "The sky is falling, the sky is falling".
The Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ) DNA double strand break repair process can produce mutagenic deletions (and sometimes insertions) in the DNA sequence. Both the Werner's Syndrome (WRN) and Artemis (DCLRE1) proteins involved in that process have exonuclease activity in order to process the DNA ends into forms which can be reunited. The Homologous Recombination (HR) pathway, which is more active during cell replication, is more likely to produce "gene conversion" which can involve copying of formerly masked mutated DNA (from the homologous chromosome) or sometimes large scale deletions or duplications as well as inversions if the "homology" detection proteins perform their job poorly. The other DNA repair processes generally involve only a single bases and tend to be less destructive to the genome from a pathology standpoint (in part due to the redundancy in the genetic code in converting mRNA into proteins)..
I would suggest that you spend some time studying the topic in more detail before you make comments on/.
At all the genome conferences I've been to the "genome" includes everything -- the chromosome number and architecture, the coding, regulatory & non-coding regions (tRNA, rRNA, miRNA/siRNA, telomere length, etc.). But the non-coding, highly variable parts of the genome can be considered part of the "big picture" because the amount of *really* junk DNA may function as a free radical "sink" which protects the critical DNA from more rapid mutation (and thus effects rates of cancer development and aging). The DNA composition and ultrastructure may also effect things like gene expression (DNA unwinding temperature, variable access to genes, etc.). It would be a gross simplification to divide a gnome into simply coding vs. non-coding regions.
Books like DNA Replication, DNA Repair and Mutagenesis and Aging of the Genome (~2000+ pages) are good places to start on this topic. Bruce Ames demonstrated in the early '90s that all cells are receiving damage to the DNA (thousands of "hits" per cell per day) and usually repair it successfully. If you knew about the 5+ types of DNA repair (BER, NER, MMR, HR, NHEJ) involving 150+ proteins or had some knowledge of the types of DNA damage which have been discovered in genetic diseases (OMIM) and cancers (Gancer Genome Anatomy project(s)) you would understand that mutational repair does occur within both coding and noncoding DNA and that such damage is probably the core cause of cancer, aging and arguably many other major causes of death (decline of the immune system, susceptibility to influenza or pneumonia, aging of the blood vessels, heart and other muscles, etc.). The accumulation of mutations *does* happen in non-dividing cells and is cumulative. Karanjawala & Lieber [1] have estimated that each cell of a 70 year old individual may contain more than 100 mutations in the critical regions of genes. The accumulation of the proper set of "wrong" mutations (5-10) in dividing cells tends to steer towards cancer while mutations in less critical genes, or non-dividing cells, tends to result in general aging.
There are several million differences in the, esp. SNPs, between the genomes of each human, which is what makes each of us (excepting identical twins/triplets) "different". Speciation results when those differences become sufficient to effectively prevent breeding between population groups. However, the same mutation accumulation that drives differences in individuals and evolution among species can also occur within a single individual. There are many more cells in a single human body (which are derived from a single genome) than there are humans on the planet (~3 orders of magnitude difference), and I suspect more than have ever lived on the planet, so it is unlikely that even within a single individual all of the "genomes" are the same. A genome can best be considered an "average" (esp. if the DNA used to produce the sequence was derived from more than a single cell -- the typical case).
I can think of nothing that would encourage them more than reading works by K. Eric Drexler or Robert Freitas. Though they deal more in the realm of engineering than science and are generally create a picture of possible future paths (molecular nanotechnology & nanomedicine) which can easily inspire people to learn science.
The best book for nanotechnology would be Engines of Creation 2.0: http://e-drexler.com/p/06/00/EOC_Cover.html (the paperback 1987 edition is somewhat dated at this point) but you would have to go browsing through the papers by Robert @ http://www.rfreitas.com/ to find something which is for a younger age level. You might even have to read them with your children and explain them. But exploring the realms of the small (nanotechnology) and the large (astronomy) both serve as windows to get children to wonder about the world around them, how it can be understood, and potentially how it can be explored and developed. Tools that allow these explorations (I grew up with both a microscope and a telescope in the house) are helpful as well.
For those unfamiliar with the site and only loosely following security issues, is there any speculation on how the hack was done? Was ImageShack stupid enough to be hosting a web site on Windows or was it a Linux hack? Was the site designed (perhaps mis-designed) to allow remote users the ability to upload data? Or was it something as simple as allowing ssh or ftp from anywhere?
If its a windows hack, the story lead-ins should perhaps reveal that so Linux users know whether or non they should just shake their heads or whether they should actually be concerned.
The introduction note contains a typo. It is Ralph Merkle, not "Ray Merkle", that is involved in nanotechnology and the Singularity University as can be seen from his WikiPedia page and his web site (www.merkle.com).
I can think of at least two instances on entirely different hardware (an IBM 370 and a Motorola 68000) where I had to discover that it was not working as promised. This involved a test-and-set instruction which was essential for Oracle (in the early 1980's days) to function reliably. Now of course with the multi-core CPUs they have to get these things right -- but back in the "old" days the hardware engineers could be more careless.
A test-and-set instruction, for those uninformed, is an instruction which locks the memory to prevent other CPUs from changing it when one needs an exclusive lock on it.
It is interesting, though infuriating, from a software standpoint when one is using it to diagnose hardware problems.
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Part of the problem is being precise enough. "Molecular nanotechnology" does exist in the form of every enzyme which catalyzes a reaction in biochemistry. All of the DNA polymerases, RNA polymerases and the Ribosome can be considered "limited purpose" nanoassemblers in that they assemble multiple components into larger molecular aggregates which form more complex structures (genomes, ribosomal, messenger and transfer RNA and all proteins). What is missing is a 4-8 million atom complete general purpose molecular nanoassembler design, a simulation on a supercomputer proving it will work and the means of using a variety of methods (e-beam machining, nano-imprint lithography, chemical retrosynthesis, and computer aided enzyme design) to build the parts to put it together (Do you think George Stephenson, Nikolaus Otto (among others), Henry Ford, William Boeing, William Shockley, Gordon Moore, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, etc. started with all the pieces they needed "off the shelf"?!?).
One can understand the vision and understand the path toward achieving it without knowing all of the details. Your argument is nothing more than another way of saying "Everything is easy once you know how to do it."
I believe there have been studies done on wind extraction and don't remember the concerns being very significant. The problem with wind, tidal, photovoltaic, solar thermal, geothermal, space power, etc. is that they all shift the energy flow equation for the planet. However I believe humanity is still such a small part (~16 terawatts) of that equation (and will be until we are at 0.01 x Kardachev-Type-I civilization energy level (which is ~170 petawatts) so that our impact gets lost in the noise. The most significant part of the equation regarding our impact is taking tens to hundreds of millions of years of activity by cyanobacteria, algae and plants removing carbon from the atmosphere and putting it back into the atmosphere in a few centuries. That is what we have to stop and stop soon.
Being sustainable means "no new net CO2 additions to the atmosphere", preferably removal of what we have already put there. That is the only way to shift us back to a state close to what the world as we know it evolved within over the last 60 million years [1].
1. Disclaimer, if you really understand molecular nanotechnology you realize that it could remove *all* of the carbon from the atmosphere relatively quickly (in decades) resulting in the death of all photosynthetic species and the animals that depend on them (humans don't "have" to do so if robust bio/nanotechnology is available) and so one of the more interesting problems facing humanity is that we could go from facing a deadly CO2 excess to a CO2 shortage in only a few decades. If you want to worry about unintended side effects a good place to start a good place to start is handing every human being 10kg of nanorobots [2] (functioning a replicators (presumably of the Star Trek type, not the grey goo type)).
2. 10 kg of nanorobots operating at max capacity is the amount you can give each human without exceeding the hypsithermal limit of the Earth.
If one used the spare power to transmute the nuclear waste into useful non-radioactive materials then it wouldn't be "waste" anymore. The concept that the U.S. is power limited is completely false. A recent PNAS paper showed that the U.S. could supply 14x its *entire* electricity production using only high value wind power sites. Use the extra electricity to transmute the nuclear waste and one of the entire arguments against nuclear power disappears [1]. Then it becomes a simple economic discussion as to whether its better to build remote wind farms and superconducting cables to make the power available at distant cities, or build nuclear reactors closer to the cities where one could take advantage of existing transmission infrastructure. If you want to give a gift to ones children start thinking in terms of "free" green energy.
1. Also worth noting is that either laser or tokamak fusion power might come into the mix over the next decade. But that doesn't minimize the advantages in U.S. jobs and infrastructure that would result from building up wind, tidal & solar generating capacity as well as superconducting transmission infrastructure. What is required is to break the coal, oil & gas monopoly mindset. If its taking carbon out of the ground and putting it into the atmosphere it is *not* sustainable. Not unless your definition of "sustainable" involves killing off a lot of species and a fair number of humans.
The individual who submitted this item and the /. editor who approved it should be accused (and presumably flogged) for spreading buzzworditis. We have had "nanomedicine" using the definition of "medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing disease or repairing damaged tissues" (using sub-100 nm particles) since the discovery of penicillin 80+ years ago (and even earlier if you count some less well known drugs). The only thing offered by most current "claims" of nanomedicine involve more focused targeting, usually using antibodies combined with some focused radiation (heat, light, etc.) and is only the result of the fact that we have a somewhat greater knowledge of which proteins may be more highly expressed by cancer cells combined with somewhat less toxic radiation therapies (IR or visible light vs. X-rays). There isn't anything "new" here. This is simply a refinement of what we have been doing for 30 or more years. If you wanted to call this "nanomedicine" then you should also call the use of the chemotherapeutic drug "Gleevec" (which is now 8 years old) "nanomedicine".
I was at the conference in the early part of this decade when NIH announced to great fanfare that it was launching a program involving "nanotechnology" and "nanomedicine". It was clear at the time that they didn't know what they were doing (and I stood up in the NIH auditorium and told them so -- and pointed out that they would have to read Drexler & Freitas before they would reach that point). They have gotten somewhat better but by and large they are still doing more of the same (which is a well known problem with the standard medical grant approval research process -- one gets approved by making small incremental improvements, not by really innovating). As a result what goes by the name of "nanomedicine" is really nothing more than fancy chemotherapy.
It should be noted that we came much closer to real nanomedicine in the 1990's when there was a lot of activity with gene therapy research. Unfortunately due to a few deaths and the FDA squashing such efforts, gene therapy research is largely at a standstill. The work by Sangamo and others is making slow progress but it could have been much further along by now (we could have had virus based "limited intelligence" therapies that would sense what cells are cancerous and caused them to commit suicide).
Cancer and aging are both very simple. In terms /.'ers will appreciate, "the code becomes corrupted". Cancer is a subset of aging in that a specific subset of the genome (involving those genes regulating cell replication and migration) become corrupted. To fix these problems you have to eliminate the bad code and replace it with good code. In theory what chemotherapy and radiation therapy attempt to do is eliminate the bad code (but grossly -- think using an atom bomb when one would like to use a precision implosion to bring down a Las Vegas hotel). Replacing the cells with good code is what stem cell therapies (if one could use pristine stem cells -- those with unmutated/unaged genomes) would do. Even better would be using bacteria sized nanorobots to scan the code and fix the errors. That is what Robert Freitas has envisioned "chromallocyte" nanorobots doing. But their implementation is so far from the limited NIH vision of "nanomedicine" (think going to the moon vs. launching a bottle rocket in ones back yard) that it is a gross abuse of the term "nanomedicine" when used to describe enhanced chemotherapy.
Now, for those few who are nanoliterate among the readers... Drexler described a nanoassembler in 1992 (in Nanosystems). Freitas mentioned chromallocytes (and what they could do) in 1999 (in Nanomedicine V I and in more detail in a subsequent technical paper). Drexler and Merkle designed ~5000 atoms of a 4-8 million atom nanoassembler in the 1993 time frame (it took several person-months). We now have supercomputers capable of molecular simulations of nanoassemblers (the ribosome was simulated at Los Alamos in ~2003). After the design and simulate stages one has the build, assemble and test stages. No different from what we have been doing with cars and planes for decades. But we will not get there by seeing if we can build better bottle rockets.
The question will be whether you can uninstall it? I've got better things to do with my disk space and network bandwidth than support/tolerate adware. Do I have to pay for the Ads to be downloaded if my Internet access is over a 3G network???.
For that matter is it possible in Windows 7+ to uninstall IE (or the anti-virus/Windows update/big-brother/similar software)?
Can one get back to the state where it is more like a Windows 2000 system (I still have my Win2K install disks...) or even Windows 98 or 95 [1]?
Sigh, when will someone sue computer manufacturers (HP, Dell [2], Apple, etc.) so they will all provide hardware without software and end the paternalistic (monopolistic) HW+SW bundling practices?
1. Though in theory one really wouldn't want to run 95 or 98 because their unprotected nature is presumably what started the madness...
2. Though I recently noticed Dell may be returning to providing a Linux option...
Encouraging people to provide Email addresses for ones ISP, potentially for sending electronic bills, would likely be more secure than web-site visits that can be hijacked. Who can't setup an email account to sort bills if you want to ignore them?
Now, that said I would not object to ISPs sending customer's email notices, or potentially even initial browser connection/request "popup" notices, of the form -- "Your machine has demonstrated Internet usage patterns that suggest that it has been infected by a virus". Your machine's access of various Microsoft web sites and/or browser agent fields demonstrate that you are using Microsoft Windows. You could end your enslavement to the Microsoft pseudo-monopoly by upgrading to one of the various Linux based operating systems, see http://www.distrowatch.com/ for various sources of free Linux distributions which would eliminate this problem."
Comcast would benefit because the machines would discontinue loading down the network with various Microsoft and/or virus manufacturer update requests.
The basis for this is that the Internet is a "shared public resource", just like the roads, the atmosphere, the public airwaves, etc. are. And just as it is reasonable for society to say "Friends don't let friends drive drunk," or "you cannot spew out atmospheric pollutants which are potentially harmful to others," or "you cannot build a house that represents a fire hazard to your family or neighborhood," or children which have potentially come down with H1N1 can be banned from school, etc. it is *NOT* unreasonable for society (and ISPs acting as the observers for society) to enact policies which make the Internet a safer place. Presumably that means a documented shared database of "typical" and "infected" usage patterns.
That said, obviously Comcast had better be intelligent about it what they are screening for, if I choose to contact lots of sites to download gigabytes of genetics databases (FTP, HTTP), get software updates (SVN), support various software pakages of interest (Folding@Home, Freenet, SecondLife, gaming, cloud computing), or even continuously download P2P Linux distributions (or anything else for that matter) up to the bandwidth I am paying for 24/7, then I should be free to do that. Any actions have to be based on public safety rationales and not on network load minimization rationales (or even worse "police-state" restriction rationales). Though it might be reasonable to switch 24/7 Internet pricing to 18/6/7 Internet pricing. Using the Internet significantly more than 75% of the other users during the 18 hour "peak" window could subject you to "peak period" user fees. (Either that or one moves to metered usage payment plans (just like other public utilities).) But metered payment plans are not likely to reduce the level of virus/bot infected machines given the sophistication of viruses/bots today [1].
Ultimately the bandwidth problem isn't going to get corrected until one has 3-4 ISPs in any region and that is going to require some combination of DSL + Cable + 4G wireless + WiMax + Satellite -- *then* one ought to see competitive rather than monopolistic pricing.
1. Truth be told, I doubt anything will eliminate the viruses short of replacing the installed Windows OS base with non-Windows systems.
Sorry, typo in the Subject: the editor/author is "Damien Broderick".
Also, for what its worth, Raymond Douglas Bradbury is my 6th cousin twice removed and Norris E. Bradbury is my 5th cousin twice removed.
You may want to consider the recently published "Year Million" by Damien Broderick. It isn't really Science Fiction or Fantasy since it is a number of chapters (short stories) regarding what life might be like in year 1 million.
You would be hard pressed to find a better collection of thinking about current technological trends which are going to have to meld together things like advanced biotechnology, molecular nanotechnology, radical lifespan extension, mind uploading, virtual reality, transhumanism / posthumanism, etc. One of the problems with almost all historical science fiction is that it failed to treat the human mind as "software" that can be moved between hardware support systems. Some recent films have begun to touch on this, e.g. the "Matrix" series and perhaps the forthcoming "Surrogates" and "Avatars". While the "Terminator" series dealt with intelligent superhuman robots, the science is fundamentally flawed or dated even today.
You might want to engage the class in real "hard science" (see Note 1) near term (next 100 year) transitions which have tremendous social impact.
1) Biotechnology and medical advances leading to multi-thousand year healthy lifespans (not 100 year lifespans). If you can live long enough everyone gets to be a millionaire (compund interest) which changes the human social condition/dynamic/politics a *lot*.
2) Molecular nanotechnology making living for "free" a reality (see my "Sapphire Mansions" paper (short read) or fully comprehend "Engines of Creation 2.0" (or Nanosystems for the real hard core scientists)). What is society like when Star Trek "replicators" become "real"?
3) Molecular nanotechnology combined with the transition from a pre-KT-I level of civilization to a KT-II level of civilization (a Matrioshka Brain) presumably linked with nanomedicine, mind-computer links and eventually mind uploading, lead to a transformation of society unlike anything ever experienced (humanity moves from a physical realm to a virtual realm). That becomes interesting because it implies that much of what is currently found in Science Fantasy or Virtual Reality can become the primary reality.
It is also worth noting that there is a significant probability (50-90%) that #3 transition *will* take place in the 21st century so many students taking the course and writing stories based on such concepts will have the opportunity to surf the rapids that will be involved in such stories ("You must begin first by being there").
I would stress that to think or write about these concepts requires at least a 1 period class about what these advanced technology concepts entail, what fraction of them is here now, or coming towards us very rapidly and what we can foresee but could be viewed as "over the horizon". Broderick's "The Spike" and "The Last Mortal Generation" or for the hard core Kurzweil's "The Singularity is Near" are good background in these areas.
Disclosures: I am the author of Chapter 7: "Under Construction" in "Year Million"
Note 1: By "hard science" I mean science which doesn't violate (or really really stretch) known laws of physics. It could be argued that the Star Trek programs (e.g. faster than light travel), Stargate programs (worm holes not "crushing" people, unknown magical elements), Ringworld (unknown materials), (most current "mystical" TV shows (Medium, Ghost Whisperers) all fall into the category of "will never be realized" fantasy. In contrast, transitions 1-3 (above) all involve complex engineering (like "rocket science") but not "magic" (undiscovered or likely undiscoverable) physics.
I would agree with this. There aren't many skills one can teach which are guaranteed to save an individual thousands of dollars (primarily in Microsoft or other proprietary software vendor fees) over their lifetime.
While I agree with the comments that that Ubuntu is easy and Gentoo a little trickier, the real "light-bulb" effect relates to people knowing what an operating system is and that they are implicitly paying for it when they buy a Windows or Mac PC. Linux opens other windows (e.g. Perl, Python, Xen, Android, browser independence, application specific Linux derivatives, the ability to look under the hood, the idea that one might be able to do it better, etc.)
Is the school in some way prohibiting the students from using alternatives? I.e. Linux + Firefox + OpenOffice? I would consider a $500 notebook or a $200-250 netbook to be a small price to pay (that ~2-5 college textbooks) to prevent the "public" education system from enstupiding my children for the rest of their lives.
I imagine that the press would have a field day with a group of parents that got together and threatened to sue the local school board (or pull their kids from school and home school them) over the brainwashing / disabling aspects. The headlines would be too good "Government uses tax money to handicap students"... etc. Or do they not have such feedback opportunities with the local papers or governments in AU (as we do here in Massachusetts)?
I wonder what definition for "life" they happen to use? I'll bet its a fairly standard one and that White Dwarf Matrioshka Brains, which are presumably the longest lived (and perhaps the most knowledgeable) civilizations in the Universe (to date), would score fairly low on a "Habitablity Equation".
The problem with almost all discussions related to non-Earth life, habitability, SETI, etc. is that they all start with the fundamental (and highly questionable) assumption that there is nobody "out there" significantly more advanced than we are.
It would be nice if news submissions to *science*.slashdot.org contained hard data URLs, rather than simply paraphrasing other press releases. I would like for example to know precisely *what* us being measured and how it is being measured (brightness vs. radial velocity, spectroscopic planet "light" frequency shifts, etc.). If you only know the orbital period and a radial velocity shift then it would be complete "fiction" (or "certitude" based on dead universe physics). With only a couple of parameters (the star type/age isn't even specified) it is entirely speculation to label an "object" a "planet" rather than say something like a Jupiter Brain.
The problem with any approach using "bulk" cell therapies, particularly from older individuals, is the lack of quality control over the cells involved. With large cell numbers harvested from individuals the cells will have accumulated a variety of mutations, some of which are likely to make the cells cancer prone. Anyone undergoing therapy using large volumes of cells which may not have been subject to multiple levels of quality screening is asking for cancer. Any physician performing therapies using such cells is asking for a malpractice suit. You may be able to get away with this in 40 year old patients where the accumulation of mutations is lower, but with 60+ year old patients the risks will be higher and the success rate of the therapies will be lower. You have to ask why a company, such as Regenexx, which is actually performing human stem cell therapies, is (a) using marrow derived stem cells (which have lower mutagen and free radical exposure compared with adipose tissue); and (b) makes clear distinctions between the GOOD/FAIR/POOR prospects of people undergoing therapies. There are several cases in the literature and conference reports that stem cell therapy success becomes progressively poorer with the age of the donor. For example bone marrow transplants from old mice into young mice have a well deserved reputation for failure.
It is useful to note that all living humans are the product of a single cell, and that those humans are subjected to some fairly rigorous quality control tests (conception and gestation) and that if 60-70% of human conceptions end in miscarriages (as currently is believed) then the quality control is fairly ruthless. If one is playing with numbers of cells which may exceed the number of humans on the planet [1] it is reasonable to start discussing that they have a natural (cumulative) "mutational load" equal to that of all of humanity (plus all of humanity that has ever been conceived). I think the odds may be better at Russian roulette.
Disclosure: I am the author of a pending patent on methods to identify "pristine", e.g. "least mutated", stem cells which can be used for therapeutic purposes.
1. Dealing with billions of cells is not uncommon in bulk therapies if one considers that the human body by various measures probably contains 10-100 trillion cells.
While the point of "What motivates superintelligences?" is well taken, it isn't particularly new. This was dealt with to some degree on the Extropy Chat list from 1997-1999 [1] and discussed at several Extropy Institute conferences in that time period. It is interesting to note that academics and even Technology Review are finally catching up.
The example of the sun burning out is a poor one however. If one is familiar with David Criswell's "Star Lifting" concept then one realizes that all of the "doom and gloom" predictors (typically shows on the Discovery Channel, Science Channel, etc.) have terribly limited (and incorrect) perspectives. The probable lifetime for intelligent technological civilizations as we can imagine them is measured in *trillions* of years (not billions of years). The really interesting questions (which might keep one busy for some time) involve how one retains some intelligence and thought capability *after* all the stars have burned out, whether one can trump the laws of thermodynamics, whether it is possible to transfer ones essence into alternate "do over" or "do differently" universes, etc.
1. Lookup the concepts of "Matrioshka Brains" and "Jupiter Brains".
If you are 27, then you must have heard about Eric Drexler and Molecular Nanotechnology. Indeed Eric's master's thesis at MIT was on the subject of solar sails and Eric wrote a number of papers [1] about how MNT would enable inexpensive space access.
If you really wanted to go to space you might consider spending less time on wishful thinking and more time on constructive activities. If you were to use the existing (free) Nanoengineer-1 molecular design software to design the nanoscale parts which are elements of a nanoassembler (Nanosystems, pg 401) we would all get there much faster. Once we have a complete nanoassembler design, it can be simulated on a supercomputer to verify that it will function as described and then the race will be on to figure out how to build one [2].
Of course inexpensive access to space and molecular nanoassemblers (or disassemblers) opens up a different can-o-worms like "Which planets we should disassemble to build a Matrioshka Brain for the Kardashev Type II level civilization?" But I suppose if you are still thinking along "vacation in suborbital space" lines that you may not have gotten to that point yet.
1. http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/Authors/Engineering/Drexler-KE/index.html
2. It would take more space than is available here to explain what directed molecular nanoassembly enables but if you consider that DNA polymerase, RNA polymerase and the ribosome are three examples of specific molecular nanoassemblers that produce everything that is considered to be "living", you might get the general idea.
This is good news. Now maybe the string theorists, such as Michio Kaku, will spend a little more time back at the drawing board and a little less time pretending to be Carl Sagan crossed with Alan Alda.
Also, knocking the wind out of the theories that tend to be playing with fabric of the universe (e.g. string theory) is good, as it is one step away from knocking the wind out of those other dark denizens of "magic physics", namely "dark matter" [1] and "dark energy"!
1. Especially when at least dark matter can be explained by the evolution of advanced technological civilizations based on *known* physics (through molecular nanotechnology and extreme engineering) and the construction of Jupiter and Matrioshka Brains. "Look Ma, no hand waving, just putting those I have to work doing something useful" [2].
2. For those of you who do not understand this statement, answer the question, "Why 17 years after "Nanosystems" was published do we still not have an complete atomic level design for a molecular nanoassembler?" [3]
3. For those who are uneducated in molecular design, "Nanosystems" sketches the broad outline of a mechanical nanoassembler arm which requires 4-8 million atoms. In 1992-3, Merkle and Drexler showed that the design of simple molecular machines of several thousand atoms was possible even using the primitive software available in those days. So the design of a simulatable molecular assembler doesn't require "magic physics" -- it simply requires the dedication of enough people to doing the design (or the automation thereof) that it gets done. For the last 3-5 years supercomputers have been been powerful enough to simulate such a complete design to "prove" it would work. Show a design, show it will work and the only remaining barrier is building one [4]. For those who doubt the ability to build molecular machines (and eventually nanorobots), I'd suggest that you go read a textbook or two on cellular biology or microbiology.
4. For those who are uneducated in nanotechnology "enabling" in general and are thinking "Why should I care?" -- well, such things as "real" Star-Trek type replicators, the ability to live for "free" (given a few sq. m of land), indefinite lifespan extension, elimination of most causes of premature death (viruses, bacteria, starvation, etc.), elimination of the "problem" of global warming, inexpensive colonization of the solar system, etc. all come to mind.
I agree that if you need long term storage the equation shifts fairly significantly. But I'm assuming any "reasonable" site would be in an equator where ice would likely be found and one can easily consider alternative solutions to a 14-day light-dark cycle (mirrors come to mind). I have seen proposals for generating O2 from moon dust so one may also have brought along a fair amount of H2 for H2O production. In which case one is dealing with fuel cell mass rather than flywheel/battery mass. But it would be nice if such tradeoffs were all laid out side by side (energy / mass / sustainability / etc.) so one could have a more complete discussion.
Somebody doesn't seem to have done the math here. 2.3 kW of power, assuming ~1100 W/m^2 insolation, a 30% conversion efficiency, gives something like an array of solar panels less than 9 ft by 9ft (2.7 m^2). Does the article discuss how much the reactor plus the engine might weigh? I have a hard time believing its lighter than a solar array (unless they intend to launch it cold and bury it on site to shield people from the radiation).
Note any lunar sites are likely to be in places where there is a mixture of sun/shade and where long term oxygen/water production is likely to be handled on-site (so they are likely to have gas storage and/or electrolysis capabilities) for energy storage during any dark periods.
Mars is a different problem where planetary rotation and reduced insolation (esp. during dust storms) may come into play. But given the increased abilities one can expect from semi-intelligent robots over the next 10-20 years we have no business sending fragile humans on risky missions to Mars anyway. The only humans who should be going to Mars are those who can afford to pay for the trip themselves and stupid enough to want to take the risks involved in doing so. At the risk of being flamed -- you might wish to keep in mind precisely *who* came up with the humans should visit Mars plan (ignoring the bright people who might have been involved who presumably have vested interests in human space exploration) [1].
1. And don't give me the "humans need a refuge site" song and dance. Give me a cost comparison per person study between a Mars colony and self-sustaining terrestrial sub-surface ocean/land colonies. Anything that represents a significant threat in the near future (millions of years) to sub-surface colonies on Earth probably represents a threat on the moon or Mars as well.
Such predictions of "habitability" by astronomers and astrophysicists, implicitly rely on a strong assumption that the universe, *is* and *must* remain "dead". They completely ignore such concepts as the evolution of intelligence, the development of technology, transitions from pre-KT-I level civilizations to KT-II+ level civilizations and the developments that push up against the limits of physical laws, e.g. Matrioshka Brains, Star-Lifting, etc. which can completely alter the picture of the universe -- e.g. the "Earth" is much more likely to be dismantled before it becomes "uninhabitable", Matrioshka Brains contain the "missing mass", civilization lifetimes are limited the maximum lifetimes of small stars (trillions of years), etc.
Here are some tipping point questions. When will humanity reach the point when the annual mass being launched into space exceeds the mass being absorbed from space (meteorites, space dust, etc.)? How long will it take to dismantle the asteroid belt and construct a Dyson Shell which enables the use of KT-II energy levels (presumably using nanorobotic spacecraft)? If one hasn't looked at questions like these then ones ability to offer an even semi-informed opinion on the "habitability" lifetime of planets is open to significant doubt.
Of course astronmers don't get as much press from pronouncing "Don't worry, be happy" as they do from pronouncing "The sky is falling, the sky is falling".
The Non-Homologous End Joining (NHEJ) DNA double strand break repair process can produce mutagenic deletions (and sometimes insertions) in the DNA sequence. Both the Werner's Syndrome (WRN) and Artemis (DCLRE1) proteins involved in that process have exonuclease activity in order to process the DNA ends into forms which can be reunited. The Homologous Recombination (HR) pathway, which is more active during cell replication, is more likely to produce "gene conversion" which can involve copying of formerly masked mutated DNA (from the homologous chromosome) or sometimes large scale deletions or duplications as well as inversions if the "homology" detection proteins perform their job poorly. The other DNA repair processes generally involve only a single bases and tend to be less destructive to the genome from a pathology standpoint (in part due to the redundancy in the genetic code in converting mRNA into proteins)..
I would suggest that you spend some time studying the topic in more detail before you make comments on /.
At all the genome conferences I've been to the "genome" includes everything -- the chromosome number and architecture, the coding, regulatory & non-coding regions (tRNA, rRNA, miRNA/siRNA, telomere length, etc.). But the non-coding, highly variable parts of the genome can be considered part of the "big picture" because the amount of *really* junk DNA may function as a free radical "sink" which protects the critical DNA from more rapid mutation (and thus effects rates of cancer development and aging). The DNA composition and ultrastructure may also effect things like gene expression (DNA unwinding temperature, variable access to genes, etc.). It would be a gross simplification to divide a gnome into simply coding vs. non-coding regions.
Books like DNA Replication, DNA Repair and Mutagenesis and Aging of the Genome (~2000+ pages) are good places to start on this topic. Bruce Ames demonstrated in the early '90s that all cells are receiving damage to the DNA (thousands of "hits" per cell per day) and usually repair it successfully. If you knew about the 5+ types of DNA repair (BER, NER, MMR, HR, NHEJ) involving 150+ proteins or had some knowledge of the types of DNA damage which have been discovered in genetic diseases (OMIM) and cancers (Gancer Genome Anatomy project(s)) you would understand that mutational repair does occur within both coding and noncoding DNA and that such damage is probably the core cause of cancer, aging and arguably many other major causes of death (decline of the immune system, susceptibility to influenza or pneumonia, aging of the blood vessels, heart and other muscles, etc.). The accumulation of mutations *does* happen in non-dividing cells and is cumulative. Karanjawala & Lieber [1] have estimated that each cell of a 70 year old individual may contain more than 100 mutations in the critical regions of genes. The accumulation of the proper set of "wrong" mutations (5-10) in dividing cells tends to steer towards cancer while mutations in less critical genes, or non-dividing cells, tends to result in general aging.
There are several million differences in the, esp. SNPs, between the genomes of each human, which is what makes each of us (excepting identical twins/triplets) "different". Speciation results when those differences become sufficient to effectively prevent breeding between population groups. However, the same mutation accumulation that drives differences in individuals and evolution among species can also occur within a single individual. There are many more cells in a single human body (which are derived from a single genome) than there are humans on the planet (~3 orders of magnitude difference), and I suspect more than have ever lived on the planet, so it is unlikely that even within a single individual all of the "genomes" are the same. A genome can best be considered an "average" (esp. if the DNA used to produce the sequence was derived from more than a single cell -- the typical case).
1. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15272504
I can think of nothing that would encourage them more than reading works by K. Eric Drexler or Robert Freitas. Though they deal more in the realm of engineering than science and are generally create a picture of possible future paths (molecular nanotechnology & nanomedicine) which can easily inspire people to learn science. The best book for nanotechnology would be Engines of Creation 2.0: http://e-drexler.com/p/06/00/EOC_Cover.html (the paperback 1987 edition is somewhat dated at this point) but you would have to go browsing through the papers by Robert @ http://www.rfreitas.com/ to find something which is for a younger age level. You might even have to read them with your children and explain them. But exploring the realms of the small (nanotechnology) and the large (astronomy) both serve as windows to get children to wonder about the world around them, how it can be understood, and potentially how it can be explored and developed. Tools that allow these explorations (I grew up with both a microscope and a telescope in the house) are helpful as well.
For those unfamiliar with the site and only loosely following security issues, is there any speculation on how the hack was done? Was ImageShack stupid enough to be hosting a web site on Windows or was it a Linux hack? Was the site designed (perhaps mis-designed) to allow remote users the ability to upload data? Or was it something as simple as allowing ssh or ftp from anywhere?
If its a windows hack, the story lead-ins should perhaps reveal that so Linux users know whether or non they should just shake their heads or whether they should actually be concerned.
The introduction note contains a typo. It is Ralph Merkle, not "Ray Merkle", that is involved in nanotechnology and the Singularity University as can be seen from his WikiPedia page and his web site (www.merkle.com).
I can think of at least two instances on entirely different hardware (an IBM 370 and a Motorola 68000) where I had to discover that it was not working as promised. This involved a test-and-set instruction which was essential for Oracle (in the early 1980's days) to function reliably. Now of course with the multi-core CPUs they have to get these things right -- but back in the "old" days the hardware engineers could be more careless.
A test-and-set instruction, for those uninformed, is an instruction which locks the memory to prevent other CPUs from changing it when one needs an exclusive lock on it.
It is interesting, though infuriating, from a software standpoint when one is using it to diagnose hardware problems.