Technology Trends

It’s not the first time that physicists claim that the speed of light can be modified, and even exceed the theoretical limit called c without violating Einstein’s laws of relativity (check for example this article from two years ago). Now, researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland, claim that light can travel faster than light!. They were able to control the speed of light in an off-the-shelf optical fiber. They said that they did “slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6 (or about 71,000 km/s), creating a sort of temporary “optical memory.” On the other hand, they also did create “extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than 300 million meters a second.” As they don’t give any numbers for this upper limit, you have to trust them. Anyway, these results are important because they were achieved using off-the-shelf optical fibers, opening the way for future super fast all-optical routers. Update (August 22, 2005): Luc Thévenaz sent me insightful comments about this post. You’ll find them at the end of this entry.

So what have done Luc Thévenaz and his fellow researchers in the EPFL’s Nanophotonics and Metrology laboratory (page in French)?

The telecommunications industry transmits vast quantities of data via fiber optics. Light signals race down the information superhighway at about 186,000 miles per second. But information cannot be processed at this speed, because with current technology light signals cannot be stored, routed or processed without first being transformed into electrical signals, which work much more slowly. If the light signal could be controlled by light, it would be possible to route and process optical data without the costly electrical conversion, opening up the possibility of processing information at the speed of light.

This is exactly what the EPFL team has demonstrated. Using their Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) method, the group was able to slow a light signal down by a factor of 3.6, creating a sort of temporary”optical memory.” They were also able to create extreme conditions in which the light signal travelled faster than 300 million meters a second. And even though this seems to violate all sorts of cherished physical assumptions, Einstein needn’t move over – relativity isn’t called into question, because only a portion of the signal is affected.

Anyway, the real value of this research doesn’t come from light travelling faster than c, but from light travelling slower.

Slowing down light is considered to be a critical step in our ability to process information optically. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) considers it so important that it has been funnelling millions of dollars into projects such as”Applications of Slow Light in Optical Fibers” and research on all-optical routers. To succeed commercially, a device that slows down light must be able to work across a range of wavelengths, be capable of working at high bit-rates and be reasonably compact and inexpensive.

The EPFL team has brought applications of slow light an important step closer to this reality. And Thévenaz points out that this technology could take us far beyond just improving on current telecom applications. He suggests that their method could be used to generate high-performance microwave signals that could be used in next-generation wireless communication networks, or used to improve transmissions between satellites.

The research work has been published by Applied Physics Letters in its August 22, 2005 issue under the name “Optically controlled slow and fast light in optical fibers using stimulated Brillouin scattering” (Volume 87, Issue 8, Article 081113). Here is a link to the abstract which is reproduced below for your convenience.

We demonstrate a method to achieve an extremely wide and flexible external control of the group velocity of signals as they propagate along an optical fiber. This control is achieved by means of the gain and loss mechanisms of stimulated Brillouin scattering in the fiber itself.

Our experiments show that group velocities below 71 000 km/s on one hand, well exceeding the speed of light in vacuum on the other hand and even negative group velocities can readily be obtained with a simple benchtop experimental setup. We believe that the fact that slow and fast light can be achieved in a standard single-mode fiber, in normal environmental conditions and using off-the-shelf instrumentation, is very promising for a future use in real applications.

In this abstract, as in the news release, the researchers give a number for “group velocities” slower than c, but not a single one for those faster than c. I wonder why…

Update (August 22, 2005): Here are Luc Thévenaz’s comments in reaction to the above note, which he nicely allowed me to reproduce.

Most of your comments are right, just be aware that what is really important for applications is delaying and advancing a signal, not the real speed of propagation. This makes possible a synchronisation of optical signals, that was impossible to realize so far with a control by light.

You look very suspicious about our capability to propagate faster than the speed of light in vacuum and you wonder why we mentioned no figure about this. Hmmm, I think you were a bit lazy and you did not read entirely our APL article. The answer is in the 3 last paragraphs, read carefully. We state clearly that we could achieve an infinite and even negative group velocity! We even show a graph of our measurements. We also give explanations why this does not break the principles of relativity and causality in the next paragraph and information still propagates slowlier than the vacuum light velocity.

I just want to mention that what we have just reported experimentally was already predicted theoretically and fully explained during the 1910s by Leon Brillouin and Arnold Sommerfeld. Nothing new and no paradox, there is nothing magic behind and no theory needs to be revisited.

Finally, Luc sent me a copy of the full APL paper. Here is a link to this paper (PDF format, 3 pages, 75 KB).

Sources: EPFL news release, August 19, 2005; and various web sites

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• Future
  
  
• Optics
  
  
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Scientists at the University of Manchester, in the UK, have discovered a new class of materials which are one atom thick and exhibit properties previously never thought possible. With these new materials, they are promising us a ‘new industrial revolution.’ Not only these new materials are ultra-thin, but they can also be ultra-strong, highly-insulating or highly-conductive. Apparently, this new class of materials has been validated by the scientific community, and even if some applications are probably decades away, you can expect to see ‘ultra-fast transistors, micromechanical devices and nano-sensors based on the discovered one-atom-thick crystals already in a few years time.’ Read more…

Here is the introduction of the news release from the University of Manchester.

Scientists at The University of Manchester have discovered a new class of materials which have previously only existed in science fiction films and books.

A team of British and Russian scientists led by Professor Andre Geim, [director of the Manchester Centre for Mesoscience and Nanotechnology,] have discovered a whole family of previously unknown materials, which are one atom thick and exhibit properties which scientists had never thought possible.

After this press release lingo, let’s move — gradually — to some more technical details.

The materials have been created by extracting individual atomic planes from conventional bulk crystals by using a technique called ‘micromechanical cleavage’. Depending on a parent crystal, their one-atom-thick counterparts can be metals, semiconductors, insulators, magnets, etc. Previously, it was thought that such thin materials could not exist in principle, but the research team have, for the first time, demonstrated that they are not only possible but fairly easy to make.

Below are some pictures of these very small two dimensional crystals (Credit for images and legend: University of Manchester).

[Here you can see] single-layer crystallites of (a) NbSe₂, (b) graphite, (c) Bi₂Sr₂CaCu₂O_x and (d) MoS₂ visualized by AFM (a,b), SEM (c) and in an optical microscope (d). All scale bars are 1µm.

Dr Kostya Novoselov, a key investigator in this research, added: “Probably the most important part is that our discovery is not limited to just one or two new materials. It is a whole class of new materials, thousands of them. And they have a variety of properties, allowing one to choose a material most appropriate for a particular application.

This fascinating research work has been published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in its July 18, 2005 issue under the name “Two-dimensional atomic crystals.” Here is a link to the abstract.

We report free-standing atomic crystals that are strictly 2D and can be viewed as individual atomic planes pulled out of bulk crystals or as unrolled single-wall nanotubes. By using micromechanical cleavage, we have prepared and studied a variety of 2D crystals including single layers of boron nitride, graphite, several dichalcogenides, and complex oxides. These atomically thin sheets (essentially gigantic 2D molecules unprotected from the immediate environment) are stable under ambient conditions, exhibit high crystal quality, and are continuous on a macroscopic scale.

And here is a link to the full paper from which the above figure has been extracted. Below is the conclusion of this paper.

We have demonstrated the existence of 2D atomic crystals that can be prepared by cleavage from most strongly-layered materials. It is most unexpected if not counterintuitive that isolated 2D crystals can be stable at room temperature and in air, leaving aside the fact that they maintain macroscopic continuity and such high quality that their carrier mobilities remain almost unaffected. The found class of 2D crystals offers a wide choice of new materials parameters for possible applications and promises a wealth of new phenomena usually abundant in 2D systems. We believe that, once investigated and understood, 2D crystals can also be grown in large sizes required for industrial applications, matching the progress achieved recently for the case of single-wall nanotubes.

Finally, even if these new materials are only one atom thick, they still have three dimensions. The idea of 2D crystals and materials in our 3D world would be too disturbing. What do you think of these discoveries? Can we really talk about ‘flat’ materials? And will this research lead to a new industrial revolution? Please post your comments below.

Sources: University of Manchester news release, July 18, 2005; and various web sites

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It’s now commonly admitted that our appetite for fossil fuels is having a strong influence on the Earth’s climate — and our future. But what about the concentration of humans in urban areas? Today, 50% of the world’s population is living on about one percent of Earth’s surface. Can this extreme concentration lead to other effects on our climate and weather? In ‘Satellites and the city,’ NASA says that it can help to provide an answer. “Our research suggests that, using satellite data and enhanced models, we will be able to answer several critical questions about how urbanization may impact climate change 10, 25 or even 100 years from now,” says for example a NASA scientist from the Goddard Space Flight Center. But read more…

“More and more people live in cities. This means that cities will grow rapidly over the next several decades. Evidence continues to mount that cities affect the climate,” said J. Marshall Shepherd, Deputy Project Scientist of the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.

Shepherd and co-author Menglin Jin, a research scientist at the University of Maryland-College Park, suggest that satellite-observed urban information is extremely useful for advancing our ability to simulate urban effects in climate models. They go on further to propose that satellite data is the only feasible way to represent the expanse of global urban surfaces and related changes to the Earth’s surface, vegetation and aerosols.

Below are some images taken by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) satellite (Credit for images and legends: NASA).

This shows the MODIS land cover classification in southeastern US (near Atlanta). Red color is for Urban Land Build-up (Copied from Jin and Shepherd 2005 with original image source from Michael King).

[And here you can see] the global distribution of fine aerosol optical thickness derived from MODIS measurements on the Terra platform for September 2000. The large values over Southeast Asia, India, Europe, and the United States reflect urban pollution. The large values in the Southern Hemisphere are due to biomass burning.

The two scientists think that urban landscapes are changing the physical processes of land surfaces, such as thermal conductivity, and also adding new characteristics to our land and our atmosphere.

Structures like the Empire State Building in New York City can change the basic wind flow in and around cities that can alter air quality, temperature, cloud distribution and precipitation patterns. It is increasingly evident that such atmospheric changes near cities can be captured by NASA satellites such as Aqua, Landsat, Terra, and the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM).

This research work has been published by the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in May 2005 (Vol. 86, No. 5, pp. 681–689). Strangely, no abstract is available, but here is a link to the full paper named “Inclusion of Urban Landscape in a Climate Model: How Can Satellite Data Help?” (PDF format, 9 pages, 701 KB).

For more recent references about this subject, you also should read “Urban Climate Modeling,” published by NASA on April 27, 2005.

Finally, I want to add one more paper to your reading list. Its title is “Urban aerosols and their variations with clouds and rainfall: A case study for New York and Houston” and here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 12 pages, 701 KB).

I’ve worked with many meteorologists during my life, but I’m not sure if they’re ready to include these minuscule urban lands into their climate models. Any thoughts?

Sources: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center news release, via EurekAlert!, July 21, 2005; and various web sites

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Many people around the world are eating meat and enjoying it. But meat has a number of adverse effects on human health because of the use of drugs used to raise livestock or on the environment because of pollution from farm animal wastes. Now, scientists from the University of Maryland are proposing new techniques to grow edible meat in their labs on an industrial scale. “The idea of culturing meat is to create an edible product that tastes like cuts of beef, poultry, pork, lamb or fish and has the nutrients and texture of meat.” The researchers say that demand for meat is doubling every ten years in countries like India or China and say that with their techniques, “a single cell could theoretically produce the world’s annual meat supply.” Ready to learn more?

As an appetizer, here is the introduction of the University of Maryland news release.

Experiments for NASA space missions have shown that small amounts of edible meat can be created in a lab. But the technology that could grow chicken nuggets without the chicken, on a large scale, may not be just a science fiction fantasy.

Now, let’s go for the entree. Below is an illustration of the process leading to a perfectly healthy hamburger… (Credit: University of Maryland)

Here are the steps: 1. Scaffold-based cultured meat production: 1. Myoblasts in petri dish; 2. Porous collagen microspheres; 3. Myoblasts form myotubes on collagen microspheres; 4. Bioreactor; 5. Microwave; 6. Hamburger.

One of the techniques used to produce edible animal meat made of skeletal muscle tissue is scaffold-based and appropriate for producing processed meats, such as hamburger or sausage.

In scaffold-based techniques, embryonic myoblasts or adult skeletal muscle satellite cells are proliferated, attached to a scaffold or carrier, such as a collagen meshwork or microcarrier beads, and then perfused with a culture medium in a stationary or rotating bioreactor. By introducing a variety of environmental cues, these cells fuse into myotubes, which can then differentiate into myofibers. The resulting myofibers may then be harvested, cooked, and consumed as meat [as seen on the above image.]

After these technical explanations, let’s return to the University of Maryland news release.

Scientists know that a single muscle cell from a cow or chicken can be isolated and divided into thousands of new muscle cells. Experiments with fish tissue have created small amounts of in vitro meat in NASA experiments researching potential food products for long-term space travel, where storage is a problem.

“But that was a single experiment and was geared toward a special situation - space travel,” says Matheny. “We need a different approach for large scale production.”

Matheny’s team developed ideas for two techniques that have potential for large scale meat production. One is to grow the cells in large flat sheets on thin membranes. The sheets of meat would be grown and stretched, then removed from the membranes and stacked on top of one another to increase thickness.

The other method would be to grow the muscle cells on small three-dimensional beads that stretch with small changes in temperature. The mature cells could then be harvested and turned into a processed meat, like nuggets or hamburgers.

The first research paper about future industrial production of cultured meat was published as a commentary by Tissue Engineering in its June 29, 2005 issue under the name “Commentary: In Vitro-Cultured Meat Production.” Here is a link to this paper (PDF format, 4 pages, 50 KB).

But this commentary was based on a longer paper, also named “In vitro cultured meat production,” and written in 2004. Here is a link to this full paper (PDF format, 27 pages, 290 KB). The illustration above and its legend come from this paper.

Now, Matheny has now decided to join New Harvest, “a nonprofit research organization working to develop new meat substitutes, including cultured meat — meat produced in vitro, in a cell culture, rather than from an animal.”

So when will we eat ‘cultured’ meat? I guess that many organizations around the world will carefully look at this kind of solution before approving or refusing it.

I’ m not sure to feel comfortable with this idea of ‘cultured’ meat. Please tell me if you’re ready for a synthetic steak.

Sources: University of Maryland news release, July 6, 2005; and various web sites

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• Agriculture
  
  
• Biotechnology
  
  
• Environment
  
  
• Food
  
  
• Future
  

Like every year, this is the season for the Shell Eco-Marathon annual fuel-economy competition. Last week, the hydrogen-powered Swiss PAC-Car II broke a new record, using 1.02 gram of hydrogen to finish the race. This is the equivalent of 5,385 kilometers per liter of gasoline. For users of other units, this translates to a whopping 15,210 miles per British gallon or 12,670 miles per U.S. gallon. And this week, the British Ech2o car will attempt to break this record. Its designers say that this car, also hydrogen-powered, “can travel on less electricity than it takes to power a light bulb.” It will be driven by a 13-year old experienced go-kart driver.” Read more…

Let’s start with the PAC-Car II, designed at ETH Zürich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich). After breaking the world record for fuel efficiency, ETH Zürich published this news release on June 28, 2005.

ETH Zurich set itself a goal to construct a vehicle that used as little fuel as possible and provided the highest possible fuel efficiency. So they gave the so-called PAC-Car a fuel cell that produces electrical energy from hydrogen and drives two electric motors. The only “emission” from PAC-Car is pure water. The car is lightweight, weighing in at only about 30 kilograms.

And, PAC-Car has now achieved its goal: it finished the course at the Shell Eco-Marathon taking place on the Michelin test track at Ladoux, France, using only 1.02 grams of hydrogen. This converts to about 5385 kilometres per litre of petrol, a new world record in economical fuel consumption. This means that PAC-Car would only use eight litres to drive around the globe.

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Below is an image of the PAC-Car II in Zürich on May 10, 2005 (Credit: ETH Zürich). And here is a link to a larger version (2.37 MB).

And this is a picture of the PAC-Car II during the Shell Eco-marathon in Nogaro on May 21, 2005 (Credit: ETH Zürich) with a link to a larger version (418 KB).

You’ll find tons of other photographs in the different galleries available from this page.

And for more information, please visit this technical section.

The following paragraphs come from the Aerodynamics page.

PAC-Car II is equipped with 3 wheels; the single rear wheel is powered and steered, and the front wheels have a camber angle of -8°.

This solution allows the reduction of the frontal surface area because the room needed to steer the wheels is not needed. Some experiments on a test bench have shown that this camber angle does not provide too much rolling resistance.

[Note: for those of you not familiar with the notion of "camber," here is an explanation provided by the Ford Motor Company in this glossary: "Camber is the relative tilt of the wheels, usually slightly inward at the top edge, as viewed from the front of the vehicle. Camber is set to optimize handling and tire wear Front and rear wheels must also be aligned with respect to each other."]

You’ll find also more details about the fuel cell system on the Powertrain and Control page.

The fuel cell, a by-product of the PowerPac project, is of the PEM type (Proton Exchange Membrane) and benefits from an embedded auto humidifying area specially designed by PSI. The stack efficiency is exceptional, close to 70%.

Now, let’s move to the British challenger, described by CNN on July 5, 2005, in a short article, “Eco-car more efficient than light bulb.”

The Ech2o car is built by the BOC Group, a British gas firm, which issued a news release on July 4, 2005.

The BOC Ech2o has been designed with a simple goal to demonstrate fuel efficiency. But unlike most other eco-marathon vehicles that run on petrol or diesel, the BOC Ech2o’s driving force comes from electricity, created in a hydrogen fuel cell.

The car could travel around the world on less than the equivalent of two gallons of petrol, using 25 watts — a fraction of the power a light bulb uses.

It could also be the most efficient vehicle ever to move on wheels and, as its only emission is water, the car heralds a new age of clean virtually silent road travel, according to experts.

And why did the company choose such a young driver to try to break this fuel efficiency world record?

The BOC Ech2o car, driven by Jack Dex, 13, of Southam College, Warwickshire, will attempt to break the world fuel efficiency record of over 10,000 miles per gallon next week, during the Shell Eco Marathon at Rockingham Raceway in the Midlands.

The youngster was chosen because he is small and light enough to control the vehicle, without weighing it down — and because of his experience as a junior TKM Kart driver.

Will he break the record? Check the news near the end of the week.

Sources: Various news releases and web sites

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The Japanese Humanoid Robotics Project has produced the HRP-2 robot, which is known for dancing and preserving Japanese culture. But now, the HRP-2, which is about 1.6 meter high and weighs about 60 kilograms, can hear humans and understand them with its sophisticated software and hearing equipment. It uses an array of microphones consisting of eight omnidirectional microphones mounted around the robot’s head. Stable speech recognition is obtained by combining information from the microphone array and a camera also mounted on its head, and by isolating and eliminating noises, even from your TV. These hearing capabilities are essential “for helping humans to communicate with robots in real environments by 2025.” Read more…

Before going further, here is how looks the HRP-2, also known as ‘Prométhée’ (Credit: Kawada Industries, Inc.)

Now here are the technical details provided by Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) about the microphone array.

The microphone array consists of eight omnidirectional microphones mounted around the robot’s head. The sound source is located on the basis of difference in times for arrival to individual microphones, and at the same time, a camera mounted at the robot’s head detects, tracks and locates a person giving the vocal instruction.

Here is the robot’s head with its array of microphones. The red arrows show the positions of the eight microphones (Credit: AIST).

Stable speech recognition is obtained by combining information derived from the microphone array and the camera and by isolating and eliminating noises. Hardware to eliminate noises in real time has been developed and built into a robot, making it possible for a human operator to give robot vocal instructions, and to control IT appliances through a robot, even in a field where multiple noise sources such as TV exist.

It is expected, therefore, that natural communications may be realized in the living environment between a human operator and a humanoid robot through the auditory function of robot.

Please read the AIST document for more details about the voice interface and its hardware and software components. I just want to emphasize that the goal of this project is to allow natural communications between human beings and humanoid robots through the auditory function of the robots, and even in noisy environments.

Sources: Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) news release, June 20, 2005; and various web sites

Related stories can be found in the following categories.

• Future
  


• Human Computer Interface
  


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A team of researchers at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center has developed the first true, three-dimensional, holographic movies. These movies should appear on a screen near you in about a decade. For the moment, the initial markets for this holographic television system will be in medical visualization and military applications. The system is based on regular digital light processing (DLP) micro-mirror chips, but there is a twist. Instead of using regular lights, the researchers are using laser lights, which are using a unique wavelength. And they feed the chip with interferograms coming from regular 3-D imaging applications. This unique combination leads the micro-mirrors to project a 3-D moving image that appears suspended in air, like a 3-D hologram. Read more today, or wait until 2020…

Here is the introduction of the UT Southwestern Medical Center news release about this future projection system.

In a small research laboratory at UT Southwestern Medical Center, a grainy, red movie of circling fighter jets emerges from a table-top black box, while nearby, a video of a rotating human heart hangs suspended in a tank of gooey gel.

These images - the first true, three-dimensional, holographic movies - are the brainchild of Dr. Harold “Skip” Garner, professor of biochemistry and internal medicine at UT Southwestern.

Below are three images showing the — early — technology at work (Credit: UT Southwestern Medical Center). You’ll find more explanations below.

So when will be able to watch holographic television in our living rooms?

“An important next step is to take our proof of principle technology that we have now and move it into a commercial entity,” said Dr. Garner. “We think the two initial markets will be in medical visualization and military applications, such as heads-up displays for helmets and military aircraft and coordinating battlefield information.”

In the long term, Dr. Garner said, entertainment uses could include 3-D multiplayer games, theme park or advertising displays, and “Holo TV.” He and his colleagues have worked with students in Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business to develop a tentative business plan that explores the possible commercialization of the technology, focusing on medical applications.

“I predict that by the year 2020, that being the year of ‘perfect vision,’ we will have Holo TV in our homes,” said Dr. Michael Huebschman, a postdoctoral researcher in Dr. Garner’s lab and one of the developers of the technology.

Back in 2005, the “What’s New” section of Popular Science dated June 16, 2005, carries a special report named “The Future Starts Here,” which takes “a look at five unbelievable technologies trucking toward reality” and includes a very interesting article about the “Holographic Television.”

For more technical information, you should read this page about Holographic Imaging from Skip Garner’s lab, which also has links to several video demonstrations.

Finally, you should read a paper published by Optics Express in March 2003, “Dynamic holographic 3-D image projection” (Vol. 11, No. 5, pp. 437-445). Here is a link to the full paper (PDF format, 9 pages, 1.69 MB). The images above are extracted from this paper.

Sources: UT Southwestern Medical Center news release, June 14, 2005; Jonathan Keats, Popular Science, June 16, 2005; and various sites

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• Displays
  
  
• Future
  
  
• Holograms
  
  
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• Medicine
  
  
• Military Applications
  

In a very interesting article appearing in the May issue of Technology Review, “Environmental Heresies,” Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog writes that the environmental movement should — and maybe will — reverse its opinion on several controversial subjects. He says that environmentalists should be more opened and look at different eyes to issues such as population growth, urbanization, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power. Will Brand be heard — or be anathematized by other environmentalists? Time will tell. However, you should read his arguments, even if you’re not part of a so-called ‘green’ movement. Read more…

I don’t want to summarize the whole article and here I just want to focus on nuclear energy. But before, and even I don’t want to enter a debate about genetically modified crops, here is a short — and surprising — quote of what Brand thinks about them.

GM crops are more efficient, giving higher yield on less land with less use of pesticides and herbicides. That’s why the Amish, the most technology-suspicious group in America (and the best farmers), have enthusiastically adopted GM crops.

Now, let’s look at the issues of climate change and the global warming effect caused by our appetite for energy currently mostly satisfied by burning fossil fuels. Can a catastrophe be avoided? Here are some excerpts of Brand’s thoughts.

First, what alternative sources of energy are available today?

Everything must be done to increase energy efficiency and decarbonize energy production. Kyoto accords, radical conservation in energy transmission and use, wind energy, solar energy, passive solar, hydroelectric energy, biomass, the whole gamut. But add them all up and it’s still only a fraction of enough. Massive carbon “sequestration” (extraction) from the atmosphere, perhaps via biotech, is a widely held hope, but it’s just a hope. The only technology ready to fill the gap and stop the carbon dioxide loading of the atmosphere is nuclear power.

Nuclear plants are certainly atmospherically clean, but are they safe?

Nuclear certainly has problems — accidents, waste storage, high construction costs, and the possible use of its fuel in weapons. It also has advantages besides the overwhelming one of being atmospherically clean. The industry is mature, with a half-century of experience and ever improved engineering behind it. Problematic early reactors like the ones at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl can be supplanted by new, smaller-scale, meltdown-proof reactors like the ones that use the pebble-bed design. Nuclear power plants are very high yield, with low-cost fuel.

Brand also looks at the problem of storing radioactive waste and offers an innovative solution, even if I don’t see it today as being easily implemented.

The storage of radioactive waste is a surmountable problem. Many reactors now have fields of dry-storage casks nearby. Those casks are transportable. It would be prudent to move them into well-guarded centralized locations. Many nations address the waste storage problem by reprocessing their spent fuel, but that has the side effect of producing material that can be used in weapons. One solution would be a global supplier of reactor fuel, which takes back spent fuel from customers around the world for reprocessing. That’s the kind of idea that can go from “Impractical!” to “Necessary!” in a season, depending on world events.

So is nuclear energy in our future? Maybe yes, maybe not.

Nuclear could go either way. It would take only one more Chernobyl-type event in Russia’s older reactors (all too possible, given the poor state of oversight there) to make the nuclear taboo permanent, to the great detriment of the world’s atmospheric health. Everything depends on getting new and better nuclear technology designed and built.

Finally, after reading Brand’s article and/or these excerpts about nuclear energy, do you think that environmentalists will one day embrace the idea of nuclear plants? Please post your comments below.

Sources: Stewart Brand, for Technology Review, May 2005; Wikipedia website

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• Nuclear
  

Today, we’re using basically two ways to move data in our computers. Transistors carry small amounts of data and are extremely small, while fiber optic cables can carry huge amounts of data, but are much bigger in size. Now, imagine a single technology combining the advantages of photonics and electronics. This Stanford University report says a new technology can do it: plasnomics. (For more about plasmons, read this Wikipedia article.) Theoretically, it is possible to design plasnomic components with the same materials used today by chipmakers, but with frequencies 100,000 times greater than the ones of current microprocessors. There is still a challenge to solve before getting plasnomic chips. Plasmons can only travel a few millimeters before dying while today’s chips are typically about a centimeter across. Read more…

Let’s start with some technical explanations.

Surface plasmons are density waves of electrons — picture bunches of electrons passing a point regularly — along the surface of a metal. Plasmons have the same frequencies and electromagnetic fields as light, but their sub-wavelength size means they take up less space. Plasmonics, then, is the technology of transmitting these light-like waves along nanoscale wires.

“With every wave you can in principle carry information,” says Mark Brongersma, assistant professor of materials science and engineering. [...] “Plasmon waves are interesting because they are at optical frequencies. The higher the frequency of the wave, the more information you can transport.” Optical frequencies are about 100,000 times greater than the frequency of today’s electronic microprocessors.

But let’s get back to the technology.

Plasmons are generated when, under the right conditions, light strikes a metal. The electric field of the light jiggles the electrons in the metal to the light’s frequency, setting off density waves of electrons. The process is analogous to how the vibrations of the larynx jiggle molecules in the air into density waves experienced as sound.

Plasmon waves behave on metals much like light waves behave in glass, meaning that plasmonic engineers can employ all the same ingenious tricks — such as multiplexing, or sending multiple waves — that photonic engineers use to cram more data down a cable.

This sounds good, but is it possible to use this technology today?

Because plasmonic components can be crafted from the same materials chipmakers use today, Stanford engineers are hopeful they can make all the devices needed to route light around a processor or other kind of chip. These would include plasmon sources, detectors and wires, which the lab already has made, as well as splitters and even transistors.

While an all-plasmonic chip might be feasible someday, Brongersma expects that in the near term, plasmonic wires will act as high-traffic freeways on chips with otherwise conventional electronics.

And even Brongersma recognizes that more research needs to be done before getting plasnomic chips.

The potential of plasmonics right now is mainly limited by the fact that plasmons typically can travel only several millimeters before they peter out. Chips, meanwhile, are typically about a centimeter across, so plasmons can’t yet go the whole distance.

The distance a plasmon can travel before dying out is a function of several aspects of the metal. But for optimal transfer through a wire of any metal, the surface of contact with surrounding materials must be as smooth as possible and the metal should not have impurities.

For more information, you can check the following resources.

• “Plasmonic computer chips move closer,” an article published by New Scientist on March 17, 2005
  
  
• The Brongersma Group website and its current research projects
  
  
• The abstract of a presentation given on May 21, 2005 at the March 2005 Meeting of the American Physical Society, “Sub-wavelength confinement and the diffraction limit for surface plasmon waveguides”
  

Sources: David Orenstein, Stanford University Report, March 16, 2005; and various websites

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NASA is testing a shape-shifting robot called “TETwalker” for tetrahedral walker, because it looks like a flexible pyramid. It has been tested in the lab and at the McMurdo station in Antarctica to test it under conditions more like those on Mars. Now, it is on the way to be — really — miniaturized by using micro- and nano-electro-mechanical systems. These robots will eventually join together to form “autonomous nanotechnology swarms” (ANTS). When it’s done, in about thirty years, these nanotech swarms will “alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.” So in 2034, nanotechnology will land on Mars. Read more…

But in 2005, this is only the beginning of tests for this shape-shifting robot pyramid at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.

Like new and protective parents, engineers watched as the TETWalker robot successfully traveled across the floor at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Robots of this type will eventually be miniaturized and joined together to form “autonomous nanotechnology swarms” (ANTS) that alter their shape to flow over rocky terrain or to create useful structures like communications antennae and solar sails.

Here are more details about the TETwalker.

The robot is called “TETwalker” for tetrahedral walker, because it resembles a tetrahedron (a pyramid with 3 sides and a base). In the prototype, electric motors are located at the corners of the pyramid called nodes.

The nodes are connected to struts which form the sides of the pyramid. The struts telescope like the legs of a camera tripod, and the motors expand and retract the struts. This allows the pyramid to move: changing the length of its sides alters the pyramid’s center of gravity, causing it to topple over. The nodes also pivot, giving the robot great flexibility.

But where is nanotechnology involved in this project?

The team anticipates TETwalkers can be made much smaller by replacing their motors with Micro- and Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems. Replacement of the struts with metal tape or carbon nanotubes will not only reduce the size of the robots, it will also greatly increase the number that can be packed into a rocket because tape and nanotube struts are fully retractable, allowing the pyramid to shrink to the point where all its nodes touch.

These miniature TETwalkers, when joined together in “swarms,” will have great advantages over current systems. The swarm has abundant flexibility so it can change its shape to accomplish highly diverse goals. For example, while traveling through a planet’s atmosphere, the swarm might flatten itself to form an aerodynamic shield.

Upon landing, it can shift its shape to form a snake-like swarm and slither away over difficult terrain. If it finds something interesting, it can grow an antenna and transmit data to Earth. Highly-collapsible material can also be strung between nodes for temperature control or to create a deployable solar sail.

Of course, there are many technological challenges to solve for this project to be successful. For more information about the project, please visit the Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm website. Practically all pages have a graphical version (which look as poorly scanned images) and a cleaner text one.

In particular, take a look at the technologies needed. Those of you interested by robotics will jump to the Tetrahedral Walker page while other will be more interested by Carbon Nanotube Technology.

Finally, you can look at the Timeline for Technological Development… and dream about 2034.

Sources: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center news release, March 29, 2005; and various websites

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Several companies around the world are experimenting with wind-assisted ships, which would reduce fuel consumption at a time where fuel can represent up to 60 percent of the running costs of operating a ship. But another goal is to reduce pollution: the toxic emission volume of the world trade fleet is roughly equivalent to the U.S. one today. In “The new age of sail,” New Scientist describes a ship that will be partially pulled by a high-tech kite flying at an altitude of up to 500 meters where winds are more stable than at sea level. The German designers, who tested a prototype last year, estimate that such a hybrid sailing ship would see a 50 percent reduction of its fuel consumption. Danish and Japanese companies are also designing wind-assisted ships. Read more…

So let’s look at this ship — partially — pulled by a kite.

For several weeks last summer, a team of German engineers sailed back and forth across the Baltic Sea playing with a large inflatable kite. The engineers, from the Hamburg company SkySails, were testing the potential of high-tech kites to pull a ship across the ocean by hitching a ride on winds high above the waves.

But will such a ship be more efficient than today’s ships?

Last year’s trials in the Baltic, aboard an 8-metre model of a cargo vessel, were mostly carried out in unfavourable conditions of weak and variable winds. Nevertheless, they showed that the SkySails kite can generate 1 to 1.15 kilowatts for every square metre of aerofoil. “In favourable winds it would generate a lot more thrust,” says Stephan Wrage, founder of the company. The kite is designed to be retrofitted to ships of almost any size, but SkySail’s largest version, with an area of 2000 to 5000 square metres, will generate propulsive power equivalent to a large ship’s engine, he says.

And of course, this will contribute to reduce fuel operating costs.

For its part, the Danish company of naval architects Knud E. Hansen started another kind of wind-assisted ship back in 1995. You’ll find more details by reading the “Modern Windship Phase II” section on this page.

The company confirms the SkySails’s findings about fuel savings.

Where the weather/wind conditions are reasonable - e.g. on Atlantic routes - fuel savings of about 27% can be achieved. On routes where the superior internal volume capacity of the WindShip can be properly utilised, 50% fuel savings are possible.

And here is what New Scientist adds about the Danish effort.

Could this signal a sea change for sail? “It will now be profitable both environmentally and economically to build the windship,” says Anders Carlberg of Knud E. Hansen. Other new sailing ship projects are already in the works, one in Germany and one in Japan. Carlberg and his team estimate that full-scale trials of their design will start within three years.

It is not just the oil price that has moved in the windships’ favour. The Danish team is confident that it will be able to design a more efficient vessel. Jesper Kanstrup, Knud E. Hansen’s senior naval architect, says that the original designs concentrated on minimising the amount of space the engine and sails took up to maximise cargo space. “They weren’t designed for fuel economy.”

Will these wind-assisted ships be part of the future of sea commerce? I really don’t know. What do you think about these projects?

Sources: Mick Hamer, New Scientist Print Edition, February 26, 2005; and various websites

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• Environment
  
  
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I’m often impressed by some scientists’ ideas. But today, I’m a little bit worried, as researchers have genetically modified a common plant, the Indian mustard, to absorb more selenium, a toxic heavy metal found in soils polluted by irrigation wastewater. The transgenic plants were four times more efficient at swallowing selenium than natural ones in a contaminated area of California’s Central Valley, according to articles from Nature and Wired News. These field tests are only experiments, but the researchers also want to add genes to other plants to remove different toxic materials from soils, such as mercury. What would happen if such transgenic plants filled with dangerous chemicals start to crossbreed with natural ones? Or if an insect eats these plants before being eaten itself in the natural food chain, leading to some selenium in our food? Read more and tell me what you think…

Let’s start with the good news from the Nature article.

Genetically modified Indian mustard plants have successfully cleaned up excessive selenium in a California field. This is the first field trial for a pollution-busting transgenic plant, and it proves that the technology can work outside the laboratory, say the researchers who carried out the test.

Farmland in certain parts of California is heavily irrigated, and the water dissolves selenium in shale found in the region. As the water evaporates on the surface soil, selenium is concentrated to levels that are toxic to plants. But Indian mustard (Brassica juncea) has a natural resistance to the element, and absorbs it as it takes in water through its roots.

To increase the level of absorption of selenium by the Indian mustard plants, the researchers, led by Norman Terry, a plant biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, added extra genes to the plant. And here are the first field test results.

The researchers created three different strains of the transgenic mustard plants, each producing different enzymes to soak up selenium, and tested them in selenium-contaminated soils alongside wild-type Indian mustard. [And] hey found that the transgenic plants could accumulate up to 4.3 times as much selenium as conventional, wild-type Indian mustard.

The transgenic plants showed up to 80% of the growth expected in uncontaminated soil, whereas the wild-type plants had their growth halved by the selenium. They were harvested after 45 days in the field, but the researchers expect that longer growth periods could remove more selenium, and estimate that the most effective plants removed about 4.4% of the element in the top 25 centimetres of soil.

The process known as phytoremediation, which uses natural plants to remove toxic materials from soil, is not new, and is cheaper than traditional methods, which imply to remove polluted soil some place before burying it elsewhere. But it takes a long time, so adding genes to speed the process is an attractive solution. But what about the long term ecological impact?

The possibility of the transgenic plants crossbreeding with food crops is a worry, admits Clayton Rugh, a plant biologist at Michigan State University in East Lansing. “If you’re going to engineer a plant to take up high quantities of metals, you must ensure it doesn’t get into food crops,” he says. “They would have to be carefully contained with measures above and beyond those for genetically modified food crops,” he says.

Another source mentioned by Wired News also admits there are some dangers.

“We don’t know enough about the unintended effects of genetic engineering,” said Gurian-Sherman, senior scientist with the Center for Food Safety. The toxicity of plants can change, or a modified plant could interbreed with wild plants, he said. “What happens when an insect eats one of these plants, and then something else eats that insect?

On the contrary, Terry doesn’t seem concerned by the consequences of such experiments. Read carefully this quote from Nature.

In a useful spin-off, the Indian mustard plants could eventually be used as feed for cattle with insufficient selenium in their diet, says Terry. The team is now trying to boost the plants’ power even more. “We’d like to see increases in accumulation of 10 to 100 times that possible with wild-type plants,” says Terry. “This research is a great start.”

Let me summarize this. First, you add genes to a plant which will then easily absorb dangerous and toxic chemicals. Then you use these plants to feed cows. But why on earth a cow would need to ingest more selenium? And are you sure that you want this selenium in your plate?

I’m not an expert in this field, but these experiments look quite dangerous to me in the long term, especially if they become widespread.

By the way, the research work has been published by Environmental Science & Technology on February 1, 2005. Here is a link to the abstract of the paper called “Field Trial of Transgenic Indian Mustard Plants Shows Enhanced Phytoremediation of Selenium-Contaminated Sediment.”

Can we benefit from this or not? Please post your comments and tell me what you think.

Sources: Mark Peplow, Nature, February 11, 2005; Stephen Leahy, Wired News, February 12, 2005; and various websites

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The small town of Galena, Alaska, is tired to pay 28 cents/kwh for its electricity, three times the national average. Today, Galena “is powered by generators burning diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River’s ice-free months,” according to Reuters. But Toshiba, which designs a small nuclear reactor named 4S (for “Super Safe, Small, & Simple”), is offering a free reactor to the 700-person village, reports the New York Times (no reg. needed). Galena will only pay for operating costs, driving down the price of electricity to less than 10 cents/kwh. The 4S is a sodium-cooled fast spectrum reactor — a low-pressure, self-cooling reactor. It will generate power for 30 years before refueling and should be installed before 2010 providing an approval by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Read more…

Here is the status of the deal as told by Reuters.

Galena officials met with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday. If the commission approves the plan, the reactor would be the first new one permitted in the United States since the early 1980s, according to an Alaska Public Radio Network report on Thursday.

Energy to power electricity is important to Galena. Winter temperatures can dip below minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 51 Celsius). Daylight is scarce because of the short days during the winter.

Galena is powered by generators burning diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River’s ice-free months. That is costly and carries its own environmental risks because diesel can spill.

Toshiba, which designs a new 10-megawatt nuclear reactor, offered to install one of these in the hope that other isolated towns will follow, explains the New York Times.

Toshiba offered Galena a free reactor if the town would pay the operating costs, estimated at 10 cents a kilowatt-hour, about the national average for power. In December, the City Council voted unanimously to take it.

Galena looked at other sources of energy, such as coal, which pollutes, and solar power, but the sun is not very present at this kind of latitude. So it decided to take the nuclear path.

Here are some details about the 4S reactor.

Toshiba calls its design the 4S reactor, for “super-safe, small and simple.” It would be installed underground, and in case of cooling system failure, heat would be dissipated through the earth. There are no complicated control rods to move through the core to control the flow of neutrons that sustain the chain reaction; instead, the reactor uses reflector panels around the edge of the core. If the panels are removed, the density of neutrons becomes too low to sustain the chain reaction.

Is this really a Super-Safe nuclear reactor?

The design is described as inherently safe, but it does have one riskier feature: It uses liquid sodium, not water, to draw heat away from the core, so the heat can be used to make steam and then electricity.

Designers chose sodium so they could run the reactor about 200 degrees hotter than most power reactors, but still keep the coolant depressurized. (Water at that temperature would make steam at thousands of pounds of pressure a square inch.) The problem is that if sodium leaks, it burns.

Anyway, if the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approves it — which could cost millions of dollars to Toshiba — the 4S reactor could be installed by 2010. It will use uranium enriched to 20 percent and generate power for 30 years before needing to be disposed of and replaced.

If you’re really interested by this 4S reactor to be installed in Galena, you should read “Public Information and Outreach in Galena, Alaska,” a document prepared by the Washington, D.C., firm Shaw Pittman LLC (PDF format, 20 pages, 360 KB). The above images come from this document.

Sources: Reuters, February 3, 2005; Matthew L. Wald, The New York Times, via the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 3, 2005; Shaw Pittman LLC, March 23, 2004

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The use of ocean waves energy is in its infancy today, but can lead to clean, affordable and renewable electrical power. Right now, it’s probably 15 years behind wind energy, but it has a vast potential. For example, experts estimate that 0.2 percent of the ocean’s untapped energy could power the entire world. And Oregon may lead future of wave energy with a project of the deployment of 200 buoys, each of them about 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall. These buoys, located off Reedsport, Oregon, could be installed for an estimated initial cost of $5 million and would produce 50 megawatts, enough to power the business district of downtown Portland. But Oregon is not the only state looking at wave energy technology. Other coastal states and several other countries are also searching to produce clean electricity from ocean waves. Read more…

Let’s start with some quotes from the leading researchers about wave energy at Oregon State University (OSU).

“The world’s oceans are an extremely promising source of clean energy,” said Annette von Jouanne, an OSU professor of electrical engineering. “The technology is still in experimental stages, but we’ve made enough progress in the past couple years that it’s time to start planning a working research and demonstration facility.

“The development of wave energy right now is probably 15-20 years behind wind energy, which is just now starting to achieve some optimal production technologies,” said Alan Wallace, the co-principal investigator at OSU on these projects, and a professor of electrical engineering.

“And just like wind energy, these systems will be more expensive at first, and then the cost will come down and become very competitive,” Wallace said. “But this is really groundbreaking research that can be of enormous value to society, and it’s amazing all of the people who want to get involved.”

So what’s the goal of the current OSU project?

The OSU engineers say that a buoy about 12 feet wide and 12 feet tall, rolling up and down in the ocean swells could produce 250 kilowatts per unit — a modest-sized network of about 200 such buoys could power the business district of downtown Portland. And the winter, the period of highest wave energy electrical production, also coincides with peak electricity demands in the Pacific Northwest.

“One of the other extremely promising possibilities with wave energy is the ability to scale these systems either up or down in size, whatever you need to fit the electrical demand,” von Jouanne said. “Small systems could even be used with individual boats at anchor to generate their own electricity.”

But, as says the Oregonian (reference below), Oregon is not alone.

Several other nations are looking at wave energy technology, including Japan, Australia, China, Sweden, India, Portugal, Ireland and Norway. In addition to Oregon, other coastal states looking into wave power include Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Hawaii and California.

[And] AquaEnergy Group in Washington state has proposed a wave energy pilot plant that will use buoys about three miles off the Olympic Peninsula to generate electricity.

You’ll find more information about this project by following these links:

• Waves power future
  By Mary Ann Albright, Corvallis Gazette-Times, Oregon, February 5, 2005
  
• Electrical experts plot ways to use waves’ potential
  By Richard L. Hill, The Oregonian, February 2, 2005
  
• The O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory at OSU
  
• The Motor Systems Resource Facility (MSRF) at OSU
  
• The prototype buoys of the AquaEnergy Group Ltd.

Sources: David Stauth, Oregon State University news release, via EurekAlert!, February 2, 2005; and various other websites

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Happy 2035! Thirty years from now, we’ll use bionic eyes giving us ‘zoom vision’ for faster reactions. Nanobots injected in our bloodstream will complement our immune system. Artificial muscles built with electroactive polymers will help us to be stronger and faster. So you think it’s science fiction? Not at all. Here is my last reading suggestion for 2004, an article from EE Times. You’ll see that some people are so convinced that this kind of human enhancements will happen that they predict than in a few decades, all sporting events ‘will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes.’ And they will be safer than today’s drugs. Read more and happy 2005!

Here are the opening paragraphs of the EE Times article.

Thirty years from now, the uproar surrounding Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use might seem quaint by comparison to the human enhancement technologies that could be available then.

In the next few decades, futurists say, athletes and soldiers will call on artificial muscles to lift heavier loads and run faster. Bionic eyes will let them see distant targets, while “nanobots” enhance their cognitive abilities and genetic-engineering techniques boost their performance under pressure.

“The use of anabolic steroids, in retrospect, will seem almost prehistoric — as well as stupid,” said Jerome C. Glenn, executive director of the American Council for the United Nations University (Washington) and co-author of the book 2004 State of the Future. “In the future, we’ll be able to enhance ourselves in other ways that won’t be so dangerous.”

Right now, in 2004, many of these enhancement techniques are already actively being investigated, like artificial muscles or body implants for example.

And of course, the military forces are looking at these new technologies, such as molecular-sized ‘bots,’ put in soldiers’ bloodstream.

Soldiers could use the “bots,” which are molecularly assembled structures that behave much like red blood cells, to combat biological warfare by accelerating the actions of the human immune system, said Glenn. Bots could also be programmed to move to the frontal part of the brain to dispense certain chemicals and hence speed an individual’s anticipation and response time.

At the same time, scientists are said to be examining DNA strings in search of certain behavioral characteristics desirable for elite soldiers. “We’ve heard that researchers have identified a genetic DNA string that makes Navy Seals and other elite soldiers more effective,” said John L. Petersen, founder of the Arlington Institute (Washington). “They’re trying to find a way to take that to the military and make it generally available.”

I guess you can approve such enhancements for a soldier in danger during a war, but what about more ‘pacific’ events, such as the Olympic Games or the World Series?

Because he considers some level of augmentation inevitable, Glenn believes that sporting events will be split up to accommodate enhanced and unenhanced athletes.

“It’s not fair for someone with enhanced vision to compete with someone who doesn’t have that capability,” Glenn said. “You’ll probably need three Olympics — one for those who are enhanced, another for those who are natural and a third for those who are handicapped.”

I might not see 2035 — or even 2005, who knows? — but I would like to know if some of these human enhancements look plausible or desirable for you.

Please post your ideas below and happy new year!

Source: Charles Murray, EE Times, December 17, 2004

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• Biotechnology
  
  
• DNA
  
  
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