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Thread: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

  1. Link to Post #121
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote "There is no such thing as science fiction, there is only science eventuality. " - S. Spielberg
    I have watched Science fiction the first star trek and others and I say it regularly
    that science and science fiction drive each other. There was also a science/inventions
    TV show tomorrows world that was on the BBC in the 1960's . So sub consciously
    it has been with me since then and I see it all the time now.

    The Ion material spelt it out for a few years ago as well when ' they ' explained
    how creation works, thru the frequency of the word. 3. 2. 1. of creation
    http://ionandbob.blogspot.co.uk/2013...-you-want.html

    It sounds simple , and it is more complex ,but the more I find out, everything
    seems more and more connected in unexpected ways.


    They don't always get the details right , but the concept is there....I would have
    been around six when this was aired and as we only had one TV , in the one heated
    room ( fire place) You tended to watch whatever was on. In one way we were more
    MK Ultra'd than to day , as that was the heyday of the cold war , and it was the
    start of the great social experiment, though it did not seem like it. Uhm I'm starting
    to sound like my parents.... LOL



    ====================================================

    I expect you have already posted this idea....

    Working gun made with 3D printer

    https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...099#post671099
    Last edited by Cidersomerset; 2nd December 2015 at 18:47.

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  3. Link to Post #122
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years


  4. Link to Post #123
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    THIS will be amazing.... get ready for INSANE computing power in the near future.
    Quote Breakthrough light-based microprocessor chip could lead to more powerful computers, network infrastructure
    Researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder, in collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), have developed a groundbreaking microprocessor chip that uses light, rather than electricity, to transfer data at rapid speeds while consuming minute amounts of energy.

    Details of the new technology, which could pave the way for faster, more powerful computing systems and network infrastructure, were published today in the journal Nature.

    “Light based integrated circuits could lead to radical changes in computing and network chip architecture in applications ranging from smartphones to supercomputers to large data centers, something computer architects have already begun work on in anticipation of the arrival of this technology,” said Miloš Popović, an assistant professor in CU-Boulder’s Department of Electrical, Computer, and Energy Engineering and a co-corresponding author of the study.

    Traditional microprocessor chips—the ones found in everything from laptops to supercomputers—use electrical circuits to communicate with one another and transfer information. In recent years, however, the sheer amount of electricity needed to power the ever-increasing speed and volume of these data transfers has proven to be a limiting factor.

    To overcome this obstacle, the researchers turned to photonics, or light-based, technology. Sending information using light rather than electricity reduces a microchip’s energy burden because light can be sent across longer distances using the same amount of power.

    “One advantage of light based communication is that multiple parallel data streams encoded on different colors of light can be sent over one and the same medium – in this case, an optical wire waveguide on a chip, or an off-chip optical fiber of the same kind that as those that form the Internet backbone,” said Popović, whose CU-Boulder-based team developed the photonic device technology in collaboration with a team led by Rajeev Ram, a professor of electrical engineering at MIT.

    “Another advantage is that the infrared light that we use – and that also TV remotes use – has a physical wavelength shorter than 1 micron, about one hundredth of the thickness of a human hair," said Popović. "This enables very dense packing of light communication ports on a chip, enabling huge total bandwidth.”

    The new chip has a bandwidth density of 300 gigabits per second per square millimeter, about 10 to 50 times greater than packaged electrical-only microprocessors currently on the market.
    http://www.colorado.edu/news/release...rful-computers


    Quote Engineers demo first processor that uses light for ultrafast communications

    Engineers have successfully married electrons and photons within a single-chip microprocessor, a landmark development that opens the door to ultrafast, low-power data crunching.
    The researchers packed two processor cores with more than 70 million transistors and 850 photonic components onto a 3-by-6-millimeter chip. They fabricated the microprocessor in a foundry that mass-produces high-performance computer chips, proving that their design can be easily and quickly scaled up for commercial production.

    The new chip, described in a paper to be published Dec. 24 in the print issue of the journal Nature, marks the next step in the evolution of fiber optic communication technology by integrating into a microprocessor the photonic interconnects, or inputs and outputs (I/O), needed to talk to other chips.

    "This is a milestone. It's the first processor that can use light to communicate with the external world," said Vladimir Stojanović, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the development of the chip. "No other processor has the photonic I/O in the chip."

    Stojanović and fellow UC Berkeley professor Krste Asanović teamed up with Rajeev Ram at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Milos Popović at the University of Colorado, Boulder, to develop the new microprocessor.

    "This is the first time we've put a system together at such scale, and have it actually do something useful, like run a program," said Asanović, who helped develop the free and open architecture called RISC-V (reduced instruction set computer), used by the processor.
    http://phys.org/news/2015-12-demo-pr...afast.html#jCp
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  6. Link to Post #124
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years



    Quote Scientists Create the Superman of Metals
    A group of scientists say they have created the Superman of metals, a material so strong and lightweight it could lead to the creation of faster vehicles and revolutionize the airline and automotive industries.

    Engineers at the University of California, Los Angeles, used a combination of ceramic silicon carbide nanoparticles and magnesium. The new metal boasts a stiffness-to-weight ratio that far surpasses other strong metals that engineers have reliably used for generations. The metal is also capable of absorbing and withstanding high heat without having its integrity altered.

    Nanoparticles are a tiny speck of any material, just 1 to 100 nanometer in size, or a billionth of a meter—which is barely visible to the naked eye. When the material is scaled down to such a small size, its physical and chemical properties change. In this case, the silicon carbide nanoparticles were infused into a molten magnesium zinc. Silicon carbide is the hard ceramic material used for cutting blades. This “nanocomposite” metal is made up of approximately 14 percent silicon carbide and 86 percent magnesium by weight.

    “It's been proposed that nanoparticles could really enhance the strength of metals without damaging their plasticity, especially light metals like magnesium,” said Xiaochun Li, a professor of manufacturing and engineering at UCLA, in a press statement. “But no groups have been able to disperse ceramic nanoparticles in molten metals until now.”

    Magnesium is available in large quantities, meaning it would be easy to produce the material without damage to the environment. It is considered a type of load-bearing metal that is already used to make cars, albeit a weaker version.
    http://www.rawstory.com/2015/12/cali...man-of-metals/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years



    Quote 3D-Printed Wonder Ceramics Are Flawless And Super-Strong

    There's a reason they're used in everything from jet engines to Formula 1 race car brakes: Ceramics are tough. They can withstand an absurd amount of heat and pressure without warping or breaking, all while brushing off many of the physical and chemical assaults that would rust metals and wear away plastics.

    "The problem is that ceramics are just notoriously difficult to process," says Zak Eckel, an engineer at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, California.

    Heat-resistant ceramics require crazy-high temperatures to melt, so it's been a struggle to develop methods to 3D-print them. Today, there are just a few 3D printing techniques on the market that use any ceramics (developed by companies like 3DCERAM and Lithoz), but the approaches are severely limited in the types of ceramics they can print, as well as the end quality of their materials. Eckel and his team have just developed an altogether new way to 3D print practically flawless ceramics—including fantastically heat-resistant varieties that've so far been beyond our reach. Their research is announced today in the journal Science.

    To understand why Eckel's new printing process creates such interesting ceramics, it helps to understand why today's 3D printing approaches are so limited. To put it simply, they use clever techniques that basically print consecutive layers of ceramic particles that are suspended with a glue-like binding resin. (Imagine sand particles suspended in glue and you've got the idea). Once you're done printing a part this way, you can heat it up in a furnace to fuze the individual ceramic particles together into one big ceramic piece, and dissolve away the binding glue.

    So what's the problem? With this approach, "you're limited by the ceramics you can use" says Tobias Schaedler, a materials engineer with Eckel's team. Because you're fusing together individual particles of ceramics in a furnace, you can only use ceramics that melt at lower temperatures. According to Richard Gaignon, the president of 3DCERAM, today's printers can only work with a class of ceramics called "oxide ceramic materials." The second issue is that such ceramics can contain pores and other tiny flaws that are inherent byproducts of the messy process of creating one material by fusing millions of various small grains together.

    Eckel's approach is different in a crucial way, and avoids both these issues. Instead of fusing together particles, his team creates ceramics by printing materials that look a lot like plastics—but transform into ceramics when heated in a furnace. "It's actually a pretty simple, straightforward idea," Eckel says.

    The team uses a $3,000 printer to print 100 micron thick layers of a plastic-like material out of a resin. That resin contains all the molecules you need to form a tough ceramic. The printing process is done by carefully etching layers of the resin with a UV light, which fuses small molecular clumps (called monomers) into long plastic-like chains (called polymers). Once the plastic-like pre-ceramic part is printed, it's forged in an oven, where it's slowly cooked to 1,000 degrees Celsius in the presence of argon gas. That heating basically tears away all the unnecessary chemical groups attached to the plastic-like material, leaving nothing behind but the strong ceramic framework underneath.

    In their first tests, Eckle's group formed silicon carbide ceramics, which have never before been 3D printed. The team also believes the same approach could be used to print a menagerie of various different ceramics, by adjusting the makeup of the ceramic-plastic resin. And because you're forming a ceramic from the ground up, rather than fuzing together individuals grains "you're left with a virtually flawless ceramic," says Schaedler, one with no pores and is remarkably uniform across the entire material.
    http://www.popularmechanics.com/scie...-wont-shatter/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Dunno how I missed this one... VERY cool, though I don't know if we will see this before 5+ years or so at the consumer level....
    Quote Scientists have discovered a new state of matter, called 'Jahn-Teller metals'

    And it could be the key to understanding one of the biggest mysteries in physics today - high-temperature superconductors.



    n international team of scientists has announced the discovery of a new state of matter in a material that appears to be an insulator, superconductor, metal and magnet all rolled into one, saying that it could lead to the development of more effective high-temperature superconductors.

    Why is this so exciting? Well, if these properties are confirmed, this new state of matter will allow scientists to better understand why some materials have the potential to achieve superconductivity at a relativity high critical temperature (Tc) - "high" as in −135 °C as opposed to −243.2 °C. Because superconductivity allows a material to conduct electricity without resistance, which means no heat, sound, or any other form of energy release, achieving this would revolutionise how we use and produce energy, but it’s only feasible if we can achieve it at so-called high temperatures.As Michael Byrne explains at Motherboard, when we talk about states of matter, it’s not just solids, liquids, gases, and maybe plasmas that we have to think about. We also have to consider the more obscure states that don’t occur in nature, but are rather created in the lab - Bose–Einstein condensate, degenerate matter, supersolids and superfluids, and quark-gluon plasma, for example.

    By introducing rubidium into carbon-60 molecules - more commonly known as 'buckyballs' - a team led by chemist Kosmas Prassides from Tokohu University in Japan was able to change the distance between them, which forced them into a new, crystalline structure. When put through an array of tests, this structure displayed a combination of insulating, superconducting, metallic, and magnetic phases, including a brand new one, which the researchers have named 'Jahn-Teller metals'.

    Named after the Jahn-Teller effect, which is used in chemistry to describe how at low pressures, the geometric arrangement of molecules and ions in an electronic state can become distorted, this new state of matter allows scientists to transform an insulator - which can’t conduct electricity - into a conductor by simply applying pressure. Byrne explains at Motherboard:

    "This is what the rubidium atoms do: apply pressure. Usually when we think about adding pressure, we think in terms of squeezing something, forcing its molecules closer together by brute force. But it's possible to do the same thing chemically, tweaking the distances between molecules by adding or subtracting some sort of barrier between them - sneaking in some extra atoms, perhaps.

    What happens in a Jahn-Teller metal is that as pressure is applied, and as what was previously an insulator - thanks to the electrically-distorting Jahn-Teller effect - becomes a metal, the effect persists for a while. The molecules hang on to their old shapes. So, there is an overlap of sorts, where the material still looks an awful lot like an insulator, but the electrons also manage to hop around as freely as if the material were a conductor."

    And it’s this transition phase between insulator and conductor that, until now, scientists have never seen before, and hints at the possibility of transforming insulating materials into super-valuable superconducting materials. And this buckyball crystalline structure appears to be able to do it at a relatively high TC. "The relationship between the parent insulator, the normal metallic state above Tc, and the superconducting pairing mechanism is a key question in understanding all unconventional superconductors," the team writes in Science Advances.

    There’s a whole lot of lab-work to be done before this discovery will mean anything for practical energy production in the real world, but that’s science for you. And it’s got people excited already, as chemist Elisabeth Nicol from the University of Guelph in Canada told Hamish Johnston at PhysicsWorld: "Understanding the mechanisms at play and how they can be manipulated to change the Tc surely will inspire the development of new [superconducting] materials".
    http://www.sciencealert.com/scientis...-teller-effect
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    So between "renewables" and fusion it looks like we might be rapidly approaching a "free energy" type of situation.. or at least very inexpensive energy.

    Quote End of fossil fuels? China close to creating 'ARTIFICIAL STAR' three times hotter than sun

    Chinese experts last week successfully produced hydrogen gas more than three times hotter than the core of the Sun.

    Crucially, the scientists were able to maintain that temperature - 50 million°C - for 102 seconds.

    The experiment means nuclear fusion experts are a step nearer to replacing depleting fossil fuels with limitless nuclear energy powered by the ultra-high temperature gas.
    http://www.express.co.uk/news/world/...mitless-energy


    Quote
    Just last week, we reported that Germany’s revolutionary nuclear fusion machine managed to heat hydrogen gas to 80 million degrees Celsius, and sustain a cloud of hydrogen plasma for a quarter of a second. This was a huge milestone in the decades-long pursuit of controlled nuclear fusion, because if we can produce and hold onto hydrogen plasma for a certain period, we can harness the clean, practically limitless energy that fuels our Sun.

    Now physicists in China have announced that their own nuclear fusion machine, called the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST), has produced hydrogen plasma at 49.999 million degrees Celsius, and held onto it for an impressive 102 seconds.
    http://www.sciencealert.com/china-s-...-plasma-record
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote Eternal 5D data storage could record the history of humankind
    Scientists at the University of Southampton have made a major step forward in the development of digital data storage that is capable of surviving for billions of years.

    Using nanostructured glass, scientists from the University’s Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC) have developed the recording and retrieval processes of five dimensional (5D) digital data by femtosecond laser writing.

    The storage allows unprecedented properties including 360 TB/disc data capacity, thermal stability up to 1,000°C and virtually unlimited lifetime at room temperature (13.8 billion years at 190°C ) opening a new era of eternal data archiving. As a very stable and safe form of portable memory, the technology could be highly useful for organisations with big archives, such as national archives, museums and libraries, to preserve their information and records.

    The technology was first experimentally demonstrated in 2013 when a 300 kb digital copy of a text file was successfully recorded in 5D.

    Now, major documents from human history such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), Newton’s Opticks, Magna Carta and Kings James Bible, have been saved as digital copies that could survive the human race. A copy of the UDHR encoded to 5D data storage was recently presented to UNESCO by the ORC at the International Year of Light (IYL) closing ceremony in Mexico.
    The documents were recorded using ultrafast laser, producing extremely short and intense pulses of light. The file is written in three layers of nanostructured dots separated by five micrometres (one millionth of a metre).

    The self-assembled nanostructures change the way light travels through glass, modifying polarisation of light that can then be read by combination of optical microscope and a polariser, similar to that found in Polaroid sunglasses.

    Coined as the ‘Superman memory crystal’, as the glass memory has been compared to the “memory crystals” used in the Superman films, the data is recorded via self-assembled nanostructures created in fused quartz. The information encoding is realised in five dimensions: the size and orientation in addition to the three dimensional position of these nanostructures.

    Professor Peter Kazansky, from the ORC, says: “It is thrilling to think that we have created the technology to preserve documents and information and store it in space for future generations. This technology can secure the last evidence of our civilisation: all we’ve learnt will not be forgotten.”

    The researchers will present their research at the photonics industry's renowned SPIE—The International Society for Optical Engineering Conference in San Francisco, USA this week. The invited paper, ‘5D Data Storage by Ultrafast Laser Writing in Glass’ will be presented on Wednesday 17 February.

    The team are now looking for industry partners to further develop and commercialise this ground-breaking new technology.
    http://www.southampton.ac.uk/news/20...ge-update.page

    AND

    Quote Super flat material could extend life of Moore's Law
    Researchers could be fending off the demise of Moore's Law with the help of a new material that allows electrons to move from point A to point B faster. Engineers at the University of Utah discovered a new kind of flat semiconducting material made of tin monoxide that is only one-atom thick, allowing electrical charges to pass through it faster than silicon or other 3D materials.

    Charges traveling through conventional electronic devices bounce around in all directions when traveling through transistors and other components consisting of layers of silicon on a glass substrate. Engineers have only recently begun to work with 2D materials like graphene, molybdenum disulfide and borophene, which force electrons to "only move in one layer so it's much faster," says professor Ashutosh Tiwari, who led the research.


    Tiwari says the new material fills an important gap in speeding up electronics because, unlike graphene and other near atom-thin materials, it allows both negative electrons and positive charges – or "holes" – to move through it. This has led the team to describe the material as the first stable P-type 2D semiconductor material in existence.

    "Now we have everything," he says. "Now things will move forward much more quickly."

    The team believes the material will enable the manufacture of transistors that are smaller and faster than those currently in use, leading to computers and mobile devices that are 100 times faster than current devices and run cooler and more efficiently, thereby extending battery life.

    "The field is very hot right now, and people are very interested in it," Tiwari says. "So in two or three years we should see at least some prototype device."
    http://www.gizmag.com/2d-semiconduct...onoxide/41843/



    quasi unrelated improvement:

    Quote A New Technique Makes GPS Accurate to an Inch
    a team from the University of California, Riverside, has developed a technique that augments the regular GPS data with on-board inertial measurements from a sensor
    http://gizmodo.com/a-new-technique-m...nch-1758457807
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years




    Quote This image of Mark Zuckerberg says so much about our future
    Quote
    The image above looks like concept art for a new dystopian sci-fi film. A billionaire superman with a rictus grin, striding straight past human drones, tethered to machines and blinded to reality by blinking plastic masks. Golden light shines down on the man as he strides past his subjects, cast in gloom, toward a stage where he will accept their adulation. Later that night, he will pore across his vast network and read their praise, heaped upon him in superlatives, as he drives what remains of humanity forward to his singular vision.

    Except it's not from a sci-fi movie — it's from Mobile World Congress, in Barcelona, and the man is Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg. The picture trips all of our "horrible cyberpunk future" alarms, carefully put in place by everything from The Matrix to Noam Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent. The former uses evil squid-bodied robots, the latter privileged human elites, but both works see humanity too distracted and preoccupied — by a full-scale replica of late-90s reality, or just sports on TV — to even be aware of the actions of those in charge. Zuckerberg's picture acts this out: MWC attendees plugged into Samsung's Gear VR headset literally can't see the Facebook boss as he breezes past them.
    http://www.theverge.com/2016/2/22/11...future-samsung
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    I am a little wary about some of these technologies that interfere with
    EMF's and can be open to abuse like everything , remember the game
    on Star Trek next generation..LOL Maybe its because I just posted a
    thread about them.....Or I'm getting old ...LOL

    https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...19#post1048319



    ------------------------------------------------------------------

    Zuckerberg promotes virtual reality as ‘most social platform’

    By David on 22nd February 2016




    ‘Virtual reality is “the most social platform” of the future, the Facebook founder said
    at a presentation of Samsung’s new 360-degree camera. According to Zuckerberg,
    when powered by his company’s software it will revolutionize social media experience.

    The new Gear 360 degree camera and the Gear VR headset, powered by Oculus, which
    has been on the market since November, has been promoted at Mobile World Congress
    in Barcelona, where Zuckerberg assured the crowd that virtual reality is “going to be the
    most social platform.”’

    Read more: Zuckerberg promotes virtual reality as ‘most social platform’
    https://www.rt.com/news/333216-zucke...ampaign=chrome
    Last edited by Cidersomerset; 22nd February 2016 at 18:41.

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Looks like we are going to have some healthy mice in the future.... ( )

    Quote Neuroscientists reverse autism symptoms

    Turning on a gene later in life can restore typical behavior in mice.
    Autism has diverse genetic causes, most of which are still unknown. About 1 percent of people with autism are missing a gene called Shank3, which is critical for brain development. Without this gene, individuals develop typical autism symptoms including repetitive behavior and avoidance of social interactions.

    In a study of mice, MIT researchers have now shown that they can reverse some of those behavioral symptoms by turning the gene back on later in life, allowing the brain to properly rewire itself.

    “This suggests that even in the adult brain we have profound plasticity to some degree,” says Guoping Feng, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences. “There is more and more evidence showing that some of the defects are indeed reversible, giving hope that we can develop treatment for autistic patients in the future.”

    Feng, who is the James W. and Patricia Poitras Professor of Neuroscience and a member of MIT’s McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute, is the senior author of the study, which appears in the Feb. 17 issue of Nature. The paper’s lead authors are former MIT graduate student Yuan Mei and former Broad Institute visiting graduate student Patricia Monteiro, now at the University of Coimbra in Portugal.

    Boosting communication

    The Shank3 protein is found in synapses — the connections that allow neurons to communicate with each other. As a scaffold protein, Shank3 helps to organize the hundreds of other proteins that are necessary to coordinate a neuron’s response to incoming signals.

    Studying rare cases of defective Shank3 can help scientists gain insight into the neurobiological mechanisms of autism. Missing or defective Shank3 leads to synaptic disruptions that can produce autism-like symptoms in mice, including compulsive behavior, avoidance of social interaction, and anxiety, Feng has previously found. He has also shown that some synapses in these mice, especially in a part of the brain called the striatum, have a greatly reduced density of dendritic spines — small buds on neurons’ surfaces that help with the transmission of synaptic signals.

    In the new study, Feng and colleagues genetically engineered mice so that their Shank3 gene was turned off during embryonic development but could be turned back on by adding tamoxifen to the mice’s diet.

    When the researchers turned on Shank3 in young adult mice (two to four and a half months after birth), they were able to eliminate the mice’s repetitive behavior and their tendency to avoid social interaction. At the cellular level, the team found that the density of dendritic spines dramatically increased in the striatum of treated mice, demonstrating the structural plasticity in the adult brain.

    However, the mice’s anxiety and some motor coordination symptoms did not disappear. Feng suspects that these behaviors probably rely on circuits that were irreversibly formed during early development.

    When the researchers turned on Shank3 earlier in life, only 20 days after birth, the mice’s anxiety and motor coordination did improve. The researchers are now working on defining the critical periods for the formation of these circuits, which could help them determine the best time to try to intervene.

    “Some circuits are more plastic than others,” Feng says. “Once we understand which circuits control each behavior and understand what exactly changed at the structural level, we can study what leads to these permanent defects, and how we can prevent them from happening.”

    Gordon Fishell, a professor of neuroscience at New York University School of Medicine, praises the study’s “elegant approach” and says it represents a major advance in understanding the circuitry and cellular physiology that underlie autism. “The combination of behavior, circuits, physiology, and genetics is state-of-the art,” says Fishell, who was not involved in the research. "Moreover, Dr. Feng's demonstration that restoration of Shank3 function reverses autism symptoms in adult mice suggests that gene therapy may ultimately prove an effective therapy for this disease."

    Early intervention

    For the small population of people with Shank3 mutations, the findings suggest that new genome-editing techniques could in theory be used to repair the defective Shank3 gene and improve these individuals’ symptoms, even later in life. These techniques are not yet ready for use in humans, however.

    Feng believes that scientists may also be able to develop more general approaches that would apply to a larger population. For example, if the researchers can identify defective circuits that are specific for certain behavioral abnormalities in some autism patients, and figure out how to modulate those circuits’ activity, that could also help other people who may have defects in the same circuits even though the problem arose from a different genetic mutation.

    “That’s why it’s important in the future to identify what subtype of neurons are defective and what genes are expressed in these neurons, so we can use them as a target without affecting the whole brain,” Feng says.
    http://news.mit.edu/2016/neuroscient...-symptoms-0217

    And

    Quote New Alzheimer’s treatment fully restores memory function

    Of the mice that received the treatment, 75 percent got their memory function back.
    Australian researchers have come up with a non-invasive ultrasound technology that clears the brain of neurotoxic amyloid plaques - structures that are responsible for memory loss and a decline in cognitive function in Alzheimer’s patients.

    If a person has Alzheimer’s disease, it’s usually the result of a build-up of two types of lesions - amyloid plaques, and neurofibrillary tangles. Amyloid plaques sit between the neurons and end up as dense clusters of beta-amyloid molecules, a sticky type of protein that clumps together and forms plaques.
    Neurofibrillary tangles are found inside the neurons of the brain, and they’re caused by defective tau proteins that clump up into a thick, insoluble mass. This causes tiny filaments called microtubules to get all twisted, which disrupts the transportation of essential materials such as nutrients and organelles along them, just like when you twist up the vacuum cleaner tube.

    As we don’t have any kind of vaccine or preventative measure for Alzheimer’s - a disease that affects 343,000 people in Australia, and 50 million worldwide - it’s been a race to figure out how best to treat it, starting with how to clear the build-up of defective beta-amyloid and tau proteins from a patient’s brain. Now a team from the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland have come up with a pretty promising solution for removing the former.

    Publishing in Science Translational Medicine, the team describes the technique as using a particular type of ultrasound called a focused therapeutic ultrasound, which non-invasively beams sound waves into the brain tissue. By oscillating super-fast, these sound waves are able to gently open up the blood-brain barrier, which is a layer that protects the brain against bacteria, and stimulate the brain’s microglial cells to activate. Microglila cells are basically waste-removal cells, so they’re able to clear out the toxic beta-amyloid clumps that are responsible for the worst symptoms of Alzheimer’s.

    The team reports fully restoring the memory function of 75 percent of the mice they tested it on, with zero damage to the surrounding brain tissue. They found that the treated mice displayed improved performance in three memory tasks - a maze, a test to get them to recognise new objects, and one to get them to remember the places they should avoid.

    "We’re extremely excited by this innovation of treating Alzheimer’s without using drug therapeutics," one of the team, Jürgen Götz, said in a press release. "The word ‘breakthrough’ is often misused, but in this case I think this really does fundamentally change our understanding of how to treat this disease, and I foresee a great future for this approach."

    The team says they’re planning on starting trials with higher animal models, such as sheep, and hope to get their human trials underway in 2017.
    http://www.sciencealert.com/new-alzh...emory-function
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    On the subject of games that are embracing new concepts......


    The Video Game That Made Elon Musk Question If Our Reality Is A Simulation

    By David on 24th February 2016 What is Reality?




    In June, a team of programmers will release a ground-breaking new video game called
    No Man’s Sky, which uses artificial intelligence and procedural generation to self-create
    an entire cosmos full of planets. Running off 600,000 lines of code, the game creates an
    artificial galaxy populated by 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 unique planets that you can
    travel to and explore.

    Though this artificial universe is realistic down to the dimensions of a blade of grass, faster
    than light-speed travel is available in order for players to bridge the unfathomable distances
    between stars.Chief architect Sean Murray says No Man’s Sky is different than most games
    because the landscapes and distances aren’t faked. While most space-based games utilize a
    skybox that simply rotates between different modalities, No Man’s Sky is virtually limitless
    and employs real physics.’

    Read more: The Video Game That Made Elon Musk Question If Our Reality Is A Simulation

    http://www.activistpost.com/2016/02/...imulation.html

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    This is a scary an inevitable conclusion I think , probably
    a bit further than 2 years but they are getting more stable.....


    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ATLAS: Next Generation Of DARPA Humanoid Robot Released

    By David on 25th February 2016



    The evolution of humanoid robots is happening at an ever-quickening pace. These
    advancements are occurring not only in their mechanics but also with the
    incorporation of artificial intelligence.

    One of the humanoid robots that has garnered the most attention is ATLAS,
    developed for DARPA by Boston Dynamics. ATLAS has been through several
    incarnations since its inception in 2013 as part of the DARPA Robotics Challenge
    and, as you’ll see in the videos below, if a truly Terminator-like killer robot ever
    does come to fruition, ATLAS very well could be the one.’

    http://www.activistpost.com/2016/02/...-released.html



    Published on 23 Feb 2016

    A new version of Atlas, designed to operate outdoors and inside buildings. It is
    specialized for mobile manipulation. It is electrically powered and hydraulically
    actuated. It uses sensors in its body and legs to balance and LIDAR and stereo
    sensors in its head to avoid obstacles, assess the terrain, help with navigation and
    manipulate objects. This version of Atlas is about 5' 9" tall (about a head shorter
    than the DRC Atlas) and weighs 180 lbs.
    Last edited by Cidersomerset; 25th February 2016 at 21:50.

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Ultra accurate magnetic induction based cooking system by.... Bose?

    Quote Bose didn't have a comment at the time we ran the article, but when we went to visit Bose recently, it gave CNET an exclusive demo of the system -- code-named Project Vortex and in development for 10 years -- with Bose Senior Research Engineer Ken Jacob cooking the perfect crepe for us in one try.

    Bose won't make the stovetops itself. In the coming months, Jacob says, it will announce a partnership with a major appliance company to manufacture the system.
    http://www.cnet.com/videos/hands-on-...ooking-system/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    But do we discover in 10 years that the ultra high magnetic frequency alters DNA whilst the inbuilt wireless system continues to sterilise everything within a 2 feet radius, aka your groin. :D

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote Posted by Ewan (here)
    But do we discover in 10 years that the ultra high magnetic frequency alters DNA whilst the inbuilt wireless system continues to sterilise everything within a 2 feet radius, aka your groin. :D
    if magnetic fields do that then we are screwed (see LeyLines etc...) I'd like to think that we are pretty tolerant to magnetic fields, since we are bathed in them all the time... I think that using a magnetic field to excite a piece of metal (via resonance) is a MUCH less intrusive way of heating than using a microwave to heat the water inside an object.




    This is an important breakthrough, getting economy of scale into the nano-world will rapidly increase it's proliferation in every day life.
    Quote A practical solution to mass-producing low-cost nanoparticles

    USC researchers have created an automated method of manufacturing nanoparticles that may transform the process from an expensive, painstaking, batch-by-batch process by a technician in a chemistry lab, mixing up a batch of chemicals by hand in traditional lab flasks and beakers.

    Consider, for example, gold nanoparticles. Their ability to slip through the cell’s membrane makes them ideal delivery devices for medications to healthy cells, or fatal doses of radiation to cancer cells. But the price of gold nanoparticles at $80,000 per gram, compared to about $50 for pure raw gold goes.

    The solution, published in an open access paper in Nature Communications on Feb. 23, is microfluidics — manipulating tiny droplets of fluid in narrow channels. The team 3D-printed tubes about 250 micrometers in diameter, possibly the smallest, fully enclosed 3D printed tubes anywhere.

    Then they built a parallel network of four of these tubes, side-by-side, and ran a combination of two non-mixing fluids (like oil and water) through them. As the two fluids fought to get out through the openings, they squeezed off tiny droplets. Each of these droplets acted as a microscale chemical reactor in which materials were mixed and nanoparticles were generated. Each microfluidic tube can create millions of identical droplets that perform the same reaction.

    This sort of exotic process has been envisioned in the past, but its hasn’t been able to be scaled up because the parallel structure meant that if one tube got jammed, it would cause a ripple effect of changing pressures along its neighbors, knocking out the entire system.

    The researchers bypassed this problem by altering the geometry of the tubes themselves, shaping the junction between the tubes such that the particles come out a uniform size and the system is immune to pressure changes.

    The work was supported by the National Science Foundation.
    http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-practica...-nanoparticles



    The effect this finding will have on science is going to be huge since most things behave like waves (at least part of the time)...
    Quote
    A mathematical advance in describing waves


    New development builds on centuries of research devoted to using math to describe the physical world

    BUFFALO, N.Y. — One of the great joys in mathematics is the ability to use it to describe phenomena seen in the physical world, says University at Buffalo mathematician Gino Biondini.
    With UB postdoctoral researcher Dionyssios Mantzavinos, Biondini has published a new paper that advances the art — or shall we say, the math — of describing a wave. The findings, published Jan. 27 in Physical Review Letters, are thought to apply to wave forms ranging from light waves in optical fibers to water waves in the sea.
    The study explores what happens when a regular wave pattern has small irregularities, a question that scientists have been trying to answer for the last 50 years.
    Researchers have long known that in many cases such minor imperfections grow and eventually completely distort the original wave as it travels over long distances, a phenomenon known as “modulational instability.” But the UB team has added to this story by showing, mathematically, that many different kinds of disturbances evolve to produce wave forms belonging to a single class, denoted by their identical asymptotic state.
    “Ever since Isaac Newton used math to describe gravity, applied mathematicians have been inventing new mathematics or using existing forms to describe natural phenomena,” says Biondini, a professor of mathematics in the UB College of Arts and Sciences and an adjunct faculty member in the UB physics department. “Our research is, in a way, an extension of all the work that’s come before.”
    He says the first great success in using math to represent waves came in the 1700s. The so-called wave equation, used to describe the propagation of waves such as light, sound and water waves, was discovered by Jean le Rond d'Alembert in the middle of that century. But the model has limitations.
    “The wave equation is a great first approximation, but it breaks down when the waves are very large — or, in technical parlance — 'nonlinear,'” Biondini said. “So, for example, in optical fibers, the wave equation is great for moderate distances, but if you send a laser pulse (which is an electromagnetic wave) through an optical fiber across the ocean or the continental U.S., the wave equation is not a good approximation anymore. “Similarly, when a water wave whitecaps and overturns, the wave equation is not a good description of the physics anymore.”
    Over the next 250 years, scientists and mathematicians continued to develop new and better ways to describe waves. One of the models that researchers derived in the middle of the 20th century is the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which helps to characterize wave trains in a variety of physical contexts, including in nonlinear optics and in deep water.
    But many questions remained unanswered, including what happens when a wave has small imperfections at its origin.
    This is the topic of Biondini and Mantzavinos’ new paper.
    “Modulational instability has been known since the 1960s. When you have small perturbations at the input, you’ll have big changes at the output. But is there a way to describe precisely what happens?” Biondini said. “After laying out the foundations in two earlier papers, it took us a year of work to obtain a mathematical description of the solutions. We then used computers to test whether our math was correct, and the simulation results were pretty good — it appears that we have captured the essence of the phenomenon.”
    The next step, Biondini said, is to partner with experimental researchers to see if the theoretical findings hold when applied to tangible, physical waves. He has started to collaborate with research groups in optics as well as water waves, and he hopes that it will soon be possible to test the theoretical predictions with real experiments.
    http://www.buffalo.edu/news/releases....5jMJthbX.dpuf

    Practical application:
    Quote MIT Invents a Way To Warn Sailors of Rogue Waves
    MIT researchers have developed a new way for ships to predict unexpected rogue waves.​​

    ogue waves, killer waves, monster waves, freak waves—whatever you call them, these deadly oscillations of the sea can rise up eight feet out of seemingly calm waters to come crashing down onto an unwary vessel. Researchers at MIT developed an algorithm that they believe can give sailors 2 to 3 minutes warning before a rogue wave strikes. The program works by identifying groups of waves rather than considering every single one.

    The open ocean contains many waves moving in seemingly random directions. Amongst that chaos, waves will occasionally flow close together and in the same direction. Researchers realized that these groups of waves are the telltale sign of a forming rogue wave.

    Previous simulations tried to map every single wave surrounding a ship, but accounting for all those data points simply requires too much computing power for a laptop set up at sea. The new MIT algorithm searches for just groups of waves flowing in the same direction and then measures the height and length of the group. The team found that certain height and length combinations are more likely to form a rogue wave, and their program estimates the probability that a wave group will ultimately grow into a towering monster wave.

    "It's precise in the sense that it's telling us very accurately the location and the time that this rare event will happen," says Themis Sapsis, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. "We have a range of possibilities, and we can say that this will be a dangerous wave, and you'd better do something. That's really all you need."

    Vessels will need to incorporate high-resolution scanning technologies such as radar and LIDAR to measure surrounding waves, allowing the algorithm to give them adequate warning of destructive waves. But these technologies are steadily becoming more and more available—self-driving cars use LIDAR, for example—and the algorithm does not require much computing power.

    Once the technology finds its way onto commercial vessels, it can give you a 2- to 3-minute heads-up prior to a rare rogue wave. But it won't protect you from a raging storm, and you still have to scramble to prepare for the blow.
    http://www.popularmechanics.com/tech...y-rogue-waves/
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    This will be a bit further than 2 years... but the fact that it looks like it's actually moving forward is awesome... power produced @ $.01kw/h is amazing.


    Quote Disruptive advanced nuclear design is in pre-licensing design review
    Terrestrial Energy announced that it is submitting its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for Phase I of its pre-licensing Vendor Design Review. During the course of this review, which is an optional feedback process offered by the CNSC, Terrestrial Energy will be demonstrating that the design meets Canadian regulatory requirements in a number of technical topic areas. This is seen as the first step towards an eventual license application to build its first commercial demonstration IMSR power plant.

    Terrestrial Energy CEO, Simon Irish, made the following comment regarding the engagement:

    “Terrestrial Energy is entering a new phase of its development – moving ahead from reactor research and design, to engineering and regulatory compliance. This new chapter takes the Company towards the submission of a formal license application to build and operate the first commercial demonstration Integral Molten Salt Reactor plant in the 2020s.

    Terrestrial Energy is developing a next-generation nuclear reactor based on its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) technology. The IMSR represents true innovation in safety, cost and functionality. It will offer safe and reliable power solutions for electricity production, both on- and off-grid, and also energy for industrial process heat generation. These together extend the applicability of nuclear energy far beyond its current footprint. With this profile, the IMSR is capable of driving the rapid global decarbonization of the primary energy system by displacing fossil fuel combustion across a broad front. It is complementary to renewable power sources and ideal for distributed power systems on existing grids. Using an innovative design and proven Molten Salt Reactor technology, the IMSR can be brought to global markets in the 2020s. Terrestrial Energy is currently developing its IMSR commercial demonstration power plant for deployment in Canada.

    Why is Terrestrial Energy's Integral Molten Salt Reactor a big deal ?

    A molten salt 7.4 MWth test reactor was operated at Oak Ridge from 1965-1969. So no question about technical feasability
    A conservative first IMSR design should be competitive with established power at about 3 cents per kWh
    Later designs should be able to get lower than 1 cent per kWh
    Design is walk away safe with passive safety systems
    First designs would produce 6 times less nuclear waste and later designs can close the fuel cycle
    Canada can use the first several hundred reactors to directly produce steam to profitably produce oil from the oilsands
    Canada and Terrestrial Energy can thus use the oilsand reactors to profitably climb the learning curve before factory mass production of supersafe, super efficient and disruptively lower cost reactors
    These system could provide 100% of global electricity demand without any emissions

    In 2015, Terrestrial Energy had secured CAD$10 million ($7 million) in Series A funding to support its program to bring its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) technology to industrial markets in the 2020s.

    Terrestrial Energy CEO Simon Irish said that the funds will be used to support pre-construction and pre-licensing engineering, and to support further engagement with industry and nuclear regulators. "These programs allow the Company to demonstrate to industry the commercial merits of the IMSR design," he said.

    Series A funding is a term used to describe a company's first round of funding secured by selling preferred stock to investors, typically venture capitalists. Details on the source of Terrestrial Energy's funding have not been revealed.

    Terrestrial Energy in January 2015 announced a collaboration with ORNL to develop its IMSR design to the engineering blueprint stage.

    The conceptual design stage is anticipated to be completed in 2017.
    Canadian David LeBlanc is developing the Integral Molten Salt Reactor, or IMSR. The goal is to commercialize the Terrestrial reactor by 2021.

    Molten Salt and Oilsands
    * Using nuclear produced steam for Oil Sands production long studied
    * Vast majority of oil only accessible by In-Situ methods
    * No turbine island needed so 30% to 40% the capital cost saved (instead of steam to turbine for electricity just send it underground to produce oil from oilsands)
    * Oil sands producers expected to pay 200 Billion$ on carbon taxes over the next 35 years, funds mandated to be spent on cleantech initiatives
    * Canada Oil Sands in ground reserves of 2 trillion barrels, current estimate 10% recoverable (likely much higher with cheaper steam)
    * 64 GWth nuclear to add 6.4 million bbls/day (200B$/year revenue)
    * 64 GWth needed as about 200 small 300MWth MSRs
    * Oil Sands a bridge to MSRs then with time, MSRs a bridge to not needing oil

    So each 300 MW thermal MSR would generate $1 billion per year in oil revenue from the oilsands.
    A 300 MW thermal reactor would be the same as a 100 MW electrical reactor. Even if costs were as much proportionally as a $10 billion 1 GWe conventional nuclear reactor (the high costs of the most expensive european or US projects.) the $1 billion cost would be recovered in about 2-4 years. Also, they indicated that there is no turbine to produce electricity since only steam is used. So the costs should be $700 million max.

    This profitability means that the first 200 units should easily be profitable. Usually making more units has a improvement rate in lowering costs by a few percentage points for each later unit. The oilsand units would also generate the money to help payoff research and development costs, which would initial come from oilsand taxes and oilsand partners.

    In previous design discussions about a similar Denatured Molten Salt Reactor , David LeBlanc believed that capital costs could be 25% to 50% less for a simple DMSR converter design than for modern LWRs (light water reactors).
    More:
    http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/02/dis...design-is.html
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Quote Posted by TargeT (here)
    This will be a bit further than 2 years... but the fact that it looks like it's actually moving forward is awesome... power produced @ $.01kw/h is amazing.


    Quote Disruptive advanced nuclear design is in pre-licensing design review
    Terrestrial Energy announced that it is submitting its Integral Molten Salt Reactor (IMSR) design to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) for Phase I of its pre-licensing Vendor Design Review.
    Here's a presentation by Terrestrial Energy from August of 2015 explaining more of what they are doing:
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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    Ray Kurzweil's future talk effects of open source technologies, 3-D printing, virtual reality today and in next 5-10 years. Kinda of bland thought since he has been hired by Google his insight is along the cutting edge...
    Last edited by Wide-Eyed; 7th March 2016 at 03:05. Reason: embed prperly

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    Default Re: Technological advances that will directly affect you in the next 2 years

    This will make medical diagnosis much more accurate, better displays (lower energy, more dynamic colors) and is teaching us how different materials are at the nano scale; plus it's cheap! (And I can only imagine that Tattoos... haha)

    Quote The nanolight revolution is coming
    Virus-sized particles that fluoresce in every colour could revolutionize applications from television displays to cancer treatment.



    At Biopolis, a sprawling research complex in Singapore, Chi Ching Goh leans over an anaesthetized mouse lying on the table in front of her, and carefully injects it with a bright yellow solution. She then gently positions the mouse's ear underneath a microscope, and flips a switch to bathe the ear in ultraviolet light. Seen through the microscope's eyepiece, the illumination makes the blood underneath the skin glow green, tracing the delicate vessels that carry the solution through the creature's body.Ultimately, Goh, a PhD candidate at the National University of Singapore, hopes that the method will help her to find blood vessels that are leaking owing to inflammation, perhaps helping to detect malaria or predict strokes. Crucial to her technique are the virus-sized particles that give the solution its colour. Just a few tens of nanometres across, they are among a growing array of 'nanolights' that researchers are tailoring to specific types of fluorescence: the ability to absorb light at one wavelength and re-emit it at another.

    Many naturally occurring compounds can do this, from jellyfish proteins to some rare-earth compounds. But nanolights tend to be much more stable, versatile and easier to prepare — which makes them attractive for users in both industry and academia.

    The best-established examples are quantum dots: tiny flecks of semiconductor that are prized for their beautiful, crisp colours. Now, however, other types of nanolight are on the rise. Some have a rare ability to absorb lots of low-energy photons and combine the energy into a handful of high-energy photons — a trick that opens up opportunities such as producing multiple colours at once. Others are made from polymers or small organic molecules. These are less toxic than quantum dots and often outshine them — much to the amazement of chemists, who are used to carbon-based compounds simply degrading in the presence of ultraviolet light.

    “I was kind of surprised to find that we can make organic particles much brighter than inorganic particles,” says Bin Liu, a chemical engineer at the National University of Singapore and the designer of the fluorescent nanoparticles that Goh is using.Nanolights have already begun to find application in areas ranging from flat-screen displays to biochemical tests. And researchers are working towards even more ambitious uses in fields such as solar energy, DNA mapping, motion sensing and even surgery. “The research is certainly fast-paced,” says Daniel Chiu, who studies fluorescent nanoparticles at the University of Washington in Seattle.

    It is also increasingly wide ranging, adds Paul Alivisatos, a chemist at the University of California, Berkeley, and a co-founder of the first quantum-dot technology companies. “It's so much fun now.”
    Size matters

    The nanolight era began with the discovery of quantum dots in 1981. Russian physicists were growing tiny crystals of the semiconductor cuprous chloride in silicate glass and observed that the colour of the glass depended on the size of the particles1. The crystals were so small that quantum effects were kicking in and they were behaving somewhat like atoms: they could absorb or emit light only as specific colours, with the exact frequencies depending on the size or shape of the particles (see 'Bridge the gap').


    The quantum dots were bright and beautiful, says Yin Thai Chan, who studies them at the National University of Singapore, but “there were no obvious applications”. By the early 2000s, however, the pure colours had begun to attract television manufacturers, as well as biomedical researchers, who saw their potential for labelling specific proteins and DNA segments.“Everything is good about quantum dots,” says Liu — except for one thing: their toxicity. The best-performing dots contain cadmium, which can poison cells. This limits their usefulness in biology and in applications such as household electronics, because some countries do not allow use of the element in such devices. To some extent, this problem can be overcome by replacing cadmium with zinc or indium, which are considerably less toxic, or by wrapping cadmium-based quantum dots in polymers that are biocompatible. But the toxicity is still a drawback for researchers who are pursuing ambitious applications such as fluoresence-guided surgery, in which nanoparticles are injected into a tumour, for instance, to make it glow and help surgeons to remove all traces of it.
    Going organic

    Partly in response to this challenge, researchers have begun to develop nanoparticles from materials that fluoresce naturally. Because the light-emitting properties of these nanolights come from their composition rather than their size or shape, they are easier to make with specific colours. “Practically, this is useful because of the difficulties to synthesize everything in the same size,” says Chiu.

    It also frees up nanolight researchers to explore alternative materials, such as semiconducting polymers. Studied for their potential in electronics since the 1950s, these polymers consist of simple compounds linked into a long chain in which electrons are free to move, but only at certain energies determined by the chain's composition.

    Light is emitted when electrons are kicked up to higher energy levels by some outside source, such as ultraviolet light, then fall back down to lower levels. The polymers can also be decorated with side groups to give them specific properties — for example, targeting them to cancer cells, or helping them to dissolve in water. And when chains are aggregated into polymer nanoparticles, or 'P-dots', they can be as much as 30 times brighter than a quantum dot of comparable size2Semiconducting polymers do tend to be less stable than the inorganic semiconductors used in quantum dots. But because they are based on carbon, and contain no metals, they are much more likely to be biocompatible. P-dots have been used to stain and image cells, and also as sensors to detect oxygen, enzymes or metal ions such as copper.

    In 2013, for example, Chiu and his collaborators reported that a P-dot bound to a terbium ion can detect biomolecules produced by bacterial spores3. Under an ultraviolet lamp, the P-dots glow dark blue and the terbium ions emit a faint neon green colour. But when passing biomolecules attach themselves to terbium, the ions' light strengthens to a bright green. The P-dots' light remains unchanged, so it serves as an internal standard.

    Unfortunately, P-dots also have a fundamental problem: the polymer molecules are packed together so closely that they can be affected by 'quenching' — a phenomenon in which most of the energy coming from the original light source is quickly dissipated and fails to trigger fluorescence.

    Quenching has a huge impact on efficiency, says Yang-Hsiang Chan, a chemist at National Sun Yat-Sen University in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. One way to tackle it is to add bulky groups onto the polymer backbone to prevent the polymers from getting too close to each other. But this can be self-defeating: the resulting nanoparticles tend to be too fat to get into cells, say, or too dim to be useful. “It is very hard to get the right balance,” says Chan, who is working to solve the problem by designing new polymers.
    Together we shine

    A more fundamental solution was pioneered in 2001, when Ben Zhong Tang at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology in Clear Water Bay found that a class of small organic molecules would fluoresce only when they aggregate together4. These molecules are shaped like propellers or pinwheels, and they fluoresce when packed because they can no longer move and waste their energy. Instead, they release their energy as light — a phenomenon Tang has named aggregation-induced emission (AIE). He called the molecules AIE-gens.

    Over the next few years, Tang and his students changed the side groups and introduced elements such as nitrogen or oxygen, and AIE-gens can now glow in the entire spectrum of colours from ultraviolet to near-infrared. “My students quickly made a lot,” says Tang. “We can change the colour at will.”In 2011, Tang met Liu through a collaboration at the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore, part of the government-backed Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A∗STAR). At that time, AIE-gens were performing well, except that they could not dissolve in water, which made them difficult to use in biological applications. Liu was an expert in making things water-soluble, so Tang gave her some of his best AIE-gens to work with.

    Liu solved the problem by experimenting with polymers that are oil-loving on one end and water-loving on the other. The AIE-gens crowd within the polymer's oil-loving ends, and its water-loving ends point outwards to form a protective shell, resulting in a water-soluble capsule with a dense core full of AIE-gens. Liu designed a protective shell for the resulting nanoparticles, called AIE-dots, such that it could be decorated with various chemical groups that are tailored to specific applications. The shell can easily accommodate a wide variety of AIE-gens, says Liu, “so that we can screen a lot of molecules very quickly to find out which one is the best.”AIE-dots have been used to stain various tissues, from blood vessels to cancer cells to intracellular organelles such as mitochondria. Last year, Liu, Tang and their colleagues reported an AIE-dot that could be useful in a type of light-activated treatment known as photodynamic therapy5. It carries two molecules on its surface: one to get the dot into a cancer cell, and another to make it stick to the mitochondria. Once excited by an external light source, the AIE-dot produces red light that generates oxygen radicals near the mitochondria and kills the cancer cells.

    The best AIE-dots can be 40 times brighter than quantum dots6. “With AIE, high density in constrained space produces high brightness,” says Guangxue Feng, a research assistant in Liu's lab. That is particularly useful for applications such as visualization of tissues or long-term tracking of cancer cells, which halve the number of nanoparticles per cell every time they divide.

    But the brightness comes at a cost: AIE-dots produce a much broader, more-muted spectrum than the pure, brilliant colours of quantum dots. But that hasn't kept Liu from starting LuminiCell, a spin-off company in Singapore that produces AIE-dots in three colours and three sizes for research such as Goh's at A∗STAR. Tang is also trying to start a company; both he and Liu are now hoping to gain approval from the US Food and Drug Administration to test AIE-dots for human use in applications such as fluorescence-guided surgery.
    Into the infrared

    Another thing that limits the biological use of nanolights is that most of them absorb ultraviolet or visible light, which can penetrate only a few millimetres into tissue. Longer-wavelength near-infrared radiation can penetrate up to three centimetres — a much better depth for uses such as releasing drugs. But infrared light does not have enough energy to break the bonds that hold drugs on the nanoparticle, so many researchers are turning to a process called upconversion. This involves making material that can absorb multiple low-energy infrared photons, accumulate the energy and then re-emit it as higher-energy ultraviolet or visible photons.

    The group of heavy-metal elements known as lanthanides are particularly good at this trick. In 2011, Xiaogang Liu at the National University of Singapore reported that his laboratory had created a particularly versatile type of nanoparticle7 with a Russian doll-like structure. It consists of a series of concentric shells that each contains a different combination of lanthanides. The energy from infrared light is absorbed by the core, then migrates outwards layer by layer, snowballing from lanthanide to lanthanide before finally emerging as high-energy light near the surface.
    More here: http://www.nature.com/news/the-nanol...coming-1.19482
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