Too small to call

Nanomedicine

Source: Scientific American (2009)

If you had a wall in your home that was scraped and dented and full of pin holes what would you do?  You could spend an eternity repairing it hole by hole, dent by dent, filling each imperfection until it was like new again.  On the other hand you could rip down the wall and replace it with a brand new piece of gib. Voila, sorted.

Apply that same analogy to a human body, afflicted with cancerous cells that bind to healthy tissue and choke it like a noxious weed.  What are you going to do now?  Sure, you can cut out the bits you can see, you can swamp the blood stream with a cocktail of chemical poisons that kill the cancer but destroy the immune system in the process.  Or you can blast the affected areas with radiation, causing sometimes dreadful nausea, fatigue and damage to surrounding areas.

None of this is in the least bit satisfactory but it’s the best we can do to save someone’s life – at least it was the best until the brave new dawn of nanotechnology and medicine, or nanomedicine.  Early days yet but research is showing that nanoparticles can deliver minute quantity of drugs, heat or light to each and every cell that needs it, leaving all surrounding cells alone.  No brute force required.

Carbon nanotubes

Nanotechnology is the new frontier where science meets medicine at the molecular level.  Nanomedicine, like all branches of nanotechnology has set the world of innovation alight.  So far we can only glimpse the myriad possibilities where this may go but already we are experiencing significant investment in research and development and an avalanche of applications to protect intellectual property.  There will be huge sums to be made out licensing the techniques to others who can combine the processes into something that will deliver an actual usable product.

Take a crash course in what nanomedicine can offer mankind and prepare to be amazed.

How small is nano sized?

Struggling to get a handle on nano dimensions? Take a look at the graphic below.  A pin head is about 1 million nanometres across.  A red blood cell is 2,500 on the same scale and that's small.  So consider the dimensions of a carbon nanotube - just 2 nanometres.  If you were hoping to see this marvel in action you're going to need something a bit more powerful than that old school microscope.

Source: HowStuffWorks

Some introductory information about nanomedicine

Boston University presentation - Introduction to nanomedicine

Nanomedicine Journal

Nanomedicine - Small particles, big concerns

Space cowboys

NASA plans to  bag themselves an asteroid

April 1st has been and gone so I'm guessing that this story is for real.  NASA are planning to engage in a bit of trajectory shift by lassoing errant asteroids and swinging them off to park elsewhere.  This appears to be a rehearsal for space missions where we would want to land astronauts onto asteroids.

This is all due to happen in 2019, which is not that far away really.  Good luck to them.


Herding asteroids (Stuff)

NASA lasso plans (SkyNews)

How NASA plan to lasso the asteroid (Source: Daily Mail)

$100 million plan (Daily Mail)

Could we lasso an asteroid? (Discovery News)

Best of Earth from the heavens

An absolutely breathtaking video has been released from the millions of shots taken of our planet from the

Italy from the space station

'heavens' in 2012.

How lucky we are to live in an age where we can look down on our planet and marvel at the scale and magnificence of this precious place.

Satellite imagery has made it possible for us to understand so much about how our planet works and what is in store for all life contained in its fragile ecosystem.

Watch the NASA movie and search out some of the wonderful still photos.  It's a humbling experience but a joyous one.

Paluweh, Indonesia erupting

NASA image of the day

NASA Image archive

Earth observatory image of the day

Death of a legend

I read with some sadness that Disney has decided to close down LucasArts, just 154 days after acquiring it.  Since launching back in the dark ages of 1982, these guys have brought us some wonderful games, like Star Wars, TIE Fighter and Monkey Island.  A personal favourite of mine was the wonderfully quirky Grim Fandango.

Grim Fandango, a LucasArts game classic

Licensing IP to other game developers

They produced a plethora of games from the Star Wars saga, plus there's the collaboration with the english software house, Traveller's Tales, on the Lego series, which has introduced a new generation of kids to the classic movie franchises.  It sounds like Disney will continue to license the LucasArts IP to other developers - all goes to show that owning the rights to valuable products is where there is always going to be a lot interest.


Sad to see that LucasArts is going but I'm sure that the talent behind the games studio will find good homes elsewhere in the industry.

So long LucasArts (Stuff)

The mouse cleans the house (Forbes)

Disney closes LucasArts within 154 days (TechCrunch)

Shutdown by Disney (SlashGear)

End of an era (ArsTechnica)

Orwellian outlook

"You are being watched every hour of every day"

You are being watched !

Imagine a society where everyone was tagged and all of your movements were recorded.  This has echoes of an Orwellian world of totalitarian governments where papers were required to be carried at all times and could be inspected many times a day.  With modern technology like RFID, NFC, or GPS monitoring that tracking would not just be occasional but instead it could be active 24/7.

Popular culture has embraced the concept of tracking with many science fiction (or maybe science forecast) movies, like Gattaca, Logan's Run, Minority Report.  The TV series Person of Interest highlights the huge usage of cameras that use facial recognition techniques and record this information in vast state-controlled databases.  Analysis of this huge data store is somehow use to predict crime before it happens.

Consider how new passports are issued with biometric information encoded on a chip, how visitors to US, even if they are only passing through as transit passengers, are herded through Immigration. The US government is building a huge database on non-US nationals and potentially has more information about these individuals than their only sovereign governments.  What does the US intend to use this data mine for?  Will they be passing this on to other state authorities or commercial organisations?

The answers to these questions are not something that we will readily find in the public domain.  Many commentators will provide an opinion.

Like any tracking technology there are some really positive benefits.  Unfortunately the shadow of big brother means that we all need to be aware that for all the advantages of modern tracking technology there are some real dangers to our privacy and personal freedom.

Sometimes being connected may not always be in your best interests.

Some tracking news stories

Police use GPS to track (Cnet)

Surveillance cameras

Tag and track in american schools

RFID for toll road tracking

RFID tracking blog (Techdirt)

CCTV in UK cities (Business Insider)

Chicago is most watched US city (CBS News)

CCTV surveillance in New Zealand (Waikato Times)

Person of Interest Fan Blog

For fans of the TV show Person of Interest

Cosmology 101

Stephen William Hawking

Can you imagine having an IQ that's off the scale but a body that leaves you virtually paralysed?

Such is the cruel twist of fate that faces our most famous living cosmologist, Stephen Hawking.  The man is a giant in the world of science.  His impressive body of published works, his constant promotional tours and his contribution to what we understand of the universe is quite staggering.

Hawking, now 71,  is also a shining example of how long someone with the debilitating ALS variant of motor neurone disease can survive.

Be entertained by listening to Stephen Hawking explore some big questions about the universe in this TED presentation.

A truly amazing human being. 

Middle aged cell

Would you believe it?  The mobile phone is 40 years old this week.

Oh how far we have come - 40 years of cell phones

Take a look at the original incarnation in the picture.  It looks very much like a orthopedic shoe for legs of unequal length.

We've come so far from these humble beginnings.  The original phones had terrible battery life, poor range and very few towers to communicate across.  Fast forward to 2013 where there are an estimated 6 billion mobile devices across the globe.  The modern smartphone is full blown computer, GPS navigation device and games console as well as a phone.  It's become an indispensable, even vital device to young and old.  Could you manage without yours?

Happy birthday, mobile !

Stories about 40 years of mobile phone

40 years of cell phones in pictures

Happy Birthday (DailyTech)

The mobile phone at 40 (Daily Telegraph)

40 years ago today (Fox)

The mobile, then now and in the future (BBC video)

Game of phones (Stuff)

Mobile phones will exceed world population by 2014