Satellite Pit Stop

According to DARPA’s website “the goal of the Orbital Express Space Operations Architecture program is to validate the technical feasibility of robotic, autonomous onorbit refueling and reconfiguration of satellites to support a broad range of future U.S. national security and commercial space programs. Refueling satellites will enable frequent maneuver to improve coverage, change arrival times to counter denial and deception and improve survivability, as well as extend satellite lifetime. Electronics upgrades on-orbit can provide regular performance improvements and dramatically reduce the time to deploy new technology on-orbit.”

Via Defence Tech.

The new new thing (synthetic biology)

It’s fairly clear that nanotechnology is no longer the new new thing. A recent story in Business Week - Nanotech Disappoints in Europe - is not atypical. It takes its lead from the recent difficulties of the UK nanotech company Oxonica, which it describes as emblematic of the nanotechnology sector as a whole: “a story of early promise, huge hype, and dashed hopes.” Meanwhile, in the slightly neophilic world of the think-tanks, one detects the onset of a certain boredom with the subject. For example, Jack Stilgoe writes on the Demos blog “We have had huge fun running around in the nanoworld for the last three years. But there is a sense that, as the term ‘nanotechnology’ becomes less and less useful for describing the diversity of science that is being done, interesting challenges lie elsewhere… But where?”

Source: Soft Machines.

Engineered Virus Attacks Bacteria

Scientists have engineered viruses to attack and destroy mega-colonies of potentially harmful bacteria called biofilms.

The work is one of the latest potential applications to emerge from synthetic biology, a burgeoning field that aims to change the genomes of organisms on large scales to make them more useful to humans or to even craft new life forms from scratch.

Source: Live Science.

The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering

Three years ago in The Atlantic, the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel wrote a critique of genetic engineering titled “The Case Against Perfection.” Now he has turned it into a book. The title is the same, but the text has changed, and sections have been added. That’s what human beings do. We try to improve things.
…
Sandel thinks this vision of freedom is flawed. Part of freedom, he argues, “consists in a persisting negotiation with the given.” To abolish the given by re-engineering not only our world but also ourselves would “leave us with nothing to affirm or behold outside our own will.” This is a profound insight. But it’s not fatal to freedom. It’s fatal to perfection.

Source: NY Times.

New Single-Molecule Detector

Using tiny silicon rings that trap and circulate light, researchers have made an ultrasensitive device that can detect single biomolecules. Unlike standard techniques for detecting individual molecules, the new method, described online in Science last week, does not require labeling the target molecules with fluorescent tags, potentially making it simpler and less expensive.

Source: Technology Review.

What happens if all human experience can be stored on crystals?

UK science fiction writer Charles Stross, author of novels Accelerando and Singularity Sky, posits a future in which all human experience is record on devices the size of a grain of sand.

Source: BBC.

Russians threaten to counter US shield

Russia could site cruise missiles in Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania, if the US goes ahead with plans for a missile defence shield in central Europe, Russia’s first deputy prime minister warned on Wednesday.

Source: Financial Times.

Cell-transistor interface clears biolectronics hurdle

PORTLAND, Ore. — Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (Munich, Germany) have developed a cell-transistor interface that they believe will usher in a new era of bioelectronics, allowing cells to be manipulated and studied without destroying them in the process.

Source: EETimes.

Blessed are the doomsayers

Back in 2000 Sun Microsystems chief scientist Bill Joy published his now famous (or is that infamous?) warning cry, ”Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Soon thereafter philosopher Nick Bostrom published his seminal paper on existential risks and Sir Martin Rees released his book, Our Final Hour. Even thinkers like Stephen Hawking and James Lovelock chimed in, warning that human civilization is headed in a bad way.

And it was only recently that the Doomsday Clock was once again moved foward.

Source: IEET.

Brain Boosters

Two days from now I’m planning to further tweak my mind by taking a brain-boost pill. Called Provigil, it differs from its predecessors in that it is believed to home in on a section of the brain that helps govern alertness and memory. The pill is manufactured by ­Cephalon of Frazer, PA, and its active ingredient is called modafinil. The drug’s targeted delivery is supposed to prevent the side effects of stimulants that diffuse throughout the brain and rev up everything.

Source: Technology Review. See also “Climbing Walls with Carbon Nanotubes”.