Early work towards the Soft-Machine Outfit

In the Nanopunk scifi novel 'The Cloud Connection', the Soft-Machine outfit Alister finds is a fluid programmable substance that can adapt its properties to suit different situations. It receives design instructions over the wireless Cloud network from Janus, a globally connected supercomputer.
The video and text below (from the Cornell Creative Machines lab) illustrate the early developments that led to the manufacture of the Soft-Machine.
In the Soft-Machine, the basic components have been significantly improved and refined through advances in nanotechnology and bio-mutation of genetically engineers biological compounds and nanotechnology to form a fluid that defaults to a super-strong, malleable fabric condition.

Cornell Creative Machines Lab

"A major challenge in fluidic assembly is the dynamically programmable fabrication of arbitrary geometries from basic components. Current approaches require predetermination of either the assembly machinery or the component interfaces for the specific target geometries. This research persues an alternative concept that exploits self-assembly forces locally but directs these forces globally, allowing fabrication and manipulation of target structures without tailoring the substrate or interfaces. By controlling the flow in a microfluidic chamber, components are directed to their target locations where local interactions align and bond them. Following this approach, we have so far demonstrated the experimental assembly of structures composed of two to ten components."

Electricity generating nanofibres.

You starting to get the Picture?
The technologies in The Cloud Connection are not pure science fiction. In labs across the globe people, nano-scientists are already developing the first stages of the materials and technologies you'll find in 'The Cloud Connection'

New Nanofiber Tech Could Make Your Clothes Positively Electrifying
Forget grades of wool—the clothing of the future's going to be measured in millivolts. Researchers at UC-Berkeley have created electricity-generating nanofibers that could someday be woven into your clothing.
The fibers are about 100 times thinner than a human hair, but can generate electrical outputs of up to 30 millivolts. Even better, their piezoelectric properties allow them to mechanical stress and twisting into electricity:
Full article on the jump here

Nanoparticles absorbed through skin

Scientists are finding that particles that are barely there – tiny objects known as nanoparticles that have found a home in electronics, food containers, sunscreens, and a variety of applications – can breach our most personal protective barrier: The skin.
The University of Rochester Medical Centre has found that the particles can be found in the Lymph, liver and nervous system.
This is how Alister absorbed the nanoparticles in his mothers lab.
Full article here

The Guardian ran an report on concerns about these nanoparticles. Read it here
Other scientists are experimenting using coated  nanoparticles to deliver treatment such as Polyethylene Glycol (PEG) to injured brain and spinal cords. PDF File outlining principles here

Nanotechnology: what is it and how will it affect us?

The Fundació Catalana per a la Recerca i la Innovació published a report on nanotechnology, its economical and societal implications, and its role in public policy.
The report (available in English and in Catalan) can be downloaded from their website and provides a lot of clear information on nanotechnology.

Bullet-proof. Another piece of the Soft-Machine outfit emerges.

Bulletproof Skin Made From Spider Silk : Discovery News

Fuel cell gives power and water

Chinese team develop fuel cell that can clean water as it generates electricity

BART riot police stood at the ready during an Anonymous protest.

10:00 p.m. | Updated Added information about later protest.
Anonymous may be better at hacking than at organizing a protest.
More than a dozen members of the hacker group Anonymous joined a small group of San Francisco residents Monday evening to protest the fatal shooting of a 45-year-old man by police officers last month.
The protest, which began peacefully, became more chaotic when individuals tried to disrupt the transit system at a Bay Area Rapid Transit station. Police officers in riot gear closed the station gates while protesters chanted at them.

The Full Article on the Jump Here

Quantum Encryption code Cracked. Oh Dear!

That machine behind these geeks is 'Eve', a code-breaking parlance for 'eavesdropper'
The researchers have used Eve to crack a type of coded communication called quantum key distribution (QKD), thought to have been impossible to break.
It goes something like this. QKD exploits a key principle in quantum physics - you can't measure or examine individual photons of light without altering their state.
Eve does it all with lights - a laser to be precise, to fake the photon in transit.zzzzzzz

The catacombs of Paris. Video

As mentioned in "Cloud"
Two chapters take place in the catacombs. Researching for the book was rewarding and fun.
BBC News - What lies beneath in the catacombs of Paris

Facebook, Google, Yahoo, US Intelligence and propoganda

Julian Assange is unrivalled in his ability to articulate in clear and simple terms the ways in which public and personal information is being used and manipulated to influence knowledge and perceptions of what's going on in the world.

 "Facebook, in particular, is the most appalling spying machine that has ever been invented. Here we have the world’s most comprehensive database about people, their relationships, their names, their addresses, their locations, their communications with each other, their relatives, all sitting within the United States, all accessible to US intelligence. Facebook, Google, Yahoo – all these major US organizations have built-in interfaces for US intelligence. It’s not a matter of serving a subpoena – they have an interface that they have developed for US intelligence to use....Now, is it the case that Facebook is actually run by US intelligence? No, it’s not like that. It’s simply that US intelligence is able to bring to bear legal and political pressure to them. And it’s costly for them to hand out records, one by one, so they have automated the process. Everyone should understand that when they add their friends to Facebook, they are doing free work for United States’ intelligence agencies, in building this database for them."

Jump to full article Here 

Transit system cuts off mobile users - #anonymous action

AnonOps Communications: This is ao message from Anonymous to the Bay Area Rapid Transit System (BART)

Nanoparticles and your Body

An "electronic tattoo" could herald a revolution in the way patients are monitored and provide a breakthrough in computer gaming, say US scientists.
They used the device, which is thinner than a human hair, to monitor the heart and brain,according to a study in the journal Science.
The sensor attaches to human skin just like a temporary tattoo and can move, wrinkle and stretch without breaking.
The device can cope with being stretched and squeezed and includes solar cells which can generate power or absorb energy from electromagnetic radiation. The device is less than 50 micrometres thick. Thinner than the diameter of a human hair.
Within ten years, this device will be so small, it will be suspended in liquid. You'll just need to dip your finger into the liquid for thousands of them to be absorbed through your skin and into your nervous system.

NASA discover DNA Molecules that came from Space.

NASA-funded researchers have evidence that some building blocks of DNA, the molecule that carries the genetic instructions for life, found in meteorites were likely created in space. The research gives support to the theory that a "kit" of ready-made parts created in space and delivered to Earth by meteorite and comet impacts assisted the origin of life.

"People have been discovering components of DNA in meteorites since the 1960's, but researchers were unsure whether they were really created in space or if instead they came from contamination by terrestrial life," said Dr. Michael Callahan of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "For the first time, we have three lines of evidence that together give us confidence these DNA building blocks actually were created in space." Callahan is lead author of a paper on the discovery appearing in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Here's the Jump: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/dna-meteorites.html

Genetic Engineering

GREENPEACE – Genetic engineering from FEINHEIT on Vimeo.
It was this 2009 Video that inspired the Young Dr David L. Cloud to begin his career in biotechnology and genetic engineering and develop the theoretical models that would lay the foundations for safe and controlled development of genetic engineering and its application in food production in the years leading up to the Big Freeze.
His use of the Chinese J0-8 supercomputer to develop accurate forecast models of complex relationships in biology. His models set the groundwork for an 85% cut the use of genetic modified farming and food production. The programme of environmentally friendly genetic optimisation saw an increase in biodiversity that was welcomed by farmers, manufacturers and environmentalists.

Antimatter belt around Earth discovered

A small number of antiprotons lie between the Van Allen belts of trapped "normal" matter. The researchers say there may be enough to implement a scheme using antimatter to fuel future spacecraft

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14405122

Human-Primate genetic experiments. Current research.

Plus Ultra continues its unmissable articles with yet another topical, contraversial and informative report on the science behind genetic experiments.


Among the kinds of experiments that the report states "should be permissible, subject to additional specialist scrutiny by the national expert body" are:

"Experiments that could be expected to significantly alter the appearance or behaviour of animals, affecting those characteristics that are perceived to contribute most to distinguishing our species from our close evolutionary relatives."

It should be noted that the writers of this report, do not say that the third category of experiments should never be performed.  The phrase is "should not, for now" be licensed.  They say this because at the present time there is a"lack of compelling scientific justification..."  They recommend that this list of experiments be kept "under regular review."  But in a footnote they realize that,

...whether or not an admixed embryo is predominantly 'human' is an expert judgment, including an assessment of likely phenotype, but neither the precise eventual composition of an individual embryo nor the phenotypic effect of the admixture will be easily predictable in the current state of knowledge. [italics are ours]

Read the full fascinating article here - and Bookmark the link while you're there!!

Nanotechnology- Miniaturized sensing devices

Nanotechnology research and innovation continues to produce the missing pieces for the development of the particles inside Alister and the manufacture of the Soft-Machine outfit.
The article " Responsive Microgel Composite Colloids for Plasmonic Sensing" describes the development of nanoparticles that can respond to changes in  its environment

More on the Soft-Machine. It's rapidly approaching folks!

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Fabrics that block toxic gasses to protect emergency responders, T-shirts that change color and kill bacteria and dresses that can recharge iPods are some of the latest projects scientists at Cornell University are working on.
Fiber science professor Juan Hinestroza said Wednesday that antibacterial clothing and anti-counterfeit devices are key pieces of research at Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory in Ithaca.
He says their work is helping the military and health departments beef up technologically. The Department of Homeland Security provides half of the lab's $1.3 million annual budget. The fashion industry is interested in nanotechnology to design clothes that can change color due to chemical reactions, cotton that can block radiation to avoid a sunburn, and fabrics that can detect allergic reactions and cardiac movements in our bodies.

Nanotechnology Batteries. Power source for Soft-Machine Outfit developed.

A nano sized battery has been designed that can fit into a wire only 150 nanometers thick). Engineers from Rice University are working on batteries of only 50 microns - that's about the thickness of a strand of human hair. 

So. We'll soon have devices running on tiny, long-life  batteries. This means more space on the device for extra features and functionality - and all lasting longer before a recharge.

All they need to do now is create solar or kinetic powered nano or micron batteries and The Soft-Machine outfit finds another piece of its design.

Want to read about the Soft-Machine in operation? Hunt down 'The Cloud Connection.'