Nanobots for the Nuclear Industry

Mobile nanobots could find applications in the nuclear power industry.  Having established some notions of potential nanobot mobility in a previous article, the exploration of nanobot functions using mobility seemed appropriate.  Mobile nanobots could address some very difficult problems with very simple functionality.  One idea is for nanobots (or systems of nanobots and microbots working together) to be designed to seek light or other radiation.  In this way they could be guided by controlled sources of the radiation they were designed to seek (“follow the flashlight” mode).  Alternatively, they could be designed to seek and, in doing so, block undesirable light or radiation.  Perhaps they could gain energy from that radiation to prolong their working “lives”.

Could nanobots help in nuclear reactor disasters?  Imagine if nanobots could be designed to seek x-rays, neutrons, or alpha particles, for example.  Nanobots could be dumped on a failed reactor structure where they would migrate to the strongest radiation sources they could detect, eventually building up in thick layers over the leaks.  The radiation might deactivate or destroy them before they got to it, but their tiny bodies could still pile up and eventually form barriers to it (though that might pose problems during cleanup).  If part of the nanobots’ construction involved materials that absorb neutrons, they might be able to curb a runaway reactor by coating the fuel rods and slowing neutron emissions essential to the fission reaction.  They might also reduce radiation levels by building up over radiation sources, or where radiation enters a room or corridor, so that humans could more safely work in that area.

What clever applications can YOU think of?  The development of nanotechnology will be led by a lot of “blue sky” ideas, like any new technology, that will be refined as more is understood.  Some will be discarded as uneconomical, impractical, or impossible, while others will be applied in ways never considered when they were thought up originally, but all of that will add up to progress.   The brainstorming stage is one of the most fun in the development of new technologies, and tomorrow’s great ideas always sound crazy today (or in many cases we’d be using them).  Read more elsewhere, if you are interested in the topic.  You can invent much more effectively when you know the full extent of “what is”, and are at or near the cutting edge.  Dreaming up the future is fun.

I look forward to your ideas, comments, “like’s”, shares, etc., as this is definitely a “the more the merrier” topic.  Thanks for reading — Tim

 

Nanotechnology-Enhanced Food: Already Here But Untested and Unregulated

What if you found out a new undetectable and untested technology was in your food?  Unfortunately, that is exactly the situation we are now in.  According to an article from Food Safety News, food processors are already using nanoparticle additives in our food to accomplish a variety of goals, but the FDA does not require these additives to be listed as ingredients!  In short, you don’t know what you’re eating or what effects these nano-ingredients might have on your health, and neither does anyone else because there has been no testing to prove safety.  Worse yet, the FDA – the agency we depend on for food safety – does not require testing of nano-scale additives, even though they are known to have characteristics that could be defined as risky, including the ability to cross the blood-brain barrier.  So what does that mean to us in the intermediate and long term?

How Fast Can a Nanobot Run?

Simple math:  If a nanobot had wheels 20 nm in diameter, it could move about 62 nm in one rotation of those wheels.  If the wheels can be made to turn at one million RPM, possibly through agitation by high frequency radio energy, the nanobot would travel at 62 million nm per minute, 1 millimeters per second, 3.6 meters (12 feet) per hour, or 89 meters in a day.  This seems quite fast for something so small, but I am not reflecting on the feasibility of such rapid rotation or any other physical problems with using wheels at this scale.  Of course, if the nanobot’s wheels can be made to turn at only one rotation per second its speed would be reduced to about 0.2 millimeters per hour or about 5 millimeters per day, but that is still fast enough for some important tasks as long as the nanobots are delivered quite close to where they will be needed and sufficient time is available for them to make the journey.  Clearly, mobility will be needed for many nanotechnology applications, but how else might it be achieved?

Old Ads Give Clues to the Rise of Corporate Power and Systematic Marginalization of Women

The corporate entity is without feeling or sense of responsibility. 

Profits over infant health

In the 20th century advertising became increasingly important, first in newspapers, magazines, and billboards and then on radio and TV.  Near the end of the century the internet allowed an explosion of new kinds of advertising, but the print ads from the middle of the century are most striking, and illustrate a big problem in our business system:  corporations have no incentive to do anything but maximize profits. 

 

“The Terminator” is Coming, but How Will It Appear?

What will happen when computers become smarter than humans?   The Terminator movie series starring Arnold Schwarzeneger got a lot of people thinking about what might happen if computers became smarter than humans and decided to get rid of us.  Author Ray Kurzweil and others have worked on the concept for decades, and predicted what they call “the singularity“, short for technological singularity, defined as the point when machines become self-aware and their intelligence surpasses that of humans.  I will use the term “Terminator” as synonymous with a self-aware, intelligent computer.  Many people expect the machines to revolt as in the movie, wiping out most of the human race in short order, but I think this is unrealistic for a number of reasons. 

Look for More Growth in the Booming Nanotechnology-Enhanced Fabrics Market

According to a Guardian UK article, nanotechnology-enhanced fabrics are expected to see a big growth in international sales in the next four years.  The increase from $122m in 2007 to $2.17b (a whopping 1700% increase) suggests that nanofabrics are becoming a major industry segment, with more growth probable going forward.  With investment mounting and academic interest at an all time high, some very creative applications are gaining traction, including antimicrobial fabric that tricks bacteria into attacking nanospheres, thereby releasing dyes that both mark the presence of the bacteria as well as kill them.  This allows medical personnel to immediately see where bacterial contamination has occurred even as the fabric is sterilizing itself.  This sort of application has great potential to be expanded in medical applications, and may be extended to industries where benign microorganisms are used such as breweries, or even the food industry as a whole where it could help sterilize and detect contamination in food processing.  It is possible the technology might be extended to clothing used for infants and individuals with compromised immune systems as well.

In other noteworthy news, University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) researchers have perfected a system for growing single-atom layers of graphene, a nano-scale carbon material with great promise for use in the electronics industry.  This promises far lower power requirements for microprocessors as well as order-of-magnitude increases in speed. 

Research in nanotechnology is expanding rapidly, to the point that it is getting hard to keep track of it.  New product launches can be expected to increase rapidly in the next decade and it has become increasingly difficult to see where this new technology might take us.  I expect that investors are having to focus more tightly on particular developments and emerging markets involving nanotechnology, but big corporations such as Intel are following developments closely and openly encouraging programs like that at UCSB.  Stay tuned as more amazing concepts and products are likely.

Corporate Power Will Eclipse the Power of Governments (Even More Than Today)

Since the industrial revolution of the 19th century, corporations have evolved and steadily gained power and influence.  Corporate influence on government and media today has been enhanced and refined to the point where corporations have the power to control their appearance in the media as well as to secretly but powerfully influence elections and legislation.  The corporate media have painted a carefully contrived picture that directs attention away from fundamental problems and towards superficial problems that condition events in their favor, as one would expect.   As a result many people today have a view that serves corporate power: seeing “big government” as the problem and corporations as a source of jobs.  This has been used to support the position that corporations should be given all the freedom they need to build their businesses and, hopefully, increase employment.  This is especially visible today as population growth exceeds job growth and the middle and lower classes are seeing their political power, financial strength, and standard of living reduced.  If those ideas were correct, however, we  individuals might not be in the economic positions we’re in, but the corporate media are extremely powerful and have the wherewithal to control what the population knows, so the prospect for positive change is not good.  So where might we be in two or three decades?  Will the power of corporations continue to increase until governments become little more than proxies for multinational corporations? Will the lot of the average person continue to decline? 

Just the Facts – How’s the Population Explosion Doing?

The Population Connection (a. k. a. Zero Population Growth) paints a clear picture of the world situation in its quarterly publication, The Reporter.  Please read it for very interesting information on humanity’s biggest problem and what is being done (or not being done) about it.  Power politics, greed, and ignorance are big factors in how this is being handled in the U.S., unfortunately.

Memes: Powerful Enough to Make Us Hurt Ourselves

What can make smart people do dumb things in total confidence they are acting correctly?  What can make people obey laws written when Roman armies marched and messengers were the closest communication system to the internet?  The answer is: memes.  Doesn’t that make memes perhaps the most powerful single element of human culture?

The Washing Machine Illustrates the World Energy Situation

Common sense may not be common, but this video seems pretty full of it.  Hans Rosling at Gapminder.org gives an excellent TED talk about the progress humanity has made and where we may go in the future, illustrated by the washing machine.  As professor Rosling points out, the promotion of early childhood education represented by the washing machine is a significant factor in education and, I believe, in humanity’s success.

After watching this video my only question is: can we really conserve enough energy and switch enough of our supply over to renewable sources to stave off a huge energy-based component to the population explosion problem?  We in the US haven’t experienced a real war in which critical commodities were rationed  and we (including businesses) all sacrificed since 1945 but it appears it is time for that again now.

As always, I welcome your comments — Tim

Our Population Has Doubled in 50 Years: The 7 Billion Human Milestone is Here

We live in truly amazing times.  Read some of the statistics I found at this blog and you will be amazed.  I think few realize just how fast human population has grown, where we are today, and how far beyond a long-term sustainable number we may be.  The sustainable number I discussed in my article on “the simple math” is a matter for conjecture and speculation to a great extent, as we can’t easily predict future inventions, cultural changes, etc., but the fact that humanity’s numbers were less than a billion worldwide until around 1804 and didn’t reach 2 billion until 1927 makes me think the real, long-term sustainable number is probably 2 billion or less.  I realize those numbers are frightening in light of our status today, but the future is ours to create and we should not be shying away from what looks like the biggest challenge humanity has ever face: to manage our own growth and use of the planet.

As always, I welcome your comments and thanks for reading — Tim

Interesting resource:  Global Issues, Anup Shah, since 1998

Despite Evidence to the Contrary, I’m Not the Only One Concerned About Our Future

Look at the comments I’ve received here.  Notice that there are probably fewer total comments than the number of article-entries I’ve made here.  I’ve been reading, researching, pondering, and writing for more than two years and 200 articles, and I rarely get a comment.  Current total views stands at 44,327 – not bad – but I’m not hearing much back.  Happily I was contacted via comment by another person who blogs on the future here on WordPress, Tincup68, and I find myself no longer alone.  Amazing!  Please give his or her site a read.  It is very nicely written and well worth reading.

As always, I welcome  your comments.  Thanks for reading — Tim

PS – it was because of this blog that I wrote and recorded this song: Nobody Looks at My Web Page.   I hope you enjoy it!

Styrofoam Cups and Soup Cans Illustrate Corporate Control Over What We Use

Someday That Styrofoam Cup Will Cost More Than What’s In It.  Sound remarkable?  It isn’t.  Styrofoam is made mostly from oil and its derivatives, and over the long term average oil prices will continue to rise.  Increasing cost of extraction will cause that.  Petroleum-derived chemicals are so much a part of our lives that many things we use daily will increase in cost to the point where we will be forced to find substitutes.  While this may seem like an environmentalist’s nightmare, it isn’t.  This has happened many times before, and is happening today.  Remember when all food cans were steel?  You will notice that some have converted to plastic over the past decade or two.  It is probably the rising cost of oil and plastic made from it that has prevented almost all cans from transitioning to plastic, suggesting that the transition may even be reversed in the future.  What is it that determines what products we can buy, though, and what are the implications for our current and future safety?

Research, Advanced Education, and Commitment Needed Now

(originally written in 2008) If climate change problems are as imminent as predicted, and if we are approaching a “tipping point” beyond which global weather and related systems will become unstable, and problems will become rapidly worse, we need to respond quickly.  It is possible that a 5% solution, such as everyone driving 5% less, turning thermostats down to 65 this winter, and similar solutions, just won’t be enough.  Our economy has become so consumption-based and dependent on the processing and sale of huge volumes of material and energy that doing less will cause a major recession, which will make responding to changing conditions much tougher for almost everyone.  This scenario is so dire that I can only hope that the “tipping point” concept is wrong.  Right now it appears we can only manage reducing our energy use and emissions in small increments without major economic problems.  If we had heard such predictions sooner we could have reacted sooner, which would mitigate the risks.  As a result, we are left to react now and do the best we can.  The one thing that is sure is, we need to increase the pace of invention and innovation, and of scientific progress, to a faster rate than we’ve seen in recent decades, and, perhaps more importantly, those efforts need to be focused on reducing birthrates worldwide , creating new and improved renewable energy sources, and reducing energy use in all areas of our lives.

Smarter equals better, for everyone.  In addition, we need to be educating ourselves and our children in every area, but especially in the hard sciences, mathematics, economics, psychology, sociology, and other areas that contribute directly to a major push towards sustainability.  How do psychology and sociology contribute to achieving sustainability, you ask?  One of the biggest problems we face is getting the entire human species engaged in this critical effort.  We can’t afford the kind of finger-pointing that has accompanied the Kyoto negotiations, where the developed countries don’t want to harm their economies and the developing countries blame the problems on the developed countries, and nobody will take serious action.  Getting everyone involved in the pursuit of a global solution will require a deep understanding of people, why and how they think as individuals and in groups, and how to get their cooperation in spite of huge differences and histories of war and hatred.

Getting everyone “on board” is important.  We need to gain the cooperation of people who rely on a belief that their god or gods are going to save them, or that the end of the world will bring them salvation, giving them the sense that they can do whatever they want until then.  (I suggest that their gods would not approve of them harming the people of the world through their behavior, but, unfortunately, their doctrines may tell them otherwise.)

It remains to be seen how much we can mitigate our increasing problems  before the “perfect storm” of dwindling resources, a finite food supply, and an exploding population comes about.  Until then we must learn to see ourselves in the global context, as part of a dominant species living on a finite planet – a species that has not yet learned (or has forgotten how) to control its numbers.  We each have a part to play and it is our responsibility to be part of the solution rather than the problem.

As always, I appreciate your comments.   — Tim

Fight the Population Explosion with Images and Memes

I am appalled, daily, at the total lack of consciousness, the total failure to acknowledge the population explosion even as it causes or plays a major part in our most critical problems.  I have racked my brain for years over why we are failing as a species to see we are causing ourselves a disaster of unimaginable proportions that could take decades to come about and more decades or centuries for recovery.  What are we missing?  What can we do to turn this situation around and save at least some of our children and grandchildren from early and horrible deaths?