Technologies related to Human Enhancement & Machine Consciousness
RELATED PAGES ON THIS SITE
HUMAN ENHANCEMENT AND MACHINE CONSCIOUSNESS (Main)
AI Accelerating Intelligence - Artificial Intelligence
Companies & other entities with specific potential for the Singularity process
Farmacia, medicamentos y otros productos sanitarios
Delitos contra la Salud Pública
Testamento vital, Instrucciones previas y Anticipo de Voluntades
ROADMAP
TRENDS ¬ TECHNOLOGY TIMELINE 2010+. A roadmap for the exploration of current & future trends + some predictions to stir things up (by Richard Watson at Nowandnext.com)
BIOTECHNOLOGIES
Neuroscience & Cognitive science
Eagleman Lab - The long range goal of the lab is to understand how the brain constructs perception, how different brains do so differently, and how this matters for society. Our three main prongs involve time perception, synesthesia, and neurolaw.
Neuroengineering the futture (oct, 2009) - Dr. J. chats with Bruce Katz, author of Neuroengineering the Future: Virtual Minds And The Creation Of Immortality. They discuss augmented cognition, induced bliss, and the elusiveness nature of personal identity.
Applause For The SmartHand: Human-machine Interface Is Essential Link In Groundbreaking Prosthetic Hand (ScienceDaily, Nov. 5, 2009)
Cloning
Psychological and Ideological Aspects of Human Cloning: A Transition to a Transhumanist Psychology (Néstor Micheli Morales, Aug 2009)
Human Cloning is the Least of It By Ray Kurzweil In this message posted to the WIRED Future List, Raymond Kurzweil asserts that cloning--replicating animals, organs, and cells--has profound implications for health and well-being of both humans and animals, including a possible solution for world hunger. He also sees no problem with human cloning.
Human Cloning is the Least Interesting Application of Cloning Technology By Ray Kurzweil Cloning is an extremely important technology--not for cloning humans but for life extension: therapeutic cloning of one's own organs, creating new tissues to replace defective tissues or organs, or replacing one's organs and tissues with their "young" telomere-extended replacements without surgery. Cloning even offers a possible solution for world hunger: creating meat without animals.
Regenerative medicine - Organs, Tissues and cells
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) uses the term ‘regenerative medicine’ interchangeably with ‘tissue engineering’ and defines it as “a rapidly growing multidisciplinary field involving the life, physical and engineering sciences that seeks to develop functional cell, tissue, and organ substitutes to repair, replace or enhance biological function that has been lost due to congenital abnormalities, injury, disease, or aging.”
Major Step In Making Better Stem Cells From Adult Tissue (Oct, 2009)
Tackling a gruesome trade (Arthur Caplan , oct 2009)
Call 1-800-New-Organ, by 2020? (McDonald Glenn, Nov 2009)
Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine
SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY
A discipline trying to construct chemical circuitries -metabolic pathways- and to 'write programs' to control standardized genetic components, synthetic pieces of DNA made of parts of different genes (BioBricks). Synthetic biology sees cells as hardware and the genetic code as the software needed to run them. Among the relevant figures of this discipline are Jay Keasling (Univ. Cal. at Berkley) or Tom Knight (MIT).
First Self-Replicating Synthetic Bacterial Cell (20 May 2010)
Synthetic Biology Patent Applications Expected to Present New Challenges (VID S. MOHAN-RAM and J. MARK WAXMAN, June 2008)
Synthetic Biology: Caught between Property Rights, the Public Domain, and the Commons (Rai A, Boyle, 2007)
BioBricks - Toggle switch
BioBricks are biological components made of standardized pieces of DNA.
BBF The BioBricks Foundation - BBF encourages the development and responsible use of technologies based on BioBrick™ standard DNA parts that encode basic biological functions. Using BioBricks, a synthetic biologist or biological engineer can already, to some extent, program living organisms in the same way a computer scientist can program a computer.
Registry of Standard Biological Parts (MIT) - The Registry make available to the public, free of charge, DNA sequence information and other characteristics of BioBricks .
BioBrick Public Agreement v1 - BBF Technical Standards Working Group
BBF Legal - BBF Legal Standards Working Group - Its legal archives
SELF-ASSEMBLING, SELF-PROPELLING AND SELF-REPLICATING STRUCTURES TECHNOLOGIES
Self-assembling
Controlled formation of patchy particles, using charged, self-assembling molecules (Oct, 2009)
DNA Origami Nanoscale Breadboards Developed For Carbon Nanotube Circuits (Science Daily, Nov. 10, 2009) - DNA origami is a type of self-assembled structure made from DNA that can be programmed to form nearly limitless shapes and patterns. It is created from a long single strand of viral DNA and a mixture of different short synthetic DNA strands that bind to and "staple" the viral DNA into the desired shape, typically about 100 nanometers (nm) on a side. Caltech researchers have developed simple nanometer-scale electronic circuits out of carbon nanotubes by sticking them to DNA origami in a desired geometric pattern.
Self-Propelling
Self-Propelling Bacteria Harnessed to Turn Gears (Luca Angelani, Univ. Roma, Oct, 2009)
Self-Replicating
Promise And Peril By Ray Kurzweil Bill Joy wrote a controversial article in Wired advocating "relinquishment" of research on self-replicating technologies, such as nanobots. In this rebuttal, Kurzweil argues that these developments are inevitable and advocates ethical guidelines and responsible oversight (Interactive Week)
Kurzweil vs. Dertouzos Raymond Kurzweil and Michael Dertouzos debate Bill Joy's Wired article urging "relinquishment" of research in certain risky areas of nanotechnology, genetics, and robotics.
In Response to By Ray Kurzweil Although George Gilder and Richard Vigilante share Ray Kurzweil's grave concerns about Bill Joy's apparently neo-Luddite calls for relinguishing broad areas of technology, Kurzweil is critical of Gilder and Vigilante's skepticism regarding the feasibility of the dangers.
NANOTECHNOLOGIES
Step forward for nanotechnology: Controlled movement of molecules (Sep, 2009)
Nanonmotors
Nanotech researchers develop artificial pore (Sep, 2009) - Using an RNA-powered nanomotor, researchers have developed an artificial pore able to move single- and double-stranded DNA through the membrane, which could lead to the development of a single-pore DNA sequencing apparatus.
Nanoparticles
Magnetic Nanoparticles To Simultaneously Diagnose, Monitor And Treat (ScienceDaily, Nov. 7, 2009)
Nanotubes
New techniques make carbon-based integrated circuits more practical (9 dec 2009) - This body of work illustrates that carbon nanotube transistor technology has moved beyond the realm of scientific discovery and into engineering research. We are now able to construct devices and build circuits on a wafer scale as opposed to previous 'one-of-a-kind' type demonstrations. Devices are in a circuit environment that is relevant to both today's and tomorrow's system needs.
How to grow nanotubes as metallic or semiconducting (Oct, 2009)
Inhaled carbon nanotubes reach the subpleural tissue in mice (Jessica P. Ryman-Rasmussen et al., en Nature Nanotechnology, 25 Oct 2009) - Comentario breve sobre el mismo
Making Carbon Nanotubes into Long Fibers (Katherine Bourzac, Nov 2009) - A new method for assembling carbon nanotubes has been used to create fibers hundreds of meters long valuable as, among other things, electrical transmission wires or as the basis of structural materials and conductive textiles. Aligning nanotubes into well-ordered materials has proven challenging at a scale suitable for manufacturing.
A step toward better brain implants using conducting polymer nanotubes (Sep,2009) - coated with nanotubes made of poly (3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), a biocompatible and electrically conductive polymer that has been shown to record neural signals better than conventional metal electrodes
Un chip de nanotubos de carbono, detector ultrarrápido de átomos y medidor de presiones ultrabajas (Nov 2009) - Technical paper: Integrated Atom Detector Based on Field Ionization near Carbon Nanotubes (B. Grüner, M. Jag, A. Stibor, G. Visanescu, M. Häffner, D. Kern, A. Günther and J. Fortágh)
Nanowires
Nanowires Key to Future Transistors, Electronics (3 dic 2009) - Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became "supersaturated" with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires.
Femtotecnología
Sobre femtotecnología (Francis, 8 dic 2009)
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES
La velocidad máxima teórica de un ordenador se alcanzará dentro de 75 años - Technical paper on the subject: The fundamental limit on the rate of quantum dynamics: the unified bound is tight
Transistor monomolecular basado en el fulereno C60 y electrodos superconductores - Technical paper on the subject: Superconductivity in a single-C60 transistor and its Sumplementary info
Quantum computers
En seis meses de trabajo, un chip cuántico de dos cubits se ha convertido en programable - Realization of a programmable two-qubit quantum processor (D. Hanneke, et al, Nature Physics, Published online, 15 Nov 2009)
Un resonador nanomecánico enfriado hasta vibrar sólo en los 4 estados cuánticos más bajos (Francis, 10 dic 2009)
Quantum teleportation
Quantum teleportation achieved over 16 km (20 May 2010)
Bio computers
Puertas lógicas y circuitos combinacionales implementados con reacciones bioquímicas enzimáticas - La biología sintética es un campo de investigación emergente que pretende aplicar a la biología las ideas del diseño y desarrollo de sistemas utilizadas en ingeniería. Hay muchas aproximaciones, pero una de las más curiosas es la implementación de redes de circuitos lógicos combinacionales (los utilizados por los microprocesadores microelectrónicos en nuestros ordenadores) mediante redes de reacciones (bio)químicas catalizadas por enzimas (proteínas). Se implementa una puerta lógica (OR, AND, NOR, NAND) con dos entradas y una salida utilizando reacciones químicas del tipo A+B→C (o A+B→C+D), donde se interpreta la concentración de los metabolitos (sustratos) A y B como entradas y la del sustrato C como salida (en su caso, D no se considera como salida)