Filed under: Nanotech
Cornell University
A team of Cornell University scientists has shown in initial experiments that it might be possible to borrow sperm’s strategy for energy production and modify it to power nanodevices that could move through the human body, dispensing drugs, monitoring enzymes or performing other chores.
Borrowing strategy from sperm
In a mouse sperm, the long tail gets the energy it needs to swim from two sources. In the mid-piece, tiny power plants known as mitochondria generate energy, whereas a pathway known as glycolysis creates power within the tail’s principal piece. Cornell University scientists are borrowing the latter strategy to attempting to generate energy for nanodevices.
This simplified cross-section of the principal piece of the sperm tail shows the architecture of the black fibrous sheath, a scaffold-like support running the length of the tail. Several research groups have suggested that in sperm, the enzymes involved in glycolysis are all tethered to the fibrous sheath. Glycolysis produces energy from glucose, allowing the sperm to generate energy down the tail’s length.
The biological pathway known as glycolysis has 10 steps, each catalyzed by an enzyme. In the sperm tail, glycolysis produces energy for motor proteins (embedded in a structure called the axoneme) to create the bending action needed for sperm to swim. Cornell University researchers have proposed modifying these same glycolysis enzymes and tethering them to a solid support so a device could generate energy in the form of ATP.
As a proof of principle, Cornell University scientists attached the first two enzymes of the glycolysis pathway (including hexokinase, shown here) to a metal chip. The researchers found that not only do the modified sperm proteins bind to the chip, but by using the sperm’s attachment strategy, the proteins also possess much higher activity than if they are just randomly attached to a surface.
– Bryn Nelson
(…excerpt from the in progress ‘architectural’ graphic novel archimorph)
Archimorph
The Near Future
It is July in Nebraska, and the humid air looms over Jim as he removes the handkerchief from his back pocket and wipes the sweat from his brow. Yet again, it has been another day of relaxation and self-reflection, of daydreaming under the willow tree, and tending to the garden. This type of day is not unordinary for Jim, for in this time material possessions are worthless and only meaningful to the owner when he needs them. There is no theft or robbery here, for anyone can have whatever it is that he or she desires, and the need to steal from a neighbor is never felt. With money being worthless and material objects conceived at the blink of an eye, Jim has spent the last few months tending to his life and taking the time to question deeper meanings of life.
As his daydream dissipates, he looks at beautiful blue sky and continues his walk back up to the house. Upon reaching the entrance of the house, it senses his presence and dilutes the wall from a solid to fog, allowing for his passage, and back again upon entry. As he enters, his house senses that he is tired by the stride in his walk, slumped posture, and breathing rhythm. Walls, once translucent soaking in the day’s sun, now become black shutting out the exterior light. Changing its molecular make-up the floor becomes soft to the touch and comfortable to the inhabitant, and from out of the floor a couch materializes to catch Jim as he lays down for a midday nap.
Fifty miles away an F5 tornado is tearing through the Nebraska landscape, for it is once again tornado season. Unknowing of the oncoming disaster, Jim slumbers in his sleep as his house is directly in the path, and will with out a doubt be destroyed under any other past building methods. For the last twenty years there has not been a single death by natural disasters, and on key there will not be one today. Today, as every day, each house within the projected path of the tornado is able to sense its oncoming presence, and just as a starfish on the ocean floor, move itself out of the way and protect itself. A change in barometric pressure is processed by the house and it senses the danger before it ever hits, moves out of the way, and afterwards returns back to its place of being.
Jim awakes to the walls clearing from their translucent sleep, revealing bright blue skies as he notices that it is daylight outside, the birds are chirping and it is the next morning. The house senses his awakening, revealing a kitchen next to his bedroom. He notices that the tree which once stood in front of the house is gone, with only a torn stump still remaining. ‘There must have been another tornado during the night’, he thinks as he groggily heads outside to assess the damage of the landscape. Jim’s house however, like all of the others, did not sustain any damage and he slept right through the horrendous storm. For his house, like every other house, was well prepared. Over fifty miles away, before any tornado was sighted, or even touched ground, a farmer’s house sensed an unusual change in air pressure. The house collected the data, was able to predict its path and life, and send signals to all surrounding buildings to protect themselves and their inhabitants. As the tornado touched ground and scoured the earth for nearly seventy miles, every house was aware, and moved out of the way in time for the tornado to pass, and then safely crawl back to its original location.
To find out how we got this point in time, we must go back in time and look at the beginning, where it all began, how it began, and why it began…
The Beginning
Grey is working late again as he usually does, everyday, every night, all day, all night. He sleeps little and spends all of his hours either working or thinking about his work at hand. He is an architect, but not the egotistical driven Fountain Head architect of the twenties. No, he is more like DiVinci or Einstein–a renaissance man. This is someone who has devoted their life in the name of science. The project he now works on has consumed his life for nearly three decades, and is quickly coming to an end as he finalizes the project, and begins to sign the release forms. With his signature on the page, Grey is about to single handedly change the world as those living in it now know it. From this point on a new age will begin, one that will revolutionize the world and forever change it.
The project coded ‘Archimorph’, a project conceived in his earlier years, took over his life and sent him down a tangent path in time to create a new world order. Technology has now caught up with the project’s aspirations, as its fulfillment is conceived. Initial nanobots can be built via convergent assembly, and the processes Grey helped to develop and design are able to see self-reproducing nanobots. Feeding off of carbon by splitting Co2 molecules, the nanobots harvest the carbon from the atmosphere for building, and release the lone oxygen molecule back into the air. These carbon molecules are taken to the nanofactoy within the bots carbon shell, where they can then be used to build a new member of nanobot. It is today, that the first ‘Archimorph’ will be released to the public in stores, offering for the first time a new future for civilization.
After today, money for material objects will be worthless and no more than a paper object ready for recycling. People will now work for service industries, but no longer in the manufacturing process, for nothing needs manufactured. With the proper script, nanobots are able to be recoded into any object desired. As Grey prepares for yet another sleepless night, he ponders how the public will react to such a future. Will there be a future? Life altering questions such as these are the reason Grey has not slept more than a wink at a time in months.
The bell clanks against the glass door as the first customer of the morning walks into the Archimorph store. His name is Jim, a middle aged man, who has been standing in line for over a week in hope to be the first customer through the door. For this is the first time the public will be able to own an Archimorph. It is also the last exchange he will ever make on a material object. There have been many debates of concern over the release of such technology, especially with the ‘grey goo’ myth, a theory that the nanobots will eat up all carbon molecules on the planet, killing every living thing on it. But Jim has faith in the technology, and the designer behind it–he has been a supporter of the project from day one. After all, people said the Hadron collider would destroy the earth too, and he’s still here with the knowledge of knowing he is within ten dimensions. Hardwired into each nanobot is a process of limits, telling them when to start, and most importantly when to quit. The nanobots must know when to terminate, because it is only then that they, like other living creatures, must know there limits and keep from taking too much.
Before him in the middle of the shop, Jim stares upwards at a large plume completely constructed of nanobots. Their molecular make-up has been changed so that it has the composition of cotton. He walks up to the column, and like cotton candy pulls a chunk from the column. Within the palm of his hand he now has the first nanobots owned in public. The local media is at hand to report the first exchange in the town; a flash, a snap, and a shot of Jim is frozen in time. Like a kid with a new bike, Jim rushes to the place where he once called home. As he approaches the yard he recalls the white picket fence, the wood shake siding, and the eighteenth century design. A week ago he had his house demolished and the materials sold off for proper recycling. Now all that remains is his old concrete stoop– something he kept for memories, as it was a place where he spent many of nights waiting for such a day.
Coming to all customers of the new technology is a personal display device, directly linking the user to the nanobots. With his PDA in one hand, and his Archimorph in the other, Jim prepares for the inevitable. He lays the cube on the ground and turns on the PDA. The welcome screen loads and it prompts Jim for a few quick informative details–his height. Six Feet. His weight. Two Hundred Twenty. The number of persons living in the house. One. And the room types in which he desires- bedroom, kitchen, dining room, living room, bathroom. The program takes Jim’s modular dimensions, and based off of pre programmed spatial requirements inserts this as criteria for the evolution process. It does not matter which rooms Jim picks, for the house can be anything he wants it to be at that given time. He may even decide to turn it into a watch, where he can carry it with him throughout the day. One minute he may be sitting on a chair in the kitchen, and after eating the room becomes the living room, the chair a comfy lounge.
The PDA jumps to life and calculates Jim’s position via GPS as well as; local annual climate data, local and global building codes, and joins his systems to the worldwide network—Resident Number One. Upon receiving the information from Jim, the PDA runs the program which takes his information, inputs the fitness criteria which will influence the evolutionary algorithm that will be run on a natural growth algorithm. After the program has run through ten million generations of evolution on the given form, it finally decides that is has selected nine optimally fit forms for Jim’s context. The nine houses appear on the screen and Jim determines he likes parts of both A and E. He struggles to choose between the two and so he resorts to refining the process more. He picks the individual qualities he likes about each of the houses, and runs them back through the evolutionary process. Finally the end result is returned and Jim looks onto his new house. He then looks onto the ground at the small cube of nanobots, no bigger than his fist, which will in a half hour be the amorphous house he sees on the screen in front of him. He presses Start. At first he does not notice anything, and thinks that this project may be hoax, and in fact not actually work– it did after all seem somewhat outlandish. But in fact the nanobots within the cube are linking up creating new networks and relationships with one another, harvesting carbon straight out of the air for new building materials, reading climate data for molecular composition, and processing trillions of lines of code and script.
Within a minute he notices that the cube actually has gotten bigger, and is in fact beginning to lose its cube shape and become a blob on the ground. Within ten minutes the cube has grown into a large plant-like structure which reaches out into the air, and digs itself into the ground creating foundation, walls, and structure. At twenty minutes the west exterior wall is complete–it has calculated the climate data, adjusted for the thickness and molecular makeup of the wall, calculated the water shed and direction, and channeled tubular veins throughout the exoskeleton to direct rainwater for collection and later reuse. Jim gazes in amazement as the cube transforms before his eyes.
While the structure grows Jim decides that he needs a seat to watch the spectacle before him. He scans through the scriptWiki on the PDA for instructions (a script) on how to build a rocking chair out of the nanobots. While the house is still growing, he reaches onto the built portion of the house and rips off a handful of the house. The wall realizes it has been damaged, begins self-replication of the nanobots in that area, and in fills in the void. With the blob of nanobots in his hand, he sends the instructions to the group of nanobots to form into the red rocking chair he found online. He sets the blob down, and within five minutes before him sits the exact same red rocking chair. He sits down, kicks back, and watches his house under construction by trillions of workers, smaller than a blood cell. He looks back down the neighborhood and for as far as he can see, people in their front yards, gazing at the future, as their house builds itself.
-Image of capillary in Human lung.
It has been discussed that our structure might grow with an L-System script while simultaneously growing with the environmental data, rather than the structure growing and then environmental data optimizing the structure. This would now happen all in one process–in one script. It is now being proposed that our capillary system grows in a similar manner – simultaneously. We have been working with an L-System script that grows our network capillaries. It would be our wish that while the L-Systems code and environmental data are growing the structural exoskeleton, the capillary L-System script will run simultaneously, only instead of growing nanobots in these areas, it will tell the other script to leave voids there. This will help to maximize efficiency of the structure and capillary system. Environmental data such as wind currents and precipitation values would be the variables for this script and would be updated continuously through the peer-to-peer network.
Filed under: Nanotech
The images are details which will be presented on either the first or second board. These will be the blown up details of certain areas of the carbon nanobot. Nanoconnectors are linked at the ends of the nanotubes and the processor linked to the inner shell of the carbon nanobot body. Here are the detail images for board: (more on the way…)
Filed under: Nanotech
Multi-walled Carbon Nanotube (10^9nM) – Tom Poore
The nanotubes, special molecules made of carbon atoms in a unique arrangement, are hollow and more than 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. Billions of these tubes act as the pores in the membrane. The super smooth inside of the nanotubes allow liquids and gases to rapidly flow through, while the tiny pore size can block larger molecules. This previously unobserved phenomenon opens a vast array of possible applications.
The team was able to measure flows of liquids and gases by making a membrane on a silicon chip with carbon nanotube pores making up the holes of the membrane. The membrane is created by filling the gaps between aligned carbon nanotubes with a ceramic matrix material. The pores are so small that only six water molecules could fit across their diameter.
“The gas and water flows that we measured are 100 to 10,000 times faster than what classical models predict,” said Olgica Bakajin, the Livermore scientist who led the research. “This is like having a garden hose that can deliver as much water in the same amount of time as a fire hose that is ten times larger.”
Membranes that have carbon nanotubes as pores could be used in desalination and demineralization. Salt removal from water, commonly performed through reverse osmosis, uses less permeable membranes, requires large amounts of pressure and is quite expensive. However, these more permeable nanotube membranes could reduce the energy costs of desalination by up to 75 percent compared to conventional membranes used in reverse osmosis.
Carbon nanotubes are a unique platform for studying molecular transport and nanofluidics. Their nanometer-size, atomically smooth surfaces and similarity to cellular water transport channels make them exceptionally suited for this purpose.
“Since water does not wet the outside surface of carbon nanotubes, we were skeptical that water would enter into them, let alone flow really fast,” Bakajin said. “But the molecular dynamics simulations in the literature predicted fast flow, so we wanted to test the predictions.”
“The first time we set up an experiment with water, we left it overnight thinking that the water level above the membrane would not budge,” Park said. “Instead, we came back in the morning and there was a little puddle on the floor under the membrane.”
Holt added: “The first thing that came to mind was that the membrane broke, but fortunately it didn’t. The membrane allowed water through and blocked gold nanoparticles that were just a bit larger than the nanotube pores.”
Simulations of gas and water transport through carbon nanotubes predict that each should flow rapidly. Gas molecules should bounce off its atomically smooth surface like billiard balls. Water molecules should slide through either because of the “slipperiness” of the carbon nanotube surface or due to molecular ordering induced by spatial confinement. The experiments performed by the LLNL team demonstrated these predicted rapid flows of gas and water through carbon nanotubes, but further research is needed to determine the exact transport mechanisms.
Another potential application for the membranes is in gas separation. The high gas permeability and its affinity to hydrocarbons may allow for lower-energy, industrial-gas separations. “Though our membranes have an order of magnitude smaller pore size, the enhanced flow rate per pore and the high pore density makes them superior in both air and water permeability compared to conventional polycarbonate membranes,” Bakajin said.
Filed under: Nanotech
The assembly line technique of replication is, as far as I know, an untested human invention. Plants and animals (at least at the cellular level) replicate via mitosis. But here we are dealing with RNA coding which is beyond my ability to demonstrate as it occurs in nature let alone as it might occur in machine production. I think convergent assembly is a better descriptor of the assembly line technique we have in mind. Merkle states that, “The particular architecture proposed should be able to produce meter-sized products in a few minutes from nanometer-sized parts while going through about 30 stages.” This sounds pretty intriguing but all that he is proposing is an assembly technique comparable to the one Ford introduced in 1908 except now the work of people is done by chemistry, and the required chemistry is left unexplained.
There are more possibilities for self-reproduction out there (another) but they are all highly complex and unproven. An example,
(The machine would have four parts – (1) a constructor “A” that can build a machine “X” when fed explicit blueprints of that machine; (2) a blueprint copier “B”; (3) a controller “C” that controls the actions of the constructor and the copier, actuating them alternately; and finally (4) a set of blueprints f(A + B + C) explicitly describing how to build a constructor, a controller, and a copier. The entire replicator may therefore be described as (A + B + C) + f(A + B + C). Now, for the machine “X” that is to be manufactured, let us choose X = (A + B + C). In this special case, Controller C first actuates copier B which copies f(A + B + C) to produce a second copy f(A + B + C), then actuates constructor A to build a second constructor, copier, and controller – i.e., another (A + B + C) – and to tie them together with the second copy of the blueprints. Thus the automaton (A + B + C) + f(A + B + C) produces a second automaton (A + B + C) + f(A + B + C) and so self-replication has taken place. The fact that the description f(A + B + C) must be both copied (uninterpreted data) and translated (interpreted data) during replication is the key to avoiding the paradox of self-reference. Note that this replication takes place in an environment of stockroom parts) ; this isn’t necessarily that mind boggling until you delve into Neumann’s meaning of automaton.
The majority of nanoproduction that is currently going on is the production of lattice tubes, crystal structures, and molecular hybrids . The only nanomachine that has been created as of today is a paddle like object that spins around a tube. There is no information sent to the paddle, it rotates as a reaction to the proximity of two embedded cylinders. Our machines must do more than just react. They have to move along polar coordinates when we instruct them to and they must bond to each other and release at our instruction. How will they do that? We can assume nanochips will be available as they appear to already be in development. But in order for a quadrillion nanobots to be equipped with nanochips they will also have to be part of the self-replicating process, and this adds an immense degree of difficulty to an already complicated production dilemma. But lets assume that this is possible, is it possible to communicate with a quadrillion robots that are 100,000 times smaller than a hair on my head? Do we tell each robot what to do or just some of the robots? Maybe we don’t have to communicate with all of the bots, possibly the majority of bots are preprogrammed with some type of fitness criteria. And in the end, I am discussing communication with nanorobots when I don’t know how to communicate with a lego robot. Is there time to learn that and develop a believable production assembly? We don’t necessarily have to explicitly demonstrate everything but we have to careful not to look like alchemists creating something from nothing.
Additionally, is it appropriate to assume the existence of a smart material or should we create one?
At tonights meeting we discussed which route we are going to take for this competition; an exoskeletal structural system (an Octet Truss System) or self replicating nanobots. Taking from the idea of starting from the bottom-up we have decided to are look at designing a nanobot which can self replicate itself to make a structure. As of now we are focusing on Foglets and were coming up with ideas on how we could expand on this and design one that self replicates itself. Some of the questions we are trying to research is; how does a nanobot replicate a microprocessor? How exactly do you feed them information? How do you automate a quadrillion nanobots un unison? We are also interested in integrating NanoRAM and Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes into our Nanobots.
After our meeting tonight, I got sort of a rough idea of how a structure might be built and a system worked using nanobots. This is just a real rough outline of what I have been thinking about. This doesn’t attempt to solve any problems yet, just see how a system might be worked out based on some of the different topics we discussed. This is what I got out of what we might be able to accomplish using nanobots, how nanobots might self replicate by pulling carbon molecules out of the air, and the morphing with nanotubes as the bonds between the nanobots. The second paragraph is an idea of how a system could be set up—a what if scenario to get us thinking. Let me know if we’re on the same page or this is way out there.
One nanobot, made of a polycarbonate body, would have a single microprocessor implanted into the carbon shell which would send electrical pulses throughout the nanobot. These electrical pulses would in turn send signals to the twelve carbon nanotubes, which are used to grab onto the nanotubes of another bot and transfer information. The nanotubes are multi-walled polycarbonate nanotubes-which can grow, contract, and deflect using electrical impulses. The electrical impulses would send signal which would link, or bond, one nanotube to another by switching the atoms in the end of the nanotubes (see Geckovator). Linked together they would join the network of nanobots. The microprocessors implanted in the nanobot would also able to read outside data from the environment in which it is in. In order to self replicate the nanobots would have the ability to pull carbon molecules off of oxygen molecules and then once mixed with the catalyst inside of the bot become a new polycarbonate nanobot. This would allow them to harvest carbon to create the parts for new nanobots. Certain nanobots would create specific pieces of the nanobot so they would collectively build a new nanobot, much like a factory made up of nanobots. They work together to make the whole of a new nanobot–one makes a new microprocessor, the other makes a new nanotube, and another a nanotube, and so on until a new nanobot is assembled. This “factory” would be set up by making sure certain series’ of nanobots would linked to another, much like in DNA, only certain codes are mixed to one another. This happens in a matter of milliseconds. Once nanobots are linked together they are plugged into the network of nanobots running together. These bots run under the confinement of the principals defined by the user and the limits placed upon them by the software and the user. These limits could change the composition of the bond, and bots could become denser or pull away from each other to change the shape of the bond. This would then change the configuration of the molecule making it appear to us to be a different color – using different wave lengths in the visible light spectrum. They could appear to be green one minute, and blue the next. Walls could even appear to become completely opaque or even as a gas.
The inhabitant or user of this structure would purchase this at a market place. This could be given as a solid object made up of nanobots. The user receives a “box” of bots. This box is made up of trillions of polycarbonate nanobots, which make up a mass that looks like a solid box. This box is hooked up wirelessly to a computer where it receives its code, or instructions, from the program. The program then sends the user defined information to the box to be reprogrammed. The microprocessors receive their signals and start to process information. The box collectively calculates the weather conditions (sun, wind, temperature, precipitation, etc). The user places limits, desirable to their needs on the nanobots. The limits are areas, voids, which should be left out to complete the desired floor plan of the structure. The bots are calibrated around this design, and then it maximizes itself to work more efficiently with the environment—taking into account weather conditions and location. Areas, or voids, will be carved out within the exoskeleton which will carry water and air throughout the structure, much like a capillary system. Building codes and regulations are also put into this database of limits, which mandates some rules for the bots. These building codes and limits are set by architects and the government to; ensure the infrastructure of the city, from the nanobots running out of control, and general greed of the user. Each bot then finds its exact coordinates (GPS) of where it is at that place in time. Once all of the limits are placed on the bots and GPS is located, the box is then linked up to the network where its information is fed into the database and calculates the shape of the house based on the conditions. The nanobots map out all gps positions they will be traveling to make up the exoskeleton of the house. Each nanobot is self replicating, and while moving along its GPS defined path, self-replicaties more nanobots in its trail leaving other self-replicating bots. This is turn leads to new swarms of nanobots which are sent to their respective GPS height position signal to stop replicating, so that it leaves a solid, level, surface for a floor. Nanobots on the perimeter of the floor, which will eventually become the exoskeleton of structure, will not receive this signal, and follow on the path upwards to complete the walls.
So, if this structure was placed somewhere around the NorthWest Hemisphere,where it was winter, walls on the colder, or windier, side of the house would fill in thicker, while walls on the southern side would become thinner– appearing to be translucent. These nanobots would change color, attracting the rays of the sun, and harvest the sunlight from the southern exposure of the house using PV cells. This energy would then be put back directly into the structure. Certain areas of the structure may be left more porous than others to allow for air flow (composition of the nanobots, which are smaller than water molecules, would allow for air to breath while keeping rain water out) or even collect and distribute rain water. Once the nanobots are done self replicating and all nanobots have received their gps position telling them to stop self replicating, the structure is completed. The structure is then rechecked and updated for maximum efficiency, sustainability, and reconfigures to make minute adjustments. The design is then entered into an online database of all anonymous designs of other structures. Users are then able to see other designs which might be more efficient or desirable, which can then recalibrate their design and improve on it. Together collectively all of the structures built will maximize and share their information to get the most efficient and sustainable structure.
