From: Gina Miller (nanogirl@halcyon.com)
Date: Sat Oct 02 1999 - 02:27:27 MDT
*CARBON AND ITS MANY DIMENSIONS. A Close Inspection of NanoCarbon Tubes
Houston - September 30, 1999 - Fullerene fibers, virtually too small to be
seen but with huge prospects for material science, will be showcased along
with other technologies at NASA's Inspection99 at Johnson Space Center Nov
3-5
http://www.spacedaily.com/spacecast/news/carbon-99c.html
*Novel Neural Net Recognizes Spoken Words Better Than Human Listeners
Machine demonstrates superhuman speech recognition abilities. University of
Southern California biomedical engineers have created the world's first
machine system that can recognize spoken words better than humans can. A
fundamental rethinking of a long-underperforming computer architecture led
to their achievement.
http://www.usc.edu/ext-relations/news_service/releases/stories/36013.html
*3D circuits -- changing the shape of things to come. A new technology that
allows 3-D electronic circuits to be moulded into plastic objects is set to
change the shape of tomorrow’s technology by allowing designers much greater
freedom and providing excellent weight and space savings. The technology,
being developed by Interconnection and Electronics Chemicals in the UK, can
be used to produce products that can be assembled with lower production
costs than using traditional technologies and are 100 per cent recyclable.
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/iom-3dc092499.html
*Scientists Build Bridge Toward 'Thinking' Robots. It's not exactly the
Golden Gate -- just a 6 1/2 foot (2 meter) span made of children's Lego
blocks -- but the bridge designed by a computer at Brandeis University could
be a step toward the creation of intelligent robots, researchers said
Friday.
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991002/sc/science_robot_2.html
*CIA invests in Silicon Valley. The US spy agency is to invest $28m in a
venture capital firm based in California to keep abreast of the latest
Internet technology.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/the_economy/newsid_461000/461574.s
tm
*Mending Broken Genes. One Girl Is Living Proof That Gene Replacement Works.
But It's Not All Happy Endings Just Yet.
http://new.popsci.com/context/features/genes/
*Photons on Demand. 1 October 1999. Laser physicists are good at producing
and manipulating single photons, but as with good comedy, the timing is
important. Even the best experiments in quantum cryptography and
computing--applications that make use of single photon properties--use
sources that emit photons at random times. In the 4 October PRL a French
team demonstrates a system that emits single photons on a dependable
schedule at a frequency of 3 MHz. One other "triggered" photon source which
operates on completely different principles was reported earlier this year.
http://focus.aps.org/v4/st17.html
*A Clinton administration proposal to build a civilian research facility
just off the northern coast of Long Island for countering biological
terrorism has local residents worried they’ll one day be living in the path
of a deadly microbe.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/DailyNews/bioterror_plumisland_990929.html
*Experimental gene therapy proves deadly. An 18-year-old Arizona man with a
rare metabolic disease has died while participating in a gene-therapy
experiment, marking the first death attributed by doctors to a burgeoning
field of research that seeks to cure people by giving them new genes.
http://www7.mercurycenter.com/premium/nation/docs/gene29.htm
*Do Diamonds Hail Down Upon Neptune And Uranus?
If experiments at the University of California, Berkeley, are any
indication, future explorers of our solar system may well find diamonds
hailing down through the atmospheres of Neptune and Uranus. These planets
contain a high proportion of methane, which UC Berkeley researchers have now
shown can turn into diamond at the high temperatures and pressures found
inside these planets.
http://unisci.com/stories/19994/1001993.htm
*Chandra Discovers X-ray Ring Around Cosmic Powerhouse in Crab Nebula. After
barely two months in space, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory has taken a
stunning image of the Crab Nebula, the spectacular remains of a stellar
explosion, and has revealed something never seen before: a brilliant ring
around the nebula’s heart.
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/1999/99-251.html
*First Brain Cancer Surgeries Using New Space-Age Probe Are Successful
For the first time, surgeons have used a special lighting technology,
developed for space-based commercial plant growth research on NASA’s Space
Shuttle, in two successful operations to treat brain cancer on Earth.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/1999/09/990930185847.htm
*Researchers discover hemoglobin's enzymatic nature. A unique form of
hemoglobin found in a parasitic worm binds oxygen 25,000-times more tightly
than does human hemoglobin. HHMI researchers have discovered that the
hemoglobin is an enzyme that is crucial to the worm's ability to survive in
a world containing oxygen.
http://www.hhmi.org/news/stamler2.htm
*Genome Researchers in the Chips. Scientists have developed a method to
create cheaper and more efficient gene analysis chips using technology from
an unlikely source -- overhead projectors.
http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/21984.html
*Chemical that could power microbes is found at Jupiter moon.While
scientists wait for direct proof of water and maybe even life beneath the
frozen crust of Jupiter's moon Europa, new data shows it is coated with an
acid that could power microbes.
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9910/01/europa.acid/index.html
http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast30sep99_1.htm
*Screen talk: We may eventually be able to use an LCD screen as a digital
loudspeaker or a phased array that beams sound in a chosen direction. Patel
and his colleagues believe that the switching current makes the liquid swirl
round the cell as its molecules reorient themselves.
http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991002/newsstory5.html
*More on US biotech farming in the Salt Lake Tribune:
http://www.sltrib.com/1999/sep/09301999/business/32685.htm
*Pay rises to help stem medical research brain drain. The Federal Government
has endorsed an overhaul of Australia's medical and health research
framework, including plans to increase pay for senior scientists to arrest
the overseas "brain drain". (Financial Review)
http://www.afr.com.au/content/991002/news/news4.html
*French scientists have identified a gene associated with the kind of brain
seizure that killed Olympic sprinter Florence Griffith Joyner. Faulty copies
of the gene, known as CCM1, are responsible for the development of tangled
blood vessels in the brain known as cavernous angiomas, according to a study
by three laboratories in Paris.
http://www.cleveland.com/news/pdnews/metro/w01seiz.ssf
*Nanorover to Help Fetch Asteroid Material (Space.com)With advances in
technology and experience from the Sojourner, the new rover has better
optics and computing power than the Mars rover. The rover has four wheels
and a rocker suspension similar to Sojourner.
http://www.space.com/news/planetarymissions/nanorover_990929.html
*Bug alert: IE5 has privacy peephole. Download Behavior’ bug can let
Webmaster read files on your PC.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/317834.asp?cp1=1
*Gene identified for mental retardation disorder that targets girls.
Scientists have identified a faulty gene that causes Rett syndrome, one of
the most common causes of mental retardation in females.The discovery should
help doctors better diagnose the disease, which can be confused with other
conditions, and find out what goes wrong in the brain. That might lead to a
treatment.
http://www.trib.com/HOMENEWS/SCIENCE/RetardationGene.html
*Infigen Inc., the biotechnology company responsible for "Gene," the world's
first cloned calf, today announced that its herd of cloned cattle has grown
to nearly 40 clones. "Gene" was the first cloned calf derived from a
non-embryonic cell. Approximately a quarter of Infigen's herd will be
showcased at the World Dairy Exposition Friday, Oct. 1, 1999 from 9:00 a.m.
to 4:00 p.m. at the Dane County Exposition Center in Madison, Wis.
ON-SITE CONTACTS: Susan E. Atkins 619/995-5286
Peter Steinerman 516/641-8959
*'Iceman' Age Determined. Canadian scientists this week released the results
of radiocarbon dating on a hat and cloak found with the man, who has been
dubbed Kwaday Dan Sinchi -- or Long Ago Man Found -- by local Indians. (The
name is pronounced KwaDAY dun sin-CHEE.)
http://www.discovery.com/news/briefs/brief4.html
*View Never-before-seen Images From Soviet Government Archives.
http://www.pbs.org/redfiles/
*Dupont Pharmaceuticals, Janssen Pharmaceutica and Neurocrine Biosciences
Enter Agreement
Officials at Neurocrine Biosciences, Inc. (San Diego) report that
Neurocrine, Janssen Pharmaceutica and DuPont Pharmaceuticals entered into a
three way licensing agreement of patents and patent applications relating to
a series of small-molecule CRF receptor antagonist compounds. Under the
agreement, Neurocrine and Janssen receive exclusive rights to a subset of
DuPont Pharmaceuticals' CRF antagonist compounds and DuPont Pharmaceuticals
receives exclusive rights to a subset of CRF antagonist compounds jointly
developed by Neurocrine and Janssen. Janssen and DuPont Pharmaceuticals have
agreed to certain milestone payments and royalties on product sales.
*Industrial-Strength Genomics-Coming Soon: A global genomic map of
single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the tiny differences between two
people's DNA that largely determine everything from who's the natural
athlete and who's the klutz to who's likely to get lung cancer from smoking
and who's not. In the not-so-distant future, scientists will also be able to
tell who's at risk for cardiovascular disease, whatever their lifestyle, as
well as who will respond, or not, to this drug or that. (although dated the
8/24th) this story has company links and is informative.
http://www.signalsmag.com/signalsmag.nsf/0/DEC74B56C34589DC882567D1006C676E
*ArQule Will Deliver Compounds To Bayer In Exchange For $30M.ArQule Inc.
entered a three-year collaboration worth $30 million with Bayer AG to design
and create a custom library of compounds for screening against Bayer's
therapeutic and agrochemical targets. (Oct 2)
http://www.bioworld.com/bw/public.htm?path=headlines/article1.htm
*The Calgary Herald has published a profile of Theo de Raadt and arguably
the most secure out of the box operating system there is, OpenBSD.
http://www.calgaryherald.com/business/technology/stories/990930/2929913.html
*New team to study high-pressure physics at Advanced Photon Source. A new
research team at Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source will
study the structure and behavior of materials under high pressures, research
that has applications in materials science, planetary science and high
technology.
http://www.anl.gov/OPA/whatsnew/hpcatstory.htm
*Sniffing DNA may relieve asthma
The Independent - LondonMILLIONS OF asthma sufferers could soon be using
inhalers filled with DNA from bacteria to relieve their symptoms, according
to a team of American scientists who have tested the system on mice. Such
inhalers could be ready within five years if the research proves effective
in humans. Mice that had been treated to give them asthma-like attacks
developed far less severe symptoms after inhaling DNA from bacteria. Most
present treatments for asthma focus on reducing the inflammation of the
bronchial tubes, which become affected in an immune response whose cause is
still unclear. A potential vaccine is undergoing trials at a London
hospital. Now, a new treatment for sufferers is proposed by a team at the
University of Iowa. Dr Joel Kline, a lung expert at the university, told New
Scientist magazine that the body was programmed from birth to recognise the
DNA of invasive bacteria and some viruses. He explained: "Your body can't
wait weeks for a specific antibody to be produced to begin attacking." Early
exposure to bacteria, and stimulation of an antibody response is thought to
stop people developing asthma later in life. Dr Kline's work aims to prompt
the response by using bacterial DNA. An experiment with mice, sensitised to
develop asthmatic symptoms when they encountered a protein from eggs, showed
that sniffing short sections of DNA from bacteria, mixed with the protein,
did not lead to symptoms. Dr Kline also found that the number of white blood
cells entering the lungs and causing inflammation fell to 10 per cent of
previous levels.
*Police have opened China's first DNA data bank in Shanghai, storing blood
samples of 2,500 criminals, the state-run Xinhua News Agency said Thursday.
The Justice Ministry plans a nationwide network of such centers meant to
help catch criminals through blood or hair evidence, Shen Weizhong, director
of the ministry's Judicial Authentication Research Institute, was quoted as
saying. Similar centers already exist in the United States and Britain.
Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
Web:
http://www.nanoindustries.com
E-mail:
nanogirl@halcyon.com
Alternate E-mail
echoz@hotmail.com
"Nanotechnology: solutions for the future."
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