From: owner-associates-digest@lists.xmission.com (associates-digest) To: associates-digest@lists.xmission.com Subject: associates-digest V1 #10 Reply-To: associates-digest Sender: owner-associates-digest@lists.xmission.com Errors-To: owner-associates-digest@lists.xmission.com Precedence: bulk associates-digest Monday, August 30 1999 Volume 01 : Number 010 (associates) Nanogirl News ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 17:31:56 -0700 From: "Gina Miller" Subject: (associates) Nanogirl News Nanogirl Nanotech news~ *See the following URL for Business weeks latest issue with coverage on "= 21 Ideas for the 21st>Century". This includes the topic of NANOTECHNOLOGY. (With a Drexler and Foresight mention. http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_35/b3644001.htm You may also want to pick up the issue at your newstand. *Today is the deadline for the discount of the Foresight Conference Tutorial. http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT7/Tutorial.html *7th Foresight Conference on Molecular NanotechnologyOctober 15-17, 1999 Tutorial October 14Silicon Valley, California http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT7 *Nanotech stuff!~ EMBARGOED FOR RELEASE: 25 AUGUST 1999 AT 14:00:00 ET US>UK CONTACT: Claire Bowles, New Scientist Press Office, London>claire.bowles@rbi.co.uk 44-171-331-2751>>US CONTACT:>New Scientist Washington office>newscidc@idt.net 202-452-1178>>New Scientist>>Beware swarms of 'smart dust'> CLEANLINESS freaks have a new rationale for their pathological hatred of dust-it could soon be spying on them. Packed full of sensors, lasers and communications transceivers, particles= of "smart dust" are being designed to communicate with one another. They cou= ld be used for a range of applications from weather monitoring to spying.> The tiny "motes" are being developed at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of a programme to produce the smallest possible devices that have a viable way of communicating with each other. Each mote is made up of a number of microelectromechanical systems, or ME= MS, wired up to form a very simple computer. At present each mote is 5 millimetres long, but Kris Pister, one of the developers, says that in future they could be small enough to remain suspended in air, buoyed by t= he currents, sensing and communicating for hours. The latest version not only has a thick-film battery powering it but also= a solar cell to recharge it. "This remarkable package has the ability to se= nse and communicate, and is self-powered," says Randy Katz, a communications engineer on the project. He presented the latest work at last week's Mobicom99 mobile computing meeting in Seattle. MEMS are made using the same photolithographic techniques as integrated circuits, so once perfected they should be easy to mass-produce. Patterns are etched out of a silicon wafer to create structures such as optical mirrors or tiny engines. Each mote in a smart-dust system will need to survive on extremely low power, while being able to communicate kilobits of data per second. To th= is end, says Katz, the team has designed motes that shut down parts of themselves when they are not being used. The latest challenge has been to devise a system that enables the motes t= o communicate. Katz and his colleagues decided to use optical transceivers because of their low energy demand compared with radio communications. According to Pister they have already shown that they can monitor the dus= t 21 kilometres across San Francisco Bay. "There's no way you're going to g= et that kind of range except with optical devices," he says. "The base station may actually reside in a hand-held unit, much like a pa= ir of binoculars," says Katz. This would allow for simultaneous viewing of t= he scene from afar while superimposing any measured data on the image. He ad= ds that this approach could be especially useful for hazardous applications such as detecting chemical weapons or sending the dust into space. The next task is to build distributed intelligence into the dust to produ= ce "swarm behaviour".>>>###>Author: Duncan Graham-Rowe New Scientist issue 28th August 99 (credit: Sasha Chislenko ) *Faraday Discussion 117 EXCITED STATES AT SURFACES The University of Nottingham, UK, 4-6 September 2000 Many interfacial processes implicitly involve the creation and decay of excited states. This Discussion will highlight their role in experimental and theoretical surface science. We shall consider a wide range of phenomena including surface spectroscopies and reactions to arrive at a deeper understanding of the main issues by explicitly including a description of transient states. Excited electronic states play a pivotal role in measurements in both the energy and time domain. Hole decay in optical spectroscopies has a long history but the advent of newer probes (e.g. multiphoton photoelectron emission) with improved resolution suggests that we are now in a position to test some of the long-standing paradigms. Many interesting resonance phenomena have been observed in electron energy loss spectroscopy from adsorbates and again new theoretical descriptions are required. The explosion of interest in scanning probe microscopies has focussed attenti= on on the behaviour of processes in real space. The injection of electrons into molecular states at low energies gives rise to diffusion and complex restructuring in adsorbate layers. Elementary models have been proposed within the framework of Frank-Condon dynamics but with the emergence of high quality (albeit ground-state) electronic structure calculations is i= t possible to formulate excited state scenarios? The Discussion will also focuss on excited molecular states interacting with surfaces. The dynamic= s of a state-prepared molecule when it nears a surface is amazingly complicated with a wide range of final states possible (dissociation, scattering etc.). The interaction with the surface atomic and electronic degrees of freedom gives rise to transient excited states that dissipate energy and information. Are we yet in a position to arrive at a consisten= t theoretical description capable of including these effects? Experimental and theoretical contributions relating to the above areas or to any other, unmentioned, aspects of excited states at surfaces will be most welcome. Papers should be concerned with NEW, UNPUBLISHED WORK and contributions o= f both an experimental and theoretical nature are welcome. Titles and abstracts, of about 300 words should be submitted no later than FRIDAY 3 SEPTEMBER 1999 to Professor S Holloway, Surface Science Research Centre, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX, United Kingdom; Fax: +44 (0) 151 708 0662; email: faraday@ssci.liv.ac.uk ORGANISING COMMITTEE Professor S. Holloway (Chair) Dr. G. R. Darling Dr. R. G. Jones Dr. D. Lennon Professor E. Hasselbrink Dr. K. Kolasinski Dr. M. R. S. McCoustra The URL of the Faraday Discussions Homepage: http://www.rsc.org/lap/confs/faradischome.htm Acknowledge: eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de *"Macroscopic order from stochastic and reversible lattice growth models" Raissa D'Souza Thesis Defense, Department of Physics, Massachussetts Institute of Technology Tuesday, August 24th, 11 AM, Room 12-132ABSTRACT:This thesis advances the understanding of how autonomous microscopicphysical processes give rise to structure---the emergence of macroscopic order from microscopic growth rules. This is a large issue and a broad array of topics are addressed: local microscopic growth rules for pattern formation; stochastic fluctuations of nonequilibrium processes; use of pseudorandomness in dynamical simulations; emergence of order from deterministic, reversible microscopic rules; the thermodynamics of pattern formation;recurrence times of finite state discrete systems; and computation in discrete lattice systems. These topics overlap the fields of statistical physics, cellular automata, computational physics, nonlineardynamics, and computer science. A unifying aspect is the use of physically motivated microscopic models of discrete systems, incorporatingthe constraints of locality, uniformity, and exact conservation laws. This defense talk will focus on microscopically reversible models of discrete systems. In these models, entropy cannot decrease. Aswill be shown, invertible dynamics on discrete systems in generalapproach fully ergodic. Therefore these systems can be used to model thermodynamics and the approach to thermodynamic equilibrium. Iuse these models as a laboratory for studying the thermodynamics of pattern formation: a nonequilibrium process with dissipation at the macroscopic scale and a decrease in coarse grained entropy. I explicitly model how dissipation arises (i.e., how information flows between the macroscopic and the microscopic degrees offreedom), and provide a clear example of how to reconcile the macroscopic irreversibility that gives rise to patterns with the microscopic reversibility adhered to by physical processes. A model of cluster growth via the diffusive aggregation of particles, in a closed two dimensional system coupled to a heat bath, will be explicitlydiscussed. Thesis supervisors: Norm Margolus, Mehran Kardar (Fred Hapgood) *PHYSICS NEWS UPDATEThe American Institute of Physics Bulletin of Physics News Number 445 August 25, 1999 by Phillip F. Schewe and BenStein NEW THEORY OF EPILEPSY. [bobbitt]A LINEAR DECELERATOR FOR NEUTRAL MOLECUL= ES, identical in principle to a linear accelerator (LINAC) for charged particles, has been demonstrated by researchers in the Netherlands (Gerard Meijer, University of Nijmegen, 011-31-24-365-2277, gerardm@sci.kun.nl), providing a new way to cool molecules to ultralow temperatures. Previous methods for cooling molecules either depend upon the presence of a cold background gas and magnetic fields (Update 393), or they are restricted to those molecules which can be formed by combining already cold trapped atoms. In their demonstration, the researchers constructed a 35- centimeter long "Stark decelerator," containing a succession of 63 pulsed electric fields. The decelerator can slow down any neutral molecule with a permanent dipole moment, i.e., a permanent separation of electric charge within the molecule. This includes any diatomic molecule composed of two different elements (such as NaCl), but also molecules like H2O and NH3. The researchers chose to demonstrate their technique with carbon monoxide (CO). When a pre-cooled mixture of CO in xenon gas entered the linear decelerator, each molecule experienced the Stark effect; at every electric field, their internal energy shifted upward and caused them to lose some kinetic energy. After passing through all 63 electric- field stages, a subset of the CO molecules was slowed down from 225 m/s to 98 m/s, with an equivalent temperature of 30 millikelvin. Additional electric field stages could in principle cool the molecules further. This technique promises to be useful for cold-molecule physics, a field which is "expected to bloom in the next decade," says Meijer. (Bethlem, Berden and Meijer, Phys. Rev. Lett., 23 August 1999.) *Get the Nanotechnology Industries newsletter (includes James Lewis-Foresight webmaster, Josh Hall-Utility fog, and Forrest Bishop-Shap= e shifter) at: http://www.homestead.com/nanotechind/nanonews/describe.html ~More general news as follows~ *From Nanogirl news* *Princeton head leads bioethics debate. So did the workload of Princeton University President Harold T. Shapiro. http://www.bergen.com/morenews/prince30199908304.htm *Starvation may be the key to living longer (Sydney Morning Herald) http://www.smh.com.au/news/9908/30/text/pageone12.html *Today is the deadline for the discount of the Foresight Conference Tutorial. http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT7/Tutorial.html *7th Foresight Conference on Molecular NanotechnologyOctober 15-17, 1999 Tutorial October 14Silicon Valley, California http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT7 *The force of gravity is the same for atoms and baseballs. Stanford physicists have put a modern twist on Galileo's classic 16th=ADcentury experiment of dropping objects from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. http://www.stanford.edu/dept/news/pr/99/atomgravity990825.html *Solar cells forever One of the biggest problems with solar cells is they tend to wear out wit= h time. Now David Cahen of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, may have found a way to make them so they last forever. Cahen and his colleagues used copper indium gallium diselenide, a novel material in which it seems that copper atoms can diffuse to damaged areas and effectively heal damage caused by long exposure to light. The solar cells are as efficient as the best ones that are commercially available and may turn out to be cheaper. ref: Advanced Materials, August 1999. *Worm aids medical research An Irish scientist working in Paris is using a microscopic worm in resear= ch that could in time lead to cures for neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's. (The Irish Times) http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/science/1999/0830/sci1.htm *A Workout For Your Brain- Forget About Kickboxing: How About Neurobics? Through Mental Exercises, Keep Your Brain Young. http://www.cbs.com/flat/story_180254.html *Diagnostic Imaging-Getting the inside view. (Mayo Clinic) Remember how neat and tidy medical practice was in the original Star Trek television series? Dr. McCoy ("Bones") could instantaneously diagnose a c= rew member's malady simply by waving a hand-held tricorder over whatever hurt. Real-life diagnostic imaging has not quite progressed to the Star Trek level. But the growth of technology has allowed for astounding changes in how the human body can be viewed. http://www.mayohealth.org/mayo/9908/htm/imaging.htm (Or see Purdue news) New sensing device reads chemical make up in real ti= me. http://news.uns.purdue.edu/html4ever/9909.Ben.Amotz.sensor.html *Mozart Sonata's IQ Impact. Can music improve your metal capabilities? (A study) http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-08/30/089l-083099-idx.ht= ml *Researchers at the Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory are creating durable membranes that can be specially tailored to separate different chemicals from water. Fred Stewa= rt, a chemist at the INEEL, will be present his group's work at the 218th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society on Aug. 24 in New Orlea= ns, La. http://www.inel.gov/cgi-bin/newsdesk.cgi?a=3D106&t=3Dtemplate.html *Extraterrestrial Water Found Trapped in Meteorite (NASA) http://www.nasa.gov/today/meteor.html *Head transplants not just the realm of science fiction. A leading U.S. brain surgeon has unveiled plans to perform the first huma= n head transplant -- a procedure that has already been carried out successfully on dogs and monkeys. It will be offered initially to mortall= y ill tycoons, who can afford its $2-million Cdn price tag. http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/stories/990829/2789568.html *Cornell Physicists Report A Breakthrough In Writing Data To Magnetic Chi= ps That Could Store "Terabits" Of Information Cornell University researchers have demonstrated a new way to write information to magnetic material tha= t could lead to new computer memory chips that will have a very high storag= e capacity and will be non-volatile, meaning they would not require a const= ant electric current flowing to maintain stored information. http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Aug99/magnetic_memory.ws.html *Researchers studying three families with the same unusual sleep pattern have uncovered the first hereditary sleep disorder in humans caused by a single gene. Neurologist Christopher Jones and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator Louis Pt=E1cek, both at the University of Utah, ar= e now searching for the gene that causes the disorder known as familial advance= d sleep phase syndrome (FASPS). http://www.hhmi.org/news/ptacek.htm *Scientists provide first detailed maps of wiring circuitry in the living human brain St. Louis, Aug. 31, 1999 -- Researchers have developed a way to visualize nerve fiber bundles that transmit information between different areas of = the living human brain. Their study provides new information on the orderly pattern of these fiber connections and may one day lead to improvements i= n brain surgery, diagnosis of brain ailments, and understanding of neurological diseases. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/wusm-spf083099.html *Making Mice Live Longer Researchers Examine Aging=92s Effects on Genes in Mice http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/aging_genes990826.html *Researchers overcome hurdle of transporting large amounts of DNA to the nucleus using nonviral vectors. University of Pennsylvania bioengineers increased the expression of marker DNA in cardiovascular cells by 60 time= s over previous attempts with nonviral vectors. They combined a short genet= ic tag from a nuclear protein with the standard marker gene, which provided = the molecular key to the nucleus. http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/upam-roh082599.html * Gene clue to the way people learn and memorise (The Irish Times) Researchers are using advanced genetic techniques to explain how memory a= nd learning take place in the human mind and in time might be able to define how genes affect behaviour. The difficulty is being able to make definitive associations between how = an organism behaves and the substances being expressed by its genes, explain= ed Prof Tim Tully of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private, non-profit research institute on Long Island, New York. Prof Tully delivered a keyno= te address last night on the molecular basis of learning and memory to the Neuroscience Symposium underway at Trinity College Dublin. He described k= ey work done at his laboratory on the role of the protein, CREB, in memory.H= e described as a "big leap" any attempt to connect a single gene and its related protein to an aspect of behaviour. Such a leap had to be made in = two steps. The first involved associating biochemical function to cell functi= on and the second involved deciding how a change in cell function changed a behavioural function. The problem was that most researchers were only looking at the initial step. Scientists were not looking at the second an= d "were not comfortable" with it because it involved something as difficult= to define as behaviour. Central to these behavioural studies is the fruit fl= y, drosophila. It has only about 15,000 to 20,000 genes, a fifth the number = in a human. Various genes can be switched on or off using genetic technologi= es and subsequent changes in fly behaviour can be studied. Findings using fr= uit flies can in turn be compared to what happens in humans because many of t= he genes and proteins in the two species are the same. Many of the genes whi= ch evolved in lower organisms were retained by higher organisms as they in t= urn evolved so there is a surprising degree of commonality even across specie= s. He studies the connections between genes and behaviour using "vertical integration" and "horizontal integration". The former involves making a change to a drosophila gene and then studying each of the knock-on effect= s that arise, from inside the cell through to behavioural change. The latte= r involves looking for parallels across species, for example, looking for a common gene and related protein in a fruit fly, mouse and human. If all three have the gene then there is a probability that it will have a commo= n function in each, despite the radical differences between species. In thi= s way CREB's ability to improve memory was discovered. Fruit flies with enhanced levels of CREB were able to learn faster compared with control flies. Further research showed that in fact CREB's action was to allow th= e flies to imprint memory faster after fewer exposures to a stimulus. (Copyright 1999) _____via IntellX_____ *Gene chip to aid in research on aging (The San Diego Union-Tribune) Biologists have gained a deep insight into the nature of aging by means o= f a new device known as a gene expression chip. The chip has shown both tha= t a specific pattern of genetic changes occurs in aging, and that these chang= es can be largely prevented by caloric restriction: putting mice on a diet w= ith only 75 percent of normal calories. The research supports the long-standi= ng idea that a semistarvation diet prolongs life in mice, and maybe people, = but its wider significance is that the chip offers for the first time a way t= o measure aging at the cellular level. The gene chip, about the size of a business card but roughly one- quarter of an inch thick, is made of glass and contains DNA. When read by a laser, the device quickly reveals activi= ty levels for thousands of individual genes in tissue placed in it. Similar chips should help to test whether present anti-aging remedies do any good and to screen for better drugs, including perhaps ones that might give th= e same effect as low calorie diets but without the pain. "If we understood = how caloric restriction works we might be able someday to elicit its benefits without having to undergo the dietary restriction, so in that sense this = is a very important study," said Dr. Leonard Guarente, an expert on aging at the [ Massachusetts Institute of Technology ] . The new research, reporte= d in today's issue of Science, builds on the view held by many biologists t= hat aging is not an inexorable process but rather the outcome of a genetic program that could be manipulated. It also gives comfort to those who arg= ue that a manageably small number of genes are involved. The study, by Dr. Richard Weindruch, Dr. Tomas Prolla and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, depends on injecting mouse muscle samples into the special chi= p. Made by Affymetrix of Santa Clara, the chip was programmed to recognize t= he activity of some 6,000 mouse genes. Mice probably have about 100,000 different genes, and the 6,000 were those whose DNA sequence had already been decoded and filed in public data banks. Weindruch is known for his studies of caloric restriction in mice and he has in progress a long term study with rhesus monkeys to see if their life span can be extended by a = low calorie diet. In the new study, Weindruch and Prolla looked first at the muscles of elderly mice fed a normal mouse diet and then at mice of the s= ame age who had been on a diet restricted in calories. They examined the animals' calf muscles because muscle, along with the brain and heart, is = one of the tissues not renewed during life and often is the first to show sig= ns of aging. Providing the first broad snapshot of how gene activity changes= in the aging cell, the Affymetrix chip shows that in elderly mice fed a norm= al diet, most of the cell's genes continue as usual. But 1 percent of the genes -- those involved in responding to stress and to nerve damage -- become very much more active. Another 1 percent, genes involved in generating energy from glucose, become very much less active. In elderly mice of the same age fed a diet restricted in calories, the researchers report, most of these changes were prevented, giving the cells a profile similar to those of much younger cells. But cells from the mice on restricted diets had their own pattern of changes, notably decreased activity by genes that repair damaged DNA and proteins. Weindruch and Pro= lla believe most of these changes can be explained in terms of the chemical damage caused by glucose metabolism. The process of combining glucose wit= h oxygen creates harmful chemicals known as free radicals that damage many structures in the cell, particularly the energy-generating units known as mitochondria. The gene expression chip, they believe, will allow them to pinpoint the genetic changes that underlie aging in human tissues. "The technique allows us to measure the aging process at the molecular level. = Now for the first time we have molecular biomarkers of aging," Prolla said, referring to the characteristic patterns of gene expression revealed by t= he Affymetrix chip. "It's our goal to test a patient's biological age from a drop of blood," Weindruch said. Affymetrix has already produced chips programmed to detect the activity of human genes. (Copyright 1999) _____v= ia IntellX_____ *Organogenesis' Conditioned Medium Stimulates Generation of Vital New Ski= n Cells (Bus. Wire) CANTON, Mass.--(BW HealthWire)--Aug. 30, 1999--[ Organogenesis Inc. ] (AMEX:ORG) today announced the presentation of data on its conditioned medium at the European Tissue Repair Society/Wound Healing Society multinational meeting in Bordeaux, France. In this presentation, the conditioned medium was shown to stimulate the generation of new skin cell= s. This conditioned medium is being evaluated for potential cosmetic and ski= n care applications. About Conditioned Medium -Organogenesis manufactures t= he only FDA-approved medical product containing living human skin cells. Conditioned medium is produced during this manufacturing process by the interaction of the healthy young skin cells, which are producing cytokine= s and other growth factors, with the Company's proprietary cell culture medium. Study Design and Findings -The presentation, entitled "Effect of Growth Factors Secreted from Bioengineered Living Tissue on the Migration= of Human Keratinocytes", discussed the effects of conditioned medium on the generation of new human skin cells in vitro. The effects of conditioned medium were compared with those of Organogenesis' proprietary cell cultur= e medium prior to cell exposure, which served as a control. The data show t= hat the conditioned medium stimulates the generation of the key cell types fo= und in healthy human skin. Exposure to conditioned medium was shown to stimul= ate growth of new keratinocytes (epidermal cells), fibroblasts (dermal cells) and endothelial cells (blood vessel cells) more than the baseline cell culture medium. The effect was also concentration dependent, with higher concentrations producing a greater effect than lower concentrations. Abou= t Organogenesis -Organogenesis Inc. designs, develops and manufactures medi= cal products containing living cells and/or natural connective tissue. The Company's product development focus includes living tissue replacements, cell-based organ assist devices and other tissue- engineered products. Le= ad product Apligraf living skin construct is marketed in the US and Canada. = The research pipeline also includes VITRIX(TM) living soft tissue replacement= , a bioartificial liver and a vascular graft. Statements in this press releas= e which are not historical fact are forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and invol= ve risks and uncertainties. There can be no assurance that Organogenesis Conditioned medium will be used in cosmetic or skin care products or of t= he commercial acceptance of these products when and if marketed. (Copyright 1999) _____via IntellX_____ *DALLAS, August 31-- In the largest study of its kind, researchers have found that consuming two to six alcoholic drinks per week was associated with a reduced risk of sudden cardiac death in men, according to a report= in today's Circulation: Journal of the American Heart Association. "This is the largest prospective study to look at alcohol consumption and sudden cardiac death in men and the first prospective study to find a reduction in sudden cardiac death from light drinking," says Christine M. Albert, M.D., associate physician in the division of preventive medicine = at Brigham and Women's Hospital and instructor of medicine at Harvard Medica= l School in Boston. Albert is also a cardiac electrophysiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. *August 30: North by Northwest to Catch A Neutrino in the Act - A century-old radiation detection tool may be pressed into service to see i= f neutrinos change flavor. The answer may change our models of subatomic particles and the universe. http://science.msfc.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast30aug99_1.htm *3-D, virtual man simulates radiation's effect on the body Xie George Xu, assistant professor of nuclear engineering and engineering physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, has created a 3-D virtual ma= n called "Visible Photographic Man" (VIP-Man) that is so sophisticated it c= an model the effects of radiation on the skin, lens of the eye, optic nerve, GI- tract mucous membranes, and bone marrow--areas previously too minute = to accurately model, but which are highly susceptible to radiation. http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/visible/ *Could physicists accidentally make killer black holes or lethal strange matter that would swallow the Earth? (New Scientist Planet Science articl= e) http://www.newscientist.co.uk/ns/19990828/ablackhole.html *Scientists have looked inside the cells of Dolly the cloned sheep to determine the origin of her genetic material. What they found surprised them and may provide useful information to researchers who study inherite= d diseases like neuromuscular and kidney problems, which are passed down on the mother_s side only. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_433000/433786.stm *Researchers Wonder How to Make Robots Work With People 1.00 p.m. ET (1700 GMT) August 30, 1999 By Tim Molloy PITTSBURGH =97 Scientists are learning to make robots that do what they'r= e supposed to do when they're supposed to do it. Now if only human beings would play along. A Carnegie Mellon research assistant makes an adjustmen= t to a robot designed to search for landmines. Researchers from all over t= he world gathered Sunday at Carnegie Mellon University to show each other th= e latest in robots made to help their human masters. One common problem: making the programmed machines work alongside unpredictable human nature. For example, a team of scientists at Carnegie Mellon is working on robots that serve as museum guides. The technology could eventually be used to build robot nurses. But kids at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington= , D.C., had other ideas when a robot named Minerva debuted there last summe= r =97 they jumped on Minerva and tried to take it for a ride. To make sure peop= le respected Minerva's space, designers gave it a voice and moving mouth and eyebrows. "I need to get through," the robot said, frowning at Smithsonia= n guests who dawdled in front of it. Minerva smiled at those who moved. Peo= ple responded, said Sebastian Thrun, a Carnegie Mellon assistant computer science professor working on the museum robots. Thrun's conclusion: Peopl= e like it when machines interact with them. Now he's using that theory when building other robots. Most of the technology spotlighted Sunday is not y= et available commercially, but researchers are hopeful. Among those looking = for corporate sponsorship was Gerard Lacey, a designer from Ireland's Trinity College. His team tested robots to help blind and elderly people who don'= t have the strength to walk with canes or guide dogs. The robot, which resembles a lawn mower, allows blind people to walk holding its handles f= or support. They point the robot in the direction they want to go, and its built-in sensors slow it down and stop it from hitting walls. The robot became popular quickly at a nursing home where it was tested. "Life in a nursing home is very regimented," Lacey said. "There's a time for bingo, there's a time for tea. There's a time for whatever. Now there was a time= to walk around. They guarded it very jealously." Meeting older people's need= s called for some adjustments, Lacey said. At one point the robot had a joystick like those used in arcade games, which had to change. "Elderly people have never used a joystick in their life," he said. "It's probably not going to be a successful interface for them." Other robots unveiled Sunday included a wheelchair that automatically finds its way through shifting crowds. Once the chair is programmed to move in a given directio= n, the person sitting in it can ride with hands folded as the chair charts t= he movements of people nearby, chooses a path around them and moves at norma= l walking speed. Another robot tracked people's eye movements. One of the designers, Alex Zalinski of Australian National University, said it could= be used in cars to make sure drivers are keeping their eyes open and on the road, even if they move their heads or change the lighting in the car. (F= ox) *LONDON =97 Computer software that evolves like a human brain is set to t= ry to pick winners on the stock market. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/ *SMART DUSTClean freaks have a new rationale for their pathological hatre= d of dust - it could soon be spying on them. Packed full of sensors, particles of "smart dust" are being designed to communicate with one another. The tiny dust particles, called "motes" are being developed at the University of California as part of a program to produce the smallest possible devices that can communicate with each other. The latest motes not only have a battery powering them but also a solar cell to recharge the battery. Today each of these motes is five millimetres long, but researchers say in the future they could be small enough to remain suspended in mid-air, buoyed by air currents, sensing and communicating for hours. And why, you ask? Researchers say in the future, we could send smart dust in the air to detect chemical weapons, conducting space research, or monitoringweather patters. *WEARABLE COMPUTERS GO ACEDEMIC When "wearable computers" are discussed, many people in the computer science industry think of Steve Mann. Mr. Mann has had a computer and wireless video camera strapped to him for nearly 20 years now. He transmits what his camera sees 24 hours a day on his web site at http://www.wearcam.org . And now, what seemed like an oddity has gone acedemic: Mann is now a professor at the University of Toronto where he is teaching post-graduate studies in, well, walking around with a camera on your head. (Of course, the U of T calls it "computer mediated interaction.") :-) When he started in 1980, you could barely pick out a person from behind all the gear; now, all you see is a guy wearing sunglasses. The glasses are actually computer monitors, and all the high-tech gadgetry is under his shirt. *DNA FOR THE DEADWe've seen cremation jewelry and designer caskets with themes that included even golf - a ``Fairway to Heaven'' motif. Now funeral homes are beginning to collect DNA samples from the dead - for a fee - to preserve a genetic record that could provide medical information. While experts are divided on the usefulness of the data, some think the service will be a strong seller - and that in the future, nearly every funeral home might offer the service. For $350, the service retains a bit of hair, some blood, and body fluids. The samples are sent to a lab where molecular biologists extract the DNA and sends the family a confidential genetic fingerprint of the deceased. But not everyone thinks this is a great idea - ethicists question taking DNA from people before getting their approval before they die. The DNA samples also could be used to determine paternity, which might reveal a few unexpected and unwanted surprises. making some secrets taken to the grave a thing of the past. *BONE-GROWING PROTEIN 12-year-old Emily Lang is no stranger to surgeries. She's already had 121 of them correct bone deformities she was born with. But the one she underwent a couple of weeks ago was different. Physicians applied bone protein to holes in Emily's skull. The protein is a new synthetically created product that kickstarts molecular activity that causes the body to grow new bone-forming cells called osteoblasts. These osteoblasts then develop into healthy new bone structures. Emily was the first child to ever have the protein applied to existing bone and have it successfully grow. Until now, it's only been used to grow bone in lab animals. In the future, the development could help heal athletic injuries faster and possibly correct birth defects before the child is born. *PACEMAKERS FOR THE BRAINYou've heard of pacemakers, the electric devices helping thousands of heart patients. Well now comes word of a pacemaker for the brain - one that in the future could help people with epilepsy. It works like this: surgeons make a pocket in the chest to hold a small transmitter. When the patient feels a seizure coming on, they simply place a magnet across their chest. That gives the episode a shorter duration and makes it seem less intense. The nerve stimulator has a generator similar to those used in heart pacemakers - and it's powered by a battery that can last up to five years. Researchers are taking what they've learned from this device and trying to find other neuro-conditions that may be helped by this implant. (Last 5 from Tod Maffin) I'm back from vacation and ready to repair my computer withdrawl symptoms. 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