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POPSNano Superbug-Killers -Identifies Bacteria That Have Become Resistant to Antibiotics The drugs to be tested work by latching onto the bacteria and literally ripping its cell wall to pieces, exposing the vulnerable core to destruction by the surrounding environment. When a drug can latch onto the mucopeptide, it bends the cantilever and alters the reflection of the laser. The response to the drug can be observed almost instantly. While this technique only works for surface-latching antibiotics (by no means the only antibiotic mechanism), Professor McKendry and colleagues are already planning an upgrade where entire bacterial cells will be pinned to the nano-lever and stretched by drugs.
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POPSExperts Say Humans Can Live to 1,000 Leon Kass, the former head of Bush's Council on Bioethics, insists that “the finitude of human life is a blessing for every human individual”. Bioethicist Daniel Callahan of the Garrison, New York-based Hastings Centre, agrees: “There is no known social good coming from the conquest of death.” Maybe they’re right, but then why do we as humans strive so hard to prolong our lives in the first place? Maybe growing old, getting sick and dying is just a natural, inevitable part of the circle of life, and we may as well accept it. "But it's not inevitable, that's the point," One wonders what Methuselah would say about all this.
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POPSNano-Solar Power -Will it Be the Next Revolutionary Technology? Not that the technology is perfect. The system can absorb energy very well, but that's no good to anyone until they work out a way to harvest it from the sheet - when you're dealing with a hyper-complex web of millions of units oscillating at trillions of cycles per second, you can't just solder copper wires to the ends and call them plus and minus. This isn't a mistake or a weakness in the concept though; it's an issue because no-one has ever done this before. You know, the kind of thing that happens with cutting edge invention.
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POPSLockheed and Nanotech Further evidence of the government's interest in nanotech. As we noted here (http://www.forbes.com/businessinthebeltway/2008/07/24/nanotechnology-altair-nanphase-biz-wash-cz_atg_0724nano.html) Uncle Sam, for its fiscal 2009, is set to spend $1.5 billion to nanotech on nanotech (mostly research). The Department of Defense accounts for 28 of that money.
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POPSSurge in Food Nanotechnology Worries Consumers Davies quoted David Rejeski of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, who advocates a U.S. investment of $150 million a year in such research by 2010, to benefit from an industry that will involve “15 percent of globally manufactured goods, worth $2.6 trillion, by 2014.”
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POPSNanotech regulation under the spotlight The report concerns regulations in Australia, but nanotechnology that may have benefits that can cause problems or 'side effects' to be either overlooked, or ignored. It's easy to overlook a problem if there is no test for it, and often we may not know what to test for. Then there are both short term and long term effects. It's easy to ignore the possible long term effects, if some of the criteria examined are cost effectiveness and profitability, Perhaps a case of too many bells and whistles, making researchers deaf. For some reason i was just reminded of Pierre and Marie Curie.
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POPSThe power and the glory The market for energy is huge. At present, the world’s population consumes about 15 terawatts of power. (A terawatt is 1,000 gigawatts, and a gigawatt is the capacity of the largest sort of coal-fired power station.) That translates into a business worth $6 trillion a year—about a tenth of the world’s economic output—according to John Doerr, a venture capitalist who is heavily involved in the industry. And by 2050, power consumption is likely to have risen to 30 terawatts.
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