Desktop Biofactories 56
leb writes: "Eurekalert has a synopsis of an upcoming Science article that describes the creation of 'microbots' 670 micrometers tall and 170 to 240 micrometers wide that were able to manipulate small cell like beads in biological environments. Coupled with a multisensor area, the microrobots also may suggest lab-on-a-chip designs, or 'factory-on-a-desk' tools, programmed to assemble various
microstructures. Sounds a little like Neil Stephenson's 'The Diamond Age' to me ..."
Correction (Score:1)
I mean sipping a beer, of course. I don't think we condone bear-sipping in this country.
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seumas.com
Movies of the Machines (Score:1)
Re:How close to a cure for cancer? (Score:1)
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:The trolls have won... (Score:1)
Re:FOR NATALIE (Score:1)
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Re:do we need this? (Score:1)
Too Big (Score:2)
Nano technology implies manufacturing on the scale of the nanometer; these are performing tasks on the MILLIMETER scale, six orders of magnitude larger. Hell, if you looked closely I bet you could see these guys at work with the naked eye.
Re:Practical Uses for the Every Day Joe (Score:1)
Wow, you could give each one a grit and command them to move to the stove. What would you have then? ;)
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Re:The trolls have won... (Score:1)
This doens't match biology class. (Score:2)
That would certainly depend on the type of cell.
The largest cell I've seen when gazing at them through a microscope in Grade 12 biology was about 1000 microns (1 mm) across (vegetable cell of some kind).
The smallest that I've seen is a cell scraped from the inside of my own cheek with a toothpick. It was 50 microns across.
Bacteria are much smaller and are still single cells, but it's presumably animal cells that we'd mainly be dealing with.
At 650um by about 200 um, these robots are 13 cheek cells high by 4 cheek cells wide. The robots could maipulate them as easily as you could manipulate a can of food.
Re:FOR NATALIE (Score:1)
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Re:Why Stephenson? (Score:1)
Re:How close to a cure for cancer? (Score:1)
Yes, but we can do it better. (Score:3)
Yes, deadly cancer usually happens when the immune system can't recognize the difference between the cancerous cells and the healthy ones. After all, they can only examine it at a chemical level. I mean, why doesn't your immune system destroy moles? They're not healthy, normal tissue.
Doctors (and their machines), on the other hand, can step back further than the chemical level, and recognize an unhealthy and unnatural growth from its shape and location.
You can be killed by a benign tumor, if it's in the wrong place and big enough. When a tumor goes malignant, that means that it's releasing cells that take root in other parts of the body, sprouting more tumors wherever they land; either through one growing in just the wrong place, or the cumulative weakening of all sorts of organs being interfered with, it kills you. If you can weed out tiny tumors by the hundred, as quickly as they sprout up, you remove the sources of new seed cells. Do it for long enough, and well enough, and not only will you keep the tumors from killing the patient, but sooner or later, there won't be enough sources of seed cells to keep new tumors sprouting up, and the patient is cured.
That's the theory anyway. I hope it works.
Re:Why Stephenson? (Score:1)
in fact, just finished Snow Crash by Stephenson, and am starting The Difference Engine by Gibson/Sterling.
I enjoyed Stephenson more, Gibson is fairly scatelogical (sp?) and dark, Stephenson is funny, dark, funny and very interesting. With the Gibson books I feel like I am looking down on a massive world of mega-tech/drugs, with Stephenson I felt like I was actually there.
my 2 cents..
Biofactories for kids??? (Score:1)
How close to a cure for cancer? (Score:4)
Tiny robotic implements like this, which can be built onto the tip of a needle (or better yet, a "tentacle" needle using the same technology that can flex and move around important nerves and blood vessels, so it can safely penetrate to any place in the body) and can function in conductive fluids (like in the human body), are probably the most important missing component to implement automated tumor weeding.
It could also have very important applications in cleaning out blood vessels (much finer than our current "balloon" and "burner" methods).
This kind of microtechnology could provide many of the health benefits expected from nanotechnology. This could be the key to pushing the average life expectancy past 100 years.
Re:Practical Uses for the Every Day Joe (Score:2)
There's already a company which deals in this sort of thing using chemicals. Check out this site [passyourdrugtest.com].
I think it's kinda revolting and saddening, but they're not doing anything illegal it seems, so more power to them.
troll != spam (Score:3)
In the slashdot tradition of insisting upon the distinction (that no one else at all ever bothers to make) between "crackers" and "hackers," may I insist, in the cause of verbal precision, that we now also distinguish between "trolls" and "spammers"?
By the commonly accepted definition, a troll [mcgill.ca] is someone looking to stir up a heated discussion by posting messages which aren't quite, ah, sincere. There may be, no there is, a certain degree of dishonesty in the composition of a traditional troll; however, the fact remains, if no one gets excited enough to respond, then the troll must be held a failure. Now isn't that the essence of a web log, to stimulate readers to participate? Isn't this the very reason why it is better to prowl slashdot than to sit and soak up TV? A successful troll on a weblog like this one is typically followed by many responses and rebuttals. And indeed, often what a troller has to say is often intellectually stimulating; on other occasions the substance of a troll is garbled, absurd rubbish, but at least it gets people to laugh, and while laughter may be officially verboten and verba non grata at the otherwise excellent Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org], I hope no one reading this here has a soul so dead that he decries the value of laughter. So at the very least, a troll has a certain definite value.
Conversely, a spammer [mcgill.ca] is an odious fellow who overloads communication channels with innumerable copies of a message which no rational person has the slightest interest to read. The essence of spam is that it is something which emburdens you with the task of throwing it in the garbage.
osm is a troll, a damn good one. streetlawyer is a fucken troll. 80md is a troll, and so is Jon Ericson, and so is gnarphlager, and so is spiralx, and so, logging in from Chiapas, is Estanislao Martinez (andale! andale! arribe! viva Che!). The guy who penned this [io.com] swell little piece of nuttiness is a troll. I'm sure if you peruse slashdot regularly you can think of other favorites of your own. Did you ever see any of these guys flood a thread with copy after copy of their works? No, you have not. These are funny guys, and their light and wacky humor is nothing but good news here in slashdot. I don't propose that we hand slashdot over to the true troll underground entirely, much as they'd probably like it, but I do say that slashdot can and should tolerate their eccentric literary troll art, in the reasonably small doses they supply.
But now compare these artists to beer mug man, or penis bird guy, or this fellow who has posted, out of the 141 comments here, 40 (as of my last count) pointless content-free comments titled "NOBODY" to this article. The basic difference is, their posts are all empty and all the same, i.e. boring, and they repeat and repeat and repeat themselves. That, fellow readers, is nothing more nor less than pure spam.
Please refrain from insulting osm by comparing his creative stuff with repetitive boring crap such as that. Hormel Spam(tm) is actually pretty tasty pan-fried with poached eggs and wheat bread toast - try it sometime - but weblog spam is naught but slop, fit only for the garbage pail.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Re:troll != spam (Score:1)
Hey miserable yank oppressor, learn to spell. It's Martínez, with an accent over the "í". Would you like it if I spelled "Kiernan" as "Quirnan"? I bet you wouldn't, eh?
And I'm not in Chiapas. I'm in the northernmost Latin American nation: Québec.
Liberté pour le Québec, asteur!
Re:Yeah, Neil Stephenson that Prophet... (Score:2)
Well, I remember reading one of the Lem books written in the 60's
where nanobots on a foreign planet were used to build walls,
etc... And I guess that the idea was floating around in various
"futurologic congresses" etc.
Still, the Diamond Age is a "relatively" serious exploration of what
would be the social implication of the nanotechnology age. When written,
Stephenson had available another thirty years of technological advances,
so he was in a better position to theoretize about this than Lem.
I guess that when he wrote about this, he considered the Diamond Age
as being a serious possibility for the not too remote future (Neil,
are you reading this?). Lem was probably considering the
"futurological congress" as being an intellectual game - and the
adventures of Pirx the pilot a serious "anticipation". Now it might
happen that we will have nanobots, but no space travel...
Lotzi
The trolls have won... (Score:1)
Puts the lie to some molecular nanotech propaganda (Score:4)
It looks more and more like we'll be going down one step at a time, not just suddenly building a molecular assembler with chemical processes and AFMs. Like Feynman thought: build one little set of hands, use that to build a smaller set of hands, until you've got one built out of atoms.
I remember a portion of the book "Nano" that mercilessly, and utterly without class, mocked the efforts of the micromachinery crowd, taking special effort to make fun of the "three little gears" (an electrostatic motor and two gears driven by it). I don't know if this outburst was the fact that they were building mechanisms, while the nanotech people were still only doing simulations, but I thought it was completely uncalled-for.
Nanotechnology will be an incredible revolution in technology, but advances in microtechnology are not only useful in themselves, but IMHO essential to the development of nanotechnology. I remember one thing a nanotech researcher said that convinced me of this: he said that they thought they had built a wire and some diodes, but they couldn't hook them to anything, so they just couldn't tell.
BTW, they're actually performing tasks on the micrometer scale, to be fair. Think: a human is built at the meter scale, and one can work at the millimeter scale. This thing is built at the millimeter scale, and it can move things around to micrometer accuracy. I'm sure a nanotech assembler would be at least micrometer across, but you wouldn't call it "microtechnology" because of that.
Desktop Biofactories? (Score:2)
In my mind, I've conjured up this surreal image of some guy sipping a bear while an army of microbots construct a new liver for him, in a cooler on his desktop, next to his PC...
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seumas.com
Ant smackdown (Score:4)
It's amazing to me that these little guys can move a glass beed more than 250 microns (. They're only ~200 microns big, so that's like an ant moving another ant the length of his body. Not a big achievment for an ant, but a pretty impressive undertaking for todays nanostructures. I know a few mold makers who would like to set a few of these things loose inside of a high detail plastic mold to polish the hard to reach areas. They still have to be wired to a controler, but they can reach areas unreachable with conventional tools.
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Re:This doens't match biology class. (Score:2)
Re:Practical Uses for the Every Day Joe (Score:1)
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A good step in the right direction! (Score:1)
After reading the article, though, I think there's still a long way to go before crying that we have a cure for cancer or aging...
Why? Because while the article does a lot of explainning about what these nanobots can do, which is pretty impressive, a few important problems are practically neglected any mention in the article.
First, how are the nanobots controlled? If it's not by a computer program then they can't be called 'bots just yet. In fact it seems from the article that they actually have to have little wires to each of these nanobots in order to control them.
The next question is how are they powered. If there is no convinient way to power them, all this means is more wires. With all these wires I imagine it must be quite a complex setup for just one nanite.
The good thing about this, though, is that in order to make truly useful truly smart nanites, small robotic hands are an important step in the right direction.
do we need this? (Score:1)
So called "slave labor" is resposible for the majority of work done. A "factory on a stick" will do nothing more than leave millions of people un-employed. While the wages and safety conditions might not be something to write home about, sweatshops produce so much for us. It is a slap in the face against these workers to even suggest that the geeks could create a way to replace them.
Would you like to be faced with un-employment one day because some hacker across the ocean found a way to replace with you a new gadget?
I didn't think so.
Practical Uses for the Every Day Joe (Score:1)
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seumas.com
Rejoice, fellow hackers! (Score:2)
Robots in all sizes, for all purposes, which only we understand and control...
Our plans for world domination are coming to fruition. We will be like gods!
No! We have surpassed the gods themselves!
Muahahahaha!
[TheDullBlade is struck by lightning, leaving a smoking pair of boots and a sickening burnt meat smell]
Serious concerns and questions re space technology (Score:1)
Will this mechanical assembler technology significantly assist us in devising more affordable and more efficient space technology?
I have long been concerned that advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology, and/or artificial intelligence will result in a technological cataclysm which the human race will not survive (or at least not as recognizeably human). I have rigorously tracked trends in these technologies, and the ability to build increasingly powerful devices at low cost has been increasing at an exponential rate across the board, much faster than most people have expected. I deeply and truly fear the time when the equipment exists in every highschool lab to (for instance) custom-engineer virii or bacteria, and the entire human race is still stuck on this mudball. As the availability of this technology increases, the probability of some sick-minded biohack (et al) fashioning a doomsday virus approaches unity.
We need to get out of here and spread the genetic pool around a bit, across multiple disjoint life support systems, preferably with a big hunk of empty space between them, so that accident or malice can do only limited damage. Before that can happen, space technology needs to become much, much more affordable. Two things that would really give us a boost in the right direction would be (1) a cheaper and/or more effective power source, and (2) lighter building materials.
Light, strong building materials would go a long way to dropping the cost of pushing a payload out of the Earth's gravity well, by making the space vehicle and (potentially) the payload lighter, decreasing the amount of energy required for achieving orbital velocities. What are some ways these micro-assemblers could assist us in creating these lighter materials?
Obviously, even if we reduce the per-capita vehicle mass of boosting a human into orbit to zero, our vehicle would still need to expend enough energy to boost the human's mass into orbit. This takes a lot of energy, preferably in a lightweight form. Liquid oxygen and hydrogen is about as good as we can get, energy-density-wise, without going nuclear and building an Orion drive. How might these micro-assemblers assist us in more cheaply generating large volumes of liquid hydrogen and oxygen? Is there a better fuel (perhaps easier to store) that could be made less expensive, or even possible in the first place, to produce using these micro-assemblers?
Food for thought.
-- Guges --
Re:Practical Uses for the Every Day Joe (Score:2)
But this technology is eons away from being deployed for anything useful. And by then, they'll likely no longer require tethering.
At least, that's my take.
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seumas.com
Re:NOBODY... (Score:1)
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Re:The trolls have won... (Score:1)
Re:Yes, but we can do it better. (Score:2)
Surface antigens are the only known way to recognize individual cells. (If you just look at a single cell under ordinary light with no particular context, you'd have a very hard time telling if it was a cancerous cell or normal tissue, especially if all you see is the outside.) This means that even if we put in a nanobot swarm, that swarm is vulnerable to at least some of the same tactics which tumors use to evade the immune system. (For example, many tumors shed large amounts of soluble protein into the fluid around them; this keeps the immune system distracted, much as a flare could distract a heat-seeking missile.)
Diagnosis of cancer before it's a macroscale-visible lump is not an easy thing. Almost all tumor diagnoses are made by seeing the lump on a radiogram, taking a chunk out of it, and using some nasty chemical stains to visualize that tissue. These aren't methods which we can use inside a living patient, and as I mentioned before, the natural solution is highly suboptimal.
I wouldn't go thinking of these as the cure for cancer. Microsurgery will certainly cause more tumors to be operable, and thus save lives, but it won't cure cancer the same way we've cured smallpox. IMHO, there may never be a complete eradication of cancer; it'll just come down to being as much of a worry as being hit by a meteor.
Microbot Movies (QuickTime... erg) (Score:4)
More info:
http:/
http://www.ifm.liu.se/~edjag/FS/edjag.ht ml [ifm.liu.se]
Re:MicroBots? (Score:1)
Re:How close to a cure for cancer? (Score:1)
Something that is a quarter of a millimiter
in size will not navigate capillary blood
or lymph paths. Also, AFAIU these bots still
need direct electrical contacts, so they can't
be remotely directed or controlled, so I
doubt your cancer cure idea is close at hand.
Re:do we need this? (Score:4)
Good!
the best thing about nanotech is not that it'll allow everyone to purchase super detailed mega-spiffy goods. The best thing about Nanotech is it will take every labor/ service related worker and throw them in the gutter. Where they belong!
Guess what waits for them in the gutter?
the general assembler. A nano-sized robot that can build a copy of itself from nearby available materials. "what does this mean for me as I am an idiot?" you might say. Imagine living without want. Imagine a future where materialism is long dead, anyone can build anything if they have the right plans for their general assembler(s). A future where information and ideas are the new currency. Sainthood to the first one to bring a single assembler to the poor slave laborers. Forever loved for freeing them from the slavery of trying to be a "productive" country, where labor is exchanged for goods & services.
In my vision, we have achieved eden. When the general Assembler hits, you'll find me in a boat 30 miles from the southern shores of Kauai, dropping a canister full of those little robots. Fsck your countries, all of them. I'll be more than happy to live out my life on my own personal paradise, where all I want is grown and controlled by me. If you'd like you can come and visit, perhaps live. Let me warn you though. My paradise involves long peeling waves that never seem to end (I can grow any kind of reef I want). Lots of the Herb growing plentifully everywhere. Don't worry about not being one of the beautiful people though.... I'll just mess with a few of your genes. it might feel a little odd for a while to shed excess fat directly onto the ground, to lose your "unattractive" features. You will enjoy it..
Re:Serious concerns and questions re space technol (Score:1)
Re:Too Big (Score:1)
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Re:Practical Uses for the Every Day Joe (Score:2)
Man, if you're addiction requires that you resort to another man's pee... *shudder*.
- Yo, whassup with that 'redundant' mark on my first post? Man, I tell you, ever since Slashdot hired these Moderator's from the ex-Microsoft-Intern pool, things have gone down-hill here.
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seumas.com
What else could it mean? (Score:1)
From wat I have seen of them both in the article and in the movies that have been linked to in various replies, is that they would appear to make excellent artificial muscle replacements. As everyone here knows, I'm sure, muscles are controlled by electrical impulses sent from the brain. An electric jolt causes them to contract and the removal of that jolt causes them to relax. From what I can tell in the article, this is essentially what these little "fingers" do. Of course, they are nothing more ingenious than a tiny bimetallic strip responding to electricity instead of heat, but I think this technology could well be adapted to make muscle replacements. This application would be a godsend for people who have had motorbike wrecks to sports injuries.
Does anyone have an opinion on why this might not work? Or a better explaination of how it might work?
Re:How close to a cure for cancer? (Score:3)
Maybe I'm mistaken, but isn't that exactly how the human body naturally prevents cancer? It's been a while since I took biology, but as I remember it little mutations are occuring all the time, and some of them end up being self replicating with an altered growth plan and so develop into cancers. Then T cells float around comparing what cells are with what they should be, and absorbing the mutants. They also catch things like bacteria and cells infected by viruses, and are part of the reason the body rejects organ transplants. But if a cancerous mutation develops that they can't tell is a mutation, they don't get it and it can become deadly.
Like I said, it's been a while since I took a biology class, so if some of that is wrong, sorry.
Re:Yeah, Neil Stephenson that Prophet... (Score:1)
Yeah, Neil Stephenson that Prophet... (Score:1)
Re:How close to a cure for cancer? (Score:2)
Re:This doens't match biology class. (Score:2)
See:
http://www.biology.arizona.edu/cell_bio/tutoria
In any case, nanotechnology means exactly that - manipulation on the scale of a nanometer. This is manipulation on the scale of a millimeter, with the objects being handled actually visible to the naked eye. Not even close.
Announcing sid=slashcode (OT) (Score:1)
Re:Too Big - but shrinking (Score:1)
But bear in mind that this micro-arm is the first one ever. These things are likely to get smaller as experience is gained, and there's not a lot of point in doing research work on a device that you can't diagnose - keeping it visible is a good idea for research purposes.
Another thought: 6 months ago 500nm was the size of the best state-of-the-art gripper, and that couldn't work inside a human body anyway as it was made of silicon. That's just a pair of tweezers too, not the whole arm. What will we get in the next 6 months?
How soon until the smallest arm we can make can manipulate the largest regular molecules we can make? I say within 5 years.
Vik
Re:The trolls have won... (Score:1)
Re:do we need this? (Score:1)
Seriously, Humanity's biggest advantage and biggest curse is our adaptability. We all get rich -- so what? We still want more. We want more because our peers have more and we seem to be hardwired to keep up with the Jonses.
Most of us already live lives that would be considered idyllic by 19th century standards, but we strive for more, and in striving we use more resources. Given God-like control over our environment, I am a little wary of what the Joe Average (or I for that matter) will do once he has a few beers in him... and this excludes the danger of evil Nano-Bond villians who will try to destroy the world through self-replicating doomstay devices.
My take: Humanity will survive, but there will be casualties. We need to get off this beautiful rock if for no other reason than to put some eggs in other baskets.
Regards, your friendly neighbourhood cranq
Re:troll != spam [MOD PARENT UP!] (Score:1)
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Did you even read what I wrote? (Score:3)
I also never referred to them as "microbots". The robots I was imagining are big floor models containing a top-of-the-line modern computer and with one or more "microscalpel syringes" mounted on robotic arms about the size of human arms.
MicroBots? (Score:3)
Mm. -Minimally invasive surgery.. Little bots crawling around in my gut.. Call me a ludite, but I'm not sure how much faith I would place in a scheme like this - how does the failsafe work? Imagine them programed by a certain nameless favorite from the Pacific Northwest.. "Dr! Quick.. Reboot the Nano-bots! We're getting the blue foam of death" as the little bots get stuck in a endless loop.