Tech Talk

This monthâ''s editon of IEEEâ''s Spectrum has a piece entitled â''Nanoparticles without Macroproblemsâ'' and subtitled â''Quick and dirty advice for keeping nanotech cleanâ''.

It gives a fairly thorough catalogue of some of the alarming research in nanoparticle toxicology that has come to light in the last few years, especially from the family Oberdörster.

I am not sure about the advice though. I would guess that it recommends we should be doing more research, looking to establish guidelines, and seeing if the electronics industry can sort it outâ''theyâ''re apparently good at this sort of thing.

My advice goes beyond just being quick and dirty: itâ''s bitterly short and filthy.

Instead of focusing on the toxicity of nano-sized particles (weâ''ve certainly had these little fiends around since we first harnessed fire), letâ''s focus on the toxicity of the products in which these nanoparticles are incorporated into the material matrix.

Short enough? Well, it's free advice, what do you expect?

But if you want to see more silicon artwork (otherwise known as chip graffiti) look at Florida State microscopist Michael Davidson's site, Silicon Zoo, where he has lovingly assembled an enormous gallery of these treasures. Don't miss the computer bug or the Martians on the Mars Rovers. Sadly, this is a dying art.

What's best about these is the time-capsule quality. Where else will you find B. A. Baracus immortalized in a Dallas Semiconductor T1 chip?

September 7, 2007

Todayâ''s theme: We can rebuild you.

In what may have been an orchestrated industry-wide tribute to the return of the Bionic Woman to the small screen, the biomedical engineering community this week unleashed a cornucopia of studies that pave the way to make you

- Better

- Stronger

- Faster*

- Taller

Already bionic? Be the first one on your block to imprint the sum of all human knowledge and history on your "junk" DNA-- or the entire Federlinian oeuvre, that's up to you. Iâ''m looking forward to seeing this technology adapted for the next issue of Sky Mall.

But where could you have all this work done? Why, DuBiotech, of course.

* ok, I cheated a little on that one. But if you're thinner, doesn't it stand to reason that you'd be faster?

Thus started the lament of the Ancient Mariner, â''Water, water everywhere, and not a drop to drink.â''

According the US Geological Survey, 97.2% of the worldâ''s water is saline. If we could just get that water resource so it was drinkable, all of our water shortage issues would be fixed, right?

Well, it is being done...sort of at roughly 30 billion litres per day, but at a huge expense at about $0.5 to $0.85 per cubic meter.

As a result, 60% of desalination capacity in the world is located in the Middle East where the oil-producing countries of the Gulf have access to inexpensive energy. In these countries a thermal/distillation method is typically used called multi-stage flash (MSF)â'' 70% of a MSF plantâ''s operational cost is energy.

MSF use is expected to decline in favor of less expensive methods such as Multi-effect Distillation (MED) and a hybrid approach of MED combined with membranes.

The other major method employed in most of the world outside of the Middle East, and accounting for 50% of the total market, is Reverse Osmosis (RO).

But all of these methods require huge amounts of energy and as a result are quite costly, not to mention they arenâ''t exactly environmentally friendly, discharging high salinity water as a byproduct of the desalination process.

Thatâ''s just some of the background to set the context for a White Paper recently released by the Meridian Institute that provides an excellent overview and comparison of conventional water treatment technologies with nanotechnology-based ones.

This is a thorough review of the technologies now available or in development, but I was looking for one in particular, and to my delight it was included.

It is the use of a self-assembled structure of the iron-storage protein ferritin to make nanoscale magnetic particles. It was developed by a UK-based Nanomagnetics that has now closed its doors.

The Nanomagneticsâ'' approach exploited a water purification process called Forward Osmosis.

Basically, the way this works is that if you had a bag made of a nanoporous membrane that more or less served as a filter and filled that bag with these magnetic nanoparticles and some clean â''drawâ'' water, and then put the bag into contaminated water, the dirty water would be pulled through the membrane into the bag by osmotic pressure exerted by the difference in concentration between whatâ''s outside the bag and whatâ''s inside. Then you could just pick up the nanoparticles in the bag with a magnetic field, and voila...clean water...and you could use the bag again

Compared to RO, Forward (or Direct) Osmosis offers:

â'¢ Lower energy process and efficiency

â'¢ Increased membrane lifetimes and reduced fouling

â'¢ Water recovery exceeding 85% for seawater (40-60% for Reverse Osmosis)

Just the simplicity of this proposed method always fascinated me as well as the serendipitous method it was discoveredâ''Nanomagnetics originally developed magneto-ferritin for data storage applicationsâ''always appealed to me.

But the technology has never been applied to a complete desalination system (the IP is up for sale), so it's not as if this technology is going to change the desalination plants of the world overnight.

But it is often argued against nanotechnology in water applications that they make processes more expensive, and with this technology the processes of desalination could be less expensive...at least theoretically. We'll have to see if the vagaries of capitalism watch another solution to drinkable water issues pass by the wayside or bring them into the light of day.

Ten years ago, in â''The Truth about Air Traffic Control,â'' I quoted Neil Planzer, then director of the Air Traffic System Requirements Service for the Federal Aviation Administration, who said that, by the year 2015, if the U.S. air transportation system does not change in any significant way, there could be a major aviation accident every seven to ten days.â'' Planzer at the time was looking at data that showed historical accident rates for certain volumes of traffic, and a future in which air traffic over the U.S. was likely to climb steadily. Adding the statistics together did not bode well for safety in 2015.

I caught up with Planzer this week; heâ''s now a vice president for air traffic management at Boeing. And he was happy to report that enough has indeed changed that his dire prediction wonâ''t be coming true.

The skies are safer, Planzer says, due, for the most part, to better technology on the

airplane. I wasnâ''t exactly surprised that, as a Boeing executive, he would say this, but he was able to give me compelling examples. Terrain warning systems, he pointed out, have drastically lowered the number of so called CFITs, or â''controlled flight into terrainâ'' accidents. (Ya gotta love how the aviation community makes flying into a mountain sound so scientific.) TCAS, the Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System, mandated for large commercial aircraft in the U.S. since 1993 and in Europe, Australia, and China since 2000, has proven itself by basically eliminating head-on collisions. Planzer also credits new techniques for training cockpit crews to communicate for reducing human error. And he says flow control on the ground, that is, sophisticated computer programs that adjust aircraft departures and arrivals so as to not overload air traffic controllers, have also increased safety.

This last technology may have made air travel safer, but not, as countless travelers who waited on the ground long past their scheduled departure times, more pleasant. For, while safety may have improved in the past ten years, capacity hasnâ''t. In fact, the Bureau of Transportation Statistics reported this week that July's U.S. airline on-time arrival rate of 69.8 percent made it the worst July on record. Said David Castelveter in a brief from the Air Transport Association, "We're seeing a growing volume of traffic in the airspace system and an air-traffic control system that is incapable of handling that growth."

â''To drive down the accident rate, and make safety supreme,â'' Planzer says, â''you, at times, restrict capacity.â''

So does that mean by 2015 weâ''ll hardly have any U.S. aviation accidents because most of us will be sitting on runways?

Planzer says no. Technology will improve capacity too, it will just take a few more years. First, ADS-B, Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, needs to roll-out system wide. In this aircraft positioning system, based on GPS instead of ground-based radar; aircraft broadcast their locations and velocity to ground controllers and other aircraft. Just last week, on 30 August, the FAA took major step towards implementing ADS-B by awarding a $1.8 billion contract to a team led by ITT. According to the contract schedule, ADS-B should be nationwide by 2013.

Next, the FAA needs to implement what it is calling System Wide Information Management, or SWIM (Planzer has a vested interest in this project, he admits, because Boeing is one of the companies working on developing this technology.) SWIM will let air traffic controllers and pilots share information, for example, the fact that a pilotâ''s collision avoidance system told him to dive suddenly. Right now, controllers donâ''t get that information, and may issue conflicting instructions.

Get ADSB, SWIM, and supporting technologies in place, Planzer says, prove they work, and then capacity can increase. Separation standards, for example, set today to allow for radarâ''s inaccuracies at 3 miles around terminals and 5 miles in long-distance routes, could be reduced, instantly getting more airplanes off the tarmac. And weâ''ll start seeing the impact of these efficiency improvements by 2015.

Weâ''ll check back with Planzer then. Meanwhile, what do you think?

The brilliant inventor who gave the world such remarkable achievements as the first human-powered aircraft has passed away. Paul MacCready, an innovator of all manner of aerodynamic vehicles died last week of an undisclosed ailment at the age of 81. He was a man ahead of his time.

MacCready first expressed his passion for flying machines at the age of 15, when he won a U.S. competition to build the best flying model of an airplane. It would be far from his last victory in major invention contests. According to an account by the Academy of Achievement, a non-profit museum of the arts and sciences in Washington, D.C., MacCready entered the Henry Kremer Prize competition, sponsored by the Royal Aeronautical Society, in 1977 because he needed the £50 000 award to offset a business debt incurred by a relative. The prize for the first person to prove human-powered sustainable flight was possible had lain unclaimed for 18 years before MacCready's Gossamer Condor took the honor with a one-man propulsion system able to fly for 1.15 miles.

MacCready came back two years later to win another prize (of £100 000) when a pilot powered his Gossamer Albatross across the English Channel. Later, he even took the third of the Kremer Prizes with his battery-assisted Bionic Bat, when it set a record for human-powered air speed. Continuing on this path, MacCready designed the Gossamer Penguin, the world's first successful solar-powered airplane, and the Solar Challenger, which awakened the public to the possibilities of solar energy. In 1981, the Challenger flew from Paris to Canterbury, England, a distance of 163 miles, rising to an altitude of 11 000 feet.

MacCready was even the person responsible for a minor craze in the Eighties, when he created a working life-size replica of a pterodactyl, a prehistoric dinosaur with a 36-foot wingspan. His remote-controlled flying model can be seen in the IMAX film "On the Wing."

In 1987, applying his knowledge of low-energy, high-output aerodynamic vehicles to use on the ground, MacCready's team designed the solar-powered Sunraycer for General Motors, to compete in the first competition to cross 1867 miles of Australian highway, from Darwin to Adelaide, the Solar Challenge. The Sunraycer led from start to finish, running at an average speed of 41.6 mph. This success led MacCready to work on a line of new electric-powered cars for General Motors, under the name of the EV1 project in the Nineties.

MacCready founded the firm AeroVironment (AV) in 1971, which specializes in unmanned aerial vehicles, among other things. According to his corporate bio, he received many honors throughout his life, including the Engineer of the Century award by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the NASA Public Service Grand Achievement Award, Aviation Week's Aerospace Laureate, and Time magazine's "100 Greatest Minds of the 20th Century." In 1991, he was inducted into the Aviation Hall of Fame.

Contributors to a special section for condolences on the AV website referred to the man as a cherished inspiration. "I will deeply miss Paul MacCready; he was a true friend," said Wally E. Rippel, the principal power electronics engineer of Tesla Motors, a creator of electric sports cars.

"More than any one I know, he was aware of the dangers we all face due to environmental abuse, and he was aware of the possibilities for solving these problems," said Rippel, who worked with MacCready on the EV1 project. "It is my desire that people will remember him not just for his aeronautical accomplishments, but also for his environmental vision and achievements. May others follow passionately in his footsteps."

What does satellite radio have in common with high-end organic supermarkets? Well, for one thing, most people seem to find them both overpriced.

But now it turns out that they may have similar anti-trust profiles, which is to say, slim enough profiles to pass muster at the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Media Daily News reported last week that "the proposed merger between XM and Sirius got a boost with the dismissal of an unrelated antitrust case." The unrelated case was the merger of Whole Foods Market and Wild Oats Markets, two of the largest whole/organic foods supermarkets in the country.

The FTC had gone to court to block the merger on anti-trust grounds, and last week a district judge dismissed the case.

Essentially, the judge ruled that their merger would not constitute a monopolistic action in the larger context of the supermarket and grocery store industry. The FTC had argued that the relevant market definition was in fact a subset of that industry: the "premium and natural organic food markets."

The ruling becomes relevant to satellite radio because the grounds for dismissal cited by the federal judge hinge on the same issue as the Sirius-XM merger: the relevant definition of the market where the deal is taking place.

While opponents of the satellite merger, like the National Association of Broadcasters, argue that it would create a monopoly in a discrete satellite radio market, Sirius CEO Mel Karmazin contends that the definition of the relevant market includes all terrestrial radio, as well as MP3 players and streaming radio on the Internet.

We've seen this before in technology, particularly in telecommunications, both at the FCC and within the halls of Congress. AT&T has largely reconstituted itself - it and Verizon are just about the last Baby Bells standing, AT&T being the much larger. (Recall the hilarious Stephen Collbert analysis, and note that Verizon could well be broken up, with much of it swallowed up by AT&T.)

One justification for this remonopolization of telephony is precisely the same as that of satellite radio - telephone companies compete in a larger space of telecommunications providers, including cable companies, Internet service providers, wireless data providers, and so on. So if the #1 and #3 companies merge, out of a total of four, as they did when SBC devoured BellSouth not long ago, forming what soon became the current AT&T, they were not the #1 and #3 telecommunications providers in a space with four players. The relevant space, as far as the FCC was concerned, included Comcast, Time Warner, Sprint, AOL, Google, and so on.

So too, when Whole Foods and Wild Oats merge, they are not the top two companies in their market, narrowly defined as health food stores, rather they're two relatively small players in the large world of supermarket chains. And Sirius and XM compete in a space that includes broadcast radio, Internet radio, the radio that comes from your cable provider, and maybe even the Musak in shopping mall.

To some extent, this seems disingenuous. If Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts merged, would we say that the result wasn't a monopolization of retail coffee, because, after all, McDonalds and Wal-Mart also sell coffee? Or because they're not the #1 and #2 companies in their market, rather they're two smaller players in the world of fast-food chains?

Still, there's no denying that consumers will find creative ways to get the goods and services they want. As the saying goes, the railroads should have thought of themselves in the transportation business. Whole Foods and Wild Oats ought to think of themselves as competing for supermarket dollars. And Sirius and XM ought to be thinking of themselves as in the delivery-of-digital-content-that-happens-to-mostly-be-audio-programs-right-now business.

Steve Fossett, the aeronautics legend who first circled the globe non-stop in a balloon and then matched that feat by flying an airplane solo around the world without refueling is missing today after a routine Labor Day flight over Nevada. The Associated Press is reporting that a coordinated search for him is underway, led by the U.S. Air Force's Rescue Coordination Center in Langley, Va.

A spokesperson for the Federal Aviation Administration told the AP that Fossett took off alone in a single-engine Bellanca Monday morning from a private airstrip on a ranch south of Smith Valley in western Nevada and didn't return as scheduled. When informed of the disappearance, local and federal authorities sprang into action.

"The Civil Air Patrol is looking for him," said Ian Gregor, an FAA official. "One problem is he doesn't appear to have filed a flight plan. They are working on some leads, but they don't know where he is right now."

In 2002, Fossett completed a solo circumnavigation of the planet in a balloon, nearly 20 000 miles, across the Southern Hemisphere, entering the record books. In 2005, he topped the mark for non-stop and non-refueled flying of a fixed wing aircraft with a global transit of over 25 000 miles, traveling to and from an airport in Salina, Kan., after three days.

A determined adventurer, the 63-year-old Fossett has also climbed some of the world's tallest peaks, including the Matterhorn in Switzerland and Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. He swam the English Channel in 1985, placed 47th in the Iditarod dogsled race in 1992 and participated in the 24 Hours of Le Mans auto race in 1996, according to the AP.

Earlier this year, Fossett was inducted into the National Aviation Hall of Fame in Dayton, Ohio. Receiving the honor, Fossett told the aeronautic enthusiasts, "I'm hoping you didn't give me this award because you think my career is complete, because I'm not done."

Aviation authorities will conduct a press conference on the search effort at 4 pm (Eastern Time).

UPDATE: Thirteen aircraft from the Air Force, the Civil Air Patrol (CAP), and the Nevada Highway Patrol are currently searching an area near Yerrington, Nev. A spokesperson for the Nevada CAP said Fossett may have been scouting dry lake beds in the area for the staging of a possible upcoming attempt to break the land speed record in a ground vehicle.

The New Scientist has assembled a special report on nanotechnology collecting 60 articles or more (I didnâ''t do a precise count) it has written over the past 12 months on the subject.

So far, I have just read one, which I suppose is meant to serve as an overview of the entire subject. It provides a condensed history of nanotech, which I think may stir a bit of controversy with the molecular nanotechnologists out there.

The author notes Richard Feynmanâ''s 1959 lecture â''Thereâ''s Plenty Room at the Bottomâ'' as the motivational beginning of nanotechnology. Then quickly jumps ahead to 1981 when IBM Zurich scientists Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer created the first scanning tunneling microscope (STM).

The piece gets around to mentioning K. Eric Drexler but mainly attributes to him the stirring up of concerns over nanotechnology by conjuring up the nightmare scenario of â''grey gooâ'' mentioned in his 1986 work, Engines of Creation.

It also somewhat controversially attributes to Drexler the creation of the term â''nanotechnologyâ''. This is one of those tempest-in-a-teapot debates, but others have noted that the term â''nanotechnologyâ'' was first used Norio Taniguchi in his 1974 published work â''On the Basic Concept of â''Nanotechnologyâ''â''.

The piece makes no distinction between the different visions of nanotechnology held by molecular nanotechnologists, like the Foresight Institute, or the advanced material nanotechnology vision as represented by the NNI.

I am not certain of the orthodoxy of molecular nanotechnologists, but is it accepted to refer to Drexler as a â''futuristâ''?

Wow! Thatâ''s a big number (or is it?)! In any case, it is one that has been put forward by the Project on Emerging Technologies in its nanotech consumer product inventory.

Now, of course, everybody quotes this number as solemn gospel truth. But, now some folks are beginning to look at the validity of this list. Nanoarchitecture.net and Howard Lovyâ''s Nanobot Blog are beginning to take a long, hard look at the list.

Howard Lovy applies some deductive reasoning on how the list has managed to get so long: â''â'¿it is important to remember that its Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies exists as a self-appointed watchdog for environmental and health risks. The more nanotech products it can claim, the higher the public alarm. The higher the alarm, the more the media and citizens are going to come to the Wilson Center for "answers."

Considering how long Howard Lovy has been covering nanotech, you can imagine that his skepticism may not be misplaced.

However, there are those who find the number extremely low, noting that a total of 500 consumer products (dubious though some of them may be) hardly seems to constitute an industrial revolution.