Tag Archives: iPod

Nano augments reality; PEN’s consumer nano products inventory goes mobile and interactive; Two Cultures; Michael Geller’s ‘Look at Vancouver’ event

Leave a reply

There was a nanotechnology mention hidden in a recent article (Augmented Reality is Both a Fad and the Future — Here’s Why by Farhad Manjoo in Fast Company) about a new iPhone application by Yelp, Monocle. From the article,

Babak Parviz, a bio-nanotechnologist at the University of Washington, has been working on augmented-reality contact lenses that would layer computer graphics on everything around us — in other words, we’d have Terminator eyes. “We have a vast amount of data on the Web, but today we see it on a flat screen,” says Michael Zöllner, an augmented-reality researcher at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research. “It’s only a small step to see all of it superimposed on our lives.” Much of this sounds like a comic-book version of technology, and indeed, all of this buzz led the research firm Gartner to put AR on its “hype cycle” for emerging technologies — well on its way to the “peak of inflated expectations.”

Manjoo goes on to note that augmented reality is not new although he’s not able to go back to the 1890s as I did in yesterday’s (Nov. 11, 2009) posting about using clouds to display data.

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has produced an exciting new iPhone application, findNano which allows users to access PEN’s consumer products inventory via their mobile phones. From the news item on Azonano,

findNano allows users to browse an inventory of more than 1,000 nanotechnology-enabled consumer products, from sporting goods to food products and electronics to toys, using the iPhone and iPod Touch. Using the built-in camera, iPhone users can even submit new nanotech products to be included in future inventory updates.

That bit about users submitting information for their database reminds me of a news item about scientists in the UK setting up a database that can be accessed by mobile phones allowing ordinary citizens to participate in gathering science information (I posted about it here). I wonder how PEN will track participation and if they will produce a report on the results (good and/or bad).

One thing I did notice is that PEN’s consumer products inventory has over 1000 items while the new European inventory I mentioned in my Nov. 10, 2009 posting has 151 items.

I finally finished reading The Two Cultures: and A Second Look (a publication of the text for the original talk along with an updated view) by C. P. Snow. This year is the 50th anniversary. My interest in Snow’s talk was reanimated  by Andrew Maynard’s postings about the anniversary and the talk in his 2020 Science blog. He has three commentaries starting here with a poll, and his May 5, 2009 and May 6, 2009 postings on the topic.

I had heard of The Two Cultures but understood it to be about the culture gap between the sciences and the arts/humanities. This is a profound misunderstanding of Snow’s talk/publication which was more concerned with raising the standard of living and health globally. Snow’s second look was a failed attempt to redress the misunderstanding.

From a writer’s perspective, his problem started with the title which sets the frame for his whole talk. He then opened with a discussion of literary intellectuals and scientists (bringing us back to the number two), their differences and the culture gap that ensues. Finally, over 1/2 of his talk was over by the time he started the serious discussion about extending the benefits of what he termed ‘the scientific revolution’ globally.

It’s an interesting read and some of it (the discussion about education) is still quite timely.

Michael Geller,  local architect, planner, real estate consultant, and developer in Vancouver (Canada), has organized an event to review the happenings in the city since the last election in 2008. From the news release (on Frances Bula’s blog),

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14, 20009 marks the one year anniversary of the last election day in Vancouver; a day that resulted in a significant change in the political landscape and leadership of our city.  The purpose of this event is to mark this anniversary with a review of the highlights of the past year in Vancouver municipal politics, particularly in terms of the accomplishments of Council and staff in the areas of housing, planning and development; fiscal management and economic development; and leadership.

The event will be held at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue (lower level) at 515 West Hastings from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm. Admission by donation. Geller has arranged a pretty interesting lineup for his three panel discussions although one of the commenters on Bula’s blog is highly unimpressed with both the speakers and anyone who might foolishly attend.

Happy 2009!

Leave a reply

I just read ‘How spintronics went from the lab to the iPod’ by W. Patrick McCray in the online January 2009 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, it’s here. The author is in the history department of the University of California at Santa Barbara and he provides an intriguing view of how nanotechnology, electronics, academic, military, and business interests converged in various applications, the best known being the iPod. He also provides a brief history of how the discovery (giant magnetoresistance) was made by two teams independently of each other (but almost simultaneously) who agreed to share credit and ultimately a Nobel prize. (BTW, that last bit contrasts nicely with Crick and Watson with their double helix and the way they took full credit when at least some should have gone to Rosalind Franklin.)

For anyone who doesn’t know about giant magnetoresistance (GMR), we start with magnetoresistance (from the article),

Magnetoresistance, a change in the electrical resistance of a conductor caused by an applied magnetic field was first observed … in 1857 (p. 2)

The source was not discovered until quantum mechanics became an area of interest,

… the physics underlying electron spin — which is the ultimate source of magnetism in most materials — dates back to … the golden era of quantum mechanics. The effect was quite small … but that all changed … in 1988. [One team in Germany and another team in France sandwiched very thin layers {1 nm} of nonmagnetic materials with magnetic materials to observe a significant {10% for one team and 50% for the other team} change in electrical resistance in the presence of a magnetic field. Presumably lowering the resistance which {researchers at IBM realized} meant that disc drives could become smaller and hold more information {which is how we ultimately with an iPod}.

GMR also represented the first example of a new kind of technology called ‘spintronics’, so-called because it exploits the spin of the electron, as well as its electric charge, store and process information. p. 2 (the stuff in square brackets is my attempt to massage the information so I don’t quote the entire article]

Do read the story.