I always appreciate a reference to Star Trek and three-dimensional chess was one of my favourite concepts. You’ll find that and more in a May 19, 2020 news item on Nanowerk,
Researchers at The Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research at Osaka University [Japan] introduced a new liquid-phase fabrication method for producing nanocellulose films with multiple axes of alignment. Using 3D-printing methods for increased control, this work may lead to cheaper and more environmentally friendly optical and thermal devices.
Ever since appearing on the original Star Trek TV show in the 1960s, the game of “three-dimensional chess” has been used as a metaphor for sophisticated thinking. Now, researchers at Osaka University can say that they have added their own version, with potential applications in advanced optics and inexpensive smartphone displays.
It’s not exactly three-dimensional chess but this nanocellulose film was produced by 3D printing methods,
Caption: Developed multiaxis nanocellulose-oriented film. Credit: Osaka University
Many existing optical devices, including liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) found in older flat-screen televisions, rely on long needle-shaped molecules aligned in the same direction. However, getting fibers to line up in multiple directions on the same device is much more difficult. Having a method that can reliably and cheaply produce optical fibers would accelerate the manufacture of low-cost displays or even “paper electronics”–computers that could be printed from biodegradable materials on demand.
Cellulose, the primary component of cotton and wood, is an abundant renewable resource made of long molecules. Nanocelluloses are nanofibers made of uniaxially aligned cellulose molecular chains that have different optical and heat conduction properties along one direction compared to the another.
In newly published research from the Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research at Osaka University, nanocellulose was harvested from sea pineapples, a kind of sea squirt. They then used liquid-phase 3D-pattering, which combined the wet spinning of nanofibers with the precision of 3D-printing. A custom-made triaxial robot dispensed a nanocellulose aqueous suspension into an acetone coagulation bath.
“We developed this liquid-phase three-dimensional patterning technique to allow for nanocellulose alignment along any preferred axis,” says first author Kojiro Uetani. The direction of the patterns could be programmed so that it formed an alternating checkerboard pattern of vertically- and horizontally-aligned fibers.
To demonstrate the method, a film was sandwiched between two orthogonal polarizing films. Under the proper viewing conditions, a birefringent checkerboard pattern appeared. They also measured the thermal transfer and optical retardation properties.
“Our findings could aid in the development of next-generation optical materials and paper electronics,” says senior author Masaya Nogi. “This could be the start of bottom-up techniques for building sophisticated and energy-efficient optical and thermal materials.”
This new technique seems promising but there’ve been a lot of ‘cloaking’ devices announced in the years I’ve been blogging and, in all likelihood, I was late to the party so I’m exercising a little caution before getting too excited. For the latest development in cloaking devices, there’s a January 18, 2018 news item on Nanowerk,
Northwestern University researchers have developed a first-of-its-kind technique for creating entirely new classes of optical materials and devices that could lead to light bending and cloaking devices — news to make the ears of Star Trek’s Spock perk up.
Using DNA [deoxyribonucleic acid] as a key tool, the interdisciplinary team took gold nanoparticles of different sizes and shapes and arranged them in two and three dimensions to form optically active superlattices. Structures with specific configurations could be programmed through choice of particle type and both DNA-pattern and sequence to exhibit almost any color across the visible spectrum, the scientists report.
“Architecture is everything when designing new materials, and we now have a new way to precisely control particle architectures over large areas,” said Chad A. Mirkin, the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern. “Chemists and physicists will be able to build an almost infinite number of new structures with all sorts of interesting properties. These structures cannot be made by any known technique.”
The technique combines an old fabrication method — top-down lithography, the same method used to make computer chips — with a new one — programmable self-assembly driven by DNA. The Northwestern team is the first to combine the two to achieve individual particle control in three dimensions.
The study was published online by the journal Science today (Jan. 18). Mirkin and Vinayak P. Dravid and Koray Aydin, both professors in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering, are co-corresponding authors.
Scientists will be able to use the powerful and flexible technique to build metamaterials — materials not found in nature — for a range of applications including sensors for medical and environmental uses.
The researchers used a combination of numerical simulations and optical spectroscopy techniques to identify particular nanoparticle superlattices that absorb specific wavelengths of visible light. The DNA-modified nanoparticles — gold in this case — are positioned on a pre-patterned template made of complementary DNA. Stacks of structures can be made by introducing a second and then a third DNA-modified particle with DNA that is complementary to the subsequent layers.
In addition to being unusual architectures, these materials are stimuli-responsive: the DNA strands that hold them together change in length when exposed to new environments, such as solutions of ethanol that vary in concentration. The change in DNA length, the researchers found, resulted in a change of color from black to red to green, providing extreme tunability of optical properties.
“Tuning the optical properties of metamaterials is a significant challenge, and our study achieves one of the highest tunability ranges achieved to date in optical metamaterials,” said Aydin, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at McCormick.
“Our novel metamaterial platform — enabled by precise and extreme control of gold nanoparticle shape, size and spacing — holds significant promise for next-generation optical metamaterials and metasurfaces,” Aydin said.
The study describes a new way to organize nanoparticles in two and three dimensions. The researchers used lithography methods to drill tiny holes — only one nanoparticle wide — in a polymer resist, creating “landing pads” for nanoparticle components modified with strands of DNA. The landing pads are essential, Mirkin said, since they keep the structures that are grown vertical.
The nanoscopic landing pads are modified with one sequence of DNA, and the gold nanoparticles are modified with complementary DNA. By alternating nanoparticles with complementary DNA, the researchers built nanoparticle stacks with tremendous positional control and over a large area. The particles can be different sizes and shapes (spheres, cubes and disks, for example).
“This approach can be used to build periodic lattices from optically active particles, such as gold, silver and any other material that can be modified with DNA, with extraordinary nanoscale precision,” said Mirkin, director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology.
Mirkin also is a professor of medicine at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and professor of chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering in the McCormick School.
The success of the reported DNA programmable assembly required expertise with hybrid (soft-hard) materials and exquisite nanopatterning and lithographic capabilities to achieve the requisite spatial resolution, definition and fidelity across large substrate areas. The project team turned to Dravid, a longtime collaborator of Mirkin’s who specializes in nanopatterning, advanced microscopy and characterization of soft, hard and hybrid nanostructures.
Dravid contributed his expertise and assisted in designing the nanopatterning and lithography strategy and the associated characterization of the new exotic structures. He is the Abraham Harris Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in McCormick and the founding director of the NUANCE center, which houses the advanced patterning, lithography and characterization used in the DNA-programmed structures.
As noted earlier, it could be a while before cloaking devices are made available. In the meantime, you may find this image inspiring,
Caption: Northwestern University researchers have developed a new method to precisely arrange nanoparticles of different sizes and shapes in two and three dimensions, resulting in optically active superlattices. Credit: Northwestern University
As you might suspect, a neuristor is based on a memristor .(For a description of a memristor there’s this Wikipedia entry and you can search this blog with the tags ‘memristor’ and neuromorphic engineering’ for more here.)
Being new to neuristors ,I needed a little more information before reading the latest and found this Dec. 24, 2012 article by John Timmer for Ars Technica (Note: Links have been removed),
Computing hardware is composed of a series of binary switches; they’re either on or off. The other piece of computational hardware we’re familiar with, the brain, doesn’t work anything like that. Rather than being on or off, individual neurons exhibit brief spikes of activity, and encode information in the pattern and timing of these spikes. The differences between the two have made it difficult to model neurons using computer hardware. In fact, the recent, successful generation of a flexible neural system required that each neuron be modeled separately in software in order to get the sort of spiking behavior real neurons display.
But researchers may have figured out a way to create a chip that spikes. The people at HP labs who have been working on memristors have figured out a combination of memristors and capacitors that can create a spiking output pattern. Although these spikes appear to be more regular than the ones produced by actual neurons, it might be possible to create versions that are a bit more variable than this one. And, more significantly, it should be possible to fabricate them in large numbers, possibly right on a silicon chip.
The key to making the devices is something called a Mott insulator. These are materials that would normally be able to conduct electricity, but are unable to because of interactions among their electrons. Critically, these interactions weaken with elevated temperatures. So, by heating a Mott insulator, it’s possible to turn it into a conductor. In the case of the material used here, NbO2, the heat is supplied by resistance itself. By applying a voltage to the NbO2 in the device, it becomes a resistor, heats up, and, when it reaches a critical temperature, turns into a conductor, allowing current to flow through. But, given the chance to cool off, the device will return to its resistive state. Formally, this behavior is described as a memristor.
To get the sort of spiking behavior seen in a neuron, the authors turned to a simplified model of neurons based on the proteins that allow them to transmit electrical signals. When a neuron fires, sodium channels open, allowing ions to rush into a nerve cell, and changing the relative charges inside and outside its membrane. In response to these changes, potassium channels then open, allowing different ions out, and restoring the charge balance. That shuts the whole thing down, and allows various pumps to start restoring the initial ion balance.
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Here’s a link to and a citation for the research paper described in Timmer’s article,
A scalable neuristor built with Mott memristors by Matthew D. Pickett, Gilberto Medeiros-Ribeiro, & R. Stanley Williams. Nature Materials 12, 114–117 (2013) doi:10.1038/nmat3510 Published online 16 December 2012
A future android brain like that of Star Trek’s Commander Data might contain neuristors, multi-circuit components that emulate the firings of human neurons.
Neuristors already exist today in labs, in small quantities, and to fuel the quest to boost neuristors’ power and numbers for practical use in brain-like computing, the U.S. Department of Defense has awarded a $7.1 million grant to a research team led by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The researchers will mainly work on new metal oxide materials that buzz electronically at the nanoscale to emulate the way human neural networks buzz with electric potential on a cellular level.
A July 28, 2017 Georgia Tech news release, which originated the news item, delves further into neuristors and the proposed work leading to an artificial retina that can learn (!). This was not where I was expecting things to go,
But let’s walk expectations back from the distant sci-fi future into the scientific present: The research team is developing its neuristor materials to build an intelligent light sensor, and not some artificial version of the human brain, which would require hundreds of trillions of circuits.
But an artificial retina that can learn autonomously appears well within reach of the research team from Georgia Tech and Binghamton University. Despite the term “retina,” the development is not intended as a medical implant, but it could be used in advanced image recognition cameras for national defense and police work.
At the same time, it would significantly advance brain-mimicking, or neuromorphic, computing. The research field that takes its cues from what science already does know about how the brain computes to develop exponentially more powerful computing.
The retina would be comprised of an array of ultra-compact circuits called neuristors (a word combining “neuron” and “transistor”) that sense light, compute an image out of it and store the image. All three of the functions would occur simultaneously and nearly instantaneously.
“The same device senses, computes and stores the image,” Doolittle said. “The device is the sensor, and it’s the processor, and it’s the memory all at the same time.” A neuristor itself is comprised in part of devices called memristors inspired by the way human neurons work.
Brain vs. PC
That cuts out loads of processing and memory lag time that are inherent in traditional computing.
Take the device you’re reading this article on: Its microprocessor has to tap a separate memory component to get data, then do some processing, tap memory again for more data, process some more, etc. “That back-and-forth from memory to microprocessor has created a bottleneck,” Doolittle said.
A neuristor array breaks the bottleneck by emulating the extreme flexibility of biological nervous systems: When a brain computes, it uses a broad set of neural pathways that flash with enormous data. Then, later, to compute the same thing again, it will use quite different neural paths.
Traditional computer pathways, by contrast, are hardwired. For example, look at a present-day processor and you’ll see lines etched into it. Those are pathways that computational signals are limited to.
The new memristor materials at the heart of the neuristor are not etched, and signals flow through the surface very freely, more like they do through the brain, exponentially increasing the number of possible pathways computation can take. That helps the new intelligent retina compute powerfully and swiftly.
Terrorists, missing children
The retina’s memory could also store thousands of photos, allowing it to immediately match up what it sees with the saved images. The retina could pinpoint known terror suspects in a crowd, find missing children, or identify enemy aircraft virtually instantaneously, without having to trawl databases to correctly identify what is in the images.
Even if you take away the optics, the new neuristor arrays still advance artificial intelligence. Instead of light, a surface of neuristors could absorb massive data streams at once, compute them, store them, and compare them to patterns of other data, immediately. It could even autonomously learn to extrapolate further information, like calculating the third dimension out of data from two dimensions.
“It will work with anything that has a repetitive pattern like radar signatures, for example,” Doolittle said. “Right now, that’s too challenging to compute, because radar information is flying out at such a high data rate that no computer can even think about keeping up.”
Smart materials
The research project’s title acronym CEREBRAL may hint at distant dreams of an artificial brain, but what it stands for spells out the present goal in neuromorphic computing: Cross-disciplinary Electronic-ionic Research Enabling Biologically Realistic Autonomous Learning.
The new materials have already been created, and they work, but the researchers don’t yet fully understand why.
Much of the project is dedicated to examining quantum states in the materials and how those states help create useful electronic-ionic properties. Researchers will view them by bombarding the metal oxides with extremely bright x-ray photons at the recently constructed National Synchrotron Light Source II.
Grant sub-awardee Binghamton University is located close by, and Binghamton physicists will run experiments and hone them via theoretical modeling.
‘Sea of lithium’
The neuristors are created mainly by the way the metal oxide materials are grown in the lab, which has advantages over building neuristors in a more wired way.
This materials-growing approach is conducive to mass production. Also, though neuristors in general free signals to take multiple pathways, Georgia Tech’s neuristors do it much more flexibly thanks to chemical properties.
“We also have a sea of lithium, and it’s like an infinite reservoir of computational ionic fluid,” Doolittle said. The lithium niobite imitates the way ionic fluid bathes biological neurons and allows them to flash with electric potential while signaling. In a neuristor array, the lithium niobite helps computational signaling move in myriad directions.
“It’s not like the typical semiconductor material, where you etch a line, and only that line has the computational material,” Doolittle said.
Commander Data’s brain?
“Unlike any other previous neuristors, our neuristors will adapt themselves in their computational-electronic pulsing on the fly, which makes them more like a neurological system,” Doolittle said. “They mimic biology in that we have ion drift across the material to create the memristors (the memory part of neuristors).”
Brains are far superior to computers at most things, but not all. Brains recognize objects and do motor tasks much better. But computers are much better at arithmetic and data processing.
Neuristor arrays can meld both types of computing, making them biological and algorithmic at once, a bit like Commander Data’s brain.
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The research is being funded through the U.S. Department of Defense’s Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) Program under grant number FOA: N00014-16-R-FO05. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of those agencies.
I think these Australian scientists are bigger fans of Dr. Who than Star Trek if I read this March 8, 2017 news item on Nanowerk rightly (Note: A link has been removed),
Physicists have designed a handheld device inspired by the sonic screwdriver in Doctor Who and the tricorder in Star Trek that will use the power of MRI and mass spectrometry to perform a chemical analysis of objects (Nano Letters, “Nanomechanical Sensing Using Spins in Diamond”).
The sonic screwdriver is a tool used in Doctor Who to scan and identify matter, among other functions, while the multi-purpose tricorder in Star Trek can provide a detailed analysis of living things.
This video confirms the scientists’ Dr. Who fanhood,
Lead researcher Dr Marcus Doherty from ANU said the team had proven the concept of a diamond-based quantum device to perform similar functions to these science fiction tools and would now develop a prototype.
“Laboratories and hospitals will have the power to do full chemical analyses to solve complex problems with our device that they can afford and move around easily,” said Dr Doherty from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering (RSPE).
“This device is going to enable many people to use powerful instruments like molecular MRI machines and mass spectrometers much more readily.”
Dr Doherty said medical researchers could use the device to weigh and identify complex molecules such as proteins, which drive diseases, such as cancer, and cures for those diseases.
“Every great advance for microscopy has driven scientific revolution,” he said.
“Our invention will help to solve many complex problems in a wide range of areas, including medical, environmental and biosecurity research.”
Molecular MRI is a form of the common medical imaging technology that is capable of identifying the chemical composition of individual molecules, while mass spectrometers measure the masses within a sample.
Co-researcher Michael Barson said the device would use tiny defects in a diamond to measure the mass and chemical composition of molecules with advanced quantum techniques borrowed from atomic clocks and gravitational wave detectors.
“For the mass spectrometry, when a molecule attaches to the diamond device, its mass changes, which changes the frequency, and we measure the change in frequency using the defects in the diamond,” said Mr Barson, a PhD student from RSPE.
“For the MRI, we are looking at how the magnetic fields in the molecule will influence the defects as well.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Nanomechanical Sensing Using Spins in Diamond by Michael S. J. Barson, Phani Peddibhota, Preeti Ovartchaiyapong, Kumaravelu Ganesan, Richard L. Taylor, Matthew Gebert, Zoe Mielens, Berndt Koslowski, David A. Simpson, Liam P. McGuinness, Jeffrey McCallum, Steven Prawer, Shinobu Onoda, Takeshi Ohshima, Ania C. Bleszynski Jayich, Fedor Jelezko, Neil B. Manson, and Marcus W. Doherty. Nano Lett., 2017, 17 (3), pp 1496–1503 DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b04544 Publication Date (Web): February 1, 2017
“Beam me up, Scotty” – even if Captain Kirk supposedly never said this exact phrase, it remains a popular catch-phrase to this day. Whenever the chief commander of the television series starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701) wanted to go back to his control centre, this command was enough to take him back to the control centre instantly – travelling through the infinity of outer space without any loss of time.
But is all of this science fiction that was thought up in the 1960s? Not quite: Physicists are actually capable of beaming–or “teleporting” as it is called in technical language – if not actual solid particles at least their properties.
“Many of the ideas from Star Trek that back then appeared to be revolutionary have become reality,” explains Prof. Dr Alexander Szameit from the University of Jena (Germany). “Doors that open automatically, video telephony or flip phones–all things we have first seen on the starship USS Enterprise,” exemplifies the Juniorprofessor of Diamond-/Carbon-Based Optical Systems. So why not also teleporting? “Elementary particles such as electrons and light particles exist per se in a spatially delocalized state,” says Szameit. For these particles, it is with a certain probability thus possible to be in different places at the same time. “Within such a system spread across multiple locations, it is possible to transmit information from one location to another without any loss of time.” This process is called quantum teleportation and has been known for several years.
The team of scientists lead by science fiction fan Szameit has now for the first demonstrated in an experiment that the concept of teleportation does not only persist in the world of quantum particles, but also in our classical world. …
They used a special form of laser beams in the experiment. “As can be done with the physical states of elementary particles, the properties of light beams can also be entangled,” explains Dr Marco Ornigotti, a member of Prof. Szameit’s team. For physicists, “entanglement” means a sort of codification. “You link the information you would like to transmit to a particular property of the light,” clarifies Ornigotti who led the experiments for the study that was now presented.
In their particular case, the physicists have encoded some information in a particular polarisation direction of the laser light and have transmitted this information to the shape of the laser beam using teleportation. “With this form of teleportation, we can, however, not bridge any given distance,” admits Szameit. “On the contrary, classic teleportation only works locally.” But just like it did at the starship USS Enterprise or in quantum teleportation, the information is transmitted fully and instantly, without any loss of time. And this makes this kind of information transmission a highly interesting option in telecommunication for instance, underlines Szameit.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Demonstration of local teleportation using classical entanglement by Diego Guzman-Silva, Robert Brüning, Felix Zimmermann, Christian Vetter, Markus Gräfe, Matthias Heinrich, Stefan Nolte, Michael Duparré, Andrea Aiello, Marco Ornigotti and Alexander Szameit. Laser & Photonics Reviews DOI: 10.1002/lpor.201500252 Article first published online: 11 JAN 2016
The story of science in the Muslim world is extraordinary, influencing science to this day, and is not well known even within its own community. The days when Muslim or Islamic scientists led the world are long gone and that is cause for concern. An Oct. 29, 2015 Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology press release on EurekAlert argues that universities in Muslim countries must reinvent themselves to transform society and achieve scientific excellence,
A Task Force of international experts, formed by the Muslim World Science Initiative, today released a report [Science at Universities of the Muslim World] on the state of science at universities of the Muslim world.
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To assess the state of science at universities of the Muslim world, the Task Force reviewed the rankings of Muslim-world’s universities globally, scientific production (number of papers published and citations), the level of spending on research and development (R&D), female participation in the scientific workforce, and other indicators.
The results were compared to those of countries deemed comparable in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, e.g. Brazil, Israel, Spain, South Africa, and South Korea.
The Task Force noted recent improvements in scientific publishing across a number of countries and a relatively healthy gender ratio among university students, even though the overall state of science in the Muslim World remains ‘poor,’ as depicted by
the disproportionately small number of Nobel Laureates
the small number of universities in top global rankings
the low spending on R&D, and
the abysmal performance of pre-university students on math and science tests
Seeking to assess if universities were the ‘main culprits’ in this sorry state of affairs, the Task Force highlighted significant challenges at the Universities of the Muslim World.
In particular, the Task Force lamented the fact that science education in most Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) member countries was extremely narrow in focus and did little to enable students to think critically, especially beyond their respective domains of specialty.
The Task Force calls for broad liberal education for scientists and engineers to enable them to function effectively in addressing complex multi-disciplinary challenges that the world faces today.
The Task Force also noted that self-censorship was often practiced in the selection of topics to be taught, particularly regarding controversial subjects such as the theory of evolution.
The Task Force called for the introduction and systematic study of philosophy of science and history of the sciences of the Muslim ‘Golden Age’ and beyond for students to navigate and develop a perspective on these difficult disciplinary boundaries and overlaps. The language of instruction also created significant challenges.
Faculty members were also ill-trained to teach using cutting-edge methods such as inquiry-based science education and had little autonomy to innovate.
While the Task Force called for greater autonomy for the universities, it also emphasized that they must become meritocracies and aspire for true scientific excellence rather than playing for temporary gains in numbers or rankings. It also calls for zero tolerance on plagiarism and other forms of academic misconduct.
The Report of the Task Force includes: a foreword by the Chair, Tan Sri Zakri Abdul Hamid, the main assessment and recommendations, and individual essays written by the Task Force members on issues, including
Science, Society & the University
Are universities of the Muslim world helping spread a culture of science through society?
Should Religion Be Kept Out of the Science Classroom?
STEM Education and the Muslim Gender Divide and
The Need of Liberal Education for Science and Engineering
The Task Force is putting out an open call for universities across the Muslim world to join a voluntary Network of Excellence of Universities for Science (NEXUS), to be launched early next year.
This peer group will be managed by the task force and housed in Tan Sri Zakri’s office. NEXUS will run summer schools for university administrators, monitor the progress of reforms at participating universities, and issue a peer report card that will assess the performance of the universities in meeting milestones, thus recognizing and inspiring further improvements. True transformation will require much broader action from ministries, regulators and funding agencies, and these may be the most resistant to change.
Releasing the Report of the Task Force, Tan Sri Zakri Abdul Hamid stressed that “universities must reinvent themselves to lead the scientific reforms in the Muslim World, and as they do so they must embrace key ideas of merit and transparency, engagement with society, and pedagogical and curricular innovation.”
Professor Nidhal Guessoum, the Task Force’s Convenor, noted that “Task Force members strongly believe that the most appropriate venue for action on our recommendations is the university itself. The most essential ingredient in creating excellence in science and science teaching at a university is a realization, within a university’s highest leadership and its faculty, of the need to give up the old and dated ways, renew the purpose, and re-write the genetic code of their university.
Dr. Athar Osama, the Director of the Project noted that “the purpose of Muslim World Science Initiative is to jumpstart a dialogue within the society on critical issues at the intersection of science, society, and Islam. The Task Force has done a commendable job in laying the groundwork for a very important conversation about our universities.”
The divide between science/technology/engineering/mathematics (STEM) education and other fields of interest such as social sciences, the arts, and the humanities may be larger in the Islamic world (and to some extent reversed with humanities looking down on science) but it is a problem elsewhere, often expressed as a form of snobbery, as I alluded to in my Aug. 7, 2015 posting titled: Science snobbery and the problem of accessibility.
An Oct. 28, 2015 Nature essay about Islam, science, and the report by Nidhal Guessou and Athar Osama (two members of the Task Force; Note: Links have been removed) provides more context,
The Islamic civilization lays claim to the world’s oldest continually operational university. The University of Qarawiyyin was founded in Fes, Morocco, in ad 859, at the beginning of an Islamic Golden Age. Despite such auspicious beginnings, universities in the region are now in dire straits, as demonstrated by a report we have authored, released this week (see go.nature.com/korli3).
The 57 countries of the Muslim world — those with a Muslim-majority population, and part of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) — are home to nearly 25% of the world’s people. But as of 2012, they had contributed only 1.6% of the world’s patents, 6% of its academic publications, and 2.4% of the global research expenditure1, 2.
The authors note problems and at least one success with regard to curriculum (from the Nature essay; Note: Links have been removed),
Science classes themselves have serious problems. The textbooks used in OIC universities are often imported from the United States or Europe. Although the content is of a high standard, they assume a Western experience and use English or French as the language of instruction. This disadvantages many students, and creates a disconnect between their education and culture. To encourage the production of higher-quality, local textbooks and other academic material, universities need to reward staff for producing these at least as much as they do for research publication.
Some basic facts are seen as controversial, and marginalized. Evolution, for example, is usually taught only to biology students, often as “a theory”, and is rarely connected to the rest of the body of knowledge. One ongoing study has found, for example, that most Malaysian physicians and medical students reject evolution (see go.nature.com/38cswo). Evolution needs to be taught widely and shown to be compatible with Islam and its culture6. Teaching the philosophy and history of science would help, too.
The global consensus is that enquiry-based science education fosters the deepest understanding of scientific concepts and laws. But in most OIC universities, lecture-based teaching still prevails. Exceptions are rare. One is the Petroleum Institute, an engineering university in Abu Dhabi, UAE, where the faculty has created a hands-on experience with positive results on student interest and enrolment, particularly of women.
For anyone interested in the full report, it can be requested from the Muslim Science website.
One final comment, here’s the list of task force members in the Oct. 29, 2015 news release which includes someone from Mauritius (my father was born there),
Tan Sri Zakri Abdul Hamid, Science Advisor to Prime Minister of Malaysia, Chair of the Task Force on Science at the Universities of the Muslim World
Prof. Nidhal Guessoum, American University of Sharjah, UAE, Convenor of the Task Force on Science at Universities of the Muslim World
Dr. Mohammad Yusoff Sulaiman, President and CEO, MiGHT, Malaysia, Co-Convenor of the Task Force on Science at Universities of the Muslim World.
Dr. Moneef Zou’bi, Executive Director, Islamic World Academy of Science (IAS)
Prof. Adil Najam, Dean Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University and former Vice Chancellor, Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS)
Prof. Ameenah Gurib-Fakim, Fellow of IAS, President of the Republic of Mauritius, and Professor at University of Mauritius
Prof. Mustafa El-Tayeb, President , Future University, Khartoum, Sudan
Prof. Abdur Razak Dzulkifli, President of International Association of Universities (IAU), and former Vice Chancellor USM, Malaysia
Dr. Nadia Alhasani, Dean of Student Life (formerly Dean of Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE), The Petroleum Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Prof. Jamal Mimouni, Professor, University of Constantine-1, Algeria
Dr. Dato Lee Yee Cheong, Chair ISTIC Governing Board / Chair IAP SEP Global Council
Prof. Michael Reiss, Professor of Science Education, UCL Institute of Education, University College, London, Expert Advisor to the Muslim-Science.Com Task Force on Science at Universities of the Muslim World
Prof. Bruce Alberts, Professor of Biochemistry, University of California, San Francisco; President Emeritus, National Academy of Sciences, and Recipient, 2014 US Presidential Medal of Science, Expert Advisor to the Muslim-Science.Com Task Force on Science at Universities of the Muslim World
Professor Shoaib S. H. Zaidi, Professor and Dean of School of Sciences and Engineering, Habib University, Karachi
Dr. Athar Osama, Founder Muslim World Science Initiative, and Project Director of the Task Forces Project.
This show is still making its way around the world with the latest stop, as of Oct. 20, 2015, at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt.
A Jan. 21, 2010 article by Nick Higham and Margaret Ryan for BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news online describes some of the exhibit highlights,
From about 700 to 1700, many of history’s finest scientists and technologists were to be found in the Muslim world.
In Christian Europe the light of scientific inquiry had largely been extinguished with the collapse of the Roman empire. But it survived, and indeed blazed brightly, elsewhere.
From Moorish Spain across North Africa to Damascus, Baghdad, Persia and all the way to India, scientists in the Muslim world were at the forefront of developments in medicine, astronomy, engineering, hydraulics, mathematics, chemistry, map-making and exploration.
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Salim Al-Hassani, a former professor of engineering at Umist (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) is a moving force behind the exhibition, 1001 Inventions.
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Visitors to the exhibition will be greeted by a 20 ft high replica of a spectacular clock designed in 1206 by the inventor Al-Jazari.
It incorporates elements from many cultures, representing the different cultural and scientific traditions which combined and flowed through the Muslim world.
The clock’s base is an elephant, representing India; inside the elephant the water-driven works of the clock derive from ancient Greece.
A Chinese dragon swings down from the top of the clock to mark the hours. At the top is a phoenix, representing ancient Egypt.
Sitting astride the elephant and inside the framework of the clock are automata, or puppets, wearing Arab turbans.
Elsewhere in the exhibition are displays devoted to water power, the spread of education (one of the world’s first universities was founded by a Muslim woman, Fatima al-Fihri), Muslim architecture and its influence on the modern world and Muslim explorers and geographers.
There is a display of 10th Century surgeons’ instruments, a lifesize model of a man called Abbas ibn Firnas, allegedly the first person to have flown with wings, and a model of the vast 100 yard-long junk commanded by the Muslim Chinese navigator, Zheng He.
The description of the exhibition items is compelling.
Science and the modern world debate (Humanism and Islam)
Yasmin Khan has written up a transcript of sorts in a Nov. 6, 2015 posting on the Guardian science blogs about a science debate (which took place Wednesday, Oct. 28, 2015 in London, UK) where Humanist and Islamic perspectives were being discussed (Note: Links have been removed),
Two important figures came head-to-head at Conway Hall, to discuss Islamic versus Humanist perspectives on science and the modern world. Jim Al-Khalili made the final public appearance of his term as president of the British Humanist Association during this stimulating, and at times provoking, debate with Ziauddin Sardar, chair of the Muslim Institute.
Al-Khalili advocated the values of the European Enlightenment, arguing that ever since the “Age of Reason” took hold during the 18th century, Humanists have looked to science instead of religion to explore and comprehend the world. Sardar upheld the view that it is the combination of faith and reason that offers a fuller understanding of the world, maintaining that it was this worldview that enabled the development of science in the Islamic golden Age.
A practising Muslim, Sardar is on an independent mission to promote rational, considered thought in interpreting the Qur’an. He explained that when he came to the UK from Pakistan, he found comfort in the familiar language of mathematics, which set him on a trajectory to train as a physicist: “God doesn’t need me, I need him. It makes me a better person and a better scientist”, he said.
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In short, Sardar’s view is that although human knowledge at times converges with the Qur’an, the text should certainly not be treated as a scientific encyclopaedia. In support of this view, Sardar lamented the emergence of the I’jaz movement, which insists the Qur’an contains descriptions of modern scientific phenomena ranging from quantum mechanics to accurate descriptions of the stages of embryology and geology. In Sardar’s opinion, this stems from insecurity and a personal need to vindicate Islam to others.
Jim Al-Khalili agreed that ascribing literal meanings to religious texts can be perilous and that these verses should be interpreted more metaphorically. Likewise, when Einstein famously said “God does not play dice” he was using a figure of speech to acknowledge that there are things we don’t yet understand but this shouldn’t stop us from trying to find out more.
Whilst Al-Khalili is a staunch atheist, he adopts what he describes as an “accommodationist” approach in his interactions with people of religious faith: “I don’t think people who believe in God are irrational, I just don’t see a need to believe there is a purpose for why things are the way they are.” Born in Bagdad, Al-Khalili grew up in Iraq. His mother was Christian and his father was Shia, but he never heard them quarrel about religion. By the time he reached his teens he felt that he had distanced himself from needing any form of spirituality and his subsequent scientific training cemented this worldview. He asserted that his core values are empathy, humility and respect, without being driven by a reward in an afterlife: “It’s not just people of religious faith that have a moral compass – morality is what makes us human.”
I encourage you to read Khan’s piece (Nov. 6, 2015 posting) in its entirety as she provides historical and contemporary context to what seems to have been a fascinating and nuanced debate. Plus, there’s a bit of a bonus at the end where Khan is described as the producer of Sindbad Sci-Fi, a website where they are Reimagining Arab Science Fiction. From the website’s About page,
Sindbad Sci-Fi is an initiative for spurring the discovery of and engagement with Arab Science Fiction through dialogue. Our aim is to sustain a growing community of interest through brokering face-to-face and online discussion, building new partnerships and project collaborations along the way.
Many of us know and love Sindbad the sailor as the fictional sailor from the Arabian Book of OneThousand and One Nights, considered as being an early composite work of proto-science fiction and fantasy. His extraordinary voyages led him to adventures in magical places whilst meeting monsters and encountering supernatural phenomena.
Sindbad Sci-Fi is reviving Sindbad’s adventurous spirit for exploration and discovery. Join us as we continue star trekking across the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and beyond. Together, we will boldly go where no one else has gone before!
I’m pretty sure somebody associated with this site is a Star Trek fan.
It’s been two years (my Aug. 16, 2013 posting features a German-Japanese collaboration) since the last quantum teleportation posting here. First, a little visual stimulation,
Captain James T Kirk (credit: http://www.comicvine.com/james-t-kirk/4005-20078/)
Captain Kirk, also known as William Shatner, is from Montréal, Canada and that’s not the only Canadian connection to this story which is really about some research at York University (UK). From an Oct. 1, 2015 news item on Nanotechnology Now,
Mention the word ‘teleportation’ and for many people it conjures up “Beam me up, Scottie” images of Captain James T Kirk.
But in the last two decades quantum teleportation – transferring the quantum structure of an object from one place to another without physical transmission — has moved from the realms of Star Trek fantasy to tangible reality.
Quantum teleportation is an important building block for quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum network and, eventually, a quantum Internet. While theoretical proposals for a quantum Internet already exist, the problem for scientists is that there is still debate over which of various technologies provides the most efficient and reliable teleportation system. This is the dilemma which an international team of researchers, led by Dr Stefano Pirandola of the Department of Computer Science at the University of York, set out to resolve.
In a paper published in Nature Photonics, the team, which included scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin and the Universities of Tokyo and Toronto [emphasis mine], reviewed the theoretical ideas around quantum teleportation focusing on the main experimental approaches and their attendant advantages and disadvantages.
None of the technologies alone provide a perfect solution, so the scientists concluded that a hybridisation of the various protocols and underlying structures would offer the most fruitful approach.
For instance, systems using photonic qubits work over distances up to 143 kilometres, but they are probabilistic in that only 50 per cent of the information can be transported. To resolve this, such photon systems may be used in conjunction with continuous variable systems, which are 100 per cent effective but currently limited to short distances.
Most importantly, teleportation-based optical communication needs an interface with suitable matter-based quantum memories where quantum information can be stored and further processed.
Dr Pirandola, who is also a member of the York Centre for Quantum Technologies, said: “We don’t have an ideal or universal technology for quantum teleportation. The field has developed a lot but we seem to need to rely on a hybrid approach to get the best from each available technology.
“The use of quantum teleportation as a building block for a quantum network depends on its integration with quantum memories. The development of good quantum memories would allow us to build quantum repeaters, therefore extending the range of teleportation. They would also give us the ability to store and process the transmitted quantum information at local quantum computers.
“This could ultimately form the backbone of a quantum Internet. The revised hybrid architecture will likely rely on teleportation-based long-distance quantum optical communication, interfaced with solid state devices for quantum information processing.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Advances in quantum teleportation by S. Pirandola, J. Eisert, C. Weedbrook, A. Furusawa, & S. L. Braunstein. Nature Photonics 9, 641–652 (2015) doi:10.1038/nphoton.2015.154 Published online 29 September 2015
Thanks to David Bruggeman and his Nov. 30, 2013 posting on the Pasco Phronesis blog for some fascinating information about the Hubble space telescope and its upcoming 30th anniversary in 2015 (Note: Links have been removed),
Bay Chamber Concerts commissioned a piece in advance of the 30th anniversary of the Hubble Space Telescope (H/T The Atlantic). Called Hubble Cantata, it is currently in two forms – a 22 minute version which can be heard online at the composer’s website (and is available for download), and a multimedia version that has been performed in public by soprano Jessica Rivera and the International Contemporary Ensemble. The goal is to develop a full cantata for two voices and instruments, which would include the same kinds of multimedia interludes focused on the Hubble Telescope and what it’s been able to see.
David has embedded a video (approximately 20 mins. running time) of the July 2013 premiere of the Hubble Cantata, a work, that is still in progress.
I have dug up a bit of information about Bay Chamber Concerts which is located in the US state of Maine and is both a school and a concert production company as per the About Us webpage on their website,
Bay Chamber has a rich history of presenting the best in performing arts in Midcoast Maine.
ALL YEAR, ALL-AROUND OUTSTANDING.
Founded in 1961 by brothers Andrew and Thomas Wolf, Bay Chamber Concerts features world-renowned artists year-round. Our Summer Concert Series and Music Festival in July and August feature over 30 events that redefine the standards for chamber music. From September to June the Performing Arts Series features classical, jazz, world music and dance events in a variety of venues throughout the region.
EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION.
The Bay Chamber Music School, located in the village of Rockport, offers private instruction, ensemble opportunities, group classes and other music education programming to local musicians and community members of all ages and abilities.
As part of our Community Engagement program, Bay Chamber presents concerts in alternative settings to audiences who might otherwise not have the ability to attend live performances. Concerts and workshops featuring Bay Chamber Concerts professional roster of musicians are presented at no charge in prisons, hospitals, assisted living facilities and more.
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The composer for this cantata is Paola Prestini and here’s more about the project and her collaborators from her (eponymous) website’s Projects page,
Hubble Cantata
in collaboration with artists
filmmaker CARMEN KORDAS & librettist ROYCE VAVREK
with soprano Jessica Rivera &
International Contemporary Ensemble
violinist and improviser, Cornelius Dufallo
texts inspired by astrophysicist Mario Livio
a Bay Chamber Concerts Commission
The Hubble is a contemporary multimedia cantata for the mezzo soprano Jessica Rivera, and the renowned International Contemporary Ensemble. Commissioned by Bay Chamber Concerts, the cantata is inspired by Hubble Telescope images. The work is a collaboration with librettist Royce Vavrek, filmmaker Carmen Kordas, and the famed astrophysicist, Mario Livio, of the Space Telescope Science Institute. The work is leading towards a full length cantata for soprano and baritone, for the Hubble’s 25th anniversary in 2015. This work is supported by the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The work exists in two versions, as a 22 minute work, and an evening length cantata that features music, electronics, filmed sequences with rare seen photographs and footage from the Hubble telescope, interlaced with sung poetic movements.
Prestini provides this compelling description of the work written Mario Livio on the website homepage,
By incorporating Mario Livio’s strong and poignant themes with music, visual art/film, and advanced technology, the Hubble Cantata promises to be one of the most exciting forays into the interdisciplinary dance of science and art, to date.
“We decided to symbolically anchor the Earth-based part of the lyrics on the agonizing experiences of a young woman struggling with a harsh reality. As Vavrek states in the introduction to the libretto: “Her footsteps tell stories.” The music and imagery for this section were partly inspired by the Japanese mythology-rich forest Aokigahara. Sadly, the historic association of this forest with demons has led to numerous suicides on the site. To connect the life (and death) experience of the young woman to the heavens, we used the ancient Peruvian geoglyphs known as the Nazca Lines. Again in Vavrek’s words: “The woman walks in patterns, pictures emerge in the soil… She creates her own private Nazca lines, tattooing the Earth with her history.” The Nazca lines in Peru are believed to have been created between the fifth and seventh centuries, and they are thought (at least by some researchers) to point to places on the horizon where certain celestial bodies rose or set. In other words, they truly marked a direct astronomical connection between the surface of the Earth and the heavens. In its conclusion, the Cantata completely intermingles the fate of the young woman with the ultimate fate of the stars. The shapes in the sand and the constellations in the sky become one, mirroring the tortuous path of human life in the dramatic Hubble images of outbursts that simultaneously mark stellar deaths and the promise for a new generation of stars, planets, and life.”
-Mario Livio
While this is somewhat off topic; it is related. Today (Dec. 2, 2013), Google is commemorating the 90th anniversary of opera singer. Maria Callas’ birth with a doodle as per this Dec. 2, 2013 news item on the Guardian website (Note: Links have been removed),
The birth of singer Maria Callas 90 years ago has been celebrated in a new Google doodle.
The animation shows the legendary soprano performing on stage. Callas, who died in 1977, was a colourful figure who was renowned as a prima donna.
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Last month, the actor Faye Dunaway said she was determined to finish a film – which she is also directing and producing – telling Callas’s life story. The Independent quoted Dunaway as saying: “That woman changed an art form and not many people can say that. Callas is to opera what Fellini is to cinema.”
Getting back to music and outer space, I was reminded of an episode in the classic Star Trek series that featured Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, the communications officer, singing a song about space,loneliness, and love,
For anyone as ignorant as I am about the difference between a cantata and an opera, here’s a definition for a cantata from Wikipedia (Note: Links have been removed),
A cantata (literally “sung”, derived from the Italian word “cantare”) is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir.
The meaning of the term changed over time, from the simple single voice madrigal of the early 17th century, to the multi-voice “cantata da camera” and the “cantata da chiesa” of the later part of that century, from the more substantial dramatic forms of the 18th century (including the 200-odd sacred and secular cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach) to the usually sacred-texted 19th-century cantata, which was effectively a type of short oratorio.[1] Several cantatas were written for special occasions, such as Christmas cantatas.
I wish the principals good luck with their Hubble Cantata project and look forward to hearing more about it as the Hubble’s 30th anniversary in 2015 rears.
In the foreseeable future there’ll be no need to stick needles/syringes into your arm (or other body part) to draw blood for testing if these Israeli scientists have their way. Instead, someone can take an image of your blood, from the Aug. 31, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,
An Israeli team has demonstrated a non-invasive technique for imaging blood cells in vivo that could eliminate the need to extract blood from many patients. Powered by the Andor Newton Electron Multiplying EMCCD camera, their high-resolution Spectrally Encoded Flow Cytometry (SEFC) probe offers primary care physicians the capability to detect directly a wide range of common medical disorders, such as anaemia and bacterial infection, and potentially life threatening conditions, including sepsis, thrombosis and sickle cell crisis.
As well as enabling an immediate medical response to be offered, SEFC could also allow large-scale screening for common blood disorders. Vitally, its ability to directly and continuously visualise blood cells flowing inside patients could also provide an early warning of a medical emergency, such as internal bleeding, in post-operative and critical-care conditions.
SEFC was developed by the Biomedical Optics Laboratory, headed by Dr. Dvir Yelin, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa. Their focus is the application of advanced optics to address some of today’s clinical challenges, particularly the development of non- or minimally-invasive diagnostic tools.
Here’s a description of the difficulties (and how they were solved) with imaging blood that’s beneath skin. From the Aug. 31, 2012 Andor news release,
According to Lior Golan, one of the researchers at the Biomedical Optics Laboratory, two major challenges needed to be solved. “SEFC Images of fast-moving blood cells are acquired from deep under the surface of the skin through tissue that scatters the light. This means that very little light is available and necessitates the use of a spectrometer equipped with a high-speed line camera. The Andor Newton DU970N-BV camera provided our team with a combination of high sensitivity and the required line rate for imaging physiological blood flow. Switching between 2-D image and full vertical binning mode on the Newton camera also made the alignment of the spectrometer very easy and the ability to customise the Labview software development kit to control the camera was very convenient.”
Having demonstrated the clinical potential of SEFC, the team believes that miniaturization of the probe’s optics is feasible to produce a compact, hand-held SEFC probe, free of moving parts and connected to the main system console by just a pair of optical fibers. This would allow the application of SEFC for minimally invasive applications, either as a standalone device or through the instrument channel of an endoscope.
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Antoine Varagnat, Product Specialist at Andor, notes that “Overcoming the challenges of meaningful bio-parameters measurement in vivo while maximizing patient comfort has been an increasing research focal point in recent years. Golan’s team has been very successful in that regards with their innovative technique, taking full advantage of the ultra low-light detection capability and acquisition speed capabilities of Andor’s Newton EMCCD detector and also opening the door to routine in vivo, non-invasive blood diagnosis equipment in the near future”.
I always liked it when the ‘Star Trek’ doctors diagnosed problems non-invasively by moving a ‘tricorder’ or other device over the body and with this work in Israel we seem to be moving closer to making that fiction a reality.
David Koepsell, author of Innovation and Nanotechnology: Converging Technologies and the End of Intellectual Property, is a philosopher, attorney, and educator who teaches at the Delft University of Technology (the Netherlands). He is also author of Who Owns You? The Corporate Gold Rush to Patent Your Genes.
In a Feb. 27, 2012 interview with Dr. J (James Hughes, executive director of the Institute of Ethics for Emerging Technologies [IEET] and producer/interviewer for Changesurfer radio), Koepsell discussed his book about nanotechnology and the disappearance of intellectual property regimes in a 28 min. 51 sec. podcast.
Koepsell and Dr. J provided a good description of converging technologies so I’m going to plunge in without much introduction.
I wasn’t expecting to hear about Marxism and the means of production but there it was, mentioned in the context of a near future society where manufacturing can be done by anyone, anywhere by means of molecular manufacturing or by means of 3D fabrication, or etc. The notion is that production will be democratized as will the intellectual property regime. There were several mentions of the state (government) no longer having control in the future over intellectual property, specifically patents and copyrights, and some discussion of companies that guard their intellectual property jealously. (I have commented on the intellectual property topic, most recently, in my Patents as weapons and obstacles posting in October 2011. Koepsell is mentioned in this posting.)
Both Koepsell and the interviewer (Dr. J) mentioned the possibility of widespread economic difficulty as jobs disappear due to the disappearance of manufacturing and other associated jobs as people can produce their own goods (much like you can with Star Trek’s replicators). But it did seem they mentioned job loss somewhat blithely, secure in their own careers as academics who as a group are not known for their manufacturing prowess or, for that matter, the production of any goods whatsoever.
It seems to me this future bears a remarkable resemblance to the past, where people had to create their own products by raising their own food, spinning, weaving, and sewing their own clothes, etc. The Industrial Revolution changed all that and turned most folks into ‘wage slaves’. As I recall, that’s from Marx and it’s a description of a loss of personal agency/autonomy, i.e., being a slave to wages (no longer producing your own food, clothing, etc.) and not a reference to poor wages as many believe (including me until I got a somewhat snotty professor for one of my courses).
The podcast is definitely worth your time if you don’t mind the references to Marx (there aren’t many) as the ideas are provocative even if you don’t agree. Koepsell describes how his interest in this area was awakened (he wrote about software, which is both copyrightable as writing and patentable as a machine).
The book is available as a free download or you can purchase it here. Here’s a brief excerpt from the book’s introduction (I removed a citation number),
Science demands unfettered inquiry into the workings of nature, and replaces the confidence previously demanded over rote knowledge with a practiced skepticism, and ongoing investigation. With the rise of the age of science came the need to develop new means of treating information. Scientific investigations conducted by ‘natural philosophers’ could only be conducted in full view, out in the open, with results published in meetings of scientific societies and their journals. Supplanting secret-keeping and obscurantism, the full sunlight of public and peer scrutiny could begin to continually cleanse false assumptions and beliefs, and help to perfect theories about the workings of the world. Science demanded disclosure, where trades and arts often encouraged secrets. And so as natural philosophers began to disseminate the results of their investigations into nature, new forms of trade, art, and industry began to emerge, as well as the demand for new means of protection in the absence of secrecy. Thus, as the scientific age was dawning, and helping to fuel a new technological revolution, modern forms of IP [intellectual property] protection such as patents and copyrights emerged as states sought to encourage the development of the aesthetic and useful arts. By granting to authors and inventors a monopoly over the practice of their art, as long as they brought forth new and useful inventions (or for artistic works, as long as they were new), nation states helped to attract productive and inventive artisans and trades into their borders. These forms of state monopoly also enabled further centralization of trades and industries, as technologies now could become immune from the possibility of ‘reverse-engineering’ and competitors could be kept at bay by the force of law. This sort of state-sanctioned centralization and monopoly helped build the industrial revolution (by the account of many historians and economists, although this assumption has lately been challenged) as investors now could commodify new technologies free from the threat of direct competition, secure in the safe harbor of a state-supported monopoly over the practice of a useful art for a period of time.
In many ways, traditional IP [intellectual property] was (and is) deemed vital to the development of large industries and their infrastructures, and to the centralized, assembly-line factory mode of production that dominated the twentieth century. With the benefit of a state-sanctioned monopoly, industry could build sufficient infrastructure to dominate a market with a new technology for the duration of a patent. This confidence assured investors that there would be some period of return on the investment in which other potential competitors are held at bay, at least from practicing the art as claimed in the patent. Factories could be built, supply chains developed, and a market captured and profited from, and prices will not be subject to the ruthless dictates of supply and demand. Rather, because of the luxury of a protected market during the period of protection, innovators can inflate prices to not only recoup the costs of investment, but also profit as handsomely as the captive market will allow.
For most of the twentieth century, IP allowed the concentration of industrial production into the familiar factory, assembly-line model. Even while the knowledge behind new innovation moved eventually into the public domain as patents lapsed, during the course of the term of patent protection, strictly monopolized manufacturing processes and their products could be heavily capitalized, and substantial profits realized, before a technique or technology lost its protection. But the modes and methods of manufacturing are now changing, and the necessity of infrastructural investment is also being altered by the emergence of new means of production, including what we’ll call ‘micromanufacturing’, which is a transitional technology on the way to true MNT (molecular nanotechnology), and is included in our discussions of ‘nanowares’. Essentially, assembly-lines and supply chains that supported the huge monopolistic market dominance models of the industrial revolution, well into the twentieth century, are becoming obsolete. If innovation and production can be linked together with modern and futuristic breakthroughs in micromanufacturing (in which small components can be fabricated and produced en mass, cheaply) and eventually molecular manufacturing (in which items are built on the spot, from the ground up, molecule by molecule), then we should consider whether the IP regimes that helped fuel the industrial revolution are still necessary, or even whether they were ever necessary at all. Do they promote new forms of innovation and production, or might they instead stifle potentially revolutionary changes in our manners of creation and distribution?
Amusingly, towards the end of the interview Dr. J plugs Koepsell’s ‘nanotechnology’ book by noting it’s available for free downloads then saying ‘we’re hoping you’ll buy it’ (at the publisher’s site).
