via Cordis

France will increase its funding for nanosciences and nanotechnologies from 30 million to 70 million euro over three years, the country’s Research Minister, François d’Aubert, has announced.

Speaking at the launch of France’s new National Research Agency, which will officially start operating in January, Mr d’Aubert explained that every effort possible would be made to maintain France’s position as a world leader in nanotechnologies.

Well this beats both the virtual island and grilled cheese.

via CBC news

A California biotech company, Genetic Savings and Clone, forged the kitten from the remains of Nicky, a cat who died last year.

“He is identical. His personality is the same…”

via Posthuman Blues… original article at BBC | Science/Nature

Their creations, small synthetic vesicles that can process (express) genes, resemble a crude kind of biological cell.

The parts for their “vesicle bioreactors”, as they call them, all come from diverse realms of life.

The soft cell walls are made of fat molecules taken from egg white. The cell contents are an extract of the common gut bug E. coli, stripped of all its genetic material.

 
(Photo credit: BBC)

via SciScoop

The climb of civilization can be tracked by what classes of materials humans are able to understand and use. Earth. Water. Air. Fire. Ceramics. Metals. Alloys. Chemicals. Plastics. Semiconductors. Superconductors. Next step up: Quantum critical matter? Modern materials science has been a boon for electronics, providing average consumers with palm-sized computers that would have filled a room just a few years ago for instance. But the push to create materials with radically new electronic properties has also produced a host of experimental results that textbook theories simply cannot explain.

“Our experimental observation points toward a complete breakdown of the traditional theory…”

A 22-year-old gamer purchased a virtual island in Project Entropia for $26,500, and is selling off plots to virtual developers. This almost beat the $28,000 grilled cheese auctioned on ebay.

MMORPGs (massively multi-player online role-playing games) have become enormously popular in the last 10 years with hundreds of thousands of gamers living out alternate lives in fantasy worlds.

a variety of new innovations recently covered in gizmo

A recent article by Howard Lovy. Also check out his NanoBot

The product: “A billion-processor laptop computer,” Drexler says, built atom by atom on a contraption that looks, at least in the animation, a bit like your average office copy machine.

Really, you just plug the thing into a wall socket (yes, the answer to the “out-of-control self-replicating nanobot gray goo” fear is to simply unplug the darn thing; sorry, Michael Crichton), and then something that resembles a nanoscale version of an automobile assembly line clanks out your product.

Tool tips grab individual atoms, conveyor belts with palettes and work pieces move the product down the line as more and more atoms are attached. And none of it so much as commits even the slightest misdemeanor against the laws of physics, say the producers.

“You’ll see it begin to change the culture,” Drexler announced in Washington, D.C. “We’ll be using it in talks. It will be a tremendous tool for getting a picture of where this path that we’re embarking on can end up.”

(from Roland Piquepaille’s Technology Trends)

3D Biometric Facial Recognition Comes To UK
In the UK, where the recent Queen’s speech about national identity cards generated lots of — mostly negative — coverage, another potentially invasive technology is being tested with very few criticism. For example, several police departments are now testing a 3D biometric facial recognition software from Aurora, a company based near Northampton. The use of facial recognition “is rapidly becoming the third forensic science alongside fingerprints and DNA,” according to a police officer who talked to BBC News for “How your face could open doors.” The company claims its software is so sophisticated it can make the distinction between identical twins. And if the civil liberties groups continue to be neutral, this technology could also be deployed in airports or by private companies. Even banks are thinking to put cameras in their ATM machines to identify you. The good thing is that you will not have to remember your PIN. On the other hand, as with every new technology, is it safe for your privacy and is it possible to hack the system?

(Photo credit: BBC)

What is captology?

Captology is the study of computers as persuasive technologies. This includes the design, research, and analysis of interactive computing products created for the purpose of changing people’s attitudes or behaviors.

Take 5 minutes to watch the captology videos from BJFogg’s Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford, then read the Captology Notebook