Robobug: Scientists Clad Bacterium With Graphene To Make a Working Cytobot 41
Zothecula writes By cladding a living cell with graphene quantum dots, researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) claim to have created a nanoscale biomicrorobot (or cytobot) that responds electrically to changes in its environment. This work promises to lay the foundations for future generations of bio-derived nanobots, biomicrorobotic-mechanisms, and micromechanical actuation for a wide range of applications. "UIC researchers created an electromechanical device — a humidity sensor — on a bacterial spore. They call it NERD, for Nano-Electro-Robotic Device. The report is online at Scientific Reports, a Nature open access journal."
How much of the 'quantum' do we understand? (Score:2, Funny)
How much of the 'quantum' do we truly understand?
Do we know anything about the other side of the 'quantum dot'?
How do we know there isn't any 'quantum wisdom' hiding on the other side?
By cladding a living cell with things that comes with quantum dots we could be hooking that living cell up with some kind of superduper 'quantum brain' which is so powerful that it can easily defy the fabric of space-time itself !
What if that superduper 'quantum brain' reaches over to this world we live in through those 'quant
Not a robot (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article:
"We’ve taken a spore from a bacteria [sic], and put graphene quantum dots on its surface – and then attached two electrodes on either side of the spore," said Berry. "Then we change the humidity around the spore. When the humidity drops, the spore shrinks as water is pushed out. As it shrinks, the quantum dots come closer together, increasing their conductivity, as measured by the electrodes. We get a very clean response – a very sharp change the moment we change humidity."
So clearly, it's not a robot, it's a sensor.
Buzzword compliant (Score:2)
It may not be a cytobot but the synergy is 110% buzz word compliant. We put a bug in an electrical field and it reacted in a way similar to an elastomer or sponge.
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Step 2 is remote control, like what they're doing with cockroaches.
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Google "God Goo" (Score:1)
So will God Goo get us first, or AI?
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>Re:Google "God Goo"
I'm too afraid to; I half expect to see Rule 34 of the Almighty.
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No, 5% of humanity will evolve to survive those
Grey goo (Score:2)
here we come.
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seriously
this is the terrorist attack of 2215 or 2315
i'm no luddite, technological advance gives us just as much good as bad
but as we advance further and further, the power to do greater and greater good, and greater and greater evil, will be in the hands of smaller and smaller groups of people
such that some deranged cult will be able to kill us all in a few centuries. and then one of them will choose to do that
man, we really have to get off this planet
we need an insurance policy badly
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this is the terrorist attack of 2215 or 2315
Oww, bullshit. 'The terrorists' are by and large people who are uneducated, poor and without access to modern amenities, whether because they live in a 'pariah nation' or in a ghetto in Paris. This is what turns them into 'terrorists' in the first place. Hi-tech warfare requires marketable skills and healthy attitude, and these don't mix well with the circumstances that create terrorists, therefore people who have developed those skills rarely engage in terrorism.
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terrorists took down the world trade center with boxcutters
you don't seem to understand what determination means
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I can see the cartoon now:
Two Arab-looking guys in a basement, ineffectually sawing at steel beams with tiny knives.
"When Osama said we could take down the World Trade Center with boxcutters, I don't think this is what he meant!"
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You've never had to work around a bunch of PETA members, I take it. A lot of them are trust fund brats with enough money to buy used gene splicing equipment off eBay and the idea that Earth would be better off without humans.
They've just put accurate sensors on a bacteria. (Score:5, Insightful)
All the clever sensing is done by the bacteria, all they've done is attach a big flag to the bacteria so that when it does what it does we can tell.
Whilst this may be very useful, it's hardly outwitting nature, or creating new forms of life, or doing anything that'd be likely to be disastrous in any way.
It's as tho putting a radio collar on a polar bear turns it into some cyborg killing machine.
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It's as tho putting a radio collar on a polar bear turns it into some cyborg killing machine.
Not really a good comparison; the polar bear is already a killing machine, and putting a radio collar on it "could" make it a cyborg. It's either a cyborg killing machine, or a radio tracked killing machine.
The bacteria are in essence, armored AND tracked, which makes them pretty a more like Emo kids with smart phones who tweet their every action. Sounds counter productive; "LOL, just arrived at the Colon and man, this dude is whack!" Sorry, my slang is 10 years un-hip.
Scientific Breakthrough (Score:1)
In other news, in a breakthrough experiment scientists have scaled the experiment up to the macroscopic scale and strapped magnets to a pigeon, which now appears to react to other magnets in its vicinity.
Really? (Score:2)
" a humidity sensor — on a bacterial spore. They call it NERD,..."
For the first NERD I would have used a pizza-detector and not a humidity sensor.
And I always thought spores had humidity sensors built-in, after all it's kind of their 'thing'.
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