reposted from Advancednano.

Here is an article about outsourcing healthcare

 
With an estimated 45 million uninsured Americans, some 500,000 trekked overseas last year for medical treatment, according to the National Coalition on Health Care. Asian hospitals in Thailand, India and Singapore have long been swarmed by medical tourists looking for tummy tucks and face lifts, but many glitzy, marble-floored facilities are now gaining reputations for big-ticket procedures including heart surgery, knee and back operations.

This could also be a means of circumventing the Food and Drug Administrations 19 year drug approval process. A country could work with global drug and insurance companies to create a system of more advanced healthcare without restrictions from using newly discovered effective or promising approaches. Stem cells and regenerative treatments as well as life extension could be developed overseas with lower costs and fewer unnecessary delays. There would still be incentives to not apply treatments in a reckless fashion (too many people with bad results would be bad for future business).

Just as several small countries and states became tax and business havens with highly streamlined corporate laws and rules were created by lawyers and accountants, healthcare companies could create advanced healthcare havens.

The healthcare havens could also be used for the advancement and implementation of transhuman and life extension medicine.
 

Cross posted from advancednano.blogspot.com

Roland Piquepailles technology trends points out an animation of living cells by XVIVO
The animation explores "the mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus."

The technology used to study brain neurons in real time has been adapted for the real time study of other biological processes. This is going to rapidly boost our understanding of exactly how our cells and plant cells work. We can then modify those processes to boost food production or drugs and other products produced by biological means. Computer simulations will help to guide the understanding and the modifications of the processes. This will also accelerate transhumanist efforts to transcend current biology and improve human capabilities.

New technology addresses metabolism studying problems by measuring sugar flux in real time in individual cells, with subcellular resolution.

Frommer and his colleagues have used similar imaging tags, called fluorescent resonance energy transfer (FRET) sensors, to track sugars and neurotransmitters in animal cells. Most recently, the group used FRET sensors to study glutamate, an important mammalian neurotransmitter. Frommer has tracked glucose in cultured mammalian cells, but until now, plant tissues had proven problematic because of interference from the plants' virus defense mechanisms, as well as high background fluorescence in some plants.

To surmount these issues, Frommer's team dramatically improved the sensors, while inserting them in mutant Arabidopsis plants with disabled defense genes. The fluorescent tags worked well where they had failed before.

FRET sensors are encoded by genes that, in theory, can be engineered into any cell line or organism. They are made of two fluorescent proteins that produce different colors of light--one cyan and one yellow--connected by a third protein that resembles a hinged clam shell. The two fluorescent proteins are derived from jellyfish, and the third from a bacterium; the shape of the clam shell protein determines which sugar or other molecule the sensor can detect. When a target molecule such as glucose or sucrose binds to the third protein, the hinge opens, changing the distance and orientation of the fluorescent proteins. This physical change affects the energy transfer between the cyan and yellow markers.

When the researchers hit the tags with light of a specific wavelength, the cyan tag starts to fluoresce. If the yellow tag is close enough, the cyan tag will transfer its energy to the yellow tag, causing it to resonate and fluoresce as well. This energy transfer affects how much cyan and yellow fluorescence can be seen, and by calculating this ratio, researchers can accurately track molecules such as glucose and sucrose in both time and space.

"The strength of this technology lies in its elegant simplicity; with the power of computational design, we can potentially design FRET tags to detect virtually any small molecule in living cells," Frommer said.

cross posted from advancednano

Many groups are concerned about transhumanism and nanotechnology. They are worried for various reasons about people being made stronger, smarter and with more capability than others. They fear the creation of supermen who will dominate others or that the act of creating superhuman abilities would be a transgression against religion.

I think it would be helpful to analyze what capabilities make sense to put into the body like Star Treks Borg, (cyborgs like Robocop or Steve Austin, the 6 million dollar man), put into the cells and genetic code (like artificial X-men) and what makes sense to leave as a wearable tools (like the comic book character Iron Man).

We can also analyze what enhancements might make a difference or are flashy but mostly irrelevent. One of the main aspects of relevance would be difference in productivity and ability to earn a living of future Iron men versus future x-men versus future Borg. Note: there is no reason for the eventual appearance of any enhancement architecture to be as obvious as the fictional examples.

One of the things that was mentioned was night vision.

Now: We have night vision goggles now which you can buy on Ebay and other places.

There is limited advantage or difference for this capability. There is less reason to out it in the body versus using the tools.

Strength enhancement.
Mundane Iron Man Now: We have fork lifts, bulldozers and cranes.
Mundane X-men Now: We have steroids, exercise and supplements (creatine, protein powders etc...). In mice they have modified genetics for strength enhancement and I expect that it will work on humans. More exotic: We are making exoskeletons. (more advanced Iron man and Manga style robotech/Gundam). We will perfect the genetic modifications and the techniques used to deliver those modifications.

Utility: strength helps in various situations. The main reasons for doing it are for general resilience and for an "always on" ease of use. Good exoskeletons would limit the advantage for genetically modifications in this area.

If you can make modifications that are as safe as supplements and with health benefits instead of risks, then why would you not do it? The advantage to be able to lift something is irrelevant because you could get an easily available tool or exoskeleton to help you.

Speed enhancement:
Exotic now: exoskeletons.

Utility: Same as for strength. You can do it but the advantages will be limited. There would be an advantage for enhancing reflexes and reaction times. Reaction times would benefit from sensory enhancements. Being able to spot and identify targets sooner.

Intelligence enhancement:
Mundane now: computers. PCs, iPods, there are wearable computers and displays that go directly to the eye.
Exotic now: There is Brain gate and other close interfaces between machine and brain. Many of those are non-invasive.
Utility: The difference between invasive and non-invasive is one of bandwidth and communication speed. There are also advantages to integrated control.
Productivity: This is one enhancement that could have a substantial productivity variance depending upon architecture. This is one area where getting optimum performance irregardless of architecture will make a difference.

Life extension and regeneration:
This is another where the genetic and invasive modifications are required.

Uploading/mind transfer:
There are questions as to how well this would work in terms of consciousness. Eventually this architecture could diverge from the cyborg, genetic enhancement capabilities. The communication between biology and the computer and whether upgrading hybrid biology would be slower than pure computer equipment would be factors in whether architectures diverge in performance.

cross posted from http://advancednano.blogspot.com

There are several topics which are often analyzed in isolation in regards to projected advanced technology. AI, accelerating technology, and abundance from technology and resources from space.

There are various papers that talk about achieving abundance from advanced technology like molecular nanotechology.

There is the analysis by Ray Kurzweil that technology is providing accelerating returns

There is also the concern about the need for friendly Artificial Intelligence (AI). This matters because the technological Singularity is mainly about the development of intelligences that are far greater than human and how that will cause an explosion of technological capability.

People can get a sense of the immense resources of energy and materials in space from the Kardashev scale of civilizations

People fear that an AI that is vastly more intelligent than people will rapidly become very powerful and dangerous to people. If an AI is vastly superior in intelligence and is able to rapidly develop and extend technological capability, then it should rapidly be able to tap the resources of space. Trillions of times more than what is available on earth. The AI can make itself mobile and leave and do whatever it wants. For the AI to decide to kill people on earth, I have difficulty seeing the motivation good or bad. The AI can basically outclass any human that is not completely augmented. It would be like Bill Gates parents being concerned that he might plot to kill them for his allowance. Even if the AI is very greedy or expansionist what we have developed so far should be irrelevant to its aims. Maybe a bad AI won't help us out and just leave. But why would it fumigate the old house on the way out ?

The superior AI rapidly moves itself into an entirely level. Tiger Wood's does not need to dominate the miniture gold courses.

There is also the discussion about whether or not to upgrade people. There is the concern the non-upgraded and therefore weaker people would be at the mercy of those who upgrade. The choice is not whether the non-upgrades will be killed, again abundance and accelerating returns from technology means that those who do not upgrade become irrelevant.

Accelerating returns mean that 100 years of progress in the 21st century...it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today's rate).

200 years of progress will be more than 4,000,000 years of progress (at today's rate).

In about 20 years, those who have not upgraded are like the Amish a few hundred years of technology behind. They are a quaint curiousity and barely connected to the advanced economy.

In about 100 years, they are like the cavemen and utterly removed from and unable to understand the advances being made.

In 200 years, they are like chimpanzees. The choice not to adopt the best technology is like choosing not to evolve.

For those who choose to advance and become transhuman, being generous to those who did not becomes very easy with abundance and the resources of space. It becomes increasingly small fractions. Initially like foreign aid (1-2%), then like setting side nature preserves and reservations. Then like setting up city zoos. Then like keeping potted plants and ant colonies.

So some things to remember is that abundant is really abundant. Not a little abundant.

And AI's and radically augmented people can move themselves into an entirely different level of operation.

Cross Posted at advancednano.blogspot.com

Superlens focus is 5 to 10 (1/20th of wavelength) times better than diffraction limit (half of wavelength). For light that is 350 nanometers it could focus to 17 nanometers. Applications: far faster computers, communications, microscopes, telescopes, DVDs etc... The goal is a perfect lens. Metamaterials make this and invisibility possible.

Powerpoint tutorial, by G Shvets of the University of Texas at Austin, on meta-materials and applying superlens to laser plasma accelerators The powerpoint discusses plans to use superlens to focus down to 1/20th of a wavelength. Half of wavelength is the diffraction limit for a conventional lens. Lenses that are 10 times better are planned and lenses 5 times better have been achieved.

Researchers at the University of Texas at Austin and at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have created a functional superlens in the mid-infrared, achieving a resolution of better than λ/10 using an 11-µm source. According to the group’s calculations, a square array of nanorods, perhaps fabricated of anodized aluminum, may demonstrate superlensing at near-IR and visible wavelengths.

The scientists are investigating the use of a square array of metallic nanorods spaced approximately 100 nm apart. This will produce a metamaterial with a negative refractive index and numerical calculations show that such a structure will exhibit superlensing.

Here is some of work with gold nanorods which show the negative index effect. However, the nanorods are too large and too much light is absorbed.

Applications are any technology where sub-wavelengths would provide performance benefits. Various optical related electronics can get smaller. It could be used for photo-nanolithography. (nanolithography is discussed here at wikipedia and photolithography is discussed at wikipedia. Combining them with photo-nanolithography means cheaper ways to make more powerful computer chips) Photo-nanolithography would make it possible to etch smaller electronic devices and circuits, resulting in more powerful computers, as well as new types of antennas, computer components and consumer electronics such as cell phones that use light instead of electricity for carrying signals and processing information, resulting in faster communications.

Previously discussed possibilities include invisibility, supertelescopes, supermicroscopes and many more.

Related article:
Metamaterials background and potential applications

This study develops a general recipe for the design of media that create perfect invisibility within the accuracy of geometrical optics. The method developed here can also be applied to escape detection by other electromagnetic waves or sound.

Controlling electromagnetic fields with metamaterials