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NASA Fast Facts – KRTV Great Falls News

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

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(CNN) -- Here's a look at NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), the United States government agency that conducts research into space.

There are ten major NASA installations, including the Kennedy Space Center in Florida and the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Timeline: October 4, 1957 - The Soviets launch Sputnik 1, the world's first artificial satellite.

October 1, 1958 - The official start of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

October 7, 1958 - NASA announces Project Mercury. The Mercury project's objectives are to place a human spacecraft into orbital flight around Earth, observe human performance in such conditions, and recover the human and the spacecraft safely.

April 9, 1959 - The Mercury Seven are introduced as the first US astronauts: Scott Carpenter, L. Gordon Cooper Jr., John H. Glenn Jr., Virgil I. "Gus" Grissom, Walter M. Schirra Jr., Alan B. Shepard Jr., and Donald K. "Deke" Slayton.

May 5, 1961 - Freedom 7, the first piloted Mercury spacecraft carrying Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr., is launched from Cape Canaveral. It is the first American space flight involving human beings.

February 20, 1962 - John Glenn becomes the first American to circle the Earth, making three orbits in the Friendship 7 Mercury spacecraft.

March 23, 1965 - The first operational mission of Project Gemini takes place, under the command of Mercury astronaut Virgil "Gus" Grissom.

June 3-7, 1965 - The second piloted Gemini mission, GT-4, stays aloft for four days. Astronaut Edward H. White II performs the first extra-vehicular activity (EVA) or spacewalk by an American.

January 27, 1967 - Apollo 1 catches fire during a dress rehearsal and the three astronauts aboard, Lt. Col. Virgil I. Grissom, Lt. Col. Edward H. White, and Roger B. Chaffee, are killed.

July 16-24, 1969 - Apollo 11 goes to the moon. On July 20, 1969, the Lunar Module with astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin lands on the lunar surface while Michael Collins orbits overhead in the Apollo command module. Armstrong becomes the first man to walk on the moon.

April 11-17, 1970 - During the flight of Apollo 13, an oxygen tank ruptures and damages several of the electrical and life support systems. The astronauts and NASA engineers on the ground find that the Lunar Module, a self-contained spacecraft unaffected by the accident, can be used as a "lifeboat" to provide austere life support for the return trip. The crew returns safely on April 17, 1970.

July 15-24, 1975 - The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project is the first human space flight mission managed jointly by two nations. It is designed to test the compatibility of rendezvous and docking systems for United States and Soviet spacecraft in order to open the way for future joint human flights.

April 12, 1981 - Astronauts John W. Young and Robert L. Crippen fly Space Shuttle Columbia on the first flight of the Space Transportation System (STS-1). Columbia becomes the first airplane-like craft to land from orbit for reuse.

June 18, 1983 - Astronauts Robert L. Crippen and Frederick H. Hauck pilot Space Shuttle Challenger (STS-7) on a mission to launch two communications satellites and the reusable Shuttle Pallet Satellite (SPAS 01). Sally K. Ride, one of three mission specialists on the flight, becomes the first American woman astronaut.

January 28, 1986 - The Challenger explodes 73 seconds after launch as a result of a leak in one of the solid rocket boosters. All seven crew on board die: Commander Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, pilot Michael J. Smith, three mission specialists, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, payload specialist Gregory B. Jarvis, and Sharon Christa McAuliffe, a teacher selected through the teacher in space program.

April 24-29, 1990 - During the flight of the Space Shuttle Discovery (STS-31) the crew deploys the Hubble Space Telescope.

February 3-11, 1995 - Exactly one year after a major cooperative flight with the Russians in STS-60, NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery, this time STS-63, flies another historic mission featuring the flyby of the Russian Mir Space Station. It is also the first time that a woman pilot, Eileen M. Collins, commands the Space Shuttle.

July 4, 1997 - The Mars Pathfinder lands on Mars. Two days later, the Sojourner Rover rolls out of the Pathfinder and onto Mars's surface, where it soon begins transmitting pictures of Mars back to Earth.

November 2, 2000 - The first permanent crew, Expedition One, arrives at the International Space Station.

February 1, 2003 - The space shuttle Columbia on mission STS-107 disintegrates during reentry and all 7 crew on board are killed: Commander Rick Husband, pilot Willie McCool and mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark, Mike Anderson, David Brown and Israeli payload specialist Ilan Ramon.

August 31, 2006 - NASA awards Lockheed Martin a contract to build a manned lunar spaceship called Orion.

December 4, 2006 - NASA announces plans for a permanent astronaut settlement on the moon's south pole by the mid 2020's.

September 2010 - Shuttle fleet, Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour are set to be retired from service.

October 11, 2010 - President Barack Obama signs the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Authorization Act of 2010 bill, which includes funds for commercial space programs, authorization for a heavy lift launch vehicle, and approval of an additional shuttle launch before the fleet retires.

December 2, 2010 - NASA scientists announce the discovery of an arsenic-eating bacteria found in California's Mono Lake, expanding the traditional notions of sustainable life.

August 5, 2011 - Mission Juno, an unmanned spacecraft launches. The arrival in Jupiter's atmosphere is scheduled for August 2016 and the mission's end is to be October 2017. Investigations into the formation and evolution of the planet, its cloud cover, magnetic and gravitational fields will be performed in an effort to further understandings of the formation of Earth.

July 2, 2012 - NASA unveils Orion, the agency's newest manned spaceship. Orion's first mission with crew aboard is scheduled for 2021.

August 6, 2012 - The $2.6 billion rover, Curiosity, successfully lands on target on Mars.

September 12, 2013 - Scientists confirm that Voyager 1, launched in 1977, has crossed into interstellar space.

July 23, 2015 - NASA's Kepler spacecraft locates "Earth's bigger, older cousin." The planet Kepler-452b is about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the Cyngnus constellation.

July 4, 2016 - After an almost five-year journey, the Juno space probe successfully enters Jupiter's orbit.

May 31, 2017 - NASA announces it will launch its first mission to the sun in the summer of 2018. The Parker Solar Probe will explore the sun's outermost atmosphere, the corona, by having to withstand heat and radiation never before experienced by any spacecraft. Researchers say the mission will help scientist understand the sun in greater detail, and help shed light on Earth and its place in the solar system.

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NASA Fast Facts - KRTV Great Falls News

NASA Considering Using Pre-flown SpaceX Rockets for Cargo Flights – Space.com

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

SpaceX may not be far away from a big milestone its first mission that involves both a reused rocket and a reused spacecraft.

The California-based company launched a pre-flown Dragon capsule for the first time ever Saturday (June 3), using a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket to blast the robotic craft toward the International Space Station (ISS) on a cargo run for NASA.

So the agency is obviously comfortable with used SpaceX spacecraft, at least on uncrewed flights. And it's now entertaining the possibility of going with used Falcon 9 boosters on future resupply missions as well, NASA officials said. [Launch Photos: SpaceX's 1st Reused Dragon Spacecraft]

"That question has been posed," Ven Feng, manager of the ISS Transportation Integration Office at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during a post-launch press conference Saturday.

"We are looking at it," he added. "We're evaluating every aspect of it very carefully, and there is no schedule yet when we might go down that path."

SpaceX is working to develop fully and rapidly reusable spaceflight systems, an advance that founder and CEO Elon Musk has said could spur space exploration by slashing costs. Indeed, reusability is critical to Musk's goal of establishing a million-person city on Mars.

The company has already landed Falcon 9 first stages on 11 separate occasions including Saturday, when the booster came back to Earth for a pinpoint touchdown at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

SpaceX has re-flown one of these first stages to date. That milestone came on March 30, during the successful launch of the SES-10 communications satellite. A used Falcon 9 first stage will also help loft the BulgariaSat 1 communications satellite on June 15, company representatives have said.

SpaceX also aims to recover and refly other Falcon 9 pieces as well. In fact, the company was able to recover the payload fairing the nose cone that protects satellites and other spacecraft during launch after the SES-10 mission.

"Fairing is ~$5M, but that should be reusable this year. Am fairly confident we can reuse upper stage too by late next year to get to 100%," Musk tweeted on April 7.

The Dragon that blasted off today went to the ISS once before, in September 2014. The first stage that helped launch SES-10 first flew in April 2016, during a different Dragon launch. But there won't always be such lengthy periods between flights; SpaceX aims to streamline the checkout and refurbishment process for used gear, eventually re-launching Falcon 9 first stages within 24 hours of touchdown.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter@michaeldwallandGoogle+.Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookor Google+. Originally published onSpace.com.

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NASA Considering Using Pre-flown SpaceX Rockets for Cargo Flights - Space.com

NASA is launching colorful fake clouds Sunday morning. Here’s how to watch – USA TODAY

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

A rocket launches at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia in 2014.(Photo: Bill Ingalls, AP)

If youre up early enough Sunday morningand are near the mid-Atlantic coast, you can catch a colorful NASA-inspired cloud show.

Shortly before 5 a.m., a sounding rocket will launch from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginias eastern shore. The 670-pound rocket is on a fact-finding mission to support studies of the ionosphere and aurora, but its purpose is overshadowed here on Earth by 10Pepsi-can-sized canisters.

The rocket will deploy the canisters roughly five minutes after launch, or about 96 to 124 miles above ground. It will cast them out between six and 12 miles into the morning air, where theyll leave blue-green and red vapor clouds. The vapor tracers are an interaction between barium, strontium and cupric-oxide.

The experimentallows NASA scientists to track particle motions in space. Scattering the clouds across the sky allows NASA to cover a wider area.

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NASA estimates people living along the coast from New York City to North Carolina should be able to spot the clouds, includingPhiladelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C. Peopleas far west as Charlottesville, Va., may also be able to get a view.

The launch will last about 8 minutes and the rocket will land in the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles from the shore. NASA said the rocket will not be recovered and the clouds do not pose a hazard to residents.

If you dont live near the coast, NASA will stream the mission starting at 3:45 a.m. from its Wallops Ustream website.

Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman

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NASA rocket releasing trippy fake clouds Friday morning – CNET

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

A combination of artificial clouds created by released vapor tracers.

The early morning hours on the US East Coast might be unusually colorful Friday, as NASA plans to produce artificial blue-green and red clouds that may be visible from New York to North Carolina.

It's not the launch of a new era of geoengineering or a bizarre upper-atmospheric art project. It's a test of a new system that helps scientists study the auroras and ionosphere.

A NASA sounding rocket (a small, sub-orbital rocket often used in research) will launch from Wallops Flight Facility off the coast of Virginia and release several soda-sized canisters of vapor tracers in the upper atmosphere that may appear as colorful clouds.

The tracers use vapors made up of lithium, barium and tri-methyl aluminum that react with other elements in the atmosphere to glow, letting researchers visually track the flows of ionized and neutral particles. It's a bit like being able to dye the wind or ocean currents to be able to get a visual picture.

The artificial clouds created by the tracers will be between 96 and 124 miles (154 and 200 kilometers) above the Earth, and NASA says they don't pose any hazards to humans. Similar research using sounding rockets and vapor tracers has been performed as far back as the 1950s.

The launch was originally set for May 31 and has been delayed twice due to weather conditions. It is now set for June 2 as early as 1:26 a.m. PT.

You can watch the launch live early Friday via NASA's UStream feed. To look for the colorful clouds from the East Coast, point yourself in the direction of the Virginia coast from wherever you are. The further away you are from Wallops, the lower in the sky they'll be.

NASA's 12 most far-out futuristic space projects

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NASA rocket releasing trippy fake clouds Friday morning - CNET

Nanocomp’s partnership with NASA could lead to larger, but lighter, rockets – The Union Leader

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Last month, NASA successfully launched the SubTec-7 mission using a Black Brant IX rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Nanocomp produced carbon nanotube fibers to fabricate a carbon nanotube composite overwrap pressure vessel for the rocket that was launched on May 16.

It was a big deal in the advancement of our products into space use, said Peter Antoinette, president of Nanocomp Technologies in Merrimack.

Although Nanocomps materials have been used on the spacecraft side, they have never been used on the rocket until now, Antoinette said.

This is the first time our Miralon has been used in the booster. It is now on the rocket itself, and that is just a preview of other upcoming launches, he said.

The Miralon sheet material serves as a protection system, and is essentially used as a shield over the vehicle. In this instance, the Miralon was used to make a very lightweight, high-performance propellant tank that holds under high pressure fuel use for thrusters to control the booster itself, Antoinette said.

SubTec-7 provided a flight test for more than 20 technologies to improve sounding rocket and spacecraft capabilities, according to a release from NASA, adding good data was received during the flight, and the payload was recovered.

It was a perfect performance, Antoinette said about Nanocomps material on the launched rocket. The carbon nanotubes not only reduce the weight of the vehicle, but also help improve its performance, he said.

After making a composite pressure tank for NASA, Nanocomp leaders are optimistic that in the future, composite tanks for other vehicles using Nanocomp technology will be possible.

Our material is conductive, so it is self-grounding, said Antoinette, who is hopeful the product can eventually be used for hydrogen tanks and on fuel tanks for boosters.

It has been an exciting initiative working with NASA on this effort, according to Antoinette, who said the possibilities are endless as larger rockets with more strength and less weight can now be imagined.

Last months flight enabled NASA to test and see how 24 new technologies and experiments performed in a real-world environment, according to a release.

Sounding rockets are not only used for conducting science missions, but also provide an excellent platform for technology development. While the flight is short in duration (17 minutes), enough flight time is provided to test the new technologies, said Cathy Hesh, technology manager for the sounding rocket program office at Wallops, in a recent statement.

Nanocomps carbon nanotubes are on board NASAs Juno mission to Jupiter, a solar-powered spacecraft that broke the record last year for traveling the farthest from the sun.

Nanocomp has about 75 employees and operates a 60,000-square-foot facility at 57 Daniel Webster Highway, with plans to add an additional 40,000 square feet in the next couple of years.

At full capacity, the Merrimack facility will have the capability to produce approximately 40 metric tons of Miralon products annually.

khoughton@newstote.com

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Nanocomp's partnership with NASA could lead to larger, but lighter, rockets - The Union Leader

NASA, Pence to announce new astronaut class – Florida Today

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Raw video: SpaceX nails the landing. Posted June 3, 2017 SpaceX video

Then-Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence gave a speech before a crowd of several hundred at the Space Coast Convention Center at the Holiday Inn Express in Cocoa on Oct. 31, 2016.(Photo: TIM SHORTT/FLORIDA TODAY)Buy Photo

Vice President Mike Pence at 2 p.m.Wednesday will join NASA officials introducing the space agencys newest class of astronauts, selected from a record total of more than 18,000 applicants.

NASA did not say how many candidates would be chosen from the group that submitted applications by February 2016.

The most recent class, selected in 2013 from 6,300 applicants, included four men and four women.

Uponcompletingtwo years of training, the rookie astronauts will be eligible to join International Space Station crews expected to fly through at least 2024, and could be assigned to NASAs first deep space exploration missions since the Apollo era.

The agency aims to launch crews into orbit around the moon, and eventually on missions to Mars, in Orion capsules lifted from Kennedy Space Center by the giant Space Launch System rocket. The rockets first unmanned test flight is targeted for 2019, with a first crewed flight possible around 2022.

More: SpaceX launches ISS cargo from KSC, lands Falcon at Cape Canaveral

Pence will represent a Trump administration that has not yet nominated a NASA administrator or signaled any major shifts in exploration policy from the Obama administration.

If the administration follows through on plans to revive a National Space Council, Pence would be its leader.

It was not known if Pence planned any space-related announcements in conjunction with the astronaut selection. NASA said Pence would tour the Christopher C. Kraft Jr. Mission Control Center and receive briefings on current human spaceflight operations.

In June 2016, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches a pair of commercial satellites from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.(Photo: SpaceX)

Space Florida last week approved contributing up to $5 million to upgrades of Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, which SpaceX is repairing after a rocket explosion there last September.

Officials said the improvements, including to the flame trench and sound suppression systems, would support more efficient launch operations.

More: SpaceX bets the house to become satellite internet provider

These improvements will allow the user to reduce processing time between launches and increase the frequency of flight, said Space Florida CEO Frank DiBello.

The upgrades are said to be distinct from the repairs necessary after a Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the pad last Sept. 1 while being fueled for an engine-firing test. The state says the investment would benefit any launcher in the unlikely event that SpaceX should vacate the complex.

DiBello said the states $5 million contribution would be matched by more than $35 million in private investment, and would help create 70 jobs with average wages of $80,000.

SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 rocket on a mission to the International Space Station and landed the first stage at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station shortly after on Saturday, June 3, 2017.

Thats a good match, said board chairman Bill Dymond. And 70 jobs at $80,000 a year I think is worth $5 million as well.

SpaceX expects Complex 40 to be back in action in the late summer or early fall. Until then, it is launching rockets from nearby pad 39A to the north at Kennedy Space Center.

At the same meeting last Thursday, Space Florida approved up to $2.75 million more in FDOT funds for widening roads, relocating overhead lines and access roads in Exploration Park, described as benefitting Blue Origin and potentially other tenants there including OneWeb Satellites.

Stratolaunch Systems last week rolled its carrier aircraft out of its hangar for the first time in Mojave, California. The aircraft could perform its first air launch in 2019.(Photo: Stratolaunch Systems)

An aircraft with the worlds widest wingspan longer than an American football field left its Mojave Air and Space Port hangar for the first time last week in a first step toward planned launches ofsmall satellites.

Stratolaunch Systems Corp.s twin-fuselage plane equipped with six Boeing 747 jet engines and weighing 550,000 pounds rolled out on 28 wheels for fueling tests.

This was a crucial step in preparing the aircraft for ground testing, engine runs, taxi tests, and ultimately first flight, said CEO Jean Floyd.

Stratolaunch is targeting a 2019 first air launch of an Orbital ATK Pegasus XL rocket. The plane eventually could carry several of the rockets.

The company founded in 2011 by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen aims to provide unparalleled flexibility to launch small satellites weighing up to 1,000 pounds into low Earth orbit.

Stratolaunch is frequently identified as likely to set up operations at Kennedy Space Center's three-mile former shuttle runway, now operated by Space Florida.

Contact Dean at 321-242-3668 or jdean@floridatoday.com. And follow on Twitter at @flatoday_jdeanand on Facebook at facebook.com/jamesdeanspace.

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NASA, Pence to announce new astronaut class - Florida Today

NASA is Planning to Test Pulsars as Cosmic Navigation Beacons – Universe Today

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Universe Today

NASA is Planning to Test Pulsars as Cosmic Navigation Beacons
Universe Today
When a large star undergoes gravitational collapse near the end of its lifespan, a neutron star is often the result. This is what remains after the outer layers of the star have been blown off in a massive explosion (i.e. a supernova) and the core has ...

NASA is Planning to Test Pulsars as Cosmic Navigation Beacons - Universe Today

NASA Plans To Launch A Probe Next Year To ‘Touch The Sun’ – NPR

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

It's a mission that's been in the works for nearly 60 years. NASA says it will launch a spacecraft in 2018 to "touch the sun," sending it closer to the star's surface than ever before.

The spacecraft is small its instruments would fit into a refrigerator but it's built to withstand temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while maintaining room temperature inside the probe.

"Even though the sun is so close to us, there's actually a lot about it we don't understand," says heat shield lead engineer Betsy Congdon from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Scientists are hoping the data gathered might solve some of the big mysteries about the sun.

First, what allows the sun to fling winds out at supersonic speeds? Understanding this will be important for protecting astronauts during space travel, Congdon says, and solar events can damage satellites and knock out power on Earth.

"Unless we can explain what is going on up close to the sun, we will not be able to accurately predict space weather effects that can cause havoc at Earth," NASA says.

Second, why is the sun's atmosphere actually hotter 300 times hotter than its surface? "That defies the laws of nature. It's like water flowing uphill. It shouldn't happen," mission project scientist Nicola Fox of the Johns Hopkins lab said at a news conference.

The probe is expected to complete 24 orbits over the course of more than six years, looping closer to the sun and eventually hurtling toward it at a speed of 450,000 miles per hour. At that speed, you could travel from Philadelphia to Washington, D.C., in one second. Here's a map of the route:

The probe is set to gradually move its orbit closer to the sun over the course of six years. NASA hide caption

It's worth noting that the probe will not literally touch the sun's surface the closest it will get is about 3.9 million miles away.

But Congdon says that's actually very close. "If you think about a football field and the sun's sitting on one side and the Earth's sitting on the other, we're getting within the 5-yard line," she says. It's about seven times closer than any previous mission.

The circuitous route involves careening closer to the sun and then back out to Venus, which means wild oscillations in temperature. Congdon says protecting the probe's scientific instruments from getting fried is "quite an engineering feat."

It basically involves "putting up a big umbrella," she says. The shield is an 8-foot wide disc made of layers of carbon, which would get burnt to a charcoal crisp if it weren't for the fact that there's no oxygen in space.

Today, NASA announced that it is naming the spacecraft after Eugene Parker, a retired physicist who predicted the existence of solar winds almost 60 years ago. He is about to turn 90, and this is the first time NASA has named a spacecraft after a researcher during their lifetime.

Parker's ideas fundamentally changed the study of the sun.

But at this point, Fox compared the state of the field with learning about weather by looking out the window.

"You can see the sun is shining, you can see the birds are singing. But until you actually go out, you have no idea quite how hot it is out there or how windy it is or what the conditions are like," Fox said.

"I really think we've come as far as we can with looking at things and it's now time to go up and pay it a visit."

The European Space Agency also has plans to launch a probe toward the sun.

Graduate Student Earns NASA Fellowship – University of Arkansas Newswire

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Photo by Whit Pruitt, University Relations

Ellen Czaplinski with the Titan surface simulation chamber.

Ellen Czaplinski, a space and planetary sciences doctoral student, has won a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship. The fellowship provides Czaplinski with a $35,000 stipend and an additional $10,000 for research expenses. The first-year doctoral student was one of only 33 students in the nation selected for the award, which can be renewed for up to threeyears.

Czaplinski's research focuses on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Other than Earth, Titan is the only other body in the solar system with a substantial nitrogen atmosphere. It is also the only other object in the solar system with bodies of liquid on the surface. However, unlike Earth, Titan is exceedingly cold, with surface temperatures measuring at nearly 300 degrees below zero.

"It's so cold that methane and ethane, which are gases at room temperature, are in liquid phase," Czaplinski said.

These liquid hydrocarbons accumulate in basins on Titan's surface, creating lakes and seas of methane, ethane and other minor components. Czaplinski is able to simulate those lakes and seas in the University of Arkansas Titan surface simulation chamber, where she specifically examines what happens when the lakes evaporate.

"It's been proposed that, as the liquids evaporate, the minor components of the lakes could come together in a single phase and create a co-crystal, which is indicative of a new compound forming," Czaplinski said. "I am still analyzing the data to see if any new compounds are forming during the evaporation process."

Understanding the compositional structure of the lakes and seas is important, as future NASA missions to Titan could include sending a boat or submarine for further exploration.

Though just in the beginning stages of her research, Czaplinski's work is already being well-received by others in her field.

"I've been able to present my research at some big conferences, and the feedback has been pretty good," she said. "It's nice to hear my work is valuable in the planetary science field."

A native of Indiana, Czaplinski holds a bachelor's degree in planetary science from Purdue University. She is advised by Vincent Chevrier, an assistant research professor for the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences.

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Nanomedicine Market is anticipated to reach USD 350.8 billion by 2025 – PR Newswire (press release)

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Solutions such as nanoformulations with triggered release for tailor-made pharmacokinetics, nanoparticles for local control of tumor in combination with radiotherapy, and functionalized nanoparticles for targeted in-vivo activation of stem cell production are anticipated to drive R&D, consequently resulting in revenue generation in the coming years.

Therapeutics accounted for the largest share of market revenue in 2016 owing to presence of nanoemulsions, nanoformulations, or nanodevices

These devices possess the ability to cross biological barriers. Moreover, presence of drugs such as Doxil, Abraxane, and Emend is attributive for higher revenue generation

Presence of substantial number of products manufactured through the use of microbial sources can be attributed for the largest share

In-vitro diagnostics is expected to witness lucrative progress as a result of R&D carried out in this segment

Asia Pacific is estimated to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period

Key players operating in this industry include Pfizer Inc., Ablynx NV, Nanotherapeutics Inc., Nanoviricides Inc., Abraxis Inc., Arrowhead Research Inc., Celgene Corporation, Bio-Gate AG, and Merck

Active expansion strategies are undertaken by a number of the major market entities in order to strengthen their position

North America dominated the industry in 2016, accounting for a 42% of total revenue

The global nanomedicine market is anticipated to reach USD 350.8 billion by 2025, according to a new report by Grand View Research, Inc.

Development of novel nanotechnology-based drugs and therapies is driven by the need to develop therapies that have fewer side effects and that are more cost-effective than traditional therapies, in particular for cancer.

Application of nanotechnology-based contrast reagents for diagnosis and monitoring of the effects of drugs on an unprecedented short timescale is also attributive drive growth in the coming years. Additionally, demand for biodegradable implants with longer lifetimes that enable tissue restoration is anticipated to influence demand.

As per the WHO factsheet, cancer is found to be one of the major causes of mortality and morbidity worldwide, with approximately 14 million new cases in 2012 and 8.2 million cancer-related deaths. Thus, demand for nanomedicine in order to curb such high incidence rate is expected to boost market progress during the forecast period.

Biopharmaceutical and medical devices companies are actively engaged in development of novel products as demonstrated by the increasingly growing partnerships between leading enterprises and nanomedicine startups. For instance, in November 2015, Ablynx and Novo Nordisk signed a global collaboration and a licensing agreement for development and discovery of innovative drugs with multi-specific nanobodies. This strategic partnership is anticipated to rise the net annual sales of the products uplifting the market growth.

However, in contrary with the applications of nanotechnology, the entire process of lab to market approval is a tedious and expensive one with stringent regulatory evaluation involved thereby leading investors to remain hesitant for investments.

Further key findings from the report suggest: Therapeutics accounted for the largest share of market revenue in 2016 owing to presence of nanoemulsions, nanoformulations, or nanodevices

These devices possess the ability to cross biological barriers. Moreover, presence of drugs such as Doxil, Abraxane, and Emend is attributive for higher revenue generation

Presence of substantial number of products manufactured through the use of microbial sources can be attributed for the largest share

In-vitro diagnostics is expected to witness lucrative progress as a result of R&D carried out in this segment

Introduction of nano-enabled biomarkers, vectors and contrast agents with high-specificity and sensitivity are attributive for projected progress

Clinical cardiology is expected to witness the fastest growth through to 2025 owing to development in nano-functionalization and modification of surfaces for increased biocompatibility of implants in treatment of late thrombosis

Moreover, an abundance of research publications and patent filings from European region with a share of about 25% in nanomedicine-related publications is supportive for revenue generation from European economies

Asia Pacific is estimated to witness the fastest growth over the forecast period

Factors responsible include government and regulatory authorities that have implemented a framework to encourage R&D collaborations and framework extension.

Key players operating in this industry include Pfizer Inc., Ablynx NV, Nanotherapeutics Inc., Nanoviricides Inc., Abraxis Inc., Arrowhead Research Inc., Celgene Corporation, Bio-Gate AG, and Merck

Active expansion strategies are undertaken by a number of the major market entities in order to strengthen their position

North America dominated the industry in 2016, accounting for a 42% of total revenue

Read the full report: http://www.reportlinker.com/p04899216/Nanomedicine-Market-Analysis-By-Products-Therapeutics-Regenerative-Medicine-Diagnostics-By-Application-Clinical-Oncology-Infectious-diseases-By-Nanomolecule-Gold-Silver-Iron-Oxide-Alumina-Segment-Forecasts.html

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Nanomedicine Market is anticipated to reach USD 350.8 billion by 2025 - PR Newswire (press release)

Manufacturing the future of nanomedicine – Cordis News

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

EU-funded RNA-based therapy targets the direct cause of some neurodegenerative diseases, not just their symptoms.

Precision NanoSystem's NanoAssemblr will use RNA-based therapeutics to stem disease producing proteins for conditions such as Parkinsons, Alzheimers and Huntingtons. These illnesses affect over seven million people across Europe, with a socio-economic burden previously estimated at around 130 billion euros per year.

Overcoming the barrier to RNA therapy

RNA is a molecule influential in the coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes, which includes the production of proteins responsible for disease. There has been much excitement at the prospect of co-opting this function (through messenger RNA - mRNA) to enable medicine to instruct the body to stop damage before it occurs. This is a relatively new field of medicine, only going back a couple of decades and considered safer and more cost-effective than alternative genetic manipulation options.

However, for these RNA modalities to reach their full potential, they first need to overcome the bodys defences, developed through billions of years of evolution. Protections such as lipid bilayers (forming a thin membrane) have served to keep the RNAs on the outside of cells from being able to easily get inside cells. Overcoming this armoury has remained, quite literally, a barrier to the widespread development of RNA therapeutics.

B-SMART has developed just such an effective delivery mechanism through the use of nanocarriers. These are transport modules small enough to cross the brain-cerebrospinal fluid barrier while also protecting the RNA enzymes against degradation.

As the B-SMART project coordinator, Professor Raymond Schiffelers, summarises in a recent Technology Networks article announcing the selection of the manufacturing platform, 'RNA medicines are interesting because you can use what is essentially the same polynucleotide molecule to treat multiple diseases, just by changing the nucleotide sequence. Our goal is therefore to design modular nanoparticles capable of delivering a payload of therapeutic RNAs to the brain, allowing them to prevent the biosynthesis of harmful proteins at source.'

Out of the lab and into clinics

To increase effectiveness, the delivery mechanism required specific targeting using ligands (small molecules, ions or proteins), based on heavy chain-only nanobodies, which are smaller and more stable than conventional antibodies. The modular delivery system is being tested both in vitro and in vivo.

Taking advantage of knowledge gleaned form the multidisciplinary field of microfluidics, and key to getting B-SMARTs approach out of the lab and into a wide range of European therapeutic settings, is the development of a scalable and reproducible manufacturing process. Towards this end the benchtop NanoAssemblr platform will be in use in the eight laboratories involved in the project, across the Netherlands, Belgium, Norway, the UK, Spain and Italy.

Professor Schiffelers further explains the selection of the Precision NanoSystems NanoAssemblr platform by saying, 'This technology also allows you to accurately predict the particle size based on the mixing speed, PEG [polyether compounds] concentration and mixing ratios, which is a significant step forward. Equally importantly, it can be easily scaled to manufacture batch volumes sufficient for clinical trials'. The pre-clinical efficacy will be tested after local injection, nasal administration and systemic administration.

For more information, please visit project website

Excerpt from:

Manufacturing the future of nanomedicine - Cordis News

Rallying Point | HMS – Harvard Medical School (registration)

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Harvard Medical School researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have identified a surprising new role for the immune cells called macrophages: improving the effectiveness ofnanoparticle-deliveredcancer therapies.

In theirScience Translational Medicinereport, the investigators describe finding how appropriately timed radiation therapy can improve the delivery of cancernanomedicinesas much as 600 percent by attracting macrophages to tumor blood vessels, which results in a transient burst of leakage from capillaries into the tumor.

Get more HMS news here.

The field ofnanomedicinehas worked to improve selective drug delivery to tumors for over a decade, typically by engineering ever more advancednanomaterialsand often with mixed clinical success, said first authorMiles Miller, HMS instructor in radiology at Mass General. Rather than focusing on thenanoparticlesthemselves, we used in vivo microscopy to discover how to rewire the structure of the tumor itself to more efficiently accumulate a variety ofnanomedicinesalready in clinical use.

Encapsulating cancer drugs innanoparticlescan improve how a drug is absorbed, distributed, metabolized and excreted by extending a drugs presence in the circulatory system and avoiding the toxic solvents used in infusion chemotherapy.

But in clinical practice, delivering nanoencapsulated drugs into patients tumors has been challenging, largely because of known factors in the microenvironment of the tumor. High pressures within tumors and low permeability of tumor blood vessels limit the passage of drugs into tumor cells.

A 2015 study by Miller and his colleagues showed that tumor-associated macrophages can improve delivery of nanoparticle-based therapies to tumor cells, and radiation therapy is known to increase the permeability of tumor vessels. But exactly how these effects are produced and how they could be combined to enhancenanomedicinedelivery was not known. Answering those questions was the goal of the current study.

Finding that this combination of radiation andnanomedicineleads to synergistic tumor eradication in mice provides motivation for clinical trials that combine tumor rewiring using radiation therapy withnanomedicine" - Miles Miller

Experiments in mouse models of cancer revealed that radiation therapy produced important changes in the tumor microenvironment, including greater blood vessel size and permeability and an increase in the number of macrophages relative to tumor cells. These changes did not appear until three to four days after administration of radiation therapy and disappeared by day 11.

Analysis of patient biopsy samples taken before and several days after radiation therapy for breast or cervical cancer revealed significant macrophage expansion in post-radiation samples, with the greatest increases in patients receiving the highest radiation dosage.

Additional mouse studies showed that, beginning three days after radiation therapy, the uptake ofnanoparticles, but not of solvent-delivered drugs, approximately doubled. High-resolution in vivo microscopy revealed that increases in vascular permeability occurred erratically with periods of low permeability interrupted by a bursting of vascular contents, includingnanoparticles, into the tumors.

The rate of bursting increased three days after radiation and was higher on larger blood vessels with adjacent macrophages. Removal of macrophages prevented the radiation-induced changes and the increased uptake ofnanoparticles.

Combining radiation therapy with cyclophosphamidea DNA-damaging drug that enhances nanoparticle delivery to tumor cells through similar tumor-priming mechanismsled to even greater nanoparticle uptake.

Testing the therapeutic effect of combining radiation therapy with a nanoparticle-encased chemotherapy drugs in a mouse model confirmed the efficacy of the strategy and the key role of macrophages.

While combining radiation with a solvent-based drug had no benefit compared with radiation alone, delivery of a nanoencapsulated version of the same drug three days after radiation therapy eliminated most tumors, an effect that was significantly reduced if macrophages were depleted.

Most of the treatments andnanomedicinesemployed in this study are FDA approved for cancer treatment, so this combination treatment strategy could be tested in clinical trials relatively quickly, he added. And given the role of macrophages in this approach, we are particularly interested in combining tumor irradiation andnanomedicinewith immuno-oncology therapies.

This study was supported by National Institutes of Health grants UO1CA206997, K99CA207744, R01EB010011 and P50GM107618.

Adapted from a Mass Generalnewsrelease.

See the original post:

Rallying Point | HMS - Harvard Medical School (registration)

Aerospace engineer to get tough on ceramics with Office of Naval … – Penn State News

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. Namiko Yamamoto, assistant professor of aerospace engineering at Penn State, was recently awarded $447,663 through the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Sea-Based Aviation Airframe Structures and Materials program to study fundamental toughening mechanisms of novel ceramic composites and their use as alternative materials for high-temperature applications in the aerospace industry.

Through her project titled Multi-functional Nano-porous Ceramics, Yamamoto, in collaboration with Jogender Singh, professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and chief scientist in Penn States Applied Research Laboratory, will seek to understand how the introduction of nano-pores into ceramics contributes to enhanced fracture toughness and increased damage tolerance, with minimal compromising of the materials strength.

Tougher ceramic materials are in high demand for numerous aerospace applications that require adequate mechanical strength, stability in extreme environments and lightweight materials, said Yamamoto. Although ceramics exist that meet those requirements, their applications as bulk structural materials are currently limited to their brittleness and low fracture toughness.

Ceramics have a unique combination of material properties, such as low density, high strength at high temperatures, wear resistance, corrosion resistance and low thermal and electrical conductivities. However, when high stress is placed on them, premature or catastrophic failure can occur.

Recently, some unique deformation behaviors have been observed when nano-porous ceramics are indented, including shear banding of collapsed pores. If controlled, this quasi-plastic deformation could potentially contribute to intrinsic toughening of ceramics and effectively mitigate crack initiation and propagation.

Systematic understanding is currently missing about shear banding and its relation to fracture toughness of nano-porous ceramics, said Yamamoto. By conducting multi-scale parametric studies, we hope to gain the knowledge that is critical to the acceleration of practical fabrication and use of macro-scale, nano-porous ceramic materials with increased damage tolerance. Also, through field-assisted sintering technology, we will pursue scalable manufacturing of such nano-porous ceramics.

If successful, the toughened nano-porous ceramics could find use as alternative materials for high-temperature and high-shear loading applications in aerospace engineering parts, helicopter rotor heads, ball-point bearings, gear boxes, thermal and physical protection layers, abrasive cutting tools and more.

Funding for the project will span three years and will support ONRs interest in the field of Sea-Based Aviation Airframe Structures and Materials.

Yamamoto also received an ONR grant in 2016 for her research proposal titled 1D-Patterned Nanocomposites Structured Using Oscillating Magnetic Fields.

New Fields Fast: The NanoCar Race and Quantum Mechanical Engineering – Edgy Labs (blog)

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

After their Nanocarfinished second at the first molecular-car race, an Ohio University team is laying the groundwork for the new field of quantum mechanical engineering.

This is a completely new concept of car racing. Think of a NASCAR race, but instead of hot rods roaring on the tarmac, you have cars made up of few molecules, invisible to the naked eye, speeding on a track 50,000 times thinner than the stroke of a ballpoint pen!

What I described is the NanoCar Race that was held last April by CNRS (the National Centre for Scientific Research), a French organization under the Ministry of Education and Research.

The NanoCar Race, which took place over 36 hours between the 28th and 29th of April in Toulouse, saw the participation of 6 international teams.

Four-wheeled molecular cars of different shapes and sizes raced on 100-nanometer gold track, powered by an electrical pulse generated by an STM (scanning tunneling microscope) that uses a quantum mechanics phenomenon known as the tunnel effect.

Speed isnt everything, as the winner should be the one that made the greatest distance during the 36 hours.

According to the final ranking of CNRS, there were two winners ex-aequo, The US-Austrian team (Rice/Graz universities) whose NanoPrix made 1 micron in 29 hours (on a silver surface), and the Swiss team (Bazel University), whose car traveled 133 nm in 6-and-a-half hours.

Coming in second was the Ohio University team with their Bobcat nano-wagon, which traveled 43 nm; and last, the German team (Dresden University), whose car traveled 11 nm. There were also two other unranked teams: the Japanese team (NIMS-MANA) was awarded the Fair play prize, and the French team (Toulouse) took home the most beautiful car prize.

The Bobcat Nano-Wagon was developed at Laboratory for Single Atom and Molecule Manipulationat Ohio University. Although the Bobcat came in second and performed rather well, the team blames a thunderstorm in Ohio that caused power issues, as the nano-wagon was remotely-controlled across the ocean.

Nevertheless, the end of the race for the Bobcat nano-wagon is only the beginning of yet another exciting perspective.

Team leader and pilot, Saw-Wai Hla have bigger plans in store. The teams two-target project is, first to develop a controlled molecular transport system, and two, help launching a whole new field of study: quantum mechanical engineering.

Professor Hla and his teammates are not sure whether the wheels glide or roll across the nano-surface where gravity is irrelevant, or how the nano-wagon adheres toand moves across the surface.

Currently in early theoretical discussions, the field of quantum mechanical engineering would benefit from further study of nanocars and open the way to new concepts. For example, building electronic circuits and nano-sized data storage devices.

New Fields Fast: The NanoCar Race and Quantum Mechanical Engineering - Edgy Labs (blog)

New center will push frontiers of sensing technology – MIT News

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

In anticipation of the official opening of the new MIT.nano building which will house some of the worlds leading facilities supporting research in nanoscience and nanotechnology MIT last week officially launched a new center of excellence called SENSE.nano, which is dedicated to pushing the frontiers of research in sensing technologies.

Like the new building, which is slated to open a year from now, SENSE.nano is an endeavor that cuts across the divisions of departments, labs, and schools, to encompass research in areas including chemistry, physics, materials science, electronics, computer science, biology, mechanical engineering, and more. Faculty members from many of these areas spoke about their research during a daylong conference on May 25 that marked the official launch of the new center.

Introducing the event, MIT President L. Rafael Reif said that [MIT.nano] will create opportunities for research and collaboration for more than half our current faculty, and 67 percent of those recently tenured. In fact, we expect that it will serve and serve to inspire more than 2,000 people across our campus, from all five MIT schools, and many more from beyond our walls.

Explaining the impetus for creating this new center, Reif said that MIT is famous for making because we have a community of makers a concentration of brilliant people who are excited to share their experience and their ideas, to teach you to use their tools and to learn what you know, too. On a much bigger scale, this is the same magic we hope for in creating SENSE.nano. As MIT.nanos first center of excellence, SENSE.nano will bring together a wide array of researchers, inventors, and entrepreneurs fascinated by the potential of sensors and sensing systems to transform our world.

The development of new kinds of connected, inexpensive, and widespread sensing devices, harnessing the power of nanoscale imaging and manufacturing systems, could impact many of the worlds most pressing problems, said Vincent Roche, president of Analog Devices, who gave the opening keynote talk. Such new technology has the potential to solve problems that have plagued humanity for millennia, including food and water security, health care, and environmental degradation.

The 200,000-square-foot facility, in addition to more than doubling the amount of clean-room imaging and fabrication space available to MIT researchers, also contains one of the quietest spaces on the eastern seaboard, said Brian Anthony, co-leader of the new center of excellence and a principal researcher in the mechanical engineering department, referring to an exceptionally vibration-free environment created on the new buildings basement level, where the most sensitive of instruments, that require a perfectly stable base, will be housed.

To show by example what some of that cross-disciplinary work will look like, several faculty members described the research they are doing now and explained how its scope and capabilities will be greatly enhanced by the new imaging and fabrication tools that will become available when MIT.nano officially opens for research.

Tim Swager, the John D. MacArthur Professor of Chemistry, described ongoing work that he and his students have been doing on developing tiny, low-cost sensors that can be incorporated in the packaging of fruits and vegetables. The sensors could detect the buildup of gases that could lead to premature ripening or rotting, as a way to reduce the amount of food wasted during transportation and storage. Polina Anikeeva, the Class of 1942 Career Development Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering, talked about developing flexible, stretchable fibers for implantation in brain and spinal cord tissues, which could ultimately lead to ways of restoring motion to those with spinal cord injuries.

Others described large-area sensing systems that could incorporate computation and logic so that only the most relevant data would need to be transmitted, helping to curb a data overload; and sensors built from nanotubes that could be bent, twisted, or stretched while still gathering data. Still others described ways of integrating electronics with photonic devices, which use light instead of electrons to carry and manipulate data. Also presented was work on using fluorescing quantum-dot particles to provide imaging of living tissues without the need for incisions, and building sensors that can continuously monitor buildings, bridges, and other structures to detect signs of likely failure long before disaster strikes.

The future will be measured in nanometers, said MIT Professor Vladimir Bulovic, in a panel discussion at the end of the conference, moderated by Tom Ashbrook, host of NPRs On Point. Bulovic, who is the faculty lead for the MIT.nano building and the Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, added, We are right now at the renaissance age of nano. He noted that devices all around us and in our pockets are constantly sensing, recording, and sometimes transmitting data about our surroundings.

We can access data on how the world around us really functions, and with that data, we can take the next step of influencing the environment to improve our health, protect our natural environment, and monitor our buildings, structures, and devices to make sure they are working as they should, he said. The opportunity is vast.

In his introduction, Reif also hailed the potential of whats sometimes called ubiquitous sensing: Tomorrows optical, mechanical, electrical, chemical, and biological sensors, alone and networked together, offer a huge range of new possibilities in terms of understanding and controlling the world around us. Sensors will change how we protect our soldiers and keep our bridges safe. How we monitor the polar ice caps, and monitor how children learn. Sensors will change how we keep our water clean, our patients healthy, and our energy supply secure. In short, sensors and sensing systems will be the source of new products, new capabilities and whole new industries. And we should not be surprised if some of them are deeply disruptive.

Disruption, of course, can be a two-edged sword. So, Reif said, one of the challenges facing those who innovate in this field, as technology races to the future, is how to help society navigate its unintended impacts. If we can make this a first concern, and not an afterthought, I have no doubt that this community will continue to be a major force in making a better world.

Engineering Student Shares Insights from a Semester at Los Alamos … – Duke Today

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Zhiqin Huang, a doctoral student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Dukes Pratt School of Engineering, received a grant to spend time at the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. By leveraging the labs cutting-edge facilities and other resources, she aimed to gain skills and knowledge to inform her dissertation on novelnanostructures to develop extremely low-energy and ultrafast plasmonic switches.

Huang was among 19 graduate students from five schools at Duke who received Graduate Student Training Enhancement Grants in 2016 for training beyond their core disciplines. Her faculty mentor was David R. Smith. She shared this update.

Thanks to the GSTEG, I had a chance to visit Los Alamos National Lab (LANL) for a half year. Located in New Mexico, it is probably the most famous federal government laboratory and well known for decades due to the development of the first atomic bomb and research in multiple disciplines.

During this visit, I obtained a comprehensive training including hands-on laser training, electricity safety training, cryogen safety, radiological training, chemical safety, hazardous waste and environment management as well as lab management trainings.

Since I needed to go to Sandia National Lab (SNL) to do experiments, I got various related training there on different high-tech fabrication tools such as JEOL EBL (E-beam lithography) and ALD (Atomic layer deposition). I also learned how to make graphene, which is a very interesting 2D material. All these trainings were very helpful to my research in LANL and at Duke.

The main purpose of the visit was to learn optics-related experiment techniques. I had a chance to work with scientists in the laboratory for ultrafast materials and optical sciences (LUMOS). In particular, I got involved in the optical ultrafast pump-probe experiments to investigate new materials such as Weyls metals and Dirac materials. I also learned the Terahertz (THz) pump and optical probe system.

Based on the rich resources in the national lab, I even built a new pump-probe system independently and did a group of experiments using newly fabricated samples and obtained primary results.

In addition, I attended the training for a newly developed optical system known as scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM), which includes AFM, nano-FTIR, nano-imaging and ultrafast pump-probe with the spatial resolution of 10nm and temporal resolution of 10fs. This incredible experience will be essential when we build our own system at Duke in the near future.

Furthermore, I attended several LANL internal forums related to nanooptics as well as invaluable seminars given by researchers in the lab and invited scholars. Through discussions with some talented experts in the field of my research, I gained a much better understanding on both theory and experiments.

This internal funding mechanism from the Office of the Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies encourages graduate students to step away from their core research and training to acquire additional skills, knowledge or co-curricular experiences that will give them new perspectives on their research agendas. Graduate Student Training Enhancement Grants are intended to deepen preparation for academic positions and other career trajectories.

Read about other 2016-2017 recipients experiences:

Original post:

Engineering Student Shares Insights from a Semester at Los Alamos ... - Duke Today

An IBM Breakthrough Ensures Silicon Will Keep Shrinking – WIRED

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

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F?6Yn7Pj5v>"xZw[Xtp|.G5}c#S6* W |0=e^sVXT&2y<<*zN@zt myncX?GfGO1Sy K(!)36e`DmC #2X~ ?+$KjF<>%Bx6 @jO1 K`N7? h+s*3 /_eF/W!+I<` AH%OYToC=LCA"t(Jj 1C80xH,l KLyii}tE=yTv|hzfMO~5c CQOM3ohq/l6(Q|jTd$"VjUN$K oN~dp1s' q)#THM(}}oTp^ZI `O&'.,(@0O @% 8<.M-v%]ABQ5{8ZII,yC=GX$oQ0a3m4tI-bb{lf-K{O>o G7GZl~{N(FF%xr5x#@p4@|fE~ -eNe_QG_|CZU2CKx8)S1@M5/"5}nnv-7RAV^*($#t cYevQSkk-RIbop(4"2zMi!F343X6Y0&F~"~ %#U*]T{vnC^E:_AM1c(1I#1b,*C*n7.(CX|*kv6^`#z@{U~tt*uyXn{e{Tr6-{yMFg+Jl[&r}jqB

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An IBM Breakthrough Ensures Silicon Will Keep Shrinking - WIRED

Moore’s Law Is Ending… So, What’s Next? – Seeker

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

Scientists are engineering a new, more efficient generation of computer chips by modeling them after the human brain.

Remember when all you could do on your cellphone was call, text, maybe play snake? Since then, phones got faster and smaller and around every two years, you probably upgraded your phone from 8 gigs to 16 to 32 and so on and so forth. This incremental technological progress we've all been participating in for years hinges on one key trend, called Moore's Law.

Co-founder of Intel, Gordon Moore made a prediction in 1965 that integrated circuits, or chips, were the path to cheaper electronics. Moore's law states that the number of transistors, the tiny switches that control the flow of an electrical current that can fit in an integrated circuit, will double every two years, while the cost will halve. Chip power goes up as cost goes down. That exponential growth has brought massive advances in computing power, hence tiny computers in our pockets!

Now, Moore's law isn't a law of physics, it's just a good hunch that's driven companies to make better chips. But experts are claiming that this trend is slowing down. So, to power the next wave of electronics, there are a few promising options in the works. One idea currently in the lab stage is neuromorphic computing, which are computer chips that are modeled after our own brains! They're basically capable of learning and remembering all at the same time at an incredibly fast chip.

Moore's Law Is Ending... So, What's Next? - Seeker

GPUs to Run 1000 Times Faster by 2025 – Huang – Wall Street Pit

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

The CEO being referred to is NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) co-founder Jensen Huang, and he verbalized his insights on Moores Law (and life after it) during the recently concluded Computex 2017 event held in Taipei.

Moores Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, is based on Moores observation that because the size of transistors was shrinking so rapidly, the number of transistors that could fit per square inch on integrated circuits seemed to double every year since they were invented.

Moores prediction is that such trend will continue into the future. And although the pace may have slowed down, the number of transistors that could fit per square inch did continue to increase, doubling not every year but after every 18 months instead. With this exponential growth, computers became twice as powerful, benefiting not just the consumers but the device manufacturers as well.

This went on for awhile (as predicted). But logic also dictated that sooner or later, physical limitations were bound to enter the picture, and growth would not just slacken but could possibly stop altogether. Right now, it seems were already in that state.

As Huang told analysts and reporters at the Computex event: Microprocessors no longer scale at the level of performance they used to the end of what you would call Moores Law. Semiconductor physics prevents us from taking Dennard scaling any further.

Dennard scaling named after Robert H. Dennard who co-authored the concept states that even while transistors become smaller, power density remains constant such that power consumption remains proportional with its area.

The combined effects of Moores Law and Dennard scaling has affected the semiconductor industry in such a way that only the few who can afford multibillion dollar financing could continue to go forward and push the technology further. And because there arent many who fit into this category, mergers and acquisitions will become a necessary solution to keep technology advancement from stagnating.

On NVIDIAs end, Huang assures that their venture into artificial intelligence and deep learning will keep them ahead even with the death of Moores Law. And its not by making more powerful machines, but by developing smarter machines.

Thats not to say, though, that NVIDIA will stop making their GPUs more powerful. On the contrary, as GPUs can now be considered as the core of the AI universe, NVIDIA has recently unveiled a GPU-accelerated cloud platform thats built specifically to develop deep learning models and algorithms on GPUs.

Moores Law may be dead. But according to Huang, the performance of GPUs will continue to improve, not through the increased power of transistors, but through new GPU architectures. He also says that by 2025, GPUs will perform 1,000 times better. And that is definitely something to look forward to. Even with the death of Moores Law.

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GPUs to Run 1000 Times Faster by 2025 - Huang - Wall Street Pit

To Be a Machine, book review: Disrupting life itself – ZDNet

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Danzig

To Be a Machine: Adventures among Cyborgs, Utopians, Hackers, and the Futurists Solving the Modest Problem of Death Mark O'Connell Granta 242 pages ISBN: 978-1-78378-196-6 12.99

"We built ingenious devices and we destroyed things." These words are easy to imagine carved on the tombstone of the human race. In To Be a Machine, where these words appear after an alarming session with people working on artificial intelligence, they're just one of the many possible futures that Dublin journalist Mark O'Connell visits. None seem to appeal to him much.

A friend once observed that anyone who had ever watched a baby could see how limited AI really is. Here, O'Connell's new baby son helpfully provides him with a grounding biological balance as he ponders the work of people who, in one way or another, all want to transcend biology.

Many of the ideas O'Connell explores, and some of the people he interviews, will be familiar to those who who've read prior efforts, beginning with Ed Regis's Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition. It's probably a mark of some kind of social change that Regis, writing 26 years ago, couldn't avoid -- or rather, embraced -- a certain, "Oh, my God, are these people nuts or what?" tone, while O'Connell, writing now, can be more soberly reflective. The Singularity, mind uploading, cryonics, whole-brain emulation, real-life 'cyborgs', and escaping the surly bonds of Earth to colonise distant planets and save the future of humanity may be no closer to reality than they were in 1991, but the ideas are more familiar: twenty-five years of Wired magazine and Silicon Valley hegemony have had their effect.

Today, when Nick Bostrom predicts (in his book Superintelligence) that an AI might turn all the Earth's resources to making paper clips he may still seem crazy -- but he's an Oxford University professor and director of the Future of Humanity Institute. Colonizing space to save the human race may be a fringe notion -- but it's also been embraced by the physicist Stephen Hawking.

To embrace biology, O'Connell is told during his study of cryonics, is to buy into "deathist ideology". I sympathize here: visiting the leading cryonics company, Alcor, and learning the details of cryopreservation can make death seem almost cuddly. Cryonicists themselves admit that revival is a very long shot -- but it's the only non-zero option.

The one overtly comic section of To Be a Machine, therefore, is the one that's most embodied: O'Connell watches as robots try to complete DARPA's 2015 challenge -- there's a collection of the best pratfalls at Popular Mechanics. The hardest things to automate are the things humans learn earliest: the 2015 state of the art, after millions of dollars and millions of hours of human engineering, couldn't climb stairs or open doors as well as a two-year-old. So in that area, at least, we can feel smug.

Given that the technology industry famously loves disruption, it should be no surprise that it attracts people who favour disrupting life itself. In the end, however, O'Connell favours blood and bone.