"Nano Nano"

Just last week, I cited this NewScientist article by Kurzweil in one of my pedagogy assignments. I have been attending a "How to teach Critical and Creative thinking" class. There have been lots of ways we can boost our thinking skills and there are lots of gurus out there who write books on these, mainly giving structures and methods to increase creativity or using proper "habits of mind" if you will.

But hey, what can beat nanotech?

That is, if it delivers what it is touted to and all within the next few decades. There is mention of "direct brain to brain interaction over the internet" once we merge with with our technology giving us non-biological intelligence beyond our imaginings. Nanobots in our brains and swimming in our blood are going to the first step in that direction.

The National Cancer Institute of the U.S. National Institutes of Health says that nanotech would be vital to its goal of eliminating suffering and death from cancer by 2015. That's pretty soon.


Excerpts
"Human life: The next generation." By Ray Kurzweil. NewScientist.com news service, 24 September 2005"
"By the 2020s, nanotechnology will enable us to create almost any physical product we want from inexpensive materials, using information processes. We will be able to go beyond the limits of biology, and replace your current "human body version 1.0" with a dramatically upgraded version 2.0, providing radical life extension. The "killer app" of nanotechnology is "nanobots", blood-cell sized robots that can travel in the bloodstream destroying pathogens, removing debris, correcting errors in DNA and reversing ageing processes."

"A Nanotech Cure for Cancer?" By Brandon Keim. Wired News, 07 Nov 2005.
"Indeed, the National Cancer Institute, which recently announced two waves of funding for nanotech training and research, sees nanotechnology as vital to its stated goal of "eliminating suffering and death from cancer by 2015."

Did life come from another world?

Another claim that life came from outer space, this time more specifically from Mars. The only question I have with this theory is this,"So how did life on Mars came about?"

"Did Life Come from Another World?" By David Warmflash and Benjamin Weiss. Scientific American, 08 Nov 2005. New research indicates that microorganisms could have survived a journey from Mars to Earth.

Humble spice to star drug

From star anise to Tamiflu - "Cooking spice key player in bird flu battle." AFP, 01 Nov 2005 (China Daily).

Excerpt - "Star anise, the dried, star-shaped multiple fruit of a small oriental tree which is a member of the magnolia family, is a traditional ingredient of oriental cuisine with its pungent, liquorice-like flavour.

But it also has a key pharmaceutical asset - shikimic acid, described by experts as the world's only weapon against bird flu, ... a vital ingredient of Tamiflu, one of the rare anti-viral drugs that has proved effective against the lethal H5N1 strain of bird flu which has infected 118 people in Asia since late 2003 and killed more than 60 people."