Technology News 7 July 2015

Sometimes advances in technology have a dark side. I am not talking about their use, I am talking about their manufacture. People are working with new materials and new chemical combinations every day and sometimes they are not adequately protected. The lack of protection may or may not be the fault of their employer, but it is just as dangerous. Take the case of nanomaterials. These materials can be so small that you can fit 100 million of them on the head of a pin. Imagine how easy it would be to breathe these things in without even knowing it, if you were working unprotected. It has been estimated that thousands of people have been exposed to nanomaterials in the last ten years. A recent case involved a female chemist who was working with this stuff, but who didn’t know it, because there is no requirement to label bottles containing nanomaterials. Apparently she was treating the powder like any other, not realizing how tiny and dangerous each grain was. It is said all she did was measure about two grams of this powder, but a week later she was getting a terrible reaction. She was taken out of the room where it happened, but her symptoms continued. When she stayed away from the workplace she improved. How many others are sick and don’t know why?

Has anyone seen any of those new Samsung trucks? Samsung has developed something on their tractor trailer trucks which would be very helpful to all of us who drive. The front of the truck contains a camera and the rear doors of the trailer has a large screen over the back. The camera projects a view of what is in front of the truck onto the screen allowing drivers who are behind the truck know if they can safely pass. It is just one of those great ideas which is not hard to implement and which seems to not be too expensive.

Comets and asteroids hitting the earth have been a big worry lately. I guess it isn’t the fact they hit the earth more now, because they probably don’t, it is just the fact we realize now what a threat they are. Government agencies which are responsible for building rockets and nuclear arms have signed an agreement stating they will work together on planetary defense. The idea seems to be to find a better way to deflect these rocks before they hit us. This will allow the agencies to be more productive in planning what to do, because they will not be wasting their time doing something another agency is also doing. When I hear about things like this I must add the fact our detection of these objects needs to be improved so it is 100 percent before we can mount a reasonable defense against these objects. We should also include other countries in this effort.

I usually find it hard to agree with what most politicians say, but when Secretary of State John Kerry said the internet needs to be able to flourish and work properly I had to agree with him. The government is linking the internet with foreign policy and there is nothing needed more than treaties with the international community which would punish those who use the internet to facilitate criminal acts. Why should some be allowed to send out emails which bilk people out of money? Why should slander be allowed with the people committing it hiding behind a false identity? Why should people think they can get away with stealing identities just because they are in some country that doesn’t care what they do? I am for freedom of speech, but not for freedom of crime. Years ago I put something up for sale on Ebay and a buyer tried to not only defraud me, but tried to pass a stolen check off on me. The buyer turned out to be in Nigeria, a country infamous for criminal plots.

We have a tradition in this country and it is that even people who are inventors without much money might be able to develop a useful invention by building it in their garage. A man in Nebraska has taken this to heart and is building a warp engine. Yes you heard me correctly, he is building a warp engine. In December 2014 he said he would be able to give a demo of it lifting off the ground sometime this summer. Here is the problem, if the engine works it would be taken from him and put into a super-secret black project and we would never know it was a success. If it fails, we will be reading about that failure on the internet and possibly in those papers sold in the supermarkets around the country. There was also a blurb in the news in 2013 which stated NASA had started to build a warp drive.

Speaking about engines, a new type of engine is being studied. The beauty of it is it runs only on bacteria and water. A simple version can be built for only $5.00. The power comes from the shrinking and swelling of bacteria which occurs due to the change in humidity. The idea actually is not new, it was thought about and work begun about ten years ago. Ozgur Sahin and his colleagues at Columbia University have been working on this and here is what he said, “People before us had shown that the spores change shape in response to humidity." "They shrink when they're dry and expand when exposed to moisture. But in our studies, we found them to be surprisingly rigid. That told us that this shape change must come with a lot of energy. In the beginning, I was just amazed at this biological substance. But then I thought, there must be applications for this." Someday we may be driving around in cars powered by bacteria.

The US Navy has decided to accelerate its development of Artificial Intelligence. The idea is to use it by not only creating more intelligent weapons, but in support and management functions. It is beginning to look like the human factor is being put on the back burner when decisions are called for. If this is what the future holds, we may be getting closer to a terminator society than we thought possible, because things seem to be going in the same direction as the movie script.