Saturday, December 22, 2007

Nanotechnology? What's That?! -- Engineers Create Exhibits on Achievements, Promise

ScienceDaily () -- Nanotechnology has already brought advances such as self-cleaning windows and energy-efficient LED lighting, and could soon deliver medical breakthroughs. To educate the public about nanotechnology's promise, the National Science Foundation has slated $20 million to fund a network of interactive exhibits at 100 museums around the country.

Explosives At The Nanoscale With 'World's Smallest Controlled Heat Source'

ScienceDaily (2006-09-11) -- Using nanometer scale analysis techniques and quantities too small to explode, researchers have mapped the temperature and length-sale factors that make energetic materials -- otherwise known as explosives -- behave the way they do.

Close-up of AFM cantilever tip, the "world's smallest controlled heat source" used to study explosive materials at the nanoscale. (Image courtesy William King)


Scientists would like to design energetic materials with specific responses, with a given temperature producing a given burn rate, for example," explained William King, an assistant professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology's School of Mechanical Engineering. "Before our measurements, no one was able to interrogate these properties at the nanometer scale. With the data we have generated, it is possible to build physics-based models of how these materials behave rather than relying on empirical relationships seen at the macro scale."

Using an AFM tip capable of heating spots as small as a few nanometers in diameter, the researchers performed nanometer-scale thermal analysis on thin films of a polycrystalline energetic material known as Pentaerythritol Tetranitrate (PETN). They melted, evaporated and decomposed the PETN at length scales ranging from 100 nanometers to a few micrometers.



Georgia Institute of Technology (2006, September 11). Explosives At The Nanoscale With 'World's Smallest Controlled Heat Source'. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 22, 2007, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2006/09/060908171310.htm

Well, PETN is one of the most dangerous explosive with ammo. use. Have a very bad behavior; if you a unfamiliar with this class of detonating explosives, detonate very fast.

What's the point?

Explosives On A Chip: Unique Structure Enables New Generation Of Military Micro-detonators

cienceDaily (2007-12-23) -- Tiny copper structures with pores at both the nanometer and micron size scales could play a key role in the next generation of detonators used to improve the reliability, reduce the size and lower the cost of certain military munitions.

Georgia Institute of Technology (2007, December 23). Explosives On A Chip: Unique Structure Enables New Generation Of Military Micro-detonators. ScienceDaily. Retrieved December 22, 2007,
from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2007/12/071218105422.htm#



Friday, September 21, 2007

Semantic... what a word!

The original vision of the semantic web as a layer on top of the current web, annotated in a way that computers can "understand," is certainly grandiose and intriguing. Yet, for the past decade it has been a kind of academic exercise rather than a practical technology.

… The purpose of the semantic web is to enable computers to "understand" semantics the way humans do. Equipped with this "understanding," computers will theoretically be able solve problems that are out of reach today….

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, was presented in 2000 (see image below), the rest of the post will focus on the difficulties with this approach.

Well, this remember me first application of computers; translate Russian texts. So English speaking word will understand first flight in space. If I remember well, this was in 1957 or software able to translate on demand we have only after 2001. And those translations have to appear in public after human corrections.

The same ideas appear here, Russian have software for server able to interpret “xml” pages according with user’s manifested preferences. It seems to me that we are still overwhelming language barriers forgotten that is hard to obtain lets say a walking robot.

Because the designers were shooting for flexibility and completeness, the end result are documents that are confusing, verbose and difficult to analyze.

Again, designers, people searcing for something new, do not want to respect standards ;-)

If it is to be done be a centralized entity, then there will need to be Google-like semantic web crawler that takes pages and transforms them into RDF. This comes back to the issue we just discussed - having an automatic algorithm that infers meaning from text the way humans do. Creating such an algorithm may not be possible at all (and again begs the question of the need for RDF if the algorithm exists).


:-) Google is the worst enemy….or Chinese programmers have something new…


For example, suppose there are representations of a book defined by Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Each has common fields like ISBN and Author, but there maybe subtle differences, i.e., one of them may define edition like this: 1st edition and the other like this: edition 1. This seemingly minor difference, one that people would not even think twice about, would wreak havoc in computers.

The only way to have interoperability is to define a common standard for how to describe a book. So having self-describing documents is not enough, because there still needs to be a literal syntactic agreement in order for computer systems to interoperate. The bottom line is that there needs to be a standard and an API....

The original vision of the semantic web as a layer on top of the current web, annotated in a way that computers can "understand," is certainly grandiose and intriguing. Yet, for the past decade it has been a kind of academic exercise rather than a practical technology. The technical, scientific and business difficulties are substantial, and to overcome them, there needs to be more community support, standards and pushing. This is not likely to happen unless there are more clear reasons for it.

Well, nice conclusion for a person that neglect networks administrator’s jobs.




Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

Friday, September 14, 2007

b2bweb

Sa vedem ce mai fac Romanii din Romania!

Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

Tuesday, September 11, 2007

9.11 from Ann Arbor


2001: World Trade Center and Pentagon attacked by terrorists
On this day in 2001, 19 militants associated with the terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes in the United States, crashing three into buildings (the fourth crashed in Pennsylvania) and killing some 3,000 people.

Ann Arbor is in Michigan and here at 8:43 some people recall from memory that day, worst than Pearl Harbor day in American recent history.

Beyond September 11th: An Account of Post-Disaster Research

NSF Media Briefing

Engineers Week
Monday, February 23, 2004
National Science Foundation
Arlington, Virginia

Insight into Research at Ground Zero, Presented by the Researchers Who Were There
On Monday, February 23, the National Science Foundation hosted six of the nation's top rapid-response researchers to report on their experiences at Ground Zero.
Read about this event
.

Scientists Use the "Dark Web" to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online

Team from the University of Arizona identifies and tracks terrorists on the Web

Representation of computer technology, with a circuit board and the silhouette of a computer user.
The Dark Web project team catalogues and studies places online where terrorists operate.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies, Hsinchun Chen and his Artificial Intelligence Lab at the University of Arizona have created the Dark Web project, which aims to systematically collect and analyze all terrorist-generated content on the Web.
... A recent report estimates that there are more than 5,000 Web sites created and maintained by known international terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda, the Iraqi insurgencies, and many home-grown terrorist cells in Europe....

Techniques:

  • Social network analysis
  • The technologies used are statistical analysis, cluster analysis, social network analysis (SNA), visualization, and various other approaches. SNA has recently been recognized as a promising technology for studying criminal and terrorist networks. Specifically, we use the centrality and structural equivalence measures from SNA to measure the importance of each network member. Centralities such as degree, prestige, betweenness, and closeness can automatically identify the leaders, gatekeepers, and outliers from a network. To detect terrorist groups in a network we employ traditional hierarchical clustering algorithms. In addition, with a rich set of approaches and metrics from SNA, we extract interaction patterns between groups using blockmodeling approach, analyze and predict the stability of a terrorist group using group density and cohesion measures. Moreover, we examine its topological characteristics in terms of level of centralization and degree of hierarchy. These structural properties found can be of great help in revealing the vulnerability of a terrorist organization.

    ....

    ...The book, in the end, is an invitation to critical thinking of some of the major myths of American History. Woods does not attempt to denigrate his targets or examine the issues in minute detail, instead offering a second look at American history. Even though everyone may not agree with Woods’ on all of the issues, it is more important to him that people know that there is another side to many of the best-known stories of America, and draw their own conclusions, rather than take the official public school-taught propaganda at face value.
    or
    A Review of "33 Questions about American History You're Not Supposed to Ask"

    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Thursday, August 30, 2007

    Good Morning Annn...

    Ann Arbor The First Hundred Years (1927)

    Contents I. ANN ARBOR'S ANTECEDENTS................................ 5
    II. JOHN ALLEN FOUNDS A TOWN............................ 13
    III. THIE SITE OF ANN A IBOR.................................... 23
    IV. TIlE SETTLERS POUR IN......................... 27
    V. E VIDENCES OF G ROW TH........................................ 44
    V I. TI-IHE FIRST FEW Y EARS........................................ 62
    VII. THE GERMANS...................................................... 80
    VIII. PRIVATE SCHIOOLS................................................. 99
    IX. THIE CLARK SCHOOL.............................................. 1.13
    X. PUBLIC SCHOOLS........................................ 12.......... 1
    XI. MILITARY MATTERS.............................................. 144
    XII. POLITICS AND PUBLIC BUILID)INS................... 175
    XIII. THE LIGHTER SIDE................................. 193
    XIV. BUSINESS LIFE...................................................... 13
    XV. TI-E UNIVERSITY-PART I.............................. 237
    XVI. THE UNIVERSITY-PAIT II.............................. 255
    XVII. TIHE UNIVERSITY-PART III.................... 281
    X VIII. BANKS....................................................... 295
    XIX. FIRE AND WATER.............................................. 307
    XX. GAS AND LIGHT...................................................... 323
    XXI. TRANSPORTATION AND COMMUNICATION............ 328
    XXII. ANN ARBOR PUBLICATIONS.................................. 347
    XXIII. HEALTH AND SANITATION............................. 360

    ....
    CHAPTER XIII The Lighter Side LIKE other Americans, the people of Ann Arbor always have shown great interest in amusements and in social affairs. During the first two or three years of the city's history, no one came to the settlement, either to interest or entertain, other than the ministers or the emigrants. Such amusements as the people had they originated among themselves. The inauguration of the Masonic fraternity offered some diversion for the men, but for the women, their chief amusement was derived from the little gatherings about the community oven John Allen built on Ashley street, and which a few years later was covered by a shed at the back of the Clark School. Here the women sat and visited while their bread was baking, or, on Saturday evenings after they had placed their crocks of beans in the oven to cook during the night. Sunday morning the pioneers would gather in this cabin or that, and a hot bean breakfast would be served. These breakfasts often were followed by religious services or by quiet social hours where simple matters of local interest were discussed. The arrival of new settlers was ever a topic for gossip, but of all social events a wedding was the most interesting....
    When Ann Arbor was young there were no distinctions based either upon social standing or wealth. The love-making was not confined to members of a particular "set," and a prospective wedding invited the interest of all alike.
    ....
    August 20, 2007 Volume 85, Number 34 p. 10
    Science Policy
    Nanotech Survey
    OECD countries are examining nanomaterials
    Glenn Hess
    A NEW REPORT by the 30-member-nation Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development catalogs the growing number of initiatives under way in industrialized countries to address the health and environmental safety implications of manufactured nanomaterials.


    Courtesy of Delina Lyon/Rice University

    Risks of nanomaterials are still largely unknown. Shown is Delina Lyon, a Rice University researcher who studies the impact of buckyball aggregates on ecosystems.The 77-page document summarizes information on current developments provided by delegations that participated in the second meeting of OECD's Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials, held this past April in Berlin.

    The report indicates that few regulatory decisions on nanomaterials have been made by governments around the world, as the impacts of nanotechnology remain largely unknown. But many countries are devoting more resources toward discovering what those impacts might be.

    China, for example, told OECD that it has more than 30 research organizations studying the toxicological and environmental effects of nanomaterials and techniques for recovering nanoparticles from manufacturing processes.

    "A lot of countries are placing a high premium on understanding and managing the potential risks of engineered nanomaterials at an early stage in the development of these technologies," says Andrew D. Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

    Several countries, including Belgium and Ireland, say they do not currently have any specific national regulations in place, partly because there are no globally accepted definitions of nanomaterials. Maynard says a technical committee of the International Standards Organization, in Geneva, has been working on the problem.

    France has no regulations to date, either, but the French Agency for Labor & Environmental Health Safety is working to ensure that nanoscale materials are included under the European Union's Registration, Evaluation & Authorization of Chemicals (REACH) program.




    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Monday, June 11, 2007

    Blogging Apple's Keynote Faster Than a Greased Leopard (Rawr!)


    There are many blog popularity-ranking services on the web, but unfortunately, they all rely on only one piece of data for their rankings. Either link popularity, RSS feeds or some sort of traffic-ranking service. We at eBizMBA have decided that in order to get a more accurate picture we needed to combine data from multiple sources.
    The result:

    Less than 5 seconds to publish. That's how fast our new liveblogging system will
    be on Monday's Apple Keynote at 10AM PST.
    We'll be able to deliver the words from El Jobso's mouth to your LCD faster
    than any other blog by minutes. With nice photos. Cool, huh




    Essential HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, and miscellaneous cheatsheets
    There are a ton of free cheatsheets, quick references, and downloadable resources for programming languages and related technologies online -- in this post I've tried to organize and list some of the best for web development.
    I've focused on HTML, CSS, Javascript, and PHP, since those are the languages we use most commonly at Ning, but many of these sites point to resources for other languages as well.


    « The truth about venture capitalists, Part 2 Main The truth about venture capitalists, Part 3 »



    Maybe we'll stop by TUAWs
    get together
    after we're done. (Any other parties going on afterwards?)
    Man, I'm stoked to be able to get the news to you guys that much faster. Big
    thanks to Tom and Ian over in Gawker Tech, our tiny little dev team with huge
    hearts and brains. But I'd be lying if I wasn't nervous about stress testing new
    software on such a big day. No guts, no glory, hmm?


    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post



    Monday, June 04, 2007

    Climate & Intelligent Design



    For everyone who teaches Creationism or "Intelligent Design" of life, the topics menu arranged by the creation story in the Bible are as follows:

    In the beginning God created...
    Matter, Light -- The first day;
    Water, Motion -- The second day;
    Land, Plant Kingdom -- The third day;
    Solar System, Astronomy -- The fourth day;
    Marine Life, Birds, Dinosaurs -- The fifth day;
    Animal Kingdom
    , Mankind -- The sixth day;
    Learning
    , Creationism -- The seventh day;
    Beyond the seventh day -- Discovery.

    There is a lot of debate about the similarities and differences in "Intelligent Design" theory and creationism. The debate on the issue is, in itself, interesting to research and holds a lot of interest who are interested in the origins of life. The search terms [ "intelligent design" creation ] provide a good variety of websites for research. I haven't found any GREAT sites for exploring these topics yet, but If I do, I will list them here.


    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Monday, May 28, 2007

    Lights, Camera, Action


    Romania ete ...!
    Vive la Romania !
    CANNES, France, May 27 -- The international critics corps can be a tough crowd (if they don't like a film here, they boo), but they mostly agreed that the 60th anniversary of the Cannes Film Festival presented an especially strong slate of movies. At the awards ceremony at the Palais on Sunday evening, the head of the jury, British director Stephen Frears ("The Queen"), praised the selections. "I am told by people who come every year that this was a terrific festival. Thank you. The films were a pleasure to watch." They were also tough to watch, with meditations and stories about evil, sickness and death -- but filled, too, with the triumph, or sometimes just the mere survival, of the human spirit.
    And so it was no surprise that the top prize, the Palme d'Or, went to one of the darlings of the festival, "4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days," from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu. The film is set in 1987 Bucharest, during the waning years of the Soviet bloc. It tells the story of a college student who has an illegal abortion, her friend and the abortionist, who is also a rapist. Whew, no?
    At the end of a long day in the lab, what we'd all like is an award-winning movie. What makes for a good movie? An engrossing story, deft cinematography, and an extraordinary ensemble of actors. Cannes do not offer something like that so back to nanotechnologies until Eurabians will grow up. The goal of single-molecule research is to produce a movie of the cell. Biochemistry and biophysics done in the test tube already provide an understanding of the dynamic behavior of molecules; from these studies, what goes on in cells, minute by minute or even second by second, can be inferred.
    Ultimately, however, the goal is to film single molecules in single cells, focusing in closely enough not only to observe spatial and temporal characteristics but also to decipher molecular mechanisms. We're not there yet, but recent advances in single-molecule techniques bring us tantalizingly close to a molecule-scale movie of cellular life.Because cells are optically transparent, light microscopy is ideal for noninvasive imaging of cells in three dimensions. However, until recently, the resolution of lens-based optical microscopes was constrained by the diffraction barrier, which gave a resolution cutoff at half the wavelength of light. In his Review, Hell (p. 1153) discusses concepts that show how the diffraction barrier can be broken in fluorescence spectroscopy and how these techniques have been applied to achieve nanoscale resolution. His Review gives hope that real-time three-dimensional imaging of live cells with electron-microscopy resolution may not be too far away.
    sciencemag
    Post Coms
    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Sunday, May 27, 2007

    Origin-Of-Life Researcher Dies

    Stanley L. Miller
    The chemist known as the father of origin-of-life chemistry, Stanley L. Miller, died on May 20 at age 77. Miller was emeritus professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, San Diego. He had suffered a series of strokes that began in 1999.

    In the 1950s, Miller, working as a graduate student under the late Nobel Laureate Harold C. Urey at the University of Chicago, performed an experiment demonstrating that organic compounds necessary for the origin of life can be generated from simple molecules under the conditions existing on early Earth (Science 1953, 117, 528; J. Am. Chem. Soc. 1955, 77, 2351).

    To mimic the ocean/atmosphere system of early Earth, Miller put water and ammonia into a flask with hydrogen and methane gas, boiled the solution, and sparked the contents with an electrical discharge to simulate lightning. Several days later, the solution turned dark brown. Miller analyzed the solution and detected the presence of at least two amino acids. Unconvinced by the results, Miller repeated the experiment and got at least five amino acids—and in large amounts.


    Marxist teachers emphasized for me this experiment. Instead to accept their point of view, I have learn that several days means 500 hrs. and the chemist is a sceptical person.

    Yes, I have the few building blocks of life. Where it is the cement?

    I will burn a candle for Stanley L. Miller


    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Saturday, May 26, 2007

    Nanosensor

    Molecular switches
    The simplest active DNA nanostructures are switches or actuators that can be driven between two conformations. Motion is induced by changes in temperature or ionic conditions, or by the binding of a signalling molecule, often a DNA strand.
    nanosensor
    Conformation changes induced by changes in environment
    Rotary motion can be produced by changing the twist of DNA. Double-stranded DNA with the sequence (CG)n can be flipped from the usual right-handed helix (B-DNA) to a left-handed conformation (Z-DNA). This transition is favoured by high salt concentrations and low temperatures13. One of the earliest nanomechanical DNA devices14 used this transition to change the angle between two rigid DNA tiles connected by a (CG)10 stem. Each tile carried a reporter fluorophore. Förster resonant energy transfer (FRET) between fluorophores allows sensitive measurement of their separation on a nanometre length scale: the efficiency of energy transfer, mediated by a dipole - dipole interaction, scales as the inverse sixth power of their separation15. When the B - Z transition was induced by an increase in ionic strength, FRET measurements showed an increase in the separation between the fluorophores consistent with the expected relative rotation of the tiles by 3.5 turns.

    Yang and co-workers converted changes in the twist of DNA into linear motion16. Their device consisted of a closed loop of double-stranded DNA attached to opposite arms of a four-arm Holliday junction (Box 1)17. A Holliday junction can migrate (isomerize) by breaking identical base pairs in one pair of opposite arms and remaking them in the other pair. A change in the conformation of the DNA within the loop was initiated by adding ethidium bromide: this intercalating dye binds between adjacent base pairs, lengthening and partially unwinding the double helix. The resulting stress was relieved by junction migration: by shortening the protruding arms of the junction the loop was allowed to lengthen without changing the total number of twists within it.

    Environmentally driven changes in the conformation of single-stranded DNA can induce linear motion. Under slightly acidic conditions, a single strand with appropriately spaced cytosine bases folds into an i-motif " a compact three-dimensional structure that is held together by cytosine-protonated-cytosine base pairs18. In the presence of a near-complementary strand of DNA there is competition between the i-motif and an extended double helix formed by hybridization of the two strands (note that a perfectly complementary strand would itself fold into a stable structure called the G-quadruplex19). The i-motif device can be switched between compact and extended states by changing the pH20, 21. Cyclic switching can be driven by an oscillating chemical reaction22, 23.

    The i-motif-to-duplex transition has been made to do mechanical work. One surface of a silicon cantilever was coated with tethered cytosine-containing strands and formation of the i-motif induced a compressive surface stress that bent the cantilever24. The origin of the surface stress, which is also observed when complementary strands hybridize to tethered probes25, is not understood. Electrostatic repulsion between the compact i-motifs plays a part, but the effect persists with high salt concentrations at which interactions over a distance comparable to the separation between strands are effectively screened.

    It has also been suggested that the conformational change resulting from pH-dependent binding of a single strand of DNA to a duplex to form a triple-helical structure could be used as the basis of a nanomechanical actuator26, 27.

    Devices such as those described above can be used to monitor and report on their environment. Box 2 describes how active DNA nanostructures are being developed as sensors, how elementary logical operations can be performed on their outputs, and how the combination of sensors and computation might be used to create smart drug-delivery systems.

    Conformation changes induced by signalling
    Yurke and co-workers28 constructed a pair of DNA tweezers with two rigid double-stranded arms connected at one end by a flexible single-stranded hinge (Fig. 2). In the open configuration, the arms rotate freely about the hinge. Single-stranded tails extend from the free end of both arms and serve as attachment points for a control strand — the 'set' or 'fuel' strand — that can pull the arms together by hybridizing to both of them. A short region of the set strand remains single-stranded even when hybridized to the device: it serves as a toehold for hybridization of a complementary 'unset' or 'antifuel' strand that strips the set strand from the device by branch migration (Box 1). Displacement of the set strand generates a double-stranded waste product and resets the device to its initial open configuration. The device can be driven through many cycles of operation simply by repeated sequential addition of set and unset strands. The time to half completion of a single switching operation is 10 s at typical (micromolar) control-strand concentrations: the rate constant for toehold-mediated strand exchange is 105 M-1 s-1 (ref. 29). Operation of the DNA tweezers has recently been characterized using single molecule FRET measurements30.

    Figure 2: A DNA nanomachine driven by repeated sequential addition of DNA control strands.
    DNA tweezers28 have two double-stranded arms connected by a flexible single-stranded hinge. The 'set' strand pulls the arms into a closed conformation by hybridizing to single-stranded tails at the ends of the arms. A short region of the set strand remains single-stranded even when it is hybridized to the tweezers: this region serves as a toehold that allows the 'unset' strand to hybridize to the set strand and strip it from the device, returning the tweezers to the open configuration and generating a double-stranded waste product. The state of the device can be determined by measuring the separation between donor and acceptor fluorophores (represented by the green triangle and red circle) using FRET.




    Strand displacement has been used to effect conformation changes in a wide variety of systems. A number of variations on the tweezers have been reported including a device where the arms are pushed apart instead of being pulled together31 and a three-state device32. Yan and co-workers33 constructed a linear array of rigid DNA tiles in which adjacent tiles could be flipped between cis and trans conformations by stripping away and replacing control strands. Different conformations were easily distinguished by atomic force microscopy. The same device has recently been incorporated into a two-dimensional DNA array34. Feng et al.35 created a two-dimensional array that could be switched between states with different lattice spacings and Hazarika and co-workers36 used strand displacement to reverse the aggregation of gold nanoparticles held together by DNA bridges37. A number of groups have used DNA control strands to switch a section of DNA between a single-stranded state, designed to fold into a compact G-quadruplex stabilized by hydrogen-bonded tetrads of guanine19, and an extended duplex38, 39, 40.

    Motion of DNA devices can be triggered using RNA control strands41. By using a specific messenger RNA (mRNA) as a control strand, a tweezer device has been used to sense in vitro transcription42, 43. These experiments show how DNA devices could be controlled by transcriptional circuits44, 45, 46, 47, and point to future applications in which the presence of a specific mRNA within a cell might trigger an event such as the release of a caged drug48.

    The maximum force exerted by hybridization of a signalling strand of DNA can be estimated as the free energy change of hybridization divided by the distance through which the hybridizing strands must move together, and is of the order of 10 pN (ref. 28). The fact that protein motors generate similar forces49, 50, 51, 52 encourages speculation that DNA hybridization could be used to drive DNA devices that mimic natural molecular motors.

    Strand displacement has been used to effect conformation changes in a wide variety of systems. A number of variations on the tweezers have been reported including a device where the arms are pushed apart instead of being pulled together31 and a three-state device32. Yan and co-workers33 constructed a linear array of rigid DNA tiles in which adjacent tiles could be flipped between cis and trans conformations by stripping away and replacing control strands. Different conformations were easily distinguished by atomic force microscopy. The same device has recently been incorporated into a two-dimensional DNA array34. Feng et al.35 created a two-dimensional array that could be switched between states with different lattice spacings and Hazarika and co-workers36 used strand displacement to reverse the aggregation of gold nanoparticles held together by DNA bridges37. A number of groups have used DNA control strands to switch a section of DNA between a single-stranded state, designed to fold into a compact G-quadruplex stabilized by hydrogen-bonded tetrads of guanine19, and an extended duplex38, 39, 40.

    Motion of DNA devices can be triggered using RNA control strands41. By using a specific messenger RNA (mRNA) as a control strand, a tweezer device has been used to sense in vitro transcription42, 43. These experiments show how DNA devices could be controlled by transcriptional circuits44, 45, 46, 47, and point to future applications in which the presence of a specific mRNA within a cell might trigger an event such as the release of a caged drug48.

    The maximum force exerted by hybridization of a signalling strand of DNA can be estimated as the free energy change of hybridization divided by the distance through which the hybridizing strands must move together, and is of the order of 10 pN (ref. 28). The fact that protein motors generate similar forces49, 50, 51, 52 encourages speculation that DNA hybridization could be used to drive DNA devices that mimic natural molecular motors.





    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Friday, May 11, 2007

    DNA nanomachines


    Review
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Nature Nanotechnology 2, 275 - 284 (2007)doi:10.1038/nnano.2007.104
    DNA nanomachines
    Jonathan Bath1 & Andrew J. Turberfield1
    ----------------------------------------------------------
    Abstract
    We are learning to build synthetic molecular machinery from DNA. This research is inspired by biological systems in which individual molecules act, singly and in concert, as specialized machines: our ambition is to create new technologies to perform tasks that are currently beyond our reach. DNA nanomachines are made by self-assembly, using techniques that rely on the sequence-specific interactions that bind complementary oligonucleotides together in a double helix. They can be activated by interactions with specific signalling molecules or by changes in their environment. Devices that change state in response to an external trigger might be used for molecular sensing, intelligent drug delivery or programmable chemical synthesis. Biological molecular motors that carry cargoes within cells have inspired the construction of rudimentary DNA walkers that run along self-assembled tracks. It has even proved possible to create DNA motors that move autonomously, obtaining energy by catalysing the reaction of DNA or RNA fuels.
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Introduction
    The remarkable specificity of the interactions between complementary nucleotides makes DNA a useful construction material: interactions between short strands of DNA can be controlled with confidence through design of their base sequences (Box 1) The building material. http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v2/n5/box/nnano.2007.104_BX1.html
    The construction of branched junctions between double helices1 makes it possible to create complex three-dimensional objects2, 3, 4, 5, such as the tetrahedron5 shown in Fig. 1, by self-assembly. One way to exploit this extraordinarily precise architectural control is to use self-assembled DNA templates to position functional molecules: examples include molecular electronic circuits6, 7, near-field optical devices8 and enzyme networks9.
    Figure 1: Self-assembly of a nanometre-scale object.The DNA tetrahedron5 has relatively stiff double-stranded edges linked by flexible single-stranded hinges. A cargo, for example a protein48, can be trapped in the central cavity of the tetrahedron. Mechanical devices built from DNA could be used to open the tetrahedron (R. P. Goodman, M. Heilemann, A. N. Kapenidis & A.J.T., manuscript in preparation) to control access to the cargo.
    Fig 1



    It is an obvious extension of this research to convert static DNA structures into machines. DNA is not the natural choice of material to build active structures with because it lacks the structural and catalytic versatility of proteins and RNA (for both DNA and RNA, Watson–Crick base pairing is the strongest interaction determining inter- and intramolecular interactions, but RNA has a much richer repertoire of weaker non-covalent interactions that can stabilize complex structures10). If we could cope with the interactions required for a three-dimensional fold we would design more competent machines made, as in nature, from RNA and proteins11, 12. We make nanomachines from DNA because the simplicity of its structure and interactions allows us to control its assembly.
    In this review we concentrate on research that is leading towards the development of synthetic molecular motors. We start by showing how DNA nanostructures can be made to switch between two states in response to molecular or environmental signals; we describe how a device can be moved along a track by operating molecular switches in the correct sequence; we finish with an account of the current state of development of autonomous molecular motors that are inspired by the natural protein motors myosin and kinesin. Closely related work on DNA sensors and DNA-templated chemistry is described briefly in Boxes 2 (Sensors that can process information






    Thursday, May 10, 2007

    nsf.gov - News - The Longest Carbon Nanotubes You've Ever Seen - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

    nsf.gov - News - The Longest Carbon Nanotubes You've Ever Seen - US National Science Foundation (NSF)

    May 10, 2007
    Using techniques that could revolutionize manufacturing for certain materials, researchers have grown carbon nanotubes that are the longest in the world. While still slightly less than 2 centimeters long, each nanotube is 900,000 times longer than its diameter.
    The fibers--which have the potential to be longer, stronger and better conductors of electricity than copper and many other materials--could ultimately find use in smart fabrics, sensors and a host of other applications.
    "This process is revolutionary because it allows us to keep the catalyst 'alive' for a long period of time thus, providing fast and continuous transport of the carbon 'building blocks' to the carbon nanotube growth zone," said Shanov.
    More important for manufacturing, the research team grew a 12-millimeters-thick, uniform carpet of aligned carbon nanotubes on a roughly 10-centimeter silicon substrate, opening the door for scaling-up the process.
    The inventions were presented in April 2007 at the Single Wall Carbon Nanotube Nucleation and Growth Mechanisms workshop organized by NASA and Rice University.

    Thursday, April 05, 2007

    Hydrogen Society

    carbon cones


    Hydrogen Storage in Carbon

    A project to make a theoretical study to determine and understand possible physical mechanism for uptake of hydrogen gas in so-called carbon cones and explore other properties of these cones.

    The development of novel materials for efficiently storing hydrogen is of great current interest in connection with the future “hydrogen society”, a concept of an ideal energy system based on renewable energy sources using hydrogen as an energy carrier.
    Carbon comes in different forms. Prior to 1985 carbon was only known in two crystalline forms: diamond and graphite. The so-called fullerenes or Buckyballs were then discovered by chance. (Nobel Prize was awarded in 1996 for this discovery.) In 1991 it was discovered that that it was also possible to make nanotubes, a sort of elongated fullerenes. In 1997 Thomas Ebbesen et al. found that carbon could also be formed as cones in the so-called Kvaerner Carbon Black Hydrogen process.

    I'm following this path from earlies 70's past century. People from Zero Development Group have started another propaganda: Global Warming.
    Tesla Motors
    Predictably, my account last week of a presentation and test drive of BMW’s liquid hydrogen-powered cars generated all kinds of angry nay-saying.
    The “no such thing as global warming” crowd spoke up; the “global warming isn’t human-driven” contingent was heard from.
    Most respondents, however, simply called hydrogen cars a dead end. “You’ll produce more pollution burning fossil fuels to CREATE the hydrogen than you’ll save by driving these zero-emission vehicles,” they reiterated.



    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Monday, February 26, 2007

    God is Light

    God is Light

    or replacing one mystery with another!

    The Enduring Mystery of Light

    By Michael Schirber
    Special to LiveScience
    posted: 26 February 2007
    09:14 am ET

    Is it a wave?

    What ties together microwaves, X-rays and the colors of the rainbow is that they are all waves—electromagnetic waves to be exact. The substance that sloshes back and forth isn't water or air, but a combination of electric and magnetic fields
    Or is it a particle?
    wawe
    But waves are not the whole story. Light is composed of particles called photons. This is most obvious with higher energy light, like X-rays and gamma rays, but it is true all the way down to radio waves.
    Albert Einstein deciphered the mystery in 1905 by assuming that particles of light smacked into the electrons, like colliding billiard balls. Only particles from short wavelength light can give a hard enough kick.
    light as foton
    Despite this success, the particle theory never replaced the wave theory, since only waves can describe how light interferes with itself when it passes through two slits. We therefore have to live with light being both a particle and a wave—sometimes acting as hard as a rock, sometimes as soft as a ripple.

    Instead of worrying about what light is, it might be better to concentrate on what light does. Light shakes, twists and shoves the charged particles (like electrons) that reside in all materials.

    These light actions are wavelength-specific. Or to say it another way, each material responds only to a particular set of wavelengths.



    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Tuesday, February 20, 2007

    Dueling

    nanomaterial improvements   DNM

    News - Coming Soon From DuPont: Advances in ...
    ... With proper dispersion, small amounts of a new DuPont nanomaterial called DNM in
    a polymer can produce substantial property improvements, according to Dr. Rao. ...


    Intel, IBM Unveil New Transistors
    Hafnium-based materials will be incorporated in 45-nm-technology chips
    Alex Tullo

    IN DUELING ANNOUNCEMENTS that mark the culmination of years of research efforts, Intel and IBM say they are using hafnium-based dielectric insulating materials to construct the transistors in their next-generation 45-nm-technology chips.

    dielectricSilicon dioxide has been the transistor dielectric material of choice for about 40 years. As chip size has continued to shrink, the SiO2 layer has been made thinner and thinner to maintain adequate capacitance. In the most advanced chips in production today, which have 65-nm circuit lines, the SiO2 layer is only 1.2 nm thick.
    Intel
    Test wafer for a 45-nm-technology chip uses hafnium.

    But according to David Lammers, director of the WeSrch.com networking website for semiconductors—part of the semiconductor market research firm VLSI Research—a layer any thinner is prone to heat-generating electron tunneling. "You want a thinner electrical thickness, but you don't want all the current leakage and heat," he says.
    A day after Intel's announcement, IBM said it had successfully made transistors with a hafnium-based high-k and metal combination with partners Advanced Micro Devices, Sony, and Toshiba.
    How Evaporating Carbon Nanotubes Retain Their Perfection?

    Feng Ding, Kun Jiao, Yu Lin, and Boris I. Yakobson*

    Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Department of Chemistry, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005

    Received November 24, 2006

    Revised January 27, 2007

    Abstract:

    We present a mechanism of high-temperature sublimation of carbon nanotubes that does not destroy their ordered makeup even upon significant loss of mass. The atoms depart to the gas phase from the pentagon-heptagon dislocation cores, while the bond disruption is immediately repaired, and the 57 seamlessly propagate through the lattice. This explains a broad class of unsettled phenomena when at high temperature or under radiation the nanotubes do not become amorphous but rather shrink in size nearly flawlessly.
    Well,the connection with small business?
    In 1959 the Nobel laureate physicist Richard Feynman, in his visionary lecture entitled "There's plenty of room at the bottom", proposed the development of technology to function at the cellular and even the molecular level. Among other things he said, "...it would be interesting in surgery if you could
    swallow the surgeon". This is precisely the plot of the 1966 film
    'The Fantastic Voyage', made into a novel by Isaac Asimov, in which a submarine containing a medical team is shrunk and injected into a patient to perform a life saving operation. While Hollywood has to suspend the laws of physics, Feynman's proposals were based solidly on those very laws.


    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Monday, February 05, 2007

    Artificial Atoms



    "Pompeian red is really special. It represents the height of the ancient Romans’ mastery in making colors," said Daniela Daniele, a researcher at Berlin's State Museum. That unique quality makes it all the more important to learn how to preserve Pompeii’s brilliant red pigment.
    They used an unusually fine grind (2~3 µm), which makes the pigment’s color more intense. They also mixed in larger crystals 10~15 µm, which gave a shiny quality to the surface. Cinnabar that is processed in the typical way yields a dull red similar to red ochre.


    Artificial Atoms

    Jim_Kling

    Image Courtesy: PlasmaChem GmbH, Berlin, Germany

    Spherical particles of a few thousand atoms " known as nanoparticles " have been used as artificial atoms to create larger crystals that could find use in a variety of applications, such as nanoparticle-based transistors or wave guides for use in biosensors, or as computer components.

    Nanoparticles are often coated with rod-like molecules to prevent further growth or agglomeration. This 'ligand shell' can be made to react with other molecules and link up with other nanoparticles to form polymers, but it does so with no particular preference the resulting structures tend to be amorphous. Nanoparticles would be even more useful if researchers could get them to assemble in a directed manner.

    Francesco Stellacci and his colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology team synthesized gold nanoparticles and used a combination of 1-nonanethiol and 4-methylbenzenethiol as the ligand surface. They then used a two phase polymerization reaction inspired by the procedure to synthesize nylon. The nanoparticles were first exposed to a solution of 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid to form disulfide bonds with the 1-nonanethiol, leaving the carboxylic acid group from 1-nonanethiol protruding into space. They predicted that the polar 1-nonanethiol residues would be the first to react with the 11-mercaptoundecanoic acid, so that when the reaction was quenched it would yield nanoparticles with two modified poles. They then treated the mixture with a 1,6-diaminohexane and an activating agent to form amide bonds that would link the resulting carboxylic acid residue to the carboxylic acid residue hanging off of another nanoparticle.

    Transmission electron microscopy images of the resulting precipitate revealed linear nanoparticle chains and no sign of aggregates. The particles formed films as large as 1 cm2 and up to 60 microns thick. Such films have the potential to be used as nano-waveguides for use in biosensors. Linked nanoparticles transfer light in a characteristic way, and this can be altered when they are bound to a biological molecule. This change can be used to sense the molecule's presence.


    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post

    Sunday, January 21, 2007

    Chemical Nano Engineering


    Previous title and current have probability 82.5% and tis is part two of Business Strategy....
    Variable Co Ordinance Structures

    Vegas, of course, is the Mecca of sunk-costs and chasing your losses. All those shiny lights, showgirls, and Cirque Du Soleil’s (I'm pretty sure I saw them open what seems like the 38th Cirque inside a Starbucks though I must admit the new Beatles Cirque show had me at hello) that keep you captive weren't funded by your wins.
    As Scott Adams has said, "Probability is omnipotent and omnipresent. It influences every coin at any time in any place, instantly. It cannot be shielded or altered. And probability is not limited to coins and dice and slot machines. Probability is the guiding force of everything in the universe, living or nonliving, near or far, big or small, now or anytime."
    CEO Zander peddled onto the stage on a bright yellow bicycle {Las Vegas for the 2007 CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Bill Gates kicked it off Sunday evening, followed Monday morning by Motorola CEO Ed Zander (full disclosure: my firm Lux Capital manages capital for Motorola through our venture capital fund). }. Gimmick aside, he's onto something. Who else rides bikes? Chinese citizens: nearly 500 million of them. What's that got to do with Motorola? A small device connected to the back wheel powers a new Motofone, which has a low-power E-Ink display that can be recharged just by kinetic energy from peddling the bike. Too early to tell if it takes off but it's an example of thinking about the so-called "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid." (That is: the four billion people who are a highly dispersed and fragmented market with low purchasing power parity who in aggregate actually have more purchasing power than France, UK, Italy, Japan and Germany combined).
    Now here’s a Vegas riddle. There's a casino in Vegas with 50 slot machines. Each one is standard and has the same payout ratio. In other words, each will payout a certain percentage of the coins put into it and what triggers the payout is the same in all the machines. They all function at the same speed, the same volume and have the same amount of flashing lights. Here’s the rub: one of the machines, no matter where the casino positions it, ends up collecting about 25% more winnings for the casino at the end of every day than any of their other slot machines. Why is this? What's causing this?
    The answer is that this slot machine has more "near-misses". It has more sequences that go: bar-bar-banana, bar-bar-lemon, giving the player the illusion that they were oh-so-close and results in heavier play.
    Working in the middle 70's last century with variable co ordinances recognize here a lot of ideas "on debate " at that time.

    Properties Depend On Cluster Size
    Numbers of edge atoms dictate physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles
    Mitch Jacoby
    What a difference a few atoms can make.
    Tiny variations in the numbers of atoms along the edges of molybdenum disulfide nanoparticles can profoundly influence the crystal's atomic-scale structure and coordination, electronic properties, and other characteristics, researchers in Denmark have shown. The findings may lead to improvements in MoS2-based desulfurization catalysts for fuel cleanup and to advanced lubricants and other applications.
    With legislation in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and elsewhere calling for ever lower levels of sulfur in transportation fuels, scientists are redoubling their efforts to sort out the reaction mechanism that drives hydrodesulfurization, a process in which sulfur is stripped from hydrocarbons and converted to volatile hydrogen sulfide in the presence of MoS2-based catalysts.
    Previous studies indicate that the edges of thin, supported MoS2 nanoclusters, which are often equilateral-triangular in shape, contain highly active catalytic sites, which are especially active when the clusters are very small. The high activity is often attributed to the unique coordination of edge atoms and the presence of reactive edge defect sites. But those features have not been explored in atomic-resolution detail until now.
    On the basis of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements, Aarhus University physics professors Jeppe V. Lauritsen and Flemming Besenbacher and their coworkers at Aarhus and at catalyst manufacturer Haldor Topsøe have shown that nanoclusters with six or more molybdenum atoms along an edge coordinate sulfur differently than do nanoclusters containing fewer than six edge molybdenum atoms. Specifically, the team finds that along the edges of the larger crystallites, each Mo atom bonds with two outermost S atoms (S "dimers"), which tend to line up with neighboring atoms to form pairs of S "dimers." In contrast, the edges of smaller clusters exhibit Mo-S=Mo bridge structures (Nat. Nanotechnol. 2007, 2, 21). The team also reports that the smaller clusters are less stable (more reactive) and more prone to vacancy defects than the larger clusters. And they note size-dependent differences in the clusters' STM signatures, which indicate the clusters' differing electronic structures.
    In an accompanying commentary, Gotthard Seifert, of the Technical University of Dresden, and Sibylle Gemming, of the Rosendorf Research Center, both in Germany, note that the difference between the large and small nanoclusters "turns out to be the key to understanding the structural, electronic, and catalytic properties of these particles."

    Chemical & Engineering News
    ISSN 0009-2347


    The last key principle is this: evolution. Organisms, technologies, business models, social structures all evolve. And this is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. There are a few key aspects in the process of evolutions whether in life, inventions or ventures.
    First is "variation". In life: it’s via random mutation. In technology: it’s via accidental discovery, intentional invention, trial and error and combination of already existing technologies.
    The second aspect: once there are a variety of things, it’s clear that some are better than others.
    The third feature is that there’s some process or algorithm of "selection". And of course the fore mentioned 'better' depends on what environment or landscape the thing is performing or competing in. The fancy name for this is "fitness landscape". Think of climbing a mountain: you try to scale a local peak. When you get to the top, you might see a new peak which could even require you to descend, move to the new base and then climb again. Tiger Woods did this years ago to perfect his swing so did IBM. And so it is with technology adoption, startup companies and even incumbent companies that can adapt and reinvent themselves.
    The last key feature is amplification. Good biological designs or good technologies or businesses benefit from positive feedback effects and get dialed up. They get amplified, attract capital, get more adopted and spread through the proverbial (or literal) gene pool. Conversely, bad ones get dialed down. They get negative feedback, lose prominence, suffer from decreased population size or even extinction.
    There’s one key part of this framework that I’ve found frustrating. Feynman famously said that for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. But I’ve realized to the unfortunate happenstance of investors: that people can be fooled namely by other people.
    APPLICATIONS: TRANSISTORS
    Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have made ultrathin silicon transistors that operate more than 50 times faster than previous flexible-silicon devices. The advance could help make possible flexible high-end electronics that would be useful in a variety of applications, from computers to communication. Jack Ma, professor of electrical and computer engineering and lead researcher on the project, is interested in using flexible electronics to redesign large-scale antennas that could be molded in the shape of, say, an airplane. For instance, radar antennas could be made to cover a large area on an airplane, he says, increasing sensitivity and area of coverage.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18055/

    Cite:
    FORBES/WOLFE Nanotech Weekly Insider:
    JAN.12.2006 by Josh Wolfe (email: nanotech@forbes.com )

    Technorati Cosmos: other blogs commenting on this post


    Tuesday, January 09, 2007

    The End of Alchemy

    Paracelsus-03
    Paracelsus-03 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)






    or The End of Damascus Sword.



    THE INTERNAL ALCHEMY OF THE TAO






    This chart was never copied for several hundred years. There was only the
    original. It was never passed down to the rest of the world because it is so
    profound and mysterious that an ordinary person would have no way to understand
    it. It was rediscovered in the library at High Pine Tree Mountain in China
    suspended from the wall. It was carefully drawn and the printing was clear, so
    it was eventually reprinted at that time. When I first discovered this, I
    decided to reprint it with a complete explanation using the Universal Tao
    practices. By practicing the Universal Tao formulas you can start to comprehend
    the detailed illustrations of this mural connecting with our body and the
    universe. The Tao adept saw the human body as a microcosm of the natural world.
    Its anatomy was a landscape with mountains, rivers, streams, lakes, pools,
    forests, fires, stars etc. a natural harmonious landscape. It show a torso and
    head with few easily identifiable structures. - Mantak Chia

    The Arabs appeared in history in the seventh century. Alchemy had by then gone through a long path. The first contacts took place in Egypt, in Alexandria, where the traditions went back several centuries before Christianity. Muslim alchemy was derived from the Greek. The frequency with which Greek authors are quoted, the numerous theories that are common to both Greek and Arabic alchemy, and the large number of Arab technical terms clearly taken over from Hellenic treatises (e.g. hayuli, atisyus, athalia, iksir, qambar,S) prove beyond doubt the affiliation of Muslim and Greek alchemy. The transmission was made partly through direct contact in Egypt, partly through the medium of Syrian Christian translators, and partly by way of Persia. There are unmistakable traces of Persian influence, manifested distinctly by linguistic affinities in technical names and usage and in names of minerals. These traces are sufficiently well marked to render it probable that Persia was, indeed, one of the main channels through which alchemy came to Islam; and it is not without interest to note that many of the principal Muslim alchemists were Persians.It has already been observed that Chinese alchemy has so much in common with Greek and Arabic alchemy as to afford support to the hypothesis that all three had a common origin; and there is some reason to believe that the Chinese practiced a kind of alchemy long before the days of Islam. The remote origins of Arabic alchemy are therefore still to some extent uncertain, but there is very little to recommend the suggestion that the Arabs received any direct introduction to alchemy from the Chinese. Whatever may be the cause of the similarity between Chinese, Greek and Muslim alchemical ideas.
    Information provided by:

    http://www.cartage.org.lb/en/themes/Sciences/Chemistry/Aboutchemistry/Islamictimes/MuslimAlchemists/MuslimAlchemists.htm

    Paracelsus, Philippus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim
    (1493-1541)
    Paracelsus was a physician and Alchimist, who

    introduced the treatment of diseases with chemical means to the Renaissance. The
    progress of the practical medicine at the beginning 16. Century is to be owed to
    a large extent to it, like also the beginning to the modern medicine and
    chemistry.
    Time life did not omit it an opportunity, in order to make
    academic authorities ridiculous. When it accepted a teaching profession in
    Basel, it provoked the authorities, by burning the works of the well-known Greek
    physician Galen publicly. It worsened its situation further still by the fact
    that it opened its lectures for everyone and held it into German, instead of in
    latin.
    Like Hippokrates Paracelsus believes in a treatment, those of the
    body as a whole one goes out and in the welfare strength of the body. It means,
    it developed an effective means against the plague - a pill from paste with
    traces of eliminations of the patient. He regarded magic or "mental forces" as
    important for the healing process.
    While he scoffed the Astrologie, he
    looked in the Alchimie for fundamental truths: "magic is a large hidden wisdom
    -, he explained understanding a large open foolishness". Its interest to the
    Alchimie finally led it to some fundamental realizations in the area of the
    chemotherapy.
    And so the Damascus Sword reciept was lost. But new words like
    swords appear: chemy, chemoterapy.How? " Paracelsus was first, which assumed
    lung diseases were caused by mountain workers by inhalation of metallic "steams"
    and not by bad spirit."
    Alchemy was splited on two: chemistry and
    chemotherapy. On the blade remain astrology!And spiritual problems passed to
    religion.




    http://www.paracelsus.unizh.ch/
    Volumen Medicinae Paramirum Theophrasti, de Medica Industria
    Enhanced by Zemanta