The Bright Future of Molecular Nanotechnology
On a cellular level, the biomedical technologies of today are crude and destructive. Even the most delicate surgery does not repair medical problems. Surgical methods tear away huge swatches of both damaged and healthy cells, and rely upon the body's own ability to heal itself. The drugs of today are developed by trial and error at a cost of millions of dollars, and disperse throughout the entire body, causing numerous side effects in tissues unaffected by the initial physiological insult the drug was intended to correct. Today's genetic screening can determine if a patient's genome contains specific aberrant genes, but can neither determine if these genes will cause real disease, nor effectively treat these genetic diseases. Current experimental attempts at gene therapy involve weakened virus strains or poorly understood biological mechanisms to get the corrected DNA into the body and fix the problem. All of these biomedical difficulties are caused by one simple problem: scale. Human beings are simply too large to work effectively at the cellular scale of life. The tools we have developed to work in this domain were either developed by trial and error as with most pharmaceuticals, or stolen from nature. Nature contains numerous wonderful tools for working on this scale, but nature is the product of billions of years of random, thoughtless evolution, and the tools available exist because they work well enough for the systems in which they evolved, not because they are the optimal tools for the jobs humans would have them do. But this deficiency in the human tool chest may soon be challenged by a controversial new ideal known as molecular nanotechnology.
The September 2001 issue of Scientific American is devoted to the developing field of nanotechnology, and their web page has an entire section containing numerous articles they have published on the subject. Nanotechnology is the blanket term used to describe the precision manufacture of materials and structures with features of less than 100 nm, and ultimately to construct structures of the molecular dimensions in which cells and life work. Within the magazine are a number of articles describing the state of the art today, and a few considerations of future possibilities. The most prominent article on future possibilities is entitled "Machine-Phase Nanotechnology" by K. Eric Drexler, immediately followed by an article condemning his proposed tools.
Drexler's article describes the basics of advanced nanotechnology in layman's terms.
Lovgren, Stefan. Can Art Make Nanotechnology Easier t Understand? 23 December 2003. Web. 3 May 2014. .
Imagine that there is a cure for nearly every ailment that affects the human race. Imagine that you could help the terminally ill, put those you love out of pain, and cut the healing time of an enormous number of serious illnesses in half. Imagine a world in which pain and suffering would be nearly nonexistent, and the people you love can live safe from the fear of crippling injury. Now what if I told you that this utopia was a fast approaching reality? Everything from serious life threatening burns to lymphoma, AIDS, Alzheimer’s, Muscular Dystrophy, Parkinson’s Disease, Spinal Cord Injury, and Strokes could, in the very near future, be eliminated through the simple culturing and implementation of stem cell therapy . These diseases are no small component of the myriad of conditions that plagues the human race, and yet, the end for these horrible maladies could very well be in sight. Man has always sought to end suffering, largely without success, until now. the promise that stem cell therapy holds could completely change our world for the better. Already, stem cell therapy is being used to treat leukemia, immune disorders, hodgkins and non-hodgkins lymphoma, anemia and a profusion of other ailments. As you all know, this is no small accomplishment. One day i believe that we may look at alzheimer's and diabetes and other major illnesses much like we look at polio today, as a treatable illness. Right now, our research with stem cells is providing us with new light into how we look at and model disease, our ability to understand why we get sick and even to develop new drugs. In 2008, a researcher from the New York Stem Cell Foundation Laborato...
A river or “stream, ribbons of water confined to channels, or troughs, cut into the land,” (Marshak, 2009) is formed from a drainage network or “the array of interconnecting streams” that form tributaries. (Marshak, 2009). The amount of water that flows down a stream is its discharge. The discharge measurement takes the width and depths or cross sectional area of a river as well as the downstream velocity to get a numeric value for amount of water moving down stream. (Marshak, 2009)
In September 14, 1990, an operation, which is called gene therapy, was performed successfully at the National Institutes of Health in the United States. The operation was only a temporary success because many problems have emerged since then. Gene therapy is a remedy that introduces genes to target cells and replaces defective genes in order to cure the diseases which cannot be cured by traditional medicines. Although gene therapy gives someone who is born with a genetic disease or who suffers cancer a permanent chance of being cured, it is high-risk and sometimes unethical because the failure rate is extremely high and issues like how “good” and “bad” uses of gene therapy can be distinguished still haven’t been answered satisfactorily.
Nanotechnology is the manipulation of structures at nano levels. It uses incredibly small materials, devices, and systems to manipulate matter. These structures are measured in nanometers, or one billionth of a meter, and can be used by themselves or as part of larg...
Although humans have altered the genomes of species for thousands of years through artificial selection and other non-scientific means, the field of genetic engineering as we now know it did not begin until 1944 when DNA was first identified as the carrier of genetic information by Oswald Avery Colin McLeod and Maclyn McCarty (Stem Cell Research). In the following decades two more important discoveries occurred, first the 1953 discovery of the structure of DNA, by Watson and Crick, and next the 1973 discovery by Cohen and Boyer of a recombinant DNA technique which allowed the successful transfer of DNA into another organism. A year later Rudolf Jaenisch created the world’s first transgenic animal by introducing foreign DNA into a mouse embryo, an experiment that would set the stage for modern genetic engineering (Stem Cell Research). The commercialization of genetic engineering began largely in 1976 wh...
Rosa, João Gumarães. "The Third Bank of the River." Trans. William Grossman. Angles of Vision. Ed. Arthur W. Biddle and Toby Fulwiler. New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1992. 200-203.
Genes are made of DNA – the code of life (Gene Therapy- The Great Debate!). The changes in genes may cause serious problems, which we called genetic disorder. In theory, the only method to cure genetic disorders is gene therapy, which basically means the replacement of genes in order to correct the loss or change in people’s DNA. Although gene therapy gives patients with genetic disorders a permanent cure, it is controversial because it has safety and efficacy problems, and raises ethical issues.
The main purpose of green nanotechnology has been to develop clean technologies that would minimize potential human and environmental health risk. Also, to encourage replacement of existing products with the clean technologies that is more environmentally friendly. There are many benefits of using green nanotechnologies as the new solution for energy in both their current availability and their current development. Over the new few decades, the highest growth opportunities will come from application of nanomaterials for making better use of existing resources. Nanotechnologies will help reduce weight of carbon emission in transportation utilizing nanocomposite materials that quickly diffuses across the automotive and aerospace industries. Applications of nanotechnologies will result in a global annual savings of 8000 tons of carbon dioxide, which will rise even further to over millions tons by 2020. But, let’s focus on the positive effects of Green Nanotechnology in Solar.
It was about one-thirty in the morning in the town of Homestead Michigan. The almost florescent light of the moon bouncing off the fresh puddles that covered the ground. The grass and trees were covered in a thin layer of water causing every little beam of light to reflect back up. Anyone who may have been outside at this time would have without double, smelled the mix of fresh dirt and night crawlers. As the moonlight started to fade away through the cloud cover, three buses made there way through the streets and parked in front of HHS, the local high school.
There was a girl named Kandy, she was 15 years old. Her life was extremely boring, all she ever did was go to school, go on her computer, eat and sleep. She spent all summer on her computer. She was really good with HTML and spent her free time making web sites. Kandy didn't have many friends and rarely talked to guys because she was shy and unconfident about her looks. That's why she went into chat rooms. She made a web site with pictures of herself on it and told people in chat rooms to go there. A lot of people would tell her how pretty she was and some would say she was ugly. That made her feel awful. When anyone would say anything nice to her, she wouldn't believe them and think that they were just making fun of her. She only had one real friend that she could talk to, her name was Ang.
In the end, gene therapy in humans needs to come a long way before it will be widely accepted, but there is great potential in the technology and it needs to be pursued. Bibliography Anderson, W. F. (1992). The Species of the World. Human Gene Therapy -. Science, 256 (5058), 808-813.
The Roles of Women and Men in the Home Domestic roles which a husband and wife undertake in the house are called conjugal roles these can include childcare and housework. In the past there were clean divisions between the husband's bread-winning role and the wife's housewife/mother role. Today it can be argued that the divisions of labour within the home have become blurred and household tasks are shared. Some sociologists argue that a 'new man' is emerging, and he seems to be sharing more domestic tasks, engaging emotionally with women and showing interest in developing his fathering skills. Young and Wilmott argue that joint conjugal roles are becoming more common since families are becoming more 'home-centred'.
Nanotechnology is science, technology and engineering that is conducted at the nanoscale. The nanoscale is about 1 to 100 nanometres.
The procedures that will be the future of modern medicine currently fall into the realms of taboo and fictional. These procedures encompass every aspect of medical science, from exploration of the human body, curing diseases, to improving a person’s quality of life. Many of these procedures are not very well known, while a few have been in the spotlight. These procedures include cloning, nano-robotics, retro-viruses, and genetic manipulation via gene-specific medications. For any serious breakthroughs in modern medical science, we must embrace these new forms of treatment instead of shying away from them. Second, I’ll attempt to explain how these methods and procedures could benefit mankind.