Friday, May 14. 2010DNA Robots on the Move-----
Machines made of DNA could one day assemble complex--and tiny--electrical and mechanical devices.
By Prachi Patel
Researchers from Columbia University, Arizona State University, and Caltech have made a device that follows a programmable path on a surface patterned with DNA. Meanwhile, researchers from New York University, led by DNA nanoarchitecture pioneer Ned Seeman, have combined multiple DNA devices to make an assembly line. The nano contraption picks up gold nanoparticles as it tumbles along a DNA-patterned surface. The two machines, described in today's Nature journal, are a possible step forward in making DNA nanobots that could assemble tiny electrical and mechanical devices. DNA robots could also put together molecules in new ways to make new materials, says Lloyd Smith, a chemistry professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "Robots might have the ability to position one molecule in a particular way so that a reaction happens with another molecule which might not happen if they randomly collide in solution," he says. In the past, researchers have made simple machines such as tweezers and walkers that have also been fashioned from DNA. Tweezers open and close by adding specific DNA strands to the solution. Walkers are molecules with dangling strands, or legs, that bind and detach from other DNA strands patterned on a surface, in effect moving along the surface. The nano walker made at Columbia University is a protein molecule decorated with three legs--single-stranded DNAzymes, synthetic DNA molecules that act as enzymes and catalyze a reaction. The legs bind to complementary DNA strands on a surface. Then they catalyze a reaction that shortens one of the surface strands, so that its attachment to the leg becomes weaker. That leg lets go and moves on to the next surface strand. The walker follows a track of strands that the researchers pattern on the surface. It can take up to 50 steps--compared to the two or three steps taken by previous walkers. It stops when it encounters a sequence that cannot be shortened. "We show how to program [the walker's] behavior by programming the landscape," says Milan Stojanovic, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University who developed the walker. "It enables us to think about adding further complexity: more than one molecule interacting and more complicated commands on the surface. What we hope to do eventually is to be able to [use nanobots to] repair tissues." Seeman and his colleagues at New York University combine three different DNA components to make an assembly line. They have DNA path, a walker, and a machine that can deliver or hold back a cargo of a molecule of gold. The machine is a DNA structure that can be set up to either put a gold nanoparticle-laden strand in the path of the walker or away from it. The walker has four legs and three single-stranded DNA hands that can bind to the gold. The researchers demonstrated a system in which the walker passes three machines, each carrying a different type of gold particle. Each machine can be set up to either deliver its cargo or keep it, giving a total of eight different ways in which the walker can be loaded, leading to eight different products. The advances represent continuing success in creating nano devices with increasingly complex functions. "[We're] moving from individual entities that do something interesting to systems of entities working on something with a more complex behavior and function," Smith says. Copyright Technology Review 2010. Who Controls Identity on the Web?-----
Facebook and Mozilla have contrasting visions for the future of your online identity.
By Christopher Mims
The two approaches are fundamentally different. Facebook's Open Graph Protocol uses the oAuth standard, which lets a website identify a user via a third-party site without exchanging sensitive information. Facebook--whose 400 million active users make it the world's largest social network in the world--stands to benefit as other sites come to rely on the information it holds about users and their social connections. The approach taken by the Mozilla Foundation, which makes the Firefox browser, comes in the form of a suite of browser extensions. One of the extensions, called Account Manager, can replace all of a user's online passwords with secure, computer-generated strings that are encrypted and protected with a single master password. Mozilla's identity extensions can interact with other identity standards, including OpenGraph, oAuth, and OpenID, a standard that allows any website or Web service provider to host a social network-style profile of a user. The goal of the Mozilla Foundation's efforts is to establish a set of open standards and protocols that could be implemented in any browser or website. As much as possible, identity would be moved out of the webpage itself and into the "chrome" of the browser--the parts around of the webpage. Logging in and out of sites would be accomplished through buttons at the top of the browser that would activate secure protocols--rendering the process of creating and memorizing usernames and passwords obsolete. "Every user of the Internet today is expected to describe themselves to every site they go to," says Mike Hanson, principal engineer at Mozilla Labs. Inevitably, Hanson says, this leads to confusion and security holes, such as passwords that are identical across multiple sites. The solution, according to Hanson, is to let the browser itself manage user identity. Weave Sync, another Mozilla extension, is designed to enable that vision. It stores encrypted versions of a growing list of data on a Mozilla-hosted server (or any user-specified server), including a person's history, preferences, bookmarks, and even open tabs, which can be synced across two or more browsers. This allows users to have the same browser workspace on any device that supports Firefox or its mobile equivalent, Fennec. There's even a prototype for the iPhone, built on top of Apple's Safari browser. Last fall Mozilla Labs also commissioned Chris Messina, at the time a researcher in residence at Mozilla Labs, to design a Web browser that would manage the other half of online identity--a user's social graph. In Messina's mock-ups, a user can interact with people on the Web in ways that go beyond what OpenID or Facebook's OpenGraph currently offer. "The idea of a social browser is important to me because it's the single point of integration for all websites," says Messina. "It's the one thing that knows who you are across all social experiences." Messina's designs envision a browser that lets users "follow" other users by viewing all of their relevant information streams--Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc.--collected into a single browser tab stamped with that user's profile picture. A similar interface could also be used to control exactly what personal information other people and websites have access to. This could allow, for instance, a user to change her shipping address across any number of sites at once, or to control which version of their identity a particular groups of friends can access. "I'm not interested in the [Mark] Zuckerberg approach, where privacy doesn't exist anymore," says Messina, referring to the CEO of Facebook. Both Facebook and the Mozilla Foundation will face challenges in pushing their own vision of online identity. John Mitchell, a professor of computer science at Stanford, says the most significant barrier will be the adoption of suitable protocols. Before such protocols can be standardized and rolled into, for instance, the next version of HTML, Web developers are going to have to be willing to experiment. "What I've seen from a lot of companies is an attempt to guess the end solution and build that only," says Mitchell. "It would be better if, instead, we had an open architecture where people could try many different approaches." If the new Mozilla software and Messina's designs are sufficiently popular with users and developers (not to mention the influencers who sit on the boards of standards committees like the World Wide Web Consortium), then the foundation's technology could find its way into the regular release of Firefox and perhaps, ultimately, into other browsers. To Messina, just drawing up the blueprints for such technology was an important first step. "We're further away from the death of the password than I'd like to be, but it's a nice goal to aim for," he says. Copyright Technology Review 2010. Personal comment:
Back in 2003 (and up to 2005), we treated this question of identity, surveillance-monitoring technique and data mining of user's data in the Knowscape Mobile project, or in the AI vs AI in self-space project too. We claimed for a total open approach of online identity considering the web as a public space (open data collected in open space belongs to everybody). Of course, this was a speculative project to address the question. An approach that won't be feasible in reality because we definitely need all type of spaces: public, private, semi-public, semi-private, etc. But the status of "space" and their data should be transparent to all users.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Science & technology
at
10:49
Defined tags for this entry: data, identification, marketing, mining, monitoring, science & technology, surveillance
IOGraph: Tracking Computer Mouse Movements as Art Work-----
The basic concept is that people just "run" the application in the background, and then accomplish their usual activities at the computer. After a long day of hard work, a beautiful image is then created by cumulating all mouse movements and representing them as continuous paths. For people who work in a single application for a considerably long time, IOGraph could even provide potentially interesting usability data when overlayed on a screenshot of the actual window configuration. You can check some past mouse-tracking art work at Flickr. Re-Link: The Physcial Network of DataVia InfraNet Lab ----- [The global network of submarine cables as it existed in 1901.]
Editors Note: File under Feedback: Architecture’s New Territories, an InfraNet Lab seminar at Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design / University of Toronto. Guest post and images are by Ali Fard. ———– With an estimated 1,733,993,741 users and a global growth rate of 380% since 2000 , it is easy to think of the internet as a free-flowing cloud of information accessible by all. However, unlike popular belief, our connection to the internet is not mediated by an uber high-tech network of satellites (or any of the other usual suspects). In fact, satellite links account for only 1% of all internet connections. Automatically, and incorrectly, thought of as a complex metaphysical network of information, the Internet consists of a highly physical network of lines and nodes; a simple system with inherent complexities. Simply put, it is a network of submarine communication cables laid across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and other water bodies that connect us to information databases in other continents. Although the technology has changed significantly, the network itself does not differ greatly from the network of submarine telegraph lines which existed as early as 1901. Much like long umbilical cords, these cables are the not-so-visible proof of our dependence on concentrated sources of information. These very real and physical “communication highways” establish links between information super hubs, while controlling internet’s dissemination of information. These lines, coupled with the terrestrial network of land lines and data centers, are the medium of the internet.
[The existing global network of submarine communication cables.]
The lines and nodes of the internet, much like any other physical infrastructure, are prone to an array of politico-economic issues. Closely related to the politico-economic reading of the hierarchical structure of the world, much of this understanding of internet has to do with its very physical backbone. Areas with the least number of users get the best connections and others, like most of Africa, get nothing. We can clearly make out the users from producers. The redundancies of the submarine lines to North America and Europe have caused internet prices to plummet, which in turn has encouraged not only higher usage of internet but an active participation in the information world. Meanwhile, you can count the number of lines feeding Africa on one hand. As a result, prices are so high that even the lines that are already in place become meaningless, because of lack of use. [Submarine cable system, from left to right: Cable + Repeaters + Landing Points + Termination Stations.]
[Submarine communication cable: 1. Polyethylene cover; 2. & 4. Stranded steel armor wires; 3. & 5. Tar-soaked nylon yarn; 6. Polycarbonate insulator; 7. Copper sheath; 8. Protective core; 9. Optical fibers.]
[Cable-laying ship.]
[A submarine cable arriving on land in Bangladesh, April 10, 2009. REUTERS/Gina Din Corporate Communications/Japheth Kagondu/Handout.]
The Internet can be read as a dynamic network, but a network which is far from equally distributed. This unequal distribution is not because of lack of potential, but lack of means. It is clear that in today’s information heavy economy, to compete means to be connected. So, areas with little or no internet connection, which are already among the most economically unstable, get left behind and cannot compete. It is clear that the current state of the network privileges the most developed countries. This outcome is merely due to economic factors and not necessarily based on efficiencies and strengths of the network. So, how can this unequally distributed network be rewired to be able to function efficiently? How is this network affected with regards to the recent crisis in the economic structure of the world? How can a more logical rewiring of the network help African countries or other poorly connected areas of the world, while improving the system as a whole? [A current map of the global internet connection.]
[A possible re-wiring scenario in which Africa becomes an internet hub, taking advantage of its geographic location.]
One possible rewiring scenario has to do with the strategic geographic location of Africa. With cheap land, availability of natural resources and proximity to Asia, Europe and South America, Africa can provide fertile grounds for international data center activity. Big Internet companies such as Microsoft, Google and Yahoo, whose data center activity is mostly concentrated in North America and Europe, can start investing in the internet infrastructure of African countries by providing better connections, and in return can be allowed to establish data centers in areas with little economic activity. These companies can take on an active role in shaping the information economy of Africa by not only providing internet connections, but also by providing jobs and training. All this cannot be achieved by corporate colonization, but through an active and dedicated participation in the growth of the information economy of the region. Although great imagination may be required in visualizing such proposition, and a great deal of analysis is required in understanding the ups and downs of such a mammoth initiative, it is in no way farfetched. It is in fact such a proposal that can bring much needed attention to how information is distributed throughout the world and provide grounds for discussion of possible new futures of the network.
Save the Date: Postopolis! DFVia Edible Geography
-----
by Nicola
In just under a month, I am delighted to announce, I will be eagerly exploring the edible geography of Mexico City. The occasion is Postopolis! DF, the third in a series of events organised by Storefront for Art and Architecture. Postopolis! was launched in New York City in 2007, and it happened all over again in L.A. in 2009. I was lucky enough to attend both events as an audience member, and to be invited to participate this time is an honour indeed. IMAGE: Postopolis! LA The way Postopolis! works is that a handful of bloggers are invited to co-curate five days of back-to-back presentations and discussions that approach the field of urban and landscape design from as many disciplines and perspectives as possible. The list of participating blogs this year forms an impressive group: Urban Omnibus (Cassim Shepard), Intersections (Daniel Hernandez), DPR Barcelona (Ethel Barona Pohl), Toxico Cultura (Gabriella Gomez-Mont), Tomo (Guillermo Ruiz de Teresa), Mudd Up! (Jace Clayton a.k.a DJ /rupture), We Make Money Not Art (Regine Debatty), Strangeharvest (Sam Jacob), and Wayne & Wax (Wayne Marshall). Together, we’re putting together a list of speakers that ranges from government officials to DJs, academics to urban farmers, and waste disposal experts to documentary filmmakers—via a healthy sprinkling of artists, architects, and designers. IMAGE: The courtyard at El Eco. The five-day marathon will take place from 4 p.m. onwards between Tuesday, June 8, and Saturday, June 12, at the Museo Experimental El Eco in the Reforma Avenue neighbourhood of Mexico City. It is completely free and open to the public, the talks will be conducted in either Spanish or English, with simultaneous translations available, and each day will end with an after-party hosted by local music blogs. Rumour has it, the entire event will be streamed live online—I’ll confirm that nearer the time. IMAGE: Clockwise: street food, the Bordo de Xochiaca dump, chinampas, and Mexican refrigerated trucks waiting to cross into the U.S. Mexico, and Mexico City itself, offer a huge amount to discuss in terms of edible geography, from the chinampa system and the wheat and maize research of CIMMYT, to a fabulous diversity of street food and the U.S. FDA’s overseas expansion. Although the full speaker list and schedule is yet to be confirmed, Postopolis! DF is shaping up to be a pretty interesting event, and I definitely hope to see some of you there. Related Links:Personal comment: This is a great event to which we took paert last year in LA (Postopolis! LA). Lots of ideas and speculations pop out from this event. If you have the occasion to go or be around (which won't be my case unfortunately), go!
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Territory
at
09:54
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, blog, conferences, fabric | ch, speculation, territory, thinkers
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fabric | rblgThis blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research. We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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