Thursday, February 13, 2003

Thinktank predicts nanotechnology backlash. Education: Medical ethics thinktank warns of GM-style clashes over nanotechnology. [Guardian Unlimited] And the state of the art is - Wireless Sensor Networks, MIT Technology Review Great Duck Island, a 90-hectare expanse of rock and grass off the coast of Maine, is home to one of the world's largest breeding colonies of Leach's storm petrels - and to one of the world's most advanced experiments in wireless networking. Last summer, researchers bugged dozens of the petrels' nesting burrows with small monitoring devices called motes. Each is about the size of its power source - a pair of AA batteries - and is equipped with a processor, a tiny amount of computer memory, and sensors that monitor light, humidity, pressure, and heat. There's also a radio transceiver just powerful enough to broadcast snippets of data to nearby motes and pass on information received from other neighbors, bucket brigade-style.... Others are trying to make motes even smaller. A group led by Berkeley computer scientist Kristofer Pister is aiming for one cubic millimeter - the size of a few dust mites. At that scale, wireless sensors could permeate highway surfaces, building materials, fabrics, and perhaps even our bodies. The resulting data bonanza could vastly increase our understanding of our physical environment - and help us protect our own nests. 6:10:40 AM

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