Scarily Serious Sci-Fi...

Reference: NY Times Article (11/16/07)
My father once told me a very interesting story about the first time he was truly scared after reading a sci-fi novel. When he finished "Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton, he happened to have been in his father's library. It just so happened my father stumbled across some of the references Crichton had used among the scientific tomes my grandfather kept, demonstrating the chilling plausability of Crichton's work.
Here we are about fourty years later, and Crichton is still writing science fiction novels just as powerful (and plausible) as ever. I recently read "Prey", on the suggestion of a professor at UCLA I respect very much. The novel combines broad strokes of nanotechnology (as Crichton tends to do with nebulous concepts pregnant with potential in future applications) with more specific aspects of computer science. The programming ideology he discusses in detail used to be called "distributed artificial intelligence"; and while the book may make it seem like A.I., it is called intelligence because the systems are supposed to achieve complicated goals thought only achievable by an intelligent system.
Now referred to as "multi-agent systems", the concept describes large numbers of autonomous individuals programmed with very simplistic goals which, when assembled, are able to achieve much more complicated goals. The book takes this idea to the extreme: where the robots learn how to reproduce themselves, and eventually how to kill people to protect themselves. But the idea of distributed intelligence is no longer limited to programs in a computer...
Researchers in Belgium (VU Brussels) have just programmed autonomous robots doused in "cockroach perfume" to behave like real roaches. They tested them by giving them a choice between two shelters: normal roaches choose the darker shelter 75% of the time. The robots were programmed so that they chose it 85% of the time. When the programming was changed to prefer the lighter shelter, the mixed group (4 robots to 12 roaches) spent only 31% of the time at the darker shelter, contrary to their natural instinct.
This basic research has broad implications: if we can modify the behavior of insects, we might be able to replenish our diminished honeybee stocks, or better control pests without the use of harmful pesticides... and this doesn't even scratch the surface of targeted evolution (e.g., creating a type of insect which feeds on biomass and excretes a useful chemical or fuel, helping to solve our energy problems).

UCLA Research: Superhydrophilicity

... (a period of silence) ....
Now after that brief break, I decided I'd update the blog with what I've been so busy with the past several weeks. We are working on a method to generate superhydrophilic films using polystyrene nanoparticles and thin film SiO2. I designed a process which utilizes the atmospheric plasma for substrate pre-treatment, nanoparticle etching, and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) of silicon dioxide. I'm off to present the results at the 2007 Annual Meeting of AIChE (American Institute of Chemical Engineers) in Salt Lake City, UT this week. Wish me luck!