The Autonomous NanoTechnology Swarm (ANTS) Architecture is well suited to remote space or ground operations. It is being implemented on a near term basis, using Addressable Reconfigurable Technology (ART). In the future, Super Miniaturized ART (SMART) will form highly reconfigurable networks of struts, acting as 3D mesh or 2D fabric to perform a range of functions on demand. The ANTS approach harnesses the effective skeletal/ muscular system of the frame itself to enable amoeboid movement, effectively ‘flowing’ between morphological forms. ANTS structures would thus be capable of forming an en tire mobile modular infrastructure adapted to its environment.

The ANTS architecture is inspired by the success of social insect colonies, a success based on the division of labor within the colony in two key ways: First, within their specialties, individual specialists generally outperform generalists. Second, with sufficiently efficient social interaction and coordination, the group of specialists generally outperforms the group of generalists. Thus systems designed as ANTS arebuilt from potentially very large numbers of highly autonomous, yet socially interactive, elements. The architecture is self-similar in that elements and sub-elements of the system may also be recursively structured as ANTS on scales ranging from microscopic to interplanetary distances.

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This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. So a growing number of experts say it is time for broad discussion of how and by whom it should be used, or if it should be tried at all.

Similar questions are being raised about nanotechnology, robotics and other powerful emerging technologies. There are even those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies as inherently dangerous.

Here’s what they’re saying:

“Research has shown that materials shrunk down to less than 100 nanometers don’t behave the same way as their large-scale counterparts. A 2006 study by a University of Rochester toxicologist showed that when rats inhaled certain fullerenes—a type of nanoparticle—they spread to the rats’ brains, Some scientists suspect a link between these particles and brain damage, Parkinson’s disease, and other conditions. A 2004 Southern Methodist University study found that largemouth bass suffered brain damage after exposure to carbon-60, a type of fullerene.”

The full debate is worth reading.

Researchers at the École Polytechnique de Montréal Nanorobotics Lab, in Canada, led by professor of computer engineering Sylvain Martel, have coupled live, swimming bacteria to microscopic beads to develop a self-propelling device, dubbed a nanobot. While other scientists have previously attached bacteria to microscopic particles to take advantage of their natural propelling motion, Martel’s team is the first to show that such hybrids can be steered through the body using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Tracking the movement of nutrients in the real world is difficult. For example, some fungi help transfer nutrients from soil to the roots of plants; to study the process, researchers typically inject a tracer, such as radioactive carbon-14, into the soil and then take a soil sample back to the laboratory, where plant roots are teased out and analyzed to see where the tracer ends up. Root-associated fungi are typically too fine to be seen, so it’s been hard to pin down precisely which fungi are responsible for the nutrient transfer and how they work.

So microbial ecologists Matthew Whiteside and Kathleen Treseder, both of the University of California, Irvine, set out to find a way to see the nutrient flow in the soil itself. They attached nanometer-sized bits of semiconducting material called quantum dots to organic compounds. As the fungi take in the compounds, they also take in the attached dots, which light up like little light-emitting diodes when zapped with light from an ultraviolet laser. The researchers then imaged that light with a root-level camera. Images trace how the nutrients are consumed by the microscopic fungi and moved into the associated plant.

The process involves the use of nanotechnology and gasification to convert carbon-based materials into a product called synthesis gas, or syngas, which in turn can be made into ethanol.

Developing new ways of producing biofuels such as ethanol is urgent business as the country and world scout for alternatives to fossil fuels.

For now, ethanol is made chiefly by fermenting corn, diverting the valuable commodity from serving as food for people and livestock.