World’s first text message via molecular communication sent

tbn PUBLIC DOMAIN 21/12/2013

York Researchers send a text message using vodka
▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39oEgkIThHU

KurzweilAI : World’s first text message via molecular communication sent
▻http://www.kurzweilai.net/worlds-first-text-message-via-molecular-communication-sent

Researchers at the University of Warwick in the UK and the York University in Canada have developed the capability to transform any generic message into binary signals. These are in turn “programmed” into evaporated alcohol molecules to demonstrate the potential of molecular communications. (...)
Dr. Weisi Guo from the School of Engineering at the University of Warwick : “But we have gone to the next level and successfully communicated continuous and generic messages over several meters.
“Potential targeted applications include wireless monitoring of sewage works and #oil rigs. This could prevent future disasters such as the bus-sized fatberg found blocking the London sewage networks in 2013 [dont je ne trouve pas d’occurrence ici, classieux], and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.
“They can also be used to communicate on the nanoscale, for example, in medicine, where recent advances mean it’s possible to embed sensors into the organs of the body or create miniature robots to carry out a specific task, such as targeting drugs to cancer cells.

Si on le transposait aux humains ? Resterait à traduire l’information biologique en information cérébrale ? #biologie #cerveau #transhumanisme #biotech

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tbn PUBLIC DOMAIN 24/12/2013

Je lis cependant dans ce génial article :

Yet there are ways to store information biologically that don’t require neurons.

THE INTELLIGENT PLANT

Scientists debate a new way of understanding flora.
BY MICHAEL POLLAN - DECEMBER 23, 2013
▻http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_pollan?currentPage=all #science #intelligence #vie #plantes #controverse

Many plant scientists have pushed back hard against the nascent field, beginning with a tart, dismissive letter in response to the Brenner manifesto, signed by thirty-six prominent plant scientists (Alpi et al., in the literature) and published in Trends in Plant Science. “We begin by stating simply that there is no evidence for structures such as neurons, synapses or a brain in plants,” the authors wrote. No such claim had actually been made —the manifesto had spoken only of “homologous” structures — but the use of the word “neurobiology” in the absence of actual neurons was apparently more than many scientists could bear.
“Yes, plants have both short- and long-term electrical signalling, and they use some neurotransmitter-like chemicals as chemical signals,” Lincoln Taiz, an emeritus professor of plant physiology at U.C. Santa Cruz and one of the signers of the Alpi letter, told me. “But the mechanisms are quite different from those of true nervous systems.” Taiz says that the writings of the plant neurobiologists suffer from “over-interpretation of data, teleology, anthropomorphizing, philosophizing, and wild speculations.” He is confident that eventually the plant behaviors we can’t yet account for will be explained by the action of chemical or electrical pathways, without recourse to “animism.” Clifford Slayman, a professor of cellular and molecular physiology at Yale, who also signed the Alpi letter (and who helped discredit Tompkins and Bird), was even more blunt. “ ‘Plant intelligence’ is a foolish distraction, not a new paradigm,” he wrote in a recent e-mail.

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