81–90 of 91 posts
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A friend of mine is 'bio hacker'; he works with different microbiological organisms to learn about them and build better ones with specific traits. This article describes it better than I can: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101006/full/467650a.html
I am a biohacker too, actually. I just submitted a paper on how to build a Drosophila lab with little budget, for schools or biology lovers.
I might have to disappoint you all... An Australian company, BHP (my employer at the time), was working on this method of steel production in the early 1990's. They had big hopes and put a lot of R&D investment in it, but were unable to commercialize it as the sheets of metal produced did not have consistent ductility and were prone to cracking. So - the idea is not new, and the challenges of going from a concept to…
Could you share more information? A description of the process perhaps? Is there any difference between what BHP was working on and his process? (I realize that you may not have information now that you aren't working there.) There is something about the parent article that doesn't sit entirely well with me. It might just be my inner skeptic, though.
BHP's steelmaking research in the early 90's was IMO pretty leading edge - google "BHP Project M" for example. Unfortunately, the accountants decided that there was little future in steelmaking in Australia, and spun off BHP's steelmaking arm as a separate company (OneSteel) in yr 2000. The R&D focus died off around the same time.
Back to Flash Bainite - I am not totally dissing it, since some particular combination of steel composition and time-temperature path through the alloy phase diagram might produce an especially good result. What I am saying is that analogous heat treatments have been extensively studied in the past - but not implemented commercially due to problems the researchers were unable to overcome.
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There's no way to value the contribution or potential contribution of a technology to society, nor the damage done by granting a monopoly. Not by an eminent scientist or humanist, and certainly not by a clark in a patent office. You used the word repay - there's no way to be confident that a temporary monopoly will come within an order of magnitude of repayment. Further we need to consider the destructive side-effect…
That's all good but in the absence of patents, you'd have to resort to trade secrets. One of the biggest reasons for patents was the public disclosure. If they are trade secrets instead, the inventor does not get any legal defense once the secrets are reverse engineered. So I think it's a tough problem and society should err on the side of benefits for the inventor. Software patents should be limited to 1 year :)
> So I think it's a tough problem and society should err on the
> side of benefits for the inventor.
There's a great book I recommend, "Against Intellectual Monopoly". It goes back to the original patent on the steam engine, and what a bad deal for innovation and innovators that was, and proceeds from there.
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That's all good but in the absence of patents, you'd have to resort to trade secrets. One of the biggest reasons for patents was the public disclosure. If they are trade secrets instead, the inventor does not get any legal defense once the secrets are reverse engineered. So I think it's a tough problem and society should err on the side of benefits for the inventor. Software patents should be limited to 1 year :)
You have to resort to trade secrets anyway. There's never going to be a legal system that is dynamic enough to move with the whims of a collaborative technology team. > So I think it's a tough problem and society should err on the > side of benefits for the inventor. I tried to explain above - supporting patents doesn't err on behalf of the inventor. It errs against them. Patents granted to non-inventors and used to…
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I am a biohacker too, actually. I just submitted a paper on how to build a Drosophila lab with little budget, for schools or biology lovers.
Cool, do you have a link I can share or something? Sounds fascinating.
I think it's fair to point out that /this/ is an acceptable process to patent. I'm sure that's obvious, but HN does spend a lot of time denouncing software patents (rightly so). EDIT: Not really sure why I got down-voted; nevertheless, I do think it's important to point out cases where patents can be applied as originally intended.
Downvoted because there is no reason to start a patents discussion in a materials science article.
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The interesting thing about steel is that the tiny grains that make it up are immensely strong, far stronger than any other material we have. But we have no known method of making steel out of just those grains, it's always mixed with other weaker parts. That's why spider silk is so incredibly strong - it's manufactured (essentially) one atom at a time. If we could manufacture steel in the same way it would be far st…
> The interesting thing about steel is that the tiny grains that make it up are immensely strong, far stronger than any other material we have. That's not true, there are many materials stronger than steel: 1) Graphene 2) Titanium 3) Spider silk 4) Carbon nanotubes (buckypaper for instance) 5) IsoTruss carbon fiber 6) Metallic (palladium) glass 7) Transparent aluminum
Just joking?
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> The interesting thing about steel is that the tiny grains that make it up are immensely strong, far stronger than any other material we have. That's not true, there are many materials stronger than steel: 1) Graphene 2) Titanium 3) Spider silk 4) Carbon nanotubes (buckypaper for instance) 5) IsoTruss carbon fiber 6) Metallic (palladium) glass 7) Transparent aluminum
> 7) Transparent aluminum Just joking?
Alumina
Aluminium oxide
Corundum
Sapphire
Ruby
It forms immediately on the surface of all aluminium that is exposed to air, and prevents the aluminium from corroding any further.