Will we use metal in the future? What else would we build things out of? Might we use organic technology (machines and buildings made of or from biological organisms) instead?”
In The Graduate, that iconic film from 1967, bewildered 20-something Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) gets some career advice from a businessman who leans close and intones “I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics.” Benjamin didn’t follow that advice, but the rest of the world did, and in spades. By 1979, global production of plastic had exceeded that of steel and is still growing, reaching over 200 million tons this year. There’s no doubt that plastic will continue to play a major role in how we make things, but it won’t replace everything.

In some ways, plastic is the material of the future, the latest step in humanity’s long upward trek through the ages of stone, bronze, iron, and steel. The word “plastic” comes from Greek roots meaning “capable of being molded.” Compared to metals and other materials, plastic is infinitely versatile. With its ability to shape-shift and to take on different mechanical and optical properties, it shows up in a huge spectrum of applications from packaging and plumbing to toys, medical supplies, and computers. And unlike iron and steel, plastic doesn’t rust.

But plastic also has problems that will prevent it from replacing metals any time soon. Its very durability can be an issue. Discarded plastic objects can survive for centuries in garbage landfills without degrading, and plastic artifacts have been found polluting the oceans far distant from any land. Also, what doesn’t seem to be widely appreciated, the raw material to make plastic comes from a resource we need to conserve, petroleum.

On top of this, metals do some things better than plastic—just try cutting up an apple with a plastic knife. Copper and other metals are needed to conduct electricity through power grids; all plastic can do is insulate the current-carrying wires. However, plastic is making inroads relative to some materials such as wood, which is being replaced by plastic “lumber” in certain applications.

Plastic also offers a possible way to actually construct things using biotechnology. Unlike metals, which are classified as inorganic, plastics are organic; they’re made of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, the same constituents as living things, which links plastic to biological products. For instance, under the right conditions, certain microorganisms can synthesize compounds called polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). These display properties like those of artificial plastics, with the benefits that they’re not petroleum-based and are biodegradable. Researchers are investigating ways to mass-produce these bioplastics, for instance by bioengineering plants to create them.

If you want to speculate even further, way past the idea of growing plastic rather than making it in factories, think about the science-fictionish possibility of bioengineering plants to produce plastic exactly in a desired shape from a drinking cup to a house. Current biotechnology is far short of this possibility, but science fiction has a way of pointing to the future. If bioplastics are the materials breakthrough of the 21st century, houses grown from seeds may be the breakthrough of the 22nd.

We see nerve gas often enough on TV and the silver screen that it’s worth understanding out just how it works. VX gas can be deadly when ingested or when it makes contact on the skin. Depending on how much exposure a victim has suffered, it can kill in 10 minutes or a couple of hours. It functions by interfering with the break down of acetylcholine in the muscles. Normally when a nerve fires, acetylcholine is released to cause the muscle to contract. After the contaraction, an enzyme is released to break down the acetylcholine, allowing the muscle to relax. The phosphorous in the VX gas bonds with the enzyme, causing the acetylcholine to stay in place, leading to muscle contractions and spasming. Death can result from asphyxiation, but also from the victim harming themselves while in convulsions.

In the show, the brilliant Dr. Hood comes upon a victim seconds after she has been exposed to the chemical. He does exactly the right thing: He triggers the emergency shower immediately, stripes off the exposed clothing and gets as much of the VX off her as possible. The poison can be countered with an antidote, so people exposed to the gas can be saved if they’re treated in time. They’re only hope is that their exposure is low enough that they can get to the hospital. A high dose can kill in 10 minutes, a low one might take hours to kick in. VX, even in gas form, is heavier than air, so the key to surviving it is to get to fresh air and high ground (which means you have to do the opposite of what you would do in case of a dirty bomb or atomic explosion, where the goal is to avoid radioactive fallout by going inside and staying on the lower floors, as fallout can settle on roofs, so make sure you can tell your apocalyptic scenarios apart!)

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Early in the episode, the late Dr. Graiman tells Knight, via hologram, that he was actually KARR’s first driver. As we know, KARR started programming himself and became a killing machine, forcing the government to scrap the program and build KITT.  To prevent Knight from spilling the beans, they wiped Knight’s memory.  Induced amnesia is a classic of Sci Fi—and of soap operas, and who knows what all— but can it actually be done?

The current theory of memory formation is somewhat in flux, but generally there are four stages: acquisition, consoliddation, storage and retrieval. A 2007 study at the Scripps Research Institute found that the same clusters of neurons that activated during memory formation re-activated during memory retrieval in experiments on mice. the results lend credibility to the reconstruction theory of memory activation which says that when you summon a memory to the forefront of thought, it is actually reconstructed. And if memories are being reconstructed with each use, that process of formation can be interrupted.

After all, memory formation is disturbed by drugs all the time. Ever go on a bender and not remember what happened in the morning? That’s the alcohol interfering with memory formation. At Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Roger Pittman is using propranolol, a high blood pressure medication, to interfere with the creation of memories. In theory, if a patient describes a memory to a psychologist, the memory will be reactivated. But as the memory is reconstructed, the drug interferes with the memory’s formation, allowing the person to forget. Pittman describes his results as very preliminary, so, don’t go expecting to run to CVS for a forgetting drug any time soon.

Another early, promising result on this front comes out of the University of Georgia where Dr. Joe Tsien has found a way to interfere with an enzyme,  calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), crucial to memory formation. Tsien trained a mouse to be afraid of an object. They found that by overstimulating CaMKII, they caused the mouse to forget past associations with the object, even associations as much as a month old.

Of course, there are other, less precise ways to interfere with memory formation. Electroshock Therapy causes memory loss, but also brain damage. And some hypnotists say they can cause memory loss in a willing patient. But Knight was clearly not willing, and brain damage might not be desirable in an elite field operative.

Then again,  Michael Knight needed memories erased of having driven a talking car that could transform into a robot. Maybe they knocked hm out, woke him up, and convinced him that it was all a dream. You know, kind of like the end of Newheart.

But now a group of Dutch researchers at the University of Delft have created substances that behave like totally a new type of element. By heating a silver filament up to just below its melting point, silver atoms begin to evaporate from its surface. These atoms begin to clump together in very specific ways—clumps containing 9, 13 or 55 silver atoms are preferentially formed. These atoms all begin to share electrons. To understand the significance of this you have to understand that most of the chemical, magnetic and electrical properties unique to an atom are based on the behaviour of the outermost electrons that orbit an atom’s nucleus. When the silver atoms in a cluster start sharing electrons, to the outside world the whole cluster looks like one giant superatom with its own unique set of outer electrons—in effect, mimicking the behavior of a totally new, but stable and relatively lightweight, element. Scientists hope to one day make crystals from these types of superatoms, so who knows, we may be making our own mysterious artifacts in a few years.