Month: June 2002

Gina Miller writes "The Learning Channel will be airing a new show entitled "Science At The Edge", a new documentary series of emerging technologies. The first episode, "Beating The Odds" will be about groundbreaking medical procedures and will feature comments by Robert A Freitas Jr., author of Nanomedicine and Research Scientist at Zyvex Corporation, as well as those of Zyvex nanotech theorist Ralph Merkle, and a 1-minute microbivore animation. This first episode airs July 1, 2002 at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT and repeats July 2, 2002 at 1:00 a.m. ET/PT."

Gina Miller writes "An article on the Physics News Update website Nanospintronics: A Single-Spin Transistor reports on the Institute for Microstructural Sciences that is responsible for the first prototype. "The spins of the electrons in the transistor are not random but depend on the number of electrons in the electron puddle, and on the applied magnetic field. Most importantly, by connecting the dot to spin-polarized reservoirs, one can insist that the electrons flowing in or out have their spins aligned up or down, and this criterion (is the electron's spin up or down?) can be used as a gate to allow a high or low current to flow through the dot." This new spin polarized phase technique could be used in quantum computing."

Gina Miller writes "Scientific American.com has an article Nanotech Tubes Could Form Basis of New Drug-Purification Techniques that reports a way to purify drug molecules away from their inactive mirror image molecules. The scientist's created antibodies that recognize only the proper mirror image and place the antibodies in silicon nanotubes inside a membrane. As a result the drug molecules flow across the membrane five times faster than the undesired mirror image."

An article on the ABC News.com website ("Nanotech: Will Small Stuff Become Big Business?", by Peter Dizikes, 26 June 2002) touts the potential of small-scale technologies, but then goes on to explain that investors are having a hard time figuring out how to make prudent investments in the broad array of research and development activity thatís lumped under ìnanotechnologyî ñ as well as developing realistic timeframes for a return:

Intriguing as it sounds, nanotechnology presents a conundrum to venture capital firms and other private-sector investors, for a couple of reasons. For starters, backing the right company, hard by any standards, is extremely tough in the nano field where companies are pursing a bewildering array of concepts.
The article also notes:
[E]ven boosters of the field acknowledge, many of the best-known and potentially useful nanotechnology applications ó ultra-fast computer chips, drugs targeted at cancerous cells ó may be a decade or more away from becoming commercial products. That means the hit-and-run style of investing favored by so many U.S. venture capital firms simply isn't suited to nanotechnology.
"A venture fund looking for an exit strategy in three to four years isn't going to get it from this area," says [Mark Modzelewski, head of the NanoBusiness Alliance]. Indeed, he thinks venture firms that tried to get rich quickly during the Internet boom are being too skeptical now. "Most of the biggest naysayers are the people who were shoveling their money into dogfood.com," says Modzelewski. "But it's going to be so much bigger than the Internet revolution."

Gina Miller also notes"The article describes the growth of nanotechnology firms, what nanotechnology is and how these developments could be applied to our daily lives. The article goes on to discuss venture funding "To this end, venture capital firms aiming to be the biggest players in the industry ó like Lux Capital of New York and Draper Fisher Jurvetson of Redwood City, Calif. ó have hired on specialized staff to evaluate the prospects of budding nanotechnology firms.""

An article from United Press International ("Nanotech will spur space medicine advances", by Scott R. Burnell, 25 June 2002) reports that

New developments in nanotechnology, the science of manipulating matter at the atomic scale, will find their way into devices and technologies important to the space program, particularly in medicine, speakers said Tuesday at NanoSpace 2002, a conference convened to examine common ground between the two areas of research.
As humanity moves beyond the Information Age, nanotechnology's ability to interact with the basic structures of life will spawn the "Biological Age," said Kenneth Cox, a researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Johnson Space Center.
"It is extremely important to understand not just the downsides, but the benefits of diversity in science, diversity in terms of education and commerce," Cox told conference attendees. "We need to change the ways we innovate and adapt (with nanotech)."

A related story covers another presentation from the conference on the use of immunoassays based on spheres of silicon, only a few nanometers across, coated with gold atoms that could speed up blood tests for trace amounts of substances, as well as longer-term research examining how doctors might use nanoscale chemistry to guide the body's mechanisms for repairing tissue.

An extensive article on the Small Times website ("U.S. Army plans new center to develop military nanotech", by Doug Brown, 25 June 2002) reports that "The United States Army is reaching out to academia and industry to build a technology research campus that will simultaneously help armaments developers exploit nanotechnology and shepherd to the marketplace nanotechnology applications and products. . . . The partnerships have not been established yet. The Army is soliciting proposals for research from universities and businesses."

According to the article, "The U.S. Army Armament Research, Development and Engineering Center (ARDEC) at New Jerseyís Picatinny Arsenal near New York City is committed to nanotechnology, said Mark Mezger, nanotechnologies program coordinator at the arsenal. The hope, he said, is that the Armyís investment in nanotechnology combined with industry and academic research will lead to a ìNano Valleyî in northern New Jersey."

from the World-Watch dept.
An brief item item on the eTaiwanNews.com website ("Nanotechnology program aims to make NT$300b", 24 June 2002) says the Taiwan government "will pump NT$23.1 billion (US$679.41 million) into nanotechnology research in the next six years in hopes of creating a NT$300 billion (US$8.82 billion) industry by 2008, the National Science Council said [on 23 June]. Under a National Nanotechnology Initiative, mapped out by the NSC, the government will help more than 800 companies probe the new frontiers of an emerging high-tech industry."

The report also notes: A prominent NNI feature is a national nanotechnology center, which will be one of the world's best institutes of research in that high-tech field. Commercialization of the new technology is expected to begin in 2004, the NSC spokesman said. "In that year," he added, "Taiwan hopes to generate at least NT$70 billion (US$2.05 billion) in sales of nanotechnology products."

Gina Miller writes "Business 2.0 June 2002 issue has a feature called "Untangling the Future". The author, Paul Saffo, discusses the difficulty with predicting future technologies due to his observation of non linear progress. He conjectures that advances are "spawned" and "cross pollinated" by others, with this in mind he has created a pdf map of future technologies with new disciplines — for example, Molecular manufacturing or Cognitronics. Also included, a timeline pdf of these future disciplines and another Business 2.0 article that can be linked to at the bottom of the page called 8 Technologies That Will Change the World."

Gina Miller writes "A story on thePhysical Review web site focuses on research reported in the 8 July print issue of PRL that uses statistical physics techniques to find the optimum technique for building functional devices from nanoscale components that are known to contain a percentage of defective parts. The answer they found "is that no matter how many defective parts you have, it's best to take about half of them" to build your device."