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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Month: March 2002

More background on U.S. nanotech funding for FY2003

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has posted a presentation ("Research and Development FY 2003 National Nanotechnology Investment in the FY 2003 Budget Request by the President") made by M.C. Roco, NSF; Chair, National Science and Technology Council's subcommittee on Nanoscale Science, Engineering and Technology (NSET) on February 13, 2002 at the AAAS/ASME Briefing, Washington, D.C. The presentation basically reiterates the information already note here on Nanodot on 5 February 2002.

A popular update on things nanotech

from the mass-media-mush dept.
An article on the Washington Post ("Big Potential From Small Things", by Ariana Eunjung Cha, 21 March 2002) presents a superficial but reasonably well-written survey of "current events" in nanotechnolgy, focusing on increases in federal funding for nanotech research and the increasing interest from the venture capital community. As the article notes, "The debate has shifted from 'Will it happen?' to 'When will it happen?' " said Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Institute.

The article was also reposted on the Small Times website.

Background on emerging european

from the World-Watch dept.
While thereís little said in it about nanotech per se, an article in the London-based Financial Times ("'Valley' in the Alps", by Jo Johnson, 26 February 2002) provides some interesting background on the history and current climate of the region around Grenoble, France as a long-standing technology center and incubator. Previous coverage of French high-tech center appeared here on Nanodot on 28 January 2002.

ME Magazine highlights medical nanotech

from the backdate dept.
An article from the December 2001 issue of Mechanical Engineering magazine ("The engineered course of treatment", by Mauro Ferrari and Jun Liu), a publication of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) is now available online. The article says, "Use of nanoscale devices is helping to revolutionize medical treatment and research." Ferrari is a professor of internal medicine and mechanical engineering and director of the Biomedical Engineering Center at Ohio State University in Columbus. Jun Liu is a doctoral candidate in his group.

In their article, Ferrari and Liu assert, "The ability to engineer devices and their components at the nanoscale level will revolutionize medicineóand the biomedical disciplines in general. There is a simple reason for this: Whatever we put into the body, in order to be therapeutically effective, must mimic the basic biological structure it replaces or augments. And biology is intrinsically and without exception multiscale, with hierarchies of ordered components comprising complex architectures of smaller, ordered components, all the way down to the molecular or atomic levelóthe nano level, precisely."

Nanocrystals' trapped atoms technology

Gina Miller writes "Nanotech Planet has an article explaining the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory's (ORNL) new process of trapping single atoms. The new technique allows them to study a single atom's properties using classic microscopy at room temperature without cooling. "We're looking perhaps at a new class of nano-scale materials with novel optical properties," said Barnes, a member of ORNL's Chemical and Analytical Chemistry Division. "The challenge we face will be in controlling this process and fully understanding the mechanism.""

James Heath will step down as CNSI head, maybe, in a while . . .

from the what's-really-going-on-here? dept.
An extensive article on the Small Times website ("Second top official to step down at California NanoSystems Institute", by Jayne Fried, 22 March 2002) reports that molecular computing researcher James Heath will step down as an acting co-director of the California NanoSystems Institute (http://www.cnsi.ucla.edu/) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) . . . but not right away. Heath will be leaving UCLA to devote more time to research, and will join the faculty at California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It's a tough thing to do, to go to Caltech," Heath told Small Times. "This (CNSI) is my baby, but it comes down to when I go to bed at night I think about institute problems."

According to the article, Heath expressed disappointment and frustration with the pace at which technology is moving from research labs to the marketplace within the University of California system. "UC has not been very strong in transferring intellectual property out into the world and making it happen," Heath said. Part of the reason is that the UC system is a "big company that is not quite as nimble as it could be."

The report notes that Heath's departure leaves the multi-million dollar CNSI with co-director Evelyn Hu, a nanotech electrical and computer engineer at UC Santa Barbara, and Roy Doumani, acting chief operating officer. Hu is one of the founders of CNSI. "I won't deny Jim's leaving is something that is very sobering because he's had such an influence," Hu said. "We worked so closely together." The article also notes that although Heath will be at Caltech, Doumani said Heath "will remain active and be able to stay as a member of CNSI." The plan appears to be an open door policy in which scientists outside the UC system will participate in CNSI. "I hope to find a way to get Caltech involved in the institute," Heath said.

As the title of the Small Times article reflects, Heath is the second major figure to announce departure from a CNSI leadership position in recent months. In January 2002, Martha Krebs left as director of CNSI for a broader role at UCLA. Krebs was also associate vice chancellor of UCLA for research, and said she will be devote herself full time to that job. Krebs was a key figure in establishing CNSI, and had moved to California a year ago from Washington, D.C., to become director of the institute. Previously, as science director at the U.S. Department of Energy, Krebs helped establish the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative.

Commentary in Red Herring calls for a "reality check" on NT investment numbers

A commentary in Red Herring Magazine ("Reality Check: Nanotech's boosters are getting ahead of themselves", by Stephan Herrera, with additional reporting by Om Malik, 26 March 2002) opines that "Some new statistics on nanotech may be a bit optimistic." In particular, Herrera casts a cold eye on figures issued in a recent report by the NanoBusiness Alliance (NBA) that give the impression, as he puts it, that "nanotech represents an immediate opportunity, not just a distant target. In a new survey, the NBA asserts that the field is already a $45.5 billion industry that could grow to $700 billion by 2008. . . . The NBA concludes that VCs will invest more than $1 billion in nanotech this year. How the field has grown–or has it?" Herrera wonders if "these numbers might just be wishful thinking, intended to stir up media hype and investor interest."

The article quotes Nathan Tinker, an NBA cofounder and the survey's author: "Mr. Tinker says there's no harm in interpreting nanotechnology broadly. 'I tried to consider the whole range of nano,' he says. In fact, he included sales from products that most nanotech experts would not even consider to be nano, like microelectrical mechanical systems."

Herrera considers the $1 billiion investment figure by VCs to be even more fuzzy, and notes that even some NBA figures are distancing themselves from the number — such as Josh Wolfe, an NBA cofounder and "a leading voice in nanotech."

Scottish researchers find natural enzyme that forms carbon-fluorine bonds

from the put-THAT-in-the-toolbox dept.
According to a press release (21 March 2002), researchers at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have discovered a natural fluorinase enzyme, a biological catalyst which bonds carbon to fluorine. The discovery was published in the 21 March 2002 issue of Nature. An understanding of how natural enzymes handle a highly-reactive element such as fluorine would have important implications for the development of artificial molecular machines systems.

Molecular

An item on the Nature Science Update website ("Magic bullet homes in", by Philip Ball, 4 March 2002) describes work by researchers at the University of Gottingen in Germany who have developed a custom-made drug molecule that turns lethal only when it reaches cancer cells. In healthy cells it is harmless, but it targets tumor cells selectively.

According to the NSU article, the Gottingen antitumour molecule is a ring of three carbon atoms that is highly strained and apt to burst open. Open, it is a reactive molecule that wreaks havoc among the nucleic acid molecules essential for normal cell function. The drug is delivered in the form of a 'prodrug' without the strained ring but with a sugar side-group. Once the sugar is clipped off, the molecule rearranges itself into a three-atom ring, and becomes lethally active. The Gottingen team uses an enzyme to cut away the sugar group. An antibody on the enzyme ensures that the enzyme targets the tumor cells, and activates the drug molecules there.

This method is vaguely similar to another molecular ësmart bombí that employs a single radioactive actinium atom contained inside a molecular cage and attached to a monoclonal antibody that homes in on cancer cells (see Nanodot post from 16 November 2001).

Nanowalkers continue to fascinate . . .

from the feeding-the-fascination dept.
People — or at least the popular science media — seem to have a continuing fascination with the diminutive robots under development by Sylvain Martel at the Nano-Robotics Research Group within the MIT BioInstrumentation Laboratory, who has created small mobile robots which he calls NanoWalkers. Or maybe itís just the hometown press: MITís Technology Review Magazine ran a short article ("Walking Small", by David Cameron, 1 March 2002). Previous coverage of these decidedly NON-nanotech devices was noted here on Nanodot on 25 January 2002 and 20 December 2001.

Not to be outdone, and going a step smaller, an article in Semiconductor Business News ("Agilent Labs says 'nano-stepper' is smallest MEMS device", by Mark LaPedus, 14 March 2002) reports that Agilent Technologies Inc.'s R&D arm in Santa Clara, California is developing what is believed to be the world's smallest device, based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology. According to the article, the nano-stepper is a miniature moving component that is capable of providing linear, two-dimensional movements of about 15 million steps per second, with each step taken by the "nano-stepper" measuring 1.5-nm.

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