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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Month: April 2002

Extropy Institute Resource Directory – Nanotechnol

Anand writes "The nanotechnology section in Extropy Institute's Resource Directory is now available. It has been divided into three subsections, papers, websites, and miscellaneous, and each subsection contains categories for further improved organization. One of the main goals for the directory is to make each section a continually valuable resource for not only laymen and amateurs, but also for experts. Each section will be regularly updated; any link addition or removal suggestions or comments are very appreciated."

Values are the key to making nanotech work FOR the

Lincoln Roseanna writes "Values are the key to making Nanotech work FOR the future When discussing the implications of Nanotechnology, one assumption has been clearly stated; that someone, somewhere, will abuse the technology.

The strength in that belief of ourselves is the force that creates war, though mistrust, fear, guilt and paranoia.

The emergence of commercial applications for nanotechnology, usable, saleable, mass-producible products, means that we are entering a new stage of evolution. Just as technology for transport changed the way that industry, society, cultures and countries interact with each other so profoundly, this new technological revolution will, in time affect every aspect of our lives on this planet. It is time that the implications of this type of research and development were taken very seriously. It is time that we thoroughly analyse and shift our motivation, and our values."

Read more for the remainder of this lengthy comment.

UCLA researchers propose detailed mechanism for ribosome function

from the Natural-Nanomachines dept.
The translation of DNA/RNA instructions and the synthesis of proteins is arguably the most complex single-site operation carried out by biological systems at the molecular level, and it's done by relatively huge molecular machines called ribosomes. Insight into the operation of these naturally evolved molecular assembly devices could be invaluable to the design of artificial molecular machines.

According to a press release [new URL for archived press release], two UCLA molecular biologists propose a solution in the 21 March 2002 issue of the journal Nature. In their paper, James A. Lake, UCLA professor of molecular, cell and developmental biology, and UCLA graduate student Anne B. Simonson attempt to explain the molecular details of the protein synthesis process, including the location and movement of more than 10,000 atoms. In addition, they have located a novel binding site for transfer RNA (tRNA) when it enters the ribosome.

The research, which involved sophisticated computer simulation, was federally funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy and the Astrobiology Institute

Previous research aimed at working out the structure and function of the ribosome was noted here on Nanodot on 4 April 2001 (with links to earlier posts).

Agilent awards Europhysics prize to nanotube researcher

from the rewarding-innovation dept.
Agilent Technologies Inc., the scientific and instrumentation division spun off by Hewlett-Packard some years ago, announced in a press release (11 April 2002) that it has presented the Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Condensed Matter Physics to four scientists for their pioneering work in the study of carbon nanotubes. The award was presented at a general conference of the European Physical Society (EPS).

Agilent's Roberto Favaretto, vice president and general manager, Europe/Middle East/Africa, presented the 2001 award to Sumio Iijima, Cees Dekker, Thomas W. Ebbesen and Paul L. McEuen for the discovery of multi- and single-walled carbon nanotubes and pioneering studies of their fundamental mechanical and electronic properties. "The Agilent Technologies Europhysics Prize demonstrates our commitment to fundamental contributions in scientific areas essential to Agilent's future," said Favaretto. "These researchers have made a key contribution by creating an entirely new field in condensed matter physics — a field at the intersection of nanoscience, nanotechnology and molecular electronics."

Dekker was also awarded the 2002 Julius Springer Prize in Applied Physics for his work on the electrical properties of carbon nanotubes and their application in molecular electronic circuits (see Nanodot post from 5 February 2002).

Hypothesis suggests how quantum effects may play a role in brain function

from the Biological-quantum-teleportation dept.
For those who have been seriously inspired or irritated by Roger Penroseís hypotheses on the possible basis of consciousness in quantum effects occurring inside neurons in the brain, a trio of researchers has published a speculative proposal that suggests that biological microtubules may act as quantum electrodynamic cavities and have the potential for quantum entanglement, teleportation and computation. The authors suggest that this mechanism may be responsible for how the brain works, or might at least provide biological building blocks for creating quantum computers. A preprint of their research paper is available online on the arXiv preprint server at http://www.arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0204021.

Online resources for computational chemistry, nanotech journal

Science and technical publisher Wiley InterScience has announced it will add the Encyclopedia of Computational Chemistry to Wiley InterScienceís growing selection of quality electronic Major Reference Works online. According to the announcement, ìComprising 5 volumes, and equivalent to over 3,500 print pages, the online version of the work now provides computational chemists with unmatched breadth of content together with a dynamic and flexible format, perfectly suited to their progressive discipline.î It also states the Encyclopedia contains over 300 primary articles together with a further 375 definition articles covering all aspects of the field, from ab initio computations to biological and biochemical applications, and contains contributions from more than 300 leading computational chemists. The online version provides fully searchable text, hyper-linked cross-references, and over 300 full color illustrations. Alas, access to the new online reference is NOT free. Further information is available at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/reference.html.

And Foresight President Chris Peterson sends a reminder that the journal Nanotechnology from the Institute of Physics (IOP) publishing in the United Kingdom now has the policy of making the current issue available free online, in the Adobe Acrobat PDF format (access to back issues requires a subscription). More information about the journal and its access and publication policies can be found in an editorial from February 2002.

Seeing protein structure with an AFM

Gina Miller writes "Physics News Update (26 March 2002) reports that researchers from Case Western Reserve University have developed a computational technique to get a sharper picture of a protein structure from an atomic force microscope (AFM) image. Because the region of an AFM tip that contacts the protein during imaging is typically about the same size as the protein molecule, the image that is obtained is too low resolution to reveal the structure of the molecule. Studying a cartilage protein called aggrecan, the researchers combined in their image processing technique data from the AFM, from the genomic sequence of the protein, and from transmission electron microscopy to yield a refined structure allowing them to identify certain elements of the 3-D structure of the protein.

Superconducting film on carbon nanotube

Gina Miller writes "According to a press release (18 March 2002) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, UI researchers and their collaborators at Harvard and Rice created superconducting wires using carbon nanotubes as scaffolding to support a molybdenum-germanium film as thin as one nanometer. The researchers demonstrated that the superconduction they observe is due to the film, and not to the nanotube, by using fluorinated carbon nanotubes, which, unlike ordinary carbon nanotubes, are not metallic.
For a report that multi-walled carbon nanotubes might themselves be superconducting at high temperatures, see previous Nanodot post Buckytubes may be high-temp superconductors (28 November 2001)."

InfoWorld report on Drexler

A not-very-informative article in InfoWorld ("CTO Forum: Drexler declares nanotechnology victory", by Mark Jones, 10 April 2002) gives a brief summary of remarks made by K. Eric Drexler, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and Foresight Board Chair, at the InfoWorld CTO Forum on 9 April 2002. According to the article, "After 30 years, Dr. K. Eric Drexler Tuesday night declared that debate over the validity of nanotechnology [had been] 'won by default'. . . . The Foresight Institute chairman who first coined the term nanotechnology in 1971 dissected what has only until recent times been an overlooked debate. 'It's time to argue for the future with nanotechnology,' he said."

Berkeley researchers work on networked nodes of

Two recent articles describe a project at the University of California at Berkeley to develop 'smart dust' ó sensor-laden networked computer nodes that are just cubic millimetres in volume. While hardly nanoscale, such work is likely to provide useful experience when it comes to developing cooperative swarms of nano-scale devices in the future.

Similar work by a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin at Madison was noted in a Nanodot post from 20 December 2001.

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