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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: Articles

President of India cites Nanosystems

Rosa Wang writes "In his address to a group earlier this year, just published in the press today in India, the President of India sees the future in nanotechnology. There is no ambiguity in their intent:"

Our future lies in nanotechnology
GUEST COLUMN | President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
July 31

"When I think of nanoscience and nanotechnology, I am reminded of three personalities. The first person is Richard Feynman, who described the concept of 'building machines' atom by atom in his talk at Caltech titled 'There is plenty of room at the bottom'. The second person is Eric Drexler, who wrote the book titled Nanosystems, Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation. The third person is Prof C.N.R. Rao, who pioneered and fostered nano science research in India."

Moving Water Molecules By Light

Roland Piquepaille writes "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) has discovered a new nanotechnology effect, the ability of moving water molecules by light. This is a far better way than current methods such as damaging electric fields and opens the way to a new class of microfluidic devices used in analytical chemistry and for pharmaceutical research. For example, this makes possible to design a device that can move drugs dissolved in water, or droplets of water and samples that need to be tested for environmental or biochemical analyses. Please read this overview for more details and references, plus an image of two water drops illuminated with a fluorescent dye and sitting respectively on a nanowire surface and on a flat surface."

Do the Nano-Locomotion

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's widely accepted today that nanotechnology will soon be able to deliver medicine inside the human body or to do research on cells. But to achieve this goal, you need nano-cargos moving through liquid environments, such as blood. And this is a very difficult challenge because the nano-swimmers have to struggle with blood's viscosity, which has very large effect in a nanoscale environment. But now, two Iranian researchers have found a simple and elegant solution to this problem, based on the principle of non-reciprocal motion and described in "Teaching Nanotech to Swim" by Technology Review. Their nano-swimmer consists of three aligned spheres connected by two rigid rods which can contract and expand. The nano-cargo then advances in the blood like an earthworm inside the soil. Even if these nano-swimmers look promising, nobody knows when they will be able to deliver drugs in our bodies. Read this summary for more details and references. You'll also find an illustration showing how the nano-swimmer moves."

U.S. Public Sensible About Nanotechnology

A recent study of the American public's views on nanotechnology has shown a remarkably accurate understanding of its potential benefits and drawbacks. Conducted by North Carolina State University researcher, Dr. Michael Cobb, assistant professor of political science, who designed the survey and analyzed the data, and Dr. Patrick Hamlett, associate professor of science, technology and society, and Dr. Jane Macoubrie, assistant professor of communication, the results will appear in the next Journal of Nanoparticle Research.

Report on Royal Society atomic manipulation meeting

David Bradley Science Writer writes "The Royal Society recently held a meeting on atomic manipulation. You can read a summary report of the meeting by a freelance science writer on the RS site available as a PDF file here."

New Nanomaterial for Future Magnetic Fridges

Roland Piquepaille writes "Magnetic refrigerators offer significant advantages when compared with current vapor-compression ones, such as gains in energy efficiency, lower cost of operation or elimination of environmentally damaging coolants. Unfortunately, all the materials which have been tested in the last fifty years suffer from hysteresis losses, lowering the energy available for cooling. But now, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have found a solution, reported in "Nanomaterial Yields Cool Results." By adding a small amount of iron to a gadolinium-germanium-silicon alloy, they enhanced the cooling capacity by 30 percent. This very significant step may help move the promising technology of magnetically generated refrigeration closer to market. This overview contains more details and references."

Nano Tetrapods With Tunable 'Legs'

Roland Piquepaille writes "A team of chemists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), working with computer scientists, has discovered a new kind of adaptable nanoscale compounds. They previously devised tetrapods, structures with four 'arms' or 'legs', from materials such as cadmium telluride. But they now found that by using different materials, like selenium, tellurium or sulfur, to produce crystals of different cadmium compounds, each 'leg' could acquire different electronic properties. After isolating these 'legs,' they were able to produce 'nanorods' with specific properties. In "Nanotech Branches Out with New Discovery," NewsFactor Network says that this discovery will have important consequences, leading to the development of new solar cells, quantum computers or simply very small and fast transistors. This overview is more technical and contains additional references. You'll also find an image showing you the kind of nano tetrapods built at LBNL."

Robert Bradbury on Freitas interview

Svidinenko Yuriy brings to our attention commentary by Senior Associate Robert Bradbury on an interview of Robert Freitas, including responses to readers' posts. Topics: nanobiotechnology, nanowarfare, age curing, nanomedicine robotics and more.

Interview With Robert A. Freitas Jr. on NanoNewsNe

Svidinenko Yuriy writes "We have new article – nanomedicine-related interview with Robert A. Freitas Jr. "Robert A. Freitas Jr., J.D., has degrees in physics, psychology, and law, and has written nearly 100 technical papers, book chapters, or popular articles on a diverse set of scientific, engineering, and legal topics. He is is author of "Nanomedicine", the first book to comprehensively address the technical issues involved in the medical applications of molecular nanotechnology and medical nanodevice design. His book is well-known in Russia and our site provides translation to russian some Robert's science articles. So our visitors and members have some nanomedicine-related questions to Mr. Freitas. Site administration sincerely thanks to Robert A. Freitas Jr. to this interview." Link to full text avialable here: http://www.nanonewsnet.com/index.php?module=pagese tter&func=viewpub&tid=4&pid=3 Sincerely, Nanotechnology News Network."

A Spinach-Powered Laptop?

Roland Piquepaille writes "In "Could laptops run on spinach?," Nature reports that researchers from the MIT have made solar cells powered by spinach proteins. These prototype solar cells which transform light into 'green' energy could be used one day to coat and power your laptop. There is still work to be done before becoming a commercial product. Right now, the prototype delivers current for only three weeks. And they are not very efficient, converting only 12% of the light they absorb into electricity. However, these spinach-powered solar cells are better for our environment than silicon solar cells. And according to Science News Online, in "Protein Power: Solar cell produces electricity from spinach and bacterial proteins," they also have the potential to be self-repairing. The research work has been published by Nano Letters (Vol. 4, No. 6, Pp. 1079 – 1083, June 2004). If you are a subscriber, you may access the paper, named "Integration of Photosynthetic Protein Molecular Complexes in Solid-State Electronic Devices," by going to this page. You'll find more details and references in this overview."

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