Author: Allison

Dr_Barnowl writes "A somewhat dubious product was recently released by BatMax (See here for technical details.) It was apparently convincing enough to be posted by a Slashdot moderator (here).

The company basically claims it can drastically improve the performance of your mobile phone battery with what amounts to a stick-on decal. The spurious and unscientific descriptions of the technology (allegedly) involved are nothing special, apart from the association with nanotechnology.

It would seem that it's not just manufacturers of sunblock, tennis rackets and trousers that have cottoned on to the "magical" properties of putting a *10^-9 in your product blurb. If this becomes commonplace, what kind of damage will it do to the funding prospects of projects promising similarly outrageous (but scientifically feasible) benefits as a result of genuine MNT?"

Ed. Note: Hmmm… a "nano-ceramic" — aren't most ceramics "nano-" in nature?

Brian Wang writes "By 2011, the market for next-generation, nonvolatile memories will be worth $65.7 billion, according to a new report from research firm NanoMarkets LC on Wednesday (August 18, 2004).

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David Kanaan writes "Nanotechnology-Based Solid Lubricant NanoLub Shows Promising Performance for Space Applications

NanoLub surpasses minimum limits for space durability

New York, USA, August 5, 2004. ApNano Materials Inc. (www.apnano.com), a provider of nanotechnology-based products, today announced that its proprietary product NanoLub, the worldís first commercial nanotechnology-based solid lubricant, has significantly surpassed an outgassing screening test for space applications. This aerospace qualification test, in accordance with international specifications, was conducted under a simulated space environment by the Space Technology Division Materials Group of the Soreq Nuclear Research Center in Israel.

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Anonymous Coward writes "Feynman's vision has finally begun to materialize, thanks to ever more sophisticated microelectronics. Micro- and nanoscale machines are poised to become a multibillion-dollar market as they are incorporated in all kinds of electronic devices.

But, again, at very small scales, chemical batteries can't provide enough juice to power these micromachines. As you reduce the size of such a battery, the amount of stored energy goes down exponentially.

Researchers developing sensors the size of a grain of sand had to attach them to batteries they couldn't make smaller than a shirt button. The nuclear microbatteries we are developing won't require refueling or recharging and will last as long as the half-life of the radioactive source, at which point the power output will decrease by a factor of two.

For the IEEE Spectrum article click here."

Ed. note: This reminds me of the Gd¹⁴⁸ power source for nanorobots (Nanomedicine Vol I, Sec 6.3.7, pgs 156-159). It begs the issue that a lot more people are going to have to become a lot more comfortable with radioactive power sources.

Anonymous Coward writes "The Inquirer posted an article stating that Applied Micro Systems will team up with US company Micromechatronics to create a highly miniaturised set of robots. These robots will be used to build microprocessors and are appearantly capable of moving in nanometers. A potential for "top down" production of further miniaturized nanobots seem probable."

Ed. note: The article seems a bit thin and nikkei.net appears to require registration. Does anyone have any more detailed information? At 3 cm² this is quite a way from "nanorobots" even if it can move in nm increments. And with chips pushing down into the 70nm and smaller range it is questionable how "nanorobots" of this size could be useful.

Nanotechwire is pointing out the forthcoming publication of Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology, and Medicine by Elsevier who claim that it is to be the world's first peer-reviewed journal devoted to nanomedicine. Robert Freitas is supposed to have an article "What is Nanomedicine?" in the first issue. One would hope that will get the journal off in a good direction. Slowly the mainstream science community seems to be acknowledging that nanotechnology and nanomedicine are not fantasies.

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab are using nanotechnology to learn how to clean up environmental contaminants like nuclear waste. They are also using supercomputers and state-of-the-art imaging to predict how quickly pollutants react with minerals in soils and aquifers. This article from the Daily Californian says they are studying kinetics, or rates, of reactions which occur at the earthís surface using a nanoscale approach. They started to look at the reactions that take place at the pore scale and plan to expand their scope from nanometers to meters in the months to come. This research has implications for transport of contaminants, especially of radioactive materials, but also for oil or ore recovery. This overview contains more details, references and a picture of a device used to grow and monitor nanocrystals important for our environment."

SpaceDaily based on UPI is covering how scientists from Luc Jaeger at UCSB to Ned Seeman at NYU (and others) are creating grand plans to use DNA and related chemical molecules to do everything from assembly to analysis.

Sounds like the combination of the fact that the hardware to do the synthesis of these molecules exists and the fact that there are a lot of things these molecules can manage via self-assembly is giving these methods a lead in the "real" molecular nanotechnology arena.