Those of you who have heard Peter Thiel speak (at the Singularity Summits and a while back at Foresight’s Senior Associates Gathering) already know that he is quite a visionary. In Hoover’s Feb/Mar 2008 Policy Review, Peter presents The Optimistic Thought Experiment, his thoughts on globalization and technology. Some excerpts: For every account of globalization… Continue reading Peter Thiel on technology and globalization
A major milestone along the protein design path to productive nanosytems and advanced nanotechnology has been achieved—the design by computational methods of enzymes that catalyze reactions for which biological enzymes do not exist.
Researchers have combined several different nanotechnology techniques to introduce a switchable pore-forming protein into a stable polymeric nanocontainer.
Researchers have assembled molecular films on the Si(100) surface utilized in conventional CMOS technologies and shown them to be of comparable quality to those assembled in earlier studies on the Si(111) surface, which is not compatible with CMOS.
The American Chemical Society has awarded Nadrian Seeman its Nichols Medal for establishing the field of structural DNA nanotechnology, nearly 13 years after the Foresight Institute awarded Seeman the 1995 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.
another case where nanotech has been advanced by “innovative measurement techniques and new ways to position the molecules”
Normally this blog focuses on nanotechnology, but it’s also important to stay on top of major advances in related fields such as robotics; the fields will interact in interesting ways. This video of a DARPA-funded project from Boston Dynamics is a must-see: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww Watch the whole thing, and use the YouTube version; the one on… Continue reading Amazing advance in robotics: see video
Researchers have published a new DNA nanotech method that uses essentially one tile that self-assembles into a variety of larger three-dimensional shapes.
IBM announced (credit PhysOrg.com) that stacking two layers of graphene—one on top of the other—reduces noise that has bedeviled attempts to build nanoelectronic circuits from graphene. From “IBM Scientists ‘Quiet’ Unruly Electrons in Atomic Layers of Graphite“: [IBM researchers] today announced a discovery that combats one of the industry’s most perplexing problems in using graphite… Continue reading Less noise with nanotechnology devices using two atomic layers of graphene
Nanotech provides a way to tailor the optical and electronic properties of materials through engineering their nanostructures. Nanotechnology researchers have demonstrated that quantum dots of different sizes will absorb light of different wavelengths, and that an architecture using nanotubes transports electrons better than one using nanospheres, thus making more efficient solar cells possible. In “Catching… Continue reading More efficient solar cells through quantum dot nanotechnology
