Foresight members have long been interested in physical/mechanical control of the positions and reactivity of molecules, as a pathway to advanced molecular nanotechnology and atomically-precise contruction of large products. This connection is described on Wikipedia in the mechanochemistry entry. Now at team at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign led by chemistry prof Jeffrey Moore has… Continue reading Nanotechnology video: Forcing reactions mechanically
Tom Moore has set up the Machine Phase blog to chronicle his nanotechnology adventures designing molecular machines using the NanoEngineer-1 software from Nanorex. Read the whole thing starting on March 3 in the archives. Some of the images are still shots; others turn into animations when you click on them. It’s quite impressive considering that… Continue reading Nanotechnology @ home: Design your own molecular machines
Finally, some decent swag for us here at Nanodot: We have received a review copy of the Italian book Blow-up: Images from the Nanoworld mentioned here earlier. It lives up to its advertising, being a beautiful collection of nanoscale (and microscale) images by Lucia Covi, including AFM tips, nanodevices, quantum dots, nanowires, DNA, nanotubes, and… Continue reading The nanotechnology book for your coffee table
Small Times reports that nanotechnology medical applications are expected to climb immensely: U.S. demand for nanotechnology medical products will increase over 17 percent per year to $53 billion in 2011, says The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry research firm. Afterwards, the increasing flow of new nanomedicines, nanodiagnostics, and nanotech-based medical supplies and devices into… Continue reading Nanotechnology health uses to grow hugely
USA Today covers the challenging but environmentally important issue of making batteries: inefficient, nasty things today that need to get a lot better and cheaper. And they will, with nanotech developed by these two MIT professors: [Prof. Angela] Belcher’s virus-assembled batteries are thin, transparent sheets that look like plastic wrap. They could be used to… Continue reading Batteries will be everywhere with nanotechnology
Richard Jones brings to our attention an amusing note on which to end the nanotechnology workweek: A pointer to a Technology Review blog in German by Niels Boeing which compares Drexler to Elvis and the UK’s Software Control of Matter project to the Beatles. Roughly translated: It’s intringuingly reminiscent of the history of pop music,… Continue reading Nanotechnology, Elvis, and the Beatles
A Yale researcher has won the $25,000 Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences for his discovery of natural molecular machine that guides some proteins to fold properly in the warm, crowded environment inside cells: They learned that a large double donut-shaped machine is responsible. They analyzed how that machine uses the energy of ATP and… Continue reading Molecular machine work wins $25,000
A recent study by Yale Law School on how people’s views on nanotechnology change when they learn more information found that people seem to use whatever they are told to reinforce what they expect to hear. See the graph and analysis on this page: There were even more dramatic differences in the reactions of subgroups… Continue reading Nanotechnology: People hear what they want to hear
Richard Jones and commenters bring our attention to a number of enticing research papers on the use of catalysis and molecular motors to produce movement. One paper mentioned sounds particularly useful: an overview of progress on Synthetic Molecular Motors and Mechanical Machines. From the abstract: The widespread use of controlled molecular-level motion in key natural… Continue reading Nanotechnology leading to molecular machines
Now, kids around the world can benefit from the nanoeducational prowess of Singapore. (Or at least rich kids can.) The ever-vigilant website Nanowerk brings word of three Nano-Bio educational kits available for ordering from Singapore. They’re perhaps a bit more bio- than nano-oriented, but whatever gets kids doing science and technology is helpful: One of… Continue reading Singapore exports nanotechnology learning tools
