Author: Foresight Editor

UCLA physicist Giovanni Zocchi, a member of the California NanoSystems Institute, explains: "We have made an artificial mechanism of allosteric control based on mechanical tension…We insert a molecular spring on the protein…By gluing together two disparate pieces of the cell's molecular machinery, a protein and a piece of DNA, we have created a spring-loaded protein which can be turned on and off."

From Brad Stone of Newsweek on Nathan Myhrvold's company: "The five-year-old firm's plan is to create or buy new ideas, accumulate patentsóexclusive rights to use the inventionsóand rent those ideas to companies that need them to do the gritty work of producing real products…But they charge that Silicon Valley companies have stolen other people's inventions for too long while slashing their own R&D budgets. Referring to Intellectual Ventures' portfolio of patents as his own…" The company's home page explicitly mentions nanotechnology.

Nanochallenge is a nanotech business plan competition, deadline 5 June 2005. The top twenty entries win 1000 euros and free lodging in Padua, Italy, for the two-day final competition. The winning team gets 300,000 euros and venture advice. Sponsored by Veneto Nanotech, funded by the Italian government.

As Science Daily is reporting a group at the BESSY lab in Germany has pioneered a technique using X-ray holography (Nature abstract here) that can image down to 50nm. Predictions are that when the "X-ray free electron laser" [1] aka Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) comes online at Stanford in ~2009 that they will not only have 10x the resolution of current systems (does that get us to 5nm?) and will be able to do femtosecond imaging.

Interestingly from a biological standpoint this may provide a way around the problem of molecules which for various reasons simply refuse to crystalize and whose structure cannot be determined by more classical (X-ray crystallography) based methods. This (and the optical methods mentioned recently) suggest that we are actually going to be able to *see* and watch our inventions operate in the nanorealm.

This book has a great title, but is it great? We could use a review of Self-Assembled Nanostructures. Unfortunately, it costs US$135, and is not much cheaper used. This list from AzoM has a number of other intriguing-sounding nano books.

Richard Jones over at Soft Machines has comments on molecular manufacturing. Richard: ì[S]ystems that make thingsî should only be a small part of the story. We need systems that do things – we need to process energy, process information, and, in the vital area of nanomedicine, interact with the cells that make up humans and their molecular components. CP: Yes, but as has been repeatedly pointed out, we need better systems that make things in order to build better systems that do things. Manufacturing may be a boring word compared to energy, information, and medicine, but it is fundamental to all. See Read More.

A book chapter on Nanorobotics, focusing on the molecular level, is available in pdf format: "If all these different components were assembled together they can form nanorobots and nano devices with multiple degrees of freedom, with ability to apply forces and manipulate objects in the nanoscale world, transfer information from the nano- to the macroscale world and even travel in a nanoscale environment…Active control of nanorobots has to be further refined. Hybrid control mechanisms, where in, a molecular computer and external (navigational) control system work in sync to produce the precise results seems very promising." Here's the research group, and the chapter is from The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, 3rd Edition, CRC Press, 2004.

Two award-winning nanotech films from Europe are available for downloading, or you can order free DVDs. The first, "Nanotechnology", is clearly aimed at kids, while the second, "Nano: the next dimension", is for adults and includes Nobel winning chemist Jean-Marie Lehn. Your reviews welcome in the comments.

It is being reported in multiple sources that Intel has managed to develop "silicon lasers". The buzz is in a report in Nature here and is followed up in the NY Times (registration required) here as well as /. here.

It will be interesting to see how the optical methods play out against Sun's proximity communication.

For those readers who do not actively follow the technologies its about the speed and reliability of the interface between separate processing units (similar to communication between neurons in the brain), CPUs are probably way over the processing capacity of individual neurons (one could of course debate this…), but they are nowhere close to the density neurons achieve and the minimal communication delays between neurons. Laser and/or proximity based communication methods would seem to narrow that gap.

Nanopolis writes "Nanopolis invites instrument manufacturers, nanomaterials users and IP lawyers to participate in the upcoming "Exploring Nanotechnology" encyclopedia & Virtual Show, the first and only multimedia animated space of nanotechnology science and industry.

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