Author: Foresight Editor

BuffYoda writes "BERKELEY, CA — "Another important step towards realizing the promise of lightning fast photonic technology has been taken by scientists with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California at Berkeley. Researchers have demonstrated that semiconductor nanoribbons, single crystals measuring tens of hundreds of microns in length, but only a few hundred or less nanometers in width and thickness (about one ten-millionth of an inch), can serve as 'waveguides' for channeling and directing the movement of light through circuitry." An interesting (though by no means unexpected or revolutionary) development in photonics, a field I consider to be of great importance to the development of extremely fast computers (this route seems to be a lot closer than the alternatives)."

Anonymous Coward writes "The Southern California Linux Expo has announced plans to host a panel discussion on the future of open source and voice over IP technologies at SCALE 3x. SCALE 3x, the Third Annual Southern California Linux Expo is the premier grass roots Linux and Open Source conference." More…

molecool writes "Daily Science News reports that researchers at the NanoTech Institute at The University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) have been awarded a $750,000, 20-month grant to develop artificial muscles that convert chemical energy to mechanical energy. The award was made by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), whose charter is to develop new technologies for military applications. Well, DARPA was instrumental in creating the early Internet over 30 years ago, which evolved into what we all have come to take for granted for the last decade or so. Maybe we will take artifical muscles for granted 30 years from now?"

Ed. Note: I wonder if these are a first step towards Asimov's I Robot?

As pointed out by BetterHumans.com, the group led by Geoffrey Ozin have produced "Synthetic-Self-Propelled Nanorotors" (Abstract). They also have a number of other interesting nanoscale projects.

While this is still seems to be manufactured with "bulk" scale chemistry perhaps combined with other methods it seems to be approaching the stage (as is the case with the other several examples of human engineered molecular motors) of having a certian amount of "technology" at nanoscales (< 100 nm).

If someone has access to Chemical Communications perhaps they could comment on the exact dimensions of the nanorotors (in nm) and the methods by which they are assembled.

EurekaAlert/AAAS will be having an online chat/conference Jan. 12 2005 from 10-12 AM EST. The URL: http://www.eurekalert.org/nanotalk.

You can submit questions before the chat session.

The panel they have assembled appears to involve several well informed experts from a biomedical standpoint — whether they are well informed from a nanomedical standpoint could be a provocative topic for conversation.

Even if you cannot make the conversation please do submit your questions for discussion.

Anything and all we can do to engage and/or educate the the more classic academic school is time well spent.

Carsten Zander writes Intelligent nanoparticle systems? Here is an (hypothetical) example:
An "intelligent" nanoparticle unit could imitate a neural network. It could be a simple mixture of a few nanoparticles N and o:

N o N o N
o N o N o
N o N o N
o N o N o
more….

Christine Peterson has pointed out that the ETC group is making noise again about "nanoparticles" in our food. In line with their general perspective they claim "In keeping with the Precautionary Principle, all food, feed and beverage products (including nutritional supplements) that incorporate manufactured nanoparticles should be removed from the shelves and new ones prohibited from commercialisation until such time as laboratory protocols and regulatory regimes are in place that take into account the special characteristics of these materials, and until they are shown to be safe."

See: Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture.

In an effort to make nanodot a more concentrated news resource we have added a number of new block summaries that users may choose to add to their nanodot homepages. More…

Christine Peterson has pointed out an item from Howard Lovy's Nanobot regarding Further Info on Nanotech Action in Leeds.

It looks like the European GMO perspective is starting to spill over into nanotechnology. Obviously an education problem here as it seems that the anti-nanotech forces don't seem to realize that nanotechnology can help clean up the existing problems as well as reduce future problems.

How does one make it clear to people that reality is going to evolve and they had best evolve with it?

WilliamDye writes "A few weeks ago, the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha announced that it was forming a Center for Drug Delivery and Nanomedicine. The new center was briefly discussed in a recent newspaper article in the Lincoln (Nebraska) Journal-Star. Unfortunately, the use of the term "nanomedicine" at the new center does not appear to be in the realm of what many NanoDot readers would consider to be true Nanomedicine, but as with the current popular usage of the term "nanotechnology", perhaps the present initiatives will eventually lead to the earlier, more powerful concepts."