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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Author: Foresight Editor

Will You Ride This Nano-Elevator?

Roland Piquepaille writes "Chemists from Italy and at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) have built the world's smallest elevator. It is a molecular elevator, about 2.5 nanometers high and 3.5 nanometers wide. The molecular platform sits on three legs which can move up and down by one nanometer. The New Scientist and the New York Times (free registration needed) are both reporting about this nano-elevator. The researchers think this system might be used as a drug delivery system. Even if they're right, it will not happen before at least ten years. This overview contains some excerpts from the two articles mentioned above. It also includes a schematical representation of the chemical equilibrium between the two co-conformations of the molecular elevator."

Software for augmenting human intellect still needed

A Manifesto for Collaborative Tools: "This essay is a manifesto about software for collaboration — why the world's future depends on it, why the current crop of tools isn't good enough, and what programmers can and must do about it." The importance of "backlinks" and "fine-grained links" was also emphasized in Eric Drexler's 1987 paper Hypertext Publishing and the Evolution of Knowledge.

Creating nanoscale conveyor belts

More on the previous topic. Kevin D. Keck writes "LBNL Material Sciences researchers today announced 'the achievement of controllable, reversible atomic scale mass transport along carbon nanotubes' in the April 29 issue of Nature [HTML] [PDF] and in a press release. 'Weíre not transporting atoms one at a time anymore ó itís more like a hose,' says Chris Regan (coauthor). 'In order to build a structure we have to be able transport material to the construction site, and weíre developing a better way to do that. Our nanoscale mass delivery system is simple and reversible. It requires only a nanotube, a voltage source, and something to transport."

Nanotubes melt and guide metals

Vik writes "This story in New Scientist describes how electrically-heated nanotubes have been made to accurately ferry molten metal around, in theory allowing the soldering of nanoscale metal parts. A variety of metals have been used, and there is an interesting possibility that this technique could be used to make crude nanotube structures that can weld themselves together."

Rosette nanotubes make implants more biocompatible

Rosette nanotubes not only promise versatile components for advanced nanotechnology, but look likely to be useful in near-term nanomedicine as well. Jamie Dinkelacker brings to our attention the fact that Self-assembling 'nanotubes' offer promise for future artificial joints. These nanotubes are assembled from DNA base pair-like rosettes and have the virtue of being readily modified to have different chemical properties [see Customizable, Self-assembling Nanotubes]. Not only has it been demonstrated "that bone cells called osteoblasts attach better to nanotube-coated titanium than they do to conventional titanium used to make artificial joints," but the highly customizable nature of these nanotubes offers hope that coatings can be designed that are optimized for implants in different body parts.

Defining nanotechnology now a legal issue

Nanotechnology: What's in a Name? reports "The Foresight Institute's Eric Drexler, who coined the word 'nanotechnology' in the 1980s and is one of the field's leading evangelists, has complained for years that the term has been watered down to the point of uselessness by researchers and companies who apply it to almost anything small. Now a legal complaint against Merrill Lynch, of all companies, may help to restore the definition to its original meaning — technologies that work on the scale of a nanometer, or a billionth of a meter, or less."

New Nanotechnology Research Institute in Ulster

David Young writes "The University of Ulster … opened a new Nanotechnology Research Institute at its Jordanstown campus in Northern Ireland: University Opens £8m Nanotechnology Research Institute

Is the NNI only about chemistry and materials?

Rosa Wang writes about Howard Lovy's comments [and also here] on the NNI Conference and nanotechnology funding priorities, and suggests that "some broad publicity might encourage other scientists to air their frustrations with the NNI's current priorities (perhaps to Howard Lovy?) as well as hilight some of the problems with having one centralized source of funding."

Businessweek on self assembly & molecular manufacturing

Getting Molecules To Do The Work surveys half a dozen nanotechnology projects involving self-assembly that are bringing an "era of nano-manufacturing". Although many obstacles remain, the survey concludes optimistically:

Still, "the field is moving very fast," says NYU's Seeman. Only a year ago, he says, he showed his students a top-10 list of major challenges nanotechnology faced. Today, three are already resolved. At this pace, he adds, self-assembly and molecular manufacturing will come into commercial use sooner rather than later.

VigyaanCD: bio/chemical modeling workbench on PC

PKA writes "Pratul K. Agarwal from Oak Ridge National Laboratory has released VigyaanCD (homepage, mirror). Vigyaan, a Knoppix customization, is an electronic workbench for computational biology and computational chemistry. The user can choose from more than 20 science applications. In addition to bioinformatics software, it provides GROMACS, TINKER for biomolecular modeling and Ghemical, MPQC, PSI3 for quantum chemistry calculations. VigyaanCD is a live Linux CD containing all the software required to boot the PC into workbench environment and is suitable both for beginners (12 demos and tutorials) and experts. Learning computational biology/chemistry has never been easier, so grab the free ISO image from several mirrors around the world and put your PC to work."

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