Author: Foresight Editor

Two articles on the Small Times website describe presentations at the Nanotech Planet conference held in Munich, Germany on 17 & 18 June 2002.

• "Europe longs to play catch-up in nanotech commercialization", by Kyle James, 19 June 2002:
  The 50-odd scientists, engineers and venture capitalists at this European Nanotech Planet Conference gathered here to talk business and look at ways Europe might bridge the "disconnect," as some were calling it, between the research lab and the board room.
  The conference verdict was that Europe is very strong on the scientific side, but when it comes to getting its new findings to the market, Europe needs to play catch-up.
  "If you look at the number of articles in academic journals, Europe is on a par with the U.S.," said Meyya Meyyappan, director of NASA's Center for Nanotechnology at the Ames Research Center. But when it comes to the number of companies and new opportunities, he continued, Europe is bringing up the rear.
• "Gun-shy European VC firms want revenue plans, not hype", by Kyle James, 20 June 2002:
  "People don't buy technology, they buy products. So concentrate on the products." That was the gospel preached at Nanotech Planet in Munich, a two-day conference devoted to nanotechnology business in Europe. The engineers and venture capitalists hammering that message home seemed intent on converting scientists into businesspeople ñ or at least instilling in them the fact that any nanobusiness has to focus on the business part of the equation as much as on the science.

Gina Miller writes "IBM reported using MEMS/NEMS technology to achieve a data storage density of a trillion bits per square inch. The research project, code-named "Millipede," uses an array of 1024 (32 x 32) silicon cantilever AFM tips in a 3-mm square to make indentations 10 nm in diameter in a thin polymer film. Bits are written by heating the cantilever to 400 C, which softens the polymer film, and read at 300 C, where the polymer is not soft. Data is erased by using the tip to surround the data pit with a series of overlapping pits that fill in the old pit. The authors achieved more than 100,000 write/overwrite cycles to demonstrate this capability. They are currently using electronics that achieve kilobit-per-second data rates with individual tips, but expect to do much better with better electronics. A technical report on the Millipede project published in the June 2002 inaugural issue of IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology can be downloaded from the IBM page. Soooo, the big question for nanodot readers, could this AFM array be useful for molecular manufacturing?"

Gina Miller writes "The EE Times reports that a research team in Denmark and France used a large, table-shaped organic molecule (C₉₀H₉₈) as a template to induce a copper surface to form a wire of copper atoms. At room temperature the organic molecules will bind to the edges of one atom-thick terraces on the copper surface. At lower temperatures, where the copper atoms stay put, an STM tip can be used to nudge the organic molecule away from the edge. Since the copper atoms had lined up under the table molecule at higher temperatures, there is now a small segment of a wire on the surface: one copper atom thick, two copper atoms wide, and 8 copper atoms long. Could these molecular templates be used to make wires to link components on a copper surface together into circuits? The research was originally published in the April 12, 2002 issue of Science."

An article on the Small Times website ("U.S. secretary of energy announces $85 million Brookhaven nanocenter", by J. Mason, 17 June 2002) reports that U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham visited Brookhaven National Laboratory on 14 June 2002 to announce that BNL's proposed nanocenter will officially move ahead. In remarks to BNL employees after touring the labs on Long Island in New York, Abraham also signaled the Energy Department's growing commitment to developing nanotechnologies that serve U.S. national interests, from bioterror detection to fuel cells that could help reduce dependence on foreign oil.

Update: Additional coverage is available in the article from United Press International ("DOE picks Brookhaven for nanocenter ", by S. Burnell, 14 June 2002).

An article in the New York Times ("Total Ban on Cloning Research Appears Dead", by S. Stolberg, 14 June 2002) reports that "A proposed [U.S.] ban on all human cloning experiments, a topic that has brought profound scientific and ethical questions to the forefront of President Bush's domestic agenda, is stalled in the Senate and appears dead, at least for this year."

According to a press release (12 June 2002) from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), two teams of scientists have fashioned transistors from single molecules, and report their results in the 13 June 2002 issue of Nature.

At the Cornell University Center for Materials Research, Hector Abruna and colleagues wedged a molecule containing a single cobalt atom between gold electrodes. They were able, using a gate voltage, to control the transfer of electrons across the cobalt atom, demonstrating the ability to regulate electrical flow at the smallest possible scale. Hongkun Park and coworkers at Harvard University developed a transistor by inserting a different molecule containing two atoms of the metal vanadium between gold electrodes.

Additional information is available in a press release from Cornell University and an article on the Small Times website ("Researchers report they have an atom surrounded on all sides", by Peg Brickley, 12 June 2002).

And waynerad writes notes this report on the PhysicsWeb website.

Mr_Farlops writes "With a scanning probe microscope acting as pen and DNA acting as ink, scientists have built nanoscopic arrays that will soon revolutionize research in molecular biology. These tiny arrays would be the last statement in gene-testing chips because, by reducing things to the ultimate testing compenents, single strands of DNA, they will be much cheaper and faster to make than conventional gene chips.The arrays may have extensive use in nanotechnology as well because the builder can control which strands of DNA bind to which spots on the substrate and since each strand of DNA will only bind with its corresponding complement of base-pairs, one can quickly sort molecules, reagents, enzymes, etc.

"By taking advantage of DNA as a type of biochemical Velcro, we should be able to build a circuit, a catalyst, a sensor or a transistor from the bottom up, instead of the top down." says, Chad A. Mirkin, director of Northwestern Universityís Institute for Nanotechnology and one of the chief developers of dip-pen nanolithography."

The U.S. National Research Council (NRC) has issued a report assessing the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative. According to a report from United Press International ("US needs 'crisp' nanotech plan", by Scott Burnell, 10 June 2002), the NNI "has had a good start but needs sharper focus".

The report was also covered in an article on the Small Times website ("National Research Council report says some changes needed in NNI", by Doug Brown, 11 June 2002).

Background on the NRC assessment of the NNI, see the Nanodot post from 30 October 2001.

waynerad writes "Researchers at the University of Arizona are exploring ways to 'grow' microchips using proteins from living cells.

The new biological interconnects would bypass lithography, etching and soldering processes with long strings of proteins called microtubules (MT). They'll connect transistors and other devices in microchips by growing between the device junctions. They're solder-free, don't involve lithography or etching, and are highly uniform. Once the proteins connect devices, they will be coated with metal and turned into microscopic wires.

MTs are common in nature. They help cells carry out mitosis (cell division) and have diameters of about 24 nanometers. MTs also can grow to several microns in length."

[The press release also cautions: "[D]on't start looking for MTs in devices at your local electronics store any time soon. The research still is in the "basic science" stage, and much remains to be done by scientists and engineers from widely diverse backgrounds."]

WillWare writes "There has recently been released a partially open-sourced version of the Cyc artificial intelligence program. Information can be found at http://www.opencyc.org/. Cycorp, the commercial venture that developed Cyc, writes the following on the benefits of this release.

From this point forward, real-world common sense can be expected to play an integral part of software applications. For the first time, the world's only large-scale, task-independent, language-independent, extensible, reusable, common-sense knowledge base is being made available to the world. Beginning now, software can become increasingly and arbitrarily smarter.

They expect the following benefits for themselves.

To establish Cyc as the standard for knowledge representation, for knowledge management, for data base integration, and in general for intelligent software applications. Also, the release of OpenCyc will help lay the groundwork for the massively parallel effort to rapidly grow the Cyc [knowledge base]… OpenCyc will raise awareness for symbolic knowledge representation. It will also create opportunities for combining symbolic and rule-based systems with other technologies, such as neural networks, planning systems, machine learning and genetic algorithms.

One might expect that the most MNT-relevant AI programs will look more like CAD programs than common-sense databases, at least in the near future. Where the Cyc technology would have an advantage would be in addressing problems that are not already well formulated and well studied. Perhaps a Cyc-based program could be a good researcher, or a good economic or political advisor, or would fare better in meeting the unexpected challenges that might be encountered on a long term space mission than a more clearly goal-specific program. In any event, it's an interesting development, and it will be intriguing to see what is done with the open-source release."