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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Author: Foresight Editor

Growing interest in nanotech among venture investors

from the dollars-and-sense dept.
Two recent articles point out the growing interest among venture capitalists and other investors in the potential of nanotechnology:
The views of venture capitalist (and Foresight Senior Associate) Steve Jurvetson and associate Warren Packard on nanotechnology are profiled in the San Francisco Business Times ("Jurvetson pins big hopes on tiny nanomachines", by M. Calvey, 13 July 2001). The article quotes Jurvetson: "We are entering an era of exponential growth in our capabilities in biotech, molecular engineering and computing . . . The cross-fertilization of these formerly discrete domains compounds our rate of learning and our engineering capabilities." Jurvetson also had an article on nanotechnology in Red Herring Magazine in June 2001.
An article by Jayne Fried at the Small Times website ("Venture capitalists listen, learn as scientists discuss nanobiotech", 17 July 2001) discusses interest expressed by potential investors at a recent conference on nanobiotechnology.

A useful summary of nanotech in Texas

from the not-invented-here dept.
An article on the Small Times website ("NanoTexas: The Land of Big Oil is Now Boomtown for the Tiny", by Candace Stuart, 16 July 2001) provides a useful overview of nanotech-related activity in Texas. The article covers the various Texas institutions and private firms engaged in nanotechnology research and development, and describes some of their work.

Also, in the tradition of Texas tall tales, we again see the dubious claim that "Texas is the birthplace of nanotechnology." The claim is based on the co-discovery of fullerenes by Richard Smalley at Rice University, and the mistaken assumption that the Rice researchers are the only ones who have done interesting work with fullerene nanotubes.

Activity in Texas has recently been covered here on nanodot on 29 June, 13 June, and 30 May in 2001, and 16 August 2000.

AI researcher says nanotech won

from the intelligence-issues dept.
United Press International science correspondent Kelly Hearn recently interviewed artificial intelligence researcher Eric Chown ("Thinking robots coming, but decades away", 14 July 2001). Chown is a professor of computer science at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. When asked if nanotechnology will help engineers build machines that better mimic the brain's activity, Chown said: "No, I don't think so. Nanotechnology will provide amazing breakthroughs in the medical domain in terms of robotic surgery and such. But in terms of building human-like robots, I don't think it will contribute greatly. I really think that the big breakthroughs will come in terms of better understanding of how the brain works."
On the question of whether the future will bring a merging of flesh and machines, Chown said, "merging man and machine is more a short-term issue than the potential long-term issue of machines actually replacing people. In terms of ethical questions, in the short run, I don't see a big ethical problem. If somebody can't see and an optical implant can help them, that's a good thing. But it doesn't take a great leap to see how it could get out of control. We aren't doing enough in society to consider the ethics of the technologies we're developing."

German researchers create rubidium atom laser

from the fine-focus dept.
An item on the Nature Science Update website tells of researchers at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, who have found a way to focus, reflect and split an atom laser beam. They were able to generate a coherent atom beam from a Bose-Einstein condensate. Magnetic forces are used to hold the condensate in a trap. A beam of coherent atoms can be formed by letting the condensate stream out through an opening in the trap's walls.
The German researchers produced an atom laser beam of rubidium-87 atoms. They used normal lasers to tune the atoms' magnetic behavior, then used magnets as mirrors to reflect the atom laser beam and to store it. The paper describing their work appeared in Physical Review Letters, 87: 123 – 321 (2001).

Article on nanotech investing in The Economist

from the boom-or-bust? dept.
An article in the UK-based magazine The Economist ("The smaller the better", 21 June 2001) tries to answer a few questions for potential investors: "After the dotcom bust and the fibre-optics glut, nanotechnology has suddenly become the refuge of choice for technologically obsessed investors. But why ìnanoîóand what is it, anyway?"

The article covers a broad range of ideas, but focuses on short-term nanoscale bulk items like nanoparticles, but also mentions micro- and nano-electronics. The piece concludes: "The danger is that the investment firmsí expectations could run too far ahead of nanotechnologyís ability to deliver. Whether investors have the patience to hang around for the pay-off is the big question."

Boom in regional nanotech "hubs" catches press attention

from the catching-the-wave dept.
khennes1 writes "Which states will be big in the small-scale nanotech arena? An article from United Press International ("Nanotech hubs spread all over ", by K. Hearn, 11 July 2001) details various nanotech initiatives emerging across the country."

The article covers programs on the U.S. east coast in New York and Pennsylvania (and possibly the Boston and Washington, D.C. areas), as well as in California and Texas.

Artificial enzyme tested for medical use in humans

from the early-nanomedicine dept.
MetaPhore Pharmaceuticals, based in St. Louis, Mo., announced on 12 July 2001 that it has completed initial human clinical studies of an artificial enzyme-mimic molecule that scavenges free radicals inside cells. MetaPhore says it is only the first candidate from its proprietary family of free-radical fighting enzyme mimetics.

The initial clinical trials showed the drug to be safe and well tolerated, according to the company press release. The studies are also significant because they represent the first time that a small molecule drug developed to mimic an enzymeís activity has been tested in humans, based on published reports. MetaPhore says its enzyme mimetics work by replicating the catalytic activity of the natural enzyme, superoxide dismutase (SOD), the bodyís natural defense against free radical damage to tissues and cells. The natural regulation of superoxide free radicals by SOD, however, is unbalanced in certain disease states, including cancer, when the bodyís immune system prompts an overproduction of superoxide and the natural SOD enzymes become overwhelmed.

The release also states that additional pre-clinical studies conducted by MetaPhore researchers and others indicate that SOD enzyme mimetics hold extensive potential for a wide array of diseases and conditions associated with free-radical damage, including pain and inflammation, stroke, heart attack as well as certain types of cancers. It is worth noting that some theories of aging mechanisms are associated with free-radical damage to tissue and cells.

U.S. DOE launches nanotech programs at Brookhaven Lab

from the mushrooming-regional-NT-programs dept.
According to a press release issued by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on 12 July 2001, funding has been approved for two major nanoscience research initiatives at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York.

One set of studies will focus on understanding the nanoscale properties of catalysts, substances that initiate or speed up the rates of chemical reactions, with the goal of exploiting these properties to optimize chemical reactivity and selectivity. The second initiative will explore how electric charges move at the nanoscale. These studies could lead to advances in energy-conversion devices such as those that convert sunlight into electricity, and new "molecular electronics" for tinier, faster computer circuits.

Both programs will also develop and refine methods of nanofabrication to build improved materials atom by atom or molecule by molecule.

S. Korea debates ban on human cloning experiments

from the World-watch dept.
An interesting and extensive overview of the issues related to the regulation or banning of human cloning in South Korea appeared in the Korea Herald ("Experts call for urgent legislation on human cloning", by Yoo Soh-jung, 13 July 2001). The article also surveys similar debates in the United States and Europe.

The cloning issue is of particular concern in South Korea, in part because in 1998, researchers at Kyunghee University Hospital's infertility clinic claimed they succeeded in a human cloning test. The researchers removed the nucleus from the ovum of a 30-year-old woman and replaced it with a somatic cell. They claimed ovum successfully reached cell division and segmentation. (These results have since been disputed.) The director of the research team was quoted as saying that the "experiment was not designed to clone human beings but to clone specific organs for transplant."

LA Times columnist favors uploading

from the chips,-ahoy! dept.
In a commentary in the Los Angeles Times spurred by the release of the film A.I., Bart Kosko, a professor of the electrical engineering at USC and author of Heaven in a Chip (Random House, 2000), places himself in the intellectual camp that sees a merger of humans and their technology as inevitable.

"It will be far easier to make us more like computers than to make computers more like us," says Kosko. He concludes: "So forget "A.I.'s" vision of lumbering machines that simply mimic our pre-computer notions of speech and movement and emotions. Brains and robots and even biology are not destiny. Chips are."

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