Author: Foresight Editor

from the free-info-for-the-rest-of-us dept.
For those of us who don't have easy access to the journal Science online, RobVirkus writes "The Zettl group at UC Berkeley published work on nanotube based bearings and springs which may have application to Stewart platforms. The work is published in Science but a press release is available here"

from the keep-them-bearings-rollin' dept.
Senior Associate and IMM researcher Josh Hall writes "An article in the current Science, Low-Friction Nanoscale Linear Bearing Realized from Multiwall Carbon Nanotubes, by John Cumings and A. Zettl, describes recent work that will be very important in terms of building nanomachines with sliding parts. If you have an online subscription, read it here. (for those with access to a paper copy, the ref is Science 289, 602 (2000) )

There is a "perspective" entitled "NANOTECHNOLOGY: Beyond Gedanken Experiments" by Laszlo Forró, which mentions that the technique was foreseen by Drexler and references Nanosystems. It's here.

It's good to see this on the heels of stories such as this cover story in Science News about "stiction", the bane of MEMS microdevices."

from the let's-get-some-of-our-tax-money-back dept.
Senior Associate WesDuCharme writes "The National Nanotechnology Initiative seems to be coming onstream. The NSF just put out program announcement regarding nanotechnology They are interested in proposals on six "research themes". The first five are highly technical, but as a research psychologist I find the sixth one most interesting: Societal and Education Implications of Scientific and Technological Advances on the Nanoscale. Read More for details and an offer to collaborate.

from the snap-to-it dept.
Researchers have used the Van der Waals attraction between two closely spaced perpendicular nanotubes to give the pair two stable mechanical states. In one state the tubes are well separated and unstrained, while in the second they are in close contact and the attraction between them bends the upper tube, holding them together. They were able to both switch between the states and sense them electronically. They calculate potential switching rates of 100GHz and densities of 10¹² bits/cm²

from the where-to-stay-when-you're-REALLY-under-the-weather dept.
Miss the Alcor conference at Asilomar this year? That's unfortunate, but you can get a vague idea of what it was like from this media writeup, which doesn't have too many errors: "Mr Drexler's presence at the conference–he has become something of a media recluse–could be explained by the fact that it was organised by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He is on the scientific advisory board of Alcor, best known perhaps as the largest US cryonics foundation. At its freezer facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, 38 dead people, including one Australian, are in suspended animation awaiting a miracle of future technology to bring them back to life." We prefer the term "temperaturely-challenged".