Philanthropist Fred Kavli has extended his nanotech research giving to found the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard. From the Harvard press release: The Kavli Foundation and Harvard University have agreed to establish the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology (KIBST). The endowment from the Kavli Foundation will help to boost… Continue reading Nanotechnology for medicine: Harvard's new Kavli Institute to develop tiny machines for nanomedicine
For those interested in nanobiology and nanoscale medicine, the site Nanomedicine and Nanobiology Research is worth exploring. The book section includes various books you’ll recognize (and quite a few you may not), there’s a nanomedicine-specific Medline search, and there are rankings for labs, researchers, and even science writers. Most interesting to me are the “Early… Continue reading Nanotechnology: Asia dominates in early career nanobio & nanomedicine
The term “bottom-up” was originally used to refer to molecule-by-molecule assembly of atomically-precise products. But more recently we’ve seen the term used to describe processes that produce products which are not atomically precise. The following Azonano item is an example of this usage. However, it seems likely that this kind of research — which does… Continue reading DNA-directed self-assembly of nanowires
Cees Dekker’s team at the Kavli Institute of NanoScience at Delft University of Technology have produced some intriguing work published in Science (400 KB pdf): Integration of biomolecular motors in nanoengineered structures raises the intriguing possibility of manipulating materials on nanometer scales. We have managed to integrate kinesin motor proteins in closed submicron channels and… Continue reading Dutch team uses molecular motors for sorting
Purdue University is extremely serious about being a leader in nanotech and they are putting serious money into that goal. They’ve just opened a new nanofabrication cleanroom that sounds unique: combining the usual semiconductor capabilities with nanobio work, in cleanrooms that connect to each other. This sounds very handy for cool cross-disciplinary R&D. From the… Continue reading Purdue builds one-of-a-kind nanotech lab
Accelrys is having a July 13 webinar, which I assume is free, on how to use their software for nanobio purposes. They say it enables “multiscale modeling that enables seamless design from the molecular level through full device”, which is pretty impressive. UPDATE: Yes, it’s free. —Christine Read more for the full press release
Kevin Bullis writes in Technology Review about a nanotech-based medical tool that looks very promising. The most deadly disease in the U.S. isn’t cancer or AIDS, it’s heart disease: Each year 100,000 patients complaining of heart attack-like symptoms are sent home without treatment because current methods cannot diagnose some heart attacks, Moffitt says. Of these… Continue reading Nanoscale medical detection close to practical use
Longtime Foresight participating member Richard Smith brings our attention to a piece at Technology Review by Kevin Bullis, the second page of which I was unable to access online (could only get a BMW ad instead), so the last paragraph below is taken from a paper printout (Update: second page is working now): One of… Continue reading Sponges inspire self-assembly of nanostructures
This week I’m attending the Institute for the Future’s meeting titled Beyond the Horizon: Science & Technology in Ten, Twenty & Fifty Years. Overall, it’s great and I recommend it. Reminds me of Foresight’s Vision Weekends. Tomorrow I’ll be presenting our Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems project at one of the breakouts. The meeting was… Continue reading IFTF predicts nanotech 50 years out
As described — briefly, as one would expect — in the May 2006 Nanotech Briefs (subscription only), the EU is funding a nanomotor construction kit project. From their press release: “A promising interdisciplinary approach combines research methods of biology, physics, chemistry, computing, system theory and engineering into a “synthetic biology”. The EU has also recognised… Continue reading Europeans to make construction kit of tailored nanomotor components
