Sometimes the behavior of electrons in nanostructures can be modelled using classical laws of motion, while at other times more computationally challenging quantum methods are necessary to obtain useful results. Christopher W. Ince of the Nanotechnology Research Foundation writes with news of a new method to distinguish classical from quantum behavior in electrons: Researchers from… Continue reading Researchers Develop method to Distinguish Classical from Quantum Behavior in Electrons
Palo Alto, CA – December 20, 2010 – The Foresight Institute, a nanotechnology education and public policy think tank based in Palo Alto, has announced the winners of the prestigious 2010 Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology. Established in 1993 in honor of Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, two $5,000 prizes are awarded in two… Continue reading Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology Awarded by Foresight Institute
Molecular dynamics calculations define optimum strand lengths for the assembly of DNA films as greater than 10 and less than 30 nucleotides.
An IEEE Spectrum podcast asks the question, Why Are Terrorists Often Engineers? The blurb: With terrorism back in the news, so, too, is a curious footnote: Of the hundreds of individuals involved in political violence, nearly half of those with degrees have been engineers. This finding, first published in 2008, has been substantiated by two… Continue reading Why terrorists are often engineers: implications for nanotechnology
We have reports from a couple of Foresight members who have toured the Allosphere, part of the California NanoSystems Institute at UC Santa Barbara, and it sounds truly impressive. From their website: The AlloSphere, a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story near-to-anechoic (echo free) cube, allows for synthesis, manipulation, exploration and analysis of large-scale… Continue reading Check out the Allosphere at California NanoSystems Institute, UCSB
The nomination/submission process for the 2010 Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology is now open. Two $5000 prizes are offered, one for theory and one for experimental achievement. These prizes recognize progress toward the goal of atomic-level control in the construction of macroscale 3D objects: an ambitious goal but one toward which physicist Richard Feynman… Continue reading Nominations now open for 2010 Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology
Foresight Feynman Prize winner Robert Freitas brings to our attention the first published theoretical study of DMS (diamond mechanosynthesis) tool-workpiece operating envelopes and optimal tooltip trajectories for a complete positionally controlled reaction sequence, which he did with colleagues in Russia. He writes, “This paper represents the first extensive DMS tooltip trajectory analysis, examining a wide… Continue reading Modeling the recharging of used hydrogen abstraction tool
From Ars Technica: Nobel Intent, a thought-provoking article on what the prevalence of computational science portends for reproducibility in science: Victoria Stodden is currently at Yale Law School, and she gave a short talk at the recent Science Online meeting in which she discussed the legal aspects of ensuring that the code behind computational tools… Continue reading Keeping computers from ending science's reproducibility
Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel: While nanotechology might mean different things to different people, the term was originally coined to describe the building of things from the bottom up with… Continue reading Atomic precision as the goal of nanotechnology
If you were an alien from an advanced civilization who had been stranded on Earth, but had all your people’s knowledge on a thumb drive, how would you go about creating nanotech and building up Earth’s technology to the level you could rejoin your galactic civilization? If you actually knew the details, probably one of… Continue reading Proteins
