Last week I posted a story of strange behavior in the simulation of molecular machines. One commenter asked if this was due to something unusual in the starting configuration of the atoms. This was the first thing we investigated, and didn’t seem to be the case. There was a small amount to strain energy in… Continue reading A cautionary note, concluded
One of the constraints laid down by DARPA at the recent Physical Intelligence proposers workshop was that the model of intelligence that was to be proposed had to have a physical implementation. It seemed odd to some of the attendees that this should be a hard constraint, since many models of intelligence have a perfectly… Continue reading A cautionary note
Some interesting developments in memories: This Nanowerk story reports results out of Alex Zettl’s group at Berkeley on a memory cell that consists of an iron nanoparticle which can be moved back and forth in a nanotube. More information on this can be found at Zettl’s site here. This memory, like someother nanotech schemes, relies… Continue reading Memories: nanotech?
Evolution has adapted what were the bones of the fingers of the bat’s ancestors to form the skeleton of its wing. Similarly, in technology, when one element of a system is capable of expanding to take up new functions, it can substitute for what might have been expected to be different ways to achieve the… Continue reading Bat Wings
Two papers in a recent issue of Science suggest that graphene is rapidly moving from being “just” a nanotech wonder material to becoming relevant to atomically precise nanotechnologies.
This the sixth essay in a series exploring if, when, and how the Singularity will happen, why (or why not) we should care, and what, if anything, we should do about it. Part VI: The heavily-loaded takeoff The fastest software I ever used ran on some of the slowest computers I ever had. Circa 1980,… Continue reading Singularity, part 6
New computational results reveal how the proper hierarchical assembly of smaller protein domains optimizes mechanical properties.
Computer simulations have shown that graphene deposited on a silicon dioxide surface will be either a semiconductor or a metal depending on whether the underlying layer is terminated with oxygen atoms or passivated with hydrogen atoms.
Computational nanotech studies have shown that deliberate introduction of structural defects at specific sites in carbon nanotubes can guide electrons along specific paths, providing a way to fabricate complex electronic circuits from nanotubes.
Molecular dynamics simulations show that electron tunneling through nanoscale rotary motors based on carbon nanotube shafts may enable nanotech motors to rotate more than a million times faster than their biological counterparts.
