Foresight Feynman Prize winner Nadrian Seeman will share the $1 million Kavli Prize in nanoscience with IBM’s Don Eigler. From the SciAm blog by Katie Moisse: Donald Eigler from IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., and Nadrian Seeman from New York University will jointly accept the nanoscience prize for illuminating the basic units of… Continue reading Seeman, Eigler to share $1 million Kavli nano prize
Sander Olson interviewed Jim Von Ehr of Zyvex for the website NextBigFuture.com by Brian Wang. Here’s an excerpt: We are confident that we will be able to create simple, blocklike objects within the next five years. From that point, capabilities should grow fairly rapidly. Once simple block objects are created, we can programmably assemble them… Continue reading Zyvex founder Jim Von Ehr: "Rudimentary molecular manufacturing by 2020"
The U.S. President’s Council on Advisors on Science and Technology requested public input on a number of manufacturing topics including “molecular-level, atomically precise production.” Foresight joined with our sister organization IMM to produce a statement on Atomically Precise Manufacturing, now posted on the OpenPCAST site, with public voting and commenting still continuing, so join in the… Continue reading Vote and comment on IMM/Foresight statement to President's Council
Kevin Bullis reports in Technology Review: Now Paul Rothemund, a computer scientist at Caltech, with a background in biology, has developed a relatively inexpensive way to quickly design and build arbitrary shapes and patterns using DNA — and, he says, it’s simple enough for high-school students to use… It’s really spectacular work. I’m extremely excited about… Continue reading Do-It-Yourself DNA nanotechnology from Caltech
John Faith brings to our attention a writeup by Annalee Newitz over at io9.com which colorfully describes a new achievement by Foresight Feynman prizewinner Nadrian Seeman and team at NYU and Nanjing U.: Today in Nature, a group of researchers announced they’d successfully operated the first assembly line populated entirely by nanobots. The bots in question… Continue reading DNA-based 'robotic' assembly begins
Here we present a special report from Dave Conz of ASU on Josh Hall’s talk and subsequent panel discussion at the SME nanotech conference. An excerpt: Technoscientific development is difficult to direct and nearly impossible to predict. Because of this – not in spite of it – panel discussions like “How Do We Get There… Continue reading Debate: "How do we get there from here?" at SME nano conference
David Cassel brings our attention to an h+ review of the long-awaited film The Singularity is Near, based on the book by Ray Kurzweil: In documentary style, we have Ray discussing his ideas about the Singularity, with commentators variously supporting or refuting or worrying about his ideas. With Bill McKibben in the role of the… Continue reading The Singularity is Near: the Movie
The winner of the 2009 Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (Theory), Robert A. Freitas Jr., has now been granted the first diamond mechanosynthesis patent. This is not just the first DMS patent but also, I believe, the first mechanosynthesis patent that has ever been issued. Freitas is the sole inventor on this patent, which was… Continue reading Freitas awarded first mechanosynthesis patent
Dexter Johnson writes, “What Should We Call the (Nano)technology in Your Stain-resistant Pants?” … the competition for ownership of the term “nanotechnology” that seems to persist between the adherents to MNT, as exemplified by the Foresight Institute, and those who use the term to acknowledge developments in manipulating and exploiting structures that have at least… Continue reading Nanopants, redux
In Popular Mechanics, longtime Foresight friend Prof. Glenn Reynolds looks at the future of nanotech and artificial intelligence, among other things looking at safety issues, including one call that potentially dangerous technologies be relinquished. He takes a counterintuitive stance, which we’ve discussed here at Foresight over the years: But I wonder if that’s such a… Continue reading Reynolds advocates faster nano/AI R&D for safety reasons
