Category: Nanodot

Richard A. L. Jones, author of Soft Machines: nanotechnology and life is documenting a debate about the feasibility of mechanosynthesis between Philip Moriarty, a nanoscientist from Nottingham University, Chris Phoenix, Robert Freitas with some comments by Hal Finney. There may have even been some comments by Eric Drexler though he appears to requested those not be included in the documented exchanges.

The debate with archived discussions and current comments is here.

Christine Peterson points us to this story: "A new nanotechnology institute requiring an investment of $88 million will be set up at the Technion… The new institute will be the biggest established in the country to date, with an almost unprecedented financial investment – in terms of both the field of nanotechnology and university research centers in general… In a manner reminiscent of the high-tech euphoria, the Technion, and Israel in general, is gripped by 'nano fever.' "

It is worth drawing attention to the forthcoming conference on Nano Ethics being held at the Univ. of S. Carolina in Columbia, SC, March 2-5, 2005.

The particpants include Scott Mize, Christine Peterson, Mike Treder, and Mark Gubrud. All prominent people well known to the within the nanotechnology community.

I would highly urge people in the SE U.S. or others with an interest in nanotechnology and nanoethics to consider attending one or more days of this conference. As it is an academic conference the fee is minimal. The important factor is that you get to schmooze with the people who contribute to policy at the breaks and diners and potentially influence them.

As Buckminster Fuller once once pointed out there are "trim tabs" in life as well as engineering. Such opportunities are where a small force applied properly can produce a significant result. Given that the clash of cultures (the nanotechnology intelligentsia vs. the academia vs. government) involves many people who are just now wading into the swamp it would seem to be a significant opportunity to educate such individuals.

This is associated with Nanodot's previous reference to The Online Student Journal for Nanotechnology which appears to be affiliated with ⁿSTS.

There are multiple paths leading to molecular nanotechnology. Two of the more visible are chemistry and physics.

The chemists at U. Michigan (Choi & Baker) have recently combined dendrimers and DNA to allow directed assembly of more complex structures (here). This is an extension of our previous discussion of DNA based directed assembly methods (here). A memorable quote is by Baker, "So it's like having a shelf full of Tinker Toys."

Now at the same time the physicists and electronics engineers at HP (Kuekes, Stewart & Williams with Heath) are publishing significant advances in molecular electronics with a molecular scale crossbar latch (here, here and here). This technology is based on nanoimprint lithography (and here). They hope to combine this with existing semiconductor methods at the 32nm scale by 2013. The capacity of this technology is in the vicinity of a trillion switches per cm² which is at least 10,000 times the density of current chips. Methods that likely to plug into existing technologies have a significant advantages by providing incremental improvements in existing industries.

Rumors circulate that behind the scenes that patent(s) may be in preparation for an assembly process that could legitimately be called directed mechanosynthesis (vs. self-assembly, directed-assembly or bulk-assembly (i.e. lithography based methods))¹. But one has to ask, "What is the state of parallel mechanosynthesis?" For it is the parallelization of mechanosynthesis that could play a large role in it becoming an important manufacturing process. If that cannot be achieved it would appear that self-assembly or directed assembly (even of large molecules or lacking complete precision) would appear to have advantages. The only other alternative would seem to be that mechanosynthesis has to be extremely fast. Some might say that using mechanosynthesis assemblers can assemble themselves (after all this is what happens in biology). But that fails to take into account the amount of time that nature put into the development of the self-replication process. Lacking a complete self-replicating system the only alternative is a bootstrap process.

Finally, there is biotechnology. It provides all of the benefits of molecular nanotechnology with the possible exception high density of covalent bonds per unit volume. But with respect to parallelization and production costs it is way out in front because it can easily take advantage of self-replication. It has atomic precision and assemblers of many types. The costs of production blueprints (genes) in this arena has recently been significantly reduced by technologies for DNA synthesis using microchips (Gulari, Katz, Church, Gao) (here). The only thing it is lacking is the intelligent design of enzymes. But that similar to the hurdle that the semiconductor industry had to overcome with the semi-intelligent design and layout of chips over the last 20-30 years. It is simpler in some respects (enzymes may contain thousands to tens of thousands of atoms while chips have millions to tens of millions of transistors) but more complex in others (enzymes are 3D structures while semiconductor chips are largely 2D structures.

So asking the question of "Who's on First?" is not unreasonable.

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The Online Student Journal of Nanotechnology

CALL FOR PAPERS:
Now accepting papers from graduate and undergraduate students on epistemological, societal, ethical & legal implications of nanotechnology, and its convergence with other technologies.

Articles, reviews, and papers of any length will be considered.

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Wendy Emanuel writes "Northbrook, Ill. ñ February 1, 2005 ñ Nanosphere, Inc. today announced it plans to expand the application of the recently reported early detection test for Alzheimerís disease to a variety of other applications, including cancer, coronary artery disease and Mad Cow disease. More…

String theorist Michio Kaku suggests molecular nanotechnology as one way to deal with the heat death of the universe: "There is nothing in the rules of science to prevent the regeneration of an advanced civilisation from the molecular level. For a dying civilisation trapped in a freezing universe, this may be the last hope." The size of his proposed devices seems to vary, however. Read more for the full quote.

Roland Piquepaille writes "By mixing a salt compound with an hydrocarbon, researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have created molecules able to sense their environment. Then they used these molecules to develop self-assembling nanotubes which look like that 'nanocarpets'. These nanostructures can change colors when their environment is modified and can be trained to kill bacteria, such as E. coli. Now, they plan to develop products that would both detect and destroy biological weapons. Read more for selected excerpts about these nanostructures acting as biosensors."

Keck writes "Foresight's logo has served us well for many years, and I'm sure many long-time members are very attached to it. But I've noticed on orkut that it's one of the duller logos around these days, entirely lacking in color and textural depth, and relatively text-heavy. Perhaps many would like to scoff at such superficial considerations, and it could even be argued that the current logo should remain defiantly retro, as it subtly testifies to Foresight's remarkable age and consistent message. But I'd like to spark a discussion about it.

Can and should the existing logo by reinvigorated by at least adding some color? Should the texty-ness also be lowered? Are there any more radical suggestions for a new logo, perhaps incorporating a bio-medical motif? Or should we just leave well enough alone? What do you think?"