Category: Nanodot

Roland Piquepaille writes "Researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley Lab are using nanotechnology to learn how to clean up environmental contaminants like nuclear waste. They are also using supercomputers and state-of-the-art imaging to predict how quickly pollutants react with minerals in soils and aquifers. This article from the Daily Californian says they are studying kinetics, or rates, of reactions which occur at the earthís surface using a nanoscale approach. They started to look at the reactions that take place at the pore scale and plan to expand their scope from nanometers to meters in the months to come. This research has implications for transport of contaminants, especially of radioactive materials, but also for oil or ore recovery. This overview contains more details, references and a picture of a device used to grow and monitor nanocrystals important for our environment."

SpaceDaily based on UPI is covering how scientists from Luc Jaeger at UCSB to Ned Seeman at NYU (and others) are creating grand plans to use DNA and related chemical molecules to do everything from assembly to analysis.

Sounds like the combination of the fact that the hardware to do the synthesis of these molecules exists and the fact that there are a lot of things these molecules can manage via self-assembly is giving these methods a lead in the "real" molecular nanotechnology arena.

Strategies Unlimited writes "January 18, 2004 ? Mountain View, CA?Companies developing nanophotonic products are aiming collectively at opportunities worth over $30 billion today in large displays and over $3 billion in other photonic applications." More…

The LANL/Sandia "Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies" is providing a database of solicitations for future funding by the government (including DARPA and military) for nanotechnology R&D.

This will give you some idea of where all of those $ billions will be going…

Nanopolis writes "The 1st Nanotechnology multimedia encyclopedia for science and business arrives soon.

From Feynman's visionary predictions to today's applications the "Exploring Nanotechnology" interactive multimedia encyclopedia was conceived to provide an understanding of nanotechnology and their transformative effects on the world as we know it today. Containing extremely intuitive multimedia explanations of the concepts, technological processes and applications of nanotechnology, summary charts show the major players associated with each concept along with the references necessary for further insight.

Hundreds of world-wide actors contribute to its finalizing through the e-collaborative Nanopolis platform at http://www.nanopolis.net"

NanoWorld Group extends radius of action

Schaffhausen/Switzerland, January 7th, 2005 ñ As of January 1st 2005 NanoWorld Holding AG acquired 100% of the German based NanoAndMore GmbH.

This is a first step to extend the NanoWorld Groupís radius of action along the value added chain.

With this acquisition the NanoWorld Group gains access to the greatest end-customer base for Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) related supplies in Europe and benefits even more from the probes supermarket concept that was created and successfully implemented by NanoAndMore GmbH founder and CEO Peer Burshille.

At the same time the acquisition enables the NanoWorld Group to participate more directly in the promising tool business that NanoAndMore successfully started in 2004.

NanoAndMoreís sales expertise and NanoWorld Holdingís strong financial background will enable NanoAndMore to expand the scope of products, service and support.

www.nanoworldholding.com
www.nanoandmore.com

Stuart Scott writes "Phaedon Avouris has a good overview of future electronic applications of nanotubes published in IEEE Spectrum. http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature /aug04/0804tube.html"

Ed. Note: We realize this is a bit dated but the information and references are still valid.

It would appear to be the case that scientists have managed to use Manganese to create magnetic silicon. This offers some interesting future paths with respect to data storage as well as "spintronics". The referencing article is here.

If this can be pushed to the limits then one can imagine a manganese atom within a silicon matrix whose spin state can be regulated. This might result in a memory storage device even more capable than that proposed by Drexler (e.g. Nanosystems Sec. 12.6.4). In part because there is a lot more Mn in the universe than F and so one simply has more memory storage capacity given the materials we have to work with.

As we have mentioned previously EurekAlert/AAAS is having monthly chats about nanotechnology. The complete chat log for this month can be found here (though I expect the location may change over the next month). It was an interesting discussion from the perspective of pointing out the mindset of current "nanotechnology" researchers. I suspect the moderator may have been overwhelmed with incoming questions but the following is interesting…

I posted two questions directly comparing biological assemblers with a Drexler type assemblers (I even cited a Science article [Science is published by AAAS] in one of the questions). So I'm rather amazed that they did not make it into the discussion. I had also posted multiple questions regarding whether the people on the panel had ever read Nanosystems or any of the Nanomedicine volumes. None of those appear to have made the cut to be presented to the panel.

In their nanotech definition, Brookhaven College explains: "The laws of physics, chemistry, and biology are no longer applicable to nanoscale structures… Brookhaven College, in partnership with Rice University is helping to educate teachers and the public about this emerging field." Having those laws no longer work is going to make design work much trickier. (grin)