Category: Nanodot

from the Cultured-Pearly-Whites dept.
Ryan writes "Scientists have found a way to grow teeth in the lab. The Boston Globe has the story on how 'the work raises the possibility that dentists of the future could dispense with mechanical implants – such as dentures, bridges, and crowns – and literally grow new teeth for patients on demand.'"

from the possibly-a-milestone dept.
Mr_Farlops writes "According to Nature, computer simulations have finally become accurate enough to predict the final shape of some small proteins from raw gene sequences. This is one of the central problems of molecular biology and will likely revolutionize drug design, biotechnology and it will have implications for machine-phase nanotechnology. Large proteins are still too unwieldy for current computers to simulate in a timely fashion but this too may become tractable with quantum computers, faster computers and new algorithms."

from the securing-your-personal-stake-in-the-future dept.

Fifth Alcor Conference on Extreme Life Extension
Saturday November 16 & Sunday November 17, 2002
Newport Beach Marriott Hotel near Los Angeles, California
http://www.alcor.org/conferences/2002

Foresight's own Ralph Merkle is conference chair, and both Foresight President Christine Peterson and Foresight Advisor Ray Kurzweil are speaking. Among a host of other excellent speakers, Michael D. West (President and CEO of Advanced Cell Technology) will describe the impressive potential of therapeutic human cloning and Rob Freitas will be talking about the even more impressive potential of nanomedicine.

SAVE $100 — REGISTER by September 30th (it's only a few days away!)

from the gathering-influential-supporters dept.
Legislation to advance nanotechnology research and development advanced toward full Senate consideration, unanimously passing the Senate Commerce Committee on Sept. 19: Senate Committee Passes Nanotech Bill. For earlier coverage of the recent Senate scrutiny of nanotechnology, see Nanodot post of Sept. 18, 2002, the written opening statements of hearing witnesses, and Nanotechnology bill introduced in Senate.

from the Nanoparticles-for-diagnosis dept.
Wendy Emanuel writes with a September 17, 2002 press release from Nanosphere Inc. announcing Nanosphere Inc. Awarded Two NIH Grants to Assess Genetic Risk Factors for Cancer and Hypercoagulation Disorders. The work to be financed by $1.5 million in NIH funds features the company's ultra sensitive detection platform using "nanoparticle probe technology in conjunction with a proprietary bio-molecular detection system".

from the Great-deals dept.
Robert A. Freitas Jr., author of Nanomedicine, writes to announce that Nanomedicine, Vol. I: Basic Capabilities is now available in a paperback edition. See listing at Amazon for Vol. I, paperback. Also, Nanomedicine, Vol. IIA: Biocompatibility will be published in February 2003 in hardback by Landes Bioscience (pre-order Vol. IIA).

from the every-atom-in-its-place dept.
Gina Miller writes "University of California, Irvine scientists used a scanning tunneling microscope to build chains of gold atoms, one atom at a time, from one to 20 atoms long, and to measure the electrical conductivity of the chains: UCI gold chain study gets to heart of matter. The electronic properties of the gold nanostructure changed dramatically as the first few atoms were added and could share electrons. But by six atoms, the electrical conductivity of the chain was very similar to that of bulk gold, implying functional gold structures could be built with as few as six atoms."

The research article "Development of One-Dimensional Band Structure in Artificial Gold Chains" by N. Nilius, T. M. Wallis, and W. Ho appeared in the September 13, 2002 issue of Science.

from the moving-it-out-of-the-lab dept.
Jerry Soderquist writes that an August 2002 press release by Nanotech Capital, LLC announced that the North Carolina based nanotechnology intellectual property management and development company has just signed an agreement with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The agreement is the first agreement that the Oak Ridge Laboratory has for the commercialization of nanotechnology research conducted at the Oak Ridge facility.

from the Until-we-get-medical-nanobots dept.
WillWare writes "A novel and promising cancer treatment was mentioned Friday night on 20/20. A young guy with advanced skin melanoma was treated by taking lymphocytes from a tumor biopsy, culturing them in a laboratory to produce large populations of lymphocytes, and transfusing these back into the patient. This work was done by Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer Institute. Here are some URLs:"

• 20/20's website
• a more technical description provided by the Centre of BioInformatics at Peking University
• NCI press release

"t would be interesting if a vestigial organ like the appendix could be re-engineered to do the work that these researchers are currently doing in the lab."

from the Know-thyself dept.
Gina Miller writes "A small British company Solexa is developing a dense single molecule array, based on nanotechnology, that allows simultaneous analysis of hundreds of millions of individual molecules. It expects to apply this technology to sequencing an individual human genome much more quickly and cheaply than can be done with current methods: Cambridge University Spinoff Devises Array for Swift, Cheap Resequencing. The arrays could also be applied to studying interactions between other large sets of molecules."