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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: Nanodot

Towards the single molecule transistor

waynerad spotted an item in Electronic Engineering Times ("Towards the single molecule transistor", by Nolan Fell, 24 January 2002) that provides a brief update on work by Bell Labs' physicists Hendrik Schön and Shenan Bao, who report they have developed a FET combining both insulator and semiconductor layers within a single organic molecule. "The combination of insulating and semiconducting parts could lead to true single-molecule transistors," said Schön. "We need now to develop a more complex molecular design and connect them to some kind of contact." A technical report appeared in the 14 January 2002 issue of Applied Physics Letters. Earlier Nanodot posts on the Bell Labs molecular transistors appeared on 17 December and 8 November 2001.

HP-UCLA team announces another molectronics patent

from the steady-progress dept.
According to a Hewlett-Packard Company press release (23 January 2002), the collaborative research team led by James Heath, a UCLA chemistry professor and staff researcher at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI), and Stanley Williams and Philip Kuekes at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories has announced another advance in their research program to develop computing systems based on molecular electronic components, which has been awarded a patent by the U.S. Patent Office. HP was previously awarded patents for related molectronics work in July 2001 and October 2000.

Additional coverage of the research and the new patent can be found in this Associated Press article ("Advance Made in Molecular Computing", 23 January 2002) posted on the New York Times website (free access with registration); and this article from Reuters News Service ("HP Says Atom-Sized Computer Chips a Lot Closer", 23 January 2002). Many other newsfeeds are reporting the story (and thank you to those who submitted posts), but most are mere rewrites of the HP press release, or the AP or Reuters wire story.

Heath, Williams and Kuekes have been making steady progress toward their goal of developing molecular computing systems (see posts on Nanodot from 26 October, 17 July, 18 July, and 13 April 2001 and 18 August 2000, and articles in Foresight Update issues #44 and #42). The team was jointly awarded the 2000 Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology for Experimental Work. Some interesting background on this research team can be found in a profile of Jim Heath ("Speed Demon", by Gary Taubes) that appeared in UCLA Magazine in the Spring 2000 issue (and therefore is about two years out of date); in this interview with Stan Williams (also about two years old) and this feature article ("Molecules that compute") from 1999, both on the HP Labs website.

CNSI offers short course on creating commercial products

from the how-to dept.
The University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) Extension program and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) will present a three-day short course on "Integrating BioMEMS and Nanotechnology into a Commercial Product" on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, from 15 to 17 April 2002. The course will present state-of-the-art research and technology in microelectromechanical systems (MEMs) and nanotechnology, with specific emphasis and applications in the biomedical field, and look at research into the construction of a hybrid organic/inorganic nanoscale systems, the basic mechanics of motor protein motion, and the technological foundation for functionally integrating manufactured devices. Four CNSI professors, James Gimzewski, James Heath, Carlo Montemagno, and Chih-Ming Ho, will participate and lecture on the various technologies. The course will address the commercialization of bio-MEMs and nanotechnology and the involvement of small and large companies within this emerging field.

The course fee is $1395. For more information on the course and registration, go to the course web page.

Canadian National Post takes a long, skeptical look at nanotech

from the nanotech,-eh dept.
An extensive article in the Ontario, Canada National Post ("Small Miracles", by Margaret Munro, 21 January 2002) provides an interesting, if somewhat skeptical, look at nanotechnology in Canada and the United States. While dismissing speculations about advanced molecular nanotechnology as "the stuff of fiction", Munro writes "there is clearly a revolution afoot", but:

Scientists say the revolution will be gradual. "The hype is just that," says Robert Wolkow, a research officer at the National Research Council in Ottawa and one of the country's leading nanotechnologists. "Many really remarkable things will happen. But they're not going to happen next year or even in five years," he says. A more realistic time frame is 10 to 20 years before nanotechnology dramatically changes our lives. But when the revolution comes, says Wolkow, "it will be fantastic."

In addition to profiling a number of interesting nanotech research projects, the article briefly mentions the contention over the feasibility of molecular assemblers that resulted from the September 2001 special nanotech issue of Scientific American, and quotes skeptical Canadian researchers.

Business leaders in Taiwan support nanotech programs

from the money-talks dept.
According to an article in the Taipei Times ("Business leaders learn about nanotechnology", by Chiu Yu-tzu, 22 January 2002), business representatives meeting in southern Taiwan on 21 January said that full support from the government and research organizations would be crucial to future industrial transformation, including nanotechnology.

More than 500 representatives of diverse industries attended a panel discussion held by the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Kaohsiung to hear the latest information about nanotechnology research. According to the report, "Representatives said that they sensed signs of an economic recovery, but what they needed urgently was full support from both the government and research organizations to promote nanotechnology, which is innovative and will soon be closely linked to daily life. "

Highlighting the accelerating pace of nanotechnology activity in Taiwan, the meeting closely follows the dedication of a new national Center for Nanotechnology and rapid progress toward the development of an integrated nanotech development program (see Nanodot posts from 22 January, 10 January, and 7 January 2002).

NanoSpace 2002 conference: Call for abstracts

The Institute for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research, Rice University, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Houston Technology Center, and the National Space Biomedical Research Institute will host the fifth annual conference devoted to the emerging nanoscale and micro technologies for space, medical and commercial applications, NanoSpace 2002: Future Technology Frontiers, to be held from 24 to 28 June 2002, at the Moody Gardens Hotel in Galveston, Texas.

All interested parties from NASA, the medical and scientific community, industry and commercial interests, other government agencies, academia, and the national laboratories are invited to submit abstracts of possible conference presentations. Abstracts on relevant nano/micro/bio technology research and development should be text only and no more than 250 words in length. Please identify whether you are submitting an abstract for presentation or poster session. Abstracts should be sent in electronic form (MS Word or ASCII file) to [email protected].

The deadline for receipt of abstracts is March 1, 2002. For more information, please contact:

Essay considers how to live in a VR simulation

An interesting essay by Robin Hanson on highly advanced virtual reality (VR) systems ("How To Live In A Simulation") appears on the Kurzweil AI website. Hansonís theme: "If you might be living in a simulation then all else equal you should care less about others, live more for today, make your world look more likely to become rich, expect to and try more to participate in pivotal events, be more entertaining and praiseworthy, and keep the famous people around you happier and more interested in you."
The essay was originally published September 2001 in the Journal of Evolution and Technology. Robin Hanson is also the originator of the Idea Futures concept.

Nanotubes may form gigahertz oscillators for nanocomputers

A brief item on the Physical Review Focus website ("Nanotubes in the fast lane", by J.R. Minkel, 18 January 2002) summarizes a paper in the 28 January 2002 print issue of Physical Review Letters in which researchers calculate that a group of concentric nanotubes nested inside an outer set of tubes can slide back and forth a billion times every second. Such a gigahertz oscillator could be a major advance in nanotechnology that would enable applications such as ultra-fast optical filters and nano-antennae. The researchers contend that the low friction between tubes — a tenth or less of the nano-newton-scale attractive force — allows the ensuing oscillation to match a Pentium 4 computer chip's speed in processing electronic signals, and that this demonstrates the feasibility of fabricating such devices.

Some readers of this article may find interesting echoes of the rod logic mechanical nanocomputer proposed by K. Eric Drexler back in 1988.

New method employs AI to speed up discovery of materials

from the Automated-engineering dept.
According to a press release (22 January 2002), a new method promises to change how companies create materials — using artificial intelligence and a technique that simultaneously tests thousands of formulations — dramatically speeding up the discovery process. The system, which combines hardware and software, was developed by Jochen Lauterbach, an associate professor of chemical engineering at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

According to the press release, Lauterbach has developed an automated system that uses combinatorial chemistry, in which equipment systematically creates and tests thousands of chemical samples at the same time using thousands of tiny plastic beads coated with different catalysts. All of the beads, each bearing its own individual catalyst, are tested simultaneously. The system then uses infrared sensor technology to quickly screen each sample to evaluate its performance. A small percentage of the catalysts created are effective. Information is collected from both the best catalysts and the failed catalysts and fed into software that employs hybrid neural networks and genetic algorithms to mimics the logical and intuitive thought processes of chemists. Even though the majority of the catalysts created are not effective, the software uses the wealth of information gained from those failures to come up with entirely new catalysts.

More on marine nanorobot swarm project at USC

A short article on the Small Times website ("Scientists want to send nanobots to search and destroy brown tide", by Richard Acello, 22 January 2002) provides a few additional details on the project announced on 10 January 2002 by the Laboratory for Molecular Robotics (LMR) at the University of Southern California School of Engineering to use a $1.5 million research grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to create swarms of microscopic robots. The application envisioned for such a system is to monitor potentially dangerous microorganisms in the ocean.

The project calls for initial designs to be tested in laboratory tanks, but, as the Small Times article notes, eventually the USC team wants to create robots that are as small as the microorganisms that they seek to monitor. Ari Requicha, a USC professor of computer science and the project's principal investigator, said heíll be ready to move his early stage robots into the ocean ìin a couple of years or so.î The article also notes that the long-term goal of the technology, said Requicha, is its use in the human body. ìIf you can make a system that can detect microorganisms in a marine environment, it could be deployed in blood. If you were successful, you could have artificial cells, you could program an artificial immune system for those with impaired immune systems. The possibilities are amazing.î

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