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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: Nanodot

Open information movement in France

from the a-modern-french-revolution dept.
David Forrest writes "Here's a tidbit from FAST (http://www.france-science.org/english): Many French scientists are joining the international scientific palace revolt of researchers against their publishers (in an effort to make research results more accessible than by paying thousands of dollars of subscription fees), and the CNRS has established a "Center for Direct Scientific Communication" for Internet-based publication. The Center's director denies any attempt to replace journal literature, claiming simply that there is a need for a new level of scientific communication and that the two types of venue can coexist peacefully. Other French scientists in the movement also deny a declaration of war while insisting that publicly funded labs can not afford and should not have to pay millions of francs in annual subscriptions for access to research that for the most part is produced by public funds. (Le Monde, April 21, p23, Pierre Le Hir)"

This item echoes recent debate in the U.S. over the movement to establish a Public Library of Science, and the growing influence of open information sources such as the Los Alamos Electronic Archive.

McKendree MNT & Space Dissertation Accepted

from the congratulations! dept.
Tom McKendree writes "I am extremely happy to announce that last week I passed the defense of my Ph.D. dissertation at USC, on the subject of "Technical and Operational Assessment of Molecular Nanotechnology for Space Operations". This is a rewrite of my earlier dissertation draft, making molecular nanotechnology for space the explicit central focus of the document. The basic conclusion, that systems designed and built to atomic precision can outperform current technology for space operations, should not be a surprise to this audience. The heartening aspects are that I was able to substantiate this conclusion in much more detail, and that I was able to convince a dissertation committee of six, including five lecturing professors at USC, that this was sufficiently credible and important to deserve a Ph.D."

Proposal: Foresight working group on Reliable Computing

from the foresight-needs-you! dept.
Phil Wolff writes ""Software has bugs." We take this for granted. But defects like the blue screen of death in nano-systems are likely to be unacceptable.

Contibute your ideas, knowledge, and experience to an online working group on reliable computing."

Read more for details . . .

IR lasers spin microscopic objects

from the in-a-spin dept.
Both vik and Brian Wang noted the news that Researchers at St. Andrews University in Scotland have developed a technique using specialized lasers to spin microscopic objects, such as chromosomes, without making physical contact. They report that they have used infrared lasers to spin tiny glass spheres, a glass rod and even the chromosome from a hamster. The light pulls the objects around at speeds up to five revolutions a second, but is gentle enough not to damage delicate molecules. The work is a variation of the "optical tweezers" technique: as a beam of light bends around an object, the light exerts a force on it. At the microscopic level, the force of laser light bending around tiny objects is strong enough to trap them. By moving the beam, the trapped objects move as well, allowing optical tweezers to push and pull microscopic objects. In the new research, the researchers combine the light of two lasers to create a spiral interference pattern, a pinwheel-like pattern of bright and dark spots. Changing the optical path length causes this pattern, and thus the trapped objects, to rotate.

Brian Wang also noted "My observation is that this combined with Arryx (http://www.arryx.com/overview.html) Holographic Optical Trap ("HOT") technology for splitting one laser into thousands of manipulated lasers might scale into a massive photonic assembly system at the microscopic level."

The research report appeared in the 4 May 2001 issue of Science. Additional coverage can be found on the New York Times website.

Impending Doom or maybe not?

from the thoughts-on-AI dept.
An Anonymous Coward writes "Recently I have been reading a bit about Kurzweil and Bill Joy's rants about the impending destruction of life-as-we-know-it.

"I'd like to attempt to discount the likelihood of human destruction via machine intelligence by trying to figure out what would/could happen."

Read more for the rest . . .

Gillmor on PriorArt.org: "Keeping Open Source Open"

from the fewer-lawyers-more-engineers dept.
San Jose Mercury News business columnist Dan Gillmor's May 4, 2001 column describes Foresight's PriorArt.org disclosure website, a joint project with IP.com. Dan writes: "Open-source programmers want to ensure that their work remains in the public domain. But some fear that private companies will take their good ideas and turn them into proprietary products — and even patent other people's work…It costs a bundle to challenge even a blatantly bad patent. If this site causes companies to hire fewer lawyers and more engineers, it will be a terrific enhancement to the intellectual-property field." See also earlier controversy.

Wilson Quarterly: "Is Nanotech Getting Real?"

from the what-DC-is-reading dept.
The Spring 2001 Wilson Quarterly — overall, an excellent publication worth reading regularly — includes a short survey of recent articles on nanotechnology mentioning Foresight, Bill Joy, Gilder's objections to Joy, Smalley's objections to nanomachines ("various practical reasons"), and Mirkin's work at Northwestern. It closes: "The [US] federal government is spending on nanoscience this year some $423 million — hardly a nanosum."

Controversy over Foresight's PriorArt.org

from the time-to-think-hard dept.
Foresight's new open source disclosure website, PriorArt.org, is generating controversy. Some complain that it's too "anti-patent", while others are concerned that it may have pro-patent effects. About the latter: there are two specific concerns raised by Richard Stallman that merit attention. Read more to see the pros and cons described, and then give your views. At the end of the Read More section are some quotes from people who currently see the project as a good idea (Jeff "Hemos" Bates, Brian Behlendorf, Lawrence Lessig, Eric Raymond, Lawrence Rosen). You may want to read this general description of the project first. This is a serious issue, folks, and merits serious thought and participation.

NWU celebrates new nanotech center with symposium

from the Northwestern-goes-nano dept.
Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois (near Chicago) is celebrating the establishment of its new Institute for Nanotechnology with a day-long Symposium on Emerging Molecule-Based Nanoscale Science and Technology. The symposium will also honor Morrison Professors Joseph T. Hupp and Mark A. Ratner. In addition to Hupp and Ratner, speakers will include Chad A. Mirkin, Director of the new Institute, Richard Smalley of Rice University, George Whitesides of Harvard University, Angela M. Belcher of the University of Texas at Austin, and Richard J. Colton of the Naval Research Laboratory. The symposium will be held on Monday, 21 May 2001 in the Technological Institute Lecture Room 3, at 2145 Sheridan Road in Evanston, Illinois. If you would like to attend, you can register online.

NASA study points to nanotubes as key material for orbital towers

from the going-(way)-up;-watch-your-step! dept.
Brian Wang writes "An article from New Scientist posted at EurekAlert describes recent NASA studies on the feasibility of space elevators and orbital towers. The interesting aspect is the view of some solutions to making nanotubes cheaply and long enough to be the primary structural material."

According to the article, two independent NASA teams recently work out the technological requirements and found them to be feasible. The article also notes that "carbon has been elevated to the material of choice. In the form of diamond, it shows record-breaking mechanical properties. Diamond can't be spun into filaments, but there is a form of carbon that combines strength with length: nanotubes. These . . . exceed the tensile strength of steel by at least a factor of 100." The problem, as the article notes, is synthesizing nanotube molecules long enough construct the cable at the heart of the orbital tower.

Additional information about the space elevator studies can be found at this NASA website.

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