Google has started a venture-capital unit to fund new technologies, including nanotechnology.
A piece in The Christian Science Monitor compares Nadrian Seeman, founder of the field of structural DNA nanotechnology and winner of the 1995 Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, with Henry Ford—implying that his recent accomplishment with his collaborators in creating a two-armed DNA nanorobot could point to a role for DNA nanorobots in future nanotech… Continue reading A DNA nanotechnology road to molecular assembly lines?
A Newsdesk feature by Kelly Morris titled “Nanotechnology crucial in fighting infectious disease” in the April 2009 issue of Lancet Infectious Diseases surveys some highlights in developing nanotech efforts to prevent, diagnose, and treat infectious diseases. Examples include detecting disease through lab-on-a-chip technology featuring cantilevers that move upon binding antigens and nanowires that detect current… Continue reading Promise of nanotechnology for fighting infectious diseases will balance public's safety concerns
The power density is large compared to that of macroscale motors: >1e15 W/m^3. For comparison, Earth intercepts ~1e17 watts of solar radiation. (Cooling constraints presumably preclude the steady-state operation of a cubic meter of these devices at this power density.) Nanosystems p. 339 It is difficult, even for someone who has been working with these… Continue reading More energy
Wrapping Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) with a molecular sleeve made from an analog of Vitamin B2 protects the SWNTs from defects caused by oxygen and renders them much more useful for nanotech applications.
Everybody knows that the world is running out of oil. The predicted year of the peak varies from 2000 to 2100, but it is generally conceded that it won’t last forever. Of course, economists know that when you have a scarce resource, it doesn’t just suddenly run out: the price rises, more expensive sources or… Continue reading Sustainable energy
DNA origami structures act as seeds to program the construction of structures up to 100 times larger.
A major advance in molecular machine fabrication allows the construction of rotaxane molecular shuttles in which organic and inorganic components are mechanically linked in the same molecular structure.
In my Early Retirement post, I wrote If you have a human-level AI based on computer technology, the cost to do what it can do will begin to decline at Moore’s Law rates. Even if an AI costs a million dollars in, say, 2020, it’ll be a thousand in 2030 and one dollar in 2040… Continue reading Early retirement — how soon?
There’s a post at The Futurist entitled Nanotechnology : Bubble, Bust, ….Boom? which echoes an earlier posting here: I believe that nanotechnology underwent a similar bubble, peaking in early 2005, and has been in a bust for the next four years. The Futurist believes nanotech, of the near-term applications-oriented kind, is about ready to pick… Continue reading Nanotech resurgence?
