Category: Nanotechnology

from the first-assembler-in-vacuum-or-liquid? dept.
Senior Associate Alison Chaiken writes "A recent new message from the ever-wonderful (and free) "Physics News Update" highlights progress in the developing field of "atom optics". When last we left our heroes, Jurg Schmiedmayer and colleagues from the University of Innsbruck had used electromagnetic fields and logic circuits on an IC to guide beams of atoms with high resolution, implying an obvious extension to a computer-controllable high-precision atom placement technique. Now several groups in Europe have come up with new innovations that could lead to the "atomic ink-jet printer" and the "atom-coupled device." Once folks start moving Bose-Einstein condensates this way, all kinds of exciting advanced fabrication techniques may become possible. I'm still betting that the first "assembler" will be an ultra-high vacuum chamber with a bunch of lasers and well-controlled electromagnetic fields. I'd be thrilled if all you organic chemists can prove me wrong!" Read More for the Physics News Update article.

from the what-is-human dept.
In a story originally from the LA Times, Pope John Paul II defines death as "the complete and irreversible cessation" of brain activity. This would seem to indicate that, eventually, the Roman Catholic Church will choose to view patients entering and in cryonic suspension as being alive; this would fit with their general "when in doubt, be generous to marginal cases" position. This can serve as a reminder to the cryonics organizations that an awkward gap may appear in financial arrangements for cryonics, when life insurance no longer covers the cost, but medical insurance has not yet added this coverage. Perhaps we need a new type of policy entirely.

from the we're-starting-up-the-slope dept.

A collaborative team of engineers and neuroscientists at Brown University in Providence, RI, plan to develop nanoelectronics systems to monitor brain activity. According to a press release, the group's proposal is to create a tiny device that would emit light to stimulate brain cells and record light from brain cells, analogous to a camera. Using electronic structures 500 times smaller than the width of a human hair, six Brown University professors plan to explore the function of the human brain under a $4.25-million grant from the U.S. Defense Department. And they make some interesting comments about the long term potential of their work.

from the atomic-age-MNT??? dept.
Neutron scattering has been used to quantify thermal positional disorder in proteins. In myoglobin, there is a transition at ~200K from a "harmonic" regime where all the atoms are trapped in single potential wells to an anharmonic regime where jumps between wells become important. The anharmonic regime is important for the biological function of myoglobin (O₂ binding), but may cause problems for use of proteins as mechanical elements in nanotechnology.

from the sing-repeatedly-"It-Was-an-RNA-World-After-All" dept.
Foresight chairman EricDrexler points out this story from Chemical & Engineering News: "The best evidence yet that, before there were proteins, there was once a world in which RNA both provided genetic information and catalyzed chemical reactions comes from a trio of papers in the current issue of Science. In a tour de force of X-ray crystallography, chemists at Yale University have located most of the atoms in the gigantic apparatus that cells use to link amino acids together into proteins. The heart of the apparatus where peptide bonds form, they find, is composed entirely of RNA." See also The RNA World book.

from the bits-and-pieces dept.

According to an article in the New York Times (18 August 2000), chemists at the University of California at Los Angeles are reporting a further advance in the effort to produce electronic circuitry on a molecular scale. (Note: access to the Times site is free, but requires registration. To avoid logging in, read instead this version at the San Jose Mercury News.)

In an article published in the 18 August 2000 issue of Science, the U.C.L.A. team, led by James Heath and J.Fraser Stoddart, says it has succeeded in using a molecule to create an electronic switch that can be reconfigured — turned on and off, and on again — like a transistor.

UPDATED: UCLA has also posted a lengthy press release in which the researchers discuss their work in some detail. It's a useful overview of the work, straight from the source.

from the makes-our-heads-hurt dept.
Surely the problems that we at Foresight take on — e.g. heading off abuse of nanotechnology and machine intelligence — are some of the most complex ("wicked") around. Those of us trying to work on these problems — alone or in groups, online or in person — will benefit from this essay on wicked problems and how to come at them for best effect: To solve wicked problems, we need to confront a more complex mass of information than we are used to dealing with, while unleashing creativity and opportunity-driven thinking. It is a more complex and chaotic process…"Some problems are so complex that you have to be highly intelligent and well informed just to be undecided about them."–Laurence J. Peter Thanks to Scott Johnson, editor of Future Presence email newsletter from Arlington Institute, for the pointer.

from the Nano-Blue dept.
IBM-Almaden researcher Isaac Chuang described his team's experiments that demonstrate what IBM claims is the world's most advanced quantum computer, which is based on a single, specially designed molecule containing five fluorine atoms. Chuang presented the results on 15 August 2000 at Stanford University at the Hot Chips 2000 conference, which is organized by the IEEE Computer Society. An IBM press release described the research; the web version contains a number of useful links to related items.

UPDATED: An article in the 26 August 2000 issue of Science News provides a useful overview of this research, a graphic of the molecule used, and links to references and resources.

from the "let's-build-better-tools-for-thought" dept.
The results are in for the final stage of the Software Carpentry open source software design competition. The design paper for Roundup, an issue tracking and discussion tool which is part of the plans for Engines of Creation 2000 phase 4, was chosen as the winner of the "issue tracking" category of the competition. Senior Associate Ka-Ping Yee is the creator of Roundup, which Foresight plans to use for serious discussion.

from the poke-it-again-Sam dept.
Researchers have written 0.8 nm (presumably diameter) conductive marks in a thin organic film with an STM. The marks were stable for at least the 2 hour scanning session. They attribute the marks to polymerisation of the film under the STM tip.