Category: Nanotechnology

from the let's-get-some-of-our-tax-money-back dept.
Senior Associate WesDuCharme writes "The National Nanotechnology Initiative seems to be coming onstream. The NSF just put out program announcement regarding nanotechnology They are interested in proposals on six "research themes". The first five are highly technical, but as a research psychologist I find the sixth one most interesting: Societal and Education Implications of Scientific and Technological Advances on the Nanoscale. Read More for details and an offer to collaborate.

from the snap-to-it dept.
Researchers have used the Van der Waals attraction between two closely spaced perpendicular nanotubes to give the pair two stable mechanical states. In one state the tubes are well separated and unstrained, while in the second they are in close contact and the attraction between them bends the upper tube, holding them together. They were able to both switch between the states and sense them electronically. They calculate potential switching rates of 100GHz and densities of 10¹² bits/cm²

from the where-to-stay-when-you're-REALLY-under-the-weather dept.
Miss the Alcor conference at Asilomar this year? That's unfortunate, but you can get a vague idea of what it was like from this media writeup, which doesn't have too many errors: "Mr Drexler's presence at the conference–he has become something of a media recluse–could be explained by the fact that it was organised by the Alcor Life Extension Foundation. He is on the scientific advisory board of Alcor, best known perhaps as the largest US cryonics foundation. At its freezer facility in Scottsdale, Arizona, 38 dead people, including one Australian, are in suspended animation awaiting a miracle of future technology to bring them back to life." We prefer the term "temperaturely-challenged".

from the metanews dept.
Jonathan Desp writes "At Atomasoft we developed a Nanotechnology News Search web page…It's several search engines that search within 300+ news magazines in science and technology. Enjoy the service!" CP: See also Nanospot, covered previously.

from the I'll-have-a-mole-of-moletronics-please dept.
CPhillips reports on story from the July issue of Wired magazine: "It describes the research and potential impact of molecular electronics. Jim Tour (Rice) and Mark Reed (Yale) are the main focus of the article. The article also makes brief mention of the National Nanotechnology Initiative and the research being done at Hewlett-Packard. It's very interesting reading for lay-people like myself. This is almost enough for me to forgive Wired for Bill Joy's story!"

from the maybe-maybe-not-but-still-interesting dept.
RajayKumar writes "CNN has an article regarding light traveling faster than c. This article goes into more detail than the previous article mentioned on Nanodot. CP: The piece explains that it is not clear that the light coming out is the same light that went in, so it may not be correct to say the light exceeded c.

from the yup-here-comes-the-money-for-sure dept.
Senior Associate Luke Nosek, VP Strategy at X.com, points out this item from The Standard on venture capitalist John Doerr at the Internet Summit: Still, in a sign that the revolution is changing, Doerr, an investor credited with being one of the early Internet visionaries, admits that his interests are shifting. When asked what the next big thing is, Doerr didn't answer by describing some new Internet technology. "I'm getting interested in making things again — atoms," he says. The largest global markets to come, he added, will be in providing clean water, clean power and transportation.

from the let's-get-a-2nd/3rd/4th-opinion-on-this-one dept.
Senior Associate ChrisPhoenix brings weird news: "I wouldn't have believed it, but it's reported in the American Institute of Physics Physics News Update number 494. A team in Europe has done some new thermodynamics work. They say that heat engines may be made more efficient than previously thought, by putting the hot and cold baths in direct contact for brief periods of time–this may even lead to new engine designs. Even more surprising is their second paper, which claims that a quantum particle strongly interacting (entangled) with a "quantum thermal bath" may violate the Clausius inequality. The particle may gain heat from a colder bath. They term this "appalling behavior", but come right out and say that this could constitute a perpetual motion machine of the second kind."

from the like-trying-to-get-a-drink-from-a-firehose dept.
The Virtual Journal of Nanoscale Science and Technology is a weekly multi-journal compilation of the latest nanoscale research, including journals from APS, AIP, AVS, even some Russian journals. It should save you time (and possibly money, since you can order specific articles instead of taking an annual subscription, which gets darn expensive, believe me). Abstracts are free, as are weekly emails of the table of contents.

from the "But-That-Sounds-Like-Science-Fiction!" dept.
The BBC reports: "It has taken scientists just a day's work to unravel the entire genetic sequence of an antibiotic-resistant 'superbug' that is one of the leading causes of hospital-acquired infections…The work has been done extraordinarily quickly — even by the latest standards. The 2.8 million 'base pairs' — the nucleotides that pair up to make the twisted ladder of DNA's double helix — were sequenced using what is the essentially one day's production capacity at the US Department of Energy's Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in California." CP: It's clear what's coming: sequence an individual human genome in one day. Then: faster.