Category: Nanotechnology

from the au-revoir-but-not-goodbye? dept.
Futurist F.M. Esfandiary has been placed in cryostasis at Alcor Life Extension Foundation, reports the San Jose Mercury News: "The tall, affable, soft-spoken philosopher, visionary educator, lecturer and writer…was respected by scientists, engineers, students who took his classes and intellectuals who read his books or attended his lectures. A quarter-century ago he was predicting things that are now happening. What he called “teleshopping'' and “tele-education'' are now ordinary Internet activities. And he foresaw such medical and biological breakthroughs as fertilization and gestation outside the womb and the correction of genetic flaws." FM thought he would live to see the year 2030 — he may be proven correct on that prediction as well. Good luck to him and others now in residence at Alcor and other cryonics facilities, especially Foresight pal Phil Salin.

from the OK-so-it's-not-our-favorite-magazine dept.
BradHein writes "Scientific American has an article titled Computing with Molecules by Mark Reed and James Tour. The article covers Reed and Tour's work with molecular electronics. Some of the topics include current day research challenges in working with self assembly, combining molecular systems with conventional electronics, and creating complex molecular devices."

from the technology-for-all-not-just-the-rich dept.
Senior Associate BryanBruns reports "A well-written white paper on Transgenic Plants and World Agriculture argues that farmers in poor countries need better access to plant biotechnology. A working group from the US National Academy of Sciences the Royal Society of London, and scientific academies in other nations prepared the paper. (See also stories in the Washington Post and NandoTimes). This paper offers good examples of thinking through how to steer technology so it can benefit farmers and others in poor countries, not just commercial interests in wealthy countries. The report encourages better sharing of intellectual property. The whole report is worth reading, if you are interested in preparing society for advanced technologies, but if you're pressed for time you could look at the summary and the chapter on intellectual property".Read More for Bryan's full post.

from the those-clever-Canadians dept.
Senior Associate GinaMiller points out a report from the NRC on their breakthrough work using a scanning probe to stimulate the automatic self-assembly of organic molecules into lines on a chip surface: While much work remains to be done, they are optimistic about the prospects of nanotechnology…"The appeal of the technique is that we've limited the need for arduous atom-by-atom crafting of structures with an STM, and unleashed a spontaneous process to automatically drive nanostructure growth…" See their animation.

from the Rice-calls-it-"Moleware" dept.
TomKalil writes "DARPA has recently released a call for proposals in molecular electronics (MoleTronics). One of the technical goals of the program is to demonstrate densities of 10¹¹ devices/cm². See link for a description of existing DARPA-funded research on molecular electronics at HP and UCLA, Rice, Notre Dame, Harvard, Penn State, etc." From the call for proposals: "The second task is hierarchical self-assembly, i.e., bridging the nano- to the micro-worlds. This can be described as a set of processes that will first assemble individual devices, then create functional nano-blocks (e.g., memory and/or logic) from those devices, and finally the interconnection amongst said nano-blocks to form computationally functional circuits (modules) with a reasonable input and output methodology. Innovative interconnect and input/output concepts (e.g., multiplexing and demultiplexing schemes) are solicited."

from the Japan-moves-forward?-downward?-or-is-it-upward? dept.
Senior Associate BrianWang writes: An article at NEC discusses their work on atomic beam holography: "In a recent experiment, the joint research team succeeded in making real-time changes in the patterns of neon atoms by applying a bias voltage to an electrode array controlling the hologram. This experiment was a giant step towards the fabrication of complex, three-dimensional, nanometer-order structures. [emphasis added] The goal of our holographic atom manipulation is the nanofabrication of complex semiconductor structures. The technique will involve directly piling germanium and aluminum atoms on the substrate. In addition to increasing density, the new process will save time by eliminating the resist and etching steps in the lithography process."

from the EuroNanoTalk dept.
It's getting to be possible to attend nanotechnology conferences all the time, with barely enough time to recover in between. Here's a tempting one: Trends in Nanotechnology 2000 in Toledo, Spain. European Commission is participating (read: funding), and everyone on the committees is European, with one exception from Japan. Sensibly, they separate "Nanofabrication: Printing" from "Nanofabrication: Self-Assembly".

from the higher-order-self-assembly dept.
BrianWang and GinaMiller both reported this U of Illinois news release: "By manipulating simple and nonspecific interactions, researchers have discovered a way to make chemicals spontaneously self-assemble into ribbon-like tubules that resemble bacterial cell walls. The micrometer-sized tubules have potential applications in drug delivery systems and as templates for the synthesis of inorganic nanostructured materials." The Science article (abstract and summary free with registration) about this work concludes "The tubules described here…can be thought of as constituting a spontaneously assembled 'artificial' bacterium." CP: An overstatement, but the reseachers get points for vision.

from the really-different-computers dept.
Senior Associate Alison Chaiken (alison) writes "In a recent Science magazine article, Notre Dame electrical engineer Craig S. Lent discusses the possibility of molecular electronics circuits based on the "Quantum-dot Cellular Automata (QCA)" paradigm. (This article, as well as a critical response, should be available with free registration.) The primary thrust of the article is to argue that attempts to implement current-switching molecular electronics that mirror the behavior of silicon circuits are misguided, and that molecular electronics will require a different type of architecture altogether." Read More for additional analysis.

from the it's-a-discovery-not-an-invention-so-no-patents! dept.
Foresight Director of Communications Tanya Jones alerts us that the journal "Nature is openly publishing information on the Human Genome project on its website, rather than restricting this to subscribers only. See their index of relevant papers, news, and application data. Included is asection on bioethics which may shed some light on concerns about the development of nanotechnology and provide us with avenues to achieving consensus on how these technologies may safely be developed. –Tanya "