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Gaming the Future: The Book!

Category: news

Leaders in medicine look toward nanotech

from the now-here's-some-vision dept.
In a Perspective on "The Next Pharmaceutical Century", Chemical & Engineering News (subscription req'd) gives great quotes on nanotechnology-based medicine from two leaders: William Hazeltine, chairman and CEO of Human Genome Sciences, and Richard Klausner, director of the National Cancer Institute. Hazeltine: "The fusion of atomic-scale engineering technology with our bodies will enormously enhance human performance." Klausner: "Ultimately, what I think is a fantastic challenge is to link molecular sensing technologies with nanotechnology…" Read More for the full quotes.

Money for info on prior art to stop bad patents

from the reform-through-online-coordination dept.
Senior Associates Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly, along with Charles Cella, have a new project: "BountyQuest is the world's first high-stakes knowledge marketplace, on a mission to strengthen the patent system. We pay large cash rewards to people who can help find evidence critical to issues of patent validity. BountyQuest revolutionizes information searches by connecting the experts who have the information with the people who need it through our "Broadcast Reward System·" Simply put, BountyQuest offers monetary rewards for hard-to-find information. We support an on-line community of scientists, engineers, and professional researchers who have valuable knowledge that can help their field, their industry, and the world community. BountyQuest's first mission is to reform the patent system by providing the prior art searches required to insure that only true innovators have patents." Thanks to Bennett Smith for this pointer.

Nanotech jobs & job candidates: post 'em here

from the let's-play-nano-matchmaker dept.
Foresight is often asked about how to find a job in nanotech. Pat Delany reports that Nanospot, the targeted search engine for nanotechnology information, now offers classified ads in these categories: Positions Available, Available Candidates, Equipment Available, Equipment Wanted, and the always-useful Other: " We promised this long ago but had more trouble than we could have imagined finding affordable, secure software that actually works…and ended up almost rewriting this one…Our search engine now includes well over a thousand academic department and research group sites. A year ago we could find only about 200. We started the search engine as a way of giving wide access to academic papers. Is there any way you can help us get the word out?"

NASA to aerospace companies: embrace nanotech

from the hey-flyboys-wake-up-and-smell-the-molecules dept.
Space.com's Leonard David writes on Yahoo News of NASA's advice: "There is a global wake-up call ringing loudly for spacefaring nations. The aerospace industry faces a major overhaul if promising commercial space markets are to be realized in coming years…But after four decades of development, is the promise of a booming commercial space sector more high hope than profitable, bottom-line marketplace?…The key to the space future, [NASA Administrator] Goldin emphasized, is in aerospace companies that embrace biology, nanotechnology and information systems." As a first step, we suggest they read up on work by Tom McKendree, currently at Raytheon.

Commercialization of Carbon Nanotubes

from the can-they-really-trademark-"Bucky"? dept.
Bryan Hall writes "A recent press release from Carbon Nanotechnologies, Inc. discusses an advancement in the commercialization of carbon nanotechnology… “With the formation of CNI, we are seeding a new industry based on carbon,'' said Dr. Smalley. “Carbon is the most versatile of all elements. It is the very basis for life. Now we have a unique new form of carbon that has the potential to propel the 21st century in some fundamentally new directions. We are looking at a whole new field of chemistry with spectacular properties that can unlock a new future for a wide variety of industries.'' Read More for the full post.

USA Today: No need to fear: Nanotech is near

from the why-can't-SciAm-do-as-well-as-this dept.
Josh Wolfe, Managing Partner, Lux Capital reports that "USA Today's Life section included a broad mainstream overview of nanotechnology"…"Suddenly, nanotechnology is a concept with buzz. Like 'atomic' in the 1950s, nanotech is loaded with almost unimaginable promise and fear. It's also burdened by misunderstanding." It mentions the usual suspects (Zyvex, Bill Joy — "Says IBM's Theis: ''Bill Joy is a great software architect, but he's not a scientist"…) CP: This piece is more accurate than many that have appeared in publications which are supposedly more technical. Kudos to writer Kevin Maney.

Comparison of Idealist, Commercial and Guardian Syndromes

from the not-just-a-comment,-it's-a-commentary dept.
Tom McKendree writes, "Pat Gratton's idea of a third moral syndrome, Idealist, to complement the Commercial and Guardian syndromes described in Jane Jacob's Systems of Survival, is sufficiently compelling to deserve further exploration. (For more discussion of this concept, see the original story on nanodot).

I've tried to compare the three syndromes, matching characteristics where I could, and guessing characteristics where there seemed to be holes. From this exercise, I would guess that the Idealist Moral Syndrome also says 'Respect truth,' 'Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens for the sake of the task,' and 'Treasure standing in the subject area community.'"

Click Read More… to view Tom's table summarizing the comparison.

Zyvex in Red Herring

from the nanobusiness-in-the-news dept.
Foresight advisor and Zyvex researcher Ralph Merkle points out an Oct 5 column on nanotechnology on the site of business magazine Red Herring: For decades, skeptics have dismissed molecular nanotechnology as the dream of crackpots, fools, and technology visionaries. The skeptics were wrong…in the last two years, there have been new discoveries that may revolutionize the fields of medicine, microprocessors, and synthetic materials. Discoveries such as Northwestern University's new nanolithography techniques used for designing transistors smaller than a molecule, Cornell University's work on how to turn a living cell into a motor, or NASA's progress on the development of carbon nanotubes — super-strong, lightweight materials for use in future spacecraft. Nanotechnology, it seems, is progressing from the science fiction of books like Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age to science fact. Most of the piece is on the company Zyvex, which is working on both bottom-up and top-down approaches.

Chem & Eng News special report on nanotechnology

from the 18-pages-and-growing dept.
The Oct 16 issue of Chemical & Engineering News has a large (about 18 pages) special report on nanotechnology . Unfortunately, the web pages are password-protected. Research ("Building from the bottom up"), instrumentation, business ("Firms find a new field of dreams"), and government are covered. From the first, an excerpt: In any case, [Feynman Prize winner Nadrian] Seeman says, his primary goal is not computation per se but algorithmic assembly–using DNA to make novel and potentially useful nanostructures. Nanostructures, after all, are the key to nanotechnology, whether they are designed to perform lightning-fast calculations, detect molecules in the environment, eliminate pathogens from the body, or improve the properties of a material." Amusingly, one researcher is quoted as blaming the medical nanobot concept for getting the field "off to such a bad start"; this same concept inspires the new NASA/NCI/Caltech project. If someone has time to type in more quotes, we'll post them.

Single-molecule-thick films show promise

from the OK-so-it's-only-nano-in-one-dimension dept.
A press release announces: "Lightyear Technologies Inc. announced today that it has made a major breakthrough in nanotechnology, the science of building products at a molecular level…the company is the first in the world capable of producing nanotechnology products in commercial quantities…The material, first developed at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, is just a single molecule thick, and is capable of building itself into many useful products…Lightyear so far is concentrating its efforts on energy and environmental uses…Lightyear is now concentrating on working with companies developing applications that could revolutionize water purification and energy storage, possibly making electric vehicles much more practical."

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