While most Foresight Conference participants headed for home, the Steering Committee and Working Group of the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystem buckled down for some hard work to kick off the Roadmap process. We are extremely pleased to announce that Sun Microsystems has joined as a corporate sponsor of the Roadmap. It was especially helpful… Continue reading Productive Nanosystems Roadmap gets underway
Last talk: Luc Jaeger of UCSB explaining “Sculpting Bio-materials by Programmable Assembly of RNA”. He has been building super-molecular RNA assemblies. Good control of folding has been achieved. One shape they’ve built is a square, presented at Foresight Conference two years ago. Goal at that time was to make larger 2D arrays of these squares.… Continue reading Building with RNA; Nanotech X Prize; Closing remarks
For the penultimate talk we have Eric Drexler, introduced by Bill Goddard as “grandfather of nanotechnology”. Topic is “Design and Analysis of a Molecular Tool for Carbon Transfer in Mechanosynthesis”. Name of the tool is DC10c. There are multiple paths forward toward artificial molecular machinery made of strong covalent solids. Slide shows stages of nanotechnology,… Continue reading Molecular tool for carbon transfer in mechanosynthesis
We’re back from the break (under the firm direction of chair Bill Goddard, who is a great emcee) for the first of the final three lectures: “Engineering Artificial Biochemical Circuits” by Roy Bar-Ziv of Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. These are cell-free gene expressions carried out on a chip. To get proteins to assemble… Continue reading Artificial biochemical circuits on a chip
Now speaking is Christian Schafmeister of U. Pittsburgh. His career started in computers, then went to bio, now on to chemistry. He’s been at the chemistry for five years. First slide shows an Aldrich chemical catalog and the productive nanosystems cover story from C&E News. His goal is to get from one to the other.… Continue reading Feynman Prize for Experiment: Christian Schafmeister
Now speaking is Christian Joachim of France, who last night was awarded the 2005 Foresight Institute Feynman Prize for Theory. He just finished explaining his uni-molecular “wheelbarrow” and now is covering his molecular Morse manipulator. First he designs and evaluates computationally, then he builds the device. Now he is showing a design for 1/2 of… Continue reading Feynman Prize for Theory: Christian Joachim, France
Liveblogging the Foresight Conference. Today is the last day of the research sessions, and Teri Odom of Northwestern just overwhelmed us with a quick summary of her work, both bottom-up and top-down. Normally I am a bottom-up fan, but I especially like her work using lithography to make pyramidal nanoparticles. Basically you make a layer… Continue reading Nanopyramids from Teri Odom
At last night’s Feynman Prize banquet, we awarded this year’s prizes. The Feynman Theory prize went to Christian Joachim of France, the Feynman Experimental prize to Christian Schafmeister of U. Pittsburgh. The Government Prize, in its first year, went to U.S. Congressman Mike Honda. The Communication Prize was awarded to Rocky Rawstern of Nanotechnology Now.… Continue reading 2005 Feynman Prizes, Government Prize, Communication Prize awarded
Liveblogging the Foresight Conference research sessions: Co-chair Bill Goddard dedicated his talk to Eric Drexler for his role in stimulating this field as long as ago as early 1990’s. Dr. Goddard is describing his computations at the nanoscale, for example of the contact resistance at metal-carbon nanotube junctions. Palladium, platinum, and titanium look the best.… Continue reading Goddard on predicting nanostructure properties
Ron Bailey has written up his differences with Alan Goldstein, which were explored at a debate at the Foresight Vision Weekend a few days ago. “Waiting until the ethicists catch up with scientific and technological progress is a recipe for technological stagnation. Slowing innovation is not cost free. It makes a difference to tens of… Continue reading NanoBioEthics: Advancing past the "Carbon Barrier"
