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Nanotechnology Enables Real Atomic Precision is the title of a piece by Susan Smith in Desktop Engineering, which includes comments by longtime Foresight Senior Associates Steve Vetter and Tihamer Toth-Fejel: Here’s a talk happening next Tuesday at UCLA: Josh Hall, on his way to catch a plane, sends us this news from Technology Review’s Katherine Bourzac: One of the constraints laid down by DARPA at the recent Physical About a month ago, the web was all agog over the announcement of DARPA’s Physical Intelligence program — Wired wrote: The idea behind Darpa’s latest venture, called “Physical Intelligence” (PI) is to prove, mathematically, that the human mind is nothing more than parts and energy. In other words, all brain activities — reasoning, emoting, processing sights [...] EurekAlert reports work by the University of Liverpool and Chinese Academy of Sciences: Nominations are now open for the Foresight Institute Prizes for 2009, due June 30. Two papers in a recent issue of Science suggest that graphene is rapidly moving from being “just” a nanotech wonder material to becoming relevant to atomically precise nanotechnologies. A catalyst can be switched on and off using mechanical means. Wrapping Single-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (SWNTs) with a molecular sleeve made from an analog of Vitamin B2 protects the SWNTs from defects caused by oxygen and renders them much more useful for nanotech applications. DNA origami structures act as seeds to program the construction of structures up to 100 times larger. A major advance in molecular machine fabrication allows the construction of rotaxane molecular shuttles in which organic and inorganic components are mechanically linked in the same molecular structure. 20 years ago, in the wake of the cold fusion excitement-turned-debacle, I noticed an interesting fact. The people doing the experiments were divided into two classes: The electrochemists who believed that fusion was happening were doing their experiments in plastic tubs and glassware, whereas the physicists who believed that no fusion was really happening were [...] An atomic force microscope (AFM) can be used to write and erase two-nanometer-thick conducting lines at the interface between atomic layers of two different metal oxide insulators. The discovery that nitrogen-doped, metal-free carbon nanotubes make better electrodes than do platinum nanoparticles may open the way for inexpensive nanotech fuel cells. A sawing and annealing process that creates regular nanoscale features on the surface of a sapphire crystal promises a way of making nanotech memories of up to 10 Terabits per square inch without the need of photolithography. Two independently controlled nanomechanical devices can be positioned on a two-dimensional DNA grid so that they can cooperate to capture between them one of four DNA building blocks, determined by which of two possible states each device is set to. Advances in using amorphous metal alloys may make possible an inexpensive nanotech version of the molding technique used to make DVDs. A response to my “Parricide” essay has been seen on IEEE’s Tech Talk blog. Dexter Johnson gives a fair summary of the positions taken to date, and says As the argument seems to go, Drexler popularized the term nanotechnology in his book Engines of Creation, and so when the general public heard that thousands of scientists [...] Plasmonic nanoswitches based upon molecular machines may eventually lead to nanotech plasmonic circuits. |
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