Comments for the Foresight Institute

Comment on Mass production of higher quality oligonucelotides to spur DNA nanotechnology by flashgordon

flashgordon — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 18:02:02 +0000

As I had noted in a blog of mine, this is a more general method to make arbitrary dna strands and in a less expensive manner than some of the exciting breakthroughs over the last year.

Comment on Quantum dot conduction impacted by stoichiometry, not dangling bonds by flashgordon

flashgordon — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 22:58:13 +0000

Here’s one,

http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/space/newsid=30747.php

I’ve heard some groups trying to combine all the latest dna-nanotech ability with proteins. I’m sure there’s developments somewhere.

Comment on Quantum dot conduction impacted by stoichiometry, not dangling bonds by flashgordon

flashgordon — Sat, 01 Jun 2013 22:05:29 +0000

We want to know the latest advances in nanomanufacturing, not implications of nanomanufacturing if it happens.

Comment on Silicene: silicon's answer to graphene by willis

willis — Fri, 03 May 2013 19:22:42 +0000

“We may need to revise the term “post-silicon” to “post-bulk-silicon”.
-Posted by Stephanie C”

Or not. Doesn’t sound like anyone’s close or likely to get close.

Comment on A framework to promote critical thinking about nanotechnology by flashgordon

flashgordon — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 21:50:31 +0000

and here’s a framework/philosophy in dealing with anti-science religions and irrationalists.

http://wwwscientifichumanism.blogspot.com/

hopefully we can evolve rational people so that we can live in a sane safe world.

Comment on Superparamagnetism-explicated-for us by flashgordon

flashgordon — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:09:28 +0000

I forgot to mention that because we can’t analyse atoms into smaller mechanical parts, we have to make these millions and billions of atoms machines from our current technological base – which is turning out to be problematical.

Comment on Superparamagnetism-explicated-for us by flashgordon

flashgordon — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:07:05 +0000

To make a mechanical machine, one needs to analyse something into smaller mechanical parts. So, to manipulate individual atoms, one needs to analyse atoms into smaller mechanical parts. This has always been known to be not likely. Clearly, making nanomechanical machines has to be done differently.

Mr Drexler knew that making things atom by atom from STMs is kind of impractical; so, he suggested self-assembling proteins; but, that turns out to require solving the quantum gravity problem of biology – protein folding. Yes, there’s progress in making designer proteins; but, there’s little general procedures to make arbitrary mechanical parts. And even if you do make some kind of nano-stm, Drexler/Merkel’s designs for instance require millions and billions of atoms. It’s kind of inefficient to move and assemble . . . everything from space colonies to cars and houses by means of hundreds of millions of atoms.

I’ve argued before that one should self-assemble on a certain scale and then do mechanical linkages at a higher level. There’s been some general self-assembly breakthroughs recently.

Yes, making things to atomic precision gives all kinds of magical properties which would then scale(if you can assemble macroscopic objects to atomic precision), but the ability to do so is proving rather difficult; or at least the solution could be more wondrous than we could initially imagine!

Comment on Re-engineering a junction to give a new twist to DNA nanotechnology by flashgordon

flashgordon — Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:23:47 +0000

http://phys.org/news/2013-04-evolutionary-oomph-synthetic-polymers-genetic.html

Comment on Re-engineering a junction to give a new twist to DNA nanotechnology by flashgordon

flashgordon — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 21:42:52 +0000

http://www.nanowerk.com/news2/biotech/newsid=29780.php

These transcriptors are practically assemblers that do nano-chemistry! I’m not sure if Eric Winfree was the first to say this; but, i recall hearing him say that the Ned Seeman dna-nanotechnology actually works better in cells than out of them. So, here, we have transcriptors/assemblers, and by doing the Ned Seeman dna-nanotechnologies inside the cell, the nanochemistry can be self-organised inside the cell by Seeman-dnananostructures.

Cells are covered by pores that allow certain chemicals in and excrete certain products or even waste. I think that dna-nanostructures punctured into cells has already been demonstrated. So, we could extend the self organising of transcriptor products inside the cell and put a super-pore on the cell that allows the self-organised nanomechanical whatever outside to an extended Seeman/Rothemund dna-structure which can do more assembly.

Comment on Studying environmental impacts of nanoparticles using mesocosms by Stephanie C

Stephanie C — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 23:51:43 +0000

Precisely the right kind of scrutiny, and details about the experimental procedures, results, and interpretations can be found in the journal article. The aspects highlighted in the post center on the experimental design, which allows for realistic exposure scenarios – a requisite for useful data regardless of particle size regime.

Regarding possible toxicological effects due to particle size, data pools are slow to emerge (note the broad research objectives of CEINT and the UC CEIN). There are a number of review articles that discuss responsibly why the nanoscale causes concern and the limitations of existing data, for example Seaton 2010: http://intl-rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/7/Suppl_1/S119.full