September 6, 2012
6-10 p.m.
Autodesk Gallery, 2nd Floor
1 Market Street, San Francisco

Introducing Design Night, a new event series in the Autodesk Gallery at One Market held on the first Thursday of every month. At each event, guests will explore a different theme – such as biomimicry, light, or robotics – that challenges the conventionally narrow definition of design. The theme will be reflected in all aspects of the event, from the activities guests enjoy to the food they eat to the music they hear. Design is all about experience, so why limit that experience to just talk?

Please join us as we launch the Design Night series on Thursday, September 6, 6-10 p.m.The theme is “Small is the Next Big Thing” where we will explore the frontiers of bio and nano technology.

General admission to Design Night is $20 and student admission is $10. Admission fees include access to the exhibits, content such as a speaker, music, a hosted bar, and hands-on activities.

FIND OUT MORE INFORMATION & PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Come explore what great design can do.

Nanotechnologically Yours,
Instructables and the Autodesk Gallery

Our friends over at the Thiel Foundation asked us to help spread the word about their fellowship program, which offers $100,000 grants to innovators age 19 or younger.

If you know of a very bright, energetic, and visionary young person, please bring this opportunity to his or her attention.

Of course, here at Foresight we hope that your protege will work on nanotechnology, and the Thiel Foundation is very interested in this field, but the fellowships are available in a wide range of areas of endeavor.

Below is their message. Think of this as a potentially large holiday gift to the smartest teenager you know!

Another great holiday gift — to yourself and society at large — is your membership in Foresight Institute. Donate by December 31 and your gift will be matched:
http://www.foresight.org/challenge

Best wishes,

Foresight Institute

from the Thiel Foundation:

We’d like to tell you about the 20 Under 20 Thiel Fellowship, a no-strings-attached grant of $100,000 that lets extraordinary young adults skip college and focus on their work, their research, and their self-education. We are delighted to announce that our friends at the Thiel Foundation are now accepting applications for the 2012 class of Fellows.

The future will not take care of itself. Global prosperity is not inevitable. The world will only get better if visionary people are creative and relentless about solving hard problems.

The 2011 class of Thiel Fellows includes 24 people who are tackling breakthroughs in hardware and robotics, making energy plentiful, making markets more effective, challenging the notion that there is only one way to get an education, and extending the human lifespan. Several of them have already launched companies, secured financing, and won prestigious awards. As they’re demonstrating, you don’t need college to invent the future (you can read about their progress in a recent article in TechCrunch).

If you’re under twenty and love science or technology, we hope you’ll consider joining the 2012 class of fellows. Go to ThielFellowship.org and apply to change the world. There’s no cost to apply, and they’re accepting applications through December 31. Fellows will be appointed this spring and begin two-year fellowships this summer.

If you’re twenty or over, we have a different request. Think of the smartest, most creative person you know who’s 19 or younger. Sit down and talk with that person about her or his goals and interests. For some people, such as future doctors, the time and cost of four years of college may be worth it. But for those who plan to invent things or start companies, starting now may make more sense. If your friend is interested, you might suggest pursuing an innovation or applying to the Thiel Fellowship.

Millions of people enjoy a higher quality of life because smart people like Steve Jobs, Muriel Siebert, Benjamin Franklin, Mark Zuckerberg, and hundreds of others skipped college to start a project that couldn’t wait.

We hope you’ll help me spread the word about the Fellowship. The time for innovation is now.

Please visit ThielFellowship.org to learn more.

The difficult thing to keep sight of when you’re talking about the Singularity is that even though it sounds like science fiction, it isn’t, no more than a weather forecast is science fiction. It’s not a fringe idea; it’s a serious hypothesis about the future of life on Earth. There’s an intellectual gag reflex that kicks in anytime you try to swallow an idea that involves super-intelligent immortal cyborgs, but suppress it if you can, because while the Singularity appears to be, on the face of it, preposterous, it’s an idea that rewards sober, careful evaluation.

After a brief but very informative survey of the concept of the Singularity, covering nanotechnology and life extension as well as artificial intelligence:

A hundred years from now, Kurzweil and de Grey and the others could be the 22nd century’s answer to the Founding Fathers — except unlike the Founding Fathers, they’ll still be alive to get credit — or their ideas could look as hilariously retro and dated as Disney’s Tomorrowland. Nothing gets old as fast as the future.

But even if they’re dead wrong about the future, they’re right about the present. They’re taking the long view and looking at the big picture. You may reject every specific article of the Singularitarian charter, but you should admire Kurzweil for taking the future seriously. Singularitarianism is grounded in the idea that change is real and that humanity is in charge of its own fate and that history might not be as simple as one damn thing after another. Kurzweil likes to point out that your average cell phone is about a millionth the size of, a millionth the price of and a thousand times more powerful than the computer he had at MIT 40 years ago. Flip that forward 40 years and what does the world look like? If you really want to figure that out, you have to think very, very far outside the box. Or maybe you have to think further inside it than anyone ever has before.

Established in 1993 in honor of Nobel Prize winner Richard Feynman, two $5,000 prizes are awarded in two categories, theory and experiment, to recognize researchers whose recent work has most advanced the field toward the achievement of Feynman’s vision for nanotechnology: molecular manufacturing, the construction of atomically-precise products through the use of molecular machine systems.

The winner of the 2010 Feynman Prize for Experimental work is Masakazu Aono (MANA Center, National Institute for Materials Science, Japan) in recognition of his pioneering and continuing work, including research into the manipulation of atoms, the multiprobe STM and AFM, the atomic switch, and single-molecule-level chemical control including ultradense molecular data storage and molecular wiring; and his inspiration of an entire generation of researchers who have made their own ground-breaking contributions to nanotechnology.

The winner of the 2010 Feynman Prize for Theory is Gustavo E. Scuseria (Rice University) for his development of quantum mechanical methods and computational programs that make it possible to carry out accurate theoretical predictions of molecules and solids, and their application to the chemical and electronic properties of carbon nanostructures.

“The answer to Feynman’s 1959 question ‘What would happen if we could arrange the atoms one by one the way we want them…’ has come a step closer to reality,” said Ralph C. Merkle, Chairman of the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize Committee. “Our ability to simulate and manipulate atoms will enable us to design and build engineered molecular machinery. This coming nanotechnology revolution will transform our world and our lives for the better.”

The annual Feynman Prizes are leading to the eventual awarding of the $250,000 Feynman Grand Prize, an incentive prize for making a nanometer-scale robotic arm and a nanometer-scale computing device, the most critical components in future molecular manufacturing systems.

For more information about the Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology, visit http://www.foresight.org/about/fi_spons.html or contact Christine Peterson, peterson@foresight.org, tel +1 (650) 289-0860, ext 255.

Zyvex Labs today announced the award of a $9.7M program funded by DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and Texas’ ETF (Emerging Technology Fund). The goal of this effort is to develop a new manufacturing technique that enables “Tip-Based Nanofabrication” to accelerate the transition of nanotechnology from the laboratory to commercial products. Starting with the construction of ‘one-at-a-time’ atomically precise silicon structures, the Consortium initially plans to develop atomically precise, ‘quantum dot’ nanotech-based products in volume at practical production rates and costs. Harnessing this capability will position the United States and Texas with the fundamental technology to develop next-generation quantum dot applications for military and commercial applications such as advanced communications, metrology, and quantum computers. The spin-off nanomanufacturing capabilities from that early application will result in revolutionary nanotech products in follow-on development.

…”We are extremely proud to receive this award,” said John Randall, Ph.D., Vice President of Zyvex Labs and Principal Investigator for the APMC research program. “The technologies developed by this program will be the first to allow robust three-dimensional solid structures to be created with atomic precision under computer control. While, historically, this falls in line with ongoing efforts throughout human history to improve manufacturing precision, it is revolutionary because it will achieve unprecedented precision by taking advantage of the quantized nature of matter.”

“DARPA is investing in breakthrough approaches to nanomanufacturing. Our goal is to develop the capability to fabricate nanostructures in such a way that we can control position, size, shape and orientation at the nanometer scale, which is not possible today,” said Tom Kenny, DARPA Program Manager. “If we can demonstrate this, we will be able to truly unlock the potential capabilities of nanotechnology.”

Coming only two months after the announcement that a UK laboratory was awarded $3M to investigate the possibility of diamond mechanosynthesis, the announcement that $9.7M has been awarded to a US consortium for atomically precise manufacturing is indeed welcome news for nanotech enthusiasts—especially for advocates of advanced nanotechnology, alternatively termed molecular manufacturing or productive nanosystems. Read the entire Zyvex Labs press release. Zyvex Labs is one of several companies formed from the April 2007 reorganization of Zyvex Corporation. John Randall was a member of the Steering Committee for the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems and spoke at the conference a year ago that launched the roadmap. He also contributed several papers to the Working Group Proceedings (210 pages, 14.6 MB PDF). The main part of Productive Nanosystems: A Technology Roadmap (198 pages, 2.1 MB PDF) is also available and provides a wide overview of the challenges and opportunities of atomically precise manufacturing.
—Jim

MMFGs are collaborative, open-source simulations of imagined future scenarios. Designed to address real world problems by harnessing the wisdom of crowds, IFTF’s new MMFG platform launches with multiple games this fall that invite diverse global groups of people to contribute to futures research through games. Unlike predictions markets where answers fall within a finite range of outcomes, the Institute has created MMFGs to gain insight into situations where the outcome is unknown.

The first game in this series launched on October 6. Superstruct focuses on life in the year 2019.

Superstruct invites players to imagine life in 2019 and to document and record how they, their families, local communities, or extended social networks might respond to a catastrophic population collapse. Beginning today players can register at www.superstructgame.org. Six-weeks of global gameplay will begin on Monday, October 6, 2008.

About the Game:

Set in the grim future of 2019, Superstruct begins with the findings of a fictional supercomputer that, after a year-long analysis, predicts the extinction of the human population in 23 years. A potentially terminal combination of five so-called “super-threats,” which represent the collision of environmental, economic, and social risks, are causing massive disruptions of global society. The existing structures of human civilization—from families and language to corporate society and technological infrastructures—just aren’t enough. Superstruct is played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces. We show you the world as it might look in 2019. You show us what it’s like to live there. Bring what you know and who you know, and we’ll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.

“Superstruct is mass collaboration wrapped in a high-stakes, challenging game environment that will appeal to gamers, but also to creative thinkers of all ages and types,” said McGonigal. “By harnessing the thinking and input of thousands, or millions, of minds, research shows that we can tackle massive problems faster and find tenable solutions.”

—Jim

Russia believes that Israel could become a strategic partner in developing nanotechnology projects, the general director of the Russian Rosnanotech state corporation said on Thursday.

“Israel is one of the global high-teach leaders, uniting a large number of inventers [Sic], innovative groups, working in the nanotechnology sphere,” Leonid Melamed said during a visit to Israel.

The main goal of the visit, which includes trips to educational, scientific and technical centers and meetings with Israeli officials, is to identify investment projects for Russia.

“Considering that almost half of the people working in these laboratories speak Russian, Israel is clearly a strategic partner for us,” Melamed added.

In 2007, the Russian government allocated 130 billion rubles (about $5.5 billion) to Rosnanotech, which is aiming to build infrastructure in Russia for nanotechnology projects providing the right research conditions.

—Jim

The second step I’ll take is to require that 10% of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now. To meet these goals, we will invest more in the clean technology research and development that’s occurring in labs and research facilities all across the country and right here at MSU, where you’re working with farm owners to develop this state’s wind potential and developing nanotechnology that will make solar cells cheaper.

A recent MSU news release highlighted the energy applications of a new nanomaterial developed in the laboratory of MSU researcher Lawrence Drzal—xGnP Exfoliated Graphite NanoPlatelets.

“XGnP can either be used as an additive to plastics or by itself it can make a transformational change in the performance of many advanced electronic and energy devices,” Drzal said. “It can do so because it’s a nanoparticle with a unique shape made from environmentally benign carbon, and it can be made at a very reasonable cost.”

As a step toward solving American energy problems, Senator John McCain has suggested a national prize of $300 million for anyone who can develop a better, more efficient car battery. Although Senator McCain did not mention nanotechnology in his proposal, nanotech solutions for better batteries were mentioned in several comments posted in response to the article.
—Jim

Two nanotechnology pioneers were honored this week with the Kavli Prize, a $3 million award shared among seven recipients. The winners were announced … during the World Science Summit at Columbia University in New York.

The Kavli Prize, worth $1 million each in the fields of astrophysics, nanoscience and neuroscience, are awarded every other year.

The nanotechnology prizes went to: Louis Brus, who discovered semiconductor nanocrystals know as quantum dots in the 1980s while at Bell Laboratories; and Sumio Iijima, who discovered nanotubes in 1991 while working at NEC Corp. Brus is now a professor at Columbia University and Iijima is a professor at Meijo University.

Brus was collaborating with researchers at the Yoffe Institute in St. Petersburg, Russia, when he discovered nanocrystal semiconductors in colloidal suspensions. His observation of how different semiconducting nanoparticles—now called quantum dots—glowed different colors when excited led to the discovery that quantum confinement explains the correlation between size and color in quantum dots.

Sumio Iijima is credited with the discovery of nanotubes, even though they had already been observed earlier. Iijima authored a seminal 1991 paper which seeded the field now called nanotechnology. As the fourth form of carbon (after graphite, diamonds and fullerenes, spherical carbon-60, also called buckyballs), nanotubes measure only a few nanometers in diameter, but can be microns long.

Nanotubes promise to revolutionize semiconductors by providing ultra-small interconnects and ultra-fast transistor channels.

—Jim

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. 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."

A table summarizing this effort is summarized below. Any words added to the characterizations of the syndromes are marked in brackets and italics [like this]–everything else is the words of Jane Jacobs or Pat Gratton. Question marks indicate particularly unsure guesses.