Rosa Wang writes "In his address to a group earlier this year, just published in the press today in India, the President of India sees the future in nanotechnology. There is no ambiguity in their intent:"

Our future lies in nanotechnology
GUEST COLUMN | President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
July 31

"When I think of nanoscience and nanotechnology, I am reminded of three personalities. The first person is Richard Feynman, who described the concept of 'building machines' atom by atom in his talk at Caltech titled 'There is plenty of room at the bottom'. The second person is Eric Drexler, who wrote the book titled Nanosystems, Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing and Computation. The third person is Prof C.N.R. Rao, who pioneered and fostered nano science research in India."

Roland Piquepaille writes "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) has discovered a new nanotechnology effect, the ability of moving water molecules by light. This is a far better way than current methods such as damaging electric fields and opens the way to a new class of microfluidic devices used in analytical chemistry and for pharmaceutical research. For example, this makes possible to design a device that can move drugs dissolved in water, or droplets of water and samples that need to be tested for environmental or biochemical analyses. Please read this overview for more details and references, plus an image of two water drops illuminated with a fluorescent dye and sitting respectively on a nanowire surface and on a flat surface."

Roland Piquepaille writes "The new Scripps-PARC Institute for Advanced Biomedical Sciences (SPIABS for short) is the fruit of the union between Xerox's PARC and the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and promises to transform medical research and the practice of medicine. The Mercury News writes that it's making a big leap to innovation in medicine. SPIABS already announced an enthalpy array, an extremely precise nanocalorimeter. It can detect changes of millionths of a degree in temperature, using samples of only 240 nanoliters. This nanocalorimeter will be used to "help pharmaceutical companies quickly pick out the best drug candidates and get improved medications to market sooner." Earlier this year, SPIABS unveiled the FAST cytometer, a laser scanning device so precise it can spot a single cancerous cell in the middle of the ten other millions contained in a standard blood sample. And SPIABS is working on other projects, such as sutures sewn on the perimeter of a removed tumor, equipped with laser diodes to spot and kill new cancerous cells as soon as they appear. Please read this overview for more details, references and pictures."

RobertBradbury writes "Space Daily had a recent article about progress by Stephen Chou's group (at the NanoStructures Lab) with nanoimprint lithography. Their most recent article in Applied Physics Letters is here [1]. They are getting down to 5nm ridges spaced 14nm apart. From the looks of NNT conference program last December this area is getting hot."

Roland Piquepaille writes "It's widely accepted today that nanotechnology will soon be able to deliver medicine inside the human body or to do research on cells. But to achieve this goal, you need nano-cargos moving through liquid environments, such as blood. And this is a very difficult challenge because the nano-swimmers have to struggle with blood's viscosity, which has very large effect in a nanoscale environment. But now, two Iranian researchers have found a simple and elegant solution to this problem, based on the principle of non-reciprocal motion and described in "Teaching Nanotech to Swim" by Technology Review. Their nano-swimmer consists of three aligned spheres connected by two rigid rods which can contract and expand. The nano-cargo then advances in the blood like an earthworm inside the soil. Even if these nano-swimmers look promising, nobody knows when they will be able to deliver drugs in our bodies. Read this summary for more details and references. You'll also find an illustration showing how the nano-swimmer moves."

A recent study of the American public's views on nanotechnology has shown a remarkably accurate understanding of its potential benefits and drawbacks. Conducted by North Carolina State University researcher, Dr. Michael Cobb, assistant professor of political science, who designed the survey and analyzed the data, and Dr. Patrick Hamlett, associate professor of science, technology and society, and Dr. Jane Macoubrie, assistant professor of communication, the results will appear in the next Journal of Nanoparticle Research.

David Bradley Science Writer writes "The Royal Society recently held a meeting on atomic manipulation. You can read a summary report of the meeting by a freelance science writer on the RS site available as a PDF file here."

Roland Piquepaille writes "Magnetic refrigerators offer significant advantages when compared with current vapor-compression ones, such as gains in energy efficiency, lower cost of operation or elimination of environmentally damaging coolants. Unfortunately, all the materials which have been tested in the last fifty years suffer from hysteresis losses, lowering the energy available for cooling. But now, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have found a solution, reported in "Nanomaterial Yields Cool Results." By adding a small amount of iron to a gadolinium-germanium-silicon alloy, they enhanced the cooling capacity by 30 percent. This very significant step may help move the promising technology of magnetically generated refrigeration closer to market. This overview contains more details and references."

Roland Piquepaille writes "A team of chemists from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), working with computer scientists, has discovered a new kind of adaptable nanoscale compounds. They previously devised tetrapods, structures with four 'arms' or 'legs', from materials such as cadmium telluride. But they now found that by using different materials, like selenium, tellurium or sulfur, to produce crystals of different cadmium compounds, each 'leg' could acquire different electronic properties. After isolating these 'legs,' they were able to produce 'nanorods' with specific properties. In "Nanotech Branches Out with New Discovery," NewsFactor Network says that this discovery will have important consequences, leading to the development of new solar cells, quantum computers or simply very small and fast transistors. This overview is more technical and contains additional references. You'll also find an image showing you the kind of nano tetrapods built at LBNL."

RobertBradbury writes "Chongwu Zhou at USC has demonstrated a combination of chemical vapor deposition and pulsed laser deposition that can produce multi-material nanowires (diameters 30-100 nm, length up to 3000 nm). News here. The process appears to be able to produce the nanowires in quantity (from a nanoscale perspective). Interestingly the material that determines the properties of the wire is on the outside rather than the inside of the cable as is the case with coax and glass fiber.

Now of course if the high temperature superconductor varient of these wires could be positioned and bonded in place on semiconductor chips one would have a new and interesting method for connecting the transistors on the chips. I've seen claims that some types of buckytubes are good conductors — but are they anywhere close to HTSC?"

Tyler Emerson writes "In anticipation of 20th Century Foxís July 16th release of I, Robot, the Singularity Institute announces ì3 Laws Unsafeî ì3 Laws Unsafeî explores the problems presented by Isaac Asimovís Three Laws of Robotics, the principles intended for ensuring that robots help, but never harm, humans. The Three Laws are widely known and are often taken seriously as reasonable solutions for guiding future AI. But are they truly reasonable? ì3 Laws Unsafeî addresses this question."

Foresight Institute, a nanotechnology education and public policy think tank, is sponsoring the 1st Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology: Research, Applications, and Policy, October 22-24, 2004 at the Crystal City Marriott Hotel, Washington DC area. "This is the first conference to focus on molecular machine systems and advanced nanotechnology," said Christine Peterson, president and founder of Foresight Institute. "The Conference targets the bottom-up goal of molecular machine systems and what this Next Industrial Revolution will mean for the environment, medicine, national competitiveness, and defense."

Svidinenko Yuriy brings to our attention commentary by Senior Associate Robert Bradbury on an interview of Robert Freitas, including responses to readers' posts. Topics: nanobiotechnology, nanowarfare, age curing, nanomedicine robotics and more.

Foresight VP Ralph Merkle brings to our attention an article by Foresight founder Eric Drexler on the political forces shaping nanotech research in "Nanotechnology: from Feynman to Funding", published in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society.

Foresight Senior Associate Luke Nosek brings to our attention a piece on Wired.com written by Foresight Advisor Lawrence Lessig, titled Stamping Out Good Science, which describes efforts to eliminate research proposals for molecular manufacturing from US NNI funding consideration. "Science thus becomes irrational because we can't imagine government as rational. Simple facts of a political nature, we might say, tweaking and reusing Smalley's warning in a much more depressing context, prevent good science from ever becoming a reality."

To promote responsible coverage and assist society in making informed decisions about advanced nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing, Foresight Institute has established a communication prize. The nomination deadline for the 2004 Foresight Institute Prize in Communication is July 31.

Phil Bowermaster writes "The Prince of Wales is once again warning about the dangers of nanotechnology:

The Prince acknowledges nanotechnology is a "triumph of human ingenuity".

"Some of the work may have fundamental benefits to society, such as enabling the construction of much cheaper fuel-cells, or new ways of combating ill-health," he says.

But he adds: "How are we going to ensure that proper attention is given to the risks that may… ensue?

Hmmm, well if he's really this concerned, I can think of something that might really help."

John Heron writes "As reported today in the Taiwan Economic News, Taiwan is setting up a nano-industry association 'as part of the government's plan to boost output value of the island's industry using nanometer technology to NT$300 billion (US$9.1 billion at US$1:NT$) in 2008.' From the examples given in the article, field emission displays (FED) and optical disk technology improvements, I'd guess this is more marketing for material science under a different name rather than a molecular manufacturing initiative, but it is another government jumping on the nanotech bandwagon."

An anonymous reader writes "Howard Lovy announces that he has been reorganized out of Small Times magazine. One of his readers suggests that this was a political decision based on Howard's too-open advocacy of MNT. http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2004/07/flirtin-with-freelance-disaster.html" Update from Foresight president Christine Peterson: Now folks, there's no particular reason to assume MNT advocacy was involved here; it's just as likely to be a budget issue. We at Foresight all wish Howard excellent success in his new career as a freelancer–send some assignments his way!

In a letter published in Chemical & Engineering News, 28 June 2004, p.4, under the title "Nanotech challenge," Eric Drexler called for a dialog on the physical and engineering specifics of proposals to build molecular assemblers. Drexler wrote: "The recent publication of an additional letter to the editor (C&EN, May 17, page 5) regarding the Nanotechnology Point/Counterpoint (C&EN, Dec. 1, 2003, page 37) suggests that readers are still interested in this exchange. To date, although I've heard of scientists who endorse Richard E. Smalley's conclusions, none has been willing to endorse the core of his new argument (that water is essential to controlled chemical synthesis)."