For 60 days we can all use the new nanotech portal Nanotechnology.com for free. After that, they’ll be conducting a Dutch Auction to set their subscription price. This is a gutsy thing to do, if carried out in a really transparent way. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate hearing what you find useful on the site, or what [...]

Howard Lovy and Rocky Rawstern bring us news of the death of Richard Smalley, who shared a Nobel Prize for the discovery of the buckyball. He was active in promoting the US National Nanotechnology Initiative and became an advocate of nanotechnology as a key approach to addressing the energy challenge.

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 [...]

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. [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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. [...]

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. [...]

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 [...]

Next up is co-chair of the Research sessions, Hiroshi Yokoyama, Director of the Nanotechnology Research Institute, part of AIST in Japan — one of the leaders of nanotech in Japan. He is an expert in liquid crystal nanotech but in this talk he is giving an overview of nanotech in Japan. A survey showed that [...]

Liveblogging the Foresight Conference: Apologies for not blogging yesterday’s afternoon session, including the “Controversies in Nanotechnology” talk (by me), the IP talk by Stanford prof Mark Lemley, the IP panel (I was moderating), and the Public Equity panel — featuring the colorful Michael Weiner of Biophan, who advised against taking investment funds from VCs. This [...]

Liveblogging the Foresight Conference: Just finishing up is Jim Von Ehr of Zyvex, introduced as a “rock star of nanotechnology” by Charlie Harris. His goal is molecularly precise manufacturing of products at any length scale. He is agnostic on the method. They just won an R&D 100 award, and have quite a long list of [...]

Another view of the clean water panel at the Foresight Conference, from Michael Kanellos of CNET News.com: “What’s the biggest hazard for the future? Global warming? Oil shortages? “A small, but growing number of people think that a looming shortage of drinking water constitutes a much larger crisis. Water consumption is doubling every twenty years, [...]

Now up: “Federal Government Regulation of Nanotechnology: Present and Future Trends” by Nancy White of Central Michigan University. She began with “The government is coming.” Areas likely to be regulated are limitation of self-replication and encryption of software used with nanotech. “Foresight’s policies will probably be used by the Federal government.” This pre-planning “should be [...]

See Michael Kanellos of CNET News.com’s brief report on the Foresight Conference.

Liveblogging the Foresight Conference. Now in progress is the clean water panel, moderated by Anthony Waitz of Quantum Insight. First up is Fred Tepper of Argonide, which makes nanoalumina filters which look like paper and are made in a paper mill, based on Russian technology. When the nanoalumina reaches 15% weight of the filter, over [...]

First after lunch was Volker Rieke from Germany, who explained that Germany is #2 (after US) in nanotech publications, and directed us to the Nano-map to find out what is happening in German nanotech. Now speaking is Helena Acheson, Head of Division, Science, Technology & Innovation Policy and Awareness Division, Forfás, a think tank for [...]