The Institute for the Future, in a UK-funded study published on the Stanford website, presents eleven outlooks for nanotechnology over the next 50 years: • Better drug delivery through nanotechnology • Carbon nanotubes and lighter vehicles • The coming nanoshell revolution in oncology • The dream of biochemical nanocomputing • Manufacturing with programmable materials “Advent [...]

Regular readers of Nanodot know that we rarely use this space to “bleg” (i.e., request donations via blog). We make an exception for our annual $40,000 Challenge Grant, during which your donations are doubled. As this is posted, we have about $30,000 to go. Take each example below and multiply the payoff by two — [...]

Forbes announces its top five nanotechnology breakthroughs for 2006, and we’re not surprised to see the winner of this year’s Foresight Institute Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology listed as #1: 1. DNA origami, at Caltech 2. Nanomagnets to clean up drinking water, at Rice 3. Arrays connect nanowire transistors with neurons, at Harvard 4. Single nanotube [...]

Switzerland’s Centre for Technology Assessment has issued its report Public Reactions to Nanotechnology in Switzerland (428 KB pdf), and — not surprisingly — it’s relatively balanced. From page 33 (page 35 of pdf file): “There’s a good and a bad side to everything” — This saying sums up quite well the way that the publifocus [...]

Allison Stoddart of the Royal Society of Chemistry’s magazine Chemical Science interviews nanotechnology researcher David Leigh on the joy of molecular machines in a piece titled “The magic of chemistry”: What motivated you to study molecular machines? I worked in Fraser Stoddart’s group before he made any catenanes or rotaxanes. We made our first catenane [...]

In yet another promising example of nanotechnology being used to defeat cancer, Forbes.com tells us of work at University of Michigan on brain cancer research: Tiny “nanoparticles” can be loaded with high concentrations of drugs to kill brain cancer, U.S. researchers report. Researchers at the University of Michigan (U-M) Comprehensive Cancer Center incorporated the drug [...]

Nanotechnology will soon be taught in Mexico’s public schools, but Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post explains that it’s a different story in the U.S.: Scientist Robert P.H. Chang of Northwestern University had no trouble persuading education officials in Mexico to introduce the burgeoning field of nanotechnology to schools there, but it’s been a far [...]

The useful website Nanowerk describes a new technique invented by researchers in Spain which should be useful in analyzing nanotechnology devices: Many protein molecules, such as those that process DNA, execute twisting motions, but researchers have only managed to measure the torques in a few cases. Often the random thermal jiggling of water molecules makes [...]

As a veteran nanowatcher, I can testify that what most people want most from nanotechnology is dramatic medical advances, such as the cancer treatments now showing so much promise. Science magazine periodically includes a “product” section reviewing what’s happening in a particular field of interest. Nanobiotechnology: an Incredible Voyage for the Life Sciences by Mike [...]

Red Herring reports that the city of Berkeley, California, has voted to approve its own nanoparticle regulations: On Tuesday night the Berkeley, California City Council passed an ordinance to regulate the use of manufactured nanoparticles, tiny subatomic [sic] materials that can be 100,000 times smaller than the width of human hair… Now the city will [...]

NYU prof Nadrian Seeman, who won the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize back in 1995, has done it again. From Science Daily: New York University chemistry professor Nadrian C. Seeman and his graduate student Baoquan Ding have developed a DNA cassette through which a nanomechanical device can be inserted and function within a DNA array, allowing [...]

At every meeting of the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, we find at least one new rising star in nanotechnology. At the recent meeting held at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, it was Prof. Matthew Francis of UC Berkeley. Access to these folks is one of the main attractions for organizations participating in the Roadmap process. [...]

Cognitive enhancement technologies already exist — if you drink coffee, you’re a user — so it seems likely that nanotechnology will eventually be used for this purpose. A new report (pdf) from the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes at ASU summarizes the results of a workshop on this topic held with Sandia. They identified [...]

The Future of Things, an online magazine based in Israel, has a nanotechnology article/interview with the clearest explanation I’ve seen of the two generations of nanocars built at Rice University. We’ve discussed this before, but a more comprehensible exposition is always welcome. See especially the Flash movie of how the latest nanocar moves. Some excerpts: [...]

Will Ware, whom you may remember from NanoCAD, has done the most accurate simulation and animation of a molecular bearing design to date. He explains: Using NanoEngineer-1 (see http://www.nanoengineer-1.com) and other open-source software, I have created an animated simulation of the molecular bearing design on page 298 of Nanosystems by Eric Drexler. I worked with [...]

Funded by the European Commission, the Nanologue project has released its report titled The future of nanotechnology: We need to talk. It presents three scenarios: Scenario 1: Disaster recovery A lack of regulation resulted in a major accident. Public concern about nanotechnology is high and technology development is slow and cautious. Scenario 2: Now we’re [...]

Arab News reports that Saudi Arabia is building separate nanotechnology R&D facilities for women to use: As part of the government’s drive to empower women, a scientific research center will be established in Riyadh with modern facilities for nanotechnology, biotechnology and information technology… “The center will focus on advanced technologies and activities that are suitable [...]

A new book by German physicist Jürgen Altmann of Dortmund University looks at Military Nanotechnology: Potential Applications and Preventive Arms Control (Routledge, 2006). Both near-term and long-term applications are examined. From the abstract: NT applications will likely pervade all areas of the military…By using NT to miniaturise sensors, actuators and propulsion, autonomous systems (robots) could [...]

Earth & Sky interviewed yours truly on the topic of nanotechnology surveillance and nanoprivacy. It looks as though there are both a transcript and a couple of podcasts (1, 2). Excerpts: Nanotechnology will produce new sensors that can analyze chemical signals in our environment. And of course, we as individuals send off chemical signals that [...]