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By Christine Peterson, on August 24th, 2010
Nanodot normally focuses on longer-term nanotechnologies such as molecular manufacturing, but we do like to keep an eye on how different countries compare to each other in nanotech and technology in general. Below is an excerpt from a recent Lux Research announcement; you can read the full PDF here:
U.S. Risks Losing Global Leadership in Nanotech
While the U.S. still leads the world in nanotech innovation by virtue of its size, Japan, Germany and South Korea are doing a better job of bringing technology to market, says Lux Research.
In terms of sheer volume, the U.S. dominated the rest of the world in nanotech funding and new patents last year, as U.S. government funding, corporate spending, and VC investment in nanotech collectively reached $6.4 billion in 2009. But according to a new report from Lux Research, countries such as China and Russia launched new challenges to U.S. dominance in 2009, while smaller players such as Japan, Germany and South Korea surpassed the United States in terms of commercializing nanotechnology and products.
Now, I don’t know why this may be the case, but speaking as someone running a small nonprofit in the U.S., the paperwork alone is a huge burden, and I know it’s worse in the case of for-profit companies and larger organizations. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on August 18th, 2010
Forbes describes work at IBM Zurich:
IBM researchers in its Zurich lab have drawn–or rather, carved–a three-dimensional map of the world that’s 22 micrometers east to west by 11 micrometers north to south. At that size, about 15 of the maps could be wrapped end to end long-ways around a strand of human hair, by our math.
In a process the researchers describe in articles published today in Scienceand Advanced Materials, they used a silicon needle with a tip about ten thousand times smaller than an ant to sculpt a polymer material known as polyphthalaldehyde. By heating the needle to between 300 and 500 degrees centigrade, they were able to melt and evaporate tiny segments of the material without disturbing those particles’ neighbors…
IBM’s researchers hope that it could someday be used to craft circuit boards at smaller sizes than e-beam lithography is used to etch them today, or even build tiny nanobots or other tiny mechanical structures that could travel inside the human body or other nanoscale environments.
More images here. Go IBM! —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on August 16th, 2010
Longtime Foresight supporter John Gilmore writes: “I noticed a story that reminded me of something Foresight wanted to encourage in society. Wired reports that the CIA uses decision analysis software ‘Analysis of Competing Hypotheses’, and has funded a rewritten version for shared networked analysis by many people. But the gov’t contractors got into a hassle over who owned the code, so its developer is dumping it out into the open source world:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/08/cia-software-developer-goes-open-source-instead/
http://www.competinghypotheses.org
“It’s not *quite* released yet, but in theory it will show up there.
“Here’s how the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses process works:
https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/psychology-of-intelligence-analysis/art11.html
Analysis of competing hypotheses, sometimes abbreviated ACH, is a tool to aid judgment on important issues requiring careful weighing of alternative explanations or conclusions. It helps an analyst overcome, or at least minimize, some of the cognitive limitations that make prescient intelligence analysis so difficult to achieve.
ACH is an eight-step procedure grounded in basic insights from cognitive psychology, decision analysis, and the scientific method. It is a surprisingly effective, proven process that helps analysts avoid common analytic pitfalls. Because of its thoroughness, it is particularly appropriate for controversial issues when analysts want to leave an audit trail to show what they considered and how they arrived at their judgment.
“This reminded me of the ’science court’ process that Eric [Drexler] described decades ago in Engines of Creation. It sounds like it may have found an institutional home in the CIA and may be able to break out into broader society.”
Thanks for this, John. We’ll watch it with interest! —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on August 13th, 2010
Many of you have an interest in human longevity in general and in being healthier and living longer personally. If we want to help develop and guide nanotech and other advanced technologies, we need to stay healthy.
I am organizing a conference on this topic, October 9-10, here in the Bay Area:
You will recognize some of the speakers from past Foresight meetings, now speaking on a new topic — applying their high-tech skills and knowledge to improving their bodies. Foresight is a partner with this conference, and there’s a discount on registration. By using the code below, you will get $100 off:
Discount code: FORESIGHT
If you have already paid the higher rate, please let me know. Feel free to pass this code along to your friends and colleagues; the goal is to benefit the greater Foresight community.
Whether you can attend the meeting or not, if this is a topic of interest, you can join the Facebook page and participate in other ways; see the list here:
Hope to see you there! —Christine Peterson, Chairman, Personalized Life Extension 2010
By Christine Peterson, on August 11th, 2010
Many of you will recall Bill Joy’s famous article in Wired called Why the future doesn’t need us, where he expressed concern about various technologies including advanced nanotech. Apparently he gave an update of his views on this in his talk for TED, viewable here. An excerpt:
So if we can address, use technology, help address education, help address the environment, help address the pandemic, does that solve the larger problem that I was talking about in the Wired article? And I’m afraid the answer is really no, because you can’t solve a problem with the management of technology with more technology. If we let an unlimited amount of power loose, then we will — a very small number of people will be able to abuse it. We can’t fight at a million-to-one disadvantage. So what we need to do is, we need better policy. And for example, some things we could do that would be policy solutions which are not really in the political air right now but perhaps with the change of administration would be — use markets.
Whether you agree with him or not, it’s a useful discussion to have. As he says:
We can’t pick the future, but we can steer the future…So we can design the future if we choose what kind of things we want to have happen and not have happen, and steer us to a lower-risk place.
Check it out. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on August 10th, 2010
An article in New Scientist with the optimistic title “Artificial life forms evolve basic intelligence” gives an update on how two specific examples of computational artificial life is doing in terms of evolving to have more interesting behavior. An excerpt:
Brains that have been evolved with HyperNEAT have millions of connections, yet still perform a task well, and that number could be pushed higher yet,” he says. “This is a sea change for the field. Being able to evolve functional brains at this scale allows us to begin pushing the capabilities of artificial neural networks up, and opens up a path to evolving artificial brains that rival their natural counterparts.
See the comments after the article for useful discussion. A field to keep an eye on. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on August 4th, 2010
The Space Studies Institute will hold Space Manufacturing 14 on Oct. 30-31, 2010 at NASA Ames here in Silicon Valley. Topics to be covered include:
Session 1: Space Transportation Architecture
Session 2: Closed Environment Life Support Systems
Session 3: Robotics and Space Manufacturing
Session 4: Extraterrestrial Prospecting
Session 5: Engineering Materials from Non-Terrestrial Resources
Session 6: Space Solar Power and Space Energy Systems
Session 7: International, Legal and Economic Considerations
Great to see this work continuing! Note that attendance is limited to 200, and there are some special procedures for non-US citizens. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 28th, 2010
Nanowerk describes a recent advance toward the “e-nose” by an international team of researchers. Team member Andrei Kolmakov explains:
Our approach demonstrates the potential of combining bottom-up nanowire fabrication protocols with state-of-the art microfabrication methods to design prospective simple sensing arrays which, in principle, might be scaled down to the size of few micrometers and thus become the smallest analytical instrument…
Time for open source sensing! I’ll be speaking on this Friday at the Open Science Summit which starts tomorrow. Attend in person or watch the webcast. Hope to see you there. (Image: Dr. Kolmakov, Southern Illinois Univ. at Carbondale) —Christine Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 27th, 2010
We’ve received an update on work by our friend Anirban Bandyopadhyay at the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan. Here’s the abstract of his recent Nature Physics paper:
Modern computers operate at enormous speeds—capable of executing in excess of 1013 instructions per second—but their sequential approach to processing, by which logical operations are performed one after another, has remained unchanged since the 1950s. In contrast, although individual neurons of the human brain fire at around just 103times per second, the simultaneous collective action of millions of neurons enables them to complete certain tasks more efficiently than even the fastest supercomputer. Here we demonstrate an assembly of molecular switches that simultaneously interact to perform a variety of computational tasks including conventional digital logic, calculating Voronoi diagrams, and simulating natural phenomena such as heat diffusion and cancer growth. As well as representing a conceptual shift from serial-processing with static architectures, our parallel, dynamically reconfigurable approach could provide a means to solve otherwise intractable computational problems.
He explains:
…we have realized 700 bits parallel processing using cellular automaton for the first time in the world. This is a significant advancement from our 16 bit parallel processing which you highlighted in your website (http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2687)…This invention may be in coherence with the Feynman’s vision…We can solve some problems which computers will take more than the age of this universe. We did it in 6-10 minutes (in the Nature Physics paper).
Some coverage:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36788441/ns/technology_and_science-innovation/
http://www.natureasia.com/asia-materials/highlight.php?id=708&utm_source=NPG+Asia+Materials&utm_content=Research+Highlights
Anirban writes, “Hope you may like this.” We do indeed! —Christine Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 20th, 2010
 Foresight Research Analyst and Technical Editor James Lewis has tracked the careers of those receiving Foresight’s student award. Here are his findings on the careers of a few of these gifted young researchers:
We at Foresight find it gratifying to track the subsequent careers of those who have won our nanotechnology-related prizes and awards, in this case the Foresight Distinguished Student Award, last made in 2007 to a Rice University graduate student, Fung-Suong Ou. Mr. Fung joins a distinguished group of winners who have launched impressive careers in nanoscience and nanotechnology. [ http://www.foresight.org/about/fi_spons.html#StudentAward ]
The Foresight Distinguished Student Award was established in 1997 and is given to a college undergraduate or graduate student whose work is notable in the field of nanotechnology. Typically, the nominations are made by the most prominent researchers in nanoscience and nanotechnology from among their most promising and productive students. The significance of the award is best exemplified by the distinguished careers of previous awardees. To cite only five spanning a wide area of nanoscience and the first eight years that the award has been made:
The first award was made to Phil Collins, then of the Department of Physics, University of California at Berkeley, and the Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and currently Associate Professor, Physics & Astronomy, School of Physical Sciences, University of California at Irvine. He maintains an active research group in nanoelectronics, carbon nanotubes, and molecular electronics including sensors and bioelectronics. [reference http://www.physics.uci.edu/~collinsp/ ] more: Foresight’s student award-winners go on to great things
By Christine Peterson, on July 19th, 2010
The Open Science Summit on July 29-31 in Berkeley is looking better and better.
Topics include OpenPCR, DIY biology, open source hardware, brain preservation, synthetic biology, gene patents, open data, open access journals, reputation engines, crowd-funding and microfinance for science, citizen science, biohacking, open source biodefense, cure entrepreneurs, open source drug discovery, patent pools, tech transfer, and much more.
Here’s some advance media coverage:
http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/07/07/the-open-science-shift/
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/07/diy-biotechnologists-go-looking-for-a-bigger-garage/59701/
If you can’t attend in person, watch the webcast live at:
http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2010
Put it on your calendar now! Or we’ll hope to see you in person, especially for the session where I’m speaking: “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday. –Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 15th, 2010
We can get a hint of the power coming from longer-term nanotech by seeing what is being discovered today on how to use some of the new materials becoming available. Many of us have been intrigued with graphene, a one-atom-thick planar sheet of bonded carbon atoms. It’s no surprise that exciting applications are being found already, such as Nanotechweb’s report on work in South Korea:
…Kwang Kim, In-Cheol Hwang and colleagues at Pohang University of Science and Technology have synthesised a new type of magnetite composite based on reduced graphene oxide (RGO). The hybrid material, which is superparamagnetic at room temperature, can remove over 99.9% of arsenic in a sample, and reduce its concentration to below 1 ppb – as measured by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) techniques.
The magnetite-RGO composite can be dispersed in water. Once it has adsorbed arsenic, it can quickly be removed from a sample using a permanent hand-held magnet (with a strength of 20 mT) within a fraction of a minute.
Probably you already known that arsenic is a natural contaminant in water in parts of the western U.S. and in south Asia. This is a huge problem and causes very serious health problems. Let’s hope this helpful use of graphene is just the start of a great career for this nanomaterial, first in simple applications like this one, and later as part of more complex molecular machine systems. (HT to Meridian Nanotechnology and Development News) —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 12th, 2010
If you’re having trouble remembering to stop by Nanodot (this blog), and also having trouble keeping up with your RSS feeds (as I am), there’s an easier way to keep up with Nanodot news, albeit a bit delayed.
Once a month we compile all the most recent Nanodot posts — plus other news such as upcoming conferences and their related discount codes — and ship it out free to thousands of readers using the old but tried-and-true technology called “email”.
So if you’d like to get these emails, just stop by our home page and click on the “mailing list signup” link at upper right.
Or if you know you are already in the Foresight database, just drop a quick note to foresight@foresight.org and tell us to start sending you the emails. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 9th, 2010
Finishing off the week on a fun note, we see that robotic firm Willow Garage — of special interest to Foresight due to their emphasis on open source — has achieved an important milestone in robotics: namely, the ability for a robot to fetch a beer from the fridge and deliver it.
It’s worth seeing the video.
Note that some of the video is speeded up by 5X or 6X, but these parts are clearly indicated, and it’s an interesting achievement in any case. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 7th, 2010
The nomination/submission process for the 2010 Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology is now open. Two $5000 prizes are offered, one for theory and one for experimental achievement. These prizes recognize progress toward the goal of atomic-level control in the construction of macroscale 3D objects: an ambitious goal but one toward which physicist Richard Feynman pointed as early as 1959. Please nominate those whose work most impresses you as moving in the direction of this goal, and all its medical, economic, and environmental benefits. Thanks! —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 6th, 2010
Nanotechnology Now brings news of a recent Atom Technology workshop in Singapore featuring dual Foresight Institute Feynman Prize winner Christian Joachim, Feynman Prize founder Jim Von Ehr of Zyvex Labs and Zyvex Asia, and Foresight Roadmap participant Damian Allis of Syracuse University:
Atom Technology is IMRE’s flagship program led by well known scientist Prof. Christian Joachim from France and world leading nanotechnology company Zyvex in the USA. Atom Technology in IMRE focuses on molecular electronics device research headed by Prof. Joachim and atomic precise manufacturing (APM) in partnership with its industry partner Zyvex Asia (sister company of Zyvex Labs in the United States which is leading the DARPA funded APM program. The workshop is to showcase IMRE’s effort in scientific and technological frontier of the ultimate electronic device and manufacturing R&D. The Atom Technology program has a very interesting balance between basic research and industry application which was nicely presented at the workshop specially by Prof. Joachim, First Class Director of Research at the France Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)) and Mr James Von Ehr (Founder and President of Zyvex Corporation and a visionary of nanotechnology).
Prof Christian Joachim, who is also a visiting scientist under the A*STAR Visiting Investigator Programme (VIP) attached to IMRE, presented his vision and progress on the ultimate atomic and molecular transistors. Mr Jim Von Ehr presented his vision and his industry “making things and sell” approach towards atomic precise manufacturing, the ultimate manufacturing with digital design and atomic precision that will revolutionize how we make things today, like the way how semiconductor manufacturing has transform our lives.
If Singapore’s nanotech interests you, you might want to get on the mailing list for their email newsletter; see signup at the bottom right of SingNano’s home page. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on July 1st, 2010
Small investors who want to invest in nanotech startups have for years turned to publicly-held venture group Harris & Harris Group, which has focused on private companies in nanotech and microsystems.
With the economy down, and initial public offerings (IPOs) more rare, this strategy is changing. Brian Gormley of the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch explains:
In a June 28 letter to shareholders, Chief Executive Douglas Jamison said many of its private holdings are maturely nicely. Even so, volatility and risk aversion in the public markets are making it difficult for these companies to go public…
“With the lengthening time between investment and return on investment in private venture capital-backed companies, we need to find a way to generate returns with greater frequency,” Jamison said in the letter.
“As a public company, we should not count on investors to wait five years between liquidity events. We will seek to position our investments so that we can demonstrate positive returns on investments on an annual basis.”
The firm is therefore turning its attention to public companies with market capitalizations below $50 million. Many of these companies have exciting products enabled by nanotechnology and microsystems, Jamison wrote, and several are a year or two ahead of comparable venture-backed companies.
This means less investment will be available to pre-IPO nanotech companies, at least for now. Not good news, but near-term nanotech can’t be expected to escape the economic downturn. Sigh. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on June 29th, 2010
Frequent Nanodot readers know that our main interest is longer-term nanotech, but sometimes what’s happening today gets pretty exciting as well. A quick summary of recent advances in nanotech used to fight cancer appears in a Computerworld piece by Sharon Gaudin; some excerpts:
Rice University said yesterday that when the nanoparticles deliver dye to the cell, a small bundle of fiber-optic cables attached to a US$400 Olympus E-330 digital camera are used to capture images. The dyes cause the cell nuclei to glow brightly when lighted with the tip of the fiber-optic bundle…
“The dyes and visual techniques that we used are the same sort that pathologists have used for many years to distinguish healthy cells from cancerous cells in biopsied tissue,” said study coauthor Mark Pierce, Rice faculty fellow in bioengineering, in a statement. “But the tip of the imaging cable is small and rested lightly against the [patient's] inside the cheek, so the procedure is considerably less painful than a biopsy and the results are available in seconds instead of days”…
Scientists have been putting a lot of focus on nanotechnology in recent cancer research.
This past January, teams of researchers from three universities jointly developed a nanotechnology cocktail that should target and kill cancerous tumors. The mixture of two different-sized nanoparticles work with the body’s bloodstream to seek out, stick to and kill tumors, according to MIT.
And Stanford University researchers last October announced that they had used nanotechnology and magnetics to create a biosensor designed to detect cancer in its early stages, making a cure more likely. University scientists reported that the sensor, which sits on a microchip, is 1,000 times more sensitive than cancer detectors used clinically today.
A month earlier, researchers at the University of Toronto said they had used nanomaterials to develop a microchip that is sensitive enough to detect early stage cancer. The chip is designed to detect the type of cancer and its severity.
Good news for everyone who might get cancer, which is…everyone. —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on June 28th, 2010
For years we’ve watched academic degree programs in nanotechnology being announced piecemeal, or in partial lists. Now it looks like Nanowerk has stepped up to the task of keeping a complete list, sorted by level of degree and country. See it here: http://www.nanowerk.com/nanotechnology/nanotechnology_degrees.php
A handy chart allows users to click through to see all the programs at a given level in a particular country.
From their press release announcing the new database:
Only three years ago, there were no more than 150 programs worldwide – now there are over 250 in more than 25 countries.
Reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of nanosciences and nanotechnologies, these specialized academic degree programs span many disciplines ranging from biology, chemistry, and physics to medicine, engineering, and electronics; even MBAs are offered as dual degree options for nanotechnology students.
While there is an emphasis on Master’s programs, with almost half of all degree offerings, roughly one half of all programs can be found in Europe and one third in North America.
The UK is the country with the most Master’s programs (30) and the U.S. by far has the most dedicated Ph.D. programs (24).
Not surprisingly, with 61 offerings the U.S. is the country with the single most nanotechnology degree and certification programs, followed by the UK (38) and Germany (30).
I wouldn’t want to be the one responsible for keeping this database current! —Chris Peterson
By Christine Peterson, on June 24th, 2010
Nanowerk brings us news of advances at Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology:
Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) in Singapore have now successfully demonstrated, for the first time, a lithography-free, direct-write technique for fabricating discrete field-effect transistors, as well as digital logic gates on a single nanowire…
| “Our single-step fabrication technique obviates the time-consuming and labor-intensive lithography process, and enhances the fabrication accuracy and yield,” says Roy. “With a higher level of precision and throughput, it can offer a powerful method for rapid prototyping of futuristic nanoelectronic circuits.” |
I like that word “futuristic” and hope it’s not just a translation error. –Chris Peterson |
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