Foresight Update 23.18: Modular DNA scaffolds with programmable properties - April 30, 2009
Discuss these news stories at http://foresight.org/nanodot.
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The modular molecular composite nanosystems (MMCNs) route to atomically precise productive nanosystems could benefit from a new modular method of constructing DNA nanotubes that provides control of the geometry of the nanotube cross-section (for example, triangular or square) and may enable real-time modulation of the stiffness and porosity of the nanotube…
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In results that augur well for nanotech uses for graphene, two research groups have published in the same issue of Nature two different ways to unzip carbon nanotubes to create graphene ribbons, which heretofore have been more difficult than carbon nanotubes to produce in quantity…
Evolution has adapted what were the bones of the fingers of the bat's ancestors to form the skeleton of its wing. Similarly, in technology, when one element of a system is capable of expanding to take up new functions, it can substitute for what might have been expected to be different ways to achieve the same end…
A nanotech-based gene-therapy method that dramatically improved the efficiency of conventional cancer therapy in animal models is now undergoing clinical trials. The method works by restoring the function of a normal gene that causes badly damaged cells to commit suicide, but which is usually lost in cancer cells, thus permitting them to escape destruction…
As I pointed out in Nanotechnology Without Engines, nanotechnology's promise of being a revolutionary rather than evolutionary technology was based on two key ideas… you start with a desktop system capable of replicating itself and make smaller and smaller copies.
With this in mind, consider the RepRap…
—Nanodot posts by James Lewis and J. Storrs Hall
Foresight Events – Lectures
Foresight Lectures
May 28-29, 2009
1st Annual Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence Symposium
Palo Alto, California
Christine Peterson will speak on beneficial medical nanotechnologies.
Click here for conference details
June 17-18, 2009
Size Matters 2009: the future fields of application, opportunities and ethical challenges of nanoscience
Saarbrücken, Germany
Christine Peterson will speak on Nanotechnology & Open Source Sensing.
Click here for conference details
August 20-22, 2009
Gnomedex: a technology conference of inspiration and influence
Seattle, Washington
Christine Peterson will speak on life extension.
Click here for conference details
Advancements in technologies such as nanotech, robotics, and biotech are promising to make major differences in our lives in the not-too-distant future, as the Industrial Revolution did to the agrarian world — to do for the physical world what the computer and Internet have done to the world of information.
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