Category Archives: Nanotechnology

Radical Life Extension

The near-term inevitability of radical life extension and expansion by Ray Kurzweil:

It took 15 years to sequence HIV and from that perspective the genome project seemed impossible in 1990. But the amount of genetic data we were able to sequence doubled every year while the cost came down by half each year.
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If we think linearly, then the idea of turning off all disease and aging processes appears far off into the future just as the genome project did in 1990. On the other hand, if we factor in the doubling of the power of these technologies each year, the prospect of radical life extension is only a couple of decades away.

KurzweilAI.net includes many articles on Kurzweil’s ideas, by him, and others. Major topic areas include: Nanotechnology, Will Machines Become Conscious? and Singularity. The ideas can seem crazy but as Kurzweil discusses the ability to predict with the tremendous increase in the power of technology. I still think many things like radical life extension is unlikely so soon but the ideas presented are interesting and worth thinking about.

Self-assembling Nanotechnology in Chip Manufacturing

Read more information about the content of the – IBM Brings Nature to Computer Chip Manufacturing:

the first-ever application of a breakthrough self-assembling nanotechnology to conventional chip manufacturing, borrowing a process from nature to build the next generation computer chips. The natural pattern-creating process that forms seashells, snowflakes, and enamel on teeth has been harnessed by IBM to form trillions of holes to create insulating vacuums around the miles of nano-scale wires packed next to each other inside each computer chip.

In chips running in IBM labs using the technique, the researchers have proven that the electrical signals on the chips can flow 35 percent faster, or the chips can consume 15 percent less energy compared to the most advanced chips using conventional techniques.

Via: IBM Airgap Microprocessors enabled by self assembly

NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials

NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials is offering short courses this summer, one at Northwestern and one at UCLA. NSF fellowships are available to professors, high-school science teachers, post-docs and Ph.D. candidates from US universities. The fellowship consists of full tuition plus a travel allowance, if applicable. Apply by April 1, 2007. I really like that the NSF provides funds to help people attend this type of thing.

The objectives of the NSF Summer Institute on Nano Mechanics and Materials are:

* To identify and promote important areas of nanotechnology, and to create new areas o focus which will augment current nanotechnology research and development by universities, industries and government.
* To train future and practicing engineers, scientists and educators in the emerging areas of nanotechnology, nano-mechanics, and nano-materials.
* To exchange new ideas, disseminate knowledge and provide valuable networking opportunities for researchers and leaders in the field.

The short courses offered by the Institute provide fundamentals and recent new developments in selected areas of nanotechnology. The material is presented at a level accessible to BS graduates of science and engineering programs. Emphasis is on techniques and theory recently developed that are not available in texts or standard university courses.

Atom-thick Carbon Transistor

Atom-thick carbon transistor could succeed silicon by Tom Simonite:

Transistors more than four times smaller than the tiniest silicon ones – and potentially more efficient – can be made using sheets of carbon just one-tenth of a nanometre thick, research shows. Unlike other experimental nanoscopic transistors, the new components require neither complex manufacturing nor cryogenic cooling.

The transistors are made of graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms in a flat honeycomb arrangement. Graphene makes graphite when stacked in layers, and carbon nanotubes when rolled into a tube. Graphene also conducts electricity faster than most materials since electrons can travel through in straight lines between atoms without being scattered. This could ultimately mean faster, more efficient electronic components that also require less power.

Bionanotechnology Future

Commercialization and Future Developments in Bionanotechnology by Marcel P. Bruchez:

The lack of specifiability of our modules was a key challenge to commercialization. Specification will require detailed basic investigations of the properties and chemistry of nanoparticle materials in biological systems. In addition, we will have to establish analytical tools and quantitative descriptors to detail the distribution of properties present in a population of nanoparticles. This is categorically different from specification for organic molecules and proteins, in which properties can be effectively described by an average. In nanomaterials, performance properties may be dominated by a relatively small population of particles, so averaging cannot always be used.

Interesting paper, from The Bridge, an open-access publication of the National Academy of Engineering. This issue includes papers from the 12th U.S. Frontiers of Engineering including: New Mobility: The Next Generation of Sustainable Urban Transportation and Creating Intelligent Agents in Games.

Nanotech Engine Research

Tiny engine boosts nanotech hopes:

Scientists at the University of Edinburgh have created a tiny engine powered by light that can be made to sort molecules. The device may one day find a role in nano-scale machines. It emerged from research into similar tiny machines in nature that power well known processes such as photosynthesis.
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“We have a new motor mechanism for a nanomachine,” said Prof Leigh. “It is a machine mechanism that is going to take molecular machines a step forward to the realisation of the future world of nanotechnology,” he said. Because the rotaxane can be made to do useful work in a predictable fashion, ie sort particles, it could become a key component for anyone designing nano-scale device.

Nanoscale Universe Experience

Riding Snowflakes is a production exploring the nanoscale universe projected on digital-domes (planetariums) funded by NSF and created by RPI. A teacher’s guide provides experiments and activity-based lessons for to introduce, reinforce and expand upon key concepts presented in the show.

Generating the molecular worlds described in the screenplay entailed a wide range of challenges in statistical mechanics, molecular modeling, and simulation. To create a truly immersive portal into the nanoscale universe required simulations of a massive scale and complexity – an entirely unusual request for the chemical and biological engineers and scientists involved in the project. The creation of a believable and cinematic molecular landscape to visualize the plot twists and dramatic tension of the story posed a host of new creative challenges for the collaborating scientists. Their involvement in this work has brought about insights that will hopefully spark a breakthrough in the very real worlds of energy, environment, and health.

3 “Moore Generations” of Chips at Once

HP nanotech design could be leap forward for chips by Therese Poletti

The scientists said their advance would equal a leap of three generations of Moore’s Law, a prediction formulated in 1964 by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that forecast chip makers could double the number of transistors on a chip every couple of years. “This is three generations of Moore’s Law, without having to do all the research and development to shrink the transistors,” said Stan Williams, a senior fellow at HP in Palo Alto. “If in some sense we can leapfrog three generations, that is something like five years of R&D. That is the potential of this breakthrough.”
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HP researchers plan to start manufacturing prototypes of their chip design later this year. They also said they expect to see a high rate of defects in the finished products, but that the greater amount of defects will be compensated for by the ability of the circuitry to quickly route around the failed circuits. The model for their chip design is based on a 45-nanometer chip, but with much smaller wiring in the chicken-wire crossbars of 4.5 nanometers.

“Hopefully, by the middle of this year, we will have a real working chip that we have run through an HP fab,” Williams said. “Our goal is that by 2010, we will have something that we can give our customers to play with.”

Smallest Known Living Organisms Found – 200 nanometers

Shotgun sequencing finds nanoorganisms by Robert Sanders:

Once Baker had found gene segments (ribosomal RNA) from three Archaea, he was able to fish the microbes out of the slime soup and found that they were extremely small, around 200 nanometers in diameter, the size of large viruses. Bacteria average about five times this diameter. These therefore could be the smallest organisms ever found, though Baker needs to culture them before confirming this. Because they’re so small, however, they may not be free-living.

“We’re not sure they can live independently, whether they have enough genes to fend for themselves, but instead are symbiotic with another organism or are feeding off another organism,” Baker said. Baker now is trying to find the right conditions for these Archaea to thrive in a culture dish. For now, he has dubbed them ARMAN-1, -2 and -3, for Archaeal Richmond Mine Acidophilic Nanoorganisms.

Nanotechnology Education

Teaching the Notion of Nanotechnology

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 tougher sell in the United States. In Mexico, Chang said he had only to speak about the subject to top government officials, who then simply ordered school officials to teach it.
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Nanotechnology presents an especially difficult challenge in education. It is not a traditional discipline but rather a combination involving physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, engineering and technology.
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That’s what Chang has been developing as he directs Northwestern’s new national center for the university’s Materials World Modules program, charged with creating materials on nanotechnology for students in grades seven through 12.