Sunday, January 22, 2006

Virtual synthetic chemistry?

This reminds me of that stuff I once read about, "Wellstone" envisioned by Will McCarthy (thanks wikipedia, you rock!) This stuff fits almost every characteristic he described, with the exception that it ain't nanotubes or doped isotopes i.e. it's restrained to the surface of a chip and manufactured by current methods.
New Method Developed for Exploring Frustrated Systems in Nature.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Always Towards never At

Towards Molecular Electronics: New Way of Making Molecular Transistors from PhysOrg.com
Researchers at Columbia University's Nanoscience Center are on the verge of solving one of the most vexing barriers facing advances in molecular electronics: incorporating individual molecules into functional nanoscale devices and exploiting their electrical and chemical properties. [...]

Articles like these have become a little tiresome. A whole bunch of "Somedays" and "maybes" Can't these people ever go directly to product? And must the transition from hypothetical research and actual implementation always take between 5 and 10 years? The principles I read about above along with the last 5 years of advances in imagining, testing and verification of nanoscale devices tell me that this technology would be available in less than 2 years if the stream of innovation went directly between researcher and manufacturer. Is it a huge licensing issue that keeps these things tied up for 3-8 years or is it that the initial research is so specious and the reporting of it so flimsy and jargony that we are misled?



Monday, January 16, 2006

Whatever happened to C60 ?

The company Csixty was a promising player in the nanomedicine industry 3 years ago. But since their team-up with Merck pharma. We haven't heard or seen a single bit from them. Their C3 product still looks safe and effective despite some simulations which implied fullerenes might distort DNA (that research was entirely simulated with no actual physical analog, a technique with implicit doubt) has Csixty's research been blunted by their involvement with a major company? It wouldn't be the first time a promising technology was intentionally allowed to languish in favour of vested interests.

Link

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Coherent light from shockwaves

Researchers from Lawrence Livermore have found that shockwaves propagating in a crystal matrix can produce coherent light. I'm wondering if there is a converse of this? Can coherent light produce shockwaves in crystals?

Link

Notre Dame's revolutionary logic system

Cellular automata are fascinating and powerful software tools. Akin to neural networks they demonstrate diverse and flexible performance. Now Notre Dame's Center for Nano Science and Technology has released a paper detailing cellular automata made from magnetic elements. These systems overcome many of the drawbacks that have kept all electronic CAs from becoming more widely used.

Link

Thursday, January 12, 2006

NanoViricides And Vietnam To R&D Bird Flu Drug

Here's a perfect example of a nation skipping ahead of United States interests. Should this research be successful and the blird flu were to reach our shore, we'll be paying Vietnam a premium.
Link

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Laser generated neutron pulse

This article presents some fascinating possibilities. If a magnetic field were applied to the proton "plume" they describe would the proton's natural magnetic fields cause them to accelerate? and if so how much gradient could be applied? Could the proton's be accelerated enough to provide thrust?

Link

Further concerns

One of the things which is really worrisome about the US losing its technological advantage is that other countries are able to make forays into implementations of technology which have been unexplored or even implicitly prevented here. American technicians operate somewhat under the same scrutiny as American scientists do as far as safety and oversite are concerned. Research programs abroad are not restrained by our methods. This puts US technology at a further disadvantage as well as creating unforeseen danger. If we should come to encounter a foreign made technology which we have no experience with be it nano, bio or some other -tech the US will not have any sort of recourse. No experts to consult, no advanced analyses to be gained. What's even worse is that we won't be able to provide the consequences of our own expertise. Other countries will end up going to the new "Super-power" of technology for trade and transactions.

Pull your hair out...

This is one of those articles that indirectly displays the corruption going on in our govern-ment. It reflects the same sort of monopolistic social disease (a sort of power hungry uber-meme) that exists in the cabal between doctors and the pharmaceutical industry. A resistance to the idea of solutions or cures in favor of treatments.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

Overlooked breakthroughs in nanotech

Here's a short spontaneous list of some nanotech which didn't really get the press it deserved.

Molecular
Scale Imprint Lithography


Duke
Engineers Fabricating Polymer 'Nanobrushes' and Other 'Smart' Molecule-Sized
Structures


Rice
scientists build world's first single-molecule car


Nanopantography:
A New Method for Massively Parallel Nanopatterning over Large Areas

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

1st post to NanoGuy

Setting this up as a nanotech only site to keep my futurist meanderings seperate from my other labors ( Savage Farming )