X-Message-Number: 19358 From: "Gina Miller" <> References: <> Subject: Nanogirl News~ Date: Thu, 27 Jun 2002 22:24:28 -0700 The Nanogirl News June 27, 2002 Sailors often took several clocks with them on voyages to try to minimize the error from any individual timepiece. Clocks are pretty reliable these days, but soon we may have to worry about defective microscopic machines. In the 8 July print issue of PRL, researchers take the first steps toward a plan for optimizing the performance of wildly uneven nanotech components, using statistical physics techniques. They find that defective parts can add up to perfectly good devices, with little or no waste. (Physical Review Focus 6/24/02) http://focus.aps.org/v9/st32.html U.S. Nanotech Funding Heads for $1 Billion Horizon. With its request for US $710.2 million in nanotechnology research funding for the 2003 fiscal year, the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the umbrella program coordinating nanotechnology research for 10 government agencies, is accelerating its R&D efforts at an extraordinary rate. The program has grown more than five-fold since its formal inception in 1997, and in the President 's budget, the NNI is requesting a 17 percent increase over fiscal year 2002. (IEEE 6/27/02) http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/resource/jun02/nnano.html Nanomagnetics boosts magnetic storage density. UK start-up NanoMagnetics has used nanoparticulate magnetic films to produce a data-recording density of roughly 6 Gbit/square inch. The company claims that this figure is a record. "This level of areal density will turn the heads of the disk-drive community to the potential of this technology," said Brendan Hegarty, chief executive officer of NanoMagnetics. "We will be having discussions with members of the industry as to possible partnerships." (Nanotechweb 6/18/02) http://nanotechweb.org/articles/news/1/6/10/1 Nanotech will spur space medicine advances. New developments in nanotechnology, the science of manipulating matter at the atomic scale, will find their way into devices and technologies important to the space program, particularly in medicine, speakers said Tuesday at NanoSpace 2002, a conference convened to examine common ground between the two areas of research. As humanity moves beyond the Information Age, nanotechnology's ability to interact with the basic structures of life will spawn the "Biological Age," said Kenneth Cox, a researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Johnson Space Center. (United Press International 6/25/02) http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=25062002-015948-3055r Thinking Small Nanotech: Will Small Stuff Become Big Business? The next technological revolution may be so small you won't be able to see it. But that's not keeping venture capitalists and major American companies from investing in what they think is the next big thing. The revolution in question, according to its proponents, is nanotechnology - a broad term covering a wide range of small-scale scientific advancements, from medicine to computing and military defense. (ABC News 6/26/02) http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/DailyNews/nanotechnology020626.html INT Media Acquires Jupiter Research. INT Media Group, Inc. (NASDAQ:INTM), the parent company of this publication, has purchased the remaining research and events businesses from Internet research firm Jupiter Media Metrix (NASDAQ:JMXI) for $250,000, the companies said Friday. The sectors include application service providers, online advertising & Web marketing, Internet Service Providers, Internet technology developments, IT investment strategies and nanotechnology advancements. The company also owns about 175 technology industry e-mail newsletters, which number about 5 million subscribers in all. (Internet.com 6/21/02) http://www.internetnews.com/ent-news/article.php/1369431 NanoMem said to exceed flash density one-hundredfold. Rolltronics Corp. said Monday (June 24) that it is developing a nanoscale thin-film memory that stores data in molecule-sized "cylinders" that retain data when power is removed. The NanoMem technology has the potential to store 10 to 100 times more data in the same space as current flash memory, and can be produced at a much lower cost, the company said. (EETimes 6/25/02) http://eet.com/at/news/OEG20020625S0028 Silicon Is Slow. Researchers seeking to significantly boost computer speed are looking into other materials and technologies that operate on a much smaller scale than silicon, and promise to avoid power-limiting factors such as the sequential nature of silicon chip operation. One form of computing being researched takes its cue from DNA, which encodes vast amounts of data and can be used to generate all solutions to a problem at the same time. Molecular electronics, in which circuits are built from carbon and other elements, can speed up computing while still adhering to classical computing architecture, and machines that combine both silicon and molecular circuitry could be designed before the end of the decade. (Popular Science 06/02) http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/article/0,12543,241609,00.html July 1, 2002 at 10:00 p.m. on TLC (check local listings) will be airing 'Science at the Edge.'A new documentary series of just arriving future technologies. Episode 1: Beating the Odds. Robert A. Freitas Jr., Research Scientist, Zyvex Corporation; Author of "Nanomedicine." Ralph Merkle, Ph.D., Nanotechnology Theorist, Zyvex Corporation. Repeats TLC Tuesday, July 2, 2002 at 1:00 a.m. ET/PT http://tlc.discovery.com/schedule/series.jsp?series=10168 Nanotech Tubes Could Form Basis of New Drug-Purification Techniques. When manufacturing medicines, it is especially important to provide a pure product. This task is often complicated because many drug molecules are produced in so-called chiral pairs (nonsuperposable mirror images) of which only one form is beneficial; the other may be useless or even harmful. A new technique detailed today in the journal Science provides a novel approach to this problem. Scientists describe a smart membrane containing tiny silica nanotubes that is capable of separating two forms of a cancer-fighting drug molecule. (Scientific American 6/21/02) http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000F1DCC-5639-1D12-8B07809EC588EE DF&pageNumber=1&catID=1 University at Buffalo Materials Researchers Develop Device for "Ultrasmall" Data Storage. Two University at Buffalo materials researchers have developed an extremely sensitive nanoscale device that could shrink ultra-high-density storage devices to record sizes. The magnetic sensor, made of nickel and measuring only a few atoms in diameter, could increase data storage capacity by a factor of a 1,000 or more and ultimately could lead to supercomputing devices as small as a wristwatch, according to Harsh Deep Chopra, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, and Susan Hua, director of UB's Bio-Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems Facility and adjunct professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering, in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. (University at Buffalo 6/26/02) http://www.buffalo.edu/news/fast-execute.cgi/article-page.html?article=57590 009 Nanotech Runs Behind Semiconductors, MEMS in Optical IC Market. The market for integrated circuits (ICs) used in optical switches will be worth more than $5 billion in 2006, according to a report by Pioneer Consulting, and nanotechnology is one of three chip technologies vying for a piece of the pie. The report, "Optical Chips: Enabling Technologies and Markets from Semiconductors to MEMS, Nano-Optics and Photonic Crystals," predicts that total worldwide optical IC sales will increase from $654.3 million in 2002 to $5.4 billion in 2006. (Internetnews.com 6/27/02) http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/1377751 Federal tech transfer turns to nanotech. National laboratories and federal entities such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are paying more attention to nanotechnology as they look to commercialize ongoing research, speakers said Thursday at a conference. Sandia National Laboratories, in Livermore, Calif., is even creating a Center for Integrated Nanotechnology to focus its efforts, said Mark Allen, a manager in the lab's technology commercialization office. The center would have facilities at both Sandia and at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, he told a session at the NanoSpace 2002 conference. (United Press International 6/27/02) http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=27062002-015706-2683r Using an ultrafast laser spectroscopy technique, scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have tracked - and timed - the flow of vibrational energy through certain molecules in their liquid state. "To understand chemistry at the most fundamental level, we have to understand the transfer of vibrational energy," said Dana Dlott, a professor of chemistry at Illinois. "Lots of scientists can put energy into a molecule and watch it drain away, but with our technique we can actually see where the energy goes." (University of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign 6/20/02) http://www.news.uiuc.edu/scitips/02/0620laser.html Bioforce Nanosciences Inc. Receives SBIR/NIH/NIAID Grant for Pathogen Sensor Development. The NIAID/NIH grant, for approximately $250,000, will be used to create sensors for targeted pathogens. In this Phase I project, BioForce will develop a NanoArrayT that can detect simulants of biological warfare agents. Future studies will develop a comprehensive NanoArrayT panel to detect several known biological warfare agents, which can serve to protect the public and military personal from future threats. (Bioforce Nanoscience Inc. news release 6/25/02) http://www.bioforcenano.com/readmore7.html Nanoscale detector checks out cell biology. A team of scientists from Cornell University, US, has created a nanofabricated electrochemical detector array to help uncover the secrets of cell biology. The researchers used the device to look at exocytosis in single chromaffin cells."Exocytosis is the mechanism by which cells release molecules such as neurotransmitters, hormones and various other compounds," Manfred Lindau, an associate professor at Cornell." (Nanotechweb.org 6/24/02) http://nanotechweb.org/articles/news/1/6/16/1 New 'fuzzy' polymers could improve the performance of electronic brain implants. Electrodes implanted in the brain may one day enable the blind to see and the paralyzed to walk. University of Michigan researchers have developed a new polymer surface that could improve the interface between these implants and living tissue, enhancing the longevity and performance of the devices. (EurekAlert 6/27/02) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-06/acs-np061802.php Researchers get big results from science of the small. It's a Dick Tracy world: cell phones are wristwatch-size, televisions are a quarter-inch thick, swimming pool chemicals take care of themselves, pre-made salads last nearly forever in the fridge, diapers are silky to the touch and cancer is treatable. Sound futuristic? Some of those products are already available, and others are in development today. They're all possible thanks to very different inventions by Michigan companies that have one thing in common: nanotechnology. (Detroit Free Press 6/25/02) http://www.freep.com/money/tech/newman25_20020625.htm JMAR Technologies Inc. (Nasdaq:JMAR), a provider of precision manufacturing equipment for the microelectronics industry, announced today that its JMAR Precision Systems (JPSI) microelectronics instrument division in Chatsworth, Calif. has sold and delivered two of its new line of sub-nanometer-resolution Nano-Zoom(TM) metrology systems to a leading internationally-recognized manufacturer of computer hard disk drives (HDDs). The company's Nano-Zoom(TM) systems enable hard disk drive manufacturers to see and measure molecular-size features on the surfaces of their products while processing disk media. The systems consist of extremely sensitive, high-resolution, material surface scanning probe microscopes (SPMs) integrated into JMAR's standard Disk Inspection System (DIS) products. (Stockhouse 6/27/02) http://www.stockhouse.com/news/news.asp?tick=JMAR&newsid=1217016 Chips' future cast Tomorrow's microprocessors could be laser printed. Computer chips of the future could be printed, just like books or banknotes. A new laser-stamping technique could one day produce computer chips smaller, faster and more cheaply than today's chemical-etching technology. With a transparent quartz die and a laser pulse, Stephen Chou and colleagues at Princeton University in New Jersey imprint features only 10 millionths of a millimeter (10 nanometers) wide onto a silicon wafer2. The best photolithography can reproduce features about 130 nanometers wide. (Nature 6/20/02) http://www.nature.com/nsu/020617/020617-7.html See also with graphics at MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/news/769583.asp Window on a Small World. Atomic force microscopy provides eyes, noses, and fingers to explore the world from a molecule's point of view. In 1871, the Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell dreamed up an imaginary "demon" to help him conduct thought experiments by picking up and arranging atoms one at a time. Maxwell's Demon (as the creature came to be known) was a tiny gatekeeper who sat at a door between two chambers and violated the second law of thermodynamics by sending all the fast gas molecules into one chamber and all the slow ones into another. Over the past 15 years, scientists have come close to making their own personal Maxwell's demons to help them see and manipulate atoms and molecules one at a time in the real world. (Chemist at Work June 02 issue) http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/tcaw/11/i06/html/06inst.html NIST Open House Showcases Nanotech Research. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) opened the doors of its Gaithersburg campus on June 20 to share its work in nanotechnology with more than 200 researchers from industry, academia and government. The Open House was one of four organized in the past year by the Greater Washington Nanotech Group, with the previous events taking place at the University of Maryland, the Naval Research Laboratory and the National Science Foundation. (Nanotech-Planet 6/21/02) http://www.nanotech-planet.com/briefs/article/0,4028,6551_1369831,00.html On June 14, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham officially announced that the Department plans to proceed with a center for nanoscale science research at Brookhaven. Here's the site. http://www.bnl.gov/nanocenter/ Adding Up With Individual Atoms. Researchers at the University of Michigan's Center for Optical Coherent and Ultrafast Science (FOCUS) and Department of Physics have reported the first demonstration of laser-cooling of individual trapped atoms of different species. This may be an important step in the construction of a future "quantum computer," in which quantum superpositions of inputs are processed simultaneously in a single device. Trapped atoms offer one of the only realistic approaches to precisely controlling the complex quantum systems underlying a quantum computer. (Spacedaily 6/19/02) http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-02q.html Nanotech Initiative Needs Major Interdisciplinary Investment. Manipulating individual atoms and molecules to alter a material's makeup at the most basic level seems more like science fiction than science, but scientists are doing just that, changing everything from the composition of lipsticks and sunblocks to the most advanced medicine and information technology. This science and technology, known as nanotechnology, is carried out on a scale of approximately 1/100,000 the width of a human hair. (Spacedaily 6/20/02) http://www.spacedaily.com/news/nanotech-02r.html Nanospintronics: A Single-Spin Transistor. Spintronics is a relatively new field in which the electron's spin, not just its charge, can be exploited in devices and circuits. The ultimate spintronics degree of control would come from controlling a circuit at the level of a single spin. Physicists at the Institute for Microstructural Sciences (Ottawa) are the first to create a prototype of a single-spin transistor, which consists of a quantum dot connected to spin-polarized leads. (Physics News Update 6/26/02) http://www.aip.org/enews/physnews/2002/split/595-2.html Crystal-ball display renders images in 3D. It looks like the Wicked Witch's crystal ball. Actuality Systems Inc.'s unusual globe-like display renders images that are viewable from any angle, and the company is now trying to conjure interest for its use in medical and molecular modeling applications. It also thinks it can reduce the display's $40,000 cost enough for use in gaming systems. The U.S. Army has also expressed an interest. (EETimes 6/26/02) http://www.eetimes.com/sys/news/OEG20020626S0037 Agere debuts comms-centric 90-nanometer technology. Agere Systems Inc. is leveraging its extensive collection of communications intellectual property for a 90-nanometer ASIC design platform targeted at communications applications. The AGR90 ASIC Platform, announced Wednesday (June 26), can be used to create predesigned, semicustom or fully custom solutions that may include such preexisting functions as standard protocols, serial/deserializer (Serdes) circuits, encoding schemes, digital signal processors, I/O cells, microprocessors, memory and more. By combining these functions with millions of logic gates and memory bits in an area array flip-chip package, design time can be reduced by approximately six months, Agere said. (CommsDesign 6/26/02) http://www.commsdesign.com/story/OEG20020626S0011 Tomorrow's technology points to present-day solutions. Off-key subjects were at the heart of several emerging technology sessions at last week's Design Automation Conference that examined the challenges of next-generation designs while suggesting possible approaches to existing problems. At a session titled "Life after CMOS: Imminent or Irrelevant?" Intel Corp. discussed potential solutions to the problems of CMOS scaling when gate lengths approach 10 nanometers. At "E-Textiles," researchers detailed their work to mesh electronics into clothing. And at "Optics: Lighting the Way to EDA Riches," speakers examined the EDA industry's possible role beyond the design of electronic devices. (EETimes 6/20/02) http://www.eet.com/at/news/OEG20020619S0026 Don't forget to check the Nanotechnology Industries "Feature", as it will be updated in a few days on a nanotech conference thanks to David Forrest. Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com E-mail: "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=19358