X-Message-Number: 20412 From: "Gina Miller" <> Subject: The Nanogirl News~ Date: Thu, 7 Nov 2002 15:16:50 -0800 The Nanogirl News November 7, 2002 Molecular wheel gets a brake. Switch turns microscopic motor on and off. Scientists have redesigned one of nature's molecular machines to make the world's smallest switchable motor. The rotating machine can be turned on and off like a pocket fan - but it is only about 14 millionths of a millimetre across. The invention brings mechanical devices made from single molecules a step closer. Such machines might form part of electronic circuits, carry out delicate surgery on cells or gather solar energy. (Nature Science Update 11/2/02) http://www.nature.com/nsu/021028/021028-3.html Tech group gets federal money for nanotechnology initiative. Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Southeastern Pennsylvania said Friday it has received a $600,000 earmark from the U.S. Department of Education to develop an associate degree program in nanotechnology involving a number of area colleges. (Philadelphia Business Journal 11/1/02) http://philadelphia.bizjournals.com/philadelphia/stories/2002/10/28/daily67. html Next Generation Data Storage on the Nanometer-Scale. Imagine having all of the information recorded on a stack of 1,540 CDs on a disk the size of a single CD. Or visualize having all of the information recorded on a stack of 154 CDs written on a one-inch square chip. New probe microscopy techniques and new organic materials could be combined in the next generation data storage technology - which will be nanometer-scale technology with probable major impact on related storage technologies, University of Arizona optical scientists say. (Cosmicverse News 10/31/02) http://www.cosmiverse.com/news/tech/1002/tech10310203.html Rushford technology explained to MnDTED Commissioner Yanisch. The Minnesota Commissioner of Trade and Economic Development, Rebecca Yanish, toured southeast Minnesota last week. The longest stop was in Rushford Sept. 25 where she toured TRW, met with staff members of the Southeast Minnesota Development Corporation, then settled into a small luncheon group at Sprigs for briefings.Reports came from Kevin Klungtvedt on the formation of the Rushford Institute of Nanotechnology and John Brodd of the Aveka Group which will start a nanoparticle manufacturing facility in Rushford next year. The Rushford company name is now Cima Nanotechnologies. It is the result of a merger between Aveka Nanotechnologies and Nanopowders Industries an Israeli company founded in 1997 and backed by the Millenium Material Fund, a venture capital group.(Tri-County Record Online/Rushford.net Nov. 2002) http://www.rushford.net/rushford/myarticles.asp?P=583182&S=366&PubID=10121&E C=0#8115764 Q&A: From the Front Lines of Nanotech. Many scientists are betting on nanotechnology to deliver new levels of control over engineering materials. Philip Wong, senior manager of nanoscale materials processes at IBM Research Laboratory, explains why he's excited about the ability to manipulate properties of materials less than 100 nanometers in size. (PC Magazine 10/29/02) http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,640410,00.asp Researchers produce strong copper that retains ductility. Extreme cold and high heat help optimize the metal's microstructure. Combining old-fashioned metal-working techniques with modern nanotechnology, engineers at The Johns Hopkins University have produced a form of pure copper metal that is six times stronger than normal, with no significant loss of ductility. The achievement, reported in the Oct. 31 issue of the journal "Nature," is important because earlier attempts to strengthen a pure metal such as copper have almost always resulted in a material that is much less ductile, meaning it is more likely to fracture when it is stretched. Strength, on the other hand, refers to how much stress a metal can tolerate before its shape is permanently deformed. (EurekAlert 10/30/02) http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-10/jhu-rps102902.php Scientists to further explore nanohybrid structures. A select group of 60 scientists from across the country will convene at the University Friday, Nov. 15 and Saturday, Nov. 16, to discuss the emerging field of nanohybrid structures. Nanoscientists build these structures to develop smaller, faster computers, accelerate drug discovery and development, and spur a variety of other potential applications. (U of Chicago Chronicle 10/24/01) http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/021024/nanohybrid.shtml Nanoparticles save paper. A sprinkling of slaked lime conserves old documents. Tiny particles of a strong alkali are helping preserve historical documents. Piero Baglioni of the University of Florence and his coworkers have treated manuscripts dating back to the fourteenth century with a sprinkling of calcium hydroxide grains just 200 millionths of a millimetre across. The nanoparticles of what is commonly called slaked lime penetrate between paper's fibres. They combat the ravages of acids introduced when paper is made, without altering documents' apperance1. The technique is cheap and green and could also be used on canvas. (Nature Science Update 10/22/02) http://www.nature.com/nsu/021021/021021-1.html Speed reader. Craig Venter sequenced the genome in record time, ushering in a new era of drug discovery. Next step: fast, cheap scans of your DNA that you can take home. The gene guru J. Craig Venter stunned the scientific world in 2000 when his company, Celera Genomics, deciphered the entire human genetic code in little more than two years with an R&D Budget of $270 million. A consortium of U.S. government researchers took 13 years and spent $2.5 billion to reach the same finish line. (The government says it spent only $300 million on the actual sequencing of the genome.) But Venter says that even his rapid-fire breakthrough didn't come nearly fast enough. (Forbes via Yahoo 10/30/02) http://biz.yahoo.com/fo/021030/speed_reader_2.html Nanotechnology, the process of manipulating matter on an atomic or molecular scale, has been a staple of science fiction for a decade. Now it's beginning to break out into real science, and some technology critics are already starting to complain. If they're listened to, the most important technology of the 21st century may be strangled in its crib. (Fox News Channel 10/31/02) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,67119,00.html Nanocrystals, Quantum Dots, and Nature's Own Assembly Line. Chemist Paul Alivisatos's pioneering research into tiny nanocrystals and nanorods is paying off in big ways. Chemically-pure clusters of anywhere from 100 to 100,000 atoms, Alivisatos's nanocrystals and nanorods have myriad applications that impact the macroworld - from tagging biological samples for genetic analysis and drug discovery to the creation of plastic solar cells that can be painted onto any surface. (Berkeley College of Engineering 11/1/02) http://www.coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/1102/alivisatos.html Supercomputer for a day. Thousands of computers across Canada have been interconnected to create a supercomputer that only operated for a day. The 1,360 processor strong supercomputer was used to tackle a problem in computational chemistry that would otherwise take years to complete...Professor Schaeffer said the supercomputer could be used up to three days of every month, helping Canadian scientists tackle problems in climate prediction, genomics, protein folding and nanotechnology. (BBC 11/6/02) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2400811.stm Scientists Use Microscope to View Magnetism at Atomic Level. Scientists and engineers build the transistors that run televisions, radios and similar electronic devices based on the moving electric charges of electrons. But the electron also has another key property: a magnetic "spin" that scientists believe could be exploited to develop faster, smaller and more efficient devices. The first step is to determine the magnetic properties of materials that could be used to create futuristic nanoscale devices, a task that has escaped scientists until now. (Ohio university 11/6/02) http://www.ohio.edu/researchnews/science/nanotech_02.html World record for silicon light-emission. Silicon is ideal for electronic applications, but its inability to emit light has limited its potential for optical processing. Now researchers at STMicroelectronics in Italy have increased silicon's light-emitting efficiency by a factor of a hundred, making silicon competitive with conventional light-emitting semiconductors such as gallium arsenide. This advance, achieved by adding rare-earth metals to silicon, will allow optical and electrical functions to be combined on a single silicon chip. Researchers at ST's Corporate Technology R&D Organization in Catania, Sicily, carried out the work. They implanted ions of rare-earth metals such as erbium and cerium into a layer of silicon rich oxide (silicon dioxide enriched with silicon nanocrystals 1-2 nanometres in diameter). The frequency of the light emitted by the silicon depended on which metal was chosen. (Physics Web 11/5/02) http://physicsweb.org/article/news/6/11/2 One-way transport in quantum dots. Rectifiers are devices that only allow movement in one direction. Examples include self-winding wristwatches and rectifiers in electrical circuits. Even though the exact mechanism is different for each, all rectifiers share a common principle: the rectification is based on an asymmetry in the system that makes it much easier for motion to occur in one direction than another...Now Keiji Ono of Tokyo University in Japan and co-workers have developed an entirely different rectification mechanism in which the spin of the electrons plays a crucial role (K Ono et al. 2002 Science 297 1313-1317). Their quantum rectifier, which consists of two weakly coupled quantum dots, has two important advantages: it is fully controllable and it is capable of blocking current entirely in one direction. (nanotechweb.org 11/01/02) http://nanotechweb.org/articles/feature/1/11/1/1 Thinner chips with everything. Engineers have crossed a symbolic barrier with a new way to make microchips with transistors that are a thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair or as small as a flu virus. The 90-nanometre width is regarded as a major milestone because scientists believe it will eventually lead to the production of transistors with atomic level dimensions. (BBC 11/6/02) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/2404599.stm Nanotechnology News TV. Finally, someone with vision has stepped to the fore and is launching a revolutionary news service all about Nanotechnology. I would like to direct you to the new streaming video news program website that is just about to launch - see http://www.nanonews.tv/ Take a look at the short video segments, located under "Nano in the AM" - the password for the demonstration segments is "nano" (Rocky Rawstern Nanotechnology Now 11/6/02) http://nanotech-now.com/nano-news-tv.htm Nanotechnology industry's next feature: Invasion of the lawyers. Several law firms are joining a growing group that sees opportunities in nanotechnology. A firm in Texas and another in Minneapolis recently opened their nanotech practices within a week of one another. Each offers something unusual - a team of lawyers with degrees in engineering, or experience nurturing life science or high-tech startups, or an understanding of the patent office. (Small Times 11/7/02) http://www.smalltimes.com/document_display.cfm?document_id=4975 Researchers stamp out polymer nanowires. A team of scientists has used micromoulding in capillaries and soft-embossing to stamp out nanowires and nanodots from conducting and semiconducting polymers. (nanotechweb.org 11/7/02) http://nanotechweb.org/articles/news/1/11/4/1 Nanodiagnostic chip to debut. NANOBIOTECH Sdn Bhd, the tentatively-named joint venture company between Open Source Systems Sdn Bhd (OSS) and US-based Nano DiagnostiX Inc, plans to produce a working prototype of a nanodiagnostic microarray chip within six months. "Within a year, the chip is expected to hit the US and the European markets, of which command about 70 to 80 per cent of the worldwide microarray chip market," Open Source Systems Sdn Bhd's founder, chairman, and chief executive Azman Firdaus Shafii informs Business Computing recently. However, no target revenue was given. (NSTP e-media 11/8/02) http://www.nst.com.my/TECH/BizComp/NewsAnalysis/20021106120259/wartrevamp Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Extropy member http://www.extropy.org "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20412