"Silicon chips could become even more densely packed with 
    transistors thanks to a breakthrough that carves features 
    in silicon that are many times smaller than the wavelength 
    of the light used to make them."

   "The new approach produces grids of parallel lines just 25 
    nanometers wide using light with a wavelength of 351 nm. 
    The grids are not functional circuits but could be made 
    into working chips by adding extra small features."

NewScientist.com::Shrinking chip could keep us on track with Moore's law

[20 August 2008, top]

   "For those of you who haven yet heard of the N-Prize, the 
    N-Prize is a £9,999.99 (sterling) cash prize which can be 
    claimed by any individual, or group, who are able to prove 
    that they have put into orbit a small satellite. The satellite 
    must weigh between 9.99 and 19.99 grams, and must orbit the 
    Earth at least 9 times. This project must be done within a 
    budget of £999.99 (sterling)."

   "In order to be eligible for the award, the winning team must complete 
    the challenge before 19:19:09 (GMT) on 19 September 2011."

The Space Fellowship is an "international news and information network dedicated to the development of the aerospace industry."

   Q: "Do you think there is a genuine market for nano-satellites 
       or is this more of a 'stunt' to get attention towards 
       private spaceflight?" -- International Space Fellowship

   A: "Yes and no, on both counts. I suspect there is a use for 
       nano-satellites. If someone today can put something in orbit 
       which takes a single fuzzy picture of the earth, then tomorrow 
       someone will launch a nanosatellite that sends back live video 
       in visible and infra-red. Before you know it, tiny satellites 
       will be doing all kinds of neat stuff, either in isolation or 
       as part of a swarm." -- N-Prize founder Dr. Paul Dear

SpaceFellowship.com::N-Prize Founder, Dr. Paul Dear Talks to the Space Fellowship about Starting up a Space Prize (with a Bottle of Pinot Grigio)

[04 August 2008, top]

   "The future of nanotechnology is extraordinary.  When you 
    start crossing it with synthetic biology and artificial 
    intelligence and so on, science fiction looks very pale 
    in comparison."

1st- and 2nd-generation Nanotechnology is happending now.

   "From March 2006 to February 2007, reckons the Project 
    on Emerging Nanotechnologies, the number of manufactured 
    goods using nanotech tripled to 600."--Forbes.com

Forbes.com::Political Risk Watch: Nanotechnology

[24 July 2008, top]

   "Imagine a robotic David Beckham six times smaller than 
    an amoeba playing with a 'soccer ball' no wider than a 
    human hair ... with all of the action happening on a 
    field the size of single grain of rice."

Nano-scale robots are nanobots. According to NIST.gov, "about 200 nanobots could stretch in a line across the top of a plain M&M candy."

[20 July 2008, top]

Adams is pleading with young people when he says, "Be a Scientist and Save the World." He came right out and said that it's not going to be him (or his generation) that is going to make the significant discoveries to save the world--it's going to be some kid in Arizona and some kid in Illinois and some kid in Texas, etc.

I don't consider nano- a buzz-prefix. Yes, lots of stuff gets labeled nano- when it shouldn't, but nanotechnology/nanoscience is happening world-wide.

The homepage for the Center for Responsible Nanotechology (CRN) starts with the following.

   "The next Industrial Revolution is right around the corner. 
   Fourth generation nanotechnology -- molecular manufacturing 
   -- will radically transform the world, and the people, of 
   the early 21st century. Whether that transformation will 
   be peaceful and beneficial or horrendously destructive is 
   unknown. Although nanotechnology carries great promise, 
   unwise or malicious use could seriously threaten the 
   survival of the human race."

CRN might be wrong, but then again they could be right.

I'm 51 years of age and I'm a nano-illiterate. And dangerously, so is a large percentage of the U.S. population (and this includes most of our political leaders).

I appreciate Wade Adams preaching "Be a Scientist and Save the World." Young people would be wise to heed his advice.

The discussion continued...

Bob8930 wrote: "Wade and his colleagues are indeed potato farmers."

I replied with: Yes, but if these "potato farmers" make that one significant scientific discovery, then maybe one potato feeds 10 and 10 potatoes feed 100 and so on.

[side-bar] If Wade Adams is a potato farmer, then I don't want to consider what I might be--it would be too depressing.

Bob8930 also wrote: "The energy crisis will be solved by scientists and engineers who use a problem solving approach."

And my reply: I suspect scientists and engineers who work at the nano-scale are going to "use a problem solving approach" just like scientists and engineers of today; however, they are going to have peta-scale computing (exa-scale by 02019?) and a powerful cyber-infrastructure to help them do their science and engineering.

Thank You for seconding Wade's edict: "Be a Scientist and Save the World."

[13 July 2008, top]

Wade Adams was a keynote speaker at the 2007 2nd Annual Arizona Nanotechnology Symposium. Dr. Adams is the Director of the Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Rice University in Texas.

Adams talk was titled, "Nanotechnology and Energy... Be a Scientist and Save the World" and he started it by listing 10 biggest problems facing humanity over the next 50 years: (1) Energy, (2) Water, (3) Food, (4) Environment, (5) Poverty, (6) Terrorism and War, (7) Disease, (8) Education, (9) Democracy and (10) Population. Adams is confident that future scientists will use nanotechnology to solve the energy issue and when they do the other nine problems will go away.

Nanotechnology in 02008 must be looked at using three time frames: "right now, the near future and the coming decades."

We don't need to know anything about nanotechnology in order to learn stuff from Wade Adam's 83-slide nanotechnology presentation.

Kudos to AzNano.org for posting the slideshow to the web.

AzNano.org::http://aznano.org/uploads/Wade_Adams_Keynote.pdf

[10 July 2008, top]

   "It's fascinating, though, to try placing the tiny segment 
    of time in which we live into a larger perspective. Inspired 
    by the iconic film, 'Powers of Ten,' we performed a similar 
    exercise going backward and forward in time by powers of ten, 
    with results that generated a lot of interest on the Internet.

Posthumans?

   "More likely is that our civilization will end, as has every one 
    before it, and that its replacement will be a new civilization 
    built upon the old. But the entities creating and inhabiting 
    that new order will not be humans as we know them. Instead, 
    the majority will be posthumans of some form or other, perhaps 
    human-machine hybrids, bio-engineered chimeras, redundant virtual 
    superintelligences, or something else we can't even imagine."

CRNano.Typepad.com::Powers of Ten (in years!)

[05 July 2008, top]

   posted by Gerald9588  on Jun 12, 2008 at 06:42 AM 

   Bob8930 wrote:  "much more expensive energy."  True statement 
   today, but advances in nanotechnology leads me to agree with 
   Ray Kurzweil's assessment:  "Solar power will be cost-competitive 
   with fossil fuels in just five years, and that within 20 years 
   all our energy will come from clean sources."

   I agree with Bob that college students are paying a hefty 
   price for their futures.

AzCentral.com::Blogs::Sandy55::Sun Devils look to the sun for power.

[12 June 2008, top]

   "Richard Compton and his team at Oxford University, UK, 
    have developed a sensitive technique to measure the levels 
    of capsaicinoids, the substances that make chillies hot, 
    in samples of chilli sauce."

   "The capsaicinoids are adsorbed onto multi-walled carbon 
    nanotube (MWCNT) electrodes. The team measures the current 
    change as the capsaicinoids are oxidised by an electrochemical 
    reaction, and this reading can be translated into Scoville units."

Innovations-Report.de::Chemists measure chilli sauce hotness with nanotubes

[02 June 2008, top]

   This is confirmation of the renewal of the domain 
   you registered with Gandi: AZNANOTECH.NET

   Your domain has been renewed for 1 year(s) without error. 
   The new expiration date is : 2009-06-12 15:56:25

[31 May 2008, top]

Kudos to the University of Albany in New York.

   "Officials at the University at Albany's College of Nanoscale 
    Science and Engineering [CNSE] will award what they say is 
    the world's first degree in nanoeconomics Saturday [17 May 2008]."
       
   "Erez Golan, a 39-year-old graduate student, is scheduled to 
    receive a Ph.D. in nanoscale science, with a concentration 
    in nanoeconomics, at ceremonies at the UAlbany campus. It 
    took him three and a half years to complete."

According to its homepage, CNSE's Albany NanoTech Complex is "$4.2 billion megaplex that has attracted over 250 global corporate partners and it is the most advanced research complex at any university in the world."

CNSE.Albany.edu:: College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering

[19 May 2008, top]

Ironically, I was sick and not able to attend the event.

This year's theme was "Small is Big: Global Perspectives on Nanotechnology." Local, national and international speakers participated.

Flickr.com::MarkGoldstein::AZ Nanotech Symposium

[03 May 2008, top]

   "Engineers have created the first 'active matrix' display 
    using a new class of transparent transistors and circuits, 
    a step toward realizing applications such as e-paper, 
    flexible color monitors and 'heads-up' displays in 
    car windshields."

   "The transistors are made of 'nanowires,' tiny cylindrical 
    structures that are assembled on glass or thin films of 
    flexible plastic. The researchers used nanowires as small 
    as 20 nanometers - a thousand times thinner than a human 
    hair - to create a display containing organic light emitting 
    diodes, or OLEDS. The OLEDS are devices that rival the 
    brightness of conventional pixels in flat-panel television 
    sets, computer monitors and displays in consumer electronics."

Purdue.edu:: Engineers make first 'active matrix' display using nanowires

[16 April 2008, top]

   "Nanosolar, a privately held solar energy company whose backers 
    include Google Inc's co-founders, said it has started to sell 
    what it calls the world's lowest cost solar panel."

   "We have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in 
    Eastern Germany," said Chief Executive Martin Roscheisen 
    in a statement on Nanosolar's Web site. "The first megawatt 
    of our panels will go into a power plant installation there."

Nanosolar uses a "thin-film technology" that requires a small fraction of the "amount of silicon needed in conventional solar cells" and their "technique allows them to make panels profitably for less than $1 per watt."

Fast forward to 2 April 2008...

Nanosolar announced they received an investment of $50 million from French renewable energy group EDF Energies Nouvelles.

[02 April 2008, top]

The theme of 2008 symposium is: "Small is Big: Global Perspectives on Nanotechnology."

AzNano.org:: 3rd Annual Arizona Nanotechnology Cluster Symposium

[24 March 2008, top]

   "This patent describes a method for designing and synthesizing 
    quantum dot nanoparticles with improved uniformity and size. 
    These quantum dots have the potential to create new high 
    efficiency, low-cost solar cells and other optoelectronic 
    devices such as lasers, light emitting diodes (LEDs), and 
    photodetectors. The extremely small size of these structures 
    also makes them useful for medical assays, diagnostic systems, 
    and therapeutic compounds." [source: Spire press release]

On 6 March 2008, Scottsdale Community College had a noon-time lecture about quantum dots.

   "Quantum dots are nanometer-sized (about one 25-millionth of 
    an inch) semiconductor structures which, when exposed to light 
    at predetermined wavelengths, can generate free electrons and 
    create an electrical current.  The confinement of electrons in 
    these minute three-dimensional structures gives scientists the 
    ability to use quantum dots to precisely control the optical 
    properties of various devices, such as a solar cell or a biomarker 
    for detecting cancer." [source: Spire press release]

I'm betting the following is true: "nanoscience and nanotechnology will change the nature of almost every human-made object in the next century." Or as SCC's Dr. Kyle Rawlings said in his quantum dot lecture--think "synthetic chemistry."

LLNL.gov:: Mighty Small Dots

[11 March 2008, top]

   "A New Hampshire company, Nanocomp Technologies of Concord, is
    producing sheets of carbon nanotubes that measure three feet 
    by six feet and promising slabs 100 square feet in area as 
    soon as this summer."

   "The sheets, which the company can produce on its single machine 
    at a rate of one per day, are composed of a series of nanotubes 
    each about a millimeter long, overlapping each other randomly to 
    form a thin mat. The tensile strength of the mat ranges from 200 
    to 500 megapascals--a measure of how tough it is to break. A sheet 
    of aluminum of equivalent thickness, for comparison, has a strength 
    of 500 megapascals. If Nanocomp takes further steps to align the 
    nanotubes, the strength jumps to 1,200 megapascals.

Xconomy.com:: New Hampshire Startup Makes World's Largest Sheets of Carbon Nanotubes

[11 March 2008, top]

Science.Slashdot.org:: Nanotechnology-Powered Wiper-Less Windshield

[23 February 2008, top]

   "Scientists in the US have developed novel brush-like 
    fibres that generate electrical energy from movement."

   "Weaving them into a material could allow designers to 
    create 'smart' clothes which harness body movement to 
    power portable electronic gadgets.'

   "Writing in the journal Nature, the team say that the 
    materials could also be used in tents or other structures 
    to harness wind energy."

There has always been speculation that we'll be wearing intelligent clothing and this is simply an extension of that speculation.

BBC.co.uk:: Nanowires allow 'power dressing'

[14 February 2008, top]

   "The principles of physics, as far as I can see, do not speak 
    against the possibility of maneuvering things atom by atom. 
    It is not an attempt to violate any laws; it is something, 
    in principle, that can be done; but in practice, it has not 
    been done because we are too big."--Richard Feynman

CRNano.org:: Nanotechnology Basics for Students

[04 February 2008, top]

   "Scientists at Arizona State University's Biodesign Institute 
    have developed the world's first gene detection platform made 
    up entirely from self-assembled DNA nanostructures."

Nanotech-Now.com:: Nanotechnology innovation may revolutionize gene detection in a single cell

[14 January 2008, top]

   "The advent of computer modeling capabilities and the arrival 
    of nanotechnology allow us to interrogate the wisdom that 
    nature displays."--John Pietrzyk, founder Biomimetic Connections

Biomimetics example: An algorithm that optimizes Internet servers is based on honeybee colonies.

The following quote comes from Julian Vincent, director of the Center for Biomimetic and Natural Technologies at the University of Bath in England.

   "We should understand the way biology does its engineering and 
    then replace current engineering with the biological version."

Wikipedia.org:: Biomimetics

[02 January 2008, top]

Nanotech SmallBlog Archives: 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2003

[01 January 2008, top]