January 29th, 2010

An organic transistor that mimics a brain synapse

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 12:10 am

Categories: Computers & Internet, Nanotechnology

Tags: Transistor, Synapse, NOMFET, Semiconductors, Hardware, Chris Jablonski

For the first time, nanotechnology researchers in France have developed a hybrid nano-particle-organic transistor that can mimic the main functionalities of a synapse.

Credit: Mil-Tech.com

The NOMFET (Nanoparticle Organic Memory Field-Effect Transistor), as it’s known, is an organic device made of a molecule called pentacene (an organic semiconductor) and gold nano-particles. It exhibits the main behavior of a biological spiking synapse and can lead to a new generation of neuro-inspired computers, capable of responding in a manner similar to the nervous system.

As Mil-Tech reports, Dominique Vuillaume, a research director at CNRS (the French National Science Agency) involved with the project said; “Basically, we have demonstrated that electric charges flowing through a mixture of an organic semiconductor and metallic nano-particles can behave the same way as neurotransmitters through a synaptic connection in the brain.”

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January 17th, 2010

Texas scientists develop 'nanodragster'

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 2:14 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology

Tags: Vehicle, Scientist, Productivity, Manufacturing, Chris Jablonski

Scientists at Rice University’s Richard E. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology are reporting the development of a “nanodragster” that measures only 1/50,000th the width of a human hair. The research may speed the course toward development of a new generation of futuristic molecular machines.

The vehicle (pictured above to the left) resembles a hot-rod in shape (right) and can outperform previous nano-sized vehicles. In fact, it was the same Rice team that developed the world’s first nanocar– essentially a 4 by 3 nanometer arrangement of complex molecules with buckyball wheels (spheres created with 60 carbon atoms) that made it behave like a vehicle. The tiny car scooted around a gold surface when exposed to heat or an electric field gradient.

The original nanocar developed by researchers at Rice University (Credit: Y. Shira/Rice University)

But it had some drawbacks. The scientists had limited control of the car’s movement and the nanoscopic resolution tools available at the time (2005) for studying the car’s range of motions and capabilities were also constrained.

The new hot-rod–about half that size of the nanocar–delivers a performance boost by addressing some of these problems. The front end has a smaller axle and wheels made of special materials that roll easier. The rear wheels sport a longer axle but are still made of buckyballs, which provide strong surface grip. According to the scientists, these changes result in a “nanodragster” that can operate at lower temperatures than a regular nanocar and possibly has has better agility, paving the way for better molecular machines.

Such nano-machines may one day be used to transport cargo such as drugs or for manufacturing computer circuits and other electronic components.

James Tour, Kevin Kelly and colleagues detail their research in; “Molecular Machinery: Synthesis of a “Nanodragster”, a report published in ACS’ Organic Letters.

January 12th, 2010

2010 tech predictions: a futurist roundup

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 9:35 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Defense & Security, Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Leisure, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Science & Nature, Social Sciences, Space & Aerospace, Uncategorized, Wireless & Telecom

Tags: Chris Jablonski

Sure, you’ve already read enough tech predictions for 2010 and probably have some of your own. But there’s one subset of the tech community that makes a living prognosticating- futurists. So it’s worth a post to highlight a few thought-provoking and entertaining ideas from a few experts. (Note: I would’ve posted this a lot earlier but was in Brazil on vacation for the last few weeks).

Jump the Curve

#7: An amateur scientist using cheap supercomputers accessed through “the cloud” will make a major scientific discovery. Her discovery will have initially been dismissed by peer-reviewed journals but hailed by the growing number of “open-science” advocates.

#13: Hype surround algae’s promise as the “bio-fuel of the future” will grow hot after a breakthrough in the field of synthetic biology. Environmental advocates, however, will draw parallels between the advent of the “designer bacteria” (which is used to convert algae into fuel) and the creation of genetically modified organisms. The issue of “Frankenbugs” will gain traction in the media.

#19: A conservative state legislator will introduce legislation prohibiting healthy individuals (i.e. non-injured combat veterans) from using implanted brain-neural technology to control objects outside their body. The bill will die in committee but the author and other supporters vow to make it a campaign issue in 2010.

Read all of Jack Uldrich’s 2010 Technology Forecast & Predictions

Ross Dawson

1. Information Intensity
We will soon consume more media than there are waking hours, by virtue of multi-channeling at most times. Billions of people and places will be media producers, including video streaming from most points of view on the world. We are just at the dawn of an incomprehensible daily onslaught of news and information – some valuable, much useless.

5. Culture Jamming
Remix culture will surge, with everybody taking and jamming up slices of everything and anything to express themselves, while intellectual property law fails to keep pace. Every culture on the planet will reach everywhere – the only culture we will know is a global mashed-up emergent culture that changes by the minute.

9. Augmented Humans
More than ever before, we can transcend our human abilities. Traditional memory aids are supplemented by augmented reality glasses or contact lenses, thought interfaces allow us to control machines, exoskeletons give us superhuman power. Machines will not take over humanity… because they will be us.

Read all of Ross’ Top 10 trends for the 2010s: the most exciting decade in human history

Read the rest of this entry »

December 24th, 2009

Scientists create world's first molecular transistor

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:39 pm

Categories: Computers & Internet, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology

Tags: Transistor, Molecule, Semiconductors, Hardware, Chris Jablonski

Scientists from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, have succeeded in creating the first transistor made from a single molecule.

Credit: Hyunwook Song and Takhee Lee

The team showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor. The researchers adjusted the voltage, allowing them to raise and lower the molecule’s energy states and demonstrated that it could be used exactly like a traditional transistor at the molecular level. The team published their findings in Nature.

“It’s like rolling a ball up and over a hill, where the ball represents electrical current and the height of the hill represents the molecule’s different energy states,” said Mark Reed, the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale. “We were able to adjust the height of the hill, allowing current to get through when it was low, and stopping the current when it was high.” The result is similar functionality to regular transistors, but with a molecule a few atoms in size.

The work builds on previous research Reed did in the 1990s, which demonstrated that individual molecules could be trapped between electrical contacts.

While the new transistor is a scientific breakthrough, Reed conceded that practical applications such as smaller and faster “molecular computers”—if possible at all—are many decades away.

“We’re not about to create the next generation of integrated circuits,” he said. “But after many years of work gearing up to this, we have fulfilled a decade-long quest and shown that molecules can act as transistors.”

Remarkable yes. But is it the ultimate in electronic device miniaturization? Earlier this month, an international team from Finland and Australia reported the development of a single-atom transistor.

In recent years, engineers have been moving away from silicon to exotic materials such as graphene to slash transistor size, with 10 atoms the record last year. The molecular transistor reduces that figure down to the single digits, possibly just one nanometer in length.

December 12th, 2009

Manhattan Beach Project to reverse aging by 2029

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:37 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature, Social Sciences

Tags: Longevity, Compound, Cell, Spindler, Mice, Hardware, Peripherals, Chris Jablonski

Human life expectancy may see a hockey stick growth curve in the coming years as a result of leaps made in fields such as molecular nanotechnology, gene therapy, robotics, and regenerative medicine.

Seizing the potential for radical longevity, an effort dubbed the “Manhattan Beach Project“, is a focused and targeted “all-out assault on the world’s biggest killer- aging,” according to its founder David Kekich, President/CEO of Maximum Life Foundation.

Sculpture of Methuselah, a 969 year-old man mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Credit: www.answersingenesis.org)

The project was spawned during an international scientific conference nine years ago in Manhattan Beach, California (hence the namesake that only in ambition is similar to the Manhattan Project).

It consists of a group of researchers and entrepreneurs that have for years been collaborating on a scientific road-map to intervene in the human aging process and are disclosing their plan “to start saving up to 100,000 lives lost to aging every day, by 2029.”

In November ‘09, Kekich organized a Longevity Summit that brought together a number of leading scientists, visionaries, and experts on human aging and longevity for a discussion on the state-of-the-art research and the implications of their discoveries. Their goal is to develop a scientific and business strategy to make human life extension a real possibility within the next two decades. Here’s a video of Kekich explaining the project.

Hosted by the Maximum Life Foundation and sponsored by the Life Extension Foundation, also a non-profit organization dedicated to longevity research, the summit opened with futurist Ray Kurzweil, who explained, “We are very close to the tipping point in human longevity. We are about 15 years away from adding more than one year of longevity per year to remaining life expectancy.”

Over the next three days, experts presented their latest research at a series of conference sessions. As H+ (The Manhattan Beach Project to End Aging by 2029 ) and Reason.com (The Methuslelah Manifesto) report, below are conference highlights: Read the rest of this entry »

December 7th, 2009

World's smallest 'snowman' measures 1/5th the width of a human hair

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:01 pm

Categories: Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags:

Utilizing laboratory tools designed for manipulating nano-particles, a scientist at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) in West London has created a miniature snowman that measures just 0.01 mm across, or about 1/5th the width of a human hair.

The snowman was made from two tin beads normally used to calibrate electron microscopes. Platinum was used to weld the beads together, and a focused ion beam was used to mill the eyes and smile. The nose, just under 1 µm wide (or 0.001 mm), is platinum deposited by an ion beam.

The hand-made snowman was mounted on a silicon cantilever from an atomic force microscope whose sharp tip ‘feels’ surfaces creating topographic surveys at almost atomic scales.

In addition to the Atomic Force Microscope cantilevers, to create the nano-snowman required a SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices) magnetometer–a device that measures extremely small magnetic fields and has applications in spintronics, single particle detection, nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), and quantum information processing. Also used were quantum hall probes that measure magnetic properties. You can learn more about all three techniques on NPL’s site.

Dr. David Cox, a member of the Quantum Detection group at the laboratory, created the snowman, took the picture above, and posted this video with a holiday message:

November 22nd, 2009

The surgeons of tomorrow: Miniaturized robots that go inside you

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 4:28 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Robotics

Tags: Bot, Robots, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

Before the advent of laparoscopic or keyhole surgery in the 70’s, operations such as a stomach bypass or gall bladder removal required large incisions and long periods for recovery. The next chapter further minimizes the invasiveness of surgical procedures via robots that are millimeters in size that infiltrate our bodies through the ears, eyes and lungs, to take tissue samples, deliver drugs, or install medical devices.

Brad Nelson, a roboticist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EHT) in Zurich, recently told New Scientist; “It’s not impossible to think of this happening in five years. I’m convinced it’s going to get there.”

Hurdles to overcome include the development of new mechanisms for propulsion and power supply on a miniature scale, which are also prerequisites to the loftier idea of nanoscale medical robots swimming in our bloodstream.

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November 12th, 2009

Top three Star Trek-style holodeck experiences

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 12:24 am

Categories: Computers & Internet, Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature, Space & Aerospace

Tags: User Interaction, 3D, Pixel, StarCAVE, Audio System, Tech Spec, Projectors, Virtual Reality, Hardware, Components

Surround 3D TV is making its way to your living room. To get a sense of what it may look and sound like, look no further than the cutting edge of virtual reality taking shape at academic research centers outfitted with world class data visualization facilities. In this post, we’ll take a look at three (ok, four) of the most remarkable scientific visualization technologies.

Allosphere: University of California, Santa Barbara

The AlloSphere is a spherical space in which immersive, virtual environments allow researchers to convert large data sets into experiences of sight and sound. For example, it allows researchers to “fly” through a hydrogen atom while hearing sonified features of the wavefunction of its single electron to help describe invisible processes of nature.

The facility consists of a 30-foot diameter sphere built inside a 3-story cube that’s nearly echo-free. Inside the chamber are two spherical hemispheres that are constructed of perforated aluminum designed to be optically opaque and acoustically transparent. A 7-foot-wide bridge runs across the center, supporting the users. High-resolution video projectors can project images across the entire inner surface enabling seamless stereo-optic 3D projection.

The Allosphere has more than 500 audio components that hang suspended in rings just outside the aluminum shell and are connected to multiple Gigabit Ethernet LAN fibers that lead to a server farm consisting of seven Hewlett Packard 9400 workstations (as of April 2009).

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October 25th, 2009

Carbon nanotubes: Great for agriculture, but for humans?

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 11:10 pm

Categories: Engineering & Innovation, Health & Medicine, Nanotechnology, Science & Nature

Tags: Agriculture, Nanotube, Carbon Nanotube, Health Care, Seed, Nanotechnology, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

In what can eventually kick up a firestorm similar to the genetically modified food controversy, the emerging field of “nano-agriculture” is making headlines.  It involves the use of nano-particles — wisps 1/50,000th the width of a human hair — in agriculture and could have beneficial affects for crops, say scientists.

Tomato seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes (right) sprouted and grew faster than unexposed seeds. (Credit: The American Chemical Society)

University of Arkansas researchers report that tomato seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes (CNTs) germinated faster and grew into larger, heavier seedlings than other seeds. That growth-enhancing effect could be a boon for biomass production for plant-based biofuels and other agricultural products, they suggest.

Considerable scientific research is underway to use nanoparticles — wisps 1/50,000th the width of a human hair — in agriculture. The goals of “nano-agriculture” include improving the productivity of plants for food, fuel, and other uses.

The scientists report the first evidence that CNTs penetrate the thick outer coating of seeds, and support water uptake inside seeds, a process which can affect seed germination and growth of tomato seedlings.The nanotube-exposed seeds sprouted up to two times faster than control seeds and the seedlings weighed more than twice as much as the untreated plants.

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October 13th, 2009

Resilient cockroach-inspired robot survives large falls, dashes off

Posted by Chris Jablonski @ 10:12 pm

Categories: Energy & Environment, Engineering & Innovation, Nanotechnology, Robotics, Science & Nature

Tags: IEEE Spectrum, Robots, Emerging Technologies, Chris Jablonski

IEEE Spectrum writes of a small resilient robot created by Paul Birkmeyer and Prof. Ronald Fearing at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab at UC Berkeley.

Aptly called DASH (Dynamic Autonomous Sprawled Hexapod), the six-legged insect-inspired robot can reach speeds of 1.5 meters per second and is flexible/strong enough to be dropped from a height of 28 meters without breaking. A single DC motor powers the legs and a small servomotor to slightly deform the robot’s body, allowing it to make turns.

DASH was created using a fabrication process called smart composite microstructures, or SCM. Developed by UC Berkeley researchers, the process is quick, inexpensive, and purpose-built for the design challenges of microrobots.

SCM allows for complicated, functional folded structures that move using elastic deformation rather than through the use of traditional mechanical elements like pin joints or bearings. It integrates large flexible joints, created by a laser micro-machining and lamination, with novel actuators. The result is a robot made up of composite materials that can not only withstand a drop from a tall building, but also immediately dash off, undamaged.

DASH is but one of several ongoing projects underway at the Biomimetic Millisystems Lab. For instance, check out the synthetic gecko adhesive which cleans itself during use, as the natural gecko does. Or the Micromechanical Flying Insect (MFI) Project, an effort to develop a 25 mm (wingtip-to-wingtip) device capable of sustained autonomous flight.

Among the goals of the researchers is to; “Harness features of animal manipulation, locomotion, sensing, actuation, mechanics, dynamics, and control strategies to radically improve millirobot capabilities.”