Nanotechnology

» Normxxx - Nano-transisters

Thu Jun 2, 4:58 PM ET

OTTAWA (AFP) - Canadian engineers unveiled the creation of the world's smallest transistor in which electricity flows through a molecule.

The device is only visible through a powerful microscope, but experts say it may be the biggest development so far in nanotechnology, a science that aims to reduce computers and other devices to minuscule sizes.

"It's a big step forward. It could never have been said before with certainty that a molecule could be a building block and now there's no doubt," Robert Wolkow, head of the research team at the University of Alberta told AFP.

"It's no longer science fiction. There is no question, molecules can be used as electronic components."

The team's results appeared in the scientific journal Nature on Thursday.

Transistors have become widely used in radios, computers, cellular phones and other electronic devices since their creation in 1947. Typically, they are integrated circuits on silicon chips that act as the brains of electronic devices, regulating the flow of electricity.

Wolkow's gizmo, which consists of one to 20 molecules anchored to a silicon wafer, is nearly one thousand times smaller than conventional transistors and requires about one millionth as much energy.

An electrode or metal tip hovers above the molecule. When activated, "you can see a sloping effect, like a comet's tail," he said. "You can see the decay of the electric field from the charge."

The breakthrough is the result of five years of intense work by Wolkow and his colleagues. It took that long just to figure out how to line up the molecules and the small electrodes and control the flow of electricity in repeated experiments at the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton.

But, consumers should not expect to see the technology in gadgets on store shelves anytime soon. There are still many bugs to work, Wolkow said.

First, the metal probe that is "ever so carefully poised over the molecule" is moved into position using a special microscope that costs about one million (800,000 US) dollars.

"Obviously, a transistor that requires a million-dollar microscope to work is impractical," he said.

Also, it takes the team several minutes to turn it on or off. To be useful in a computer, it would need to make the switch in less than a microsecond, or one millionth of a second.

It is more likely the first applications for the device will be as a sensor or medical diagnostic tool that could trigger the release of drugs in specific locations in the human body or detect levels of iron or oxygen in the blood, Wolkow said.

"There's a long way to go to making a molecular computer. That requires interconnecting millions of these entities and have them function collectively," he said.

-- posted by Normxxx

» Kirk - Nono Transistor: Honey, I Shrunk the PC

Honey, I Shrunk the PC

By Mark Anderson
Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1...

02:00 AM Jun. 09, 2005 PT

Scientists at the University of Arizona have discovered how to use quantum mechanics to turn molecules into working transistors in the lab, a breakthrough that might one day lead to high-powered computers the size of a postage stamp.

Results of the as-yet-unpublished study came together just weeks before Canadian researchers performed a similar feat using chemical means. That experiment appeared in the journal Nature last week. Together, the two studies could bring the final frontier in nanocomputing -- a single-molecule transistor -- considerably closer to reality.

See photoThe transistor -- the essential building block of computers -- is a circuit component that amplifies or halts an electrical signal using three leads: The first two leads are like two ends of a garden hose; the third is like a valve that regulates the flow of water through the hose.

When first developed in the 1940s and '50s, individual transistors were fractions of an inch in size.

The smallest transistors in consumer electronics devices today measure 50 nanometers across -- a million times tinier than their postwar progenitors. (This shrinkage would be equivalent to reducing the continental United States to the size of a hot tub.) Taking transistors down another one or two orders of magnitude, to the realm of individual atoms and molecules, requires a generational leap in technology.

Three years ago, scientists at the University of California at Berkeley and Harvard and Cornell universities announced the fabrication of a transistor from a single organic molecule. But these delicate circuits only operated at single-digit temperatures above absolute zero.

Both the Nature paper and the Arizona study propose transistors able to handle room-temperature environments -- although scaling such designs as these up to mass-production levels still will require years of research and development.

The Arizona paper, soon to be submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters, uses the laws of quantum mechanics as the traffic cop that starts or stops current from flowing.

The Arizona team's proposed transistor is a ring-shaped molecule such as benzene. Attaching the two electrical leads to non-opposite sides of the ring -- at, say, the 12 o'clock and 4 o'clock positions -- allows the electrons to flow through the molecular ring and not destructively interfere with one another. (Due to the quantum wavelike laws of nature that electrons follow, attaching electrical leads at the 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock positions causes the current to cancel itself out.)

However, attaching the third lead (the "valve") opposite one of the two electrical leads enables one to turn this wave interference effect on and off -- and thus turn the flow of electricity through the transistor on and off.

"This is the only proposal that I'm aware of ... to use quantum interference effects in a device at room temperature," said Arizona physicist Charles Stafford.

George Kirczenow of Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, finds the Arizona transistor design a promising development in regulating current flow at the nanometer scale.

"It's an interesting and imaginative thing," said Kirczenow. "These guys have done something quite new."

Perhaps the greatest problem with this design -- as with any single-molecule transistor design -- is the assembly of the components. The Arizona transistor, in fact, only exists on the drawing board, although a team of chemists from the University of Madrid will soon begin the lab work necessary to translate these blueprints into working electronics.

Nature paper co-author Gino DiLabio (.pdf) of Canada's National Institute for Nanotechnology likens his team's transistor molecule, styrene, to a poppy seed.

"When you try to take microscopic leads and converge them on a very small object, you can't fit them into that space," DiLabio said. "(Think of) holding a poppy seed between your thumb and your forefinger. And then try to touch it with another finger. You just can't quite get that other finger in there."

DiLabio's group, led by physicist Robert Wolkow of the University of Alberta, gets around the "third finger" problem by finding a system that doesn't need to be physically touched in three places. The third finger is actually the electric field of a nearby atom. The styrene is attached to a silicon surface, with the head of a scanning tunneling microscope, or STM, hovering just overhead.

In the garden hose analogy, the silicon surface and the STM head are the two ends of the hose. Wolkow et al. found that in this environment, an external electric field acted like the valve. The field in this design comes from one or more nearby silicon atoms on the surface. If the neighboring silicon atoms are all electrically neutral, no current flows between the surface and the head of the tunneling microscope. The transistor is shut off. But if one of the silicon atoms carries a net electric charge, the floodgates open and current flows through the circuit. (See accompanying figure.)

"It's a rather big advance, because I don't think anybody has done anything quite that well-controlled with a single molecule," Kirczenow said of the Wolkow transistor.

In conventional microchips today, DiLabio said, many thousands or even millions of electrons are needed to turn the transistor's valve on and off. "But in this case we have the ultimate efficiency," he added. "A single electron."

<img src=http://a1112.g.akamai.net/7/1112/492/200...>

The University of Alberta's single-molecule transistor (the blue and yellow molecule in the middle) enables the flow of current from the silicon surface (below) to the head of a scanning tunneling microscope (above) via a charged atom on the silicon surface (the bright-red atom to the left). Without the electric field from the charged atom, the current doesn't flow.
Photo: Courtesy of the National Research Council of Canada

-- posted by Kirk

» Normxxx - Re: Nono Transistor: Honey, I Shrunk the PC

There are still major problems. As I recall, many years ago at an IBM lab, they managed to get a conductor down to only a few atoms wide-- where the electrons could flow through only one at a time! The problem was, the electrons would often wind up in the surrounding insulator due to quantum tunneling effects! Plus, even if that problem were solved, the flow of electrons at that level would obey quantum laws, NOT electrical laws.

The current generation of smallest transisters is already so small that they must take quantum effects and cosmic radiation into account (using redundancy and error correcting codes).

-- posted by Normxxx

» Normxxx - Scared of nano-pants?

By Kevin Maney, USA TODAY | 22 June 2005

In the late 1950s, my Uncle Jim and his teenage buddies would sometimes roam downtown Binghamton, N.Y., and stop at a little shoe store that had its very own X-ray machine.

It was the latest technology for getting your shoe size. Customers would come in, flick a switch, stick their feet in, and see how their foot bones lined up on a sizing chart. My uncle and his friends did this for kicks. The thing probably spit out hundreds or thousands of times the dosage you'd get from a dental X-ray today.

It's a wonder Uncle Jim never grew a few extra toes.

Contrast that with the naked folks in Chicago a few weeks ago.

A handful of young men and women filed into an Eddie Bauer store and took off their clothes to protest the selling of khaki pants treated with nanotechnology.

So far, there seems to be no reason to think anyone could be hurt by nano-pants, but a lot of people are terribly worried about nanotechnology. They've heard stories that it could self-replicate until it covers the Earth like a virulent kudzu, or that nanotech particles might damage brain cells or cause cancer. They're assuming the worst now, ahead of any proof of danger.

In fact, people today are raising all kinds of alarms about technology. They worry that RFID chips might track our every move until we have less privacy than the Osbournes. Or that genetically modified foods could make us morph like the Fantastic Four. Or that cell phones could be giving us brain cancer and are distracting drivers.

And yet an earlier generation thought dangerous X-rays were fun. What gives?

As it turns out, these things go in cycles, and extreme reactions to technology are nothing new.

"It's been going on as long as innovation has been going on," says Clinton Andrews, past president of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Society on Social Implications of Technology. "The guy selling the innovation is often optimistic. But there's often this fear, and the fear is not entirely groundless."

In fact, IEEE preaches that technologists should welcome the protesters and skeptics because they force issues to the surface early, before something gets out of hand and causes widespread damage. The fears push technologies to improve, and get society to look at consequences and decide what trade-offs are acceptable.

"You always need both camps" - the optimists and the pessimists, says Brian O'Connell, current president of the Society on Social Implications of Technology.

Feelings about technology can also wax and wane with eras. In the 1920s, anything scientific and modern was seen as progress, and progress was good. In the 1960s, the space race lit up a generation of tech believers. In the 1990s, we all thought the Internet was going to "change everything" and swore it was the most significant human development since the Sumerians invented writing.

The crummy economies of the 1930s, 1970s and early 2000s wiped out a lot of that smiley-faced buoyancy. Once in a while, progress would take a devastating blow, such as in 1979, when Three Mile Island threatened to melt through the Earth's crust and make half of Pennsylvania even less habitable than normal. Nuclear power never regained its footing in the USA.

The odd part, though, is that while in the middle of the debate about some technology, it's impossible to know which side is right. History is packed with examples of skepticism that turned out to be unfounded, and sanguinity that was misplaced.

In the early 1900s, natural gas companies struggled to persuade homeowners to switch from wood or coal stoves to gas stoves.

"Gas is invisible and potentially explosive," says Marian Calabro, president of CorporateHistory.net. Wood or coal stoves "were messy and labor-intensive, but at least homeowners knew what they were dealing with."

Gas companies mounted a PR campaign behind the slogan, "Now you're cooking with gas." By 1930, people saw that the homes of early adopters didn't get blown up, and the ease of the use of gas won out over any remaining safety concerns, Calabro says. The fears had been unfounded.

Similarly, when Edward Jenner invented the smallpox vaccine in the late 1700s, the public protested, even setting up anti-vaccination leagues, IEEE's Andrews says. Typists at first resisted carbon paper, thinking it would threaten their jobs. The first electronic computers stirred fears that companies were building "electric brains." IBM CEO Thomas Watson Sr. made speeches saying the machines would never be able to think.

Then there's the flip side. In the 1940s, people labeled DDT the wonder pesticide. By the 1960s, Rachel Carlson published Silent Spring, alleging that DDT caused cancer and other environmental problems. The stuff was banned in the USA in 1973.

The story of X-rays and other radiation is among the most bizarre. In the early 20th century, beauty shops used doses of X-rays to make unwanted facial and body hair fall out. Physicians prescribed radioactive radium for heart trouble, arthritis and other ailments. For a while in Europe, a candy company marketed chocolate bars laced with radium as a "rejuvenator."

Obviously, none of that was a very good idea.

We really can't tell whether the naked protesters in Chicago are flakes or prophets. Nanotechnology might turn out to be like natural gas - an efficient, safe technology that benefits millions of people. Or it could be this generation's X-ray, and our grandchildren will guffaw at our naiveté for putting it in our pants. The same goes for RFID or any other technology that's making people wary.

Either way, it seems like it's better to ask the questions rather than swallow the optimism whole.

Kevin Maney has covered technology for USA TODAY since 1985. His column appears Wednesdays. Click here for an index of Technology columns. E-mail him at: kmaney@usatoday.com

-- posted by Normxxx

» Kirk - Re: Scared of nano-pants?

In the early 1900s, natural gas companies struggled to persuade homeowners to switch from wood or coal stoves to gas stoves.

"Gas is invisible and potentially explosive," says Marian Calabro, president of CorporateHistory.net. Wood or coal stoves "were messy and labor-intensive, but at least homeowners knew what they were dealing with."

Gas companies mounted a PR campaign behind the slogan, "Now you're cooking with gas."

My grandfather used to say "Now you're cooking with gas" whenever he thought we were doing something right. Now I finally know where he got the expression from! LOL

-- posted by Kirk

» Normxxx - nano-Frankenfoods?

By John Feffer | 18 July 2005

"Avoid 'dead water,'" the website advises, or else risk cardiovascular disease. According to Nanotechnology Limited, dead water is distilled or purified water that lacks minerals the body needs. The Chinese company claims that its product, "nano water," currently available in Hong Kong supermarkets, is not only pure but has enhanced properties that fight inflammation, cancer and even aging itself. Thanks to a "nanometer high-energy water activator," this superwater has smaller molecule clusters that enable more direct absorption by the body.

Whether these claims are true or not— scientists that I directed to the website pronounced it "hilarious" and "completely bogus" while company officials declined comment— "nano water" is piggybacking on one of the most heralded scientific advances of our generation. Perhaps you've heard of the pants from Nano-Tex that repels spills or the Wilson Double Core tennis balls that have an extra nano-bounce. These are not exactly the stuff of scientific revolutions. But with advances promised in everything from cancer research to cheap energy, this technology of the tiny has a big future.

Nothing brings home the reality of a new consumer product like eating it. Nanofoods, currently a several billion dollar industry, is expected to grow to $20 billion by 2010. Most of this money is in packaging, but the food component may not stay under wraps for long. Nano-rice, nano-cheese, and hundreds of other products are in the research phase. Nano-agriculture, which relies on advances in microfine fertilizers and pesticides as well as microsensors for precision farming, is also just around the corner. Instead of waiting on the sidelines for the start-ups to work out the kinks, the big boys— Kraft, Nestle, Campbell— are investing large sums, putting their money where our mouths are going to be. Are nanofoods the best thing since sliced bread or simply round two in the "frankenfood" debate?

Defining Nanotech

Maybe you read Michael Crichton's Prey, or caught the reference in Spiderman 2, or even played the video game Nanobreakers. Nanotechnology has permeated pop culture. Of course, so has Michael Jackson, and he too remains a mystery.

Definitional confusion is endemic to new technologies, and nanotech is plagued by more than its share of misunderstanding. On the one hand, "nano" refers to any process that takes place at the nano-scale, which is 1-100 nanometers. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter or one-thousandth the diameter of a human hair. A great deal of chemistry takes place at this level. Even ordinary combustion produces nanoparticles, whether from diesel engines or just plain campfires.

Strictly speaking, though, nanotechnology refers to scientific manipulations at the nano-scale. In the last twenty years, scientists have learned how to manufacture so many different synthetic nano-materials that they now have what amounts to a Lilliputian Lego set. These materials go by often fanciful names such as buckyballs (60 carbon atoms shaped like a mini-soccer ball), dendrimers (molecules that branch like trees), and quantum dots (semiconductor nano-crystals). The variety of these new materials is so wide that it can be difficult to generalize about their properties, just as it would be foolish to generalize about apples and oranges simply because they are both fruit.

Nanotech is often in the eye of the beholder. "If industry is selling nanotechnology to investors or potential customers, it says that the technology is new and unique," explains Kathy Jo Wetter of the watchdog ETC Group. "If industry is emphasizing nanotechnology's safety to smooth away concerns, it talks about the technology going all the way back to ancient Greece and about its use in medieval stained glass."

Sound familiar? In the debate over genetically modified organisms (GMO), the biotech industry claimed that their products were novel enough to warrant a patent but not so new and different to require a label or a special set of regulations. It might be more difficult for the nanotech industry to rely on similar arguments of "substantial equivalence." After all, what makes nanotech so potentially revolutionary is that materials often have very different properties at the nano-scale.

Definitional uncertainty is not the only problem to plague nanotechnology. To raise money, backers have hyped the new science's potential benefits. To lobby for regulations, the skeptics have played up the potential risks. These two worlds are just beginning to collide. The fallout will influence tomorrow's menu and determine whether both fast food and slow food are to be replaced, ultimately, by small food.

Food and Money

No one in the nanotech industry wants to see a replay of the GMO experience: protestors burning fields, consumers waging boycotts, Europeans and Americans in a food trade fight, scientists calling into question each other's careers. The food and agriculture industry would like to avoid the mistakes it made with Calgene tomatoes (no one bought them) or Vitamin A "golden" rice (commercialization has been slowed by controversy).

The smart nanotech money so far has gone into packaging. German consulting firm Helmut Kaiser predicts that the new technology will transform 25 percent of the $100 billion food and beverage industry in the next ten years. "People's eyes widen when they hear that they can have a dot on a package that changes color when the food spoils," says David Lackner, a senior analyst with Lux Research. "Anyone who deals with the food chain and knows that spoilage accounts for huge losses knows that this little dot is a huge deal." Scientists have so far figured out how to shrink down these spoilage sensors but not yet shrink the price to make them commercially viable on a large scale.

Nanotech also promises a great deal in the realm of growing food. The smaller the particles of fertilizer, the greater the absorption by the roots of plants. The smaller the pesticide particles, the more easily it dissolves in water. Farmers might one day sprinkle "smart dust," or micro-sensors, over a field in order to transmit back information necessary to farm that particular soil with the precise combination of nutrients.

Whether "nano water" qualifies for the designation or not, nano-foods have begun to enter the food supply. The Food and Drug Administration has given the "generally recognized as safe" label to a synthetic lycopene from BASF that adds an orange color to food. Spray for Life, the first commercial product from Nanoceutical Laboratories Inc., relies on a new nanotech delivery system to make a vitamin supplement into a mouth spray. The Russians are feeding iron nano-particles to fish and reporting faster rates of growth, which has major implications for aquaculture. The Dutch are looking into how to use nanotechnology to shrink the fat globules in milk so that cheese melts more easily. Thai researchers are attempting an end run around GMO, which remains a hot-button issue throughout the developing world, by researching atomically modified rice that can be grown all year long.

Kraft, which set up a nanotech lab six years ago, is exploring nanocapsules that smuggle healthy fish oils into your chocolate chip cookies. A more visionary project involves customizing food with nanosensors that identify customer likes and dislikes and releases molecules that then change the smell and taste of the product. Kraft refused requests for interviews.

It's not just private money like Kraft and Syngenta and Monsanto behind this research. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has acquired a small piece of federal funding for nanotech, approximately one-fifth of one percent of total funding. This pales though in comparison to the Defense Department and its one-third share of the billion or so federal research dollars a year. The Bush administration is more interested in "smart dust" for gathering battlefield intelligence than farmland data.

The United States is ahead of all rivals in terms of nanotech funding. But other countries are closing the gap, particularly in East Asia. "When people look in the rearview mirror, they see Japan and China," says Lux's David Lackner. "Whether these countries are far away or whether these objects are closer than they appear is the question."

All of the federal research dollars and major corporate interest do not quite add up to "irrational exuberance." The first nanotech company to go public, Nanosys, couldn't get the $17 a share it wanted and withdrew its offering in August 2004. A company like Nanosys, with no commercial products, no profit, and not much revenue, might perhaps have been expecting a dot-com leap of faith. Even though Forbes publishes an annual "ten best" list of nano-products and several new nano-indexes have appeared on the stock market, investors are resisting the hype.

The greatest challenge to nanotechnology, however, is not the reticence of investors. As the GMO controversy reconfirmed, a new technology is only going to be profitable if people trust it and buy it. The number of scientific studies that raise troubling questions about nanotech is increasing. Neither voluntary nor enforceable regulations are in effect. The first protests against nanotech have begun.

"I'm very bullish on nanotechnology three to six years from now," says David Rejeski, director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "The benefits are spectacular. What worries me is getting there, the speedbumps. It's nice to have pants that repel stains but the stuff that really appeals to people is three to six years away. What happens in between is critical."

Health and Safety

At the end of his May 31, 2005 Technology column in USA Today, Kevin Maney dismissed the health and safety concerns of nano-skeptics by arguing that "so far, no studies have shown that nanotech is harmful." But one month later, Maney was wondering whether nanotechnology might just be comparable to the fluoroscopes that shoe stores once used to X-ray customers' feet and that inadvertently exposed their sales staff to dangerous levels of radiation.

Contrary to Maney's initial claim, the last two years have witnessed a flurry of studies suggesting that nanotechnology is not as benign as first thought. This research has shown that carbon nanotubes have caused lung damage in mice and can in large quantities penetrate human skin to cause irritation. Buckyballs have caused brain damage in fish, might knock out smaller links in the aquatic food chain, and turn out unexpectedly to dissolve in water (which might inhibit the growth of important soil bacteria). Dendrimers, used in drug delivery systems, can punch tiny holes in and ultimately destroy cell membranes.

These studies are far from conclusive, particularly when it comes to the consumer. "I'm looking at my computer screen. It contains a lot of things that I wouldn't want to eat or rub on my skin, but those things are locked in there," explains Kristen Kulinowski, a chemist and executive director of Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology. "If you have nanoparticles that are bound in a plastic, then the potential of exposure to these materials is limited for the consumer."

But, Kulinowski continues, consumers are only one part of a product's lifespan. The health and safety impact of nanotechnology first hits the workers in the factories. The first cases linking asbestos to lung disease were among textile workers. Nanotechnology not only produces a new set of particles but also involves some old toxic risks as well. Says the Wilson Center's David Rejeski, "The idea that this is super-clean manufacturing, moving atoms around, that's not right. The input chemicals are not clean. A lot of this stuff is done by milling and it's really dirty."

At the other end of the chain, the "end of life" question, no one really knows what happens to nanoparticles. "What happens to all that nano-sized titanium oxide in skin care products when you wash it off?" Rejeski wonders. No one knows if nanoparticles accumulate in human tissue or ecosystems and whether nano-pesticides might pose some future DDT-like problem.

At whatever stage in the life cycle of these nanomaterials, their novel properties have yet to register on the radar screens of regulators. Ray Pimentel is Vice Consul for Trade at the British Consulate in Chicago. "If you look at aluminum, at the macro level, it's stable. But if you take it down to under 80 nanometers, it can be explosive," he points out. This crucial distinction is lost on those who monitor imports and exports. Pimentel continues: "Currently, an MSDS— a material safety data sheet— for nano-aluminum can just say aluminum. Even most aggressive nanotech advocates agree that that should not be the case."

Some nanotech firms are pushing for change from the ground up. Nanotool company Zyvex has established a certification program for carbon nanotube producers. "It's in their interest to deal with environmental health and safety issues," Lux's David Lackner says. "It also deals with the issue of buyers who buy a certain quality of nanotubes, but don't get the quality they pay for." Corporate self-interest has also been piqued by major insurance companies, such as Swiss Re, that have worried publicly about liability issues if some of the new nanomaterials turn out to be this generation's thalidomide.

Unlike the GMO issue, there has been greater dialogue between corporate, environmental and governmental stakeholders on the issue of regulations. A June 15 op-ed by Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund and Chad Holliday of Dupont in the Wall Street Journal tried to find common ground between voluntary standards from industry and enforceable regulations from government. The Environmental Protection Agency has recently begun to assess the usefulness of such voluntary regulations.

But the EPA initiative is not necessarily a step in the right direction. Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council worries that industry will get its way on voluntary, rather than enforceable, regulations. "Having these kinds of joint partnerships and collaborative efforts is a good thing," she says, "But without an overhanging enforceable regulation, I'm quite confident that the voluntary initiatives are inadequate regulations."

Other participants in the nanotech debate, like Hope Shand of the ETC Group, are looking beyond environmental, safety, and health issues to underlying questions of ownership and control. The slowness of the regulatory process has done nothing to affect the race for intellectual property rights. "We keep hearing the industry say that nanotech is in its infancy," Shand says. "But we're already seeing patent thickets in some areas that are creating barriers to entry for researchers in the global south. To get involved, they'll have to pay multiple licensing fees just to get started— and that's if the companies want to give licenses."

Public Concerns

THONG is not waiting for industry and government regulators to get their act together. In May, Topless Humans Organized for Natural Genetics— better known as THONG— took off their clothes at an Eddie Bauer store in the middle of Chicago to protest the nanopants on sale. Printed on the rear ends of some of the protestors was the title of Richard Feynman's lecture that opened up the nanotech field back in 1959: "There's Room at the Bottom."

"Nanotechnology has been billed as the greatest thing since sliced bread: it will end global warming, cure cancer, and otherwise make the universe perfect," said one THONGster, who goes by the moniker of Just Joking Jerry. "When we see hype like that, our radar goes off— another miracle technology that hasn't been adequately tested. So we're addressing hype with counter hype. We're getting in on nanotech on the ground floor. That was the big problem with GMO. We didn't get in quickly enough before the food crops were infected."

David Rejeski of the Wilson Center has been conducting focus groups on nanotech. He's found that the vast majority of people know next to nothing about the subject. More troubling, at least from the point of view of industry, is that the more people learn, the less trust they have. "In this country there's a tendency to use this efficiency model: if the public understood the science then they would trust us," Rejeski says. "But that's a dangerous track to go down."

Nanotech holds a great deal of promise and has more far-reaching applications than GMO. But with often unlabelled products in a largely unregulated environment, nano might fall into the same trust gap. Industry spokespeople are saying that small is beautiful. But consumers may not be ready yet to step up to the counter and say, "nano-size me."

John Feffer is working on a book about the global politics of food.

The contents of this letter/report does not necessarily reflect the opinions or viewpoint of normxxx. They are provided for informational/educational purposes only.

The content of this message is not to be construed as constituting market or investment advice. It is intended for educational purposes only. Individuals should consult with their own advisors for specific investment advice.

-- posted by Normxxx

» Kirk - Sub-angstrom microscope targets nanotechnology

HILLSBORO, Ore. — A company based here has unveiled what it claims is the highest-resolution scanning-transmission electron microscope.

FEI Co. unveiled the new device at the Microscopy & Microanalysis conference this week in Honolulu. FEI claims its commercial instrument resolves at the sub-angstrom scale for the first time. Designed for nanotechnology development, FEI’s microscope, called the Titan 80-300, enables sub-angstrom (atomic scale) imaging and analysis.

Vahe Sarkissian, FEI's chairman and CEO, called the microscope "a significant breakthrough for researchers, developers and manufacturers needing greater access to the nanoscale."

Titan will be the platform from which the TEAM effort will develop their new microscope. TEAM (transmission electron aberration-corrected microscopy), is a collaborative project with the U.S. Office of Basic Energy Sciences, which coordinates microscopy efforts between U.S. national laboratories, universities and industry. The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences Nanoscale Imaging, Characterization, and Manipulation at Oak Ridge National Laboratories is also participating.

The project's goal is to make direct observations and analysis of individual atoms at 0.5-angstrom resolution — a key dimension for atomic level research since it is one-third the diameter of a carbon atom. (Organic molecules always contain hydrogen — the smallest atom — and carbon.)

"Currently, high-resolution microscopy is performed at resolutions between 1 and 2 angstroms, but at resolutions below 1 angstrom materials exhibit different properties and behaviors which researchers and scientists need to observe in order to correctly characterize materials,” said an FEI spokesperson.
-end-

The nanotechnology stock in my newsletter is up 16% YTD and I think it could double in the next year if its new product continues to perform well in the market.

 
                                Total   Annual   2005   
                               Return   -ized    YTD
My newsletter portfolio is    up 163.1%  16.0%   1.3% 
While they S&P500 is only     up   5.9%   0.9%  (0.9%)
and the Nasdaq Composite is  down (6.2%) (1.0%) (5.4%)
QQQQ – NASDAQ100 ETF              NA       NA   (7.9%)
and Warren Buffett's BRKA is  up  19.3%   2.8%  (6.4%)