tech: [nanotech] ~Nanogirl news~

[<eugene.leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>]

From: "Gina Miller" <nanogirl@halcyon.com>

*Honey, they've shrunk the logo: the science of the very small has very big
ramifications, say UMass researchers. University of Massachusetts physicist
Mark Tuominen may have some trouble finding a T-shirt small enough for the
UMass logo recently sketched in his lab. Tuominen is researching
nanotechnology, a field aimed at producing devices so small that they can
only be seen with an electron microscope. Tuominen and graduate student
Mustafa Bal recently created a UMass logo which is roughly the size of a red
blood cell - some six micrometers in diameter. (2/10/00 UMass)
http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/press/00/0210tuominen.html

*InfoCharms preps OS for wearable Net communicator. Wearable computers need
a NANOsize operating system. That's the philosophy of MIT spin-off
InfoCharms Inc., which will describe Nanux, its forthcoming
wearable-computer OS, later this month at the Everywhere Internet show in
San Francisco.
(EE Times 2/14/00)
http://www.eetimes.com/story/technology/OEG20000214S0079

*Bright future of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology that is likely to come up
in the next few years will change the face of the world. It is likely to
overwhelm us with its breathtaking design. And a nanotechnologist is someone
who designs and makes tiny motors and other products by manipulating atoms.
(Bangladesh Independent 2/2/00)
http://independent-bangladesh.com/news/feb/02/02022000sc.htm#A1

*Scientists capture first images of how x-rays damage proteins
While using high-intensity X-rays to "photograph" the chemical reactions of
an enzyme, an international team of scientists found that the X-rays were
systematically destroying their target in a highly specific way. This
accidental discovery of "weak links" in proteins may yield future measures
to prevent radiation damage and will have implications for the use of X-rays
to decipher molecular structures. (Eurekalert 2/15/00)
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/bnl-scf021500.html

*Robots speed up gene research. American scientists have used  robots to
record the interactions between proteins in a single  cell in a technical
tour de force that will help researchers  learn about the function of
unknown genes.  (ABC news 2/9/00)
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/World/reuters20000209_3628.html
Robots eavesdrop on cellular discussions For the first time, scientists have
figured out a way -- using robots -- to record the "conversations" taking
place simultaneously between thousands of molecules inside a single cell.
http://www.nih.gov/nigms/news/releases/fields.html       (NIGMS 2/9/00)
Researchers unlock secrets of directional cell movement. For years,
researchers have puzzled over how some cells guide themselves toward a
chemical that spreads itself around. Now, in this week's issue of Science,
Johns Hopkins researchers identify a protein that accumulates toward the
front end of a cell and helps cells "sense" their way to a target.
(Eurekalert 2/10/00)
http://www.eurekalert.org/releases/jhmi-rus020900.html

*Infrared Lasers Read Vibrations Of Molecular Bonds. Taking a page from
modern astronomy, where scientists are making a raft of new discoveries by
sampling starlight across the electromagnetic spectrum, a group of chemists
from the University of Wisconsin-Madison has refined a powerful new way to
probe the molecular universe using infrared light. (UniSci 2/9/00)
http://unisci.com/stories/20001/0209004.htm

*Researchers report micro-battery advance. Korean researchers have reported
an advance in developing a next-generation micro-battery that could be used
to power future smart cards, micro-robots and small precision instruments.
(EETimes 2/20/00)
http://www.eetimes.com/story/technology/OEG20000210S0014

*Argonne's Toroid Cavity Detector Provides Inside Story on Sealed.
Containers.Argonne's device reveals the contents of packaged contents
without damaging the package or contents. Argonne National Laboratory
scientists have taken the guesswork out of a popular guessing game: "How
many beans in the jar?" Their invention, a scaled-up toroid cavity imager (T
CI) that employs nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) technology, reveals not only how many there are,
but how many of each flavor, and exactly where every last one is located.
(Argonne 2/4/00)
http://www.techtransfer.anl.gov/techtour/nmr-imager.html

*Antiferromagnetic Secrets. Improved magnetic devices such as the read heads
of computer hard drives could result from new insights into
antiferromagnetic thin films. (Berkeley lab 2/10/00)
http://www.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/antiferromagnetism.html

*Research 'Daytona' DSPs Are 16 Times Faster Than Current Devices
 Researchers at Bell Labs have developed a new approach to building the
signal processing "engines" that will be required in tomorrow's
performance-hungry communications networks. The Bell Labs approach, called
Daytona, allows multiple digital signal processors (DSPs) to be integrated
on a single silicon chip to provide up to 16 times faster processing than
conventional DSP chips. (Bell labs Feb. 9, 2000)
http://www.bell-labs.com/news/2000/february/9/1.html

*Great news, brain cells don't have to last a lifetime. We can always grow a
few more. -snip- The tidal wave of new research done in the past year and a
half suggests that, yes, anything from exercising to mood can influence how
many neurons are born each day, and how many survive. It is providing fresh
insights into how memories form and take root. And some researchers are even
starting to explore the possibility of improving people's recovery from
brain injury by exploiting this ability to grow new nerve cells. (New
Scientist 2/12/00)
http://www.newscientist.co.uk/features/featuresns222520.html

*MIT, Nanovation to partner on research into light-based technologies to
revolutionize communications, boost speed by 100s of times.  Nanovation to
provide $90 million for MIT center and 6-year research program. The
Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Nanovation Technologies Inc. today
announced plans to establish a world-class center dedicated to the research
and prototyping of light-based photonic technologies, a 21st century field
that will make communications hundreds of times faster. (2/21/00 Nanovation
release) Click pressroom to find.
http://www.nanovation.com/index.html

*At a special seminar on 10 February, spokespersons from the experiments on
CERN* 's Heavy Ion programme presented compelling evidence for the existence
of a new state of matter in which quarks, instead of being bound up into
more complex particles such as protons and neutrons, are liberated to roam
freely. Theory predicts that this state must have existed at about 10
microseconds after the Big Bang, before the formation of matter as we know
it today, but until now it had not been confirmed experimentally. (Cern
2/10/00)
http://www.cern.ch/Press/Releases00/01-QuarkGluonMatter.en.html
A Little Big Bang. Slam an iron ion into another at temperatures 100,000
times hotter than the center of a sun, and you create something called a
quark-gluon plasma. Scientists believe they have reproduced a form of matter
that existed for a moment just after the Big Bang. (ABC news 2/9/00)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/science/DailyNews/littlebigbang000209.html

*New thermoelectric material. The discovery of a new thermoelectric material
that may someday help double the speed at which computers operate is
detailed in the Feb. 11 issue of Science. When jolted with an electrical
current, the temperature of current thermoelectric materials can drop by as
much as 60 degrees. The new material could make the drop as low as 100
degrees.
(Tip off 2/14/00)
http://www.onr.navy.mil/onr/newsrel/to000214.htm

*First double-aided transistor. Working under ONR funding, scientists at the
Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., developed a unique, low-
temperature wafer bonding technique, termed Power-Bond, that uses commercial
off-the-shelf fully processed silicon wafers to produce the world's first
double-sided, 1-gigabyte power transistor. (2/14/00 Office of Naval
Research)
http://www.onr.navy.mil/onr/newsrel/nr000214b.htm

*Molecular Voltage Sensors Turn Like Keys In Locks. Scientists who performed
the first direct measurement of voltage-induced distance changes in ion
channels -- critical components of the nervous system -- have reached a
surprising conclusion.  (UniSci 2/9/00)
http://unisci.com/stories/20001/0209005.htm

*New tool gives scientists inside look at materials. When your computer
crashes, it could be because of a failure in the tiny metal wires that
connect parts of the integrated circuits inside, but it's difficult to know
for sure. Now, because of the work of researchers at the Department of
Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), scientists have a powerful
new tool to study interconnects and other materials made up of small
disoriented crystal blocks called grains. The new X-ray crystal microscope
provides an exciting capability that didn't exist before, (2/14/00 Oak Ridge
Lab)
http://www.ornl.gov/Press_Releases/current/mr20000214-00.html

*The world's largest fast-growth crystal, weighing in at 701 pounds, has
been grown by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory. The pyramid-shaped KDP (potassium dihydrogen
phosphate) crystal measures approximately 26 inches by 21 inches by 23
inches high. It was grown in a record 52 days using a special rapid-growth
technique that delivers twice the yield originally projected. The enormous
crystal will be sliced into plates for use in the National Ignition Facility
(NIF), a giant laser under construction at Lawrence Livermore. (Lawrence
Livermore Lab 1/4/00)
http://www.llnl.gov/PAO/NewsReleases/2000/NR-00-02-02.html

*SPECIAL REPORT: SENDING ASTRONAUTS TO MARS. Why Go to Mars?
In the first of this group of articles about human missions to Mars, staff
writer Glenn Zorpette examines the main goal: looking for life (current
issue of Scientific American)
http://www.sciam.com/2000/0300issue/0300zorpette.html

*Optical switching could cause shakeup in electronics industry. Electronic
transistors may one day be replaced by all-optical transistors, which are in
early stages of development at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National
Laboratory. (ORNL 2/14/00)
http://www.ornl.gov/Press_Releases/current/mr20000214-01.html

*The delicate wafers of silicon used to make computer chips normally shine
like silvery mirrors. But hit them with extremely short, very intense laser
pulses and the silicon goes through a strange transformation--it turns a
deep, dense black. The reason: the laser pulses reshape the silicon
molecules into a forest of microscopic spikes that absorb almost all of the
light hitting the surface.
(Scientific America)
http://www.sciam.com/exhibit/1999/032299silicon/

*First Orbit Around an Asteroid. At 11:00 a.m. Eastern time, navigation data
from the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous spacecraft indicates NEAR has
achieved orbit around asteroid 433 Eros. (2/14/00 Space science)
http://www.spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast14feb_1.htm

*Paper your walls with loudspeakers. -fi buffs wondering how to fit
wardrobe-sized loudspeakers into a tiny flat can take heart from a new type
of speaker developed by scientists at SRI International in Menlo Park,
California. Described in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America1,
the loudspeaker is lightweight, cheap, and just half a centimetre thick. It
can be hung on the wall like a poster. (Nature science 2/16/00)
http://helix.nature.com/nsu/000217/000217-8.html

*Amplifier from Half-Breed Particles. The "se" in "laser" stands for
"stimulated emission," the critical property of photons that makes possible
the huge amplification of energy inside a laser. In the 14 February PRL a
team of European physicists reports "stimulated scattering" for
polaritons--amalgams of electrons and photons that can exist only within a
semiconductor--suggesting that a laserlike device could be made with these
particles. (PRF 2/10/00)
http://focus.aps.org/v5/st6.html

Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
Nanotechnology Industries
http://www.nanoindustries.com
Personal Web
http://www.nanogirl.com
E-mail: nanogirl@halcyon.com
"Nanotechnology: solutions for the future."





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