New Nanoshite

Thursday 19th November 2009:

• Received the following link via an Email that was incredibly insistent it be communicated to the public immediately:

• Scientists used ISIS to view the sewage at the nano scale
  • http://www.isis.stfc.ac.uk/science/earth-science-and-environment/managing-nanoparticle-waste-in-sewage9094.html

  • The scientists used ISIS to view the sewage at the nano scale. Nanoparticles are too small to be seen by the human eye. The neutrons easily penetrate the turbid sewage "soup" and scatter strongly from the nanoparticles, allowing the aggregation behaviour of the nanoparticles to be measured through time

• Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 28th April 2009:

• Add E-mail received with link to Nano Coffee Energy tablets

• Add E-mail received with link to Gold Nano Toothbrush
  • An extraordinarily remarkable double-bristled toothbrush, incorporating nano-sized gold and loess particles This brush provides the sedative, antidotal and purifying effects that are the unique powers of gold.

• Add E-mail received with link to My government spent billions on nanotechnology, and all I got was this wrinkle-free T-shirt? which links to:
  • Studio 350 Thread-Count Nano-Tex Sheet Set
  • Nanometer-Silver Foam condom
  • Greenyarn insoles : "the most advanced insoles in the world. Eco-fabric is fabric made by Greenyarn that contains nano-particles of bamboo-charc
  • The Tigold STROM fishing lure is coated with a polyimide film with a thickness of several hundred nanometers.
  • Nano breast cream
  • Nanoseal facial cream.
  • Nanotea : "Nanometer is not a meter, but a unit of size. 1 nanometer is one thousandth of 1 micrometer, one millionth of 1 millimeter, or one billionth of 1 meter, meanwhile 1 micrometer is one thousandth of 1 millimeter. The 20th century is a micrometer area, when people had invented a great number of products that can be seen only by ultramicroscopes and had rapidly changed the living of the people. Nano-tea ... is processed with a patented technology called “three steps of nano-tea preparation” (patent N0.:02100314.9) - traditional pulverization - air current pulverization (make plants knock against each other) - Nano-pulverizations (Multi-layers grading nano-ball-milling technique). The particles of the powder thus prepared can be seen only under a 0.1 million-fold microscope. The powder at such fineness are called “Nano-grade” product, and the tea thus prepared is called nano-tea."

• Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 21st April 2009:

• Add E-mail received in a more timely manner with information on PhilComments - Wednesday, January 7, 2009

  slocklin said...
  
  Hey Josh! I'd leave out nanotech; Drexler is a snake oil salesman and a  
  science fiction author. I worked next to fellows who took "nano" money;  
  the word is just a synonym for chemistry. Most of the "nano" dudes were  
  chemists or materials scientists. The idea of looking at little things as  
  machines doesn't really help any. It's still just chemistry.
  
  A friend of mine (who I found by researching my name of all things) has a  
  cool webpage called "nanoshite" which goes into amusing detail.
  
  http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/nanoshite/newnanoshite.html
  

Monday 20th April 2009:

• Belatedly add E-mail received with information on Nano and Far Infrared Underwear

  FAR INFRARED BEAUTY & HEALTH
  
  The far infrared rays, also called the fertile ray, is part of rays of
  the sun. Its wavelength is closed to that of the human body's, and
  produces resonance vibration of magnetic wave with the human body by
  means of it. Thus, it is of great help to the health of the human body.
  
  Properties:
  1. Promoting blood circulation, activating cells, and speeding up metabolism.
  2. Burning excess fats, consuming extra calories, and shaping attractive curves.
  3. Regulating autonomic nerves, and eliminating fatigue rapidly
  
  Using the weaving of high elastic fibers to design this product with
  human body engineering that has functions of restraining the abdomen and
  lifting buttocks. It is truly the killer of bulgy abdomens cooperating
  with the far infrared ray processed at the abdomen.
  
  Ways of Cleaning:
  1. Cleaning in the warm water under 30 degree c
  2. Do not soak with the chlorine series washing powder in order to avoid
  damaging the elasticity of fibers.
  
  Ingredients:
  20% Magnetic Powder of Far Infrared Ray
  20%LYCRA
  60% Polyamide
  

• And another belatedly add E-mail received with information on Company Name: Truck Rapidoil S. R. O. - Product/Service: Nanosocks, Nanounderwear, Nanowindows, Nanodesinfection, Nanosurface rain protect, Nanoautocosmetics, Nano engines oil, nanoproducts for healing service

• Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Saturday 8th November 2008:

• E-mail received with an additional nanobuzzword from the world of nano: "nanoscaffold"

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Sunday 27th July 2008:

• Received the following link via an Email that was incredibly insistent it be communicated to the public immediately:

• Overhyped Technology Starts to Reach Potential: Nanotech to Impact $3.1 Trillion in Manufactured Goods in 2015
  • http://www.nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=6340

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "One Trillion Dollars": The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite subsection.

Saturday 26th July 2008:

• E-mail received with an additional nanobuzzword from the world of nano: "computational nanophotonics"

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Saturday 26th July 2008:

• Received the following Email with link to :

• Fabrication of Silver Nano-Noodles
• and the comment: "Apparently Japanese nanobots will have a menu and a choice of flavours at their favourite diner: not just the "classical" carbon nanonoodles, but silver nano-noodles too"
  • http://jjap.ipap.jp/link?JJAP/42/L1208/
  • http://mysree.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/japanese-scientists-create-microscopic-noodle-bowl-using-nanotechnology/

• Then received following Email with link to :

• Nano Asian Dining, Maryland
• and the comment received : "perhaps they could eat here in Maryland"
  • http://www.urbanbites.com/showMenu.asp?ID=282
  • Nano Asian Dining, MD

    Nano Stripe Bass: $15.00
    Nano Noodles (In Soup): $12.00
    Nano Deluxe: $20.00 Chef`s assortment of 12 pieces sushi with spicy tuna roll...

• And another Email with link to :

• Nanorice: A Hybrid Plasmonic Nanostructure
• Comment received : "More Asian food to fill the newly developed nano-noodle bowl. Nanorice...from the prestigious Rice U, no less. A hotbed of nanotech."
  • http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/nalefd/2006/6/i04/abs/nl060209w.html
  • Nanorice: A Hybrid Plasmonic Nanostructure

    We have designed and fabricated a new hybrid nanoparticle that combines the intense local fields of nanorods with the highly tunable plasmon resonances of nanoshells. This dielectric core-metallic shell prolate spheroid nanoparticle bears a remarkable resemblance to a grain of rice, inspiring the name "nanorice". This geometry possesses far greater structural tunability than either a nanorod or a nanoshell, along with much larger local field intensity enhancements and far greater sensitivity as a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) nanosensor than any dielectric-metal nanostructures reported previously. Invoking the plasmon hybridization picture allows us to understand the plasmon resonances of this geometry, as arising from a hybridization of the primitive plasmons of a solid spheroid and an ellipsoidal cavity inside a continuous metal.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" and Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsections.

Friday 25th July 2008:

• Received the following links to :

• Japanese Scientists Create Microscopic Noodle Bowl : Japanese Scientists Create Microscopic Noodle Bowl Using Nanotechnology "carbon nanotube ramen"
  • http://www.physorg.com/news131288928.html
  • http://mysree.wordpress.com/2008/05/30/japanese-scientists-create-microscopic-noodle-bowl-using-nanotechnology/

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 9th July 2008:

• Received the following links:

• Copper and DHEA Facial Spray for the discriminating person: A highly active Nano Copper, bioactive from start to finish.
  • http://www.mag-i-cal.com/copper.htm

  • Doctor Gunderson's Rãahj Nano Copper Facial Spray is produced using Nano Technology, a highly sophisticated production process to obtain a very small particle size. Nano means 1 divided by 1,000,000,000 or 10-9. We have certified (condfidential) test data from a FDA approved and certified Micro Precision Laboratory that verified the results to be nano size particles in the 10-9 meter range. Because of these small particle sizes the copper is very easily assimilated into the skin through cell ion channels. Nano Copper Facial Spray is cupric in form meaning it is metabolically active for a younger vibrant look

  • Comment from submittee: "In the cached version there is the additional warning: "This product may not be shipped into Canada as it now is illegal in Canada." ...all very inspiring for health products don;t you think

• Nano Odour Killer - Neutralising agent
  • http://www.alibaba.com/product-free/100501093/Mineral_Silver_Nano_Spray.html

  • Thanks to application of nanotechnology is the newest generation amongagents fighting unpleasant odours. New layer removes many nasty andunpleasant odours - cigarette smoke, trash, animal beds and most of volatile organiccompounds (for instance urea, toluene etc.). In old houses reduces in great measure unpleasant smell of must.

    Nano Odour Killer [+ Sandal] - Neutralising agent & Air freshener Eliminates all offensive smells. Applied onto various types of surfacesin order to provide long lasting deodorizing and air purifyingfeatures. Opposite to common deodorants it does not operate temporarilythrough spraying additional odour into air or using chemical agentsneutralizing smells. Use Nano Odour Killer in the home, hospitals,restaurants, shops, cars etc.

• Nano-2 Bio-Sym
  • http://spiritofmaat.com/maatshop/n2_biosim.htm

  • What Is Bio-Sim Made From

    Bio-Sim contains over ten thousand (10,000) varieties of food-grade diatomaceous earth, nanoized to create just the right size particles to be most effective in your body.

    This diatomaceous earth is uniquely treated and processed to give immune-system support. After nanoization, it is combined with minute quantities of sugar cane and kosher, distilled vinegar to serve as bait for hidden parasites.

    Timing, temperature, and blending all play a part in Bio-Sim's success.

    Bio-Sim's Action

    Because ridding the body of Candida and other yeast overgrowth, parasites, worms, fungus and amoebas is the fundamental basis for any cure that brings back health to the body, this product is a must in your total healing program.

    Once the Bio-Sim is absorbed by the body, the sugar and vinegar start attracting parasites, fungus, Candida, worms, and amoebas out of hiding. Then the nano-silica acts like a cutting knife toward the intruders. And because of the perfect size of the diatomaceous earth, Bio-Sim touches only the pathogens, leaving the healthy body intact. It took many years to find this sizing!

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 3rd July 2008:

• Received the following links to following Nanorobot animations on YouTube:
  • Nanotech Assembler: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Spr5PWiuRaY
  • Nanobots Flowing Through a Blood Vessel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7zw9fvfBZI&NR=1
  • Nanobots replacing neurons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-2Xw-GNkUQ
  • Nanotechnology - Age of Convergence: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uf6EGvl7nJo&NR=1
  • Nano Robot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olIQMnukgmg&feature=related
  • DRILLERS, STINGERS, PEEPERS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbXC262f7mk
  • nanobot - Bio-Medix animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9VVdQTe7OI&feature=related
  • Nanobots - making nano-machines from atoms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBopJiWKiic&feature=related
  • Nanobots kill a virus: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyThoRCiwqc&feature=related

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 2nd July 2008:

• Received the following links to :

• Machines 'to match man by 2029'
  • http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7248875.stm

  • Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029, a leading US inventor has predicted.

  • Tiny machines could roam the body curing diseases

• Who Would Jesus Bomb? (A Question for Nanobots)
  • http://havemacwillblog.com/2008/02/17/who-would-jesus-bomb-a-question-for-nanobots/

  • According to a recently posted article on the BBC web site, "Machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence by 2029. Humanity is on the brink of advances that will see nanobots implanted in people’s brains to make them more intelligent."

    The prediction comes from Ray Kurzweil, one of 18 influential thinkers chosen by the US National Academy of Engineering to identify the great technological challenges facing humanity in the 21st century. It’s a bizarre suggestion and I for one will refuse to snort nanobots, no matter who recommends it. Apart from anything else, if the nanobots have human-equivalent intelligence why wouldn’t they just plug themselves into your nervous system and then chew your brain to pieces as soon as they realized that they didn’t need that redundant meat computer that occupies your skull.

    They could then enjoy themselves demonstrating their humanness by getting drunk, watching hours of advert-interrupted television and surfing the Internet for porn.

    More Accurate Clocks

    Luckily the nanobots will be able to experience even more accurate clocks. News broke yesterday that US physicists have constructed a clock so accurate it will neither gain nor lose even a second in more than 200 million years. No living being is likely to appreciate such accuracy, but you just know it’s the kind of thing that’s gonna appeal to nanobots, especially those who like to plan ahead.

    Admittedly, I’m assuming that the nanobots will be able to keep a human body in good repair for those hundreds of millions of years or at least be able to migrate from one human body to another through a convenient mechanism (like the human sneeze for example).

    HD DVD: Dead Very Dead

    Sadly those nanobots are unlikely to ever experience an HD DVD, as Toshiba has given up the fight and filed the HD DVD in the attic with the 8 track tapes and Betamax videos. I called this a while ago (here, here and here), the last time excusing Gartner for its deficiency of spherical objects (100 percent probability). I could claim that I possessed incredible insight, but the truth is that even current nanobots have achieved the requisite intelligence to understand that when BlockBuster Video ceases to support your DVD format, it’s time to start writing the eulogy.

    Who Would Jesus Bomb?

    That was the question asked by a bumper sticker I saw yesterday. It made me think about the unexpected turnaround that has occurred in American politics in the past few months and which is (as yet) unremarked. The “Christian Right” has gone from being a potent political force to an irrelevancy. As a consequence, there will not be much debate about the teaching of intelligent design/evolution, stem cell research or gay marriage in the coming presidential election.

    It may have happened because Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney represented very similar constituencies and they divided the Christian vote to some degree, while Giuliani’s campaign imploded and McCain, the Republican maverick came waltzing through. Or it may have happened because Ray Kurzweil was lying to us about the nanobots and, in fact, they are already as clever as we are and they have already been released among the American population.

    The nanobots care nothing either way about evolution (it’s in our hands now), stem cell research (who needs it?) or gay marriage (whatever floats your processor), but they are burning teraflops over the big question:

    Who Would Jesus Bomb?

• Have Your Say - Visions of the Future

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/yoursay/visions-future.shtml

  • Visions of the Future was repeated recently on BBC Four and is available on BBC iPlayer until Sunday 22 June 2008. There are no plans at the moment to release the series on DVD.

  • I watched the third of these programmes last night. The man presenting it was clearly a charlatan. It is disgraceful that the BBC wastes money from the licence-payers peddling this unscientific rubbish. There was a parade of "scientists" or "engineers" or "technologists", all of whom were shameless self-promoters, concerned only in convincing gullible funders (government, business, etc) to give them vast amounts of money for research which will never amount to anything. This stuff is obviously as huge a science "boondoggle" as was the Star Wars programme under President Reagan. The chance of this vision of the future coming true is as high as was that of the sixties-futurism that offered us air-cars, food pills, and enormous amounts of leisure time (robots would do all the work and produce all our basic needs). Why don't you commission some programmes made by people who know something about "science", rather than having them made by media studies graduates, who know nothing about anything and have degrees based on studying EastEnders? Wake up, BBC Four

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 20th May 2008:

• New nanobuzzword : "nanoworm".
  (Media Quote received: ( http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/sec.asp?CID=1920&DID=84063 ) Scientists have developed nanometer-sized "nanoworms" that can cruise through the bloodstream without significant interference from the body's immune defense system and-like tiny anti-cancer missiles-home in on tumors. Using nanoworms, doctors should eventually be able to target and reveal the location of developing tumors that are too small to detect by conventional methods. The scientists constructed their nanoworms from spherical iron oxide nanoparticles that join together, like segments of an earthworm, to produce tiny gummy worm-like structures about 30 nanometers long. In addition to a polymer coating, which is derived from the biopolymer dextran, the nanoworms were coated with a tumor-specific targeting molecule, a peptide called F3.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Friday 2nd May 2008:

• Still not a lot of feedback received on wold of nanoshite nanoshite for quite some time - but Received information of a new nanobuzzword and instructions that is must be communicated to the public as soon as possible: "Nanovector Trojan Horses (NTH)" (Comment received of the internet webpage this is mentioned within: [the research group] "have been awarded a $540,000 grant by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to do further research on a carbon nanotube (CNT) based drug for the treatment of radiation sickness.")

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Wednesday 9th January 2008:

• Received the following link to (with the comment: "..would they still be classical diamondoid though?"):

• Medical applications of molecular nanotechnology: Nanorobots
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanomedicine#Nanorobots

  • Nanodevices could be observed at work inside the body using MRI, especially if their components were manufactured using mostly 13C atoms rather than the natural 12C isotope of carbon, since 13C has a nonzero nuclear magnetic moment. Medical nanodevices would first be injected into a human body, and would then go to work in a specific organ or tissue mass. The doctor will monitor the progress, and make certain that the nanodevices have gotten to the correct target treatment region. The doctor wants to be able to scan a section of the body, and actually see the nanodevices congregated neatly around their target (a tumor mass, etc.) so that he or she can be sure that the procedure was successful.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 29th December 2007:

• Received the following link to :

• Nanodentistry
  • http://www.rfreitas.com/Nano/Nanodentistry.htm

  • Abstract. Nanodentistry will make possible the maintenance of comprehensive oral health by employing nanomaterials, biotechnology including tissue engineering, and, ultimately, dental nanorobotics (nanomedicine). When the first micron-size dental nanorobots can be constructed in 10-20 years, these devices will allow precisely controlled oral analgesia, dentition replacement therapy using biologically autologous whole replacement teeth manufactured during a single office visit, and rapid nanometer-scale precision restorative dentistry. New treatment opportunities may include dentition renaturalization, permanent hypersensitivity cure, complete orthodontic realignments during a single office visit, covalently-bonded diamondized enamel, and continuous oral health maintenance using mechanical dentifrobots.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 27th June 2007:

• Add

  Uncyclopedia entry for Nanotechnology:

  "Use In Modern Science:

  Scientists have also discovered that the word "nanotechnology" itself seems to generate government funding and science grants without question or limit. This has baffled many in the review selection process, who realize it is just a buzz-word. "

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - "Nano-article links" subsection.

Monday 7th May 2007:

• Still not a lot of feedback received on wold of nanoshite nanoshite for quite some time - but Received E-mail with new nanobuzzword from the literature: "nano sea-urchin" (Comment received: "It's just a small spiky clump of gold.")

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Sunday 20th August 2006:

• Not a lot of feedback received on nanoshite for quite some time - but Received E-mail with the following "interpretive" text

• The nanoshite page stimulates the full spectrum of human emotions..

• http://www.gpforums.co.nz/thread/328289/?s=

  • You may be interested in the blog which has a lot of usual boring
    comments among some gems. The nanoshite page stimulates the full
    spectrum of human emotions...
    
    http://www.gpforums.co.nz/thread/328289/?s=
    
    
    DELIGHT
    
     10 Jul 2006 3:54 pm
    
    Simply had enough of the buzz and the shit, I'm glad someone else out there
    feels the same way I do and made a webpage about it, for the sole purpose of
    humouring me. I have a dream, and that dream is that one day I'll be able to
    look up high strength materials on the internet without 3000 hits including
    the words nano and rod  I'm sure cynos will like it, it distinctly has NO
    round corners.
    
    http://lachlan.bluehaze.com.au/nanoshite/
    
    BOREDOM
    
     10 Jul 2006 4:09 pm
    
    HOS, what a boring thread
    
    DEFENSIVENESS
    
     13 Jul 2006 1:00 pm
    
    Having to work with researchers involved in nanotechnology, its really an
    amazing technology and it will become our way of life in the not too distant
    future..
    
    ANGER
     13 Jul 2006 8:58 pm
    
    It's a name given to a very interesting field of technolgy crossing multiple
    scientific disclipines, that yes has been around for quite some number of
    years. As a member of the Institute of Nanotechnolgy I do not find this
    amusing, check out something informative if you like http://www.nano.org.uk/
    
    It's simply hugely misunderstood by the general populace.
    
    MORE ANGER
    
    14 Jul 2006 11:36 am
    
    Don't get me wrong, technology on that scale is exciting, whacking the word
    nano on the front of anything small is not.
    
    AGREEMENT
    14 Jul 2006 12:50 pm
    
    I'm also referring to the host of companies that use chemicals, which as we
    all know are small things made of atoms, in their products and so bullshit
    on about their nano involvement. If it's on a nano scale, nano can be
    attached to its name. This makes it very hard to find out information about
    anything scientific based on the net, because lots of scientific based
    'stuff' is on a very small scale and you have to wade through the shit to
    find what you're looking for

Monday 17th April 2006:

• Received E-mail with the following link

• New nanoshite particles a radical new approach to DHT

• http://www.regrowth.com/hairloss-forums/viewthread.cfm?f=5&t=16798

  • Ellsom research has formulated a new topical that uses a radically new mechanism for DHT [dihydrotestosterone] removal. Its called the Naoshite particle using micronised nanoscat in a collidal solution with a mean improvement of dermal absorption of 187%. What makes nanoshite unique is that it operates on a totally new principle namely that of a maximal physiological capacity of effluence or waste.

    "Excess DHT is a waste by-product and hair loss is the bodies primary response to the excess DHT. However like all clean up mechanisms the body will concentrate it immunological response on the most toxic waste product in the body, in this case the proximity to the skin organ. Our research has shown that by placing toxic by-products directly onto the scalp, the skin concentrates it immunological resources on removing the toxity and not on removing hair. Hair loss is prevented." "Our research has shown that the most effective and naturally occuring non-harmful topical waste product is in fact human excrement, using our unique patented nanosal technology of encapsulation, the shit is scattered into microfine nano-bubbles each 1/100 i.u in diameter and suspended in a colloidal suspension to form nanoshite suspensions. Studies have shown a 187% increase in absorption over simple application of human-excrement in its raw unprocessed state. Customers need not worry about the smell since nanoshite is suspended and the smell is diffused it has been described as having a "heady woody farmland smell"

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 12th April 2006:

• Received E-mail with the following link

• How to get rich on people not understanding science

• http://lupoleboucher.livejournal.com/32527.html#cutid1

  • I got some idjit motley fool today about Nanotech. As is usual with such rubbish, the new technology was declared to be a panacea; the world as we know it will end. There will be no more work; only infinite wealth generated by our nanoscopic robot slaves. The more frothing of such reports (including this one) indicates that, not only will they generate insane wealth, basically, by making things appear in genie-like fashion, they will also make us immortal. I'm not just making this crap up; people really write it. Other people really believe it. I even met an astounding charlatan on tribe.net who started a special interest group (to siphon money from gullible charitable foundations) calling for "responsible use of nanotech." As if there were presently any uses of "nanotech," irresponsible or otherwise. This idea of the imagined technology wreaking havoc comes from that ninny who invented Java: he has been claiming we are in dire danger of scientists creating nanorobots who would immediately eat everything and turn the world into "grey goo."

  • That's it. That's what the whole book is. Oh yes, there are a few collections of tables and graphs purporting to indicate that such a thing might be possible, and Drexler does sketch out some impressive looking mechanical designs of what he supposes a nanobot might look like, but, without more than a passing justification, he seems to lack the imagination to figure out what a real nanosized doodad might look like. Much of his thesis seems to be hand wavey arguments that such "looking rather a lot like a meter scale object" designs were actually valid on a nano or small microscale. I know for a fact that they are not. You can wave your hands around all you want; when you stick an atomic force microscope down on nanosized thingees, you know what forces they produce. Duh. Drexler would also occasionally notice that his perfect little robots would probably, you know, oxidize, like most reactive things do, and embarassedly consign them to Ultra High Vacuum chambers. Then sometimes he would forget, and enthusiastically stick them everywhere. None of the chemistry was done. Little real thought was given to thermodynamics or where the energy was coming from for all these cool Maxwell-Demon like "perpetual motion" reactions. It was never noticed that computational chemistry is basically useless. Experimental results were rarely mentioned, or explained away with the glorious equation of Schroedinger, with which, all things seemed possible. Self assembly was apparently deemed routine, despite the fact that nobody knows how to engineer such things, or even really when to expect them.

  • Lookit; it will be easy; just take these red balls, and stick them to the blue balls and you have a bearing surface! -so sez Drexler; not really -so sez my atomic force microscope; little things are sticky: duh

  • Presently the best scam to be in, in nanoland is claiming to use nanoparticles in your whatever. The thing is, we have always used nanoparticles in our whatevers. Before Drexler (BD?) we would call these nano-entities, "chemicals." But now people realize the marketing worth of claiming your sunscreen has "nanoparticles" in it, despite the fact that, well, all sunscreens do. Scotchguard is no longer marketed as a chemical that makes it easy to clean your pantaloons; it is now rebranded a "nanoshield" of some kind. Some ding dong has managed to fool people into thinking they have specially engineered some tennis balls to be bouncy using ... nanothingees... Back when I was a boy, they called those, "chemical coatings."

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 2nd April 2006:

• Received E-mail with the following updated contribution

• Nano-smiley made from DNA

• http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1593020.htm

  • A nanotechnologist has created the world's smallest and most plentiful smiley, a tiny face measuring a few billionths of a metre across assembled from strands of DNA.

  • This theoretically opens the way to making DNA quantum computers and nano-level devices including injectable robots that can monitor the body's tissues for good health.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Monday 27th February 2006:

• Received E-mail with the following updated contribution

• Automatic Nanotechnology Grant Application Generator (a slightly enhanced bugfix version)

  Update entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano Grant Applications vs Scientific Grant Applications" subsection.

Wednesday 15th February 2006:

• Received E-mail with the following contribution

• Automatic Nanotechnology Grant Application Generator

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano Grant Applications vs Scientific Grant Applications" subsection.

Saturday 4th February 2006:

• Received E-mail with following link

• Nano-technology takes weather warfare into a new dimension

• http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/6571.asp

  • The weather warfare has taken new dimensions. Now the military scientists all over the world are secretly working on applying nano-technologies to weather manipulation to produce devastating effects on adversaries like never before.

    Methods of artificial weather control are a potential weapon of war. Methods like Cloud-top seeding can confuse you and make you believe that such techniques are primitive. But such methods when integrated with nano-bacteria technologies can produce devastating effects.

    Tiny particles linked to a number of painful and sometimes deadly diseases may spread across the globe by hitching a ride in clouds, claim researchers in a recent issue of the Journal of Proteome Research. But cloud steams across the globe can also be controlled by artificial means. This means artificial clouds with nano-bacteria can be created and spread in a specific region by covert human hands.

    Counter nono-weather actions are also in effect. Classified and secret projects are in place to counter this new devastating technologies. Many coutries wary about artificial weather control by their potential adversaries are busy looking into all possibilities which can make their skies, air, soil and water dangerously polluted, compromised, biologically affected and vulnerable.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 1st January 2006:

• Received E-mails with following links

• Singularly fanciful: review of The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology by Ray Kurzeil,

• http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,17557088%255E5001986,00.html

  • OUR bodies will soon be obsolete. Genetic engineering, smart drugs and nanotechnology will reverse the ageing process and make us immortal. Machines will do the unpleasant work for us, producing all the energy we need. We will download our minds into powerful computers and become superintelligent, disembodied beings. We will be able to change bodies at will and inhabit virtual worlds of our making.

    And all of this will happen in our lifetime, for we are approaching the Singularity: a point at which scientific advance will happen so fast that technology will become indistinguishable from magic. This is the picture of the future presented in Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near. A renowned inventor and entrepreneur, Kurzweil is a leading voice of the extropian (or transhuman) movement, which preaches that we are on the threshold of a golden age of techno-supermen.

    Unsurprisingly, extropianism is largely an American phenomenon, combining two potent traditions: Christian millenarianism and the cult of technology. This enthusiastic brand of futurism may appear harmless, charming even, but it has an ugly side.

    Kurzweil's central belief is that technological and scientific progress is exponential. That is, science and technology do not only improve, but the rate of progress also accelerates, tending towards infinity, at which point we will experience "an expansion of human intelligence by a factor of trillions through merger with its non-biological form". A variation on the Enlightenment myth of rational progress, Kurzweil's model departs from a restricted notion of technology (basically, processing power). In the final analysis, it is based on a bad inference.

    Kurzweil's technological determinism is equally myopic. The political and social environment that shapes the nature and direction of technology is completely missing from his picture. Technology is neither an autonomous force nor an outgrowth or continuation of biological evolution. The recent debacle concerning AIDS drugs for Africa underscores the fact technology means nothing in the face of political unwillingness and the profit motive. Life extension can be granted now to most of the world's disadvantaged with remarkably low-tech means, such as food and cheap medicines.

    An entrenched political conservatism underlies the transhuman vision of the future. Social change is not necessary for Kurzweil, since it will be precipitated by the inherent acceleration of technological progress and driven by the free market model.

    Today's machines represent the principles of the neo-liberal economy, just as in the 16th century the mechanical clock embodied the values of the monarchic state. Robots and computer systems "self-organise", just like selfish individuals under the invisible hand of the market.

    And technology gets better and cheaper all the time, so that eventually it will trickle down to the poorest people, just like capital does in right-wing economics. The Singularity, Kurzweil tells us, is an economic imperative. Like human knowledge, economic growth is also exponential and the market will become the main engine of future change. We will not only be immortal but filthy rich.

    Incredibly, Kurzweil argues that factories and farm jobs in the US have dropped from 60per cent to 6 per cent because of automation; no mention of Third World sweatshops or corporate outsourcing and downsizing. He even argues that modern warfare claims fewer casualties thanks to more accurate weapons. We should mention that Kurzweil is an adviser to the US military and sits on the board of directors of Seegrid, a robotics company (founded by fellow extropian Hans Moravec) that subcontracts to the US Army. This may explain the absence of ethical concerns in his discussion of the military applications of new technology.

    Also central to Kurzweil's argument is the notion that our minds can be copied into computers built in the image of the brain. This runs up against gigantic problems and relies on several unproven assumptions. The information sciences have sparked the mystic belief that everything is made of ethereal data and that consciousness or identity can be separated from the complex electro-biochemical dynamics of the brain. This is a curious technological rewriting of the notion of the individual soul, transcendent from embodiment. It may be a reassuring story but there's no evidence to support it. Kurzweil believes the simulation of intelligence (or consciousness, he can't see the difference) is a matter of fast processing power.

    But he is not speaking to our more rational instincts. Though dressed in the garb of science, these fantasies are addressed mainly to the anxieties of ageing baby boomers. As governments of developed nations brace for an imminent huge swell in the population of elderly and retirees, this vision of a future ruled by an army of narcissistic baby-boomer cyborgs sounds like a bad joke. Kurzweil, however, feels naturally entitled to the fruits of the latest biomedical knowledge. And he has some ideas on how to handle the accompanying strain on economic and natural resources: nanobots will produce all the energy we need, cheaply and in an environmentally sustainable manner. And the oil giants needn't worry, as the nanobots will clean the environment too.

    For most of its history, technology has remained inseparable from religion, illusionism and magical thinking. Things haven't changed much and modern science and technology continue to inspire beliefs as baroque as anything concocted by our forebears. The road to the uncertain future is littered with the carcasses of brave new worlds that never were.

    So far, the only reliable law of futurism was pronounced by J.G. Ballard: "If enough people predict something, it won't happen."

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 30th December 2005:

• Received E-mails with following links

• The Coming Age Of Nanotechnology: GREAT HOPES

• http://www.his.com/~dionychus/nano/greathopes.html

  • The ramifications for pollution control and clean-up are startling. Because nanotechnology is a "bottom-up" technology that constructs products atom by atom, molecule by molecule, it would no longer be necessary to destroy the biosphere in an attempt to gather raw materials for production. Any substance nearby; dirt, grass clippings, garbage, etc., will suffice. They would be broken down into their constituent atoms and reassembled into desired products using the sun as an energy source. There would be no manufacturing waste. 100% recycling would be achieved because the nano-machines would be able to construct and de-construct atom by atom (Wu). This would have the additional effect of decentralizing our economies because the technology will be portable. "By disconnecting our material needs from distant places and relocating ultra-clean manufacturing locally, the highly undemocratic trend of the past few centuries, of concentration of technology and wealth in the hands of the few" will be reversed (Wu). According to Drexler, we would be able to build planet mending machines to correct damage already inflicted on the earth. "Some wastes, such as dioxin, consist of dangerous molecules made of innocuous atoms. Cleaning machines will render them harmless by rearranging their atoms" (Drexler 121). We will be able to remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, putting to good use the carbon dioxide that was spewed out during the industrial revolution. With this resource it would be possible to build strong and lightweight housing for ten billion people and still have ninety-five percent of this material left for other purposes; all "without even scratching the surface of the earth" (Wisz). We would also be able to make use of all the garbage we have already created. This would provide building material for some time to come (Wisz). There is very little if anything at all that could not be accomplished using nano-machines. It will even be possible to repair living tissue and extend human life. "Imagine having your bones woven with invisible diamond fabric. You could fall off a building and get up and walk away" (NanoTechnology, Health). Nano-computers could be inserted inside living cells. These computers would watch for invading organisms and if a virus or some other alien organism were found, assemblers could be sent out into the bloodstream to attack and destroy them (NanoTechnology, Health). Cancers could be selectively destroyed. Similarly, viral diseases such as herpes could be eradicated by removing the coded information in the host DNA structures. Plaque and other deposits in the heart could be cleaned out using nano-machines (Drexler 109). Nano-machines could be applied to a myriad of health problems. With cell repair machines, life could actually be extended (Drexler 115). In the home, all appliances would be replaced with a bread-box sized machine called a "shape shifter." This machine would take the place of all the other appliances and would be able to perform any function you asked of it. It could cook dinner, be the toaster, microwave, or can opener, or create the food for you. It could even walk the dog, or be the dog (Bishop). This same machine could be used to colonize space. It could be economically used to mine asteroids, using the raw materials to create colonies suitable for human use. Shape shifters could also be used to manufacture "lightsails," devices that use solar wind energy to propel them through space. These lightsails could transport universal assemblers (shape shifters) to far reaches of our solar system. These assemblers could then terraform other planets or build more colonies for human habitation. This, of course, will ease population pressures on earth, and allow unlimited exploration of space (Drexler 86-87). Then, of course, there are the more off-the-wall, or trivial uses. Self-repairing roads, trees that manufacture gasoline, roving real estate (you could adjust the size of your house, say, to accommodate a large party). Floors and carpets, and even entire houses could clean themselves, or paint themselves for that matter! (Crandall 126-129).

• The Coming Age Of Nanotechnology: GREAT HOPES

• http://www.his.com/~dionychus/nano/greathopes.html

  • The ramifications for pollution control and clean-up are startling. Because nanotechnology is a "bottom-up" technology that constructs products atom by atom, molecule by molecule, it would no longer be necessary to destroy the biosphere in an attempt to gather raw materials for production. Any substance nearby; dirt, grass clippings, garbage, etc., will suffice. They would be broken down into their constituent atoms and reassembled into desired products using the sun as an energy source. There would be no manufacturing waste. 100% recycling would be achieved because the nano-machines would be able to construct and de-construct atom by atom (Wu). This would have the additional effect of decentralizing our economies because the technology will be portable. "By disconnecting our material needs from distant places and relocating ultra-clean manufacturing locally, the highly undemocratic trend of the past few centuries, of concentration of technology and wealth in the hands of the few" will be reversed (Wu). According to Drexler, we would be able to build planet mending machines to correct damage already inflicted on the earth. "Some wastes, such as dioxin, consist of dangerous molecules made of innocuous atoms. Cleaning machines will render them harmless by rearranging their atoms" (Drexler 121). We will be able to remove billions of tons of carbon from the atmosphere, putting to good use the carbon dioxide that was spewed out during the industrial revolution. With this resource it would be possible to build strong and lightweight housing for ten billion people and still have ninety-five percent of this material left for other purposes; all "without even scratching the surface of the earth" (Wisz). We would also be able to make use of all the garbage we have already created. This would provide building material for some time to come (Wisz). There is very little if anything at all that could not be accomplished using nano-machines. It will even be possible to repair living tissue and extend human life. "Imagine having your bones woven with invisible diamond fabric. You could fall off a building and get up and walk away" (NanoTechnology, Health). Nano-computers could be inserted inside living cells. These computers would watch for invading organisms and if a virus or some other alien organism were found, assemblers could be sent out into the bloodstream to attack and destroy them (NanoTechnology, Health). Cancers could be selectively destroyed. Similarly, viral diseases such as herpes could be eradicated by removing the coded information in the host DNA structures. Plaque and other deposits in the heart could be cleaned out using nano-machines (Drexler 109). Nano-machines could be applied to a myriad of health problems. With cell repair machines, life could actually be extended (Drexler 115). In the home, all appliances would be replaced with a bread-box sized machine called a "shape shifter." This machine would take the place of all the other appliances and would be able to perform any function you asked of it. It could cook dinner, be the toaster, microwave, or can opener, or create the food for you. It could even walk the dog, or be the dog (Bishop). This same machine could be used to colonize space. It could be economically used to mine asteroids, using the raw materials to create colonies suitable for human use. Shape shifters could also be used to manufacture "lightsails," devices that use solar wind energy to propel them through space. These lightsails could transport universal assemblers (shape shifters) to far reaches of our solar system. These assemblers could then terraform other planets or build more colonies for human habitation. This, of course, will ease population pressures on earth, and allow unlimited exploration of space (Drexler 86-87). Then, of course, there are the more off-the-wall, or trivial uses. Self-repairing roads, trees that manufacture gasoline, roving real estate (you could adjust the size of your house, say, to accommodate a large party). Floors and carpets, and even entire houses could clean themselves, or paint themselves for that matter! (Crandall 126-129).

• Calls for Competitiveness and Nano-revolution Rhetoric Overhyped

• http://www.merid.org/nanodev/more.php?ts=20051222130123

  • David Berube, Professor of Communication Studies at the University of South Carolina in the U.S., responds to U.S. Senator George Allen's recent article in the journal Issues in Science and Technology by saying that it "is guilty of some exaggeration and hyperbole". Berube says that Allen's assertion that nanotechnology will "transform almost every aspect of out lives" is wrong because current evidence indicates only that nanotechnology has the potential to improve many existing lines of production, while it is unclear whether it will become a new general purpose technology. Berube says, "Nanotechnology is evolutionary not revolutionary [sic] and hyperbole produces false expectations." He also says that Allen's call for U.S. competitiveness is "misguided" because improving education and increasing the number of U.S.-trained engineers does not ensure domestic job production. He suggests that a better solution may be supporting globalization and international efforts to develop nanotechnology.

• Chinese Robots To Land On Moon Before Yuhangyuan

• http://www.spacedaily.com/news/china-00zzj.html

  • Beijing - Oct. 18, 2000

    China would send robots to land on the Moon before dispatching its yuhangyuan ("astronauts") in future lunar exploration, Xinhua News Agency reports today (Oct. 16

• Why Nanotechnology?

• http://www.yashnanotech.com/nano-application.php

  • Within a decade, nanotechnology is expected to be the basis of $1 trillion worth of products in the United States alone and will create anywhere from 8, 00,000 to 2 million new jobs. "Nanotechnology will require you to radically rethink what your core business is, who your competitors are, what skills your workforce needs, how to train your employees, and how to think strategically about.

    Even though it may sound far off at times, within the decade Nanotech will have huge effects on many practical industries, including manufacturing, health care, energy, agriculture, communications, transportations & electronics.

    The industries that nanotechnology will likely disruptively affect in the near term include the following: (Amounts are in Billions of US Dollars).

• Guest Editorial/ Nanobots: A New Paradigm for Hydrogeologic Characterization?

• http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-6584.2005.0079.x

  • Ground Water
    Volume 43 Page 463 - July 2005
    doi:10.1111/j.1745-6584.2005.0079.x
    Volume 43 Issue 4

• Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties

• http://www.nanotec.org.uk/finalReport.htm

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 13th December 2005:

• Received E-mail accusing(?)/indicating that perhaps this page did not appreciate the full import of Toward total environmental sustainability via emerging molecular nanotechnology, in that it is a publication of the CRNano Taiwan-Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Taiwan. This is a publication which elaborates on such things as:
  • Though MNT [Molecular NanoTechnology] does not meddle with atomic nuclear, NEMS [NanoElectromechanical Systems] will make triggering nuclear fusion easy
  • Nanobots like nanoflocculant or nanocoagulant can be devised to neutralize the surface charge of suspended solids.
  • Nanocondenser can be developed to extract water from air.
  • Nanobots like nano-catalytic-converter can also be sent up into atmosphere to converter NOx into nitrogen and oxygen.
  • For ground level treatment, the acidified waterbodies and soil, we can disseminate a troop of nano-buffer to increase their buffer capacity in resisting acidity.
  • MNT will also enable us to develop nanomachines or nanobots such as nano-photosynthesizer
  • Powered by the cheap solar energy, these nanobots not only can be manipulated to extract all the 300 billion tons of excess CO2 from atmosphere, but also can transform them into valuable materials.
  • Drexler (9) proposed using sodium containing balloon type nanobots. The nanobots powered by nano-solar cells collects CFCs and separates out the chlorine in the stratosphere. Combining this with sodium makes sodium chloride.
  • Nuclear wastes can be collected, concentrated by specific nanobots.
  • Underground nano-atom smasher powered by cheap solar cells can also be devised to treat nuclear wastes. This is a reverse process of nuclear engineering. Instead of smashing nonradioactive target and harvesting for radioactive substance, the nanomachine will smash radioactive target and harvest for nonradioactive substance.
  • MNT is powerful and realizable within our lifetime, yet it's a tool

Monday 12th December 2005:

• Received E-mail with following links

• nanosexuality- the next sexual revolution?

• http://www.barbelith.com/topic/966

  • Suppose that, at some point in the future, scientist develop nanobots, capable of swimming around inside a persons body, unclogging their arteries, rebuilding cancerous cells, and helping out our immune systems. (I reckon this could happen in around 50 years, but that's neither here nor there.) With such technology, it will then be possible for a person to change (physical) sex (in both directions) with negligible difficulty: not merely on a cosmetic level, but genetically, hormonally, as well as in terms of what organs a person has

• Three Minutes With Ray Kurzweil : Visionary tells how biotechnology and nanotechnology will extend human life spans into near immortality.

• http://pcworld.about.com/magazine/2212p034cid118375.htm

  • PC World: How does computer technology fit into your plan to "live long enough to live forever"?

    Ray Kurzweil: [In the recent book,] we present three bridges to radical life extension.

    We provide a detailed program--bridge one--based on today's knowledge of how to slow down aging and disease processes. I've been reprogramming the biochemistry of my own body for 20 years, and this has become more intensive with my collaboration over the past five years with Dr. Grossman. I take about 250 supplements each day and weekly intravenous therapies. A biological aging test pegged me at about 38 when I was 40. I'm now 56, and an extensive biological aging test says that my biological age is now 40, so I have not aged very much in the last 16 years.

    Dr. Grossman and I describe a program of how to slow down each of the dozen aging and disease processes. This program will enable baby boomers who are aggressive enough to remain in good shape until the full flowering of the biotechnology evolution--bridge two, in which we reprogram the information processes underlying biology. Biotech will reach its peak in ten to twenty years.

    Computers are playing a vital role in biotechnology. The decoding of the genome would have been impossible without computers, and we're using computers today to design highly targeted therapies that perform precise biochemical missions, such as destroying a cancer cell, with minimal side effects. We're starting to place computerized biochemical sensors in our bodies that can monitor our health and make diagnostic decisions. An artificial pancreas is now undergoing clinical trials; it combines a glucose sensor, an insulin pump, and a computer, all embedded inside the patient's body.

    Biotechnology in turn will lead to bridge three--nanotechnology--in which we will go beyond the limitations of biology to enhance our physical and mental capabilities by factors of many thousands, eventually millions. The golden age of nanotechnology will be in the 2020s. We will ultimately replace our frail "version 1.0" bodies with a greatly enhanced version 2.0. In our book, we describe all three bridges in detail.

    The killer app for nanotechnology, about twenty years away, is nanobots. Inside our bodies and brains, nanobots will provide radical life extension by destroying pathogens and cancer cells, repairing DNA errors, destroying toxins and debris, and otherwise reversing aging processes. Nanobots are computer-based robots small enough to travel in our bloodstream.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 11th December 2005:

• Received E-mail with following link including comment that "Some highlights from what looks to be the Taiwanese view of the future"

• Toward total environmental sustainability via emerging molecular nanotechnology

• http://www.tainano.com/CCRN/TOWARD%20REAL%20SUSTAINABILITY%20BY%20NANOTECHNOLOGY.htm

  • 2.1.1. Control of Pollution from Energy Production by MNT

  • Though MNT does not meddle with atomic nuclear, NEMS will make triggering nuclear fusion easy (18). Community own small-scale nuclear fusion power plant is possible. Nevertheless solar energy is ample for us; so far there is no need to tap into fusion energy source.

  • Nano-photosynthesis can produce sugar, starch for food; further synthesis of cellulose for paper and wood to avoid clear-cutting forests. Nano-biotechnology can yield protein and collagen to stop animal slaughtering. Carbon retrieved from atmosphere and recycled from existing wastes by MNT will be used to make carbon nanotubes, that are far superior than steel. Carbon will be the most common structural and functional element for a MNT based civilization (9). A carbon based MNT material production model is conceptualized as Fig. 6. If there is specific need for metal, nanofactory with trillions of nanoassembler can synthesize steel (9), copper and alloy to skip mining and refining. Thereby, industrial wastewater, wastes and air pollution will all vanish.

  • 2.1.2. Control of Pollution from Material Production and Product Manufacturing by MNT

  • The costly water distribution network not only encroach the environment but also provide chances for chemical and biological recontamination.

    A series of nanodevices can be devised to revolutionize water treatment process. Nanobots like nanoflocculant or nanocoagulant can be devised to neutralize the surface charge of suspended solids. They are non-chemical and 100% reusable. Smart non-fouling nanomembrane or nanoseparator can be developed to selectively separate dissolved solids while keeping beneficial minerals in the water, or to desalinate brine water (20,21). Nano-disinfectant such as UV nanobots can accomplish germicidal task without leaving toxic residual and producing no THMs. Nanocondenser can be developed to extract water from air. Integrating these unit nanoprocesses and powered by abundant nano-solar energy, different water treatment systems can be designed to fit specific geographical conditions. Such development will make huge waterworks with messy piping system obsolete. On-demand and on-location generation of drinking water from liquid or vapor will make decentralized water supplies extensive, affordable, and environmentally clean. A MNT's future on-demand and on-location generation of drinking water system is conceptualized as Fig. 7.

  • 2.2.1. Acid Rain and Smog

  • Once MNT enabled solar energy become exclusive energy source, our long-term energy umbilical cord that ties with fossil fuel can finally be severed. In addition, future vehicles that constructed with nanomaterial, driven by nanoelectromechanical system and powered by hydrogen fuel cell or solar cell will totally eliminate transportation related SO2 and NOx emission. Therefore,the anthropogenic SO2 and NOx that assault our atmosphere since industrial revolution can be ceased; thus further acidification to the environment and threatening to human health can be relieved.Nanobots such as nano-desulfurizer can be sent up to the atmosphere to capture SO2 gas, reduce it to sulfur and precipitate to earth surface as dust; nano-sulfur-precipitator contains calcium or magnesium ion can be sent up into sky to oxidize SO2 and then form CaSO4 or MgSO4 salts.

    Nanobots like nano-catalytic-converter can also be sent up into atmosphere to converter NOx into nitrogen and oxygen. If the agriculture technology still needs fertilizer, nanobots like nano- NOx-reducer can be sent up to capture NOx and transform it into ammonia and bring it down to the ground. For ground level treatment, the acidified waterbodies and soil, we can disseminate a troop of nano-buffer to increase their buffer capacity in resisting acidity. We can also deploy an army of nano-neutralizer to dynamically adjust pH in water or soil to their original condition, either by capturing H+ from the environment or giving off OH- to the environment.

  • 2.2.2. Global Warming

  • MNT will also enable us to develop nanomachines or nanobots such as nano-photosynthesizer (11,12,13) nano-chlorophyll, nano-carbon-fixer, and etc. Powered by the cheap solar energy, these nanobots not only can be manipulated to extract all the 300 billion tonsof excess CO2 from atmosphere, but also can transform them into valuable materials. The carbon extracted by nanobots can be used in synthesizing functional and structural materials. It can also be extracted by other nanobots and further synthesized into sugar, starch, and cellulose to supplement our demand for food, paper and etc. (See Fig. 6).

  • 2.2.3. Ozone Layer Depletion

  • Drexler (9) proposed using sodium containing balloon type nanobots. The nanobots powered by nano-solar cells collects CFCs and separates out the chlorine in the stratosphere. Combining this with sodium makes sodium chloride. When the sodium is gone, the balloon collapses and falls. Eventually, a grain of salt and a biodegradable speck fall to Earth. The stratospheric CFC can be removed soon.

  • 2.2.5. Nuclear Wastes

  • Nuclear wastes can be collected, concentrated by specific nanobots. Products of MNT could help with conventional approaches to dealing with nuclear waste, helping to store it in the most stable, reliable forms possible. Using nanomachines, we could seal them in self-sealing containers and powered by cheap nano-solar energy (10). These would be more secure than any passive rock or cask. When MNT has developed cheap, reliable spacecraft, the concentrated nuclear wastes can be transported to the moon and bury them in moon's dead, dry rock by nanobots, or to other planets that still radioactive, or even shoot them directly into the sun.

    Underground nano-atom smasher powered by cheap solar cells can also be devised to treat nuclear wastes. This is a reverse process of nuclear engineering. Instead of smashing nonradioactive target and harvesting for radioactive substance, the nanomachine will smash radioactive target and harvest for nonradioactive substance. The smashing and harvesting process will continue stability is achieved. Fig. 9 illustrates a few routes for resolving nuclear waste piles that accumulated in the environment and TDBT is at loss on dealing with them.

  • 3. Conclusions

  • MNT is powerful and realizable within our lifetime, yet it's a tool

• Received E-mail with following link

• NASA nanobots

• http://www.eetimes.com/news/98/1000news/nano.html

  • Thus, one scenario is of a NASA space probe that dumps a container full of nanoscale robots on an asteroid. Their first job: mine metals to reproduce billions of identical robots that then go to work transforming the amorphous chunk of material into a space station.

    Other scenarios feature the ability to harness biological processes such as protein replication or DNA information encoding to produce ultradense memories and computing devices.

    Other possibilities include nanobots that would circulate through the bloodstream to attack cancer cells, or industrial nanomachines that build superstrong materials one atom at a time.

    Though tantalizing, such futurism has also come under attack. Introducing a healthy dose of scientific skepticism, Scientific American recently ran an article questioning whether the field is actually going to deliver in the near term.

    That sparked a spirited debate among nanotechnology proponents. The debate is presented online at a page that also presents a concise overview of the field

• Nano service

• http://www.eetimes.com/news/98/1000news/nano.html

  • While current methods are just breaking ground with the individual manipulation of atoms and molecules, the full visionary idea fueling nanotechnology enthusiasts is the possibility of building manufacturing machines and robots on the nanometer scale . Like life forms, which are self-reproducing molecular machines, these hypothetical machines would be able to rapidly build billions of copies of themselves and go to work tirelessly performing the tasks they were programmed for.

• Including comment that ""Nanosat Constellation Trailblazer" (well they were in 1999!!) Aren't we lagging behind the Chinese here in nanosatellite technology?"

• New breed of robots to explore the planets

• http://www.robots.org/images/2001_Robot_Games/New%20breed%20of%20robots%20to%20explore%20the%20planets.htm

  • Conceivably, NASA could cram numerous nanobots aboard a single launch vehicle, then send them to Mars or another world. There, they would disembark and form a "robot colony," in the words of Ames systems engineer Hamid Berenji.

    The colony could scout out in different directions to survey the entire planet. Such fleets would be mechanical versions of the great human terrestrial exploring teams of the past, such as Lewis and Clark.

  • Nanobots would have an inherent disadvantage: They get cold easily. A well-known principle of physics is that smaller objects cool off faster than large ones, because the smaller object's surface is bigger relative to its overall volume than a larger object's. (This is one reason why small planets like Mars apparently have no active volcanoes: Their internal heat escaped to space long ago.)

    And the nanobot will be too small to carry an on-board heater. Scientists could give it heat shields to keep it warm (as well as to protect it from high-speed interstellar particles called galactic cosmic rays), but the added weight of shielding would obviate the advantage of its small size.

    So the JPL team is trying to develop nanobots whose electronics can endure the temperature extremes of deep space - which range from boiling-hot daytimes to nighttime temperatures about 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, far colder than the South Pole.

    On Thursday, NASA announced plans to launch into Earth orbit three small satellites, dubbed the "Nanosat Constellation Trailblazer" mission. Each satellite would be an octagon 8 inches high and 16 inches long. Among other things, the minisatellites - to be launched in 2003 - will test the ability of new electronics and other equipment to survive "near the boundary of Earth's protective magnetic field,"

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Saturday 10th December 2005:

• Received E-mail with following links including comment that "Hmm, March 2002. Apparently robots 32 mm in diameter will be manipulating sub-atomic particles within three months!"

• Nanotech Takes a Giant Step Down!

• http://online.sfsu.edu/~rone/Nanotech/nanostepdown.htm

  • MIT says an army of NanoWalkers (microbots) will be manipulating sub-atomic particles within three months. The development signals a new era in technology as industry prepares to move "down" from genomes to atoms.

• When Molecules Fly

• http://www.cato.org/research/articles/crews-030515.html

  • But now Republican advocacy of science pork is back. Exhibit A for 2003 is nanotechnology, the cutting-edge science of direct manipulation of matter at the molecular level. Government wants to get involved in a big way, despite companies such as IBM, Hewlett Packard and Intel - and numerous venture capitalists - already taking the lead. Promised applications include smaller and cheaper computer chips, nano-scale "punch cards" to boost computer storage, stronger-than-steel carbon "nanotubes" with myriad applications, and new materials and coatings including responsive clothing.

    The field sports its share of hype: Surely, promised "nanobots" to attack cancers and other human ailments - or even repair cellular damage and revive cryogenically frozen human beings - remain in the far-distant future. Similarly, the proposed "Starlight Express" carbon-nanotube elevator to outer space - from a NASA-funded outfit called Highlift Systems - belongs to the realm of science fiction.

• Return to the Garden

• http://www.actionart3d.com/nanonature/?postid=5

  • Here's another way nanotechnology could help nature. We will build underground and reduce our need to occupy every square foot of the planet. Instead of skyscrapers that reach 3000 feet, why not bury them and contribute the surface to a local nature conservatory? Put transportation below ground as well. Turn the surface of the Earth into a sparsely settled, recreation area with forests, prairie, footpaths, lakes, coliseums and bike paths covering the land that now is paved with concrete and roadway.

    It is certainly a long term goal. No one wants to live in a hole while their neighbor lives in a national forest. But there might be a high percentage of the population that would trade surface rights for a tax break. All factories, office buildings and warehouses should, in my view, be underground. With high resolution voice and video communication as common as telephone and email is today, we may find our living styles adapt quickly to a home and community tens of meters below the surface.

    How does a nano robot dig a hole big enough in which to build a house? Since we are not in favor of self reproducing nanobots, we would need to create the mass quantity of robots sufficient to do the job on site. We would need an outdoor bot generation facility to actually build the enormous quantity of nanorobots required to build any structure large enough for human habitation. Probably something that is moved from one site to the next. This bot generation facility would probably be a mobile collection of large boxes that arrive on site after you call and set up an appointment.

    Talk to it, verify your identity and give it the go-ahead. It's already knowledgeable of what you want it to do. It taps into a local power grid, runs off a fuel cell or else extrudes and erects a temporary solar collector depending on conditions at the site. The boxes contain enough intelligence to carry out the task, but are not what we would consider a person. The boxes couple, divide and generally put together all the systems needed to deliver material down into the hole and to extract the earth and rock from the hole. They brought one big block of carbon that is usually sufficient for a job of this size. They may need additional carbon on site. They need fuel to run the robots. They need to transport a few thousand tons of excavation material to a local fill location or load it onto surface transport to some other location. Assuming they can't tap into a local underground material transport tunnel. Should be one within a few hundred meters, but we might have to wait to build a spur line to make that connection if the building site is isolated.

    If carbon material is not available as organic rubbish, you will probably have had a pile of carbon feedstock delivered to your site. Anything from organic waste to diamond grit. The digger systems will find it and, once it's original carbon is gone, eat the pile to create the umpteen trillion nanobots that are needed. Since the nanobots get recycled over and over, the job only requires a limited quantity of carbon.

    Once the digger starts to dig, one object shaped like a big bass drum becomes the focus. The lower surface extrudes a thick liquid that sinks into the dirt below it. You can watch the drum sink into the ground dragging it's umbilicals behind it. The pipes pulse with material going in and coming out. The excess rock and dirt is extracted and the hole grows slowly.

    Within two days, the hole is essentially excavated. The slick interior surface is a single mechanical unit with walls a meter thick and waterproof. The entire building stucture is crack proof up to a Modified Mercalli of XI. The building rides with the earth movement like any other rock embedded in the earth.

    The interior is sculpted to provide essentials like floors, walls, plumbing, hardware attachment features, lighting pipes, and other unique features designed in long before the digger was on site.

    The surface entrance may be the equivalent of a rest booth that blends into a grove of trees. You would need to be within 20 meters to know it was there. That depends on whether the building is part of a below ground community with transportation, and walking space close to the unit. If not, it may require access to a road as we do now. The surface installation might be more substantial and include a garage and other features of a house we have today.

    I hope this short trip into the future paints an alluring picture. I'd love to breath clean, cold air with the smell of pine trees and honeysuckle vines. Living in a city, that never happens.

• NANO-ECONOMICS

• http://www.computerresearchassociated.com/NanoEconomics.htm

  • How will our concept of money evolve in the nanotechnology future?

    "Still building cars when you could grow'em?"

    Well, not for very long... Present economics are a product of first wave industrialization... economics in the age of this second wave are analogous to medieval vs. 20th century and require considerable contemplation. Humanity will be faced with an industrial, monetary and social quake as a result of molecular manufacturing - programmed self assembly.

    In the near future, a team of scientists will succeed in constructing the first nano-sized robot capable of self-replication. Within a few short years, and five billion trillion nano-robots later, virtually all present industrial processes will be obsolete as well as our contemporary concept of labor. Consumer goods will become plentiful, inexpensive, smart, and durable. Medicine will take a quantum leap forward. Space travel and colonization will become safe and affordable. For these and other reasons, global life styles will change radically, drastically impacting human behavior.

    The prudent corporation wishing not only to survive, but to prosper in the first half of the twenty-first century, would do well to start research projects now on how to utilize a nanotechnology based universal assembler when it arrives. Such a company should consider how to design the products they make today, through this new technique.

    Examine this simple, yet universally relevant, example: After the first assemblers arrive there will still be demand for cotton bath towels until a superior product is engineered. A manufacturer should get a handle on just what a bath towel physically looks like on a molecular level, figure out what proportions of carbon, oxygen etc. are involved, and start writing the software for their full line of towels with all their various colors, weaves, and patterns.

    By determining in advance how to utilize assemblers before they exist, a company would be able to start production day one of availability by plugging in their pre-engineered software. Such a company should examine today the sparkling numbers that appear when the cost of cotton, synthetic dyes, machinery and (gulp) most of their labor is substituted with inexpensively available carbon black and atmospheric gases (and of course, the lease payment to Xerox for the assembler). Perhaps such a company should also consider designing software for a line of elegant Persian rugs as well!

    Since the industrial revolution, manufacturing has been creating unavoidable, wasteful by-products. These by-products are usually harmful to life yet too expensive to disarm, so they are spewed into the air, dumped into rivers and seas, or buried underground, only to eventually work their way back into our neighborhoods. Compared to the wretched lifestyle of the middle ages, we all enjoy great wealth, health and materialism from our current industrial technology. Unfortunately, with population growth and all, our lifestyle is destined for the dumps as we bury ourselves in our own toxic waste. Would it not be ideal if manufacturing had zero by-products and all goods recycled themselves with virtually no human energy? What a green fantasy. It simply can't be done with traditional technology.

    To make a plastic, chemical reactants are combined in various complex steps under specific conditions to form a desired product. The reactant rarely converts into 100% product. What's left over is nasty and disposal is expensive. In contrast, if you make a plastic with nano-technology, you can use feed stocks of pure elements like carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and force individual atoms deliberately into chemical bonds without intermediate steps. You could also build the plastic into the final shape you desire without injection molding. All "reactant" becomes "product" with no embarrassing and wasteful by-products.

    If you wanted to build something out of steel, you could release "nano" machines (or nanites) into an unsightly junkyard to scavenge iron and, again, build your desired structure atom-by-atom into its' final form without burning coal for smelting and leaving a heap of slag full of heavy metals. You want wood? Which do you prefer: mahogany, teak, cherry, zebra, or another exotic? No problem... Just whip out your software for the wood of your choice, turn on the feed stocks and press GO! We can stop destroying tropical rain forests as well as the creatures who live there, releasing dangerous viruses, and changing the world's climatic patterns.

• Frankfurter Nano - November 17, 2005

• http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • I spent an interesting day at the second Hessen Nanoforum in Hanau, Germany (just outside Frankfurt if you are not familiar) followed by a rather less interesting day at Frankfurt airport due to fog and wind in Madrid causing an eight hour delay to my Iberia flight.

    All of the participants except two were from Germany, so I had to dust off the German I learned at school in Meinerzhagen and pay attention. Two things were apparent at this event. Firstly that the state of Hessen is very strongly supporting nanotechnologies, and secondly there has been little impact on industry so far. Hessen is doing everything right at the academic level, with networks and conferences like this with four hundred attendees, but most of the fifty exhibitors were either academic institutions or companies wanting to sell tools to academic institutions, with few companies actually applying nanotechnology to anything.

    Perhaps the oddest company was Neosino who extol the health benefits of ingesting, inhaling and being massaged with 3-10nm silica particles and even claim to be the official supplier (of nanoparticles?) to FC Bayern Munich. I didn’t notice them during the talks on toxicology and risk.

• Phantom Nanohorns - December 5, 2005

• http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • The Enquirer reports that NEC is now able to produce a kilogram of pure nanohorns a day. Back in 2003, Yoshimi Kubo, senior manager of NEC Fundamental Research Labs' Nanotube Technology Centre, said the methanol based fuel cells using nanohorns would start shipping for laptops in 2004 and cell phones in 2005. Back in 2002 they were claiming availability in 2003.

    NEC are not alone with bullish predictions about nanomaterials, Toshiba and Casio were also claiming similar time scales.

    It is a salutary lesson about the huge gap between the initial enthusiasm of engineers (material x could revolutionise…) and the dull reality of trying to manufacture materials reliably and in bulk, at an economically viable price. Every day we see many nanotech articles with qualifiers such as ‘could’ or ‘may, rather than statements such as ‘is’ or ‘will’ – which is what it takes to convince the business community that nanotech is not vapourware.

• Nano Banana Skins - December 5, 2005

• http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • There are more calls from the US for regulation of nanomaterials, albeit voluntary. We are somewhat sceptical of voluntary approaches, especially when major omissions are present in the financial information that is compulsory. If a company cannot be relied on to state its financial results accurately, what chance is there of voluntary disclosure of the odd nanomaterial related problem?

    The report finds that, unfortunately, it’s the same old solution, akin to finding that some chemicals are explosively reactive and then calling for the regulation of chemistry.

    Perhaps the silliest comment came from David Rejeski director of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, although this may be somewhat out of context.

    “Some nanospheres, for example, are extremely slippery, "like the nano version of banana peels," said Rejeski, director of the center's foresight and governance project. With slips and falls a major cause of workplace injury, he said, this is the kind of thing that deserves attention but can be easily overlooked, given the lack of an overarching national nanotechnology research strategy -- something he and others are calling for.”

    Call us cynical, but if you have a workplace plastered with unfettered nanoparticles, then slipping on them would be the least of your worries!

• Hype vs Hype - December 10, 2005

• http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • There are a number of areas of concern when it comes to nanomaterials, all of which need to be addressed in a balanced manner, something highlighted in a recent report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

    On the other hand, articles such as this one in the UKs Independent seem to balance hype with hype and should come with an "Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter Here" warning. A typical example is:

    "Cancer cells could be destroyed by tiny silicon combs; "nanobots" could clear blocked blood vessels. Hydrogen-based fuel cells using "nanotubes" could allow cars to travel 5,000 miles on a full tank. Minute solar cells in building façades and on road surfaces would produce cheap energy."

    Given that the report author is so obviously out of touch with current science and technology, it is safe to treat statements such as "each type of nanoparticle may be as deadly as asbestos" with similar caution.

• Space Elevator

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

  • However these structures whilst possibly reaching the agreed altitude for space (100 km).......

    Carbon nanotubes have exceeded all other materials and appear to have a theoretical tensile strength and density that is well within the desired range for space elevator structures and the technology to manufacture bulk quantities [4] and fabricate them into a cable is somewhat developing. While theoretically carbon nanotubes can have tensile strengths beyond 120 GPa, in practice the highest tensile strength ever observed in a single-walled tube is 63 GPa, and such tubes averaged breaking between 30 and 50 GPa. Even the strongest fiber made of nanotubes is likely to have notably less strength than its components. Improving tensile strength depends on further research on purity and different types of nanotubes. .Most designs call for single-walled carbon nanotubes.

• Laboratory Grows World Record Length Carbon Nanotube

• http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/040917091336.htm

  • LOS ALAMOS, N.M., Sept. 13, 2004 -- University of California scientists working at Los Alamos National Laboratory in collaboration with chemists from Duke University have recently grown a world record-length four-centimeter-long, single-wall carbon nanotube

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 9th December 2005:

• Received E-mail with following link

• Bird Flu Protection: NanoMasks

• http://birdfluprotection.com/nanomasks/buy_nanomask.htm

  • Each nanomask includes two individual nanofilters. Each package of nanofilters include ten. Due to health concerns and high demand, there are no returns (All sales are final).

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 8th December 2005:

• Received E-mail with following links

• Scientists build world's first single-molecule car

• http://www.physorg.com/news7438.html

  • Rice University Scientists have done it. After BMW announced the possibility of producing a car that would utilize nanotechnology practically for all functions, Rice University scientists developed the world’s first single-molecule car- the car that was driven on a gold microscopic highway. It a small coupe that is devoid of any plush seating or conventional steering system. But it is a real solution for the grid locked cities. With a wheelbase of less than 5 nm, parking it is a cakewalk.

• Digg: Scientists build world's first nanocar

• http://digg.com/science/Scientists_build_world__s_first_nanocar

  • No digg.

    It isn't a nanocar. It has no engine and can't pull itself. If anything, it's a nanocart. The nano-machine gimick is running old. Say you're doing something nano, and people throw money at you. So silly, yet nobody bothers to build any actual machines that DO anything. They just do some organic chemistry to make a nanometer sized molecule and call it a nanomachine. Call it whatever you want, but it doesn't DO anything.

    The concept of making real world objects nano-size is just stupid. If you're really interested in developing nano-machines, we need to think about how one could do that and what kind of engine we could use to drive the machine, instead of just goofing around.

    I have an idea... let's make a molecule that looks like a horse and attach it to the nanocart! ROFL!!!one11!!

    What a colossal waste of money.

  • I believe what they built was a nano-wagon not a nano-car. I did not read about a molecular engine in there. Sounds like they're overstating their achievement. They need to make a nano-horse to pull their nano-wagon.

  • You're a moron. A nano engine cannot exist, because one molecule of fuel would be bigger than it.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection. Also refer to NanoCar section on the first scientific reference relating to the concept of a nanocar.

Saturday 26th November 2005:

• Updated webpage with nanoshite buzzword received via E-mail: "nanorattle" ("Now, nano-sized people can play the Rhumba!"): - buzzword "appears in an otherwise respectable journal". Article titled: "Synthesis of Pt/Ag bimetallic nanorattle with Au core"

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Wednesday 9th November 2005:

• As per instructions from the representatives of El Dorado State University, update the Centre for Nanoethical Nanononesense (CNN) of El Dorado State U. press release on: 1) NASA Sponsors Research into Civilisation Destroying Applications of NanoTechnology and 2) World's First Functioning Nanobots! Link to an example image of the Bionanobots which the The Very Reverand P. Dolding-Beedle has found to be so inherantly flawed.

Sunday 30th October 2005:

• A Centre for Nanoethical Nanononesense (CNN) of El Dorado State U. press release: 1) NASA Sponsors Research into Civilisation Destroying Applications of NanoTechnology and 2) World's First Functioning Nanobots!

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Press Releases" subsection.

Sunday 30th October 2005:

• Waiting for Breakthroughs By Gary Stix
  • http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0003FBB1-6119-1C76-9B81809EC588EF21&pageNumber=1&catID=6

  • "That's the messiah," confides Edward M. Reifman, D.D.S. The Encino, Calif., dentist has paid hundreds of dollars to attend a conference to hear about robotic machines with working parts as small as protein molecules. Reifman nods toward K. Eric Drexler, the avatar of nanotechnology. Drexler has just finished explaining to a strange mix of scientists, entrepreneurs and his own acolytes that nanotech may arrive in one to three decades. The world, in his view, has not fully grasped the implications of molecular machines that will radically transform the way material goods are produced.

  • Drexler's fanciful scenarios, nonetheless, have come to represent nanotechnology for many aesthetes of science and technology. The phenomenon is not uncommon in the sociology of science. The public image of a certain field or concept, shaped by futurists, journalists and science-fiction scribes, contrasts with the reality of the often plodding and erratic path that investigators follow in the trenches of day-to-day laboratory research and experimentation.

  • Drexler and his nanoist disciples view molecular nanotechnology as a grand challenge of science and technology. And they comb the pages of journals such as Science and Nature for evidence of research advances that might lay the groundwork toward the ultimate self-replicating assembler. At the Foresight conference last fall, Merkle showed a schematic chart illustrating how the current work being done at a scale below 100 nanometers by chemists and materials scientists might one day lead to nanomachines. Lines on the left of the chart represented experimental approaches, such as probes that can manipulate atoms, tubes of graphite about a nanometer in diameter, and novel types of proteins. On the right side resided lines that corresponded to computer simulations of molecular machine parts for assemblers. In the center appeared a noticeable gap.

  • Keeping every atom in its place may also prove exceedingly onerous at the atomic level. David E. H. Jones, a researcher in the department of chemistry at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, who may be best known as the author of the irreverent "Daedalus" column in Nature, has provided a pointed critique of the idea that individual atoms and molecules could serve as construction elements in the ultimate erector set. Jones made his case a year ago in a review of a popular book about Drexler by science writer Ed Regis, called Nano. Regis's account generally treats the chief nanoist's ideas favorably.

    Jones describes the contortions often required to achieve atomic control of matter. In 1989 two IBM researchers penned their employer's acronym by manipulating 35 xenon atoms with a scanning tunneling microscope-a device that dragged the atoms across a nickel surface. The atoms moved because of chemical bonding interactions that occurred when the microscope's tungsten tip came to within a tenth of a nanometer or so of each atom. Jones notes the difficulties involved: The IBM logo was created in an extremely high vacuum at the supercooled temperature of liquid helium using inert xenon atoms. Outside this rarefied environment, the world becomes much less stable. "Single atoms of more structurally useful elements at or near room temperature are amazingly mobile and reactive," Jones writes. "They will combine instantly with ambient air, water, each other, the fluid supporting the assemblers, or the assemblers themselves."

    Jones believes that the nanoists fail to take into account critical questions about the thermodynamics and information flow in a system of assemblers. "How do the assemblers get their information about which atom is where, in order to recognize and seize it? How do they know where they themselves are, so as to navigate from the supply dump [where raw atomic material is stored] to the correct position in which to place it? How will they get their power for comminution [breaking up material] into single atoms, navigation and, above all, for massive internal computing?" The list continues before Jones concludes: "Until these questions are properly formulated and answered, nanotechnology need not be taken seriously. It will remain just another exhibit in the freak show that is the boundless-optimism school of technical forecasting."

    The nanoists' response to this fusillade is simple: read Drexler's technical tome Nanosystems, which contains a response to virtually any general point raised by detractors. Acoustic waves, for example, can be used to supply power to assemblers, an answer to one of Jones's objections.

  • The present inability to build an assembler-coupled with elaborate speculation about what the future may hold-gives nanotechnology a decidedly ideological or even religious slant, in Barth's view. In early January he posted a message to an Internet bulletin board (sci. nanotech) suggesting that subscribers comment on whether molecular nanotechnology has the makings of a mass social/political movement or a religious faith in the traditions of Marxism or Christianity. Barth bolsters the case for nanoism as a form of salvation by citing a passage from a new magazine called NanoTechnology: "Imagine having your body and bones woven with invisible diamond fabric. You could fall out of a building and walk away."

    The nanoists' legacy may be to stoke science-fiction writers with ideas for stories. The latest genre in science fiction employs nanotechnology as its centerpiece. A follow-on to the cybernetic fantasies of authors such as William Gibson, it is sometimes even called "nanopunk." The world depicted by nanowriters goes beyond cybernetic mind control and downloading one's brain into a computer. It postulates ultimate control over matter. "It seems like nanotech has become the magic potion, the magic dust that allows anything to happen with a pseudoscientific explanation," says Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr., an editor of the journal Science-Fiction Studies, published by DePauw University.

  • Nanoists' convictions about the inevitability of a breakthrough evoke memories of another idea once posed by Feynman, their adoptive mentor. In a commencement speech given to the 1974 graduating class at Caltech, Feynman noted that some Pacific Islanders religiously awaited the return of the U.S. troops who had landed in World War II. He described the elaborate preparations the islanders made for the return of the planes that would bring them advanced technological accoutrements and limitless wealth. Fires mark the sides of runways. A man plays air-traffic controller by sitting in a hut with carved wooden headphones from which pieces of bamboo stick out, like antennas. The believers wait patiently in this preindustrial imitation of an airfield.

    "They're doing everything right," Feynman said. "The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land." Similarly, some scientific endeavors rely on wish fulfillment-and an inability to consider why something may not work, Feynman noted. "So I call these things cargo cult science," he concluded, "because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigations, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land." Until the nanoists can make an assembler and find something useful to do with it, molecular nanotechnology will remain just a latter-day cargo cult.

• Foresight Debate with Scientific American
  • http://www.islandone.org/Foresight/SciAmDebate/SciAmResponse.html

  • Dear Editors:

    I was dismayed to read in your April 1996 issue ("Waiting for Breakthroughs") an extended quotation from Richard Feynman's essay "Cargo Cult Science" used as a critique of nanotechnology. I am sure he would have found such misuse of his idea quite unreasonable. I should know, because I talked with him at length about the prospects of nanotechnology.

    As the article itself points out, Richard Feynman saw no basis in physical laws that would preclude realization of the concepts of nanotechnology. To claim that nanotechnology is cargo cult science because its proponents analyze the capabilites of devices not yet constructed is as absurd as to say that astronautics was cargo cult science before Sputnik.

    Richard Feynman did not regard setting "stretch" technological goals as cargo cult science. Quite the opposite. In the course of his 1958 talk in which he proposed manipulating atoms, he offered cash prizes from his own financial resources for breakthrough achievements in working at a very small scale. If he were still alive, I think that he would be pleased to have his name associated with a large cash prize that seeks to accelerate the realization of one of his most exciting ideas. That is why I have participated in defining the conditions for winning the Feynman Grand Prize, and have agreed to naming the prize in his memory.

    Sincerely,
    Carl Feynman

• Foresight Institute vs Scientific American : Debate on nanotechnology: Round 2 from Foresight : Foresight reply to Email from Scientific American
  • http://www.islandone.org/Foresight/SciAmDebate/Round2frForesight.html

  • Subject: Re: unauthorized use of SciAm materials

    We have received your email dated 5 April concerning "unauthorized use of SciAm materials" in the Web document http://www.foresight.org/SciAmResponse.html published at the Foresight web site.

    We have consulted with copyright counsel. We believe that the quotations from the news story "Trends in Nanotechnology: Waiting for Breakthroughs" (April 1996) fall within the safe harbor of fair use principles stated in Section 107 of the Copyright Act. We do not believe we have any obligation, under either Section 107 or the First Amendment, to cease to use these quotations in an effort to set the record straight and to defend our organization's work. For information on fair use, see these Web pages:

    http://www.law.cornell.edu/usc/17/107.html
    http://www.benedict.com/fairtest.htm

• Journalism Gone Wrong
  • http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2004/week19/

  • This article is an opinion article from Chris Pheonix of the group Responsible Nanotechnology. The link below will bring you to their website, if you are interested in more information. Chris's issues seem to be with people who use phrases to create mass hysteria over the introduction of nanotechnology to consumer products. In particular, he was defending the newest book from Robert A. Freitas, Jr. who is a scientist at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, entitled "Nanomedicine Volume IIA, Biocompatibility". In his article, Chris Phoenix provides links to a letter written by Carl Feynman, son of physicist Richard Feynman as well as to reviews of the book itself. It's an interesting perspective.

    http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2004/05/journalism_gone.html

    "A few years ago, Scientific American published an article that began with the words, 'That's the messiah,' and proceeded to inform us that Eric Drexler sounded like Mr. Peabody. This, we assume, was because they had nothing more substantial to say, but for some reason felt a pressing need to oppose Drexler's work on molecular manufacturing. The article was so bad that it evoked a strong protest from Carl Feynman, son of the Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman, about their abuse of his father's name and reputation.

    Just this week, a nano blog that used to be trustworthy and even-handed has gone down the same path. In response to Robert Freitas' recent publication of Nanomedicine Volume IIA: Biocompatibility, Cientifica posted an article containing such phrases as, 'swarm of nanobots - more idle speculation,' and 'books of this ilk,' and most dishonorably, 'a hobby pursuit.'

    A book with six thousand references is not a hobby pursuit. I wonder why they are trying so hard to persuade people that it's not worth reading. What is their motivation?

    I've been saying 'they,' but in fact, Paul Holister recently left Cientifica. It appears that Tim Harper is now free to vigorously -- and irresponsibly -- oppose the more advanced kinds of nanotechnology. I'm not usually so openly critical. But false claims that 'Martian nanobots ... are equally feasible' should not go unchallenged. This is shabby journalism, and it damages the serious and ongoing discussion of the potential effects of advanced nanotechnology.

• May 02, 2004 : "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast"
  • http://www.cientifica.com/archives/000100.html

  • Just when we thought there was some positive movement in the media battle to wean popular press off nanobots and get down to the real businesses of nanotech, along comes another swarm of nanobots - more idle speculation sold as science.

    A new volume in the Nanomedicine book series by Robert A. Freitas Jr. describes "the many possible mechanical, physiological, immunological, cytological, and biochemical responses of the human body to the in vivo introduction of medical nanodevices, especially medical nanorobots."

    And we thought that we had enough issues to grapple with concerning humble nanoparticles and fullerenes.

    While there is a lot of good information in the Nanomedicine series, it is well researched and thought out, albeit with a rather odd focus, we cannot help wondering whether the immense amount of effort put into determining the effects of accidentally ingesting diamondoid flying nanorobots and other decices yet to be invented may have been put to better use?

    Understanding the products that are currently on, or coming to, the market, as the scientific community is curently engaged in, may have been a good place to start. After all, the Martian nanobots from Olaf Stapledons SciFi classic "Last and First Men", published in 1930, may have similar effects on the human body, and are equally feasible.

    While books of this ilk do reference scientific results, that does not make them any more credible than any other forms of fiction. We would be far more interested to hear the views of scientists, the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology (CBEN) for example, or even a someone with some medical training.

    While there is a place for these types of works, and we will leave readers to speculate as to where that place may be, attempting to pass off a hobby pursuit as real science is dangerous, counter productive and merely confuses people. It also propagates the myth that nanotechnology is something dreamt up by a handful of Star Trek fanatics, and provides yet more ammunition to the critics of MNT.

• Heresey (Webscribe's Note: MNT = either means "Micro and Nano Technologies" or "Molecular Nanotechnology")
  • http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=04/07/10/0029244

  • The people in power do not wish for Nanotechnology to be known to the general public. Why? Because this technology will change everything; people will finally be able to realize their dreams without living through a life of hardship. The status quo, and the social hiearchy created by man, will cease to exist altogether, and this has many people, especially those who are set in their ways and do not desire change, running around as if their heads had been cut off.

    The enemy isn't just the politicians here though - the majority of the malice towards MNT comes from the scientific community itself, because many of these scientists feel threatened by this idea, and fear that their careers will be in jeapordy - which, in all honesty, they will be. They have every right to be scared - but denial of this technology and Drexler's vision is kind of a stupid way to go about doing things, and is looked down upon.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Saturday 29th October 2005:

• October 11, 2005 : Blogging the Nanoworld
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • With Howard Lovy's Nanobot being closed down by his new employers for fear of further antagonizing non Kabbalists, molecular nano skeptics and the entire population of China we felt it was time to round up a few of the blogs that currently catch our eye.

• Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Saturday, July 02, 2005 : Feynman on freedom
  • http://nanobot.blogspot.com/

  • 'So I have just one wish for you -- the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.'
    -- Richard Feynman, from a Caltech commencement address given in 1974

  • No government has the right to decide on the truth of scientific principles, nor to prescribe in any way the character of the questions investigated. Neither may a government determine the aesthetic value of artistic creations, nor limit the forms of literacy or artistic expression. Nor should it pronounce on the validity of economic, historic, religious, or philosophical doctrines. Instead it has a duty to its citizens to maintain the freedom, to let those citizens contribute to the further adventure and the development of the human race.
    -- [Richard Feynman], "The Uncertainty of Values" (in the collection "The Meaning of it All")

• CARGO CULT SCIENCE by Richard Feynman : Adapted from the Caltech commencement address given in 1974.
  • http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cargocul.htm
  • http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html

  • During the Middle Ages there were all kinds of crazy ideas, such as that a piece of rhinoceros horn would increase potency. Then a method was discovered for separating the ideas--which was to try one to see if it worked, and if it didn't work, to eliminate it. This method became organized, of course, into science. And it developed very well, so that we are now in the scientific age. It is such a scientific age, in fact that we have difficulty in understanding how witch doctors could ever have existed, when nothing that they proposed ever really worked--or very little of it did.

    But even today I meet lots of people who sooner or later get me into a conversation about UFOS, or astrology, or some form of mysticism, expanded consciousness, new types of awareness, ESP, and so forth. And I've concluded that it's not a scientific world.

    Most people believe so many wonderful things that I decided to investigate why they did. And what has been referred to as my curiosity for investigation has landed me in a difficulty where I found so much junk that I'm overwhelmed. First I started out by investigating various ideas of mysticism, and mystic experiences. I went into isolation tanks and got many hours of hallucinations, so I know something about that. Then I went to Esalen, which is a hotbed of this kind of thought (it's a wonderful place; you should go visit there). Then I became overwhelmed. I didn't realize how much there was.

    At Esalen there are some large baths fed by hot springs situated on a ledge about thirty feet above the ocean. One of my most pleasurable experiences has been to sit in one of those baths and watch the waves crashing onto the rocky shore below, to gaze into the clear blue sky above, and to study a beautiful nude as she quietly appears and settles into the bath with me.

    One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn't seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, "Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude babe?"

    I'm trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, I'm, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?"

    "Sure," she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby.

    I think to myself, "What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!" He starts to rub her big toe. "I think I feel it, "he says. "I feel a kind of dent--is that the pituitary?"

    I blurt out, "You're a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!"

    They looked at me, horrified--I had blown my cover--and said, "It's reflexology!"

    I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating.

    That's just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn't do any mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.

    But then I began to think, what else is there that we believe? (And I thought then about the witch doctors, and how easy it would have been to check on them by noticing that nothing really worked.) So I found things that even more people believe, such as that we have some knowledge of how to educate. There are big schools of reading methods and mathematics methods, and so forth, but if you notice, you'll see the reading scores keep going down--or hardly going up in spite of the fact that we continually use these same people to improve the methods. There's a witch doctor remedy that doesn't work. It ought to be looked into; how do they know that their method should work? Another example is how to treat criminals. We obviously have made no progress--lots of theory, but no progress-- in decreasing the amount of crime by the method that we use to handle criminals.

    Yet these things are said to be scientific. We study them. And I think ordinary people with commonsense ideas are intimidated by this pseudoscience. A teacher who has some good idea of how to teach her children to read is forced by the school system to do it some other way--or is even fooled by the school system into thinking that her method is not necessarily a good one. Or a parent of bad boys, after disciplining them in one way or another, feels guilty for the rest of her life because she didn't do "the right thing," according to the experts.

    So we really ought to look into theories that don't work, and science that isn't science.

    I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

    Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea Islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

    Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem. When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else come out right, in addition.

    In summary, the idea is to try to give all of the information to help others to judge the value of your contribution; not just the information that leads to judgment in one particular direction or another.

    The easiest way to explain this idea is to contrast it, for example, with advertising. Last night I heard that Wesson oil doesn't soak through food. Well, that's true. It's not dishonest; but the thing I'm talking about is not just a matter of not being dishonest, it's a matter of scientific integrity, which is another level. The fact that should be added to that advertising statement is that no oils soak through food, if operated at a certain temperature. If operated at another temperature, they all will-- including Wesson oil. So it's the implication which has been conveyed, not the fact, which is true, and the difference is what we have to deal with.

    We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science.

    A great deal of their difficulty is, of course, the difficulty of the subject and the inapplicability of the scientific method to the subject. Nevertheless it should be remarked that this is not the only difficulty. That's why the planes didn't land--but they don't land.

    We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off, because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of the electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.

    Why didn't they discover that the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of--this history--because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong--and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number closer to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.

    But this long history of learning how not to fool ourselves--of having utter scientific integrity--is, I'm sorry to say, something that we haven't specifically included in any particular course that I know of. We just hope you've caught on by osmosis.

    The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

    I would like to add something that's not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you're talking as a scientist. I am not trying to tell you what to do about cheating on your wife, or fooling your girlfriend, or something like that, when you're not trying to be a scientist, but just trying to be an ordinary human being. We'll leave those problems up to you and your rabbi. I'm talking about a specific, extra type of integrity that is not lying, but bending over backwards to show how you are maybe wrong, that you ought to have when acting as a scientist. And this is our responsibility as scientists, certainly to other scientists, and I think to laymen.

    For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. "Well," I said, "there aren't any." He said, "Yes, but then we won't get support for more research of this kind." I think that's kind of dishonest. If you're representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you're doing--and if they don't want to support you under those circumstances, then that's their decision.

    One example of the principle is this: If you've made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.

    I say that's also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don't publish such a result, it seems to me you're not giving scientific advice. You're being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don't publish it at all. That's not giving scientific advice.

    Other kinds of errors are more characteristic of poor science. When I was at Cornell, I often talked to the people in the psychology department. One of the students told me she wanted to do an experiment that went something like this--it had been found by others that under certain circumstances, X, rats did something, A. She was curious as to whether, if she changed the circumstances to Y, they would still do A. So her proposal was to do the experiment under circumstances Y and see if they still did A.

    I explained to her that it was necessary first to repeat in her laboratory the experiment of the other person--to do it under condition X to see if she could also get result A, and then change to Y and see if A changed. Then she would know that the real difference was the thing she thought she had under control.

    She was very delighted with this new idea, and went to her professor. And his reply was, no, you cannot do that, because the experiment has already been done and you would be wasting time. This was in about 1947 or so, and it seems to have been the general policy then to not try to repeat psychological experiments, but only to change the conditions and see what happens.

    Nowadays there's a certain danger of the same thing happening, even in the famous (?) field of physics. I was shocked to hear of an experiment done at the big accelerator at the National Accelerator Laboratory, where a person used deuterium. In order to compare his heavy hydrogen results to what might happen with light hydrogen" he had to use data from someone else's experiment on light hydrogen, which was done on different apparatus. When asked why, he said it was because he couldn't get time on the program (because there's so little time and it's such expensive apparatus) to do the experiment with light hydrogen on this apparatus because there wouldn't be any new result. And so the men in charge of programs at NAL are so anxious for new results, in order to get more money to keep the thing going for public relations purposes, they are destroying--possibly--the value of the experiments themselves, which is the whole purpose of the thing. It is often hard for the experimenters there to complete their work as their scientific integrity demands.

    All experiments in psychology are not of this type, however. For example, there have been many experiments running rats through all kinds of mazes, and so on--with little clear result. But in 1937 a man named Young did a very interesting one. He had a long corridor with doors all along one side where the rats came in, and doors along the other side where the food was. He wanted to see if he could train the rats to go in at the third door down from wherever he started them off. No. The rats went immediately to the door where the food had been the time before.

    The question was, how did the rats know, because the corridor was so beautifully built and so uniform, that this was the same door as before? Obviously there was something about the door that was different from the other doors. So he painted the doors very carefully, arranging the textures on the faces of the doors exactly the same. Still the rats could tell. Then he thought maybe the rats were smelling the food, so he used chemicals to change the smell after each run. Still the rats could tell. Then he realized the rats might be able to tell by seeing the lights and the arrangement in the laboratory like any commonsense person. So he covered the corridor, and still the rats could tell.

    He finally found that they could tell by the way the floor sounded when they ran over it. And he could only fix that by putting his corridor in sand. So he covered one after another of all possible clues and finally was able to fool the rats so that they had to learn to go in the third door. If he relaxed any of his conditions, the rats could tell.

    Now, from a scientific standpoint, that is an A-number-one experiment. That is the experiment that makes rat-running experiments sensible, because it uncovers the clues that the rat is really using--not what you think it's using. And that is the experiment that tells exactly what conditions you have to use in order to be careful and control everything in an experiment with rat-running.

    I looked into the subsequent history of this research. The next experiment, and the one after that, never referred to Mr. Young. They never used any of his criteria of putting the corridor on sand, or being very careful. They just went right on running rats in the same old way, and paid no attention to the great discoveries of Mr. Young, and his papers are not referred to, because he didn't discover anything about the rats. In fact, he discovered all the things you have to do to discover something about rats. But not paying attention to experiments like that is a characteristic of cargo cult science.

    Another example is the ESP experiments of Mr. Rhine, and other people. As various people have made criticisms--and they themselves have made criticisms of their own experiments--they improve the techniques so that the effects are smaller, and smaller, and smaller until they gradually disappear. All the parapsychologists are looking for some experiment that can be repeated--that you can do again and get the same effect--statistically, even. They run a million rats no, it's people this time they do a lot of things and get a certain statistical effect. Next time they try it they don't get it any more. And now you find a man saying that it is an irrelevant demand to expect a repeatable experiment. This is science?

    This man also speaks about a new institution, in a talk in which he was resigning as Director of the Institute of Parapsychology. And, in telling people what to do next, he says that one of the things they have to do is be sure they only train students who have shown their ability to get PSI results to an acceptable extent-- not to waste their time on those ambitious and interested students who get only chance results. It is very dangerous to have such a policy in teaching--to teach students only how to get certain results, rather than how to do an experiment with scientific integrity.

    So I have just one wish for you--the good luck to be somewhere where you are free to maintain the kind of integrity I have described, and where you do not feel forced by a need to maintain your position in the organization, or financial support, or so on, to lose your integrity. May you have that freedom.

• Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Independent nanotechnology information and commentary
  • http://nanobot.blogspot.com/

• Howard Lovy's NanoBot: Sunday, June 19, 2005: Irresponsible NanoHype
  • http://nanobot.blogspot.com/2005/06/irresponsible-nanohype.html

  • Those responsible boys at the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology are fired up over accusations of nanobot hype-mongering and are blasting back at the U.S. government's nanotech program. The best part is that Chris Phoenix and Mike Treder do not even need to write any commentary around it. Using U.S. science policy leaders' own words, they reveal exactly where the hype is coming from. Read the intro, Part 1 and Part 2

    I found the passage below particularly amazing:

    • Enabling the blind to see better, the lame to walk better, and the deaf to hear better
    • Curing and preventing AIDS, cancer, diabetes and other afflictions
    • Ending hunger
    • Clean, renewable energy
    • Supplementing the power of our minds, enabling us to think great thoughts, create new knowledge and gain new insights.

    What molecular manufacturing nutcase is making those irresponsible claims? U.S. Commerce Undersecretary Phil Bond, the same Phil Bond who, just a month before making those comments last year, told me that it's time to "aggressively" counter nanotech misinformation.

    Sounds like the patriots at CRN are carrying out the undersecretary's orders.

• Iranian Nanotechnology Initiative
  • http://www.irannano.org/

• Defense and National Security Nanomaterials and Nanotechnologies
  • http://nanomat.blogspot.com/

• Soft Machines : Thoughts on the future of nanotechnology from Richard Jones
  • http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/

• Nanotechnology Implications and Interactions
  • http://nanohype.blogspot.com/

• October 24, 2005 : KNT or KNTcase?
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • We're not sure whether this is the point where nanotech moves from hype to fad, but in the wake of Apple's ipod nano (Small Times accidentally ran an automated story on this last week!) we now have, oh dear, Kabbalistic Nanotechnology.

    Madonna's favourite Rabbi Rav Berg's book Kabbalistic Nanotechnology just popped up on our radar thanks to an anonymous tipster (see the description below).

    The description sounds uncannily Drexlerain in its utopian nature, which makes us wonder how many of the attendees at this weeks Foresight Vision Weekend will have seen this particular light? This recent addition to nanotechnology's rich pageant gives us yet another flavour, KNT anyone?

    "Two emerging technologies promise to transform the world in ways that will make the breakthroughs of the 20th century seem pedestrian. One has existed for less than 50 years and is called nanotechnology. The other has existed for 4,000 years and is called Kabbalah. On the surface, they seem to be divergent, even contradictory technologies. But in fact, they are complementary in the most profound ways possible. One promises to deliver a practical technology and a transformed world in the distant future. The other promises practical tools and remarkable changes now. In this book, Kabbalist Rav Berg isolates the common points of science and spirit to reveal the elusive path toward achieving humanity's noblest and most challenging aspiration - the manipulation of the physical world. The potential uses are staggering: pollution reversal, elimination of disease and genetic defects, eradication of poverty, microscopic computers faster than today's best supercomputers, and the indefinite extension of the human lifespan."

• October 12, 2005 : A Monstrous Misconception
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • Jobs portal Monster.com has an article on how to get a job in the Nanotechnology Industry, but perhaps that should that be the yet to come Molecular Nanotechnology Industry?

    Ominously, the article starts with Michael Crichton's definition of nanotechnology as "the quest to build man-made machines of extremely small size, on the order of 100 nanometers, or 100/billionths of a meter."

    It gets worse from here with the author suggesting that a good way to get a nanotech job would be to join an organisation such as Foresight. It's hard to think of a worse idea, as most nanotech related jobs are concerned with real world applications, not pontificating about possible nanobot related scenarios. In fact the mere mention of nanobots is enough to bring most job interviews to an speedy conclusion, whether in industry or the academic world.

    It brings us back to the twin issues of the non-existence of any kind of nanotechnology industry, and the fact that nanotechnologies cut across a wide variety of academic disciplines and industries. While there are many jobs that may involve the application of nanotechnologies, there are very few companies entirely concerned with nanotechnologies, and even those will have specific requirements for chemical engineers or material scientists.

    The mistake commonly made in this type of article is to assume that there exists some kind of industry often described as the digitisation of matter where anyone fascinated by computer games and science fiction can find a job. The harsh reality is no different from any other sector, you have to have the skills and experience that an employer wants, and a predilection for sci-fi usually comes low on the list of priorities.

• Industry Spotlight: Nanotechnology
  • http://technology.monster.com/articles/nanotech/

  • Engineers, software professionals and other techies are always looking for the next big thing. And according to some futurists and techno gurus, it could be something small: Nanotechnology.

    Doctor, sci-fi author and Hollywood power broker Michael Crichton sees nanotechnology as "perhaps the most radical technology in human history."

    What Is Nanotechnology?

    Crichton defines it as "the quest to build man-made machines of extremely small size, on the order of 100 nanometers, or 100/billionths of a meter." In an article in Parade magazine, Crichton wrote about the potential power of the field: "Such machines would be 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. Experts predict that these tiny machines will provide everything from miniaturized computer components to new medical treatments to new military weapons. In the 21st century, they will change our world totally."

    No wonder techies of all types are scrambling to learn about this nascent field. "Lots of people are very interested in nanotechnology," says Christine Peterson, vice president of public policy for the Foresight Nanotech Institute, the leading nanotech think tank. "They can see this is the next big thing, and they want to participate."

    As Foresight defines it, nanotechnology encompasses a number of technologies -- some with current or near-term applications, others with applications likely to be developed in the distant future. But experts say it is a field that utilizes a wide variety of technical skills and knowledge, including electrical engineering, materials science, chemistry, physics, mechanical engineering and software.

    "The good news is that you can come at nanotechnology from almost any technical direction," says Peterson. "The bad news is sometimes you need to go back to school."

    How to Break In

    Peterson, who counsels Foresight members on career issues, says she sees "a lot of software folks -- dotcom-bust people -- jaded with that field and wanting to do something new and exciting." But "the jump from software to nano is a pretty big jump," she cautions. "Some people in software are good about bits, but they can't think about atoms."

    Those best positioned to enter the field include experts in materials science and applied chemistry as well as others "who have been thinking about molecules," as Peterson puts it.

    Research is essential. Students should consider which aspect of nanotechnology is right for them, and then seek out leading local university scholars in that arena. To make your mark, tap into your school's resources and conduct research. Positions for those with nanotechnology research experience range from PhD scientists working on original ideas in the lab to those with bachelor's degrees carrying out experiments and filling other support roles.

    You can also research the field by:

    • Scanning Online Resources: The online world offers a wealth of nanotechnology resources. The Forbes/Wolfe Nanotech Report, the Foresight Nanotechnology Institute, the Nano Science and Technology Institute and the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, among scores of other spots, will connect you with message boards, blogs, courses and other resources.
    • Joining an Organization: Consider membership in Foresight or other groups as a way to meet others and become immersed in the field.
    • Attending a Conference: Nanotechnology conferences provide a way to network, connect with companies and hear from industry leaders.

    Ignore the Hype

    Some in the field caution that excessive hype is driving interest in nanotechnology. "So far, it's an idea," says Lev Dulman, CEO of AngstroVision, a startup working on imaging for nanotechnology.

    In Dulman's view, those considering a career in nanotechnology shouldn't focus on nanotechnology itself, "because there's still not a clear definition of what it is." Instead, he suggests focusing on the "problems associated with nanotechnology," such as developing instrumentation and tools to work toward practical applications.

    Follow the Money

    Others, however, see nanotechnology as happening now rather than far into the future.

    "Follow the money," advises Peterson, noting the cash being funneled into nanotechnology in Europe, Japan and the US. Just one example: The federal government's 2006 budget includes more than $1 billion in R&D funding requests for nanotech projects in 11 departments and agencies. "It doesn't really matter whether there's hype or not. If there's money going into it, that's real."

• Cracking the Science of Undies
  • http://www.abc.net.au/science/features/undies/default.htm

  • But Dr Tony Pierlot, a researcher with CSIRO Textile & Fibre Technology argues that many new synthetic fibres and manufacturing techniques would not be necessary if wool was worn more often. He says wool's structure and chemical composition naturally inhibits bacterial growth and it also keeps body odours down by trapping the smells and releasing them during washing and by carrying sweat away from the skin. Wool is pretty weird stuff. Paradoxically it is water repellent but can absorb 35 per cent of its own weight in water, Pierlot says, and still feel dry. Meanwhile, tiny pores in the wool fibres allow water vapour to pass right through. This is why wool is comfortable because it can 'breathe' and allow body heat and moisture out.

    Ironically, scientists are now working on a synthetic fibre and engineering materials containing carbon nanotubes. "Funnily enough, it turns out nature's already thought about nanotechnology - for at least a few million years," says Pierlot "because wool is a complex assembly of nano-sized fibres." "The human race is besotted by technology, but if you hang in long enough the worm turns and people come back to natural fibres … the challenge is to develop a range of products that have relevance to people's lifestyles now."

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 27th October 2005:

• Smart food

  • Beware the coming of smart foods! In not so distant future companies will engineer food to have a host of useful properties. Food could acquire an unbearably bad taste upon its expiration date to prevent hoarding. Food could taste good and have no caloric value whatsoever to let people with no self-control lose weight. Food could become completely digestable and produce no excrement.

    But that's not all! Did you ever wish your competitors would go out of business? Well, with smart food engineering you'll be able to get your food to install tiny machines in the eater's taste buds. Then, whenever a product similar to yours enters his mouth, these machines will check for your company's cryptographic signature and, if absent, make the food taste really bad. Then the poor shmuck will have no choice but to buy your product. Is that cool or what?

    But why stop there? With the latest nanoengineering technology you can make food that is as addictive as cocaine, but without any effect on the brain. It just has really unpleasant withdrawal symptoms. That'll surely keep them coming back for more!

    Smart food can also drastically improve the effectiveness of your marketing. Did you ever want to know which part of the city eats the most of your product? Tag it with special nanotracers and install simple scanning equipment in the city sewers. Since such equipment is easy and cheap to produce, there is no reason why every home shouldn't have one. Wouldn't you like to know exactly who is eating your stuff, when, and where? I thought so.

• How nanocubes can run your laptop
  • http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2005/02/23/efnano23.xml&sSheet=/connected/2005/02/23/ixconn.html

  • Could a 'hydrogen economy' help clean up the planet or is it all just hot air,

• "Nanobombs" could blow up cancer
  • http://www.betterhumans.com/News/4738/Default.aspx

  • Researchers have created "nanobombs" that can produce nanoscale explosions to blow up cancer.

  • The bombs are created through the bundling of carbon nanotubes. Nanotubes dissipate heat generated by the light into surrounding air. In bundles, they can't dissipate the heat as quickly and the result is "an explosion on the nanoscale,"

  • The nanobombs could also offer advantages over other nanotech treatments as they are destroyed along with cancer cells. Macrophages then clear cell debris and exploded nanotubes, preventing nanoparticles from jamming up in the body.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 23rd October 2005:

• Email received (web-scribe's note: Also refer to Original Pedegree of the term, "Nanocar") :

• Researcher Develops World's Smallest Car
  • http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1875223,00.asp

  • I bet you thought the Mini Cooper was small. At four nanometers long and three wide, the Nanocar, developed by researchers at Rice University, takes the cake as the smallest car in the world.

  • And with four independently rotating axles, built-in suspension, and oversized wheels, it looks more like a racer in the DARPA Challenge than any car on route 95. With its rotating axles, the Nanocar moves directionally, which means either forward or backward, with its wheels rolling, as opposed to sliding back and forth which is commonly done on the nanoscale. The oversized wheels and suspension allow the Nanocar to drive over positive and negative atomic steps, or nanoscale speedbumps and potholes, if you will, necessary for even the thin layer of gold that was used in Tour's experiments, which can resemble the mountainous surface of the moon.

    But why build a Nanocar? For bottom-up fabrication, of course. The Nanocar was built to transport cargo across a nanoscale surface, which has always been difficult to do gracefully. This cargo could then be used for fabrication on the nano level. For example, a fleet of Nanocars could carry the materials necessary to build a computer chip on a silicon wafer, and deposit them in the appropriate location. According to Tour, this provides a more graceful strategy for chip fabrication, and should enable more precise construction and fewer defects.

    The Nanocar will be only slightly larger than the cargo it carries. Why? "We're taking our cue from biology," Tour explains, since a transporter tends to be roughly the same size as the particle it carries. Each unit of hemoglobin, for example, is about the same size as the molecule of oxygen it carries around your body.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 16th October 2005:

• E-mail received with the following links:

• Molecule-size sensors inside astronauts' cells could warn of health impacts from space radiation.
  • http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/28oct_nanosensors.htm

  • Wouldn't it be nice if the cells in your body would simply tell you when you're starting to get sick, long before symptoms appear? Or alert you when a tumor is growing, while it's still microscopic and harmless?

    The ability to detect changes inside of individual cells while those cells are still inside your body would be a boon to medicine. NASA-supported scientists are developing a technology right now that could, if it works, do exactly that.

    The scientists don't actually coax the cells into talking, of course. The idea is to place "nanoparticles" inside the cells to function as molecule-size sensors. Whenever these sensors encounter certain signs of trouble -- a fragment of an invading virus perhaps -- they would begin to glow, signaling the outside world that something is wrong.

• The Next Giant Leap: The next big thing is small: Nanotechnology could lead to radical improvements for space exploration.
  • http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/technologies/27jul_nanotech.html

  • When it comes to taking the next "giant leap" in space exploration, NASA is thinking small -- really small.

    In laboratories around the country, NASA is supporting the burgeoning science of nanotechnology. The basic idea is to learn to deal with matter at the atomic scale -- to be able to control individual atoms and molecules well enough to design molecule-size machines, advanced electronics and "smart" materials.

    If visionaries are right, nanotechnology could lead to robots you can hold on your fingertip, self-healing spacesuits, space elevators and other fantastic devices. Some of these things may take 20+ years to fully develop; others are taking shape in the laboratory today.

• Voyage of the Nano-Surgeons : NASA-funded scientists are crafting microscopic vessels that can venture into the human body and repair problems – one cell at a time.
  • http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2002/15jan_nano.htm

  • It's like a scene from the movie "Fantastic Voyage." A tiny vessel -- far smaller than a human cell -- tumbles through a patient's bloodstream, hunting down diseased cells and penetrating their membranes to deliver precise doses of medicines.

    Only this isn't Hollywood. This is real science.

• NASA and Self-Replicating Systems: Implications for Nanotechnology
  • http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/selfRepNASA.html

  • In the summer of 1980, NASA and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) sponsored a summer study by 15 NASA program engineers and 18 educators from U.S. universities to investigate advanced automation for space missions. The resulting 400-page report included a 150-page chapter on "Replicating Systems Concepts: Self-Replicating Lunar Factory and Demonstration" which proposed a 20-year program to develop a self-replicating general purpose lunar manufacturing facility (a Self Replicating System, or SRS) that would be placed on the lunar surface. The design was based entirely on conventional technology.

    The "seed" for the facility, to be landed on the lunar surface from Earth to start the process, was 100 tons (approximately four Apollo missions). Once this 100-ton seed was in place, all further raw materials would be mined from the lunar surface and processed into the parts required to extend the SRS. A significant advantage of this approach for space exploration would be to reduce or eliminate the need to transport mass from the Earth--which is relatively expensive.

    The report remarks that "The difficulty of surmounting the Earth's gravitational potential makes it more efficient to consider sending information in preference to matter into space whenever possible. Once a small number of self-replicating facilities has been established in space, each able to feed upon nonterrestrial materials, further exports of mass from Earth will dwindle and eventually cease. The replicative feature is unique in its ability to grow, in situ, a vastly larger production facility than could reasonably be transported from Earth. Thus the time required to organize extraordinarily large amounts of mass in space and to set up and perform various ambitious future missions can be greatly shortened by using a self-replicating factory that expands to the desired manufacturing capacity."

    "The useful applications of replicating factories with facilities for manufacturing products other than their own components are virtually limitless."

    Establishing the credibility of the concept occupied the early part of the chapter. The theoretical work of von Neumann was reviewed in some detail. Von Neumann designed a self-replicating device that existed in a two-dimensional "cellular automata" world. The device had an "arm" capable of creating arbitrary structures, and a computer capable of executing arbitrary programs. The computer, under program control, would issue detailed instructions to the arm. The resulting universal constructor was self-replicating almost as a by-product of its ability to create any structure in the two-dimensional world in which it lived. If it could build any structure it could easily build a copy of itself, and hence was self-replicating.

    One interesting aspect of von Neumann's work is the relative simplicity of the resulting device: a few hundred kilobits to a megabit. Self-replicating systems need not inherently be vastly complex. Simple existing biological systems, such as bacteria, have a complexity of about 10 million bits. Of course, a significant part of this complexity is devoted to mechanisms for synthesizing all the chemicals needed to build bacteria from any one of several simple sugars and a few inorganic salts, and other mechanisms for detecting and moving to nutrients. Bacteria are more complex than strictly necessary simply to self-reproduce.

    Despite the relative simplicity that could theoretically be achieved by the simplest self-reproducing systems, the proposed lunar facility would be highly complex: perhaps 100 billion to a trillion bits to describe. This would make it almost 10 thousand to 100 thousand times more complex than a bacterium, and a million times more complex than von Neumann's theoretical proposal. This level of complexity puts the project near the limits of current capabilities. (Recall that a major software project might involve a few tens of millions of lines of code, each line having a few tens of characters and each character being several bits. The total raw complexity is about 10 billion bits--perhaps 10 to 100 times less complex than the proposed SRS.) Where did this "excess" complexity come from?

    The SRS has to exist in a complex lunar environment without any human support. The complexity estimate for the orbital site map alone is 100 billion bits, and the facilities for mining and refining the lunar soil have to deal with the entire range of circumstances that arise in such operations. This includes moving around the lunar surface (the proposal included the manufacture and placement of flat cast basalt slabs laid down by a team of five paving robots); mining operations such as strip mining, hauling, landfilling, grading, cellar-digging and towing; chemical processing operations including electrophoretic separation and HF (hydrofluoric) acid-leach separation, the recovery of volatiles, refractories, metals, and nonmetallic elements and the disposal of residue and wastes; the production of wire stock, cast basalt, iron or steel parts; casting, mold-making, mixing and alloying in furnaces and laser machining and finishing; inspection and storage of finished parts, parts retrieval and assembly and subassembly testing; and computer control of the entire SRS.

    When we contrast this with a bacterium, much of the additional complexity is relatively easy to explain. Bacteria use a relatively small number of well defined chemical components which are brought to them by diffusion. This eliminates the mining, hauling, leaching, casting, molding, finishing, and so forth. The molecular "parts" are readily available and identical, which greatly simplifies parts inspection and handling. The actual assembly of the parts uses a single relatively simple programmable device, the ribosome, which performs only a simple rigid sequence of assembly operations (no AI in a ribosome!). Parts assembly is done primarily with "self-assembly" methods which involve no further parts-handling.

    Another basic issue is closure. "Imagine that the entire factory and all of its machines are broken down into their component parts. If the original factory cannot fabricate every one of these items, then parts closure does not exist and the system is not fully self-replicating." In the case of the SRS, the list of all the component parts would be quite large. In the case of a bacterium, there are only 2,000 to 4,000 different "parts" (proteins). This means that the descriptions of the parts are less complex. Because most of the parts fall into the same class (proteins), the manufacturing process is simplified (the ribosome is adequate to manufacture all proteins).

    What does all this mean for humanity? The report says "From the human standpoint, perhaps the most exciting consequence of self-replicating systems is that they provide a means for organizing potentially infinite quantities of matter. This mass could be so organized as to produce an ever-widening habitat for man throughout the Solar System. Self-replicating homes, O'Neill-style space colonies, or great domed cities on the surfaces of other worlds would allow a niche diversification of such grand proportions as never before experienced by the human species."

    The report concludes that "The theoretical concept of machine duplication is well developed. There are several alternative strategies by which machine self-replication can be carried out in a practical engineering setting. . . .There is also available a body of theoretical automation concepts in the realm of machine construction by machine, in machine inspection of machines, and machine repair of machines, which can be drawn upon to engineer practical machine systems capable of replication. . . . An engineering demonstration project can be initiated immediately, to begin with simple replication of robot assembler by robot assembler from supplied parts, and proceeding in phased steps to full reproduction of a complete machine processing or factory system by another machine processing system, supplied, ultimately, only with raw materials."

    What implications does the NASA study have for nanotechnology?

    The broad implications of self-replicating systems, regardless of scale, are often similar. The economic impact of such systems is clear and dramatic. Things become cheap, and projects of sweeping scale can be considered and carried out in a reasonable time frame without undue expense.

    The concepts involved in analyzing self-replicating systems--including closure, parts counts, parts manufacturing, parts assembly, system complexity, and the like--are also quite similar. The general approach of using a computer (whether nano or macro) to control a general purpose assembly capability is also clearly supported. Whether the general-purpose manufacturing capability is a miniature cross-section of current manufacturing techniques (as proposed for the SRS), or simply a single assembler arm which controls individual molecules during the assembly process, the basic concepts involved are the same.

    Finally, by considering the design of an artificial SRS in such detail, the NASA team showed clearly that such things are feasible. Their analysis also provides good support for the idea that a nanotechnological "assembler" can be substantially less complex than a trillion bits in design complexity. There are several methods of simplifying the design of the "Mark I Assembler," as compared with the NASA SRS. First, it could exist in a highly controlled environment, rather than the uncontrolled lunar surface. Second, it could expect to find many of its molecular parts, including exotic parts that it might find difficult or impossible to manufacture itself, pre-fabricated and provided in a convenient and simple format (e.g., floating in solution). Third, it could use simple "blind," fixed-sequence assembly operations.

    Conceptually, the only major improvements provided by the Mark I Assembler over a simple bacterium would be the general purpose positional control it will exert over the reactive compounds that it uses to manufacture "parts," and the wider range of chemical reactions it will use to assemble those "parts" into bigger "parts." Bacteria are able to synthesize any protein. The Mark I Assembler would be able to synthesize a very much wider range of structures. Because it would have to manufacture its own control computer as a simple prerequisite to its own self-replication, it would revolutionize the computer industry almost automatically. By providing precise atomic control even the Mark I Assembler will revolutionize the manufacturing process.

    Copies of "Advanced Automation for Space Missions" are available from NTIS. Mail order: NTIS, U.S. Department of Commerce, National Technical Information Service, Springfield, VA. 22161. Telephone orders with payment via major credit cards are accepted; call 703-487-4650 and request "N83-15348. Advanced Automation for Space Missions; NASA Conference Publication (or CP) 2255." Publication date is 1982 (although the study was done in 1980). Purchase price is about $60.00, various shipping options are available.

• Advanced Automation for Space Missions (report completed in 1980)
  • http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/

  • What follows is a portion of the final report of a NASA summer study, conducted in 1980 by request of newly- elected President Jimmy Carter at a cost of 11.7 million dollars. The result of the study was a realistic proposal for a self-replicating automated lunar factory system, capable of exponentially increasing productive capacity and, in the long run, exploration of the entire galaxy within a reasonable timeframe. Unfortunately, the proposal was quietly declined with barely a ripple in the press.

  • "In the lower left corner, a lunar manufacturing facility rises from the surface of the Moon. Someday, such a factory might replicate itself, or at least produce most o f its own components, so that the number of facilities could grow very rapidly from a single seed."

• Self-Assembling Nanotubes
  • http://newsbureau.upmc.com/Photos/Nanotubes04.htm

• Nanofactory Product Catalog (NPC)
  • http://nano-catalog.com/

  • This catalog is a compilation of ideas and designs for products that could be produced by a home desktop nanofactory or commercial molecular manufacturing industry.

  • Electric Grass: Solar panels indistinguishable from plants, aside, of course, from being inedible to wildlife. Replacing lawns in this fashion will generate huge amounts of power, as well as eliminating fertilizer runoff, and lawn mowing labor. Attach the "lawn interface" to your power panel, unfold the lawn panels and apply to the ground like carpet squares. The lawn pieces connect to each other and to the interface module. More individualized "plants" can be made up of variable assemblages of structural and solar collecting units, and assume any shape you assign, from a flower bed to a tree.

  • Food Machine: Makes tasty food from any biomass. Just stuff whatever plants or animal matter into the input hopper and miniturized chemical processes deconstruct it and reconstruct it into your desired dish. The Food Machine has a large chamber at the top to accept the biomass, which locks at the beginning of the process. A combination of heat and enzymes break down the biomass into simple amino acids and simple carbohydrates. After thermal depolymerization the molecules are sorted and routed to the production tracks. Some production tracks use lab-on-chip technology, others use molecular mills to produce the food precursers. The starches, proteins, and fatty acids of various lengths and properties, and also vitamins are routed to the product assembly chamber (below the input chamber) and are assembled into the finished product by micro-mechanical techniques.

  • Nano-Paint: While maintaining the functionality of Drexler's Smart-Paint (self spreading, color control, self repair, and self cleaning), Nano-Paint incorporates several new and incredibly useful features, solar to electric power generation, electro-shock insect pest control, user configurable display screens, electrical power distribution, air cleaning by active molecular transport, and sound dampening or production.

  • A bloodborne spherical 1-micron diamondoid 1000-atm pressure vessel with active pumping powered by endogenous serum glucose, able to deliver 236 times more oxygen to the tissues per unit volume than natural red cells and to manage carbonic acidity. An onboard nanocomputer and numerous chemical and pressure sensors enable complex device behaviors remotely reprogrammable.

  • Constructed from a matrix of diamondoid and carbon nanotube lattice plus an array of molecular machinery for added functionality, the suit is bulletproof, and when wearing the hood (not shown) it filters the air you breathe. The suit monitors the occupant's physical condition and will go rigid to prevent crushing or to distribute force. Also limits flexibility to a safe range of motion. Provides protection against infectious and chemical agents, and with the ability to inflate itself can provide temperature insulation, buoyancy, and injury stabilization, plus a safe comfortable harness for vertical work. Depending on amount of inflation, it can provide impact protection or even partial free-fall protection. It can gather a little solar power. It can also control humidity and keep out environmental toxins (smoke, poison ivy, military chemicals). With enough power, it can provide cooling.

  • Microbivore artificial white blood cell: Artificial mechanical phagocytes of microscopic size, called "microbivores," whose primary function is to destroy microbiological pathogens found in the human bloodstream using a digest and discharge protocol. The microbivore is an oblate spheroidal nanomedical device measuring 3.4 microns in diameter along its major axis and 2.0 microns in diameter along its minor axis, consisting of 610 billion precisely arranged structural atoms in a gross geometric volume of 12.1 micron3. The device may consume up to 200 pW of continuous power while completely digesting trapped microbes at a maximum throughput of 2 micron3 of organic material per 30-second cycle. Microbivores are up to ~1000 times faster-acting than either natural or antibiotic-assisted biological phagocytic defenses, and are ~80 times more efficient as phagocytic agents than macrophages, in terms of volume/sec digested per unit volume of phagocytic agent.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 6th October 2005:

• Magic Nano-Beans / Nano-Magic-Beans: More Email with some more very world class "inspired" nanoshite (a further potential rival to the 'vision' of "intelligent yogurt" (yogurt made intelligent by the use of nanotechnology - for human benefit), and the lesser 'vision' of replacing people's DNA with 'more reliable' nanotechnology).

  Title of Email - quoting from within the article: "He scatters the seed in his garden and waits, and at some point, just l ike a flower, his dream car sprouts up from the earth":

• Nanotechnology in future cars
  • http://www.nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=2356

  • Windscreens that no longer steam up, or paint that no longer gets dirty or can be scratched: all this could be everyday reality for car drivers in just a few years time. As part of their research work, engineers at the BMW Group are examining the use of nanotechnology in future cars. The range of possibilities is large. Currently the company is working on an agent that will counter dirt and paint damage, and small nanoparticles are of great help in this.

    Purchasing a new car in 2020 - the scenario: the showroom dealer, in addition to exhibiting BMW's latest shiny new models, also sets up a stand with small, colourful seed packets. The packets, however, do not have pictures of exotic plants printed on them but instead car models. The customer chooses a car, pays for it, and is then handed over his dream car in a seed packet. He scatters the seed in his garden and waits, and at some point, just like a flower, his dream car sprouts up from the earth. Atom by atom, molecule by molecule.

    What today seems like science fiction could tomorrow be reality. This is because there is no reason why objects cannot be created on an atom by atom basis, the proof for this being provided as far back as 1959 by American physicist and Nobel prize winner, Richard Feynman. In 1986 US researcher Eric Drexler too prophesied that: "In the future programmable molecular-sized robots will be able to grab hold of individual atoms and place them at the exact location where we want them to be. We will be able to replicate each new object atom by atom, be it a strawberry or a car." Just one year later the first step in this direction was taken when the decisive tool for conquering the atomic world was discovered. Since then scientists have been able to precisely design and mix the building blocks of the universe. Also possible now is the construction of artificial molecules which can be used as minute machines - almost exactly as Drexler prophesied.

• Received E-mail titled: "Like no other country china understood that to win the race depends on finished products through Nano-Bio-Cogno-Info convergence and not on nano science mainly."

• Nanotechnology in China is focusing on innovations and new products
  • http://www.physorg.com/news5870.html

  • The markets in china for nanotechnology products and systems is 5.4 billion us dollar in 2005 and will increase to 31.4 bn us $ by 2010 and 144.9 bn us $ by 2015. The main segments are nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, nanobio and nano-life-sciences which count already for 70 percent of the turnover. The market share ( worldmarket ) will be more then 6 percent by 2010 and 16 percent by 2015. Like no other country china understood that to win the race depends on finished products through Nano-Bio-Cogno-Info convergence and not on nano science mainly. Second but maybe even more important, there are no ethical restrictions or social controversy on developing and using nanotechnologies for new products and systems.

    Over the past three years, the number of companies in the field of nanotechnology in China has grown and reached over 800. This growth rate is very rapid and it has yet to show signs of slowing down. The sales to date have been largely domestic, but with the increasing global interest on the development of nanotechnology and with the advantage of modern communication we can for sure speculate that this could be a very profitable investment in the near future.

    Nanotechnology and nano-bio-info-cogno converging technologies are becoming more and more the decisive factor of the race between regions and nations to win the future markets and society’s wealth and political stability. The development shows that five nations are leading the competition today. China, as one of these five nations, has its unique advantage of high flexibilty, low labour costs, no barriers for new technologies, young and vibrant society, large amount of foreign venture capital, underestimated currency (today about 25 percent undervalue compared with the US Dollar), low taxes, goverment support and a home market with more than 1.3 billion people for applications.

• Nano-vehicle in blood vessel invented
  • http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-09/30/content_3569905.htm

  • BEIJING, Sept. 30 (Xinhuanet) -- Chinese scientists have invented a tiny vehicle which can carry drugs in human blood vessels and unload drugs only at therapeutic targets.

    Shi Jianlin, a senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Shanghai Institute of Silicate, led a research team to invent the nano-vehicle.

    "The 200-nanometer-long vehicle can safely carry drugs and release them suspendedly at focuses targeted by physicians," Shi said, adding that unloaded nano-vehicles can go out of human bodies via alimentary canals.

    "This method can reduce side effects as much as possible and make the curative effects of drugs into full play," Shi said.

    Shi completed his sophisticated tests in his lab, delivering antiphlogistic and analgesic drugs and cancer curatives.

    The invention was published by the American Chemical Society Journal and a German academic journal of Angew Chemical.

    Shi said that one gram of drugs needs thousands of such vehicles for transportation.

    The research team used layer-by-layer technique in a hollow mesoporous silica. Mesoporous materials are of great research interests for their potential applications as catalysts, absorbents, key components in chemical sensors and optical nanodevices.

    The past decade has seen the fast development of nanocomposite materials from ordered mesoporous materials.

    The size distribution and dispersion of nanomaterials, in addition to their dimension, are crucial for their performance, Shi said.

    Angew Chemical rated Shi's achievement as a "very important paper."

    Chinese scientists have achieved a lot in nanotechnology. Statistics showed that from January to August 2004, China was ranked first in academic papers in nanotechnology by the Scientific Citation Index.

• Received E-mail titled from a quote within the following article: "A good look at the following has a lot of links to Chinese nanoshite products"

• Real World Applications of Nanotechnologies
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/2005/09/

  • Shantou Tongsheng Co., Ltd produces nanotech toothbrushes claiming they are:

    Capable of cleaning the inner side of teeth more effectively, it is toothbrushes upgradeable from the traditional. Usage the Nano technology, prevent the toothbrush to become the carrier what the germ survive and spread.

  • Shanghai BEST Industry & Commerce Co., Ltd produces Herbal Skin Care Lavender Nano Whitening Cream

    "The product is rich with patented herbal-whitening-effective ingredient and bodhi fruits UAA that may fight against the reason of blemish skin formation.

    It can fade the black, yellow or brown skin and make skin white and tender. The ingredient of plant whitening can also prevent blemish skin especially the development of Tyrosinase. The Nano element is added to enhance skin transparent. The plentiful nutrition elements added can instantly make skin more elastic and white. The effect of white is quick and long."

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 5th October 2005:

• Received E-mail titled: "Like no other country china understood that to win the race depends on finished products through Nano-Bio-Cogno-Info convergence and not on nano science mainly."

• Nanotechnology in China is focusing on innovations and new products
  • http://www.physorg.com/news5870.html

  • The markets in china for nanotechnology products and systems is 5.4 billion us dollar in 2005 and will increase to 31.4 bn us $ by 2010 and 144.9 bn us $ by 2015. The main segments are nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, nanobio and nano-life-sciences which count already for 70 percent of the turnover. The market share ( worldmarket ) will be more then 6 percent by 2010 and 16 percent by 2015. Like no other country china understood that to win the race depends on finished products through Nano-Bio-Cogno-Info convergence and not on nano science mainly. Second but maybe even more important, there are no ethical restrictions or social controversy on developing and using nanotechnologies for new products and systems.

    Over the past three years, the number of companies in the field of nanotechnology in China has grown and reached over 800. This growth rate is very rapid and it has yet to show signs of slowing down. The sales to date have been largely domestic, but with the increasing global interest on the development of nanotechnology and with the advantage of modern communication we can for sure speculate that this could be a very profitable investment in the near future.

    Nanotechnology and nano-bio-info-cogno converging technologies are becoming more and more the decisive factor of the race between regions and nations to win the future markets and society’s wealth and political stability. The development shows that five nations are leading the competition today. China, as one of these five nations, has its unique advantage of high flexibilty, low labour costs, no barriers for new technologies, young and vibrant society, large amount of foreign venture capital, underestimated currency (today about 25 percent undervalue compared with the US Dollar), low taxes, goverment support and a home market with more than 1.3 billion people for applications.

• Received E-mail titled: "Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno-Socio-Anthro-Philo- & Geo-Eco-Urbo-Orbo-Macro-Micro-Nano-"

  Comment from person: "You only have to look at the (3-sublevel)title and vomit

  Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno-Socio-Anthro-Philo- HLEG
  Foresighting the New Technology Wave Converging Technologies
  Shaping the Future of European Societies
  . .
  Rapporteur Report 2004 Geo-Eco-Urbo-Orbo-Macro-Micro-Nano-

• Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno-Socio-Anthro-Philo- HLEG : Foresighting the New Technology Wave Converging Technologies : Shaping the Future of European Societies
  • http://europa.eu.int/comm/research/conferences/2004/ntw/pdf/final_report_en.pdf

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 2nd October 2005:

• More Email with some very world class "inspired" nanoshite (a potential rival to the 'vision' of "intelligent yogurt" (yogurt made intelligent by the use of nanotechnology - for human benefit), and the lesser 'vision' of replacing people's DNA with 'more reliable' nanotechnology).

  Comment from person: "I like the prediction that nontech will bring us phones we don't need to speak to. I thought that was the definition of a phone: for spoken communication. Perhaps nano can give us food we don't need to eat, but only look at etc...":

  Kudos to the person who passed this on. You know who you are, and I am in awe of your olifactory abilities with respects the sniffing of new, true nanoshite.

• Bell Labs president projects long-term nanotech
  • http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2033
  • Phones that can smell, minus the breath mints: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200509/13/200509132231215209900090609061.html

  • "In the next five to 10 years, mobile phone users will be able to detect changes in the facial expressions and even in the smell of the person they are talking to, according to Jeong Kim, president of Bell Labs, the research arm of the U.S. firm Lucent Technololgies.

    "As part of a five-day business trip here, Mr. Kim met with reporters in southern Seoul yesterday to introduce cutting-edge future technologies and offer predictions on the world’s information-technology industry.

    "Elaborating on the new cell phone technology developed by the laboratory, Mr. Kim said that smell-transmitting sensors, lenses that follow the movement of eyeballs and microphones as narrow as a human hair already exist, and would be on sale within a decade.

    "Mr. Kim said nanotechnology - techniques used to create structures as small as one-millionth of a millimeter - had played a key role in the development of the new technologies.

    "Mr. Kim predicted that nanotechnology could bring huge changes to the way humans live, citing the example of a new computer that will enable simultaneous translation of telephone conversations.

    "'If nanotechnology maintains its current pace of development, it will give birth to a computer that has the information processing capacity equivalent to every human brain combined by 2060,’ he said.

    "Mr. Kim said that while communication technologies have so far mostly focused on speed, future developments will look to improve their convenience. Eventually, he added, phones will no longer need to be touched or even spoken to, but will instead respond to mental commands."

• China develops superior nano ink
  • http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/876516.cms

  • BEIJING: China has claimed to have developed a superior colour ink using nano technology which is considered ideal for both black and colour printing.

    The nano ink's pigment particles have a maximum diameter of only 200 nanometres.

    Pigment particle size is the key in producing ink for printers. The particle diameter should be less than 500 nanometres for high quality print.

    However, traditional Chinese ink did not reach this requirement, China Radio International reported.

    After three years of research, Tsinghua University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences here have co-developed this new ink by applying nano technology.

    The minimum diameter of the pigment particles is only 20 nanometres, which is considered to be ideal for both black and colour printing.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 29th September 2005:

• Another link received on the benefits of various types of Nano-Selenium Rich Tea:

• A Tentative Probe into the Nano-Selenium Rich Tea for Assistance to Aids Succor Net for Aids
  • http://www.369.com.cn/En/ATentative.htm

  • Succor Net for Aids was founded by Qu Shaozhong, deputy fellow researcher, in 2001 and obtained congratulatory symptoms of trend after three years' assistance work, with the job summarized as follows:

    - Recipients

    All the recipients are help seekers on the Internet, among whom 75 are females, 24 females with a total number of 99. The age range is from 7-51, with 36 cases feverish, 38 diarrheas, 12 liver and spleen tumescent, 9 stomatic respiratory infection, 47 weight loss and 17 lymph tumescent.

    - Succor method

    With the treatment method corresponding to the symptoms, 5 varieties of nano-teas manufactured by Qinhuangdao Taiji Ring Product Company Limited are adopted, among which dark-green tea, white tea and green tea are made from the selenium rich tea unique to Enshi of Hubei, China . The average size of nano-teas is 100nm, distributed between 10-200nm for above 95% ( of which some tea particles are very close to viruses in size, and others are so tiny that they can penetrate viruses). Based on the major symptoms described by the help seekers, different varieties of nano-teas are used, with the table shown as follows:

  • Suitable quantities for intake of Nano-Selenium Rich Tea: wall-breaking, steaming, condensing and drying nano ballmilling methods are adopted for this group of case and 10-100nm nano particles are obtained with

    selenium content exceeding 25ppm, i.e. each gram of tea contains 25micrograms of selenium. Shishu nano-selenium rich tea. When taken, one should start from 1g of selenium rich tea two times a day and selenium content in blood should be measured when used, after which an increase of 0.5 g of selenium rich tea should be implemented each time and selenium content in blood is monitored with liver function indexes and body signs when increased to 2.5g each time. If no response, an increase of quantity should be effected continuously.

    When increased to response of body signs such as flush face, smell of metal or garlic in the mouth, slight falling-out of hair, rise of GPT, restlessness in emotion, the quantity of intake should be reduced to 1g if there is one of the above-mentioned signs. If responses disappear, it proves to be the person's resistance to selenium, i.e. it is the fatal dosage for viruses or cancerous cells (hypodermic sarcoma). This is also the time when poisoning needs watching closely so as to avoid abnormalities for individualities, and timely treatment can be arranged thereinafter. The method of use should be summed up as "increase incrementally on a trial basis and decrease in case of response".

    - Summary of succor

    Tentative Summary for Treatment of Aids by Nano-Tea

  • It can be seen from the table that nano-selenium rich tea has received obvious results in relieving and removing major symptoms, and the most congratulatory is that HIV turned negative for 5% of the cases (not included in the table).

    Discussion:

    1 ) A relatively large of number of anti-virus and anti-cancer cases for tea products (green tea in particular) have been reported at home and abroad, which is mainly attributed to the chemical composition of tea and the function of polyphenol in the tea. This website adopts the absorbent physical effect of small particles and small-size surface to absorb and eliminate viruses as well as the penetration effect (tunnel effect) of nano particles to penetrate cell walls so that viruses can be removed through penetration, which hasn't yet been read at home and abroad. This has blazed a new road for defeat of Aids viruses in terms of methodology

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 23rd September 2005:

• More links received "true bionanoshite" :

• Nanobots For You: 500 trillion nanobots might replace your blood in the future
  • http://www.pcquest.com/content/firstlooks/103091603.asp

  • Ever thought about holding your breath and swimming under water for hours at a stretch like a whale? Or sprinting like a cheetah for 12 minutes, without breathing even once!

    It's no Sci-fi movie script or dream. The concept is very much real and might come true some day in the future. Scripted by scientists, Robert A Freitas and Christopher J Phoenix, it involves changing the very essence of life-replacing the blood coursing through your arteries and veins with over 500 trillion oxygen and nutrients carrying nanobots. The vasculoid system as it is called will just about duplicate every function of blood, albeit more efficiently.

    Respirocytes, for example, are just one type of the nanobots that will make up this artificial blood. Freitas envisages respirocytes to be made up of 18 billion structural atoms that are precisely arranged to the last atom. Each respirocyte will have a tiny onboard computer, powerplant and molecular pumps and storage hulls that can transport molecules of oxygen and carbon dioxide.

    The bots will be a thousand times more efficient than the RBCs they seek to replace. Agreed this nano-robotic blood will be more than a little time in the making. But who knows, one day it could very well change the course of human evolution.

• Inventor foresees implanted sensors aiding brain functions
  • http://www.eetuk.com/tech/news/rn/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=18307535

  • BOSTON : Using deliberately provocative predictions, speech-recognition pioneer Ray Kurzweil said that by 2030 nanosensors could be injected into the human bloodstream, implanted microchips could amplify or supplant some brain functions, and individuals could share memories and inner experiences by "beaming" them electronically to others.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 18th September 2005:

• More links received :

• Visual images in nanotechnology
  • http://www.zyvex.com/nanotech/visuals.html

  • There are frequent requests for visual images that illustrate the concepts of molecular nanotechnology. This is a brief guide to some of the available images.

  • Zyvex has produced video of exponential assembly, a scale-independent replicative architecture which could be implemented in the next few years using MEMS. It's hypnotic.

• Diamondoid Molecular Machine Parts
  • http://www.imm.org/Parts/index.html

  • Some atomically detailed designs include:
    • A pump selective for neon
    • A molecular differential gear
    • A fine-motion controller for molecular assembly

• Nano Space
  • http://www.angelfire.com/mt/marksomers/nanospace.html

  • Space science as long played a role in the research and development of advancing technologies. Spacecraft are being launched, with hulls that are composed of carbon fibers, a light weight high strength material. Combine that with smaller on board computers that perform hundreds of times faster than computers used on spacecraft just a decade ago and one can see the why of incredible advances in space exploration in just the past few years. The advancements in material science and computer science have allowed the building, launching and deploying of space exploration systems that continually do more and more as they become smaller and lighter.

    Some of the latest avenues being explored, that are more in the nano realm, in space science, include smart materials for the hulls of spacecraft. These would be materials primarily composed of nanotube fibers with nano sized computers integrated into them. These materials along with being even lighter will also be far stronger too. One idea is to create a surface that will help transfer the aerodynamic forces working on a spacecraft during launch. When the craft is launched the nano computers will flex the crafts hull to offset pressure differences in the hull caused by the crafts acceleration through the atmosphere. Then the same nano computer network in the hull would go to work heating the shaded side of the craft and cooling the sun exposed side and to even create heat shielding for reentry. To equalize the surface temperature now, a spacecraft must be kept rotating and although a slight spin is good in maintaining the attitude of a craft somtimes it interferes with the mission plan, like when a spacecraft is taking photographs or is in the process of docking with another craft.

    Another avenue being investicated is a concept of nano robotics called "Swarms". Swarms are nano robots that act in unison like bees. They theoretically, will act as a flexible cloth like material and being composed of what's called Bucky tubes, this cloth will be as strong as diamond. Add to this cloth of nano machines nano computers and you have smart cloth. This smart cloth could be used to keep astronauts from bouncing around inside their spacecraft while they sleep, a problem that arises when the auto pilot computer fires the course correction rockets. The cloth like material will be able to offset the sudden movements and slowly move the sleeping astronaut back into position. Still another application for the nano robot swarms, being considered, is that the smart cloth could be used in the astronauts space suits.

    A space suit is nothing more nor less than an incredible space ship itself so this same smart cloth could be the super structure of a deep space probe replete with an on board A.I computer capable of creating the science experiments needed enroute to its destination and capable of not only making changes in mission plans but creating even new experiments as they are needed or wanted. The same super explorer could even create its own solar energy gathering panels if appropriate or utilizing R.T.G technology with plutonium also it will be able to repair itself. And while all of the above is going on the craft could even expand it's own computing capabilities if need be.

    Another application of nano robots would be in carrying out construction projects in hostile environments, for example with just a handfull, of self replicating robots, utilizing local materials, and local energy it's conceivable that space habitats can be completely constructed by remote control so that the inhabitants need only show up with their suitcases. Colonization of space begins to make economic sense then, since it would only take one saturn type rocket to create a complete space colony on mars, for example. An engineer or a team of engineers could check up on the construction of the habitat via telepresents utilizing cameras and sensors created on the surface of Mars by the nano bots all from the comfortable confines of Earth. Then once the habitat is complete humans can show up to orchestrate the expansion of the exploration. Venus could be explored with nano robots too. Super Hulls could be fashioned by nano robots to withstand the intense pressures and corrosive gases of the venusian atmosphere, to safely house nano robot built sensors and equiptment. The potential in all of this is getting a lot more space exploraton accomplished with less investment of resources and a lot less danger to human explorers.

• LEGO(TM)s to the Stars: Active MesoStructures, Kinetic Cellular Automata, and Parallel Nanomachines for Space Applications
  • http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/9609lego.htm

  • Abstract: Primitive molecular nanotechnology (MNT) will contribute significantly to the human settlement of Space by creating flexible, human-scale active systems that can be actively reconfigured into a wide variety of useful shapes and artifacts. It appears that a very large number of identical primitive nanomachines, operating in parallel as an Active Meso-Structure (AMS), may not only meet the requirements for such a system, but might also be easier to design, build, and control than drexlerian assemblers. These systems attempt to combine the respective strengths of Von Neumann's kinetic model and cellular automata (CA). Examples such as Josh Hall's Utility Fog, Joseph Michael's Shape-Shifting Flexible Robotic System, Forrest Bishop's XY Active Cells, and Goel and Thompson's Movable Finite Automata are described and compared. The claim is made that machines can only be self-replicating if they are built using MNT. Finally, a non-self-replicating method of constructing these primitive nanoscale KCAs is described.

  • Utility Fog: Bothered one day by a chaffing seat belt, J. Storrs Hall imagined how nanotechnology would replace it, and he ended up inventing Utility Fog. He imagined a user-friendly, completely programmable collection of avrogadro numbers of nanomachines that could form every kind of transportation, from horses to spaceships. It could simulate any material from gas, liquid, and solid, and it could implement the ultimate in virtual reality. Finally more speculative projections envision uploading human minds into planet-sized collections of Utility Fog. Before dismissing such speculations too quickly, it may be worthwhile to examine it closely for useful concepts that may be applied in the near term.

  • Joseph Michael's Shape-Changing Robots: While Hall's foglets closely resemble TinkerToys(TM), another, more conservative KCA (kinematic cellular automata) is more similar to LEGO(TM) blocks. Joseph Michael envisions flexible robots that can flow through small openings as they work on a wide variety of tasks. Like Utility Fog, Michael's concept also involves at large numbers of individual machines, but instead of dodecahedral foglets with telescoping and swiveling arms, his paradigm is a simpler one consisting of solid bricks or cubes with retractable wedges. Michael has not only patented his flexible robot, but he has also built and tested models, and demonstrated them at trade shows.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 16th September 2005:

• Follow-on nanoshite received from previous submittor ("Nanoshite self-admittance! What an admission - fresh from the Foresight Institute") :

• How nanotechnology can help Hurricane Katrina victims
  • http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2022

  • Comment from submitter: "Refers to the "lots of promise" general stuff about nano and then says so far it can do .... NOTHING!! Just send some of their billions of dollars of otherwise frittered away research money."

  • Scenarios have been written about how advanced nanotechnology could help victims of natural disasters, and those otherwise in need, in the future. And at the upcoming Foresight Conference we’ll be looking at how nanotech can provide clean water cheaply. But what can nanotech do, right now, for those affected by Hurricane Katrina?

    Nothing, to my knowledge (send corrections if you know of something). But what the nanotech community can do today is send donations to relief organizations

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 15th September 2005:

• Some new nanoshite received via E-mail :

• Nanotechnology's miniature answers to developing world's biggest problems
  • http://www.physorg.com/news3681.html

  • In a study by the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, a panel of international experts ranks the 10 nanotechnology applications in development worldwide with the greatest potential to aid the poor. With a high degree of unanimity, the 63 panelists selected energy production, conversion and storage, along with creation of alternative fuels, as the area where nanotechnology applications are most likely to benefit developing countries.

    Some day soon, in a remote village in the developing world, a health worker will put a drop of a patient's blood on a piece of plastic about the size of a coin. Within minutes, a full diagnostic examination will be complete including the usual battery of blood work tests, plus analysis for infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS, hormonal imbalances, even cancer.

    That remarkable piece of plastic is called a lab-on-a-chip and it is one of the revolutionary products and processes currently emerging from nanotechnology research with the potential to transform the lives of billions of the world's most vulnerable inhabitants.

    According to a new study by the Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health (CPGGH) at the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics (JCB), a leading international medical ethics think-tank, several nanotechnology applications will help people in developing countries tackle their most urgent problems - extreme poverty and hunger, child mortality, environmental degradation and diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. The study is the first ranking of nanotechnology applications relative to their impact on development; it was published today by the prestigious, open-access, US-based Public Library of Science journal PLoS Medicine.

    The study also relates the impact of nanotechnologies to the world's eight Millennium Development Goals, agreed in 2000 for achievement by 2015.

    "Most waves of technology can increase the gap between rich and poor but the harnessing of nanotechnology represents a chance to close these gaps. The targeted application of nanotechnology has enormous potential to bring about major improvements in the living standards of people in the developing world," says CPGGH co-director and JCB Director Dr. Peter Singer.

    "Science and technology alone are not going to magically solve all the problems of developing countries but they are critical components of development. Nanotechnology is a relatively new field that will soon be providing radical and relatively inexpensive solutions to critical development problems."

    Nanotechnology is the study, design, creation, synthesis, manipulation, and application of functional materials, devices, and systems through control of matter at the nanometer scale (one nanometer being equal to 1 x 10-9 of a meter), and the exploitation of novel phenomena and properties of matter at that scale. When matter is manipulated at the tiny scale of atoms and molecules, it exhibits novel phenomena and properties. Thus, scientists are harnessing nanotechnology to create new, inexpensive materials, devices, and systems with unique properties.

    Goals of the CPGGH study included identifying and ranking the 10 nanotechnology applications most likely to have an impact in the developing world. The study team asked an international panel of 63 experts which nanotechnology applications are most likely to benefit developing countries in the areas of water, agriculture, nutrition, health, energy and the environment in the next 10 years.

    The top 10 nanotechnology applications are:

    1. Energy storage, production and conversion;
    2. Agricultural productivity enhancement;
    3. Water treatment and remediation;
    4. Disease diagnosis and screening;
    5. Drug delivery systems;
    6. Food processing and storage;
    7. Air pollution and remediation;
    8. Construction;
    9. Health monitoring;
    10. Vector and pest detection and control.

    With a high degree of unanimity, panelists selected energy production, conversion and storage, along with creation of alternative fuels, as the area where nanotechnology applications are most likely to benefit developing countries.

    "Economic development and energy consumption are inextricably linked," says Singer. "If nanotechnology can help developing countries to move towards energy self-sufficiency, then the benefits of economic growth will become that much more accessible."

    Study leader Dr. Fabio Salamanca-Buentello explained that nano-structured materials are being used to build a new generation of solar cells, hydrogen fuel cells and novel hydrogen storage systems that will deliver clean energy to countries still reliant on traditional, non-renewable contaminating fuels.

    As well, recent advances in the creation of synthetic nano-membranes embedded with proteins are capable of turning light into chemical energy.

    "These technologies will help people in developing countries avoid recurrent shortages and price fluctuations that come with dependence on fossil fuels, as well as the environmental consequences of mining and burning oil and coal," he says.

    Number two on the list is agriculture, where science is developing a range of inexpensive nanotech applications to increase soil fertility and crop production, and help eliminate malnutrition - a contributor to more than half the deaths of children under five in developing countries.

    Nanotech materials are in development for the slow release and efficient dosage of fertilizers for plants and of nutrients and medicines for livestock. Other agricultural developments include nano-sensors to monitor the health of crops and farm animals and magnetic nano-particles to remove soil contaminants.

    Water treatment is third-ranked by the panel. "One-sixth of the world's population lacks access to safe water supplies," says Dr. Salamanca-Buentello.

    "More than one third of the population of rural areas in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has no clean water, and two million children die each year from water-related diseases, such as diarrhea, cholera, typhoid, and schistosomiasis, which result from a lack of adequate water sources and sanitation."

    Nano-membranes and nano-clays are inexpensive, portable and easily cleaned systems that purify, detoxify and desalinate water more efficiently than conventional bacterial and viral filters. Researchers also have developed a method of large-scale production of carbon nano-tube filters for water quality improvement.

    Other water applications include systems (based on titanium dioxide and on magnetic nano-particles) that decompose organic pollutants and remove salts and heavy metals from liquids, enabling the use of heavily contaminated and salt water for irrigation and drinking. Several of the contaminating substances retrieved could then be easily recycled.

    Disease diagnosis and screening was ranked fourth. Here technologies include the "lab-on-a-chip", which offers all the diagnostic functions of a medical laboratory, and other biosensors based on nano-sized tubes, wires, magnetic particles and semiconductor crystals (quantum dots). These inexpensive, hand-held diagnostic kits detect the presence of several pathogens at once and could be used for wide-range screening in small peripheral clinics. Meanwhile, nanotechnology applications are in development that would greatly enhance medical imaging.

    Rounding out the top 10:

    5. Drug delivery systems: including nano-capsules, dendrimers (tiny bush-like spheres made of branched polymers), and "buckyballs" (soccerball-shaped structures made of 60 carbon atoms) for slow, sustained drug release systems, characteristics valuable for countries without adequate drug storage capabilities and distribution networks. Nanotechnology could also potentially reduce transportation costs and even required dosages by improving shelf-life, thermo-stability and resistance to changes in humidity of existing medications;

    6. Food processing and storage: including improved plastic film coatings for food packaging and storage that may enable a wider and more efficient distribution of food products to remote areas in less industrialized countries; antimicrobial emulsions made with nano-materials for the decontamination of food equipment, packaging, or food; and nanotech-based sensors to detect and identify contamination;

    7. Air pollution remediation: including nanotech-based innovations that destroy air pollutants with light; make catalytic converters more efficient, cheaper and better controlled; detect toxic materials and leaks; reduce fossil fuel emissions; and separate gases.

    8. Construction: including nano-molecular structures to make asphalt and concrete more resistant to water; materials to block ultraviolet and infrared radiation; materials for cheaper and durable housing, surfaces, coatings, glues, concrete, and heat and light exclusion; and self-cleaning for windows, mirrors and toilets.

    9. Health monitoring: several nano-devices are being developed to keep track of daily changes in patients' physiological variables such as the levels of glucose, of carbon dioxide, and of cholesterol, without the need for drawing blood in a hospital setting. This way, patients suffering from diabetes would know at any given time the concentration of sugar in their blood; similarly, patients with heart diseases would be able to monitor their cholesterol levels constantly.

    10. Disease vector and pest detection control: including nano-scale sensors for pest detection, and improved pesticides, insecticides, and insect repellents.

    Addressing global challenges using nanotechnology

    The study team found that several developing countries have already launched nanotechnology initiatives. India's Department of Science and Technology will invest $20 million over the next four years, for example, and China ranks third in the world behind the United States and Japan in the number of nanotech patent applications.

    Researchers at China's Tsinghua University have begun clinical tests for a bone scaffold based on nanotechnology which gradually disintegrates as the patient's damaged skeletal tissue heals. This application of nanotechnology is especially relevant for developing countries, where the number of skeletal injuries resulting from road traffic accidents is acute.

    In Brazil, the projected budget for nanoscience during the next five years (2004-2007) is about US $25 million, and three institutes, four networks, and approximately 300 scientists are working in nanotechnology. Brazilian researchers are investigating the use of modified magnetic nanoparticles to remove oil from oil spills; both the nanoparticles and the oil could potentially be recycled.

    The South African Nanotechnology Initiative is a national network of academic researchers involved in areas such as nanophase catalysts, nanofiltration, nanowires, nanotubes, and quantum dots. And Mexico has world-class researchers in carbon nanotubes. Other developing countries pursuing nanotechnology include Thailand, Philippines, Chile, and Argentina.

    "Resource-rich member nations of the international community have a self-interest and a moral obligation to support the development and use by less industrialized countries of these top 10 nanotechnologies to address key development challenges," says Dr. Abdallah Daar, MD, Director for Ethics and Policy of the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine and co-director of the CPGGH.

    "We propose an initiative, called Addressing Global Challenges Using Nanotechnology, that can be modelled on the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative launched last year by the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

    "A grand challenge directs investigators to seek a specific scientific or technological breakthrough that would overcome obstacles to solving significant development problems. In our proposed initiative, a specific Grand Challenges in Nanotechnology project would foster scientific and technological advances that would encourage development in less industrialized countries. The top 10 nanotechnology applications identified in our current study are a good starting point for defining these grand challenges.

    "Our results can provide guidance to developing countries themselves to help target their growing initiatives in nanotechnology. The goal should be to use nanotechnology responsibly to generate real benefits for the 5 billion people in the developing world."

    Source: University of Toronto Joint Center for Bioethics

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Monday 5th September 2005:

• Some new nanoshite links received via E-mail :

• Nanobeans
  • http://www.martakoush.com/nano_beans.htm

• Nanodrink
  • http://www.martakoush.com/products.htm

• Study: Nanotechnology in Food and Food Processing Industry Worldwide: 2003-2006-2010-2015 - Tomorrow we will design food by shaping molecules and atoms
  • http://www.hkc22.com/nanofood.html

  • Comment received (In an E-mail with the moderately emotional title of "f**k") : "...some highlights....."

  • Keeping leadership in food and food processing industry, you have to work with nanotechnology and nano-bio-info in the future.

  • Tomorrow we will design food by shaping molecules and atoms. Nanoscale biotech and nano-bio-info will have big impacts on the food and food-processing industries.

  • The nanofood market is expected to surge from 2.6 bn. US dollars today to 7.0 bn. US dollars in 2006 and to 20.4 bn. US dollars in 2010. More than 200 USA is the leader followed by Japan and China. By 2010 Asian with more than 50 percent of the worldpopulation will be the biggest market for Nanofood with the leading of China.

  • The number of the companies involved in this field will increase from 69 in 2002 to 2004 and to several thousands by 2010.

  • February 2001, hkc22.com and btt.com (www.btt.com) published the first study worldwide about convergence of nanotechnololgy-biotechnology-information-neural technology. (Converging nano-bio-info-neural-technologies 2015).

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 4th September 2005:

• Some new nanoshite links received via E-mail :

• Nanowater
  • http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/23534/

  • 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.

• Scientists unveil 'clay' robots that will shape our world
  • http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=632012005

  • TINY robots that can turn into any shape - from a replica human to a banana to a mobile phone - are being developed by scientists in the United States.

    The new science of claytronics, which will use nanotechnology to create tiny robots called catoms, should enable three-dimensional copies of people to be "faxed" around the world for virtual meetings.

    A doctor could also consult with a patient over the phone, even taking their pulse by holding the wrist of the claytronic replica, reports New Scientist.

    And the nano "clay" could be carried around, shape-shifting into virtually anything when required. Your claytronic mobile phone could turn into a hammer for a spot of DIY and then a pair of shoes to go jogging.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 14th August 2005:

• Some more feedback giving a new nanoshite link :

• Nanotech frauds imminent, warns VC
  • http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/18/nanotech_frauds_soon/

  • Vinod Khosla, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems who wrote its first business plan, and one of the pivotal figures in Silicon Valley capital, has warned that nanotech frauds are on their way. The first IPO in the much-touted sector will shortly take place, with the flotation of Nanosys, a Silicon Valley company which has gained over $50m in capital and filed over 200 patents, as premature. For Khosla it's a problem that he can't evaluate what it's actually selling.

    "When people start investing in a technology as opposed to investing in an application [and] when people start hyping a technology, you're sure to have bad things happen," said Khosla. He said the sector would "almost certainly" create a bubble.

    "And whether they are doing it knowingly or unknowingly, there is a reasonably high likelihood that they will defraud the public market," he said, referring to Nanosys.

    It's not that he thinks that nanotech is bogus. Far from it: he's invested in two firms and regards nanotechnology breakthroughs in computer memory and batteries as inevitable in the next few years. But he doesn't think companies should go to market without a product and he's dubious that old companies have been able to repackage themselves as fresh nanotech startups.

    Nanosys itself has licensing agreements with Intel and Matsushita (Panasonic) to exploit its portfolio. Nanosys' CEO Larry Bock has a slash-and-burn reputation with startups: of twelve biotechnology companies he took public in 2001, four have gone bust and the not one of the remaining eight is making money yet. ®

    A partner at Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byers, Khosla has invested in optical networking and silicon companies in recent years. You can find an account of his early years at Sun here - it's worth a hundred airport kiosk business paperbacks.®

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 10th August 2005:

• After a lull of feedback - some new nanoshite links :

• Initial Decision of an SEC Administrative Law Judge - In the Matter of Nano World Projects Corporation
  • http://www.sec.gov/litigation/aljdec/id228rgm.htm

• Initial Decision of an SEC Administrative Law Judge - In the Matter of Nano World Projects Corporation
  • http://www.mary.cc/npct/

  • Some information about the public company Nanopierce, its CEO Paul Metzinger and stock promoters. The CEO has been sued by the SEC twice for fraud. He was also sued over missing stock certificates. He was not allowed to practice law in front of the SEC for 36 months. He's never had a successful company. He went bankrupt. The company stock promoters have been sued by the SEC for fraud in relation to their promotion of npct and other companies. The company stock promoters are currently being sued for fraud by an investor.

    October 5, 2004 NPCT announces a deal to go into the business of chicken feed additive with Xact Industries. I tried to check out this PR and new business partner but so far it seems totally false and the new biz partner is as scammy as Paul. The new guy was sued by the US for making false statements.

  • January 26, 2004 They admit they have no real product or business but are interested in buying a nanotech business, see PR. They are doing more toxic funding with an entity with a total scam past.

  • "Yet many companies would love some of that $35 billion. Which might explain"nano" in the names of many firms. But just because a company has thenano prefix does not mean it is really involved with nanotechnology. TakeDenver-based NanoPierce Technologies. Formerly known as Sunlight Systems, itstechnology creates connections between microchips and other electronic parts atsizes about the nanoscale. "We just use nano because it means small,"says CEO Paul Metzinger. Perhaps the best-known nanotech company is NanophaseTechnologies, which makes the metal-oxide particles found in sunscreens. Hardlythe stuff of nanotechnology. "

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 9th June 2005:

• Received Email with nano-links to :

• Index of thumbnails and names of all images in the Nanomedicine Art Gallery
  • http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Gallery/index.html#ExhList

  • http://www.foresight.org/Nanomedicine/Gallery/Captions/index.html

  • Included as such things as :

  • "Brain Cell Enhancer: The blue, octopus-like nanobot is one of billions of brain cell enhancers. The central sphere houses a computer, with a storehouse of information equal to many large libraries. Billions of spheres are in contact with one another, as well as with the brain cells, creating a secondary gestalt mind that interfaces with the brain's original gestalt mind. For this image, the circuit board background was chosen to impart a surreal tone."

  • "Cell Repair Machines I: In a cubic micron, you can construct the equivalent of a mainframe computer with a gigabyte of memory You have enough computational cycles within the volume, time, and heat-dissipation constraints to identify all the macromolecules of the cell (even if they're moderately damaged), by using certain algorithms that can already be specified in fairly great detail. Since you can identify all the molecules, you can map the cell structures: the patterns that you recognize are type-tagged by the molecules they contain (i.e. if it contains tubulin, it's a microtubule). Since this tells us the type of structure, it makes it easier to know how to probe and further characterize the structure."

  • "Nanosubmarine Attacks Fat Deposit: A nanomachine swimming through a capillary attacks a fat deposit (such as normally may accompany an arteriosclerotic lesion). The classic original image!"

  • Cell Repair Machines IV: Several cell repair units are shown simultaneously engaged in repairing a single neuronal cell. Communications fibers and cables link the repair units to a master controller system that directs all the repair activities from outside the scene.

  • Molecular Machines in the Bloodstream: Vanishingly small machines like the ones envisioned here could someday serve as tiny mechanical doctors. These miniature devices would roam between the red cells of the bloodstream, seeking out and destroying harmful viruses (shown here as green geometric solids). The working parts of these machines would be built around gears no bigger than a protein molecule.

  • Blue Respirocyte Closeup: High latitude view of a single respirocyte in blue, showing the circumpolar concentric-circle bar coding and a conventional 12-fold pumping station layout. Surface features are realistically depicted as nearly flush with the outer spherical surface of the device.

  • Utility Foglet: Imagine a microscopic robot. It has a body about the size of a human cell and 12 arms sticking out in all directions. A bucketfull of such robots might form a `robot crystal' by linking their arms up into a lattice structure. Now take a room, with people, furniture, and other objects in it -- it's still mostly empty air. Fill the air completely full of robots. The robots are called Foglets and the substance they form is Utility Fog, which may have many useful medical applications.

  • Toward the Breach: Cylindrical nanorobots in the bloodstream hurry to the site of a vascular breach to begin repairs.

  • Nanobot Lung Cleaners: In this fanciful image, mobile nanorobotic janitors (green) patrol the lungs, collecting inhaled debris and transporting it to recycling stations (blue-gray).

  • Artery Cleaner II: A metallic-looking medical nanorobot in the foreground extends a pincer-like mechanism and begins removing a yellow fatty deposit from an arterial surface; another similar device is seen working in the background. Hovering nearby is a supervisory nanorobot.

  • Dental Nanorobots I: A remote-controlled nanorobot performs a restorative dental procedure on a patient's tooth. As an aid to visualization, the artist has depicted the dental nanorobot about 1000 times larger than actual size. This artwork originally appeared on the front cover of the November 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Dental Association.

  • Peepers I: "Peeper" nanorobots equipped with optical sensors along with other nanorobots having various test features are introduced into the venous bloodstream of an anesthetized animal to validate safety protocols prior to human use.

  • Hairjacks: Evoking a humorous sense of lumberjacks felling trees, this image shows buzzsaw-wielding nanorobots mowing down a thick stand of follicles. Apparently the owner treated his hair with green mousse before deciding to go with a buzzcut instead. You can almost feel your scalp humming!

  • Gastronanorobot I: Image Description: A nanorobot surveys the stomach of an astronaut, looking for signs of infection. This image is taken from "Vital Space," an interactive movie exhibit unveiled in Summer 2002 at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, which takes its audience on a fantastic voyage through the body of a female astronaut ravaged by an alien virus.

  • Fibots 4: In artist Fonseca's interpretation of the clottocyte concept created by Robert Freitas , a clot-inducing medical nanorobot is embedded in a growing clot with red cells and fibrin strands involved.

  • Artery Cleaner V: Medicine is one of the most exciting application areas for nanorobots. It may become possible to inject a fleet of nanorobots to perform vital work inside a human body without resorting to surgery. Imagine toothpaste full of nanorobots equipped to locate and destroy plaque, or nanorobots built to clean a diseased blood vessel, as shown in this image.

  • Capsula: Radio-controlled drug delivery nanocapsules measuring about 1 micron in diameter include a storage tank, multiple injection ports, and an antenna allowing external radio control; inspired by Freitas' pharmacytes.

  • Thinkers and Handlers: "Handler" nanorobots install "Thinker" nanocomputer modules in a damaged brain. Note the dead brain cells. Such devices could one day replace brain cells damaged by illnesses such as Alzheimers, mad cow disease, or accidents, or could be used to enhance brain capacity. The nanorobots can operate autonomously or through teleoperation.

  • Stinger II: A "stinger" nanorobot (designed by Erik Viktor) grabs a sick T lymphocyte and injects a glucocorticoid designed to induce cellular apoptosis, during a laboratory diagnostic test on a patient''s blood sample.

• Received Email with nano-link which points out that "Inevitably, the bionanobot group from Rutgers had their insanity printed in Nature": http://bionano.rutgers.edu/Mavroidis_Final_Report.pdf.

• From pulses to motors (published in Nature Materials)
  • http://www.bionano.neu.edu/Mavroidis_Dubey.pdf

• Received an Email with related nano-link :

• Rutgers to create ultra-tiny 'bio-nano' motors under National Science Foundation grant
  • http://www.scienceblog.com/community/older/2003/G/20035251.html

  • Three engineering departments at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey – mechanical and aerospace, biomedical, and chemical and biochemical – are teaming up to create a prototype of an ultra-tiny motor small enough to be part of a system that could eventually travel patients' bloodstreams to help repair damaged cells, organs and DNA.

    A prototype of the "Viral Protein Nano Motor" is expected to be unveiled in 2007, with research and development funded by a four-year $1,050,017 grant from the National Science Foundation and its Nanoscale Science and Engineering program

    The term "nano" refers to nanotechnology – the study and process of working with devices and assembling structures by using atom- or molecule-sized building blocks. In this case, Rutgers scientists are using biological molecules derived from virus-based proteins to build a bio-nano motor that can perform a linear opening and closing motion.

  • compares developing bio-nano motors to designing the internal combustion engine, which later was combined with other components to develop such history-changing advances as the automobile and airplane. "Two years ago, our ideas seemed very ambitious, like science fiction. Now it's becoming a reality," he said.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 8th June 2005:

• Received Email with nano-link.

• Molecular Nano Weapons - China Hotels Reservation
  • http://www.chinaopportunity.net/Molecular_Nano_Weapons.htm

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 7th June 2005:

• Received Email about "more nanobot renderings" with nano-link.

• Dictionary: nanotechnology: nan·o·tech·nol·o·gy
  • http://www.answers.com/topic/nanotechnology

  • By 2020, scientists at Rutgers University believe that nano-sized robots will be injected into the bloodstream and administer a drug directly to an infected cell. This robot has a carbon nanotube body, a biomolecular motor that propels it and peptide limbs to orient itself. Because it is composed of biological elements such as DNA and proteins, it will be easily removed from the body. For more information, see http://bionano.rutgers.edu/Mavroidis_Final_Report.pdf.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 5th June 2005:

• Received Email with nano-link.

• Toto Sanagloss: like toilet scrubbing nano bubbles
  • http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000863044646/

  • Japanese toilet manufacturing phenoms Toto have developed a new ceramic glaze that could end the days of toilet scrubbing forevah. Apparently, "stubborn waste" is as small as a few microns whereas their new SanaGloss product coats the inner-bowl with an ultra smooth surface at the nanometer scale. Any matter actually finding a foothold will be promptly washed away with a simple flush. Bring on the pizza and Pabst, we’re going on a field trip!

  • This isn't very new. Our 3 year old Toto toilets have the SanaGloss surface. In our case, they get red (rust) stains fairly quickly. Scrubbing alone isn't enough to get this stain off; a chemical cleaner is required. Nothing else seems to stick though...

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Saturday 4th June 2005:

• Slowly get through a backlog of Emails reporting nanoshite with various links.

• These be NanoBots
  • http://www.chinabusinessman.org/these_become_nanobots.htm

  • Includes a link to P. Dolding Beedle press release on nanorock, nanoscissors and nanopaper. High impact for P. Dolding B. in Chinese nano!!

• NANOCON PROCEEDINGS page 10 VI. CRITICAL PATH PANEL A. DELPHI Survey
  • http://www.halcyon.com/nanojbl/NanoConProc/nanocon10.html

  • We questioned 200 scientists chosen from the literature prominent in the paths that Mr. Drexler says will be important for the development of nanotechnology. About half said that they would not participate because of the reputation that nanotechnology has associated with it. They called people involved with it the lunatic fringe. I find it very interesting that the existence of a science-fiction oriented group such as this is making it very hard for nanotechnology to be taken seriously in the technological arena. The paradox seems to be that if you want it to come about, you can't talk about it.

  • G. BENFORD: One reason for emphasizing products developed from nanotechnology is, first, it's sort of fun. Second, you can get people who hold stock options who might be very interested in listening to you. Third, one of the problems of technology in modern society is that if you can't reach into the ordinary life of an ordinary person in a way in which they identify you as both good and new, you have got two strikes against you. One of the problems of the nuclear industry in this country is that it has never been able to deliver a product that had its label on it. Electricity through the wall -- you don't know where it came from. Meanwhile, all the PR has been in the opposite direction, nuclear weapons, etc. They have never established their constituency. Nanotechnology could establish its constituency by producing -- a good wall cleaner!

    G. FJERMEDAL: Make it so practical that Middle America would just embrace it! Bathroom cleaners, wood preservatives.

    G. BEAR: Might I suggest the fabric industry. There is apparently a huge grant available for anyone who can remove rust stains once they are set.

• Nanobots could be roaming through our body by as early as 2020: Nanotech to eliminate disease, old age; even poverty
  • http://www.betterhumans.com/Members/futuretalk/BlogPost/503/Default.aspx

  • Nanotech to eliminate disease, old age; even poverty

    Though he admits that nanobots sound like something out of "Fantastic Voyage," this star scientist feels confident his dream will come true. "Already we can insert nano-biosensors into cells and observe their process," he says.

    Officials at Foresight Institute, an industry think tank, agree that future nanobots will revolutionize healthcare. Ability to self-replicate makes them inexpensive, and because they can position each atom in place with perfect precision, they leave no doubts about the quality of performance.

    Today, when a cell is damaged, doctors rely on drugs to instruct the cell to repair itself, a process that does not always bring the patient back to health. With nanobots, damaged cells are completely rebuilt, one atom at a time, creating a flawless and brand new, or better than new youthful cell.

    Nanobots work like tiny surgeons as they reach into a cell, sense damaged parts; repair them by reformatting new atoms, and leave. By repairing and rearranging cells and surrounding structures, nanobots can restore every tissue and bone in the body to perfect health – including replacing aging skin with new, resilient skin, restoring youthful looks and good health.

  • "By manipulating individual atoms, nanobots can replicate themselves, and build nearly any desired product on command. This capability promises to end disease, create wealth for everyone, stop pollution, provide unlimited energy, and build goods at little or no cost."

    Foresight thinkers compare nanotech with the importance of humanity’s taming of fire. Because assemblers build copies of themselves quickly, using inexpensive materials, little energy, and no human labor, a single nano-machine can copy itself billions of times with almost no cost.

    However, opponents remind us that the human body contains about ten thousand billion billion protein parts, which make up an extremely complex machine called "life." Can nanobots really improve on what nature has accomplished through all its years of evolution? Advocates believe they can.

    These amazing ‘bots will easily understand how healthy cells differ from damaged ones, and in the time it takes an enzyme to change a single bond, nanobots could perform more than a thousand steps, easily winning the "speed race" over nature.

    Expected by many as early as 2020, nanobots will clearly revolutionize medicine, giving us the ability to drastically extend our lives. Since forward-thinking scientists now consider death a treatable disease resulting from damaged molecular machinery, chemical imbalances, and defective structures – all problems within the range of nano-repair devices – youthful health and indefinite lifespan could soon be available to every adult, regardless of age.

    This "magical future" can become reality in our lifetime! Think positive and it could become your future.

• Nano-interest in New York nanotech
  • http://www.corante.com/newyork/archives/2005/05/31/nanointerest_in_new_york_nanotech.php

  • The NanoBusiness 2005 event, held last week at the New York Marriott Financial Center, attracted little or no attention from the MSM (mainstream media). In fact, a search at Google News didn't turn up any MSM links to New York nanotech news, only a short preview of the conference from a site called Monsters & Critics:

    "While applications for the technology are wide open and venture capital dollars are readily available - many of the companies assembled at the NanoBusiness Conference 2005, a trade show held here wherein nanotechnologists are rubbing elbows with each other and Wall Street types - the challenges are great for the industry, which is still in its infancy."

• Nanotube water doesn't freeze - even at hundreds of degrees below zero
  • http://www.allamericanpatriots.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=10447

  • A new form of water has been discovered by physicists in Argonne's Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS) Division. Called nanotube water, these molecules contain two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom but do not turn into ice - even at temperatures near absolute zero.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 26th May 2005:

• Received Emails with various links.

• Really big diamonds!
  • http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/17/1350224&mode=nocomment&threshold

  • It isn't nanoassembly but it is real diamond. ScienceBlog is discussing how the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory can produce 10-carat (half-inch thick) single-crystal diamonds using CVD. Unlike previous work it appears that this is flawless & colorless diamond. They believe the method may be adaptable to growing up to 300 carat (1") diamonds as well as diamonds with unique shapes.

    While it isn't "diamondoid", one has to wonder, given the flexibility of CVD, how far the method could be pushed towards "diamondoid". Certainly multi-element crystals seem possible as would things like silicon on diamond (for micro/nanochips with high heat removal capacity).

• Nanotech Toilets Take Off
  • http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1820013,00.asp

  • Luxury bidet seats can cost a consumer anywhere from $350 to $800 or more, greater than the price of most toilets. While they are not yet as popular in the U.S. as they are in Japan (where the market penetration is greater than that of microwave ovens), another relatively new and little publicized toilet innovation is emerging as a winner here. Yes, it's the nanotech toilet. It turns out that nanotechnology can address one of those "should do" but highly unpleasant tasks in life – cleaning the toilet. For some of us, that's right up there with pulling weeds, flossing teeth and taking out the garbage. Wouldn't it be great if there were a self-cleaning toilet?

  • The Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) images of conventional (left) vs. SanaGloss glazed (right) surfaces. Smoothness on a nanometer scale helps prevent debris from sticking. With nothing to cling to, particles, molds, and bacteria can be washed away with every flush.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 24th May 2005:

• Received Emails with various links.

• The Nanotechnology "Industry"
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • A few years back the National Science Foundation and its National Nanotechnology Initiative proclaimed that the "Nanotechnology Industry will be a $1 trillion industry by 2015."

    Since that time, this figure has been quoted by nearly everyone to justify just about every commercial endeavor in the area of nanotechnology.

    We here at Cientifica have always maintained that no such "industry" exists and that there isn’t much use in trying to define one. At first, we were a lone voice in the woods, but more and more people are coming around to this realization.

    Well, now the US Government has addressed the issue in the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) recently released report, "The National Nanotechnology Initiative at Five Years: Assessment and Recommendations of the National Nanotechnology Advisory Panel."

  Add entry into "ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!": The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite.

• NaturalNano Inc
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • ...NaturalNano Inc.

    You couldn't make this up, but hot on the heels of intelligent yoghurt comes the news that NaturalNano Inc, who exploit the somewhat non nano halloysite nanotubes have announced that it will be honored as the "First Nano Company Exploiting Naturally Formed Nanotubes"

    We'd like to see who else was on the short list, or should first have read only?

• A Self Assembled Steak Sandwich and an Intelligent Dessert in Every Home?
  • http://www.cientifica.com/blog/mt/

  • We are rarely rendered speechless by an article, and we did indeed plan on saying a few words about intelligent yoghurt until we realoised that we had been beaten to the punch, and saw who leapt to its defence! And there we were thinking the newly reinvented and renamed treehugging Foresight people were trying to ditch their image of mad eyed fanaticism by becoming the technological equivalent of Bono with aq new mission of "Advancing Beneficial Nanotechnology."

    While this new direction shows some considerable ingenuity, it still begs the question over whether Foresight has abandoned the Drexlerian crede, or whether the nanobot ate their homework. After all, wasn't molecular manufacturing going to give the world unlimited resources anyway, at least once someone had got it beyond the theoretical stage?

• Intelligent yoghurt by 2025
  • http://www.softmachines.org/wordpress/index.php?p=120

  • Yesterday's edition of the Observer contained the bizarre claim that we’ll soon be able to enhance the intelligence of bacteria by using molecular electronics. This came in an interview with Ian Pearson, who is always described as the resident futurologist of the British telecoms company BT. The claim is so odd that I wondered whether it was a misunderstanding on the part of the journalist, but it seems clear enough in this direct quote from Pearson:

    “Whether we should be allowed to modify bacteria to assemble electronic circuitry and make themselves smart is already being researched.

    ‘We can already use DNA, for example, to make electronic circuits so it’s possible to think of a smart yoghurt some time after 2020 or 2025, where the yoghurt has got a whole stack of electronics in every single bacterium. You could have a conversation with your strawberry yogurt before you eat it.’ “

    This is the kind of thing that puts satirists out of business.

  • 1 Comment-

    Let’s be careful here. "Some time after 2020 or 2025" is not the same as your headline, "by 2025".

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Monday 23rd May 2005:

• Received an E-mail titled "Letter to the Editor" with the concluding text that "I regret that I have come to view your website as almost negative towards nanotechnology, and wish you would take the work of the Rev Prof Dolding-Beedle and other leading renderers such as the Foresight Institute with the seriousness they deserve."

  In the interest of fair and balanced feedback, add into NanoShite Mainpage within Feedback subsection.

Wednesday 27th April 2005:

• Received Email with link to:

• nanopyrexia
  • http://www.nanogloss.com/defi/nanopyr.htm

  • nanopyrexia: In nanomedicine, refers to an abnornal raise of the body temperature (fever) that could be caused by "the presence or activities of in vivo medical nanorobots".

• Received Email with links to:

• Synthesis of Anthropomorphic Molecules: The NanoPutians
  • http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/jo0349227

• "Scolding the Nanokids"
  • Via: http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/cen/82/i19/toc/toc_i19.html

  • "As one who examines the development of humanoid and robotic behavior in molecular systems, I call into question the description given to efforts to create anthropomorphic molecules. The structures denoted in your recent article (C&EN, April 5, page 71) and in the original publication [J. Org. Chem., 68, 8750 (2003)] "cherry-pick" a structural depiction of a class of polyacetylenes as given by the artistic placement of bonds using conventional vector-based drawing programs such as ChemDraw.

    "While suggestive as drawn and even modeled, a significant portion of the conformational space taken up by the molecules described as "NanoKids" adopts conformations that are nothing like what the human anatomy is capable of. Moreover, such structural assignments can be confirmed using the appropriate chemical physics; such studies were not presented.

    "These self-termed "NanoKids" contain molecular arrangements defined by their artistry but not by their chemical structure. The worst part of this scheme stems from the fact that young minds are being led to believe that such structures are correctly ascribed. If we are to use popular vehicles to encourage interest in chemistry, should we not require their structures to be properly depicted? Is that not one of the primary roles of the chemist?"

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Monday 18th April 2005:

• Received Emails with various links.

• Can a Lifewave patch increase energy and stamina by 40% using nanotechnology?
  • http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=494678

• 3D Spam?
  • http://crnano.typepad.com/crnblog/2005/03/3d_spam.html

  • Imagine a future virus that infects nanofactories to periodically make produce a wireless internet connection to download new spam designs. You or your kids only need to fall for one "free trial!" scam, and your nanofactory is permanently infected and open to 3D spammers.

    Next imagine a "slow virus" - one that doesn't immediately affect the nanofactory it invades. Instead, it waits several months. By the time it takes effect, you have no idea where you contracted it, no idea how to avoid getting it again even if you buy a fresh nanofactory.

    Next imagine an airborne nanofactory virus. Sprayed from a passing spammer's car or plane, it drifts into your house, gets sucked in by the nanofactory's cooling fan, infecting it with instructions to make that wireless internet connection. Now you don't even have to be careless to get infected. Oh, and it produces and sprays out millions more of it's kind, so soon your whole neighborhood is infected.

    Next imagine a flea-sized flying device that deliberately seeks out nanofactories to infect, with tools to drill through the nano-active micro-pore air filters you installed to catch and destroy airborne viruses. It also infects your whole neighborhood.

    Then there's the tiny worm that tunnels through the power line insulation, and eventually digs into your house wiring, finds where your nanofactory is plugged in, and tunnels on into it. Millions of them then tunnel back out to infect your neighbors.

• 3D Spam?
  • http://www.jrbtech.com/bio.php/bio/2005/03/30/3D_Spam_/

  • Which made me think -- what happens when spam can be delivered not just as email, but as 3D objects?

    When your home or office includes a desktop nanofactory as a standard appliance, how easy will it be for hackers to steal (or buy) your machine's unique address and send instructions to produce unwanted physical products?! It could be something as "innocent" as a clever marketing ploy to get you to try a new product. Or it could be something as dangerous as a smart bomb designed to look like a toy or a new electronic gadget.

    Will such things happen? Almost certainly, unless we do something in advance to prevent them.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 17th April 2005:

• Received Email with various links.

• Yet another example of researchers jumping on the "nano" bandwagon
  • http://www.newstarget.com/000457.html

  • Wow, what an impressive way to include the word "nano" in a story that has nothing whatsoever to do with nanotechnology. This is all part of today's nano-craze, where everybody doing anything at all on a small scale attaches the word "nano" to their projects.

    This article talks about nano-bumps. As in, little tiny bumps. Just like the kind on your skin, or the kind you find in a rock, a tree, or a concrete sidewalk. And, yes, metal can have nano-bumps, too.

    This isn't nanotechnology, folks, it's just little tiny bumps. Get yourself a big enough microscope and you'll see them. Hey, maybe you, too, can be your own nanotechnology researcher and request billion dollar grants from the federal government! Get a good enough microscope and you'll discover that, wow, nanotechnology is all around us!

    I'll give 'em one thing, however. There is something shrinking to microscopic size that's worth mentioning: the brains of all the researchers trying to jump on the nanotech bandwagon.

    By the way, wasn't it Robin Williams who first said, "Nano nano" anyway?

• I Built A Billion Nanotech Devices Yesterday, And So Did You
  • http://www.newstarget.com/000437.html

  • I chose this article because it offers a well grounded summary of the fundamental issues facing nanotechnology. As the article states, the requirement for social acceptance of each new technology isn't that the technology works, it's that the society believes in it.

    Do people believe in nanotechnology? Primarily, yes. It's very scientific sounding. Very precise. It requires all sorts of complex engineering and lots of capital investment. But if this is so, why don't people believe in the nanotechnology that already exists?

    Huh? What do I mean? I'm talking about the microscopic devices already present in the bodies of every human being. We have devices that repair tissue, that diagnose and treat disease, that kill invaders and that even "learn" what those invaders look like so they can capture them more easily next time.

    Every human being alive already has this nanotechnology: it's called the immune system. And yet few people actually "believe" in this form of nanotechnology. The immune system is the great unsung hero of human health.

    Through nanotechnology, doctors and scientists are essentially trying to create a secondary immune system that can be injected into patients' blood and go to work. But why not just support the immune system that's already there?

    Too often, modern medicine works to destroy the existing immune system rather than support it. Chemotherapy, for example, consists of injecting a non-lethal dose of deadly poisons into a human being. Those poisons obliterate the patient's immune system. This is especially bewildering, since a stronger immune system has the ability to tackle cancer and keep tumors in check.

    But getting back to the point here, why don't scientists and researchers work with the existing nanotechology that's already present in every human being? I'll tell you why: because nobody gets a big career boost boost from it. You don't get a billion dollars in funding by talking about the immune system. You get it by painting a science fantasy picture that includes really smart scientists building microscopic machines that challenge nature, not that complement it.

    Small devices power big egos, it turns out. At least in the politics of nanotechnology. But I offer that nature has far better nanotechnology than mankind could ever produce, and if we would spend more time finding ways to support nature rather than trying to control it, we'd all be healthier and far more "advanced."

    Analysis: Nanotechnology is currently being hyped up by researchers seeking big grants. But in the medical field, the promise of nanotech overlooks the existing biological, nature-powered nanotechnology already present in every human being alive.

• Nanotech claims lead the way in junk science; phototherapy needs no nano
  • http://www.newstarget.com/000438.html

  • This story manages to stumble through such a large number of medical myths that it's breathtaking. At first, the story sounds like it makes good sense: nanotechnology, medicine, microscopic tumors... it's all very scientific, right? Hardly. Above all, this story demonstrates how easy it is to make junk science sound legitimate. Let me explain:

    First, there's the idea that people have microscopic tumors that have to be removed through, essentially, nano-surgery. In reality, everyone has cancerous cells in their body, and it's the immune system -- not golden nano balls -- that keeps these cancerous cells in check. As usual, this story completely ignores the all-important role of the immune system in reversing cancer.

    Secondly, there's the idea that doctors have to use infrared light (a form of phototherapy) to heat these golden nano balls and, basically, cook the surrounding tissue. In reality, no nano balls are needed at all: infrared light has its own powerful, documented healing properties. In fact, infrared light at the 880nm wavelength has such astounding healing properties that it's currently being explored as cutting-edge emerging medicine under the umbrella of vibrational medicine.

    NASA was one of the first organizations to examine phototherapy in recent times: they were trying to develop a technology to accelerate the growth of plants, presumably for space travel. What they got, instead, was a technology that doubles the healing speed of human tissue. Shine the light on a cut, burn, lesion, sprain, or other injury, and it heals in half the time.

    The U.S. military has been testing units, too. Soldiers engaged in recent war efforts have been using light therapy to heal bullet wounds, among other injuries. The results have been phenomenal (around a 200% boost in the speed of healing).

    On the experimental side, some health practitioners are even using phototherapy to reverse cancer and shrink tumors.

    So, you see, the nano balls are really just smoke and mirrors, like a lot of so-called nanotechnology. But it sure makes for great headlines.

    Analysis: Nanotechnology is today's equivalent of the dot-com craze. Suddenly, everybody is talking nanotech, even when it makes no sense.

• The Top Ten Technologies: Where is Nanotechnology?
  • http://www.newstarget.com/001341.html

  • By this measure, everything is nanotechnology. I mean that literally: every "thing" is nanotech because it's made of a collection of very tiny molecules. Your computer has a nanotech CPU, your radio has nanotech transistors, your brain is made of nanotech neurons, and the carrots in your refrigerator were built from an impressive nanotechnology infrastructure that fed them nutrients from tiny molecules diffused into the plants' nanotech roots through soil.

    The whole universe is, in fact, nanotech. In fact, every item of matter in the known universe is made up of tiny particles and, ultimately, waves of energy and probability. Under this vast umbrella, nearly anything can be called "nanotechnology." And it's not a misnomer: everything really is nanotech!

    Since everything is, technically, nanotech, product makers and science researchers can legitimately claim to be using nanotechnology on practically any project. As a result, the term has lost any real meaning. "Nanotech" now belongs on the scrap heap of catchy buzzwords that sound cool but are devoid of any real meaning.

    The preferred term for the "classic" definition of nanotechnology is molecular assembly technologies. This phrase remains specific: it means the assembly of objects or machines at the molecular scale. And that's what classic "nanotech" was really all about.

    So why haven't I covered molecular assembly technologies in this report? While the field does look potentially promising, it's still a bit early to say what the real-world applications are going to look like. I plan to cover this subject in more detail in a future report, however.

    In the mean time, here's one are where I think nanotechnology has gone astray. One of the most frequently mentioned areas of nanotechnology is in medicine, where researchers promise that an army of millions of nanotech robots will travel through the bodies of medical patients and repair cells, destroy tumors, rebuild damaged tissue, and perform other medical miracles. These researchers forget that the body already has its own nanotechnology that does all this and more! It's called the immune system and the best way to improve the quality of life for most people, in terms of health, would be to support their own natural healing abilities.

• Yorkshire Forward acting on nano's £1 trillion potential
  • http://www.serco.com/media/industrynews/ItemPage.asp?ItemID=8052580

  • Development agency Yorkshire Forward has announced that it is to invest in nanotechnology's market potential.

    The Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) has predicted that by the end of the next decade, nanotechnology's global market could be worth £1 trillion.

    As such, development agency Yorkshire Forward is to invest in projects that show "substantial commercial potential" within the sector.

    The agency will invest a total of £5 million across three projects.

    Nanofactory, a joint partnership between Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford universities, which will be the first Nano-Manufacturing centre that focuses on commercial products and will receive £2.1 million.

    The York-JEOL Centre for Nanolithography and Analysis will receive £1.65 million to help transform it into a "world-class facility".

    Finally, the Polymer Interdisciplinary Research Centre, based at the universities of Sheffield, Leeds and Bradford, will get £1.2 million to investigate the nanotechnology's commercial potential in polymer and composite material production.

    Susan Johnson, executive director of business development at Yorkshire Forward, said: "There is already a substantial presence in micro and nano-technology in our region but this investment will help businesses to really exploit this expertise and to bring new and exciting innovations to the market.

    "The potential market in micro- and non-technology is huge and we want to make sure that, as a region, we are at the forefront of its commercial development."track

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Saturday 16th April 2005:

• Received Email with links to some articles, including the first one where it seems the nanoshite 'doth not floweth', and another including accounts of "nanofertilizer technology", "a field in which China is more advanced".

• Nanoparticles' behaviour causes environmental concerns
  • http://www.htcricket.com/news/181_656497,001301450000.htm

  • The tiniest particles of matter don't flow uniformly in water, a finding that could have wide-ranging implications in assessing environmental risks and benefits of nanotechnology - the science of manipulating the very small, says a scientist.

    Preliminary research, the first of its kind, suggests the ways in which so-called nanoparticles behave in groundwater environments or water treatment plants are as varied as the diverse molecules or atoms used to assemble them.

    The finding precludes making broad statements about how nanomaterials, measurable in the billionths of a meter, move in watery environments, said Mark Wiesner of Rice University. Details were presented at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society.

    "What's becoming obvious is while it's trendy to talk about nanomaterials in broad-brush terms, we can't do that. We need to discuss this on a case-by-case basis," Wiesner said in an interview.

    The discovery also suggests limited roles for some nanoparticles in either dirtying or cleaning the world - they have been touted as capable of doing both - since they gum up before flowing very far. Among the minute materials examined by Wiesner and his colleagues were buckyballs, a soccer ball-shaped particle thousands of times smaller than a human hair.

    Early research, presented by other scientists at the meeting, suggested the particles cause brain damage in fish. "There are many potential benefits of nanotechnology, but its hazards and risks are poorly understood. This study gives us additional cause for concern," said Eva Oberdorster of Southern Methodist University.

    Wiesner said laboratory tests showed the particles were the least mobile from among a variety of nanomaterials his group examined, presumably reducing their potential for causing harm in the environment.

    Even the nanoparticles best suited for travel appeared capable of moving underground no more than about 10 yards before sticking to larger grains of sand, he added.

    The finding also could impede those who want to press the ultra-small particles into the fight against pollution. Scientists are working to develop special nanoparticles to seek out and destroy sources of groundwater pollution that often are expensive and difficult to treat.

    Wiesner said not all nanoparticles are the same - some may be incapable of "finding their targets" if injected into the ground. The findings underscore a basic tenet of nanotechnology: "When you get smaller, properties change," Mark Ratner of Northwestern University said during a nanotechnology forum.

    The US government is spending roughly $1 billion a year on nanotechnology, including dozens of studies that examine its environmental and societal impacts. The private sector is laying out billions more.

    "We can't afford to make mistakes," American Chemical Society president Charles Casey said.

• German Cooperation on Nanotechnology
  • http://www.china.org.cn/english/2005/Apr/125707.htm

  • On Tuesday, experts from China and Germany began to exchange views on the development of nanotechnology at a three-day conference in Changsha, capital of central China's Hunan Province.

    "The gap between China and western countries in nanotechnology is not very big. China is even leading in some areas," said Jiang Xiaowei, a Ministry of Science and Technology official.

    Jiang said companies from the two countries will negotiate on cooperative projects. Germany will invest in nanofertilizer technology, a field in which China is more advanced, he said.

• Companies cool on nanotechnology
  • http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200504/s1343816.htm

  • A survey of western Sydney companies' attitudes to the relatively new science of nanotechnology has found that nearly half of those that responded could not see the technology's relevance to their business.

    Nanotechnology is the science of rearranging individual atoms and molecules to create different materials and devices.

    The University of Western Sydney's Kim Leevers says the Nanotechnology Project sent surveys to more than 300 businesses, of which just 38 replied.

    He says early results indicate that many companies cannot grasp how nanotechnology can have a practical use in their business.

    "The manufacturing sector, particularly those in the small-to-medium enterprises don't have large research and development budgets to put into things like nanotechnology," he said.

    "They are prepared to sit and wait for some things to come through first before I think they will invest."

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 12th April 2005:

• Received Email with link to: Nanotechnology researcher claims "Nanotechnology is Here!" : But there are good reasons to be skeptical of these premature proclamations

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 11th April 2005:

• Received Email with link to: Nano-based products starting to have consumer impact - which includes the option of "cheaper beer made with nano yeast,"

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" and Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsections.

Saturday 9th April 2005:

• In light of a second reading of "On Bullshit" by Harry G. Frankfurt, change the title text and mainpage introduction a little.

Thursday 7th April 2005:

• Received Email with links:

  Center for Automation in Nanobiotech (CAN)

  Nanorobotics

  Nanorobotics Lab

• Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Thursday 7th April 2005:

• Received Email with title of "Subject: Jezuzzzzzzz. Ou f***ingrageous" (removing highly unflattering anti-nano comments in the body-text with respect of the following) to: Kurzweil proposes research programs to replace DNA, block bioterror viruses

  Ray Kurzweil has proposed a nanobiotechnology research program to replace the cell nucleus and ribosome machinery with a nanocomputer and nanobot to prevent diseases and aging and another program to create defensive technologies against rogue designer viruses.

  Kurzweil presented the ideas in a keynote at the recent "Breakthrough Technologies for the World's Biggest Problems" conference on April 28, sponsored by the Arlington Institute.

  The nucleus is basically a computer that stores the DNA genetic code and controls gene expression via RNA, messenger RNA, and ribosomes, which build amino acid sequences that get folded into proteins that control everything else.

  Using nanotechnology expected to be available in the late 2020s, a nanocomputer would store and execute the software of the genetic code and the expression of genetic information. It would direct a nanobot to construct the amino acid sequences (eventually, it could also construct the folded proteins). The system would "block uncontrolled replication and DNA transcription errors, and virus replication that can result in cancer, disease, and aging," he said. "It could also upgrade the genetic code to eliminate other diseases, reverse aging, and enhance human abilities."

  The concept of modeling the genetic code in software and using nanobots to repair a patient's DNA was suggested by Robert A. Freitas, Jr. in the book Nanomedicine Vol I. Kurzweil's concept would go further, replacing DNA, RNA, mRNA, and ribosomes with software and nanobots.

  Stopping designer viruses

  Kurzweil also proposed a new research program to spend 1% of GDP, or about $100 billion currently, to create defensive technologies against the intentional abuse of designer biological viruses that could be used in bioterrorism atttacks.

  "Relinquishing viral design technology is not the answer because this technology provides the means to overcome many human diseases, including cancer," he said. "But a terrorist with access to a routine college biotechnology laboratory can create a designer virus that could spread easily and be deadly. We are close to having effective anti-viral medications, but this work needs to be given the highest possible priority, and funding to match.

  "We also need to streamline regulatory bottlenecks that are delaying these vital defenses. A bioterrorist does not need to put his inventions through the FDA for approval. But the responsible scientists that we are counting on to defend us are delayed at every step."

• And: Kurzweil Doesn't Tailgate

  New interview with Ray Kurzweil about his plan to live forever:

  Ray Kurzweil doesn't tailgate. A man who plans to live forever doesn't take chances with his health on the highway, or anywhere else.

  As part of his daily routine, Kurzweil ingests 250 supplements, eight to 10 glasses of alkaline water and 10 cups of green tea. He also periodically tracks 40 to 50 fitness indicators, down to his "tactile sensitivity." Adjustments are made as needed.

  "I do actually fine-tune my programming," he said.

  Once again, I think Sherwin Nuland's assessment is right on:

  Sherwin Nuland, a bioethics professor at Yale University's School of Medicine, calls Kurzweil a "genius" but also says he's a product of a narcissistic age when brilliant people are becoming obsessed with their longevity.

  "They've forgotten they're acting on the basic biological fear of death and extinction, and it distorts their rational approach to the human condition," Nuland said.

  As to the increased demand for resources when he and his friends start living forever,

  Kurzweil says he believes new technology will emerge to meet increasing human needs. And he said society will be able to control the advances he predicts as long as it makes decisions openly and democratically, without excessive government interference.

  But there are no guarantees, he adds.

• And The nanocomputer dream

  BLURB

  The writer Ray Kurzweil is known for making outlandish claims about the future of computing technology. In a speech to the Arlington Institute's conference on "Breakthrough Technologies for the World's Biggest Problems," Kurzweil advocated replacing cell nuclei and ribosomes with nanocomputers and nanobots. Kurzweil's bizarre argument was that advances in nanotechnology will allow the activities of ribosomes and cell nuclei to be largely duplicated by software, nanocomputers, and nanobots. Kurzweil claims that these techniques could "block uncontrolled replication and DNA transcription errors, and virus replication that can result in cancer, disease, and aging," and could also "upgrade the genetic code to eliminate other diseases, reverse aging, and enhance human abilities." Kurzweil gets these plans in large part from nanotechnology researchers Eric Drexler and Ralph Merkle, and medical researcher Robert Freitas, who believe that "nanocomputers"--computers the size of a bacterium--could eventually be inexpensively mass-produced. In Nanosystems, Drexler envisioned building nanocomputers using mechanical rod-logic components and reversible logic techniques (to limit energy consumption/heat dissipation). Without such reversible techniques the nanocomputer would quickly overheat. These nanocomputers could, in theory, perform a quadrillion instructions per second per watt, and facilitate mainframe-sized computers with mole quantities of transistors. Without such nanocomputers, most of the dreams and forecasts of Kurzweil and Drexler are impossible. If scientists find a way to build, program, and interface with computers the size of a bacterium, Kurzweil and Drexler's predictions go from being impossible to merely implausible.

  I want... (3:03pm EST Fri Apr 30 2004)
  ...what he smokes.

  Gotta be some wicked powerful weed to come up with stuff that extremely insane. - by MJ

• Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Speculative Nano-Innovation / Nanoshite" subsection.

Wednesday 6th April 2005:

• Received another Email with link to: Bacteria Bridges New Nano-circuit

  Scientists in Wisconsin have used bacteria to make tiny bio-electronic circuits, a step towards new sensors and perhaps new nano-manufacturing techniques

  Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have developed a system to guide living microbes, one by one, between a pair of electrodes only a germ's length apart. When the bacteria lands in between it completes the circuit. The system enables researchers to capture, interrogate and release bacterial cells -- a technique that could be used for sensors able to detection of dangerous bioterror agents almost instantaneously.

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 6th April 2005:

• Received Email with link to: So What? What Can Nano Do for Us?

  Plus to a bit further and browse NanoBusiness and You

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Speculative Nano-Innovation / Nanoshite" subsection.

Wednesday 6th April 2005:

• Received Email with link to: Space-walkers launch 'Nanosatellite' - "Where "nano" in this case means something on the scale of 300 million nanometres."

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Wednesday 6th April 2005:

• Updated webpage with nanoshite buzzword received via E-mail: "gimballed nanogyroscopes": Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Saturday 2nd April 2005:

• Add links for:

  • Scholars Probe Nanotechnology's Promise and Its Potential Problems
    • http://www.physicstoday.org/vol-57/iss-6/p30.html

  • Nobel Winner Smalley Responds to Drexler's Challenge
    • http://www.foresight.org/press.html#20031201

  • National Nanotechnology Initiative in FY2001 Budget Clinton Administration Requests $497 million for NT-Related R&D
    • http://www.foresight.org/Updates/Update40/Update40.1.html#NNIFY2001

  • The First Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology
    • http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT01/Nano1.html

  • Nano kids
    • http://nanokids.rice.edu/

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 30th of March 2005:

• E-mail received:
  • Now searching under "nano" with various combinations of "might" "may" and "could" which appears to be quite good for nanoshite web-research, with limit of one week modification to page, so that only the most recent nanoshite is revealed (with Askjeeves)  

    COIMBATORE, MARCH 24. India is likely to become a leader in nano technology within the next five to ten years, the Chief Controller (Research and Development), Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), A. Sivathanu Pillai, said here recently.  

    Nano technology could provide "carbon nano tube structures" that could activate neurons and restore brain activity in children suffering from paralysis because of the death of one set of neurons.

Tuesday 30th of March 2005:

• E-mail received:
  • Perhaps they could better spend their money ensuring shuttles don't fall out of the sky? At least they won't hurt when they fall on your head as they are so small, and anyway, might form utility fog to stop astronauts falling to earth?

    http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/roboticexplorers/ants.html

    Look at the pictures of the nanobot. Tiny isn;t it?

    Shape-Shifting Robots Form Nanotech Swarms

    blah blah....

    'The team anticipates TETwalkers can be made much smaller by replacing their motors with Micro- and Nano-Electro-Mechanical Systems. Replacement of the struts with metal tape or carbon nanotubes will not only reduce the size of the robots, it will also greatly increase the number that can be packed into a rocket because tape and nanotube struts are fully retractable, allowing the pyramid to shrink to the point where all its nodes touch.

    These miniature TETwalkers, when joined together in "swarms," will have great advantages over current systems. The swarm has abundant flexibility so it can change its shape to accomplish highly diverse goals. For example, while traveling through a planet's atmosphere, the swarm might flatten itself to form an aerodynamic shield.

    "This prototype is the first step toward developing a revolutionary type of robot spacecraft with major advantages over current designs," said Dr. Steven Curtis, Principal Investigator for the ANTS project, a collaboration between Goddard and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Using advanced animation tools, Langley is developing rover operational scenarios for the ANTS project.'

    {[advanced animation tools - the primary research tools of all nanobotic researchers, of course led by our own Rev Prof P Dolding-Beedle.]}

    Add link into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 29th of March 2005:

• E-mail received with link to:
  • USC lab launches project to create nanobot swarms for ocean research:

  • http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=02/01/10/1743228

  Add link into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Tuesday 29th of March 2005:

• E-mail received :
  • {[On "Utility Fog" clarification]}:
    Thanks. I won't ask if anyone has any idea how it would feel to walk through an atmosphere that dense with nanobots. (Nor where they are supposed to get their energy from.)

    But instead I'll draw your attention to the transcription of the BBC Horizon program which convered the Jan Hendrik Schön affair:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/hendrikshontrans.shtml

    Where the original report is here:

    http://www.lucent.com/news_events/researchreview.html

    So whilst Horizon could have investigated the peer-review system and considered the sociological processes that go on within the hard sciences, instead they decided to spin out some nanobullshit. There's in fact a sense of relief that Schön was faking his data, because it means that the we aren't all going to get turned into grey goo after all!

  • The Dark Secret of Hendrik Schön - transcript: http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2004/hendrikshontrans.shtml

  • RAY KURZWEIL: One nanobot doesn’t do much, you need trillions of them, how do you get trillions of them? Well you need them to self replicate, you need one nanobot to turn in to two, to four, to eight, and scale itself up to trillions.

    NARRATOR: Ray Kurzweil is one of those who believe that in the future huge numbers of these self-replicating machines could be programmed to target every diseased cell in our body.

    RAY KURZWEIL : Our immune system of course keeps us alive but they’re very slow, I actually watched my white blood cells destroy a bacteria and it took like an hour and a half. A nanorobot can do the job in seconds. It would be far more powerful like destroying pathogens in cancer cells.

    NARRATOR: Trillions of these tiny machines could even be swallowed in pill form. Their tiny onboard computers controlled perhaps by tiny molecular transistors will direct them through even the smallest blood vessels to destroy any infection they come across. And though the technical know-how may be decades in the future one has even been given a name, a respiracyte. Respiracytes could be injected in to the victims of drowning. Once in the blood stream these nanobots would break down the excess molecules of carbon dioxide, and release oxygen in to the blood. They could mean the difference between life and death.

    RAY KURZWEIL Ultimately we’re not going to go to doctors that have visits in the way that we do today, we’re going to have systems in our body that are continually monitoring our body, detecting problems and fixing them immediately.

    NARRATOR: This then is one vision of what the brave new world could be like for our children. A vision where all diseases could be fought. Their lives could be extended by decades. All because of nanotechnology. But there could be another use for nanotechnology. Doctor John Alexander advises the Commander of US Special Operations. He believes that in decades to come war would be fought using nanobots.

  Add links into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Monday 28th of March 2005:

• a frantic message received from The Reverend Professor P. Dolding-Beadle

  Subject: nanolithographical breakthrough

  Professor P Dolding-Beadle has just become aware of a major breakthrough in nanolithographical rendering. It appears full color rendering is possible of complex nanostructures. Dolding-Beadle has applied for emergency funding to go to the local store to buy color pencils.

  HYPERLINK : "Diagrams and Models : The following pictures drawn by our understanding in nanotechnology": http://www.tqnyc.org/NYC040656/diagram.html

  . . . . . .

   
  1. Nanotechnology thermostabilizing (center of nanobot) and cooking (sides of nanobot) undercooked steak with bacteria
  2. In this picture, nanotechnology is repairing a bird's DNA.
  3. In this picture, nanotechology is destroying germs, which were about to destroy good blood cells
  4. This is an idea a member of the team had of how nanotechnology would help a solar powered car of the future get sunlight.
  5. This is one model of how nanotechnology might look. This model has sharp edges to help cut down plaque. It also has a tank of insulin that can help diabetics.
  6. This is a picture about nanotechnology repairing a bird's bone, which is cracked and broken, by "sewing" it together.
  7. This model shows a scorpion based nanobot on a piece of a molecule. This was one of our primary pictures showing that nanotechnology is very small.

• Update the PRESS RELEASE on the nanotechnological development of Nanorock, Nanoscissors and Nanopaper nanorobots to include this major innovation in Nanolithographical Nanotoolbox technology.

  Though also a sad expose of the Reverend Professor P. Dolding-Beadle: - that primary school children have trumphed all the millions of dollars of research funding spent on the good Reverend Professor.

Sunday 27th of March 2005:

• E-mail clarification receiving on "Utility Fog" :
  • "Nanotechnology is based on the concept of tiny, self-replicating robots. The Utility Fog is a very simple extension of the idea: Suppose, instead of building the object you want atom by atom, the tiny robots linked their arms together to form a solid mass in the shape of the object you wanted? Then, when you got tired of that avant-garde coffeetable, the robots could simply shift around a little and you'd have an elegant Queen Anne piece instead.

    The color and reflectivity of an object are results of its properties as an antenna in the micron wavelength region. Each robot could have an "antenna arm" that it could manipulate to vary those properties, and thus the surface of a Utility Fog object could look just about however you wanted it to. A "thin film" of robots could act as a video screen, varying their optical properties in real time. .....

    PLUS Bonus computer simulation image of what a utility foglet might look like."

  • http://discuss.foresight.org/~josh/Ufog.html

  Add link into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 25th of March 2005:

• Add links received via the following E-mail:
  • "Twenty years ago, when researchers were learning how silicon could be deposited on a wafer in such a way as to preserve the crystal structure, the aim was to get surfaces which were flat and crystals which were free of defects. Nowadays, failure of the crystalline structure has become "nanodot arrays".

    [stuff deleted]

    "and surface blemishes due to contamination have become "quantum fortresses""

  • http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2004.09.063

    "Self-organized formation of Si nanodot arrays on the oxidized Si(1 0 0) surfaces has been studied using scanning tunneling microscopy. The growth of the oxide layer and subsequent Si deposition have been conducted under ultra-high vacuum conditions. Number density of the grown Si nanodots was in the range from 3×10¹² to 8×10¹² cm-2 and their average size varied from 3 to 5 nm. Effect of the SiO2 layer thickness (0.2-2.2 nm), amount of deposited Si (0.5-7.5 ML) and growth temperature (60-450 °C) on the Si nanodot number density and size distribution has been determined. "

  • http://www.faculty.virginia.edu/teamhull/project%20introductions/jennchichin-revised.htm

    "With further growth past the islanding transition, nucleation of islands surrounding the edges of the pits along the <100> directions (Fig. 2b) occurs, forming a structure that we term "quantum fortresses"."

  • "And for me few things have summed up nano-ignorance of basic physics than some of the contents of this thread:"

    Subject: How to fly

    "Whatever the hell "utility fog" is supposed to be..."

  Add links into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

  Add new nano-words into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Tuesday 15th of March 2005:

• Getting through a backlog of E-mails, add following message : Nanotubes crank out hydrogen
  • Comment received: "i.e. a total efficiency of 0.325% of energy across the sun's spectrum. Well done nanotech

  • http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2005/020905/Nanotubes_crank_out_hydrogen_Brief_020905.html

  • Pure hydrogen fuel is non-polluting. Current methods of extracting hydrogen, however, use energy derived from sources that pollute. Finding ways to use the sun's energy to split water to extract hydrogen would make for a truly clean energy source.

    Several research efforts are using materials engineered at the molecular scale to tap the sun as an energy source to extract hydrogen from water.

    Researchers from Pennsylvania State University have constructed a material made from titanium dioxide nanotubes that is 97 percent efficient at harvesting the ultraviolet portion of the sun's light and 6.8 percent efficient at extracting hydrogen from water.

    The material is easy to make, inexpensive, and photochemically stable, according to the researchers. The 97 percent efficiency is the highest reported, according to the researchers. There is one catch -- only five percent of the sun's energy is ultraviolet light.

    The researchers are working to find a way to shift the response of the nanotube arrays into the visible spectrum.

    The key to making titanium dioxide nanotubes that efficiently harvest the energy from light is controlling the thickness of the nanotube walls, according to the researchers. Nanotubes 224 nanometers long with 34-nanometer-thick walls are three times more efficient than those that are 120 nanometers long with 9-nanometer-thick walls.

    The researchers made the titanium dioxide nanotube material by mixing titanium with acid and electrifying the mixture, which caused the tiny tubes to grow, then heating them to cause the material to crystallize.

    The material could be ready for practical use in two to five years, according to the researchers. The work appeared in the January 12, 2005 issue of Nano Letters.

  Add link into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 13th of March 2005:

• Receive E-mail ("nanoweapons and Superweapon #3") with link to:

• An Interview on Nanoweapons: A Glimpse Into China’s Post-Nuclear Super-Weapons: Lev Navrozov Interviewed by Ryan Mauro for www.worldthreats.com
  • http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2003/9/25/210250.shtml

  • I am thankful to Lev Navrozov, an expert in post-nuclear superweapons, as he calls them, for granting this interview.

    Ryan Mauro: Mr. Navrozov, your "nano weapons columns" on Newsmax.com and WorldTribune.com are intriguing. What is nanotechnology and how can it neutralize the U.S. means of nuclear retaliation?

    Lev Navrozov: The word "nano" means "one billionth." Nanotechnology is a field of many fields, some of them civilian, dealing with such small systems. What is of interest to us is tiny systems (they are called "assemblers") of molecular nanotechnology. Such assemblers can penetrate molecules and transform or destroy them.

    The world peace has been based on Mutual Assured Destruction. That is, every nuclear power such as the United States, Russia, or China has had means of nuclear retaliation, which an enemy nuclear attack cannot destroy. Thus, nuclear weapons can destroy New York, Moscow, or Beijing, but they cannot destroy submarines deep underwater, carrying nuclear missiles, underground nuclear installations, or bombers on duty high in the air carrying nuclear bombs. Nano assemblers are expected to be able to find these means of retaliation and destroy them by penetrating in between their atoms. Thus an attacked country can be destroyed safely by nuclear weapons because it has no means of nuclear retaliation to retaliate after the enemy nuclear attack and destroy the attacker by way of Mutual Assured Destruction.

    RM: If nanotechnology is to be used as a weapon, how does it work?

    LN: Let me recall the description a nanotechnologist has e-mailed to me. A molecular assembler I spoke about is a device capable of breaking and creating the chemical bonds between atoms and molecules. Since a molecular assembler is by definition able to self-replace, the first could build a duplicate copy of itself. Those two then become four, become eight, and so on. This compounding capital base could lead to a massive and decisive force within days. As Eric Drexler described it in his book – which he published in 1986! – "a state that makes the assembler breakthrough could rapidly create a decisive military force – if not literally overnight, then at least with unprecedented speed."

    Such a device is capable of rapidly manufacturing and deploying billions of microscopic/macroscopic machines at relatively little cost. These machines could comb the oceans for enemy submarines and quickly disable the nuclear arsenals they carry. Similar acts of sabotage could be carried out simultaneously against land-based nuclear facilities and conventional military forces in a matter of hours, if not minutes.

    The race to build a molecular assembler, if won by China, will result in its worldwide nanotechnic dictatorship. We are certainly at a crucial juncture in history, not unlike 1938 and its nuclear scientists who foretold the atom bomb. This time, we cannot afford to be caught sleeping

  • RM: What do you believe are going to be China’s next steps in terms of acquiring territory?

    LN: In contrast to Hitler, who stupidly grabbed the rump of Czechoslovakia in 1939, China has been very cautious in its territorial claims, since the position of China now is the best for the development of "Superweapon No. 3," such as the nano superweapon.

    RM: Who does China see as allies and enemies?

    LN: The worst enemy is the democratic West, whose very existence produces Tiananmens able to destroy the Chinese dictatorship. The best ally is the democratic West, supplying China with everything necessary for the annihilation or subjugation of the democratic West.

    RM: Are the other post-nuclear weapons being researched to this day? If so, are they known? If not, can you enlighten us?

    LN: Since the nano "Superweapon No. 3" is a hypothesis, and not an absolute certainty, the Chinese Project 863 has been engaged in genetic engineering and at least six or seven other fields.

    RM: If China has or is close to, molecular nanotechnology to be used in war, what is the purpose of having a large, advanced conventional army and "traditional" nuclear weapons?

    LN: Eric Drexler, the Newton of nanotechnology, alive and enriching us with his wisdom, discusses the problem in his historic book of 1986 "Engines of Creation." My assistant Isak Baldwin says that, according to Drexler, "A nation armed with molecular nanotechnology-based weapons would not require nuclear weapons to annihilate a civilization. In fact, it seems that a rather surgical system of seeking and destroying enemy human beings as cancerous polyps could be developed--leaving the nation’s infrastructure intact to be repopulated."

    Nevertheless conventional weapons might be useful even on the "D-day," after nanotechnology has been successfully weaponized. Conventional non-nuclear weapons have been useful even after 1945. Please recall that two "atom bombs" were delivered in 1945 by conventional U.S. bombers with conventional machine guns and all.

    RM: What beliefs or desires are motivating the rulers of China? The belief that Communism must triumph over Capitalism?

    LN: A New York taxi robber risks his life, life imprisonment, or death sentence to acquire the taxi driver’s $200. Hence the bulletproof partitions in taxis. The dictators of China defend not $200, but their power, which is worth trillions of dollars, apart from what cannot be expressed in terms of money (royal grandeur, cult, and glorification). Remember the French king who said, "The state – it is me"? Many dictators have been saying and can always say: "Communism/capitalism/democracy/freedom/socialism/national socialism/our great country/the meaning of life/the goal of history – it is me."

    RM: If the U.S. is the most technologically advanced country, does this mean we have been surpassed?

    LN: The "most technologically advanced country" is an ambiguous generality. In the 1950s, Russia was still a technologically backward country, with most of its population deprived of running water, to say nothing of passenger cars. Yet it did not prevent Russia from outstripping the United States in space rocketry, when the Soviet space satellite was launched before its American counterpart. In its annual "Soviet Military Power," to which I subscribed, the Pentagon could not help praising certain Soviet weapons as second to none in the world.

    RM: What today is holding China back from becoming overtly aggressive and reshaping the geopolitical world?

    LN: The dictators of China are not insane! China’s government-controlled "capitalist corporations" have been penetrating the entrails of the Western economies, absorbing the latest science and technology – or sometimes entire Western corporations, induced to operate in China on cheap local labor.

    To become "overtly aggressive"? What for? To invade Taiwan? To perish, along with the West, in Mutually Assured Destruction? No, the dictators of China are not insane! They are developing superweapons able to annihilate the Western means of nuclear retaliation.

  Add link into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 13th of March 2005:

• Find new nanoshite buzzword : "nanojet" (sort of a synonym to nano-fountain): Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

Sunday 13th of March 2005:

• Receive E-mail:
  • "We're not worthy! The Dr Evil nanoeconomics pictures are fantastic!  

    Thought you may like this one. Remember ultrananocrystalline diamonds (now called ultrananodiamonds)? This is presumably what all self-assembling nanobots will be made of, since if nanobots are ~nm scale, they can either only be made out of particles as big as themselves or smaller. Anyway, interesting stuff, and a lot harder than other abrasives. So we have a better sandpaper. But according to the originator of this article ultrananodiamonds are 1 million times denser than conventional crystals!  

    This corresponds to the density of a white dwarf. This would mean that nanobots would cause massive gravitational anomalies and rather than being undetectable will be very readily detectable by conventional instruments; e.g. by triangulation with gravimeters.   

    One can only imagine the earthquakes that may be set off by these superdense nanobots crawling through the ground. However, thoughts of nanoflying bots, such as envisioned by Freitas, now seem well clear of the mark. Presumably we are well on the way to building our own nano-neutron stars or even nano-black holes. This seems worrying that nanoethicists have not picked up this potential hazard of nanotech."   

    HYPERLINK: Ultrananocrystalline Diamond Films: http://nanodot.org/article.pl?sid=00/09/22/0025250

    "Preliminary tests show that ultrananodiamonds are 1,000 more wear-resistant than silicon, and 1 million times denser than conventional crystals. This makes them a practical base material for micromachines and other devices that had only been theoretically possible before. Maybe this will mark the real beginning of Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age."

  Add link into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 13th of March 2005:

• Receive E-mail with links to:

  • The source of the $2.6 trillion: "Revenue from Nanotechnology-Enabled Products to Equal IT and Telecom by 2014, Exceed Biotech by 10 Times $2.6 trillion in products will incorporate emerging nanotechnology in 10 years " http://sev.prnewswire.com/computer-electronics/20041025/NYM11625102004-1.html

    

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection and NanoShite Mainpage section section: "ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!": The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite.

Saturday 12th of March 2005:

• Receive E-mail with links to:

  • "Re:Yet another article with no meaning whatsoever": http://nanodot.org/comments.pl?sid=04/09/17/0336218&cid=5

  • Nanotechnology products to bring $2 trillion by 2014: http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=6917_0_6_0_C

  • "Nanotechnology products to bring $2 trillion by 2014"

    Estimates of nanotechnology's financial impact range from about $20 bln to $50 bln in revenues today, jumping to as much as $1 trillion by 2010 and more than $2 trillion by 2015. Lux Research forecasts products incorporating nanotechnology by 2014 will account for $2.6 trillion worth of products 15% of global manufacturing output.

  • "interesting letter only vaguely connected to nano, but very anti-LBNL, Berkeley:" LETTER TO SENATOR DIANE FEINSTEIN CONCERNING THE MOLECULAR FOUNDARY PROJECT AT LBNL: http://www.wnho.net/feinsteinletter.htm

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection and NanoShite Mainpage section section: Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite.

Saturday 12th of March 2005:

• Add link to How Stuff Works: "How Nanotechnology Will Work"
  • http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm

  • In the early 20th century, Henry Ford built a car manufacturing plant on a 2,000-acre tract of land along the Rouge River in Michigan. Built to mass-produce automobiles more efficiently, the Rouge housed the equipment for developing each phase of a car, including blast furnaces, a steel mill and a glass plant. More than 90 miles of railroad track and conveyor belts kept Ford's car assembly line running. The Rouge model was lauded as the most efficient method of production at a time when bigger meant better.

    The size of Ford's assembly plant would look strange to those born and raised in the 21st century. In the next 50 years, machines will get increasingly smaller -- so small that thousands of these tiny machines would fit into the period at the end of this sentence. Within a few decades, we will use these nanomachines to manufacture consumer goods at the molecular level, piecing together one atom or molecule at a time to make baseballs, telephones and cars. This is the goal of nanotechnology. As televisions, airplanes and computers revolutionized the world in the last century, scientists claim that nanotechnology will have an even more profound effect on the next century.

  • How Stuff Works: "How Nanotechnology Will Work" - Building with Atoms : http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm

  • How Stuff Works: "How Nanotechnology Will Work" - A New Industrial Revolution : http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm

  • The promises of nanotechnology sound great, don't they? Maybe even unbelievable? But researchers say that we will achieve these capabilities within the next century. And if nanotechnology is, in fact, realized, it might be the human race's greatest scientific achievement yet, completely changing every aspect of the way we live.

  • How Stuff Works: How Self-healing Spacecraft Will Work : http://science.howstuffworks.com/self-healing-spacecraft.htm

  • How Stuff Works: How DNA Computers Will Work : http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dna-computer.htm

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Saturday 12th of March 2005:

• Receive E-mail link giving more of Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite

• Taiwan Nanotechnology Output to Soar - Researcher
  • http://forbes.z2c.net/rd4/ck/3072-13370-1839-293?m=11-0&e=2f517c002918

    TAIPEI (Reuters) - Backed by strong government funding, Taiwan's output of a wide range of products using nanotechnology will jump 10 fold by 2008 to T$300 billion ($10 billion), a top researcher said on Tuesday.

    Nanotechnology deals with manipulating particles one-billionth of a meter in size, and promises benefits from a coating of paint that lasts decades, to faster-acting and more effective medicines, to golf balls that go further and straighter.

    "The government has targeted nanotechnology as the most important strategic industry for Taiwan's future economic growth," Su Tsung-tsan, the general director of the NanoTechnology Research Center (NTRC), told Reuters.

    Su said Taiwan will produce T$1 trillion of goods using nanotechnology by the year 2012, accounting for nearly 10 percent of the island's US$350 billion economy.

  • 

    The NTRC, which gets about half of its budget from the Taiwan government, is home to about 150 researchers who cooperate with private companies and academic institutions to find commercial applications for their research.

    According to data from research company Venture Analytics, Taiwan nanotechnology research funding ranked number eight in the world in 2003 at US$115 million.

    The island is ahead of France and India, but far behind regional competitors like China and South Korea.

    "Nanotech is crucial for Taiwan's goal of becoming a knowledge-based economy," said Su.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage section section: Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite

Thursday 10th of March 2005:

• Received E-mail on "nanofusion"--- add entry into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

• The exact reference is : 3.2.5 Nanocentrifugal Sortation : "The nanocentrifuge may also be useful in isotopic separations. For a D2O/H2O mixture, c2/c1 = 1.415 per pass through the device; c2/c1 = 106 is achieved in a 40-unit cascade."

  "... and another delusional is already discussing radioactive waste remediation and nanofusion......" : refer to:

  Re: Can Nuclear fusion be possible with nanotechnology.

  "So, with a technology that can build gram quantities of atomically precise diamondoid, radioactive waste can be processed atom-by-atom in quite a small installation at a cost of ~2 megawatt-hours per ton."

Tuesday 8th of March 2005:

• "ONE TRILLION DOLLARS!"

  

  There was serious criticism that this humble scribe did not fully appreciate the silliness and buffoonary in the economic claims of nanotechnology / nanoshite. Thus try and rectify this: a difficult thing to do given Nanoshite Spotters are such hard task-masters.

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage in a new section: Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords The Economic Claims of Nanotechnological Nanoshite

Tuesday 8th of March 2005:

• The PRESS RELEASE on the nanotechnological development of Nanorock, Nanoscissors and Nanopaper nanorobots has been updated to include new Nanobot images that better show the power of the Nanolithographical Nanotoolbox.

Monday 7th of March 2005:

• From the ether in response to "NanoAnger's" query of where "in the NSF website does it say that "The total market impact of nanotechnology will reach $1 trillion by 2005."?"

  National Nanotechnology Initiative National Nanotechnology Initiative Overview - Research Directions II - September 8, 2004

  "Estimation on revenues from nanotechnology: Reaching $1trillion in 2015 worldwide, and the estimations moving closer because of accelerated development; growth >25% per year. "

  Which also includes: "US has about 2/3 of world NT [Nano Technology] Patents (USPTO database) using "Title-claims" and "Full-text" search for nanotechnology by keywords (using intelligent search engine, after J. Nanoparticle Research, 2004, Vol. 6, Issue 4)"

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 6th of March 2005:

• Update relevant Relevant Links section with a minor transcript of the Video interview with Harry G. Frankfurt "On Bullshit"

• Interviewer: "What brought you, as a professional philosopher, to [write about] bullshit?" :
  Harry G. Frankfurt: "It was largely because I think that respect for the truth and a concern for the truth, these are among the foundations of civilization. I was for a long time kind of disturbed by the lack of respect and concern for the truth that I seem to observe in much of the speech and writing that was being produced; and bullshit is one of the deformaties of these values. So, I thought, try and find out more about it. Try to find out what it is. I was trained as an analytic philosopher. And analytic philosophy is characterized by a special concern for clarification of concepts. And this was a concept that seemed to me to be an important one. It referred to a significant feature of our culture. And not only a significant feature, but a feature that in my view pose certain dangers to the foundations of civilization. So I was interested in analyzing the concept and trying to find out exactly what we are talking about and talk about this." - Harry G. Frankfurt

Sunday 6th of March 2005:

• From the ether: "Not quite as good as Fig 11 from Foresight but good nonetheless."

  Dream big: Figure 2.: http://www.crnano.org/unbounding.htm

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 6th of March 2005:

• "NanoAnger" raises its ugly "NanoHead" with the following received via the internet ether:

  I am getting angry:

  "The total market impact of nanotechnology will reach $1 trillion by 2005. - The National Science Foundation"

  "By 2010, half of all drugs will be made with nanotecnology... - The National Science Foundation"

  from a web page for Royal BodyCare: Pioneering Nanotechnology in Nutritional Science - Nanotechnology - The Science Behind Better Supplements

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 6th of March 2005:

• Received additional E-mail impugning a previous E-mail which claimed that the India Daily was the main media source of Indian Nanoshite.

  Probably not quite worthy for nanoshite, as it doesn;t have any single outrageous scientific comments, but notice that India Daily is not the lone voice of nanoinstanity in India. The Hindustan Times is equally rabid. However, you should note that it has a link to an Astrology column. Maybe the same guy wrote it. The economic claims however are equally as bullshitted as the scientific claims:

  Our future lies in nanotechnology

  And a link for IndiaNano: Accelerating Innovation

  Add entry into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Sunday 6th of March 2005:

• PRESS RELEASE on the nanotechnological development of Nanorock, Nanoscissors and Nanopaper nanorobots

Saturday 5th of March 2005:

• Find information on FIGURE 11: IMMUNE MACHINES (with image)

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Saturday 5th of March 2005:

• Update relevant Relevant Links section with a minor transcript of the Video interview with Harry G. Frankfurt "On Bullshit"

  Interviewer: "That is your theory of Bullshit? What is Bullshit?" :

  Harry G. Frankfurt: "Well, it consists in a lack of concern for the difference between truth and falsity. The motivation of the bullshitter is not to say things that are true or even to say things that are false, but in serving some other purpose. And the question of what he says is true or false is really irrelevant to his pursuit of that ambition. The bullshitter is not necessarily a liar, what he says may very well be true; and he may not think that it's false. I was careful to try to make a distinction between; make clear the differences as I understand it between bullshitters and liars." - Harry G. Frankfurt

Friday 4th of March 2005:

• Received additional E-mail giving links to some nanoshite articles in India (Anti-gravity and Nano-technology research in India provide medical breakthroughs).

  Included in this E-mail was useful information for "Nanoshite-Spotters": "India Daily looks like a real good source of utter crap and Indian scientists may even be out bullshitting their Western counterparts. Perhaps they are in a nanotech race with China for more nano-washing machines etc.... Note that the article is headed by three advanced computer models of nanoshite components." -Re: Military Uses of Nanotechnology - the coming scary cold war of Nano-bots and Nano-materials - the invisible deadly Nano-bombs

  Add entries into NanoShite Mainpage within "Nano-article links" subsection.

Friday 4th of March 2005:

• Add preliminary PRESS RELEASE on the nanotechnological development of Nanorock, Nanoscissors and Nanopaper nanorobots

Friday 4th of March 2005:

• Received E-mail on "nano-satellite", "nano-fuel" --- add entries into NanoShite Mainpage - Nanoshite NanoBuzzwords subsection.

  Added information recommended that "Nanoshite-Spotters" should peruse on-line English editions of mainland Chinese newspapers for the chance to encounter high quality Nanoshite. The People's Daily being a particularly good source of nano-shite, and new nano-shite buzzwords.

Friday 4th of March 2005:

• Due to complaints received that people are having trouble finding the updated information when they revisit the NanoShite Mainpage (some claiming they visit the page over 4 times a day!!!), add this "New Nanoshite" webpage.