When Pipes Peak

Mark Anderson's latest essay "When Pipes Peak" is chock-full of provocative stuff. If you don't have a subscription to Mark's "Strategic News Services" newletter, you can sign up for a free trial here.

When Pipes Peak

I'm sure that people realized they were going through a major transition in technology during the early 1900's, with cars on the left, horses and buggies on the right, and railroads connecting them. It must have been a strange and invigorating feeling, knowing you were living in the midst of radical, important change, and knowing that you would probably live to see the revolution completed.

Today is no different, except that there are more of these transitions occurring at one time. We're moving from a time in medicine when the General Practitioner had almost zero diagnostic tools, to a time when she'll be able to diagnose down to the bug, and then down to the gene, in her office or clinic.

In materials, we are still mostly working with industrial revolution metals and minerals, plus plastics and stressed concrete, but carbon nanotubes are coming into production, and it won't be long before we'll design materials atom by atom for their electrical, optical and strength properties.

In physics, after nearly a century of theoretical doldrums, we are about to discover that everything is built from the inherent properties and symmetries of otherwise-empty space; this will mark the greatest revolution since quantum mechanics.

In biology, we are confronted by our ignorance of how cells work, even as we manipulate their genes - with plenty of proof that genetically modified crops, even under lock and key, somehow re-enter the natural world, not just next to the lab fields, but, for example, in central Mexico, the source of maize genetics. Now we are about to expand our toolsets, without having yet expanded our understanding, ethics nor protections, apace.

Even so, this is bound to be the Century of Life, as our understanding of molecular biology and genetics allows us to approach understanding what life is, and how it works. (In this sense, it is the best of times, and the worst of times, to quote Sidney Carton.)

And so it is also with computing and communications. Wherever you turn, you see a revolution in process...

Three Cheers for the NDMX Golf Ball!

I was up in Boston yesterday participating in a charity golf event for Big Brothers of Massachussets Bay and had an opportunity to play with a beta version of the new NanoDynamics NDMX nano golf ball. If you haven't heard of the the NDMX golf ball, you can learn all about it here. Unlike conventional golf balls, the NDMX ball has a hollow titanium core that is engineered with patented nano materials. The unique hollow core has the effect of reducing the rotation of the ball once in flight. As a result, the ball tends to fly straighter. This is particularly helpful if you are the kind of golfer that can't get rid of that nasty hook or slice.

I found the NDMX ball was great off the tee and performed as advertised. On the fairway, it's necessary to drop down a club to compensate for the somewhat reduced distance of the NDMX ball off an iron (e.g., use a 7 iron instead of a 8 iron). The NDMX ball performed exceptionally well on the green. It seemed at times that the ball had (nano) eyes for the cup!

NanoDynamics has further testing to do before entering full scale production of the NDMX ball. I'm told that the NDMX golf ball meets all of the technical requirements set out by the USGA, but it hasn't been officially approved for professional play. Regardless of how the USGA rules, I believe the NDMX nano golf ball will be a big hit with the tens of millions of amatuer golfers out there in the US and the rest of the world.

Three Cheers for the NDMX nano-engineered golf ball!

Hooray for Hydrogen!

While oil hitting new highs, I continue to be intrigued by the news coming out of Japan. Toyota is, without a doubt, the best car company on the planet.
(Disclaimer: I'm a Toyota shareholder.)

Toyota aims for $50,000 hydrogen car
TOKYO (Reuters) - Toyota Motor Corp. aims to cut the cost of hydrogen-powered fuel-cell cars to $50,000 from more than $1 million by 2015, when it hopes to start selling the environmentally friendly vehicles, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

Toyota is "developing everything to reach this (2015) target" the financial daily quoted Kazuo Okamoto, who takes over as Toyota's head of research and development next month, as saying during a visit to Frankfurt.

Toyota, the world's second-biggest car maker, believes launching hydrogen cars earlier than 2015 would be difficult due to a lack of filling stations, the paper said.

Its plans are more conservative than those of General Motors Corp., which aims to have a production-ready hydrogen vehicle by 2010 with a fuel cell that costs $5,000, it said.

Hydrogen fuel cell vehicles, which emit only water, would ease environmental concerns and help cars meet stricter emissions regulations. They could also counter to rising energy prices.

A Toyota spokesman could not confirm Okamoto's comments.

Toyota said on Friday its fuel-cell hybrid cars had received vehicle type certification from the Japanese government -- meaning the cars no longer need to be certified individually -- clearing the first hurdle for commercialisation.

Toyota, which started limited marketing of fuel-cell vehicles in 2002, has now leased 16 such cars to government bodies in Japan and the United States but has not revealed any launch plan.

Toyota and GM are in the early stage of discussions on collaborating to make fuel cells, a source familiar with the plans told Reuters last month.

Honda Motor Co., Japan's third-biggest car maker, also said on Friday its FCX fuel-cell vehicles had received type certification.

Turning Waste Into Energy

Here's a technology to keep your eye on. I just love the concept of turning waste into useable hydrogen power.


New Electrically-Assisted Microbial Fuel Cell (MFC): High Yield Hydrogen Source and Wastewater Cleaner

Using a new electrically-assisted microbial fuel cell (MFC) that does not require oxygen, Penn State environmental engineers and a scientist at Ion Power Inc. have developed the first process that enables bacteria to coax four times as much hydrogen directly out of biomass than can be generated typically by fermentation alone.

Dr. Bruce Logan, the Kappe professor of environmental engineering and an inventor of the MFC, says, "This MFC process is not limited to using only carbohydrate-based biomass for hydrogen production like conventional fermentation processes. We can theoretically use our MFC to obtain high yields of hydrogen from any biodegradable, dissolved, organic matter -- human, agricultural or industrial wastewater, for example -- and simultaneously clean the wastewater.

"While there is likely insufficient waste biomass to sustain a global hydrogen economy, this form of renewable energy production may help offset the substantial costs of wastewater treatment as well as provide a contribution to nations able to harness hydrogen as an energy source," Logan notes,.

The new approach is described in a paper, "Electrochemically Assisted Microbial Production of Hydrogen from Acetate," released online currently and scheduled for a future issue of Environmental Science and Technology. The authors are Dr. Hong Liu, postdoctoral researcher in environmental engineering; Dr. Stephen Grot, president and founder of Ion Power, Inc.; and Logan. Grot, a former Penn State student, suggested the idea of modifying an MFC to generate hydrogen.

In their paper, the researchers explain that hydrogen production by bacterial fermentation is currently limited by the "fermentation barrier" -- the fact that bacteria, without a power boost, can only convert carbohydrates to a limited amount of hydrogen and a mixture of "dead end" fermentation end products such as acetic and butyric acids.

However, giving the bacteria a small assist with a tiny amount of electricity -- about 0.25 volts or a small fraction of the voltage needed to run a typical 6 volt cell phone -- they can leap over the fermentation barrier and convert a "dead end" fermentation product, acetic acid, into carbon dioxide and hydrogen.

Logan notes, "Basically, we use the same microbial fuel cell we developed to clean wastewater and produce electricity. However, to produce hydrogen, we keep oxygen out of the MFC and add a small amount of power into the system."

In the new MFC, when the bacteria eat biomass, they transfer electrons to an anode. The bacteria also release protons, hydrogen atoms stripped of their electrons, which go into solution. The electrons on the anode migrate via a wire to the cathode, the other electrode in the fuel cell, where they are electrochemically assisted to combine with the protons and produce hydrogen gas.

A voltage in the range of 0.25 volts or more is applied to the circuit by connecting the positive pole of a programmable power supply to the anode and the negative pole to the cathode.

The researchers call their hydrogen-producing MFC a BioElectrochemically-Assisted Microbial Reactor or BEAMR. The BEAMR not only produces hydrogen but simultaneously cleans the wastewater used as its feedstock. It uses about one-tenth of the voltage needed for electrolysis, the process that uses electricity to break water down into hydrogen and oxygen.

Logan adds, "This new process demonstrates, for the first time, that there is real potential to capture hydrogen for fuel from renewable sources for clean transportation."

Poor Charlie's Almanack

I've been reading Poor Charlie's Almanack. The book is a collection of essays, speeches and other assorted goodies from Charlie Munger. It is one of the finest investment books I've ever read.

Turn off CNBC and all the other noise out there and treat yourself to worldly investment wisdom from one of the best in the business.

GE: The Ultimate Quantum Investor

"Among the bets that General Electric is pursuing, three could bring exceptional payoffs: Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Sustainable Energy."

Fortune
June 27, 2005
p. 154

Nanotechnology: Cancer's Nemesis (continued)

As readers of my book Quantum Investing know, I believe nanotechnology is cancer's nemesis. Here's a recent development in nanotech cancer research from my birthplace, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Go Blue!


"This is the first study to demonstrate a nanoparticle-targeted drug actually leaving the bloodstream, being concentrated in cancer cells, and having a biological effect on the animal's tumor," says James R. Baker Jr., M.D., the Ruth Dow Doan Professor of Biologic Nanotechnology at the University of Michigan, who directed the study.

"We're very optimistic that nanotechnology can markedly improve cancer therapy," says Baker, who directs the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and the Biological Sciences. "Targeting drugs directly to cancer cells reduces the amount that gets to normal cells, increases the drug's anti-cancer effect and reduces its toxicity. By improving the therapeutic index of cancer drugs, we hope to turn cancer into a chronic, manageable disease."

Results of the study will be published in the June 15, 2005, issue of Cancer Research.

The drug delivery vehicle used by U-M scientists is a manmade polymer molecule called a dendrimer. Less than five nanometers in diameter, these dendrimers are small enough to slip through tiny openings in cell membranes. One nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the diameter of a human hair.

Dendrimers have a tree-like structure with many branches where scientists can attach a variety of molecules, including drugs. In experiments reported in Cancer Research, U-M scientists attached methotrexate, a powerful anticancer drug, to branches of the dendrimer. On other branches, they attached fluorescent imaging agents and their secret ingredient – a vitamin called folic acid.

Folic acid, or folate, is an important vitamin required for the healthy functioning of all cells. But cancer cells, in particular, seem to need more than average amounts. To soak up as much folate as possible, some cancer cells display more docking sites called folate receptors on their cell membranes. By taking advantage of a cancer cell's appetite for folate, U-M scientists are able to prevent the cells from developing resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs.

"It's like a Trojan horse," Baker explains. "Folate molecules on the nanoparticle bind to receptors on tumor cell membranes and the cell immediately internalizes it, because it thinks it's getting the vitamin it needs. But while it's bringing folate across the cell membrane, the cell also draws in the methotrexate that will poison it."

In conventional chemotherapy, drugs like methotrexate must diffuse across a cell membrane to get inside cancer cells, according to Baker. It's a slow process and requires a high concentration of drug in the extra-cellular fluid, which can damage normal cells and tissues.

When tested in laboratory mice that had received injections of human epithelial cancer cells, the nanoparticle-based therapy using folic acid and methotrexate was 10 times more effective at delaying tumor growth than the drug given alone. Nanoparticle treatment also proved to be far less toxic to mice in the study than the anticancer drug alone.

"In our longest trial, which lasted 99 days, 30 percent to 40 percent of the mice given the nanoparticle with methotrexate survived," says Jolanta Kukowska-Latallo, Ph.D., a U-M research investigator and first author of the study. "All the mice receiving free methotrexate died – either from overgrowth of the tumor or from toxic effects of the drug.

"We saw statistically significant tumor growth reduction in all the mice given targeted nanoparticle therapy, as opposed to mice receiving either free methotrexate or the dendrimer alone," adds Kukowska-Latallo. "Effectively, we achieved a 30-day tumor growth delay. Taking into account the length of a mouse's life, that is significant. One month for a mouse is about three years for a person."

Before they began to study the effects of targeted nanoparticle therapy on cancer, U-M scientists injected dendrimers with fluorescent tags into the bloodstream of laboratory mice to determine where they would be retained in the body. The results showed that the kidneys quickly filtered free nanoparticles from blood and eliminated them in urine. The researchers found no evidence that nanoparticles were able to leave the bloodstream and enter the brain. The nanoparticles did not appear to generate an immune response in mice in the study.

In future research, scientists at the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute will determine the maximum therapeutic dose, in research animals, of targeted nanotherapy with methotrexate, and complete other preliminary studies in preparation for the first human clinical trial, which Baker says is scheduled to begin within two years.

Researchers at the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute also are planning to explore the use of nanotechnology-based therapies using other chemotherapeutic drugs. "There are many cancer drugs that are very effective, but they can't be used now, because they are too toxic," Baker says. "If these drugs can be delivered with a targeted nanoparticle system, we may be able to overcome the toxicity problem and provide a broader range of therapeutic agents for people with cancer."

By attaching different targeting molecules and different drugs to the nanoparticle, Baker believes scientists eventually will be able to develop effective therapies for many types of cancer, perhaps even personalized therapy for an individual's specific cancer.

The research was funded by the National Cancer Institute. The University of Michigan has filed a patent application on targeted nanoparticle technology. A licensing agreement is currently being negotiated with Avidimer Therapeutics, a biopharmaceutical company in Ann Arbor, Mich. Baker holds a significant financial interest in the company.

Other U-M collaborators in the research study are Zhengyi Cao, M.D., and Shraddha S. Nigavekar, Ph.D., U-M research associates; Istvan J. Majoros, Ph.D., research investigator; and Thommey P. Thomas, Ph.D., assistant research professor. Additional collaborators who were formerly with the U-M are Lajos P. Balogh, Ph.D., Kimberly A. Candido, and Mohamed K. Khan, M.D

A Fab For Every Home

Here's a nice piece by my friend Kevin Maney, one of the best tech writers in the business, on Neil Gershenfeld's new book "Fab."


"This machine makes every man self-sufficient. It takes the stickum right out of society."
That's a quote from a 1958 science-fiction story, Business as Usual, During Alterations, by Ralph Williams. It's about a machine called a duplicator, which aliens drop off on Earth as a test for humans. Put anything on the duplicator's tray and the machine makes an exact copy.

People go nuts, making duplicate duplicators, then making jewelry, clothes, food and money, rendering all products and cash virtually worthless. It's both a dream machine and a nightmare machine, giving everyone what they want but threatening to wreck the economy and the underpinnings of civilization.

So, of course somebody is really inventing one today.

And not some loony in a garage who thinks he's Dick Van Dyke in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This is Neil Gershenfeld, director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Bits and Atoms and a certifiable physics genius. He's got backing from the National Science Foundation. He's got interest from the Pentagon, venture capitalists and foreign governments. This week, he's in South Africa, where he's setting up one of his creations in Pretoria.

He calls his machines "fabs," and he's just published a book about his work, Fab: The Coming Revolution On Your Desktop — From Personal Computers to Personal Fabrication.

Gershenfeld's ultimate goal is to invent home fabrication machines that will be as common as Hewlett-Packard ink-jet printers. They will be able to make anything: custom Barbie clothes, MP3 players, cow-shaped cream pitchers, Barry Bonds baseball cards from the 1980s when he looked skinny — you name it.

"We're aiming at making the Star Trek replicator," Gershenfeld says, referring to the machine on the USS Enterprise that could conjure up a cup of coffee or a toenail clipper on command.

How far along is Gershenfeld? Well, in one sense, not very. His fabs look like a cross between a computer and a high school shop class. The gadgets include a laser cutter and a milling machine, and together they make parts that must be assembled rather than churning out whole finished products. Users have tended to make one-off oddities, including a bag for silencing a scream in case you just have to let one loose in a crowd.

But Gershenfeld argues that his fabs today are the historical equivalent of 1970s minicomputers.

Before the 1970s, only big entities could afford to buy computers, which were room-size mainframes. The first minicomputers cost around $25,000 and could fit in a closet, allowing small companies or groups to own computing power. They were followed in the 1980s by personal computers, which fit on a desk and cost one-tenth as much.

And now, computing power is so cheap it can be in teenagers' bedrooms, working on such mission-critical tasks as instant messaging.

Similarly, Gershenfeld's fabs cost around $20,000 and can fit on a couple of tables. They do some basic fabrication that previously required a factory floor. And, Gershenfeld says, the fabs "can do today what you will do later with a single machine that costs $1,000."

It might be hard to accept that a machine will rearrange atoms into 3D products. But there are precedents. If you go into many research and development labs, you'll find a rapid prototyping machine that can make a 3D form out of plastic powder or liquid.

The other day, I met Thomas Mino, CEO of a nanotech company called Lumera. It can change the molecules in a plastic to give it different properties, depending on whether it will be used in radio antennas, circuits for computer chips or devices for drug research. If nanotech factories can build plastic products one molecule at a time, why couldn't that capability someday sit in your office?

Look at it another way: Back in 1975, anyone would've had a hard time believing consumers would eventually have home laser machines that would make optical disks that could each store the equivalent of 150 books. Yet that's exactly what a CD burner is.

In 2020 or so, you might be ready to play Wiffle ball with your kids but can't find the ball. So you'd go on the Web, perhaps finding a Wiffle ball design that's been modified by a aerodynamics graduate student so the ball dips like a Roger Clemens slider.

You'd download the design the way you download a PDF file today. Then instead of clicking "print," you'd click "fab."

The computer would dump the design into your fabricator, which would spray molecules from a cartridge to form the ball. A small fee for the design would get charged to your PayPal account. Otherwise, the only cost would be that once in a while you'd have to replace the cartridge, which no doubt would cost three times more than the fabricator.

As that example shows, in a fab world, hardware will be changeable — programmable — much as software is today. People could tinker with it and sell their customizations online. As Gershenfeld points out, it truly would become open-source hardware.

Gershenfeld dismisses worries that such a machine would undermine the manufacturing economy — just as home printers have not killed off the printing industry. "There will still be mass production for mass markets," he says. "Then for all the stuff that isn't from Wal-Mart, you make it at home."

Even in science fiction, society adapts to the fab. At the end of Williams' story, the characters figure out that instead of an economy based on standardized, mass-manufactured products, the post-duplicator economy would be one of mass-diversity. Their biggest complaint is that the duplicator didn't change things enough.

"The whole framework of our society has flipped upside down," says one character. "And yet, it doesn't seem to make much difference, it's still the same old rat race."

Bummer.

Embracing Consilience

I recently joined a Nano/Life Science corporate development firm called "Consilient Capital Partners" that is the brainchild of my friend, Mark Lester (see: www.consilientcapital.com for more). Mark and I believe that wealth creation in the Nano/Life Science domain will increasingly be generated by getting experts from different disciplines to work together (hence the name "Consilient" which is derived from the word "Consilience," which means a unity of knowledge).

Below is an article I recently came across that highlights the power of Consilient thinking. Getting scientists from different disciplines to work together won't be easy given the NIH (Not Invented Here) syndrome that exists at many places around the world. However, I believe the upside to multidisciplinary research in the Nano/Life Science domain is off the charts.

California Scientists Attempt Nanomachines Against Arterial Plaque

Some scientists at a few Calfornia research centers have received funding to develop nanotec therapies against atheosclerotic plaques in arteries. Note that this an announcement of the beginning of their research efforts. But the announcement is notable because these scientists are attempting to develop nanodevices to hook onto and modify arterial plaque.

The Burnham Institute has been selected as a "Program of Excellence in Nanotechnology" ("PEN") by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute ("NHLBI") of the National Institutes of Health ("NIH"). A partnership of 25 scientists from The Burnham Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, and The Scripps Research Institute will use the $13 million award to design nanotechnologies to detect, monitor, treat, and eliminate "vulnerable" plaque, the probable cause of death in sudden cardiac arrest.

Led by Jeffrey Smith, Ph.D., of the Burnham Institute and the principal investigator of the program, the scientific team is comprised of biochemists, vascular biologists, chemical engineers and physicists. "This is a novel approach to bring experts from all these fields together," said Dr. Smith. "And it's very exciting. These groups do not normally work together. But in this instance, I think it's going to produce some real scientific progress."

Recent studies have shown that plaque exists in two modes: non-vulnerable and vulnerable. Blood passing through an artery exerts a shearing force and can cause vulnerable plaque to rupture, which often leads to occlusion and myocardial infarction. This is a significant health issue: of the nearly one million people who die each year from cardiac disease, 60 percent perish without showing any symptoms. As many as 60 - 80 percent of sudden cardiac deaths can be attributed to the physical rupture of vulnerable plaque.

"We intend to exploit this new understanding of atherosclerotic plaque," said Dr. Smith. "By focusing on devising nano-devices, which can be described as machines at the molecular level, we will specifically target vulnerable plaque. That cannot be accomplished today. My colleagues and I hope that our work will lead to real diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for those suffering from this form of cardiac disease."

The project team will work on three innovative solutions to combat vulnerable plaque; 1) building delivery vehicles that can be used to transport drugs and nanodevices to sites of vulnerable plaque; 2) designing a series of self-assembling polymers that can be used as molecular nano-stents to physically stabilize vulnerable plaque, 3) creating nano-machines comprised of human proteins linked to synthetic nano-devices for the purpose of sensing and responding to vulnerable plaque.

Using Molecules as Transistors

Speaking of quantum investing...

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

Results of the as-yet-unpublished study came together just weeks before Canadian researchers performed a similar feat using chemical means. That experiment appeared in the journal Nature last week. Together, the two studies could bring the final frontier in nanocomputing -- a single-molecule transistor -- considerably closer to reality.
The transistor -- the essential building block of computers -- is a circuit component that amplifies or halts an electrical signal using three leads: The first two leads are like two ends of a garden hose; the third is like a valve that regulates the flow of water through the hose.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fab

I just started reading Neil Gershenfeld's new book "Fab," which lays out the future of machines that make machines (think of a printer that can print "things" rather than images). I loved this line from the intro:


Like the earlier transition from mainframes to PCs, the capabilities of machine tools will become accessible to ordinary people in the form of personal fabricators (PFs). This time around, though, the implications are likely to be even greater because what's being personalized is our physcial world of atoms rather than the computer's digital world of bits.

I hope to post more about the book in coming days...

ps: In case you weren't aware, many of the titles of my blogs are hyperlinked to articles, Amazon.com, etc. :)

The Road Ahead

Put this in your investment pipe and smoke it...


"I guarantee that the impact of the IT industry will be (greater) in the next 10 years than over the last 10."

-- Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft

Design By DNA

Check out Spencer Reiss' cool interview with NYU chemist Ned Seeman from the lastest issue of Technology Review magazine. Seeman believes, as I do, that DNA molecules could be a perfectc assembly platform for the smallest and most powerful computing devices ever built.

How do you build things out of DNA?
We don't. DNA is just a way of organizing materials on a molecular level. It's scaffolding. For instance, carbon nanotubes--how are you going to organize them into a circuit? DNA gives you a way to arrange them into something useful. Because it has a very precise structure, and because you can control how other molecules associate with it, it's just punching a sequence into a machine. And because DNA self-assembles, if there are things attached to it--micro metallic particles or carbon nanotubes--those will self-assemble along with it.

DNA's a linear molecule. Why doesn't everything you make wind up being linear?
We use a synthetic form, which we program to give us branch points. Think of the double helix as two lanes of a highway; branched DNA corresponds to intersections. You can make molecules of pretty much any shape or size you want.

What kinds of things have you made?
Lots of crystals. The earliest complex device was something that changed its shape in a controlled fashion when you added a chemical. Last summer, we did a little walker that moved across a DNA "sidewalk." Each foot was tied down by a strand of DNA. We would rip off that strand, and then the foot was free to wander around, and then we'd put in another strand to tie it down and make the next step.

How does computing come in?
As things in the computer world keep getting smaller, they're reaching the point where top-down approaches--trying to make big things smaller--are hitting the wall. What we're doing is building from the bottom up--taking little things and make them bigger. And DNA lets you do true 3-D integration. There are issues of cooling and power loss that have to be addressed, but the point is that what we're doing is inherently three dimensional, which at the nano level is pretty amazing.

So is nanomanufacturing imminent?
We are probably not going to be using this approach to knit customized sweaters. DNA is expensive stuff; for now, at least, you wouldn't want to use it for large-scale anything. But
3-D configurations of atoms, or molecules, or nanoparticles--that has to have value, in terms of making things no one has been able to make before.

What about nanotech's skeptics?
Everything we're talking about is doable. Is it doable on a scale that's going to be worthwhile? No one knows. In 25 years we've taken something that was in my imagination to the point where we can take out patents and where there are now whole conferences devoted to the topic.

A Stream Come Through...

Here's a little nugget from Merrill Lynch's Steve Milunovich on Apple (APPL). With paid online music at only 5% market share, you can see there's still a huge amount of creative destruction ahead in the music business. Note that Apple's management believes that many youths will never buy a CD. I wholeheartedly agree with this view. Lastly, it is interesting to note that Apple isn't optimistic that satellite radio will take off. Perhaps somebody should tell them that it already has. I bought an XM radio earlier this year and while it's not as good as listening to my iPod, its superior to what conventional radio has to offer today. And by the way, the song was wrong -- Video didn't kill the radio. The incompetent management team at Clear Channel did.


Apple doesn't want to get distracted from music. Only 5% of paid music is online today; the company says many youths will never buy a CD. The company continues to downplay video, pointing out that movies take too long to down for now, are not watched over and over, and that unlike music there are many ways to acquire movies. Still, we think video capability (especially for music videos) could be added to the iPod. Audio books and podcasting should contribute to iPod's popularity; management was not optimistic that satellite radio would take off.