QuoteBot

"It seems that the appeal of loveless sex to the average coed is its convenience. It requires the commitment of a De-Cal instead of a five-unit lab course. But would you rather study the social commentary in The Simpsons or the practical applications of nano-technology in the 21st century? Does the "easy way out" mean it's less rewarding? That, ole chum, is up to you. Another old professor trick: make all complicated questions rhetorical."

Sari Eitches
Daily Californian "Sex on Tuesday" columnist

Spin, spun, done

One great thing about Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CEO T.J. Rodgers is that he is not cryptic in his public statements. You don't need to read between the lines to get the feeling that he's pretty fed up with the time and costs associated with MRAM development. He's dumping subsidiary Silicon Magnetic Systems, the Cypress spintronics spinoff he set in motion out of frustration with MRAM partner NVEC's progress.

This news is sure to prompt the NVEC short-seller peanut gallery out of their shells as this again puts the status of NVEC's technology in limbo.

But those who read my NanoMarkets report on nanostorage last year already knew that Cypress did not expect to make much money off of MRAM and that the company would be an "also ran" in MRAM.

NanoBot Backgrounder
Cypress: An also-MRAM
Spin there, done that

NanoSight, NanoScheme and NanoHype

Photo by Adam Keiper

Pictured from left is Dave Rejeski of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Neil Jacobstein of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing and David Berube of the University of South Carolina.

Blogger's Note: I apologize to those who have been waiting too long for Adam Keiper's last dispatch from the "molecular manufacturing hearings" (I should really come up with a catchier title -- "MoleGate?" "Committee on UnNanopants Activities?" "The Contra-NNI Hearings?"). Family duties called me away from my computer for a few days. Someday, perhaps I'll have a team of NanoBot bloggers working around the clock for you. A man can dream, can't he? Anyway, here's what Adam filed for me on Feb. 11. Thank you, Adam, for your great work and thanks, also, to those who are contributing to the discussions on this site and others. -- Howard

By Adam Keiper
Managing editor of The New Atlantis,
Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and …
NanoBot Correspondent

The National Research Council committee that spent last week examining the feasibility of molecular manufacturing wrapped up the public portion of its workshop with a discussion of the “impacts and implications” of nanotechnology.

The workshop’s final panel included three presenters with starkly different perspectives:

• David Berube, professor at the University of South Carolina. The title of Berube’s forthcoming book, NanoHype, gives a good indication of his take on nanotech talk. He believes that the development of molecular manufacturing is at least 50 years away, making it reasonable for nanotech research funded by the public purse to have “a more immediate focus.” When it comes to nanotechnology, there has been “hype from all sectors,” Berube said, and the “time frames are muddled” so that wildly disparate kinds of nanotechnology get conflated. Berube also criticized the oft-heard comparison of the potential effects of fears about nanotech to the paralyzing fears about genetically modified foods; this comparison, Berube said, was an act of “rhetorical prestidigitation” intended to make a nano crisis seem more urgent than it really is. (Berube, incidentally, is a lead investigator on one of the four proposals vying for the huge grant from the NSF to establish a Center for Nanotechnology in Society. That grant is expected to be awarded later this year.)
• Neil Jacobstein, chairman of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. Jacobstein takes strong exception to the notion that molecular manufacturing is five decades away; he thinks it likely to come “a lot sooner” than that. The core of his presentation is a discussion of the Foresight Guidelines for the safe development of nanotechnology. These guidelines, modeled on the Asilomar scheme for coping with the development of recombinant DNA technology, have evolved several times since their original incarnation five years ago. The latest version, which Jacobstein co-authored, comes with scorecards that let any individual or company working toward advanced nanotechnology assess how well they comply with the guidelines.
• Dave Rejeski, director of the Foresight and Governance Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Rejeski emphasized the unpredictability and contingency involved in the development of advanced nanotechnology, and cautioned against holding a number of “dangerous assumptions,” like the assumptions that the public will accept advanced nanotechnology, that press coverage will be fair and accurate, and that nanotech won’t be used by terrorists. It is very difficult for policymakers to keep apace the with accelerating rate of technological and industrial change, Rejeski said, warning that “there’s nothing more dangerous than a surprised politician.” What policymakers need, he argued, is an improved “ability to see all sides and to manage what’s going on” -- not merely foresight, but what David Gelernter has called “topsight.”

The presentations from those panelists was followed by some questions from the committee and then a few rounds of closing comments from the other panelists and observers in the room. This discussion included a few interesting remarks about the millions of taxpayer dollars presently being spent on “education and outreach” to persuade the public of the wonders of nanotechnology.

During the workshop’s final minutes, Eric Drexler make closing remarks arguing that “at this point, there is a large weight of evidence -- detailed quantitative analysis -- indicating that large-scale molecular manufacturing is feasible.” [Author's note: The original version of this dispatch here included a quotation from Clayton Teague, head of the NNI, responding to Drexler by saying, “I agree with you very much, and I think you’ll find everyone on the NNI thinks that it is something of international importance.” I have since been granted a glimpse of part of the unpublished transcript of this NAS meeting, and it shows that Teague's remark was not directed at Drexler; it was in response to someone else and on a different subject. I apologize for the mistake, caused by rapid note-taking and hasty blog-reporting, and any confusion it may have created.]

Most of the day was characterized by similar attitudes of agreement and agreeableness, with a few supporters of molecular manufacturing expressing their considerable surprise at the committee’s “open-mindedness.” Although most of the committee’s work is done behind closed doors and no tapes or transcripts of this workshop will be made available to the public, the plain fact is that no recording could capture the full atmosphere of the three-day workshop, in which some of the most important work happened off-the-record, in the conversations over meals and during breaks between panels. There were indications of conciliation and comity, and there seemed to be new avenues of communication and cooperation, between representatives of the government, nano-commerce, and the molecular manufacturing community.

Of course, it remains to be seen just how deeply various hatchets have been buried -- and the report produced by this nanotech assessment committee will have a lot to do with whether they stay buried. The final report is expected early next year; an interim report is scheduled to come out in four months.

NanoBot Backgrounder
Molecular manufacturing: Who needs it, and why?
Molecules, machines and miracles
Molecular manufacturing back on the table
My grassroots are showing

Today, he is a (nano) man

I spent yesterday ripping up 401, 403, QEW and I-90 driving my kids from Detroit to Boston for my nephew's Bar Mitzvah. I'm in Concord, Mass., now, trying to brush up on my Hebrew so as not to completely embarrass the man of the hour.

Meanwhile, Adam Keiper has been busy sending me more dispatches from D.C., and I'll try to post as much as possible over the weekend. Thanks for your patience, as I know there is a great deal of interest in this National Research Council meeting on molecular nanotechnology.

And, in case you're wondering, my nephew is gettting two gifts from his nerdy nano uncle: Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything," and Eric Drexler's "Engines of Creation."

Molecular manufacturing: Who needs it, and why?

By Adam Keiper
Managing editor of The New Atlantis,
Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and …
NanoBot Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2005 -- Today’s presentations before the National Research Council committee studying advanced nanotechnology concluded with a trio of panelists describing their research and offering their assessment of the current state of the artin advanced nanotechnology. Their presentations were too technical to describe in detail here. The presenters were:

• David Forrest, president of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing.
• Carlo Montemagno, professor of biomedical engineering at UCLA.
• Christian Schafmeister, assistant professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pittsburgh.

The rest of the day was spent in a rambling discussion that included the committee, the panelists, and even the unofficial observers around the room. Instead of recounting the entire inconclusive and unorganized conversation, here are a few choice quotations from the afternoon:

Carlo Montemagno: “I've been offered to have a lab set up for me, with a staff and 10,000 square feet, all set up with the wave of a hand, no problem, many, many times - in China.”

Neil Jacobstein (from the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing): “The criticisms [of the NNI made by supporters of molecular manufacturing] weren't made in order to get funding.... The criticisms were made because we're interested in shifting the priorities of the NNI toward molecular machine systems.... There's no issue about a conspiracy or anything like that - it's just that we thought that the priorities were on the low-hanging fruit ... and there was a great deal of skepticism” from NNI about the more long-term, high-risk, revolutionary interpretation of nanotech."

Eric Drexler: “What’s on my wish list: ... A clear endorsement of the idea that molecular machine systems that make things ... with atomic precision is a natural and important goal for the development of nanoscale technologies ... with the focus of that endorsement being the recognition that we can look at biology, and beyond.... It would be good to have more minds, more critical thought, more innovation, applied in those directions.”

Maynard Holliday (committee member, Evolution Robotics): “Maybe we do need some kind of DARPA-like area in the NNI” to fund high-risk projects.

Thomas S. Hartwick (committee member, consultant): “I’ve been through a couple of [technology] revolutions ... so I’m very impressed with how technology goes ... I believe people should dream big dreams.... [But] it drives me crazy when computations are made without taking into account ... all the problems that go along with manufacturing.... So please, as the field matures, don’t decouple computation from the reality of that world.”

Kathleen M. Rest (committee member, Union of Concerned Scientists): “We still haven’t really talked about is molecular manufacturing desirable. ... I think it’s going to be important to us to look at the kind of societal needs ... that we could possibly address” with nanotechnology. “Because, after all, we’re talking about using public funds for investment” so the research should be directed “at least in the back of our heads” toward “some public good.”

And as a bonus, here’s one more quote -- an audio clip from Eric Drexler’s presentation in the morning, in which he responds to criticism that molecular manufacturing seems to promise too much, that it will have too broad a range of applications. The clip is about one minute long, and you can hear it in the following formats: MP3, Real Audio, Windows Audio, or Quicktime.

NanoBot Backgrounder
Molecules, machines and miracles
Molecular manufacturing back on the table
Nano Does D.C.

My grassroots are showing

GRASSROOTS GOVERNMENT: Nanobot blogs Congressional Nano Caucus news conference (Tapscott's Copy Desk)

It's small - hey, it's a nano thing, you know - with only a handful of members but the Congressional Nano Caucus held a joint news conference today on Capitol Hill with members of the NanoBusiness Alliance, commenting on President Bush's proposed 2006 budget for science and technology programs.

... What was more newsworthy was the fact Adam Keiper, managing editor of The New Atlantis, blogged the Congressional Nano Caucus/NanoBusiness Alliance news conference for NanoBot.com. Keiper is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and a NanoBot correspondent.

... NanoBot put the Capitol Hill news conference on the screens of anybody and everybody. It would have been no difficult task to enable NanoBot visitors to ask questions of the news conference participants. That in a nutshell is the power of Grassroots Government - using the Web to put governors and governed in the same place, regardless of their location, to discuss what should be done. More here

NanoBot Backgrounder
Nano Does D.C.
Molecular manufacturing back on the table

Molecules, machines and miracles

Photo by Adam Keiper

Eric Drexler, far right, looks on as IBM's Don Eigler, second from left, describes molecular manufacturing as "speculation," "supposition" and "fantasy." At far left is Peter Cummings of Vanderbilt University. Sitting next to Drexler is Ralph Merkle of Georgia Tech.

By Adam Keiper
Managing editor of The New Atlantis,
Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and …
NanoBot Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2005 -- Eric Drexler fathered the modern field of nanotechnology more than two decades ago. Today, he presented his ideas to the committee tasked by the National Research Council with studying America’s nanotechnology program. Now, as the committee returns from a private lunch, it isn’t clear what they make of Drexler’s ideas – there was clearly significant skepticism from some members of the committee, but Drexler's ideas were treated seriously.

Drexler’s presentation was an overview of molecular manufacturing. The heart of his presentation was an animation showing what a desktop nanofactory might look like. The purpose of the animation, he said, was to demonstrate that molecular manufacturing was “not nanobots … not goo …and not magical.” It would be a “deep and profound revolution,” but not an unattainable one.

To draw a clearer distinction between his own vision of nanotechnology and that of the government nanotechnology program, Drexler showed a slide depicting two fundamentally different objects: a huge boulder and a small, delicate pocket-watch. The boulder represents today’s nanotechnology, he said: “a nanoparticle of about 100 nanometers.” The pocket watch represents the sort of nanomachine encompassed in his vision of nanotechnology. To talk about the great potential of nanotechnology while only funding research on conventional nanotechnology inflates expectations, Drexler said, and makes the public “feel like there is hype in the system.”

Drexler admitted that there is of course an enormous “implementation gap” between our present tools and theories and those needed to achieve molecular manufacturing, and he warned that the gap couldn’t be bridged under current National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) policies. His take on the government’s approach to molecular manufacturing: “Not only are they [the NNI] not doing it, but they have been discouraging it.” He contrasted this with other governments, saying that the U.S. has a number of “known international competitors,” and mentioning that India’s president recently cited Drexler’s book "Nanosystems." (He didn’t mention, though, that there is no clear reason to think this foreign competition is doing serious work yet.)

Soon after his presentation began, members of the committee – biologists, chemists, physicists, and assorted men and women from industry and academia – engaged Drexler with critical questions about his basic theories; Drexler, in crisp sentences, responded to each question carefully. Committee member Paul Schaudies, for instance, a microbiologist from SAIC, pointed out that we don’t understand how cells work – “there are a whole lot of little boxes here that say, ‘A miracle happens here’” – so how could we possibly solve the questions required to develop molecular manufacturing? Drexler’s response: “Engineers deal with the knowns,” so it won’t be necessary to solve all the mysteries that pure scientists might want to solve.

Drexler’s solo presentation was followed by a panel discussion featuring Drexler, Don Eigler of IBM, Peter Cummings of Vanderbilt University and Oak Ridge National Labs, and Ralph Merkle of Georgia Tech. Eigler is best known for his arrangement of 35 individual xenon atoms to spell out the letters “IBM” in the 1980s. (“I suspect,” he said, “that I am the only one you [the committee] will hear from that has physically assembled a molecule using techniques other than biology or chemistry.”) He launched a blunt criticism: “Molecular manufacturing belongs in the realm of what I would call supposition, or speculation.” He drew an analogy to the ancient Greeks' speculating about human flight using feathers and wax. “What we do not need,” he said, “is an Apollo Project for molecular manufacturing.”

Drexler objected to Eigler’s use of “charged language” – words like “speculation” and “fantasy,” which “will not encourage people to come forward” with proposals related to molecular manufacturing.

Peter Cummings, speaking in clipped sentences with a strong Australian accent, described his study of fluctuations that might pose difficulties for molecular manufacturing – fluctuations that might, for instance, cause nano-machines to run backwards. But he conceded that “this is not a showstopper” for molecular manufacturing.

Ralph Merkle argued that, in order to develop molecular manufacturing, “What we lack at this point is the will ... to be bolder in what we’re willing to consider.”

The panel ended with questions from the committee about what concrete proposals would constitute reasonable next steps toward the development of molecular manufacturing. What would you do, one committee member asked the panelists, “if you had unlimited resources?” The only answer came from Drexler, who argued for improvement of the tools that would be required or molecular manufacturing, demonstrations of assembly and motion of nanosystem components, and the development of a “first-generation machine” similar to a ribosome.

During the lunch break, as the committee met behind closed doors, the government officials who started off the workshop yesterday – U.S. nanotech head Clayton Teague and White House technologist Celia Merzbacher were spotted sitting down to a lunch with several leading figures from the pro-molecular manufacturing camp, including Drexler. Now, after lunch, the committee has reassembled and is hearing about the current state of the art in nanotech research.

Please stand by

Adam Keiper is sending me more dispatches from D.C., but I'm juggling many duties at once, including some work for pay and -- most importantly -- reading an excellent tale of horror, hunger and counting called "One Hungry Monster." My 8-month-old son is enjoying it, too.

Pardon the past and future editing errors, too, as I edit with one hand, take care of a baby with the other. I'm not kidding when I say blogs are the first rough draft of the first rough draft of history ...

Molecular manufacturing back on the table

Photo by Adam Keiper

Clayton Teague, the director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office; and Celia Merzbacher, from the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Blogger's Note: I'm unable to attend the events in D.C., but sitting here at home, reading dispatches from the priceless (literally, since I'm not paying him) Adam Keiper, I cannot help but feel at last that my work for the past couple of years has made a significant impact on the debate over nanotech's future. Every once in a while, I get a needed boost like this to make me feel like my the sound of my writing is not merely that of one blogger falling. -- Howard

By Adam Keiper
Managing editor of The New Atlantis,
Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and …
NanoBot Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb. 10, 2005 - The National Research Council (NRC), the operating arm of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences, has begun work on a controversial evaluation of the direction and investment of America's national nanotechnology program.

The evaluation was required by the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act, passed by Congress and signed into law in late 2003. An early version of the legislation called for a "study on molecular manufacturing" that would "develop, insofar as possible, a consensus on whether molecular manufacturing is technically feasible," including a timeframe and a research agenda. But this provision was stripped from later versions of the bill, upon the advice of the NanoBusiness Alliance (as first reported by the proprietor of this blog). The final version of the bill instead called for an assessment of the feasibility of "molecular self-assembly" -- a meaningless request, since molecular self-assembly has already been achieved. The controversy over the study thus exposed a widening rift between (on the one hand) those who believe that nanotechnology is an important but fundamentally evolutionary advance and (on the other hand) those who believe it to be thoroughly revolutionary.

Serious work on the study got under way Wednesday in a workshop open to the public, but largely unnoticed by the press, as a committee of outside experts assembled by the NRC began to wade into the thicket of confusing terminology and conflicting views about nanotechnology. It became apparent fairly quickly that the committee intends to interpret its mandate broadly, and to seriously scrutinize claims about molecular manufacturing.

The workshop's first panel featured two government officials: Clayton Teague, the director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office; and Celia Merzbacher, from the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy. They discussed the history, goals, and grant-making procedures of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). But the core of their remarks was a sort of warning to the committee to focus its intentions narrowly on a few subjects of relevance to the NNI, and not to look into the more far-out possibilities and implications of advanced nanotechnology.

But the committee would have none of it. The key question before the committee, one member said, is whether there is "a form of molecular manufacturing," something "that will in fact revolutionize how we make things." After all, he said, "that's why we have a National Nanotechnology Initiative."

Another member of the committee, Alan Goldstein of Alfred University, agreed. If the committee doesn't look into molecular manufacturing, he said, "we can all go home!" The question before the committee, according to Goldstein, is whether there is "something more profound here" than the materials science that "is predominant in" present-day nanotechnology." By the end of the first session, several other members of the committee had voiced similar sentiments.

The intended aim of the second session was "establishing a common language," an attempt to sort through the many meanings of the terms related to nanotechnology. It featured four panelists:

• John Randall, CTO of Zyvex Corp. He tried his best to lay out definitions for a number of basic terms ("molecular self-assembly," "molecular manufacturing," "molecular self-organization," "molecular self-replication," etc.) but ultimately concluded that it was difficult to nail some of them down, and that there would "probably not" be widespread agreement on questions of nano-terminology.
• Chris Phoenix, research director for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology, argued that concepts were ultimately more important than terms, especially since nano-definitions keep changing. (He has nevertheless recently written about these slippery definitions.) He made an interesting comparison between molecular manufacturing and quantum computing: Both are very interesting theories with no real-life developments in the offing -- so, by extension, he argued, molecular manufacturing should be accorded the same sort of respect that quantum computing enjoys.
• Nad Seeman, NYU professor. He chose to completely forego the debate over terminology, and instead gave a slideshow (similar to one he has given before) that describes some of his work.
• Ari Requicha, of the USC Lab for Molecular Robotics. Rather than give his own highly interesting slideshow, Professor Requicha criticized the government's definition of nanotechnology, which uses the term to describe the manipulation of matter between 1 and 100 nanometers. That definition makes no sense, he argued, since it is at once both too broad (including things like thin film technology that ought not to be considered nanotechnology) and too narrow (since it excludes things like the control and exact placement of individual atoms, like the famous placement of 35 xenon atoms to spell out "IBM").

During the course of the day, the committee also discussed the shortcomings of the NNI's grant-making processes. Professor Requicha criticized nanotechnology research grants as being "upside-down": The NNI funding panels are "extremely conservative," which means that those who are truly interested in taking risks and doing basic research have to go to DARPA, "which is supposed to [fund] applied" science. One member of the committee, Harry Lipsitt of Wright State University, wondered aloud what would happen if the National Science Foundation was confronted with a nanotech proposal so radical that it "had no peers" -- that is, a proposal that couldn't be satisfactorily peer-reviewed. There was also some discussion about whether the committee, or its staff, could get ahold of the nano-research proposals that have been rejected by the government, the better to assess whether the NNI is wisely directing the nation's nanotechnology research program.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the sharpest voice from the committee in favor of studying molecular manufacturing was that of Peter Diamandis, the moving force behind the X Prize competition that resulted last year in the first private manned spaceflights. "Remember, a breakthrough is something which, the day before it was a breakthrough, was nonsensical," he said. Dr. Diamandis said there was a "stigma" associated with research in advanced nanotechnology, similar to the stigma once associated with space tourism -- which the X Prize ("my small experiment") put to rest. (Diamandis is an advisor to the Foresight Institute.)

The workshop today was held in a conference room in the Academy building in the Foggy Bottom section of Washington, across the street from the State Department. It resumes this morning with presentations from the NanoBusiness Alliance, the Foresight Institute, and Eric Drexler.

India's president urges IT to go nano

India should become leader in Nanotechnology: Kalam (Silicon India)

President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam today urged the IT industry to strive towards becoming leaders in nanotechnology products, especially in the nanoelectronics area.

Addressing the National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom) 2005 business summit, the president said Indian companies should become leaders in nanotechnology and should invest $300 million towards the nanoscience and technology research in partnership with like-minded multinational companies for the research, development and volume production of nanoelectronic devices.

"This knowledge product development is a challenging area such as embedded software, networking software, real time software and integrated software for bio, info and nano," he said. More here

Related News
US arms sales to India tripled in 2004 (New Kerala)

NanoBot Backgrounder
Upsourcing to India for aircraft nanomaterials
Intelligence on (and in) India
India pledges irreverence to science past

Nano Does D.C.

Photo by Adam Keiper

From left, Sean Murdock of the NanoBusiness Alliance; Sen. George Allen, R-Va.; Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; Sharon Smith, director of Technology at Lockheed Martin; Chris Mather of NorTech; and Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y.

By Adam Keiper
Managing editor of The New Atlantis,
Fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and …
NanoBot Correspondent

WASHINGTON, Feb. 9, 2005 – It's a busy week for nanotechnology in the nation's capital, with a legislative blitz on Capitol Hill from the NanoBusiness Alliance, and a major nanotechnology workshop being held at the National Academy of Sciences.

First, the legislative side of things. the NanoBusiness Alliance -- a U.S. lobbying group -- is bringing a fair number of executives from nanotechnology companies around the country to Washington for meetings with members of Congress and congressional staffers. This event was nicely timed to coincide with the release of the Bush administration's new budget for fiscal 2006, which is of course a subject of great interest for this crowd, since federal spending on nanotechnology is on the rise. (It will soon cross $1 billion per year.) [UPDATE: To clarify, although the Bush administration requested just under $1 billion for nanotechnology in fiscal year 2005, Congress appropriated more than the administration wanted -- so federal spending on nanotech actually crosses the $1 billion threshold *this year*. -AK]

But the federal budget is stretched pretty tight this year and anyone who benefits from federal nanotech largesse wants to make sure his or her chunk of the budget doesn't get squeezed too badly. Hence the value in going door to door on Capitol Hill, asking staffers to learn about the latest nanotech businesses back in their home states and districts. (You can learn more about the proposed federal science and technology budget here.)

For the media, the key event in this nanotech blitz on the Hill was a little press conference co-sponsored by the NanoBusiness Alliance and the Congressional Nano Caucus. The caucus is still pretty small -- it only includes seven senators and about 20 representatives -- but will likely grow with time. It has four co-chairmen, and three of them were present at this morning's news conference:

• Sen. George Allen, R.-Va., spoke about the importance of investing in nanotechnology: "Ever since the industrial revolution," America has been a technology leader, he said, and we need to maintain that "competitive edge" by investing in nanotech. "I'm competitive -- you might have guessed that from the football background," he joked. "You either make dust or you eat dust." (Given the fears in some quarters about the health effects of nanoparticles and about "smart nano-dust," perhaps that was an unfortunate turn of phrase.) Allen also referred to the job-creating potential of nanotechnology, mentioning by way of example Luna Innovations, a Virginia-based nanotech firm that has created fifty-odd jobs, and is based in a former tobacco plant.
• Sen. Ron Wyden, D.-Ore., spoke next. He described the "bipartisan and bicameral" support for nanotechnology in Congress, and pointed out that the United States is ranked third in terms of government investment in nanotechnology. (This statistic only works if you include Europe as a single entity, in which case Europe and Japan rank ahead of the United States.) Wyden mentions the often-heard claim that nanotechnology will soon be a trillion dollar market (that claim seems to have originated with the National Science Foundation back in 2001 (PDF, 3.1 MB)). He also mentions Michael Crichton's book "Prey," and refers to the "ethical issues" related to nanotechnology -- specifically mentioning what he calls "gray glop." It will be important, he says, to consider these ethical issues without "freezing innovation."
• Next, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R.-N.Y., the chair of the House Science Committee, spoke for a few minutes. He pointed out that, despite cuts elsewhere in the federal science and technology budget, "nano is holding its own."

The three congressmen answered a few questions from reporters. One answer in particular might be of interest. When your correspondent asked Senator Allen to speak about the ethical issues that Senator Wyden had mentioned, Senator Allen said he considered them the "biggest challenge" facing nanotechnology -- not the so-called "gray goo" problem or the surveillance concerns or other potential fears that groups like the Foresight Institute might be concerned about, but rather the public perception of those problems. Just because a new technology might cause problems doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen -- after all, "even the Internet can be used in malicious ways -- just think of spyware," he said.

He then spoke of the importance of educating policymakers and the general public about the real facts related to nanotechnology, so they won't be led astray by "assertions, rumors, legends, [and] myths [that] come out of sci-fi or letters to the editor or blogging or whatever." If people pay attention to those who warn about the potential downsides of nanotechnology, then nanotech research might face the same sort of backlash that genetically modified foods have faced in Europe.

There were four other speakers at the press conference:

• Sean Murdock of the NanoBusiness Alliance, who described nanotechnology as "an investment that we cannot afford not to make" and referred the audience to the recent Business Week cover story on nanotech;
• Sharon Smith, the director of technology for Lockheed Martin, who described a number of near-term applications of nanotechnology (like lighter-weight and stronger aircraft structures, and sensors with "unparalleled sensitivity"), and even said "I can't think of a single product that we're going to be making over the next several years or decades that's not going to be impacted by nanotechnology";
• Chris Mather of NorTech, who said that nanotech investment is much lower than it should be, because venture capitalists have had their enthusiastic tendencies dampened by the dotcom bust; and
• Donn Tice, the CEO of Nano-Tex, a company that makes nano-fabrics, who said that the size of his company is just about doubling every year. It presently has about 100 employees.

And that's it from the NbA / Nano Caucus press conference. I'm heading off now to the National Academy of Sciences building, for the big nano workshop, and will send notes later on how that goes.

Related News
A statement from House Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert

Science: Let's do it in public

Lewis Wolpert: 'Science can be beautiful, amazing, the best way to try to understand the world' (The Independent)

Science needs your help. We need to find a way to bring the general public and scientists closer together so that they can understand each other better, helping to lead to sensible decisions about both science and those applications of it that affect our lives. There have been attempts to do this, but I'm not persuaded that any have been successful, and there has been little research to find out if they actually had useful results.

The issue of mutual trust is central. Science can be beautiful, amazing, the best way of trying to understand the world. But it is difficult. My own claim is that if an idea fits with common sense, then it is almost certainly scientifically false. It is as clear as day, for example, that the Sun goes round the Earth. The world is just not built on a common-sense basis.

Unfortunately, there is no one simple description of the scientific method, other than that of finding reliable evidence to explain events. There is only one correct explanation for any set of observations - and there are many styles of doing science. Scientists themselves can be remarkably ignorant of work outside their special fields, so non-scientists can easily be alienated by science. For most Members of Parliament and senior civil servants, science is an alien culture. More here

NanoBot Backgrounder
Science blinded by culture
Barking at scientific dogma
Nanotech arrogance will meet the Luddite hammer
Stop worrying and learn to love nanobots

Assume the worst

Small, but Dangerous (Washington Post)

Rick Weiss highlighted the exciting medical potential of nanotechnology ["Nanomedicine's Promise Is Anything but Tiny," news story, Jan. 31], but only briefly mentions nanomedicine's potential toxicities.

In preliminary studies, carbon nanotubes have been shown to cause lung inflammation in animals and cell damage in cultured human skin cells. Another study showed that fullerenes, which are nanoscale molecules with great potential as drug-delivery devices because they can pass the body's defense barriers, can cross into the nervous system of fish and damage their brain cells. The Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering recently concluded that "factories and research laboratories [should] treat manufactured nanoparticles and nanotubes as if they were hazardous."

It is important that safety concerns go hand in hand with the justified enthusiasm for nanomedicine's potential. More here (registration required)

NanoBot Backgrounder
Invisible horrors and ghost stories
Choose your own 'irrational' scenario
Nanotubes and the tale of the rats

A first lady of nanotech

Atoms, molecules and medicine
A cocktail party conversation led Nanocopoeia CFO Karen Arnold into the world of nanotechnology (Minnesota Women's Press)

Karen Arnold is not your typical engineer. For one thing, she’s a woman (a whopping 91 percent of engineers are male). For another, she’s an entrepreneur—of the venture capitalist variety, to boot. Arnold is also cofounder and the chief financial officer of Nanocopoeia, Inc., a biotechnology firm that has recently transitioned from startup to full-fledged product development mode.

The St. Paul-based firm, founded in 2001, is working with pharmaceutical companies to develop new ways to deliver medications to patients using nanotechnology. Nanotechnology is a sort of catch-all description for cutting-edge technologies being developed by engineers and scientists at the level of atoms and molecules.

You don’t have to be a science nerd to catch Arnold’s excitement about Nanocopoeia’s work. “We can take any material and turn it into a nanoparticle,” she said. “We can retain the properties of the original material and change the way it is used.”

Why is that important? In the case of medications, Arnold explained, it makes them more water soluble, which helps the body absorb them more quickly and enables physicians to control dosage more exactly. More here

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It's wafer thin

Diamonds: Nanotech's best friend?
In the nanotechnology realm, pocket change figures big. (CNET News.com)

Dan Pickard, a graduate student at Stanford University's electrical-engineering school, needed a diamond membrane for an e-beam lithography system that can be used to help create nanotech products.

The slides in the accompanying photo gallery chronologically demonstrate how, with the help of professor Fabian Pease and undergraduate Heyjin Park, Pikard extracted the membrane from a diamond chip with a focused ion beam, a probe and an electron microscope. The diamond chip is about a millimeter in diameter and about 20 microns thick. The membrane is about 20 microns a side and 200 nanometers to 500 nanometers thick.

An e-beam lithography system draws a pattern on the surface of a semiconductor wafer that eventually becomes transistors or areas where metals or carbon can be grown. The energy from the beam imprints a copy of a mask--a sort of stencil--onto the surface of the wafer, which consists of layers of silicon and metal. That imprint is then exposed through processes similar to those used in photographic development. In traditional chips, the result is transistors. In nanotechnology, the result might be particles of iron, which can serve as a catalyst for growing carbon.

The rise of nanotechnology has increased the importance of complex electrons and probes and made equipment makers some of the first beneficiaries of nanotechnology. FEI, which produced the equipment used in the images, reported fourth-quarter revenue of $145.2 million, an increase of 49 percent over revenue of $97.7 million a year ago. Net income rose to $8.4 million, more than the $3.3 million reported a year ago. More here

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Antediluvian NanoBots

McKay discovers that they are up against a nanovirus — microscopic machines programmed to kill only humans.

Yep, that was the plot of "Stargate Atlantis" last weekend on the SciFi channel. I watched only a bit of it as I was channel surfing. I stayed around long enough to realize why it's taking so long to make a movie version of Michael Crichton's nano-horror novel "Prey." It's very difficult to make a full-fledged nanobot attack look convincing on camera. I had to laugh at the "Stargate Atlantis" cast flailing around at invisible bugs. It looked a bit like the old "Star Trek" camera tilt trick, when the bridge crew is tossed around in unison.

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Upsourcing to India for aircraft nanomaterials

Boeing, Airbus ramp up sourcing from India (Business Standard)

India seems to be emerging as a hot spot for global aircraft manufacturers, not just as a market but also as a destination to outsource manufacturing and software development.

While the European aircraft maker, Airbus, has started talks with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) to develop components for its latest offering, the A380, in India, Boeing has awarded a new deal to the Shiv Nadar-promoted HCL Technologies to develop software for its latest aircraft, the 787 Dreamliner.

... Boeing is also working with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, in a strategic alliance to conduct research in aerospace materials, structures and manufacturing technologies. The alliance with IISc will provide innovative ideas and help infuse the best of these technologies into Boeing.

The focus of the Boeing-IISc strategic alliance spans the range from nanotechnology, structural alloys, composites, smart materials and structures, process modelling and simulation, manufacturing technologies and prototyping through substructure fabrication and testing. These are technologies of critical importance to the future of aerostructures. More here

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Evolution amphetamine

ASU researchers seek way to harness hydrogen power
Speeding up natural process part of project (By Courtney Bonnell, Web Devil, Arizona State University)

ASU researchers are developing a way to make hydrogen a source of energy usable in outlets like transportation and electricity.

Scientists at the Biodesign Institute will be working on a catalyst to mimic the processes plants use to separate water into its two components: hydrogen and oxygen.

Researchers will use a $1.5 million grant they received from the Department of Energy last month to fund the project. They applied for the grant in December 2003.

Hydrogen is a storage source for other types of renewable energy like solar power, which can be used instead of fossil fuels at night, said foundation professor of chemistry Devens Gust, who is doing similar research on campus.

The energy used to break water into oxygen and hydrogen will store itself in the hydrogen to be used later.

"What really interests me as a scientist is the concept of being able to develop a new molecular function by essentially speeding up evolution," said Neal Woodbury, director for the Center for BioOptical Nanotechnology and principal investigator on the grant. "We're doing what evolution did, [but] in a shorter amount of time [and] using computers." More here

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Place your bets on chips

Nano and Chips: Uneasy Ties
Semiconductor execs bridle at the suggestion that this new technology could unseat them. It is, however, a distinct possibility (By Stephen Baker, Business Week)

In about a decade, the semiconductor industry, most agree, will reach a physical limit. Engineers will no longer be able to shrink down circuits on tiny slabs of silicon. To continue doubling computing capacity every 18 months, while cutting costs -- the formula that has powered tech growth for 40 years -- the industry will look to new technology, a new architecture, and perhaps a move beyond silicon.

This will be a crucial transition in the history of computing (see BW, 2/14/05, "The Business Of Nanotech"). And the key question is this: Will the current titans of the Silicon Age, led by the semiconductor industry, maintain their leadership as they attempt to shepherd the industry through this rough passage? Or will the new components and architecture of computing come from outside the silicon economy, from the new forces of nanotechnology?

Put it another way: Will nanotechnology save the chip industry or mount a challenge to it? More here

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Nano on top of Ol' Smoky

Students often ask me where they should go to major in "nanotechnology." As yet, there are few programs that offer a major in such a broad category that could apply to any field from physics to waste management. But, whether you're bound for university, community college or just want to take some classes on the side, there's a growing recognition among educators that all their work is converging on the nanoscale. Those who really want to prepare their students for the future are applying old-school to new-school.

Walters State, the Great Smoky Mountains Community College, for example, knows where its pre-engineering students' careers might take them: "The field of nanotechnology, which involves the creation of high-performance materials and components by integrating atoms and molecules, is introducing entirely new principles to the design process."

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Nanotech Tool Time

Howard,

I'm a reader of your blog. This isn't a nanotech story in itself but I thought it was a good indicator of where the market might be going. When I look for trends in other tech markets I always go to the equipment providers -- if they are going strong then (usually) you could say the same about the industry they equip, at least as an indicator for the future.

Don't know how this applies to nanotech, however.

Brian

Brian, Thanks for the info. And, yes, this is a nanotech story -- at least, from the point of view of those who see nanotech in relation to the semiconductor industry, which is where most of FEI's sales go. Equipment makers trying to sell to universities aren't doing as well. We'll probably see the IC industry continue to drive up the bottom line at FEI, Veeco and others, as the industry finally realizes that to stay alive it needs to go nano. And that does not mean simply using old lithography techniques -- only smaller. That obviously, is not working.

Howard

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Lux Research's states report

Hi Howard -- here's that piece I talked about earlier

Best -- C.

Update: This quote from ZettaCore founder Randy Levine does, indeed, answer my main criticism -- H:

"As the report mentions, this is a study about the potential for success, not of who has already succeeded," Levine said. "All Lux is saying that some places are better poised than others to take advantage of nanotechnology for their population. So it's really a wakeup call to say, if you're not high on the list, how are you going to get higher, and if you're high, how do you stay there? There is no Silicon Valley of nanotech. You can develop good firms anywhere." More here

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Pogue does the pants

Explaining Nanotechnology (By David Pogue, The New York Times)

A couple of Sundays ago, "CBS News Sunday Morning" ran my segment about the coming era of nanotechnology. During the preparation of the story, I had two great experiences.

At one point, I set out to illustrate an interview subject's comment that the earliest fruits of this technology are pretty mundane. One of his examples was "nanotechnology pants," which turned out to be Dockers Stain Defenders slacks; as a gag, I put them on and prepared to dump a cup of coffee onto my own thigh to see just how well they'd resist staining.

I warned the camera crew, though, that this would have to be a one-take deal; once the pants were wet, I figured, you'd see the dark spot and we couldn't do a retake. Imagine my shock, though, when the coffee rolled off as though from a duck's back, leaving the pants not only unstained, but completely dry! (The pants don't feel any different from any other cotton pants.) We wound up filming the dump-the-coffee shot six times, and the pants never did get wet. Man, remind me to wear them next time I'm on a plane flight with children. More here (registration required)

Blogger's Note: Once Pogue gets through the requisite "pants" review, (which of course is old news to regular NanoBot readers) there's an interview with nanotech venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson that makes for more-worthwhile reading. Another quick thought, though: Dockers Stain Defenders are made from DuPont's Teflon. It's the Eddie Bauer line that contains the NanoWhiskers from Nano-Tex, which uses technology that's a little more "nano" than simply DuPont downsized.

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Nano ISO standards

New ISO Proposal on Nanotechnologies
Opportunity for comment (American National Standards Institute)

The British Standards Institution (BSI) has submitted to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) a proposal for a new field of ISO technical activity on nanotechnologies.

The scope of the proposal identifies specific standardization tasks in the field of nanotechnologies such as classification, terminology and nomenclature, basic metrology, characterization, including calibration and certification, risk and environmental issues. Test methods include approaches for determining physical, chemical, structural and biological properties of materials or devices for which the performance, in the chosen application, is critically dependent on one or more dimension of <100nm. Test methods for applications, and product standards shall come within the scope of the Technical Committee.

Action is underway for the ANSI ISO Council (AIC) to approve the ANSI Nanotechnology Standards Panel (ANSI-NSP) Steering Committee to act as an Interim Advisory Group to the AIC. The ANSI-NSP currently serves as the cross-sector coordinating body for standards in the area of nanotechnology and provides the forum within which stakeholders can work cooperatively to promote, accelerate, and coordinate the timely development of useful voluntary consensus standards. More here

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