Posts Tagged Nanotech

More Lessons in Unnecessary: New The Day the Earth Stood Still Movie

Posted by mistergroonk in Movies, Robots, Trailers, USA on July 4, 2008

(via digg, trailer addict)

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Future Information will be Stored in Gas

Posted by mistergroonk in Technology, The Future on June 24, 2008

“The basic concepts of the storage of light have been known for several years now, as well as possible applications,” Moshe Shuker of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology told PhysOrg.com. “What triggered our work was a paper by Howell’s group in Rochester in which they showed they can slow images and delay them for several nanoseconds. We wondered would it be possible to store images – and for how long? Since we used slowing delays and storage durations in the range of microseconds, we immediately noticed the effect of the diffusion of the atoms.”

In their technique, the researchers first stored an image (for example, the number “2”) in a light pulse. When that light pulse hits a gas of atoms, it is strongly absorbed, and excites the atoms. But when a second light beam is aimed at the gas, it drives the atoms to a unique quantum state, and causes the first pulse to pass through the vapor. This phenomenon is called electromagnetically induced transparency.

The bottom line: gas would become a storage medium. Your basic gas chamber would become a harddrive for a quantum computer. Let’s not forget the monitor capabilities. Picture a movie that surrounds you instead of laying flat on a screen before you and stored in a can of air. That’s what I’m thinking.

(via i09, physorg)

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Nanoengineers create Light “Sponge”

Posted by mistergroonk in The Future on June 5, 2008

The perfect light \"sponge\"“Three things can happen to light when it hits a material,” says Boston College Physicist Willie J. Padilla. “It can be reflected, as in a mirror. It can be transmitted, as with window glass. Or it can be absorbed and turned into heat. This metamaterial has been engineered to ensure that all light is neither reflected nor transmitted, but is turned completely into heat and absorbed. It shows we can design a metamaterial so that at a specific frequency it can absorb all of the photons that fall onto its surface.”

The metamaterial is the first to demonstrate perfect absorption and unlike conventional absorbers it is constructed solely out of metallic elements, giving the material greater flexibility for applications related to the collection and detection of light, such as imaging, says Padilla, an assistant professor of physics.

Metamaterial designs give them new properties beyond the limits of their actual physical components and allow them to produce “tailored” responses to radiation. Because their construction makes them geometrically scalable, metamaterials are able to operate across a significant portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

This means that the metal is blacker than black.

(via boingboing)

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Scientists Create Tiny Computer, Mimics Human Brain

Posted by mistergroonk in Uncategorized on March 11, 2008

The most powerful computer known is the brain, and now scientists have designed a machine just a few molecules large that mimics how the brain works.

So far the device can simultaneously carry out 16 times more operations than a normal computer transistor. Researchers suggest the invention might eventually prove able to perform roughly 1,000 times more operations than a transistor.

This machine could not only serve as the foundation of a powerful computer, but also serve as the controlling element of complex gadgets such as microscopic doctors or factories, scientists added.

The device is made of a compound known as duroquinone. This molecule resembles a hexagonal plate with four cones linked to it, “like a small car,” explained researcher Anirban Bandyopadhyay, an artificial intelligence and molecular electronics scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science at Tsukuba in Japan.

WATCH: how the little bugger works.

(via yahoo news, digg)

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Nokia’s Morph Phone. 7 Years Til Perfection

Posted by mistergroonk in Uncategorized on February 27, 2008

7 years. 7 fucking years?! The very technology I’ve bitched about the world not having is 7 damn years til production and that’s in Europe. By the time the USA gets it, I’ll be in adult diapers and overjoyed about wearing mittens.

The Future does not come fast enough.

NokiaMorph1.jpg

Notice how it favors the eBracelet.

The press release video is after the jump.

(via whitechapel, gizmodo, future-like youtube)

Read the rest of this entry »

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Nanotechnology is the New Ice-Free Surface

Posted by mistergroonk in Uncategorized on January 3, 2007

Among the microburst of information found on the Ellis machine:

A transparent lacquer containing carbon nanotubes could clear car windscreens or mirrors by acting as a heater. Thicker, opaque versions of the coating could turn entire floors of buildings into radiators, researchers claim.

The lacquer can be sprayed onto any surface and consists of a liquid base containing a mixture of nanotubes that conduct electricity. As the liquid dries, the nanotubes form a conducting network inside the lacquer. Passing a current through this network causes the layer to heat up.

In tests, a coating connected to a 12 volt power supply similar to car battery was able to clear ice from a plastic sheet in about 2 minutes although the test sheet was only the size of a paper back book.

“We can heat up the whole of any surface with a transparent coating,” researcher Dominik Nemec told New Scientist: “It could be used to clear windscreens or mirrors of water or ice.” Nemec is working on the coating with colleague Ivica Kolaric at the Fraunhofer Technology Development Group in Stuttgart, Germany.

(via warrenellis.com)

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From Gecko Feet to Spiderman Suits

Posted by mistergroonk in Science on July 27, 2006

Just one metre square of a new super-sticky material inspired by gecko feet could suspend the weight of an average family car, say its inventors.

The plastic, known as Synthetic Gecko, has been developed by researchers at aerospace and defence firm BAE Systems. Like the reptile’s foot, the polymer is covered in millions of tiny mushroom-like hairs that provide grip.

Future applications could include an adhesive to repair aircraft, skin grafts or even a Spiderman-style suit.

“It would mean that your local window cleaner could dispense with his ladders and climb up the side of your house,” says Dr Sajad Haq a principle research scientist at the company’s Advanced Technology Centre in Filton, Bristol. “There’s a whole host of applications. It’s just a question of your imagination…”

More Gecko tech.

(via warren ellis)

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Quantum Dots Discover Your Secrets

Posted by mistergroonk in Uncategorized on July 19, 2006

Nano-sized fluorescent probes that can slip inside living cells and elucidate life’s most fundamental processes, or track the effectiveness of cancer-fighting drugs, are barely noticed by the cells they enter, according to a team of researchers led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Using a high-throughput gene expression test, the team determined that the probes, which are specially coated quantum dots, only affect 0.2 percent of the human genome. This finding should quell concerns that the mere presence of these promising but potentially toxic sentinels disrupts a cell’s function, confounding quantum dots’ ability to accurately track cellular processes or monitor the effectiveness of pharmaceuticals…

(via warren ellis)

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New nano-switch could be bloody brilliant

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin on May 1, 2006

Scientists have created a molecular switch that could play a key role in thousands of nanotech applications. The Mol-Switch project successfully developed a demonstrator to prove the principle, despite deep scepticism from specialist colleagues in biotechnology and biophysics.

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The number of potential applications is staggering. They can be used for flow-control valves, pumps, positioning drives, motors, switches, relays and biosensors.

The system could be used to develop molecular circuits, or even molecular scale mechanical devices. The potential applications are difficult to predict, but are only limited by the imagination of researchers, such is the versatility of an actuator on this scale.

“It could be used as a communicator between the biological and silicon worlds. I could see it providing an interface between muscle and external devices, through its use of ATP, in human implants. Such an application is still 20 or 30 years away,” says Firman “It’s very exciting and right now we’re applying for a patent for the basic concepts.”

(via physorg)

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Scientists demonstrate Artificial Nano-muscles ass-kickability

Posted by mistergroonk in Admin on March 18, 2006

University of Texas at Dallas nanotechnologists have made alcohol- and hydrogen-powered artificial muscles that are 100 times stronger than natural muscles, able to do 100 times greater work per cycle and produce, at reduced strengths, larger contractions than natural muscles. Among other possibilities, these muscles could enable fuel-powered artificial limbs, “smart skins” and morphing structures for air and marine vehicles, autonomous robots having very long mission capabilities and smart sensors that detect and self-actuate to change the environment.

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Application opportunities, Baughman said, are diverse, and range from robots and morphing air vehicles to dynamic Braille displays and muscles powered by the fuel/air mixture delivered to an engine that are able to regulate this mixture. The more than 30 times higher energy density obtainable for fuels like methanol, compared to that for the most advanced batteries, can translate into long operational lifetimes without refueling for autonomous robots. This refueling requires negligible time compared with that needed for recharging batteries. Since all muscles will not be used at the same time, temporarily inactive muscles of the first muscle type can be used as ordinary fuel cells and as supercapacitors to provide for the electrical needs of, for example, autonomous robots and prosthetic limbs. The properties of the two types of fuel-powered muscles can be merged to provide the benefits of both, Baughman said.

The fuel-powered muscles can be easily downsized to the micro- and nano-scales, and arrays of such micro-muscles could be used in “smart skins” that improve the performance of marine and aerospace vehicles. By replacing metal catalyst with tethered enzymes, it might eventually be possible to use artificial muscles powered by food-derived fuels for actuation in the human body – perhaps even for artificial hearts.

(via warren ellis via physorg)

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