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Science

US Gov't to double nano-tech funding 98

Posted by Hemos from the more-money-longer-life-everything's-happy dept.
Announced a few days ago, nanotech research currently in the quarter billion dollar US range is set to be doubled by the Federal Government over the next few years. The Feds are recognizing the immense possibilites of nanotechnolgy and want to set up a "peer review process" (Sound familiar?) to allocate the funds best.
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US Gov't to double nano-tech funding More

US Gov't to double nano-tech funding

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  • Give it up with this alien tech. shit! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    OK, so they claim that their tiny 90 gig HD was based on alien technology. But by calling it nanotechnology they are really, really pushing it! Like no one would spot the obvious reference to Mork & Mindy. For heaven's sake come up with a better name for this alien tech stuff!!!

    William S B - Just as alive as when I lived!

  • Just install the latest service pack (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    NTN (NT for Nanotech) service pack 6 will solve all your problems. It runs 501% faster than the competition. There's a minor possibility of your nanite spontaneously mutating into grey goo. That'll be fixed in the next service pack.

  • DoD doesn't believe in peer review (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Peer review is true for NSF, but it is not correct when it comes to DoD or DOE funding. For instance, for DoD 6.1 (basic) to 6.3 (applied) research, the power to fund rests in the hands of the various program managers. The proposals do not go out for peer review.

    For something like the proposed nanotech program, the standard DoD approach would be to spin up an Accelerated Research Program (more basic science) or an Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (much more applied). Once again, the power to fund will reside with a single person, or a very small cadre of insiders.

    I've sat in on several DoD (Navy) program reviews and saw nothing resembling peer review.
  • All this nanomadness is a little juvenile. If you want to talk about building nanohardrives cheaply so that everyone (whgo reads, illiterates seal their own fate) can take advantage of technology, go ahead play with nanotech. Heck even if all you want to do is understand the world a tad better, fine. But if all this technology ends up vaporware as far as applications are concerned because we didn't make an effort to bring the rest of the world into the loop, leaving it up to some whacko to misuse use sorry.

    Now let's say I agreed with this guy about going past our normal concepts of science:

    If we're talking about meditating to settle down after a crazy day, I agree.

    If we're talking about sitting back and discussing complexity theory and how it relates to metaphysics, sure.

    If we're talking about how our economy is a complete lie, yes.

    If we're talking about maintaining the place we live in as punishment for overpopulating it and while satisfying our other wants, ok yes we fucked up.

    If we're talking about learning about ourselves and creating a three-way balance between our sense, our emotions, and our thoughts (all part of the same thing by the way), fine.

    But if we're talking psychics, seances, and witch craft out of some emotionalist binge, NO. WAY. IN. HELL.

    Complexity theory and quantum mechanics could allow incredible things like telekinesis, wormholes, cold fusion, who's to say at this point. There's as many scientific whores in this age as there were in the dark ages.

    If you look at witchcraft from the point of view creating a set of conditions and being sensitive to those conditions because you have no other way of knowing complex things about the world and you compare that to the quantum chefs debating over gravitons instead of models you'll realize they're not much different. Frankly, determinists always spend too much time with particles. QD! Quantum determinism!

    Quantum mechanics was not invented by the 20th century, it was only explained (somewhat) in the 20th century.

    And if you don't believe aliens could exist, you also probably don't think humans or space or planets or galaxies or space probes exist either.

    I am speaking of current quantum chefs not Heisenberg; Heisenberg was at least a scientist who didn't idly dream up ideas to tell reporters.
  • I don't see any enzymes building diamond skin or bones.
    Wouldn't diamond be too brittle? Sure it would be great for scratch protection (and probably other attacks), but it would be lousy under impact. Sure CaC03 (? been a while) isn't the best either, but it's a nice compromise between strenght/rigidity and ductility (umm, I don't think that's the right term. I'm looking for non-brittleness (been a long time since I did materials science)). If our bones can flex (and also survive impacts) a lot more than they would be able to if they were made of diamond. Same goes for crab shells. Now, diamond coated bones/exoskeletons might not be a bad idea. Nice scratch resistant (though brittle) surface, with a shock absorbant base (much like a well made katana: hard edge, soft back; cuts like crazy but can bend without too much damage).

    Otherwise, I agree with many of the basics of your post: namely evolution doesn't necessarily find the best solution.

  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Are you trying to tell me that nanotech research is in the quarter billion dollar range? Or that the dollar amount we are spending on nanotech research is in that range? Keep in mind that "nanotech research" is not a number so it can't fall into a numerical range.
    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Check the sig. God Himself says we should be using good grammar and spelling.


    ---
    Put Hemos through English 101!
  • That may be gramatically correct, but to me it seems like you're implying that three meters is a measure of temperature. Let's just stop criticising small lapses in each other's grammer. Research doesn't fall into a range of money any more than it would fall into a range of temperature. "Nanotech research currently in the quarter billion dollar range" makes as much sense as "Nanotech research currently in the three meter range." Research isn't quantifiable; its funding is.
  • You've hit upon a long-time question of mine: how does nano heat dissipate? If thousands or millions of nano machines are working in proximity, say, in a couple square millimeters, isn't there a risk of spontaneous combustion similar to that in grain silos?
  • Since I have kind of an idea what this stuff is, and it's possable impacts that SlashDot'ers would care about, I guess I'll comment.

    Ok, yea, "nano-tech" can mean microfabrication projects, but that's not the hot/intersting feild to hardcore scientists. Microfabrication, which MAY be considered nanotechnology to slashdotters, hopeing for faster CPUs, denser RAM chips, etc, is more of an "engineering" problem, not a fundemental science problem.

    What your probably going to see is some stuff that is totally fringe that get's funded based on it's potential. What that means is, probably at least 50% of it will never be in a commercial product, and what does have commercial uses will be at least a few years from seeing your hands ;-)

    BUT, that's good, someone has to do the fringe stuff, the fundemental chemistry and physics, because without them laying the groundwork, the engineers have now referance of what directions to go that will work and what won't work.

    A lot of the hot funemental science that's considered nanotechnology is based on the discovery of Buckey-Ball, and fundementally Organic Chemistry. A form of carbon (linked in a ball, not a streight chain like life exists from, or in a crystal like diamond) not known to exist until the last few years. Based on this, chemist have developed some very cool little things made of carbon (some doped with metals), including things like bundles of carbon microtubes. Picture a test tube scaled down to like just a few atoms across if you can.

    Cool stuff this is used for? Well, some pretty trick synthysis of stuff not normally done... I could go on and on, but, I suppose SlashDotters want to know what applications might be? Well, STM (as I have mentioned before, a very cool method of positioning single atoms on a surface, best graphics on the web I know are from IBM [ibm.com]), can use these carbon nanotube for thier "tips" to get more fine control of positioning, and aquireing data about atoms on a surface (IBM is _probably_ looking at very dense data storage possabilities, on the atomic level, but it only works at near absolute zero). Additionally, if you position something as "big" (I say big from an atomic prespective) as a Bucky Ball on the surface, it's shown to be somewhat stable even near room temperatures! Woo... Big Buckyballs are still darn small by comparison to the size a 0 or 1 takes up on any drive YOU have ever seen!

    These types of things (there are many) also have numerous biological benifits for manipulating DNA, probing cells, etc... And, the manipulation of DNA itself (or RNA, or any such thing), can in a sence be considered nanotechnology itself.

    So, yes, "technically" nanotechnology means small stuff, and included microfabrication, but, I suspect that a very very large precentage of this money may go to more fundemental work and not making new wafers for chips. At least if NFS has any say at all (which they should, but might not), they will push for fundemental science, because it's considered more benificial in the long run. Once there are potential applications, it's pretty much something that Industry does, not the Government or Educational places, because there is potential profit involved. (as well should be, I don't want my tax money spent giveing corporations more money to develop direct applications that they then in turn will charge me to use!)

  • Forgive my spelling errors, I just got back from lab, doing like injection after injection in my HSGC, brain is fried, and it's 3:20AM... Grad school is hell.
  • Actually, almost _all_ government funded research allocates the money through peer review of grant proposals submitted by researchers. There's nothing shockingly amazing about the fact that the gov't did this when increasing its nanotech funding.

    -Dean
  • I like the way it's written, but what are you talking about? I get the feeling the other posters here have misunderstood your post a bit; I simply don't understand it at all. Could you possibly clarify things?
  • You're right; you can't build a computer smaller than the smallest computer core. And we all know, robots by definition need a computer to tell them what to do. So if you want a robot smaller than a computer, move the computer outside the 'bot.

    My guess is that the first nanorobots (nanites, nanobots, whatever) won't contain their own programming at all. All they'll have is a rudimentary instruction set; the instructions will then be fed by a larger, external device (probably communicating via radio).

    The "enzyme model" (each 'bot works by interacting with individual molecules) is another interesting approach, but not one that I'd think would be practical with today's technology. Plus consider that it would take many 'bots working in tandem to get anything done.

  • Nanocode (Score:1)

    by mdxi ( 3387 )
    Okay, I've thought about this a lot and had arguments with people over it...maybe I'm just being shortsighted and unimaginative but:


    Given that you can produce nanomachines, how the hell do you tell them what to do?


    I understand existing methods of making very small machines. I can buy extrapolating this into Very Small Machines making Even Smaller Machines. But how do these machines know what to do? The people I've discussed this with said "the code will be embedded, of course". Well, I know that, but what will it run on? And how big are these things going to have to start out, since the first generation must contain all sets of code for all generations of nanomachines?


    Basically I guess I'm trying to say: how can you make a robot smaller than the smallest possible computer core?

    --
  • We won't have to invent them from scratch. Nature has already come up with an excellent solution. All we have to do is improve on what evolution (or God or The Grand Turnip) has already provided.

    Yes, nature has us beat for the moment. But since nature isn't moving forward very fast, we WILL catch up. We WILL surpass nature. Someday. If we manage to not kill ourselves.

    It really boils down to how we use our tools.

  • Wouldn't diamond be too brittle? Sure it would be great for scratch protection (and probably other attacks), but it would be lousy under impact. By itself? Sure (but do you really need to worry about being brittle when its Not Going to Break). How about fabric made out of bucky-tubes? Kevlar would be like tissue paper by comparison. Diamonds also have that whole fracture plain thing going against it. 99 times out of 100, no problem, but one day someone taps you at the wrong angle and your femur is in two pieces. BTW is there some general term for diamonds and buckminster-style objects? Carbon hyper-solids (just made that up)? My chemistry sucks. What makes carbon atoms so damn special? I mean I know enough chem to know about electron shells, but what about elements further down the Table?

  • Wouldn't diamond be too brittle? Sure it would be great for scratch protection (and probably other attacks), but it would be lousy under impact.

    By itself? Sure (but do you really need to worry about being brittle when its Not Going to Break). How about fabric made out of bucky-tubes? Kevlar would be like tissue paper by comparison. Diamonds also have that whole fracture plain thing going against it. 99 times out of 100, no problem, but one day someone taps you at the wrong angle and your femur is in two pieces.

    BTW is there some general term for diamonds and buckminster-style objects? Carbon hyper-solids (just made that up)?

    My chemistry sucks. What makes carbon atoms so damn special? I mean I know enough chem to know about electron shells, but what about elements further down the Table?

  • I've actually been thinking about an artifically created life form. Replace various organels with (relatively large) nanomachines, build the cell walls out of . Maybe replace DNA with something more efficient (on an atom for atom scale). Alternatively, make each cell an individual machine, not necessarily on the same scale as biological cells (bigger or smaller).

    It may even be possible to create a "cell" that would be powered by nuclear rather than chemical energy. "Food" might be hard to come by, but it would probably last for a long time. Such an organism's stomach would be... interesting. And what would it use for blood? Superconductive fiber to transmit electricity? Fiber optics for light? Both? Neither?

    Such an artificial organism might do away with cells all together, but I doubt it. Nanotechnology points to "lots of small things to do a big job": cells.

    Evolution can find "local maxima", but the solution evolution comes by might not be the best possible answer. I don't see any enzymes building diamond skin or bones. Evolution HAS come up with many great solutions to many great problems, but there are often better ways of doing things.
  • Peer Review: The political process of Science.

    You have people getting together to decide how the pool gets split up.

    As far as bagging on the environmentalist movement, you can add civil rights, women's health issues, AIDS research, (the ban on) fetal tissue research in the US, etc.

    It's all politics.

    As far as the correlation between absurd assumptions and findings in research, well, isn't that implicitly what research is about, as much as finding out the truth as finding out what is false?

    As far as bands of programmers pushing an implementation/solution if it promised more exposure or jobs, Samba would fit under that definition. It definitely is suckup ware.

    Does Apple support SMB with Macs (does Windows support AppleTalk? No...not "natively")?

    As far as bagging on environmentalism, well, we all benefit from it, even if you think you're not.
    Sort of like someone else/others have noticed about Open Software (and protocols)...
  • Nature moves forward very fast in some areas.

    I hope that we don't try to coopt mechanisms like plasmid-sharing in bacteria to try and "defeat" them. This would bounce back so hard on us it would be silly.

    Read up on drug-resistant bacteria for some pleasant nite-time dreams...

    We will learn more than a few things the hard way...

    but why do we need to "surpass nature", when we are a part of it (or at least, *very* dependent on it)?

  • Even though the given sentence's grammar is poor, so is your criticism.

    For the purposes of our analysis, the sentence has one subject, one verb, one participial phrase serving as an adjective, one prepositional phrase serving as an adjective, and one adverb modifying the prepositional phrase. Mistaking a partipial phrase for a verb is bad enough, but mistaking the prepositional phrase / adverb for a verb is patently foolish, since the "currently in the quater billion dollar range" doesn't even contain a word that could act as a verb !

    In fact, the sentence only requires two simple corrections.

    1. Hemos should change "nanotech research" to "the nanotech research budget," and
    2. he should add commas around "currently in the quarter billion dollar range," since this phrase is paranthetical.

    After those corrections, the sentence would read:

    Announced a few days ago, the nanotech research budget, currently in the quarter billion dollar US range, is set to be doubled by the Federal Government over the next few years.

    The above sentence is not brilliant, but it is grammatically correct, which is more than most people expect from informal web forums like slashdot.

    I certainly agree that the world would benefit from a better understanding and use of grammatical rules. However, a better understanding of the basic principles of sentence construction is both the means and the end to improving one's grammar (just as a better of understanding of computers can be both the means and the end of using Linux !). Your critique only further confuses basic principles (like the definition of a verb).

    If you are going to choose the promotion of grammatical correctness as one of you crusades, please at least take the time to treat the subject with care, rather than just taking enough time to belittle (and confuse) those who offend your grammatical sense.

    - a proud grammar geek


  • "I wonder if there is a coorelation between that phenomena and open source? Would bands of programmers push an implementation/solution if it promised more exposure or jobs even though it was a faulty solution?"

    $ounds $trangely like Micro$oft...
  • Hemos and his dang nano-tech stuff. One of these days they might get this stuff done right and then what will he dream about?
  • > Science today is advancing fast, but shouldn't we be starting from the other end.

    Huh? You mean start with the things we don't understand and work towards the things we do? I don't think we'd get very far that way.

    Or maybe you mean we should decide what's true first and then try to interpret reality in terms of that?

    Daniel
    --
  • Your first question: "What will the code run on?"
    Probably not anything resembling an electronic computer. More likely, these "CPUs" will resemble mechanical calcucators, or the fundamental Turing machine. They will be entirely physical, made of levers, gears, etc. and the program will be the nano equivalent of paper tape. The DNA molecule, for example, would make an excellent choice for storing nanocode.

    Second question: "How are succeeding generations programmed?" (to paraphrase :)
    The first generation of nanodevices would be instructed to get the code for the second generation from some source besides themselves. Assuming DNA used as punchtape, then the constructors could simply be told to "get the program for your child from this jar." That's pseudocode, of course.

    Later, perhaps the devices could be made to act as neuron-like entities in a neural network. Individually they'd be as dumb as before, but as a group they could be made quite smart. After all, a real neuron is smaller than early nano-devices would be.
    --
  • There are two primary aspects of peer review in science; these two aspects are not mutually exclusive. First, there is the peer review of proposals to such agencies as NSF. While not perfect (nothing involving humans is perfect), it has generally been successful. The main criticisms about NSF peer review are that it does not recognize risky "cutting edge" science, and that it discriminates against the young unproven investigator who is not yet a member of the "old boys club."

    The other form of peer review is with regard to publications in scientific journals. One's career can be highly dependent on publishing in prestigious journals. Once again, the two common criticisms with proposals also apply with regard to publications. Furthermore, the ability to get funded is dependent on one's publication record, and one's publication record is dependent on the type of funded research that one conducts.

    For most other government agencies (for instance DoD), the decision of who to fund is left to the whims of program managers. Obviously, the abilities and intellect of the program managers is critical; I've seen PM's that range from idiots to enlightened Yodas. Nonetheless, if the these non-peer review program suceed, more funding usually ensues. Conversely, if the programs fail, the PM will start to see their budgets getting slashed.

    I hope that this educates you on the basics of peer reviewed research. Your comments were particular misguided. Note that unless all the scientists are in cahoots with one another, increasing funding in a particular topic usually (but always) results in a decrease in funding elsewhere. If you want to see a bunch of scientist get mad, watch what happens when their programs lose funds at the expense of another program.
  • Ever think about Mad Scientist who spreads Nanotechnology as a virus? If they could do advanced stuff (I'm not really familar with nanotech, but hey. . .). What if someone (ie, the government) used their wonderful encryption to send these little robots out to kill? They could have them attack whatever they wanted, right? Who's going to control nanotech? Is it going to be publicly available? In my opinion, this is where it could be a lot better to have nanotech controlled by a central source. Releasing the technology to the public could cause some crazy stuff. Any ideas?

    - Shane
  • Money? Insanity? There's sick people out there, man.


    - Shane
  • genetics is a little limited. think about a protein: it's floppy, not rigid. it comes apart. it folds together under very specific conditions, and if you unfold it, it'll be qutie hard to put it back together again.

    on the other hand, nanomachinery will likely be made out of primarily carbon atoms. PERFECT DIAMOND machinery. bearings, gears, and all.

    take a look at the work of Ralph Merkle (he works at Xerox-PARC). very enlightening and possible.

    Lea
  • exactly... I'm looking at it too (in my spare time). it seems to be the most appropriate answer to the heat dissapation problem.

    people's work to look at: Drexler, Merkle

    Lea
  • actually, take a look at nanocomputing (and I don't mean "let's stretch silicon as far as it can go")

    I predict (and it's a good guess) that the earliest nanocomputers will be mechanical, progressing to electric when we get a handle on quantum effects in computing that size (2 nm for the smallest electronic gate, which mechanical can be far smaller). Another thing about these computers: they will utilize reversible logic.
    The amount of heat that they would have to dissapate otherwise is approx. ln(2)kT PER bit lost (i.e. 1 per AND or OR gate)

    if you're interested in this, email me...

    I have a paper in the publication works on nanotech in spacesuit repair (my strategy is not to tell them how old I am :) at

    http://mars2012.berkeley.edu/teams/repair/

    which seems to be flaky (no, it's not mine...) so if you would like a copy of the paper, I can email it out... I'd like some feedback

    Lea
  • how can you make a robot smaller than the smallest possible computer core?
    What you call the smallest possible computer core depends on the technology you're talking about. Would you consider the 8086 to be the smallest? What about an 8-bit processor like the 6502? If you're talking about a very simple function, what about a programmable logic part, like a PAL16R6? The technology that drives down the die size and cost of DRAMs and big processors can also be applied to these simpler designs. If you look at some of the work on quantum dots, it's quite remarkable for speed, power consumption, and size. It may well give us a fundamentally better way to build silicon circuits.

    Maybe you can find something better than circuits etched on silicon surfaces. Tom Knight at MIT [mit.edu] is looking at how to get bacteria to perform useful computations, using genetic engineering methods that have become well understood. You can mail-order custom DNA sequences, graft them into cells, and get the ribosomes to synthesize the proteins you want, if you're smart enough to design proteins. Eric Drexler, generally recognized as the guy who formulated the concept of nanotech, wrote one of his early papers [imm.org] on the possibility of engineering proteins as a step to a more complete form of nanotechnology.

    The nanotechnology literature (see Engines of Creation [foresight.org] and Unbounding the Future [foresight.org]) talks about placing atoms at specific locations as you build up a molecular machine incrementally, in a process called mechanosynthesis [xerox.com]. If this works (and I'm not aware of any technically sound arguments that it wouldn't), it might become possible to build almost any object whose existence doesn't violate the laws of physics. At least, it would become possible to build a lot of different things we can't build today.

    how the hell do you tell them what to do? ...
    Biological cells are pretty small compared to today's microprocessors. A typical cell is 10 or 20 microns long, and transistors (of which you need thousands to make a microprocessor) are about half a square micron. Inside the cell, you find all kinds of fascinating, complex, coordinated activities taking place. We are understanding more about how cells work every year. So maybe we can learn to copy how all those parts know what to do.
    how big are these things going to have to start out, since the first generation must contain all sets of code for all generations of nanomachines?
    It probably won't work that way. It would be very hard to anticipate every possible future generation, and build it into the first one. Early nanomachines will probably have fixed programs that we can't change, but later we'll have nanomachines that we can program from the outside. The programs might be some kind of tape, like messenger RNA, and maybe the nanomachines would be like ribosomes, grabbing the starting end of the tape and then reading instructions as they move along the tape.

    There is a lot of excellent information about nanotechnology at Ralph Merkle's site [xerox.com] at Xerox PARC.

  • The amount of heat that they would have to dissapate otherwise is approx. ln(2)kT PER bit lost
    It turns out that people are working on this problem. I went to a talk by Carlin Vieri [std.com] who is building a completely reversible microprocessor as his doctoral thesis. Fascinating stuff. In his current implementation, it runs at about a third the power of an equivalent irreversible design. Presumably when this becomes important enough that really big money is thrown at the problem, bigger gains will be possible.
  • If money were dangled in front, like maybe the bounty-ware approach, we might see this happening...
    This is being done, perhaps not as extensively as one might hope. The Foresight Institute [foresight.org] is offering a series of prizes [foresight.org] for advances in nanotechnology. Two prizes of $5000 each will be given out in 1999 for the best experimental and theoretical work respectively. There is a $250,000 prize, the Feynman Grand Prize, for anybody who can demostrate a 50-nanometer 8 bit adder and a 100-nanometer robot arm. Whoever wins the Grand Prize will have done a significant chunk of the work that would get us to a complete molecular manufacturing infrastructure.

  • Now, this might have been mentioned previously, but my head aches to much for me to check it up. Here comes the rant.

    Isn't the United States of America a wonderful country? Not only do they go around the world, creating and fighting wars that are none of their damn business, also the seem to like to screw their own country. I mean, just take a look at it. Like half of the population is medically fat, a rather large quantity of the population is analphabetic, and loads of people have no homes. I wouldn't call a country modern where people are starving to death, nor where a murder occurs like every half minute.

    With this situaion, is the right thing to do to invest $500 000 000 000 into developing tiny machines?

    Poor country. And I'm going there next week! Perhaps I'm crasy too...




  • Now this was why I said 'medically' fat, not that half of the population was statistically overweight. I consider people overweight who are not medically overweight, but what being medically overweight is is that your body gets hurt by it. There is more than a marginally larger risk of getting diseases, you die earlier and you have trouble moving etc. Have I clarified what I was trying to say, or just made it worse?


  • > Given that you can produce nanomachines, how the hell do you tell them what to do?

    Well, put simply, this is the wrong question. Nanotech machines aren't like PCs, in that they have a bunch of different tools and sensors and a microchip 'brain' that can be programmed. Nanos are usually very single-purpose and very narrowly useful for just that one thing.

    It's not that "the code will be embedded", it's that the machines will be programmed only insofar as their mechanical design allows them to perform a specific function. Even a relatively complex nanomachine with multiple gears and sensors and so forth will probably be controlled only by its own mechanical design.
  • Given that you can produce nanomachines, how the hell do you tell them what to do?

    They won't need a big computer of course. Remember early 4-bit processors with perhaps a few hundred transistors? Imagine building one of those with today's .18 tecnology or something even smaller. A nanomachine don't need to be super-intelligent and it don't need to be fast at all. You make up for that by having large numbers of them. And the first nanomachine won't need code sets for all future machines - a "nano-factory" building simpler nanomachines can be made programmable. Perhaps electronic programmable, perhaps programmable by feeding it "blueprints" in the form of DNA or other useful signal molecules.
  • You should lighten up. Your attitude's a little more annoying than Hemos' grammar.
  • "Please remember that how you say something is often more important than what you say." -Rob Malda

    I hope you interpret "how you say something" as having a diplomatic tone and open mind instead of having good grammar and spelling.
  • Awright! Where can I get me a couple of gallons?


    -> A disturbing message:
  • answers this question. Not to ruin it for anyone, but basically the Dirty Pair (Lovely Angels!) finish off an opponent continually repaired by internal nanomachines by beating the crap out of him - to the point where the heat from the repair broils him and the entire system overheats. If you can stand the fact that it's an American redo of a Japanese series, it's pretty entertaining.

    Other good fictional examinations of nanotechnology include The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson (If you haven't read it, why are you reading slashdot? Go get his books!), Steel Beach by John Varley, the comic series Transmetropolitan and Gunmn/Battle Angel Alita (Name varies by country), and the incredibly inventively named anthology Nanotech. I suggest all of these strongly except for the last; it's wildly varying in quality, just check it out if possible.

  • Okay, maybe I'm just being paranoid, but does anyone else find the following quotes a little scary?

    Proponents said a larger U.S. investment in nanotechnology, which promises major advances in electronics, materials, biomedicine and national security

    trade-offs between military and civilian research will have to be made

    How exactly are they planning on having national security enhanced by nanotechnology, and in what capability are the military researching nanotech? Miniature cameras that float through the air, killer nanites to assassinate dictators, total interdiction of the border similar to the NeoVictorian border in The Diamond Age? Thing is, those ideas only took a second, and I'm sure the govt. has far more people far more inventive then me thinking about possible uses already.

    What about little bombs implanted in every citizen's cortex that explode on signal in conjunction with biomedical chips (already being researched) that tap into the ocular nerve (nerve interfaces exist - look up the old technology of cochlear implants and the new ones of ocular implants), scan for forbidden words using a newfangled version of OCR, and then blow the cortex if the wrong ones are found. Paranoid fantasy? I know. It's just an example of what could happen.

    This better be damn open - would you trust closed source for running the nanomachines that control your body? Not necessarily GPL, but... what an opportunity this will be. All those Metal Ages, The Atomic Age, The Nano Age...

  • One's mind can be so open that one's brains fall out.

    Seriously, poor grammar and spelling detract much from any otherwise good point. I know that I discount a lot of what is said here because I consider the poster to be a nitwit.

    If you are a native English speaker, but cannot master the simple nuances of "there", "their", and "they're", or "to", "too", and "two", then you have no point to make. You are a chimp (or might that be, instead, "chump"?).

    A little work put into proper spelling and grammar may not lend credence to any argument you might make, but an obvious lack of English skills (in a native speaker, I realize that other languages have different grammatical structures, and I can deal with that) certainly detracts from it.

    --Corey
  • BadlandZ,

    I just wanted to say thanks. I hope that news/reporters, industry, and US Congress folks will look you up for consulting. You presented a few significant concepts/directions in a way that most (Non-TEK) CEOs, repoters, politicians, and folks like me could understand and avoid science/technology investment pitfalls.

    Genetic companies have had a tough time. I expect that the future Molecular a/o Atomic Engineering a/o Architecture companies will have a few bad (big Ups-Downs) years before extreamly significant gains. I expect that there will be major software requirements for the machines and processes required for fast-efficient tailored a/o batch manufacturing.

    Anyway I look forward to the unknown products and future IPOs of the "nano-tech" sector.

    Ah! TEK = Technology Experience and Knowledge, non-TEK folks, I believe, are those people that make a living by means other than direct contact/relationship with Science, Engineering, Research, Development, Programming, Integration, Analysis ... of technology. PLEASE, help them understand ...?

  • I think I blundered along in my prose and made myself come across more critical than I should. I I believe in the peer review process (at the grant level, publication level, AND within a research organization) as the best way known to decide where funding and attention should go. There's nothing like a smack in the head from the friends you respect to remind you that you are in fact fallible.

    I just wanted to point out that the process does have some imperfections, and unfortunately I've seen this first hand. No, not as a jilted researcher, but I worked at a research institute and have seen junk science pushed as legitimate science (not necassarily at this institute but within the field in general). I've heard post-grads and PI's alike complain about it.

    I never like to hear that my hard earned tax dollars are wasted, but nothing is perfect, even government funded research.

    Now about corporate funded research, have I got stories...
  • Peer Review is a fact of life in research. As a matter of fact it is usually the only way you can tell a bogus research project over the ones with real results.

    However, peer review is definately not perfect and fails when a large portion of the peers would benefit from a certain outcome (look at the environmentalist movement). Peers will support absurd assumptions and findings to secure more grant funding (ie: "we can band together and cause concern over an issue enough to get more money from the congress!"). This happens a lot.

    I wonder if there is a coorelation between that phenomena and open source? Would bands of programmers push an implementation/solution if it promised more exposure or jobs even though it was a faulty solution?

    I don't know because the chance of getting a monetary benefit is not strongly present. If money were dangled in front, like maybe the bounty-ware approach, we might see this happening...

  • The smallest posible computer core is probably smaller than you think. In Eric Drexlers book he talkes about a nanocomputer thats 400 cubic nm. And thats fully mechanical. I imagine that using quantum electrodynamic effects you could shring it quite a ways.

    As for communicating with the nanomachines, you could think of a number of uni-directional methods. Flashes of light (if the nano machine is protected against EM radiation in that band) could be used to communicate both power and instructions. Or how about a nanomanufactured record of sorts, where the nanomachine could ride the grove reading different atoms as ones and zeros.

    Well, I am by no means qualified to say this, but I think that getting information to the nanomachine wont be a very large hurdle, perhaps getting information back to a human will be though.
  • This is the preciise reson that nonotech must be public.
    If a single central agency has absolute control over nanotech than that leaves us with two very big problems that would be very hard to deal with:

    1)External terrorist groups illeagally obtain nanotech knowledg/resources. The central agency, being the only group that has nonotech would be horribly unpropared for an outside group to have nanotech as well. Catastrophy results.

    2)The central agency itself could become corrupt, result in catastrophy to a greater extent than the above.

    While I believe that nanotechnology will remain out of the hands of the home hobbyist for some time to come, if many diverse(funded) groups have knowledge of nanotechnology, then almost the first thing on the government's (et al) agenda would be nanotech defense, and even though the risk of nanotech missuse is greater, our preparedness is likewise increased.

    lactose
  • OK - I'm a /. reader, a software engineer, and a relatively pragmatic person. Magic works. I have verified this in the same way that I verify other aspects of the behavior of the objective universe, through experimentation.

    I don't think that this fact requires a person to adopt a particular paradigm about the world. In particular, I don't think that the "technology is bad" paradigm somehow must come along with the "magic works" one.

    People don't have to "believe" this; they don't have to believe in electriity either, but it doesn't alter the facts.

    moebius_4d

    ref: www.xeper.org
  • The genetics boys will get there first.
  • How much longer until man realizes that nature is much more then what we perceive...
    Science today is advancing fast, but shouldn't we be starting from the other end.

    If we don't start looking and thinking at it in a different way, we are working on our own self destruction...

  • ...hell, if they ( Congress ) would just cut, a tenth of the wasted money on "The War on Some Drugs" ad's we would then see some real progress. but it is good to see that some of my tax dollers isnt wasted. still, govment moves too slow for an information sociality [sp]... but thats for a diffrent rant.

    nmarshall
    #include "standard_disclaimer.h"
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
  • Ya know couch potatoes and their attention spans.
    The only way to keep their attention is to frequently pump up their adrenaline. Fascinating animals.

    Standard grammar:
    subject, verb, object.

    Media grammar:
    action, camera, lights.

    Announced - Action: the trap.
    Nanotech research (budget left out cause research is more exciting than budgets) - Camera: some background info.

    [Suspense!]

    Set to be doubled - Lights: What was announced?.
  • There's a realplayer copy of the hearing on nanotechnology last Tuesday here [house.gov], which led to this government funding. Just click on the View Archive button next to it. Molecular systems research is pretty interesting stuff in my opinion, so screw you naysayers on nanotechnology ;)
  • There may eventually be computer-driven nanomachines, but it wont start out that way. We already have simple nano-scale machinery.. gears, motors, etc and they arent computer driven, they're self-controlled because a gear can only do 1 thing.. turn. If we needed nanomachines with internal logic processors they would probably not use ram or transistor-type devices based on the flow of electrons, it'd be closer to the old 'Analytical Engine' designes.. a computer based on actual mechanical processes rather than the flow of electricty through electronic components, since nanomachine scales are simply too small. A brownian-motion driven propeller developed as a possible power source for nanomachines was the size of a medium-sized molecule. Perhaps by making a nanomachine, say, the size of a blood cell we could have it accept simple external commands, but it would have to be from extreamly short range since it coulnt have an antenna more than a few nanometers long (or across what with the new fractal ones).
    Dreamweaver
  • Why slow them down needlessly ;-P

    Ben
  • One of my professors in college is friends with Smalley... and I never thought Bucky-ball would come to such a use??? It's a small world I guess.

  • Althought a wee bit off topic, I feel some corrections need to be made to his statments. First off all, There is no proof that man is destroying the planet. Using resources yes, destroying it, no. No scientist can pin down Earth's warming trend to Greenhouse gases. Its possible, and logical, that we are still coming out of the ice ages. Second, the United States' founding principles are the best government ever created. To claim otherwise is almost always the insane ramblings of a communist. Although the US government of the 1990's is far from perfect due to corruption, beauracracy, and over-regulation, it is still, IMHO, the best on the planet. Finally, the concept of God cannot be proven. To say that humans are gods is inherently flawed, as gods must be all powerful and perfect, of which humans are, unfortunately, neither.

    ==================================================
  • Yep, you're dead right here. Biz as uzual...
    Nothing like having a bunch of old goats give each other grants while younger, more innovative engineers and researchers get the shaft.
    Bend over, maw, we're going to Newark!
  • Then they'll really get things done!

    Will in Seattle
  • Aha! Now we know why Scully ran across that - it was version 0.89 of a nano machine in a test subject.

    Will in Seattle
  • Of course, then not only will the conspiracy theorists be right(wing), but the nanos will die of severe boredom ...

    Will in Seattle
  • A lot of people have put a lot of thought into this one. Early nanotools will be externally driven, possibly by pressure-activated pistons. Nano-scale computers will eventually replace these early, externally-driven devices.
    There are plausible, if unproven, designs for nano-scale computers, including a variety of non-volatile RAM. It's likely to happen. See foresight [foresight.org] for more details.

    What I want to know is: What do you mean by "And how big are these things going to have to start out, since the first generation must contain all sets of code for all generations of nanomachines?"

    Why? Please don't confuse the concept of self-replication with the fallacy that we have to figure everything out first and turn it all over to the machines. Early nanotech will be macrocomputer-driven. It will, however, provide the tools to create nanocomputers. From there, it's still quite an engineering leap to get to fully self-replicating systems.
  • Don't confuse the current micron-scale gear experiments with true nanotech. These very small machines are called MEMS (Micro Electro Mechanical Systems?). There are actually production MEMS being used today in airbag sensors. They're very small, and very cool, but they are not true nano. They are built using lithography, with many of the same techniques used for integrated circuits. The true nanotechnology vision involves molecular manufacturing. Materials are custom built at the atomic and then molecular level. Individual machines would be systems of a few (or many) highly complex molecules with specific shapes corresponding to mechanical devices with which we are familiar.
  • I was reading about this a few weeks ago. There were a number of ideas:

    1) You can always run machines slower to slow heat production.
    2) Reversible computing (another post discussed it) reduces heat dissipation.
    3) I read of a suggestion for a coffee-mug sized ultracomputer with hundreds or thousands of gallons of water being pumped through per minute to provide cooling.

    It seems to me that I know of at least one category of machine which consists of millions or billions of nanomechanical devices in close proximity, under continuous operation. It's able to operate at less than 100 degrees fahrenheit for years on end.

    V
  • Forget the government, what about Microsoft? You'd have to buy service packs once a month or else the MS-Nanobots would extend little blades and start cutting all of your blood vessels. And the MS-Nanobots wouldn't be something you voluntarily purchase. MS would secretly pay Starbucks to dump these things in the coffee by the truckload. Not to mention paying Abercrombie and J. Crew to dust their clothes with them. (after all, if they can afford to spend that much on coffee and clothes, then MS can charge them anything they want...)

    Of course, within a week, the FSF/OSS community would whip up GPL'd hunter-seeker nanobots that would kill MS 'bots on on sight, so we'd be all good....
  • Research doesn't fall into a range of money any more than it would fall into a range of temperature. "Nanotech research currently in the quarter billion dollar range" makes as much sense as "Nanotech research currently in the three meter range." Research isn't quantifiable; its funding is.

    The guy had an honest beef -- sure, we could all parse the sentence, the same way we all know how to pronounce '3l337 d00dz,' but it's not out of line to ask for a higher standard of English in /. postings.

    Also, opening with 'announced today, nanotech research...' means the research was announced today -- clearly not the intent of the sentence. Hemos meant (and we all understood) that the budget had been 'announced today,' and that it was twice as big as the old budget, and that it was a budget for nanotech research. But that ain't what the sentence says.

    gomi
  • .. I thought the Feds were 15-20 years ahead in the technology field? Wouldn't they have already Developed nano-spys and 90Zigabyte HDs? I keep hearing about how advanced they are from their own mouths in interviews on those silly cable shows. I really think they need to co-invest with colgate so those of us who drink excess amounts of coffee can have little robots clean our teech all day long to keep that nasty brown-tooth syndrome away.

  • Nanites will most likely operate like enzymes, at least in theory. They will be mechanical, but they will contain no programming logic. They will be driven by interacting with normal molecules, say a fatty acid in a blood clot, and using bonding energies and forces and perhaps using molecular gears, will be able to manipulate, i.e. destroy the clots. There will be no need for programming, the nanites by design will operate themselves due to their structure.
  • "How much longer until man realizes that nature is much more then what we perceive... Science today is advancing fast, but shouldn't we be starting from the other end. "

    So all Science lead to destruction of ourself? Is is what you try to tell here? I don't belive in things being "evil" or "good" by nature. I believe that everything is clearly neutral until some one conscious living creature (someone might say that we don't belong to them...) use it for a specific propose.
  • A few years back I was reading some nanotech sci-fi (That was back when I had time to read) and came up with the idea that nanomachines could be simulated on a macroscopic scale now using something like, say, legos. Assembling said legos in such a manner that they could do computations in binary would be both a very interesting exercise and would also prepare programmers for the day when they will will be programming on a microscopic scale.

    For that matter, a nanomachine simulator would probably make an interesting project and start building nanoprogramming skills now.
  • Nanotechnology will change the world as we know it - and we will finally be able to travel the stars like so many of us have dreamed - that is, of course, unless we don't kill ourselves first. Many people think that Nanotechnology is a NEW concept and that it will change everything (it will) - however, the truth is, Nanotechnology has always existed. HUMANS, AS WELL AS EVERY OTHER BACTERIA AND LIVING ORGANISMS, ARE THE PRODUCT OF NANOTECHNOLOGY! With this in mind, how is Nanotechnology (manmade) going to help the world, if we (the giant nanites) are already destroying it and turning it into the famous 'Gray Goo' as Drexler puts it? The fact of the matter is, unless everything becomes free, and the pathetic United States is destroyed, and ALL Religion is vanquished from the face of the earth (There is no God - We are our own Gods) - only then will manmade Nanotechnology work correctly - only then will the world/universe be worth living in. Death to the United States and its pathetic people who happen to mostly FREELOADERS off other people's work - Death to them all, I say. The Universe would be a hell of a lot better without scum such as this...
  • There is much more to this world than appears at first glance. We humans still perceive many things "in a mirror, dimly". Nonetheless, those who dare to look will find a great many things.
    Perhaps, one day we will find that there is more to "magic" as well...

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