Nanotechnology

Overheard - DNA origami

“At IBM, scientists are investigating the possibility of using structures made of DNA strings as buildings blocks for future microchip designs. The structures, dubbed ‘DNA origami,’ self assemble onto lithographic templates which can lead to manufacturing of circuit features down to 22 nanometers.” MedGadget, IBM’s DNA Origami May Lead to New Computer Chip Design

Overheard: Your grandchild’s car might be made of buckypaper

Buckypaper is similar in concept to papier mache - layer it up thick and it gets stronger. So strong, in fact, that aeroplanes and rockets and even common household chairs could all be made from buckypaper in some distant future world. We are therefore calling it papier mache 2.0. Gary Cutlack, World about to get lighter and stronger thanks to “buckypaper” and the magic of nanotubing

Buckypaper forms when a suspension of carbon nanotubes is forces through a fine-mesh filter.  Like a lot of great inventions, it was found accidently; researchers were trying to find out how stars created carbon.  Scientists and engineers are trying to figure out how to produce the material in bulk. Right now it takes several hours to make a single sheet of buckypaper.

Video: Buckypaper

Buckypaper is made of tube-shaped carbon molecules (carbon nanotubes) that are 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. The Florida Advanced Center for Composite Technologies (FAC2T) at Florida A&M University is working on developing real world applications for the material.

Overheard: The next killer technology could be nano

Nano enthusiasts see it as the next “platform technology” — one that will, like electricity or micro-computing, change the way we do almost everything. Carole Bass, Nanotech: The Unknown Risks

Carole Bass provides a good overview of some of the dangers nanotech poses — she’s not yelling fire, but she urges us to investigate any smoke.

Overheard: Programmable Metallization Cell Memory

“All the current limitations in portable electronic storage could go away. You could record video of every event in your life and store it.” Michael Kozicki

There was a re-run of Dallas on today that had JR Ewing making a call from his car. He was wheeling and dealing on this big brick that was connected with a heavy pigtail to a box that sat between his bucket seats. It reminded me of the day we got our first minivan.

The minivan had a car phone. It sounds silly even to say “car phone” now. We pretty much spent the first day entertaining the kids by pulling into friends’ driveways and letting the kids call.

“I’m calling you from the car and we’re in your driveway — look out the window! See me? I’m waving!”

It was a dollar a call, but it was worth it. Boy, that was an exciting day.

That was twenty years ago. Now you see kids in third grade watching DVDs in the car as Mom drives them to Cub Scouts. That need for mobile technology is why Hulu is going to succeed.

Those kids are going to want to watch the latest Simpson episode on their cell phones and the little portable DVD players kids are using now are going to be as clunky as JR Ewing’s car phone.

Having all that video at your fingertips is going to require a lot of memory. And flash is pretty much hit its limit with the iPhone.

I predict the next disruptive technology is going to be ion memory. The technical name is Programmable Metallization Cell memory. It’s nanotechnology that’ll give you a terabyte of storage on a thumb drive.

Alexis Madrigal explains: Programmable Metallization Cell memory stores information in a fundamentally different way from flash. Instead of storing bits as an electronic charge, the technology creates nanowires, from copper atoms the size of a virus, to record binary ones and zeros.

The key enabling technology for the memory is nano-ionics, a field that focuses on moving and transforming positively charged atoms. In PMC memory, the charged atoms, or ions, are harnessed by applying a negative charge, which transforms them into copper atoms lined up to form nanowires.

Overheard - Nanotech future so bright even a housefly has got to wear shades

Teeny tiny shades. This housefly is sporting a pair of two-millimeter-wide eyeglasses, engineered with fast-pulse laser technology.

According the the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, there are now almost 600 consumer products made with nanotechnology, including computer processors by Intel and AMD, high capacity hard disk drives, battery pack systems and memory. Even the iPhone uses nanotech manufacturing. Got a minute? Browse the product list.

Photo courtesy of Micreon GmbH

Overheard - Grace Hopper

“The wonderful thing about standards is that there’s so many of them to choose from.” Andrew Tanenbaum, quoting Grace Murray Hopper

I would like to nominate December 9th, the birthday of Admiral Grace Hopper, to be our first international IT holiday. Why Grace Hopper, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Anyone whose obituary in Time magazine says “She is perhaps best known for having said “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission” deserves a holiday named after her.

How would we celebrate Grace Hopper Day, you ask? Let’s take a quick look at some of Admiral Hopper’s contributions and see what we can come up with.

Grace Murray Hopper, a pioneer in computer science, is generally credited with developments that led to COBOL, the programming language for business applications on which the world’s largest corporations ran for more than a generation. After receiving her Ph.D. in mathematics at Yale, Hopper worked as an associate professor at Vassar College before joining the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1943. She went on to work as a researcher and mathematician at the Eckert-Mauchly Computer Corp. and the Sperry Corporation. Having retired from the Navy after World War II, she returned in 1967 to work at the Naval Data Automation Command. By the time of her death in 1992, Rear Admiral Grace Hopper had left many contributions to the field of software engineering and was arguably the world’s most famous programmer.

But here are some lesser-known facts:

• The clock in her office ran counterclockwise to remind her that there’s always more than one way to do something.
• She hated the words “because we’ve always done it this way.”
• She joked that she created COBOL because she didn’t like to balance her checkbook.
• When she was a child, she practiced her troubleshooting skills (not always successfully) by taking apart alarm clocks.
• She called her Admiral’s uniform her “identifier” and used it to remind listeners that every record in a computer must have a unique identifier so it can store data and retrieve it later.
• During her lifetime, she was a popular TV talk show guest.
• She chain-smoked unfiltered cigarettes.
• She liked to be introduced as the “third programmer on the first large-scale digital computer.”
• She is credited with applying the engineering term “bug” to computing when her team found a moth trapped in a relay of the MarkII computer. It was a joke, but the moth is now in the Smithsonian.
• She was first asked to resign from the Navy when she was 40 because she was too old. By the time she was 80, President Reagan had to go before Congress once a year to get permission for her NOT to have to resign from the Navy. She is quoted as saying “I seem to be doing a lot of retiring.”

Amazing Grace, as Admiral Hopper was often called, was a colorful woman who might inspire some interesting ways to celebrate a holiday, don’t you think?

I can just see it. On December 9, we’ll all gather together in hyperspace and celebrate (virtually, of course) Grace Hopper Day. If nothing else, it’ll be interesting to see what your co-workers pick as their “unique identifier.” We can all spend the day troubleshooting and brainstorming new ways to solve old problems.

Here’s Grace Hopper on one of the first David Letterman Shows: