Small Times brings word of advances in making longer carbon nanotubes. The company involved, Nanocomp Technologies, reminds us why these materials are so intriguing: Individual nanotubes have extraordinary properties as they are: Strong - 100 times stronger than steel. Lightweight – 30 percent lighter than aluminum. Conductive - conduct ...

Michael Berger of the useful Nanowerk website has produced a clarification essay on the size of the nanotechnology market, helping to put the hype in perspective. Some excerpts: First of all, these market size forecasts are dealing with what is called evolutionary nanotechnology. The goal of evolutionary nanotechnology is to improve existing ...

Small Times reports on a meeting held in Oregon among a wide variety of nanotechnology-based business participants, at which many commercialization challenges were discussed. One was difficulties encountered with the U.S. Patent office: Start-ups expressed frustration with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Long waits for patent ...

The company mPHASE points out that battery technology advance has been dismal compared to computer chips. Now they’ve used nanotechnology to build a more environmentally-friendly, longer shelf-life battery, and made a two-minute movie, posted on YouTube, to tell us about it. If the link doesn’t work for you, go to YouTube and search ...

The Harvard Business Review has named its top 20 Breakthrough Ideas for 2007, and home-based, atomically-precise manufacturing makes the list. Business in the Nanocosm, by UC Berkeley business prof Rashi Glazer, does a good job of conveying the future of home-based nanomanufacturing. Excerpts: Conventional manufacturing carves or distills a ...

Nanotechnology career advice is available from the U.S. Departments of Labor and Education at CareerVoyages.gov. It’s a pretty good place to start for people who are entirely new to the field. Most of the link lists include useful sites. A couple of areas could use additional work. The Nanotechnology — Tools and Technology section lists ...

Nanowerk reports that the German branch of Friends of the Earth (BUND) is calling for Samsung to withdraw from the market its washing machine using silver nanoparticles: …BUND criticized that considerable amounts of silver could enter sewage plants and seriously trouble the biologic purification process of the waste water. In addition, ...

Regular readers of Nanodot know that we never give nanotechnology investment advice. We are not experts at nanotech investing and our own personal portfolios are dismal. That said, here’s some news from Nanotero (pdf): Nantero Announces Routine Use of Nanotubes in Production CMOS Fabs Carbon Nanotube Electronics Era Has Begun Woburn, ...

Here’s a nanotech news item from the Financial Express (India) that shows the challenge that developing countries such as India face in their efforts to leapfrog over intermediate levels of technology directly to operating right at the cutting edge: Indian nanotech firm to move to Singapore Singapore, November 1: Bangalore-based ...

One of the cover stories in Machine Design is by Mark Sims, CEO of Nanorex, on nanotech molecular modeling in CAD (computer-aided design). For those of us who have already been tracking the field, the most exciting part is at the end: The software does not currently output data that could drive such machines as, [...]