Since the concept of nanosystems first arose, people have asked “how will these things be powered?” Now there’s another answer from Z.L. Wang at Georgia Tech, in a paper published April 6 in Science. Extremetech explains: The generators use a series of vertically aligned zinc oxide nanowires that move inside a zigzag plate ...

The Institute for the Future, in a UK-funded study published on the Stanford website, presents eleven outlooks for nanotechnology over the next 50 years: • Better drug delivery through nanotechnology • Carbon nanotubes and lighter vehicles • The coming nanoshell revolution in oncology • The dream of biochemical nanocomputing • ...

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 top four nanotech articles highlighted in the first issue of Nature Nanotechnology is “Making Molecular Machines Work” by Wesley Browne and Ben Feringa. Full text of the article is free, at least for now. From the conclusions: The exquisite solutions nature has found to control molecular motion, evident in the ...

I just received two copies of a beautiful brochure from the California NanoSystems Institute describing the new nanotechnology facility they’re building at UCLA, opening informally this fall and formally on September 7-9, 2007 (there will also be one at UCSB). They’re looking for sponsorship. My first thought was, boy do they have ...

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers, who’ve done two conferences focusing in part on molecular nanotech, now have a video on nanomanufacturing. The script is free, and so is a video clip with some images, so if the cost is an issue for you ($99 SME members/$280 nonmembers), you can get quite a bit just [...]

The Woodrow Wilson Center Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has a cute short (8:25) movie posted in which Bethany Maynard interviews her dad Dr. Andrew Maynard and Dr. Barbara Karn on nanotech. Worth showing to kids, and even adults may enjoy it. The best part is when Bethany and her brother Alex apply mustard [...]

John Faith brings our attention to an item at PhysicsWeb on how to overcome friction in nanosized mechanical devices: Friction is a big problem in nanosized devices because they have huge surface-to-volume ratios, which means that their surfaces quickly wear out and seize up. Traditional lubricants are useless in such machines because they ...