Foresight Feynman Prize winner Nadrian Seeman will share the $1 million Kavli Prize in nanoscience with IBM’s Don Eigler.  From the SciAm blog by Katie Moisse:

Donald Eigler from IBM’s Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., and Nadrian Seeman from New York University will jointly accept the nanoscience prize for illuminating the basic units of matter and the building blocks of nanotechnology.

We are extremely pleased that Ned Seeman, who won our Feynman Prize back in 1995 (see photo), has now received this wonderful recognition and delightful amount of money.  May it happen to our other Feynman Prize winners as well.  Congrats to both winners!  —Chris Peterson

Sander Olson interviewed Jim Von Ehr of Zyvex for the website NextBigFuture.com by Brian Wang.  Here’s an excerpt:

We are confident that we will be able to create simple, blocklike objects within the next five years. From that point, capabilities should grow fairly rapidly. Once simple block objects are created, we can programmably assemble them to make more complex objects. Zyvex has already identified a number of market opportunities for these. Once we get the basic capability of creating these simple objects, we can expand their complexity and sophistication rapidly. From the first integrated circuit to an extremely valuable integrated circuit business ecosystem took a surprisingly short amount of time, compared to previous technological revolutions. I’d expect a Digital Matter ecosystem to also develop rapidly once the basics are in place. Although I don’t feel comfortable making specific predictions as to when molecular manufacturing will emerge, by 2020 we should have rudimentary molecular manufacturing systems in operation. Once we can create these blocks, the technology of molecular manufacturing will advance exponentially. Digital matter will eventually change everything.

Read the whole thing.  The page includes other relevant info and links as well.  —Chris Peterson

The U.S. President’s Council on Advisors on Science and Technology requested public input on a number of manufacturing topics including “molecular-level, atomically precise production.” Foresight joined with our sister organization IMM to produce a statement on Atomically Precise Manufacturing, now posted on the OpenPCAST site, with public voting and commenting still continuing, so join in the discussion:

We address this question as it relates to Atomically Precise Manufacturing (APM), a critical technology specifically cited in one of PCAST’s White Papers for this question:

“ISSUE: What should be the Federal Government’s role in the development of production processes and related sensing, measurement, and analytical capabilities for molecular-level, atomically precise production.”

This has been a central question for both the Foresight Institute and the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing since our inceptions in 1986 and 1991, respectively. Our position is that the development of Productive Nanosystems—high volume, lost-cost assembly systems for atomically precise products—is of strategic importance to our nation. Projected benefits promise clean and abundant energy, permanent cures for serious diseases, a clean environment, and the security of advanced capabilities for a strong national defense. APM will dramatically reduce the cost of manufacturing most commercial products, paying for its development costs many times over, but the technical challenges and development time horizon have precluded major initiatives by industry players.

In addressing the question of consortia, we broaden our response to consider a range of complementary approaches. The scientific and engineering challenges needed to develop Atomically Precise Manufacturing requires a focus and commitment that extends well beyond the limitations of a consortium-based activity, and is best handled by a mix of programs that focus on different strengths:

- Consortia
- Incentive prizes
- 3-5 year Fixed Fee Small Business Initiatives
- DOE or NIH Grant Programs
- Major DoD or NASA Acquisition Programs

A table comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches is available at: http://imm.org/images/IMM-FI-R&DLeverageTable.jpg

SBIR/STTR projects are useful as quick ways to provide funding to smaller teams in industry and academia, stimulating innovative R&D projects toward APM in the short term. Incentive prizes (Xprize, DARPA challenges) are particularly good at organizing entrepreneurial teams to integrate and make operational technologies that have been developed, but are immature. Consortia will take longer to organize, but can leverage private capital and create incentives for industry to cooperate on a massive precompetitive R&D base.

To create focused research results that will provide major advances in Energy and Medicine, and a flow of knowledge to the industry teams, we recommend the use of grant programs funded by NIH and DOE. These target areas are detailed in the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems, available at www.foresight.org/roadmaps

Developing APM systems requires a long term commitment on the order of 10-15 years. For the complex and focused systems integration and engineering program that we envision, the structured discipline developed for major federal acquisitions by NASA and DoD is an ideal approach. Awarding two or three prime contracts with alternative development approaches (as with the Navy’s Littoral Combat Ship program) will provide more widespread participation, reduce overall risk, and accelerate development to the benefit of all.

Unlike in most large federal acquisition programs, and certainly unlike in a typical consortium-based effort, there are major policy issues to be addressed at the national and international levels. The impact of APM on the economy, nationally and internationally, will require an engaged discussion from a wide range of stakeholders. And the technology will be dual-use—mandating DoD involvement toward objectives that are stabilizing and positive for global security.

Many rewards and challenges await. This is a program worthy of becoming our highest national priority, with the attendant devotion of our best minds and strongest spirits.

Respectfully submitted,

David Forrest, President of IMM and Senior Fellow with the Foresight Institute
Neil Jacobstein, Chairman, Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, CEO, Teknowledge
Christine Peterson, President, Foresight Institute

We hope you’ll log into the site and indicate your views of the above.  Special thanks to Dr. David Forrest, President of IMM and Senior Fellow at Foresight, for his key role in preparing this statement.  —Chris Peterson

Foresight Feynman Prize winner Robert Freitas brings to our attention the first published theoretical study of DMS (diamond mechanosynthesis) tool-workpiece operating envelopes and optimal tooltip trajectories for a complete positionally controlled reaction sequence, which he did with colleagues in Russia.

He writes, “This paper represents the first extensive DMS tooltip trajectory analysis, examining a wide range of viable multiple degrees-of-freedom tooltip motions in 3D space that could be employed to recharge the hydrogen abstraction tool, a key reaction set in DMS.”  The published paper appears in the Journal of Computational and Theoretical Nanoscience.

ABSTRACT. The use of precisely applied mechanical forces to induce site-specific chemical transformations is called positional mechanosynthesis, and diamond is an important early target for achieving mechanosynthesis experimentally. A key step in diamond mechanosynthesis (DMS) employs an ethynyl-based hydrogen abstraction tool (HAbst) for the site-specific mechanical dehydrogenation of H-passivated diamond surfaces, creating an isolated radical site that can accept adatoms via radical-radical coupling in a subsequent positionally controlled reaction step. The abstraction tool, once used (HAbstH), must be recharged by removing the abstracted hydrogen atom from the tooltip, before the tool can be used again. This paper presents the first theoretical study of DMS tool-workpiece operating envelopes and optimal tooltip trajectories for any positionally controlled reaction sequence – and more specifically, one that may be used to recharge a spent hydrogen abstraction tool – during scanning-probe based ultrahigh-vacuum diamond mechanosynthesis. Trajectories were analyzed using Density Functional Theory (DFT) in PC-GAMESS at the B3LYP/6-311G(d,p) // B3LYP/3-21G(2d,p) level of theory. The results of this study help to define equipment and tooltip motion requirements that may be needed to execute the proposed reaction sequence experimentally and provide support for early developmental targets as part of a comprehensive near-term DMS implementation program.

Work to keep an eye on.  —Chris Peterson

Bill McDonald brings to our attention the U.S. Congressional campaign of Mike Stopa, a Harvard nanotechnologist and physicist.

This is probably the first time that a nanotechnologist has run for Congress.

However, his profession may not get much attention, as his campaign is focusing on other issues.

It will be interesting to see whether, as a fiscal conservative, he favors or opposes federal spending on nanotech.  Could be a tough decision for him!

As a 501(c)3 organization, Foresight does not support or oppose political candidates.  —Chris Peterson

Kevin Bullis reports in Technology Review:

Now Paul Rothemund, a computer scientist at Caltech, with a background in biology, has developed a relatively inexpensive way to quickly design and build arbitrary shapes and patterns using DNA — and, he says, it’s simple enough for high-school students to use…

It’s really spectacular work. I’m extremely excited about it,” says William Shih, professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard Medical School, who is now working to extend Rothemund’s technique to building three-dimensional structures. Rothemund’s work, he says, has taken the small field of DNA nanotechnology and “opened it up to becoming a mainstream tool by making it one or two orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to do.”

Nadrian Seeman, the New York University chemist who pioneered the use of DNA for constructing complex shapes, says, “By moving up in scale, he is able to produce more intricate and larger patterns than were practical with previous approaches. This is an exciting advance which is likely to revolutionize pattern formation on this scale.”

Both Rothemund and Seeman are winners of the Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.  Bravo, Paul!  (Update: this story is from 2006! oops)  —Chris Peterson

John Faith brings to our attention a writeup by Annalee Newitz over at io9.com which colorfully describes a new achievement by Foresight Feynman prizewinner Nadrian Seeman and team at NYU and Nanjing U.:

Today in Nature, a group of researchers announced they’d successfully operated the first assembly line populated entirely by nanobots. The bots in question are molecular machines made from strands of DNA, and each one has four “feet” that walk on a specially-prepared surface covered in chemicals that direct the bot’s motion. It also has three “arms” to carry cargo – in this case various sizes of gold particles. These gold particles can bind together into eight different products.

In their experiment, the scientists succeeded in guiding a nanobot to pick up the three gold particles, each held by other bots. It walked up to each bot, grabbed the gold cargo, and moved on to the next bot to do the same thing.

Technology Review also covers the news:

“We show how to program [the walker's] behavior by programming the landscape,” says Milan Stojanovic, a biomedical engineer at Columbia University who developed the walker. “It enables us to think about adding further complexity: more than one molecule interacting and more complicated commands on the surface. What we hope to do eventually is to be able to [use nanobots to] repair tissues.”

See the original article in Nature.  Exciting times to come — bring it on!  —Chris Peterson

For many of us, it’s our desire to preserve and restore the environment that brought us into the work of pursuing molecular nanotechnology in the first place.  How do we keep going over the decades that this goal is taking to accomplish?

One way is to restore our enthusiasm for the goal through films such as “Oceans“, the documentary now showing in mainstream movie theaters.

Breathtaking is the best way to describe it.  Repeatedly I saw images I never imagined before and often wondered “how could they have obtained this footage?”  Lucasfilm helped with the film, narrated by Pierce Brosnan.  It’s worth sitting through the credits to see some coverage of how the movie was made.

This is one you want to see on the big screen.  Thanks to Scott Banister for the tip!  —Chris Peterson

The Mark, “Canada’s daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate,” has published a commentary that primarily takes a negative view of the use of nanotech (or any tech) for life extension:

Extreme life extension raises other interesting, yet troubling questions. Significant life extension could have serious implications for individual identity; what if we change too much over the course of a highly extended life? Will we eventually lose psychological continuity with our earlier lives, thereby becoming different people and in turn defeating the purpose of life extension? Will identity and narrative have coherence? Or perhaps we humans are sufficiently adaptive to deal with a greatly extended life. At this point, there’s really no way of knowing…

What we’d do with extended life and who it would be available to begs the question, “Would it be a good thing?” There may well be merit in life extension if it helps us maximize our potential as humans and make a greater social contribution.

There is a simple answer to this debating.  Boomers should stick around, keep working, and help pay off the national debt(s).  And while we’re at it, we can help clean up the environment.  It’s not fair to leave these tasks as burdens on the next generation.  —Chris Peterson

I’ll be speaking at the following event. If you miss the early registration rate, you can get 20% off regular registration with the discount code ‘Foresight’:

Open Science Summit 2010: Updating the Social Contract for Science 2.0

July 29-31 International House Berkeley
http://opensciencesummit.com

Ready for a rapid, radical reboot of the global innovation system for a truly free and open 21st century knowledge economy? Join us at the first Open Science Summit, an attempt to gather all stakeholders who want to liberate our scientific and technological commons to enable an new era of decentralized, distributed innovation to solve humanity’s greatest challenges.

In the last ten years, a collection of burgeoning movements has begun the herculean task of overhauling the outmoded institutions and worldviews that make up our global scientific governance system. Proponents of the Access to Knowledge movement (A2K) have united around the principle that data and knowledge are “anti-rivalrous,” the value of information increases as it spreads.

Open Access Journals have demonstrated a new path for publishing that utilizes the power of the internet to instantly distribute ideas instead of imposing artificial scarcity to prop up old business models. “Health 2.0” entrepreneurs are seeking to apply the lessons of e-commerce to empower patients.

However, these different efforts are each working on a piece of a problem without a view of the whole. It is not sufficient or realistic to tweak one component of the innovation system (eg, patent policy) and assume the others stay static. Instead, dynamic, interactive, nonlinear change is unfolding.

The Open Science Summit is the first and only event to consider what happens throughout the entire innovation chain as reform in one area influences the prospects in others. In the best case scenario, a virtuous circle of mutually reinforcing shifts toward transparency and collaboration could unleash hitherto untapped reserves of human ingenuity.

Hope to see you there!  —Chris Peterson

Brian Wang brings to our attention a Daily Mail article:

A routine traffic-stop in Switzerland has allegedly thwarted eco-terrorists from blowing up the site of the £55million nano-technology HQ of IBM in Europe…

The group describes itself as anarchist and is opposed to all forms of micro-technology as well as nuclear power and weapons…

The IBM facility that the Il Silvestre group was targeting is still under construction.  When finished, it will contain the most state-of-the-art facilities in Europe for nano-and-bio-technological research, with the probability of billions of pounds in profit for IBM.

The article describes the suspects as ‘eco-terrorists’ but I am not sure we should encourage them by using that term.  (Or ‘anarchists” either, for that matter—peaceful anarchists should object to that.)

The more terrorism there is, the more we need Open Source Sensing.  —Chris Peterson

David Cassel brings our attention to an h+ review of the long-awaited film The Singularity is Near, based on the book by Ray Kurzweil:

In documentary style, we have Ray discussing his ideas about the Singularity, with commentators variously supporting or refuting or worrying about his ideas. With Bill McKibben in the role of the friendly flat out opponent; Bill Joy playing the reasonable but worried man; and Mitch Kapor doubting the technological possibilities — they are all worked into the weave to (at least) let us know that not everybody believes that a) The Singularity is Coming and b) It’s going to work out well. K. Eric Drexler, MIT roboticist Cynthia Breazeal, desktop manufacturing guru Neil Gershenfeld and many many more are woven in to support the idea — and the more hopeful potentials — of accelerating change leading to radical alterations in life (itself).

The value added here for those h+ types already familiar with this discourse includes the clarity and concise expression of the ideas presented in Ray’s doorstopper sized book, and lots of very groovy, trippy, and playful graphics (including an apparent parody of the opening of Fringe.)

The reviewer says “it’s awesome!” so we look forward to seeing it when it’s more widely available.  —Chris Peterson

Videos for all talks and slides for some are now available for the Foresight Conference held in January.

Here’s the list: http://www.foresight.org/conf2010/

Or if you prefer to watch them in chronological order: http://foresight.org/conf2010/schedule.html

There are 17 videos, so in case you’d like some guidance in getting started, consider starting with the top three talks as rated by conference participants:

• Hod Lipson: “Adaptive and Self-Reflective Systems“
• Brad Templeton: “Revolutionizing Transportation with AI“
• Ralph Merkle: “The Contributions of Robert Freitas to Molecular Nanotechnology“

Special thanks to Monica Anderson, Miron Cuperman, and TechZulu (Efren Toscano) for their work on this project, to volunteers Miguel Aznar and Ravi Mistry for help on the conference overall, and to Shawna Pandya for handling Twitter for us.

If you enjoy the videos and have not yet joined Foresight or donated in 2010, we encourage you to chip in and help fund this work: https://www.networkforgood.org/donation/MakeDonation.aspx?ORGID2=770119168

We hope to see you at the next Foresight Conference!   —Chris Peterson

Angela Belcher and team at MIT have tweaked a bacterial virus to serve as a scaffolding to:

attract and bind with molecules of a catalyst (the team used iridium oxide) and a biological pigment (zinc porphyrins). The viruses became wire-like devices that could very efficiently split the oxygen from water molecules.

Belcher says that

within two years she expects to have a prototype device that can carry out the whole process of splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, using a self-sustaining and durable system.

This is just a very early taste of what we can expect someday from more extensively designed molecular machine systems.  —Chris Peterson

From Singularity Hub, 5 Axis Robot Carves Metal Like Butter:

Industrial robots are getting precise enough that they’re less like dumb machines and more like automated sculptors producing artwork. Case in point: Daishin’s Seki5-axis mill. The Japanese company celebrated its 50th anniversary last year by using this machine to carve out a full scale motorcycle helmet out of one piece of aluminum. No breaks, no joints, the 5-Axis mill simply pivots and rotates to carve metal at some absurd angles. Every cut is guided by sophisticated 3D design software (Openmind’s HyperMill). While the Daishin helmet made a nice showpiece for a biannual meeting of machiningcompanies (EMO), this level of production is becoming the new standard. Your average industrial company got hi-tech in a hurry and now we have machines that can transform computer designs into the highest quality professional metal objects, seemingly at a push of a button.

More like science fiction every year!  —Chris Peterson

The winner of the 2009 Foresight Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology (Theory), Robert A. Freitas Jr., has now been granted the first diamond mechanosynthesis patent.  This is not just the first DMS patent but also, I believe, the first mechanosynthesis patent that has ever been issued.  Freitas is the sole inventor on this patent, which was assigned to Zyvex because the work was done while he was a contractor for the company.  The patent abstract reads:

“A method is described for building a mechanosynthesis tool intended to be used for the molecularly precise fabrication of physical structures — as for example, diamond structures. An exemplar tool consists of a bulk-synthesized dimer-capped triadamantane tooltip molecule which is initially attached to a deposition surface in tip-down orientation, whereupon CVD or equivalent bulk diamond deposition processes are used to grow a large crystalline handle structure around the tooltip molecule. The large handle with its attached tooltip can then be mechanically separated from the deposition surface, yielding an integral finished tool that can subsequently be used to perform diamond mechanosynthesis in vacuo. The present disclosure is the first description of a complete tool for positional diamond mechanosynthesis, along with its method of manufacture. The same toolbuilding process may be extended to other classes of tooltip molecules, other handle materials, and to mechanosynthetic processes and structures other than those involving diamond.”

The literature citation of the patent reads as follows:  Robert A. Freitas Jr., “A Simple Tool for Positional Diamond Mechanosynthesis, and its Method of Manufacture,” U.S. Patent No. 7,687,146, issued 30 March 2010.

The URL is:  http://www.molecularassembler.com/Papers/US7687146.pdf

Congratulations, Rob!  —Chris Peterson

Longtime Foresight Senior Associate and senior research scientist at Genetic Programming, Inc. has done an interview on memristors over at blog FrogHeart for those of us trying to keep up on this challenging topic.  He concludes:

So why are memristors useful? Sticking with our water analogy, I can make the pipe bigger or small depending on which way I run the water through it. And, when I turn off the water, the pipe stays at whatever size it’s at. So the pipe has a memory. This means that I can use it to store data. I can run water through it in one direction to make the pipe big, and treat the big pipe like a stored digital ONE. Or can run water through it in the other direction to make the pipe small, and treat the small pipe like stored digital ZERO. Presto! We have a digital storage device. It may not sound very exciting when described like this, but the excitement is about just how small, low powered, simple, and 3D these devices can be.

But memristors can store more than just ONEs and ZEROs. They can also store intermediate values between ONE and ZERO depending on how long and hard I push the water through the memristor. This is what makes a memristor useful in simulating a neural synapse.

Thanks, Forrest.  —Chris Peterson

Finally, the first step has been made toward the longed-for goal of a robot which can do laundry:

http://singularityhub.com/2010/03/31/berkeley-gets-willow-garage-robot-to-fold-towels-simply-stunning-video/

Of course, this also gives us some idea of other formerly human-only tasks that robots are likely to take over in the next decade or two.

Thanks to SingularityHub.com for bringing this to our attention.  —Chris Peterson

This conference track is being chaired by a real computer scientist with a specialty in AI, so it should be more meaty than some popular discussions of this challenging topic:

We invite submissions describing systematic attempts at understanding the likelihood and nature of these projections. In particular, we welcome papers critically analyzing the following issues from a philosophical, computational, mathematical, scientific and ethical standpoints:

• Claims and evidence to acceleration
• Technological predictions (critical analysis of past and future)
• The nature of an intelligence explosion and its possible outcomes
• The nature of the Technological Singularity and its outcome
• Safe and unsafe artificial general intelligence and preventative measures
• Technological forecasts of computing phenomena and their projected impact
• Beyond the ‘event horizon’ of the Technological Singularity
• The prospects of transhuman breakthroughs and likely timeframes

The deadline for submissions is May 7. —Chris Peterson

Nanowerk reports:

Taking the patent land grab to a new level, the government of Greece today, April 1, filed a patent and trademark application for the term nanotechnology with the European Patent Office. The country is thereby seeking the right to prevent third parties from commercially exploiting these and related terms without paying royalties.

“Quite honestly, we are sick and tired at the world’s incessant exploitation of our country’s cultural heritage and the fact that people make billions on the back of our amazing cultural achievements and the inventive talents of our great ancestors” said a spokesperson for the Hellenic parliament. Notwithstanding the moral high ground the Greek government is trying to occupy, observers note that the real reason for this surprising move is very simple and very down-to-earth: money. For readers in countries that don’t celebrate April 1: today is the day we play jokes on each other, including this story.  —Chris Peterson