Utility fog has a father, who wrote a report: “Utility Fog: A Universal Physical Substance,” J. Storm Hall, Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering in the Era of Cyberspace, NASA Conference publication 10129, 1993, pp. 115-126. Hall, at Rutgers University, explains: Active, polymorphic material (“Utility Fog”) can be designed as a conglomeration of 100-micron robotic cells (‘foglets’). […]
Tag: nano
There be Quantum Dragons
Improbable can say, with some confidence, that no-one has even seen a ‘Quantum Dragon’. But that shouldn’t be taken to mean that they don’t exist. Dr. Mark A. Novotny Professor and Head of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the HPC² Center for Computational Sciences, Mississippi State University, US, asserts that they do – […]
Molecular wheelbarrows under the (scanning tunneling) microscope
The idea of a molecular wheelbarrow was first raised [Improbable believes] in 2002 by C Joachim, H Tang, F Moresco, G Rapenne and G Meyer in the journal Nanotechnology, Volume 13, Number 3: ‘The design of a nanoscale molecular barrow’. Later, as described in Surface Science Letters, 584, 2005, L153 – L158, a research team […]
A technological way to create temporary images in/on a head of hair
Everyone with a head of hair—not just the members of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists (LFHCfS)—is likely to be intrigued by this new patent for creating images in/on a head of hair. Think of the images as nano-patterned temporary tattoos, if you like: “Hair treatment process providing dispersed colors by light diffraction,” US patent […]
The Clever Lab’s Catalytic Coordination Chemistry
Few would say that the construction of multiple nano-engineered cavities for the immobilization of catalytically active transition metals was a non-trivial task. We are talking clever technology here. And appropriately perhaps, such is the domain of Junior Professor Dr. Guido Clever (of the Inorganic Chemistry Dept., Göttingen University, Germany) who has his own laboratory at the […]
A little numbers game
Investigator William J. Maloney received the following note. It maybe be of interest as a harbinger of what scientists will be doing for the next several years: Dear William, From where I sit, small is big. In my work at Boston College, I focus on developing nanotechnology-inventions so small they are measured in nanometers: billionths […]