October 21, 2005

Nanoscale technology: Quantum dots produce white light : light bulb replacement



the new Quantum dot lights are even more efficient than LEDs and produce better light quality and can make lights in different shapes. The light bulb is made out of metal and glass using primarily mechanical processes. Current LEDs are made using semiconductor manufacturing techniques developed in the last 50 years. But, if the quantum dot approach pans out, it could transform lighting production into a primarily chemical process. Such a fundamental change could open up a wide range of new possibilities, such as making almost any object into a light source by coating it with luminescent paint capable of producing light in a rainbow of different shades, including white.

October 20, 2005

Quantitative Cell Biology

This will help put us on the path to computational cell biology as an extension of computational chemistry. Computational chemistry is important to the development of molecular manufacturing.


"The method makes possible accurate measurements of proteins inside cells using microscopic methods usually used just to show where proteins are located," said senior author Thomas D. Pollard, M.D., Chair and Higgins Professor of Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology at Yale, of the work published in Science.

Postdoctoral fellow Jian-Qiu Wu attached a tag called yellow fluorescent protein to proteins of interest, allowing these proteins to be detected in live yeast cells with a light microscope. He used seven sample proteins to demonstrate that the brightness of the fluorescence is directly correlated with the amount of that protein in the cell.

With this reference, they could take a stack of pictures through any whole cell that makes a tagged protein, count up all the fluorescent signal, and calculate the number of molecules by comparing with their standardized sample proteins. The assay works whether the molecules are spread out or concentrated in particular parts of the cell, so they could also count the number of molecules in different locations throughout the cell.

October 19, 2005

Secret code to track color printer use: one partial control step for nanofactory

The pages coming out of your color printer may contain hidden
U.S. government.
information useful to law-enforcement authorities, a secret digital
"license tag" for tracking down criminals.

Similar embedded control and tracking coding seems a likely and probably would be useful for even limited nano-factories. It would require hacking to circumvent and time to detect. It could slow up and deter some forms of abuse. It would be a constant battle to increase the barriers to abuse to those with sophisticated skills.

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