4 replies to this topic

[wannabe]

This hyper-cautionary article provides a list of nano-producers and their products:

http://online.sfsu.e...mallmatter.html

"...Nano-Advocates: The prospect of a new industrial revolution–on the order of a US$1 trillion market by 2015–has excited governments, scientists, industry, and venture capitalists. None of the scientists working with nanomaterials today, even those who have questioned their fate in the environment, could be accused of being technophobic or alarmist when it comes to the advancement of the technology....

...A Sampling of Nano-Producers around the World:

Hyperion Catalysis, Cambridge, MA (USA): makes carbon nanotubes–used as an electrically

NanoCarbLab, Moscow, Russia: makes carbon nanotubes

Nanoledge SA, Clapiers, France: makes carbon nanotubes–for use in composite materials

Altair Technologies, Reno, NE (USA): makes nanoparticles–specializes in titanium dioxide, used in coatings, thermal sprays, as catalysts

Nanophase, Inc., Romeoville, IL (USA): makes nanoparticles–zinc oxide and titanium dioxide (used in cosmetics, sunscreen), cerium oxide and iron oxide (used as catalysts), aluminum oxide (used in ceramics)

Frontier Carbon Corporation, Tokyo, Japan: makes carbon nanotubes–also engages in research, development and production of nanotube-based products

Molecular Nanosystems, Palo Alto, CA (USA): makes fullerenes–large scale production

Southern Clay Products, Gonzales, TX (USA): makes nanocomposite plastic–a naturally-occurring clay nanoparticle is added to plastics to make them lighter, stronger, more heat-resistant; mainly used in packaging and automotive plastics

Carbon Nanotechnologies, Houston, TX (USA): makes carbon nanotubes–uses technology developed at Rice University by Nobel Prize winner Richard Smalley

Yorkpoint New Energy Science and Technology Development Co., Guangzhou, Guangdong Province (China): makes carbon nanotubes–used in fuel cells

[wannabe]

Simple water molocules aren't considered nanomaterials, I guess, yet within the cell membrane, H2O functions in surprisingly complex onion-like layers, I read ( I'm an intensely interested layperson). "Life is nanotechnology that works" is a quote I found somewhere. Water (as conglomerate, polar molecules) can be structured in myrid ways, can mimic the structure of other substances, and has varying degrees of wetness, or surface tension. It is found at the core of DNA, where it conducts electrons at a stagering speed.
I took a homeopathic remedy yesterday for stress-- high speed grocery checking while being `on' wears on this one-- and it helped. My understanding of homeopathy theory is that water takes on stucture or memory, and carries a "signature" that the body responds to.
As we examine the exciting new nanomaterials, it interests me to see how they interact with water/our bodies-- as nanotechnology that works.

This posted article below addresses some of this concept, and can be found complete at http://pages.prodigy...ives/qm/qm2.htm

"...Nanotech in the real world is making some progress, in areas such as scanning tunneling electron microscopy, self-assembling monolayers, nanotube fabrication, buckyball chemistry, and so on. And science fiction's exploration and illumination of the potential of nanotech gives it a sort of inevitability, even if it doesn't eventually take the forms we anticipate.

Which is what I want to talk about. Suppose I told you that molecular machines are being used in laboratories all over the world, that we can string small molecules together into all kinds of structural, catalytic and mechanical nano-products? Suppose I told you that I myself have used an "assembler," a catalytic molecular scaffold, to build microscopic motors, circuits and chemical processors?

Well, I have. And so have you. You do it in every cell of your body, all the time.

The greatest argument that Drexler and his acolytes can offer up to the Nattering Nabobs of Nanotech Negativisim is that it's already been done. In a sense, it's the oldest "technology" on earth. Molecular machines are the basis of living matter.

Some of you are shaking your head and saying: it's not the same thing. What we all do in our cells is one thing, but the dream of nanotech is to build stuff in the laboratory and factory. And don't give us a biotech spiel: growing up insulin in vats of E. Coli is not the same thing as nanotech!

No, it's not. But biotechnology and nanotechnology must converge, must dovetail into sister disciplines. It is inevitable, for two reasons. First of all, they both seek to manipulate matter at the atomic and molecular levels. And second, because living systems offer us the machines needed to get nanotech off the ground, the very machines the nanotech gurus have themselves failed to produce.

Let's start with the Assembler. The Assembler is one of those keystones of nanotechnology, a microscopic robot that accepts instructions from the designer or fabricator, and then uses molecules as raw materials to construct a machine or substance. The Assembler has the attributes of an information processor, construction scaffold and chemical catalyst or reactor. So far, a real, honest-to-goodness Assembler hasn't been built de novo. But there's a microscopic machine that's been known to us for decades that does all these things--cheap, available, well-understood and fantastically efficient.

It's called a ribosome..."
continue to page http://pages.prodigy...ives/qm/qm2.htm

[wannabe]

http://buckminster.physics.sunysb.edu/

At this site, there are descriptions and images of fullerines, or buckyballs, that encapsulate other atoms. They call it "doping". This interests me as a method of delivering atoms or other particles, especially within the living system. This might be exploited for delivering therapeutic substances.
Doped Fullerines: A carbon cage is wrapped around a nitrogen, for example, or a number of buckyballs are packed with other molecules amid themselves.

[Lazarus Long]

Great links and articles Wannabe, glad to have you aboard, don't stop now.

[wannabe]

You wanted it, you got it, Lazarus Long!

Here is some of a page mostly devoted to what are being described as "high-spin mono/di-atomic elements". A subset of the micro clusters, which I expect includes "buckyballs". The metals are the subject of most discussion at this site, as "exotic matter" and as very possibly being related to the alchemy of the ancients -- advanced technology for life extension and enhancement in ancient times?

article located here -- http://monatomic.ear...abase/research/

Physics and Chemistry Research

Microclusters




[REF00001]



Scientific American


December 1989


Michael A. Duncan, Dennis H. Rouvray


Reference: pp. 110-115

Divide and subdivide a solid and the traits of its solidity fade
away one by one, like the features of the Cheshire Cat, to be
replaced by characteristics that are not those of liquids or gases.
They belong instead to a new phase of matter, the micro cluster.
Micro clusters consist of tiny aggregates comprising from two to
several hundred atoms. They pose questions that lie at the heart
of solid state physics and chemistry, and the related field of
material science. How small must an aggregate of particles become
before the character of the substance they once formed is lost?
How might the atoms reconfigure if freed from the influence of the
matter that surrounds them? If the substance is a metal, how small
must this cluster of atoms be to avoid the characteristic sharing
of free electrons that underlies conductivity..."

go to article here -- http://monatomic.ear...abase/research/