RE: NANO: _Forbes_ cover story

From: Amara D. Angelica (amara@kurzweilai.net)
Date: Sun Jul 15 2001 - 17:19:27 MDT


> On Sun, 15 July 2001, Natasha Vita-More wrote:
> > Can you give us a brief recap of the story?

http://www.kurzweilai.net/news/frame.html?main=news.html?id%3D353

The Next Small Thing

Forbes, July 23, 2001

Scientists are re-creating our world in the realm of the intensely tiny. The
potential payoff: denser hard drives, smaller chips, better medicine.

Top research organizations within large companies and renowned universities
are inventing the future: electronics as cheap and plentiful as bar codes on
packaging; lightweight vests enmeshed with sensors could measure a person's
vital signs; analysis of a patient's DNA could be done so quickly and
precisely that designer drugs could be fabricated on the fly; a computer the
size of your library card could store everything you ever saw or said.

Current nanotech research includes:

* IBM: scanning tunneling microscope and "millipede" storage system, which
will record more than 400 gigabits of data per sq. in.

* Harvard University: self-assembling 3-D circuit

* University of Texas: protein-controlled semiconductor growth

* Cornell University: lithography to separate DNA fragments and detect
whether food is spoiled

* Hewlett-Packard: Carbon nanotubes to create computer chips

* UCLA: chips built from organic molecules

* Yale: self-assembling memory devices, leading to memory so cheap that
people will throw away electronics the way they do packaging



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