~Nanobits of News~

Gina Miller (nanogirl@halcyon.com)
Sat, 9 Oct 1999 11:30:21 -0700

A smaller version of "Nanogirl news" mainly to feature this first topic that appears in Fox News.

*Immortality on Ice. Cryonics May Offer Life After Death for Those Willing
to Wait. (Ralph Merkle, Alcor, Marvin Minsky, Robert Ettinger, Leary, nanotechnology mentions)
(animation and pictures included) "Death sucks." http://www.foxnews.com/js_index.sml?content=/scitech/100899/cryonics.sml

*Artificial and real nerve cells linked. Using $7.50 worth of electrical
parts, scientists hooked up an artificial neuron with biological nerve cells extracted from a lobster. The resulting neuron network transmitted signals back and forth just like the real thing — one small step toward a bionic future.
http://www.msnbc.com/news/320569.asp?cp1=1

*The Ultimate Fine Print. A new technique to print using an ink jet may one
day make it possible to "type" letters that are too small for the naked eye to read. Physicists have formulated a way, in theory, to make nanodrops of ink that are 100 times smaller than those produced by the best ink-jet printers on the market. If it works in practice, the method could be used to print invisible serial numbers on computer chips or on currency. http://www.academicpress.com/inscight/10081999/grapha.htm

*S.F. students, teachers train with scienti... (S.F. Gate/ San Francisco
Examiner & Chronicle)
$10 million school grant to collaborate with UC-Berkeley, Intel, Genentech. Armed with a $10 million grant, San Francisco schools will train hundreds of teachers, allow students to collaborate with scientists at UC-Berkeley and intern with engineers at Intel or Genentech. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/examiner/archive/1999/10/08/ NEWS9861.dtl

*White House to Host Eighth Millennium Evening Oct. 12 in Live Cybercast.
President and First Lady will host the eighth Millennium Evening at the White House. The program, titled, "Informatics Meets Genomics," will feature Dr. Vinton Cerf, Senior Vice President of Internet Architecture and Technology at MCI WorldCom, and Dr. Eric Lander, Director of the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research. http://www.usnewswire.com/topnews/Current_Releases/1008-136.htm

*Going Mad with Smads. In the past year, several studies of mice with
genetically manipulated Smad genes have caught the attention of cancer researchers. Smad is a family of at least nine genes, each bearing an identifying number (e.g., Smad1, Smad2, and Smad9), and each encoding a protein involved in mediating cellular responses to transforming growth factor (beta) (TGF-(beta)) and related polypeptides. http://www.nejm.org/content/1999/0341/0015/1144.asp

*High-tech rodent goes everywhere.IntelliMouse Explorer uses tiny digital
camera and a light to point, click. It has no moving parts. Instead of the traditional rubber ball and rollers, the IntelliMouse Explorer uses patented IntelliEye technology, a red light and a miniature digital camera. The camera takes 1,500 snapshots per second, of the surface beneath the moving mouse. A built-in digital signal processor (DSP) translates these movements on your computer screen. This "image correlation processing" is 12 times faster than an ordinary mouse and is running at 18 million instructions per second (MIPS).
http://www.edmontonjournal.com/
(click technology, this story is at the bottom)

*Here comes the sun battery. A discovery by Japanese chemists might help to
turn sunlight and water into fuel for transportation and power generation -- with the added bonus that the fuel is non-polluting when burned, producing nothing but pure water.
http://helix.nature.com/nsu/991014/991014-2.html

*A Super-Sensitive Detector. To follow the trail of a terrorist,
investigators need to identify extremely small residues of explosives or biological warfare agents. The 11 October PRL describes a new method for detecting molecules in tiny concentrations that is 100 times more sensitive than current methods and could help those investigators. http://focus.aps.org/v4/st19.html

*World: Americas Russian hackers attacked Pentagon. Hackers apparently
working from Russia have broken into US Government computer systems for over a year, an FBI official has said.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_469000/469006.stm

*A little nanoscience from nandotimes.

http://www.nandotimes.com/ourcentury/cnscitech/story/body/0,3341,91675-14518 7-1017664-0-nandotimes,00.html

Gina "Nanogirl" Miller
http://www.nanoindustries.com
http://www.homestead.com/nanotechind/nothingatall.html nanogirl@halcyon.com