From the category archives:

Bloggy-blogging

Flattening the Matterhorn

May 19, 2010

Text and graphics excerpted from Figure 4 of a recent paper on a new form of nanoscale lithography:
AFM scan of the replica of the Matterhorn written into the molecular glass (3D data source: geodata © swisstopo).
The maximum steepness of slopes is an important parameter in scanning probe lithography. It would be easy to misread the [...]

Read the full article →

A brief post about brief posts

May 16, 2010

This post is displayed on Metamodern in a new format designed for brief posts, to be categorized as “Brevia”. This (and a bunch of other changes) reflects an upgrade in my Wordpress theme, Thesis.
The typical Wordpress theme centers a style provided by an HTML template, but Thesis is more like a PHP app. It has [...]

Read the full article →

Globe Forum afterword & environmental posts

May 4, 2010

I’m back from Globe Forum 2010, a meeting that brings together leaders of innovative businesses focused on sustainability. A major theme at the meeting was, of course, greenhouse gases and climate change. My talk emphasized that high CO2 levels will persist for decades (even with heroically deep cuts in CO2 emissions) unless we implement large-scale [...]

Read the full article →

Liveblogging Globe Forum 2010, Stockholm

April 29, 2010

A bit of liveblogging, at least. I’m in Stockholm for the Globe Forum 2010, resting for a moment after a talk and interviews. The Forum brings together people building businesses focused on sustainability. Work ranges from computational fluid dynamics for better wind energy to a technology that lays down nanoscale films of a tungsten disulphide [...]

Read the full article →

Self assembly and nanomachines:
Complexity, motion, and computational control

January 28, 2010

A commenter on the previous post raised several important issues, and my reply grew into this post. The comment is here, and my reply follows:

 

Subscribe

Read the full article →

Boronate esters, Suzuki coupling,
self-assembly, design software, etc.

January 24, 2010

I’ve been exploring some recent developments in chemical synthesis and self-assembly that suggest attractive possibilities for engineering robust self-assembling molecular systems. Boronate esters are involved in two ways.
Two days ago, I sat down to write about this, but then I read further into the literature, and learned substantially more. Yesterday, another cycle of the [...]

Read the full article →

The importance of seeing what isn’t there

January 17, 2010

The Edge Annual Question — 2010 —
The Edge Annual Question — 2010 asks “How is the Internet changing the way you think?”, with answers by (to borrow from the Edge description) “an array of world-class scientists, artists, and creative thinkers” that includes technology analyst Nicholas Carr, social software guru Clay Shirky, science historian George Dyson, [...]

Read the full article →

The Wall Street Journal on Feynman,
Drexler, History, and the Future

January 9, 2010

The Wall Street Journal published an article yesterday, “Feynman and the Futurists”, about Feynman’s ideas, mine, how the nanotechnology bandwagon got rolling, and how the band got thrown off the wagon — and then, out of the shadows, the NRC report and why the U.S. government should implement the NRC’s recommendations.

[...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →