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| | Nanotechnology breakthroughs on the horizon
Saturday, Apr 23, 2005 By Wesley Brown Not too long ago, a man in Tulsa predicted that the price of crude oil would be over $30 a barrel by the end of the century. At the time, in the late 1990s, the price paid for a barrel of West Texas crude had dipped below $10 and the very economy of Oklahoma sat precipitously on the brink of a recession. A few years earlier, an Oklahoma farmer predicted that the primary mode of communication for a vast majority of Americans would be the wireless phone, not the landline phone owned by the gaggle of Bell companies spread across the U.S. That old farmer and oilfield hand received a similar treatment from newspaper readers - lots of letters to the editor questioning both their IQ and sanity. Today, both of those brave soothsayers - with their bold predictions forever preserved in newspaper archives - are probably having the time of their lives telling their grandkids about the time when everybody had a rotary phone and kept the same number until they died, and a gallon of gas could be had for much less than a king's ransom. But what will the world look like in 10 years, compared to today. Many experts are now making bold predictions about nanotechnology, an emerging branch of science and engineering devoted to the design and production of extremely small electronic devices and circuits built from individual atoms and molecules. In other words, nanotechnology is the science of the ultra small. For instance, one nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter, which means it would take 100,000 nanometers lined up side-by-side to equal the dimeter of a human hair. Here's the part that is hard to believe. Scientists at several universities and research centers across the U.S. are now developing this technology in hopes of applying its use to everything from medicine and food production to electronics and computers science. The Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine and Biological Sciences at the University of Michigan is working on medical advances that will allow man-made molecules to deliver drugs directly to sick cells and tiny mite-sized sensors to monitor oxygen levels in the bloodstream. Others see nanotechnology fostering social advances that could impact everything from extreme poverty, hunger and AIDS to finding cheaper ways to produce water. Scientists in the electronics, energy, aerospace, transportation and defense industries are studying nanotechnology applications that could boost the use and efficiency of solar energy, create super fast computers that operate in near real-time, and produce nanorobots that do everything from building cars to fighting wars. "A gold-rush mentality has taken hold in nanotechnology, and patents are the precious resource being hoarded," said Matthew Nordan, vice president of research at New York-based Lux Research. As of late March 2005, 3,818 U.S. nanotechnology patents had been issued with another 1,777 patent applications awaiting judgment, according to a recent report by Lux. "But entrepreneurs' ability to turn their patents into cash may be limited by crowded claims that overlap with one another," said Nordan, whose company bills itself as the world's leading nanotechnology research and advisory firm. Will nanotechnology be a part of our lives soon? Many people think so, including the influential investment banking firm of Stephens Inc. in Little Rock. Stephens Inc. is a sister company of Stephens Media Group, which owns the Arkansas News Bureau. Earlier this month, Stephens held a Nanotechnology Investors Conference in Pasadena, Calif., where it brought nanotechnology inventors and investors to the same table. One of the nanotech companies attending the conference was Florida-based Ener1 Inc., which is developing lithium-ion electrodes for use in hybrid vehicles. The new technology could radically improve the performance of car batteries and fuel cells, which could foster a new era of hybrid cars and SUVs that get over 50 miles to a gallon of gasoline. That alone, especially with crude and pump prices predicted to move even higher, is enough to hope that nanotechnology is something that the whole world will embrace. ------ Wesley Brown is business editor for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is wbrown@arkansasnews.com. |
