Many announcements related to nanotechnology have been made last week, so I just want to make a quick summary. A team of chemists have found that buckyballs could have a negative impact on our environment while other researchers used nanotechnology to find tumors before they are visible in conventional MRI. A team at CMU could revolutionize nanoelectronics manufacturing by making ordered nanocarbons while a chemist at New York University thinks that DNA molecules could lead to the smallest computing devices ever built. Cornell University researchers have designed a nanoscale switch linking electronics to photonics and others at the University of Leeds, U.K., have identified antimicrobial nanoparticles for safer food packaging. In the commercial sector, Dimatix is developing nano-printing technologies which could lead to human skin cells, and Accelrys is using molecular modeling and simulation software tools to design potential new materials. Read more...

Please read all the articles or news releases mentioned above to find more information about these new discoveries. Here I just want to focus -- briefly -- on three of them.

Let's first look briefly at this new use of nanotechnology to find tumors.

Biomedical engineers have used nanotechnology to find human melanoma tumors in mice while the growths are still invisible to conventional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

Earlier detection can potentially increase the effectiveness of treatment. This is especially true with melanoma, which begins as a highly curable disorder, then progresses into an aggressive and deadly disease.

A second benefit of the approach is that the same nanoparticles used to find the tumors could potentially deliver stronger doses of anti-cancer drugs directly to the tumor site with fewer side effects.

Now, here is a short description of the nano-printing technologies developed by Dimatix.

Dimatix currently employs about 50 people in its Santa Clara offices, where it is developing ink-jet printing technologies for a wide range of possible uses. Some futuristic uses of Dimatix's super-small ink jets could include making semiconductor interconnects, or electronic screen displays so thin and flexible they wrap around a column in a department store.

Dimatix is developing a new generation of print heads that can deposit microscopic droplets of conductive ink, or even droplets of organic materials. They call these nano-particle inks, because they are at the atomic level in size, or smaller than a virus.

In the future, Dimatix expects its printing technologies to be used in the life sciences, where scientists could re-create human cells by layering down DNA substrates.

Finally, it's time to look at the modeling software tools developed by Accelrys.

Here is how the company is "modeling a drug candidate in a protein active site" (Credit: Accelrys).

Here is the introduction of the article.

As electronics companies find themselves increasingly needing to characterise their materials at nanometre length scales, they are resorting to modelling software packages that until recently were seen as pure research tools.

Cambridge-based molecular modelling and simulation specialist Accelrys says its products, which are built on quantum mechanical descriptions of particular systems, are now being employed for real-world applications, rather than simply in more blue skies research.

Accelrys’ tools are typically applied in the fields of chemistry and fundamental materials science. They are used to address questions of what is happening at the molecular and atomic scales, and below, and enable the modelling of properties such as the electronic behaviour of solids, molecules, interfaces, and molecules on surfaces.

And here is the conclusion from Stephen Warde, European director of marketing for Accelrys.

"What our technology can help you do today is make smarter decisions about materials designs, and understand the materials science issues in more depth… I think it’s fair to say that we’re at the beginning of making those sorts of connections."

And for more information about the involvement of Accelrys in this field, please read this page about Life Science Modeling.

Sources: American Chemical Society, May 9, 2005; The Whitaker Foundation, May 18, 2005; Carnegie Mellon press release, May 6, 2005; Spencer Reiss, Technology Review, June 2005; Cornell University news release, May 19, 2005; Food Production Daily, May 13, 2005; Therese Poletti, Mercury News, May. 16, 2005; Harry Yeates, ElectronicsWeekly.com, May 19, 2005; and various websites