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How nanotechnology can change the world

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Nanotechnology

Michael Kanellos CNET News.com

Published: 11 Nov 2004 13:55 GMT

Some day, humans may plant a chip in their head to help them remember where they put the car keys.

A group of researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, have devised a specially designed chip that can stimulate or monitor brain tissue when placed under it. A synapse fires, and a corresponding spike in voltage occurs in the adjacent chip. Alternatively, electricity courses through the chip, and chemical synapses fire in the brain tissue.

So far, the group has only used the technology to study the reactions of snail neurons, sections of rat brain and a few other types of nerve cells. The group is not close at all to delivering a product -- but the technology creates the possibility that the movements of mind can be mapped (or guided) by computers.

"The real goal is to make content-addressable memory" in living beings, said Peter Fromherz, speaking at the International Congress of Nanotechnology this week in San Francisco. "You can really look at brain dynamics with a CMOS chip," he said, referring to complementary metal-oxide semiconductors.

If you want to get a glimpse of the future, a nanotechnology conference is the place to be. Other ideas discussed at the three-day event include a fuel cell that runs on plant matter, including matter scavenged from the ground; a chip that can detect the onset of a disease days before any physically visible symptoms appear; and computers controlled by domino-like chain reactions among zinc-oxide molecules.

Although it's often viewed sceptically by investors, analysts and the general public, nanotechnology -- the art of making products from designer molecules or components that measure 100 nanometres or less -- is rapidly taking off. (A nanometre is one-billionth of a metre, or 90,000 times thinner than a human hair.)

The national governments in the United States, the European Union and Japan will each invest more than $900m in nanotechnology research in fiscal 2004, according to Michael Roco, the chair of the nanoscale science subcommittee at the National Science Foundation. Early experimental results show promise. Three years ago, Roco estimated that molecules for detecting cancer far earlier might appear in 20 years to 30 years. Now, such molecules might come by 2015.