The Three of the Newspapers says that there is a bad thing for nanobots, they could reproduce so fast, and overrun the humanity. The first one, tells about the affects of the NAno bots, and the third and forth tells about the benifits about the Nanobots. It say that the nanobots could, kill cancer, viruses, and make good strong material, and make bullet proof vest that is light as a raincoats.

"We're moving toward a showdown of the type we saw in genetically modified crops."

Peter Singer, director of the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toront

Scientists and activists are on a collision course over a new technology that operates on a microscopic scale but could have massive ramifications, and the confrontation could derail the rapidly emerging field of nanotechnology, a Canadian study shows.

Nanotechnology, the manipulation of atoms and molecules on the scale of a nanometer -- one-billionth of a meter -- could give humans a science-fiction-like power to remake nature as easily as a child assembles and rearranges Lego blocks.

Scientists herald nanotechnology as the first major scientific revolution of the 21st century, which could open a world of wonders for humanity, researchers at a bioethics think tank at the University of Toronto said on Thursday.

Its applications include everything from nanorobots, or nanobots -- tiny machines that could travel throughout the body destroying viruses or cancer cells -- to data storage systems the size of a sugar cube, which could hold virtually everything ever published.

But those opposed to the technology argue that there could be severe environmental damage, including the release of nanomaterials that could create illnesses not seen before.

Some critics outline a scenario where trillions of self-reproducing nanobots take on a life of their own and reduce our planet to a massive "grey goo" -- a theme popularized in Michael Crichton's recent novel Prey.

"The scary scenarios are the ones that will undermine public confidence and support of nanotechnology," said Abdallah Daar, director of the Joint Center for Bioethics at the University of Toronto, who is also co-author of the study published in the British journal Nanotechnology.

"We see a widening gap between the science and the ethics. The backlash is already gathering momentum and we've seen calls for a moratorium," said Peter Singer, who is also director of the bioethics center and a co-author of the study.

A Winnipeg-based organization called ETC Group has proposed a moratorium on commercial production of nanomaterials. It wants a global process to evaluate the socioeconomic, health and environmental implications of the technology.

ETC estimates nanotechnology will create an economic "revolution" worth US$1 trillion by 2015 in virtually all sectors of the economy, but poses a fundamental question: "Who will control nanotechnology?"

"We're moving toward a showdown of the type we saw in genetically modified crops," Singer said. "That would be very unfortunate because the potential benefits of the technology might be prematurely and inappropriately rejected."

Daar and Singer's study calls for a closing of the gap between the science and the ethics. It argues that if the ethics debate does not speed up, the science and research are going to get slowed down.

"What we're saying is that we don't want a moratorium," Daar said. "We need to discuss realistic applications, not scaremongering."

Applications of nanotechnology include removal of greenhouse gases cheaply and efficiently by rearranging the molecules into harmless or even beneficial substances.

Molecules could also be manipulated into creating materials like steel, but would be 100 times stronger and much lighter, or a protective spacesuit that fits better than slacks and a sweat shirt.

The study suggests there should be an appropriate level of funding for research into the ethical issues of nanotechnology and that scientists and activists should interact more.

In addition, developing countries should also be involved in this debate lest they be left behind, creating a new scientific divide similar to the technology and genomics divide that already exists.
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A US research centre is working to develop tiny technology in an environmentally friendly way, its director told this week's meeting of the American Physical Society in Austin, Texas.

Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology in Houston, Texas, is trying to identify the potential impacts of manipulating matter on the scale of atoms and molecules to make devices over a thousand times thinner than a human hair.

"Nanotechnology provides a new opportunity for advancing proactive approaches to environmental impacts," said Kevin Ausman, executive director of the Rice centre as he presented his vision for responsible research. "The traditional approach of new technologies to environmental concerns is to wait until there is a problem."

The centre's research focuses on materials made of particles and structures less than 100 millionths of a millimeter (100 nanometres) in size. These nanomaterials may themselves be safe, but their interactions in the environment can have unexpected effects.

For example, nanoparticles of titanium dioxide - which has a variety of uses from sunscreens to rechargeable batteries - absorb and concentrate heavy metals such as cadmium. Ausman's group is looking at whether the release of such nanoparticles increases the toxicity and movement of other pollutants in the environment.

The centre is also studying ways that nanotechnology can help the environment, in efficient water-purifying systems, for instance, or by removing dangerous elements from industrial waste.

Prey in mind

Nanotechnology holds great promise for medicine, electronics and manufacturing, especially now that minute component parts are becoming available in bulk.

But concerns have been growing over the dangers that it could pose. Many of these fears have been fuelled by Michael Crichton's book Prey, in which self-replicating 'nanobots' threaten to take over the world, turning everything in their path into grey goo.

That such extreme scenarios are the realm of science fiction is no reason to be complacent, says Ausman. "An open dialogue between the scientists and engineers developing these technologies and the environmental activists and public policy-makers can lead to a sense of trust that the process will catch problems."

The Rice centre is funded by the US National Nanotechnology Initiative, launched by Bill Clinton in 2000. Last year the initiative spent just $500,000 of its $700-million budget on studying the environmental and health impacts of nanotechnology.

A doctor injects a cancer patient with microscopic gold spheres that hunt down and stick to tumors. She then shines a harmless invisible light through the body. The light warms the spheres, frying the tumors while allowing nearby tissue to thrive.

This is where the next big thing in science may occur -- on the ultra-small nanoscale, a physical netherworld where the laws of gravity begin to give way to the forces of quantum mechanics. It's a frontier where atoms and molecules behave in unexpected, sometimes almost magical ways.

The possibilities, some near and some distant, range from bullet-proof battle jackets weighing no more than a rain jacket to self-repairing highway concrete.

Such innovations can no longer be considered far-fetched, scientists and tech entrepreneurs say, because the field of nanotechnology has matured to the point that the question may no longer be if but rather when the nano-revolution comes, be it five years or 50.

Yet if Houston, already a hotbed for nanotechnology research, wants to cash in on possibly the next great technology gold rush it must act now, said Conrad Masterson, a Houston entrepreneur and nanotech promoter.

"This could be as important to Houston as Spindletop," he said.

But wrenching profits from this potential gusher will require more than the patience the city's boom-and-bust mentality has historically afforded. Any investment made today in nanotechnology might not see a payoff for a decade or more.

For all its promise over the past 15 years, nanotechnology has delivered but a handful of innovations -- such as better sunscreen and wrinkle-free pants -- but that has done little to dampen the spirits of enthusiasts for the science of nanotechnology, so named for the nanometer, one-billionth of a meter.

More and more, government budget writers who hold the purse strings to research funding are joining the ranks of nanotech enthusiasts.

This year, spending under the National Nanotechnology Initiative will rise about 17 percent, to $679 million, continuing an upward spiral. Japan will spend almost as much. Worldwide spending by governments will eclipse $2 billion as nations don't want to miss a possible economic windfall.

The National Science Foundation estimates the market for nanotechnology-related products and services will reach $1 trillion by 2015.

Neal Lane, the science adviser who convinced President Clinton to begin increasing nanotechnology funding in the 2001 budget, said he became a believer in the field when he saw the country's top scientists flocking to the discipline.

"While the science is interesting, we thought here was an opportunity to begin seeing applications really soon," Lane said. "The science is moving so rapidly."

Nanotechnology is also rapidly moving into the public conscience.

Once the province of edgy science fiction or technical magazines, it is now the subject Prey, a bestseller by popular novelist Michael Crichton, based on nanomachines run amok. Written like a movie script, undoubtedly it will soon be a blockbuster. And in Houston's schools, because of a federal grant, Rice University is bringing nanotechnology education into classrooms.

Increasingly precise engineering opened the world of nanotechnology to scientists in the early 1980s.

In 1981, scientists built a microscope that took pictures on the atomic scale and soon were manipulating matter that is 70,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. In some cases they were making objects only a few atoms wide.

To their surprise, they found that the materials they built at this scale behaved in odd ways.

On the human scale (where apples fall out of trees) and across much larger distances (where planets orbit stars), gravity controls the behavior of matter. Gravity reigns on smaller distance scales, too, down to about several hundred nanometers.

But across distances of less than a nanometer, another set of forces, discovered less than a century ago and known collectively as quantum mechanics, controls the interplay of atoms and their constituent electrons, protons and neutrons.

Matter at the nanoscale, then, falls into this gap between gravity and the forces of quantum mechanics, the counter-intuitive realm that Albert Einstein and other 20th-century physicists helped to illuminate where nuclear and electromagnetic forces overpower the more familiar gravity.

Matter at the nanoscale tends to look and behave differently, in part, because it is being tugged at by both sets of forces.

"Nanotechnology is the art and science of building stuff at the nanometer scale," said Richard Smalley, a Rice University professor and probably the most widely respected nanotechnology researcher in the world.

Not only are the materials that scientists build at the nanoscale different from their larger counterparts -- they're better. In some cases much better.

Scientists have made nanomaterials that are 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight, and are more adept at transporting electricity than silicon or copper.

Versatile capabilities like these, and many others, have led speculators to suggest that nanotechnology will foster a gradual revolution that will creep into all corners of the world, from medicine to computer science and beyond for many years to come.

In its search for lighter, stronger materials to build new generations of manned space vehicles, NASA, too, has put research money into nanotechnology.

Among the possibilities are multi-use materials, such as a protective layer around a launch vehicle that would not only protect astronauts from rigors of re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, but also have the ability to sense stress to instantly alert astronauts of a hull breach.

As demonstrated so dramatically by the recent Columbia disaster, there is currently no way for NASA to determine whether the shuttle's protective tiles are damaged once the craft is in space.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the nano-revolution right now is the difficulty of producing enough material. It's one thing to make a sample in a college lab, but quite another to build enough at a price that would justify a factory.

One of the most promising materials made so far is a carbon nanotube. A flak jacket with nanotube composites would look like a windbreaker but be virtually indestructible.

Yet because carbon nanotubes are so difficult to synthesize, requiring high pressure and extreme temperatures, fewer than 100 pounds have been produced to date. A single ounce still costs hundreds of dollars.

Some experts believe nanotechnology will find its way into medicine sooner because smaller quantities are needed. Houston researchers may begin clinical trials as soon as next year on various treatments for cancer, AIDS and other diseases.

Another potential barrier comes from environmental hazards.

There may be long-term risks from the manufacture of nanomaterials, if current methods are put into large-scale production. No scientist can ensure that no harm will come from introducing hordes of tiny, man-made nanoparticles into the environment.

These are questions that must be answered now, rather than after the fact, said Julia Moore, a public policy scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"The public isn't stupid," Moore said. "Anytime anyone stands up and says, `This isn't dangerous,' the public won't believe them."

Probably the most concerted effort to study the environmental implications of nanotechnology is based at Rice, in the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, created in 2001 by a $10.5 million federal grant.

Eventually, Rice hopes to create a database that will highlight potential environmental dangers for all types of nanoparticles, said center director Vicki Colvin.

Key questions include whether nanoparticles would accumulate in the environment or break down naturally and if, because of their small size, they could get into normally restricted tissues in animals and humans.

"It's the right thing to start looking at early because you can save a lot of money in the long run," Colvin said.

Silicon Valley may offer a cautionary tale. Once thought to be home to the "clean industry" of high-tech computer manufacturing, the region is now home to 29 Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites because of contaminated groundwater. Chemicals from computer manufacturing leaked into the water supply.

Had the dangers been known in advance, Colvin said, manufacturing methods could have been cleaned up, or more care could have gone into storing the chemicals.

Scientists are also worried that the public's first exposure to nanotechnology may come through popularizations such as Crichton's book, in which swarms of molecule-size, self-replicating nanobots threaten humanity.

A widely circulated article, written three years ago in Wired magazine by Sun Microsystems scientist Bill Joy, aroused concern by offering a scenario in which specially engineered nanomachines could selectively kill certain people or genetically distinct groups of people.

A future of nanobots building copies of themselves lies in the distant future -- if ever. Scientists disagree over whether it could happen.

"It's an enchanting thought, particularly if you spend a lot of time sitting at a computer simulating things," Smalley said. "But it's never going to happen that way."


Smalley's importance to Houston's stake in nanotechnology cannot be overstated.

He is the discoverer of the buckyball, a sphere of carbon atoms; his research won him the Nobel Prize in 1996 and helped launch the nanotechnology buzz. Buckyballs are inert, nontoxic and small enough to interact with cells, proteins and viruses. They were among the first generation of nanomaterials.

Smalley's work with a cylindrical shaped material -- carbon nanotubes -- also helped start a revolution in materials science. He is the most often cited nanotech researcher in scientific journals. And, in 1993, Smalley created at Rice the first U.S. lab dedicated to nanotechnology.

As a result, Houston is off to a fast start in the nanotechnology race.

The city already has 11 start-up companies hoping to bring nanotechnology research into the marketplace, one of which, C Sixty Inc., the city snagged from Toronto.

"We're very well positioned at this moment to seize nanotechnology for Houston," said James D. Calaway, president of the Center for Houston's Future, an affiliate of the Greater Houston Partnership.

"But we are not the only people in the world that are aware of this opportunity."

As a C Sixty board member, Calaway helped orchestrate the company's move to Houston.

Although Houston is strong in research scientists, it is weak in developing technical business managers who could help build high-tech industries, Calaway said. Because there is little history here of developing such industry, it is difficult to get people to recognize the importance of acting early, he said.

Nanotechnology is just now at the point where research is coming out of laboratories and moving to commercial facilities. Local planners should consider subsidizing labs and making research equipment, such as costly microscopes, available in a central area that would attract research companies, Calaway said.

Because of the Texas Medical Center and the city's large medical research community, Houston could flourish as a nanomedicine center, promoters say.

In recent months, Smalley has also become bullish on nanotechnology's ability to address energy concerns, another seemingly natural area for local focus, given Houston's economic footprint in energy.

But there's almost no investment Houston could make in nanotechnology that could yield a return within just a few years. Of the 20-plus nanotechnology start-ups in Texas, only one, Nanotechnologies Inc. of Austin, is shipping a commercial product. It makes fine powders that, among other uses, make eyeglasses more resistant to scratches.

Yet Texas is already missing out on some opportunities. Last summer, Sematech North, an Austin-based consortium of computer chip giants such as IBM and Intel, chose Albany, N.Y., for a multimillion-dollar expansion for nanoscale research.

"In three years we may have lost our opportunity," Masterson said. "Today, there probably isn't a center of nanotechnology in the country.

"Our challenge is: When someone asks where the center is in 2010, the answer is Houston."

A doctor injects a cancer patient with microscopic gold spheres that hunt down and stick to tumors. She then shines a harmless invisible light through the body. The light warms the spheres, frying the tumors while allowing nearby tissue to thrive.

This is where the next big thing in science may occur -- on the ultra-small nanoscale, a physical netherworld where the laws of gravity begin to give way to the forces of quantum mechanics. It's a frontier where atoms and molecules behave in unexpected, sometimes almost magical ways.

The possibilities, some near and some distant, range from bullet-proof battle jackets weighing no more than a rain jacket to self-repairing highway concrete.

Such innovations can no longer be considered far-fetched, scientists and tech entrepreneurs say, because the field of nanotechnology has matured to the point that the question may no longer be if but rather when the nano-revolution comes, be it five years or 50.

Yet if Houston, already a hotbed for nanotechnology research, wants to cash in on possibly the next great technology gold rush it must act now, said Conrad Masterson, a Houston entrepreneur and nanotech promoter.

"This could be as important to Houston as Spindletop," he said.

But wrenching profits from this potential gusher will require more than the patience the city's boom-and-bust mentality has historically afforded. Any investment made today in nanotechnology might not see a payoff for a decade or more.

For all its promise over the past 15 years, nanotechnology has delivered but a handful of innovations -- such as better sunscreen and wrinkle-free pants -- but that has done little to dampen the spirits of enthusiasts for the science of nanotechnology, so named for the nanometer, one-billionth of a meter.

More and more, government budget writers who hold the purse strings to research funding are joining the ranks of nanotech enthusiasts.

This year, spending under the National Nanotechnology Initiative will rise about 17 percent, to $679 million, continuing an upward spiral. Japan will spend almost as much. Worldwide spending by governments will eclipse $2 billion as nations don't want to miss a possible economic windfall.

The National Science Foundation estimates the market for nanotechnology-related products and services will reach $1 trillion by 2015.

Neal Lane, the science adviser who convinced President Clinton to begin increasing nanotechnology funding in the 2001 budget, said he became a believer in the field when he saw the country's top scientists flocking to the discipline.

"While the science is interesting, we thought here was an opportunity to begin seeing applications really soon," Lane said. "The science is moving so rapidly."

Nanotechnology is also rapidly moving into the public conscience.

Once the province of edgy science fiction or technical magazines, it is now the subject Prey, a bestseller by popular novelist Michael Crichton, based on nanomachines run amok. Written like a movie script, undoubtedly it will soon be a blockbuster. And in Houston's schools, because of a federal grant, Rice University is bringing nanotechnology education into classrooms.

Increasingly precise engineering opened the world of nanotechnology to scientists in the early 1980s.

In 1981, scientists built a microscope that took pictures on the atomic scale and soon were manipulating matter that is 70,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. In some cases they were making objects only a few atoms wide.

To their surprise, they found that the materials they built at this scale behaved in odd ways.

On the human scale (where apples fall out of trees) and across much larger distances (where planets orbit stars), gravity controls the behavior of matter. Gravity reigns on smaller distance scales, too, down to about several hundred nanometers.

But across distances of less than a nanometer, another set of forces, discovered less than a century ago and known collectively as quantum mechanics, controls the interplay of atoms and their constituent electrons, protons and neutrons.

Matter at the nanoscale, then, falls into this gap between gravity and the forces of quantum mechanics, the counter-intuitive realm that Albert Einstein and other 20th-century physicists helped to illuminate where nuclear and electromagnetic forces overpower the more familiar gravity.

Matter at the nanoscale tends to look and behave differently, in part, because it is being tugged at by both sets of forces.

"Nanotechnology is the art and science of building stuff at the nanometer scale," said Richard Smalley, a Rice University professor and probably the most widely respected nanotechnology researcher in the world.

Not only are the materials that scientists build at the nanoscale different from their larger counterparts -- they're better. In some cases much better.

Scientists have made nanomaterials that are 100 times stronger than steel at one-sixth the weight, and are more adept at transporting electricity than silicon or copper.

Versatile capabilities like these, and many others, have led speculators to suggest that nanotechnology will foster a gradual revolution that will creep into all corners of the world, from medicine to computer science and beyond for many years to come.

In its search for lighter, stronger materials to build new generations of manned space vehicles, NASA, too, has put research money into nanotechnology.

Among the possibilities are multi-use materials, such as a protective layer around a launch vehicle that would not only protect astronauts from rigors of re-entry into Earth's atmosphere, but also have the ability to sense stress to instantly alert astronauts of a hull breach.

As demonstrated so dramatically by the recent Columbia disaster, there is currently no way for NASA to determine whether the shuttle's protective tiles are damaged once the craft is in space.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle to the nano-revolution right now is the difficulty of producing enough material. It's one thing to make a sample in a college lab, but quite another to build enough at a price that would justify a factory.

One of the most promising materials made so far is a carbon nanotube. A flak jacket with nanotube composites would look like a windbreaker but be virtually indestructible.

Yet because carbon nanotubes are so difficult to synthesize, requiring high pressure and extreme temperatures, fewer than 100 pounds have been produced to date. A single ounce still costs hundreds of dollars.

Some experts believe nanotechnology will find its way into medicine sooner because smaller quantities are needed. Houston researchers may begin clinical trials as soon as next year on various treatments for cancer, AIDS and other diseases.

Another potential barrier comes from environmental hazards.

There may be long-term risks from the manufacture of nanomaterials, if current methods are put into large-scale production. No scientist can ensure that no harm will come from introducing hordes of tiny, man-made nanoparticles into the environment.

These are questions that must be answered now, rather than after the fact, said Julia Moore, a public policy scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.

"The public isn't stupid," Moore said. "Anytime anyone stands up and says, `This isn't dangerous,' the public won't believe them."

Probably the most concerted effort to study the environmental implications of nanotechnology is based at Rice, in the Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology, created in 2001 by a $10.5 million federal grant.

Eventually, Rice hopes to create a database that will highlight potential environmental dangers for all types of nanoparticles, said center director Vicki Colvin.

Key questions include whether nanoparticles would accumulate in the environment or break down naturally and if, because of their small size, they could get into normally restricted tissues in animals and humans.

"It's the right thing to start looking at early because you can save a lot of money in the long run," Colvin said.

Silicon Valley may offer a cautionary tale. Once thought to be home to the "clean industry" of high-tech computer manufacturing, the region is now home to 29 Environmental Protection Agency Superfund sites because of contaminated groundwater. Chemicals from computer manufacturing leaked into the water supply.

Had the dangers been known in advance, Colvin said, manufacturing methods could have been cleaned up, or more care could have gone into storing the chemicals.

Scientists are also worried that the public's first exposure to nanotechnology may come through popularizations such as Crichton's book, in which swarms of molecule-size, self-replicating nanobots threaten humanity.

A widely circulated article, written three years ago in Wired magazine by Sun Microsystems scientist Bill Joy, aroused concern by offering a scenario in which specially engineered nanomachines could selectively kill certain people or genetically distinct groups of people.

A future of nanobots building copies of themselves lies in the distant future -- if ever. Scientists disagree over whether it could happen.

"It's an enchanting thought, particularly if you spend a lot of time sitting at a computer simulating things," Smalley said. "But it's never going to happen that way."


Smalley's importance to Houston's stake in nanotechnology cannot be overstated.

He is the discoverer of the buckyball, a sphere of carbon atoms; his research won him the Nobel Prize in 1996 and helped launch the nanotechnology buzz. Buckyballs are inert, nontoxic and small enough to interact with cells, proteins and viruses. They were among the first generation of nanomaterials.

Smalley's work with a cylindrical shaped material -- carbon nanotubes -- also helped start a revolution in materials science. He is the most often cited nanotech researcher in scientific journals. And, in 1993, Smalley created at Rice the first U.S. lab dedicated to nanotechnology.

As a result, Houston is off to a fast start in the nanotechnology race.

The city already has 11 start-up companies hoping to bring nanotechnology research into the marketplace, one of which, C Sixty Inc., the city snagged from Toronto.

"We're very well positioned at this moment to seize nanotechnology for Houston," said James D. Calaway, president of the Center for Houston's Future, an affiliate of the Greater Houston Partnership.

"But we are not the only people in the world that are aware of this opportunity."

As a C Sixty board member, Calaway helped orchestrate the company's move to Houston.

Although Houston is strong in research scientists, it is weak in developing technical business managers who could help build high-tech industries, Calaway said. Because there is little history here of developing such industry, it is difficult to get people to recognize the importance of acting early, he said.

Nanotechnology is just now at the point where research is coming out of laboratories and moving to commercial facilities. Local planners should consider subsidizing labs and making research equipment, such as costly microscopes, available in a central area that would attract research companies, Calaway said.

Because of the Texas Medical Center and the city's large medical research community, Houston could flourish as a nanomedicine center, promoters say.

In recent months, Smalley has also become bullish on nanotechnology's ability to address energy concerns, another seemingly natural area for local focus, given Houston's economic footprint in energy.

But there's almost no investment Houston could make in nanotechnology that could yield a return within just a few years. Of the 20-plus nanotechnology start-ups in Texas, only one, Nanotechnologies Inc. of Austin, is shipping a commercial product. It makes fine powders that, among other uses, make eyeglasses more resistant to scratches.

Yet Texas is already missing out on some opportunities. Last summer, Sematech North, an Austin-based consortium of computer chip giants such as IBM and Intel, chose Albany, N.Y., for a multimillion-dollar expansion for nanoscale research.

"In three years we may have lost our opportunity," Masterson said. "Today, there probably isn't a center of nanotechnology in the country.

"Our challenge is: When someone asks where the center is in 2010, the answer is Houston."