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Advances made in the field of nanotechnology could be applied in the development of a new generation of chemical and biological weapons, writes Andy Oppenheimer.

Current and future developments in nanotechnology—science and engineering on the scale of nanometres or billionths of a metre—may pave the way for new types of weapons. The new technology will have a profound impact on new materials, electronic devices, chemical, biological and mechanical systems and provides the potential for future weapons development. Previous articles on Janes Chem-Bio Web discussed the potential of nanotechnology being used for a fourth generation of nuclear weapons. This article deals with its potential to enable future production of novel chemical and biological weapons (CBW).

Dual-use medical advances

Nanotechnology has great potential in the fields of biotechnology and medicine. Bio-nanotechnology is concerned with molecular-scale properties and production of materials and devices including tissue and cellular engineering scaffolds, molecular motors and biomolecules for sensors and drug delivery. While bio-nanotechnological products are seen as around 10 years off, medical application is promising, with intense research being conducted in disease diagnosis, drug delivery and molecular imaging. Medical-related products containing nanoparticles are currently on the market in the US. DNA-based geometrical structures (including artificial crystals) and functioning DNA-based nanomachines are currently being fabricated.

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Forty years ago, mathematician Mark Kac asked the theoretical question, “Can one hear the shape of a drum?”

If drums of different shapes always produce their own unique sound spectrum, then it should be possible to identify the shape of a specific drum merely by studying its spectrum, thus “hearing” the drum’s shape (a procedure analogous to spectroscopy, the way scientists detect the composition of a faraway star by studying its light spectrum).

But what if two drums of different shapes could emit exactly the same sound? If so, it would be impossible to work backward from the spectrum and uniquely surmise the physical structure of the drum, because there would be more than one correct answer to the question.

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DETROIT–Drivers have never had so many distractions tempting them to take their eyes off the road and their hands off the wheel.

Talking on cell phones and typing text messages while driving has already led to bans in many states. But now auto companies, likening their latest models to living rooms on the road, are turning cars into cocoons of communication systems and high-tech entertainment.

Some drivers are packing their car interiors with GPS navigation screens, portable DVD players and even computer keyboards and printers.

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An Australian inventor has come up with a gun that can fire 180 rounds in one hundredth of a second, or an impossible 1 million rounds a minute – so fast that a bullet enters the barrel before the preceding one has even left the muzzle.

Incredibly, storekeeper James Michael O’Dwyer’s gun has no moving parts and operates entirely on electrical impulses.

Despite the fact that O’Dwyer’s invention has vast and even dizzying implications as an awesome military weapon, when he approached Australian defense officials in 1994 with his idea they turned a deaf ear. And when he showed his gun to former U.S. Special Forces chief Gen. Wayne Downing, the general said O’Dwyer was “certifiably” crazy.

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A new strategic plan for the work of the National Nanotechnology Initiative has just been released by the interagency Nanoscale Science, Engineering, and Technology (NSET) Subcommittee of the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Technology with support from the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO). The 2007 NNI Strategic Plan describes the vision, goals, and priorities of the NNI to ensure that the United States derives growing economic benefits and improved quality of life for its citizens and remains a global leader in nanotechnology R&D in the years to come.

According to NNCO Director Clayton Teague, periodic reexamination of the NNI Strategic Plan is essential, given the dynamic nature of the field. The 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act of 2003 calls for the NNI Strategic Plan to be updated every third year; the plan just released updates and replaces the December 2004 plan.

“This strategic plan presents an overview of the NNI for the public and will facilitate achievement of the NNI vision by offering guidance for agency leaders, program managers, and the research community in their nanotechnology R&D investments and activities,” said Dr. Teague. He noted that the new plan reflects the consensus of the 25 NNI participating agencies as to the goals and priorities of the NNI and provides a framework within which each agency will carry out its own mission-related nanotechnology programs, as well as a path that will sustain coordination of interagency activities. In addition to specifying high-level goals, the plan identifies activities aimed at accomplishing those goals. The plan also identifies major subject areas, or program component areas (PCAs), in which investments are needed to ensure the success of the initiative. Finally, the plan identifies a number of representative high-impact application opportunities that cut across the NNI program component areas and that align with the competencies and missions of participating agencies.

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In the race to make solar cells cheaper and more efficient, many researchers and start-up companies are betting on new designs that exploit nanostructures — materials engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter. Using nanotechnology, researchers can experiment with and control how a material generates, captures, transports, and stores free electrons — properties that are important for the conversion of sunlight into electricity.Two nanotech methods for engineering solar cell materials have shown particular promise. One uses thin films of metal oxide nanoparticles, such as titanium dioxide, doped with other elements, such as nitrogen. Another strategy employs quantum dots — nanosize crystals — that strongly absorb visible light. These tiny semiconductors inject electrons into a metal oxide film, or “sensitize” it, to increase solar energy conversion. Both doping and quantum dot sensitization extend the visible light absorption of the metal oxide materials.Combining these two approaches appears to yield better solar cell materials than either one alone does, according to Jin Zhang, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Zhang led a team of researchers from California, Mexico, and China that created a thin film doped with nitrogen and sensitized with quantum dots. When tested, the new nanocomposite material performed better than predicted — as if the functioning of the whole material was greater than the sum of its two individual components.

“We have discovered a new strategy that could be very useful for enhancing the photo response and conversion efficiency of solar cells based on nanomaterials,” said Zhang. “We initially thought that the best we might do is get results as good as the sum of the two, and maybe if we didn’t make this right, we’d get something worse. But surprisingly, these materials were much better.”

The group’s findings were reported in the Journal of Physical Chemistry in a paper posted online on January 4. Lead author of the paper was Tzarara Lopez-Luke, a graduate student visiting in Zheng’s lab who is now at the Instituto de Investigaciones Metalurgicas, UMSNH, Morelia, Mexico.

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