Small science

Technology: The nanotech future is just beginning | Lynde Langdon ST. LOUIS— In a dim meeting room at the America's Center in St. Louis, two rows of armless stick figures splash across a projection screen. The figures, some upright and others upside down, look like two-tentacled squids lined up to tickle each other's feet. The stick figures represent lipids, the molecules that make up fat. In this picture, they line up to form a lipid bilayer, the material that makes up the membrane, or skin, of living cells. What the scientists at this symposium are learning about lipid bilayers could change the world. Six scientists at the February convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)—the largest general science conference in the world—presented their individual versions of the stick-squid illustration and their own research in nano-biotechnology. By coating a nano-sized machine—say, a silicon chip smaller than a human cell—with a lipid bilayer, the scientists could trick a human cell into talking to the machine, maybe even into taking orders from it. "Source":[ http://www.worldmag.com/articles/11580].

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