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from the waiting-for-nano-baby-deliveries dept.
Tiny nano-scale machines formed from DNA could be the future of manufacturing things at small scale but great volume: drugs, tiny chip components, and of course more nanomachines. But moving simple, reusable machines like a little arm half a micrometer long is more difficult than at human scale. Wires for signals aren't possible at that scale, and if you want to move it with a second arm, how do you move that arm?
For a while chemical signals have been used; wash a certain solution over a nanobot and it changes its orientation, closes its grasping tip, or what have you. But that's slow and inexact.
Researchers at the Technical University of Munich were looking at ways to improve this situation of controlling machines at the molecular scale. They were working with "nano-cranes," which are essentially a custom 400-nanometer strand of DNA sticking up out of a substrate, with a flexible base (literally — it's made of unpaired bases) that lets it rotate in any direction. It's more like a tiny robotic finger, but let's not split hairs (or base pairs).
What Friedrich Simmel and his team found, or rather realized the potential of, was that DNA molecules and therefore these nano-cranes have a negative charge. So theoretically, they should move in response to electric fields. And that's just what they did.
[...] The team's work, which like most great research seems obvious in retrospect, earned them the coveted cover story in Science.
Source: TechCrunch
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday January 21 2018, @04:10AM (3 children)
Cuz my doc sez my needed meds combined with my needed ethanol fuel intake is overwhelming the liver worker's union, and while I'm pretty sure the liver isn't 100% evil and must be destroyed, I'm also pretty sure the union bastards are lazy; and I need both those meds and that bottle of vodak to function. hic
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Sunday January 21 2018, @04:57AM (2 children)
Who needs vodka? Just have the nano-cranes directly synthesize ethanol and release it into you bloodstream.
You'll still need the meds, cause they're probably patented and synthesizing them yourself would be an intellectual property violation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 22 2018, @12:05PM (1 child)
Yes but where is fun in that? No rituals, no solemn toasts, no monetary sacrifice (showing off), no bribery (buying someone a drink), no public display of amount of alcohol consumed (again showing off - one's liver), ...
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Monday January 22 2018, @04:34PM
That's the whole point. If you're that blasted on alcohol you made inside yourself, you won't care!