Moving Water Molecules By Light

Roland Piquepaille writes "An interdisciplinary team of researchers at Arizona State University (ASU) has discovered a new nanotechnology effect, the ability of moving water molecules by light. This is a far better way than current methods such as damaging electric fields and opens the way to a new class of microfluidic devices used in analytical chemistry and for pharmaceutical research. For example, this makes possible to design a device that can move drugs dissolved in water, or droplets of water and samples that need to be tested for environmental or biochemical analyses. Please read this overview for more details and references, plus an image of two water drops illuminated with a fluorescent dye and sitting respectively on a nanowire surface and on a flat surface."

Comments

This could be interesting torture device

[LeahofRivendell]

It probably wouldn't be that practical, but it could be effective to dehydrate certain parts of someone's body by moving the water around inside. Maybe the military could find use for that.

Hydro-Computing

[daniel23]

Would this mark the first step into the evolution of hydrocomputing, just light and water in miniature pipes, feasable to use under water or in environments with a high risk of explosion ?

Would this make any sense to have?

Roland Piquepaille == Spammer

[Anonymous Coward]

please visit his adverts he means, not an overview that he has cut and pasted with zero added insight

as he would say with his boilerplate article submission template

you can find more details in this overview of Roland Piquepaille's spamming activities here

Poorly written article - Here's what they mean:

[Anonymous Coward]

If you add a bunch of nanofibers to a wax coated surface, the water will "ball up" and move around more easily. If you make the nanofibers sensitive to light, you can control the speed with which the water moves over the surface by changing the light level.

Fascinating

[Lord_Dweomer]

Sorry if this may be slightly off-topic, but I am absolutely fascinated with this new technology. This is clearly in the realm of what was once just Sci-Fi.

I am so frightened (and by frightened I mean extremely excited) at how fast we are evolving technologically, I can't even get a vague picture of where we'll be 5 years from now let alone 50.

I'd really like to hear some practical non-research based applications for this technology if any knowledgeable person might be able to help out. One of the first things I thought of was that this might be useful for creating cybernetics, since light is a lot less harmful than electricity, and I'm guessing that cybernetics of the future will involve some sort of liquid transfer on a nano scale.

Why is nanotechnology different from other fields?

[wass]

we haven't figured out a way to curb the serious abuses (i.e. the goo problem) that can occur with each new discovery in the field.

Please elaborate on the 'goo problem'. Ie, with explicit details on how it would work, not just some qualitative description, which is all that anybody seems to have at the moment.

So somebody said that maybe all life COULD be devoured by a properly-designed nanotech robot that would reproduce quickly and break up organic matter into component monomers, etc etc etc.

I'll say a self-aware self-replicating AI program COULD be created that would spread through the net independent of host operating system, and crash all airplanes, screw up everybody's bank accounts, erase all data, etc etc etc.

Similarly, a 'battlebot' with enough memory COULD somehow be programmed properly that it also attains self-awareness intelligence, reproduces and builds an army of subservient battlebots, and wreaks havoc across the planet.

So, if you are trying to claim we should stop research into nanotechnology, then we should also stop research into computing, artificial intelligence, robotics, etc.

There is NO field where there isn't any risk that something bad could happen. Nanotech is the 'new' field, so this is where the fear-mongering comes in. You're not alone, look at comics, for instance. Most old-school Marvel superheroes got their superpowers, for better or worse, through radioactive effects, back in the fearful decades after the atom bomb. Nowadays the current fear is nanotech, and even the first Spiderman movie changed the story from a radioactive spider to a genetically-modified spider. You're doing the same thing, really.

I work with nanotech. Just 30 minutes ago I was putting carbon nanotubes onto a substrate, and I'll eventually do some electronic transport measurements. Currently I'm scanning the substrate with an atomic-force microscope. There are TONS of amazing uses that nanotubes might have, so we're studying many of their properties. Why is my study of carbon nanotubes different from somebody determining which binary tree search algorithms are most efficient, or what shape sawblade cuts through plastic the best?

Re:Why is nanotechnology different from other fiel

[kirkjobsluder]

So somebody said that maybe all life COULD be devoured by a properly-designed nanotech robot that would reproduce quickly and break up organic matter into component monomers, etc etc etc.

I keep reading about the grey goo, and I've yet to see an argument that it is possible from someone who demonstrates an understanding of the complex tradeoffs that limit our currently existing biological self-replicating machines. Problems like:

1: Oxygen is both a nutrient, and a poison.
2: The lack of a universal catalyst. A machine that catalyzes the transformation of one amino acid will be less than optimal for catalyzing a different amino acid.
3: Energy and trace elements severely limit growth at a microscopic level.