Molecular transistor

From Yale University's Office of Public Affairs --

New Haven, Conn. — A group of scientists has succeeded in creating the first transistor made from a single molecule. The team, which includes researchers from Yale University and the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology in South Korea, published their findings in the December 24 issue of the journal Nature.

The team, including Mark Reed, the Harold Hodgkinson Professor of Engineering & Applied Science at Yale, showed that a benzene molecule attached to gold contacts could behave just like a silicon transistor.

The researchers were able to manipulate the molecule’s different energy states depending on the voltage they applied to it through the contacts. By manipulating the energy states, they were able to control the current passing through the molecule.

“It’s like rolling a ball up and over a hill, where the ball represents electrical current and the height of the hill represents the molecule’s different energy states,” Reed said. “We were able to adjust the height of the hill, allowing current to get through when it was low, and stopping the current when it was high.” In this way, the team was able to use the molecule in much the same way as regular transistors are used.

The work builds on previous research Reed did in the 1990s, which demonstrated that individual molecules could be trapped between electrical contacts. Since then, he and Takhee Lee, a former Yale postdoctoral associate and now a professor at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, developed additional techniques over the years that allowed them to “see” what was happening at the molecular level.

Being able to fabricate the electrical contacts on such small scales, identifying the ideal molecules to use, and figuring out where to place them and how to connect them to the contacts were also key components of the discovery. “There were a lot of technological advances and understanding we built up over many years to make this happen,” Reed said.

There is a lot of interest in using molecules in computer circuits because traditional transistors are not feasible at such small scales. But Reed stressed that this is strictly a scientific breakthrough and that practical applications such as smaller and faster “molecular computers”—if possible at all—are many decades away.

“We’re not about to create the next generation of integrated circuits,” he said. “But after many years of work gearing up to this, we have fulfilled a decade-long quest and shown that molecules can act as transistors.”

Other authors of the paper include Hyunwook Song and Yun Hee Jang (Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology); and Youngsang Kim and Heejun Jeong (Hanyang University).

Citation: 10.1038/nature08639

Avatar

Just saw Avatar. First impression? It did what good SF should do: it transported me into another world. Solid acting, solid tech, solid story.

The story seems more like Carpenter discovered it than Carpenter wrote it.

Which is as it should be.

More to come.

The Chicago way

America -- as far as I can remember from Poli-Sci classes in the previous milleniumn -- is meant to be a "Republican democracy." It's a grand experiment. Huzzah.

"Huzzzah" aside, the experiment is at risk from too much information – an unintended consequence of the media revolution.

My Cliff Notes assumption is that, in a democracy, an educated public (via free speech and free press) is supposed to have an educated discussion (re: political philosophy and policy application) and elect representatives accordingly. Screw that.

From the days of Nixon in 1968 (See The Selling of the President) politicians have been rebranding and packaging themselves. (A response to a new media called television, of course. For a good laugh, watch The Manchurian Candidate.) Political philosophy and policy gets boiled down to air bubbles like “Peace with honor." Granted, politicians have been lying bastards since the dawn of time. But McLuhanesque media forced them to make a science out of it.

It didn't always work that way.

According to my cousin (U of C military history major) Chicago Ward politics is the model for all successful politicians. Basically, there’s the horseshit you tell the public, then the shit you actually do. Based on corruption, graft, favor and promises, you must pay back the people who put you in. This necessitates a practical, reality-based confrontation of what-is. As a politician, you’re forced to face facts and deal with the real world. You owe patronage. You owe payback. Words don’t count. Your patrons need results.

The result was a no-nonsense, pragmatic practicality in the backroom deals American politicians made with the opponents they supposedly hated. As dirty as the system was, it forced politicians to confront reality – and make decisions accordingly. And not on the basis of the rhetorical horsecrap that got them elected. Talk is cheap. You gotta bring home the bacon. So it was.

Speeches are crap. Every chump pushing a broom knew that. What counted were the actual deals. The quid pro quo. What you got. Speeches aside, what you wanted was a guy who knew the score and got things done for the people who put him in office.

In other words, when it comes to American politics, there’s a layer of bullshit rhetoric above a layer of reality. Surprisingly, until, say, the 1960s, most people knew that. Even dirt farmers and sharecroppers. They weren’t that stupid. Huey Long said, “Every man a king!” What he meant was, “Put me in the goddamn governor’s mansion and I’ll make sure your kids get into college.” Even the dumbass hicks knew the score.

But, thanks to the power of advertising, the average American today doesn’t have the sense of a shitkicking hick from the 1930s.

To sell himself today, a politician must brand himself, and keep the message simple.

It’s morning in America. Elect me, and all the little children will have ice cream.

Somewhere along the line, people started taking this shit seriously. Then the politicians started taking their own shit seriously. Modern media killed the rough, reality-based pragmatism of backroom politics. What's left is ideology. Bullshit bulletpoints that sell.

Duh, the liberal media hates America. Duh, the evil corporations are putting thoughts in our heads.

Today’s cyber-savvy voters are networked. They know everything. There's a flood of information going into their heads. But they filter it all through the pre-existing narratives of Left or Right. These narratives have a quasi-religious certainty. There’s no discussion – no need to ask questions. Government is evil. Business is evil. You don't have to think about it, don't have to talk about it. You know.

Back in the bad old days, voters would ask selfish questions. What’s in it for me? What have you done for me lately? Huey Long would say, Jesus, this global warming thing. If this goes on, we’re screwed. He’d cut a deal in a smoke-filled room and make a speech that was filled with lies. But something would get done.

Back in the day, politics was bullshit. Nobody believed in it. But shit got done.

Today, the politicians believe their own bullshit. The people do too.

And nothing gets done.

America's stuck, kids. Our tires are spinning in the sand. We ain't going nowhere.

"Change" aside, that isn't likely to change.

Facebook -- pure evil, or what?

Is Facebook pure unadulterated evil, sorta like that swirling green cylinder of Satan-in-a-Can in John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness?

The jury of my mind is still out. Partly, because I’m predisposed to hate Facebook. I’m a writer/cartoonist. I’m not a people person. I’m not chatty. I crawl in my cave, enter a trance, laugh insanely at my own jokes, then emerge with something to show the tribe. It’s how I’m wired.

Facebook is chatty by design. It’s a people-place for people-people to meet people. It resembles nothing so much as a high school cafeteria where the guys and gals are filling the echoing walls with oh did you hear about saundra I think she’s pregnant no she’s just fat stop what’d you think of true grit god my dad likes that that’s like for old people oh my god that looks like puke I’m not going to eat something that looks like puke already stop poking me god no I don’t want to be your friend like what part of fuck off do you not understand

Any content you introduce in this Babel is a rock dropped in a bottomless well of chat that quickly sinks out of sight.

So, the words you put into Facebook are probably wasted. FB will probably lay waste to the words outside of it as well.

So, when I finally emerge from my cave with something for people to read, I suspect they’ll either be on FB or have the attention span of a hummingbird with ADD and not want to read in their spare time anyway.

Being a cranky writer, that’s what I’m predisposed to think.

Or maybe not.

To quote Fugate's Law of Media: Each new wave of media is followed by a reactionary anti-wave of media critics claiming the new media is turning people into idiots and anti-social bastards.

Corollary: Like stopped clocks, reactionary media critics are sometimes right.

Music videos, comic books, rock and roll, radio, television, movies, jazz music, the Wizard of Oz books, the telephone and the printing press were all blamed for the decline and fall of everything. As McLuhan points out, even literacy itself was accused of destroying oral memory and poetry in ancient Greece. But the "stopped clock" argument remains. TV, for example, really did turn people into idiots. Facebook may very well accelerate the process. Soon, we will all be devo.

The jury is still out.

Additional musings:

Fugate's 39th Law

A socialist government that owns all the businesses is functionally no different than a oligarchy of big businesses that own the government.

Peace in Our Time

They awarded Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize today. The prize was delivered by a Terminator robot from the future. "We are giving him this award for something he hasn't accomplished yet," said the robot. "But in the next few decades, he will."

Public Service Announcement

Across America, cops are cracking down. We’d like to say come to a complete stop, use your seat belt obey the speed limit and don’t drink and drive, but it won’t do you any good. The economy sucks and the government needs the money. You’re going to get a ticket whether you’re guilty or not. Especially if you’re black.