William Gibson
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Vocabulary
gaijin
SYLLABICATION: gai·jin
PRONUNCIATION: gjn, -jn
NOUN: Inflected forms: pl. gaijin
A non-Japanese person.
ETYMOLOGY: Japanese : gai, outside, foreign (from Middle Chinese wajh) + jin,
person; see jinriksha.
A nanometer is a unit of spatial measurement that is 10 to the -9th meter, or one billionth of a meter. It is commonly used in nanotechnology, the building of extremely small machines.
nanotechnology
Nanotechnology, or, as it is sometimes called, molecular manufacturing, is a
branch of engineering that deals with the design and manufacture of extremely
small electronic circuits and mechanical devices built at the molecular level
of matter. The Institute of Nanotechnology in the U.K. expresses it as "science
and technology where dimensions and tolerances in the range of 0.1 nanometer
(nm) to 100 nm play a critical role." Nanotechnology is often discussed
together with micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), a subject that usually
includes nanotechnology but may also include technologies higher than the molecular
level.
There is a limit to the number of components that can be fabricated onto a semiconductor
wafer or "chip.". Traditionally, circuits have been etched onto chips
by removing material in small regions. However, it is also possible in theory
to build chips up, one atom at a time, to obtain devices much smaller than those
that can be manufactured by etching. With this approach, there would be no superfluous
atoms; every particle would have a purpose. Electrical conductors, called nanowires,
would be only one atom thick. A logic gate would require only a few atoms. A
data bit could be represented by the presence or absence of a single electron.
Nanotechnology holds promise in the quest for ever-more-powerful computers and
communications devices. But the most fascinating (and potentially dangerous)
applications are in medical science. So-called nanorobots might serve as programmable
antibodies. As disease-causing bacteria and viruses mutate in their endless
attempts to get around medical treatments, nanorobots could be reprogrammed
to selectively seek out and destroy them. Other nanorobots might be programmed
to single out and kill cancer cells.
Two concepts associated with nanotechnology are positional assembly and self-replication.
Positional assembly deals with the mechanics of moving molecular pieces into
their proper relational places and keeping them there. Molecular robots are
devices that do the positional assembly. Self-replication deals with the problem
of multiplying the positional arrangements in some automatic way, both in building
the manufacturing device and in building the manufactured product. http://WhatIs.techtarget.com/
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