Meeting notice

 1-06-98 7:30 NE43-773 (545 Tech Sq.)

Suggested topic:  There are several reasons to expect
investment in global high-tech enterprises to increase 
significantly over the next decade.  Current signs of 
this trend include the dramatic increase in European 
biotech companies, the organization of European venture 
capital firms, and the consensus among analysts that 
the future of the non-Chinese Asian economies is to found
by their climbing as far up the value-added chain as
possible.

Is it legitimate to factor this increase into forecasts
of the development in NT?  Can we assume that a
doubling (say) of investment in hi-tech R&D world-wide 
translates into a doubling of the rate of progress? More
than 2x>?  Less?   

Minutes:  John Myers, who gave a fascinating talk last
month on "What Quantum Mechanics can do for Computing
and Vice-Versa" has prepared a set of minutes so
detailed as to be virtually a transcript. Contains a
lightly annotated bibliography. Available at
world.std.com/~fhapgood/nsgpage.html.

Will Ware writes:

        It is likely that future nanotech designers
        will be to some extent specialized programmers
        (with other areas of expertise, since a program
        doesn't typically have, say, a Young's
        modulus).  Accordingly I have been thinking a
        little about how to generate molecular
        structures algorithmically, i.e. as the output
        of programs.  Recently I threw together a
        little C code that generates a shape that can
        be viewed with RasMol. If you edit one very
        short source file and recompile, you can change
        the shapes. My personal congratulations will go
        to the first good-looking rendition of Mickey
        Mouse. The code is at
        ftp://ftp.std.com/pub/wware/alg_gen.tgz

IBM has a nice summary of its inhouse NT research at
www.ibm.com/Stories/1997/12/sm1.html.  It represents
some kind of milestone that a company like IBM is
organizing its research -- or at least the presentation
of its research -- this way.

News of meetings received:
	
	1998 Molecular Graphics and Modelling Society International Meeting
			www.mgmsoa.org
        Microsystem and Nanosystem Technology Workshop
                         www.atp.nist.gov



hapgood@pobox.com