NanoBlog

IOP Science European Physics Letters journal has issued a special issue on graphene in honor of the Nobel Prise awarded to Professors Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov. Professor Neto has written the introduction. This issue is presently open access.

Wolfram Alpha now includes visible and atomic spectra, and atomic energy level data. Check out this Alpha blog for details on its use.

The APS has a wonderful physics and astronomy education resources website called ComPADRE. There are materials for students, teachers, and anyone interested in physics on this site.

The latest issue of IOP Science Journal on Semiconductor Science and Technology has a special issue on heterostructures to nanostructures. It's available now and many of the articles have free access. Get it while you can.

My pile of technical paper, journals, white papers, and other information on nanotechnology alone has grown to be unmanageable. This is the advantage of the Internet, several professional memberships, and arVix. I began looking for a reference manager to help with writing a technical paper. Wikipedia has a great summary of reference management tools and I selected three to look at Endnote, Mendeley, and Zotero. Each package has its pros and cons:

• EndNote X4: great integration with MS Word and supports Mathematica (not tested), but has a hard time converting previously stored pdfs to citations. The user interface isn't as good as the others.
• Mendeley: Great at converting pdfs to citations and good at MS word integration. Searching and finding new citations from the desktop applications was not apparent. All citations on the desktop tool get mirrored on your web account on the Mendeley website seamlessly. Sharing is easy perhaps too easy. Great tool and site but worried about information leakage before its time. Mendeley will integrate well with Zotero so that citations from Zotero appear in the Mendeley citation database.
• Zotero: Great integration with Firefox and it's easy to build up a citation database. I wish I used it from the start. It's not so good at converting previously stored pdfs to citations even pdfs from arXiv. This site has online storage and collaboration too, but it lets you can choose to connect to it.

I've had some luck converting my pdfs to citations with Zotero using other openURL resolver sites. Harvard, Stanford, and George Maison University resolver sites have worked fairly well.

Forget about sharing databases and files between the three programs. EndNote would import RIS files from Mendeley. Zotero could not read RIS or Bib files from Mendeley. The EndNote eval program does not export anything useful. There is no one program to rule them all. My ranking

• Zotero for easy of getting citations but needs a better pdf converter.
• Mendeley for great pdf conversion and word integration but wary of the seamless transfer of information to the website that is setup for social networking. This would be my first choice if the connection to the website could be disabled. I would use Zotero to collect citations.
• EndNote for great integration with MS Word but needs better pdf converters.

Also, if you prefer EndNote, it is for sale on Amazon for $187 verses the $250 download price on the EndNote website. The programs are the same but Amazon buys in volume and passes on the discount (according to the Endnote sales rep). Lastly in this information rich world, the citation managers should support all applications not just MS Word. This includes applications like Photoshop, Indesgign, Illustrator, Visio, Wordpress, Tikiwiki, Mathematica, MathCAD, LabView, AutoCAD, SolidWork, and so on.

I've been fascinated by bio-electronics and nanobiotechnology for some time now. The idea that you can attach bio-structures to semiconductor nano-structure to make new biosensors that can sense things like cancer from a patients breath, for example, is astonishing (see Biosensors ). There is a website called Open WetWare that provides open source information and courses from many universities like MIT on biology and bioengineering. This might be a good place to look for information and techniques to functionalize nano-structures (like nanowire, quantum dot, nano-FET, etc).

Wired magazine has an article on an new DIY bio hacker space called Genspacethat opened in NYC recently. It might be a good place to learn how to functionalize nanodevices. You can follow them on twitter @genspacenyc.

Update
Genspace is offering a crash course in biotech for beginners with a three four-hour sessions for $190 on Sundays starting January 23, 2011. The lab was also written up in a NY Time article — Turning Geek Into Chic

ACS Nano has produced a virtual issue on nanotoxicology and has made it open access. Get it while you can.

Astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson is entertaining and informative as ever. I keep thinking that the fact that the superconducting super collider wasn't funded was a fundamentally large lost opportunity to create a technological ecosystem that would have driven innovation and provided a better future for the people in America (not just jobs but careers). This kind of thing has been repeated many times since. We might be regularly launching a 3rd generation space shuttle by now in addition to the commercial rockets like SpaceX did today if only we had the vision and will to do so. Other countries commendably do. As Carl Sagan indicated in his book the Pale Blue Dot, human spaceflight and astronauts are the first defense in the survival of our world civilization since the universe is out to kill us. The first moon landing inspired me. It was awesome. The accomplishment is still awesome and still inspires me today. I image that it also inspired many other to go into science and technology too. It mostly likely provided a better standard of living too. Now for some reason, it seems there is some odd notion that we can't afford or don't want to invest in our future. It's very strange and unfortunate because it effects so many people in a negative way. We need to get back to the future. We need solutions and investments that result and rival the awesome accomplishments of moon landing going forward.

ACS Nanotation has sponsored a Carbon NanoTube video contest and some of the entries are entertaining and informative.