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Actually, from a layman's point of view, Claverie has his eye on something nearly as impressive. "Take a drug which is not very compatible with the human anatomy—it could be toxic, or it could be proteins we cannot swallow because our stomach destroys proteins—and put them in a small bag of molecules designed in a very smart way. It goes through the intestines and then, because it is a smart bag, it knows to release the drug," he says.

Nanoholes on silver film could form templates for nanotubes. 3 nanometers (nm)

"Another example is a 'magic bullet.' Put the chemotherapy drug in a bag with a sensor that targets only cancerous cells, so you avoid the side-effects of chemotherapy," he says. "This is absolutely not science fiction—there already are a few products on the market with this approach."

Most of Claverie's work is related to medical applications, financed by New Hampshire-based Bentley Pharmaceuticals, and he thinks we'll probably see nanotechnology in health-related applications before we see any in computers.

While much of this work is geared toward creating a product, the hard-to-predict behavior of mini-matter leaves scientists plenty of fundamental research questions to tackle.

Red blood cell 7,000 nm

"Consider melting, which is the most basic property of materials," says Pohl, who recently received a $450,000 NSF Career Award grant. "Atoms don't melt—it's a collective property—and nobody has ever seen at the atomic level what happens when a substance melts. We also don't know how it will affect nanosized devices."

When you don't even understand melting or the thermal properties of nanosystems, you've got a long way to go—which is part of the appeal to scientists, who prefer a good question to almost anything. Another appeal of this field is cross-pollination. "This may be the most interdisciplinary field I know of," says Miller. "There is no one field that is ideally suited to tackle all of the problems we suddenly face."

"I appreciate the fact that I can collaborate with a manufacturing workshop and yet still work in a field of very basic research," says Pohl.

One of the most intriguing aspects of nanotechnology is that debate on ethical and social issues has cropped up even before basic technical questions have been answered. Consider "gray goo," although most researchers will roll their eyes if you do.

That phrase was coined a couple years ago by Eric Drexler, the researcher who made the term "nanotechnology" popular and chairman emeritus of the Foresight Institute in Los Altos, Calif. It describes a catastrophic scenario in which microscopic robots start replicating themselves and spread over the Earth, consuming everything in their path. Although nanorobots don't seem very gooey and it's not clear what color they'd be, "gray goo" has become shorthand for this fear, which Michael Crichton turned into an apocalyptic novel, Prey.

Human hair 80,000 nm

The idea strikes most UNH researchers as absurd. "It's preposterous," says Miller, shifting out of his affable personality to show something close to irritation. "We're struggling to make simple devices—to make wires—and this is talking about terribly sophisticated devices that can't even be made at the macro level. It's so far removed from reality that it's ridiculous."

But Miller and others know that the fear demonstrates a real uncertainty that can't be ignored. Some toxicologists, for example, have raised questions about whether nano-based medicines might be risky when they cross the blood-brain barrier, which prevents toxins and other harmful substances from reaching the brain.

"Part of it is a fear of the unknown," says Claverie, who says he is not concerned by the toxicology studies he has seen so far. "But I think debate is great. These are old practices grafted on a new field of science—we have to be concerned about that. It won't always be easy to tell you the best way."

Shea, whose specialty is operations management, agrees that it's not too early to look at ethical and moral issues in the field, although she adds that approaching it as a homogeneous entity is a mistake.

"You can't just look at the environmental implications of nanotechnology—you've got to look at each application, each process, by itself," she says. "It's the same with business. In some sectors—computers, memory chips and so on—a new product may be an incremental change, and existing firms are not likely to be supplanted. But in others, the impact could be much more radical."

Flea 1,000,000 nm

The benefits of having a solid core of nanoscale research at UNH are many. From the fiscal point of view, there's the benefit of grant funding, which helps underwrite research opportunities for undergraduate and graduates students that the university would otherwise have to fund. There's also the possibility of patent profits, although that's still a long way off.

Perhaps most important, however, is the opportunity to undertake influential research. "The number of universities doing this is very low, maybe 20, and they are big schools," says Claverie.

As a result, when the center takes off, UNH will occupy an unusual niche: a small university doing big things in a very small field.

David Brooks is the science correspondent for The Nashua Telegraph.

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