Chemical power for microscopic robots in capillaries.

The power available to microscopic robots (nanorobots) that oxidize bloodstream glucose while aggregated in circumferential rings on capillary walls is evaluated with a numerical model using axial symmetry and time-averaged release of oxygen from passing red blood cells. Robots about 1 microm in size can produce up to several tens of picowatts, in steady state, if they fully use oxygen reaching their surface from the blood plasma. Robots with pumps and tanks for onboard oxygen storage could collect oxygen to support burst power demands two to three orders of magnitude larger. We evaluate effects of oxygen depletion and local heating on surrounding tissue. These results give the power constraints when robots rely entirely on ambient available oxygen and identify aspects of the robot design significantly affecting available power. More generally, our numerical model provides an approach to evaluating robot design choices for nanomedicine treatments in and near capillaries. FROM THE CLINICAL EDITOR: The power available to microscopic robots (nanorobots) that oxidize bloodstream glucose while aggregated in circumferential rings on capillary walls was evaluated in this study. The presented numerical model provides an approach to evaluating robot design choices for nanomedicine treatments in and near capillaries.

Welcome to the future of medicine.

This chapter describes the negative consequences of medical technology development and commercialization that is too slow, and makes the case for an immediate large scale investment in medical nanorobots to save 52 million lives a year. It also explains the essence of nanotechnology, its life-saving applications, the engineering challenges, and the possibility of 1000-fold improvement over our current human biological abilities. Every decade that we delay development and commercialization of medical nanorobotics, half a billion people perish who could have been saved.

Human Brain/Cloud Interface.

The Internet comprises a decentralized global system that serves humanity's collective effort to generate, process, and store data, most of which is handled by the rapidly expanding cloud. A stable, secure, real-time system may allow for interfacing the cloud with the human brain. One promising strategy for enabling such a system, denoted here as a "human brain/cloud interface" ("B/CI"), would be based on technologies referred to here as "neuralnanorobotics." Future neuralnanorobotics technologies are anticipated to facilitate accurate diagnoses and eventual cures for the ∼400 conditions that affect the human brain. Neuralnanorobotics may also enable a B/CI with controlled connectivity between neural activity and external data storage and processing, via the direct monitoring of the brain's ∼86 × 109 neurons and ∼2 × 1014 synapses. Subsequent to navigating the human vasculature, three species of neuralnanorobots (endoneurobots, gliabots, and synaptobots) could traverse the blood-brain barrier (BBB), enter the brain parenchyma, ingress into individual human brain cells, and autoposition themselves at the axon initial segments of neurons (endoneurobots), within glial cells (gliabots), and in intimate proximity to synapses (synaptobots). They would then wirelessly transmit up to ∼6 × 1016 bits per second of synaptically processed and encoded human-brain electrical information via auxiliary nanorobotic fiber optics (30 cm3) with the capacity to handle up to 1018 bits/sec and provide rapid data transfer to a cloud based supercomputer for real-time brain-state monitoring and data extraction. A neuralnanorobotically enabled human B/CI might serve as a personalized conduit, allowing persons to obtain direct, instantaneous access to virtually any facet of cumulative human knowledge. Other anticipated applications include myriad opportunities to improve education, intelligence, entertainment, traveling, and other interactive experiences. A specialized application might be the capacity to engage in fully immersive experiential/sensory experiences, including what is referred to here as "transparent shadowing" (TS). Through TS, individuals might experience episodic segments of the lives of other willing participants (locally or remote) to, hopefully, encourage and inspire improved understanding and tolerance among all members of the human family.

Pharmacytes: an ideal vehicle for targeted drug delivery.

An ideal nanotechnology-based drug delivery system is a pharmacyte--a self-powered, computer-controlled medical nanorobot system capable of digitally precise transport, timing, and targeted delivery of pharmaceutical agents to specific cellular and intracellular destinations within the human body. Pharmacytes may be constructed using future molecular manufacturing technologies such as diamond mechanosynthesis which are currently being investigated theoretically using quantum ab initio and density-functional computational methods. Pharmacytes will have many applications in nanomedicine such as initiation of apoptosis in cancer cells and direct control of cell signaling processes.

Nanorobotics control design: a collective behavior approach for medicine.

The authors present a new approach using genetic algorithms, neural networks, and nanorobotics concepts applied to the problem of control design for nanoassembly automation and its application in medicine. As a practical approach to validate the proposed design, we have elaborated and simulated a virtual environment focused on control automation for nanorobotics teams that exhibit collective behavior. This collective behavior is a suitable way to perform a large range of tasks and positional assembly manipulation in a complex three-dimensional workspace. We emphasize the application of such techniques as a feasible approach for the investigation of nanorobotics system design in nanomedicine. Theoretical and practical analyses of control modeling is one important aspect that will enable rapid development in the emerging field of nanotechnology.

What is nanomedicine?

The early genesis of the concept of nanomedicine sprang from the visionary idea that tiny nanorobots and related machines could be designed, manufactured, and introduced into the human body to perform cellular repairs at the molecular level. Nanomedicine today has branched out in hundreds of different directions, each of them embodying the key insight that the ability to structure materials and devices at the molecular scale can bring enormous immediate benefits in the research and practice of medicine.

Theoretical analysis of a carbon-carbon dimer placement tool for diamond mechanosynthesis.

Density functional theory is used with Gaussian 98 to analyze a new family of proposed mechanosynthetic tools that could be employed for the placement of two carbon atoms--a carbon-carbon (CC) dimer--on a growing diamond surface at a specific site. The analysis focuses on specific group IV-substituted biadamantane tool tip structures and evaluates their stability and the strength of the bond they make with the CC dimer. These tools should be stable in a vacuum and should be able to hold and position a CC dimer in a manner suitable for positionally controlled diamond mechanosynthesis at room temperature.

Medical nanorobot architecture based on nanobioelectronics.

This work describes an innovative medical nanorobot architecture based on important discoveries in nanotechnology, integrated circuit patents, and some publications, directly or indirectly related to one of the most challenging new fields of science: molecular machines. Thus, the architecture described in this paper reflects, and is supported by, some remarkable recent achievements and patents in nanoelectronics, wireless communication and power transmission techniques, nanotubes, lithography, biomedical instrumentation, genetics, and photonics. We also describe how medicine can benefit from the joint development of nanodevices which are derived, and which integrate techniques, from artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and embedded smart sensors. Teleoperated surgical procedures, early disease diagnosis, and pervasive patient monitoring are some possible applications of nanorobots, reflecting progress along a roadmap for the gradual and practical development of nanorobots. To illustrate the described nanorobot architecture, a computational 3D approach with the application of nanorobots for diabetes is simulated using clinical data. Theoretical and practical analysis of system integration modeling is one important aspect for supporting the rapid development in the emerging field of nanotechnology. This provides useful directions for further research and development of medical nanorobotics and suggests a time frame in which nanorobots may be expected to be available for common utilization in therapeutic and medical procedures.

Ab initio thermochemistry of the hydrogenation of hydrocarbon radicals using silicon-, germanium-, tin-, and lead-substituted methane and isobutane.

A series of reactions of the type Y. + XH(4) --> YH + .XH(3) and Y'. + HX(CH(3))(3) --> Y'H + .X(CH(3))(3), where Y = H, CH(3); Y' = CH(3), C(CH(3))(3); and X = Si, Ge, Sn, Pb are studied using state-of-the-art ab initio electronic structure methods. Second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory; the coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples method; and density functional theory are used with correlation-consistent basis sets (cc-pVNZ, where N = D, T, Q) and their pseudopotential analogs (cc-pVNZ-PP) to determine the transition-state geometries, activation barriers, and thermodynamic properties of these reactions. Trends in the barrier heights as a function of the group IVA atom (Si, Ge, Sn, and Pb) are examined. With respect to kinetics and thermodynamics, the use of a hydrogen attached to a group IVA element as a possible hydrogen donation tool in the mechanosynthesis of diamondoids appears feasible.

High-level ab initio studies of hydrogen abstraction from prototype hydrocarbon systems.

Symmetric and nonsymmetric hydrogen abstraction reactions are studied using state-of-the-art ab initio electronic structure methods. Second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) and the coupled-cluster singles, doubles, and perturbative triples [CCSD(T)] methods with large correlation consistent basis sets (cc-pVXZ, where X = D,T,Q) are used in determining the transition-state geometries, activation barriers, and thermodynamic properties of several representative hydrogen abstraction reactions. The importance of basis set, electron correlation, and choice of zeroth-order reference wave function in the accurate prediction of activation barriers and reaction enthalpies are also investigated. The ethynyl radical (*CCH), which has a very high affinity for hydrogen atoms, is studied as a prototype hydrogen abstraction agent. Our high-level quantum mechanical computations indicate that hydrogen abstraction using the ethynyl radical has an activation energy of less than 3 kcal mol(-1) for hydrogens bonded to an sp(2) or sp(3) carbon. These low activation barriers further corroborate previous studies suggesting that ethynyl-type radicals would make good tooltips for abstracting hydrogens from diamondoid surfaces during mechanosynthesis. Modeling the diamond C(111) surface with isobutane and treating the ethynyl radical as a tooltip, hydrogen abstraction in this reaction is predicted to be barrierless.