 UCLA’s Fraser Stoddart on Molecular Electronics
It’s
not just the world that seems to be getting smaller with each
passing year, but also the gadgetry that goes with it. This curve
of ever-smaller devices has always had a roadblock sitting at the
end of it, at least in the world of computing, which has been
delineated by the quasi-law of nature known as Moore’s Law. If
the number of transistors that can be packed on a computer chip
doubles every 18 to 24 months, as Intel co-founder Gordon Moore
suggested it did, then the physical limits of how many devices can
be packed on a silicon chip will be reached within a decade. This
has inevitably raised the question, what’s next?
For
the past two decades, one promising answer has been the technology
known as molecular computing or molecular electronics, in which
molecules play the role of silicon semiconductors and the
proponents dream of building artificial electronic machines on
nanometer scales. The technology has always held enormous
potential, although it has also evoked its fair share of skeptics
who have inevitably suggested that, so far, the promise and
imagination have managed to considerably outdistance the actual
accomplishments.
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 Canadian
Universities: U. Toronto Still Tops
A decade has now elapsed since this publication surveyed Canadian university
research (Science Watch, 6[10]: 1-2, November/December 1995), so the time
is right to once again shift attention northward. As in the previous study, Science
Watch now examines performance in 21 main fields over the last five years
and ranks Canadian universities according to two separate measures: impact (or
average citations per paper) and total citations...
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