Chemical Nano Engineering

Previous title and current have probability 82.5% and tis is part two of Business Strategy....

Variable Co Ordinance Structures

Vegas, of course, is the Mecca of sunk-costs and chasing your losses. All those shiny lights, showgirls, and Cirque Du Soleil’s (I'm pretty sure I saw them open what seems like the 38th Cirque inside a Starbucks though I must admit the new Beatles Cirque show had me at hello) that keep you captive weren't funded by your wins.
As Scott Adams has said, "Probability is omnipotent and omnipresent. It influences every coin at any time in any place, instantly. It cannot be shielded or altered. And probability is not limited to coins and dice and slot machines. Probability is the guiding force of everything in the universe, living or nonliving, near or far, big or small, now or anytime."
CEO Zander peddled onto the stage on a bright yellow bicycle {Las Vegas for the 2007 CES (Consumer Electronics Show). Bill Gates kicked it off Sunday evening, followed Monday morning by Motorola CEO Ed Zander (full disclosure: my firm Lux Capital manages capital for Motorola through our venture capital fund). }. Gimmick aside, he's onto something. Who else rides bikes? Chinese citizens: nearly 500 million of them. What's that got to do with Motorola? A small device connected to the back wheel powers a new Motofone, which has a low-power E-Ink display that can be recharged just by kinetic energy from peddling the bike. Too early to tell if it takes off but it's an example of thinking about the so-called "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid." (That is: the four billion people who are a highly dispersed and fragmented market with low purchasing power parity who in aggregate actually have more purchasing power than France, UK, Italy, Japan and Germany combined).
Now here’s a Vegas riddle. There's a casino in Vegas with 50 slot machines. Each one is standard and has the same payout ratio. In other words, each will payout a certain percentage of the coins put into it and what triggers the payout is the same in all the machines. They all function at the same speed, the same volume and have the same amount of flashing lights. Here’s the rub: one of the machines, no matter where the casino positions it, ends up collecting about 25% more winnings for the casino at the end of every day than any of their other slot machines. Why is this? What's causing this?
The answer is that this slot machine has more "near-misses". It has more sequences that go: bar-bar-banana, bar-bar-lemon, giving the player the illusion that they were oh-so-close and results in heavier play.
Working in the middle 70's last century with variable co ordinances recognize here a lot of ideas "on debate " at that time.

Properties Depend On Cluster Size

Numbers of edge atoms dictate physical and chemical properties of nanoparticles
Mitch Jacoby
What a difference a few atoms can make.
Tiny variations in the numbers of atoms along the edges of molybdenum disulfide nanoparticles can profoundly influence the crystal's atomic-scale structure and coordination, electronic properties, and other characteristics, researchers in Denmark have shown. The findings may lead to improvements in MoS2-based desulfurization catalysts for fuel cleanup and to advanced lubricants and other applications.
With legislation in the U.S., Europe, Japan, and elsewhere calling for ever lower levels of sulfur in transportation fuels, scientists are redoubling their efforts to sort out the reaction mechanism that drives hydrodesulfurization, a process in which sulfur is stripped from hydrocarbons and converted to volatile hydrogen sulfide in the presence of MoS2-based catalysts.
Previous studies indicate that the edges of thin, supported MoS2 nanoclusters, which are often equilateral-triangular in shape, contain highly active catalytic sites, which are especially active when the clusters are very small. The high activity is often attributed to the unique coordination of edge atoms and the presence of reactive edge defect sites. But those features have not been explored in atomic-resolution detail until now.
On the basis of scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) measurements, Aarhus University physics professors Jeppe V. Lauritsen and Flemming Besenbacher and their coworkers at Aarhus and at catalyst manufacturer Haldor Topsøe have shown that nanoclusters with six or more molybdenum atoms along an edge coordinate sulfur differently than do nanoclusters containing fewer than six edge molybdenum atoms. Specifically, the team finds that along the edges of the larger crystallites, each Mo atom bonds with two outermost S atoms (S "dimers"), which tend to line up with neighboring atoms to form pairs of S "dimers." In contrast, the edges of smaller clusters exhibit Mo-S=Mo bridge structures (Nat. Nanotechnol. 2007, 2, 21). The team also reports that the smaller clusters are less stable (more reactive) and more prone to vacancy defects than the larger clusters. And they note size-dependent differences in the clusters' STM signatures, which indicate the clusters' differing electronic structures.
In an accompanying commentary, Gotthard Seifert, of the Technical University of Dresden, and Sibylle Gemming, of the Rosendorf Research Center, both in Germany, note that the difference between the large and small nanoclusters "turns out to be the key to understanding the structural, electronic, and catalytic properties of these particles."

Chemical & Engineering News
ISSN 0009-2347

The last key principle is this: evolution. Organisms, technologies, business models, social structures all evolve. And this is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle. There are a few key aspects in the process of evolutions whether in life, inventions or ventures.
First is "variation". In life: it’s via random mutation. In technology: it’s via accidental discovery, intentional invention, trial and error and combination of already existing technologies.
The second aspect: once there are a variety of things, it’s clear that some are better than others.
The third feature is that there’s some process or algorithm of "selection". And of course the fore mentioned 'better' depends on what environment or landscape the thing is performing or competing in. The fancy name for this is "fitness landscape". Think of climbing a mountain: you try to scale a local peak. When you get to the top, you might see a new peak which could even require you to descend, move to the new base and then climb again. Tiger Woods did this years ago to perfect his swing so did IBM. And so it is with technology adoption, startup companies and even incumbent companies that can adapt and reinvent themselves.
The last key feature is amplification. Good biological designs or good technologies or businesses benefit from positive feedback effects and get dialed up. They get amplified, attract capital, get more adopted and spread through the proverbial (or literal) gene pool. Conversely, bad ones get dialed down. They get negative feedback, lose prominence, suffer from decreased population size or even extinction.
There’s one key part of this framework that I’ve found frustrating. Feynman famously said that for a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled. But I’ve realized to the unfortunate happenstance of investors: that people can be fooled namely by other people.
APPLICATIONS: TRANSISTORS
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have made ultrathin silicon transistors that operate more than 50 times faster than previous flexible-silicon devices. The advance could help make possible flexible high-end electronics that would be useful in a variety of applications, from computers to communication. Jack Ma, professor of electrical and computer engineering and lead researcher on the project, is interested in using flexible electronics to redesign large-scale antennas that could be molded in the shape of, say, an airplane. For instance, radar antennas could be made to cover a large area on an airplane, he says, increasing sensitivity and area of coverage.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/18055/

Cite:
FORBES/WOLFE Nanotech Weekly Insider:
JAN.12.2006 by Josh Wolfe (email: nanotech@forbes.com )

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