The Ecology of Technology and Nanomotors

Ecosystems are characterized by particular scaling laws describing, for example, the relationship between animal abundance and species body weight. It is hypothesized that technological systems follow similar scaling laws, where the abundance of a type of machine correlates with its size. Human prog...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:ACS nano 2014-05, Vol.8 (5), p.4070-4073
Main Authors: Armstrong, Megan J, Hess, Henry
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Abundance
Accessibility
Adenosine Triphosphate - chemistry
Animals
Dyneins - physiology
Ecosystem
Fishes
Foundations
Human
Humans
Kinesin - physiology
Microtubules - metabolism
Motors
Nanoparticles - chemistry
Nanostructure
Nanotechnology - methods
Peptides - chemistry
Scaling laws
Technology - trends
Trends
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Summary:Ecosystems are characterized by particular scaling laws describing, for example, the relationship between animal abundance and species body weight. It is hypothesized that technological systems follow similar scaling laws, where the abundance of a type of machine correlates with its size. Human progress continuously expands the range of accessible machine sizes, creating a technology trend toward vast numbers of microscopic machines. Current research related to nanomotors, such as the report by Kumar et al. in this issue of ACS Nano describing advances in controlling biomolecular motors, lays the scientific foundation for this trend.
ISSN:1936-0851
1936-086X
DOI:10.1021/nn502431c