The folks at HP Labs have figured out a  way to control memristors and the information is being published in the July issue of Nature Nanotechnology (article will be behind a paywall). Memristors first came up in May this year when scientists at HP Labs confirmed that they existed. (Take a look at my June 19 posting and May 9 postings for more about memristors.) Briefly, a memristor retains information (memory of value) about current that passes through it. They’ve now created a memristor switch (50nm x 50nm) which the can be set to ‘1’ or ‘0’ or something in between. That’s right it can be used in a  binary (digital) fashion or an analogue fashion. One of the potential applications (noted in the earlier postings) is for saving energy and another is a computer that learns. There’s more info. here at HP Labs.

A friend told me about a report from Friends of the Earth called ‘Out of the Laboratory and Onto Our Plates’. It’s about nanotechnology being used in food packaging and agriculture. I find their approach a bit strident especially when taking into account their acronym, foe. Still, the report itself is well written, except for the strident bits, has a substantive set of references and can be downloaded from their website. There’s also a March 2008 article  in Scientific American here which discusses the report and includes some commentary from other interested parties to provide some journalistic balance.