The Hindu Business Line : Of exotic semiconductors, nanotubes and quantum dots

What is nanotechnology? It is an intersection, a confluence, says Ted Sargent in The Dance of Molecules, from Thunder's Mouth Press (www.TedSargent.com) . "It is where the latest breakthroughs in chemistry, physics, and biology merge, mix with engineering and medicine, and produce chips, diagnoses, and therapies that no sequestered specialist would generate."

The Prologue, titled `imagine', cites Nobel laureate Richard Feynman's 1959 talk titled `There's plenty of room at the bottom,' in which he had proved that according to the laws of physics, "the entire 24 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica could feasibly be written on the head of a pin."

Sargent fast-forwards, to catch up with Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohre of the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, who "wrote the word IBM, atom by atom, using the scanning tunnelling microscope for which they had won the 1986 Nobel Prize in Physics." Sargent postulates: "Had they kept writing, they could comfortably have fit the encyclopaedia onto the tip - not the head - of their pin." Would that be "Macropaedia, Micropaedia? Nanopaedia," he wonders.

The Introduction, titled `discover', informs how `intricately layered semiconductors' display the same physical phenomena as `buckyballs, nanotubes, and quantum dots'. How? "They provide control and enable purpose-built engineered matter at the nanometer scale, remaining to this day our most refined means of tailoring matter to influence the flow of electron waves." Sargent notes that exotic semiconductors have given us "microwave-frequency cell-phones and lasers to light up fibre-optic communications."

The book is divided into three parts, viz. health, environment, and information. In each, there are three chapters, with crisp one-word names, such as `Diagnose', `Heal', and `Grow' in health. "Biochips allow us to merge the narrow but impressive performance of computation with the admirable elegance and variety of biology," informs Sargent. "Will genetically preprogrammed nasal aquilinity be downloadable off the wireless Web?" he asks.

With `versatile pharmacies-on-a-chip', you can think of array of therapies. "Headache? Let me concoct some Aspirin for you. Tired? I'll make you a nanocappuccino. Going into anaphylactic shock? Put away that monster needle; I'll release epinephrine where and when it's needed."

The `environment' section exhorts thus: `Energise', `Protect', and `Emulate'. But let me take you to the part on `information', which has chapters titled `Compute', `Interact', and `Convey'. Sargent opens with ENIAC tale - the Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer', built in 1946, and capable of adding 5,000 numbers in one second, or calculating the trajectory of artillery shell in 30 seconds.

"ENIAC weighed 60,000 pounds and occupied 16,000 cubic feet of space. It also consumed more energy in calculating the trajectory of one shell than was needed to fire the shell." Today's cell-phones are thousands of times more powerful than ENIAC, points out the author; they consume "much less power than a single one of its 18,000 vacuum tubes."

Radical developments are on; these could "postpone further Moore's last sigh." For instance, "industry experts predict that by 2012 gates will need to be 35 nanometres long, and for transistors to maintain properly scaled proportions, only 5 atoms tall."

Sargent writes about molecular circuits' architecture to resemble `moist pile of neurons' to allow a mind to form with the right connections! "We may be able to persuade Nature to construct arrays of molecular transistors, but if we decide to delegate to her the construction of our chips, we must not nano-manage her," counsels the author.

"It is incumbent upon innovators in nanotechnology to communicate the profound intellectual interest and the personally relevant potential of their work," appeals Sargent in the epilogue, titled `Humanise'.

Splendid style and forceful arguments.

Close the vulnerability window

IF your job is to guard IT infrastructure, get Inside Network Security Assessment, by Michael Gregg and David Kim, from Pearson (www.pearsoned.co.in) . The book discusses, in 10 chapters, "the vulnerability assessment process from creation to finish." And it provides "a collection of tools, utilities, and templates," for the purpose.

"Misconfiguration, improper installation, and poor management" are causes of poor security, says the introduction.An example in the book is about a firewall in a government agency. It was supposed to be protecting the internal network, but "the problem was that it wasn't even hooked to the network." It had been configured in `loop back mode'.

The basic building blocks of security are CIA, that is, confidentiality, integrity, and availability. "Information classification and access control are closely related," say the authors, citing as example Bell-LaPadula, which is `a need-to-know confidentiality model'. While governmental classification has `unclassified, confidential, secret, and top secret' categories, the commercial domain speaks of `public, sensitive, private, and confidential.'

To those who wonder `why risk assessment', the authors list a bunch of laws as rationale. Such as HIPPA (Healthcare Information Privacy and Portability Act), GLBA (Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act), FISMA (Federal Information Security Management Act), SOX (Sarbanes-Oxley Act), and MITS (Canadian Management of Information Security Standard).

`Risk assessment best practices' include tasks such as inventory of IT infrastructure, and asset criticality valuation, where your accountant may help. The chapter on `risk assessment methodologies' introduces readers to AV (asset value), EF (exposure factor), SLE (single loss expectancy), ARO (annualised rate of occurrence), and ALE (annualised loss expectancy).

The book also discusses ISO 17799 ("an international standard for conducting a self-assessment and self-certification as per the best practices in information security"), OSSTMM (Open Source Security Testing Methodology Manual), and NIST 800-26 (a publication of the National Institute of Standards and Technology of the US).

Who, what, why and how of attacks and attackers is elaborately presented in a separate chapter. To cope with attacks, you may need CIRT or SIRT. What's that? `Computer or Security Incident Response Team,' with "a cross-section of human resources, legal, IT and IT security personnel"!

Vulnerability window is "the gap in time from when an organisation realises it has a threat from a known vulnerability to when the organisation actually implements the proper security controls and security countermeasures." The authors instruct that closing this window is what is just part of "minimum acceptable level of risk in the seven areas of information security responsibility."

Urgent read.

Tailpiece

"My daughter is in LKG and she knows ABCD thoroughly!"

"That's all? Mine is in pre-KG and they are teaching her SMS."

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