British science has always surprised, even in these days of state-sponsored decline, as the sciences and mathematics are abandoned for the ease of pseudo academia and the people's targets. Now, a workshop has produced an interdisciplinary IDEAS factory, aiming at the development of a molecular manufacturing facility.
Nanofactories will use vast arrays of tiny machines to fasten single molecules together quickly and precisely, allowing engineers, designers and potentially anyone else to make powerful products at the touch of a button. In a single week of intense interdisciplinary work, an "IDEAS Factory on the Software Control of Matter" produced three ground-breaking research proposals that bring the nanofactory concept closer to reality. The project was sponsored by the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), a national science agency that also will fund the proposals.
One of the less well-known aspects of nanotechnology is its interdisciplinary nature , ranging widely across the scientific professions and accepted categories, in patents and investment. This is one development to monitor.