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Miller & Barns PLLC is a full service intellectual propery law firm. Miller & Barns specializes in chemicals, materials, biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, nanotechnology, and medical devices. We provide clients with assistance in preparation and prosecution of patent applications, portfolio management, clearance, validity and non-infringement opinions, licensing, foreign and domestic trademark prosecution, design around assistance and international patent litigation management. Our partners have a combination of inhouse and big firm experience that allows us to provide levels of service that are typically available only to large corporation with dedicated inhouse intellectual property counsel.

The First Nanotechie Anton van Leeuwenhoek

I thought this was cool so I cut and pasted from http://www.foresight.org/nanodot/?p=2118

Looking through his handmade microscope in 1702, it was Anton van Leeuwenhoek who first described the workings of a nano machine. He observed the rapid contraction of a stalk tethering the cell body of a tiny protozoan, Vorticella convallaria, to the surface of a leaf. Little did van Leeuwenhoek imagine that more than 300 years later, the biological spring that drives Vorticella would set records for speed and power in the nano world of cellular engines. It might also power future generations of nano devices and materials, according to biological engineer Danielle Cook France and colleagues at MIT, the Whitehead Institute, the Marine Biological Laboratory, and the University of Illinois, Chicago. France presented her findings Sunday at the 45th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco.


"The spring in the unicellular Vorticella is a contractile fiber bundle, called the spasmoneme, which runs the length of the stalk. At rest, the stalk is elongated like a stretched telephone cord. When it contracts, the spasmoneme winds back in a flash, forming a tight coil. To find out how fast and how hard Vorticella recoils, France and colleagues used modern microscopes and tools to measure the force and speed of the spring. This is one powerful engine, France reports. The spasmoneme's contraction is measured in nano-newtons of force and centimeters/second of speed in a biological world where the ruler markings are usually in tiny pico-newtons and micrometers/second. Gram for gram, the power of the spasmoneme engine outperforms human muscles and car engines. (Credit: Betterhumans)