Today in Globe Business

What's up with nanotech?

LOWELL — When the University of Massachusetts Lowell launched its nanotechnology center six years ago, scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs were dreaming big dreams about small things, like miniature generators to replace batteries and microscopic robots to repair human tissues.

State officials and economic developers imagined new industries and jobs. Universities jockeyed for billions in research money. The news media hyped it as the next big thing. So what happened?

A lot, actually. While nanotechnology — working at a scale that is one-thousandth the width of a human hair — may have faded from the public’s imagination, the field has made substantial progress in recent years, opening new frontiers in electronics, medicine, and materials.

 --------------------------------------------------------------------

As PAX closes, gamers await bigger '11 venue

The PAX East gaming conference, which wrapped up yesterday, was the biggest event of its kind ever hosted in Boston, but many of those who crowded into the Hynes Veterans Memorial Convention Center said the venue wasn’t big enough.

“I don’t think this convention center was designed for a show of this size,’’ a PAX spokesman, Kris Straub, said yesterday. “I’m glad, for one, that it’s moving to a bigger center next year,’’ he said, referring to a plan to hold the conference at the huge Boston Convention & Exhibition Center in 2011, and again in 2012.

Tens of thousands of video game and board game players swarmed through the Hynes over the weekend. They came to play, to party, and to check out new products from about 70 hardware and software companies. Precise attendance numbers were not released yesterday, but a PAX event held in September in Seattle attracted about 60,000 gamers.

 ---------------------------------------------------------------

On the hunt of what makes all of us recoil

The pungent sting of wasabi, the searing pain of tear gas, and the watery eyes we get from chopping an onion are all triggered by an ancient chemical sensor that is found in everything from humans to mollusks and may hold the key to developing new kinds of insect repellents and pain medications.

Research by Brandeis University scientists finds that the ability to detect noxious compounds comes from a biological pathway older than our sense of smell, emerging far in the evolutionary past, about half a billion years ago.

“This chemical sense, as far as we can tell, appears to have been essentially unchanged,’’ said Paul Garrity, a biology professor at Brandeis and senior author of a paper published in the journal Nature this month.

-------------------------------------------------------------------