Is there anything buckytubes can't do?

As seen on digg: http://www.physorg.com/news66308334.html

Thin films of carbon nanotubes deposited on transparent plastic can also serve as a surface on which cells can grow. And as researchers at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and Rice University suggest in a paper published in the May issue of the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, these nanotube films could potentially serve as an electrical interface between living tissue and prosthetic devices or biomedical instruments.

(My wife is always proud of having attended Rice when buckystuff makes the news; Rice has been on the forefront of carbon nanostructure research from the beginning.)

Of course, the most intriguing part is the last paragraph of the article:

Another avenue Pappas wants to explore is finding out whether nanotubes are sensitive enough to record ongoing electrical activity in cells. "Where we want to get to is a device that can both sense and deliver stimuli to cells for things like prosthetic control," Pappas said.

Or, of course, doing detailed nano-level scanning of the entire brain for the purpose of uploading. I'm going to put the Singularity Clock one small notch closer to Midnight. (Hey, someone else had the same ida I did. Only a couple of hits for that on the Google... there's a project just waiting to happen.)