Month: March 2002

from the World-Watch dept.
According to a brief report in the Taipei Times ("British science minister seeks closer cooperation", by Chiu Yu-Tzu, 8 March 2002), the highest ranking British official ever to visit Taiwan, the UK's parliamentary under-secretary of state for science and innovation is pushing stronger research ties in a number of fields, including nanotechnology. According to the report, during a visit to Taiwan on 7 March 2002, the UK's Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Science and Innovation, Lord Sainsbury, said both Taiwan and the UK would benefit from deeper scientific collaboration on a variety of scientific topics, including nanotechnology, bio-technology, and information technology.

from the World-Watch dept.
According to a pair of articles from the New Zealand Herald on 6 March and 7 March 2002, competition among New Zealandís academic institutions has been keen to win a role as host institutions in the Government's funding of five university research programmes from its $60 million Centres of Research Excellence (Core) fund. The NZ Government pledged to invest almost $61 million in five research centres, based across three of the country's eight universities. One of the centers selected will be devoted to nanoscale science and technology.

An article in the Houston Business Journal ("Nanotechnology beginning to take center stage in Houston", by Jennifer Darwin, 1 March 2002) provides a brief look at NT-related activity in and around Houston, particularly at Rice University. The article notes that Nobel-laureate and fullerene nanotube researcher Richard Smalley has stepped down as head of the director of Rice's Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, reported to focus on research and the commercial ventures in which he is a partner. The article also has an interesting quote from Smalleyís replacement as director of the CNST — Wade Adams, who was the chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force's materials laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio before joining Rice. According to the article:

Adams' goal is to find situations to which Rice's nanotechnology can be applied. He will look for opportunities for funding, partnering, collaborating, and ultimately, spinning off new companies focused on nanotechnology. "We think nanotechnology is going to have a huge payoff, tying to the medical profession and biology," Adams says. "It is extremely obvious that we need to be doing more to bring the nano expertise we have at Rice to the (Texas) Medical Center."

from the late-to-the-game dept.
Florida Governor Jeb Bush has proposed spending $100 million in 2002 on a technology initiative to create Centers of Excellence at Florida universities, according to a number of recent press reports. The program would include nanoscale science and technology as a major component.

If passed, the Florida program, which resembles programs already in place in California, New York, and Texas, would be one of the largest government-funded nanotechnology programs in the United States, trailing only Californiaís program.

Read more for links to coverage of the proposed Florida program in the Florida press.

An article in the Detroit Free Press ("Michigan nanotech companies may hit it big by thinking small", by Heather Newman, 28 February 2002) sounds a boosterish note for the potential for Michigan to become a leader in nanotechnology. Apparently Newman has missed the noise and thunder of the past yearís stampede to set up nanoscience research and development programs, because she claims that "[Michigan] is rapidly becoming one of a handful [of states] in the country with a group of scientists working seriously on nanotechnology, the art of building everything from chemicals to machinery molecules, or even atoms, at a time." However, the article does provide a useful, if cursory, survey of nanotech activity in the state.

from the half-a-loaf dept.
An article in The Scientist ("Nanotech Dreams", by Senior Science Editor Jeffrey M. Perkel; 4 March 2002) offers a general overview of nanotechnology from a life science perspective. The article presents some background on the ideas of Richard Feynman and Eric Drexler (mixed with a few hoary science fiction clichés and comments from nay-sayers to the idea of advanced molecular nanotechnology, such as Richard Smalley) before focusing on current research in several areas. "It's an unusual field," says Chad A. Mirkin, a professor of chemistry and director of the Institute for Nanotechnology at Northwestern University. "It's a field that focuses on a scale rather than on a material. So it affects everything."

The article also quotes Robert A. Freitas Jr., a research scientist at Zyvex Corp. and author of Nanomedicine, about the distance between long-term visions for nanotechnology and current capabilities: "My vision of nanomedicine ranges from the near-term to the far-term," he says. "I look at the things that can't be done for 20 years as a vision, as the ultimate goal, as a wonderful thing, way out there, that we can grasp for. And in the meantime, we have to do all the things that are necessary to get up to that point, and there's an awful lot of work to be done, and lots of work for everybody."

The bulk of the article actually focuses on various companies attempting to create biosensor systems using various micro- and nano-scale technologies, and nanostructured materials that may have therapeutic applications. The article does concludes by returning to disputes over the feasibility of nanorobotic systems, and gives greater play to the more conservative view:

Northwestern's Mirkin bluntly surmises, "I think it's baloney . . . I think a lot of people, including scientists, try to say, 'This is pie-in-the-sky. A lot of it is really far out. It's going to have a big impact, but it's not going to be realized for 25 to 50 years,'" says Mirkin. "That's wrong, and it's also wrong to say it's going to revolutionize everything in the next couple of years. Something in the middle is correct."