John Etkind at allAfrica.com writes about the Continent’s Nano Revolution. Excerpts: According to Bethual Sehlapelo, deputy director-general of the South African department of science and technology’s Frontier Science Programme, “Nano is going to be the next technological revolution”… Although sub-Saharan Africa is a late entrant in this new technological race, an African materials forum held… Continue reading Nanotechnology starts to ramp up in Africa
Many Foresight members join partly in order to make a move toward a nanotech career. It’s not always an easy transition to make. But I just got an email from Lux Research — which bills itself as “the world’s leading nanotechnology research and advisory firm” — looking for Senior Analysts, about which they state: The… Continue reading Nanotechnology: Get an analyst job in San Francisco, Boston, NYC
Although the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative’s previous definition of nanotechnology was confusing, at least they were trying to make it more relevant than the usual “anything 1-100 nm” nanotech definition used by so many. Sadly, they’ve given up and are now using this: “Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions of roughly… Continue reading A better nanotechnology definition: U.S. NNI gives up
Great news in the August 2006 issue of Nano Today in an opinion piece by two UCLA researchers, Guodong Sui and Hsian-Rong Tseng, titled “Reactions in hand: Digitally controlled microreactors are providing chemists with a new playground for discovery.” First, some background. As an MIT undergrad in chemistry, I tried to make reactions work in… Continue reading Bottom-up nanotechnology to be speeded by nanoliter-on-a-chip reactors
Our friends at Nanorex have done it again. You really should click through to see this new nanotech design in action. Click on the design to make it move: This worm drive assembly designed by K. Eric Drexler, Josh Hall, Ninad Sathaye and Mark Sims includes 11 components totalling 25,374 atoms. The animations below have… Continue reading Nanotechnology design-of-the-month reaches 25,000 precisely-placed atoms
We don’t usually like to link to subscription sites, but as an editorial advisory board member, I’ll make an exception for Nanotech Briefs (you can download a free sample). The August issue has the usual hard-core technical news: SiGe transistor operates at frequencies above 500 GHz, Method creates hollow nanocrystals, nanopore technique sequences DNA [note:… Continue reading Nanotechnology patents delayed, nanotech public understanding mixed
We’ll end the week on an upbeat note: It’s good to see the American Associate for the Advancement of Science — AAAS, publisher of the journal Science — covering long-term nanotechnology prospects on their EurekAlert website. An updated essay by Eric Drexler looks at “Revolutionizing the Future of Technology“. Excerpts: Why focus on productive nanosystems… Continue reading Productive nanosystems on AAAS nanotechnology site
For those interested in nanobiology and nanoscale medicine, the site Nanomedicine and Nanobiology Research is worth exploring. The book section includes various books you’ll recognize (and quite a few you may not), there’s a nanomedicine-specific Medline search, and there are rankings for labs, researchers, and even science writers. Most interesting to me are the “Early… Continue reading Nanotechnology: Asia dominates in early career nanobio & nanomedicine
Bill Joy, we at Foresight, and others have called for the use of insurance as a tool to help reduce the potential risks of nanotechnology. This assumes that the insurance industry is willing to take on the task. So it’s reassuring to see a new report, “Nanotechnology: The Plastics of the 21st Century?”, by Guy… Continue reading Making nanotechnology safer through insurance
Nanotech Takes on Homeland Terror is the title of a piece by Josh Wolfe and Dan van den Bergh over at Forbes.com. It describes current and near-term applications for nanotech in detecting biowarfare agents and in protecting soldiers: The DOD believed in nano long before the term was mainstream…Current detection tools using nanotechnology allow high-speed… Continue reading Nanotechnology's role in national security
