Foresight Research Associate Bryan Bruns reports: “Will heavy investments in nanotechnology lead to a North-South nanodivide? In the Policy Forum of the July 1 issue of Science, an article, Small Things and Big Changes in the Developing World, argues that the answer appears to be no. Mohammed H.A. Hassan of the Academy of Sciences for… Continue reading Nanotechnology in the developing world
The first annual Nano 50 Awards for the top nanotech technologies, products, and innovators have been announced by NASA’s Nanotech Briefs publication. Note the inclusion of Harvard’s Charles Lieber, co-chair of this fall’s Foresight Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology, for which the abstract submission deadline is July 31. Starting in August, the Nanotech Briefs publication will… Continue reading Nano 50 Awards announced
You may like the “for Dummies” series, or dislike it, but surely it was inevitable that there would be a Nanotechnology for Dummies book, due out in five days. I can’t tell from the description whether this will be a useful introduction or not, but am always a bit nervous when the first phrase is… Continue reading It had to happen: Nanotechnology for Dummies
Recently there have been a spate of media articles triggered by a July 13 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office to the effect that, as an LA Times piece put it: “The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect the public from tens of thousands of toxic compounds because it has not gathered… Continue reading Let's put nanotechnology in larger chemical context
In an Alternet article called The Evolution of Frankenfoods?, there’s a comment on voluntary controls on nanotech: “Jennifer Sass of the Natural Resources Defense Council worries that industry will get its way on voluntary, rather than enforceable, regulations. ‘Having these kinds of joint partnerships and collaborative efforts is a good thing,’ she says, ‘But without… Continue reading Nanotechnology controls: Voluntary or required?
Signal, the publication of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association, has a Special Report on nanotechnology in their July issue, including: (1) Small Matters: Nanotechnology could lead to the next arms race; experts debate how to prepare, (2) a piece on the New Jersey Nanotechnology Consortium, and (3) a story on photo-activated porphyrin nanotubes.… Continue reading Nanotech arms race debated
My first column is up over at Always On, and you can rate it on a scale from “Way Off” to “On the $”. Excerpts: “So there’s a big international race on to see which country will lead the Nanotechnology Revolution. How will the U.S. do?…you can have lots of venture capital looking to invest… Continue reading Nanotech in U.S.: Find more molecule geeks soon or lose out
A useful article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle by Paul Carlstrom — “As solar gets smaller, its future gets brighter: Nanotechnology could turn rooftops into a sea of power-generating stations” — describes the current state of near-term nanotech’s contribution to solar energy technologies. “With nanotechnology, tiny solar cells can be printed onto flexible, very thin… Continue reading Nanotech solar power planned for rooftops, siding
Longtime Foresight readers will remember Masakazu Aono from his pioneering Atomcraft Project started in 1989. Now he’s working on “Atomic Electronics” based on an “Atomic Switch”; see the report in today’s Japan Nanonet Bulletin. This is interesting, but we were more excited by the earlier bottom-up fabrication work. Dr. Aono has some advice: “Researchers should… Continue reading "Atomic Switch" coming from Masakazu Aono
The June 2005 Technology Quarterly report in the The Economist includes an update on the work of MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld (subscription required). There’s a summary of his fab lab project and some projections: “He admits that his far-flung fab labs are not the advanced molecular machines he foresees in the next 20 years on a… Continue reading MIT's Gershenfeld: Desktop molecular machines within 20 years
