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
As has been pointed out repeatedly here, the term nanotechnology is very broadly defined, and the various “nanotechnology indexes” that try to track nanotech stocks have a tough job, to put it mildly. To complicate matters, nanotech watchers distinguish at least four, and maybe five, different generations of nano, from passive materials to highly advanced… Continue reading Nanotechnology investing: the multi-decade roller coaster
High school students in the COSMOS program were treated to an early version of the NanoEngineer-1 modeling software for atomically-precise nanotechnology. Foresight Director of Education Miguel Aznar reported to Nanorex president Mark Sims on the nanotech course results: Success! NanoEngineer-1 greatly enhanced my nanotechnology class. My students were excited to manipulate and simulate the world… Continue reading Nanotechnology software enables students to design molecular machines
The U.S. NSF has a program in Nanoscale Informal Science Education, awarding $20 million over five years to a network of science museums and related institutions. This is the largest single award NSF has ever given to science museums. One of the main three museums getting the award is the Exploratorium in San Francisco, and… Continue reading Converting nanotechnology cash into public engagement
Dietram Scheufele writes of an event at the U.K.’s Dana Centre — whose website says “The Dana Centre is sexing up science for the masses” — using a nanotechnology-based card game to get the general public thinking about nanotechnology. Dietram concludes: “Using a card game that defines clear rules for all players and forces them… Continue reading Nanotechnology policy game for public shows bias
Attendees at this year’s Lux Executive Summit (pdf) will get to tour Harvard’s Center for Nanoscale Systems. As an alumna of the rival school down the street (MIT), I suggest that while you’re there, you help tweak their website, which has one of the least impressive nano definitions I’ve seen: The term nanoscale refers to… Continue reading Tour Harvard's nanotechnology center — and fix website
