A. Soltani writes of an upcoming "The Nanotechnology conference, the outlook of industrial revolution will be held in March 2002 in Tehran, Iran. You can see more at: http://www.tco.gov.ir/nano/English/events/Conference.htm"
Editor's Note: Be sure to visit the web site of the Iranian government's Nanotechnology Policy Studies Committee. The site offers an extensive amount of material in English (much of which appears to have been . . . er, "borrowed" from other sites on the web.)
from the Discount-for-Senior-Associates dept.
CMP Cientifica (based in Spain) and nABUCUS (based in Hong Kong), two nanotechnology-oriented consulting and investment firms, along with the U.S. public relations firm of Niehaus Ryan Wong, have teamed up to prepare the Nanotechnology Opportunities Report (NOR), which is due to be released some time early next year. They have released a free preliminary white paper that aims to "give a comprehensive introduction to the wide variety of technologies that fall under the nanotech umbrella, and to present this in a manner that gives a sense of the areas of our world, and thus the markets, that will be impacted, and when."
As with most of these ìinvestment opportunityî reports, none of the material in the NOR preview white paper is particularly new or unique. However it does provide a succinct basic explanation of the developing excitement in the field for newcomers, and has a more international viewpoint than some of the reports issued by U.S.-based firms. The paper is available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file (about 1.4 MB) at the website of any of the three firms:
The NOR white paper follows in the wake of a number of similar reports that were released in August and September 2001 (reported here on 3 August, 30 August, and 9 October 2001). The full Nanotechnology Opportunity Report will be available for purchase in January 2002 at a cost of US$1995.
UPDATE: Foresight Senior Associates, and attendees of this week's Ninth Foresight Conference, can get a discount of $200 on the pre-publication price of $1695 on advance orders for the NOR. This offer is good until 30 November 2001. These advance orders should be placed through Foresight, either online (secure web form), or through our office, to get the $200 discount. Contact information for the Foresight office.
A number of universities in the U.S. are competing to become the host for a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) for the U.S. Armyís Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (ISN). A considerable amount of information about the intended goals of the ISN center can be found in the formal solicitation for the ISN center, released in October 2001, which is available as an Adobe Acrobat PDF file (about 155 KB). Funding for the ISN will be about $US 10 million per year, for at least five years.
According to the solicitation: "The individual soldier will. . . will require systems revolutionary in their capabilities. Recent advances in the field of nanoscience suggest that may be possible to provide the soldier with radically new capabilities in full-spectrum threat protection without incurring significant weight or volume penalties. Such soldier systems will only be realized by directing additional resources to the Army's Science and Technology Program in the emerging field of nanoscience. . . . The purpose of this research center of excellence is to develop unclassified nanometerscale science and technology solutions for the soldier. A single university will host this center, which will emphasize revolutionary materials research toward advanced soldier protection and survivability capabilities."
Responses to the solicitation are due by 15 November 2001, and competition for the center is keen. An item from the Cornell Daily Sun ("Army Research Facility May Replace Ward Lab", 25 October 2001) describes some of Cornell universityís efforts to bring the center there.
Previous coverage of the ISN program appeared here on 28 June and 13 September 2001
The Ninth Foresight Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology will be held at the Westin Hotel in Santa Clara, California from 9 -11 November 2001. The keynote speaker will be James Murday of the U.S. Naval Research Lab and Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. A special conference session on Venture Capital for Nanotechnology and a Nanotechnology Patent Roundtable will be held.
from the More-conferences dept.
A reminder: The special nanotechnology track at the 2001 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) International Mechanical Engineering Conference (11-16 November 2001) will include a keynote panel discussion, three nanotechnology tutorials, and nine conference technical sessions devoted to various aspects of nanotechnology.
RobertBradbury writes "A group lead by Fred Levine at UCSD is now reporting in Cryobiology (42:207) that simply drying cells in a vacuum is feasible method for cellular preservation. The highly unexpected discovery is discussed in a New Scientist article from October 22, 2001. This potentially provides a very different approach to cryonic suspensions where you would dehydrate the person first, then lower the temperatures to keep them in stasis. No water means no freezing damage due to ice crystal formation. The question becomes whether or not the extracellular structure of the brain (and other tissues) could survive the dehydration process? The shrinkage due to water loss seems like it would put a fair amount of stress on the proteins that bind the synaptic junctions together."
from the OK-with-us dept.
Media coverage of the recent Nobel Prize in Physics — for demonstrating Bose-Einstein condensation — often portrayed it as an enabling step for nanotechnology. Sample excerpt: "The discovery that won the prestigious Nobel Prize in physics last week could lead to practical uses of nanotechnology, including molecular-scale electronics and microscopic computers."
The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced on 19 September 2001 about $65 million in funding over five years to establish six university centers to promote research and education in nanotechnology. The centers will each focus on a specific area in nanoscale science and engineering, and include collaborations with industry and other institutions. The six centers will be located at Columbia and Cornell Universities and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in New York, Harvard University in Massachusetts, Northwestern University in Illinois, and Rice University in Texas. Details are available in this NSF press release.
Additional coverage is available in an article on the Small Times website, and in individual press releases from Northwestern University, Rice University and RPI.
from the talks-demos-&-lunch dept.
Accelrys is offering a free one-day computational nanotechnology seminar to be given in mid-October 2001 in DC, Houston, and Silicon Valley. While it includes some product demos, it also features speakers from outside the company, an "interactive session — creating complex structures from atomic building blocks (Audience participation)", and lunch. The invitation states "Entire nanoscale devices can be modeled on a computer in complete atomic detail". For a free event, this looks hard to beat.
The U.S. Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) will be holding a Nanophase Materials Sciences Workshop on 24-26 October 2001 at the Garden Plaza Hotel in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The workshop will be part of the planning for a "highly collaborative and multidisciplinary Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences to address the national need for facilities to support state-of-the-art research on the synthesis, fabrication, characterization, and understanding of nanoscale structures, materials, and phenomena." The Center will include a Nanofabrication Research Laboratory, a Nanomaterials Theory Institute, and extensive facilities for materials synthesis and characterization. The purpose of the workshop is to facilitate community involvement in the planning for the Center. In particular, input is sought on equipment needs, candidate research areas, and user operations. A preliminary program is available online.
