Category: Opinion

from the he-sponsored-our-first-nanoconference dept.
Global Business Network chairman and Foresight Advisor Peter Schwartz, author of The Long Boom, writes about nanotechnology in his Scenarios column in Red Herring: "No idea has gone from wild, fringe science to the dead center of mainstream research faster than nanotechnology. Perhaps the impact of nanotechnology will be felt just as rapidly…There are early hints that the first commercial nanotechnologies are not far off. Venture capital is already beginning to flow toward nanotechnology companies…Nanotechnology's development is inevitable: it's only a matter of when and where. Will it be in the United States now, or somewhere else later?" CP: Or somewhere else now? The U.S. lead may not be strong.

from the bio-is-a-subset-of-nano dept.
Lots of folks ask, in which public companies can I invest today in order to ride the nanotech wave as it occurs? Some companies in the biotech sector will be able to make the jump to nanotech as that begins to make sense commercially. An excellent prospect is ArQule, a profitable public company which was named individualinvestor.com's Stock of the Day last Friday. An excerpt from that story on Yahoo: "The company also has announced a venture with privately held Nanosyn, a research consortium concentrating on the still-developing nanotechnology [emphasis added] sector." Disclaimer: the above is personal opinion and does not reflect the opinion of any organization. Moreover, it is the personal opinion of someone who is not rich. Invest at your own risk.

from the money-is-nice-but-less-politics-is-better dept.
In the 20 October Science (free registration req'd), Editor-in-Chief Donald Kennedy sketches the effect of private money on basic research. One topic discussed is "the declining relative state of scientific equipment and facilities in the research universities. I say relative because the equipment and the buildings aren't really that bad, except in comparison with what is available in the new companies, many of them startups, that now perform an increasing fraction of the kind of basic research that used to be an academic monopoly. The availability of venture capital and the liveliness of our entrepreneurial culture have radically altered the character of commercial science, attaching financial opportunity to the nascent front end of the innovation cycle. Molecular and cell biology, nanotechnology [emphasis added], and computer science are among the disciplines that have been transformed by this migration." CP: It's true that there's plenty of private money available for nanotechnology companies. Tenure-track professors are hearing the siren song. But I disagree on one point: what these refugees dislike most in academia is the politics, not obsolete equipment.