Charles Choi of UPI’s Nano World presents two views of the development of new nanotech weapons: (1) “Pardo-Guerra and colleague Francisco Aguayo, of the College of Mexico, outlined in Nanotechnology Law & Business Journal three ways in which nanotechnology could enable new weapons” and (2) Microbiologist Mark Wheelis, of the University of California at Davis:… Continue reading New nanoweapons discussed in Nanotech Law & Business Journal
Menlo Park, CA – May 23, 2005 – Foresight Institute, the original organization in the nanotechnology field, founded in 1986, announced today that it has updated its mission and focus. The organization has also renamed itself Foresight Nanotech Institute to reflect these changes. “As Foresight approaches its twentieth year, it has largely succeeded in its… Continue reading Foresight Nanotech Institute Adopts New Mission
Environmental Defense is getting active on nanotech issues, including advocating that of the approximately US$1 billion spent by the US federal government on nanotech, at least $100 million should be spent on nanomaterial risk identification. That’s a lot of money, but we agree the current amount is too small. Industry should support an increase–if the… Continue reading Environmental Defense wants 10% of nanofunding for risk ID
Those of us tracking bottom-up nanotech have long been keeping an eye on the dendrimer pathway. Now a pioneer in the field is claiming a major breakthrough: “Priostar™ dendrimers radically change the economics of nanotechnology and have broad commercial applications. They share and improve the physical properties of the original PAMAM dendrimers that were invented… Continue reading Dendrimer pathway takes leap forward
David Berube at U. South Carolina, in an ongoing campaign against nanohype, has been looking into complaints by the ETC Group that a nanoparticle product was approved by the Bureau of Indian Affairs for use to prevent erosion on Taos Pueblo land in New Mexico. His conclusion: “a review of the actual event discredits their… Continue reading Nanoparticle-release complaint cast in doubt
Posted by Robert Bradbury: For many years we have had “rational design” of drugs (see drug design) and other small molecules. Unfortunately these developments have been generally limited, particularly with respect to proteins, because we have not really solved the protein folding problem. We have had several companies, particularly Maxygen and Genencor which have worked… Continue reading Molecular evolution by design
Foresight participating member Norm Wu has two essays available on the Ziff-Davis ExtremeNano site: one on quantum dots and one on “parallel entrepreneur” David Soane of Nano-Tex. From Soane: “even with a very conservative business plan, each project generally ends up taking twice as long (and costing twice as much) to accomplish…with many twists and… Continue reading Norm Wu insights on ExtremeNano
Bored with the U.S. NNI? Check out the Iranian NanoTechnology Initiative. It’s a beautiful site due to the pretty alphabet, which is unfortunately completely unreadable by me, Google, or Babelfish. How about a translation of some key elements, readers in Iran? (Credit: Elaine Tschorn)
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) has issued its five-year review of the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative. You can read the whole 60-page pdf, or just Howard Lovy’s humorous summary. Or, go with my summary: They like it.
Greenpeace UK and Interdisciplinary Research Collaboration (IRC) in Nanotechnology at Cambridge University have set up a “Citizen’s Jury” to review risks and opportunities and give a “verdict” on nanotechnology by mid-September. Doug Parr, of Greenpeace, said: “We want to provide an opportunity for people to give their perspectives…at a time when we hope they can… Continue reading NanoJury UK to give verdict on nanotech
