There’s an arms race between government patent offices and patent filers assisted by private law firms. The folks who work for the former get paid a lot less than the those who work for the latter. This leads to a continual drain away from government review of patent applications toward private generation of patent applications. [...]

Alan Shalleck of NanoClarity writes over at Nanotechnology Now on how the U.S. should go about planning its future federal funding of nanotech. Excerpts: It is time to explore what the next three to five year national nanotechnology funding allocation will look like. We have already benefited from two multiple-year, multibillion-dollar Presidentially-endorsed Federal programs and [...]

Babak Parviz of University of Washington, named by Technology Review as one of this year’s outstanding innovators under the age of 35, writes in the Sept/Oct issue (free reg req’d) about self-assembly: In nature, components “self-assemble” to yield complex functional systems. Inspired in part by this observation, a number of research groups are working to [...]

Science Daily brings news of the future of transportation as nanotechnology changes how we make our products, described in the book Transport Communications. An excerpt from Science Daily: By introducing nanotechnology, the authors suggest, goods could be produced and distributed locally, limiting the amount of worldwide transport that takes place annually. Whether discussing virtual reality-based [...]

“Fun” is not the first word that comes to mind when the topic of ethics comes up, but the new book Nanoethics: the Ethical and Social Implications of Nanotechnology manages to include a surprising amount of it. Topics include the end of biological aging, body enhancement, privacy, military use, exponential manufacturing, space development, AI, and [...]

There seem to already be an awful lot of nanotechnology and nanoscience journals out there, but ACS feels there’s room for another: ACS Nano. Editor Paul Weiss — who does “molecular motor-driven assembly“, which sounds fascinating — explains: One of the great traditions of the chemical sciences is that one’s work can be reproduced anywhere [...]

We hear so much about possible environmental concerns with respect to nanoparticles that it is a joy to have David Berube bring to our attention the upcoming EPA conference on Pollution Prevention through Nanotechnology, Sept. 25-26, which may possibly still be accepting poster presentations: Representatives from industry, academia, non-governmental organizations, and government are invited to [...]

Nanotech experiments using real molecules are expensive and slow. Progress in nanotechnology would be greatly increased by highly advanced software truly able to model how molecules interact to make materials, devices, and systems. What are the odds of highly advanced software — machine intelligence — being developed any time soon? Explore this question at the [...]

Here’s a cheerful note on which to end our week: Most of us would like to reduce the need for experimentation on animals, but the question has been how to do it without increasing risks to humans. Now nanotech is being considered as a possible route, in a new conference sponsored by IoN (there does [...]

Foresight president Pearl Chin brings our attention to an interview of Sanjay Gupta in Life Extension magazine. It sounds as though his new book Chasing Life includes coverage of nanotechnology. Excerpts from the interview: Turn on any television in the world—Beijing, Chicago, Tel Aviv, Rome, Los Angeles, or Tokyo—and you will find Dr. Sanjay Gupta [...]

The new book Nanoethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Nanotechnology is now out. From the press release: Examining the impact of nanotechnology on society, “Nanoethics: The Ethical and Social Implications of Nanotechnology”…offers incisive essays on the potential risks and rewards of applications of nanotechnology written by both proponents and critics of this burgeoning technology. [...]

The University of South Carolina has released a survey of nanotechnology researchers’ views on various nanotech issues. For example, most agreed that: Nanotechnology will draw more students into science, engineering and math than would otherwise have chosen to study in these fields. I think this is already true — after all, students have been reading [...]

The U.S. National Academy of Engineering wants input on what should be the Grand Challenges in engineering over the next century. Let’s let them know: nanotechnology! Specifically, nanotech leading toward, and achieving, productive nanosystems. Heck, they can just follow the Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems. The IEEE has a summary. You have until August 17, [...]

Marvin Hofberg of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine sends info on nanotechnology for medicine and longevity: Among the scientific and medical phenomena unveiled at the Eighth Congress that are projected to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare and, as a result, improve the quality and extend the quantity of the human lifespan: • Nanobots, fleets [...]

Today’s San Jose Mercury News — the newspaper of Silicon Valley — features a guest editorial by Wirt Cook, IBM vice president and senior state executive, on the proposed Patent Reform Act, titled “Patent Reform Act best way to protect, foster innovation”: Berman’s bill will enable private-citizen-experts to help patent examiners research the novelty of [...]

Those of us who spend our days looking at innovation would do well to look at the other side now and then. The New Yorker gives us a chance with a book review by Steven Shapin of the book “The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900” (Oxford) by David Edgerton. He [...]

Nanotech Briefs has announced its Nano 50 award winners for 2007, in the categories of Innovators, Products, and Technologies. (Full disclosure: I was a judge again this year.) Great to see Zyvex on the list. Don’t see your favorites? Maybe they weren’t nominated. Don’t let that happen for the Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes; nominate your [...]

Some sunscreens contain simple nanomaterials: nanoparticles of zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. Sunscreens have had these for decades, but the particles used to be bigger, which is why lifeguards at the beach used to have white noses. Now the particles are smaller, so the sunscreens are transparent. Applying the “nanotechnology” label to these products is [...]

In the Edigest email from Nanotechnology.com, we found the interview below with a young researcher whose work has been mentioned here before. Normally we don’t reprint items in their entirety, but I could not find this on the Nanotechnology.com website, or elsewhere on the web, so here it is. Its appearance in the Edigest was [...]

The May/June Technology Review (free reg. req’d) features an essay by philosopher Roger Scruton attempting to examine the ethical issues of highly advanced technologies. While the focus is on biotech, nanotech is hinted at: …why cannot machines be produced as humans are now produced, by self-reproduction? Why not indeed. They could, in principle. Scruton makes [...]