Only four days left to make your 2007 donation to Foresight, and help us complete our Challenge Grant. See the Challenge web page to see how close we are to meeting our goal. From the page: Please consider making a one-time donation, or renewing/upgrading your membership, to qualify for matching of your donation. You’ll be [...]

We hope you find Nanodot useful all year long. Now we need some assistance from our loyal readers: we have a Challenge Grant going, with every dollar you donate being matched one-for-one up to US$40K. But as of today we’re only about a quarter of the way to our goal. You can track our progress [...]

Nanowerk brings our attention to a story at Forbes.com looking at anticipated developments in sensing and monitoring: At their annual meeting this fall in Montreal, there was little of the traditional talk among the international privacy people about the nuts and bolts of data protection. Instead, there were urgent and distressed discussions about “uberveillance,” “ambient [...]

CRN has been working on eight scenarios for advanced nanotechtechnology, and they are now available. You can get a quick feel for them by their titles: Scenario 1: Secret Military Development Scenario 2: Positive Expectations Scenario 3: Negative Drivers Scenario 4: Presidential Commission Scenario 5: … And Not a Drop to Drink Scenario 6: A [...]

For those of us who can’t get enough nanotechnology info, now there’s a one-hour radio show/podcast every week to download and enjoy while you drive or work out, hosted by industry analyst Marlene Bourne: “Next-generation science and technology, and the cool products that are being developed as a result, are captivating subjects,” said Ms. Bourne. [...]

Jamais Cascio offers four nanotechnology policy scenarios over at CRN, looking at options resulting from two axes: centralized vs. decentralized, and precautionary vs. proactionary. His two decentralized scenarios describe some territory similar to that which Foresight is investigating as part of our Decentralized Physical Security project: The third scenario, combining Distributed rule-making and Proactionary technology [...]

Everyone is pursuing private donors for their nanotechnology research, and Israel is very serious about it, matching private nanotech fund donations made from outside the country, as reported in EE Times: The country’s nanotechnology program, called the Israel National Nanotechnology Initiative (INNI) provides 3-to-1 matching funds for all private donations to nanotech centers, effectively producing [...]

Yesterday we highlighted MIT’s work in getting their course materials online. But many other schools with courses relevant to nanotech have been working on similar goals, especially UC Berkleley. For a useful overview of what’s out there, see Jimmy Ruska’s page on Free Education (it covers all fields, not just nanotechnology). An excerpt: Ranked as [...]

Like many MIT alumni, I have decidedly mixed feelings about the school, but one program to be entirely pleased with is OCW: OpenCourseWare, the free online provision of MIT course materials. They just reached a major milestone: Join us as we celebrate the publication of virtually the entire MIT curriculum — 1800 courses — on [...]

Words can’t really get across the essence of the nanoscale and potential of nanotechnology, but images can do much better. That’s why Foresight encourages participation in the NanoArt competition: FREE Entries NanoArt 2007 INTERNATIONAL ONLINE COMPETITION Submission deadline December 31, 2007. Open to All Artists and Scientists – Three Electron Microscope Scans are provided as [...]

Foresight Nanotech Institute has received a large Challenge Grant, but to fulfill the challenge we need to raise $40K in matching gifts. You can watch our progress on the pie chart as we work toward our goal. Are you up for the nanotech challenge? Thanks to contributions like yours, we’ve been able to advance beneficial [...]

On October 8, some of us were in the air on our way to the Productive Nanosystems Conference (pdf). Others — specifically, UgoTrade.com — were blogging about the new Nanotechnology Island in Second Life: Dave Taylor, of the National Physical Laboratory (in the UK), explains that some of the key objectives are to: “provide resources [...]

Most of us avoid thinking much about the testing of human products on animals to check for safety. It’s distressing and we wish there were another, better way. Nanotech should eventually make such testing entirely obsolete, and the early stages of this process have begun. You can hear the latest in London this May at [...]

As mentioned previously, tonight MIT alums geek out on nanotechnology in 15 cities around the US. I speculated that non-alums might be able to get in if they try, and sure enough, it seems that they can — at least in the Bay Area, where the event appears to have opened up to the entire [...]

Most nanotechnology emails I receive are because the sender knows I have some connection to the field professionally. This one came due only to my being an MIT alum. The nanotech event described is only for such alumni, but I bet it’s possible to get in some other way if you try hard enough: “It’s [...]

If you are planning to attend this year’s Foresight Vision Weekend Unconference in Silicon Valley this weekend, now is definitely the time to register, since registration closes today at 4 PM Pacific time. After that, you will need to phone Alicia Isaac at +1 (650) 289 0860 ext 254 or email her at foresight@foresight.org to [...]

Getting experimental results in nanotechnology can be a long, hard slog — those doing this work need and deserve inspiration. Beautiful nanoscale images — both of current results and future designs — can help. Damian Allis shows us some of his own images in his post about a new nanoscale art/gallery site called Nanohedron. From [...]

A draft version of the Productive Nanosystems Roadmap was distributed to attendees at the similarly-named conference (PDF) in DC on Oct. 9-10. Now participants at the Foresight Vision Weekend will be critiquing and planning expansions of this first roadmap for atomically-precise manufacturing. IMPORTANT: REGISTRATION DEADLINE IS 4 PM, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 31. In addition to the [...]

Registration for Foresight’s Nov. 3-4 Vision Weekend focused on nanotechnology and other advanced technologies — traditionally restricted to Foresight Senior Associates — is being opened to the general public this year as an experiment. Space is limited and participants are advised to register very soon. To warm up for our Sat/Sun afternoon unconference, in the [...]

This year as an experiment we are opening up a subset of seats at the Nov. 3-4 Foresight Vision Weekend to members of special groups such as Nanodot readers. The event is usually open only to Foresight Senior Associate members: http://www.foresight.org/SrAssoc/2007 I encourage you to check out this event. Since it is an Unconference, you [...]