Christine Peterson, co-founder and president of The Foresight Institute, a public interest group seeking to educate the community on forthcoming technological advances, emphasized the increasingly prominent role that nanotechnology has come to play.

Peterson noted that nanotechnology has the potential to create new materials and make vast advances without the side effects, such as pollution, that would currently ensue. She allowed, however, that the near-invisible and highly sensitive technology might enable intrusions on privacy.

“We need to know what data is collected,” Peterson said, “how it is used and how long it is retained. We have those rights.”

Peterson highlighted the medical benefits of nanotechnology, noting, “The ability to control atoms and molecules would mean that there really isn’t a physical illness [that] we wouldn’t be able to address.”

The report quotes the moderator of the panel, author Piero Scaruffi, as stating that the four panelists were picked because “They discussed life as in the future, rather than life as in the past.” We can certainly expect that life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.

Nanotechnology: How should we evaluate the environmental impact of human-made machines that are too small to see? What limits should be placed on self-replicating nanodevices? What defenses should we institute against malevolent uses of such technology?

These questions were asked by Marc Goodman, a senior advisor to Interpol and founder of Future Crimes Institute, a think tank that explores the security implications of new technology.  In a report by Ted Greenwald at Forbes.com, Goodman urged “aspiring captains of emerging industries like synthetic biology, robotics, and nanotech to take a proactive attitude toward their impact on the global community.”

Great to see this message of foresight reaching such a key audience, in addition to Ralph Merkle’s frequent briefings on nanotech at SU.  —Christine Peterson

Hope to see you there!  —Christine Peterson, President, Foresight Institute

Queen’s researchers have discovered that nanoparticles, which are now present in everything from socks to salad dressing and suntan lotion, may have irreparably damaging effects on soil systems and the environment.

“Millions of tonnes of nanoparticles are now manufactured every year, including silver nanoparticles which are popular as antibacterial agents,” says Virginia Walker, a professor in the Department of Biology. “We started to wonder what the impact of all these nanoparticles might be on the environment, particularly on soil.”

The team acquired a sample of soil from the Arctic as part of their involvement in the International Polar Year initiative. The soil was sourced from a remote Arctic site as they felt that this soil stood the greatest chance of being uncontaminated by any nanoparticles.

“We hadn’t thought we would see much of an impact, but instead our results indicate that silver nanoparticles can be classified as highly toxic to microbial communities. This is particularly concerning when you consider the vulnerability of the arctic ecosystem.” …

The researchers first examined the indigenous microbe communities living in the uncontaminated soil samples before adding three different kinds of nanoparticles, including silver. The soil samples were then left for six months to see how the addition of the nanoparticles affected the microbe communities. What the researchers found was both remarkable and concerning.

The original analysis of the uncontaminated soil had identified a beneficial microbe that helps fix nitrogen to plants. As plants are unable to fix nitrogen themselves and nitrogen fixation is essential for plant nutrition, the presence of these particular microbes in soil is vital for plant growth. The analysis of the soil sample six months after the addition of the silver nanoparticles showed negligible quantities of the important nitrogen-fixing species remaining and laboratory experiments showed that they were more than a million times susceptible to silver nanoparticles than other species.

There are three important aspects to this study that the news release does not emphasize. First, the nanoparticles were not already present in the arctic soil samples—they were added by the experimenters, so there is as yet no evidence that silver nanoparticles are widespread in the environment. Second, neither the news release nor the abstract of the research publication correlates the level of silver nanoparticles added to these samples with the levels currently found in other environmental samples. Third, the other two types of nanoparticles (identified in the abstract as copper nanoparticles and silica nanoparticles) showed no evidence of harm.

While there is yet no reason for blanket alarm about the presence of nanoparticles in the environment, the researchers are certainly correct to warn, as they do in the last sentence of their abstract:

Thus, NP contamination of arctic soils particularly by silver NPs is a concern and procedures for mitigation and remediation of such pollution should be a priority for investigation.

One of the worst possible outcomes for the long range development of nanotechnology would be for current nanoparticle commercialization to cause substantial EHS problems as a result of inadequate EHS research and foresight. Some nanoparticles may be of little concern, but others might require special regulation or precautions, or might need to be modified or substituted, or might not be safe for certain applications.

Posted by Travis Earles on November 01, 2010 at 12:07 PM EDT

Starting today, public comment is being accepted on the draft Strategic Plan for the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), which is posted at the NNI Strategy Portal. The NNI is an interagency program for coordinating Federal research and development in nanotechnology, which is the understanding and control of matter at dimensions between approximately 1 and 100 nanometers. At these super small scales, unique phenomena emerge, enabling the development of materials and devices with novel applications. Research in nanoscale science and engineering has the potential to bring about new nanotechnology innovations, such as improving how we collect and store energy, reinforce materials, sense contaminants, target drugs, and shrink and accelerate computational devices.

The NNI Strategic Plan is the framework that underpins the nanotechnology work of 25 NNI member agencies. It aims to ensure that advances in nanotechnology R&D and their applications to agency missions continue unabated in this fledgling field. Its purpose is to facilitate achievement of the NNI vision by laying out targeted guidance for agency leaders, program managers, and the research community regarding planning and implementation of nanotechnology R&D investments and activities.

…You may review the draft Plan and submit comments of approximately one page or less (4,000 characters) from now until November 30, 2010.

To comment on the DRAFT National Nanotechnology Initiative Strategic Plan 2010, you must first register. In a quick scan I did not find any mention of the advanced nanotechnology that is Foresight’s primary concern. Searches for the phrases “atomic precision”, “atomically precise”, “productive nanosystems”, and “molecular manufacturing” all came up negative. The various program component areas (see page 5) do make a strong case for expanded incremental improvements in the design, manufacturing, and use of nanostructured products in a wide range of applications—electronics, materials, energy, medical, environment, health, and safety, etc. Perhaps the closest indirect allusion to advanced nanotechnology is Program Component Area 5 – Nanomanufacturing:

R&D aimed at enabling scaled-up, reliable, and cost-effective manufacturing of nanoscale materials, structures, devices, and systems. Includes R&D and integration of ultra-miniaturized top-down processes and increasingly complex bottom-up or self-assembly processes.

Whether your primary interest is near-term or long-term, let them know what you think of their plan.

Humanity+ @ Caltech
December 4-5, 2010
Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change
Pasadena, CA

Several times a year, Humanity+, the world’s leading nonprofit for the ethical use of technology, holds conferences about the sciences, technologies and social issues concerning the future. Past Humanity+ conferences have taken place in Cambridge, Massachusetts at Harvard University and Irvine, California. Our next conference, Humanity+ @ Caltech, will take place on December 4-5th (Saturday-Sunday) at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

Speakers will include many of the top visionaries and leaders of the transhumanist community, as well as new voices from the worlds of science, art, media and business.

The Humanity+ @ Caltech program will be divided into four main sessions, each one of which will cover a key area of transhumanist thought:

• Re-Imagining Humans: Mind, Media and Methods (Saturday morning)
• Radically Increasing the Human Healthspan (Saturday afternoon)
• Redefining Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Enhancement and Substrate-Independent Minds (Sunday morning)
• Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomorphosis (Sunday afternoon)

For information about registration: http://humanityplus10.eventbrite.com/

Many of you will recall Bill Joy’s famous article in Wired called Why the future doesn’t need us, where he expressed concern about various technologies including advanced nanotech. Apparently he gave an update of his views on this in his talk for TED, viewable here. An excerpt:

So if we can address, use technology, help address education, help address the environment, help address the pandemic, does that solve the larger problem that I was talking about in the Wired article? And I’m afraid the answer is really no, because you can’t solve a problem with the management of technology with more technology. If we let an unlimited amount of power loose, then we will — a very small number of people will be able to abuse it. We can’t fight at a million-to-one disadvantage. So what we need to do is, we need better policy. And for example, some things we could do that would be policy solutions which are not really in the political air right now but perhaps with the change of administration would be — use markets.

Whether you agree with him or not, it’s a useful discussion to have. As he says:

We can’t pick the future, but we can steer the future…So we can design the future if we choose what kind of things we want to have happen and not have happen, and steer us to a lower-risk place.

Check it out. —Chris Peterson

Topics include OpenPCR, DIY biology, open source hardware, brain preservation, synthetic biology, gene patents, open data, open access journals, reputation engines, crowd-funding and microfinance for science, citizen science, biohacking, open source biodefense, cure entrepreneurs, open source drug discovery, patent pools, tech transfer, and much more.

Here’s some advance media coverage:

http://www.xconomy.com/san-francisco/2010/07/07/the-open-science-shift/

http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2010/07/diy-biotechnologists-go-looking-for-a-bigger-garage/59701/

If you can’t attend in person, watch the webcast live at:

http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2010

Put it on your calendar now!  Or we’ll hope to see you in person, especially for the session where I’m speaking: “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday.  –Chris Peterson

We’ll miss you, but you can watch the conference live at:

http://fora.tv/live/open_science/open_science_summit_2010

Put it on your calendar now!  Or we’ll hope to see you in person, especially for the session where I’m speaking: “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday.  –Chris Peterson