Also in the Summer 2005 Issues in Science and Technology is an article from Environmental Defense giving many recommendations for improved nanotech policies, including: “Develop corporate standards of care. Even under the most optimistic scenario, it appears unlikely that federal agencies will put into place adequate provisions for nanomaterials quickly enough to address the materials [...]

ETC Group has issued a new 36-page report on Nanotech’s “Second Nature” Patents: Implications for the Global South (pdf), summarized in a two-page news release (pdf). The report lists various concerns about nanotech patents, including from Stanford’s Mark Lemley and the Nanobusiness Alliance, but the primary issue for ETC is access for poor countries. Multiple [...]

The June 2005 Technology Quarterly report in the The Economist includes an update on the work of MIT’s Neil Gershenfeld (subscription required). There’s a summary of his fab lab project and some projections: “He admits that his far-flung fab labs are not the advanced molecular machines he foresees in the next 20 years on a [...]

Small Times CEO Patti Glaza writes: “The nanotechnology industry needs to be able to compartmentalize itself, so that if and when the first widespread negative impact of nanotechnology is felt, people only demand the end to the harmful (or perceived harmful) applications and not demand the end of beneficial forms of nanotechnology too.” Indeed. Companies [...]

[Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers. If you would like future nanotech news emails, just type your email address in the "Free Registration" box to the right.--CP] In the Summer 2005 Issues in Science and Technology, two of the primary White House advocates for the original U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative, Neal Lane and Tom Kalil, issue a [...]

Just back from a meeting of ICON in Houston (agenda in PDF format). I went out a day early to sit in on a meeting focused on Rice University’s CBEN, which included a high-level summary of their research plus some in-depth examples. Especially impressive was the research on gold nanoshells to treat cancer, and work [...]

A partnership of 25 scientists from The Burnham Institute, University of California Santa Barbara, and The Scripps Research Institute will use a $13 million NIH award to design nanotechnologies to detect, monitor, treat, and eliminate “vulnerable” plaque, the probable cause of death in sudden cardiac arrest. The project team will work on three innovative solutions [...]

Last Thursday I spoke at a Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition conference on nanotech, at which Jim Thomas of the ETC Group also spoke. While we agree that nanoparticles need better testing and regulation, one of the ETC handouts, A Tiny Primer on Nano-scale Technologies, illustrates the risks of making policy recommendations that aren’t quite fully [...]

A new report on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) risks from nanotechnology: “Lux Research, one of a handful of investment advisory firms that focuses on nanotechnology companies, said corporations including Lockheed Martin and Kraft Foods Inc. spent $3.8 billion on nanotech research and development last year. Yet, it said corporate EHS officers are ‘mostly unaware [...]

We’re adding more speakers continually, but a preliminary list is now posted for the 13th Foresight Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology this Oct. 22-27 in San Francisco. Choose your area(s) of focus: the first two days give the big picture (Vision), the next two are on Applications & Policy, and the last two are on Research. [...]

The attitude taken by insurance companies toward nanotech will have a major impact on the field. The OECD and Allianz, an insurance firm, have published a study on the opportunities and risks of nanotechnology (available in pdf format, 2.7 MB). From the announcement: “Allianz believes that it would not be appropriate to create a general [...]

From a UC Irvine press release, based on work published in Nano Letters: UC Irvine scientists have demonstrated for the first time that carbon nanotubes can route electrical signals on a chip faster than traditional copper or aluminum wires, at speeds of up to 10 GHz…Now that Burke’s team has developed both high-speed nanotube-interconnect technology [...]

An earlier post discussed a new nanobusiness course at UC Berkeley, saying it was the first one, to our knowledge. Our knowledge has now expanded: Sean Murdock has taught such a course at Northwestern for a couple of years, and Rod Ruoff taught it for a year before that. Anyone earlier out there? –CP

[Update: see comments for link to full article] In an opinion editorial expected to run in the Wall Street Journal (subscription only) today [Update: it ran June 14], Environmental Defense President Fred Krupp and DuPont CEO Chad Holliday outline the steps that policymakers, academics, businesses and nonprofits need to take to maximize the potential and [...]

Frost & Sullivan has issued a report titled U.S. Nanotechnology Industry: Investment Analysis and Growth Opportunities, which appears to be an analysis of 16 nanotech companies which make up their Nanotechnology Index. It costs US$4950, and is probably a useful report for high-level investors, but I’m afraid they are in for some gentle teasing — [...]

If you’re unsure about whether to buy the book Nanotech Fortunes: Make Yours in the Boom, you can wait for my review, or listen to this WallStreetReporter audio interview of the author. One point made is that he expects a series of booms and busts for the next 20 to 40 years. Sounds right to [...]

Researcher John Warren writes about his (politically-incorrect) frustration with being asked to engage in two-way dialogue with the public. The headline writer summarized it as “Scientists are too busy discovering hard facts to engage the public in constant dialogue, says John Warren”, but that’s not right. Warren says: “The trouble is, for a meaningful two-way [...]

For those of us struggling to keep up with the very latest nanotech research: Get a quick intro of two key areas from the website of Harvard’s Prof. Charles Lieber, co-chair of this fall’s Foresight Conference on Advanced Nanotechnology research sessions. See the nanoelectronics animation on his homepage, and the nanosensing one here. Also on [...]

From Physorg.com: “Scientists from the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Potsdam, and from eight other scientific institutions in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy have received 2 Million Euro from the European Union for research on “Active Biomimetic Systems”…One long term vision is the construction of nanorobots, which can perform work and other [...]

We in the U.S. who are interested in nanotech tend to focus on NSF, but DoE deserves substantial attention as well. See their overview page, and then download the pdf brochure on their nanoscale science research centers (worth the effort for the illustrations alone): Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies, Center for Nanophase [...]