From the AAAS website EurekAlert: “It has been 20 years since the futurist Eric Drexler daringly predicted a new world where miniaturized robots would build things one molecule at a time. The world of nanotechnology that Drexler envisioned is beginning to come to pass, with scientists conjuring new applications daily. “Now Salvatore Torquato, a Princeton [...]

From Michael Toffel in the Berkeley Daily Planet: “…I asked the City of Berkeley’s Community Environmental Advisory Commission (CEAC), of which I am a member, to consider a draft motion calling for the City Council to ask a similar set of questions. This motion simply asks LBL to: 1. Publicly disclose how they are identifying [...]

Prof. Alan Goldstein, who debated Ron Bailey on nanoethics at the Foresight Vision Weekend, writes on the effect of nanomedicine on medical privacy in Salon: “And by the way, the proliferation of unique molecular identifiers will make medical privacy an impossibility because, ultimately, these types of data cannot be encrypted. The medium is the message. [...]

From EurekAlert, news from Prof. Pulickel Ajayan of RPI: ” ‘These nanotubes can be squeezed to less than 15 percent of their normal lengths by buckling and folding themselves like springs,’ says lead author Anyuan Cao, who did much of the work as a postdoctoral researcher in Ajayan’s lab and is now assistant professor of [...]

In blog/nano, Darrell Brookstein takes a competitor to task, characterizing an ad for the Forbes Wolfe Nanotech Report as “rabidly hyped-up.” On another topic: for those loyal Nanodot readers who are seeing this on Thanksgiving, may you enjoy eating the products of “Nature’s Nanotechnology” with family and friends today. For those outside the U.S., similar [...]

Ronald Kostoff of the Office of Naval Research brings our attention to some new ONR publications, listed on this page: “Two recent reports (1, 2) contain a text mining survey and analysis of the global nanotechnology literature, and should be of use to nanotechnology research performers, managers, planners, sponsors, evaluators, vendors, and implementers/ users… “Some highlights of [...]

Not everyone is a big fan of the United Nations or UNESCO, but the wording of their declarations has impact, and we can expect this year’s bioethics declaration (PDF format) to have an effect on later nanoethics documents. Here’s a clause that may come into play on the question of human enhancement: “The autonomy of [...]

For a layperson’s explanation of 2005 Feynman Prize winner Christian Schafmeister’s work, see this piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: “Taking this cue from nature, Dr. Schafmeister and his students have spent the last five years concocting their own set of 14 building blocks — the molecular equivalent of Lego pieces. “By his estimation, that’s enough [...]

Joining DuPont and Environmental Defense, followed by Foresight, Nanodynamics CEO Keith Blakely has issued a call in recent Congressional testimony for 10% of federal nano spending to go toward safety studies: “The federal government, as the largest single investor in nanotechnology research, must take the lead in identifying the appropriate gaps in EHS information and [...]

UW Madison prof Dietram Scheufele writes about his research in Smalltimes: “In work forthcoming in the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and Science Communication my colleagues and I explored many of these shortcuts in greater detail. I want to highlight one here that illustrates the competing influences of information and heuristics. We conducted a national phone [...]

There will be a webcast of the U.S. House Science Committee hearing on “Environmental and Safety Impacts of Nanotechnology: What Research is Needed?” to be held at 10 AM to noon Eastern time. Witnesses testifying: Dr. Clayton Teague, Director, National Nanotechnology Coordination Office Dr. Richard Denison, Senior Scientist, Environmental Defense Dr. Krishna C. Doraiswamy, Research [...]

It’s not as fun as my job here at Foresight — what could be? — but Lux Research is recruiting Analyst and Senior Analyst positions based in NYC, SF, or Boston. Required for both: “Deep intellectual curiosity about emerging technologies…Fluency in spoken and written Mandarin or Korean is a huge plus; Western European or Middle [...]

Publishing in Nature, Stanford researcher Steven Block has produced an amazing new tool for the nanoscale, accurate down to one angstrom, or one-tenth of a nanometer. From the detailed press release: ” ‘This technical achievement will no doubt lead to new information about the molecular machinery that carries out basic cellular processes, particularly those related [...]

From “China Moving Up in Nano World” in Smalltimes: “New findings from Lux Research Inc. say that trends in Chinese nanotech research have set the world’s largest nation on a course to challenge dominant nanotech players like the U.S., Japan, and Germany. “The company says that China’s nanotech efforts would have broad-reaching implications for issues [...]

From the Sept/Oct issue of Nanotechnology Law & Business (subscription required), a piece titled “Top Ten Nanotechnology Companies Likely To Go Public.” In alphabetical order: Carbon Nanotechnologies, Insert Therapeutics, Konarka, Molecular Imprints, Nanodynamics, Nanofilm, Nanosys, Nano-Tex, Nantero, and Zyvex. Excerpt: “Zyvex unabashedly claims that it is ‘the most publicized nanotechnology business in the world.’ Founded [...]

From Lawrence Gasman over at NanoMarkets, a thought piece on nanotech intellectual property. An excerpt: “Contrary to the beliefs of many, the pure IP model may ultimately prove hard to defend in the nanotechnology business. Nanotechnology provides a very wide range of materials and manufacturing platforms. This in turn, suggests that performance goals for nanoproducts [...]

For those interested in the longer-term applications of advanced nanotech to medicine — Over at Nanotech.biz, Sander Olson interviews (part 1 and part 2) Robert Freitas, prolific author of Nanomedicine and many other works on related topics: “…I immediately realized that medicine would be the single most important application area of this new technology.  In [...]

Wired News surveys current work on nanotech for cancer treatment: “It’s a space-opera scene we know by heart: The hero’s tiny craft faces off against the vast enemy ship. Now scale down the set a billion times or so, and replace Luke Skywalker’s X-wing and the Death Star with a clump of drug-bearing molecules and [...]

The California NanoSystems Institute, in collaboration with the Professional Artists Lab, is co-sponsoring a contest for scripts involving science and technology themes, with a prize of $10,000. Deadline is December 15, 2005. What’s the catch, you ask? There are two: (1) no screenplays; it must be a stage play script. More challenging is (2), with [...]

UPDATE: Welcome Instapundit readers! Glenn is on our board. Sign up at upper right to get ongoing nano news from us. Keeping scrolling below to see much liveblogging from the nano conference last week.—Christine We at Foresight are often get inquiries from those who wish to invest in nanotechnology stocks and want advice. Unfortunately, we [...]