It had to happen: a book in which German philosophers direct their attention to nanotech. (Ethicists and social scientists too.) Excerpts from the English abstracts (pdf), with my commentary inserted: An account is provided of how the purpose of gaining knowledge is reoriented towards purposes of application. This helps clear up the relation of discovery [...]

Cees Dekker’s team at the Kavli Institute of NanoScience at Delft University of Technology have produced some intriguing work published in Science (400 KB pdf): Integration of biomolecular motors in nanoengineered structures raises the intriguing possibility of manipulating materials on nanometer scales. We have managed to integrate kinesin motor proteins in closed submicron channels and [...]

It’s hard for small investors to participate in nanotechnology. Harris & Harris has been one of the few options available. Now there’s another: Nanoventure N.V. ( machine translation of home page) has made an initial public offering on the Frankfurt exchange: Eindhoven, June 13, 2006 – Nanoventure N.V. was successfully listed on the Open Market [...]

Purdue University is extremely serious about being a leader in nanotech and they are putting serious money into that goal. They’ve just opened a new nanofabrication cleanroom that sounds unique: combining the usual semiconductor capabilities with nanobio work, in cleanrooms that connect to each other. This sounds very handy for cool cross-disciplinary R&D. From the [...]

Accelrys is having a July 13 webinar, which I assume is free, on how to use their software for nanobio purposes. They say it enables “multiscale modeling that enables seamless design from the molecular level through full device”, which is pretty impressive. UPDATE: Yes, it’s free. —Christine Read more for the full press release

The Innovation Society in Switzerland has a new report: Nano-Food Science-Fiction or Business Opportunity? Kellog’s decision to replace advertising, puzzles and product information on the back side of the cereal box with information on Nanotechnology demonstrates their desire to familiarize their customers with nano products. Perhaps in the future, customers will ask for healthy Nano [...]

I’m blogging from Moscow, but the news this week is back in the States. We at Foresight like to make win-win connections between worthy projects, and here’s an example: Nanorex Inc., the world’s first developer of tools for the design, simulation and analysis of atomically precise molecular machine systems, will launch its educational outreach program [...]

Kevin Bullis writes in Technology Review about a nanotech-based medical tool that looks very promising. The most deadly disease in the U.S. isn’t cancer or AIDS, it’s heart disease: Each year 100,000 patients complaining of heart attack-like symptoms are sent home without treatment because current methods cannot diagnose some heart attacks, Moffitt says. Of these [...]

The question of how to power devices at the nanoscale is getting increasing attention. Georgia Tech’s Z.L. Wang has one answer: Researchers have developed a new technique for powering nanometer-scale devices without the need for bulky energy sources such as batteries. By converting mechanical energy from body movement, muscle stretching or water flow into electricity, [...]

Alan B. Shalleck of NanoClarity LLC writes of the potential of nanotechnology to address energy issues, Foresight Nanotech Challenge #1: Nanotechnology is fundamental over the next 50 years to providing sufficient energy for a growing world and to protecting the environment in which we live. There is an energy/environmental storm gathering and we must pay [...]

As you read this, I should be arriving in Moscow (badly jetlagged) to keynote Interop Moscow. But I will also try to find the brand new Center for Nanotechnology Excellence here, which a June 11 story reports “officially opened last weekend.” As I write this, the only web coverage of the Center is in form [...]

Frequent reader Jonas Ørbæk Hansen brings to our attention an archived webcast of the June 1 nanotechnology conference Smallscapes sponsored by Denmark’s Innovation Lab and iNANO and held in English. Includes speakers from Denmark, US, and UK. Watch it soon, as the archived webcasts of the talks will only be available for one month, and [...]

Back when Foresight was started in 1986, nanoscale simulations were regarded as quite radical. They were still regarded as pretty radical when we set up the Foresight Institute Feynman Prize and included Theory — often, simulation – as one of two categories along with Experiment. Those days are long gone. Science Daily reviews the critical [...]

The Foresight/Battelle-sponsored International Technology Roadmap for Productive Nanosystems working group will be meeting next week at Brookhaven National Lab in the U.S. The team is having good success so far, and new corporate or governmental sponsors can still join and participate. A conference is being planned for Spring 2007 to present the Executive Summary and [...]

Howard Miller brings our attention to a big section on nanotech at National Geographic this month (June 2006 issue). You can get a taste of it on their website, but for the main article, it looks as though you’ll need to get ahold of the dead-tree version. An excerpt from the description: A tsunami is [...]

It’s hard for anyone to learn the basics and then keep up with the technical side of nanotech. To the ressue: the National Center for Learning and Teaching in Nanoscale Science and Engineering: NCLT is the first national center for learning and teaching of nanoscale science and engineering education in the US. Its vision is [...]

I had heard rumors and today at a meeting at the British Consulate here in SF I heard again that there was a big protest in Grenoble in connection with the opening of their new nanotech center Minatec, which appears to have been delayed to the next day due to the protest. There’s very little [...]

Judy Conner here at Foresight brings our attention to a new 55-page report from International Risk Governance Council, based in Switzerland, titled Survey on Nanotechnology Governance: Volume D. The Role of NGOs (400K pdf). Nine organizations are featured: five from the U.S. (CRN, Environmental Defense, Foresight, NRDC, and one I had not previously heard about, [...]

Longtime Foresight participating member Richard Smith brings our attention to a piece at Technology Review by Kevin Bullis, the second page of which I was unable to access online (could only get a BMW ad instead), so the last paragraph below is taken from a paper printout (Update: second page is working now): One of [...]

From a piece in Red Herring: “Mark Mansour, an attorney for Foley & Lardner, issued the warning during a talk at the NanoBusiness 2006 conference in New York City. He said nanotech businesses need to step up their efforts to explain the complex technology to the public—before their foes do… ” ‘Friends of the Earth [...]