Philanthropist Fred Kavli has extended his nanotech research giving to found the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology at Harvard. From the Harvard press release: The Kavli Foundation and Harvard University have agreed to establish the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science and Technology (KIBST). The endowment from the Kavli Foundation will help to boost [...]

John Faith and Billy Harvey bring our attention to progress in Dip Pen Lithography nanotech reported at Phys.org.com: Ever since the invention of the first scanning probe microscope in 1981, researchers have believed the powerful tool would someday be used for the nanofabrication and nanopatterning of surfaces in a molecule-by-molecule, bottom-up fashion. Despite 25 years [...]

Regular Nanodot readers will not be surprised to read this short item at Forbes.com by Andrew Pasek of AFX News, apparently reporting on an article in the China edition of the Wall Street Journal: BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) – China is making rapid advances in the field of nanotechnology and the US should monitor China’s progress in [...]

Patrick Lin over at the Nanoethics Group let us know that the principals of that group have received a US$250,000 grant from the NSF to study the ethics of using nanotechnology to do human enhancement, through their academic affiliations at Dartmouth and Western Michigan U. The questions to be investigated by the nanoethics research team [...]

The long-awaited report on the U.S. NNI from the National Academies’ National Research Council has just been issued. For Foresight, the most important part is the review of molecular self-assembly and molecular manufacturing. Here’s the short form: Molecular Assembly: Self-assembly for the manufacturing of simple devices and materials is feasible, but because the probability of [...]

I remember when the most popular timing estimate for molecular manufacturing was “huh?” Next it was “never”. Then “centuries”. Here’s where we are today, as reported by the Australian Broadcasting Corp.: Dr Peter Binks of Nanotechnology Victoria, a sponsor for Treder’s tour, says his organisation does not “yet buy into the idea” of the desktop [...]

I just received two copies of a beautiful brochure from the California NanoSystems Institute describing the new nanotechnology facility they’re building at UCLA, opening informally this fall and formally on September 7-9, 2007 (there will also be one at UCSB). They’re looking for sponsorship. My first thought was, boy do they have the wrong list, [...]

The Society of Manufacturing Engineers, who’ve done two conferences focusing in part on molecular nanotech, now have a video on nanomanufacturing. The script is free, and so is a video clip with some images, so if the cost is an issue for you ($99 SME members/$280 nonmembers), you can get quite a bit just from [...]

From Webwire, news of an increased commitment by Israel to keep pace in nanotech: The Israeli government will increase funding for Israeli universities over the next 5 years to $82 million in order to strengthen their advanced research centers in nanoscience and nanotechnology, it was announced today… “We found that multiple donation matching can work [...]

Tune in to the live webcast from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies at Woodrow Wilson Center on Sept. 19, 2006 — either TODAY or TOMORROW for most readers — at 12:30 PM Eastern time (9:30 AM Pacific): “Public Awareness of Nanotechnology: What do Americans know? Who do they trust? Major Poll Findings to be Released“. [...]

To close out our nanotechnology week on a lighter note: David Berube brings to our attention an irreverent video excerpt — The Daily Show: Future Shock – Robots! — in which Ray Kurzweil is interviewed on the topic of nanobots (nanotech-based robots). Also included is a profile of Mikey Sklar who has injected an RFID [...]

We at Foresight see a lot of nanotech websites and books of limited usefulness, to put it nicely. For quite a while I’ve been getting ads for an online multimedia library on nanotechnology from Nanopolis, and ignoring them. Now for the first I dug around in their website a bit and am pleased to be [...]

The Woodrow Wilson Center Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has a cute short (8:25) movie posted in which Bethany Maynard interviews her dad Dr. Andrew Maynard and Dr. Barbara Karn on nanotech. Worth showing to kids, and even adults may enjoy it. The best part is when Bethany and her brother Alex apply mustard to her [...]

The Australian site InfoLink brings word of a new nanotech product from Australia-based company Nanovations: a silver nanoparticle-based paint which will kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The product is meant for hospitals and other facilities that have serious problems with infections caused by such bacteria. (Credit: Meridian) One problem not mentioned in the story is disposal and [...]

The Korea Herald carries a story on a forum in Korea on “Revolutionary Advanced Technology and Future Urbanism”. Researcher Eric Drexler explained the goals of nanotech software firm Nanorex and his views of US/Asia competition in productive nanosystems: Nanorex is still developing products that are expected to be available later this year…The idea is to [...]

The U.S. Navy’s Thomas Vandermolen looks at defense aspects of advanced nanotech in a footnoted paper over at Nanotechnology Now. He argues against a do-nothing strategy: Given MNT’s tremendous potential for both peaceful and violent applications, controlling it with a “do nothing” strategy is analogous to providing nuclear reactors to every country under the assumption [...]

Probably because I’m an IEEE member — see their Nanotechnology Council and journal — I’ve just received the nanotechnology book catalog from Wiley. This 16-page catalog shows that Wiley, long a leader in high-quality technical publishing, is probably the dominant force in nanotech books today. To save 20% on orders through October 31, 2006, use [...]

The popular NSF-funded Earth & Sky radio series — “illuminating pathways to a vibrant and sustainable future for over six million people daily” — has been focusing on nanotech for quite a while now (see list). Most recently is an interview (description and download) looking at the question of nanotechnology-based sensors and privacy: As technology [...]

News from Howard Lovy, now working with Nanorex: I wanted to make sure you saw this news item about molecular simulation software maker Nanorex acquiring Nano-Hive, developer of a powerful open source tool that speeds up nanoscale simulation through distributed computing. Together, Nanorex’s NanoEngineer-1 and the renamed NanoHive-1 are going to produce faster, better-quality animations. [...]

Phil McCallister warns over at SeekingAlpha that some investors fall for nanotech hype: owever, investors have been burned (charred to a crisp actually) by the big Nanotech hype back in January of 2004. Remember that? George W. Bush signed the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act in 2003, and continued mentioning nanotech throughout the [...]