There’s still time to get your nominations in for this year’s top nanotechnology researcher, student researcher, and communicator or publication: The Productive Nanosystems conference will detail the pathways leading to the ultimate in manufacturing, and the Feynman Prizes recognize this year’s most impressive achievements toward that goal,” said Dr. Pearl Chin, President of Foresight Nanotech [...]

Foresight advisor John Gilmore brings our attention to the use of nanotechnology to inject a nanoscale cargo directly into a human cell. Lynn Harris writes in Science@Berkeley about work by Alex Zettl and team: The prick of a flu shot may momentarily sting, but the penetration of the needle does no lasting harm to the [...]

At one of the Accelerating Change conferences I saw Prof. Beth Noveck introduce for the first time her ideas on improving patents via peer review. Now, the nanotechnology field will be envious to hear that another field has been chosen to carry out the first pilot project — software, as reported in IEEE Spectrum: The [...]

Marvin Hofberg of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine sends info on nanotechnology for medicine and longevity: Among the scientific and medical phenomena unveiled at the Eighth Congress that are projected to revolutionize the delivery of healthcare and, as a result, improve the quality and extend the quantity of the human lifespan: • Nanobots, fleets [...]

The current issue of Nanotechnology Law and Business (Vol. 4, Issue 2) includes a surprising article called “Nanoassemblers: A Likely Threat?” by Martin Moskovits, a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Dean of the Division of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara. I saw this just as I was heading [...]

Today’s San Jose Mercury News — the newspaper of Silicon Valley — features a guest editorial by Wirt Cook, IBM vice president and senior state executive, on the proposed Patent Reform Act, titled “Patent Reform Act best way to protect, foster innovation”: Berman’s bill will enable private-citizen-experts to help patent examiners research the novelty of [...]

Just received from Steffen Foss Hansen is a paper by his colleague Evan Michelson at the Wilson Center on the tough issue of “Nanotechnology Policy: An Analysis of Transnational Governance Issues Facing the United States and China.” An excerpt: Due to the rapid pace of R&D, discoveries in nanotechnology could come in great, discontinuous leaps [...]

The nanotechnology project over at The Wilson Center sent Steffen Foss Hansen, a PhD candidate visiting from his university in Denmark, here to Foresight to interview me for a policy project they are doing on nanotech regulation. Normally these kinds of things don’t seem very useful, but I have to make an exception for this [...]

iTWire reports that a recent test by NASA of a nanotech-based sensor has succeeded: “The nanosensor worked successfully in space,” said principal investigator Jing Li, a scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center. “We demonstrated that nanosensors can survive in space conditions and the extreme vibrations and gravity change that occur during launch,” she said. The [...]

Those of us who spend our days looking at innovation would do well to look at the other side now and then. The New Yorker gives us a chance with a book review by Steven Shapin of the book “The Shock of the Old: Technology and Global History Since 1900” (Oxford) by David Edgerton. He [...]

Nanotech Briefs has announced its Nano 50 award winners for 2007, in the categories of Innovators, Products, and Technologies. (Full disclosure: I was a judge again this year.) Great to see Zyvex on the list. Don’t see your favorites? Maybe they weren’t nominated. Don’t let that happen for the Foresight Institute Feynman Prizes; nominate your [...]

Foresight will be issuing our own release, but our partner SME got theirs out first, so here it is. Please make your nominations by June 30. It’s easy, and it’s okay to nominate your own research. Feynman Prizes in Nanotechnology Nominations due June 30 Top Nanotech Researchers to be Honored at Productive Nanosystems Conference DEARBORN, [...]

Here at Foresight we expect great self-repair abilities from advanced nanotechnology, but even today some simple forms of nanoscale self-repair are on the way. Nanowerk reports: The aerospace and automotive industries are frontrunners in researching and employing nanotechnology. Visions of “nano in cars” range from contributions towards CO2-free engines, safe driving, reduced noise, self-healing bodies [...]

Nanowerk brings to our attention some confusion on an IEEE blog: Somewhere along the line, the advocates for molecular nanotechnology (MNT) seem to have lost interest in actually seeing molecular manufacturing come to pass if it meant that the concepts of the mechanically engineered approach (Dry) are abandoned in favor of a biologically engineered method [...]

Some sunscreens contain simple nanomaterials: nanoparticles of zinc oxide or titanium dioxide. Sunscreens have had these for decades, but the particles used to be bigger, which is why lifeguards at the beach used to have white noses. Now the particles are smaller, so the sunscreens are transparent. Applying the “nanotechnology” label to these products is [...]

After a lengthy search, Foresight Nanotech Institute is very pleased to announce our new President, Dr. Pearl Chin. You can see her bio and photo on our website. Welcome to the team, Pearl! —Christine Nanotechnology Think Tank Appoints Dr. Pearl Chin President Foresight Nanotech Institute to further research, policy Palo Alto, Calif. June 8, 2007 [...]

In the Edigest email from Nanotechnology.com, we found the interview below with a young researcher whose work has been mentioned here before. Normally we don’t reprint items in their entirety, but I could not find this on the Nanotechnology.com website, or elsewhere on the web, so here it is. Its appearance in the Edigest was [...]

Forbes.com’s Josh Wolfe interviews Andre Geim, a prominent graphene researcher, about the latest nanotechnology buzzword and buzzmaterial — a free-standing, two-dimensional crystal of carbon in a hexagonal lattice. Of course, it’s not truly two-dimensional — it’s one atom thick, not zero atoms thick — but close enough: In the scientific community, the area of graphene [...]

The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 in the U.S. gives patent rights for federally-funded research done in universities to the universities themselves, in effect. Many people regard this strategy as a succcess, and many countries around the world are copying it. But is this the best way to handle this publicly-funded intellectual property? After over 25 [...]

Nanowerk brings to our attention a resolution on nanotechnology by a labor group for food and agricultural workers claiming to represent 12 million people. It has a number of sections, but here’s an example: To demand that national and international patent offices, like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), decline to register all patent applications [...]