Since it was the potential environmental benefits of nanotechnology that first drew me (and many others) to an interest in the field, it’s good to see some official notice of that aspect. From Cordis via Nanowerk News: Much has been said about the potential of nanotechnologies to revolutionise the way we live, with the biggest [...]

A while back I offered to write more about Health and Nanotechnology: Economic, Societal, and Institutional Impact, a report from a conference convened with the cooperation of the U.S. Dept. of State and the European Commission, part of a series called Perspectives on the Future of Science and Technology, which has a ten-year time horizon. [...]

On the plane back from last week’s U.S. National Nanotechnology Coordinating Office-sponsored workshop on ethics and nanotechnology, I dug into the report “Health and Nanotechnology: Economic, Societal, and Institutional Impact” (not on web, as far as I can tell). This was the result of a meeting sponsored by the U.S. ...

The U.S. National Academy of Engineering is requesting your input on Grand Challenges for Engineering over the next 100 years. This being Nanodot, we hope you’ll nominate nanotechnology. It’s a serious effort funded by $500,000 from NSF. From the MSNBC coverage: The comments will be winnowed down, then reviewed by an 18-member ...

Switzerland’s Centre for Technology Assessment has issued its report Public Reactions to Nanotechnology in Switzerland (428 KB pdf), and — not surprisingly — it’s relatively balanced. From page 33 (page 35 of pdf file): “There’s a good and a bad side to everything” — This saying sums up quite well the way that the ...

Funded by the European Commission, the Nanologue project has released its report titled The future of nanotechnology: We need to talk. It presents three scenarios: Scenario 1: Disaster recovery A lack of regulation resulted in a major accident. Public concern about nanotechnology is high and technology development is slow and ...

In the U.S., psychoanalysis has fallen a bit out of fashion. But in Italy, a psychonanalyst heads up their bioethics organization, Centre for Science, Society and Citizenship. A year ago, Professor Emilio Mordini presented on “Dreams, Hopes and Uncertainties in the Nano Revolution” at EuroNanoForum 2005: Nanotechnology and the ...

Lots of people say that nanotech R&D should include international collaborations, but these are not always easy to set up, especially the money part. To the rescue is Nanoforum, a “European Nanotechnology Gateway” funded by the EU, which has published a report (free reg. req’d) listing such opportunities: Countries for ...

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 ...

Of course most Nanodot readers will want to study this 76-page report (PDF) in great detail, but for the few who don’t quite get around to this task, here are some of the more ambitious parts: In the section on 2006 and 2007 Activities by Agency, NIST says they will continue to “devise ways to build [...]