While Iran continues to attract international attention for the wrong reasons, spare a thought for the Iranian science community who are battling with embargoes meaning that they can’t even buy basic equipment, but are still managing to develop a nanotech research community. If you are curious you can download their latest quarterly bulletin here, or visit the web page of …
Long Term Prosperity is an an Ozymandian Dream Without Technology
The recent news about the debt problems in Dubai contrast with the glitzy no expense spared hotels and conference centres where I spent last weekend with the World Economic Forum, but probably do more to highlight the importance of a diverse technology enabled economy than any amount of lobbying we could do. While Dubai has led the way for the …
Anti-Science and Politics
I’ve mentioned the negative views of science expressed by the ‘green’ movement, but according to the Guardian most politicians feel the same, with hardly any thought given to science other than the usual lip service of creating dynamic knowledge based economies, although unfortunately the result we ended up with was less like the Google campus and more like this: I suppose it says a lot about the …
China & US Neck & Neck For Third Place In Global Nanotech Funding
A few years ago I spent a long time explaining to journalists that it didn’t actually matter whether Europe, the US or Japan was spending the most on nanotechnology R&D, it was how they spent it that mattered. But of course numbers and league tables make good copy. Looking at the 2009 numbers, which you can see on the left …
The Least Informative Information Of The Year?
Some bizarre statistics about nanotechnology market growth are being bandied around followimg the “Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) along with Department of Science & Technology, (DST), Government of India, Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology (GIST) and Tamil Nadu Technology Development Promotion Council” fourth Nanotechnology Conclave 2009. This looks like a perfect storm of the longest and most complex conference …
The Chinese are Coming! Oops, They Are Already Here!
The chart below shows nanotechnology R&D spending in the US and China corrected for purchasing power parity – i.e things are cheaper in China so $1 gets you more minutes of a researcher or a bigger bowl of noodles in Wuhan than in San Francisco (and parking is probably cheaper too).
A Rational Debate on Australian Nanotech? – No Chance, Mate!
The Australian branch of Friends of the Earth, who really really hate nanotechnology, yes really, and will do anything they can to stop it (despite not being quite sure what it is) are threatening apoplexy, tantrums and running naked through the streets of Canberra painted blue as a result of the Australian Governments decision to have a “Nanodialogue on Nanotechnology …
Russians To Stamp Out Nanothieves
One of the banes of nanotechnology has been the number of companies claiming that things are nano when they are clearly not, for instance the infamous sickness inducing Magic Nano from early last year. Help is at hand from the Rusian Nanotechnology Corporation who have pledged to “implement a system of standards to weed out swindlers who use the term …
Drexlerians and Saudi Arabia’s Nanotech
One of the presumed characteristics of those who are adherents to molecular nanotechnology (MNT) as proposed by Eric Drexler is their ability to keep an open mind, while simultaneously pointing out that the rest of us are “too conservative” or “close-minded,” but their open-minded qualities seem to run aground when faced with the prospect of a Saudi Arabian nanotechnology initiative. …
Russia Takes a Bite from the Trillion Dollar Market
…with 2008 sales of $700Bn according to the Deputy Prime Minister. It strikes us as a bit on the over optimistic side, and brings back memories of Soviet era Radio Moscow broadcasting long lists of the number of pairs of boots produced by various factories in Tomsk, Omsk and Irkutsk