Technology Push and Rebranding Nanotech

While carbon nanotubes seem to have found a few niches, a salutary lesson about the dangers of starting with the technology rather than a market is given in the Boston Business Journal’s recent article on Nano-C, reporting on a year that included a CEO search, the layoff of half its staff and a shift in strategy. Meanwhile Bayer give a …

Too Little, Too Late?

The University of Tokyo has announced the setting up of a new Center for NanoBio Integration (although grumbling a little at the five year funding plan). It’s nice idea, and puts Tokyo some three years behind Singapore’s Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology which opened in March 2003. We’ll be back in Singapore this October for the third World Nano Economic …

India’s Nanotech Boom

Indian interest in all things nano continues to accelerate, the latest evangelist being one of India’s leading scientits C.N.R. Rao claiming that India cannot afford to miss the revolution in nanotechnology. The conditions look ripe for some good technology activity. 2005 was an outstanding year for India’s financial markets with the benchmark Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) Sensex up 42% to …

The World Nano-Economic Congress Comes to India

According to a report in Small Times, India is now in “mission mode” to develop nanotechnology, and earlier in the month, on the 7th November, India’s President APJ Abul Kalam told a high level technology meeting in Delhi that “The nano science technology revolution …is just round the corner.” The reasons for the World Nano-Economic Congress coming to India are …

Bedtime Reading

If you fancy getting up to speed with heath and environmental risks of nanotechnologies, or more specifically nanoparticles, then you can take your pick from a veritable onslaught of information this week. DEFRA (The Department For Environment, Food And Rural Affairs) weighs in with “Characterising The Potential Risks Posed By Engineered Nanoparticles”, the Royal Society has a report on a …

UK Employment in Nanotechnologies

In an article about the BSI standards conference we noticed an intriguing factoid. “Speaking at the event, science and innovation minister Lord Sainsbury said that the UK’s current annual turnover for all micro and nanotechnologies is £11bn, and that it supports some 20,000 jobs.” It makes us wonder what the turnover for UK nanotechnologies alone is, and whether the government …

Frankfurter Nano

I spent an interesting day at the second Hessen Nanoforum in Hanau, Germany (just outside Frankfurt if you are not familiar) followed by a rather less interesting day at Frankfurt airport due to fog and wind in Madrid causing an eight hour delay to my Iberia flight. All of the participants except two were from Germany, so I had to …

Of Mice and Men

It is rare pleasure to see a balanced headline involving such emotive subjects as nanotech and cancer, but recent headlines from the European Cancer Conference in Paris have contended themselves with “Nanotechnology May Help Treat Cancer” rather than the usual hyperbolic “will cure cancer.” The idea is that “the cancer can be vaccinated against itself (using nanoparticles as ‘intelligent’ carriers), …