Nanotechnology has produced no shortage of wonder materials, Buckyballs anyone? Trimetaspheres? Or even carbon nanotubes where producing them at anywhere near the cost that anyone would be willing to pay for them has been a struggle. The main problem with many nanomaterials is that while they may have wondrous properties, conductivity, tensile strength, the ability to cure cancer or …
Car Care Goes Extreme Nano
While we were looking at the performance enhancing effects of nanotechnology over at our motor sport site, it’s worth a quick look at whats happing in the world of car care. A trip down to your local car accessories store will reveal the greatest concentration of nanotech products, or at least things with ‘Nanotech’ emblazoned on them, anywhere. Turtlewax for …
Taiwan Nano 2011
Some pictures from Taiwan Nano 2011 – including the now inevitable nanotech toilet!
New EU Funded Project Stimulates Nanotech Debate By Paying For Articles In Newspapers
My delight at seeing a sensible piece about “nanotechnology in everyday life” by Colin Stuart (@skyponderer) published in the Guardian Newspaper turned to puzzlement when I noticed that the article was “Paid for by NanoChannels.” As the unfortunately named Nanochannels is a project funded by the European Union (i.e. taxpayers), albeit run from Israel, it seems a bit odd that the only …
And More New Year Cheer For Nanosight
The New Year begins with some good news, that Nanosight has sold its 250th instrument and become profitable, which also illustrates how hard it is to get a company profitable outside the small world of social networking. Getting the Nanosight instrument to market required balancing the competing interests of the scientists, the engineers and the management, which is not always …
Variety’s the very spice of life, That gives it all its flavour
I always count myself lucky that I have never had a standard job. From my first job with VG Ionex testing and tweaking a wide variety of ion guns (but try getting one through an airport without saying ‘gun!’) to my current bipolar technology/fashion enterprises I’ve rarely done the same thing two days in a row. So far this week …
Predicting The Future And Keeping It Bright
I spent some time in the ever fascinating city of Geneva this week for some meetings with the World Economic Forum where, as always, we are trying to figure out what to do about the world right now while trying to understand how the future will look – hopefully better than the present is the short answer! One of the …
Stop Dithering Over Nanotech Regulation
Reading reports of government plans for the regulation of nanotechnology sometimes feels like being on death row. The outcome is inevitable, and all you can do is hope that it will be short and painless. The European Commission has been debating regulations for the best part of a decade,and now apparently has been given a deadline of 2011 by the …
Stimulating Nanotech Innovation
One of the biggest problems facing nanoscience is moving from pottering around in a lab doing something fascinating to translational research, i.e. taking that process or material and moving it in the direction of something that may be of use to someone for reasons other than writing publications. In the early days of nanotech, with investors fired up be the …
Stain Resistant Pants Are So 2002, Here Come The Nanotech Underpants
I bet you were expecting these to be stain resistant too, but the key application of nanotech underwear is medical sensing according to Business Week. The tight elastic waistband of underwear “has tight contact and direct exposure with the skin and it allows for direct sweat monitoring via the chemical-sensing electrodes. And it seems elastic is a hardy textile. Engineers at …