Playing with the new stats site from the Iranian Nanotech Initiative I couldn’t resist a few comparisons. Here’s a comparison between the UK and Iran of articles published on nanotechnology – the site explains the methodology in terms of keywords and of course these comparisons are never perfect. While Iran seems to be closing the gap this is based on numbers …
What Is Technology For?
(Foreword to Using Emerging Technologies to Address Global Risks , October 2011) This is a question that often comes up in our dealings with global policy makers who spend huge sums on scientific research while simultaneously being fearful of its consequences. Many believe that it is somehow important for the economy in an undefined and non-quantifiable manner, or that it is some …
The 2011 Report on Global Nanotechnology Funding and Impact
In the last 11 years, governments around the world have invested more than US$67.5 billion in nanotechnology funding. When corporate research and various other forms of private funding are taken into account, nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars will have been invested in nanotechnology by 2015.
Nanotech Regulation – Fostering Innovation While Protecting Public Health
The White House Emerging Technologies Interagency Policy Coordination Committee (ETIPC) has developed a set of principles (pdf) specific to the regulation and oversight of applications of nanotechnology, to guide the development and implementation of policies at the agency level. I’m glad to see that it addresses those two old bugbears, the confusion between risk and hazard and the prejudging of issues …
Nanotech Isn’t Green Enough – But Compared to What?
I’ll leave the professional report readers such as 2020Science to wade through the Friends of the Earth’s latest broadside against nanotechnology which claims that it “isn’t green enough.” This brief report in “The Australian” neatly sums up the argument, which is that although nanotechnology has been spoken of as a solution to some aspects of climate change, it is is …
Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions shock!!
Ever since someone choked a mouse with carbon nanotubes in an attempt to prove their toxicity, people have been running round giving huge doses of nanomaterials to everything from bacteria to fish. Of course the huge doses involved, far in excess of anything that would be encountered in the real world, could be equally well used to prove that bananas …
A Cunning Plan To Avoid Nanotech Risks?
Michael Berger at Nanowerk has a look at the the new EU Communication Roadmap and wonders what is is for. I had a similar issue when we were involved with the Nanoforum project years ago, and pulled out when No one involved in it could explain why they were doing it or explain why the EU taxpayers were being billed …
Another Boring Pointless Nanotech Spat Or Does It Tell Us Something?
The ongoing spat between a journalist determined to prove nanotech is dangerous and the Nation Nanotechnology Coodination Office tells us a lot about how science is perceived, and about ourselves. The problem is that, as a journalist, you are far more likely to get a story published which alerts people to some kind of hidden danger, preferably as a result …
Nailing The Innovation Myths
Good to see a new report from the Judge Business School in Cambridge highlighting some of the myths about how high tech firms are created. Much of Europe tends to focus on large multi partner research schemes such as Framework 7 whereas much of business wold prefer something like the SBIR and DARPA contracts common in the US. The report …
“Something Should Be Done” – Nanotechnology: a UK Industry View
The new report “Nanotechnology: a UK Industry View” finally surfaced, and its recommendations are to spend more money, develop more skills, have more dialogue and..sorry, I must have nodded off, but it’s pretty standard stuff, and the recommendations are exactly the same as every other nanotech report produced over the past ten years. I have to question why we go …