Public talk on how videogames affect social perceptions of nanotechnologies

Center for Nanotechnology in SocietyUniversity of California, Santa Barbara www.cns.ucsb.edu W EEKLY C LIPS October 15 - 22, 2007 Weekly Clips from CNS-UCSB are now available online: htt

Center for Nanotechnology in Society

University of California, Santa

Barbara www.cns.ucsb.edu

W EEKLY C LIPS

October 15 - 22, 2007

Weekly Clips from CNS-UCSB are now available online:

http://www.cns.ucsb.edu/clips/

October 16, 2007

Public talk on how videogames affect

social perceptions of nanotechnologies

The National Science Foundation’s Center for Nanotechnology in

Society (CNS), housed at UC Santa Barbara, will host a public talk by Colin Milburn, Assistant Professor of English and Science & Technology

at UC Davis, on Monday, November 5, from 4:00 – 5:30 p.m

This talk, “Digital Matters: Video Games and the Cultural Transcoding of Nanotechnology,” will explore the cross-traffic between

nanotechnologies and video games and how gamers’ perceptions and knowledge of nanotechnologies may be influenced by the games’ narratives and images

http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=2962.php

October 17, 2007

MichBio Expo: Nanotechnology will be

‘third industrial revolution’

Lansing — “Stem cells and cell therapy are not a matter of ‘if’ but are a matter of ‘when,’ ” George Dunbar, president and CEO of Ann Arbor-based Aastrom Biosciences, told the closing session of the third annual MichBio Expo Wednesday afternoon

…Proof than nanotechnology finally has been accepted as a real

scientific thrust and is no longer seen as a fad, he said, was the recent award of the Nobel Prize in science to two nanotechnologists,

Frenchman Albert Fert and German Peter Grunberg, whose work

involved the flow of electric current through very thin layers of metal

http://crainsdetroit.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?

AID=/20071017/REG/71017012/1009/breaking/-/-/michbio-expo-nanotechnology-will-be-third-industrial-revolution

October 22, 2007

Nanotech: The Next Big Thing is Right

Now

Going somewhere?

You pull on your wrinkle-free nano pants, your no-smell nano socks and your anti-static nano fleece jacket, all purchased from popular retailers You toss your brand-name, stain-resistant nano luggage into the cargo bed of your new SUV with the beautiful and resilient glossy nano finish Staying home?

You have a beer; it’s fresh The plastic bottle contains a nano-clay particle said to keep the oxygen out and the carbon dioxide in

Bedsheets, a hard baby rattle and a soft teddy bear, food storage containers — in fact, the whole refrigerator — all treated with nano-silver to kill microbes Dietary supplements, toothpaste, baby cups, cosmetics, condoms, soap, cleaning sprays, hair dryers, cell phone casings, golf clubs, tennis rackets Nanotechnology is not the next big thing in consumer products It’s the right-now big thing

http://public.cq.com/docs/gs/greensheets110-000002609879.html

October 15, 2007

Setting Priorities For Nanotech

With more nanotechnology-containing products hitting the market, the need for research on the environmental, health, and safety (EHS)

impacts of these engineered nanomaterials is vital And while more federal dollars are going into such research, experts agree that the lack

of a common list of priorities is hampering assessments on the risk of this technology to the public and the environment

Now, both government and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) are taking on this challenge by identifying nanotech EHS research priorities and developing strategies to get answers about relative risks and

benefits of various nanotechnologies But time is of the essence, and

as the federal government plods toward a strategic plan, several NGOs have already released or are about to release strategic plans of their

own, leaving some observers to question just how useful the federal strategy will end up being

http://pubs.acs.org/cen/government/85/8542gov1.html

October 17, 2007

Who Put the Nano in My Teddy Bear?

When we recently updated our inventory of manufacturer-identified, nanotech-enabled consumer products, there were a few surprises: the product landscape was now dotted with some new entries targeted clearly at children (and, by default, their parents) It is probably worth asking some questions about their safety or asking, more broadly,

"Who is in charge of testing these products and making sure that they

do not present risks to children, especially products that go directly into the mouth?"

…If our oversight system cannot keep these run-of-the-mill products containing toxins off the shelves and out of the mouths of various family members, how are they going to deal with nanotechnologies or any other emerging technologies with potentially novel properties and yet-to-be-determined risks?

http://www.nanotech-now.com/columns/?article=121

October 21, 2007

Tackling global poverty

From the provision of clean drinking water to the early detection of disease, nanotechnology has the potential to make a real impact in the fight against global poverty

It is easy to see nanotechnology as something that is being funded exclusively for the benefit of the developed world The most widely publicized applications — be they serious, like next-generation

electronic devices and targeted drug delivery, or frivolous, like stain-resistant trousers — will have little impact on the majority of the

people in the world However, if you look beneath the surface, there is enormous scope for nanotechnology to reduce poverty and improve

living standards around the world Nature Nanotechnology is publishing

two articles on this topic as part of a global effort by more than 200 journals to raise awareness and stimulate research into poverty and human development

http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nnano.2007.34 9.html

October 22, 2007

Thinking tiny: computers that fit in a

palm

Tiny wires 1000 times thinner than a human hair could now deliver supercomputers that fit in the palm of the hand

The latest breakthrough in nanotechnology, the science of seriously small things, is helping scientists predict the behaviour of wiring on this scale under stress

Engineers at Edinburgh University have devised a tool to help combat problems which can arise from wiring microchips much smaller than the ones we are used to

…However it may create more nightmares for the Prince of Wales, who expressed fears about the march of nanotechnology four years ago, anxious that self-replicating nanorobots - atoms rearranged to create tiny machines - could annihilate life on earth in less than two days

http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1775783.0.0.php

October 22, 2007

Cientifica: Nanodelivery can bring

new life to pharma IP

Cientifica, a London-based nanotech research firm, says nanotech-enabled improvements to existing pharmaceuticals have created a

"new value paradigm" in the drug delivery market

In a white paper, "The Nanotech Revolution in Drug Delivery," lead author Hailing Yu wrote that "several hundred billion dollars worth" of pharmaceutical compounds are sitting in "IP vaults unused" because technology has not yet been developed to deliver the compounds directly to where they are needed in the body

"The industry is keen to unlock and exploit this valuable intellectual property, and using nanotechnology to create new chemical entities via reformulation gives them the key," wrote Yu, research director for Cientifica

The impact on the dental surgical market is already significant, with Cientifica estimating that nano-enabled dental drugs already represent

a $3.39 billion market and prompting a scramble by both large

pharmaceutical companies and drug delivery start ups to grab a piece

of a market predicted to grow to $26 billion by 2012

http://www.smalltimes.com/articles/article_display.cfm?

Section=ONART&C=Bio&ARTICLE_ID=309757&p=109

October 15, 2007

For disruptive technologies, look to

material sciences

Cambridge, Mass. Society-impacting technological change will

increasingly come from physical sciences, such as chemistry, physics and mechanical engineering, rather than information technologies, said Matthew Nordan, the president of nanotechnology research firm Lux Research

…Nordan pointed out a few examples where nanotechnology can play

a disruptive role in the economy

http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9797268-7.html

October 18, 2007

Nanoscale particles designed to block

UV light

Nanoscale titanium dioxide particles could be the next breakthrough in food and beverage plastic packaging, having the ability to prevent ultraviolet light from reducing shelf life

Over time the sun's ultraviolet light can cause cracking, fading and other types of solar degradation to plastics Ultraviolet light (UV) can also reduce the quality and shelf life of beverages and foods in

transparent or semi-transparent packaging

Finding better ways to block UV rays from passing through food and beverage packaging, while still allowing consumers to see the product inside, is a major goal within the industry

http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/news/printNewsBis.asp?id=80676

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