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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Mar 30, 2011 6:49 am
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Zhong Lin Wang/Georgia Tech Photo
(NHI Nanoblog) Always looking for a place to plug in that smartphone? A new “nanogenerator” introduced this week might one day let you charge up as you walk around.
Scientists at Georgia Tech spent six years developing the tiny generator, pictured above. Just flexing the pliable chip converts your physical energy into electricity, said Zhong Lin Wang, a professor and the director of the Center for Nanostructure Characterization at Georgia Tech.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Mar 23, 2011 12:25 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) Much of the focus in the debate over toxicity and testing in the world of nanomaterials is on how researchers can tackle the seemingly impossible task of understanding every single thing that contains these tiny particles and structures.
Donald Ewert has another idea, based on a longtime system used for pharmaceuticals: categories.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Mar 17, 2011 5:39 am
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Gwyneth K. Shaw Photo
Andrea Haase of Germany’s Federal Institute for Risk Assessment and Jed Constanza of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — As the one-two punch of devastating earthquake and horrifying tsunami unfolded across the world in Japan last week, setting off what has become the worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, researchers and policymakers from across the U.S. and the European Union gathered in the nation’s capital wrangled with a different kind of risk-assessment challenge.
The subject of the Japan catastrophe never came up at the two days of meetings at George Washington University and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which wrapped up before the full magnitude of the disaster became apparent. Instead, those assembled discussed ultra-tiny nanomaterials and nanoparticles — and whether the rush to develop super-products from them may, without adequate oversight and planning, produce their own environmental or public-health disaster.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Mar 8, 2011 2:42 pm
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NobelPrize.org Photo
Frederick Soddy.
(NHI Nanoblog) As researchers, manufacturers and policymakers wrestle with how to handle the risks and benefits of the brave new world of nanotechnology, David Guston wants them to step back into history — to the beginning of the atomic age and the insights of two long-dead science philosophers.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 22, 2011 11:58 am
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Nano-Tex
(NHI Nanoblog) Nanotechnology is a hot trend in clothes, from gym socks with anti-stink capabilities to chinos that repel those occasional coffee spills. Now the nano-textile industry is getting even more intimate: Bra behemoth Maidenform has inked a deal with a major fabric maker.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 18, 2011 12:30 pm
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Gwyneth K. Shaw File Photo
(NHI Nanoblog) Cementing an existing effort to probe the dangers associated with nanotechnology, the University at Albany’s sprawling College of Nanoscale Science & Engineering announced a $10 million partnership with industry to start the dedicated NanoHealth and Safety Center.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 15, 2011 12:28 pm
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Steptoe & Johnson Photo
(NHI Nanoblog) With government regulations on the horizon, liability lawsuits over products that use nanomaterials may follow, a lawyer for the Washington megafirm Steptoe & Johnson LLP writes.
Among the expected changes are requests for better data from manufacturers, workplace safety guidelines, and product labeling requirements, some mandatory and some voluntary.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 11, 2011 4:22 am
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University of Michigan Photos
Philbert.
(NHI Nanoblog) What makes Martin Philbert worry about nanotechnology? In some ways, it’s the term itself.
“My biggest fear and cause for optimism is that there’s no such thing as ‘nanotechnology,’‘’ he said during a freewheeling discussion Tuesday hosted by the University of Michigan’s Risk Science Center.
A better word, Philbert said, is “nanotechnologies.” That takes into account the huge spectrum of materials that are defined by their size as much as their substance.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 8, 2011 1:45 pm
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Gwyneth K. Shaw Photo
Anil R. Diwan, president of NanoViricides, in his West Haven office.
The warehouse hard by the railroad tracks isn’t the stereotypical headquarters for a cutting-edge company hatching big-time breakthrough medicines. There’s no fancy logo sign, no sweeping glass-and-metal entrance area, no headset-wearing assistants.
But this biomedical outfit has millions in the bank. It’s just spending wisely as it develops the Venus Flytrap of antiviral drugs.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 5, 2011 11:44 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) Carbon nanotubes, the tiny, super-strong building blocks that have drawn both excitement over their potential and concern over their risks, may help stroke victims recover faster.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Feb 2, 2011 1:43 pm
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Caprio.
Accepting an invitation from the new Republican U.S. House majority to help get regulators to back off industry, a nanotechnology trade group is asking a congressional committee to pressure regulators to avoid “unnecessary public alarms.”
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Jan 31, 2011 10:09 pm
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(NHI Nanoblog) As with many scientific concepts and fields, “nanotechnology” has entered the public lexicon, but few laypeople have more than a vague understanding of what it actually entails.
Depending on your perspective, that could be a good thing. For example, some of the protests over the health concerns about various nano-based products that have blown up in other countries haven’t happened here. Others would argue that the lack of knowledge means that real risks could go unnoticed by the public.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Jan 25, 2011 6:52 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) People in the risk management business (not to mention Donald Rumsfeld) are famous for talking about the “unknown unknowns.” With nanotechnology, there are a lot of them — a fact that’s got insurance companies as eager as researchers and regulators to find out what potential dangerous lurk amid some of the economy’s most promising new technolgies.
A briefing prepared late last year for a branch of the CRO Forum, a risk-management consortium made up of European insurance companies, echoes the themes that run through efforts to isolate and understand dangers that might lurk inside products that use nanomaterials. The briefing has a number of great charts, including a visual representation of the nanoscale and a helpful characterization of what constitutes “active” and “passive” nano-based stuff.
But the most interesting part is the briefing’s blunt assessment that insurers are already assuming risks associated with nanotechnology, through products currently on the market or in development. That fact, the report says, makes a rapid increase in the understanding of nano risks critical.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Jan 20, 2011 9:36 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) In a commentary in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, a team of American and European officials discuss the numerous challenges facing the regulation of nanomaterials, and give readers a glimpse of what’s going on behind the scenes.
Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, European Commission and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (known universally as the OECD) write about the difficulties of balancing development and safety and outline areas where they’re working together. The paper includes a standard note that the authors are speaking for themselves, not their agencies.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Jan 17, 2011 1:06 pm
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(NHI Nanoblog) California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control is asking in-state nanotechnology companies and researchers to share how they’re keeping tabs on several nano-sized metals, as evidence continues to emerge that these substances might have long-term implications for the environment.
Late last month, the DTSC put out a request for information about nano-sized silver, zero valent iron, titanium dioxide, zinc oxide, cerium oxide and quantum dots.
Specifically, the agency wants to know what tools companies and researchers are using to analyze these materials — a key question for regulators across the country in the effort to understand the impact of the substances — over a broad range of areas, including air, water, soil, sewage sludge and urine.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Jan 10, 2011 11:50 am
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Gwyneth K. Shaw Photo
Sara Brenner inside a CNSE lab.
ALBANY, N.Y. — Sara Brenner loves nanotechnology.
At the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering, she’s a key ambassador, doing workshops with schoolchildren aimed at igniting an early passion for science and technology. In the burgeoning field of “nanobio,” which seeks to capitalize on the promise of nanomaterials in innovative medical applications, Brenner is guiding undergraduate and graduate students as an assistant professor of nanobioscience.
As assistant head of the nanobioscience “constellation” at CNSE, she’s also trying to foster collaborations among researchers who might never think of crossing disciplines. (Read about the development of CNSEhere.)
Yet Brenner, who trained as a physician, remains a doctor — and one focused on public health — at heart. So even as her enthusiasm for the exploding science of the very small overflows, she remains focused on nano safety, trying to make sense of what risks these innovative materials pose and how to protect workers, people and the environment from any dangers.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Jan 10, 2011 11:48 am
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UAlbany Photo
The College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering’s Albany NanoTech Complex.
ALBANY, N.Y. — Walk down one 150-foot hallway inside the building known as NanoEast, and you get an immediate sense of what convergence means at the University at Albany’s College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.
Behind one door is a company that builds the clean rooms used to build semiconductors. Keep walking, and a student laboratory comes into view behind a long glass window, chock full of state-of-the-art equipment. Tucked in between are faculty offices and classrooms.
This hallway is a tiny fraction of the sprawling complex at CNSE, which is at 800,000 square feet and expanding. A tour leaves you feeling as if you should have brought bread crumbs to find your way out. On a recent day, the behemoth bustled with activity, as undergraduates celebrating the completion of an exam mingled with workers carefully pushing front opening unified pods, or FOUPs, containing stacks of the delicate wafers essential to building semiconductors.
This is exactly what college officials, and their patrons in the state government, had in mind when they began building here nearly a decade ago — a true partnership between academia, government and industry. It’s a model that many nanotechnology boosters believe is the best way forward as innovations move from the lab into real-life applications.
Nanotechnology, which leverages the super-properties of super-small particles, is already in items like bike frames, skin creams and cancer treatments, as well as computer chips. Scientists are constantly tinkering with new materials, new properties, and new applications. But major manufacturing — and the commercial success that is projected to go with it — have been slower to develop.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Dec 23, 2010 3:12 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) Looking for a quick rundown of what nanotechnology is, and how it might affect you? Check out this new booklet from a California environmental advocacy group.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Dec 21, 2010 12:25 pm
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(NHI Nanoblog) In a new, scathing report, an advocacy group that has repeatedly questioned the safety of nanotechnology products strongly criticizes governments across the world for failing to do more to regulate the growing industry.
The report, issued by the ETC Group, basically argues that nano advocates, particularly companies that manufacture products using nanomaterials, are winning the geopolitical war against regulation. That’s true, the report says, in Europe, India and other places, as well as the U.S.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Dec 17, 2010 2:12 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) As we wait on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to decide what to do about nanosilver — a popular new anti-stink ingredient in your gym socks — American and European researchers have outlined several suggestions for making nanotechnology-based pesticides safer.
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Dec 10, 2010 4:59 am
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University of Minnesota Photo
Jennifer Kuzma
(NHI Nanoblog) As U.S. and international regulators struggle to create a way to regulate the rapidly growing field of nanotechnology, lots has been made of what’s not going to work — such as treating nanomaterials as self-contained entities like chemicals.
There are also plenty of ideas, some of them already discussed in this space, about new templates for regulation and control. But what can we learn from (relatively recent) history — namely, the record of trying to regulate biotechnology? It’s another emerging technology, and it also involves stuff, like plants and fish, that we eat and interact with on a daily basis.
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Jim Motavalli
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Dec 9, 2010 11:53 am
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Nanotechnology could be seen as a “Friend of the Earth,” since it’s an aid to green energy applications from solar panels and wind turbines to batteries for electric cars. But the group called Friends of the Earth (FOE) doesn’t see it that way. It has just issued a scathing report on nano climate and energy uses, calling them “overheated promises and hot air.”
The nanotechnology community says that FOE’s charges are a knee-jerk, outdated response. It’s a rather bitter war of words.
Since its inception, the initiative, proposed by President Clinton, has spent more than $14 billion, mostly on research across the government. In the past decade, nanotechnology has begun to move out of the laboratory and into products.
More than 1,000 products that use nanotechnology — based on micro-particles that have super properties — are currently on the market, according to the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies. The inventory includes everything from superconductors to luggage.
But as with all anniversaries, this one begs the obvious question: how effective has the NNI, as it’s known, been? And where should the government be spending its resources moving forward?
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Gwyneth K. Shaw
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Dec 3, 2010 5:33 am
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(NHI Nanoblog) Where’s nanotechnology going? What’s worked over the last decade, and what still needs improvement? Where should the field be in 2020?
A panel of American experts on the science of the super-small spent the better part of a year thinking about those questions and more, with the help of counterparts around the world. This week, Mihail C. Roco, the National Science Foundation adviser for the group, discussed its report at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington (here’s his presentation; a video of his talk should be available soon).
The report’s official name is “Nanotechnology Research Directions for Societal Needs in 2020 Retrospective and Outlook.” The short version is “Nano 2.”
