I should warn you in advance – this is an interactive blog – there’s something I want from you! I have a question – where do ordinary people go to get information on nanotechnology safety?
Feeling a little lazy I thought I would get you – the loyal 2020 Science readership – to help me out here. Below are twenty questions on nanotechnology safety provided by folks on Twitter and FaceBook (okay so I’m using the term “normal people” in its widest sense). What I would like is for readers to let me know which websites they feel best answer the questions. This is how it’s going to work: [click to continue…]
If you ever wanted proof that the nanotechnology research community is floundering when it comes to safe working practices, look no further than a paper just published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. The paper, written by researchers at the Nanoscience Institute of Aragon (NIA) in Spain, surveys nanosafety practices in labs around the world. Sadly, the flaws in the paper make the point that more needs to be done to raise safety awareness far more eloquently than its content. [click to continue…]
Well, I’ve survived my first “Davos” and lived to tell the tale. I feel I should write about how profoundly important and influential these meetings are (and without a doubt, they are). But it’s two o’clock in the morning, and I wanted to wrap up this blog series with a minimum of effort before hitting the sack. So instead, here’s a quick overview of how “my Davos” went (as the phrase goes): [click to continue…]
There’s been something of a theme running through my day at The World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos today – getting from A to B. The “A” in this case is technology innovation, and the “B” the problems we hope it will solve – the big ones like world hunger and disease, as well as some of the smaller ones like making life a little easier and more comfortable for ourselves. But rather than write directly about the challenge of translating technology innovation into action, I thought I would give you a sense of how things work here – at least in the outer layers of the Davos onion I’m privileged to inhabit – using getting from A to B as an example.
Having skipped the early sessions I got to the Convention Center in Davos mid-morning, to find a message from a BBC World Service reporter waiting for me. [click to continue…]
This evening I was invited to talk to a group of industry leaders on alternative solutions to the “carbon” problem at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos. The brief was to be one of three “firestarters” – a bit of a dangerous one if you ask me. Given the informal setting (this was all off the record and over dinner), my comments were aimed at being provocative and challenging, and were probably more full of holes than the proverbial sieve – perfect material in other words for a blog! [click to continue…]
Having just got back to the hotel at some unseemly hour (at least according to my body clock) from the first full day of meetings at the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos, I’m trying my best to be disciplined and write some of my impressions up. As it’s late, I’ll be brief: [click to continue…]
I‘m sitting here at Dulles Airport waiting for my flight to Zurich and the annual World Economic Forum Meeting in Davos, so I thought I’d dash off a quick blog. If you’re on the ball, you will realize that by arriving tomorrow, I will be missing most of the first day of the meeting. This is intentional – I’m doing Davos on a budget (which is why I am also flying on frequent flier miles – but more of that later in the week possibly. In the meantime, I’m crossing my fingers that they don’t place me in the dreaded toilet seat!). [click to continue…]
This week I’m heading out to the World Economic Forum jamboree in Davos, Switzerland. I’d like to play this cool – as if rubbing shoulders with politicians, business leaders and celebs is something I do all the time. But the reality is that this is my first time to what is probably the biggest annual gathering of world thought-leaders and decision-makers, and I’m just a little star-struck! [click to continue…]
To accompany the review just posted of Felice Frankel and George Whitesides’ book “No Small Matter: Science on the Nanoscale” the authors kindly allowed me to post this series of excerpts. What I wanted to capture here was the synergy between the images and the prose – and how together they pull the reader in.
This is just a small taste (bad pun – sorry) of what the book offers. If you enjoyed it and want to see more – I’m sure you know your way to a good bookstore by now.
As people seem to expect this these days, I should be clear that this is an independent review, using a copy of No Small Matter purchased from my own hard earned cash!
How do you write a book about something few people have heard off, and less seem interested in? The answer, it seems, is to write about something else.
Felice Frankel and George Whitesides have clearly taken this lesson to heart. Judged by the cover alone, their new book “No Small Matter: Science at the Nanoscale” is all about science in the Twilight zone of the nanoscale – where stuff doesn’t behave in the way intuition says it should. Open the cover, and you are drawn into a seductive world of stunning images and poetic prose, that reveal as much about the authors’ passions and delights as the science that drives them. Finish the book, and you will have a far more sophisticated grasp of nanotechnology than most of your friends and, dare I say it, many of the people currently working in the field. Because this is the sleight of hand that Frankel and Whitesides pull – by not writing about nanotechnology, they have published what is perhaps the best book on the subject to date! [click to continue…]
Hype, scare mongering, obfuscation and just plain misinformation – the scientific community are reasonably clear about what they think of Tabloid science reporting much of the time. So I wasn’t too surprised to see the headline “‘Grey goo’ food laced with nanoparticles could swamp Britain” in today’s Daily Mail, following the release of a new report on nanotechnologies and food from the UK House of Lords. Here we go again I thought – cheap misrepresentation to pull the punters in and never mind the fallout. But on closer reading, perhaps this piece isn’t as crass and misleading as I initially thought… [click to continue…]
Back in February of 2009, the UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee launched an inquiry into the use of nanotechnology in food products and the food industry. Chaired by Lord Krebs (the son of Hans Adolf Krebs – best known for describing the mechanisms of energy uptake and release in cells), a small group of peers was assembled to address the potential benefits and use of nanotechnology in the food sector, arising health and safety issues, regulation, communication and public engagement. On January 8 2010, the subcommittee’s much-anticipated report was published. Concluding with 32 recommendations covering nanotechnology and food commercialization, potential risks, regulation and public communication and engagement, it is perhaps the most comprehensive and authoritative report on the subject to be published to date. [click to continue…]
A little over a year ago, Ruth Seeley – a freelance communications consultant – rather bravely approached me with a proposition: She would help me develop a social media strategy for 2020 Science, if I would let her write the experience up as a case study. Was she mad? [...]
I know you’re supposed to look forward at the beginning of the new year, but having done that the other day, I thought I would take this opportunity to have a quick glance back at the last 12 months of 2020 Science. And just to keep your attention – I know how tedious these retrospectives [...]
Ten years ago at the close of the 20th century, people the world over were obsessing about the millennium bug – an unanticipated glitch arising from an earlier technology. I wonder how clear it was then that, despite this storm in what turned out to be a rather small teacup, the following decade would see [...]
Brain-candy for the intellectually incapacitated.
To help the brain cells recuperate from over-exertion (and quite possibly over-indulgence) this Holiday season, here’s a short compendium of mindless games – the sort of things scientists and others indulge in when they think no-one’s looking!
By Jim Thomas, ETC Group
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
For a fresh perspective on how to do technology governance consider starting somewhere else. I suggest York Castle in Northern England – a stark stone tower from the thirteenth century.
It was here in 1812 that the English state first executed fifteen [...]
By Tim Jackson, University of Surrey, UK
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
Are we a clever species or a stupid one? It’s not a trivial question. Put our society in the dock with a jury of our future peers and the verdict would be far from clear cut.
Exhibit A, m’lud: the [...]
By George Kimbrell, International Center for Technology Assessment, and the Center for Food Safety
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
Andrew asked us to write about “how technological innovation should contribute to life in the 21st century.” Technological innovation is often blindly referred to as “progress.” The question is — progress towards [...]
A guest blog in the Alternative Perspectives on Technology Innovation series
My first scholarly engagement with environmental politics was an honor’s thesis written while I was an undergraduate at Berkeley in the early 1970s. Back then, the term “environmentalist” was frequently deployed to profile someone held to be a naïve, irresponsible and [...]
A personal blog about science and technology in the 21st century. Written by scientist and emerging technologies advisor Andrew Maynard it tackles some of the knottier questions raised by science and technology, such as “where is technology innovation taking us?”, “what is the role of science in society society?” and “how can science and technology be developed responsibly?” More…
Andrew Maynard…
Is a scientist gone over to the dark side – policy, communication and all that. When not writing and talking about science and technology, he advises on nanotechnology and synthetic biology (amongst other things) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington DC.
Q: How much do 1.5 gal milk, ham, cheese, pork chops, mushrooms, oranges & bananas on a backpack weigh? A: At least 150 lb by my reckoning! 54 mins ago
Just passed by a mail van with chains on. *Nothing* stops the mail here! 1 hour ago
