From the category archives:

Ethics

A 2020 Science Taster

February 19, 2009

Given the recent surge in 2020science readers (thanks to Lon S. Cohen at Mashable), I thought it about time I did a short retrospective—a taster for the type of stuff you can expect to read here.  So here are five pieces from the past year that cover everything from nanotechnology to synthetic biology, and ethics [...]

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Synthetic biology: Lessons from synthetic chemistry

November 13, 2008

Looking back to chart a course to the future
This coming lunchtime*, former New York Times columnist Denise Caruso will discuss the promise and pit-falls of synthetic biology with Center for American Progress senior fellow and former Washington Post science reporter Rick Weiss.  Given the track record of both participants, I’m anticipating a stimulating and spirited [...]

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Nanotechnology and the God of Small Things

January 12, 2008

With apologies to Arundhati Roi for “borrowing” the title of her moving book, what—if anything—has nanotechnology got to do with religion?
Barnaby Feder of the New York Times takes on this issue in his latest posting to the Bits blog:
“There may not be a lot of agreement among the world’s religions on exactly what constitutes humans [...]

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Nanotechnology in context – Size matter

November 1, 2007

In July 2007, a specially convened task force of the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) concluded that size does in fact matter (FDA 2007).  The focus of the task force was not on the importance of “largeness”, but rather on the technology of the unimaginably small—nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology is the technology of manipulating matter at [...]

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