Nanobio-RAISE brings together nanobiotechnologists, ethicists and communication specialists to anticipate and discuss the societal and ethical issues likely to arise as nanobiotechnologies develop. The project will implement in 2006 and 2007 what RAISE stands for: Responsible Action on Issues in Society and Ethics. NanoBio-RAISE is a 6th Framework Programme Science & Society Co-ordination Action funded by the European Commission. For more information, please see: www.nanobio-raise.org

New subscriber? To join our forum, subscribe online or send an e-mail to: join@nanobio-raise.org

Contents

•  forthcoming Nanobio-RAISE events
  
•  news
•  publications
•  selected conferences
•  resources on the web

Forthcoming Nanobio-RAISE events

Second Horizon Scanning Workshop, 11-12 December 2006, Frankfurt am Mainz

The second Horizon Scanning Workshop will be held on 11 and 12 December 2006 and will be organised by DECHEMA. This workshop will bring together the key players in the nanobiotechnology scientific and commercial field together with the leading ethicists and public communication experts concerned with it. The aim is to forecast the serious societal and ethical issues likely to emerge in non-medical nanobiotechology and to recommend the responses which should be made. 

This workshop builds on the first Horizon Scanning Workshop on 'Human-Machine Interfaces' held in Munster on 19-21 January 2006 and organised jointly by Nano2life and Nanobio-RAISE (for the report please see the downloads page). A third and final Horizon Scanning Workshop on therapeutics and diagnostics will be organised in May next year. The workshop will be preceded by the Second Steering Group meeting which brings together the Nanobio-RAISE project participants with the aim to monitor progress and provide expertise, experience and advice for the project as a whole. 

Convergence Seminars 2006

The Philosophy Division at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm is conducting four focus group discussions on nanotechnology as part of the Nanobio-RAISE project. Two of these discussions have succesfully been organised in Sweden and Great Britain. Two additional sessions will be held in Poland and Portugal later this year.

1st Advanced Course on Strategic Communication and Applied Ethics in Nanobiotechnology, 11-16 March 2007, St Edmund Hall, Oxford, UK

This five-day Advanced Course for nanobiotechnologists will enable the participants to carry out a wide variety of public communication activities discussing the social and ethical implications of their work with confidence. The programme provides leading experts in public affairs and communication, bioethics, risk assessment and regulatory affairs in the field of nanobiotechnology. Participants will be trained in writing, speaking, debating, preparing communication plans and ethical case studies applied to the various fields of nanobiotechnology.
Please see the Course Programme for further information.

News

Call for Evidence: ‘Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties’

Two-year review of progress on Government actions

In July 2004 the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering jointly published a Report ‘Nanoscience and nanotechnologies: opportunities and uncertainties’, to which the Government responded in February 2005. The UK Council for Science and Technology will be reviewing the Government’s progress after two years in taking forward the actions it set out in the Response, and assessing the implications of any new developments.

As part of the Review, the Council is asking for written submissions on the following issues:
- The extent to which the Government has taken forward the commitments described in its Response.
- The timeliness and effectiveness of the actions taken by Government.
- Whether there have been significant developments in nanoscience/nanotechnology since February 2005 which raise new issues the Government did not address in its Response, and should now.

The Council will not be discussing wider arguments on the use of nanotechnology in society, nor looking at whether the commitments made by Government were the correct course of action, unless new evidence suggests compelling reasons for doing so. Submissions should be sent to nanoreview@cst.gov.uk by Monday 2 October, 2006.
The Council for Science and Technology's website: http://www.cst.gov.uk
Call for Evidence: http://www.cst.gov.uk/cst/business/nanoreview.shtml

Dutch physicists get a grip on the spin of a single electron

Source: TU Delft Press release

Researchers of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at Delft University of Technology and the Foundation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM) have succeeded for the first time in the world in controlling the spin of a single electron in a nanostructure. They are able to rotate the spin to every possible direction and to record it accordingly. This achievement makes it possible to use the electron’s spin as a ‘quantum bit’, the basis of a (still theoretical) future quantum computer. The researchers have published this scientific breakthrough in a Nature article on 17 August 2006.
An electron does not only have an electrical charge, but it also behaves like an ultrasmall magnet. This is caused by the spinning of the electron around its axis, also called ‘spin’. The spin of a single electron can be used as a quantum bit, an important building block for the (theoretically speaking, superior) future quantum computer. In order to create this type of quantum bit, an electron in a semiconductor material is locked up in a quantum dot, which is a kind of electrical trap for the electron. Already in 2004, the Delft researchers succeeded in locking up a single electron and reading out the direction of its spin. Last year a research team of Harvard succeeded in getting control of the entanglement (the quantum mechanical linkage) of two electrons.
See: http://qt.tn.tudelft.nl/research/spinqubits/

Publications

Report of the OECD Workshop on the Safety of Manufactured Nanomaterials: Building Co-operation, Co-ordination and Communication

The OECD’s Joint Meeting of the Chemicals Committee and Working Party on Chemicals, Pesticides and Biotechnology, held a Special Session on the Potential Implications of Manufactured Nanomaterials for Human Health and Environmental Safety (7 June 2005), which was intended to identify human health and environment safety issues associated with manufactured nanomaterials. Based on the discussion of the Special Session, the 38th Joint Meeting (held 8-10 June 2005) recognized that nanotechnology offers a wide range of potential benefits which will impact on a large number of sectors.
See: OECD Workshop Report

Eurobarometer 64.3: Europeans and Biotechnology in 2005: Patterns and Trends, European Commission, July 2006

This Eurobarometer report contains a number of interesting findings about nanotechnology. It is the sixth in a series of surveys conducted since 1991 and based on a representative sample of 25,000 respondents, approximately 1,000 in each EU Member State.
See: Eurobarometer Report

Selected conferences

The Agenda for Nano-ethics

27-Sep-2006, Drienerburght, University of Twente, The Netherlands

The workshop is organized by CEPTES & TA-NanoNed. During the workshop several speakers will discuss nano-ethics. To apply, please send your name and affiliation to: K.Waelbers@utwente.nl, stating your interest to attend the workshop ‘the agenda for nano-ethics’. ONLY 25 PEOPLE CAN PARTICIPATE. FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED
See: CEPTES Symposium

ESF-UB Conference: Nanomedicine - A new Opportunity for improving Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment for Disease

15-Sep-2006 en 20-Sep-2006, Hotel Eden Roc, Sant Feliu de Guixols, Spain

The 2006 Nanomedicine Conference is the first in a series of biannual in-depth meetings that will bring together academic and industrial scientists, regulators and policy makers to foster cross-fertilisation in this emerging multidisciplinary field. This meeting series has been established to encourage interdisciplinary exchange at the leading edge of all aspects of nanomedicine research and its development into clinical.
See: ESF Conference

For further details on these and other events, please see: www.nanobio-raise.org/events

Resources on the web

http://www.zit.tu-darmstadt.de/cipp/tudzit/custom/pub/content,lang,2/oid,848/ticket,guest - The NanoOffice is part of the Center for Interdisciplinary Technology Studies (ZIT) at Darmstadt Technical University. It serves as a platform for interdisciplinary discussions, the development of joint initiatives and the pursuit of various research and outreach projects. Any well-grounded engagement with ethical and societal dimensions of nanotechnology requires an understanding of the difficulties and peculiarities of nanoscale research.