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Weil, who was recently named to the advisory board of The Nanoethics Group, a non-partisan independent research organization, is currently working with a grant from the NSF to establish NanoEthicsBank. The database will consist of codes of ethics, company policies, precautionary principles, and applicable articles as well as reports on topics such as toxicity. The online database will be available to researchers and the general public. Weil hopes to have something online by September.
Meanwhile, the legal issues of the new technology are also being discussed. Professor Andrews has been awarded a $100,000 NSF grant to study several aspects of nano legal issues?most specifically, the issue of patents and trademarks. In the case of nanotechnology, the FDA has said if a product is simply a smaller version of something that already exists, it doesn?t require testing and is therefore not novel. But at nano scale, a product may exhibit unique or different properties, allowing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to come up with a different conclusion.
As education and debate about the ethical, social, and legal implications of this new technology continue, investigators are working to bring the promise of nano to light. IIT researchers, including those at Armour College of Engineering and the College of Science and Letters, are exploring nano?s scientific applications.
?In order to have a full-fledged nanotechnology program, a close collaboration between Armour College and CSL is essential,? explains Armour College Dean Hamid Arastoopour, who adds that, ultimately, development of the new materials must be a partnership between science and engineering. ?Dimitri Gidaspow and I are working with the New Jersey Institute of Technology with a grant from the NSF to apply engineering principles at the level of nano scale. We?re trying to understand and come up with governing equations and numerical simulation for flow of nanoparticles.?
Arastoopour believes that debate and research must go hand in hand. ?On one hand,? he says, ?science and engineering should join in progress, but on the other hand, what is equally important are the social and legal impacts. We may advance science, but we need society to appreciate and understand the challenges involved in nanotechnology and its impacts on society.?
Such is the viewpoint of Chemistry Professor Ishaque Khan, who adds, ?The heart and soul of this scientific revolution is nanoscale science. As with anything, ethics has to be considered.?
Khan is leading an active research program focused on the design and synthesis of nanostructured materials, in particular, nanostructured catalytic systems for detection and removal of toxic gases, environmental decontamination, and targeted drug delivery. Since the 1990s, he has given presentations on his research and has been invited to speak at some 50 symposia, conferences, and research universities worldwide. He has also spoken several times at Argonne National Laboratory, with whom he has been collaborating on environmental decontamination and cleanup from automobile and industrial exhaust. In addition to receiving grants from the NSF and the Petroleum Research Fund of the American Chemical Society, he has received funding from Argonne Labs to research the development of materials for the storage and transport of hydrogen, an imperative if we are to look at hydrogen as the future of energy.
Last December, Khan organized the symposium ?Transition Metal Oxide-Based Advanced Materials in the Context of Materials and Nanotechnology? for the International Chemical Congress of Pacific Basin Societies. His work has led to his participation on the NSF?s nanoscience and engineering panels, roles that include the evaluation of grant requests and advising the NSF on funding initiatives.
The efforts of IIT?s researchers, as well as the opportunity for debate, depend on grants. And there is a great deal of competition for every dollar.
?I heard a professor of nano at Oxford say ?nanotechnology is from a Greek word meaning grant,?? says Cameron. His efforts have resulted in several grants from federal funds?$890,000 in 2004?05, a $500,000 grant that helped established Nano & Society in 2005?06, and another promised $500,000 for 2006?07. This most recent grant will be split between Nano & Society and IBHF.
As nanotechnology research advances and the Center on Nanotechnology and Society works to further the nano ethics debate in national and international political and social arenas, Cameron says the center?s agenda must remain flexible, as legislatures and leaders continue to wrestle with nano?s implications.
?We are hoping for a dual win: technology that is safe and enhances a human future and policies that governments will go for,? he says. He just returned from Europe, where he was the only American invited to advise the European Commission?s expert group on new technologies. ?I think people are listening,? says Cameron. ?Nano & Society has taken the lead in the great national conversation that will shape our society for the next generation, and we've already begun to make a difference.?
Moving Atoms: Then and Now
If you?ve ever tried to build a toothpick sculpture wearing thick winter mittens, you know how hopeless it is. It?s been said that?s the way researchers have been moving atoms?creating clumps of toothpicks with no precision. Nanotechnology will let scientists remove the mittens, enabling them to put together building blocks to create such things as a device that could travel through capillaries to repair living cells. It will allow all the information of every library in the world to be stored on a device the size of a credit card. In 1992, students at the Institute of Design developed an entry for an international competition on the future of plastics. Called ?Nanoplastics: A Home System,? it demonstrated how nanoplastics will make use of solar and other forms of energy, including sound and motion, to cause a revolution in home design. Details of the students? award-winning Home of the Future can be found here.
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