I’ve noticed a bit of an information slowdown lately but I assumed that had to with my aggregator. However, Dexter Johnson on his IEEE tech talk blog (June 16, 2009 posting) suggests that the number of nano focused blogs is shrinking. He makes a good case for the disappearance or the morphing into other topic areas of English language nano blogs in the US and UK. I’m not sure whether this is a temporary lull or an indication that nanotechnology is the process of being accepted without too much concern.
Last week, I noticed that Richard Jones (Soft Machines blog) has accepted a new position at Sheffield University and won’t be so involved with nanotechnology issues. In fact, it seems that he won’t have much time for blogging at all. I’m sorry to see that as he offered interesting insights although I wasn’t always able to follow some of his more technical points easily. In his comments to his latest (possibly last?) blog posting he offers some commentary about the UK government moving the Science portfolio. (You’ll note he describes the portfolio as becoming part of a business ministry or business super portfolio.)
The big issue for UK science in the next few years is simply the fact that the public finances are in such a mess (partly from the cost of bailing out the banks, but more because the UK government got used to receiving large revenues from the financial sector which, in retrospect, weren’t based on real wealth creation). A minor side-effect of the recent political shenanigans is that control of the science budget has been seized by Peter Mandelson, who is keen to push a program of industrial activism, and is clearly now the second most powerful figure in the UK government. I suspect science will do better in this environment than it would with a Conservative government with a primary focus on reducing government expenditure, though either way there’s going to be an even greater emphasis on looking for research with demonstrable economic impact.
As for Jones’ new job,
… n my new role at Sheffield – as the Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation I’ll be responsible for the health of research right across the University.
I think that does it for today.