It’s been a while since I’ve visited Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology’s (NINT) website and since it’ s pretty slow on the news front these days I figured I’d check out their news releases. It wasn’t there! It’s been absorbed into the National Research Council’s (NRC) site.
These things usually portend some sort of political shenanigans, which can range from internal NRC politics to federal policy mandates to funding issues, or some combination of them all. In NINT’s case, you can also include the provincial government (Alberta) as they were (and possibly still are) funding a significant portion of the institute’s budget.
The NINT information now available has been ‘branded’ by the NRC. It looks slick and seems a bit better organized than it was in some respects. One exception is in the area of media information. NINT media releases are now grouped with all of the NRC releases making NINT information harder to find. As well, it’s harder to find contact details for the NINT media relations/communications folks.
Taking into account the loss of the NanoBusiness Alliance in Toronto, Nanotech BC’s imperiled future, and NINT’s loss of its ‘brand’, the nanotechnology future is not looking so bright in Canada.
And on something completely unrelated, Vancouver’s (Canada) Jazz Festival is taking place right now and tonight (July 2, 2009) local jazz songstress, Laura Werth will be at:
Capone’s restaurant
1141 Hamilton St.
Vancouver, Canada
604.684.79007:30 pm – 11:30 pm
Weaver & Werth Music Group
Laura Werth — Vocals
Ingrid Stitt — Sax
Rick Kilburn — Bass
Rob Weaver — Piano
Nino Di Pasquale — Drums
If you want to preview the music, Laura has a few tracks for listening here.