Canadian nano and a couple responses

The province of Alberta has decided to fund nanotechnology studies to the tune of $30 million in programming for undergraduate students undertaking a Bachelor of Science in Engineering at either the University of Alberta or the University of Calgary. Congratulations to them all. It just seems odd to me that Canadians haven’t put much money into figuring out whether any of this is safe and what impact, if any, it’s going to have on us.

Scientists usually want some kind of communication programme or what they call public engagement because they want to make sure there’s no public outrage resulting in a loss of funds to do their work. I gave a presentation called Engaging Nanotechnology (pop culture, media, and public awareness) at the Cascadia Nanotech Symposium this last March in Vancouver. I’d give a link to the symposium presentations but they haven’t posted them yet. More about that in a later posting as I’m still rewriting the paper.

On the other side of the country, researchers at the Universite de Montreal have made some discoveries about proteins which have implications for cancers and degenerative neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Huntington’s diseases. The article is here.

Thank you to both Richard Jones and Adam Shand for clearing up a few questions. I’m sorry that it took me so long to figure out that I had any comments.

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