The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has an event tomorrow, Jan. 14 2009 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am EST (with a 6:30 am PST start time, I think I’ll wait ’til they post the webcast). If you want to see the webcast (Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins) live or, if you’re planning to attend,  RSVP, go here. This seems more like a press conference than one of their standard events given the time and the planned distribution post webcast of a report on food supplement regulation as per nanotechnology innovations.

Genome BC has a free public forum coming up on January 20, 2009 (next Tuesday). It’s called ‘Why are Bees Disappearing and Could Poplar Trees be the Next Biofuel?’  There are speakers from the University of British Columbia and one from the BC Innovation Council.  Location is: Science World, 1455 Quebec St., Vancouver and the time is: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Go here for more details and for pre-registration.

I found an interesting aggregator, Allport, which offers amongst other topics a nanotechnology page listing ‘All the top nanotechnology news’ from various blogs. Go here for a look. Allport describes itself as: a “digital magazine rack of the internet” (from their About Allport page).

After noticing yesterday’s kerfuffle (in Canadian media) about risk, regulation, and nanotechnology, I decided to take another look at that report, ‘Small is different’ from the Council of Canadian Academies’. Here’s what they had to say in their summary,

Although the panel believes that it is not necessary to create new regulatory mechanisms to address the unique challenges presented by nanomaterials, existing regulatory mechanisms could and should be strengthened.  p. 9

(Arguably the regulatory mechanisms should be strengthened regardless of any innovations due to nanotechnology or other emerging technology.) In any event, it’s interesting to contrast the text in the report with the news items which suggest a more strident tone.