A National Research Council (NRC) committee today issued a highly critical report describing serious shortfalls in the Bush administration’s strategy to better understand the environment, health and safety (EHS) risks of nanotechnology and to effectively manage those potential risks.

New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the market at the rate of 3-4 per week, a finding based on the latest update to the nanotechnology consumer product inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN).

Without clear leadership and more transparency in federal risk research investment, the emergence of safe nanotechnologies will be a happy accident, rather than a foregone conclusion, says Dr. Andrew Maynard, the Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN). This sentiment was voiced today by Dr. Maynard in testimony at the House Science & Technology Committee’s hearing on the National Nanotechnology Initiative Amendments Act of 2008.

When the public considers competing arguments about a new technology’s potential risks and benefits, people will tend to agree with the expert whose values are closest to their own, no matter what position the expert takes. The same will hold true for nanotechnology, a key study has found.

National survey findings released today indicate that Americans’ awareness of nanotechnology remains low. Popular awareness is nearly as small as the tiny nanoscale materials and nano-enabled devices and products now flowing onto the market from this rapidly progressing technology that experts believe will usher in a new industrial revolution.

IBM announced two major scientific achievements in the field of nanotechnology that could one day lead to new kinds of devices and structures built from a few atoms or molecules.

Today’s report from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Nanotechnology Task Force is an important and positive step forward in the agency’s effort to tackle the new scientific and regulatory challenges posed by nanotechnology.

A University of Alberta research team has combined two fields of study in nanotechnology to create a third field that the researchers believe will lead to revolutionary advances in computer electronics, among many other areas.