The Gaming Den

Sorry if this is long winded and confusing, but I'm sort of slightly rushed.

My dad called up today from the other side of the world with a huge problem: he says that the Malaysian government want to look into having some sort of policy on nanotechnology, and he's supposed to be giving a presentation on it on the 28th, but he's been told about it like, today.

On top of that, he doesn't really have access to the internet so he wants me to find resources (mostly website links) about nanotechnology. He's not even sure about whether its supposed to be about how it should be controlled, if it should be controlled, or about where to research into it.

So I've been volunteered to search the internet and find, well, pretty pictures he can copy and paste with simple descriptions of how nanotechnology works. Which is insane. What I've done so far is look up Google Scholar and find some papers comparing policies on nano, some overview studies of perception of nano, some basic applications of nano and similar, with about two websites that meet what he wants. I started trying to type up a simple starting explanation but he says thats not what he wants.

There are some nice things I've found, but given that he and the rest of his team have a day and a half to really research and prepare a presentation they don't have time to read through and parse all the information, especially since English isn't necessarily their first language.

So, um, I need help since I now have eight hours to find stuff and email him it and I'm busy for about five and a half hours of that, starting in five minutes. Is anyone aware of simple and easy to understand, with pretty pictures descriptions of what nanotech is, what the risks are (of the current day nano not scifi self replicating nano), and about the policies in place today that can be found on the internet?

I know this is an impossible task, so feel free to ignore it. I'm personally tempted to say fuck this, and give him the two papers comparing the policies of the UK, US, Australia and a few other countries, then encourage him to take out all the best bits and say that this is the proven policies.

The nano guitar, the most common "pretty picture" used in nanotechnology. I don't really know why it's called the nano guitar when it's on a micron scale (well, the strings are a nano scale), but whatever.

That said, a picture of a modern microprocessor itself is probably pretty powerful. Intel uses a 45 nanometer dye for their processors these days, which is ridiculously small.

That's not the in-depth kind of information you're looking for (about policies and whatnot), but it should get across the idea that people use really small things all the time already and they aren't even called nanotech. I mean, I'm typing this on a 45 nm dye processor.

Something I found a while back. It might conceivably be useful to someone: Link.

Those might help with the native language issue:

http://ms.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanoteknologi (pretty pic inside)
http://id.edaboard.com/ftopic313654.html
http://www.forumsains.com/ilmu-dan-tekn ... stri/?wap2

... otherwise, not much to contribute.

Gray Goo is not a problem in the foreseeable future. Nanotech currently and projected nanotech options do not involve nano assemblage. We're at more danger gray goo-wise from making random proteins. And organic life does that with evolution like all the time.

That being said, most nanotech is really dirty, and a lot of it doesn't break down super well (being small enough that bacteria can't necessarily digest it). So getting some kind of environmental policy on it is a good plan. Companies should have a plan to keep their nanowaste from ending up bio-accumulating in shrimp.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Gray Goo is not a problem in the foreseeable future. Nanotech currently and projected nanotech options do not involve nano assemblage. We're at more danger gray goo-wise from making random proteins. And organic life does that with evolution like all the time.

That being said, most nanotech is really dirty, and a lot of it doesn't break down super well (being small enough that bacteria can't necessarily digest it). So getting some kind of environmental policy on it is a good plan. Companies should have a plan to keep their nanowaste from ending up bio-accumulating in shrimp.

-Username17

Yeh, New Scientist had an article about how nano-scale objects are harmful to living tissue, so one would imagine how you'd want a policy on controlling whether they get into the environment.

Thanks, those should be useful. I didn't know that nano objects don't degrade well. Any links to info about that? I'll look as well, but just in case I can't find any...

Personally, I pretty much have these issues and things to look at with a nanotech policy:

• Nanotechnology is everywhere already. Its in sunscreen, in computers, on clothes... Everything even slightly technological that is that small is nanotech. So the policy will have some nanotech grandfathered in already unless you want to throw out everything from other countries including computers. And trying to only allow current nanotech without allowing new could get... iffy.
• Creating a policy is pretty much impossible since there still aren't standard measurements of nanotech (still being researched) and so will be useless almost immediately.
• Unlike nuclear reactors and research into that, nanotech doesn't seem to need that rare equipment or resources, so it would be hard to stop people researching or working on it anyway.
• Nanomolecules can be toxic so regulations need to be in place in manufacturing (although I don't think theres that much regulations in workplaces in Malysia currently, so...).
• Regulations and safety protocols must be devised for storage and transport of nanotech since it could easily have as much devastation or more as an oil spill.
• Similar tests and safety protocols to genetic engineered crops must be in place for agricultural nanotech. Especially since it doesn't break down easily and so could easily have the same effect as fertilisers being washed into rivers and fucking up ecosystems as a minimum.
• There hasn't been much actual research into the actual risks of nanotechnology. Government funded studies have made proposals into where to research since 2005 ( several papers in a confusing list about this ) but as of 2007 still mostly talk about future research targets into the same areas discussed in 2005 and have no real updates since.

So basically, a policy for nanotech is needed because it can be incredibly dangerous. Unfortunately making a policy is impossible since the risks are still mostly unknown so policies won't necessarily fit properly and being able to define different types of nanotech is vague and flimsy. As well as that it is impossible to enforce properly.

Basically, the issue that you're looking at is that "nanotech" is a really broad term.

The main thing it has is that, because surfaces can have different properties than bulk materials, even of the same thing, and on a nanowhatever pretty much every atom is close to a surface, nanowhosits have different properties than the bulk material.

Also nanostuff can get places bulk material usually can't, since its always dust or smaller. That's really the big commonality nanothings have that they don't share with bulk materials.

The big worry, then, is that nanomaterials have different properties than bulk materials. But if you treat nanoparticles and bulk material as different materials and regulate them differently, and don't assume, ever, that you know anything about a nanomaterial based on its bulk properties, that problem is pretty much solved. Trying to apply the same regulations to all nanotech would be like trying to regulate everything between the size of your hand to your size with the same regulations.

"macro scale" "macro structures" or "macromaterials" might be the words you're looking for. Nanomaterials can, in fact, come 'in bulk'.

FrankTrollman wrote:So getting some kind of environmental policy on it is a good plan.

Or just wait until someone else proves its dangerous then spend several decades concocting fake science "proving" otherwise. By the end of that you can sell your stocks to some other bastard and let them pay the compensation.

Nanotechnology is the study of really small things. As such a definition it is far too vague to be "good" or "bad" in the same way chemistry is neither good or bad in the general sense. You have to get into specifics in order to determine good or bad.

So let's crop up a quick definition, "Nanotechnology, shortened to 'nanotech', is the study of the controlling of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures of the size 100 nanometers or smaller in at least one dimension, and involves developing materials or devices within that size." Oh and while I'm going metric, let's consider that 100 nanometers is 0.1 micrometers. So let's look at an old friend (NOT) of mankind from the previous century, who knew it was nanotech?

"Asbestos as a contaminant: Most respirable asbestos fibers are invisible to the unaided human eye because their size is about 3.0–20.0 µm long and can be as thin as 0.01 µm." (That's 10 nanometers so it qualifies!)

That's a good point as to why they should be dealt with dust contamination regulations, but not much more.

-Crissa