The NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for High-rate Nanomanufacturing (CHN) has announced their annual Industry Day Showcase to take place on February 2, 2010. The event will showcase the research of the Center, including Northeastern University, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

Instrumentation, Metrology, and Standards for Nanomanufacturing IV, is slated to become the leading forum for the exchange of foundational information and discussion of instrumentation, metrology and standards which are needed components of nanomanufacturing. This conference is part of the NanoEngineering program track of SPIE's NanoScience + Engineering symposium, which will be held from August 1 - 5, 2010, in San Diego, CA. Deadlines for abstracts is January 18.

On January 7th, the Innovation Society Ltd. (St.Gallen) publicly released a "Nano Information Pyramid," which was proposed by Dr. Christoph Meili at the 5th International NanoRegulation Conference in Rapperswil, Switzerland, last November. The Pyramid outlines a schema for the provision of nanospecific information at every stage in the value chain.

An article published online today in Mass Higher Tech highlights the impact that nanotechnology can and likely will have on manufacturing in New England. In fact, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies' Nanotechnology Map already lists Boston as the top Nano Metro, with more than 30 nanotecnology organizations in the city alone.

Nanotechnology researchers fared very well when the Department of Energy announced the first-ever projects funded by the new Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) in late October, utilizing money DOE received through the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. As a direct example of the private-public partnership model, thirty-seven projects totaling $151 Million were funded from a group of about 300 proposals solicited in this new DARPA-inspired program. According to Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, "ARPA-E is a crucial part of the new effort by the U.S. to spur the next Industrial Revolution in clean energy technologies, creating thousands of new jobs and helping cut carbon pollution."

The National Nanomanufacturing Network is pleased to welcome two additional Contributing Editors who will round out the NNN's Editorial Team for 2010. Daniel Herr and Vincent Caprio will bring their expertise to bear on Advanced Processes + Tools and Business + Entrepreneurship focus areas for InterNano.

Principal investigators Hyunmin Yi of Tufts and Erik Demaine of MIT have recently been awarded an NSF Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) Grant entitled "Geometric Algorithms for Staged Nanomanufacturing" out of the NSF's Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems.

On November 17 and 18 the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) held the third of four workshops in its nanoEHS series. The series is an effort to review the state of research in what is now the NNI’s fastest growing program component area: Environmental, Health, and Safety Research.

The National Nanomanufacturing Network is pleased to add two new Contributing Editors to the  InterNano editorial team. Hyung Gyu Park and J. Alexander Liddle will bring their expertise to bear on our Fundamental Science and Advanced Processes + Tools categories, respectively.

Acenes are organic semiconductor compounds that show great promise in organic field effect transistor (OFET) and organic light emitting diode (OLED) applications.

While no one was paying attention, the organic foods industry considered steps to ban all nanotechnology products in foods, processes and packaging. Dozens of comments were submitted prior to a recent meeting of the National Organic Standards Board (NOSB) where the Materials Committee recommended a prohibition of all that is nanotechnology. The comments reflect a nearly universal sentiment among consumer groups that there is no place for nanotechnology in the organic industry.

In an open letter submitted on November 6, 2009, 41 Nobel laureates urged Congress to act on the Federal Research Public Access Act (FRPAA), bi-partisan legislation introduced by Senators Lieberman and Cornyn to ensure that research funded by federal agencies including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF) are made available to the public via the Internet within 6 months of publication.

The November issue of Nature Nanotechnology includes a news feature titled “Polymers: Performance Under Pressure” written by two University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers, Thomas P. Russell and Dong Hyun Lee.

In October, the National Library of Medicine's Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSBD)—a comprehensive, peer-reviewed database of toxicology information for over 5,000 chemicals—added seven nanomaterials records, the first set of such records in the datafile.

In the five years since graphene was discovered, the material's production output has jumped to 15 tons per year and is expected to exceed 200 tons per year within the next two years, according to Nature Nanotechnology Associate Editor Michael Segal.

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) will hold their third nanoEHS workshop on November 17-18 at the Holiday Inn Rosslyn at Key Bridge, Arlington, Virginia. The workshop, Nanomaterials and Human Health & Instrumentation, Metrology, and Analytical Methods, will continue the dialogue on some of the most crucial scientific questions of the day.

If you need a reason to register for the upcoming US/Ireland Emerging Technologies Conference, their program session on nanomanufacturing for biomedical applications should be enough.

The National Nanomanufacturing Network is pleased to welcome John Monica, Jr., of Porter Wright Morris & Arthur as a Contributing Editor on Environmental Health and Safety and Regulation issues for InterNano.

Researchers from Uppsala University have created a cellulose-polypyrrole composite electrode material with the highest reported charge rate and capacity for nonmetal batteries.

A simple enough manufacturing process could enable carbon nanotubes to replace the vertical wires in chips, permitting denser packing of circuits.