Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethics. Show all posts
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Nanoethics Journal

Thursday, July 19, 2007

The nanoethics journal has been available since last june. VOA issued a report on the journal yesterday:

Most nanotechnologies are still at the early stages of development, and Nanoethics' editor John Weckert says now is the best time to be anticipating problems that might arise, "so it won't be necessarily a matter of just waiting to see what the problems are and then trying to solve them."

Leading science publisher Springer describes its new journal as "the watchdog of a new technology." Weckert hopes the publication can foster a better understanding of the risks and benefits of nanotechnology among scientists, policy makers and the general public.

Listen to the podcast here. Check the Journal in SpringerLink here.

 

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Synthia's Patent Application at the USPTO

Saturday, June 9, 2007

For those of you who are curious, here's a link to Venter Institute's "synthetic life" patent application at the USPTO:
The present invention relates, e.g., to a minimal set of protein-coding genes which provides the information required for replication of a free-living organism in a rich bacterial culture medium, wherein (1) the gene set does not comprise the 101 genes listed in Table 2; and/or wherein (2) the gene set comprises the 381 protein-coding genes listed in Table 3 and, optionally, one of more of: a set of three genes encoding ABC transporters for phosphate import (genes MG410, MG411 and MG412; or genes MG289, MG290 and MG291); the lipoprotein-encoding gene MG185 or MG260; and/or the glycerophosphoryl diester phosphodiesterase gene MG293 or MG385.