With belt-tightening the norm these days, a 17 September announcement by NSF and the US Environmental Protection Agency was especially welcome: The two agencies upped their investment in studying the safety implications of nanotechnology from the intended $25 million to $38 million. That money goes to research in an area for which lawmakers threatened last spring to mandate more spending (see Physics Today, Physics Today 0031-9228 61 6 2008 24 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.2947640 June 2008, page 24 ).
The increase is to create two multi-campus, interdisciplinary research centers rather than one. The Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology headed by the University of California, Los Angeles, will get $24 million, and the CEIN spearheaded by Duke University will get about $14 million. “It’s unusual that we are funding two and making a much bigger investment [than planned],” says Alan Tessier, a program director in the division of environmental biology at NSF,...
