To assist the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in its fact-finding on the use of nanotechnologies in foods, cosmetics, drugs, and other consumer goods, nanoscience’s leading publisher and conference producer will co-produce a special “Health & Environmental Summit on Nano” during Nanotech 2007, May 20-24 in Santa Clara, California.

The ‘Health and Environmental Summit on Nano’ will be co-produced by PennWell Corp.’s SmallTimes magazine and Nano Science and Technology Institute (NSTI) Nanotech 2007, the leading nanotechnology conference in the U.S, where some 4,000 nano experts from science, research, commercial and government interests are expected to gather.

In the single largest investment in the school’s 150-year history, Penn State University is in the midst of planning for a new state-of-the-art research building complex that will feature a multidisciplinary approach to nano and biomaterial sciences.

With a total investment of $190 million ($40 million from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania), Penn State will construct a new 350,000-square-foot Materials/Life Science research facility at its University Park campus. With laboratory space to accommodate more than 125 faculty and staff in cross-disciplinary research, the new building will facilitate collaborations with Penn State’s Hershey School of Medicine and long-time industrial research partners such as healthcare and materials giants Johnson & Johnson and Bayer Materials.

The Nano Science and Technology Institute (NSTI) is busy creating one of the world’s largest scientific and business programs for its Nanotech 2007 Conference and Trade Show. The conference is taking place in Santa Clara, California at the Santa Clara Convention Center May 20-24, 2007. Nanotech 2007 is celebrating its 10th anniversary as the largest small tech conference in the U.S.

Led by Dr. Erik Hoek, a research team at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a new reverse osmosis (RO) membrane that has the potential to reduce the cost of seawater desalination and wastewater reclamation. The new membrane utilizes a cross-linked matrix of polymers and engineered nanoparticles designed to bring in water ions but block almost all contaminants.

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