Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Mapping Study of Regulation and Governance of Nanotechnologies

Last week, the European FramingNano project released the major report "Mapping Study on Regulation and Governance of Nanotechnologies. This publication gives a full picture of the regulatory activities, public engagement projects, and other research projects countries and regulatory/standard-setting agencies around the world are taking to address the human health, safety and environmental impacts of nanotechnologies. The report looks at the debate about the risks and concerns related to nanotechnology research and development, and also examines the different regulatory measures being considered and adopted by countries (using existing regulatory frameworks, voluntary measures, standardization, etc). The final section of the report includes a detailed summary by country of the proposed and existing strategies and action plans for nanotechnology, ongoing research projects worldwide, and a snapshot of the activities of standards organizations in regard to nanotechnology.

This report is one of the best publications currently available on the current regulatory activities of countries around the world, especially in Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia. In the next few weeks, we will be going through the report, and adding links to the references not before included in the NanoEthicsBank.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Engineering Ethics Resources

Every few months, I try and make time to do a review of our online resource guides to add material, take down broken links, and see what kinds of new resources are available. In the field of engineering and science ethics, the Online Ethics Center (OEC) at the National Academy of Engineering has consistently been one of the top resources available to students and scholars in this subject area. Covering a wide array of topics from responsible research to environmental ethics, the OEC is an extremely good place for students to begin their research, for practitioners to gain an introduction to what is meant by professional ethics, or for instructors looking to integrate ethics into their professional courses. This is also an especially good place to look for or discuss ethics cases.

I am always looking for new resources in this and other areas of professional ethics, so please feel free to suggest other web sites, articles or books you have come across!