CNS-ASU Ideas

CNS-ASU Seminar Series (Archived)

Stuart Lindsey, the director of the Center for Single Molecule Biophysics in the BioDesign Institue at ASU, and Taylor Jackson, a student in the Barrett Honors College,  will discuss "Celebrating 20 Years of Scanning Probe Microscopy at ASU" Wednesday, May 17, 2006 at 11:30 am in BioDesign B, room L10/14.
Click here to view the presentation.

Jeffrey Schloss, the Co-Chair of the Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative, NIH, and a program director in the Division of Extramural Research at the National Human Genome Research Institute will discuss "Nanomedicine in the NIH Roadmap: Priorities, Vision, & Implications," Wednesday, May 3, 2006 at 11:00 am in  BioDesign A, room 10/14.

Jeffrey Schloss, the Co-Chair of the Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative, NIH, and a program director in the Division of Extramural Research at the National Human Genome Research Institute will discuss "Nanotechnology in Biology & Medicine," Tuesday, May 2,2006 at 3:30 pm in the BioDesign Auditorium.

Andrew Jamison, a Professor of Technology and Society at Aalborg University in Denmark and Guest Professor of Environmental Science at Malmö University College will discuss "Hubris and Hybrids: On the Cultural Assesment of Nanotechnology," Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 12:00pm in the BioDesign Auditorium.  Click Here for an Mp3 of of the discussion (right click, save as), Click Here for his PowerPoint presentation.

February 3, 2006

Michael Bennett, Technē De Jure: Technological Legislation in a Nanotechnological Age: The technological and scientific advances germane to modern societies increasingly stress the capacity of legal theory and legal regimes to think through and act upon basic challenges. In an earlier phase of modernity, jurisprudence —in the forms of judicial practices, policy-making legislative processes and theory— was much more effective in shepherding a lay citizenry through varied adaptations to cultural change. In our era, characterized by rampant technocracy, narrow specialization, increasing complexity and diminishing understanding of our own creations, much jurisprudence is effectively captured in the wake of technoscientific change and hindered in attempts to enact and sustain basic social visions and cultural commitments.

In this talk I will briefly outline several theoretical approaches to addressing the challenging questions facing jurisprudence in a modern technological society. I will develop more fully a perspective based on the concept of technological legislation and describe the advantages of this view over its competitors within the context of domestic nanotechnoscience research, development and dissemination.

January 24, 2006
Jennifer Kuzma, Tiny Things, Big Divides: Bridgng Practice and Policy in the Study and Design of Oversight for Bio- and Nanotechnology: In this presentation, I will frame nanotechnology oversight issues by first reviewing the development and attributes of the existing oversight system for genetically engineered organisms.  There are significant strengths and weaknesses, challenges and opportunities, and successes and failures associated with this system, and it illustrates several lessons for nanotechnology.    With these lessons in mind, I will then review existing features of nanotechnology oversight.  Finally, I will present my work on two projects which attempt to bridge the divide between the practical and theoretical worlds of science and technology policy within the context of nano-bio governance.

 
January 20, 2006
Cynthia Selin, Expectations and the Emergence of Nanotechnology: While nanotechnology is often defined as operations on the 10^-9 meters, the lack of charisma in the scale-bound definitions has been fortified by remarkable dreams and alluring promises, which sparked excitement for nanotechnology. The story of the rhetorical development of nanotechnology reveals how speculative claims are powerful constructions that create legitimacy in this emerging technological domain. From its inception, nanotechnology has been more of a dream than reality, more fiction than fact.

However, in recent years, the term nanotechnology has been actively drawn towards the present in order to begin to deliver on the fantastic expectations. This debate is loaded with paradox. This work examines how future claims work to define what counts as nanotechnology and reveals the dilemmas that accompany temporal disjunctures. Science and politics converge in debates about the future of technology as expectations serve to create power and legitimacy in the emerging area.

November 4, 2005

Rosalyn W. Berne, Conversations & Reflections with Researchers in Nanotechnology: Rosalyn Berne will discuss Nanotalk, her book of conversations and explorations with thirty-five individual research scientists and engineers sharing their ideas, experiences, perceptions and beliefs about their work, humanity, nature, chance and the future of the world with nanotechnology.  These conversations are used as the basis of reflection and deliberation, about the possible significance of nanotechnology to humanity and how it might be pursued conscientiously, and ethically.

October 6, 2005

Gregor Wolbring (University of Calgary) Human Enhancement Medicine: The Final Frontier: Advances in and converging of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive sciences (NBIC) -- increases our abilities to change/modify, ‘enhance’ the human body (structure, function, capabilities) beyond species typical boundaries. An increasing amount of people believe that we will and /should/ try to overcome the biological limitations of the human body. This lecture will explore:

a) the area of human performance enhancements beyond species typical
boundaries

b) the consequences of the appearance of the transhumanist/enhancement
model of health, disease, disability and wellbeing, and the dynamic of
medicalization

c) how the dynamics and arguments around the human performance
enhancement debate as we have it today will make it very likely that a
new field of Enhancement medicine will appear and flourish as the result
of the new scientific and technological capabilities.

Powerpoint Presentation

www.bioethicsanddisability.org/start.html