Nanotechnology as an experiment in democracy: how do citizens form opinions about technology and policy?

This article analyzes nanotechnology as an experiment in democratic deliberation, one that seems motivated both by a desire to improve deliberative democracy and to protect the technology from undue public interference. However, rather than involving amplified (overstated) risks, nanotechnology appears to involve attenuated (understated) risks. Results from a 3-year panel study are presented to illustrate the ways in which citizens form opinions about nanotechnology, supporting the assertion that public opinion about complex technology can be both reasonable and stable. Nevertheless, the authors also voice concern that, in the absence of public pressure, risk regulation may not evolve as swiftly as it should to protect both society and industry.     

Comments on the Paper “Are There Enough Decoy States to Ensure Key Secrecy in Quantum Cryptography?” by S. N. Molotkov,K. S. Kravtsov,and M. I. Ryzhkin and on the Erratum to This Paper

Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Physics - In [1] (S. N. Molotkov, K. S. Kravtsov, and M. I. Ryzhkin, J. Exp. Theor. Phys. 128, 544 (2019)), the authors state that the decoy state method in...     

How to find the way out of a forest? By a collective disciplined march,or rather by many individual scouts searching in different directions?: Comments by S. Solomon on the Visioneer white papers by D. Helbing and S. Balietti

This article comments on the Visioneer (Envisioning a Socio Economic Knowledge Collider) Project as described in the following white papers [2–4].     

Reply to comment on “Polymerization,bending, tension: What happens at the leading edge of motile cells?” by Falko Ziebert and Igor S. Aranson

We are grateful to Falko Ziebert and Igor Aranson, who continue with their comment on our publication [5] a discussion on modelling concepts. Ziebert and Aranson present in their contribution to this volume [14] a model concept for cell motility and morphodynamics focusing on gel flow and its determinants. This type of models is particularly useful for describing slow dynamics on the length scale of the whole cell and modelling of cell shape [1,8,11,13,14]. Our approach is set apart from the gel models by taking into account a weakly cross-linked F-actin network region close to the location of polymerization in the lamellipodia of motile cells (semi-flexible region) in addition to the gel in the bulk. This addition explains a variety of non-linear dynamic regimes in cellular and reconstituted systems, and the force-velocity relation of fish keratocytes. Ziebert and Aranson point out in their comment that 1) a more detailed modelling of gel processes may be required to capture large cell deformations, 2) the dynamics of adhesion strength and distribution may be relevant for understanding the relation between cell shape, the dynamic regime of motion and cell velocity, 3) coarse grained models may allow for unifying both concepts, and 4) fluctuations are important in morphodynamics.