Innovative and responsible governance of nanotechnology for societal development

Governance of nanotechnology is essential for realizing economic growth and other societal benefits of the new technology, protecting public health and environment, and supporting global collaboration and progress. The article outlines governance principles and methods specific for this emerging field. Advances in the last 10 years, the current status and a vision for the next decade are presented based on an international study with input from over 35 countries.     

Supramolecular Polymeric Macrocyclic Receptors – Hybrid Carrier versus Channel Transporters in Bulk Liquid Membranes

The synthesis of heteroditopic macrocyclic ureido-receptors is described. NMR studies show the formation of self-organized oligomeric superstructures. Membrane transport experiments show a direct relation between the self-assembling and the transport properties of these molecular information transfer devices. The self-organization of these receptors may provide the first evidence for the possible hybrid transport carrier versus channel mechanisms in liquid membranes.     

A Constrained Disorder Refinement: “Reinvestigation of “Single‐Crystal X‐ray Structure of 1,3‐Dimethylcyclobutadiene” by M. Shatruk and I. V. Alabugin”

Shatruk and Alabugin propose an alternative structural model for the observed electron density that we have attributed to the photochemical formation of 1,3‐dimethylcyclobutadiene in a protective solid crystalline matrix. The main criticism from Shatruk and Alabugin concerns the modeling of the disorder in the calixarene cavity and in particular the neglect of a residual electron density close to the O1 atom. We published (Chem. Eur. J. 2011 , 17, 10021) our opinion concerning this “ignored peak” in the Supporting Information of the paper. The current response to the Correspondence demonstrates that Shatruk and Alabugin have over‐modeled our data by assigning a small electron density peak, which is hardly more than the density corresponding to a hydrogen atom, to an under‐occupied oxygen site, using inappropriate refinement contraints.     

Nano Mapper: an Internet knowledge mapping system for nanotechnology development

Nanotechnology research has experienced rapid growth in recent years. Advances in information technology enable efficient investigation of publications, their contents, and relationships for large sets of nanotechnology-related documents in order to assess the status of the field. This paper presents the development of a new knowledge mapping system, called Nano Mapper (), which integrates the analysis of nanotechnology patents and research grants into a Web-based platform. The Nano Mapper system currently contains nanotechnology-related patents for 1976–2006 from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), European Patent Office (EPO), and Japan Patent Office (JPO), as well as grant documents from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) for the same time period. The system provides complex search functionalities, and makes available a set of analysis and visualization tools (statistics, trend graphs, citation networks, and content maps) that can be applied to different levels of analytical units (countries, institutions, technical fields) and for different time intervals. The paper shows important nanotechnology patenting activities at USPTO for 2005–2006 identified through the Nano Mapper system.     

Vibronic coupling parameters and Stokes shift in thiogallate phosphors

This article is devoted to the problem of the electron-vibrational interaction in 4f-5d optical transitions and the calculation of the Stokes shift in thiogallate materials. Usually 4f-5d transitions give rise to the broad vibronic bands whose shape-function have been described and found, including terms corresponding to the emission (absorption) from both ground and first excited levels. This approximation can be applied not only at low temperatures, but at high temperatures also, including room temperature, when the most photoluminescence (PL) measurements are carried out. We estimate vibronic coupling parameters and make the fitting of experimental data for Ba, Ca and Sr thiogallates. The peculiarity of Stokes shift is discussed. The theoretical results are in good agreement with the experimental data.     

Laterally-corrugated ridge-waveguide distributed feedback lasers at 980 nm

The paper presents a simulation-based analysis of laterally-corrugated ridge-waveguide distributed feedback semiconductor lasers emitting at 980 nm. The simulations were performed using software developed in-house and the PICS3D software package from Crosslight Software Inc. The effects of the corrugation geometry, phase-shift section, and mirror reflectivities on single longitudinal mode operation are discussed. The lasers, designed along the guidelines derived from the simulation results, were fabricated by using molecular beam epitaxy for wafer growth and low-cost nano-imprint lithography. They exhibited stable single-mode operation with up to 50 dB side-mode suppression ratio.