This book celebrates a few examples of the many women who have advanced the field of nanotechnology. The book opens with an overview of the field, illuminating how nanotechnology is opening the door to manipulating matter on a scale one billionth of a meter. Then the use of nanotechnology to improve science and scientific literacy is discussed, and strategies for incorporating nanotechnology in K-12 education are presented. Next, an array of female scientists provide technical descriptions of how their work is impacting their respective areas. Topics include applications in the energy, electronics, water, communication and health care sectors, among others. The book closes with a historical perspective on the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative and future prospects for nanotechnology. This book provides the opportunity to appreciate some of the key advancements made by women engineers in nanotechnology and to become inspired by the ingenuity and creativity, collaborative nature, and altruistic inventiveness of women engineers. Includes contributions from leading female scientists in nanotechnology Highlights topics in nanotechnology ranging from health care, to sensors, to alternative energy, to clean water, to nanoelectronics Presents an opportunity to learn about the breadth, depth and impact of the field of nanotechnology and women’s important contributions to it

This book begins with an examination of the numbers of women in physics in English-speaking countries, moving on to examine factors that affect girls and their decision to continue in science, right through to education and on into the problems that women in physics careers face. Looking at all of these topics with one eye on the progress that the field has made in the past few years, and another on those things that we have yet to address, the book surveys the most current research as it tries to identify strategies and topics that have significant impact on issues that women have in the field.

In this STEM-ready book, an acclaimed physicist takes readers into the cutting-edge world of nanoscience where they will learn about the tiny building blocks that make up the world around us.

This illustrated work examines inventions and discoveries made by women, beginning with the first patent application made in 1637 and ending with the outbreak of war in 1914. Accounts of the stories of the inventions are placed into the context in which their discoveries were made.

Small things add up: trillions of dollars of products applying nanotechnology have been marketed to consumers promising new medicines, strong packaging to protect goods from contamination, stronger eyelash mascara and long-lasting lipstick, construction materials for housing, cheaper energy, and new drugs to fight cancer. Nanotechnology applications to consumer products represent a huge slice of daily economic life, heralding a revolutionary age for science and technology. How can the benefits of nanotechnology be realized while protecting public health? Global Health Impacts of Nanotechnology Law: A Tool for Stakeholder Engagement fills a major void in legal, scientific policy discourse about nanotechnology for people who are curious about nanoscience, bioethics, and law. The pioneering, plain-language text of Dr. Ilise L. Feitshans, international health law scholar and former international civil servant, enables readers to move comfortably across disciplines and explore how nanotechnology can reshape both commerce and public health to improve daily life worldwide.

"Increasingly, scientists are gaining control over matter at the nanometer scale. Spearheaded by physical scientists operating at the interfaces of physics and biology (such as the author herself), advances in nanoscience and technology are transforming how we think about life and treat human health. This is due to a convergence of size. To do medicine, one must understand and be able to reach the nanoscale environment of healthy cells in tissues and organs, as well as other nano-sized building blocks that constitute a living organism, such as proteins and DNA. The ground-breaking advances being made at the frontiers of nanoscience and -technology, specifically in the areas of biology and medicine, are the subject of this short, popular-level book. Chapter 1 describes how nanotechnology and quantitative methods in biology are progressively being deployed to embrace life in all its multiscale, hierarchical intricacy and multiplicity. Chapters 2 through 4 review how bioinspired and biomimetic nanostructures and nanomachines are being created and integrated into strategies aimed at solving specific medical problems. In particular, Chapter 2 summarizes how scientists are seeking to build artificial nanostructures using both biological molecules and the organizational principles of biology. Chapter 3 gives an account of how nanotechnology is being used to develop drug-delivery strategies that specifically target cancer cells and tumors to improve the efficacy of current cancer chemotherapies. Chapter 4 reviews the science of one of the most potentially transformative scientific fields: tissue engineering. In a concluding chapter (Chapter 5), Contera reviews how nanotechnology, biology, and medicine will continue fusing with other sciences and technologies - incorporating more mathematical and computational modelling, as well as AI and robotics. Nanoscale devices will be used to learn biology; and biology will be used to inspire increasingly sophisticated "transmaterial" devices that mimic some of the characteristics of biology and incorporate new features that are not available in the biological world. The effects on human health and longevity will be profound. In a more personal epilogue, Contera describes the crossroads at which we find ourselves. Accessing our own biology evokes a mixture of possibility and dread. However, Contera maintains that we can create a positive transmaterial world for the benefit of humankind, and she describes ways in which scientists are proactively engaging with the public, politicians, industry, and entrepreneurs, as well as the media and the arts, to communicate the power and risks of new advances and to influence the ways in which new technologies will affect our future"--

Nanotechnology is enabling applications in materials, microelectronics, health, and agriculture, which are projected to create the next big shift in production, comparable to the industrial revolution. Such major shifts always co-evolve with social relationships. This book focuses on how nanotechnologies might affect equity/equality in global society. Nanotechnologies are likely to open gaps by gender, ethnicity, race, and ability status, as well as between developed and developing countries, unless steps are taken now to create a different outcome. Organizations need to change their practices, and cultural ideas must be broadened if currently disadvantaged groups are to have a more equal position in nano-society rather than a more disadvantaged one. Economic structures are likely to shift in the nano-revolution, requiring policymakers and participatory processes to invent new institutions for social welfare, better suited to the new economic order than those of the past.