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On January 24, 2020, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) posted a December 13, 2019, memorandum to Docket EPA-HQ-OPP-2011-0370, the nanosilver registration review docket.  The memorandum lists the 12 products for which EPA issued a generic data call-in (GDCI) as part of the nanosilver case (5042).  EPA issued the DCIs on August 31, 2019, and states that they can be accessed in the docket. EPA Reg. Number PC Code Nano-Naming ID DCI Number 83587-3 072591...

The National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO) is scheduled to publish on January 27, 2020, a Federal Register notice concerning public meetings under the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI).  According to the notice, the NNCO will hold one or more workshops, webinars, networks, and Community of Interest teleconferences between the publication date of the Federal Register notice and December 31, 2020.  Attendance information, including...

By Lynn L. Bergeson Pennsylvania State University’s (Penn State) Huck Institutes of the Life Sciences’ Center of Excellence in Industrial Biotechnology (CoEIB) is now offering a new round of IMPACT Seed Grants to support interdisciplinary research, curricular development, or educational activities in the broad area of industrial biotechnology. These areas include but are not limited to: biopharmaceutical manufacturing, food biotechnology, and production of biobased chemicals....

We are pleased to announce that Lynn L. Bergeson will present at the 9th Nano Conference hosted by the Sustainable Nanotechnology Organization (SNO) and Nanotechnology, Occupational and Environmental Health (NanOEH) Committee.  Abstracts for the October 4-6, 2020, Conference are due March 6, 2020.  As reported in our December 9, 2019, blog item, the Conference will address: The Conference will be held in Denver, Colorado....

By Lynn L. Bergeson On January 1, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump released a statement recognizing the beginning of National Biotechnology Month and the country’s “enormous potential” of biotechnology to improve lives in the United States and around the globe. Highlighting the benefits of biotechnology in different sectors, President Trump states that for every one job in biotechnology, nearly two other jobs are created in various sectors in the rural United States. In his...

On January 3, 2020, the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) announced that it is expanding its podcast offerings in 2020.  The three podcast series will consist of interviews between Dr. Lisa Friedersdorf, Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office (NNCO), and various experts, and will explore nanotechnology from three different perspectives: Beginning January 6, 2020, NNI will release a new episode every Monday....

The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) has announced a call for abstract submissions for oral presentations, posters, and poster pitches at its colloquium on “A coordinated approach to assess the human health risks of micro- and nanoplastics in food,” which will be held in Lisbon on June 8-9, 2020.  EFSA states that “[m]icroplastics are small particles of plastic less than 5mm in size; nanoplastics are even smaller, ranging from 1 to 100 nanometres (N.B. 1 nanometre...

On December 11, 2019, the European Union (EU) Observatory for Nanomaterials (EUON) published a Nanopinion entitled “The innovator, the regulator and the citizen — building public trust through transparent, empowered and safe innovation.”  Carlos Eduardo Lima da Cunha, the European Commission (EC), explains how the EU is supporting safe by design approaches to new technologies such as nanomaterials to deliver safer products to the market.  Lima da Cunha notes that the EU has...

On December 17, 2019, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) will host its first annual conference in Washington, D.C., to discuss alternative test methods and strategies to reduce animal testing.  EPA states that its conference “will bring together some of the leading voices in environmental and health research to discuss efforts to reduce testing on mammals.”  The conference will focus on the New Approach Methods (NAM), which include “any technologies,...

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published standard ISO 20814:2019, “Nanotechnologies — Testing the photocatalytic activity of nanoparticles for NADH oxidation.”  The standard specifies a method for the measurement of the photocatalytic activity (PCA) of nanoparticles (NP), suspended in an aqueous environment in physiologically relevant conditions, by measuring the ultraviolet (UV)-induced nicotine adenine dinucleotide hydrate (NADH) oxidation. ...