US lawmakers have saddled American biotech with another legal restriction, and scientists are only partially engaging with this looming medical and economic problem.
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Category: law – Page 84
As the biotech revolution accelerates globally, the US could be getting left behind on key technological advances: namely, human genetic modification.
A Congressional ban on human germline modification has “drawn new lines in the sand” on gene editing legislation, argues a paper published today in Science by Harvard law and bioethics professor I. Glenn Cohen and leading biologist Eli Adashi of Brown University. They say that without a course correction, “the United States is ceding its leadership in this arena to other nations.”
Germline gene modification is the act of making heritable changes to early stage human embryos or sex cells that can be passed down to the next generation, and it will be banned in the US. This is different from somatic gene editing, which is editing cells of humans that have already been born.
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Genie out of the bottle.
A new guide into 3D printing rights and responsibilities has been launched to explain what consumers need to know before printing in 3D, including the potential risks in creating and sharing 3D printable files, and what kinds of safeguards are in place.
The website “Everything you need to get started in 3D printing” was developed by staff at the University of Melbourne in response to the growing number of users keen to find, share, and create 3D printed goods online.
A team from the School of Culture and Communications at the University of Melbourne designed the website which includes a scorecard for various 3D printing sites, as well as some useful tips for those getting started in the 3D printing world.
A new nanometric conductive ink
Posted in 3D printing, law
New ink for printers to improve speed and conserve ink. I know a few legal and accounting firms that would love this.
Nano Dimension Ltd has announced that its wholly owned subsidiary, Nano Dimension Technologies, has filed a patent application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the development of a new nanometric conductive ink, which is based on a unique synthesis.
The new nanoparticle synthesis further minimizes the size of the silver nanoparticles particles in the company’s ink products. The new process achieves silver nanoparticles as small as 4 nanometers.
Nano Dimension believes that accurate control of nanoparticles’ size and surface properties will allow for improved performance of the company’s DragonFly 2020 3D printer, currently in development. The innovative ink enables lower melting temperatures and more complete sintering (fusing of particles into solid conductive trace), leading to an even higher level of conductivity.
Can serve many uses such as geneology, etc. However, the bigger advancement will be with criminal/ legal investigations.
Rice University researchers have developed gas biosensors to “see” into soil and allow them to follow the behavior of the microbial communities within.
In a study in the American Chemical Society’s journal Environmental Science and Technology, the Rice team described using genetically engineered bacteria that release methyl halide gases to monitor microbial gene expression in soil samples in the lab.
The bacteria are programmed using synthetic biology to release gas to report when they exchange DNA through horizontal gene transfer, the process by which organisms share genetic traits without a parent-to-child relationship. The biosensors allow researchers to monitor such processes in real time without having to actually see into or disturb a lab soil sample.
Interesting.
The Science Council of Japan will make clear its position on military-linked research — possibly overturning a decades-long ban — by early next year, the academic group said Friday.
A committee of 15 academics from fields ranging from physics, political science to law held its first meeting to discuss whether to revise statements released by the council in 1950 and 1967 stating that the group will “never engage in military research.”
Over the next several months, the committee will hold five or six sessions to discuss how they should assess changes in the security and technology environment, how to define dual-use research, how studies tied to national security would impact academic transparency and how inflows of defense-related funding would alter the overall nature of research.