Science, Technology, and Society Reviewer: Nanotechnology

Nanotechnology

• Nano means "dwarf" in Greek.
• Richard Feynman coined the term nanotechnology.
• The title of Richard Feynman's famous speech introducing nanotechnology is "There is Plenty of Room at the Bottom".
• A nanometer is equivalent to one billionth of a meter.
• Consumer products that use nanotechnology include sunscreen lotion, golf shafts, and tennis rackets.
• Graphene is a type of carbon that is composed of flat sheets, extremely electrically conductive, and an allotrope of carbon consisting of a single layer of carbon.
• Gray goo is a hypothetical nano robot that can replicate itself.
• Human hair can be measured on the nanoscale.
• Materials with the same chemical composition can have different properties at the nanoscale size.
• Nano particles can be found in nature and can be made by humans.
• The scale range of nanomaterials is 1-100nm, as provided by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
• There are present Philippine laws that regulate the manufacture of nanotechnology.

Medical Ethics

• Medical Ethics refers to a system of moral principles that apply values to the practice of clinical medicine and scientific research.
• Thomas Percival is the English author and physician who published Medical Ethics, which first dated back to 1803.
• The first Code of Ethics was published in the 5th century during the reign of King Theodoric the Great.
• The American Medical Association first adapted a Code of Medical Ethics in 1847, based on the work of Thomas Percival.
• Autonomy is a doctrine that refers to the right of patients to refuse any kind of treatment.
• The concept of double effect refers to a situation where a treatment has both beneficial and harmful effects, such as in the case of pain relievers.

Toxic Substances

• Sarin is a colorless, odorless nerve gas and an organophosphate chemical, also known as GB.
• Soman is a combination of Sarin and Lewisite, and is an effective blistering agent.
• Zyklon B is a poison gas invented in Germany in 1920, and is a type of hydrogen cyanide used by the Nazis to kill war victims.
• Ebola Virus is a virus that causes severe bleeding.
• VX is a very toxic nerve gas, 100 times more toxic than Sarin.
• Smallpox is a disease that causes high fever, body aches, and a rash that develops into fluid-like bumps and produces scabs and permanent, pitted scars.
• Anthrax is a biological weapon caused by a bacterium, found naturally in some animals in low levels, but becomes deadly when its spores are inhaled by humans.
• Plague is a disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, transmitted to humans by bites from infected rats.
• Tularemia is also known as rabbit fever.
• Rinderpest is also known as cattle plague.