Blogs help promote virtual nano conference

If Australia is too far away for you, why not try a virtual trip Down Under to the Pacific Rim Conference in Nanoscience Sept. 7-12. All lectures including slides and audio from the conference will be available through this Web site. Sign-up for the Web-based hub is free. The event is going to be a multidisciplinary deal, covering nanofluidics, nanobio interfaces, nanofabrication, water, energy and minerals, nanoparticles, and computational nanoscience.

It's chaired by Nick Quirke, physical chemistry professor at Imperial College, London and director of the school's master's program in nanomaterials, who's going to show how to go with the nanoflow.

And the Blogosphere plays a vital role in the promotion of this event. I asked Barry Hardy, proprietor of the Nanomosis blog, to explain this a bit more. Here's what he wrote:

Basically we are currently running four scientific communities of practice. For this, we are developing and applying social software wiki-based environments for virtual communication in the community, whereas the Blog tool is being used for publishing selected news and highlights from the community and is available for syndication.

Abstracts of all seminars in Web conferences being held by these communities this Autumn are being made available through the Blogs and their feeds. I hope this will provide a valuable news and reference source in the areas covered and can be used to link to other useful references on the Web.

With the new Nanoscience project the idea is to concentrate on the presentation of the best new research in nanoscience that is needed to form a stronger foundation for the development of nanotechnology. So we will concentrate on building and supporting an excellent scientific program and set of activities which allow scientists globally to communicate, discuss and publish their latest results.

Sounds worthwhile to me. But I'm going to have to remember to ask the nanoflow guy to see if he can answer a very important question: In Broome, Australia, do nano-amounts of fluids swirl down nano-sized drains in the opposite direction? Can't wait to find out.