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Berkeley, California, home of leftist politics and aging flower children, is sometimes mocked as a hippie outpost. But the university town that was once a rallying point for the anti-Vietnam War movement has stayed remarkably ahead of the curve, spearheading social movements that society would later embrace - from efforts to end apartheid to keeping coffee organic.
Now, Berkeley has stepped up again. In December, its city council passed an ordinance that requires companies manufacturing nano-sized particles-any material engineered to be up to 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair - to report their activities to the Toxics Management Division of the city's Community Environmental Advisory Commission, as required with other chemicals.
And so it was that Berkeley became the only place on the planet to draw up a law specifically dealing with nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology, of course, has been hailed as "the next big thing" that will change the way the world addresses energy, medicine, and just about everything else. Scientists have discovered that, by breaking down materials to the size of a few atoms, their properties...