Nanologue Background Paper on selected nanotechnology applications and their ethical, legal, and social implications

Background paper for the Nanologue Project, a dialogue funded by the European Commission that sought to bring together a wide range of technological experts' businesses, and civil society representatives to discuss the ethical, legal, and social implications of nanotechnologies. Paper discusses their methodology of discussing specific nanotechnology applications rather then `nanotechnology` in general, and the selection of the set of ethical, legal, and social issues the project focused on. It then discusses the results of the major finding concerning these issues in relation to energy conversion and storage, food packaging, and medical diagnostics, and how discussions among stakeholders based on these results will be conducted in the second half of the project.