I was reading through some e-mails and journals recently, sorting through some of the scientific happenings in the nanotech world, and something started to resonate with me that played out fully when I was at the SPIE Photonics and Optics Conference in San Diego a couple weeks ago. Although there’s great interest from the investor side in nanotech, US industry isn’t moving very quickly into this space.

After a couple days at the San Francisco Money Show, where I did a Webcast event on nanotech investing, including my favorite hot stocks, I’m in lovely San Diego for the next few days attending a SPIE Photonic and Optics Conference. Sunday was the first day and here are my initial impressions. I’ll be blogging on At These Levels while I’m here if you want to read the day-to-day goings on.

Last issue I was fawning over HP’s potential release of the Fourth Passive Circuit technology, the memristor, for computers by next year. This issue isn’t exactly as directly beneficial to consumers as the memristor advance, but it’s equally revolutionary and significant in its own geeky kind of way.

There are inductors, resistors and capacitors. These are the three passive circuits that all electronics have been built upon since the advent of electronic devices. Everything from a radio to a parallel processing supercomputer to the space shuttle uses the same junk.

This is what I continually harp on: Nanotech isn’t just one thing; it’s an enabling technology that has the ability to change the way we do almost everything, from the mundane to the esoteric.

Although most penny stocks are best avoided, there’s one I’ve been following for some time—Industrial Nanotech. I really think it has a unique product and a good business plan.

The major press was all over a study that came out a couple weeks ago observing carbon nanotubes and C60 buckyballs (or fullerenes) to have potential carcinogenic pathologies.

My biggest issue with the whole Green Tech trend is that most people are looking for that one big solution and betting all their money on a horse that not only isn’t in the race but isn’t even born yet.

It’s likely that, if you follow the nightly news, read the paper or even scan your customized Google News browser, you missed one of the biggest scientific discoveries to come around in a long time. No, it wasn’t that Britney got the kids back.

Solar power is becoming the latest niche frenzy in the Green Tech and nanotech space. There’s all sorts of talk about thin film solar and printable photovoltaic (PV) cells using nanorods or nanotubes.