You may have heard that the future lies with nanotechnology - the manufacture of materials and machines on a microscopic scale - but wonder how this relates to a sustainable future. This month, leading U.S. scientists will explore just that at the annual American Chemical Society meeting in Atlanta, Georgia. As part of a new GreenNano initiative, they will present environmentally-friendly applications of nanotechnology manufacturing processes and explore how nanotech can be used to heal environmental damage.

The fossil fuel behemoth formerly known as British Petroleum has been ridiculed by some environmental critics for the new name it adopted several years ago, Beyond Petroleum, given the negligible size of its alternative-energy division. But detractors can’t laugh any longer: On Tuesday, BP announced that it would funnel a whopping $8 billion of R&D funds into clean-energy innovation—eight times the $1 billion it spent in this area over the past decade.