Welcome to NELSI Global, the Center on Nanotechnology and Society's international public policy document archive dedicated to nanotechnology's ethical, legal, and societal implications (NELSI). NELSI Global serves as a unified clearinghouse, enabling users to access key international and U.S. public policy documents and other online resources addressing the NELSI agenda, including regulations, legislation, case law, congressional testimony, and reports - among many other items.

When the acronym "ELSI" was coined for "ethical, legal, and social issues" in the context of the human genome project, its dual function was to ensure early awareness of potential concerns and aid in the cultural acceptance of the technology, thereby reducing its risk profile. Because the stakes are higher for nanotechnology, because it is being touted as the transformative technology of the 21st century, and because it already touches so many industries and sectors of the economy, the exploration of NELSI on a broad and public scale is central to nanotechnology's success.

Advances in nanotechnology must be considered within a NELSI framework as the technology is poised to present us with decisions of immense consequence.

It often seems that the number of documents pertaining to NELSI is increasing even faster than nanoinnovation. To help with this information overload, NELSI Global serves as a user-friendly online document archive allowing users to efficiently navigate through the vast array of NELSI information to find relevant documents. All documents are categorized and can be accessed according to the following four main categories: (1) Topic; (2) Jurisdiction; (3) Document Type; and (4) Entity. In addition, each of the four main categories is further divided into sub-categories, thereby, allowing for even greater user-driven document specificity and selectivity.

To learn more about the Center on Nanotechnology and Society please visit http://www.nano-and-society.org/. For an overview of nanotechnology, including nanotechnology's background and impact, please visit http://www.nano-and-society.org/about/nano_101.html.