March 9th, 2010
I have a number of bits today amongst them, Canadian nanotechnology, Canadian business innovation, digital archiving, and copyrights and linking.
A Quebec biotech company, Enobia Pharma is working with Dr. Marc McKee on treatments for genetic bone diseases. From the news item on Nanowerk,
The field is known as biomineralization and it involves cutting-edge, nanotech investigation into the proteins, enzymes and other molecules that control the coupling of mineral ions (calcium and phosphate) to form nano-crystals within the bone structure. The treatment, enzyme replacement therapy to treat hypophosphatasia, is currently undergoing clinical testing in several countries including Canada. Hypophosphatasia is a rare and severe disorder resulting in poor bone mineralization. In infants, symptoms include respiratory insufficiency, failure to thrive and rickets.
This research in biomineralization (coupling of mineral ions to form nano-crystals) could lead to better treatments for other conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, and kidney stones.
McKee’s research is being funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research From the Nanowerk news item,
McKee’s research program is a concrete example of how university researchers are working with private sector partners as an integral part of Canada’s innovative knowledge economy, and the positive outcomes their collaborations can offer.
I don’t think that businesses partnering with academic institutions in research collaborations is precisely what they mean when they talk about business innovation (research and development). From a March 2, 2010 article about innovation by Preston Manning in the Globe & Mail,
Government competition policy and support for science, technology, and innovation (STI) can complement business leadership on the innovation front, but it is not a substitute for such leadership. Action to increase innovation in the economy is first and foremost a business responsibility.
Manning goes on to describe what he’s done on this matter and asks for suggestions on how to encourage Canadian business to be more innovative. (Thanks to Pasco Phronesis for pointing me to Manning’s article.) I guess the problem is that what we’ve been doing has worked well enough and so there’s no great incentive to change.
I’ve been on an archiving kick lately and so here’s some more. The British Library recently (Feb.25.10) announced public access to their UK Web Archive, a project where they have been saving online materials. From the news release,
British Library Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley said:
“Since 2004 the British Library has led the UK Web Archive in its mission to archive a record of the major cultural and social issues being discussed online. Throughout the project the Library has worked directly with copyright holders to capture and preserve over 6,000 carefully selected websites, helping to avoid the creation of a ‘digital black hole’ in the nation’s memory.
“Limited by the existing legal position, at the current rate it will be feasible to collect just 1% of all free UK websites by 2011. We hope the current DCMS consultation will enact the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act and extend the provision of legal deposit through regulationto cover freely available UK websites, providingregular snapshots ofthe free UK web domain for the benefit of future research.”
Mike Masnick at Techdirt notes (here) that the British Library has to get permission (the legal position Dame Brindley refers to) to archive these materials and this would seem to be an instance where ‘fair use’ should be made to apply.
On the subject of losing data, I read an article by Mike Roberts for the Vancouver Province, January 22, 2006, p. B5 (digital copy here) that posed this question, What if the world lost its memory? It was essentially an interview with Luciana Duranti (chair of the Master of Archival Studies programme and professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada) where she commented about the memories we had already lost. From the article,
Alas, she says, every day something else is irretrievably lost.
The research records of the U.S. Marines for the past 25 years? Gone.
East German land-survey records vital to the reunification of Germany? Toast.
A piece of digital interactive music recorded by Canadian composer Keith Hamel just eight years ago?
“Inaccessible, over, finito,” says Duranti, educated in her native Italy and a UBC prof since 1987.
Duranti, director of InterPARES (International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems), an international cyber-preservation project comprising 20 countries and 60 global archivists, says original documentation is a thing of the past.
I was shocked by how much ‘important’ information had been lost and I assume still is. (Getting back to the UK Web Archives, if they can only save 1% of the UK’s online material then a lot has got to be missing.)
For anyone curious about InterPARES, I got my link for the Roberts article from this page on the InterPARES 1 website.
Back to Techdirt and Mike Masnick who has educated me as to a practice I had noted but not realized is ‘the way things are done amongst journalists’. If you spend enough time on the web, you’ll notice stories that make their way to newspapers without any acknowledgment of their web or writerly origins and I’m not talking about news releases which are designed for immediate placement in the media or rewritten/reworked before placement. From the post on Techdirt,
We recently wrote about how the NY Post was caught taking a blogger’s story and rewriting it for itself — noting the hypocrisy of a News Corp. newspaper copying from someone else, after Rupert Murdoch and his top execs have been going around decrying various news aggregators (and Google especially) for “stealing” from News Corp. newspapers. It’s even more ridiculous when you think about it — because the “stealing” that Rupert is upset about is Google linking to the original story — a step that his NY Post writer couldn’t even be bothered to do.
Of course, as a few people pointed out in the comments, this sort of “re-reporting” is quite common in the traditional news business. You see it all the time in newspapers, magazines and broadcast TV. They take a story that was found somewhere else and just “re-report” it, so that they have their own version of it.
That’s right, it’s ‘re-reporting’ without attributions or links. Masnick’s post (he’s bringing in Felix Salmon’s comments) attributes this to a ‘print’ mentality where reporters are accustomed to claiming first place and see acknowledgments and links as failure while ‘digital natives’ acknowledge and link regularly since they view these as signs of respect. I’m not going to disagree but I would like to point out that citing sources is pretty standard for academics or anyone trained in that field. I imagine most reporters have one university or college degree, surely they learned the importance of citing one’s sources. So does training as a journalist erode that understanding?
And, getting back to this morning’s archival subtheme, at the end of Clark Hoyt’s (blogger for NY Times) commentary about the plagiarism he had this to say,
Finally, The Times owes readers a full accounting. I asked [Philip] Corbett [standards editor] for the examples of Kouwe’s plagiarism and suggested that editors’ notes be appended to those articles on the Web site and in The Times’s electronic archives. Corbett would not provide the examples and said the paper was not inclined to flag them, partly because there were some clear-cut cases and others that were less clear. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked.
I’d draw it at those he regards as clear. To do otherwise is to leave a corrupted record within the archives of The Times. It is not the way to close the case.
One last thing, Heather Haley is one of the guests appearing tonight in Rock Against Prisons.
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
7:00pm – 11:55pm
Little Mountain Gallery
195 east 26th Ave [Vancouver, Canada]
More details from my previous announcement about this event here.
Tags: biomineralization, British Library, Canada, Clark Hoyt, copyright, Dame Lynne Brindley, digital archiving, Dr. Marc McKee, Enobia Pharma, Felix Salmon, Heather Haley, hypophosphatasia, innovation, InterPARES, Luciana Duranti, McGill University, Mike Roberts, nanocrystals, nanomedicine, nanotechnology, New York Times, plagiarism, poetry, Preston Manning, Quebec, re-reporting, Rock Against Prisons, School of Library Archival and Information Studies, science technology and innovation, SLAIS, STI, UBC, UK Web Archive, University of British Columbia
Posted in Vancouver, health and safety, intellectual property, nanotechnology, performing arts, poetry, science communication, science policy, writing | No Comments »
March 8th, 2010
March 3, 2010, I posted about Dr. David Cramb, director of the Nanoscience Program and professor in the department of Chemistry at the University of Calgary, and his colleagues. They had just published a paper (Measuring properties of nanoparticles in embryonic blood vessels: Towards a physicochemical basis for nanotoxicity) in Chemical Physics Letters about a new methodology they are developing to measure the impact of nanoparticles on human health and the environment. Dr. Cramb very kindly answered some email questions about the study (abstract is here, article is behind a paywall).
- Is this work on nanoparticles and blood vessels part of a larger project? i.e. Is this an OECD project; is there going to be an international report; is this part of a cross-Canada investigation into nanoparticles and their impact on health?
This is a collaborative project, but the reports that we generate will be available to Environment Canada and Health Canada. We have collaborators from both agencies.
- In reading the abstract (for the article, which is behind a paywall and probably too technical for me), it seemed to me that this is a preliminary study which sets the stage for a nanoparticle study. In fact, you were studying quantum dots (CdSe/ZnS) and establishing that a particular kind of spectroscopy could be used to track the accumulation of nanoparticles in chicken embryos. Is this correct? And if so, why not study the nanoparticles directly?
A quantum dot is a type of nanoparticle. So, in principle, we can apply our techniques to any other nanoparticle of interest.
- What does CdSe/ZnS stand for?
cadmium selenide (in the centre of the nanoparticle) / zinc sulfide (coating on the outside)
- What kind or kinds of nanoparticles are going to be used for the study moving forward from this one?
Similar but different sizes and surface chemistries. We want to understand what properties affect uptake into tissues and distribution in organs. That way we can predict risk.
- From reading the abstract (and thanks to the person who wrote the explanation), I have a pretty good idea why chicken embryos are being used. [I'll insert the description from the abstract here with attributions.] In another context, I have come across the notion that chickens in the US at least, I don’t know about Canada, have been so thoroughly compromised genetically that using their embryos for research is problematic. (brief note: I attended a lecture by Susan Squier, a noted academic, who had a respondent [a US scientist] claiming he moved to the UK because he didn’t feel confident experimenting with US chicken embryos.) What are your thoughts on this?
We aren’t doing genetic studies, so knowing the lineage of the embryos isn’t critical for us.
- Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Nanoparticles are being used in many areas from cosmetics to pharmaceutical to energy. As yet, there is no evidence that the nanoscale formulation adds any risk to these applications. We in nanoscience believe that we must maintain due diligence to asess future risk and to make nanotechnology as green as possible.
Thank you Dr. Cramb for taking the time to explain your work.
On a completely other front, Harris & Harris Group a venture capital group that invests in nanotechnology and microsystems is holding a fourth quarter conference call on Friday, March 12, 2010. From the Harris & Harris Group website,
With over 30 nanotechnology companies in our portfolio, Harris & Harris Group, Inc., is one of the most active nanotechnology investors in the world. We have funded companies developing nanoscale-enabled solutions in solid state lighting, emerging memory devices, printable electronics, photovoltaics, battery technologies, thermal and power management, next-generation semiconductor devices and equipment, quantum computing, as well as in various life-science applications of nano-structured materials.
We consider a company to fit our investment thesis if the company employs, intends to employ or enables technology that we consider to be at the microscale, nanoscale or smaller and if the employment of that technology is material to its business plan. We are interested in funding entrepreneurs with energy, vision and the desire to build great companies.
From the news release on CNN announcing the conference call,
The management of Harris & Harris Group, Inc. (Nasdaq:TINY) will hold a conference call to discuss the Company’s financial results for its fiscal fourth quarter and full year 2009, to update shareholders and analysts on our business and to answer questions, on Friday, March 19, 2010, at 10:00 a.m. Eastern Time.
For details about accessing the webcast, please follow the link to the news release.
Still on business-related nanotechnology news, the NanoBusiness Alliance will be holding its annual Washington, DC roundtable, March 15-17, 2010. From the news item on Nanowerk,
The NanoBusiness Alliance, the world’s leading nanotechnology trade association, today announced that it will convene numerous nanotechnology industry executives in Washington, D.C. from March 15 – 17 for its 9th annual “Washington DC Roundtable”. As in past years, NanoBusiness Alliance members will participate in three days of high-level meetings with Members of Congress, Administration officials, and key staff.
If you are interested in the NanoBusiness Alliance, their homepage is here.
For today’s almost final entry, I’m going back to science and its relationship to art, a topic alluded to just prior to my introduction of the Cheryl Geisler (dean of the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology at Simon Fraser University, Canada) interview. At the time I noted that art, science and technology are interconnected to justify my inclusion of art topics in this blog and, specifically, my inclusion of the Geisler interview. I just read an entry by David Bruggeman (Pasco Phronesis blog) which describes the impact that art can have. From the post,
… McCall’s art is certainly an influence on why I’m involved with science and technology today. You may not know it, but it’s likely you’ve seen his work in connection with reports on space, or in works of science fiction for the page or the screen …
McCall is Robert McCall, an important space artist who recently died. His website is here and Bruggeman provides other links to McCall’s works.
This bit has nothing to do with anything other than I’ve always thought thought Emma Peel was Steed’s (The Avengers) best partner and found this tribute (clips of Diana Rigg as Peel set to The Kinks) on Raincoaster here. (Scroll down the page.)
Tags: art/science, business, cadmium selenide/zinc sulfide, Canada, CeSe/ZnS, Dr. David Cramb, Emma Peel, Harris & Harris Group, health and safety, NanoBusiness Alliance, nanoparticles, nanotechnology, nanotechnology business investment, nanotoxicity, nanotoxicology, Raincoaster, Robert McCall, roundtable, Susan Squier, University of Calgary, venture capital
Posted in Visual Art, business, environment, health and safety, nanotechnology, science communication | No Comments »
March 5th, 2010
I just got a response to an email interview from David Cramb, the Canadian researcher at the University of Calgary, mentioned earlier this week here. I will be posting his interview on this site Monday, March 8, 2010.
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »
March 5th, 2010
It’s time for quiet appreciation as Rob Annan (Don’t leave Canada behind blog) points out in his breakdown of the 2010 Canadian federal budget’s allocation for research. From the posting (Budget 2010 – A Qualified Success),
Last year’s cuts to the research granting councils, though relatively small, were magnified by their inclusion in a so-called “stimulus budget” full of spending increases in other areas.
This year, the opposite is true. Funding increases, though relatively small, are made more significant by the context of spending restraint evidenced elsewhere in the budget.
Rob goes through the budget allocations for each of the research funding agencies and provides a comparison with previous funding amounts. As he points out, it’s not time to pop the champagne corks as this is a modest success albeit at a time when many were expecting deep cuts. One comment from me, this increase is not a good reason to get complacent and run back to the research facilities effectively disappearing from the public discourse. After all, there’s another budget next year.
Pallab Chatterjee of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) recently made some comments (on EDN [Electronics Design, Strategy, News] about nanotechnology and commercialization focusing (somewhat) on nanomedicine. It caught my eye because Andrew Maynard (2020 Science blog) has written a piece on cancer and nanomedicine which poses some questions about nanomedicine hype. First, the comments from Chatterjee,
The Nanosys announcement heralds the arrival of nanotechnology products from other companies that will soon be entering the market and shows that the typical eight- to 10-year gestation period for breakthrough technologies to reach commercialization is now reaching an end. For example, nanomedicine is now emerging as a major topic of investigation. To help solidify the topics in this area and to determine the best direction for commercialization, the ASME (American Society of Mechanical Engineers) held the First Global Congress on NEMB (nanoengineering for medicine and biology), a three-day event that took place last month in Houston.
As nanomedicine products hit the commercial marketplace, you can expect hype. According to Andrew (Nanotechnology and cancer treatment: Do we need a reality check?), government agencies have already been on a ‘hype’ trail of sorts (from 2020 Science),
Cancer treatment has been a poster-child for nanotechnology for almost as long as I’ve been involved with the field. As far back as in 1999, a brochure on nanotechnology published by the US government described future “synthetic anti-body-like nanoscale drugs or devices that might seek out and destroy malignant cells wherever they might be in the body.” Over the intervening decade, nanotechnology has become a cornerstone of the National Cancer Institute’s fight against cancer, and has featured prominently in the US government’s support for nanotechnology research and development.
Andrew goes on to quote various experts in the field discussing what they believe can be accomplished. These comments are hopeful and measured and stand in stark contrast to what I imagine will occur once nanomedicine products seriously enter the marketplace. Take for example, Michael Berger’s (Nanowerk) comments about the wildly overhyped nanotechnology market valuations. From Berger’s 2007 article (Debunking the trillion dollar nanotechnology market size hype),
There seems to be an arms race going on among nanotechnology investment and consulting firms as to who can come up with the highest figure for the size of the “nanotechnology market”. The current record stands at $2.95 trillion by 2015. The granddaddy of the trillion-dollar forecasts of course is the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) “$1 trillion by 2015″, which inevitably gets quoted in many articles, business plans and funding applications.
…
The problem with these forecasts is that they are based on a highly inflationary data collection and compilation methodology. The result is that the headline figures – $1 trillion!, $2 trillion!, $3 trillion! – are more reminiscent of supermarket tabloids than serious market research. Some would call it pure hype. This type of market size forecast leads to misguided expectations because few people read the entire report and in the end only the misleading trillion-dollar headline figure gets quoted out of context, even by people who should now better, and finally achieves a life by itself.
The comments and the figures that Berger cites are still being used ensuring commentary is still relevant. In fact, if you apply the psychology of how these claims become embedded, these comments can be applied to nanomedicine as well.
On a not entirely unrelated note, MIT’s (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Technology Review Journal has organised a meeting in Bangalore which starts on Monday, March 8, 2010. From the news item on Business Standard,
Nearly a hundred of the world’s leading business and tech visionaries will discuss next generation technologies that are ready for the market in the annual Emerging Technologies Conference (Emtech) in Bangalore next week.
The two-day conference begining March 8 is being held in India for the second year in succession in association with CyberMedia.
The conference, organised by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Technology Review journal, will cover a variety of cutting edge topics ranging from green computing techniques, clean transport alternatives and smarter energy grid to the role that wireless can play in connecting India.
Special sessions on innovative diagnostics and neglected diseases will draw attention towards unheralded health care fields. A session on the future of nanotechnology will touch on new capabilities, giving people new ways to make things and heal bodies.
Finally, I got my monthly NISENet (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) newsletter and found a couple of opportunities (from the newsletter), one for materials scientists,
→ Making Stuff Grant Opportunity
The
Materials Research Society and
WGBH will be premiering Making Stuff, a four-part PBS series about materials science, in fall 2010 and are looking for outreach partners to organize and host events, demos, workshops, and science cafes in connection with the premiere. They’ll provide outreach partners with a stipend as well as a resource toolkit. One of the four episodes is focused on nanotechnology, and nano will be a common thread throughout the episodes. You can find lots more information, as well as the application form,
here. Applications are due April 1st.
and one for emerging science writers,
→ Calling all “next generation” science and tech writers!
Our partners at ASU asked us to pass along this writing and publishing fellowship opportunity to all of you. They’re now accepting applications for To Think-To Write-To Publish, an intensive two-day workshop followed by a three-day conference in Arizona for early career writers of any genre with an interest in science and technology. The deadline is March 15th, click here to download the flier.
If you are interested in NISENet or want to submit a haiku about nanotechnology (sadly the newsletter doesn’t feature one this month), their website is here.
Tags: 2010 Canadian federal budget, Bangalore, EDN, Electronics Design Strategy News, emerging science writers, Global Congress on NEMB, grant opportunity, hype, Making Stuff, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Materials Research Society, materials science, MIT, nanoengineering for medicine and biology, nanomedicine, Nanoscale Informal Science Education, nanotechnology market size, NISENet, Pallab Chatterjee, PBS, To Write To Think To Publish, WGBH
Posted in business, education, health, medicine, nanotechnology, science communication, science policy, writing | No Comments »
March 4th, 2010
I just came across a notice for the first ever USA Science and Engineering Festival to be held in Washington, DC, Oct. 10-24, 2010. From the Azonano news item,
Agilent Technologies Inc. (NYSE:A) today announced its support of the USA Science & Engineering Festival, the country’s first national science festival. The event will take place in Washington, D.C., in October 2010. The festival, expected to be a multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary celebration of science in the United States, will offer science and engineering organizations throughout the country the opportunity to present hands-on science activities to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. Festival organizers already have engaged more than 350 participants from the nation’s leading science and engineering organizations.
From what I’ve seen of their website, they are using the term multi-disciplinary in a fairly conservative sense, i. e., different science and engineering disciplines are being brought together. This contrasts with the approach used in the World Science Festival, being held in New York, June 2-6, 2010, where they mash together artists as well as scientists from many different disciplines.
Michael Berger at Nanowerk sputters a bit as he comments on the Engineered Nanoparticles Review of Health and Environmental Safety (ENRHES) report,
Before we take a look at the report’s findings, it’s quite remarkable that the authors feel compelled to start their introduction section with this sentence: “Nanotechnology is a sector of the material manufacturing industry that has already created a multibillion $US market, and is widely expected to grow to 1 trillion $US by 2015.” Firstly, a lot of people would argue with the narrow definition of nanotechnology as being a sector of the material manufacturing industry. Secondly, it appears that still no publicly funded report can afford to omit the meaningless and nonsensical reference to a ‘trillion dollar industry by 2015′. It really is astonishing how this claim gets regurgitated over and over again – even by serious scientists – without getting scrutinized (read “Debunking the trillion dollar nanotechnology market size hype”). It would be interesting to know if scientific authors, who otherwise operate in a fact-based world, just accept a number picked out of thin air by some consultants because it helps impress their funders; or if they deliberately use what they know is a fishy number because the politicians and bureaucrats who control the purses are easily fooled by sensational claims like these and keep the funding coming.
Sadly, picking a number out of thin air happens more often than we like to believe. A few years back I was reading a book about food and how it’s changing as we keep manipulating our food products to make them last longer on the shelf, etc. In one chapter of the book, the author chatted with an individual who helped to define high cholesterol. As he told the story, he and his colleagues (scientists all) got in a room and picked a number that was used to define a high cholesterol count. (I will try to find the title of that book, unfortunately the memory escapes me at the moment. ETA: Mar.4.10, the book is by Gina Mellet, Last chance to eat, 2004) I’ve heard variations of this business of picking a number that sounds good before.
As for the rest of the ENRHES report, Berger has this to say,
Thankfully, the rest of the report stands on solid ground.
I’m using those last two words, “solid ground” to eventually ease my way into a discussion about site remediation and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies’ (PEN) recent webcast. First, there’s a brief and related item on molecular biology.
Scientists at the University of Chicago are trying to develop a method for understanding how biological processes emerge from molecular interactions. From the news item (which includes an audio file of Andre Dinner, one of the scientists, discussing his work) on physorg.com,
Funded by a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, University of Chicago scientists are aiming to develop a reliable method for determining how biological processes emerge from molecular interactions. The method may permit them to “rewire” the regulatory circuitry of insulin-secreting pancreatic beta cells, which play a major role in type-2 diabetes.
…
A second goal: to control cell behavior and function more generally, which may ultimately culminate in other applications, including the bioremediation of environmental problems.
…
The four scientists [Aaron Dinner, Louis Philipson, Rustem Ismagilov, and Norbert Scherer] share an interest in the collective behavior of cells that emerges from a complex ensemble of atoms and molecules working in concert at different scales of time and space. “In a living system you have this hierarchy of coupled time and length scales,” Dinner said. “How is it that all of these different dynamics at one time and length scale get coupled to dynamics at another scale?”
In other words, how does life begin? I know that’s not the question they’re asking but this work has to lead in that direction and I imagine the synthetic biology people are watching with much interest.
In the more immediate future, this work in molecular biology may lead to better bioremediation, which was the topic at hand on the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies’ recent (Feb.4.10) webcast.From their website (you can click to view the webcast [approx. 54 mins.] from here),
A new review article appearing in Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP) co-authored by Dr. Todd Kuiken, research associate for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN), Dr. Barbara Karn, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Marti Otto, Office of Superfund Remediation and Technology Innovation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency focuses on the use of nanomaterials for environmental cleanup. It provides an overview of current practices; research findings; societal issues; potential environment, health, and safety implications; and possible future directions for nanoremediation. The authors conclude that the technology could be an effective and economically viable alternative for some current site cleanup practices, but potential risks remain poorly understood.
There is an interactive map of remediation sites available here and, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll find a link to the review article or you can go here.
I found the information interesting although I was not the intended audience. This was focused primarily on people who are involved in site remediation and/or are from the US. The short story is that more research needs to be done and there have been some very promising results. The use of nanoscale zero-valent iron (nZVI) nanoparticles was the main topic of discussion. It allows for ‘in situ’ site remediation, in other words, you don’t need to move soil and/or pump water through some treatment process. It’s not appropriate for all sites. It can be faster than the current site remediation treatments and it’s cheaper. There was no mention of any problems or hazards using nZVI but there hasn’t been much research either. The technique is now being used in seven different countries (including Canada with one in Ontario and one in Quebec). If I understand it rightly, there is no requirement to report nanotechnology-enabled site remediation so these numbers are based on self-reports. From the article in Environment Health Perspectives,
The number of actual applications of nZVI is increasing rapidly. Only a fraction of the projects has been reported, and new projects show up regularly. Figure 2 and Supplemental Material, Table 2 (doi:10.1289/ehp.0900793.S1) describe 44 sites where nanoremediation methods have been tested for site remediation.
I think that’s it for today, tomorrow some news from NISENet (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network).
Tags: Aaron Dinner, Canada, diabetes, Dr. Barbara Karn, Dr. Todd Kulken, Engineered Nanoparticles Review of Health and Environmental Safety, ENRHES, Environmental Health Perspectives, Gina Mallet, Last chance to eat, Louis Philipson, Marti Otto, Michael Berger, molecular biology, nanoparticles, nanoscale zero-valent iron, Norbert Scherer, nZVI, PEN, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, remediation map, Rustem Ismagilov, site remediation, University of Chicago, USA Science and Engineering Festival 2010, WM Keck Foundation, World Science Festival 2010
Posted in environment, health and safety, nanotechnology, science communication | No Comments »
March 3rd, 2010
I had not realized that there’s an international drive to produce artificial insect silk until this morning. According to a news item on Nanowerk,
CSIRO [Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation] scientist Dr Tara Sutherland and her team have achieved another important milestone in the international quest to artificially produce insect silk. They have hand-drawn fine threads of honeybee silk from a ’soup’ of silk proteins that they had produced transgenically.
These threads were as strong as threads drawn from the honeybee silk gland, a significant step towards development of coiled coil silk biomaterials.
“It means that we can now seriously consider the uses to which these biomimetic materials can be put,” Dr Sutherland said.
“We used recombinant cells of bacterium E. coli to produce the silk proteins which, under the right conditions, self-assembled into similar structures to those in honeybee silk.
If I understand this rightly, ‘tinkering’ with bacterium E. coli makes this a transgenic system and I believe it’s a GEO (genetically engineered organism) and not a GMO (genetically modified organism). In any event, it’s also biomimetic because this process mimics a biological system.
On the practical side of things, insect silk could potentially be used for tough, lightweight textiles and medical applications such as sutures. You can read more about this in the Nanowerk news item.
A Purdue University study has added more evidence that silver nanoparticles are toxic to fish. According to the news item on physorg.com,
Tested on fathead minnows ╨ an organism often used to test the effects of toxicity on aquatic life — nanosilver suspended in solution proved toxic and even lethal to the minnows. When the nanosilver was allowed to settle, the solution became several times less toxic but still caused malformations in the minnows.
“Silver nitrate is a lot more toxic than nanosilver, but when nanosilver was sonicated, or suspended, its toxicity increased tenfold,” said Maria Sepulveda, an assistant professor of forestry and natural resources whose findings were published in the journal Ecotoxicology. “There is reason to be concerned.”
Coincidentally, Dr. David Cramb, director of the Nanoscience Program and professor in the department of Chemistry at the University of Calgary, and his colleagues have published a paper about a new methodology they are developing to measure the impact of nanoparticles (no specifics about which ones) on human health and the environment. From the news release on Eureka Alert, [Mar.4.10 ETA since I think the Eureka doesn't last long, here's a link to the same news on Azonano]
Cramb, director of the Faculty of Science’s nanoscience program, and his researchers have developed a methodology to measure various aspects of nanoparticles in the blood stream of chicken embryos. Their discovery is published in the March online edition of Chemical Physics Letters.
“With the boom in nanomaterials production there is an increasing possibility of environmental and/or human exposure. Thus there is a need to investigate their potential detrimental effects,” says Cramb. “We have developed very specialized tools to begin measuring such impacts.”
To close today off, I got a news release from poet Heather Haley (Vancouver, Canada based) about her latest local appearance,
Heather Haley was a member of Vancouver punk bands, the all-girl Zellots and the .45s with Randy Rampage and Brad Kent. Long-lost video of the Zellots will be screened and Heather will interviewed for a live webcast. She will perform poetry from her new collection, “Three Blocks West of Wonderland.” Hope to *see* you there.
ROCK AGAINST PRISONS Live Video Retrospective Tuesday, March 9, 2010 7:00pm – 11:55pm
Little Mountain Gallery 195 east 26th Ave Vancouver, BC
On March 9th, the social forces will be mounting an assault on the staid and the bland. From a Punk Rock Swap Meet to a Celebrity Auction, from an ‘umplugged’ stage to a Grand Slam Poetry Karaoke by some of the big stars of 1979, we are getting the Old Gang Together. We review the fabulous footage by doreen grey from the seminal 1979 gig and plan out the 2010 resurgence of the Vancouver Explosion.
Come on out and celebrate Vancouver’s living heritage with those who made it happen: Rabid, Female Hands, Devices, Zellots, Tunnel Canary, AKA, Subhumans. Special appearances. Door Prizes. Live Webcast and Kissing Booth. Fishnet stockings. Oodles of prime swag and fixins. Your every 1979 Punk nightmare come beautifully true.
You can also check out Heather’s latest work on her website.
Tags: aquatic toxicology, artificial insect silk, Australia, Canada, chicken embryos, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Researc Organisation, CSIRO, Dr. David Cramb, Dr. Tara Sutherland, Ecotoxicology, fathead minnows, fish, Heather Haley, Maria Sepulveda, nanoparticles, nanotechnology, nanotoxicity, poetry, Purdue University, silk, silver nanoparticles, Three Blocks West of Wonderland, University of Calgary, Zellots
Posted in Vancouver, environment, health and safety, nanotechnology, performing arts, poetry, risk, writing | 2 Comments »
March 2nd, 2010
Nano Days don’t start this year until Mar. 27, 2010 but the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC has already announced its programme. From the news item on 7thspace.com,
The Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History presents NanoDays 2010, a nationwide festival of educational programs about nanoscale science and engineering, March 27 to April 3.
…
During NanoDays, the Lemelson Center offers visitors of all ages the opportunity to learn about nanotechnology through activities and experiments in Spark!Lab, the center’s hands-on invention and science space. Activities include constructing a giant model of a carbon nanotube entirely from balloons, measuring height in nanometers and creating a liquid crystal display that changes color as well as other nanotechnology-related experiments.
“Nanotechnology is a perfect example of how something very small can have such big importance,” said Arthur Molella, director of the center. “At the Lemelson Center, we believe that the tiniest spark of an idea can have widespread impact on everyday life.”
For more details about the Smithsonian plans for Nano Days 2010, please go here.
During my discussion about Macmillan Publisher’s new venture, DynamicBooks, digital textbooks that can be changed however the reader chooses (see my Mar.1.10 post for details), I got a little introspective and pointed out that I do much the same by mixing, matching, stitching together, analyzing, and excerpting material from elsewhere and jamming it together into a post here.This musing brought back to mind an article by Mike Masnick on Techdirt, The Role of Curation in Journalism. From the article,
Unfortunately, for the most part, newspapers seem to look down on “curating” as if it’s some sort of lesser form of journalism, and this is a sticking point that they’re going to need to get past if they want to understand how people engage with the news today. These days, everyone is a curator of the news in some fashion: they share news, comment on it, post about it, etc. But they also look to the “pros” to add more value to it as well. But if the traditional press looks down on this function, they won’t do a particularly good job of it. It’s sometimes tough for a press who used to want itself to be “the final word” on every story to admit that others may have reported it better/faster, as well as the fact that sometimes it’s better to involve the community, rather than treating the community as riffraff waiting for the word from the god-like journalists.
Masnick’s article is a commentary about this article, Towards the Google newsroom, a revolution for media by Media Hacker which proposes a new model for newsrooms. There’s an excerpt in French but the English translation of the full article follows directly after.
Moving from evolving journalism practices to evolving science practices, there’s an article on citizen scientists in The Tyee (online ‘zine) by Carrie Simmons, Maria Ionova, and Jess Brady which discusses the rise of greater participation in science-gathering by amateurs. From the article,
Many scientists agree that citizen involvement is important for both the scientific community and the public. Dr. Micheal Shermer is a proponent of open source science — the basis on which software like Folding @ Home works. For scientists, Shermer says opening up has many advantages.
“The more access more scientists can have to analyzing data, the closer to truth we’re likely to get,” he said. Conducting science in an open, transparent way can help the public learn to place more trust in science.
“Basic research in physics, chemistry and biology — I think it’s better the better to have it open for anyone to examine,” said Shermer. “It takes the secrecy away from it.”
The software mentioned is a protein-folding software, which allows citizen scientists to simulate protein folding (problematic protein folding has been implicated in diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s) and gather data for scientists. I have blogged about this type of data gathering endeavour before notably as ‘participatory science’ here and as ’science data collection for everybody’ here.
I have not focused on ‘hard’ science in a while, so on to hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN). Scientists at Rice University (Texas) may have found a way to beat Moore’s Law. From the news item on Azonano,
Rice University researchers have found a way to stitch graphene and hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) into a two-dimensional quilt that offers new paths of exploration for materials scientists.
The technique has implications for application of graphene materials in microelectronics that scale well below the limitations of silicon determined by Moore’s Law.
…
Layers of h-BN a single atom thick have the same lattice structure as graphene, but electrically the materials are at opposite ends of the spectrum: h-BN is an insulator, whereas graphene, the single-atom-layer form of carbon, is highly conductive. The ability to assemble them into a single lattice could lead to a rich variety of 2-D structures with electric properties ranging from metallic conductor to semiconductor to insulator.
Do read the article if you’re interested in a very clear explanation of the science.
Tags: carbon nanotubes, citizen science, curation in journalism, curatorial journalism, digital textbooks, DynamicBooks, Google newsroom, graphene, h-BN, hexagonal boron nitride, Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation, Macmillan Publishers, Moore's Law, Nano Days 2010, nanotechnology, participatory science, Pulickel Ajayan, Rice University, science data collection for everyone, Smithsonian Institute, Smithsonian Museum, SparkLab
Posted in nanotechnology, public engagement, science, science communication, writing | No Comments »
March 1st, 2010
There’s a new book, Nano Meets Macro, by Fern Wickson and Kamilla Lein Kjølberg, according to a news item on Nanowerk,
Nano goes Macro is designed especially for use in interdisciplinary teaching and discussions about nanoethics with natural science students, but the richness of issues and perspectives makes it of interest to all researchers, practitioners and non-academics wanting an introduction to the social perspectives on nanosciences and technologies. To stimulate a thorough discussion the book includes pieces of science fiction and visual arts, as well as questions for reflection after each chapter. The book contains chapters by prominent scholars and commentators in the field, such as Alfred Nordmann, Rob Doubleday, Lynn Frewer and Friends of the Earth.
Ooops! Whoever wrote the news release made a small mistake with the book title. Ah well, I’ve made my share of those kinds of mistakes, usually when I’m stressed and pressed for time. As for including science fiction and visual art as part of this book, bravo.
I have two other comments. First, I’m not familiar with any of the commentators other than Friends of the Earth which is a group rather than an individual. Is there no individual authorship or attribution for that group’s contribution? I ask because my feelings towards this group are conflicted. On the one hand, they have omitted (by accident or by design?) citing research that conflicts with their perspective on nanotechnology (I posted about this on Nov.25.09) and on the other hand, there was this thoughtful essay by Georgia Miller on Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog (from the entry),
Technological choices have a key part to play in achieving urgently needed environmental and social change. Making the best choices that we can has never been so important. This requires us to look beyond safety to ask bigger questions about new technologies.
We must ask what is required to achieve our most critical social and environmental objectives, and be willing to accept that new technology is not always the answer. We must also ask what is required to ensure that those most affected by the outcomes of technology decision making have a voice in that decision making process.
For my second comment, Nano Meets Macro brought to mind a new publishing development at Macmillan Publishers. From a Fast Company article (Macmillan’s New Digital Textbooks Let Profs Reorder, Rewrite, And Stick It to Rival Academics) by Dan Nosowitz,
Macmillan’s newly announced DynamicBooks textbooks are a huge change for the stodgy, ultra-conservative world of academic writing. The digital textbooks give professors the power to reorder chapters, insert extra reading, delete irrelevant passages, rewrite individual sentences, and scribble in the margins. Oh, and they’ll cost half the price of physical textbooks.
The inherent question here is whether professors should actually have the right to alter textbooks as they see fit–but the fact of the matter is, they’ll do that anyway. Today’s college classes often require a textbook, of which only half the content is relevant and which costs over a hundred dollars, as well as a coursepack or smattering of disorganized articles to supplement it. These DynamicBooks would allow profs to simply streamline their existing syllabus into a single digital file–essentially, allowing them to do what they already do, and better.
Theoretically, if Nano Meets Macro were being published by Macmillan as part of its DynamicBooks series, chapters could be rearranged or excised or rewritten or new chapters written or material from elsewhere included. From my writer’s perspective, this is a bit disconcerting and yet it is similar to what I do here daily.
On a less introspective but related note, a news item on Nanowerk about Arizona State University’s Center for Nanotechnology in Society(CNS-ASU) and Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes (CSPO-ASU) notes a couple of special projects,
Under the umbrella of CNS and CSPO, [Jonathan] Posner [assistant professor of mechanical and chemical engineering] is working with ASU colleagues to develop a course entitled Societal and Ethical Implications of Scientific Research, which examines nanotechnology issues. His collaborators, Jameson Wetmore, an assistant professor in the School of Human Evolution and Social Change, and Ira Bennett, an associate research professor with CSPO, have also developed Science Outside the Lab, a workshop on science policy and culture to be held in the nation’s capitol. Posner is encouraging his students to participate in the workshop.
If you want more information about the workshop, you can download the PDF from here. On a local note, Simon Fraser University (Burnaby, Vancouver, and Surrey, Canada) has or had a similar program called the Leonardo Institute.
A noncredit program for doctoral students that examines the risks, uncertainties, ethics, and art of science applied.
Leonardo Da Vinci made a living as an applied scientist but was remembered for his vision and his art. The Faculty of Applied Sciences offers a number of programs under the Leonardo name, including a speaker series, a biennial summer institute for graduate students and an annual competition to attend a technology management and policy conference.
Their deadline for applying to the 2009 programme was at the end of March 2009. There is no mention of a 2010 programme. I wonder if this is fallout from the School Communication’s move from the Faculty of Applied Science to the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT). (I did ask the new dean, Cheryl Geisler, about any impact from the move and wrote up her response in part of 2 of the interview here.)
On a completely other note, Rob Annan at his Don’t leave Canada behind blog, has written up a posting that discusses a preview of the new federal budget (due Mar.4.10) and its likely impact on science funding. From Research Funding at Risk,
So what does this mean for research? First, despite insistent arguments from policy analysts and economists which suggest strong investment in R&D is a cornerstone of economic recovery and global competitiveness, research funding was not included among the “sacred cows” of health, education, and pensions. This means that, at best, research funding will have its growth “curbed” – no new spending, no new programs, and a real loss in funding in terms of inflation and overall government spending.
Second, by announcing that there would be “no new spending”, the government has suggested it will implement the research spending cuts outlined in the 2009 budget. These include $147.9-million in budget cuts to the tricouncil funding agencies, $167.8-million in cuts to Health Canada and the Public Health Agency of Canada, and $27.7-million in cuts to the National Research Council. And these cuts presumably don’t include widely rumoured cuts to the federal civil service, which includes employees at many federal research institutes. It also suggests that Genome Canada, whose funding was cut in 2009, will be left to wither on the vine, administering programs it began in 2007 and 2008, but without money to launch anything new or renew expiring projects.
I strongly suggest reading Rob’s essay for his incisive comments on the situation.
Following on Rob’s comments, I can state that after almost three years of researching, I haven’t come across anything which resembles a policy for nanotechnology research or funding in Canada, which means that in an environment where science gets very little specific attention and when the economy is in trouble, the nanotechnology situation is likely to worsen. This contrasts mightily with the US and many, many other countries. Andrew Maynard on his 2020 Science blog, recently noted this about funding for nanotechnology safety initiatives,
The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) budget for nanotechnology safety research is set to double, going from an estimated $3.6 million in 2010 to a requested $7.3 million in 2011. The agency will target its nanotechnology safety program to measuring the dynamic physico-chemical and toxicological properties of key nanomaterials and the release of these nanomaterials during manufacturing processes and from products throughout full product life cycles.
The full posting (US government kicks nanotechnology safety research up a gear) is here. Meanwhile, the Australians are putting money into the National Enabling Technology Strategy (nanotechnology is often described as an enabling technology). Here is where I get to apologize for being snarky about an Australian Academy of Science report that I couldn’t find. It was as, Cheryl Jones reported, released on Feb.22.10. I will make the correction to my posting on that date, here. I apologize for failing to check the site properly and being unwarrantedly snarky. A PDF of the report can be downloaded from here.
Tags: 2010 federal budget, Alfred Nordmann, Andrew Maynard, Arizona State University, ASU, Australia, Australian Academy of Science, Center for Nanotechnology in Society UCSB, Cheryl Geisler, Cheryl Jones, CNS, Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes, CSPO, Dan Nosowitz, digital textbooks, DynamicBooks, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Communication Art and Technology, FCAT, Fern Wickson, Friends of the Earth, Georgia Miller, Ira Bennett, Jameson Wetmore, Jonathan Posner, Kamilla Lein Kjolberg, Leonard Insitute, Macmillan Publishers, Nano Meets Macro, Nanotechnology in Australia: Trends Applications and Collaborative Oppotunities, nanotechnology safety research, Rob Annan, Rob Doubleday, robots, science funding, Science Outside the Lab, SFU, Simon Fraser University, writing
Posted in copyright, economy, health and safety, nanotechnology, public engagement, public perceptions, science policy, writing | No Comments »
February 26th, 2010
After last month’s post about disturbances (causing at least one cancellation) taking place during a series of nanotechnology public debates in France, it was a surprise to find that at least one French group wants to continue the ‘discussion’. This last series of events has been completed with a report due in April 2010. According to a news item on Chemical Watch, France Nature Environnement (FNE) is urging more public debates. From Chemical Watch,
The French public debate on nanotechnologies that began in September ended this week. An official summary of the 17 debates will be published at the end of April, but environmental organisation France Nature Environnement (FNE) says in its conclusions that further discussion is needed to decide where the technology is useful for human advancement and where its use is unacceptable.
You can look at the FNE news item here but it is in French and the site doesn’t seem hospitable to Firefox, so do try another browser.
Meanwhile, the Brits are embarking on an oral history of British science. From the news item on BBC News,
The British Library has begun a project to create a vast, online oral history and archive of British science.
The three-year project will see 200 British scientists interviewed and their recollections recorded for the audio library.
…
“We have long been painfully aware that there’s a marked absence of significant recordings of scientists,” said Dr Rob Perks, curator of oral history at the British Library.
For instance, said Dr Perks, in the current sound archives there are only two recordings of Ernest Rutherford, none of computer pioneer Alan Turing, hovercraft inventor Christopher Cockerell or AV Hill, a physiologist and Nobel laureate.
A study carried out prior to the project being started found that in the last ten years, 30 leading British scientists including 9 Nobel winners have died leaving little or no archive of their work.
I’m glad to hear that this oral history is being preserved although I do wonder about the recording formats. One of the problems with archiving materials is maintaining to access them afterwards.
Coincidentally, one of the local Vancouver papers (The Georgia Straight) has an article by Rhiannon Coppin (in the Feb. 25 – March 4, 2010 issue) about the City of Vancouver archives and their attempts at digital archiving. From the article,
Every day, Vancouver’s city archivist and director of records and archives runs a rescue operation on our past. Les Mobbs might send out film reels from the ’30s for repair, or he could receive a donation of early-20th-century photographic negatives that need to be catalogued, scanned, and put into cold storage.
Lately, Mobbs has been putting equal consideration into how to preserve our future. More and more of the city’s legal and cultural record is being created in a digital format; in other words, it’s “born digital”, he told the Georgia Straight.
…
The pitfall in digital archiving is that we’re poor caretakers of electronic file formats. In 50 or 100 years, we’ll know we’ve won the preservation game if we can open and read a computer document created today. But even in 2010, we’re missing out on 20-year-old WordStar files stuck on five-and-a-quarter-inch floppy disks. Ironically, it may be safer to keep a paper copy of a document than to store the original computer file.
“We’ve been dealing with paper for 2,000 years,” Mobbs said. “We have a lot of experience with what paper is, what it looks like, and how it’s preserved.”
While acid decay, mould, brittleness, and water damage are formidable but vanquishable foes, machine decay, format obsolescence, and file integrity degradation are virtually unconquerable. The short lifetime of many licensed software formats and the quick deaths of so much hardware (remember LaserDisc?) have posed a particular challenge for archivists like Mobbs.
“How do we preserve material that is, for all intents and purposes, essentially transitory?” he asked.
While this discussion might seem irrelevant on a mostly science-oriented blog, the ‘memristor’ story highlights why information about the past is so important. In 2008, R. Stanley Williams (HP Labs) and his colleagues published two papers, the first proving the existence of a fourth member, a memristor, of electrical engineering’s ‘holy trinity’ of the resistor, capacitor, and inductor and the second paper where they established engineering control over the memristor. Williams and his team both solved a problem they were experiencing in the lab and made engineering history, in part by reviewing engineering theories dating back at least 30 years. You can read my post about it here.
Imagine if those theories had been locked into formats that were no longer accessible. That’s one of the major reasons for preserving the past, it can yield important information.
In the interest of full disclosure, I once worked for the City of Vancouver archives.
Tags: archives, British Library, British science oral history, City of Vancouver archives, digital archiving, Dr. Rob Perks, FNE, France, France Nature Environnement, Les Mobbs, memristor, nanotechnology debates, R. Stanley Williams, Rhiannon Coppin, The Georgia Straight, UK
Posted in Vancouver, science, science communication | No Comments »
February 25th, 2010
Following on the heels of last week’s (posts of Feb. 18, 19, 20, 2010) interview with Cheryl Geisler, dean of the new Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT) at Simon Fraser University (SFU), I received news of the latest SFU grants from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), two of which (from a total of five for SFU) are directed to schools associated with the faculty. From the press release,
The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) awarded just over $2.1 million collectively to the five SFU projects as a result of its 2009-2010 Strategic Project Grants and New Media Initiative competition. The university submitted 28 applications to the competition, achieving its greatest success rate (66.67 per cent) in the New Media category.
NSERC awarded $18.3 million to 122 research projects across the country.
Philippe Pasquier, Musical Metacreation: Software Creativity and Creative Software, $340,000. Pasquier, an artificial intelligence researcher, and Arne Eigenfeldt, an SFU computer music composer are exploring and defining the boundaries of musical metacreation. A metacreation is software that uses artificial intelligence and cognitive modeling to display human-like creative behaviours. Their grant has leveraged another $148,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts.
Lyn Bartram, Meaning from Motion for Interaction and Visualization, $368,680. Along with choreographer Thecla Schiphorst and game studies professor Magy Seif El-Nasr, Bartram is exploring the use of motion to communicate information, express emotion and stimulate visualization in immersive environments and gaming.
Researchers whose work dovetails with the federal government’s research funding priorities faired the best in this competition. Those priorities are advanced communications and information management; healthy environment and ecosystems; sustainable energy systems and competitive manufacturing.
I’ve mentioned FCAT as the two grants listed here are going to members of that faculty in its School of Interactive Arts and Technology. I checked out the grant award winners on the SFU website, Phillipe Pasquier, Arne Eigenfeldt, Lyn Bartram, Thecla Schiphorst, and Dr. Magy Seif El-Nasr. On another note, it was a bit of a surprise to find this on Dr. Seif El-Nasr’s About Me page,
She has several years of experience engaged in consulting activities as well as speaking in different companies. She provides consulting and speaking services nationally and internationally. For rates please contact her at magy at sfu.ca
To be fair, the others may also have similar notices somewhere on one of their pages (although I did check all of the About/About Me and/or in some cases CV pages).
I have a few issues with this advertisement. First, it’s unclear to me if this is a personal enterprise or an SFU enterprise. On the consulting side of this business, I think a case could be made that it is the expertise and ability which is being contracted. As for the speaking side of the business, I would expect that she’s not charging people to hear about her publicly funded research. In my book, the public should have open access to the research that it has funded.
On a completely other note (musical reference intended, as per the first NSERC grant), Disney is going nano. The National Science Foundation announced (from the press release),
A new long-term exhibition at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Fl., will bring visitors face to face with the nanoworld.
Housed in the Innoventions pavilion at Epcot Center, the exhibition Take a Nanooze Break features a series of interactive, continually updated displays that allow visitors to manipulate models of molecules, study everyday items at the nanoscale, and interact with scientists and engineers who conduct the latest nano research.
“The experience is immersive and gives guests a number of ways to view a world that is too small to see,” says Carl Batt of Cornell University, the lead researcher for the project. ”It also gives guests a view of nanotechnology from real scientists”
…
“Nanotechnology will bring multiple, fundamental changes to the way we work to create goods, develop sustainable approaches, advance medicine and improve quality of life.,” says Mike Roco, senior advisor for nanotechnology at NSF. “About $80 billion worth of products incorporated nanoscale components in the United States in 2010, and one can envision mass use of nanotechnology by 2020. The Nanooze exhibition informs and inspires the public about this fast-arriving future society.”
This Disney attraction takes its name from Nanooze, a website/magazine for children. From the About page,
Nanooze is a magazine that has been created to get kids excited about science and especially nanotechnology . We have an editorial board that helps us figure out what to do. The world that is too small to see is full of interesting stuff. Scientists and engineers are beginning to understand this world and learning how to change things at the nanoscale level.
The magazine which is supported by the US National Science Foundation and the University of Cornell’s (US) Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility seems to have been started in 2005.
Hearkening back to the Nanooze attraction and its focus on our “fast-arriving future society,” I stumbled across this article, Futures Thinking: Writing Scenarios, by Jamais Cascio on Fast Company. From the article,
The three styles I used for these scenarios can be categorized as “Scenario-as-Story,” “Scenario-as-Recollection,” and “Scenario-as-History.”
In Scenario-as-Story, the presentation is similar to that of a work of fiction. Named characters operate in a lightweight plot, but in doing so engage in behaviors that display key aspects of the scenario …
… The advantage of the Scenario-as-Story approach is that fiction is a familiar presentation language for readers, and they can more readily grasp the changes to one’s life that emerge from the scenario. A story model lets you describe some of the more nuanced aspects of a scenaric future. The disadvantage is that, generally speaking, scenarios are lousy fiction. Even the best-written scenario stories generally wouldn’t pass muster with a fiction editor. A more difficult problem stems from differing views on human behavior–if the character in the scenario story does something off-putting or inexplicable, the reader will find it harder to accept the rest of the scenario.
You can read a sample of the fiction scenario in Cascio’s article where he also offers a PDF download of the full three scenarios. I’m not sure I buy his comment about readers finding it difficult to accept a scenario if a character “does something off-putting or inexplicable”. It sounds like more poor fiction. You can have your characters do anything as long as you set it up properly [ETA Feb.25.10: and your readers, or most of them, will follow you}. At any rate, this whole thing reminded me of an item I posted last year (here) about the Canadian military hiring a science fiction writer (Karl Schroeder) to create a book about a future military crisis. By the way, he included nanotechnology applications in his fictional scenario/book.
Tags: Arne Eigenfeldt, artifical intelligence, Canada, Canadian army, Carl Batt, children, Disney, Dr. Cheryl Geisler, Dr. Magy Seif El-Nasr, Faculty of Communication Art and Technology, fiction, futures thinking, games, immersive environments, Jamais Cascio, kids, Lyn Bartram, Meaning from Motion for Interaction and Visualization, Mike Roco, military, Music, musical metacreation, Nanooze, Nanoscale Science and Technology Facility, nanotechnology, National Science Foundation, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, New Media, NSERC, NSF, Phillipe Pasquier, scenario writing, School of Interactive Arts and Technology, SFU, SIAT, Simon Fraser University, Strategic Project Grants and New Media Initiative, Thecla Schiphorst, University of Cornell
Posted in Music, New Media, education, military, nanotechnology, public engagement, science communication, writing | No Comments »