Monthly Archives: October 2008

Nano funding — BC-India expressions of interest

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Way back in June 2008, the BC government announced that they had committed $1M which was matched by the government of India to support collaborative research between BC and Indian research scientists. On Friday, Oct. 10, 2008, the BC Minister of Technology, Trade, and Economic Development, Ida Chong, announced that the collaborative funding programme, which is being administered by ISTP (International Science and Technology Partnerships Canada), is asking for expressions of interest in the fields of convergent medical technologies, clean biotechnology, health, and biopharma by October 24, 2008. More details about the announcement here and about the programme here. Plus, for anyone who’s interested in knowing more about the delegation of Indian scientists who visited Canada in August you can find copies of the presentations that were made and some information about their itinerary on the ISTP site. There’s also some information in my interview with Darren Frew, Nanotech BC’s executive director (postings dated Sept. 26 and Sept. 29, 2008).

I just heard from poet Heather Haley that she will be featured on CBC Radio 2 (105.7)  tonight on the On the Signal show at 10 pm. If you’re curious about her work, you can check it out here.

Writer’s festival in Vancouver, a conference in Surrey, and a few nano odds and ends

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Vancouver’s annual writers and readers festival opens Oct. 21 and runs until Oct. 26, 2008.  I just bought a ticket for an Oct. 25 event, Femmes Fatales with Lisa Lutz, Leonie Swann, and Linda L. Richards talking about their murder mystery novels. I enjoyed both of Lutz’s books about the Spellman family, haven’t had a chance to read Richards’ book about a secretary (who’s the real brains of the operation) to a Depression era private investigator; and am not sure about Swann’s use of a herd of sheep as the detectives in her novel (still reading it). For more about about the festival and its events, go here.

There’s also a writer’s conference coming up in Surrey, BC, Oct. 24 – 26, 2008. This is for people who are serious about writing so a lot of it is shop talk. There are workshops, a trade show, book fair, editor/agent interviews (where you can sign up for a brief individual session), and more. For details, go here.

M. Fatih Yegul’s ( and co-authors M. Yavuz and P. Guild) paper analyzing the Canadian nanotechnology scene by examining the record of public scientific literature has been published. Publication details are avaialable at the IEEE Explore site. Information about the research is in my blog postings of June 17, 19, and 20, 2008. I recently heard from Martha Cook Piper’s assistant that Dr. Piper will be able to answer a few questions about her appointment (which occurred in April 2008) to the National Institute of Nanotechnology’s board  in early 2009.

E-ink and nanotech scholarships in Alberta

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I purchased the October 2008 issue of Esquire magazine (as per my last blog posting where you can also find a link to Andrew Maynard’s posting about the issue) available from my local store. Unfortunately, they don’t stock the super duper version which has the first ever e-ink cover since a limited number of those were printed and made  available only in the US. On the upside, the non super duper e-ink version (identical in every other aspect) offers a description of the process (parts of it) on p. 73.

Apparently, the magazine’s project had its genesis seven years ago in a visit to a start up company called E Ink. The company had developed a technology now found in cell-phone screens and electronic readers (e.g. Kindle). It’s a kind of ink-based electronic display. At the time, technology that would allow them to create an “e paper” thin and flexible enough to function as a magazine cover was not in place but that all changed last year.

One of E Ink’s partners, the Nicobar Group (based in Shanghai) had developed circuitry that was promising but there was a problem (along with other problems) with power requirements. The cover had to last at least 90 days. They solved the problem by refrigerating the circuit boards as long as possible throughout the process. (If you have a super duper issue, you should be able to extend its life past 90 days by refrigerating it.)

Each cover had its circuit board set by hand then the company doing the binding (RR Donnelly) had to find a way to protect the circuitry from the impact of its binding machines.

There’s more detail in the magazine (although not as much as I would like) which celebrates Esquire’s 75th anniversary not only with a new type of technology but also with profiles of 75 people the editors think will influence the 21st Century.

I should note that science fiction got there first (as far as I know) with Neal Stephenson’s nanotechnology-influenced novel Diamond Age which describes a world with e-paper newspapers and books.

One bit of news from Alberta, the provincial government announced funding scholarships for graduate students who are studying nanotechnology. Details here.

More about synthetic biology

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There is a report detailing the research on public awareness of nanotechnology and synthetic biology mentioned in yesterday’s posting. You can find it here.

One of these days I’m going to figure out how to make the comments immediately visible until then I’ll write up comments in the postings which is why I’m mentioning Andrew Maynard (Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies). He dropped a line pointing out that the October 2008 issue of Esquire magazine features five scientists amongst their 75 most influential people of the 21st century. Three of  the five scientists are synthetic biologists. That’s pretty amazing when you think that most of Esquire’s readers have never heard of it (as per almost 90% of the US population according to the research data). Here‘s more about Andrew Maynard and Esquire’s October 2008 issue.