Monthly Archives: April 2009

Russia invests in Canadian nanotechnology? and flying microbots

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There’s a delegation from RUSNANO (Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies) making the rounds of Canadian nanotechnology firms in the hopes of finding some worthy investments. Officials from the company have also traveled to Finland, the US, Germany, Israel, and elsewhere as they search for companies to invest in. From the Nanowerk news article,

With $5 billion U.S. to work with, RUSNANO is one of the largest technology capital funds on the planet.

The company’s minimum investment will be $10M and they have an investment horizon of 10 years, contrasting strongly with private sector venture funds which often demand a faster return.

I gather this is a government funding agency since it has a  public policy focus,

The public policy imperative behind RUSNANO, which is only a year old, is to help Russia quickly build nano-production capacity to catch up to other powers, notably Japan and the United States, that have developed capacity in this area. “We lost a bit when our scientists when we were engaged in resolving our political problems and now we have to catch up rapidly,” said [Alexander] Losyukov [senior RUSNANO official].

Compare the $10M minimum investment from a $5B fund with Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology’s $20M annual budget, which is partly funded by the federal government. I know the federal government makes other investments but it all seems rather piecemeal when compared to other countries’ more unified and financially substantive approach to nanotechnology research and innovation.

In other news, a flying microbot has been created at the University of Waterloo (Ontario, Canada). It’s not precisely nano but it is pretty interesting. From Science Daily,

The microrobot defies the force of gravity by flying or levitating, powered by a magnetic field. It moves around and dexterously manipulates objects with magnets attached to microgrippers, remotely controlled by a laser-focusing beam.

There are more details here.

HIV testing, nano gold, and Uganda; not so obsolete?; new nanotube manufacturing technique from McGill University

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There’s a portable blood-testing machine, designed by US-based PointCare, which can give a print-out detailing a patient’s immune status in 10 minutes. The machine was designed for use in third-world or developing world clinics such as the one in Uganda which is described in this BBC story.

One of the problems doctors and medical staff had with equipment for testing HIV patients’ immune system was that the chemicals used as reagents in the testing process were too easily perishable in the high heat common in a lot of countries. PointCare soved the problem this way (from the BBC article):

Dr Hansen [from PointCare] invented a test that uses chemical reagent that can be freeze-dried and stored in temperatures of over 40C.

CD4 screening tests use antibodies – molecular tags that recognise and latch onto a chemical marker on the surface of the cell. By attaching to the cells, they act as flags distinguishing CD4 cells from other white blood cells.

But these antibodies need to be “labelled”, so they can be detected by a machine.

Traditionally, antibodies are labelled using fluorescent markers, but these fluorescent chemicals perish if they are not kept refrigerated. So they’re useless for a medical team operating from a temporary clinic in the heat of an African summer.

Dr Hansen developed a new label. “We use colloidal gold,” explains Dr Krauledat [community physician]. “It’s true nanotechnology – extremely tiny gold particles attached to the anti-CD4 antibody.”

Do go and read the full story because there’s more to it than I’ve included. Meanwhile I had another look at those lithography stories (SFU’s new maskwriting facilities and RAPID) that I was posting about last week. While the new RAPID technique may make the use of ultra-violet light obsolete, they still haven’t approached the nanoscale. The measurement mentioned is “… 2500 times smaller than a human hair” [more here]. The measurement usually mentioned when discussing the nanoscale  is between 1/100,000 ro 1/60,000 (nobody seems to agree on the exact measurement, you can check here) of the width of a human hair equals 1 nanometre.  Weirdly, the Simon Fraser University (SFU) release notes that the new facilities will be able to create structures “… under 20 nanometres about 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair” [more here]. If I’m doing the math correctly, wouldn’t that be between 1/50,0000 and 1/30,000 of the human hair? I know it’s a little fussy but once a technical writer, always a technical writer and that kind of detail can make a big difference.

Researchers led by Dr. Hanadi Sleiman and Dr. Gonzalo Cosa at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) have developed a new way to manufacture nanotubes using DNA, in short they are DNA nanotubes. The longer story is here and the shorter story is here.

Maskwriting facilities already obsolete?

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It’s exciting when discoveries and innovations are coming fast and furious but it can be difficult to figure out exactly how to proceed. I just read about a new table-top technique for nanofabrication that doesn’t require ultra-violet light.  This stands in contrast to the proposed new maskwriting facility for nanofrabrication at Simon Fraser University (SFU). The processes described in the SFU release and in the article about the table-top technique  for lithographic patterning seem very similar except one uses ultra violet-light and the other does not.  At this pace it seems as if the SFU facility is likely to beocme obsolete soon. Still, it’s a long way from experiments in a laboratory to industrial use as planned at SFU and I don’t imagine that it makes much sense to wait for the new process. After all by the time that’s ready for  ‘prime time’ use, there’ll probably be another discovery.

Maskwriting facilities at 4D Labs and some bottom-up engineering news

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Following up on yesterday’s news from Simon Fraser University (SFU), I gather that maskwriting has to do with fabricating nanoscale materials and the facility they will be building for their 4D Labs will allow them to create nanoscale structures that measure less than 20 nanometres.

“This capability will eventually be as key to nanoscale materials fabrication as the photocopier is to information dissemination,” explains [Byron] Gates, 4D LABS’ director of nanofabrication. “With our new maskwriting facility, we’ll be able to fabricate the next generation of technologies, particularly in the fields of alternative energy and biomedical engineering.”

Local companies will not have send off to Alberta to get this work done and it will give 4D Labs some revenue.  Given that universities are under pressure these days to develop new revenue streams, this has to be good news.

Meanwhile, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have recently published a paper describing their work on bottom-up engineering of DNA ‘seeds’. The two main approaches to engineering in nanotechnology (and this is simplified) are top-down and bottom-up. Traditional enginerring has been top-down; we make things smaller and smaller. The bottom-up approach means taking your cue from biological processes (or nature) and encouraging objects to build themselves or to ‘grow’. There’s more here.

The Project for Emergining Nanotechnologies’ June 17, 2009 event (mentioned in yesterday’s posting) has been rescheduled to Fall 2009.


Fish camouflage, Australian webinar for nano business, medical nanobots in your bloodstream and Simon Fraser U has nano news

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First off, the American Chemical Society (ACS) has declared ‘The Nano Song‘ a winner (in the People’s Choice and Critic’s Choice categories)  in their ACS Nanotation web community video contest ‘What is Nano?’.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, you can go here (scroll down).

Researchers at Sandia Labs are working to develop materials that change colour in the same that some fish can. Here’s how it works with the fish (from Nanowerk News here):

Certain fish species blend with their environment by changing color like chameleons. Their tiny motor proteins carry skin pigment crystals in their “tails” as they walk with their “feet” along the microtubule skeletons of cells to rearrange the animal’s color display.

The fish change colour as the environment around them changes. The researchers led by George Bachand are trying to enable synthetic or hybrid materials to do the same thing. Applications could be for military and/or fashion.

If you’re interested in the business end of nano, then there’s a webinar courtesy of the Australian Office of Nanotechnology coming up on April 29, 2009. NanoVentures Australia CEO, Peter Binks, will be talking about nanotechnology’s impact on global markets and industries. For more info. about the event, check here and to sign up for the event, go here.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University (US) are honing in on a way to get hordes of microrobots (or nanobots) that have been introduced into the bloodstream to flock or swarm together so they can repair organs or deliver drugs to a specific target. I gather the problem has been  getting the machines to work together and the proposed solution is to use UV light. More details here.

Finally, some latebreaking news from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). The university’s nano research facility, 4D Labs, has won funding (roughly $884, 000) from the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification agency to build a maskwritiing facility.  More about this tomorrow.

Ongoing nano oversight discussions

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a couple of ‘oversight’ events coming up. The first is on Tuesday, April 28,2009 at 9 am PST and features discussion of a report ‘Oversight of Next Generation Nanotechnology‘ by J. Clarence Davies, a former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official. I wasn’t particularly thrilled the last time PEN had one of these events back in July 2008. Davies was the speaker that time too and the talk was very EPA-centric and I did not feel that Davies had a good grasp of nanotechnology.  For more information about this event or to RSVP if you’re planning to attend, go here.

Their second event will be on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 9 am PST. It’s called, ‘Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies‘. This event is the result of a collaboration between the London School of Economics, Chatham House, Environmental Law Institute, and PEN.Here’s something from their email notice,

[The purpose] is aimed at generating and examining new ideas to enable greater transatlantic convergence on nanotechnology oversight today and in the future.

For more details or to RSVP, you can go here.

Finally I have an update on the Martha Cook Piper situation. (She was appointed as the chair to Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology [NINT] last April and I’ve been trying to get an interview for several months.) I just heard today that I will be getting some answers to my question in the next few weeks. Plus, I notice that she was finally listed on NINT’s website. You can see the listing and a bit of a biography here.

Vampire batteries and thanks to the Bluehost support guy

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It’s been a bit tumultuous the last week or two as I’ve been trying to get this blog working again. I almost lost the whole thing yesterday so thank you Bluehost (the hosting service for my site) support guy for helping me to retrieve my posts. At this point, I have managed to make the full posting area visible (so I can see what I’m writing) but my spell check function and a few others are still not operational. I’ve decided not to bother fixing it as it is far beyond my technical skills and I’d really rather be writing.

This is for you, support guy (not a business article but it is a medical application that might be of interest to you). Vampire fuel cells, i.e. these fuel cells are ‘blood-powered’, may help fuel batteries for implanted medical devices. It’s a very cool idea (if it works) since it means a pacemaker or a deep brain stimulator used for people with Parkinson’s Disease or other similar devices could be fueled by the natural sugars found in blood. Researchers (Mu Chiao and Chin-Pang-Billy Siu) at the University of British Columbia (UBC) have developed a prototype which has been tested iwth human blood plasma proving it’s feasible but there haven’t been any animal or human trials yet. There’s a more technical explanation* at the New Scientist website and a more general one here* at the Vancouver Sun newspaper website. (Note: The Vancouver Sun articles are usually placed behind a paywall after a day or so.)

*Sept. 8, 2017: Those links don’t appear to be functioning but I did find this ‘backgrounder‘, where the preferred term is “yeast-powered fuel cell” on the UBC Applied Science website.