Monthly Archives: February 2010

15th Century painting techniques and nanotechnology; Conference Board of Canada and copyright; Real Vancouver Writers; Better Living

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Kate Nichols is a fellow at TED. She is also a painter who trained in 15th century techniques. From the article by Kristen Philipkoski on Boing, Boing,

Nichols learned painting as painters did in 15th century Flanders: by apprenticing under a master and learning to make her own paints. She became skilled at creating the type of complex colors only possible as light travels through thin layers of oil glaze. But she eventually found that no amount of layering could recreate the complexity she saw in the Morpho butterfly’s wings. [I previously posted about nanotech and the colour of butterfly wings here.]

As Philipkoski goes on to recount, the desire to recreate the colours of a Morpho butterfly’s wings is what led her to working with nanotechnology but, first, working with mathematician, Judy Holdener, she learned why she couldn’t recreate those colours with her traditional techniques. Nichols eventually contacted someone at a nanotech laboratory in her pursuit and went on to become the first artist-in-residence at that lab (the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley). (You can see images of her work at the article on the Boing Boing site.)

More recently she was awarded the TED fellowship I’ve already mentioned. TED stands for Technology Entertainment Design and it started out as an annual conference. You can find out more about TED here and more about this year’s annual conference here. As for the fellowship, it sounds a bit like a mentoring programme but you can read the description for yourself here.

One last quote from the article,

“I love thinking about plasmon resonance–likely, because I paint motion and grew up dancing,” Nichols said. When light comes into contact with a metal, electrons are displaced. Because the electrons are attracted to the nuclei of the metallic atoms, the electrons fall back into their original positions only to be exiled again, over and over. This oscillatory dance is called a plasmon and we perceived it as color when the wavelength falls within the visible spectrum.

On the copyright (intellectual property) front, Michael Geist is commenting on the latest Conference Board of Canada’s report. As you may recall, the Conference Board was embarrassed last year when it released a report that had large chunks plagiarized from a US lobby group’s materials. You can read more about the contretemps here on Techdirt and Geist’s comments here. From Geist’s blog,

The new report, which weighs in at 113 pages, was completed by Ruth Corbin, a Toronto-based IP expert. Corbin started from scratch, reading a broad range of materials, conducting interviews, and leading a private roundtable on the issue (I participated in the roundtable and met separately with her). While there is much to digest, the lead takeaway is to marvel at the difference between a report cribbed from lobby speaking points and one that attempts to dig into the issues in a more balanced fashion. Three examples:

First, the report puts intellectual property policy into perspective as just one portion of the innovation agenda, noting that over-protection can be lead to diminishing returns…

W2 Community Media House (in Vancouver, Canada) is hosting a writer’s series that has two more weeks to go. The next event is Feb. 17, 2010.

This description from Heather Haley (poet) highlights a couple of radio interviews and her upcoming Real Vancouver Writers appearance,

Real Vancouver Writers Series at the W2 Culture and Media House
Located across from the refurbished Woodwards Building in Downtown Vancouver
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
7:00pm – 10:00pm
112 E. Hastings
“Poet, author, musician and media artist Heather Susan Haley pushes boundaries by creatively integrating disciplines, genres and media. Published in numerous journals and anthologies, her poetry collections Sideways (Anvil Press) and Three Blocks West of Wonderland (Ekstasis Editions) have been described as ³supple and unusual” and ³brawny and uncompromising.² She was an editor for the LA Weekly, publisher of Rattler and the Edgewise Cafe, one of Canada’s first electronic literary magazines. Architect of the Edgewise ElectroLit Centre, the Vancouver Videopoem Festival and SEE THE VOICE: Visible Verse at Pacific Cinémathèque, her works have been official selections at dozens of international film festivals. Haley has gained renown as an engaging performer, sharing her poetry and music with audiences around the world. Most recently she toured eastern Canada and the U.S. in support of her critically acclaimed AURAL Heather CD of spoken word songs, Princess Nut.”
She will be appearing with Teresa McWhirter, Lee Henderson, Elizabeth Bachinsky, Nikki Reimer, Chris Hutchinson, Dina Del Bucchia, Amber Dawn, Donato Mancini, Sonnet L¹Abbe, Jonathon Wilcke and Catherine Owen.
RADIO APPEARANCES:
Heather will be live in ‘The Artist Lounge’ hosted by J Peachy on CJSF 90.1 FM on Tuesday Feb 16th at 7pm. Hope you can tune in, its also online at http://wwwcjsf.ca. The next day, the day of the reading, Wed. Feb. 17 Heather will be visiting friends Steve Duncan and RC Weslowki on Wax Poetic @ 2pm (PST) 102.7fm CFRO Co-op Radio, http://www.coopradio.org/. *See* you there!

I like to feature more about the arts and new media on Fridays or, at least, to have something amusing here. Today, I’ve managed both now that I’ve come to this item by Alissa Walker in Fast Company ,

Who knew that paper clips and staples could teach such smart life lessons? Everyday objects you might find at your desk are the stars in Hints for Better Living , a short film by Los Angeles-based designer Mike Afsa, who also does work for companies like Chiat\Day and Quiksilver.

It’s charming and it gave me a whole new perspective on paper clips and staples. Happy Weekend!

There’s gold in them thar nano hills; study on nanotechnology practices; robot actresses in Korea

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The World Gold Council has released a paper, Gold for Good: gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation which highlights the many benefits of using gold nanoparticles in areas ranging from medicine to the environment. From the news item on Azonano,

The report, which was produced in conjunction with Cientifica Ltd, the world’s leading source of global business and investor intelligence about nanotechnologies, demonstrates how gold nanoparticles offer the potential to overcome many of the serious issues facing mankind over the coming decades.

Gold nanoparticles exhibit a variety of unique properties which, when harnessed and manipulated effectively, lead to materials whose uses are both far-ranging in their potential and cost effective. This report explores the many different applications that are being developed across the fields of health, environment and technology.

I found the report a useful (and rosy) overview of gold nanoparticles, their various benefits, and their potential for business investors as to be expected when one of the report’s authors is Tim Harper of the TNT Blog and principal of Cientifica. The report can be found here.

Michael Berger over at Nanowerk has written up a spotlight feature on a study about safety practices in  nanotechnology laboratories that was published in Feb. 2010 in Nature Nanotechnology.  From Nanowerk,

Published in the February issue of Nature Nanotechnology (“Reported nanosafety practices in research laboratories worldwide”), Jesus Santamaria, who heads the Nanostructured Films and Particles (NFP) Group at the University of Zaragoza, and his team have conducted an online survey to identify what safety practices researchers are following in their own labs.

“The results of our survey indicate that environmental health and safety practice in many research laboratories worldwide is lacking in several important aspects, and several reasons may contribute to this” Santamaria tells Nanowerk. “Toxicity of nanomaterials is a complex subject because it depends on multiple factors including size, surface area, chemical composition, shape, aggregation, surface coating and solubility. Furthermore, most published research emphasizes acute toxicity and mortality, rather than chronic exposure and morbidity.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Maynard at 2020 Science has written up a pointed critique. From Andrew,

Out of all those researchers surveyed who thought the materials they were using might become airborne at some stage, 21% didn’t use any form of “special protection” and 30% didn’t use respiratory protection.  Yet there is no way of telling from the survey whether “special protection” (the authors’ terminology) was needed, or indeed whether any respiratory protection was needed.  A researcher handling small amounts of fumed silica for example – used as a food additive amongst other places – might well handle it using established lab safety procedures that are entirely adequate and don’t include the use of a respirator – in this survey they would be classed in the category of “most researchers” not using “suitabe personal and laboratory protection.”

Unfortunately the Nature Nanotechnology article is behind a paywall but it is worth looking at Andrew’s critique both for the insight it gives you into laboratory practices and for a better understanding of the problems posed by the questions in the survey. Properly framing questions and the answers respondents get to choose from is one of the most difficult aspects of creating a questionnaire.

Andrew never mentions it and I can’t get past the paywall to find out but the questionnaire (or instrument as it’s often called) should have been tested before it was used. I suspect it was not. That said, testing won’t necessarily identify all the problems once you start dealing with a larger sample but it should help.

I have a couple of other comments. I didn’t see any mention of demographic information. For example, are they more careful in smaller labs or does lab size make any difference in safety processes? Does age or experience as a researcher have an impact? Are chemists more careful than physicists? Are men more careful than women or vice versa?

My second comment has to do with self-selected respondents. Why did these people respond to a survey? Generally, if you are surveying people about an issue, the most likely to respond are the ones who feel most strongly about the issue and this can give you a false picture of the general population. In other words, your sample is not generalizable. I don’t think that’s necessarily the situation here but it is a factor that needs to be taken into account. I would expect most social scientists (I gather the Spanish team is not composed of social scientists) to use a number of instruments and not just a self-reporting survey although that may be the first step as more work is undertaken.

I should mention the GoodNanoGuide as sharing handling and safety practices are the reasons this site was developed by the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). From their website,

The GoodNanoGuide is a collaboration platform designed to enhance the ability of experts to exchange ideas on how best to handle nanomaterials in an occupational setting.

Now for something completely different, Korean robot actresses. From the news item on physorg.com,

EveR-3 (Eve Robot 3) starred in various dramas last year including the government-funded “Dwarfs” which attracted a full house, said Lee Ho-Gil, of the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.

The lifelike EveR-3 is 157 centimetres (five feet, two inches) tall, can communicate in Korean and English, and can express a total of 16 facial expressions — without ever forgetting her lines. Lee acknowledged that robot actresses find it hard to express the full gamut of emotions and also tend to bump into props and fellow (human) actors. But he said a thespian android was useful in promoting the cutting-edge industry.

Here’s a shot of the robot actress as Snow White (from physorg.com where you can see a larger version if you wish),

Courtesy of the Korean Institute of Technology, Eve Robot 3 in costume for Robot Princess and 7 Dwarfs

That’s it.

Patents kill innovation?; nanosponges and spinning carbon nanotubes in China; Google and the universal translator

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There’s an article about patents in The Economist online that provokes a question that’s not broached in the article. Here’s the thesis,

Most economists would argue that, without a patent system, even fewer inventions would lead to successful innovations, and those that did would be kept secret for far longer in order to maximise returns. But what if patents actually discourage the combining and recombining of inventions to yield new products and processes—as has happened in biotechnology, genetics and other disciplines?

Here’s the logical next question. If you accept the notion that patents kill innovation (or hinder it mightily) than how can the number of patents that are registered by any one country be used as a standard measure of scientific progress as per the 2009 OECD Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard (my post about Canada’s low patent score here)?

Thanks to Techdirt for pointing me to The Economist article (go here to see their take) and to the Brad Feld posting (go here to see their take) about biotech innovation and patents. From Feld’s posting,

Regularly, patent advocates tell me how important patents are for the biotech and life science industries.  However, there apparently is academic research in the works that shows that patents actually slow down innovation in biotech.  The specific example we discussed was that there is increasing evidence that when a professor or company gets a patent in the field of genetics research, other researchers simply stop doing work in that specific area.  As a result, the number of researchers on a particular topic decreases, especially if the patent is broad.  It’s not hard to theorize that this results in less innovation around this area over time.

Feld goes on cite a few academics who write about patents and their impact on innovation. His main interest is not biotech but software which brings me back to the article in The Economist and a ‘weirdity’ at the end.

An end to frivolous patents for business processes will be a blessing to online commerce. Meanwhile, the loss of patent protection for software could make programmers realise at last that they have more in common with authors, artists, publishers and musicians than they ever had with molecular architects and chip designers. In short, they produce expressions of ideas that are eminently copyrightable.

That could be good news for innovation. After all, who in his right mind would seek a lousy old patent offering a mere 20 years of protection when copyright can provide monopoly rights for up to 70 years after the author’s death? That one fact alone could spur more innovation than all the tinkering attempted so far.

I understand that the author is being satirical, unfortunately, the copyright side of intellectual property law is at least as crazy as the patent side and this falls a little flat for me.

Michael Berger over at Nanowerk has devoted a couple of spotlight items (in depth articles) to innovations in China over the last few days. First there were the carbon nanotube sponges,

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are ‘strange’ nanostructures in a sense that they have both high mechanical strength and extreme flexibility. Deforming a carbon nanotube into any shape would not easily break the structure, and it recovers to original morphology in perfect manner. Researchers in China are exploiting this phenomenon by making CNT sponges consisting of a large amount of interconnected nanotubes, thus showing a combination of useful properties such as high porosity, super elasticity, robustness, and little weight (1% of water density). The nanotube sponges not only show exciting properties as a porous material but they also are very promising to be used practically in a short time. The production method is simple and scalable, the cost is low, and the sponges can find immediate use in many fields related to water purification.

Then today, there was an article on spinning carbon nanotube yarns,

“While the development of a continuous and weavable pure carbon nanotube yarn remains a major challenge in the fabrications, CNT yarns so far obtained from the different processes are monolithic in structure,” Ya-Li Li, a professor in the Nanomaterials and PDCs Group at the Key Laboratory of Advanced Ceramics and Machining Technology at Tianjin University in PR China, explains to Nanowerk. “We have now been able to demonstrate the fabrication of a novel continuous yarn of CNTs with a multiple-layer structure by the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) spinning process. The yarn consists of multiple monolayers of CNTs concentrically assembled in seamless tubules along the yarn axis.”

While I’ve seen a number of articles proclaiming China’s increasing  presence in many scientific fields, including nanotechnology, this is the first time I’ve seen articles that probe beyond a basic description of published studies in language that is still accessible, i.e., you don’t need a specialist degree to read the material. It certainly helps to contextualize the statistics and other data about China’s published studies.

Kit Eaton’s article (Will Google’s Translator Phone lead us to Babylon or Babble On?) in Fast Company touches on, biblical times (Tower of Babel), Star Trek (universal translator) and linguistics, how could I resist?

Google’s revealed it’s working on extensions to its smartphone voice-control powers, debuted in the Nexus One, that’ll automatically translate between languages. It’s the stuff of pure utopian science fiction. But is it a good idea?

While Eaton makes some other sci fi references that I’m not particularly familiar with such as Douglas Adams’ Babel Fish (which in turn references the Tower of Babel), her point is clear: there can be unintended consequences (a concept from Max Weber, if I recall rightly) to new inventions/innovations.

…  For example, if Google’s device succeeds, and is useful and ubiquitous (in other words, nearly everyone ends up using it, or a competing service)–nobody would need learn a foreign language. “Hooray!” you may be thinking, but this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Because language plays such a fundamental part in connecting each of us as thinking creatures with the world around us, that the subtle nuances of language (which are different even in similar tongues, say the Latin-derived Spanish and Portuguese) actually shape how we think about the world. Learning something of how somebody else speaks from a foreign country actually helps you to understand their mindset a little. And if the average Joe on the street never learns a foreign language anymore (because it’s a very tricky thing to do, and Google’s just doing it for you, so why bother?) then that subtle understanding will be lost.

In the discussion about  “… the subtle nuances of language shaping how we think …” Eaton is referring to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Interestingly, some of the traditional linguistics departments in universities have resisted this hypothesis (I first learned about it in a mid-1980s communications course where we focused on semiotics).

On purely speculative terms, I could see two other ways for a universal translator to have unintended consequences. First, if something can’t be translated, it could disappear. Second, if a translatable version of your native language should emerge, people could break up into smaller subgroups to create more languages and more barriers to understanding. Eaton’s article definitely provoked some thinking for me this morning.

I did mention that I’d be posting the Geisler interview article later this week and I may have been a little optimistic as I’m having some difficulties chasing down a few details. In short, it’s on its way.

Miah and the Olympics; birth of the buckyball

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Given that the Winter Olympics are due to open later this week in Vancouver (Canada), there is a  flurry of interest in gene doping and other means of enhancing athletic performance. (I’m mentioning this because developments in elite athletics find their way into consumer markets and because of my interest in human enhancement.) For example, the University of British Columbia (UBC) is hosting,

Sport, Ethics and Technology: Is High Performance Sport Inconsistent with Ideals and Ethics?

Date/time: Monday, February 8, 8 p.m.

Location: Chan Centre for the Performing Arts
University of British Columbia
6265 Crescent Road, Vancouver
For a map and closest parking, visit: www.maps.ubc.ca?130

As the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games approach, Olympic athletes will come under close public scrutiny.  New technology will offer unexpected advantages that will challenge the boundaries of what is considered a level playing field.

And given those challenges, how do we determine what is ethical and fair? These questions are explored with Richard Pound followed by a panel discussion with Jim Rupert, Beckie Scott and other participants.

*Richard Pound is a former Olympic swimmer, McGill Chancellor and World Anti-Doping Agency Chairman.

*Jim Rupert is an associate professor in the School of Human Kinetics at UBC. His research looks at future trends in doping and doping control as it pertains to genetics and “gene-doping.”

*Beckie Scott is a former Olympic cross-country ski racer who currently serves as a member of the IOC.

This event is one of five provocative dialogues presented by UBC’s Sport and Society series during February and March. Find details at: http://bit.ly/9LuMXO

Friday, Feb. 5, 2010, the lead article in Section B of The Vancouver Sun by Margaret Munro was (print version), Gene Doping; The latest way to boost performance. The article noted that Andy Miah, at the University of the West of Scotland, in contrast to Olivier Rabin and Theodore Friedmann, the experts (whose study was just published in the journal Science) quoted in the article, suggests that gene doping may be safer than current methods of enhancing performance.

I have mentioned Andy before (here in my series on human enhancement and here regarding a book he edited on art and the future). His response to the Rabin/Friedmann concerns is here. An abstract of Rabin and Friedmann’s article is available here but the full article is behind a paywall.

Andy was also featured in an article in The WestEnder (a Vancouver community newspaper) by Jackie Wong titled (in the print version), New-media [sic] centre seeks to democratize Olympic coverage. From the article,

“We can say that Vancouver 2010 is the first truly digital Olympic Games,” says Andy Miah, chair in Ethics and Emerging Technologies in the School of Media, Language, and Music at the University of the West of Scotland. Miah has been researching new media and the Olympics for 10 years, at six Olympic Games.

Andy has written an essay about new media and its role at the Vancouver 2010 Olympics at Huffington Post. From the essay,

…. perhaps the most interesting dimension of Vancouver’s media culture is the rise of three other media entities, the first of which is the W2 Centre on Hastings, led by Irwin Oostindie. W2 is a cultural and arts infrastructure, serving the independent sector. It will run an extensive programme of art, debate and cultural experiences, some of which will have buy in from the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), while other elements will be more independent. To this end, W2 will serve as a bridge between the privileged participants and the critical commentators around Games time. For example, they will host the Legal Observers programme, headed up by the Pivot Legal Society and BC Civil Liberties Association, which will monitor the operations of Olympic security during Games time. It will also host a cultural collaboration between the London 2012 and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiads, as part of the UK’s Abandon Normal Devices festival, led by England’s Northwest.

You can read more here.

I’ve now mentioned the two areas that Andy sees as the two major controversies from the Vancouver Olympics, doping and new media activism.

One final note on this, Andy will be bringing a team of about 10 students from his university in Scotland who will be blogging from this site, Culture@tO Vancouver 2010. I’m not sure what the start date will be, presumably Feb. 12, 2010 when the games open.

Bucky balls are the popular name for the buckminsterfullerene (aka fullerene). Named for Buckminster Fuller, the molecule resembles one of Fuller’s geodesic domes. (There’s a geodesic dome in Vancouver which houses our local science centre and during the Olympics it will be home to the Sochi [host for 2014 Olympics], Russia pavilion.) The fullerene was first discovered at Rice University in Texas and this year marks its 25th anniversary and what many describe as the birth of nanotechnology. In celebration, the university is hosting a technical symposium.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

On Oct. 11-13, the best minds in carbon nanotechnology will gather at Rice University for a technical symposium during the Year of Nano, a series of events at the university celebrating the 25th anniversary of nano’s big bang.

Hmmm … I may have gone a little ‘link happy’ today. Tomorrow I should be looking at nano sponges and patents. Later this week I expect to be posting my interview with Dr. Cheryl Geisler, the new dean for Simon Fraser University’s new Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT).

SFU scientists set their phasers on stun; quantum biology and University of Toronto Chemists; P.R. and science journalism

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Neil Branda and his colleagues from Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) 4D Labs have demonstrated that animals can be ‘switched off ‘ with exposure to ultra violet light then ‘switched on’ when exposed to standard light. From the news item on Nanowerk,

In an advance with overtones of Star Trek phasers and other sci-fi ray guns, scientists in Canada are reporting development of an internal on-off “switch” that paralyzes animals when exposed to a beam of ultraviolet light. The animals stay paralyzed even when the light is turned off. When exposed to ordinary light, the animals become unparalyzed and wake up.

In more Canadian news, chemists at the University of Toronto have observed quantum mechanics at work with marine algae.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

“There’s been a lot of excitement and speculation that nature may be using quantum mechanical practices,” says chemistry professor Greg Scholes, lead author of a new study published this week in Nature. “Our latest experiments show that normally functioning biological systems have the capacity to use quantum mechanics in order to optimize a process as essential to their survival as photosynthesis.”

Special proteins called light-harvesting complexes are used in photosynthesis to capture sunlight and funnel its energy to nature’s solar cells – other proteins known as reaction centres. Scholes and his colleagues isolated light-harvesting complexes from two different species of marine algae and studied their function under natural temperature conditions using a sophisticated laser experiment known as two-dimensional electronic spectroscopy.

… It also raises some other potentially fascinating questions, such as, have these organisms developed quantum-mechanical strategies for light-harvesting to gain an evolutionary advantage? It suggests that algae knew about quantum mechanics nearly two billion years before humans,” says Scholes.

Is Scholes suggesting the algae are more advanced with science than humans? I find that thought intriguing and perhaps useful if one believes that human beings are remarkably arrogant creatures who can benefit from a little humility.

On a completely different front, I’ve been doing some more thinking about science journalism and science public relations (I did refer to some of it in my series on science communication in Canada on this blog in Sept/Oct 2009 ) after last week’s posting about a science journalism study in the UK. In fact, my thinking on these matters was reignited by a posting Ruth Seeley made on her No Spin PR blog about why she calls her business ‘no spin’ and why she prefers the term ‘framing’,

Implicit in the word spin is the idea that deception is involved, facts are being turned on their heads, and/or there’s so much fast talking going on the truth would be unrecognizable even if it were part of the mix. The ‘truth’ is, it’s as much of an insult to call a public relations practitioner a ’spin doctor’ as it is to call a woman a ‘chick.’ And it is a female-dominated profession, although not yet at the most senior levels.

Despite the cross-fertilization that occurs between journalists and PR practitioners (since writing well is the foundation skill for both professions), there is also the perception that journalists are those who ferret out the truth and present it objectively, while PR folks do their best to deflect, disguise, and distract from the truth. The notion of the muck-racking journalist being free of bias is laughable in the 21st Century. We wouldn’t have populist, right-wing, and left-wing media outlets if bias weren’t inherent in every medium, whether it’s the way the headline is written, the fact that the story is covered at all, or the selective presentation of facts. The notion that objectivity is in disrepute is, thankfully, permeating the zeitgeist – and not a moment too soon.

…

Whether you view the world through rose-coloured glasses or not, whether you think all politicians are dishonest or revere those who occupy the corridors of delegated power, whether you’re a MacHead or a PC fan, we all have filters we apply to information, and these filters affect our decision-making processes.

There is nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about choosing a frame. You need to be aware that there’s more than one framing choice. You need to consider the fact that others won’t choose the same frame as you. Ultimately, though, you will have to either pick one or leave the picture unframed. Choosing a frame and developing a strategy for its presentation is the heart of public relations. As a practitioner, aligning yourself with clients whose framing aligns with your beliefs and values is the soul of a successful PR consultancy.

Perception has never been reality. It just appears to be. That, I suspect, is a natural consequence of the human condition.

I mention Ruth in particular because her consultancy seems to be largely focused on science public relations (she does projects for Andrew Maynard [2020 Science] and, as you can see in her post, she is involved with the twitter science community).  Her comments reminded me of a rather provocative posting on Techdirt in May 2009,

One of the most common complaints about the trouble facing newspapers today is the woeful cry “but who will do investigative journalism?” Of course, that’s silly. There are plenty of new entities springing up everyday online that do investigative journalism — and do it well.

Romenesko points us to a column by Tim Cavanaugh taking this concept one step further: suggesting that a subset of PR people may end up taking on the role of investigative journalists . Now, I’m sure plenty of journalists are cringing at the concept — and certainly, as someone who gets bombarded daily with idiotic story pitches that are spun to such ridiculous levels I can only laugh at them (as I hit delete), it makes me cringe a bit. But some of his points are worth thinking about.

I went on to check Tim Cavanaugh’s article and after a brief description of the current publishing crisis and its effect on investigative journalism,

Here’s one hypothesis. Numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics suggest that in the decade from 1998 through 2007, another field was outgrowing, and perhaps growing at the expense of, traditional journalism. The number of people working as “reporters and correspondents” declined slightly in that period, from 52,380 in 1998 to 51,620 in 2007. But the number of public relations specialists more than doubled, from 98,240 to 225,880. (Because job types and nomenclature change substantially, I have used only directly comparable jobs. The U.S. economy was still supporting 7,360 paste-up workers in 1998, for example, while in 2007 some 29,320 Americans were working under the already antique title “desktop publishers.”)

So are flacks the future, or even the present, of investigative journalism? This interpretation makes intuitive sense. Important data points by which we continue to live our lives— the number of jobs that were created or destroyed by NAFTA, the villainy of the Serbs in the Yugoslav breakup, all sorts of projected benefits or disasters in President Obama’s budget plans— are largely the inventions of P.R. workers.

And though it’s considered wise to believe the contrary, these communications types are not constructing all these news items entirely (or even mostly) by lying. Flackery requires putting together credible narratives from pools of verifiable data. This activity is not categorically different from journalism. Nor is the teaching value that flackery provides entirely different from that of journalism: Most of the content you hear senators and congressmen reading on C-SPAN is stuff flacks provided to staffers.

The debate itself is not all that new as the relationship between public relations and journalism is at least one century old. One of the earliest PR practitioners was a former journalist, Ivy Lee. As for borrowing from the social sciences (the term framing as used in Ruth’s posting is from the social sciences), that too can be traced backwards, in this case, to the 1920s and Edward Bernays who viewed public relations as having huge potential for social engineering.Towards the end of his life (1891 – 1995) he was quite disappointed, (according Stuart Ewen’s book, PR! A Social History of Spin) in how the field of public relations had evolved. Ewen (wikipedia entry) is highly critical of the profession as per this May 2000 interview with David Barsamian,

Part of why the history of PR is so interesting is because you see that it’s a history of a battle for what is reality and how people will see and understand reality. PR isn’t functioning in a vacuum. PR is usually functioning to try to protect itself against other ideas that are percolating within a society. So under no circumstances should what I’m saying about Bernays in terms of the use of social psychology indicate that these are automatic processes that always work. They don’t always work. They don’t always work because to some extent, despite what [Walter] Lippman said, people don’t just function by pictures in their heads. They also experience things from their own lives. Often their experiences are at odds with the propaganda that’s being pumped out there.

As you can see, for Ewen PR is synonymous with propaganda which, by the way, was the title for a book by Edward Bernays.

I’ve worked in public relations and in marketing and find that the monolithic claims made by folks such as Ewen have elements of truth but that much of the analysis is simplistic. That said, I think the criticism is important and quite well placed as there have been some egregious and deeply false claims made by PR practitioners on behalf of their clients. Still, it bothers me that everyone is contaminated by the same brush.  Getting back to Ruth’s post: In a sense, we are all PR professionals. All of us choose our frames and we constantly communicate them to each other.

Happy weekend.

Nanotechnology and site remediation; nano company gives aid to Haiti; nano commodity exchange; new Canadian photovoltaic research network; sensual nanotechnology

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Tomorrow morning, Feb. 4, 2010, the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) will be webcasting an event titled, Contaminated Site Remediation: Are Nanomaterials the Answer? It starts at 9:30 am PST and the webcast can accessed from here.  Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend the live webcast but I will try to listen to it when they post the feed on their site a few days later. I did post more information, including a link to PEN’s site remediation map, about this event here.

More or less coincident with this event and on a somewhat related note, there is a donation from the company Nanoscale to relief efforts in Haiti. From the news item on Azonano,

NanoScale’s products and expertise in chemical and biological decontamination will provide protection and odor control to those most affected. NanoScale has donated NanoZorb®, a portable decomposition decontamination system based on products originally developed for U.S. military decontamination applications, to selected groups to aid their recovery efforts.

While it is likely as much a public relations effort as relief, bravo!

I’ve come across many comments as to how nanotechnology could be helpful to the environment but most of the examples I’ve seen are in the energy sector (i.e., ways nanotechnology-enabled products can reduce energy use). I’m hopeful these site remediation and decontamination nanotechnology efforts will be helpful and won’t become future problems.

There is a new commodities exchange on the horizon, Integrated Nano-Science Commodity Exchange (INSCX). From the news item on Nanowerk,

INSCX™ – Integrated Nano-Science Commodity Exchange, a patent-pending project to develop a global commodity exchange platform for trade in nano objects, materials and commodities, has formalised an agreement with AssuredNano™ [SHE] to co-ordinate the global accreditation of supply onto the market platform which is scheduled to launch in the UK early 2011.

AssuredNano™ is the premier Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) accreditation scheme for organisations producing nanomaterials, nano-enabled products and users of nanotechnology in general. It promotes the responsible and proactive application of nanomaterial SHE good current practice within the nanomaterials and nanotechnology community.

…

INSCX™, is designed to provide the “hub to the wheel of nanotechnologies” where the interests of business can co-exist with those of state governments, regional authorities, specialist agencies, research bodies, and consumer groups to deliver ethical and commercial cohesion across nanotechnologies.

I’m trying to figure out how AssuredNano can supply accreditation when there are no internationally accepted standard definitions for terms such as nanomaterials. (The International Standards Organization [ISO] has developed definitions but I have not seen any indication that they have been adopted as standards.) The AssuredNano site does not provide any details about their accreditation scheme, as you can see for yourself here. I hope to see more detailed information before the exhange starts in 2011.

As I noted earlier, most of the nanotechnology environmental news is focused on energy. Canada’s Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) just this week announced the establishment of a new solar photovoltaic research network headquartered at McMaster University. From the news item on physorg.com,

The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) announced $5 million in funding today for the establishment of the NSERC Photovoltaic Innovation Network. The Network is comprised of 29 top scientists and engineers working in the field of advanced solar cell research at 13 universities across Canada. Eleven private sector companies are also part of the network.

The Network aims to raise the status of solar photovoltaics (PV) as a renewable energy option in Canada by accelerating research and development and commercializing the outcomes.

Now on a completely different note, the sensual side of nanotechnology. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Pin-sharp projections, light that’s whiter than white, varnishes that make sounds if the temperature changes: at nano tech 2010 in Tokyo, Fraunhofer researchers present nanotechnology that is a veritable feast for the senses.

A mystical glow emanates from the display case. A white light appears out of nowhere. And a light source is invisible – at least at first glance. Only upon close examination does the source of the apparently supernatural illumination become visible: a light diode, smaller than a pinhead, passes through thousands of infinitesimal lens structures measuring only a few hundred nanometers, et voilà: beaming white light.

…

Nanotechnology not only puts an entirely new dimension before the eye, it also makes audible things that no ear could ever perceive before: like changes in temperature. A new varnish developed by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Engineering and Automation IPA ensures that surfaces emit sound if they become warmer or cool off. The trick: carbon nano-tubes embedded in the varnish that conduct electricity …

In addition to sight and sound, I have one more sense to cover, touch. From the news item, Multitouch ‘Skin’ Transforms Surfaces into Interactive Screens, on physorg.com,

The DISPLAX Multitouch Technology, believed to be the first of its kind, has been developed based on a transparent thinner-than-paper polymer film. When applied to glass, plastic or wood, the surface becomes interactive. Significantly, this new multitouch technology can be applied to standard LCD screens as well, making it an attractive choice for LCD manufacturers. The new technology will also be available for audiovisual integrators or gaming platforms to develop innovative products.

The DISPLAX Multitouch Technology dramatically extends the capabilities of the interactive format. It can be applied to flat or curved, opaque as well as transparent surfaces up to three metres across the diagonal. It is hyper sensitive, allowing users to interact with an enabled surface not just by touching it but, for the first time, by blowing on it, opening up new possibilities for future applications. Currently, the technology can detect up to 16 fingers on a 50-inch screen. The number of fingers detected is expected to increase as development progresses.

It may take a while before pure white light or varnish that you can hear comes to market but the multitouch ‘skin’ is here as a harbinger of what is to come. Offhand, I’m not sure I want to hear varnish. It seems to me that it would be like having an alarm that I can’t shut off  which means I could be confronted with any number of products that are emitting sounds because they are too hot or too cold or nearing the end of their product lives or, worse yet, malfunctioning.

nanoBIDS; military robots from prototype to working model; prosthetics, the wave of the future?

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The Nanowerk website is expanding. From their news item,

Nanowerk, the leading information provider for all areas of nanotechnologies, today added to its nanotechnology information portal a new free service for buyers and vendors of micro- and nanotechnology equipment and services. The new application, called nanoBIDS, is now available on the Nanowerk website. nanoBIDS facilitates the public posting of Requests for Proposal (RFPs) for equipment and services from procurement departments in the micro- and nanotechnologies community. nanoBIDS is open to all research organizations and companies.

I checked out the nanoBIDS page and found RFP listings from UK, US (mostly), and Germany. The earliest are dated Jan.25, 2010 so this site is just over a week old and already has two pages.

The Big Dog robot (which I posted about briefly here) is in the news again. Kit Eaton (Fast Company) whose article last October first alerted me to this device now writes that the robot is being put into production. From the article (Robocalypse Alert: Defense Contract Awarded to Scary BigDog),

The contract’s been won by maker Boston Dynamics, which has just 30 months to turn the research prototype machines into a genuine load-toting, four-legged, semi-intelligent war robot–“first walk-out” of the newly-designated LS3 is scheduled in 2012.

LS3 stands for Legged Squad Support System, and that pretty much sums up what the device is all about: It’s a semi-autonomous assistant designed to follow soldiers and Marines across the battlefield, carrying up to 400 pounds of gear and enough fuel to keep it going for 24 hours over a march of 20 miles.

They have included a video of the prototype on a beach in Thailand and as Eaton notes, the robot is “disarmingly ‘cute'” and, to me, its legs look almost human-shaped, which leads me to my next bit.

I found another article on prosthetics this morning and it’s a very good one. Written by Paul Hochman for Fast Company [ETA March 23, 2022: an updated version of the article is now on Genius.com], Bionic Legs, iLimbs, and Other Super-Human Prostheses delves further into the world where people may be willing to trade a healthy limb for a prosthetic. From the article,

There are many advantages to having your leg amputated.

Pedicure costs drop 50% overnight. A pair of socks lasts twice as long. But Hugh Herr, the director of the Biomechatronics Group at the MIT Media Lab, goes a step further. “It’s actually unfair,” Herr says about amputees’ advantages over the able-bodied. “As tech advancements in prosthetics come along, amputees can exploit those improvements. They can get upgrades. A person with a natural body can’t.”

I came across both a milder version of this sentiment and a more targeted version (able-bodied athletes worried about double amputee Oscar Pistorius’ bid to run in the Olympics rather than the Paralympics) when I wrote my four part series on human enhancement (July 22, 23, 24 & 27, 2009).

The Hochman article also goes on to discuss some of the aesthetic considerations (which I discussed in the same posting where I mentioned the BigDog robots). What Hochman does particularly well is bringing all this information together and explaining how the lure of big money (profit) is stimulating market development,

Not surprisingly, the money is following the market. MIT’s Herr cofounded a company called iWalk, which has received $10 million in venture financing to develop the PowerFoot One — what the company calls the “world’s first actively powered prosthetic ankle and foot.” Meanwhile, the Department of Veterans Affairs recently gave Brown University’s Center for Restorative and Regenerative Medicine a $7 million round of funding, on top of the $7.2 million it provided in 2004. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration (DARPA) has funded Manchester, New Hampshire-based DEKA Research, which is developing the Luke, a powered prosthetic arm (named after Luke Skywalker, whose hand is hacked off by his father, Darth Vader).

This influx of R&D cash, combined with breakthroughs in materials science and processor speed, has had a striking visual and social result: an emblem of hurt and loss has become a paradigm of the sleek, modern, and powerful. Which is why Michael Bailey, a 24-year-old student in Duluth, Georgia, is looking forward to the day when he can amputate the last two fingers on his left hand.

“I don’t think I would have said this if it had never happened,” says Bailey, referring to the accident that tore off his pinkie, ring, and middle fingers. “But I told Touch Bionics I’d cut the rest of my hand off if I could make all five of my fingers robotic.”

This kind of thinking is influencing surgery such that patients are asking to have more of their bodies removed.

The article is lengthy (by internet standards) and worthwhile as it contains nuggets such as this,

But Bailey is most surprised by his own reaction. “When I’m wearing it, I do feel different: I feel stronger. As weird as that sounds, having a piece of machinery incorporated into your body, as a part of you, well, it makes you feel above human. It’s a very powerful thing.”

So the prosthetic makes him “feel above human,” interesting, eh? It leads to the next question (and a grand and philosophical one it is), what does it mean to be human? At least lately, I tend to explore that question by reading fiction.

I have been intrigued by Catherine Asaro‘s Skolian Empire series of books. The series features human beings (mostly soldiers) who have something she calls ‘biomech’  in their bodies to make them smarter, stronger, and faster. She also populates worlds with people who’ve had (thousands of years before) extensive genetic manipulation so they can better adapt to their new homeworlds. Her characters represent different opinions about the ‘biomech’ which is surgically implanted usually in adulthood and voluntarily. Asaro is a physicist who writes ‘hard’ science fiction laced with romance. She handles a great many thorny social questions in the context of this Skolian Empire that she has created where the technologies (nano, genetic engineering, etc.)  that we are exploring are a daily reality.

Window sunglasses; insect microids; open access to science research?; theatre and science

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Having windows that can darken or lighten according to the amount of sunshine would save money and energy. Such windows have been around for over two decades but they haven’t worked very well. Researchers at the US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) are working on a new, more successful generation of such windows (electrochromic windows). From the article by Joe Verrengia on physorg.com,

Insulated windows are made from multiple layers of glass. Typically the spaces between the panes are filled with a gas. Electrochromic windows are made with a very thin stack of dynamic materials deposited on the outside pane.

The dynamic portion consists of three layers: active and counter electrodes separated by an ion conductor layer. NREL researchers are experimenting with electrode layers made of nickel and tungsten oxides; the ions are lithium.

The window changes from clear to tinted when a small electric field is applied and the lithium ions move into the working electrode layers. The change can be triggered by sensors in an automated building management system, or by a flick of a switch. Electrochromic windows can block as much as 98 percent of the direct sunlight. Reversing the polarity of the applied voltage causes the ions to migrate back to their original layer, and the glass returns to clear.

It sounds exciting to someone like me who doesn’t handle the heat or air conditioning well. I just hope they can get the costs down as it’s about $1000 per square metre at this point.

While it’s not strictly speaking nanotechnology, a researcher (Jason Clark) at Purdue University is working on an insect robot, a microid.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

His [Clark’s] concept, a sort of solid-state muscle for microid legs and mandibles, would allow the robot to nimbly traverse harsh environments such as sand or water. The concept appears to be the first to show such insectlike characteristics at the microscale, he said.
“The microids would be able to walk, run, jump, and pick up and move objects many times their own weight,” Clark said. “A microid can also do what no insect or other microrobot can do, which is continue walking if flipped on its back. Who knows, maybe flight is next.”
He also envisions the possibility of hordes of microids working in unison and communicating with each other to perform a complex task.
“You can’t underestimate the power of having thousands of microids working together, much like ant colonies,” he said.

Those last bits about flying and working in unison bring Michael Crichton’s 2002 nanotechnology novel, Prey, to mind. Crichton conceptualized a swarm that was intelligent, voracious, and almost unstoppable. As I recall, Crichton included aspects of insect behaviour, network theory, neuroscience, and self-assembling nanotechnology to describe his swarm. It caused a bit of a kerfuffle in the nanotech research community as scientists were concerned that it might set off a controversy similar to  ‘frankenfoods’ or GM (genetically modified) foods but nothing came of it at the time.

Techdirt had an interesting bit last week about open access to science research,

Via James Boyle, we’re pointed to an editorial that supposedly is all about improving access to research via open access policies for the public — and just so happens to be locked up behind a paywall itself. Apparently, the publisher doesn’t necessarily agree with the authors’ conclusions.

I did check out the link to find the publisher is the journal Science and they require a free registration or a subscription  for access to the editorial. Either Techdirt made a mistake or the editors at Science changed access to the editorial.

Combining insects with the journal, I found a news item on physorg.com about a theatre review published in Science,

Typically science doesn’t bed down with theatre, much less mate with artistic vigor, but the accord between the two is explored in the recent production Heuschrecken [The Locusts] developed by Stefan Kaegi of Rimini Protokoll. “And why not?” asks Arizona State University’s Manfred Laubichler and Gitta Honegger who review the production in the Jan. 29 issue of the journal Science.

…

The marriage of theatre and science is not new. The Greeks, starting with Aristotle embraced a more integrated relationship of the two. “But a divide came when we associated science with the brain and the arts with emotions,” Honegger says.

The news item goes on to discuss the particulars of the production such as a 60 square metre terrarium of 10,000 locusts, actors, scientists, video cameras, interwoven narratives, and locust music. I am quite inspired by it.

Coincidentally, Rimini Protokoll, the German theatre arts company mentioned in the news item, has a production here in Vancouver (as part of PUSH International Performing Arts Festival 2010 [Jan. 20 to Feb. 6]) which integrates video games and theatre. From the Canwest article by Peter Birnie,

Tim Carlson is a Vancouver playwright who was in Berlin in 2006 for a production of his play Omniscience. Carlson was so impressed by a Rimini Protokoll production of Friedrich Schiller’s Wallenstein trilogy in the German capital that, when he subsequently learned the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival was bringing Rimini Protokoll here, asked to work with them.

“I knew that they shape their shows for particular cities,” Carlson explains, “and they would want to do research here. I had them meet [former city councillor] Jim Green, they visited In-Site and had an architecture tour with [noted critic] Trevor Boddy. One thing that really captured their interest was the video-gaming industry in town, so that kind of turned the light on.”

Electronic artist Brady Marks was hired to find a way that 200 people could game together, and other electronic designers were brought on board to do the 3D modelling. As it does in other productions, Rimini Protokoll then hired local experts — not actors — to perform as themselves.

Marks is the electronic artist directing things, with animator Duff Armour as a game tester, former politician (and Railway Club owner) Bob Williams as a politician and traffic flagger Ellen Schultz as, well, the traffic flagger for the show. Carlson explains that Williams will be something of a political commentator when the audience holds its own presidential election.

You can phone 604.251.1363 to inquire about tickets for the production (Best Before) at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.