Monthly Archives: June 2013

Nanotechnology-enabled water resource collaboraton between Israel and Chicago

A June 25, 2013 news item on Azonano describes a collaborative agreement between the University of Chicago and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (Israel) to work together and fund nanotechnology-enabled solutions for more water in the Middle East and elsewhere,

The University of Chicago and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev will begin funding a series of ambitious research collaborations that apply the latest discoveries in nanotechnology to create new materials and processes for making clean, fresh drinking water more plentiful and less expensive by 2020.

The announcement came June 23 following a meeting in Jerusalem among Israeli President Shimon Peres, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer, Ben-Gurion University President Rivka Carmi and leading scientists in the field. The joint projects will explore innovative solutions at the water-energy nexus, developing more efficient ways of using water to produce energy and using energy to treat and deliver clean water.

There are more details in the June 23, 2013 University of Chicago news release, which originated the news item (Note: Links have been removed),

The University of Chicago also brings to the effort two powerful research partners already committed to clean water research: the Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, Ill., and the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass.

“We feel it is critical to bring outstanding scientists together to address water resource challenges that are being felt around the world, and will only become more acute over time,” said Zimmer. “Our purification challenges in the Great Lakes region right now are different from some of the scarcity issues some of our colleagues at Ben-Gurion are addressing, but our combined experience will be a tremendous asset in turning early-stage technologies into innovative solutions that may have applications far beyond local issues.”

“Clean, plentiful water is a strategic issue in the Middle East and the world at large, and a central research focus of our university for more than three decades,” said Carmi. “We believe that this partnership will enhance state-of-the-art science in both universities, while having a profound effect on the sustainable availability of clean water to people around the globe.”

The first wave of research proposals include fabricating new materials tailored to remove contaminants, bacteria, viruses and salt from drinking water at a fraction of the cost of current technologies; biological engineering that will help plants maximize their own drought-resistance mechanisms; and polymers that can change the water retention properties of soil in agriculture.

UChicago, BGU and Argonne have jointly committed more than $1 million in seed money over the next two years to support inaugural projects, with the first projects getting under way this fall.

One proposed project would attempt to devise multi-functional and anti-fouling membranes for water purification. These membranes, engineered at the molecular level, could be switched or tuned to remove a wide range of biological and chemical contaminants and prevent the formation of membrane-fouling bacterial films. Keeping those membranes free of fouling would extend their useful lives and decrease energy usage while reducing the operational cost of purifying water.

Another proposal focuses on developing polymers for soil infusion or seed coatings to promote water retention. Such polymers conjure visions of smart landscapes that can substantially promote agricultural growth while reducing irrigation needs.

Officials from both the U.S. and Israel hailed the collaboration as an example of the potential for collaborative innovation that can improve quality of life and boost economic vitality.

You can read more about the University of Chicago’s March 8, 2013 memorandum of understanding with the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in this March 19,2013 University of Chicago news article by Steve Koppes.

Sidenote: In early May 2013, internationally renowned physicist Stephen Hawking participated in an ‘academic’ boycott of Israel over its position on Palestine. The May 9, 2013 article, Stephen Hawking: Furore deepens over Israel boycott, by Harriet Sherwood, Matthew Kalman, and Sam Jones for the Guardian newspaper reveals some of the content of Hawking’s letter to the organizers and his reasons for participating in the boycott,

Hawking, a world-renowned scientist and bestselling author who has had motor neurone disease for 50 years, cancelled his appearance at the high-profile Presidential Conference, which is personally sponsored by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, after a barrage of appeals from Palestinian academics.

The full text of the letter [from Hawking], dated 3 May, said: “I accepted the invitation to the Presidential Conference with the intention that this would not only allow me to express my opinion on the prospects for a peace settlement but also because it would allow me to lecture on the West Bank. However, I have received a number of emails from Palestinian academics. They are unanimous that I should respect the boycott. In view of this, I must withdraw from the conference. Had I attended, I would have stated my opinion that the policy of the present Israeli government is likely to lead to disaster.”

But Palestinians welcomed Hawking’s decision. “Palestinians deeply appreciate Stephen Hawking’s support for an academic boycott of Israel,” said Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement. “We think this will rekindle the kind of interest among international academics in academic boycotts that was present in the struggle against apartheid in South Africa.”

Steve Caplan in a May 13, 2013 piece (Occam’s Corner hosted by the Guardian) explained why he profoundly disagreed with Hawking’s position (Note: Links have been removed),

My respect for Hawking as a scientist and person of enormous courage has made my dismay at his recent decision all the greater. In these very virtual pages I have previously opined on the folly of imposing an academic boycott on Israel. The UK, which sports many of the supporters of this policy – dubiously known as the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) – also appears to be particularly fertile ground for anti-Semitism. To what degree British anti-Semitism, the anti-Israel BDS lobby and legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies are related is an inordinately complex question, but it is clear that anti-Semitism plays a role among some BDS supporters.

The decision by Hawking to join the boycotters of Israel and Israeli academics is particularly ironic in light of the fact that the conference is being hosted in honor of the 90th birthday of Israel’s president, Shimon Peres. More than any other Israeli leader, Peres has been committed to negotiations and comprehensive peace with the Palestinians, and he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. At 90, despite his figurehead position, Peres remains steadfastly optimistic in his relentless goal of a fair two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians.

Caplan’s summary of how the ‘Palestine problem’ was created and how we got to the current state of affairs is one of most the clear-headed I’ve seen,

Pinning the blame on one side with a propaganda machine and a sleeve full of slogans is easy to do, but there is nothing simple or straightforward about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. From the very birth of the State of Israel in 1948, the mode by which the Palestinian refugee problem was created has been debated intensely by historians. There is little question that a combination of intimidation by Israelis and acquiescence of the refugees to calls by Palestinian and Arab leaders to flee (and return with the victorious Arab armies) were the major causes of Palestinian uprooting.

To what degree was each side responsible? The Palestinians and Arab countries initiated the war in 1948, vetoing by force the United Nations Partition Plan to divide the country between Israelis and Palestinians – in an attempt to prevent any Jewish state from arising. And at the time, Israelis doubtlessly showed little concern at the growing numbers of Palestinians who fled or were forced from their homes. And later, after the Six-Day War in 1967, the Israelis displayed poor judgment (that unfortunately continues to this day) in allowing her citizens to build settlements in these conquered territories.

Both sides have suffered from poor leadership over the years.

Caplan also discusses the relationship between Israel’s government and its academics as he explains why he is opposed academic boycotts,

… in any case, Israeli academics and scientists are neither government mouthpieces nor puppets. There have frequently been serious disagreements between the government and the universities in Israel, highlighting the independence of Israel’s academic institutions. One such example is the Israeli government’s decision last year to upgrade the status of a college built in Ariel – a town inside the West Bank – to that of a university. This was vehemently opposed by Israel’s institutions of higher learning (and by perhaps 50% of the general population).

A second example is the unsuccessful attempt by the Israeli government to shut down Ben-Gurion University’s Department of Politics and Government – which was attacked for its leftist views. The rallying opposition and petition by Israeli academics across the country who warned of the danger to academic freedom helped prevent the department’s closure.

You’ll note the reference to Ben-Gurion University in that last paragraph excerpted from Caplan’s piece, which brings this posting back to where it started, collaboration between two universities to come up with solutions that address problems with access to water. In the end, I am inclined to agree with Caplan that we need to open up and maintain the lines of communication.

ETA June 27, 2013: There is no hint in the University of Chicago news releases that these water projects will benefit any parties other than Israel and the US but it is tempting to hope that this work might also have an impact in Palestine given its current water crisis there as described in a June 26, 2013 news item in the World Bulletin (Note: Links have been removed),

A tiny wedge of land jammed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean sea, the Gaza Strip is heading inexorably into a water crisis that the United Nations says could make the Palestinian enclave unliveable in just a few years.

With 90-95 percent of the territory’s only aquifer contaminated by sewage, chemicals and seawater, neighbourhood desalination facilities and their public taps are a lifesaver for some of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents.

But these small-scale projects provide water for only about 20 percent of the population, forcing many more residents in the impoverished Gaza Strip to buy bottled water at a premium.

“There is a crisis. There is a serious deficit in the water resources in Gaza and there is a serious deterioration in the water quality,” said Rebhi El Sheikh, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA).

A NASA study of satellite data released this year showed that between 2003 and 2009 the region lost 144 cubic km of stored freshwater – equivalent to the amount of water held in the Dead Sea – making an already bad situation much worse.

But the situation in Gaza is particularly acute, with the United Nations warning that its sole aquifer might be unusable by 2016, with the damage potentially irreversible by 2020.

H/T June 26, 2013 Reuters news item.

EVP (electronic voice phenomena), recording the dead, visual art, and the Rorschach Audio research project (2007 – 2012): two talks

The British Library Sound Archive (London, England) is featuring a June 28, 2013 lunchtime talk (Note: It is free and sold out as of June 24, 2013 2:30 pm PDT) according to a June 23, 2013 Disinformation PR (public relations) announcement (from the June 4, 2013 Rorschach Audio blog posting, which originated the announcement),

Writing in “Playback: The Bulletin of the British Library Sound Archive”, Toby Oakes observed that the archive “deals with the voices of the dead every day, but our subjects tend to have been alive at the time of recording”. “Mortality was no impediment” however, in the case of tapes recorded by parapsychologist Konstantin Raudive, who claimed that Galileo, Goethe and Hitler communicated with him through the medium of radio. Raudive was the most famous exponent of Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP), as it is known, and the British Library holds a collection of 60 of his unedited tapes. Rather than dismissing the claims of EVP researchers out-of-hand, author Joe Banks demonstrates a number of highly entertaining audio-visual illusions, which show how the mind can misinterpret recordings of sound and of stray communications chatter, in a similar way to how viewers project imaginary images onto the random visual forms of the psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach’s famous ink-blot tests. The talk stresses the important role that intelligent guesswork plays in normal perception, and discusses descriptions of sound phenomena by Leonardo da Vinci, and the work of the BBC Monitoring Service, emphasizing the influence that wartime intelligence work with sound had on one of the most important works of visual arts theory every published. [sic]

[from the British Library Rorschach Audio event page: The talk stresses the important role that intelligent guesswork plays in normal perception, and discusses descriptions of sound phenomena by Leonardo da Vinci, and the work of the BBC Monitoring Service, emphasizing the influence that wartime intelligence work with sound had on one of the most important works of visual arts theory – Art & Illusion by (wartime radio monitor and post-war art historian) E.H. Gombrich.]

The talk starts at 12:30 (however the library is a bit of a labyrinth so arrive 10 minutes early to make sure you find the scriptorium on time). Admission is free and refreshments are provided. To attend please e-mail your name to summer-scholars@bl.uk.

Rorschach Audio – Ghost Voices, Art, Illusions and Sonic Archives” [emphasis mine]
12:30 lunch-time, 28 June 2013
The British Library
96 Euston Road
London NW1 2DB

This talk is part of the British Library’s Summer Scholars programme –
http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event147624.html

There is a second chance at finding out about this project at a Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa, from the June 4, 2013 posting,

After the British Library talk, the next “Rorschach Audio” demonstration will be for Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa – upstairs at St Patrick’s Irish Club, Riverside Walk (off Adelaide Road), Leamington CV32 5AH, 7pm, Monday 15 July 2013…

http://www.cafescientifique.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=221:leamington-spa

I like the Café Scientifique in Leamington Spa description of the July 15, 2013 event,

Monday 15th July 2013

Electronic Voice Phenomena: ghost voice recordings and illusions of science

Joe Banks

Electronic Voice Phenomena (EVP) refers to a movement – not unlike the UFO scene – whose supporters contend that misheard recordings of stray communications and radio chatter constitute scientific proof of the existence of ghosts. Rather than dismissing ghost-voice recordings out of hand, Joe will show how EVP researchers misunderstand the mind’s capacity to interpret sound, similar to the way we see illusory images in the random visual forms of the famous Rorschach ink-blot tests. Joe will demonstrate the formation of such perceptions using a number of entertaining and sometimes bizarre audio-visual illusions.

Joe Banks is a former Honorary Visiting Fellow in the School of Informatics at City University, London, and former AHRC-sponsored Research Fellow in the Department of Computing at Goldsmiths College and the Department of English, Linguistics & Cultural Studies at The University of Westminster. One of his “Rorschach Audio” research papers was published in a scholarly journal by The MIT Press, his recently-published book Rorschach Audio was featured on BBC Radio 4 and he has given talks about “Rorschach Audio” at the London Science Museum’s Dana Centre and the British Library.

Joe lives in London, near the set of traffic lights that inspired physicist Leo Szilard to conceive the theory of the thermonuclear chain reaction.

For those of us who can’t get to the British Library or Leamington Spa, here’s a video featuring the Rorschach Audio project, from Joe Banks’s webpage on the Goldsmiths College website,


I think it might be necessary to attend the talk in order to make sense of this video although perhaps you’ll find this image included with the publicity helpful,

Rorschach Audio visual image [downloaded from http://rorschachaudio.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/british-library-sonic-archives/]

Rorschach Audio visual image [downloaded from http://rorschachaudio.wordpress.com/2013/06/04/british-library-sonic-archives/]

RUSNANO (not dead yet) signs MOU with Alcoa

Despite what appear to be some travails noted in my May 17, 2013 posting, RUSNANO (Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies) is still making deals as reported in a June 21, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Alcoa and RUSNANO will produce technologically advanced oil and gas aluminum drill pipe finished with a life-extending antiwear coating under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by the companies today. With the help of the Alcoa Technical Center, the parties intend to pursue the potential application of a nanotechnology-based coating for the aluminum drill pipe to enhance its wear resistance in harsh corrosive drilling environments.

Alcoa Chairman and CEO Klaus Kleinfeld and OJSC RUSNANO Chief Executive Officer Anatoly Chubais signed the MOU at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The June 21, 2013 Alcoa news release, which originated the news item, provides more details,

“Complex oil and gas development projects require drilling equipment with enhanced capabilities,” Chubais said. “Aluminum drill pipe with antiwear nano-coating would enable directional and deep drilling in aggressive, corrosive environments. We expect our joint efforts with Alcoa will create a differentiated product for customers in the oil and gas industry.”

Mr. Kleinfeld added, “Alcoa’s deep technological capabilities, combined with the expertise of our partner RUSNANO, will open new opportunities for developing the aluminum industry in Russia. Alcoa is setting a high standard for innovation and extending our product range in the oil and gas segment.”

With facilities in Samara and Belaya Kalitva, Alcoa is Russia’s largest producer of fabricated aluminum, manufacturing a wide range of flat rolled products, forgings and extrusions for a variety of end markets including aerospace and automotive. [emphasis mine] Under terms of the MOU, Alcoa will leverage its Samara facility to produce aluminum drill pipe with hot fit tool joints for the country’s oil and gas market. RUSNANO Capital, a subsidiary of OJSC RUSNANO, will contribute capital.

The antiwear nano-coating is expected to extend the life of the aluminum pipe by approximately 30% to 40% in aggressive and corrosive drilling environments compared to uncoated aluminum pipe.

Here’s a little more about the two principles, Alcoa and about RUSNANO, from the news release,

About Alcoa

Alcoa is the world’s leading producer of primary and fabricated aluminum, as well as the world’s largest miner of bauxite and refiner of alumina. In addition to inventing the modern-day aluminum industry, Alcoa innovation has been behind major milestones in the aerospace, automotive, packaging, building and construction, commercial transportation, consumer electronics and industrial markets over the past 125 years. Among the solutions Alcoa markets are flat-rolled products, hard alloy extrusions, and forgings, as well as Alcoa® wheels, fastening systems, precision and investment castings, and building systems in addition to its expertise in other light metals such as titanium and nickel-based super alloys. Sustainability is an integral part of Alcoa’s operating practices and the product design and engineering it provides to customers. Alcoa has been a member of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for 11 consecutive years and approximately 75 percent of all of the aluminum ever produced since 1888 is still in active use today. Alcoa employs approximately 61,000 people in 30 countries across the world. …

In 2005, the Company acquired two of Russia’s largest fabricating facilities: Samara Metallurgical Plant (now ZAO Alcoa SMZ) and Belaya Kalitva Metallurgical Production Association (now ZAO AMR). [emphasis mine]

About RUSNANO

RUSNANO was founded in March 2011 as an open joint stock company through reorganization of state corporation Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies. RUSNANO’s mission is to develop the Russian nanotechnology industry through co-investment in nanotechnology projects with substantial economic potential or social benefit. The Government of the Russian Federation owns 100 percent of the shares in RUSNANO. Anatoly Chubais is CEO and chairman of the Executive Board of RUSNANO.

Work to establish nanotechnology infrastructure and training for nanotechnology specialists, formerly conducted by the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, has been entrusted to the Fund for Infrastructure and Educational Programs, a non-commercial fund also established through reorganization of the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies.

As for the 2011 founding date for RUSNANO, that appears to be the date it became an open stock company. Here’s more according to the RUSNANO Wikipedia essay (Note: Links and footnotes have been removed),

A law (On the Russian Nanotechnology Corporation) which resulted in the creation of “Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies” was proposed by several members of the United Russia party on June 2007. The proposal passed its first reading in the State Duma on June 14 and final reading on July 4. The upper house, the Federation Council, approved it on July 6. Initially organised as a state corporation, the company was re-registered on March 11, 2011 as open joint-stock company RUSNANO.

In any event, I’m keeping an eye on RUSNANO as it continues to evolve in the midst of what appears to be a more than usually volatile period for Russia’s state business enterprises.

Catching cancer; story of a medical revolution at Vancouver’s (Canada) June 25, 2013 Café Scientifique

Here’s the date and time for the next Café Scientifique Vancouver (Canada) talk, from the group’s  June 18, 2013 announcement,

Our next café will happen on Tuesday June 25th, 7:30pm at The Railway Club. Our speaker for the evening will be Claudia Cornwall, a science writer and author of 5 books and over 50 magazine articles. The details of her talk are as follows:Catching Cancer—the story of a medical revolution

We now know that 20% of cancers are caused by infections and many researchers believe that more discoveries are coming. This is a paradigm shift that was over a hundred years in the making. It has profound implications for our ability to prevent malignancies. Claudia Cornwall’s new book, Catching Cancer: the quest for its viral and bacterial cause, is the story of the story of how it happened. Who contributed to the change in thinking? [emphasis mine] How did investigators persuade the medical establishment to adopt their ideas? What personal qualities helped them in their struggle? To answer these questions, the book draws on wide-ranging interviews with Nobel prize winners and other researchers.

This looks like it’s going to be a very interesting (i.e., lively) session as it is a topic freighted with stress, fear, and mythology than cancer. I don’t think I’ve ever met another adult who didn’t have a friend or a family member who had and recovered or died from the disease. I expect this will be a very well attended talk.

For those who don’t know the location,

  The Railway Club is on the 2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. (at Seymour St.), in Vancouver, Canada.

I have long been interested in how ideas become knowledge and had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Rainer Becker about his project (sadly, it was cancelled) on what seems to have bene a topic very similar to Cornwall’s book. From the first part of the Becker interview in my June 1, 2010 posting,

First, some information about the research project and Dr. Becker from the April 22, 2010 news item on Nanowerk,

How do sensational ideas become commonly accepted knowledge? How does a hypothesis turn into certainty? What are the ways and words that bring results of scientific experiments into textbooks and people’s minds, how are they “transferred” into these domains? Science philosopher Dr. Rainer Becker has recently started dealing with such questions. Over the next three years, Becker will accompany the work of Professor Dr. Frank Rösl’s department at the German Cancer Research Center (Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum, DKFZ), which studies cancer-causing viruses. [emphasis mine] He is one of three scientists in an interdisciplinary joint project which is funded by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) with a total sum of approximately € 790,000.

Part 2 of the interview is here in my June 2, 2010 posting.

Getting back to the Cornwall’s appearance at the Tuesday, June 25, 2013 Café Scientifique Vancouver event, I imagine she will have her book available for sale there. From Cornwall’s Catching Cancer webpage,

Catching Cancer is published by Rowman and Littlefield.  It is available in bookstores and on in line in Canada, the U.S. and many other countries.

978-1-4422-1520-7 • Hardback
April 2013 • $36.00 • (£22.95)

978-1-4422-1522-1 • eBook
March 2013 • $35.99 • (£22.95)

Pages: 240 Size: 6 x 9

Here’s more about the book, from the Catching Cancer webpage,

Catching Cancer: the quest for its viral and bacterial causes introduces readers to the investigators who created a medical revolution – a new way of looking at cancer and its causes. Featuring interviews with notable scientists such as Harald zur Hausen, Barry Marshall, Robin Warren, and others, the book tells the story of their struggles, their frustrations, and finally the breakthroughs that helped form some of the most profound changes in the way we view cancer. I take readers inside the lab to reveal the long and winding path to discoveries that have changed and continue to alter the course of medical approaches to one of the most confounding diseases mankind has known. I tell the stories of families who have benefited from this new knowledge, of the researchers who made the revolution happen, and the breakthroughs that continue to change our lives.

For years, we’ve thought cancer was the result of lifestyle choices, environmental factors, or genetic mutations. But pioneering scientists have begun to change that picture. We now know that infections cause 20 percent of cancers, including liver, stomach, and cervical cancer, which together kill almost 1.8 million people every year. While the idea that you can catch cancer may sound unsettling, it is actually good news. It means antibiotics and vaccines can be used to combat this most dreaded disease. With this understanding, we have new methods of preventing cancer, and perhaps we may be able to look forward to a day when we will no more fear cancer than we do polio or rubella.

You can find out more Cornwall and her books  on the Claudia Cornwall website.

Mutant silkworms enter world of haute couture

Researchers in Japan have bioengineered silkworms which produce silk in fluorescent shades of red, orange, and green.

Wedding gown made from fluorescent silks, designed by Yumi Katsura, shown in white and UV light. (Iizuka et al., Advanced Functional Materials)

Wedding gown made from fluorescent silks, designed by Yumi Katsura, shown in white and UV light. (Iizuka et al., Advanced Functional Materials)

The dress gives you two looks for your wedding, one for the ceremony and one for the reception. Unfortunately, it’s not listed on Yumi Katsura’s website, so you may have to wait a while before you can purchase it.

You can read more about the mutant silkworms in a June 21, 2013 news item by Lin Edwards for phys.org,

Scientists in Japan have genetically engineered silkworms to create red, green or orange silks that glow under fluorescent lights.
… a research team led by Tetsuya Iizuka and Toshiki Tamura of the National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences in Ibaraki, Japan, has genetically modified the silkworm by transplanting genes from organisms that produce fluorescent proteins into the silkworm genome at the site coding for the silk fiber protein fibroin. The genes they used to make the transgenic silkworms came from the Fungia concinna coral (orange), Discoma coral (red) or jellyfish (green).

There is also a June 20, 2013 story by Nadia Drake for Wired magazine which provides more information and images about the project in Japan (Note: Links have been removed),

Silkworms in a Japanese lab are busy spinning silks that glow in the dark. But these silkworms, unlike others that have been fed rainbow-colored dyes, don’t need any dietary interventions to spin in color: They’ve been genetically engineered to produce fluorescent skeins in shades of red, orange, and green.

Now, scientists have tweaked the silk production process and made it possible to turn these somewhat freakish threads into useable fabrics.

The resulting silks glow under fluorescent light, and are only ever-so-slightly weaker than silks that are normally used for fabrics, scientists reported June 12 in Advanced Functional Materials. Already, the glowing silks have been incorporated into everyday garments such as suits and ties, and Japanese wedding dress designer Yumi Katsura has designed and made gowns that glow in the dark.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the published research paper,

Colored Fluorescent Silk Made by Transgenic Silkworms by Tetsuya Iizuka, Hideki Sezutsu, Ken-ichiro Tatematsu, Isao Kobayashi, Naoyuki Yonemura, Keiro Uchino, Kenichi Nakajima, Katsura Kojima, Chiyuki Takabayashi, Hiroaki Machii, Katsushige Yamada2, Hiroyuki Kurihara, Tetsuo Asakura, Yasumoto Nakazawa, Atsushi Miyawaki, Satoshi Karasawa, Hatsumi Kobayashi, Junji Yamaguchi, Nobuo Kuwabara, Takashi Nakamura, Kei Yoshii, and Toshiki Tamura.
Article first published online: 12 JUN 2013 Adv. Funct. Mater.. doi: 10.1002/adfm.201300365

© 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

TRIUMF looks for new Director as Nigel S. Lockyer exits for the Fermilab (US)

The circumstances around Nigel S. Lockyer’s departure as Director of Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics, TRIUMF,  are very interesting. Just weeks ago, TRIUMF announced a major innovation for producing medical isotopes (my June 9, 2013 posting), which should have an enormous impact on cities around the world and their access to medical isotopes. (Briefly, cities with cyclotrons could produce, using the technology developed by TRIUMF,  their own medical isotopes without using material from nuclear reactors.)

Also in the recent past, Canada’s much storied McGill University joined the TRIUMF consortium (I’m surprized it took this long), from the May 10, 2013 news release,

At its recent Board of Management meeting, TRIUMF approved McGill University as an associate member of the consortium of universities that owns and operates Canada’s national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics. McGill joins 17 other Canadian universities in leading TRIUMF.

Paul Young, Chair of the Board and Vice President for Research at the University of Toronto, said, “The addition of McGill to the TRIUMF family is a great step forward. McGill brings world-class scientists and students to TRIUMF and TRIUMF brings world-leading research tools and partnerships to McGill.”

The university’s closer association with TRIUMF will allow it to participate in discussions about setting the direction of the laboratory as well provide enhanced partnerships for new research infrastructure that strengthens efforts on McGill’s campuses. Dr. Rose Goldstein, McGill Vice-Principal (Research and International Relations), said, “We are delighted to formalize our long-standing involvement in TRIUMF. It is an important bridge to international research opportunities at CERN and elsewhere. Associate membership in TRIUMF will also help McGill advance its Strategic Research Plan, especially in the priority area of exploring the natural environment, space, and the universe.”

McGill University has been involved in TRIUMF-led activities for several decades, most notably as part of the Higgs-hunting efforts at CERN. TRIUMF constructed parts of the Large Hadron Collider that ultimately produced Higgs bosons. The co-discovery was made by the ATLAS experiment for which TRIUMF led Canadian construction of several major components, and McGill played a key role in the development of the experiment’s trigger system. McGill and TRIUMF have also worked together on particle-physics projects in Japan and the U.S.

Professor Charles Gale, chair of the Department of Physics, played a key role in formalizing the relationship between TRIUMF and McGill. He said, “Our department is one of the top in North America in research, teaching, and service. Undoubtedly our work with TRIUMF has helped contribute to that and I expect both institutions to blossom even further.” Professor of physics and Canadian Research Chair in Particle Physics Brigitte Vachon added, “TRIUMF provides key resources to my students and me that make our research at CERN possible; the discovery of the Higgs boson is a perfect example of what such collaboration can achieve.”

Nigel S. Lockyer, director of TRIUMF, commented, “The addition of McGill to the TRIUMF team is welcome and long overdue. We have been working together for decades in subatomic physics and this acknowledgment of the partnership enhances both institutions and builds stronger ties in areas such as materials science and nuclear medicine.”

A scant month after McGill joins the consortium and weeks after a major announcement about medical isotopes, Lockyer announces his departure for the Fermilabs in the US, from the May 20, 2013 TRIUMF news release,

In his capacity as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, University of Chicago President Robert J. Zimmer today announced that TRIUMF’s director Nigel S. Lockyer has been selected to become the next director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, located outside Chicago.  Lockyer is expected to complete his work at TRIUMF this summer and begin at Fermilab in the autumn.

Paul Young, Chair of TRIUMF’s Board of Management and Vice President of Research and Innovation at the University of Toronto said, “Nigel was selected from a truly outstanding set of international candidates for this challenging and important position.  Although it will be a short-term loss, this development is a clear recognition of Nigel’s vision and passion for science and the international leadership taken by TRIUMF and Canada in subatomic physics.  On behalf of the entire TRIUMF Board, we wish Nigel, TRIUMF, and Fermilab every success in the future.”

Lockyer set TRIUMF upon a new course when he arrived six years ago, focusing the team on “Advancing isotopes for science and medicine.”  Based on TRIUMF’s existing infrastructure and talent, this initiative ranged from expanding the nuclear-medicine program so that it is now playing a leading role in resolving the medical-isotope crisis to the formulation and funding of a new flagship facility called ARIEL that will double TRIUMF’s capabilities for producing exotic isotopes used in science and for developing tomorrow’s medical isotopes.  At the heart of ARIEL is a next-generation electron accelerator using modern superconducting radio-frequency technology.

Commenting on Nigel’s leadership of TRIUMF, Paul Young added, “One look at TRIUMF’s current trajectory and you can see that this is a man of great ambition and talent.  Working with the Board and a great team at the lab, he propelled TRIUMF to new heights.  We have all been fortunate at TRIUMF to have Nigel as a colleague and leader.”

Reflecting on his time at TRIUMF and the upcoming transition to Fermilab, Nigel Lockyer said, “Knowing that TRIUMF is in good hands with a superb leadership team and seeing its growing string of accomplishments has helped make this decision a tiny bit easier.  The laboratory’s future is secure and TRIUMF knows exactly what it is doing.  I am proud to have contributed to TRIUMF’s successes and it is my hope to ignite the same energy and enthusiasm in the U.S. by heading the team at Fermilab.”  He added, “I also expect to foster a new level of partnership between the U.S. and Canada in these key areas of science and technology.”

“Nigel has had a profound impact on TRIUMF,” said David B. MacFarlane, chair of the National Research Council’s Advisory Committee on TRIUMF and Associate Laboratory Director at the U.S. SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.  “He articulated an ambitious new vision for the laboratory and energetically set it upon a path toward an exciting world-class program in rare-isotope beams and subatomic-physics research.  When ARIEL comes online, the lab will be fulfilling the vision that Nigel and his team boldly initiated.”  David MacFarlane added, “The TRIUMF community will certainly miss his warmth, his insatiable scientific curiosity, his creativity, and his faith in the laboratory and its entire staff.  However, I fully expect these same characteristics will serve Nigel well in his new leadership role as Fermilab director.”

As per standard practice, the TRIUMF Board of Management will announce plans and timelines for the international search process and interim leadership within the next few weeks.

Before speculating on the search process and interim leadership appointment, I have a comment of sorts about the Fermilab, which was last mentioned here in my Feb. 1, 2012 posting where I excerpted this interesting comment from a news release,

From the Feb. 1, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

In this month’s Physics World, reviews and careers editor, Margaret Harris, visits the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) to explore what future projects are in the pipeline now that the Tevatron particle accelerator has closed for good.

After 28 years of ground-breaking discoveries, the Tevatron accelerator has finally surrendered to the mighty Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN [European Laboratory for Particle Physics], placing Fermilab, in some people’s mind, on the brink of disappearing into obscurity. [emphasis mine]

It seems the Fermilab is in eclipse and Lockyer is going there to engineer a turnaround. It makes one wonder what the conditions were when he arrived at TRIUMF six years ago (2006?). Leading on from that thought, the forthcoming decisions as to whom will be the interim Director and/or the next Director should be intriguing.

Usually an interim position is filled by a current staff member, which can lead to some fraught moments amongst internal competitors.  That action, however fascinating, does not tend to become fodder for public consumption.

Frankly, I’m more interested in the board’s perspective. What happens if they pick an internal candidate while they prepare for the next stage when they’re conducting their international search? Based on absolutely no inside information whatsoever, I’m guessing that Tim Meyer, Head, Strategic Planning & Communications for TRIUMF, would be a viable internal candidate for interim director.

From a purely speculative position, let’s assume he makes a successful play to become the interim Director. At this point, the board will have to consider what direction is the right one for TRIUMF while weighing up the various candidates for the permanent position.  Assuming the interim Director is ambitious and wants to become the permanent Director, the dynamics could get very interesting indeed.

From the board’s perspective, you want the best candidate and you want to keep your staff. In Canada, there’s one TRIUMF; there are no other comparable institutions in the country.  Should an internal candidate such as Meyer get the interim position but not the permanent one (assuming he’d want to be the permanent Director) he would have very few options in Canada.

Based on this speculation, I can safety predict some very interesting times ahead for TRIUMF and its board. In the meantime, I wish Lockyer all the best as he moves back to the US to lead the Fermilab.

e-Gnosis chip (nanopore sensor) competition on Marblar—winning money and developing a reputation for brilliance

It’s probably best to explain Marblar, a creative ‘playground’ or, as it could be called, a ‘wisdom of the crowd initiative’, before describing the e-Gnosis chip project.

Basically, Marblar is inviting people to participate in an online game/conversation where competitors make suggestions to ‘host’ inventors about how to best commercialize their inventions. Anyone can register to join in; there are two types of incentives for ‘game players’. First, they can accumulate marbles/points by voting and/or contributing ideas. Second, they can win cash prizes. Here’s how the Marblar community describes itself, from the About page,

Marblar is a creative playground that takes over-looked technology and unleashes a crowd of multi-disciplined, brilliant Marblars to discover new applications.

It is like a big game where many minds work together to realise the promise of science. Working with tech holders, we find the best technology deserving of a second look and transform these into challenges for the crowd of Marblars. The best ideas win points, kudos, and prizes. Best yet anyone can tackle any challenge. We don’t care what your background is…we care about your applied brilliance.

There’s a very interesting list of organizations backing this initiative, heavily weighted towards UK institutions but with a solid international presence, from the Partners page,

University of Oxford
Oxford, England

MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Cambridge, England

Svaya Nanotechnologies
California, USA

Imperial Innovations
London, England

Edinburgh Research and Innovation
Edinburgh, Scotland

King’s College London
London, UK

Exploit Technologies
Singapore

Virginia Tech
Virginia, USA

Getting back to the game, for the hosted competitions, participants get to brainstorm ideas for a fixed period of time. These ideas are then refined over another fixed period of time with the inventor finally choosing a winner.

Now on to the specific game/project, the e-Gnosis chip (nanopore sensor). The inventor, Peter Kollensperger of the Imperial College London, has created a portable diagnostic device. There are many such diagnostic devices being developed all over the world, many of them designed for medical use. Kollensperger wants to find another market niche for his e-Gnosis chip device,

The vast majority of biosensors today are based on some form of optical readout to get the  results you want. You usually have a choice between inexpensive (but non-quantitative) methods such as lateral flow tests (e.g. pregnancy tests), which just show you a blue line if positive, or more sensitive tests that can tell you how much of the analyte is present using specialised optical equipment. These quantitative tests generally require several extra wash steps and additional reagents and are carried out by labs or on specialised microfluidic or robotic platforms. We wanted to develop a sensitive, quantitative technology that doesn’t require expensive platforms but instead:

  • Could be read using a low-cost smartphone or laptop accessory (<$20);
  • Works with a small amount of sample (~10 microlitre, such as a tiny drop of blood, urine or saliva)
  • Requires no (or just one) washing steps.
  • Runs several different tests on the same sample simultaneously.
  • Is as easy to use as a pregnancy test.

Here’s what the inventor is looking for (from the e-Gnosis chip page),

We’ve been looking at the field of medical diagnostics for a while, but the point-of-care market is highly competitive, fragmented into relatively small markets, with high entry barriers in the form of FDA [US Food and Drug Administration]/EMA [European Medicines Agency] approval. So for any medical diagnostic we’d need a large market, where our device’s unique features (multiplexing, rapid & simple point-of-care use without sample prep) offer a very significant competitive advantage, and can justify the high barrier costs for approval.

We’d be very interested to hear ideas about a consumer market to prove the device commercially, keeping in mind:

  • While the chip-manufacturing part of the process is cheap, the cost/test is unlikely to ever fall below $6-8 due to functionalization and assembly. We need an application where customers would pay enough to allow a reasonable profit margin.
  • Need a high-volume application to justify setup costs of chip-manufacture (>$300k). What’s your market size?
  • What would be the market entry route? Who’d be our commercial partners? What are the competing devices and their price? How would distinguish ourselves against these?

Here’s a little more about Kollensperger (from the e-Gnosis chip page),

I’m Peter Kollensperger and I’m working with Prof. Green in the Optical and Semiconductor Devices Group of the Electrical and Electronic Engineering Department at Imperial College London.

My research to date has focused on the use of nanotechnology for biosensing applications, but my overarching interest is in making diagnostic/sensing technologies more accessible both to doctors and the general public.

The combination of scalable nanotechnology and the hugely parallel processing of semiconductor foundries holds great promise for the area of biosensors and we are looking for applications where the end-user wants to get results on the go without spending a large upfront amount on a reader. This can be in medical diagnostics, but ideally would be in an underserved consumer market where the combination of properties of our chip can make a real difference.

The Marblar community offers video services for the inventors hosting competitions and this is Kollensperger’s

Diagnostics Array from Marblar on Vimeo.

There’s still time (20 days) to enter the competition. Good luck!

By the way, I owe a big thank you to Daniel Bayley for contacting me about the project and about Marblar.

Listening to an individual brain cell using a carbon nanotube ‘harpoon’

Apparently, the prime motivation for listening to individual neurons or brain cells is to “better understand the computational complexity of the brain,” according to a June 20,  2013 news item on Azonano,

The new brain cell spear is a millimeter long, only a few nanometers wide and harnesses the superior electromechanical properties of carbon nanotubes to capture electrical signals from individual neurons.

“To our knowledge, this is the first time scientists have used carbon nanotubes to record signals from individual neurons, what we call intracellular recordings, in brain slices or intact brains of vertebrates,” said Bruce Donald, a professor of computer science and biochemistry at Duke University who helped developed the probe.

The June 19, 2013 Duke University news release by Ashley Yeager, which originated the news item, provides some insight into the current state of the art and how this new technique is an improvement,

Currently, they use two main types of electrodes, metal and glass, to record signals from brain cells. Metal electrodes record spikes from a population of brain cells and work well in live animals. Glass electrodes also measure spikes, as well as the computations individual cells perform, but are delicate and break easily.”The new carbon nanotubes combine the best features of both metal and glass electrodes. They record well both inside and outside brain cells, and they are quite flexible. Because they won’t shatter, scientists could use them to record signals from individual brain cells of live animals,” said Duke neurobiologist Michael Platt, who was not involved in the study.

This is not the first time researchers have tried to use carbon nanotubes for this purpose, from the news release,

In the past, other scientists have experimented with carbon nanotube probes. But the electrodes were thick, causing tissue damage, or they were short, limiting how far they could penetrate into brain tissue. They could not probe inside individual neurons.

To change this, Donald began working on a harpoon-like carbon-nanotube probe with Duke neurobiologist Richard Mooney five years ago. The two met during their first year at Yale in the 1976, kept in touch throughout graduate school and began meeting to talk about their research after they both came to Duke.

Mooney told Donald about his work recording brain signals from live zebra finches and mice. The work was challenging, he said, because the probes and machinery to do the studies were large and bulky on the small head of a mouse or bird.

With Donald’s expertise in nanotechnology and robotics and Mooney’s in neurobiology, the two thought they could work together to shrink the machinery and improve the probes with nano-materials.

To make the probe, graduate student Inho Yoon and Duke physicist Gleb Finkelstein used the tip of an electrochemically sharpened tungsten wire as the base and extended it with self-entangled multi-wall carbon nanotubes to create a millimeter-long rod. The scientists then sharpened the nanotubes into a tiny harpoon using a focused ion beam at North Carolina State University.

Yoon then took the nano-harpoon to Mooney’s lab and jabbed it into slices of mouse brain tissue and then into the brains of anesthetized mice. The results show that the probe transmits brain signals as well as, and sometimes better than, conventional glass electrodes and is less likely to break off in the tissue. The new probe also penetrates individual neurons, recording the signals of a single cell rather than the nearest population of them.

Based on the results, the team has applied for a patent on the nano-harpoon.  Platt said scientists might use the probes in a range of applications, from basic science to human brain-computer interfaces and brain prostheses.

Donald said the new probe makes advances in those directions, but the insulation layers, electrical recording abilities and geometry of the device still need improvement.

The research paper is available in the open access journal PLoS ONE,

Intracellular Neural Recording with Pure Carbon Nanotube Probes by Inho Yoon, Kosuke Hamaguchi, Ivan V. Borzenets, Gleb Finkelstein, Richard Mooney, and Bruce R. Donald. 2013. PLOS ONE. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0065715

As for calling this a ‘harpoon’, these carbon nanotube probes really do resemble harpoons,

This image, taken with a scanning electron microscope, shows a new brain electrode that tapers to a point as thick as a single carbon nanotube. Credit: Inho Yoon and Bruce Donald, Duke.  [downloaded from http://today.duke.edu/2013/06/brainharpoon]

This image, taken with a scanning electron microscope, shows a new brain electrode that tapers to a point as thick as a single carbon nanotube. Credit: Inho Yoon and Bruce Donald, Duke. [downloaded from http://today.duke.edu/2013/06/brainharpoon]

You can compare it to this harpoon from The Specialists Prop House, Traditional harpoon page,

[downloaded from The Specialists Prop House, Traditional harpoon page, http://thespecialistsltd.com/traditional-harpoon]

[downloaded from The Specialists Prop House, Traditional harpoon page, http://thespecialistsltd.com/traditional-harpoon]

I have written about some of the neuroscience work coming out of Duke University in the past, e.g., my March 4, 2013 posting about Miguel Nicolelis’ work on brain-to-brain communication.

Danish Chinese collaboration on graphene project could lead to smaller, faster, greener electronic devices

A mixed team of Danish and Chinese scientists have made a transistor from a single molecular monolayer that works on a computer chip according to a June 19, 2013 University of Copenhagen news release,

The molecular integrated circuit was created by a group of chemists and physicists from the Department of Chemistry Nano-Science Center at the University of Copenhagen and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing. Their discovery “Ultrathin Reduced Graphene Oxide Films as Transparent Top-Contacts for Light Switchable Solid-State Molecular Junctions”  has just been published online in the prestigious periodical Advanced Materials. The breakthrough was made possible through an innovative use of the two dimensional carbon material graphene.

Here’s how the transistor works (from the news release),

The molecular computer chip is a sandwich built with one layer of gold, one of molecular components and one of the extremely thin carbon material graphene. The molecular transistor in the sandwich is switched on and of using a light impulse so one of the peculiar properties of graphene is highly useful. Even though graphene is made of carbon, it’s almost completely translucent.

Using the new graphene chip researchers can now place their molecules with great precision. This makes it faster and easier to test the functionality of molecular wires, contacts and diodes so that chemists will know in no time whether they need to get back to their beakers to develop new functional molecules, explains Nørgaard [Kasper Nørgaard, an associate professor in chemistry at the University of Copenhagen].

“We’ve made a design, that’ll hold many different types of molecule” he says and goes on: “Because the graphene scaffold is closer to real chip design it does make it easier to test components, but of course it’s also a step on the road to making a real integrated circuit using molecular components. And we must not lose sight of the fact that molecular components do have to end up in an integrated circuit, if they are going to be any use at all in real life”.

In addition to the other benefits of this graphene chip, greater precision, etc., it is also greener, requiring no rare earths or heavy metals.

If you have problems accessing the news release, you can find the information in a June 20, 2013 news item on Nanowerk.