Monthly Archives: January 2014

Nanotech Security and the 2014 Optical Document Security Conference

There’s a Jan. 30, 2014 news item on Azonano about Nanotech Security, a Vancouver area-based producer of nanotechnology-enabled security products,

Nanotech Security Corp. (“NTS”) today announced that the Company has been selected to present a technical paper at the prestigious bi-annual Optical Document Security Conference in San Francisco, January 29-31, 2014. The paper, titled “Combinatory Nanostructure Arrays for Multi-Faceted, Multi-Level Security OVDs,” will discuss the science behind Nanotech’s technology and its unique ability to produce intense high definition optically variable devices (OVDs).

The Jan. 28, 2014 Nanotech Security news release, which originated the news item, provides a few additional details about the conference and the technology Nanotech Security will be presenting,

“An invitation to participate at Optical Document Security 2014 is a tremendous honor for our Company and a great opportunity to associate with the world’s best researchers, developers and manufacturers in optical feature based document security,” said Mr. Landrock. “The conference attracts the most innovative technologies and companies, and has become known as a place to present and discuss breakthroughs that are moving banknote and document security technology forward.”

Mr. Landrock added, “During our first Optical Document Security conference in 2012, we demonstrated an early version of our technology and showed how it could advance the industry once it was completed. When we return to the event next week, we will have a product that is market-ready.   We are looking forward to demonstrating KolourOptik’s many advantages, including stunning photo quality ON/OFF images and animation that are all reproducible at a cost projected to be extremely competitive within the current market place.”

I have mentioned Nanotech Security in previous postings including a Sept. 29, 2011 posting where I attempted to explore the company’s somewhat confusing (to me) history.

You can find the 2014 Optical Document Security conference (Jan. 29 – 31, 2014) here.

Cindy Patton talks about evidence and the invention of a Crystal Meth-HIV connection via press release

Canada’s Situating Science research cluster is launching a national lecture series (from a Jan. 30, 2014 announcement)

The Lives of Evidence
A multi-part national lecture series examining the cultural, ethical, political, and scientific role of evidence in our world.

They are kicking the series off with what appears to be a two city tour of Vancouver and Saskatoon (from the announcement),

The Press and the Press Release: Inventing the Crystal Meth-HIV Connection
Cindy Patton, Canada Research Chair in Community, Culture, and Health
Sociology and Anthropology, Simon Fraser University

What does the rise and fall of a scientific fact look like? In her analysis of the Crystal Meth-AIDS superbug connection in US media coverage, Dr. Patton explores scientific evidence as it circulates through the lab, the media, and society. Scientific studies, expertise, and anecdotal human-interest stories are used to “prove” a causal relationship between the (probably temporary) rise in crystal use and a (less than clear) rise in HIV rates. But far from helping to avoid hasty and ill-conceived policy in a moment of panic, the media coverage justifies something more problematic: discrimination and medical policing that appear to rest on scientific proof.

Monday February 3, 2014, 4 PM
Buchanan A-201, University of British Columbia, 1866 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC

Wednesday, February 5, 2014, 4 PM CST / 5 PM ET
Room 18, Edwards School of Business, University of Saskatchewan, 25 Campus Drive, Sakatoon, Saksatchewan
Watch the U. Sask reprise live online here:
www.livestream.com/situsci

Maybe I’ll see you at the Vancouver event.

Taking photos and videos in near darkness

Who hasn’t found wanted to take a picture in a situation where there’s very little light? It seems scientists at SUNY (State University of New York) College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) have found a way to solve the problem. From a Jan. 30, 2014 news item on Azonano,

When the lights went out at the big game, fans and film crews struggled to take a decent picture in the darkness. Those same folks will be cheering the latest research by a team of SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) scientists, which makes brilliant video and pictures possible even if the lights go out.

Dark and blurry low light photos could soon be a thing of the past, thanks to the development of game-changing ultrathin “nanosheets,” which could dramatically improve imaging technology used in everything from cell phone cameras, video cameras, solar cells, and even medical imaging equipment such as MRI machines.

As a result, this technology is perfectly suited for inclusion in a wide variety of everyday devices, including today’s smartphones, which are often used to take pictures, but suffer from limitations in low light environments. This research could allow even novice photographers to take sharper images, even in the midst of a blackout during the biggest game of the year.

A SUNYCNSE research profile titled: SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering Scientists Publish Game-Changing Semiconductor Nanosheets Research That Could Revolutionize Cameras in Low-Light Environments provides more technical details about the research,

Leading-edge research by a team of SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) scientists has been published in ACS Nano after the scientists evaluated ultrathin indium(III) selenide (In2Se3) nanosheets and discovered that their electrical resistance drops significantly when exposed to light. This effect, known as a photoconductive response, can be used to make a photodetector or light sensor, and because the two-dimensional nanosheets exhibited such a strong photoconductive response across a broad light spectrum and simultaneously resist chemical contamination, this research could lead to a revolution in extreme low-light, high-resolution imaging products and applications, such as consumer and professional cameras and video cameras, for example.

The team combined a variety of cutting-edge tools and methods, including scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to identify the nanosheets; atomic force microscopy (AFM) to measure their thickness; X-ray diffractometry (XRD) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) combined with high-resolution images from transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to examine nano-layer details such as the crystallographic phase and morphology of the sample; and energy-dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS) and auger electron spectrometry (AES) to explore the sample’s homogeneity. As the photoconductive material’s properties were characterized, the CNSE research group found that the material is extremely resistant to contamination. Additionally, the team utilized a green LED to direct pulsed light at the nanosheets and found that they exhibited a reliable response to light and an excellent response time between 18 and 73 milliseconds, indicating that In2Se3 nanosheets could be a highly effective material for real-time imaging purposes.

The nanosheets were also tested for the ability to detect light and for light responsivity, or the ratio of generated photocurrent to incident light power. The researchers noted that the photoconductive response of the nanosheets, which had a thickness of 3.9 nanometers, was demonstrably higher than other 2D photoresistors across a broad light spectrum, including Ultraviolet, visible light, and infrared, making them suitable for use in a wide-range of imaging devices.

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

Extraordinary Photoresponse in Two-Dimensional In2Se3 Nanosheets by Robin B. Jacobs-Gedrim, Mariyappan Shanmugam, Nikhil Jain, Christopher A. Durcan, Michael T. Murphy, Thomas M. Murray, Richard J. Matyi, Richard L. Moore, II, and Bin Yu.  ACS Nano (2014), vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 514-21

This is a PDF of the document and is being made available by the researchers and their institution.

Does digitizing material mean it’s safe? A tale of Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans scientific libraries

As has been noted elsewhere the federal government of Canada has shut down a number of Fisheries and Oceans Canada libraries in a cost-saving exercise. The government is hoping to save some $440,000 in the 2014-15 fiscal year by digitizing, consolidating, and discarding the libraries and their holdings.

One would imagine that this is being done in a measured, thoughtful fashion but one would be wrong.

Andrew Nikiforuk in a December 23, 2013 article for The Tyee wrote one of the first articles about the closure of the fisheries libraries,

Scientists say the closure of some of the world’s finest fishery, ocean and environmental libraries by the Harper government has been so chaotic that irreplaceable collections of intellectual capital built by Canadian taxpayers for future generations has been lost forever.

Glyn Moody in a Jan. 7, 2014 post on Techdirt noted this,

What’s strange is that even though the rationale for this mass destruction is apparently in order to reduce costs, opportunities to sell off more valuable items have been ignored. A scientist is quoted as follows:

“Hundreds of bound journals, technical reports and texts still on the shelves, presumably meant for the garbage or shredding. I saw one famous monograph on zooplankton, which would probably fetch a pretty penny at a used science bookstore… anybody could go in and help themselves, with no record kept of who got what.”

Gloria Galloway in a Jan. 7, 2014 article for the Globe and Mail adds more details about what has been lost,

Peter Wells, an adjunct professor and senior research fellow at the International Ocean Institute at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said it is not surprising few members of the public used the libraries. But “the public benefits by the researchers and the different research labs being able to access the information,” he said.

Scientists say it is true that most modern research is done online.

But much of the material in the DFO libraries was not available digitally, Dr. Wells said, adding that some of it had great historical value. And some was data from decades ago that researchers use to determine how lakes and rivers have changed.

“I see this situation as a national tragedy, done under the pretext of cost savings, which, when examined closely, will prove to be a false motive,” Dr. Wells said. “A modern democratic society should value its information resources, not reduce, or worse, trash them.”

Dr. Ayles [Burton Ayles, a former DFO regional director and the former director of science for the Freshwater Institute in Winnipeg] said the Freshwater Institute had reports from the 1880s and some that were available nowhere else. “There was a whole core people who used that library on a regular basis,” he said.

Dr. Ayles pointed to a collection of three-ringed binders, occupying seven metres of shelf space, that contained the data collected during a study in the 1960s and 1970s of the proposed Mackenzie Valley pipeline. For a similar study in the early years of this century, he said, “scientists could go back to that information and say, ‘What was the baseline 30 years ago? What was there then and what is there now?’ ”

When asked how much of the discarded information has been digitized, the government did not provide an answer, but said the process continues.

Today, Margo McDiarmid’s Jan. 30, 2014 article for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) news online further explores digitization of the holdings,

Fisheries and Oceans is closing seven of its 11 libraries by 2015. It’s hoping to save more than $443,000 in 2014-15 by consolidating its collections into four remaining libraries.

Shea [Fisheries and Oceans Minister Gail Shea] told CBC News in a statement Jan. 6 that all copyrighted material has been digitized and the rest of the collection will be soon. The government says that putting material online is a more efficient way of handling it.

But documents from her office show there’s no way of really knowing that is happening.

“The Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ systems do not enable us to determine the number of items digitized by location and collection,” says the response by the minister’s office to MacAulay’s inquiry. [emphasis mine]

The documents also that show the department had to figure out what to do with 242,207 books and research documents from the libraries being closed. It kept 158,140 items and offered the remaining 84,067 to libraries outside the federal government.

Shea’s office told CBC that the books were also “offered to the general public and recycled in a ‘green fashion’ if there were no takers.”

The fate of thousands of books appears to be “unknown,” although the documents’ numbers show 160 items from the Maurice Lamontagne Library in Mont Jolie, Que., were “discarded.”  A Radio-Canada story in June about the library showed piles of volumes in dumpsters.

And the numbers prove a lot more material was tossed out. The bill to discard material from four of the seven libraries totals $22,816.76

Leaving aside the issue of whether or not rare books were given away or put in dumpsters, It’s not confidence-building when the government minister can’t offer information about which books have been digitized and where they might located online.

Interestingly,  Fisheries and Oceans is not the only department/ministry shutting down libraries (from McDiarmid’s CBC article),

Fisheries and Oceans is just one of the 14 federal departments, including Health Canada and Environment Canada, that have been shutting physical libraries and digitizing or consolidating the material into closed central book vaults.

I was unaware of the problems with Health Canada’s libraries but Laura Payton’s and Max Paris’ Jan. 20, 2014 article for CBC news online certainly raised my eyebrows,

Health Canada scientists are so concerned about losing access to their research library that they’re finding workarounds, with one squirrelling away journals and books in his basement for colleagues to consult, says a report obtained by CBC News.

The draft report from a consultant hired by the department warned it not to close its library, but the report was rejected as flawed and the advice went unheeded.

Before the main library closed, the inter-library loan functions were outsourced to a private company called Infotrieve, the consultant wrote in a report ordered by the department. The library’s physical collection was moved to the National Science Library on the Ottawa campus of the National Research Council last year.

“Staff requests have dropped 90 per cent over in-house service levels prior to the outsource. This statistic has been heralded as a cost savings by senior HC [Health Canada] management,” the report said.

“However, HC scientists have repeatedly said during the interview process that the decrease is because the information has become inaccessible — either it cannot arrive in due time, or it is unaffordable due to the fee structure in place.”

….

The report noted the workarounds scientists used to overcome their access problems.

Mueller [Dr. Rudi Mueller, who left the department in 2012] used his contacts in industry for scientific literature. He also went to university libraries where he had a faculty connection.

The report said Health Canada scientists sometimes use the library cards of university students in co-operative programs at the department.

Unsanctioned libraries have been created by science staff.

“One group moved its 250 feet of published materials to an employee’s basement. When you need a book, you email ‘Fred,’ and ‘Fred’ brings the book in with him the next day,” the consultant wrote in his report.

“I think it’s part of being a scientist. You find a way around the problems,” Mueller told CBC News.

Unsanctioned, underground libraries aside, the assumption that digitizing documents and books ensures access is false.  Glyn Moody in a Nov. 12, 2013 article for Techdirt gives a chastening example of how vulnerable our digital memories are,

The Internet Archive is the world’s online memory, holding the only copies of many historic (and not-so-historic) Web pages that have long disappeared from the Web itself.

Bad news:

This morning at about 3:30 a.m. a fire started at the Internet Archive’s San Francisco scanning center.

Good news:

no one was hurt and no data was lost. Our main building was not affected except for damage to one electrical run. This power issue caused us to lose power to some servers for a while.

Bad news:

Some physical materials were in the scanning center because they were being digitized, but most were in a separate locked room or in our physical archive and were not lost. Of those materials we did unfortunately lose, about half had already been digitized. We are working with our library partners now to assess.

That loss is unfortunate, but imagine if the fire had been in the main server room holding the Internet Archive’s 2 petabytes of data. Wisely, the project has placed copies at other locations …

That’s good to know, but it seems rather foolish for the world to depend on the Internet Archive always being able to keep all its copies up to date, especially as the quantity of data that it stores continues to rise. This digital library is so important in historical and cultural terms: surely it’s time to start mirroring the Internet Archive around the world in many locations, with direct and sustained support from multiple governments.

In addition to the issue of vulnerability, there’s also the issue of authenticity, from my June 5, 2013 posting about science, archives and memories,

… Luciana Duranti [Professor and Chair, MAS {Master of Archival Studies}Program at the University of British Columbia and Director, InterPARES] and her talk titled, Trust and Authenticity in the Digital Environment: An Increasingly Cloudy Issue, which took place in Vancouver (Canada) last year (mentioned in my May 18, 2012 posting).

Duranti raised many, many issues that most of us don’t consider when we blithely store information in the ‘cloud’ or create blogs that turn out to be repositories of a sort (and then don’t know what to do with them; ça c’est moi). She also previewed a Sept. 26 – 28, 2013 conference to be hosted in Vancouver by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), “Memory of the World in the Digital Age: Digitization and Preservation.” (UNESCO’s Memory of the World programme hosts a number of these themed conferences and workshops.)

The Sept. 2013 UNESCO ‘memory of the world’ conference in Vancouver seems rather timely in retrospect. The Council of Canadian Academies (CCA) announced that Dr. Doug Owram would be chairing their Memory Institutions and the Digital Revolution assessment (mentioned in my Feb. 22, 2013 posting; scroll down 80% of the way) and, after checking recently, I noticed that the Expert Panel has been assembled and it includes Duranti. Here’s the assessment description from the CCA’s ‘memory institutions’ webpage,

Library and Archives Canada has asked the Council of Canadian Academies to assess how memory institutions, which include archives, libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions, can embrace the opportunities and challenges of the changing ways in which Canadians are communicating and working in the digital age.

Background

Over the past three decades, Canadians have seen a dramatic transformation in both personal and professional forms of communication due to new technologies. Where the early personal computer and word-processing systems were largely used and understood as extensions of the typewriter, advances in technology since the 1980s have enabled people to adopt different approaches to communicating and documenting their lives, culture, and work. Increased computing power, inexpensive electronic storage, and the widespread adoption of broadband computer networks have thrust methods of communication far ahead of our ability to grasp the implications of these advances.

These trends present both significant challenges and opportunities for traditional memory institutions as they work towards ensuring that valuable information is safeguarded and maintained for the long term and for the benefit of future generations. It requires that they keep track of new types of records that may be of future cultural significance, and of any changes in how decisions are being documented. As part of this assessment, the Council’s expert panel will examine the evidence as it relates to emerging trends, international best practices in archiving, and strengths and weaknesses in how Canada’s memory institutions are responding to these opportunities and challenges. Once complete, this assessment will provide an in-depth and balanced report that will support Library and Archives Canada and other memory institutions as they consider how best to manage and preserve the mass quantity of communications records generated as a result of new and emerging technologies.

The Council’s assessment is running concurrently with the Royal Society of Canada’s expert panel assessment on Libraries and Archives in 21st century Canada. Though similar in subject matter, these assessments have a different focus and follow a different process. The Council’s assessment is concerned foremost with opportunities and challenges for memory institutions as they adapt to a rapidly changing digital environment. In navigating these issues, the Council will draw on a highly qualified and multidisciplinary expert panel to undertake a rigorous assessment of the evidence and of significant international trends in policy and technology now underway. The final report will provide Canadians, policy-makers, and decision-makers with the evidence and information needed to consider policy directions. In contrast, the RSC panel focuses on the status and future of libraries and archives, and will draw upon a public engagement process.

So, the government is shutting down libraries in order to save money and they’re praying (?) that the materials have been digitized and adequate care has been taken to ensure that they will not be lost in some disaster or other. Meanwhile the Council of Canadian Academies is conducting an assessment of memory institutions in the digital age. The approach seems to backwards.

On a more amusing note, Rick Mercer parodies at lease one way scientists are finding to circumvent the cost-cutting exercise in an excerpt (approximately 1 min.)  from his Jan. 29, 2014 Rick Mercer Report telecast (thanks Roz),

Mercer’s comment about sports and Canada’s Prime Minister, Stephen Harper’s preferences is a reference to Harper’s expressed desire to write a book about hockey and possibly a veiled reference to Harper’s successful move to prorogue parliament during the 2010 Winter Olympic games in Vancouver in what many observers suggested was a strategy allowing Harper to attend the games at his leisure.

Whether or not you agree with the decision to shutdown some libraries, the implementation seems to have been a remarkably sloppy affair.

Université de Montréal (Canada) collaborates with University of Houston (US) for a new theory and better solar cells

Solar cell efficiency is not good as researchers from  l’Université de Montréal (UdeM, located in Quebec, Canada) and the University of Houston (UH, located Texas, US) note in a Jan. 29, 2014 joint UH/UdeM news release written by Lisa Merkl (UH) on EurekAlert,

“Scientists don’t fully understand what is going on inside the materials that make up solar cells. We were trying to get at the fundamental photochemistry or photophysics that describes how these cells work,” Bittner said [Eric Bittner, a John and Rebecca Moores Professor of Chemistry and Physics in UH’s College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics,].

Solar cells are made out of organic semiconductors – typically blends of materials. However, solar cells made of these materials have about 3 percent efficiency. Bittner added that the newer materials, the fullerene/polymer blends, only reach about 10 percent efficiency.

“There is a theoretical limit for the efficiency of the ideal solar cell – the Shockley-Queisser limit. The theory we published describes how we might be able to get above this theoretical limit by taking advantage of quantum mechanical effects,” Bittner said. “By understanding these effects and making use of them in the design of a solar cell, we believe you can improve efficiency.”

Silva [Carlos Silva, an associate professor at the Université de Montréal and Canada Research Chair in Organic Semiconductor Materials] added, “In polymeric semiconductors, where plastics form the active layer of solar cells, the electronic structure of the material is intimately correlated with the vibrational motion within the polymer chain. Quantum-mechanical effects due to such vibrational-electron coupling give rise to a plethora of interesting physical processes that can be controlled to optimize solar cell efficiencies by designing materials that best exploit them.”

Unfortunately, there’s no more information about this model other than this (from the news release),

“Our theoretical model accomplishes things that you can’t get from a molecular model,” he [Bittner] said. “It is mostly a mathematical model that allows us to look at a much larger system with thousands of molecules. You can’t do ordinary quantum chemistry calculations on a system of that size.”

The calculations have prompted a series of new experiments by Silva’s group to probe the outcomes predicted by their model.

Bittner and Silva’s next steps involve collaborations with researchers who are experts in making the polymers and fabricating solar cells.

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

Noise-induced quantum coherence drives photo-carrier generation dynamics at polymeric semiconductor heterojunctions by Eric R. Bittner & Carlos Silva. Nature Communications 5, Article number: 3119 doi:10.1038/ncomms4119 Published 29 January 2014

This article is behind a paywall although you can get a free preview via ReadCube Access.

Over 100,000 images from Wellcome Trust made available for download

Earlier this month there were notices about the UK’s Wellcome Trust making their images freely available which I promptly forgot about. Thanks to Mark Lorch’s Jan. 30, 2014 post on the Guardian science blogs I’ve been reminded (Note: Links have been removed),

The UK’s leading medical research charity, the Wellcome Trust, has donated a treasure trove to the world: more than 100,000 images covering the history of all aspects of medicine, science and technology are now freely available to any and all.

The database contains pictures of weird and wonderful medical instruments, copies of historical documents and stunning examples of science-related works of art, from Van Goghs to cartoons. It’s a joy just to peruse the library, jumping from one fascinating image to the next.But, being a chemist, I was of course particularly drawn to the documents and apparatus depicting the history of my chosen field. …

Lorch includes a number of images including a copy of what appears to be some graffiti written by James Crick (of Watson & Crick & the double helix) but my favourite is this periodic table of elements model (Note: A link has been removed),

Model showing the periodic elements of chemistry Photograph: Wellcome Images

Model showing the periodic elements of chemistry Photograph: Wellcome Images

Finally, the mundane but no less fascinating. How about a cunning 3D representation of the periodic table lovingly mounted in a jam jar!

A January 20, 2014 Wellcome Images news release provides more details about their newly available offerings,

Over 100,000 images ranging from ancient medical manuscripts to etchings by artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Francisco Goya are now available for free download as hi-res images on our website.

Drawn from the historical holdings of the world-renowned Wellcome Library, the images are being released under the Creative Commons-Attribution only (CC-BY) licence. This means that all the historical images can be downloaded here to freely copy, distribute, edit, manipulate, and build upon as you wish, for personal or commercial use as long as the source Wellcome Library is attributed.

The historical collections offer a rich body of historical images including manuscripts, paintings, etchings, early photography and advertisements. The earliest item is a 3000 year old Egyptian prescription on papyrus, and treasures include exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts and anatomical drawings, ranging from delicate 16th century fugitive sheets, whose hinged paper flaps reveal hidden viscera, to Paolo Mascagni’s vibrantly coloured etching of an ‘exploded’ torso.

From the beauty of a Persian horoscope for the 15th-century prince Iskandar to sharply sketched satires by Rowlandson, Gillray and Cruikshank, the collection is sacred and profane by turns. Photography includes Eadweard Muybridge’s studies of motion, John Thomson’s remarkable nineteenth century portraits from his travels in China and a newly added series of photographs of hysteric and epileptic patients at the famous Salpêtrière Hospital.

Simon Chaplin, Head of the Wellcome Library, says “Together the collection amounts to a dizzying visual record of centuries of human culture, and our attempts to understand our bodies, minds and health through art and observation. As a strong supporter of open access, we want to make sure these images can be used and enjoyed by anyone without restriction.”

Catherine Draycott, Head of Wellcome Images says, “Wellcome Images is an invaluable visual resource for anyone interested in themes around medicine and the wider history of health and we are delighted to make our growing archive of historical images freely available to all, and provide the mechanism for direct access to them. We hope that users, both personal and commercial take full advantage of the material available.”

Our specialist team of researchers at Wellcome Images are available to advise and assist with sourcing and searching for images and can be contacted at images@wellcome.ac.uk.

All of those references to Van Gogh piqued my curiosity. Here’s one of the images you’ll find if you search Van Gogh,

Credit: Wellcome Library, London Paul Ferdinand Gachet. Etching by V. van Gogh, 1890.

Credit: Wellcome Library, London
Paul Ferdinand Gachet. Etching by V. van Gogh, 1890.

Here’s the story provided by the Wellcome staff,

Paul-Ferdinand Gachet (1828-1909) was a maverick physician who practised what later came to be called complementary or alternative medicine. He had a consulting room in Paris to which he commuted from his house in Auvers-sur-Oise outside the city. He was an art lover, being an amateur artist, an art collector, and a friend of many artists, one of them being the Dutchman Vincent Van Gogh. Gachet and Van Gogh only knew each other for a couple of months, from 20 May 1890 when Van Gogh arrived to stay in a lodging house in Auvers, to 27 July 1890, when he shot himself. Van Gogh, suffering from a form of mania, was producing one painting a day at that time, but, with Gachet’s help, was able to draw this etched portrait to be printed on Gachet’s printing press, probably after Sunday lunch at Gachet’s house on 15 June 1890. Gachet’s moist-eyed portrayal reflects Van Gogh’s impression that Gachet was “sicker than I am”, but it could in turn result from the fact that the sitter was looking at the artist and contemplating his lamentable mental state. This impression of the print was bought by Henry S. Wellcome from Gachet’s son, Paul Louis Gachet, in 1927, together with many other items of Gachet personalia. The cat in the bottom margin is the stamp certifying the print’s provenance from Paul-Louis Gachet.

It is a fascinating image resource although you may find, as I did, some of it is a bit creepy, e.g., the tattoo section brought up images of tattoos on excised human skin amongst the paintings of tattooed individuals and images of patterns used in tattoos.

Trailer for television programme Cosmos: A Space/Time Odyssey

Thanks to Michael Slezak and his Jan. 29, 2014 posting on tvline.com for this heads up about a new science-oriented, limited television series to be broadcast on US network television (Note: A link has been removed0.

Fox blinding you with science(-related) goodness?

That appears to be the goal of Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey, a new 13-part series premiering Sunday, March 9 (9/8c) …

Here’s the promotional trailer released by Fox,

There’s more about the series from Fox Broadcasting Company’s Cosmos – A Spacetime Odyssey webpage,

More than three decades after the debut of “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage,” Carl Sagan’s stunning and iconic exploration of the universe as revealed by science, COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY sets off on a new voyage for the stars. Seth MacFarlane (FAMILY GUY, AMERICAN DAD) and Sagan’s original creative collaborators – writer/executive producer Ann Druyan and astronomer Steven Soter – have teamed to conceive a 13-part docu-series that will serve as a successor to the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning original series.

Hosted by renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, the series will explore how we discovered the laws of nature and found our coordinates in space and time. It will bring to life never-before-told stories of the heroic quest for knowledge and transport viewers to new worlds and across the universe for a vision of the cosmos on the grandest scale. COSMOS: A SPACETIME ODYSSEY will invent new modes of scientific storytelling [emphasis mine] to reveal the grandeur of the universe and re-invent celebrated elements of the legendary original series, including the Cosmic Calendar and the Ship of the Imagination. The most profound scientific concepts will be presented with stunning clarity, uniting skepticism and wonder, and weaving rigorous science with the emotional and spiritual into a transcendent experience.

Carl Sagan’s original series “Cosmos: A Personal Voyage” was first broadcast in 1980, and has been enjoyed by more than 750 million people worldwide.

So, they’re going to “invent new modes of scientific storytelling,” eh? That’s quite a goal and I wish them good luck with it even though they may well succeed without my good wishes. The producing team has certainly managed some major challenges to get this series produced and broadcast according to the Wikipedia Cosmos: A Space-Time Odyssey essay (Note: Links have been removed),

Following Sagan’s death in 1996, his widow Ann Druyan, the co-creator of the original Cosmos series along with Steven Soter, a producer from the series, and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, sought to create a new version of the series, aimed to appeal to as wide an audience as possible and not just to those interested in the sciences. They had struggled for years with reluctant television networks that failed to see the broad appeal of the show.[6]

Seth MacFarlane had met Druyan through Tyson at the 2008 kickoff event for the Science & Entertainment Exchange, a new LA office of the National Academy of Sciences, designed to connect Hollywood writers and directors with scientists.[8] A year later, at a 2009 lunch in NYC with Tyson, MacFarlane learned of their interest to re-create Cosmos. He was influenced by Cosmos as a child, believing that Cosmos served to “[bridge] the gap between the academic community and the general public.”[8] …

In August 2011, the show was officially announced for primetime broadcast, and is scheduled for the spring of 2014. …

So, Tyson, Druyan, and Soter had worked for about nine years with no luck when Druyan met Seth MacFarlane with whose help the team managed to interest a network and where their work will be telecast some 15 years after they started. Bravo!

Lomiko Mines, graphene, 3D printing, and the World Outlook Financial Conference and the launch of an international sustainable mining institute in Vancouver, Canada

I have two items one of which concerns Lomiko Metals and the other, a new institute focused on extraction launched jointly by the University of British Columbia (UBC), Simon Fraser University (SFU) and l’École Polytechnique de Montréal (EPM).

First, there’s a puzzling Jan. 28, 2014 news item on Nanowerk about Lomiko Metals (a company that extracts graphite flakes from the Quatre Milles property in Québec, and its appearance at the 2014 World Outlook Financial Conference being held in Vancouver,

Lomiko Metals Inc. invite [sic] investors to learn about 3d printing at the World Outlook Conference. Lomiko partner Graphene 3D Lab has reached a significant milestone by filing a provisional patent application for the use of graphene-enhanced material, along with other materials, in 3D Printing. 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the process of creating a three-dimensional, solid object from a digital file, of virtually any shape. 3D printing is achieved using an additive process, whereas successive layers of material are laid down and create different shapes.

Unsure as to whether or not Lomiko Metals would be offering demonstrations of 3D printed items containing graphene at the conference, I sent a query to the company’s Chief Executive Officer, A. Paul Gill who kindly replied with this,

The demonstration being done is by the Conference not by Lomiko.  We were going to do something at our booth but we didn’t want to steal any thunder from the WOC or Tinkinerine which is a 3D Printing manufacturer and is going public through a merger with White Bear Resources. (TSX-V: WBR).

The Jan. 27, 2013 [sic] Lomiko Metals news release, which originated the news item, did have this to say about graphene and 3D printing (Note: I live in dread of accidentally writing 2013 when I mean 2014),

Adding graphene to polymers which are conventionally u sed in 3D printing improves the properties of the polymer in many different ways; it improves the polymers mechanical strength as well as its electrical and thermal conductivity. The method described in the provisional patent application allows consumers to use the polymer, infused with graphene, together with conventional polymers in the same printing process, thereby fabricating functional electronic devices using 3D printing.

New developments in 3D printing will allow for the creation of products with different components, such as printed electronic circuits, sensors, or batteries to be manufactured. 3D Printing is a new and promising manufacturing technology that has garnered much interest, growing from uses in prototyping to everyday products. Today, it is a billion dollar industry growing at a brisk pace.

For those eager to find out about investment opportunities in 2014, here’s the World Financial Outlook Conference website. I was surprised they don’t list the conference dates on the homepage (Jan. 31 – Feb. 1,2014) or any details other than the prices for various categories of registration. There is a Speakers page, which lists John Biehler as their 3D printing expert,

John Biehler is a Vancouver based photographer, blogger, gadget geek, mobile phone nerd, teacher, traveler, 3D printer builder/operator, maker & all around curious person.

He co-founded 3D604.org, a club of 3d printing enthusiasts who meet monthly and help share their knowledge of 3d printing at many events. He has spoken at numerous conferences including SXSW Interactive, Northern Voice, BarCamp and many others.

John is a regular contributor to Miss604.com, the DottoTech radio show, the Province newspaper and London Drugs blogs as well as doing a weekly Tech Tuesday segment on News 1130 radio and many other online, print, radio and television outlets. He is currently writing his first book (about 3D printing) that will be published in 2014 by Que.

You can find the conference agenda here. Biehler’s talk “3D Printing: The Future is Now” is scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 1, 2014 at 10:45 am PDT.

Sustainable extraction

A January 29, 2014 University of British Columbia (UBC) news release announced this (Note: Links have been removed),

International sustainable mining institute launched

A new Canadian institute that will help developing countries benefit from their mining resources in environmentally and socially responsible ways was officially launched in Vancouver today.

The Canadian International Institute for Extractive Industries and Development (CIIEID) is a coalition between the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and École Polytechnique de Montréal (EPM). Institute Interim Executive Director Bern Klein was joined for the launch in Vancouver by UBC’s Vice President Research & International John Hepburn, SFU President Andrew Petter, and EPM CEO Christophe Guy.

“Nations want to develop their mineral, oil and gas resources,” says Klein, also a professor of mining engineering at UBC. “But many lack the regulatory and policy frameworks to make the most of their natural resources, while also considering the needs of affected communities. We want them to have the capacity to use their resources to enhance livelihoods, improve dialogue and mitigate environmental harm.”

In November 2012 the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (then CIDA) announced the award of $25 million to a coalition of the three academic institutions to form the Institute. Since then, the Institute has set up operations and is connecting with partner nongovernmental organizations, governments, professional associations, and industry. It is now beginning program development.

Programming will put the Institute and its partners’ knowledge and resources at the service of foreign governments and local communities. Its work will focus on four main areas: applied research, community engagement, education, and governance of natural resources.

For more information about the Institute, visit the website at: http://ciieid.org.

I have searched the CIIEID website to find out how the government or anyone else for that matter determined that Canadians have any advice about or examples of sustainable extraction to offer any other country.  I remain mystified. Perhaps someone reading this blog would care to enlighten me.