Monthly Archives: November 2015

(US) Contest: Design a nanotechnology-themed superhero

This contest is open to students enrolled in US high schools or home-schooled and the deadline is Feb. 2, 2016.

High school students can lend their creativity to engineering, science and nanotechnology. Credit: NSF

High school students can lend their creativity to engineering, science and nanotechnology. Credit: NSF

Here are more details from the US National Science Foundation (NSF) Nov. 19, 2015 news release,

A brand-new competition, awarding finalists the opportunity to present their entries at the 2016 USA Science & Engineering Festival [held April 16 & 17, 2016] and compete for cash prizes, opens today for high school students interested in science, engineering and superpowers.

Generation Nano: Small Science, Superheroes is sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI). The competition invites individual students enrolled in U.S. high schools, or who are home-schooled, to submit an original idea for a superhero who uses unique nanotechnology-inspired “gear,” such as a vehicle, costume or tool.

Generation Nano encourages students to think big–which, in this case, means super small–when pondering their hero’s gear: shoelaces that decode secret radio waves, nanotechnology-infused blood cells that supercharge adrenaline or clothing that can change color to camouflage its wearer.

“The wonders of nanotechnology are inspiring an increasing number of young students to pursue science and engineering,” said NSF Senior Advisor for Science and Engineering Mihail C. Roco. “The Generation Nano competition recognizes and channels that interest, while giving students the chance to showcase their creativity at a national level.”

“I’m just thrilled about Generation Nano,” said Lisa Friedersdorf, deputy director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office. “This competition has the potential to excite students about science and introduce them to the novel world of nanotechnology. I can’t wait to see the submissions.”

Competition details:

  • Students must submit a written entry explaining their superhero and nanotechnology-driven gear, along with a one-page comic or 90-second video.
  • Cash prizes are $1,500 for first place, $1,000 for second place and $500 for third place.
  • Finalists will showcase their comic or video at the 2016 USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C. Final-round judging will take place at the festival.
  • Submissions are due by midnight on Feb. 2, 2016.

Through nanotechnology applications like targeted drugs, self-assembled nanodevices, molecular motors and other innovations, students never have to endure a radioactive spider bite to realize their full potential.

Visit the Generation Nano competition website for full eligibility criteria, entry guidelines, timeline and prize information.

The Generation Nano website offers resources for generating comics, accessing images and audio on this page.

For inspiration, you can take a look at my May 11, 2012 posting which features a description of the nanotechnology-enabled Extremis storyline in the Iron Man comic book series in the context of plans for the Iron Man 3 movie.

For more inspiration from 2012, there was a special exhibit at the Science Gallery in Dublin, Ireland featuring six superheroes created for the exhibit (my Sept. 14, 2012 posting; scroll down about 25% of the way to where I discuss the Magical Materials; Unleash Your Superpowers exhibit).

Good luck!

Brain Talks (Vancouver, Canada) Nov. 26, 2015 event: Neurobiology of depression

Here’s more about the Brain Talks event from a Nov. 23, 3015 email announcement,

Please join us for another stimulating BrainTalks event!

Neurobiology of Depression: Insights from different treatment techniques

Thursday, Nov 26 [2015], 6:00pm @ Paetzold Auditorium, Vancouver General Hospital

Speakers:

Dr. Andrew Howard ~ Deep Brain Stimulation

Dr Howard will highlight what he has learned from ten years of experience with deep brain stimulation of the subcallosal gyrus for treatment-refractory major depression. He aims to present a transparent, unbiased view of the current landscape of deep brain stimulation for depression as well as hypotheses on why subcallosal gyrus deep brain stimulation has helped some and failed others.

Dr. Joseph Tham ~ Electroconvulsive Therapy

Electroconvulsive therapy has been in use since the late 1930’s and continues to be an important therapeutic modality since then in the treatment of severe depressive illness. Dr Tham will discuss current practice and ideas on mechanisms of activity.

Dr. Hassan Azim ~ Psychoanalysis for Depression

Dr Azim will make a case for the role of psychoanalysis in the reversal of adverse consequences culminating in depression. Specifically, experiential, epigenetic, and developmental factors will be considered.

Panel discussion and wine and cheese reception to follow!

Please RSVP here

You can find the Brain Talks website here, which features a homepage inviting both medical personnel and members of the general public to the events,

BrainTalks is a series of talks inviting you to contemplate emerging research about the brain. Researchers studying the brain, from various disciplines including psychiatry, neuroscience, neuroimaging, and neurology, gather to discuss current leading edge topics on the mind.

As an audience member, you join the discussion at the end of the talk, both in the presence of the entire audience, and with an opportunity afterwards to talk with the speaker more informally in a wine and cheese casual setting. The talks also serve as a connecting place for those interested in similar topics, potentially launching new endeavours or simply connecting people in discussions on how to approach their research, their knowledge, or their clinical practice.

For the general public [emphasis mine], these talks serve as a channel where by knowledge usually sequestered in inaccessible journals or university classrooms, is now available, potentially allowing people to better understand their brains and minds, how they work, and how to optimize brain health.

Don’t forget to RSVP, so they’ll know how big a box of wine to purchase.

Too much intelligence in your clothing? (wearable tech: 3 of 3)

While having intelligent clothing is not an immediate prospect, it is definitely on the horizon according to Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Marcelo Coelho. Speaking at an EmTech Conference Brazil (a series of conferences held by MIT Technical Review in various parts of the world). A Nov. 19, 2015 article by Sebastian Smith  published on phys.org discusses intelligent clothing,

One of the most promising areas is clothing that integrates computers and can practically think for itself.

“You can program your shirt for it to change color, or move to a different pattern,” he said. “Maybe you’re at work today and want your shirt one way, but you’ll be at a party tonight and want it different.”

Another creation is a dress with a hemline that rises and falls—or another dress, decorated with gently opening and closing flowers.

“Transforming dresses” is an idea that was profiled in an Oct. 20, 2006 article by Rachel Ross for MIT Technical review (Note: A link has been removed),

Turkish fashion designer Hussein Chalayan is known for his innovative ideas. Earlier this month [October 2006], he wowed the audience at his Paris runway show with five dresses that automatically transformed in shape and style. Zippers closed, cloth gathered, and hemlines rose–all without human assistance. Beneath each model’s skirt was a computer system designed by the London-based engineering and concept-creation firm 2D3D. Rob Edkins, director of 2D3D, talked to Technology Review about how the computers controlled the clothing with motors and wires.

Technology Review: What was your vision for the clothes in the latest Chalayan show?

Rob Edkins: He gave us a series of drawings: five dresses which morphed through three decades. Together with him we developed a means by which we could move the dresses into the various shapes of those three decades. It took a lot of R&D before we arrived at a solution.

With the first dress, the girl walked on in a 1906 costume, and it morphed from 1906 to 1916 and then to 1926. So she ended up having a beaded flapper dress of the twenties. The next dress was from 1926, and it evolved from 1936 to 1946, and so on. The final dress was 1986, 1996, and then 2007. So there were five dresses, and each dress [morphed through] three decades.

A lot of [the transformation] was unbelievably subtle. While you were watching something happen down around her waist, something else was happening on her shoulder. A little fabric might roll up and become a sort of half sleeve.

Another scientist (pulling the discussion in a somewhat different direction) was profiled in Smith’s article,

…  [In answer to the question, where is this all going?] another MIT scientist, Skylar Tibbits, [says the answer] is self-assembly.

No, not self-assembly as in struggling with instructions and wrenches over a bed you just bought in a box. Tibbits means self-assembly as in the thing—the bed, or whatever it may be—assembling itself.

This is the idea of 4D printing, Tibbits’ specialty.

If 3D printers can produce three-dimensional objects at the touch of a button, 4D means they then go on to transform or organize themselves in useful ways.

Unlike robots these materials are not computerized and do not need power like electricity. They react to ordinary forces like pressure or heat or water and change, but are engineered by the scientists so that they change shape in a pre-determined way.

Neither scientist was presenting new ideas for anyone who’s been following recent developments in emerging technologies but for an audience of people who haven’t this is likely exciting and, perhaps, a bit disturbing. (Well, that was my response when first encountering these developments.) As for clothing that’s more intelligent than its wearer (or out of control), it doesn’t seem to have been mentioned in the presentations but perhaps the possibilities should be considered.

Swallow your technology and wear it inside (wearable tech: 2 of 3)

While there are a number of wearable and fashionable pieces of technology that monitor heart rate and breathing, they are all worn on the outside of your body. Researchers are working on an alternative that can be swallowed and will monitor vital signs from within the gastrointestinal tract. I believe this is a prototype of the device,

This ingestible electronic device invented at MIT can measure heart rate and respiratory rate from inside the gastrointestinal tract. Courtesy: MIT

This ingestible electronic device invented at MIT can measure heart rate and respiratory rate from inside the gastrointestinal tract. Image: Albert Swiston/MIT Lincoln Laboratory Courtesy: MIT

From a Nov. 18, 2015 news item on phys.org,

This type of sensor could make it easier to assess trauma patients, monitor soldiers in battle, perform long-term evaluation of patients with chronic illnesses, or improve training for professional and amateur athletes, the researchers say.

The new sensor calculates heart and breathing rates from the distinctive sound waves produced by the beating of the heart and the inhalation and exhalation of the lungs.

“Through characterization of the acoustic wave, recorded from different parts of the GI tract, we found that we could measure both heart rate and respiratory rate with good accuracy,” says Giovanni Traverso, a research affiliate at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, a gastroenterologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, and one of the lead authors of a paper describing the device in the Nov. 18 issue of the journal PLOS One.

A Nov. 18, 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) news release by Anne Trafton, which originated the news item, further explains the research,

Doctors currently measure vital signs such as heart and respiratory rate using techniques including electrocardiograms (ECG) and pulse oximetry, which require contact with the patient’s skin. These vital signs can also be measured with wearable monitors, but those are often uncomfortable to wear.

Inspired by existing ingestible devices that can measure body temperature, and others that take internal digestive-tract images, the researchers set out to design a sensor that would measure heart and respiratory rate, as well as temperature, from inside the digestive tract.

The simplest way to achieve this, they decided, would be to listen to the body using a small microphone. Listening to the sounds of the chest is one of the oldest medical diagnostic techniques, practiced by Hippocrates in ancient Greece. Since the 1800s, doctors have used stethoscopes to listen to these sounds.

The researchers essentially created “an extremely tiny stethoscope that you can swallow,” Swiston says. “Using the same sensor, we can collect both your heart sounds and your lung sounds. That’s one of the advantages of our approach — we can use one sensor to get two pieces of information.”

To translate these acoustic data into heart and breathing rates, the researchers had to devise signal processing systems that distinguish the sounds produced by the heart and lungs from each other, as well as from background noise produced by the digestive tract and other parts of the body.

The entire sensor is about the size of a multivitamin pill and consists of a tiny microphone packaged in a silicone capsule, along with electronics that process the sound and wirelessly send radio signals to an external receiver, with a range of about 3 meters.

In tests along the GI tract of pigs, the researchers found that the device could accurately pick up heart rate and respiratory rate, even when conditions such as the amount of food being digested were varied.

“The authors introduce some interesting and radically different approaches to wearable physiological status monitors, in which the devices are not worn on the skin or on clothing, but instead reside, in a transient fashion, inside the gastrointestinal tract. The resulting capabilities provide a powerful complement to those found in wearable technologies as traditionally conceived,” says John Rogers, a professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois who was not part of the research team.

Better diagnosis

The researchers expect that the device would remain in the digestive tract for only a day or two, so for longer-term monitoring, patients would swallow new capsules as needed.

For the military, this kind of ingestible device could be useful for monitoring soldiers for fatigue, dehydration, tachycardia, or shock, the researchers say. When combined with a temperature sensor, it could also detect hypothermia, hyperthermia, or fever from infections.

In the future, the researchers plan to design sensors that could diagnose heart conditions such as abnormal heart rhythms (arrhythmias), or breathing problems including emphysema or asthma. Currently doctors require patients to wear a harness (Holter) monitor for up to a week to detect such problems, but these often fail to produce a diagnosis because patients are uncomfortable wearing them 24 hours a day.

“If you could ingest a device that would listen for those pathological sounds, rather than wearing an electrical monitor, that would improve patient compliance,” Swiston says.

The researchers also hope to create sensors that would not only diagnose a problem but also deliver a drug to treat it.

“We hope that one day we’re able to detect certain molecules or a pathogen and then deliver an antibiotic, for example,” Traverso says. “This development provides the foundation for that kind of system down the line.”

MIT has provided a video with two of the researchers describing their work and and plans for its future development,

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

Physiologic Status Monitoring via the Gastrointestinal Tract by G. Traverso, G. Ciccarelli, S. Schwartz, T. Hughes, T. Boettcher, R. Barman, R. Langer, & A. Swiston. PLOS DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0141666 Published: November 18, 2015

This paper is open access.

Note added Nov. 25, 2015 at 1625 hours PDT: US National Public Radio (NPR) has a story on this research. You can find Nov. 23, 2015 podcast (about six minutes) and a series of textual excerpts featuring Albert Swiston, biomaterials scientist at MIT, and Stephen Shankland, senior writer for CNET covering digital technology, from the podcast here.

Shape memory in a supercapacitor fibre for ‘smart’ textiles (wearable tech: 1 of 3)

Wearable technology seems to be quite trendy for a grouping not usually seen: consumers, fashion designers, medical personnel, manufacturers, and scientists.

The first in this informal series concerns a fibre with memory shape. From a Nov. 19, 2015 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

Wearing your mobile phone display on your jacket sleeve or an EKG probe in your sports kit are not off in some distant imagined future. Wearable “electronic textiles” are on the way. In the journal Angewandte Chemie (“A Shape-Memory Supercapacitor Fiber”), Chinese researchers have now introduced a new type of fiber-shaped supercapacitor for energy-storage textiles. Thanks to their shape memory, these textiles could potentially adapt to different body types: shapes formed by stretching and bending remain “frozen”, but can be returned to their original form or reshaped as desired.

A Nov. 19, 2015 Wiley Publishers press release, which originated the news item, provides context and detail about the work,

Any electronic components designed to be integrated into textiles must be stretchable and bendable. This is also true of the supercapacitors that are frequently used for data preservation in static storage systems (SRAM). SRAM is a type of storage that holds a small amount of data that is rapidly retrievable. It is often used for caches in processors or local storage on chips in devices whose data must be stored for long periods without a constant power supply. Some time ago, a team headed by Huisheng Peng at Fudan University developed stretchable, pliable fiber-shaped supercapacitors for integration into electronic textiles. Peng and his co-workers have now made further progress: supercapacitor fibers with shape memory.

Any electronic components designed to be integrated into textiles must be stretchable and bendable. This is also true of the supercapacitors that are frequently used for data preservation in static storage systems (SRAM). SRAM is a type of storage that holds a small amount of data that is rapidly retrievable. It is often used for caches in processors or local storage on chips in devices whose data must be stored for long periods without a constant power supply.
Some time ago, a team headed by Huisheng Peng at Fudan University developed stretchable, pliable fiber-shaped supercapacitors for integration into electronic textiles. Peng and his co-workers have now made further progress: supercapacitor fibers with shape memory.

The fibers are made using a core of polyurethane fiber with shape memory. This fiber is wrapped with a thin layer of parallel carbon nanotubes like a sheet of paper. This is followed by a coating of electrolyte gel, a second sheet of carbon nanotubes, and a final layer of electrolyte gel. The two layers of carbon nanotubes act as electrodes for the supercapacitor. Above a certain temperature, the fibers produced in this process can be bent as desired and stretched to twice their original length. The new shape can be “frozen” by cooling. Reheating allows the fibers to return to their original shape and size, after which they can be reshaped again. The electrochemical performance is fully maintained through all shape changes.

Weaving the fibers into tissues results in “smart” textiles that could be tailored to fit the bodies of different people. This could be used to make precisely fitted but reusable electronic monitoring systems for patients in hospitals, for example. The perfect fit should render them both more comfortable and more reliable.

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

A Shape-Memory Supercapacitor Fiber by Jue Deng, Ye Zhang, Yang Zhao, Peining Chen, Dr. Xunliang Cheng, & Prof. Dr. Huisheng Peng. Angewandte Chemie International Edition  DOI: 10.1002/anie.201508293  First published: 3 November 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Why Factory publishes book about research on nanotechnology in architecture

The book titled, Barba. Life in the Fully Adaptable Environment, published by nai010 and the Why Factory, a think tank operated by Dutch architectural firm, MVRDV, and Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, is a little difficult to describe.  From a Nov. 16, 2015 MVRDV press release,

Is the end of brick and mortar near? How could nanotechnology change buildings and cities in the future? A speculation of The Why Factory on this topic is illustrated in the best tradition of science fiction in the newly published book Barba. Life in the Fully Adaptable Environment. It forms the point of departure for a series of interactive experiments, installations and proposals towards the development of new, body-based and fully adaptive architectures. A beautiful existential story comes alive. A story closer to us then you’d ever have thought. Imagine a new substance that could be steered and altered in real time. Imagine creating a flexible material that could change its shape, that could shrink and expand, that could do almost anything. The Why Factory calls this fictional material Barba. With Barba, we would be able to adapt our environment to every desire and to every need.

The press release delves into the inspiration for the material and the book,

… The first inspiration came from ‘Barbapapa’, an illustrated cartoon character from the 1970s. Invented and drawn by Talus Taylor and Annette Tison, the friendly, blobby protagonist of the eponymous children’s books and television programme could change his shape to resemble different objects. With Barbapapa’s smooth morphosis in mind, The Why Factory wondered how today’s advancements in robotics, material science and computing might allow us to create environments that transform themselves as easily as Barbapapa could. Neither Barbapapa’s inventors nor anybody else from the team behind the cartoon were involved in this project, but The Why Factory owes them absolute gratitude for the inspiration of Barbapapa.

“Barba is a fantastic matter that does whatever we wish for” says Winy Maas, Professor at The Why Factory and MVRDV co-founder. “You can programme your environment like a computer game. You could wake up in a modernist villa that you transform into a Roman Spa after breakfast. Cities can be totally transformed when offices just disappear after office hours.”

The book moves away from pure speculation, however, and makes steps towards real world application, including illustrated vision, programming experiments and applied prototypes. As co-author of the book, Ulf Hackauf, explains, “We started this book with a vision, which we worked out to form a consistent future scenario. This we took as a point of departure for experiments and speculations, including programming, installations and material research. It eventually led us to prototypes, which could form a first step for making Barba real.”

Barba developed through a series of projects organized by The Why Factory and undertaken in collaboration between Delft University of Technology, ETH Zürich and the European Institute of Innovation and Technology. The research was developed over the course of numerous design studios at the Why Factory and elsewhere. Students and collaborators of the Why Factory have all contributed to the book.

The press release goes on to offer some information about Why Factory,

The Why Factory explores possibilities for the development of our cities by focusing on the production of models and visualisations for cities of the future. Education and research of The Why Factory are combined in a research lab and platform that aims to analyse, theorise and construct future cities. It investigates within the given world and produces future scenarios beyond it; from universal to specific and global to local. It proposes, constructs and envisions hypothetical societies and cities; from science to fiction and vice versa. The Why Factory thus acts as a future world scenario making machinery, engaging in a public debate on architecture and urbanism. Their findings are then communicated to the wider public in a variety of ways, including exhibitions, publications, workshops, and panel discussions.

Based on the Why Factory description, I’m surmising that the book is meant to provoke interactivity in some way. However, there doesn’t seem to be a prescribed means to interact with the Why Factory or the authors (Winy Maas, Ulf Hackauf, Adrien Ravon, and Patrick Healy) so perhaps the book is meant to be a piece of fiction/manual for interested educators, architects, and others who want to create ‘think tank’ environments where people speculate about nanotechnology and architecture.

In any event, you can order the book from this nai010 webpage,

How nanotechnology might drastically change cities and architecture

> New, body-based and fully adaptive architecture
How could nanotechnology change buildings and cities in the future? Imagine a new substance, that could be steered and altered in real time. Imagine …

As for The Why Factory, you can find out more here on the think tank’s About page.

One last comment, in checking out MVRDV, the Dutch architectural firm mentioned earlier as one of The Why Factory’s operating organizations, I came across this piece of news generated as a consequence of the Nov. 13, 2015 Paris bombings,

The Why Factory alumna Emilie Meaud died in Friday’s Paris attacks. Our thoughts are with their family, friends and colleagues.

Nov 17, 2015

To our great horror and shock we received the terrible news that The Why Factory alumna Emilie Meaud (29) died in the Paris attacks of last Friday. She finished her master in Architecture at TU-Delft in 2012 and worked at the Agence Chartier-Dalix. She was killed alongside her twin sister Charlotte. Our thoughts are with their family, friends and colleagues.

Amen.

Attomolar cancer detection: measuring microRNAs in blood

The latest research does not lead to a magical disease detector where nanoscale sensors swim through the body continuously monitoring our health and alerting us should something untoward occur (see this Oct. 28, 2014 article on RT.com for more about Google X’s development plans for it and this Nov. 11, 2015 news item on Nanowerk for a measured response from a researcher in the field).

Now onto some real research, a Nov. 17, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily announces an ultrasensitive (attoscale) sensor employing gold nanoparticles for detecting cancer,

A simple, ultrasensitive microRNA sensor developed and tested by researchers from the schools of science and medicine at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and the Indiana University Melvin and Bren Simon Cancer Center holds promise for the design of new diagnostic strategies and, potentially, for the prognosis and treatment of pancreatic and other cancers.

A Nov. 17, 2015 Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides more detail about research that seems to have focused largely on pancreatic cancer detection (Note: Links have been removed),

In a study published in the Nov. [2015] issue of ACS Nano, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society focusing on nanoscience and nanotechnology research, the IUPUI researchers describe their design of the novel, low-cost, nanotechnology-enabled reusable sensor. They also report on the promising results of tests of the sensor’s ability to identify pancreatic cancer or indicate the existence of a benign condition by quantifying changes in levels of microRNA signatures linked to pancreatic cancer. MicroRNAs are small molecules of RNA that regulate how larger RNA molecules lead to protein expression. As such, microRNAs are very important in biology and disease states.

“We used the fundamental concepts of nanotechnology to design the sensor to detect and quantify biomolecules at very low concentrations,” said Rajesh Sardar, Ph.D., who developed the sensor.

“We have designed an ultrasensitive technique so that we can see minute changes in microRNA concentrations in a patient’s blood and confirm the presence of pancreatic cancer.” Sardar is an assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology in the School of Science at IUPUI and leads an interdisciplinary research program focusing on the intersection of analytical chemistry and the nanoscience of metallic nanoparticles.

“If we can establish that there is cancer in the pancreas because the sensor detects high levels of microRNA-10b or one of the other microRNAs associated with that specific cancer, we may be able to treat it sooner,” said Murray Korc, M.D., the Myles Brand Professor of Cancer Research at the IU School of Medicine and a researcher at the IU Simon Cancer Center. Korc, worked with Sardar to improve the sensor’s capabilities and led the testing of the sensor and its clinical uses as well as advancing the understanding of pancreatic cancer biology.

“That’s especially significant for pancreatic cancer, because for many patients it is symptom-free for years or even a decade or more, by which time it has spread to other organs, when surgical removal is no longer possible and therapeutic options are limited,” said Korc. “For example, diagnosis of pancreatic cancer at an early stage of the disease followed by surgical removal is associated with a 40 percent five-year survival. Diagnosis of metastatic pancreatic cancer, by contrast, is associated with life expectancy that is often only a year or less.

“The beauty of the sensor designed by Dr. Sardar is its ability to accurately detect mild increases in microRNA levels, which could allow for early cancer diagnosis,” Korc added.

Over the past decade, studies have shown that microRNAs play important roles in cancer and other diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular disorders. The new IUPUI nanotechnology-based sensor can detect changes in any of these microRNAs.

The sensor is a small glass chip that contains triangular-shaped gold nanoparticles called ‘nanoprisms.’ After dipping it in a sample of blood or another body fluid, the scientist measures the change in the nanoprism’s optical property to determine the levels of specific microRNAs.

For anyone concerned about the cost associated with creating sensors based on gold, about patents, or about current techniques for monitoring microRNAs, there’s more from the news release (Note: A link has been removed),

“Using gold nanoprisms may sound expensive, but it isn’t because these particles are so very tiny,” Sardar said. “It’s a rather cheap technique because it uses nanotechnology and needs very little gold. $250 worth of gold makes 4,000 sensors. Four thousand sensors allow you to do at least 4,000 tests. The low cost makes this technique ideal for use anywhere, including in low-resource environments in this country and around the world.”

Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation has filed a patent application on Sardar’s and Korc’s groundbreaking nanotechnology-enabled sensor. The researchers’ ultimate goal is to design ultrasensitive and extremely selective low-cost point-of-care diagnostics enabling individual therapeutic approaches to diseases.

Currently, polymerase chain reaction technology is used to determine microRNA signatures, which requires extraction of the microRNA from blood or other biological fluid and reverse transcription or amplification of the microRNA. PCR provides relative values. By contrast, the process developed at IUPUI is simpler, quantitative, more sensitive and highly specific even when two different microRNAs vary in a single position. The study demonstrated that the IUPUI nanotechnology-enabled sensor is as good as if not better than the most advanced PCR in detection and quantification of microRNA.

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

Label-Free Nanoplasmonic-Based Short Noncoding RNA Sensing at Attomolar Concentrations Allows for Quantitative and Highly Specific Assay of MicroRNA-10b in Biological Fluids and Circulating Exosomes by Gayatri K. Joshi, Samantha Deitz-McElyea, Thakshila Liyanage, Katie Lawrence, Sonali Mali, Rajesh Sardar*, and Murray Korc. ACS Nano, Article ASAP DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b04527 Publication Date (Web): October 7, 2015

Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

This is an open access paper.

The researchers have provided this illustration of gold nanoprisms,

Caption: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis researchers have developed a novel, low-cost, nanotechnology-enabled reusable sensor for which a patent application has been filed. Credit: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, School of Science, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

Caption: Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis researchers have developed a novel, low-cost, nanotechnology-enabled reusable sensor for which a patent application has been filed. Credit: Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, School of Science, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) will lead an Ideas Lab at 2016 World Economic Forum

The theme for the 2016 World Economic Forum (WEF) is ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution’. I’m losing track of how many industrial revolutions we’ve had and this seems like a vague theme. However, there is enlightenment to be had in this Nov. 17, 2015 Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) news release on EurekAlert,

KAIST researchers will lead an IdeasLab on biotechnology for an aging society while HUBO, the winner of the 2015 DARPA Robotics Challenge, will interact with the forum participants, offering an experience of state-of-the-art robotics technology

Moving on from the news release’s subtitle, there’s more enlightenment,

Representatives from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) will attend the 2016 Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum to run an IdeasLab and showcase its humanoid robot.

With over 2,500 leaders from business, government, international organizations, civil society, academia, media, and the arts expected to participate, the 2016 Annual Meeting will take place on Jan. 20-23, 2016 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland. Under the theme of ‘Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ [emphasis mine] global leaders will discuss the period of digital transformation [emphasis mine] that will have profound effects on economies, societies, and human behavior.

President Sung-Mo Steve Kang of KAIST will join the Global University Leaders Forum (GULF), a high-level academic meeting to foster collaboration among experts on issues of global concern for the future of higher education and the role of science in society. He will discuss how the emerging revolution in technology will affect the way universities operate and serve society. KAIST is the only Korean university participating in GULF, which is composed of prestigious universities invited from around the world.

Four KAIST professors, including Distinguished Professor Sang Yup Lee of the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department, will lead an IdeasLab on ‘Biotechnology for an Aging Society.’

Professor Lee said, “In recent decades, much attention has been paid to the potential effect of the growth of an aging population and problems posed by it. At our IdeasLab, we will introduce some of our research breakthroughs in biotechnology to address the challenges of an aging society.”

In particular, he will present his latest research in systems biotechnology and metabolic engineering. His research has explained the mechanisms of how traditional Oriental medicine works in our bodies by identifying structural similarities between effective compounds in traditional medicine and human metabolites, and has proposed more effective treatments by employing such compounds.

KAIST will also display its networked mobile medical service system, ‘Dr. M.’ Built upon a ubiquitous and mobile Internet, such as the Internet of Things, wearable electronics, and smart homes and vehicles, Dr. M will provide patients with a more affordable and accessible healthcare service.

In addition, Professor Jun-Ho Oh of the Mechanical Engineering Department will showcase his humanoid robot, ‘HUBO,’ during the Annual Meeting. His research team won the International Humanoid Robotics Challenge hosted by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which was held in Pomona, California, on June 5-6, 2015. With 24 international teams participating in the finals, HUBO completed all eight tasks in 44 minutes and 28 seconds, 6 minutes earlier than the runner-up, and almost 11 minutes earlier than the third-place team. Team KAIST walked away with the grand prize of USD 2 million.

Professor Oh said, “Robotics technology will grow exponentially in this century, becoming a real driving force to expedite the Fourth Industrial Revolution. I hope HUBO will offer an opportunity to learn about the current advances in robotics technology.”

President Kang pointed out, “KAIST has participated in the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum since 2011 and has engaged with a broad spectrum of global leaders through numerous presentations and demonstrations of our excellence in education and research. Next year, we will choreograph our first robotics exhibition on HUBO and present high-tech research results in biotechnology, which, I believe, epitomizes how science and technology breakthroughs in the Fourth Industrial Revolution will shape our future in an unprecedented way.”

Based on what I’m reading in the KAIST news release, I think the conversation about the ‘Fourth revolution’ may veer toward robotics and artificial intelligence (referred to in code as “digital transformation”) as developments in these fields are likely to affect various economies.  Before proceeding with that thought, take a look at this video showcasing HUBO at the DARPA challenge,


I’m quite impressed with how the robot can recalibrate its grasp so it can pick things up and plug an electrical cord into an outlet and knowing whether wheels or legs will be needed to complete a task all due to algorithms which give the robot a type of artificial intelligence. While it may seem more like a machine than anything else, there’s also this version of a HUBO,

Description English: Photo by David Hanson Date 26 October 2006 (original upload date) Source Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Mac. Author Dayofid at English Wikipedia

Description
English: Photo by David Hanson
Date 26 October 2006 (original upload date)
Source Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Mac.
Author Dayofid at English Wikipedia

It’ll be interesting to note if the researchers make the HUBO seem more humanoid by giving it a face for its interactions with WEF attendees. It would be more engaging but also more threatening since there is increasing concern over robots taking work away from humans with implications for various economies. There’s more about HUBO in its Wikipedia entry.

As for the IdeasLab, that’s been in place at the WEF since 2009 according to this WEF July 19, 2011 news release announcing an ideasLab hub (Note: A link has been removed),

The World Economic Forum is publicly launching its biannual interactive IdeasLab hub on 19 July [2011] at 10.00 CEST. The unique IdeasLab hub features short documentary-style, high-definition (HD) videos of preeminent 21st century ideas and critical insights. The hub also provides dynamic Pecha Kucha presentations and visual IdeaScribes that trace and package complex strategic thinking into engaging and powerful images. All videos are HD broadcast quality.

To share the knowledge captured by the IdeasLab sessions, which have been running since 2009, the Forum is publishing 23 of the latest sessions, seen as the global benchmark of collaborative learning and development.

So while you might not be able to visit an IdeasLab presentation at the WEF meetings, you could get a it to see them later.

Getting back to the robotics and artificial intelligence aspect of the 2016 WEF’s ‘digital’ theme, I noticed some reluctance to discuss how the field of robotics is affecting work and jobs in a broadcast of Canadian television show, ‘Conversations with Conrad’.

For those unfamiliar with the interviewer, Conrad Black is somewhat infamous in Canada for a number of reasons (from the Conrad Black Wikipedia entry), Note: Links have been removed,

Conrad Moffat Black, Baron Black of Crossharbour, KSG (born 25 August 1944) is a Canadian-born British former newspaper publisher and author. He is a non-affiliated life peer, and a convicted felon in the United States for fraud.[n 1] Black controlled Hollinger International, once the world’s third-largest English-language newspaper empire,[3] which published The Daily Telegraph (UK), Chicago Sun Times (U.S.), The Jerusalem Post (Israel), National Post (Canada), and hundreds of community newspapers in North America, before he was fired by the board of Hollinger in 2004.[4]

In 2004, a shareholder-initiated prosecution of Black began in the United States. Over $80 million in assets claimed to have been improperly taken or inappropriately spent by Black.[5] He was convicted of three counts of fraud and one count of obstruction of justice in a U.S. court in 2007 and sentenced to six and a half years’ imprisonment. In 2011 two of the charges were overturned on appeal and he was re-sentenced to 42 months in prison on one count of mail fraud and one count of obstruction of justice.[6] Black was released on 4 May 2012.[7]

Despite or perhaps because of his chequered past, he is often a good interviewer and he definitely attracts interesting guests. n an Oct. 26, 2015 programme, he interviewed both former Canadian astronaut, Chris Hadfield, and Canadian-American David Frum who’s currently editor of Atlantic Monthly and a former speechwriter for George W. Bush.

It was Black’s conversation with Frum which surprised me. They discuss robotics without ever once using the word. In a section where Frum notes that manufacturing is returning to the US, he also notes that it doesn’t mean more jobs and cites a newly commissioned plant in the eastern US employing about 40 people where before it would have employed hundreds or thousands. Unfortunately, the video has not been made available as I write this (Nov. 20, 2015) but that situation may change. You can check here.

Final thought, my guess is that economic conditions are fragile and I don’t think anyone wants to set off panic by mentioning robotics and disappearing jobs.

What do nanocrystals have in common with the earth’s crust?

The deformation properties of nanocrystals resemble those in the earth’s crust according to a Nov. 17, 2015 news item on Nanowerk,

Apparently, size doesn’t always matter. An extensive study by an interdisciplinary research group suggests that the deformation properties of nanocrystals are not much different from those of the Earth’s crust.

“When solid materials such as nanocrystals, bulk metallic glasses, rocks, or granular materials are slowly deformed by compression or shear, they slip intermittently with slip-avalanches similar to earthquakes,” explained Karin Dahmen, a professor of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Typically these systems are studied separately. But we found that the scaling behavior of their slip statistics agree across a surprisingly wide range of different length scales and material structures.”

There’s an illustration accompanying the research,

Courtesy of the University of Illinois

Caption: When solid materials such as nanocrystals, bulk metallic glasses, rocks, or granular materials are slowly deformed by compression or shear, they slip intermittently with slip-avalanches similar to earthquakes. Credit: University of Illinois

A Nov. 17, 2015 University of Illinois news release (also on EurekAlert) by Rick Kubetz, which originated the news item, provides more detail,

“Identifying agreement in aspects of the slip statistics is important, because it enables us to transfer results from one scale to another, from one material to another, from one stress to another, or from one strain rate to another,” stated Shivesh Pathak, a physics undergraduate at Illinois, and a co-author of the paper, “Universal Quake Statistics: From Compressed Nanocrystals to Earthquakes,” appearing in Scientific Reports. “The study shows how to identify and explain commonalities in the deformation mechanisms of different materials on different scales.

“The results provide new tools and methods to use the slip statistics to predict future materials deformation,” added Michael LeBlanc, a physics graduate student and co-author of the paper. “They also clarify which system parameters significantly affect the deformation behavior on long length scales. We expect the results to be useful for applications in materials testing, failure prediction, and hazard prevention.”

Researchers representing a broad a range of disciplines–including physics, geosciences, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and materials science–from the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands contributed to the study, comparing five different experimental systems, on several different scales, with model predictions.

As a solid is sheared, each weak spot is stuck until the local shear stress exceeds a random failure threshold. It then slips by a random amount until it re-sticks. The released stress is redistributed to all other weak spots. Thus, a slipping weak spot can trigger other spots to fail in a slip avalanche.

Using tools from the theory of phase transitions, such as the renormalization group, one can show that the slip statistics of the model do not depend on the details of the system.

“Although these systems span 13 decades in length scale, they all show the same scaling behavior for their slip size distributions and other statistical properties,” stated Pathak. “Their size distributions follow the same simple (power law) function, multiplied with the same exponential cutoff.”

The cutoff, which is the largest slip or earthquake size, grows with applied force for materials spanning length scales from nanometers to kilometers. The dependence of the size of the largest slip or quake on stress reflects “tuned critical” behavior, rather than so-called self-organized criticality, which would imply stress-independence.

“The agreement of the scaling properties of the slip statistics across scales does not imply the predictability of individual slips or earthquakes,” LeBlanc said. “Rather, it implies that we can predict the scaling behavior of average properties of the slip statistics and the probability of slips of a certain size, including their dependence on stress and strain-rate.”

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

Universal Quake Statistics: From Compressed Nanocrystals to Earthquakes by Jonathan T. Uhl, Shivesh Pathak, Danijel Schorlemmer, Xin Liu, Ryan Swindeman, Braden A. W. Brinkman, Michael LeBlanc, Georgios Tsekenis, Nir Friedman, Robert Behringer, Dmitry Denisov, Peter Schall, Xiaojun Gu, Wendelin J. Wright, Todd Hufnagel, Andrew Jennings, Julia R. Greer, P. K. Liaw, Thorsten Becker, Georg Dresen, & Karin A. Dahmen.  Scientific Reports 5, Article number: 16493 (2015)  doi:10.1038/srep16493 Published online: 17 November 2015

This is an open access paper.

One final comment, this story reminds me of a few other pieces of research featured here, which focus on repeating patterns in nature. The research was mentioned in an Aug. 27, 2015 posting about white dwarf stars and heartbeats and in an April 14, 2015 posting about gold nanoparticles and their resemblance to the Milky Way. You can also find more in the Wikipedia entry titled ‘Patterns in nature‘.

Café Scientifique (Vancouver, Canada) on climate change and rise of complex life on Nov. 24, 2015 and Member of Parliament Joyce Murray’s Paris Climate Conference breakfast meeting

On Tuesday, November 24, 2015 at 7:30 pm in the back room of The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.]), Café Scientifique will be hosting a talk about climate change and the rise of complex life (from the Nov. 12, 2015 announcement),

Our speaker for the evening will be Dr. Mark Jellinek.  The title of his talk is:

The Formation and Breakup of Earth’s Supercontinents and the Remarkable Link to Earth’s Climate and the Rise of Complex Life

Earth history is marked by the intermittent formation and breakup of “supercontinents”, where all the land mass is organized much like a completed jigsaw puzzle centered at the equator or pole of the planet. Such events disrupt the mantle convective motions that cool our planet, affecting the volcanic and weathering processes that maintain Earth’s remarkably hospitable climate, in turn. In this talk I will explore how the last two supercontinental cycles impelled Earth into profoundly different climate extreme’s: a ~150 million year long cold period involving protracted global glaciations beginning about 800 million years ago and a ~100 million year long period of extreme warming beginning about 170 million years ago. One of the most provocative features of the last period of global glaciation is the rapid emergence of complex, multicellular animals about 650 million years ago. Why global glaciation might stimulate such an evolutionary bifurcation is, however, unclear. Predictable environmental stresses related to effects of the formation and breakup of the supercontinent Rodinia on ocean chemistry and Earth’s surface climate may play a crucial and unexpected role that I will discuss.

A professor in the Dept. of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of British Columbia, Dr. Jellinek’s research interests include Volcanology, Geodynamics, Planetary Science, Geological Fluid Mechanics. You can find out more about Dr. Jellinek and his work here.

Joyce Murray and the Paris Climate Conference (sold out)

Joyce Murray is a Canadian Member of Parliament, (Liberal) for the riding of Vancouver Quadra who hosts a regular breakfast meeting where topics of interest (child care, seniors, transportation, the arts, big data, etc.) are discussed. From a Nov. 13, 2015 email announcement,

You are invited to our first post-election Vancouver Quadra MP Breakfast Connections on November 27th at Enigma Restaurant, for a discussion with Dr. Mark Jaccard on why the heat will be on world leaders in Paris, in the days leading to December 12th,  at the Paris Climate Conference (COP 21).

After 20 years of UN negotiations, the world expects a legally binding universal agreement on climate to keep temperature increases below 2°C! The climate heat will especially be on laggards like Canada and Australia’s new Prime Ministers. What might be expected of the Right Honorable Justin Trudeau and his provincial premiers? What are the possible outcomes of COP21?

Dr. Jaccard has worked with leadership in countries like China and the United States, and helped develop British Columbia’s innovative Climate Action Plan and Carbon Tax.

Join us for this unique opportunity to engage with a climate policy expert who has participated in this critical global journey. From the occasion of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit resulting in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), through the third Conference of Parties’ (COP3) Kyoto Protocol, to COP21 today, the building blocks for a binding international solution have been assembled. What’s still missing?

Mark has been a professor in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University since 1986 and is a global leader and consultant on structuring climate mitigation solutions. Former Chair and CEO of the British Columbia Utilities Commission, he has published over 100 academic papers, most of these related to his principal research focus: the design and application of energy-economy models that assess the effectiveness of sustainable energy and climate policies.

When: Friday November 27th 7:30 to 9:00AM

Where: Enigma Restaurant 4397 west 10th Avenue (at Trimble)

Cost: $20 includes a hot buffet breakfast; $10 for students (cash only please)

RSVP by emailing joyce.murray.c1@parl.gc.ca or call 604-664-9220

SOLD OUT!

They’re not even taking names for a waiting list. You can find out more about Dr. Jaccard’s work here.