Tag Archives: copyright

NNI’s clumsy attempt to manipulate media; copyright roots

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Is it ever a good idea to hand a bunch of experts at your public workshop on nanotechnology risks and ethical issues a list of the facts and comments that you’d like them to give in response to ‘difficult’ questions from the media after you’ve taken a recent shellacking from one reporter who is likely present? While the answer should be obvious, I’m sad to say that the folks at the US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) publicly and demonstrably failed to answer correctly.

The reporter in question is Andrew Schneider who wrote a series on nanotechnology for AOL News. I’ve mentioned his series in passing a few times here and I’m truly disheartened to find myself discussing Schneider and it, one more time. For the record, I think it’s well written and there’s some good information about important problems unfortunately, there’s also a fair chunk of misleading and wrong information. So, in addition to the solid, well founded material, the series also provides examples of ill-informed and irresponsible science journalism. (Here’s an example of one of his misleading statements. If you want to find it, you have to read down a few paragraphs as that post was about misleading statements being bruited about by individuals with differing perspectives on nanotechnology.) The Schneider’s series, if you’re madly curious is here.

Yesterday, Clayton Teague, director for the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office, provided a riposte on AOL News where Schneider, a few hours, later, offered a devastating nonresponse. Instead, Schneider focused on the NNI’s recent report to the President’s Council of Science and Technology Advisors (PCAST) getting in a few solid hits before revealing the clumsy attempt to manipulate the media message at the public workshop that the NNI recently held and which Schneider likely attended.

If you want the inside story from the perspective of one of the experts who was at the panel, check out Dr. Andrew Maynard’s latest posting on his 2020 Science blog.

Two more points before I move on (for today anyway), Schneider’s ‘nonresponse’ refers to both Andrew and another expert as ‘civilians’.

  • Maynard [director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health] and Jennifer Sass [chief scientist and nano expert for the Natural Resources Defense Council], both leading civilian public health scientists who participated in the review … [emphasis mine]
  • “Surely it is inappropriate for the federal government to advise independent experts what to say on its behalf when it comes to critical news reports,” added Maynard, who was one of the civilian advisers on the panel. [emphasis mine]

As far as I’m aware, only the police and the military refer to the rest of us (who are not them) as civilians. Is Schneider trying to suggest (purposely or not) a police or military state?

As for my second point. Somebody passed the list of NNI preferred/approved facts and comments on to Schneider. The first thought would be someone from the expert panel but it could have come from anyone within the NNI who had access and is sympathetic to Schneider’s concerns about nanotechnology.

Copyright roots

If you’ve ever been curious as to how copyright came about in the first place, head over to Greg Fenton’s item on Techdirt. From the posting where Fenton is commenting on a recent Economist article about copyright,

The Economist goes on to highlight:

Copyright was originally the grant of a temporary government-supported monopoly on copying a work, not a property right.

Surely there will be copyright supporters who will cringe at such a statement. They believe that copyright is “intellectual property”, and therefore their arguments often confuse the requirements for laws that support copyright with those that support physical properties.

The article Fenton refers to  is currently open access (but I’m not sure for how long or what the policy is at The Economist). The last lines (with which I heartily concur) from the Economist’s article,

The value society places on creativity means that fair use needs to be expanded and inadvertent infringement should be minimally penalised. None of this should get in the way of the enforcement of copyright, which remains a vital tool in the encouragement of learning. But tools are not ends in themselves. [emphasis mine]

Today’s posting is a short one. About time I did that, eh?

Dem bones at McGill; innovation from the Canadian business community?; the archiving frontier; linking and copyright

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I have a number of bits today amongst them, Canadian nanotechnology, Canadian business innovation, digital archiving, and copyrights and linking.

A Quebec biotech company, Enobia Pharma is working with Dr. Marc McKee on treatments for genetic bone diseases. From the news item on Nanowerk,

The field is known as biomineralization and it involves cutting-edge, nanotech investigation into the proteins, enzymes and other molecules that control the coupling of mineral ions (calcium and phosphate) to form nano-crystals within the bone structure. The treatment, enzyme replacement therapy to treat hypophosphatasia, is currently undergoing clinical testing in several countries including Canada. Hypophosphatasia is a rare and severe disorder resulting in poor bone mineralization. In infants, symptoms include respiratory insufficiency, failure to thrive and rickets.

This research in biomineralization (coupling of mineral ions to form nano-crystals) could lead to better treatments for other conditions such as cardiovascular diseases, arthritis, and kidney stones.

McKee’s research is being funded in part by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research  From the Nanowerk news item,

McKee’s research program is a concrete example of how university researchers are working with private sector partners as an integral part of Canada’s innovative knowledge economy, and the positive outcomes their collaborations can offer.

I don’t think that businesses partnering with academic institutions in research collaborations is precisely what they mean when they talk about business innovation (research and development). From a March 2, 2010 article about innovation by Preston Manning in the Globe & Mail,

Government competition policy and support for science, technology, and innovation (STI) can complement business leadership on the innovation front, but it is not a substitute for such leadership. Action to increase innovation in the economy is first and foremost a business responsibility.

Manning goes on to describe what he’s done on this matter and asks for suggestions on how to encourage Canadian business to be more innovative. (Thanks to Pasco Phronesis for pointing me to Manning’s article.) I guess the problem is that what we’ve been doing has worked well enough and so there’s no great incentive to change.

I’ve been on an archiving kick lately and so here’s some more. The British Library recently (Feb.25.10) announced public access to their UK Web Archive, a project where they have been saving online materials. From the news release,

British Library Chief Executive, Dame Lynne Brindley said:

“Since 2004 the British Library has led the UK Web Archive in its mission to archive a record of the major cultural and social issues being discussed online. Throughout the project the Library has worked directly with copyright holders to capture and preserve over 6,000 carefully selected websites, helping to avoid the creation of a ‘digital black hole’ in the nation’s memory.

“Limited by the existing legal position, at the current rate it will be feasible to collect just 1% of all free UK websites by 2011. We hope the current DCMS consultation will enact the 2003 Legal Deposit Libraries Act and extend the provision of legal deposit through regulationto cover freely available UK websites, providingregular snapshots ofthe free UK web domain for the benefit of future research.”

Mike Masnick at Techdirt notes (here) that the British Library has to get permission (the legal position Dame Brindley refers to) to archive these materials and this would seem to be an instance where ‘fair use’ should be made to apply.

On the subject of losing data, I read an article by Mike Roberts for the Vancouver Province, January 22, 2006, p. B5 (digital copy here) that posed this question, What if the world lost its memory? It was essentially an interview with Luciana Duranti (chair of the Master of Archival Studies programme and professor at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia, Canada) where she commented about the memories we had already lost. From the article,

Alas, she says, every day something else is irretrievably lost.

The research records of the U.S. Marines for the past 25 years? Gone.

East German land-survey records vital to the reunification of Germany? Toast.

A piece of digital interactive music recorded by Canadian composer Keith Hamel just eight years ago?

“Inaccessible, over, finito,” says Duranti, educated in her native Italy and a UBC prof since 1987.

Duranti, director of InterPARES (International Research on Permanent Authentic Records in Electronic Systems), an international cyber-preservation project comprising 20 countries and 60 global archivists, says original documentation is a thing of the past.

I was shocked by how much ‘important’ information had been lost and I assume still is. (Getting back to the UK Web Archives, if they can only save 1% of the UK’s online material then a lot has got to be missing.)

For anyone curious about InterPARES, I got my link for the Roberts article from this page on the InterPARES 1 website.

Back to Techdirt and Mike Masnick who has educated me as to a practice I had noted but not realized is ‘the way things are done amongst journalists’. If you spend enough time on the web, you’ll notice stories that make their way to newspapers without any acknowledgment of  their web or writerly origins and I’m not talking about news releases which are designed for immediate placement in the media or rewritten/reworked before placement. From the post on Techdirt,

We recently wrote about how the NY Post was caught taking a blogger’s story and rewriting it for itself — noting the hypocrisy of a News Corp. newspaper copying from someone else, after Rupert Murdoch and his top execs have been going around decrying various news aggregators (and Google especially) for “stealing” from News Corp. newspapers. It’s even more ridiculous when you think about it — because the “stealing” that Rupert is upset about is Google linking to the original story — a step that his NY Post writer couldn’t even be bothered to do.

Of course, as a few people pointed out in the comments, this sort of “re-reporting” is quite common in the traditional news business. You see it all the time in newspapers, magazines and broadcast TV. They take a story that was found somewhere else and just “re-report” it, so that they have their own version of it.

That’s right, it’s ‘re-reporting’ without attributions or links. Masnick’s post (he’s bringing in Felix Salmon’s comments) attributes this to a ‘print’ mentality where reporters are accustomed to claiming first place and see acknowledgments and links as failure while ‘digital natives’ acknowledge and link regularly since they view these as signs of respect. I’m not going to disagree but I would like to point out that citing sources is pretty standard for academics or anyone trained in that field. I imagine most reporters have one university or college degree, surely they learned the importance of citing one’s sources. So does training as a journalist erode that understanding?

And, getting back to this morning’s archival subtheme, at the end of Clark Hoyt’s (blogger for NY Times) commentary about the plagiarism he had this to say,

Finally, The Times owes readers a full accounting. I asked [Philip] Corbett [standards editor] for the examples of Kouwe’s plagiarism and suggested that editors’ notes be appended to those articles on the Web site and in The Times’s electronic archives. Corbett would not provide the examples and said the paper was not inclined to flag them, partly because there were some clear-cut cases and others that were less clear. “Where do you draw the line?” he asked.

I’d draw it at those he regards as clear. To do otherwise is to leave a corrupted record within the archives of The Times. It is not the way to close the case.

One last thing, Heather Haley is one of the guests appearing tonight in Rock Against Prisons.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

7:00pm – 11:55pm

Little Mountain Gallery

195 east 26th Ave [Vancouver, Canada]

More details from my previous announcement about this event here.

Australian government makes an unexpected nano announcement; San Diego, the Olympics of Science, and the AAAS; Manitoba high school student discusses copyright

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Late last week I wrote about a new report, Nanotechnology in Australia: Trends, Applications and Collaborative Opportunities, that was supposed to be launched today. The news article which originated the story was by Cheryl Jones of The Australian, who noted,

THE number of Australian companies in a nanotechnology market likely to be worth trillions of dollars within a decade has plummeted, according to an Australian Academy of Science report.

Federal government reports previously put at about 80 the number of companies engaged in the technology underlying a burgeoning global market.

But now there are only 55 to 60, say nanotechnology experts cited in the academy report, to be released next week.

Little work has moved from the benchtop to the market, the report says, and one obstacle to commercialisation is “often dysfunctional” university intellectual property services.

I checked and this item from the Government of Australia was announced instead (from the Azo Materials site),

The Rudd Government is introducing a comprehensive national framework to guide the safe development of new technologies such as nanotechnology and biotechnology as part of a $38.2 million National Enabling Technologies Strategy released today.

“Technologies like nanotechnology and biotechnology have enormous potential, but we can only realise that potential with the community’s support,” said Innovation Minister, Senator Kim Carr.

“Health, safety and environmental protection are paramount for the Government. This strategy is about ensuring we meet the highest standards while at the same time maximising opportunities to develop these cutting-edge technologies.

I’m not sure what happened to the report but this announcement was a bit of a surprise. Given the material cited in Jones’ story, I would have expected the government to pull back rather than invest more heavily. It seems the government has recognized the barriers noted in the report (which has yet to be released or even seen by anyone other than Cheryl Jones [see my posting here] ETA: my apologies to Ms. Jones, I did find the report days later here at a location I failed to check, for penance I will leave my original wrong-headed and now embarrassing comment) and decided to address the issues head on.

Meanwhile, the ‘Olympics of Science’ is finishing today in San Diego (Feb. 18-22, 2010), the 176th annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). From the AAAS site,

The 2010 AAAS Annual Meeting is coming to San Diego for the first time, bringing cutting-edge research and a host of free events for the public in its role as the United States’ largest general scientific conference.

Described in The Times Higher Education Supplement as “the Olympics of science conferences,” the Annual Meeting has long been known as the premier multidisciplinary science gathering in the United States. This year, it will continue its evolution to a prime international affair: When the 176th meeting of the society convenes from 18-22 February, scientists, journalists, and educators from more than 50 nations will be there.

Under the banner “Bridging Science and Society,” top researchers will discuss their findings in the context of global challenges in the environment, economy, health, and education. Attendees can explore research in the neurosciences, energy, astrobiology, public health, and environmental change, and learn how these advances directly affect courtroom trials, care for the elderly, sustainable cities, border security, and other public concerns.

As part of an unprecedented effort to share the excitement of scientific discovery with the public, AAAS’s Family Science Days and other free events offer a chance at hands-on learning for students of all ages.

I mention it not just because I’m currently experiencing Vancouver’s Winter Olympics but because, in 2012, the AAAS  will be hosting its annual meeting in Vancouver.  To get a better idea of what this means, I’ve excerpted parts of a story by Maggie Koerth-Baker on Boing, Boing about attending some of the presentations at the AAAS 2010 San Diego Meeting. First an excerpt from a nanotechnology presentation,

[David] Cahill [University of Illinois] is part of a team working to improve thermal insulation with nanotechnology. His goal: Create some kind of new material that will disrupt the transfer of heat energy between two objects. Getting it right would have big implications. For instance, we could drastically improve our ability to capture the waste heat from electrical generation and put it to use in other ways.One possible solution is silicon nanowires. These structures are normally baby-butt smooth, but as you make their surfaces more and more rough, the nanowires conduct less and less thermal energy. Right now, it’s not exactly clear why that trick works. But understanding it could put Cahill’s team on the right path.

He’s not the only one taking energy technology nano. Another researcher on the same panel, Yi Cui, Ph.D., of Stanford, is applying nanostructures to energy storage, in hopes of developing smaller batteries that can hold more power.

In fact, according to Cui, nanotech is absolutely essential to any future progress with batteries. Storage capacity for size has plateaued, he explained. To go further, we have to start making electrodes out of completely different—and probably completely new—materials.

Note: I’ve mentioned Cui and his work at Stanford University here. More from Koerth-Baker, this time it’s from a science history presentation on measurements and averages,

Before that [1761], obviously, scientists still made mistakes. Multiple measurements or experiments still yielded varying results. But they dealt with the variation in a very different way—they picked the answer they thought represented their best work.

To modern ears, that sounds like cheating—”You just randomly decided on the number you liked best? That’s science?” But, at the time, it was perfectly logical. Historically, scientists viewed themselves as craftsmen,[Jeff]  Buchwald said. If you were building a piece of fine furniture, you wouldn’t make a bunch and pick the average to display. You’d choose the finished version that was the best, and best displayed your woodworking skill.

Intriguing, eh? If you want to find out who introduced the concept of averaging scientific measurements and why he was too embarrassed to publish this in his first research, do read Koerth-Baker’s piece.

For my last bit, I’m back on the copyright trail and thanks to Techdirt for alerting me to this essay on file-sharing and morality written by a grade 12 student at Balmoral Hall School (all girls) in Winnipeg,Manitoba. Kamal Dhillon won the 2010 Glassen Ethics competition,

This year’s essay topic was: “Is it OK to download music, movies and games without paying?” There were about 80 entries from high schools in Winnipeg and across the province. The contest, held annually since 2007, is jointly sponsored by The Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics and The Department of Philosophy at the University of Manitoba. The winner receives $1,000. The Winnipeg Free Press publishes the winning essay.

From the Winnipeg Free Press (Feb.13, 2010 edition), an excerpt from Dhillon’s essay,

MILLIONS of people, mostly but not all young, engage in file sharing.

The multinational corporations who make and sell the material are not happy with this development. Their profits are threatened and they, in turn, are threatening to sue, for huge amounts of money, individuals who engage in file sharing.

I support the act of file sharing and argue that the free sharing of these forms of intellectual property would likely produce, overall, more good than harm for society.

It’s a thoughtful piece and well worth reading.

Off the deep end: an interview with Cheryl Geisler (part 3 of 3)

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Today is the last of the series on Cheryl Geisler and the new Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology (FCAT) at Simon Fraser University (Burnby, Vancouver, Surrey, Canada):

In addition to factors such as the global economy and faculty politics (used not pejoratively but in its most general sense), Geisler and her colleagues have to contend with an increasing emphasis from the tri-council funding agencies (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council [SSHRC], Canadian Institutes of Health Research [CIHR], and Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council [NSERC]) on open-access to research and on proving to the public that the funded research has value.

From the recent Conference Board of Canada report on trademarks, patents, and copyright, Intellectual Property in the 21st Century by Ruth Corbin (as quoted by Michael Geist on his blog here),

In discussing the tabling of a new copyright bill, it notes:

Simultaneous support for “open-access” initiatives, where appropriate – such as facilitation of the use of government data with suitable safeguards, and readier access to publicly funded research – would help to unlock tremendous stores of knowledge and balance out the resources being expended on protection of rights.

From the SSHRC report, Framing our Direction, here,

Systematic evidence about the multiple short and long-term benefits of research in the social sciences and humanities will provide a solid foundation for decisions about levels of investment. In other words, our ability to enhance research activities is closely linked with our collective efforts to demonstrate the impact and value of social sciences and humanities research to society. For this reason, we will update our programs and policies to include a more complete accounting of research results. (final para. on p. 12 in print version, p. 14 on PDF)

The SSHRC report makes it quite clear that the quantity of funding it receives is liable to be affected by how the agency and its grant recipients are able to “[demonstrate] the impact and value of social science and humanities research to society.” No doubt the other members of the tri-Council are feeling the same pressures.

In responding to a question about how FCAT will make its research more easily accessible, Geisler drew on her experience as the head of the Language, Literature and Communication Department at Rensselaear, the oldest technological university in the US. “There certainly was the desire at the National Science Foundation and other federal programmes in the US for research to be more widely disseminated and to try to incorporate outreach activities and for the same reasons [as here in Canada].

For example, the School of Contemporary Arts will move into Woodward’s [Downtown Eastside] in the fall [2010] so now we’re planning for how we will partner with the community, what kinds of non-credit programmes we’ll offer, and [the] residencies [we’ll offer] for artists in the community. We also have 3 or 4 faculty members that work with policy leaders in the area of culture to try to understand how to manage cultural resources and growth and make them a greater social benefit.” She also pointed out that there are plans to situate the Surrey City Hall near SIAT as part of an initiative to create a new city centre in that municipality. All of this is in stark contrast with SFU’s main campus, built in 1965, and situated on a mountain top.

Regardless of its mountain top status, SFU has long made an effort to reach out to its various communities through its non-credit continuing studies programmes in Vancouver at Harbour Centre, the programmes at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue, and its longstanding presence in the Downtown Eastside through various School of the Contemporary Arts courses (Note: The school is slated to make a wholsale move into the area, Fall 2010). Unfortunately, many of these efforts fall short of reaching any community that is not in some way affiliated with the university

Geisler acknowledges that more could be done, “You have to give the public ways to option in, or to find out things or to give more clear access. That’s a good problem to work on.”

As for why she came to SFU, “I’ve always done interdisciplinary work and I led a department that had many of the same components that I saw here. In a way, I thought this was the perfect next step for me. There was no other department like mine and there’s no other faculty like [this one]. I had a sense that at FCAT there was a lot of potential and desire to interact across disciplinary boundaries and do exciting new work and I thought that’s [what] I would want to lead.”

The next and last question begged to be asked. Do you have any dreams, any fantasies about where it [FCAT] might go?

“What people do is very interdisciplinary in the sciences, in art practice, and in design practice but the academic structure is much more reified and rigid so that students’ curricular experience often doesn’t mirror what’s going on in professional practice and in knowledge generation. Also, I think one of the consequences [of curricular rigidity] is that the public is often alienated from the university because it’s cut off from what makes academics excited.

There’s a real potential for creating new processes and faculty structures that can be responsive and be reflective of more problem-based or opportunity-based alignments [that exist] for a few years to get [a] project done. [As opposed to] ‘we all do biology here and we always do it; and a hundred years from now there’s going to be a biology dept. Departments are structured ‘as if they will always be there’ because they reflect the way the world is. I’d like to see a more exciting, project-based [approach]. I don’t know exactly how to do that but I thought this would be a place to figure [it] out.”

Thank you to Dr. Geisler for the insights and your time.

Off the deep end: an interview with Cheryl Geisler Introduction, Part 1, Part 2

Happy Weekend!

Patenting and copyrighting intellectual property; the role of technical innovation; more on London’s digital cloud

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I keep expecting someone to try patenting/copyrighting/trademarking a nanoparticle or some such nanoscale object. If you believe that to be unthinkable, I suggest you read this (from TechDirt’s  Mike Masnick’s news item here),

We’ve seen a few ridiculous cases whereby local governments claim copyright on a law [emphasis mine], but it’s still stunning to see what’s going on in Liberia. Tom sends in the news that no one knows what the law covers in Liberia, because one man, leading a small group of lawyers, claims to hold the copyright on the laws of the country and won’t share them unless people (or, rather, the government of Liberia) is willing to pay. Oh, and did we mention that the US government paid for some of this?

Masnick’s article provides a link to more information in the story, He’s got the law (literally) in his hands, by Jina Moore and Glenna Gordon. While I find the situation extreme what strikes me first in Masnick’s piece is that it’s not unusual. So if people are actually going to try and copyright a law, why not a nanoparticle?

Coincidentally, China and India have made a proposal to eschew intellectual property rights with regard to green/clean technologies prior to the big climate talks during December (2009) in Copenhagen.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

As world leaders prepare for climate talks in Copenhagen next month, developing nations have tabled a controversial proposal which would effectively end patent protection for clean technologies.
China and India have floated the idea of making new green technology subject to ‘compulsory licensing’, which critics say amounts to waiving intellectual property rights.
The idea of adapting or liberalising patent rules for crucial new inventions which can help reduce carbon emissions is not new, but the EU and US are unhappy with compulsory licensing, fearing it would dramatically reduce the incentive for businesses to innovate and stifle green job creation.
Compulsory licensing has to date only been used in emergency situations where patent-protected pharmaceuticals were seen as prohibitively expensive. The Thai government used the mechanism to allow local medicines factories [to] produce HIV drugs at a fraction of the cost.

I’m guessing the reason that this item was posted on Nanowerk is that nanotechnology is often featured as an enabler of cleaner/greener products.

On a related theme, Andrew Maynard has posted his thoughts on the World Economic Forum that he attended last week in Dubai (from his Nov.22.09 posting),

Developing appropriate technology-based solutions to global challenges is only possible if  technology innovation policy is integrated into the decision-making process at the highest levels in government, industry and other relevant organizations.  Without such high-level oversight, there is a tendency to use the technology that’s available, rather than to develop the technology that’s needed.  And as the challenges of living in an over-populated and under-resourced world [emphasis mine] escalate, this will only exacerbate the disconnect between critical challenges and technology-based solutions.

The importance of technology innovation – and emerging technologies in particular – was highlighted by Lord Malloch-Brown in his closing remarks at this year’s Summit on the Global Agenda.  Yet there is still a way to go before technology innovation is integrated into the global agenda dialogue, rather than being tacked on to it

Maynard provides an intriguing insight into some of the international agenda which includes a much broader range of discussion topics that I would have expected from something called an ‘economic’ forum.  You can read more about the World Economic Forum organization and its latest meeting here.

I wasn’t expecting to find out more about London Olympics 2012”s digital cloud proposed project on Andy Miah’s website as I tend to associate him with human enhancement, Olympic sports, post humanism, and nanotechnology topics. I keep forgetting about his media interests. Here’s his latest (Nov.22.09) posting on the Digital Olympics (title of his new book) where he includes images and a video about the architectural project.

Plenty of Room at the Bottom’s 50th anniversary; new advance in nanoassembly; satirizing the copyright wars; China’s social media map

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There’s plenty of room at the bottom, Richard Feynman’s December 29, 1959 talk for the American Physical Society is considered to be the starting point or origin for nanotechnology and this December marks its 50th anniversary. Chris Toumey, a cultural anthropologist at the University of South Carolina NanoCenter, has an interesting commentary about it (on Nanowerk) and he poses the question, would nanotechnology have existed without Richard Feynman’s talk? Toumey answers yes. You can read the commentary here.

In contrast to Toumey’s speculations, there’s  Colin Milburn (professor at University of California, Davis) who in his essay, Nanotechnology in the Age of Posthuman Engineering: Science Fiction as Science, suggests that nanotechnology originated in science fiction. You can read more about Milburn, find the citations for the essay I’ve mentioned, and/or download three of his other essays from here.

Ting Xu and her colleagues at the US Dept. of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have developed a new technique for self-assembling nanoparticles. From the news item on Physorg.com,

“Bring together the right basic components – nanoparticles, polymers and small molecules – stimulate the mix with a combination of heat, light or some other factors, and these components will assemble into sophisticated structures or patterns,” says Xu. “It is not dissimilar from how nature does it.”

More details are available here.

TechDirt featured a clip from This hour has 22 minutes, a satirical Canadian comedy tv programme, which pokes fun at the scaremongering which features mightily in discussions about copyright. You can find the clip here on YouTube.

I’ve been meaning to mention this tiny item from Fast Company (by Noah Robischon) about China’s social media. From the news bit,

The major players in the U.S. social media world can be counted on one hand: Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn. Not so in China, where the country’s 300 million online users have a panoply of popular social networks to choose from–and Facebook doesn’t even crack the top 10.

Go here to see the infographic illustrating China’s social media landscape.

Happy weekend!

Textiles that can detect counterfeiting devices, bacteria, and dangerous chemicals; a 22 nm chip; copyrighting food?

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I’m going to watch at least part of the live stream for the PEN event (Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation) that’s taking place this morning (9:30 PST), so this is going to be a quick posting.

In my master’s project (The Nanotech Mysteries wiki), I featured a 2007 news item about a student designer at Cornell University who used textile fibres coated with nanomaterials in her clothing designs. (You can see the wiki page here.) Today, I caught a news item on Azonano about some textile scientists at Cornell University who launched a start-up that markets these kinds of fabrics.

Fabrics with embedded nanoparticles to detect counterfeiting devices, explosives and dangerous chemicals or to serve as antibacterials for hospitals, law enforcement or the hospitality industry are just a few of the products that a new company, [iFyber LLC] launched by two Cornell researchers, will produce.

This is exciting as I’ve gotten to follow the story a little further than usual. Generally, I find out about a product and then learn that it had its origins in an academic laboratory.

Intel has announced a new 22 nanometre (nm) chip. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini today displayed a silicon wafer containing the world’s first working chips built on 22nm process technology. The 22nm test circuits include both SRAM memory as well as logic circuits to be used in future Intel microprocessors. “At Intel, Moore’s Law is alive and thriving,” said Otellini. “We’ve begun production of the world’s first 32nm microprocessor, which is also the first high-performance processor to integrate graphics with the CPU.

I posted about the 32 nm chip and Intel’s investment in retooling three of their manufacturing facilities to produce the chip here. As I recall, IBM has a 28 nm chip.

I’m not sure what to make of all this. I find these innovations exciting but I always wonder about the practicalities. Since these chips aren’t visible to the naked eye, how does your computer get fixed (e.g. chip replacement) by your average computer repair shop? How reliable are these chips?

Finally, here’s a posting I found on Techdirt about copyrighting hummus, etc. There is a group in Lebanon who are planning to sue  Israel for using words like hummus, tabbouleh, etc. to describe their food products. It seemed a little odd to me when I scanned the headline but as Techdirt sardonically points out, the word champagne is for the exclusive use of wine producers in  France and there have been other successful attempts at this type of copyright claim. (As I recall,  not even French wine producers from  regions other than Champagne can call their product champagne.) I followed one of the Techdirt links here for more information. My understanding after viewing a tv clip and reading the article (both Israeli-produced) is that the Lebanese group is motivated by the fact that Israel has been more successful at marketing and selling these products internationally.  I also wonder how the other countries that market and sell these products will react to Lebanon’s proposed copyright claim.

Transparent aluminum and copyright gone crazy

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Happy BC Day! This will be a shortish posting. Transparent aluminum (or aluminium as the Brits say), an imaginary metal seen in Star Trek movie no. 4, became a reality for 40 femtoseconds (femto = quadrillionth)  in an experiment run at Oxford University. From the media release on the Nanowerk website,

“For a brief period the sample looks and behaves in every way like a new form of matter. In certain respects, the way it reacts is as though we had changed every aluminium atom into silicon: it’s almost as surprising as finding that you can turn lead into gold with light!’ [according to Professor Justin Wark]

Note the reference to alchemy. For more technical details, do visit Nanowerks.

I came across a maddening item on copyright about 10 days ago where a music professor tried to get permission from the original authors to quote sentences in a book about music.

I’ve been trying to get permission simply to refer to Fluxus pieces like La Monte Young’s “This piece is little whirlpools in the middle of the ocean,” and Yoko Ono’s “Listen to the sound of the earth turning.” And of course, Yoko (whom I used to know) isn’t responding, and La Monte is imposing so many requirements and restrictions that I would have to add a new chapter to the book, and so in frustration well past the eleventh hour, I’ve excised the pieces from the text.

The rest of the article is here on Techdirt. This piece hit home because when I was teaching about five years ago, I was told that giving attribution for every article I was using in my handouts wasn’t enough, I would have to get permission to use them. I had been teaching the course for a few years and suddenly I had  a new requirement. Why? One of the instructors had a lawyer as a guest lecturer and the lawyer raised all kinds of concerns scaring the programme admin staff who in turn insisted that instructors get permission for handouts. It was an exercise in frustration and futility. I gather from this article in Techdirt that the situation is getting worse.  So if  you have opinions on copyright and want to make yourself heard to the Canadian government, this is the time to do it. There is a consultation which is being run until Sept. 13, 2009 online as well as round table meetings and town hall meetings. Details are here.

More titanium dioxide news; the 5th anniversary of the Royal Society’s Report on Nanotechnology; Copyright in Canada

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While titanium dioxide particles in sunscreens are considered safe (see my blog posting here), there is a new study which suggests concerns. A study was done in Japan on pregnant mice who were injected with titanium dioxide nanoparticles. The results suggest that the particles affected brain development in the foetuses. (The media release is located at Nanowerk News here.) My questions since I haven’t looked at the study are this:  Where was the injection site? What was the concentration of  titanium dioxide nanoparticles in the solution? Where several concentrations used or only one? (After all, a lot of medicines are poison if taken in the wrong dosage or misapplied [taken internally instead of externally].)

Still on the titanium dioxide trail, there’s a study by researchers in Switzerland which suggests that nanowires and nanotubes made of titanium dixoide are toxic. There’s an article by Miichael Berger here on Nanowerks. From Berger’s article,

One of the complications of nanotoxicology is that the toxicity of a specific nanomaterial cannot be predicted from the toxicity of the same material in a different form.

…

“TiO2 nanoparticles are widely used as UV blockers in sunscreens” says Arnaud Magrez [researcher]. “Their cytotoxicity has been tested before and they were found to be rather non-toxic. Our new study shows that TiO2 based nanofilaments, however, can be quite toxic. The geometry of nanoparticles appears to play a crucial role in cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the toxicity can be enhanced by the presence of defects on the nanofilament surface, resulting from chemical treatment.”

Both of these studies highlight why more research needs to be done. A comment which is made in an entirely different context by Dr. Andrew Maynard in his essay commemorating the anniversary of the Royal Society/Royal Academy of Engineering 2004 report on nanotechnologies. Maynard’s essay is the foreword to a report, 5 years on – a beacon or just a landmark? Reflections on the 2004  Royal Society/Royal Academy of Engineering report into nanotechnologies – what was its impact and what is its legacy? published by the Responsible Nano Forum. Maynard’s essay can be read here on his 2020 Science blog and the report can be found here. From Maynard’s essay,

At the time, concerns were mounting over possible new risks associated with creating materials and devices at the nanoscale, and how these would affect the technology’s development.  The previous year, Michael Crichton’s book Prey had sent the nanotech community into a tizzy over a speculative public backlash against the emerging science and technology.  And researchers were beginning to reveal hints that novel nanoscale materials could also affect humans and the environment in unconventional ways—getting to places and causing harm on a scale that belied their small size.

Do read it if you have the time. Maynard’s perspective is both historical and contemporary.

And now for something which concerns me when writing this blog, copyright. Since this blog isn’t profitmaking and I give attribution and encourage people to visit the sites and blogs I quote from, I’ve considered what I do ‘fair use’. If you’ve been following the copyright discussion, you know ‘fair use’ is being debated fiercely as is intellectual property law which includes copyright, patents, and trademarks.

After a rather disastrous attempt to introduce new copyright legislation (last fall I think), the Canadian government has launched a public consultation process. (I too was surprised to find out about it.) The roundtable meeting in Vancouver took place about 10 days ago. There will be roundtable meetings  elsewhere and two town hall meetings (where the public will be invited). If you’re a member of the public who’s lucky enough to live in either Toronto or Montreal, you can have your say in real time. The rest of us can participate online here at the Copyright Counsultations website. You do have to register to participate. The Vancouver roundtable meeting has been transcribed and is available online here and the trasncript for the Calgary roundtable is here.

Copyright and The Economist, Two Cultures, and some spoken word iconoclasm

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Thanks to the folks at Techdirt I found out that The Economist is having an interactive debate about copyright. They propose this, This house believes that existing copyright laws do more harm than good. They’ve invited two law professors to present competing pro and con views and readers can offer their own comments. It’s a lively debate and you can go check it out here.

I have mixed feelings on the topic although I lean towards agreement with this particular proposition. As someone who produces content, I don’t want to see anyone cheated of credit and/or monetary reward for their (my) work. Unfortunately copyright laws are being used to stifle the lively exchange of ideas and materials. For example, I just read a very bizarre interpretation of copyright in my local daily paper (The Vancouver Sun, Saturday, May 2, 2009) by Harvey Enchin. Apparently adding links to The Vancouver Sun website is infringing on their copyright. I’d rather not quote from him, even with attribution, as I’m sure he’d consider that an infringement. Can anyone out there explain how providing a link to a website e.g. The Economist infringes on their copyright? I haven’t appropriated their content (I have noted the text of the motion that propels the debate [in the interest of full disclosure, sometimes I quote from an article but never reproduce the article  in its entirety]). Plus, I am driving traffic to their website which, theoretically, should enable them to raise their advertising rates. Where’s the problem?

As far as I’m concerned, the whole area of intellectual property law (copyright, trademarks, and patents) is being appropriated by bullies who use existing legislation to intimidate the very people they claim to be protecting.

There’s a good discussion taking place on Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog about C. P. Snow’s Two Cultures (humanities/arts and sciences). It’s a 1959 lecture that was eventually published and has proved to be quite influential. (Hmmm…Richard Feynman’s lecture, There’s plenty of the room at the bottom, was given in 1959…interesting year.) There’s also an editorial in Nature about Two Cultures. Both Maynard and the Nature editor claim that the ‘wall’ between the sciences and the humanities/arts is less formidable than it was 50 years *ago. I find it interesting that Maynard, a scientist, and the Nature editor (presumably someone versed in the sciences) are making the claim. Are there any writers or artists would agree? Here’s Maynard’s blog and Nature’s editorial. (The editorial is the one article which is not behind a paywall.)

Spoken word artist, musician, and poet, Heather Haley will be performing on Monday, May 11, 2009 at The Beaumont Studios, 315 West 5th Avenue, Vancouver, BC. Admission is $7 and the doors open at 7:15. From the news release,

AURAL Heather @ Vancouver City Limits.

Musical Showcase at Beaumont Studios
w/Christina Maria and Petunia with the Viper Band

AURAL Heather is the new weather! A unique, sublime fusion of song and spoken word by poet-iconoclast-vocalist Heather Haley and dazzling guitarist-producer, Roderick Shoolbraid.

You can check out some of Heather’s work here and you can check out the Beaumont Studios here.

*’ago’ added Sept. 12, 2017.