Posts Tagged ‘Foresight Institute’

Women in nanoscience and other sciences too

Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Last week, three women were honoured for their work in nanoscience with  L’Oréal Singapore for Women in Science Fellowships (from the news item on Nanowerk),

In its second year, the Fellowships is organised with the support of the Singapore National Commission for UNESCO and in partnership with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The Fellowships aim to recognise the significant contribution of talented women to scientific progress, encourage young women to pursue science as a career and promote their effective participation in the scientific development of Singapore.

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The three outstanding women were awarded fellowships worth S$20,000 to support them in their doctorate or post-doctorate research. This year’s National Fellows are:

– Dr. Low Hong Yee, 2010 L’Oréal Singapore For Women in Science National Fellow and Senior Scientist at A*STAR’s Institute of Materials Research and Engineering. Her work in nanoimprint technology, an emerging technique in nanotechnology, focuses on eco solutions and brings to reality the ability to mimic and apply on synthetic surfaces the structure found in naturally occurring exteriors or skin such as the iridescent colours of a butterfly’s wings or the water-proofing of lotus leaves. This new development offers an eco-friendly, non-chemical method to improve the properties and functionalities of common plastic film.

– Dr. Madhavi Srinivasan, 2010 L’Oréal Singapore For Women in Science National Fellow and Assistant Professor at the Nanyang Technological University. Dr Srinivasan seeks to harness the power of nanoscale materials for the answer to the future of energy storage. Such technologies are vital for the future of a clean energy landscape. Its applications include powering electric vehicles, thus reducing overall CO2 emission, and reducing global warming or enhancing renewable energy sources (solar/wind), thus reducing pollution and tapping on alternative energy supplies.

– Dr. Yang Huiying, 2010 L’Oréal Singapore For Women in Science National Fellow and Assistant Professor at Singapore University of Technology and Design. Dr Yang’s fascination with the beauty of the nano-world prompted her research into the fabrication of metal oxide nanostructures, investigation of their optical properties, and the development of nanophotonics devices. These light emitting devices will potentially be an answer to the need for energy-saving and lower cost display screens, LED bulbs, TV and DVD players etc.

This announcement reminded me of a question I occasionally ask myself, why aren’t there more women mentioned prominently in the nanotechnology/nanoscience narratives? There are a few (the ones I’ve heard of are from the US: Christine Peterson/Foresight Institute; Mildred Dresselhaus, advisor to former US Pres. Bill Clinton; Kristen Kulinowski/Rice University and the Good Nano Guide, please let me know of any others that should be added to this list) just not as many as I would have expected.

On a somewhat related note, there was this blog post by one of the co-authors of the article, The Internet as a resource and support network for diverse geoscientists, which focused largely on women,

In the September issue of GSA Today, you can find our article on The Internet as a resource and support network for diverse geoscientists. We wrote the article with with the idea of reaching beyond the audience that already reads blogs (or attends education/diversity sessions at GSA), with the view that we might be able to open some eyes as to why time spent on-line reading and writing blogs and participating in Twitter might be a valuable thing for geoscientists to be doing. And, of course, we had some data to support our assertions.

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As a white woman geoscientist in academia, I have definitely personally and professionally benefited from my blog reading and writing time. (I even have a publication to show for it!) But I would to love to hear more from minority and outside-of-academia geoscientists about what blogs, Twitter, and other internet-based forms of support could be doing to better support you. As you can see from the paragraph above, what we ended up advocating was that institutional support for blogging and blog-reading would help increase participation. We thought that, with increased participation, more minority and outside-of-academia geosciences voices would emerge, helping others find support, community, role models, and mentoring in voices similar to their own. Meanwhile those of us closer to the white/academic end of the spectrum could learn from all that a diverse geoscientist community has to offer.

The 2-page article is open access and can be found here.

Meanwhile, women in technology should be taking this tack according to an article by Allyson Kapin on the Fast Company website,

We have a rampant problem in the tech world. It’s called the blame game. Here’s how it works. You ask the question, “Why aren’t there enough women in tech or launching startups?” From some you get answers like, “Because it’s an exclusive white boys club.” But others say, “Not true! It’s because women don’t promote their expertise enough and they are more risk averse.” How can we truly address the lack of women in tech and startups and develop realistic solutions if we continue to play this silly blame game?

Yesterday, Michael Arrington of TechCrunch wrote a blog post saying, “It doesn’t matter how old you are, what sex you are, what politics you support or what color you are. If your idea rocks and you can execute, you can change the world and/or get really, stinking rich.”

That’s a nice idea and if it were true then the amount of wealthy entrepreneurs would better match our population’s racial and gender demographics. The fact remains that in 2009 angel investors dished out $17.6 billion to fund startups. Wonder how many funded startups were women-run? 9.4%, according to the 2009 angel investor report from Center for Venture Research at University of New Hampshire. And only 6% of investor money funded startups run by people of color.

Yet Arrington says it’s because women just don’t want it enough and that he is sick and tired of being blamed for it. He also says TechCrunch has “beg[ged] women to come and speak” and participate in their events and reached out to communities but many women still decline.

Unfortunately, the article is expositing two different ideas (thank you Allyson Kapin for refuting Arrington’s thesis) and not relating them to each other. First, there is a ‘blame game’ which isn’t getting anyone anywhere and there are issues with getting women to speak on technology panels.There are some good suggestions in the article for how to deal with the 2nd problem while the first problem is left to rest.

Kapin is right, the blame game doesn’t work in anyone’s favour but then we have to develop some alternatives. I have something here from Science Cheerleader which offers a stereotype-breaking approach to dealing with some of the issues that women in science confront. Meet Christine,

Meet Crhstine (image found on sciencecheerleader.com

Meet Erica,

Meet Erica (image found on sciencecheerleader.com)

One of these women is a software engineer and the other is a biomedical engineer.  Do visit Science Cheerleader to figure out which woman does what.

Changing the way women are perceived is a slow and arduous process and requires a great number of strategies along with the recognition that the strategies have to be adjusted as the nature of the prejudice/discrimination also changes in response to the strategies designed to counter it in the first place.  For example, efforts like the L’Oréal fellowships for women have been described as reverse-discrimination since men don’t have access to the awards by reason of their gender while standard fellowship programmes are open to all. It’s true the programmes are open to all but we need to use a variety of ways (finding speakers for panels, special financial awards programmes, stereotype-breaking articles, refuting an uninformed statement, etc.) to encourage greater participation by women and the members of other groups that have traditionally not been included. After all, there’s a reason why most of the prominent Nobel science prize winners  are white males and it’s not because they are naturally better at science.

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Joy of nanotechnology

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

When I first started investigating nanotechnology about four years ago, Bill Joy and his essay for Wired magazine, Why the future doesn’t need us, was suggested as a good place to start. As it turns out, I’ve waited until now to read that piece and only did so in the wake of Christine Peterson’s Foresight Institute August 11, 2010 posting about Joy and a TED talk that he gave in 2006.

It’s all old news but compelling nonetheless given the status that Joy’s 2000 essay still has. As for Joy’s TED Talk, it’s odd in the same way that his essay is odd, i.e., scrambled and all over the place. As I’ve often been accused of writing that way myself, I can’t be too critical of it.

His interest is much broader than nanotechnology although it is mentioned in the essay, if not the talk. The one element of his talk that has stayed with me is his focus on asymmetry and the danger posed by the ‘one to the many’. As he sees it, these new technologies which are becoming more and more easily accessible by anyone  put a great deal of destructive power into one any one person’s hands. He also proposes  more control as a remedy for this asymmetry.

Joy’s TED TAlk is here. While it was given in February 2006, it wasn’t posted online until November 2008. Since then it has generated continuous comment, the most recent being an August 8, 2010 comment.

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Open Science Summit nears

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

The July 29 -31, 2010 Open Science Summit is almost upon us (first mentioned here in a June 29, 3010 posting). The summit organizers pose this notion to set the themes for their conference (from the summit’s home page),

Renowned physicist Freeman Dyson identifies two kinds of scientific revolutions, those driven by new concepts (theoretical), and those driven by new tools (technological).

In the last 500 years we’ve witnessed paradigm shattering conceptual shifts associated with names such as Copernicus, Newton, Darwin, and, Einstein. Simultaneously, the evolution of technology drives progress in unpredictable ways—Galileo borrowed principles from the technology of eye-glasses to pioneer the use of the telescope in astronomy, while Watson and Crick relied on Rosalind Franklin’s skill with X-ray diffraction (a tool from physics) to probe the structure of life. (Undoubtedly, Franklin’s contribution would have been more fully recognized under a true Open Science Paradigm.)

To this classification of scientific revolutions, we can now add a third kind, an Organizational Revolution, the advent of a truly “Open Science,” which will profoundly affect the pace and character of subsequent theory and tool-driven paradigm shifts.

Looking at the speakers scheduled, the summit offers an interesting range including Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute, Special Agent Edward You of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)*, Michael Eisen, co-founder of the Public Library of Science (PLoS), David Koepsell, author of Who Owns You?, and more. It does seem to be largely oriented to genomics, bioinformatics, and other biological sciences.

If you can’t attend in person, there will be live streaming by fora.tv, go here.

* The FBI is quite interested in reaching out to scientists as per my posting of  May 25, 2010 about an article in The Scientist titled, SYNTHETIC BIO MEET “Fbio”; You may soon be visited by an FBI agent, or a scientist acting on behalf of one. Here’s why and written by Jill Frommer. The article is now behind a paywall.

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Over 2000 nanotechnology businesses?

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Nanowerk has announced a new, free feature: their Nanotechnology Company Directory. From the July 1, 2010 news item,

At the latest count, over 2100 companies from 48 countries are involved in nanotechnology research, manufacturing or applications – a number that keeps growing at a considerable pace.

With more than 1100 companies, the U.S. is home to roughly half of all nanotechnology firms. 670 companies are in Europe, 230 in Asia and 210 elsewhere in the world. Within Europe, Germany is represented with 211 companies, followed by the U.K. with 146 companies.

Over 270 companies are involved in the manufacture of raw materials such as nanoparticles, nanofibers and -wires, carbon nanotubes, or quantum dots. More than 340 companies are active in life sciences and pharmaceutical fields. The vast majority with well over half of all companies are involved in manufacturing instruments, devices, or advanced materials and components.

The news item goes on to provide a definition for what constitutes a nanotechnology company which is timely in light of Dexter Johnson’s June 30, 2010 posting (What Is a Nanotechnology Company Anyway?) at Nanoclast,

I stopped for a moment after reading [in an investment notice he'd received] this term “nanotechnology company” to consider what might actually constitute such a thing. Is Toyota a nanotechnology company as some nanotechnology stock indices have claimed? Is IBM a nanotechnology company because they are doing research into using graphene and carbon nanotubes in electronics? How about all the instrumentation and microscopy companies that give us the tools to see and to work on the nanometer and angstrom scale, are they nanotechnology companies? What about the flood of nanomaterials companies that started making carbon nanotubes in their basements that were going to revolutionize industry?

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Despite figures ranging from one to three trillion dollars being dangled in front of people’s faces for the last 10 years, it doesn’t seem to have attracted the level of investment that would really make a difference in advancing the commercial aspirations of nanotechnologies if the recent PCAST meeting is any indication.

So the definition has an impact since entrepreneurs need to attract investment and, as  more than one of the participants in the recent PCAST meeting noted, moving the discoveries from the laboratory to the market place is a labourious process where there is a significant dearth of investment interest for a phase described as the ‘valley of death’ or, as one participant termed it, the ‘lab gap’. (My post about that particular PCAST meeting ‘The Golden Triangle workshop’  is here.)

The same day Nanowerk announced its new nanotechnology company directory, Christine Peterson at the Foresight Institute posted an item about a venture capital group known for investing in nanotech and microsystems,

Small investors who want to invest in nanotech startups have for years turned to publicly-held venture group Harris & Harris Group, which has focused on private companies in nanotech and microsystems.

With the economy down, and initial public offerings (IPOs) more rare, this strategy is changing.

Peterson is commenting on a Wall Street Journal blog posting by Brian Gormley,

In a June 28 letter to shareholders, Chief Executive [of Harris & Harris Group] Douglas Jamison said many of its private holdings are maturely nicely. Even so, volatility and risk aversion in the public markets are making it difficult for these companies [nanotech and microsystems] to go public.

Although the firm plans to continue investing in private companies, “We currently do not plan to make an initial equity investment in a private company until we get increased visibility into the timing of liquidity for our privately held portfolio,” Jamison wrote in the letter.

The firm, which has 31 private investments in its portfolio, expects to gain such visibility later this year. Jamison was not available for comment Monday.

“With the lengthening time between investment and return on investment in private venture capital-backed companies, we need to find a way to generate returns with greater frequency,” Jamison said in the letter.

“As a public company, we should not count on investors to wait five years between liquidity events. We will seek to position our investments so that we can demonstrate positive returns on investments on an annual basis.”

The valley of death or lab gap seems to be getting wider while venture capitalists who do know the industry pull back. Meanwhile, a standard investor is likely to experience confusion about what the term nanotechnology company means and just how much that ‘market’ is liable to worth.

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First Open Science Summit: Updating the social contract for science

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Christine Peterson from the Foresight Institute will be presenting on “Safety and Security Concerns, Open Source Biodefense” at 5:15 PM on Friday, July 30, 2010 at the first ever Open Science Summit being held at the University of California, Berkeley campus, July 29 – 31 2010. From the Open Science Summit website,

Despite nostalgic myths that Science is the realm of open inquiry, reasoned debate, and the pursuit of objective truth, it has always been politicized, though never to the dangerous degree attained just in the past decade. The viciousness of the fight over embryonic stem cell research, the conflict over creationism, and the politics of climate change are unprecedented new lows. Public confidence in science and technology is deeply shaken, as the outcry over genetically modified organisms attests. When biotechnology, the veritable “toolkit of life,” that could feed the hungry, heal the ill, and fuel the economy without despoiling the environment, is greeted with suspicion and downright hostility, we must acknowledge a deep failure. Citizens and consumers correctly worry that science has sold them out, as companies compromise safety and engineering standards in the dash to control the marketplace.

Beginning in the mid 1980’s a few judicial decisions, with no public or policy deliberation whatsoever, opened the floodgates to an exponential expansion in the filing of patents covering new subject matter and technologies that were never anticipated in the industrial age during which the system evolved. Indeed, there is a growing consensus that the unchecked proliferation of intellectual property rights is perversely out of touch with, and downright inimical to, the collaborative, cumulative, and interdependent essence of innovation in the 21st century’s networked knowledge economy. [emphasis mine] As the global economy struggles to find a new equilibrium after the financial meltdown, it is indisputable that old business models are unsustainable—this applies equally, indeed, especially, to technology and biomedicine, where cycles of over-hype, under-deliver, bubble then bust, have failed to produce cures for desperate, disappointed, and now disillusioned patients, bold proclamations of a “War on Cancer,” notwithstanding.

Then they start discussing alternative models and innovation,

In the last ten years, a collection of burgeoning movements has begun the herculean task of overhauling the outmoded institutions and worldviews that make up our global scientific governance system. Proponents of the Access to Knowledge movement (A2K) have united around the principle that data and knowledge are “anti-rivalrous,” the value of information increases as it spreads. Open Access Journals have demonstrated a new path for publishing that utilizes the power of the internet to instantly distribute ideas instead of imposing artificial scarcity to prop up old business models. “Health 2.0” entrepreneurs are seeking to apply the lessons of e-commerce to empower patients. However, these different efforts are each working on a piece of a problem without a view of the whole. It is not sufficient or realistic to tweak one component of the innovation system (eg, patent policy) and assume the others stay static. Instead, dynamic, interactive, nonlinear change is unfolding. The Open Science Summit is the first and only event to consider what happens throughout the entire innovation chain as reform in one area influences the prospects in others. In the best case scenario, a virtuous circle of mutually reinforcing shifts toward transparency and collaboration could unleash hitherto untapped reserves of human ingenuity.

I know it’s a little high-minded but it’s important to be idealistic every once in a while as I think your soul shrivels up otherwise. Unexpectedly, there’s a Canadian connection. I recognized two participating organizations (although there may be more) from Canada, the University of Calgary and the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia.

If you can’t attend, there will be a livestream by Fora.tv, you can find the details here.

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Life extension as human enhancement

Wednesday, May 12th, 2010

On the heels my recent posting about human enhancement (here), I found an item on the Foresight Institute website about life extension. The poster, Christine Peterson, is responding to an article at The Mark (from their About page) “…  Canada’s daily online forum for news, commentary, and debate.” The article, Nanotechnology and Life Extension; 70, 80, or 90 could be the new 64; but is living longer necessarily a good thing?, is by Kerry Bowman and Alan Warner. From the April 14, 2010 article,

It may sound like science fiction, but with innovations in medical nanotechnology, human beings could be looking at a life extension of years or even decades. Nanotech involves microsystems that work on a microscopic scale to potentially alter our physiology and drastically improve our immune systems through improved diagnostic and surgery techniques, gene therapy, cell repair, and more. In the future, we may even be able to use implanted devices to physiologically monitor our bodies – a breakthrough in disease prevention and treatment.

I find the piece a little problematic since these writers don’t seem to know much about nanotechnology or clinical medicine. As you can see in the excerpt that follows, they seem better versed in history,

Life extension is not new. In ancient Rome, the average lifespan was around 23 years; today, the average global life expectancy is 64 years. Demographers tell us there has been an average gain in life expectancy of about three months a year for the last 160 years and that this is steadily increasing. To date, life extension has not necessarily been intentional, often the by-product of our efforts to improve medicine or quality of the life of the elderly.

As far as I can tell, the writers don’t really need to mention nanotechnology as it’s irrelevant to their main topic, life extension which has been occurring and is continuing to do so for reasons entirely unrelated to nanotechnology. Christine Peterson offers a different perspective in her May 10, 2010 response,

There is a simple answer to this debating. Boomers should stick around, keep working, and help pay off the national debt(s). And while we’re at it, we can help clean up the environment. It’s not fair to leave these tasks as burdens on the next generation.

I applaud the sentiment. I’ve never understood why people so proudly proclaim  the next generation as ‘hope for the future’ and then announce that the newbies will be responsible for fixing the previous generations’ mistakes.

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Cascio thoughts on augmenting intelligence and some other odds and sods

Friday, June 19th, 2009

It’s Jamais Cascio time … again! He’s got an article here in the Atlantic (July/August 2009 issue) about humans surviving because we get smarter. In the past this has been a passive, reactive response to changing environmental conditions but now we’re evolving ourselves in a proactive fashion. From the article,

Yet in one sense, the age of the cyborg and the super-genius has already arrived. It just involves external information and communication devices instead of implants and genetic modification. The bioethicist James Hughes of Trinity College refers to all of this as “exo­cortical technology,” but you can just think of it as “stuff you already own.” Increasingly, we buttress our cognitive functions with our computing systems, no matter that the connections are mediated by simple typing and pointing. These tools enable our brains to do things that would once have been almost unimaginable:

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Cascio goes on to describe curent and potential augmentations and possibilities. My biggest reservations centre around his enthusiasm for using drugs to augment intelligence. Specifically, he extolls the virtues of modafinil (trade name Provigil) which, according to Cascio, is widely used in the tech community for its intelligence enhancing capabilities and for the fact that you will need to sleep less. Have you ever looked at a Compendium of Pharmaceuticals? It’s a comprehensive listing of drugs that doctors and pharamacists use to see what kinds of side effects and problems a drug can cause? I haven’t looked up this drug but I have done it for others and I’m willing to bet that there are any number of unpleasant side effects possible. As to what impact, long term (decades long?) regular use might have … who knows?

Interestingly some of the enhancements that Cascio attributes to the drug are also described by sages as a consquence of something called awakening,

… I noticed a much greater capacity for clarity and simplicity. My mind became a more subtle tool, a more powerful tool; it coud be used in a very precise way, like a laser. Before this transformation happened, I wouldn’t say my mind operated on that level, so there was some sort of a transformation that led to a new sense of clarity and focus. (pp. 121-2) The End of Your World; uncensored straight talk on the nature of enlightenment by Adyashanti.

For another take on Cascio’s article, go to the Foresight Institute here.

If you are interested in a roundup of Nanotechnology News this week, you can visit the blog ‘This Week in Nanotechnology‘ here. Also, I received an invitation from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars to an event at the Smithsonian. It doesn’t look like there will be a webcast but if you’re in Washington, DC (Wednesday, July 8, 2009, 10 am to 11 am at the Woodrow Wilson Center),

Secretary [of the Smithsonian] Wayne Clough explains how the Smithsonian Institution can make major contributions on issues of national and international concern, particularly global warming and biodiversity, education, and issues of national identity. He discusses how the Institution is connecting in new ways with new audiences.

If you can attend, contact: Maria-Stella.Gatzoulis@wilsoncenter.org.

Have a nice weekend!

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