Tag Archives: Nigeria

Nigeria and its nanotechnology research

Agbaje Lateef’s (Professor of Microbiology and Head of Nanotechnology Research Group (NANO+) at Ladoke Akintola University of Technology) April 20, 2022 essay on nanotechnology in Nigeria for The Conversation offers an overview and a plea, Note: Links have been removed,

…
Egypt, South Africa, Tunisia, Nigeria and Algeria lead the field in Africa. Since 2006, South Africa has been developing scientists, providing infrastructure, establishing centres of excellence, developing national policy and setting regulatory standards for nanotechnology. Companies such as Mintek, Nano South Africa, SabiNano and Denel Dynamics are applying the science.
In contrast, Nigeria’s nanotechnology journey, which started with a national initiative in 2006, has been slow. It has been dogged by uncertainties, poor funding and lack of proper coordination. Still, scientists in Nigeria have continued to place the country on the map through publications.
In addition, research clusters at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ladoke Akintola University of Technology and others have organised conferences. Our research group also founded an open access journal, Nano Plus: Science and Technology of Nanomaterials.
…
To get an idea of how well Nigeria was performing in nanotechnology research and development, we turned to SCOPUS, an academic database.
Our analysis shows that research in nanotechnology takes place in 71 Nigerian institutions in collaboration with 58 countries. South Africa, Malaysia, India, the US and China are the main collaborators. Nigeria ranked fourth in research articles published from 2010 to 2020 after Egypt, South Africa and Tunisia.
Five institutions contributed 43.88% of the nation’s articles in this period. They were the University of Nigeria, Nsukka; Covenant University, Ota; Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, Ogbomoso; University of Ilorin; and University of Lagos.
The number of articles published by Nigerian researchers in the same decade was 645. Annual output grew from five articles in 2010 to 137 in the first half of 2020. South Africa published 2,597 and Egypt 5,441 from 2010 to 2020. The global total was 414,526 articles.
The figures show steady growth in Nigeria’s publications. But the performance is low in view of the fact that the country has the most universities in Africa.
The research performance is also low in relation to population and economy size. Nigeria produced 1.58 articles per 2 million people and 1.09 articles per US$3 billion of GDP in 2019. South Africa recorded 14.58 articles per 2 million people and 3.65 per US$3 billion. Egypt published 18.51 per 2 million people and 9.20 per US$3 billion in the same period.
There is no nanotechnology patent of Nigerian origin in the US patents office. Standards don’t exist for nano-based products. South Africa had 23 patents in five years, from 2016 to 2020.
Nigerian nanotechnology research is limited by a lack of sophisticated instruments for analysis. It is impossible to conduct meaningful research locally without foreign collaboration on instrumentation. The absence of national policy on nanotechnology and of dedicated funds also hinder research.
…
In February 2018, Nigeria’s science and technology minister unveiled a national steering committee on nanotechnology policy. But the policy is yet to be approved by the federal government. In September 2021, I presented a memorandum to the national council on science, technology and innovation to stimulate national discourse on nanotechnology.
…

Given that this essay is dated more than six months after Professor Lateef’s memorandum to the national council, I’m assuming that no action has been taken as of yet.

A June 2022 addition to the Nigerian nanotechnology story

Agbaje Lateef has written a June 8, 2022 essay for The Conversation about nanotechnology and the Nigerian textile industry (Note: Links have been removed),

Nigeria’s cotton production has fallen steeply in recent years. It once supported the largest textile industry in Africa. The fall is due to weak demand for cotton and to poor yields resulting from planting low-quality cottonseeds. For these reasons, farmers switched from cotton to other crops.
Nigeria’s cotton output fell from 602,400 tonnes in 2010 to 51,000 tonnes in 2020. In the 1970s and early 1980s, the country’s textile industry had 180 textile mills employing over 450,000 people, supported by about 600,000 cotton farmers. By 2019, there were 25 textile mills and 25,000 workers.
…
Nowadays, textiles’ properties can be greatly improved through nanotechnology – the use of extremely small materials with special properties. Nanomaterials like graphene and silver nanoparticles make textiles stronger, durable, and resistant to germs, radiation, water and fire.
Adding nanomaterials to textiles produces nanotextiles. These are often “smart” because they respond to the external environment in different ways when combined with electronics. They can be used to harvest and store energy, to release drugs, and as sensors in different applications.
Nanotextiles are increasingly used in defence and healthcare. For hospitals, they are used to produce bandages, curtains, uniforms and bedsheets with the ability to kill pathogens. The market value of nanotextiles was US$5.1 billion in 2019 and could reach US$14.8 billion in 2024.
At the moment, Nigeria is not benefiting from nanotextiles’ economic potential as it produces none. With over 216 million people, the country should be able to support its textile industry. It could also explore trading opportunities in the African Continental Free Trade Agreement to market innovative nanotextiles.
…

Lateef goes on to describe his research (from his June 8, 2022 essay),

Our nanotechnology research group has made the first attempt to produce nanotextiles using cotton and silk in Nigeria. We used silver and silver-titanium oxide nanoparticles produced by locust beans’ wastewater. Locust bean is a multipurpose tree legume found in Nigeria and some other parts of Africa. The seeds, the fruit pulp and the leaves are used to prepare foods and drinks.
The seeds are used to produce a local condiment called “iru” in southwest Nigeria. The processing of iru generates a large quantity of wastewater that is not useful. We used the wastewater to reduce some compounds to produce silver and silver-titanium nanoparticles in the laboratory.
Fabrics were dipped into nanoparticle solutions to make nanotextiles. Thereafter, the nanotextiles were exposed to known bacteria and fungi. The growth of the organisms was monitored to determine the ability of the nanotextiles to kill them.
The nanotextiles prevented growth of several pathogenic bacteria and black mould, making them useful as antimicrobial materials. They were active against germs even after being washed five times with detergent. Textiles without nanoparticles did not prevent the growth of microorganisms.
These studies showed that nanotextiles can kill harmful microorganisms including those that are resistant to drugs. Materials such as air filters, sportswear, nose masks, and healthcare fabrics produced from nanotextiles possess excellent antimicrobial attributes. Nanotextiles can also promote wound healing and offer resistance to radiation, water and fire.
Our studies established the value that nanotechnology can add to textiles through hygiene and disease prevention. Using nanotextiles will promote good health and well-being for sustainable development. They will assist to reduce infections that are caused by germs.
Despite these benefits, nanomaterials in textiles can have some unwanted effects on the environment, health and safety. Some nanomaterials can harm human health causing irritation when they come in contact with skin or inhaled. Also, their release to the environment in large quantities can harm lower organisms and reduce growth of plants. We recommend that the impacts of nanotextiles should be evaluated case by case before use.
…

Dear Professor Lateef, I hope you see some action on your suggestions soon and thank you for the update. Also, good luck with your nanotextiles.

China and the world’s largest multifunctional research platform for nanotechnology

Leave a reply

Weirdly, I got this news about China in a March 28 (?), 2017 news item from the Nigeria News Agency,

Chinese scientists are building the world’s largest multifunctional research platform for nano-science and nano-technology that could help develop more powerful computers and more intelligent robots.

The Vacuum Interconnected Nano-X Research Facility in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, integrates the state-of-art capabilities of material growth, device fabrication and testing in one ultra-high vacuum environment, said Ding Sunan, deputy director of the project.

“We are exploring a new technology route of nano-scale devices production on the platform, which simulates the ultra-high vacuum environment of space,” said Ding, a researcher at the Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

…

Nano-X is designed as a complete system for materials growth, device fabrication and testing. All samples can be transferred accurately, quickly and smoothly among all tools in an ultra-high vacuum environment.

The facility can prevent surface contamination from the air, keeping a material’s intrinsic properties unchanged and realizing quantum manipulation and control, said Ding.

Experts say it will help make breakthroughs in common and critical problems in materials science and device technology, and develop new manufacturing technologies of nano-materials and core devices in the fields of energy and information.

Nano-X is expected to be incorporated into China’s national research infrastructure system, and become a world-class open platform for research and development in nano-science and nano-technology, providing advanced technical support for the national strategy of high technologies.

…

I’ve come across ‘Suzhou’ and nanotechnology in China before but first, here are a few more details about Nano-X in a March 29, 2017 news item by PTI on the bgr.in (India) website,

Nano-X has received initial funding of 320 million Yuan (about $46.5 million) and will eventually have a budget of 1.5 billion Yuan, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. Construction of the first stage began in 2014 and is expected to be completed in 2018. It comprises 100-metre-long ultra-high vacuum pipelines connecting 30 pieces of equipment. Ultimately the facility will have ultra-high vacuum pipelines of about 500 metres, connecting more than 100 large pieces of equipment, Ding said.

I gather Nano-X is part of the Suzhou Industrial Park’s Nanopolis. I’m somewhat confused about Nanopolis since I wrote in a Sept.. 26, 2014 posting that it hadn’t yet opened officially but the Nanopolis Background webpage suggests is been open since 2013,

On the journey of starting a new undertaking led by the industry transformation and upgrading campaign, Suzhou Industrial Park has chosen the nanotech application industry as the strategic emerging industry to lead the campaign, as the first one in China that has taken this initiative.

officially [sic] put into use in 2013 as a key component of the nanotech advancement strategy, and has developed into the main battlefield of Suzhou Industrial Park for nanotechnology applications.

In the concept of “industry ecosystem” for nanotech applications, Nanopolis Suzhou focuses on new sectors, pools creative resources and invents new models to build a high-end, leading platform that’s innovation and development friendly so as to promote the transformation and upgrading of the regional industries.

In any event, Nanopolis now bills itself as (from the Nanopolis Overview webpage),

… the world’s largest hub of nanotech innovation and commercialization [emphasis mine] with a floorage of 100 acres and a planned construction area of 1.5 million m2. Besides,it’s also the China International Nanotech Innovation Cluster and the core area of the National Nano Hi-tech Industry Base.

I imagine there will be many openings for buildings and other initiatives.

After the April 22, 2017 US March for Science

Leave a reply

Since last Saturday’s (April 22, 2017) US March for Science, I’ve stumbled across three interesting perspectives on the ‘movement’. As I noted in my April 14, 2017 posting, the ‘march’ has reached out beyond US borders to become international in scope. (On the day, at least 18 marches were held in Canada alone.)

Canada

John Dupuis wrote about his experience as a featured speaker at the Toronto (Ontario) march in an April 24, 2017 posting on his Confessions of a Science Librarian blog (Note: Links have been removed),

My fellow presenters were Master of Ceremonies Rupinder Brar and speakers Dawn Martin-Hill, Josh Matlow, Tanya Harrison, Chelsea Rochman, Aadita Chaudhury, Eden Hennessey and Cody Looking Horse.

Here’s what I had to say:

Hi, my name is John and I’m a librarian. My librarian superpower is making lists, checking them twice and seeing who’s been naughty and who’s been nice. The nice ones are all of you out here marching for science. And the naughty ones are the ones out there that are attacking science and the environment.

Now I’ve been in the list-making business for quite a few years, making an awful lot of lists of how governments have attacked or ignored science. I did a lot of work making lists about the Harper government and their war on science. The nicest thing I’ve ever seen written about my strange little obsession was in The Guardian.

Here’s what they said, in an article titled, How science helped to swing the Canadian election.

“Things got so bad that scientists and their supporters took to the streets. They demonstrated in Ottawa. They formed an organization, Evidence for Democracy, to bring push back on political interference in science. Awareness-raising forums were held at campuses throughout Canada. And the onslaught on science was painstakingly documented, which tends to happen when you go after librarians.”

Yeah, watch out. Don’t go after libraries and librarians. The Harper govt learned its lesson. And we learned a lesson too. And that lesson was that keeping track of things, that painstakingly documenting all the apparently disconnected little bits and pieces of policies here, regulations changed there and a budget snipped somewhere else, it all adds up.

What before had seemed random and disconnected is suddenly a coherent story. All the dots are connected and everybody can see what’s happened. By telling the whole story, by laying it all out there for everyone to see, it’s suddenly easier for all of us to point to the list and to hold the government of the day accountable. That’s the lesson learned from making lists.

…

But back in 2013 what I saw the government doing wasn’t the run of the mill anti-science that we’d seen before. Prime Minister Harper’s long standing stated desire to make Canada a global energy superpower revealed the underlying motivation but it was the endless litany of program cuts, census cancellation, science library closures, regulatory changes and muzzling of government scientists that made up the action plan. But was it really a concerted action plan or was it a disconnected series of small changes that were really no big deal or just a little different from normal?

That’s where making lists comes in handy. If you’re keeping track, then, yeah, you see the plan. You see the mission, you see the goals, you see the strategy, you see the tactics. You see that the government was trying to be sneaky and stealthy and incremental and “normal” but that there was a revolution in the making. An anti-science revolution.

Fast forward to now, April 2017, and what do we see? The same game plan repeated, the same anti-science revolution under way [in the US]. Only this time not so stealthy. Instead of a steady drip, it’s a fire hose. Message control at the National Parks Service, climate change denial, slashing budgets and shutting down programs at the EPA and other vital agencies. Incompetent agency directors that don’t understand the mission of their agencies or who even want to destroy them completely.

Once again, we are called to document, document, document. Tell the stories, mobilize science supporters and hold the governments accountable at the ballot box. Hey, like the Guardian said, if we did it in Canada, maybe that game plan can be repeated too.

I invited my three government reps here to the march today, Rob Oliphant, Josh Matlow and Eric Hoskins and I invited them to march with me so we could talk about how evidence should inform public policy. Josh, of course, is up here on the podium with me. As for Rob Oliphant from the Federal Liberals and Eric Hoskins from the Ontario Liberals, well, let’s just say they never answered my tweets.

Keep track, tell the story, hold all of them from every party accountable. The lesson we learned here in Canada was that science can be a decisive issue. Real facts can mobilise people to vote against alternative facts.

Thank you.

I’m not as sure as Dupuis that science was a decisive issue in our 2015 federal election; I’d say it was a factor. More importantly, I think the 2015 election showed Canadian scientists and those who feel science is important that it is possible to give it a voice and more prominence in the political discourse.

Rwanda

Eric Leeuwerck in an April 24, 2017 posting on one of the Agence Science-Press blogs describes his participation from Rwanda (I have provided a very rough translation after),

Un peu partout dans le monde, samedi 22 avril 2017, des milliers de personnes se sont mobilisées pour la « march for science », #sciencemarch, « une marche citoyenne pour les sciences, contre l’obscurantisme ». Et chez moi, au Rwanda ?

J’aurais bien voulu y aller moi à une « march for science », j’aurais bien voulu me joindre aux autres voix, me réconforter dans un esprit de franche camaraderie, à marcher comme un seul homme dans les rues, à dire que oui, nous sommes là ! La science vaincra, « No science, no futur ! » En Arctique, en Antarctique, en Amérique latine, en Asie, en Europe, sur la terre, sous l’eau…. Partout, des centaines de milliers de personnes ont marché ensemble. L’Afrique s’est mobilisée aussi, il y a eu des “march for science” au Kenya, Nigeria, Ouganda…

Et au Rwanda ? Eh bien, rien… Pourquoi suivre la masse, hein ? Pourquoi est-ce que je ne me suis pas bougé le cul pour faire une « march for science » au Rwanda ? Euh… et bien… Je vous avoue que je me vois mal organiser une manif au Rwanda en fait… Une collègue m’a même suggéré l’idée mais voilà, j’ai laissé tomber au moment même où l’idée m’a traversé l’esprit… Cependant, j’avais quand même cette envie d’exprimer ma sympathie et mon appartenance à ce mouvement mondial, à titre personnel, sans vouloir parler pour les autres, avec un GIF tout simple.

” March for science ” Rwanda

Je dois dire que je me sens bien souvent seul ici… Les cours de biologie de beaucoup d’écoles sont créationnistes, même au KICS (pour Kigali International Community School), une école internationale américaine (je tiens ça d’amis qui ont eu leurs enfants dans cette école). Sur son site, cette école de grande renommée ici ne cache pas ses penchants chrétiens : “KICS is a fully accredited member of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) (…)” et, de plus, est reconnue par le ministère de l’éducation rwandais : “(KICS) is endorsed by the Rwandan Ministry of Education as a sound educational institution“. Et puis, il y a cette phrase sur leur page d’accueil : « Join the KICS family and impact the world for christ ».

Je réalise régulièrement des formations en pédagogie des sciences pour des profs locaux du primaire et du secondaire. Lors de ma formation sur la théorie de l’Evolution, qui a eu pas mal de succès, les enseignants de biologie m’ont confié que c’était la première fois, avec moi, qu’ils avaient eu de vrais cours sur la théorie de l’Evolution… (Je passe les débats sur l’athéisme, sur la « création » qui n’est pas un fait, sur ce qu’est un fait, qu’il ne faut pas faire « acte de foi » pour faire de la science et que donc on ne peut pas « croire » en la science, mais la comprendre…). Un thème délicat à aborder a été celui de la « construction des identités meurtrières » pour reprendre le titre du livre d’Amin Maalouf, au Rwanda comment est-ce qu’une pseudoscience, subjective, orientée politiquement et religieusement a pu mener au racisme et au génocide. On m’avait aussi formellement interdit d’en parler à l’époque, ma directrice de l’époque disait « ne te mêle pas de ça, ce n’est pas notre histoire », mais voilà, maintenant, ce thème est devenu un thème incontournable, même à l’Ecole Belge de Kigali !

Une autre formation sur l’éducation sexuelle a été très bien reçue aussi ! J’ai mis en place cette formation, aussi contre l’avis de ma directrice de l’époque (une autre) : des thèmes comme le planning familial, la contraception, l’homosexualité, gérer un débat houleux, les hormones… ont été abordées ! Première fois aussi, m’ont confié les enseignants, qu’ils ont reçu une formation objective sur ces sujets tabous.

Chaque année, je réunis un peu d’argent avec l’aide de l’École Belge de Kigali pour faire ces formations (même si mes directions ne sont pas toujours d’accord avec les thèmes ), je suis totalement indépendant et à part l’École Belge de Kigali, aucune autre institution dont j’ai sollicité le soutien n’a voulu me répondre. Mais je continue, ça relève parfois du militantisme, je l’avoue.

C’est comme mon blog, un des seuls blogs francophones de sciences en Afrique (en fait, je n’en ai jamais trouvé aucun en cherchant sur le net) dans un pays à la connexion Internet catastrophique, je me demande parfois pourquoi je continue… Je perds tellement de temps à attendre que mes pages chargent, à me reconnecter je ne sais pas combien de fois toutes les 5 minutes … En particulier lors de la saison des pluies ! Heureusement que je peux compter sur le soutien inconditionnel de mes communautés de blogueurs : le café des sciences , les Mondoblogueurs de RFI , l’Agence Science-Presse. Sans eux, j’aurais arrêté depuis longtemps ! Six ans de blogging scientifique quand même…

Alors, ce n’est pas que virtuel, vous savez ! Chaque jour, quand je vais au boulot pour donner mes cours de bio et chimie, quand j’organise mes formations, quand j’arrive à me connecter à mon blog, je « marche pour la science ».

Yeah. (De la route, de la science et du rock’n’roll : Rock’n’Science !)

(Un commentaire de soutien ça fait toujours plaisir !)

As I noted, this will be a very rough translation and anything in square brackets [] means that I’m even less sure about the translation in that bit,

Pretty much around the world, thousands will march for science against anti-knowledge/anti-science.

I would have liked to join in and to march with other kindred spirits as one in the streets. We are here! Science will triumph! No science .No future. In the Arctic, in the Antarctic, in Latin America, in Asia, in Europe, on land, on water … Everywhere hundreds of thousands of people are marching together. Africa, too, has mobilized with marches in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda ..

And in Rwanda? Well, no, nothing. Why follow everyone else? Why didn’t I get my butt in gear and organize a march? [I’m not good at organizing these kinds of things] A colleague even suggested I arrange something . I had an impulse to do it and then it left. Still, I want to express my solidarity with the March for Science without attempting to talk for or represent anyone other than myself. So, here’s a simple gif,

…

I have to say I often feel myself to be alone here. The biology courses taught in many of the schools here are creationist biology even at the KICS (Kigali International Community School), an international American school (I have friends whose children attend the school). On the school’s site there’s a sign that does nothing to hide its mission: “KICS is a fully accredited member of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) (…)” and, further, it is recognized as such by the Rwandan Ministry of Education : “(KICS) is endorsed by the Rwandan Ministry of Education as a sound educational institution”. Finally, there’s this on their welcome page : « Join the KICS family and impact the world for christ ».

I regularly give science education prgorammes for local primary and secondary teachers. With regard to my teaching on the theory of evolution some have confided that this is the first time they’ve truly been exposed to a theory of evolution. (I avoid the debates about atheism and the creation story. Science is not about faith it’s about understanding …). One theme that must be skirted with some delicacy in Rwanda is the notion of constructing a murderous/violent identity to borrow from Amin Maalouf’s book title, ‘Les Identités meurtrières’; in English: In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong) as it has elements of a pseudoscience, subjectivity, political and religious connotations and has been used to justify racism and genocide. [Not sure here if he’s saying that the theory of evolution has been appropriated and juxtaposed with notions of violence and identify leading to racism and genocide. For anyone not familiar with the Rwandan genocide of 1994, see this Wikipedia entry.] Ihave been formally forbidden to discuss this period and my director said “Don’t meddle in this. It’s not our history.” But this theme/history has become essential/unavoidable even at the l’Ecole Belge de Kigali (Belgian School of Kigali).

A programme on sex education was well received and that subject too was forbidden to me (by a different director). I included topics such as family planning, contraception, homosexuality, hormones and inspired a spirited debate. Many times my students have confided that they received good factual information on these taboo topics.

Each year with help from the Belgian School at Kigali, I raise money for these programmes (even if my directors don’t approve of the topics). I’m totally independent and other than the Belgian School at Kigali no other institution that I’ve appraoched has responded. But I continue as I hope that it can help lower milittancy.

My blog is one of the few French language science blogs in Africa (I rarely find any other such blogs when I search). In a country where the internet connection is catastrophically poor, I ask myself why I go on. I lose a lot of time waiting for pages to load or to re-establish a connection, especially in the rainy season. Happily I can depend on the communities of bloggers such as: café des sciences , les Mondoblogueurs de RFI , l’Agence Science-Presse. Without them I would have stopped long ago. It has been six years of blogging science …

It is virtual, you know. Each day when I deliver my courses in biology and chemistry, when I organize my programmes, when I post on my blog, ‘I march for science’.

…

Comments are gladly accepted. [http://www.sciencepresse.qc.ca/blogue/2017/04/24/march-science-rwanda]

All mistakes are mine.

My last bit is from an April 24, 2017 article by Jeremy Samuel Faust for Slate.com, (Note: Links have been removed),

Hundreds of thousands of self-professed science supporters turned out to over 600 iterations of the March for Science around the world this weekend. Thanks to the app Periscope, I attended half a dozen of them from the comfort of my apartment, thereby assiduously minimizing my carbon footprint.

Mainly, these marches appeared to be a pleasant excuse for liberals to write some really bad (and, OK, some truly superb) puns, and put them on cardboard signs. There were also some nicely stated slogans that roused support for important concepts such as reason and data and many that decried the defunding of scientific research and ignorance-driven policy.

But here’s the problem: Little of what I observed dissuades me from my baseline belief that, even among the sanctimonious elite who want to own science (and pwn [sic] anyone who questions it), most people have no idea how science actually works. The scientific method itself is already under constant attack from within the scientific community itself and is ceaselessly undermined by its so-called supporters, including during marches like those on Saturday. [April 22, 2017] In the long run, such demonstrations will do little to resolve the myriad problems science faces and instead could continue to undermine our efforts to use science accurately and productively.

…

Indeed much of the sentiment of the March for Science seemed to fall firmly in the camp of people espousing a gee-whiz attitude in which science is just great and beyond reproach. They feel that way because, so often, the science they’re exposed to feels that way—it’s cherry-picked. Cherry-picking scientific findings that support an already cherished and firmly held belief (while often ignoring equally if not more compelling data that contradicts it) is epidemic—in scientific journals and in the media.

Let’s face it: People like science when it supports their views. I see this every day. When patients ask me for antibiotics to treat their common colds, I tell them that decades of science and research, let alone a basic understanding of microbiology, shows that antibiotics don’t work for cold viruses. Trust me, people don’t care. They have gotten antibiotics for their colds in the past, and, lo, they got better. (The human immune system, while a bit slower and clunkier than we’d like it to be, never seems to get the credit it deserves in these little anecdotal stories.) Who needs science when you have something mightier—personal experience?

Another example is the vocal wing of environmentalists who got up one day and decided that genetically modified organisms were bad for you. They had not one shred of evidence for this, but it just kind of felt true. As a result, responsible scientists will be fighting against these zealots for years to come. While the leaders of March for Science events are on the right side of this issue, many of its supporters are not. I’m looking at you, Bernie Sanders; the intellectual rigor behind your stance requiring GMO labelling reflects a level of scientific understanding that would likely lead for calls for self-defenestration from your own supporters if it were applied to, say, something like climate change.

But it does not stop there. Perhaps as irritating as people who know nothing about science are those who know just a little bit—just enough to think they have any idea as to what is going on. Take for example the clever cheer (and unparalleled public declaration of nerdiness):

What do we want?

Science!

When do we want it?

After peer review!

Of course, the quality of most peer-review research is somewhere between bad and unfair to the pixels that gave their lives to display it. Just this past week, a study published by the world’s most prestigious stroke research journal (Stroke), made headlines and achieved media virality by claiming a correlation between increased diet soda consumption and strokes and dementia. Oh, by the way, the authors didn’t control for body mass index [*], even though, unsurprisingly, people who have the highest BMIs had the most strokes. An earlier study that no one seems to remember showed a correlation of around the same magnitude between obesity and strokes alone. But, who cares, right? Ban diet sodas now! Science says they’re linked to strokes and dementia! By the way, Science used to say that diet sodas cause cancer. But Science was, perish the thought, wrong.

If you can get past the writer’s great disdain for just about everyone, he makes very good points.

To add some clarity with regard to “controlling for body mass index,” there’s a concept in research known as a confounding variable. In this case, people who have a higher body mass index (or are more obese) will tend to have more strokes according to previous research which qualifies as a confounding variable when studying the effect of diet soda on strokes. To control for obesity means you set up the research project in such a way you can compare (oranges to oranges) the stroke rates of obese people who drink x amount of diet soda with obese people who do not drink x amount of diet soda and compare stroke rates of standard weight people who drink x amount of diet soda with other standard weight people who do not drink x amount of diet soda. There are other aspects of the research that would also have be considered but to control for body mass index that’s the way I’d set it up.

One point that Faust makes that isn’t made often enough and certainly not within the context of the ‘evidence-based policy movement’ and ‘marches for science’ is the great upheaval taking place within the scientific endeavour (Note: Links have been removed),

…

… . There are a dozen other statistical games that researchers can play to get statistical significance. Such ruses do not rise to anything approaching clinical relevance. Nevertheless, fun truthy ones like the diet soda study grab headlines and often end up changing human behaviors.

The reason this problem, what one of my friends delightfully calls statistical chicanery, is so rampant is twofold. First, academics need to “publish or perish.” If researchers don’t publish in peer-reviewed journals, their careers will be short and undistinguished. Second, large pharmaceutical companies have learned how to game the science system so that their patented designer molecules can earn them billions of dollars, often treating made-up diseases (I won’t risk public opprobrium naming those) as well as other that we, the medical establishment, literally helped create (opioid-induced constipation being a recent flagrancy).

Of course, the journals themselves have suffered because their contributors know the game. There are now dozens of stories of phony research passing muster in peer-review journals, despite being intentionally badly written. These somewhat cynical, though hilarious, exposés have largely focused on outing predatory journals that charge authors money in exchange for publication (assuming the article is “accepted” by the rigorous peer-review process; the word rigorous, by the way, now means “the credit card payment went through and your email address didn’t bounce”). But even prestigious journals have been bamboozled. The Lancet famously published fabrications linking vaccines and autism in 1998. and it took it 12 years to retract the studies. Meanwhile, the United States Congress took only three years for its own inquiry to debunk any link. You know it’s bad when the U.S. Congress is running circles around the editorial board of one of the world’s most illustrious medical journals. Over the last couple of decades, multiple attempts to improve the quality of peer-review adjudication have disappointingly and largely failed to improve the situation.

While the scientific research community is in desperate need of an overhaul, the mainstream media (and social media influencers) could in the meantime play a tremendously helpful role in alleviating the situation. Rather than indiscriminately repeating the results of the latest headline-grabbing scientific journal article and quoting the authors who wrote the paper, journalists should also reach out to skeptics and use their comments not just to provide (false) balance in their articles but to assess whether the finding really warrants an entire article of coverage in the first place. Headlines should be vetted not for impact and virality but for honesty. As a reader, be wary of any headline that includes the phrase “Science says,” as well as anything that states that a particular study “proves” that a particular exposure “causes” a particular disease. Smoking causes cancer, heart disease, and emphysema, and that’s about as close to a causal statement as actual scientists will make, when it comes to health. Most of what you read and hear about turns out to be mere associations, and mostly fairly weak ones, at that.

Faust refers mostly to medical research but many of his comments are applicable to other science research as well. By the way, Faust has written an excellent description of p-values for which, if for no other reason, you should read his piece in its entirety.

One last comment about Faust’s piece, he exhorts journalists to take more care in their writing but fails to recognize the pressures on journalists and those who participate in social media. Briefly, journalists are under pressure to produce. Many of the journalists who write about science don’t know much about it and even the ones who have a science background may be quite ignorant about the particular piece of science they are covering, i.e., a physicist might have some problems covering medical research and vice versa. Also, mainstream media are in trouble as they struggle to find revenue models.

As for those of us who blog and others in the social media environment; we are a mixed bag in much the same way that mainstream media is. If you get your science from gossip rags such as the National Enquirer, it’s not likely to be as reliable as what you’d expect from The Guardian or the The New York Times. Still, those prestigious publications have gotten quite wrong on occasion.

In the end, readers (scientists, journalists, bloggers, etc.) need to be skeptical. It’s also helpful to be humble or at least willing to admit you’ve made a mistake (confession: I have my share on this blog, which are noted when I’ve found or when they’ve been pointed out to me).

Final comments

Hopefully, this has given you a taste for the wide ranges of experiences and perspectives on the April 22, 2017 March for Science.

Afrofuturism in the UK’s Guardian newspaper and as a Future Tense Dec. 2015 event

Leave a reply

My introduction to the term, Afrofuturism was in a March 11, 2015 posting by Jessica Bland for the Guardian in the Technology/Political Science section. It was written on the occasion of a then upcoming FutureFest event,

This is unapologetically connected to FutureFest, the festival Nesta (where I work) is holding this weekend in London Bridge. These thoughts represent the ideas that piqued my interest while curating talks and exhibits based on the thought experiment of a future African city-superpower. George Clinton, Spoek Mathambo, Tegan Bristow and Fabian-Carlos Guhl (from Ampion Venture Bus) will be speaking during the weekend. Thomas Aquilina is displaying photographs from his trip and the architects of the Lagos 2060 project will take part in a debate on whether their fiction can lead to a different kind of future.

In anticipation of the March 2015 FutureFest event, Bland had written a roundup piece about “New sounds from South Africa and Nigeria’s urban science fiction [that] could change the future of technology and the city.” Here are some excerpts from her piece (Note: Links have been removed),

Strong stories or visions of the future stick around. The 1920s sci-fi fantasy of a jetpack commute still pops up in discussions about the future of technology, not to mention as an option on the Citymapper travel app. By co-opting or creating new visions of the future, it seems possible to influence the development of new products and services – from consumer tech to urban infrastructure. A new generation of African artists is taking over the mantle of Afrofuturist arts from a US-centred crowd. They could bring a welcome change to how technology is developed in the region, as well as a challenge to the dominance of imported plans for urban development.

Last Thursday’s London gig from Fantasma was sweaty and boisterous. It was also very different from the remix of Joy Division’s She’s Lost Control that brought front man Spoek Mathambo to the attention of a global audience a couple of years ago. Fantasma is a group of South African musicians with different backgrounds. Guitarist Bhekisenzo Cele started the gig with three of his own songs, introducing the traditional Zulu maskandi music that they went on to mix with shangaan electro, hiphop, punk, electronica and everything in between.

The gig had a buzz about it. But the performance was from a new collective trying things out; it wasn’t as genre-smashing as expected. And expectations ride high for Spoek. In 2011, he titled a collection from his back catalogue ‘Beyond Afrofuturism’. He took on, at least in name, a whole Afro-American cultural movement: embodied by musicians like Sun Ra, George Clinton and Drexciya. A previous post on this blog by Chardine Taylor-Stone describes the roots of Afrofuturism in science fiction that centres on space travel and human enhancement. But she goes on to say: “Afrofuturism also goes beyond spaceships, androids and aliens, and encompasses African mythology and cosmology with an aim to connect those from across the Black Diaspora to their forgotten African ancestry.” Spoek shares what he calls a cultural lineage with this movement. But he is not Afro-American. He also shares a cultural lineage with the sounds of South African musicians he grew up listening to.

…

Other forms of art are taking an increasingly activist role in the future of technology. Lydia Nicholas’s description of the relationship between Douglas Adam’s fictional Hitchhiker’s Guide and the real life development of the iPad shows how science fiction can effortlessly influence the development of new technology.

The science fiction collection Lagos 2060 is a more purposeful intervention. Published in 2013, it speculates about what it will be like to live in Lagos 100 years after Nigeria gained independence from the UK. It was born out of a creative writing workshop initiated by DADA books in Lagos. Foundation director of DADA, Ayodele Arigbabu, described the collection and other similar video and visual art work (in an email): “Far more than aesthetic indulgence, these renditions are a calibration of the changes deemed necessary in today’s political, technical and cultural infrastructure.”

Bland also explores a history of this movement,

Gaston Berger was the Senegalese founder of the academic journal Prospectiv in 1957. To many, he was the first futurist, or at least one of the first people to describe themselves as one. He founded promotes the practice of playing out the human consequences of today’s action. This is about avoiding a fatalistic approach to the future: about being proactive and provoking change, as much as anticipating it.

Berger’s early work spawned a generation, and then another and another, of professional futurists. They work in different ways and different places. Some are in government, enticing and frightening politicians with the prospect of a different transport system, healthcare sector or national security regime. Some are consultants to large companies, offering advice on the way that trends like 3D printing or flying robots will change their sector. An article from 1996 does a good job of summarising the principles of this movement: don’t act like an ostrich and ignore the future by putting your head in the sand; don’t act like a fireman and just respond to threats to your future; and don’t focus just on insurance against for the future.

Bland has written an interesting and sprawling piece, which in some way reflects the subject. Africa is a huge and sprawling continent.

Slate, a US online magazine, is hosting along with New America and Arizona State University a Future Tense event on Afrofuturism but this seems to be quite US-centric. From the Future Tense Afrofuturism event webpage on the Slate website (Note: Links have been removed),

Future Tense is hosting a conversation about Afrofuturism in New York City on December 3rd, 2015 from 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Afrofuturism emphasizes the intersection of black cultures with questions of imagination, liberation, and technology. Rooted in works like those of science fiction author Octavia Butler, avant-garde jazz legend Sun Ra, and George Clinton, Afrofuturism explores concepts of race, space and time in order to ask the existential question posed by critic Mark Dery: “Can a community whose past has been deliberately erased imagine possible futures?”

Will the alternative futures and realities Afrofuturism describes transform and reshape the concept of black identity? Join Future Tense for a discussion on Afrofuturism and its unique vantage on the challenges faced by black Americans and others throughout the African diaspora.

During the event, enjoy an Afrofuturist inspired drink from 67 Orange Street. Follow the discussion online using #Afrofuturism and by following @NewAmericaNYC and @FutureTenseNow.

Click here to RSVP. Space is limited so register now!

PARTICIPANTS

Michael Bennett
Principal Investigator, School for the Future of Innovation in Society, Arizona State University
@MGBennett

Ytasha Womack
Author, Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture and Post Black: How A New Generation is Redefining African American Identity
@ytashawomack

Juliana Huxtable
DJ and Artist
@HUXTABLEJULIANA

Walé Oyéjidé
Designer and Creative Director, Ikire Jones
@IkireJones

Aisha Harris
Staff writer, Slate
@craftingmystyle

It seems we have one word, Afrofuturism, and two definitions. One where Africa is referenced and one where African-American experience is referenced.

For anyone curious about Nesta, where Jessica Bland works and the Future Fest host (from its Wikipedia entry),

Nesta (formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) is an independent charity that works to increase the innovation capacity of the UK.

The organisation acts through a combination of practical programmes, investment, policy and research, and the formation of partnerships to promote innovation across a broad range of sectors.

That’s it for now.

September 2014 issue of the Nano Bite (from the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) talks 2015 mini-grants, US National Chemistry Week, and ebola/silver nano

Leave a reply

The NISENet (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) Mini-Grants are for US-based institutions only,

→ There’s Still Time to Submit Your Application for a 2015 NISE Network Mini-Grant
Since 2011, NISE Network partners have completed over 170 mini-grant projects! Mini-grants are awards of up to $3000 that support initiatives by partners to engage their local audiences in nano topics. Not quite sure what project your institution could or should embark upon? The NISE Net has a comprehensive list of past projects that can inspire you as you brainstorm project ideas. Search past projects and learn more about mini-grant resources, eligibility, and the application process.

Applications for the 2015 Mini-Grant Program are due October 1, 2014 [apply now]. If you have program questions or would like to discuss project ideas, please contact your Regional Hub Leader.

NISENet (Nanoscale Informal Science Network) will be celebrating its 10th anniversary,

→ 2014 ASTC Annual Conference
If you or your colleagues are making your final arrangements for your trip to Raleigh, NC [North Carolina] next month for the ASTC [Association of Science and Technology Centers] Conference, keep in mind the NISE Net events, workshops, and sessions [see full list of conference activities]. We particularly hope you’ll join us at the Museum of Life and Science for the NISE Network reception special event from 4-7pm on Friday (10/17) night to celebrate 10 years of the NISE Net! The reception is free to attend and transportation will be provided. RSVP here.

There are opportunities to link up ‘nano’ activities with the US National Chemistry Week coming in Oct. 2014,

→ National Chemistry Week
Looking for ideas on how to incorporate your NanoDays activities into more year-round programming? National Chemistry Week takes place October 19-25, themed “The Sweet Side of Chemistry – Candy,” and is a great opportunity for NISE Network partners to collaborate with American Chemical Society members and organize a National Chemistry Week event. Visit http://nisenet.org/events/other/national-chemistry-week-2014 for more information and join the October Online Brown-Bag Conversation How to Host a National Chemistry Week Event.

…

How to Host a National Chemistry Week Event
Wednesday, October 1, 2014: 3pm – 4pm ET
During this online brown-bag conversation, presenters will discuss ways in which partners can connect with American Chemistry Society members in your community and will share NISE Net activities that have a candy connection (sweet!) and explain the chemistry behind these activities. [Sign up now]

For the final excerpt from the newsletter, here’s some information about the international discussion regarding the use of nano silver as a curative in Nigeria for the ebola outbreak, which is affecting several West African countries,

→ Is Using Nano Silver to Treat Ebola Misguided?
With the continued Ebola outbreaks in Africa, nanosilver is once again back under the spotlight as a possible treatment for infectious diseases. Ever heard the expression that someone was “born with a silver spoon in their mouth?” That spoon isn’t silver to be fancy! Silver has been used for cups, bowls, and utensils for thousands of years because its microbial properties help to prevent food and drink-borne infection.

Doctors and researchers struggling to contain the outbreak and treat the virus are looking for new treatments. The World Health Organization recently sanctioned the use of unlicensed Ebola drugs in West Africa on medical and ethical grounds. One researcher recently submitted an open letter to the president of Nigeria supporting the use of colloidal nano silver (nano silver suspended in water) to deal effectively with the Ebola virus. There is research that supports the effectiveness of silver nanoparticles in rendering Ebola-like viruses ineffective but research was conducted using cell cultures, which still leaves the questions: would these same results occur in an infected patient, what is the appropriate dose someone would need to take, what is the best delivery method of the nanosilver particles, and would it cause unforeseen medical complications?

Read the University of Michigan Risk Science Center’s full article that provides a more in-depth look at this issue. There may be future treatments for infectious diseases that use nanosilver and other engineered materials, the medical field is already using gold nanoparticles to fight cancer, but what exactly that role will be remains unclear.

Related NISE Network activities and resources:

Nanomedicine in Healthcare – this NISE Net forum explores nanotechnology-enabled medical technologies and their potential to transform health care, while considering the societal, ethical, environmental and economic impacts of this technology.

Silver and Bandages – this high school curriculum K-12 lesson plan is a linked product designed so that students develop their own experiment to test the antimicrobial properties of nanosilver particles.

Nanosilver: Breakthrough or Biohazard? – this linked product is a public presentation that introduces audiences to silver nanoparticles in consumer products.

The Effects of Gold and Silver Nanoparticles on Brine Shrimp: A Toxicology Study (High School Curriculum Lesson) – this lab is a linked product designed to help students understand the interdisciplinary fields of science, and the practical applications of chemistry.

The article is by Dr. Andrew Maynard, the director of the University of Michigan’s Risk Science Center and a longtime figure in the field of nanotechnology. In his Aug. 15, 2014 article, Andrew provides an overview of nanosilver as a biocide and as a curative that is well worth reading in its entirety. For those who are unfamiliar with the situation regarding the ebola outbreak or might like to refresh their memories, I have an Aug. 15, 2014 posting which covers the situation briefly including the plan to use nanosilver in Nigeria (since shelved) along with some current research into ebola vaccines.

Here’s a link for anyone who would like to read the Sept. 2014 issue of the Nano Bite in its entirety.

Nanotechnology, tobacco plants, and the Ebola virus

Leave a reply

Before presenting information about the current Ebola crisis and issues with vaccines and curatives, here’s a description of the disease from its Wikipedia entry,

Ebola virus disease (EVD) or Ebola hemorrhagic fever (EHF) is a disease of humans and other primates caused by an ebola virus. Symptoms start two days to three weeks after contracting the virus, with a fever, sore throat, muscle pain, and headaches. Typically nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea follow, along with decreased functioning of the liver and kidneys. Around this time, affected people may begin to bleed both within the body and externally. [1]

As for the current crisis in countries situated on the west coast of the African continent, there’s this from an Aug. 14, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily,

The outbreak of Ebola virus disease that has claimed more than 1,000 lives in West Africa this year poses a serious, ongoing threat to that region: the spread to capital cities and Nigeria — Africa’s most populous nation — presents new challenges for healthcare professionals. The situation has garnered significant attention and fear around the world, but proven public health measures and sharpened clinical vigilance will contain the epidemic and thwart a global spread, according to a new commentary by Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.

Dr. Fauci’s Aug. 13, 2014 commentary (open access) in the New England Journal of Medicine provides more detail (Note: A link has been removed),

An outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD) has jolted West Africa, claiming more than 1000 lives since the virus emerged in Guinea in early 2014 (see figure) Ebola Virus Cases and Deaths in West Africa (Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone), as of August 11, 2014 (Panel A), and Over Time (Panel B).). The rapidly increasing numbers of cases in the African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have had public health authorities on high alert throughout the spring and summer. More recent events including the spread of EVD to Nigeria (Africa’s most populous country) and the recent evacuation to the United States of two American health care workers with EVD have captivated the world’s attention and concern. Health professionals and the general public are struggling to comprehend these unfolding dynamics and to separate misinformation and speculation from truth.

…

In early 2014, EVD emerged in a remote region of Guinea near its borders with Sierra Leone and Liberia. Since then, the epidemic has grown dramatically, fueled by several factors. First, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia are resource-poor countries already coping with major health challenges, such as malaria and other endemic diseases, some of which may be confused with EVD. Next, their borders are porous, and movement between countries is constant. Health care infrastructure is inadequate, and health workers and essential supplies including personal protective equipment are scarce. Traditional practices, such as bathing of corpses before burial, have facilitated transmission. The epidemic has spread to cities, which complicates tracing of contacts. Finally, decades of conflict have left the populations distrustful of governing officials and authority figures such as health professionals. Add to these problems a rapidly spreading virus with a high mortality rate, and the scope of the challenge becomes clear.

Although the regional threat of Ebola in West Africa looms large, the chance that the virus will establish a foothold in the United States or another high-resource country remains extremely small. Although global air transit could, and most likely will, allow an infected, asymptomatic person to board a plane and unknowingly carry Ebola virus to a higher-income country, containment should be readily achievable. Hospitals in such countries generally have excellent capacity to isolate persons with suspected cases and to care for them safely should they become ill. Public health authorities have the resources and training necessary to trace and monitor contacts. Protocols exist for the appropriate handling of corpses and disposal of biohazardous materials. In addition, characteristics of the virus itself limit its spread. Numerous studies indicate that direct contact with infected bodily fluids — usually feces, vomit, or blood — is necessary for transmission and that the virus is not transmitted from person to person through the air or by casual contact. Isolation procedures have been clearly outlined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A high index of suspicion, proper infection-control practices, and epidemiologic investigations should quickly limit the spread of the virus.

Fauci’s article makes it clear that public concerns are rising in the US and I imagine that’s true of Canada too and many other parts of the world, not to mention the countries currently experiencing the EVD outbreak. In the midst of all this comes a US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warning as per an Aug. 15, 2014 news item (originated by Reuters reporter Toni Clarke) on Nanowerk,

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday [Aug. 14, 2014] it has become aware of products being sold online that fraudulently claim to prevent or treat Ebola.

The FDA’s warning comes on the heels of comments by Nigeria’s top health official, Onyebuchi Chukwu, who reportedly said earlier Thursday [Aug. 14, 2014] that eight Ebola patients in Lagos, the country’s capital, will receive an experimental treatment containing nano-silver.

Erica Jefferson, a spokeswoman for the FDA, said she could not provide any information about the product referenced by the Nigerians.

The Aug. 14, 2014 FDA warning reads in part,

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is advising consumers to be aware of products sold online claiming to prevent or treat the Ebola virus. Since the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa, the FDA has seen and received consumer complaints about a variety of products claiming to either prevent the Ebola virus or treat the infection.

There are currently no FDA-approved vaccines or drugs to prevent or treat Ebola. Although there are experimental Ebola vaccines and treatments under development, these investigational products are in the early stages of product development, have not yet been fully tested for safety or effectiveness, and the supply is very limited. There are no approved vaccines, drugs, or investigational products specifically for Ebola available for purchase on the Internet. By law, dietary supplements cannot claim to prevent or cure disease.

As per the FDA’s reference to experimental vaccines, an Aug. 6, 2014 article by Caroline Chen, Mark Niquette, Mark Langreth, and Marie French for Bloomberg describes the ZMapp vaccine/treatment (Note: Links have been removed),

On a small plot of land incongruously tucked amid a Kentucky industrial park sit five weather-beaten greenhouses. At the site, tobacco plants contain one of the most promising hopes for developing an effective treatment for the deadly Ebola virus.

The plants contain designer antibodies developed by San Diego-based Mapp Biopharmaceutical Inc. and are grown in Kentucky by a unit of Reynolds American Inc. Two stricken U.S. health workers received an experimental treatment containing the antibodies in Liberia last week. Since receiving doses of the drug, both patients’ conditions have improved.

Tobacco plant-derived medicines, which are also being developed by a company whose investors include Philip Morris International Inc., are part of a handful of cutting edge plant-based treatments that are in the works for everything from pandemic flu to rabies using plants such as lettuce, carrots and even duckweed. While the technique has existed for years, the treatments have only recently begun to reach the marketplace.

…

Researchers try to identify the best antibodies in the lab, before testing them on mice, then eventually on monkeys. Mapp’s experimental drug, dubbed ZMapp, has three antibodies, which work together to alert the immune system and neutralize the Ebola virus, she [Erica Ollman Saphire, a molecular biologist at the Scripps Research Institute,] said.

This is where the tobacco comes in: the plants are used as hosts to grow large amounts of the antibodies. Genes for the desired antibodies are fused to genes for a natural tobacco virus, Charles Arntzen, a plant biotechnology expert at Arizona State University, said in an Aug. 4 [2014] telephone interview.

The tobacco plants are then infected with this new artificial virus, and antibodies are grown inside the plant. Eventually, the tobacco is ground up and the antibody is extracted, Arntzen said.

The process of growing antibodies in mammals risks transferring viruses that could infect humans, whereas “plants are so far removed, so if they had some sort of plant virus we wouldn’t get sick because viruses are host-specific,” said Qiang Chen, a plant biologist at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, in a telephone interview.

…

There is a Canadian (?) company working on a tobacco-based vaccines including one for EVD but as the Bloomberg writers note the project is highly secret,

Another tobacco giant-backed company working on biotech drugs grown in tobacco plants is Medicago Inc. in Quebec City, which is owned by Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corp. and Philip Morris. [emphasis mine]

Medicago is working on testing a vaccine for pandemic influenza and has a production greenhouse facility in North Carolina, said Jean-Luc Martre, senior director for government affairs at Medicago. Medicago is planning a final stage trial of the pandemic flu vaccine for next year, he said in a telephone interview.

The plant method is flexible and capable of making antibodies and vaccines for numerous types of viruses, said Martre. In addition to influenza, the company’s website says it is in early stages of testing products for rabies and rotavirus.

…

Medicago ‘‘is currently closely working with partners for the production of an Ebola antibody as well as other antibodies that are of interest for bio-defense,” he said in an e-mail. He would not disclose who the partners were. [emphasis mine]

I have checked both the English and French language versions of Medicago’s website and cannot find any information about their work on ebola. (The Bloomberg article provides a good overview of the ebola situation and more. I recommend reading it and/or the Aug. 15, 2014 posting on CTV [Canadian Television Network] which originated from an Associated Press article by Malcolm Ritter).

Moving on to more research and ebola, Dexter Johnson in an Aug. 14, 2014 posting (on his Nanoclast blog on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website,) describes some work from Northeastern University (US), Note: Links have been removed,

With the Ebola virus death toll now topping 1000 and even the much publicized experimental treatment ZMapp failing to save the life of a Spanish missionary priest who was treated with it, it is clear that scientists need to explore new ways of fighting the deadly disease. For researchers at Northeastern University in Boston, one possibility may be using nanotechnology.

“It has been very hard to develop a vaccine or treatment for Ebola or similar viruses because they mutate so quickly,” said Thomas Webster, the chair of Northeastern’s chemical engineering department, in a press release. “In nanotechnology we turned our attention to developing nanoparticles that could be attached chemically to the viruses and stop them from spreading.”

Webster, along with many researchers in the nanotechnology community, have been trying to use gold nanoparticles, in combination with near-infrared light, to kill cancer cells with heat. The hope is that the same approach could be used to kill the Ebola virus.

…

There is also an Aug. 6, 2014 Northeastern University news release by Joe O’Connell describing the technique being used by Webster’s team,

… According to Webster, gold nanoparticles are currently being used to treat cancer. Infrared waves, he explained, heat up the gold nanoparticles, which, in turn, attack and destroy everything from viruses to cancer cells, but not healthy cells.

Recognizing that a larger surface area would lead to a quicker heat-up time, Webster’s team created gold nanostars. “The star has a lot more surface area, so it can heat up much faster than a sphere can,” Webster said. “And that greater surface area allows it to attack more viruses once they absorb to the particles.” The problem the researchers face, however, is making sure the hot gold nanoparticles attack the virus or cancer cells rather than the healthy cells.

At this point, there don’t seem to be any curative measures generally available although some are available experimentally in very small quantities.

Things falling apart: both a Nigerian novel and research at the Massachusetts Intitute of Technology

Leave a reply

First the Nigerian novel ‘Things Fall Apart‘ (from its Wikipedia entry; Note: Links have been removed),

Things Fall Apart is an English-language novel by Nigerian author Chinua Achebe published in 1958 by William Heinemann Ltd in the UK; in 1962, it was also the first work published in Heinemann’s African Writers Series. Things Fall Apart is seen as the archetypal modern African novel in English, one of the first to receive global critical acclaim. It is a staple book in schools throughout Africa and is widely read and studied in English-speaking countries around the world. The title of the novel comes from William Butler Yeats’ poem “The Second Coming”.[1]

For those unfamiliar with the Yeats poem, this is the relevant passage (from Wikipedia entry for The Second Coming),

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

The other ‘Things fall apart’ item, although it’s an investigation into ‘how things fall apart’, is mentioned in an Aug. 4, 2014 news item on Nanowerk,

Materials that are firmly bonded together with epoxy and other tough adhesives are ubiquitous in modern life — from crowns on teeth to modern composites used in construction. Yet it has proved remarkably difficult to study how these bonds fracture and fail, and how to make them more resistant to such failures.

Now researchers at MIT [Massachusetts Institute of Technology] have found a way to study these bonding failures directly, revealing the crucial role of moisture in setting the stage for failure. Their findings are published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science in a paper by MIT professors of civil and environmental engineering Oral Buyukozturk and Markus Buehler; research associate Kurt Broderick of MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories; and doctoral student Denvid Lau, who has since joined the faculty at the City University of Hong Kong.

An Aug. 4, 2014 MIT news release written by David Chandler (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides an unexpectedly fascinating discussion of bonding, interfaces, and infrastructure,

“The bonding problem is a general problem that is encountered in many disciplines, especially in medicine and dentistry,” says Buyukozturk, whose research has focused on infrastructure, where such problems are also of great importance. “The interface between a base material and epoxy, for example, really controls the properties. If the interface is weak, you lose the entire system.”

“The composite may be made of a strong and durable material bonded to another strong and durable material,” Buyukozturk adds, “but where you bond them doesn’t necessarily have to be strong and durable.”

Besides dental implants and joint replacements, such bonding is also critical in construction materials such as fiber-reinforced polymers and reinforced concrete. But while such materials are widespread, understanding how they fail is not simple.

There are standard methods for testing the strength of materials and how they may fail structurally, but bonded surfaces are more difficult to model. “When we are concerned with deterioration of this interface when it is degraded by moisture, classical methods can’t handle that,” Buyukozturk says. “The way to approach it is to look at the molecular level.”

When such systems are exposed to moisture, “it initiates new molecules at the interface,” Buyukozturk says, “and that interferes with the bonding mechanism. How do you assess how weak the interface becomes when it is affected? We came up with an innovative method to assess the interface weakening as a result of exposure to environmental effects.”

The team used a combination of molecular simulations and laboratory tests in its assessment. The modeling was based on fundamental principles of molecular interactions, not on empirical data, Buyukozturk says.

In the laboratory tests, Buyukozturk and his colleagues controlled the residual stresses in a metal layer that was bonded and then forcibly removed. “We validated the method, and showed that moisture has a degrading effect,” he says.

The findings could lead to exploration of new ways to prevent moisture from reaching into the bonded layer, perhaps using better sealants. “Moisture is the No. 1 enemy,” Buyukozturk says.

“I think this is going to be an important step toward assessment of the bonding, and enable us to design more durable composites,” he adds. “It gives a quantitative knowledge of the interface” — for example, predicting that under specific conditions, a given bonded material will lose 30 percent of its strength.

Interface problems are universal, Buyukozturk says, occurring in many areas besides biomedicine and construction. “They occur in mechanical devices, in aircraft, electrical equipment, in the packaging of electronic components,” he says. “We feel this will have very broad applications.”

Bonded composite materials are beginning to be widely used in airplane manufacturing; often these composites are then bonded to traditional materials, like aluminum. “We have not had enough experience to prove the durability of these composite systems is going to be there after 20 years,” Buyukozturk says.

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

A robust nanoscale experimental quantification of fracture energy in a bilayer material system by Denvid Lau, Kurt Broderick, Markus J. Buehler, and Oral Büyüköztürk. PNAS, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1402893111 published August 5, 2014

This paper is behind a paywall.

Nano news from Malaysia and from Nigeria

Leave a reply

I have two nanotechnology news bits, one concerning Malaysia and the other concerning Nigeria.

There’s a March 24, 2014 news item on Bernama ((national news agency of Malaysia) about a recent signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU),

NanoMalaysia Bhd [aka, NanoMalaysia Berhad] is looking at jumpstarting nanotechnology development to enable it to contribute one per cent to Malaysia’s gross national income (GNI) by 2020, said Chief Executive Officer, Rezal Khairi Ahmad.

“The company would use four sectors — electronic devices and systems; energy and environment; food and agriculture; and, healthcare, medicine and wellness — to achieve the target, which would be equivalent to RM15 to RM17 billion then,” he said.

Rezal said this at the signing of memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Universiti Teknologi Petronas (UTP) here Monday [March 24, 2014].

I took a look at the NanoMalaysia site and found this on their ABOUT US page (Note: A link has been removed),

Nanotechnology was identified as one of the new growth engines for the New Economic Model (NEM).

NanoMalaysia Berhad was incorporated in 2011 as a company limited by guarantee (CLG) to act as a business entity entrusted with nanotechnology commercialisation activities. It will also support the operations of the NanoMalaysia Centre. Some of its roles include:

Managing and developing NanoMalaysia Centre and other approved Strategic Infrastructure and Facilities for the NND [National Nanotechnology Directorate Division]
Pre-commercialisation and commercialisation of nanotechnology products
Education and public awareness programmes
Bringing in venture funds and international investments in nanotechnology
Building capacity and R&D facilities
Health, safety and environmental initiatives
International linkages and networking

NanoMalaysia Berhad is Malaysia’s Lead Agency for the:

Commercialization of Nanotechnology Research and Development
Industrialization of Nanotechnology
Facilitation of Investments in Nanotechnology
Human Capital Development in Nanotechnology

On the other side of the world in Nigeria, a nanotechnology conference is being held, March 24 – 28, 2014 at the University of Nigeria at Nsukka. Here’s a bit more about the African International Conference/Workshop ON Applications Of Nanotechnology To Energy, Environment And Health, from its homepage,

The economic, social and developmental arguments for organizing the African International Conference/Workshop at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN) are strong, compelling and urgent.

First, it is an incontrovertible fact that science and technology have emerged to become critical to economic growth and sustainability in modern economy. The developments in materials science have contributed significantly in man’s quest to conquer his environment. More importantly, renewable energy is likely to be man’s long term solution to increasing demand for energy.

The conference/workshop is being organized by the Nano Research Group, University of Nigeria at Nsukka In collaboration with Energy Materials, Materials Science and Manufacturing, CSIR [Council for Scientific and Industrial Research] Pretoria, South Africa.

In a March 25, 2014 news item on leadership.ng, Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo commented on the conference and the importance of nanotechnology to Nigeria’s plans,

The Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo, on Tuesday said increase access to electricity was crucial and fundamental to economic and social development of Nigeria.

Nebo made this known at the “1st African International Conference/Workshop on Application of Nanotechnology to Energy, Health and Environment’’, at the University of Nigeria (UNN), Nsukka.

Represented by Mr Albert Okorogu, his Senior Special Assistant to Access to Power and Renewable Energy, Nebo said about 30 million households in Nigeria had no access to electricity.

Nebo quoting the United Nations said about 600 million people of Sub-Sahara Africa lacked access to electricity.

“In Nigeria, 30 million households have no access to electricity. This is the reason why the Federal Ministry of Power is rolling out comprehensive roadmap on access to power.

“This roadmap will systematically connect households through grid and off-grid solutions,’’ he said.

Nebo said that President Goodluck Jonathan had in January [2014] inaugurated “Operation Light Up Rural Nigeria Initiatives’’, as part of efforts to ensure that all households had access to electricity.

“The pilot programme will provide energy-efficient lighting to homes, streets and community centres and villages with up-to-dates solar technologies.

“There is plan [sic] to replicate this pilot project across the 36 states of the federation,’’ he said.

He said that solar system made from nanoparticles had been used to produce steam, purify water and disinfected dental device. [sic]

According to him, the exploitation of nanotechnology in Nigeria will provide sustainable solutions to our environment, social responsibility, overall wellbeing as well as increase access to electricity.

…

I think someone was in a rush to write the news item hence the errors I’ve noted; there may be more.

Nanotechnology and public engagement in Thailand

1 Reply

It’s disconcerting when you find more information about nanotechnology efforts in Thailand than in your own country (Canada) even more so after checking and finding a similar comment back in a July 12, 2010 posting. Given that I have to wait for English translations of the materials produced in Thailand and assuming that only a portion of those materials are available in English and since the country is not a major trading partner (e.g. US) with Canada, I’m amazed and have to extend kudos to NANOTEC (Thailand’s National Nanotechnology Centre) for its communication efforts.

Here’s the latest from Thailand, according to an April 11, 2012 posting on the NANOTEC website,

Realizing the crucial role of utilizing nanotechnology in everyday life, Thailand is taking necessary steps to building public awareness to direct and indirect effects of nanomaterials and nanaoproducts to health and environment. A special public seminar supported by NANOTEC, NSTDA [National Science and Technology Development Agency], UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research), and Swiss Confederation was recently held in Khon Kaen during NanoThailand 2012 to address the topic of “Society, Nanosafety and Ethics on Nanotechnology Development”. Panel speakers on the topic of “Public knowledge of nanotechnology development” included Dr. Apisak Teeravisit (Development Science, Khon Kaen University), Dr. Suchin Simarak (Ford Rural System Research Project, Khon Kaen University), and Dr. Nalinee Sripaung (Ministry of Public Health).

This panel presentation is part of a larger project (from the April 11, 2012 posting),

Since 2012, Thailand has established a Nanosafety and Ethics Strategic Plan (2012-2016). The aim of the plan is to work in parallel with nanotechnology development thus preventing and minimizing potential risks related to nanomaterials and nanotechnology applications. The plan also aim to establish three strategies: establishment of knowledge management center, develop and reinforce measures, and promote public engagement activities.

NANOTEC and UNITAR have signed a Memorandum of Agreement in September 2011 to implement a Training and Capacity Building for the Development of the Nano-Safety Pilot project in Thailand (phase 1). The Nano Inception/Awareness Raising Workshop is part of the 18 month project.

If I understand this rightly, there is a national plan which incorporates the 18 month project with UNITAR as part of its strategy for raising public awareness.

I checked the UNITAR website and found that this is one of three projects listed on their Nanotechnology and Manufactured Nanomaterials; Pilot Projects page,

Starting in 2011, UNITAR will assist three countries in undertaking pilot projects aimed to develop and/or strengthen capacities to address Nanotechnology and Manufactured Nanomaterials. These projects, which are provided with funding support from the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC), will generate experiences and lessons learned that will be transmitted for deliberation at the third International Conference on Chemicals Management (ICCM-3), to be held in 2012.

The three countries are Thailand (Asia-Pacific region), Nigeria (Africa region), and Uruguay (Latin America and Caribbean region).

ETA April 13, 2012 : I understand that New Year, Songkran, is being celebrated in Thailand for four days starting from April 12, 2012. Happy New Year!

Nanotechnology in the developing world/global south

Leave a reply

Sometimes it’s called the ‘developing world’, sometimes it’s called the ‘global south’ and there have been other names before these. In any event, the organization, Nanotechnology for Development (Nano-dev) has released a policy brief about nanotechnology and emerging economies (?). Before discussing the brief, I have found a little information on the organization. From the Nano-dev home page,

Nanotechnology for development is a research project that aims at understanding how nanotechnology can contribute to development. By investigating way people deal with nanotechnology in Kenya, India and the Netherlands, the project will flesh out appropriate ways for governing nanotechnology for development.

Nanotechnology is a label for technologies at the nano-scale, roughly between 1 and 100 nanometers. This is extremely small. By comparison, the diameter of one human hair is about 60,000 nanometers. At this scale materials acquire all sorts of new characteristics that can be used in a wide range of novel applications. This potentially includes cheaper and more efficient technologies that can benefit the world’s poor, such as cheap water filters, efficient solar powered electricity, and portable diagnostic tests.

The four team members on the Nano-dev project are (from the Project Team page):

Pankaj Sekhsaria’s project seeks to understand the cultures of innovation in nanotechnology research in India, particularly in laboratories. He has a Bachelors Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pune University in India and a MA in Mass Communication from the Jamia Milia Islamia in New Delhi, India.

Trust Saidi’s research is on travelling nanotechnologies. He studied BSc in Geography and Environmental Studies at Zimbabwe Open University, BSc Honours in Geography at University of Zimbabwe, MSc in Public Policy and Human Development at Maastricht Graduate School of Governance, Maastricht University.

Charity Urama’s project investigates the role of knowledge brokerage in nanotechnology for development. She obtained her BSc Botany from the faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Nigeria, Nsukka and MSc from the school of Biological and Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Life sciences, University of Aberdeen (UK).

Koen Beumer focuses on the democratic risk governance of nanotechnologies for development. Koen Beumer studied Arts and Culture (BA) and Cultures of Arts, Science and Technology (MPhil, cum laude) at Maastricht University.

According to the April 4, 2012 news item on Nanowerk about the brief,

The key message of the policy brief is that nanotechnology can have both positive and negative consequences for countries in the global South. These should be pro-actively dealt with.

The positive consequences of nanotechnology include direct benefits in the form of solutions to the problems of the poor and indirect benefits in the form of economic growth. The negative consequences of nanotechnology include direct risks to human health and the environment and indirect risks such as a deepening of the global divide. Core challenges to harnessing nanotechnology for development include risk governance, cultures of innovation, knowledge brokerage and travelling technology.

What I found particularly interesting in the policy brief is the analysis of nanotechnology efforts in countries that are not usually mentioned (from the policy brief),

There are large differences amongst countries in the global South. Some countries, like India, Egypt, Brazil and South Africa, have invested substantial sums of money through dedicated programs. Often these are large countries with emerging economies. Dedicated programs and strategies have been generated with strong political support.

In other countries in the global South things look different. Several African countries, like Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe have expressed their interest in nanotechnologies and some activities can indeed be observed. But generally this activity does not exceed the level of individual researchers and incidental funding. [p. 3]

In addition to the usual concerns expressed over human health, they mention this risk,

Furthermore, properties at the nano-scale may be used to imitate the properties of rare minerals, thus affecting the export rates of their main producers, usually countries in the global South. Nanotechnologies may thus have reverse effects on material demands and consequently on the export of raw materials by countries in the global South (Schummer 2007). [p. 3]

Interesting thought that nanotechnology research could pose a risk to the economic welfare of countries that rely on the export of raw materials. Canada, anyone? If you think about it, all the excitement over nanocellulose doesn’t have to be an economic boon for ‘forestry-based’ countries. If cellulose is the most abundant polymer on earth what’s stop other countries from using their own nanocellulose. After all, Brazilian researchers are working on nanocellulose fibres derived from pineapples and bananas (my Mar. 28, 2011 and June 16, 2011 postings).

One final thing from the April 4, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

The NANO-DEV project is partnership of three research institutes led by Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Besides Maastricht University, it includes the University of Hyderabad (India) and the African Technology Policy Studies Network (Kenya).

FrogHeart

Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts

Tag Archives: Nigeria

Nigeria and its nanotechnology research

A June 2022 addition to the Nigerian nanotechnology story

China and the world’s largest multifunctional research platform for nanotechnology

After the April 22, 2017 US March for Science

Afrofuturism in the UK’s Guardian newspaper and as a Future Tense Dec. 2015 event

September 2014 issue of the Nano Bite (from the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) talks 2015 mini-grants, US National Chemistry Week, and ebola/silver nano

Nanotechnology, tobacco plants, and the Ebola virus

Things falling apart: both a Nigerian novel and research at the Massachusetts Intitute of Technology

Nano news from Malaysia and from Nigeria

Nanotechnology and public engagement in Thailand

Nanotechnology in the developing world/global south