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24 regional nanotechnology centres on the block in UK is old news?

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From Siobhan Wagner’s July 23, 2010 article on The Engineer website,

Science minister David Willetts told MPs yesterday it is ‘most unlikely’ the UK’s 24 nanotechnology centres will still be in existence in 18 months time.

In the first public meeting of the House of Commons science and technology committee, Willetts said the UK has too many centres that are ‘sub-critical in size’ and resources are fractionalised by region.

‘We have been getting a strong message that especially when times are tight that people want fewer, stronger centres,’ he said.

Given the budget concerns in the UK, the move can’t be any surprise. From Richard Jones’ (Soft Machines), July 11, 2010 posting (made before this potential cut was announced),

We know that the budget of his [Willetts’] department – Business, Innovation and Skills – will be cut by somewhere between 25%-33%. [emphasis mine] Science accounts for about 15% of this budget, with Universities accounting for another 29% (not counting the cost of student loans and grants, which accounts for another 27%). So, there’s not going to be a lot of room to protect spending on science and on research in Universities.

What I found particularly interesting in this posting is Willetts’ reference to a philosopher in his speech made July 9, 2010 and Jones’ discussion of what this reference might mean as the UK government grapples with science research, budget cuts, and finding common ground within a coalition that shares the rights and responsibilities of ruling,

More broadly, as society becomes more diverse and cultural traditions increasingly fractured, I see the scientific way of thinking – empiricism – becoming more and more important for binding us together. Increasingly, we have to abide by John Rawls’s standard for public reason – justifying a particular position by arguments that people from different moral or political backgrounds can accept. And coalition, I believe, is good for government and for science, given the premium now attached to reason and evidence. [Jones’ excerpt of Willetts’ speech]

The American political philosopher John Rawls was very concerned about how, in a pluralistic society, one could agree on a common set of moral norms. He rejected the idea that you could construct morality on entirely scientific grounds, as consequentialist ethical systems like utilitarianism try to, instead looking for a principles based morality; but he recognised that this was problematic in a society where Catholics, Methodists, Atheists and Muslims all had their different sets of principles. Hence the idea of trying to find moral principles that everyone in society can agree on, even though the grounds on which they approve of these principles may differ from group to group. In a coalition uniting parties including people as different as Evan Harris and Philippa Stroud [I assume one is a conservative and the other a liberal democrat in the UK’s coalition government] one can see why Willetts might want to call in Rawls for help.

Jones’ posting provides other insights into Willett’s perspective. (BTW, If you do check out the blog, be sure to read the comments.) As for what this perspective might mean relative to the proposed cut, I don’t know. Unfortunately, I have to wait for a future Jones’ posting where he will discuss,

The other significant aspect of Willetts’s speech was a wholesale rejection of the “linear model” of science and innovation, but this needs another post to discuss in detail.

In the meantime, Tim Harper, prinicipal of Cientifica (a nanotechnology consulting firm), and TNT blogger notes,

The lack of any reaction to Fridays announcement that many of the UKs nanotech centres would be unlikely to survive is because it is old news.

He goes on to speculate that the government is gradually preparing the public for the really big cuts due in October 2010. He also provides a brief history of the centres and some of the peculiar circumstances of their existence.

Australia sees shrinkage in nanotechnology business sector?; Off the deep end: an interview with Cheryl Geisler (part 2 of 3)

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There is a new report, Nanotechnology in Australia: Trends, Applications and Collaborative Opportunities, to be released Monday, February 22, 2010, which, apparently, claims that the number of Australian companies in the nanotechnology market has “plummeted.” Dexter Johnson, Nanoclast blog, on the IEEE website wrote the first item I read about this report which is being produced by the Australian Academy of Science and will be launched by the Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Minister, Kim Carr on Monday.

From Nanoclast,

The Australian Academy of Sciences in a soon-to-be-released report indicates that the number of nanotechnology companies in Australia is declining from an estimate of about 80 to around 55, and that the technology is simply not finding its way into commercial products.

According to the report, one of the key obstacles to this commercialization is “often dysfunctional” university intellectual property offices. I have covered this problem of poor tech transfer offices before when discussing a Cientifica report that came out late last year that recommended the following in order to start making money from nanotechnology: “Fire 90% of university tech transfer people and replace them with people who understand how small businesses and science based innovation actually works.”

Cientifica, mentioned in the excerpt from Nanoclast, is a company that’s been mentioned here before. Tim Harper, the principal, writes a blog (TNTlog) and has commented on the forthcoming report. From TNTlog,

My colleague Dexter Johnson (aka the Nanoclast) highlights a forthcoming report about the decline in the number of Australian nanotech companies, but it’s hardly surprising. Before anyone heralds the death of anything consider this:

* The global economy has resulted in a reduction of the number of companies in just about every sector of the economy. High streets where a third of the shops have closed are now common outside London, and everyone from estate agents to Starbucks have been rationalising, downsizing or going bust.

* As I mentioned back in 2001, most nanomaterials companies will go bust, some sooner, some later, but there is almost no way that anyone apart from large diversified chemical and materials companies can create a sustainable business in that sector. Of course if you told your VCs that nanotubes were the new gold you probably got closed down five years ago.

* Nanotech has been subject to a large amount of M&A [mergers and acquisitions] activity, Singular ID being snapped up by Bilicare for example, thereby disappearing from the Singapore register of nanotech companies and joining the Indian pharmaceutical industry.

* Most nanotech companies were start ups, and most start ups don’t survive too long, whatever the sector.

* I can think of plenty of companies making use of nanotechnologies that no one would consider being nanotech companies, so how a nanotech company is defined is also part of the problem.

I can’t believe I’m doing this but I agree with Harper on each and every point he makes in this excerpt. (For contrast, you can read my critique of one of Harper’s reports here in my July 24, 2008 post.) As for the rest of his post, I bow to his superior knowledge of the market reports and hype.

The original story was written by Cheryl Jones for The Australian. I’ve not been able to find a reference to the forthcoming report on  the Australian Academy of Science website.

As Harper points out the economy is global and affects everyone including Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Burnaby & Surrey, Canada) where I interviewed Cheryl Geisler, Dean of the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology.

Off the deep end: an interview with Cheryl Geisler (part 2)

Arriving at SFU on the heels of one of the largest economic meltdowns in decades and presiding over a new faculty during what is still considered a shaky economic recovery. Geisler is dealing with budgetary cuts and restraints. “Oh yeah, there were budgetary cuts this year across SFU, it was about 3%. [At the point] I think we’re pretty much flat in terms of the budget over the next three years but since salaries will not be flat that means other non-salary items have to suffer some re-organization.”

When pressed for more information, Geisler noted, “In the first instances you look for things that people are doing that they don’t really care about any more. Obviously, those can go [and that’s what we] more or less did this year. I always think it’s a bad idea to [say] we’ve got to cut, that’s a very demoralizing kind of goal. I’d rather think—ok—what can we create that’s new within the kinds of incentives, resources, and interests that we have. We might not be able to do everything we want but we can make sure that what we’re doing is what we really want to do.”

In looking at what any component of FCAT may want to achieve, it might be useful to cast an eye backward at each component’s history. The School for the Contemporary Arts started as a non credit cluster of courses in 1965 at SFU’s founding. By 1975 the programme had become an academic unit in the Faculty of Interdisciplinary Studies. In 1989 the centre was renamed a school, a name it retains to this day. No mention is made as to membership in any faculty other than interdisciplinary studies. (More details can be found here on their web page or here in the faculty’s wikipedia entry although there doesn’t seem to have been an update noting the school’s new home faculty). NOTE: I received the wikipedia information (never occurred to me to look there) after I posted part 1. Thanks Livleen! The entry also gives information that I’ll use to update contextual details about this interview that I posted on Feb.16.10)

Memory (mine) will have to serve for an abbreviated history of FCAT’s other components.

  • The School of Communication was an outgrowth from the Sociology/Anthropology Dept. It seems to have achieved departmental status by sometime in the late 1970s, presumably in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. At some point in the 1980s, the department of communication became a member of the Faculty of Applied Sciences.
  • The School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT) got its start in the late 1990s as part of the Technical University in Surrey, BC. The university was absorbed by SFU sometime in the early 2000s where it resided in the Faculty of Applied Sciences.
  • The Master’s of Publishing Programme was instituted in the late 1980s and was an outgrowth of the Canadian Centre for Studies in Publishing which, itself, was at one time affiliated with or housed in the Department of Communication and, presumably, in the Faculty of Applied Sciences.
  • The Masters of Digital Media came about as an initiative from the consortium (University of British Columbia, British Columbia Institute of Technology, Emily Carr University of Art + Design) which manages the Great Northern Way Campus facility in Vancouver. The programme was instituted in 2007 and has not been anchored in a faculty.

(If you have more accurate historical or other information, please do let me know.)

The discussion about faculties is not purely academic (pun intended) as there has been an impact for SIAT, at least. “Yes, both schools (Interactive Arts & Technology and Communication) were in the Faculty of Applied Sciences but if you look at the research programmes for most of the [faculty members in Communication] there’s a strong critical analysis of media component which is more in line with the Humanities. Really, the move from Applied Sciences is affecting SIAT more. One of the consequences is that the students who are applying are not as technically literate. SIAT has a mix of Humanities and Art Practice and Science so they need to make sure they maintain and nurture that kind of mix even though there’s always a potential for drift towards design and they’re not [associated as closely] with the Computer Science Department [through their membership] in Applied Sciences anymore.”

I’m moving fast today so may have to make some changes when I review this post later. Tomorrow: part 3 where we discuss access to research, public outreach, and Cheryl Geisler’s ‘dreams’.

Off the deep end: an interview with Cheryl Geisler Introduction, Part 1, Part 3

There’s gold in them thar nano hills; study on nanotechnology practices; robot actresses in Korea

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The World Gold Council has released a paper, Gold for Good: gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation which highlights the many benefits of using gold nanoparticles in areas ranging from medicine to the environment. From the news item on Azonano,

The report, which was produced in conjunction with Cientifica Ltd, the world’s leading source of global business and investor intelligence about nanotechnologies, demonstrates how gold nanoparticles offer the potential to overcome many of the serious issues facing mankind over the coming decades.

Gold nanoparticles exhibit a variety of unique properties which, when harnessed and manipulated effectively, lead to materials whose uses are both far-ranging in their potential and cost effective. This report explores the many different applications that are being developed across the fields of health, environment and technology.

I found the report a useful (and rosy) overview of gold nanoparticles, their various benefits, and their potential for business investors as to be expected when one of the report’s authors is Tim Harper of the TNT Blog and principal of Cientifica. The report can be found here.

Michael Berger over at Nanowerk has written up a spotlight feature on a study about safety practices in  nanotechnology laboratories that was published in Feb. 2010 in Nature Nanotechnology.  From Nanowerk,

Published in the February issue of Nature Nanotechnology (“Reported nanosafety practices in research laboratories worldwide”), Jesus Santamaria, who heads the Nanostructured Films and Particles (NFP) Group at the University of Zaragoza, and his team have conducted an online survey to identify what safety practices researchers are following in their own labs.

“The results of our survey indicate that environmental health and safety practice in many research laboratories worldwide is lacking in several important aspects, and several reasons may contribute to this” Santamaria tells Nanowerk. “Toxicity of nanomaterials is a complex subject because it depends on multiple factors including size, surface area, chemical composition, shape, aggregation, surface coating and solubility. Furthermore, most published research emphasizes acute toxicity and mortality, rather than chronic exposure and morbidity.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Maynard at 2020 Science has written up a pointed critique. From Andrew,

Out of all those researchers surveyed who thought the materials they were using might become airborne at some stage, 21% didn’t use any form of “special protection” and 30% didn’t use respiratory protection.  Yet there is no way of telling from the survey whether “special protection” (the authors’ terminology) was needed, or indeed whether any respiratory protection was needed.  A researcher handling small amounts of fumed silica for example – used as a food additive amongst other places – might well handle it using established lab safety procedures that are entirely adequate and don’t include the use of a respirator – in this survey they would be classed in the category of “most researchers” not using “suitabe personal and laboratory protection.”

Unfortunately the Nature Nanotechnology article is behind a paywall but it is worth looking at Andrew’s critique both for the insight it gives you into laboratory practices and for a better understanding of the problems posed by the questions in the survey. Properly framing questions and the answers respondents get to choose from is one of the most difficult aspects of creating a questionnaire.

Andrew never mentions it and I can’t get past the paywall to find out but the questionnaire (or instrument as it’s often called) should have been tested before it was used. I suspect it was not. That said, testing won’t necessarily identify all the problems once you start dealing with a larger sample but it should help.

I have a couple of other comments. I didn’t see any mention of demographic information. For example, are they more careful in smaller labs or does lab size make any difference in safety processes? Does age or experience as a researcher have an impact? Are chemists more careful than physicists? Are men more careful than women or vice versa?

My second comment has to do with self-selected respondents. Why did these people respond to a survey? Generally, if you are surveying people about an issue, the most likely to respond are the ones who feel most strongly about the issue and this can give you a false picture of the general population. In other words, your sample is not generalizable. I don’t think that’s necessarily the situation here but it is a factor that needs to be taken into account. I would expect most social scientists (I gather the Spanish team is not composed of social scientists) to use a number of instruments and not just a self-reporting survey although that may be the first step as more work is undertaken.

I should mention the GoodNanoGuide as sharing handling and safety practices are the reasons this site was developed by the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). From their website,

The GoodNanoGuide is a collaboration platform designed to enhance the ability of experts to exchange ideas on how best to handle nanomaterials in an occupational setting.

Now for something completely different, Korean robot actresses. From the news item on physorg.com,

EveR-3 (Eve Robot 3) starred in various dramas last year including the government-funded “Dwarfs” which attracted a full house, said Lee Ho-Gil, of the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.

The lifelike EveR-3 is 157 centimetres (five feet, two inches) tall, can communicate in Korean and English, and can express a total of 16 facial expressions — without ever forgetting her lines. Lee acknowledged that robot actresses find it hard to express the full gamut of emotions and also tend to bump into props and fellow (human) actors. But he said a thespian android was useful in promoting the cutting-edge industry.

Here’s a shot of the robot actress as Snow White (from physorg.com where you can see a larger version if you wish),

Courtesy of the Korean Institute of Technology, Eve Robot 3 in costume for Robot Princess and 7 Dwarfs

That’s it.