Posts Tagged ‘University College of London’

The UK’s Guardian newspaper science blogs go nano and experiment with editorial/advertorial

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

Small World, a nanotechnology blog, was launched today (Tuesday, Apr. 23, 2013)  on the UK’s Guardian newspaper science blogs network. Here’s more from the Introductory page,

Small World is a blog about new developments in nanotechnology funded by Nanopinion, a European Commission project. All the posts are commissioned by the Guardian, which has complete editorial control over the blog’s contents. The views expressed are those of the authors and not the EC

Essentially, Nanopinion is paying for this ‘space’ in much the same way one would pay for advertising but the posts will be written in an editorial style. In practice, this is usually called an ‘advertorial’. The difference between this blog and the usual advertorial is that the buyer (Nanopinion) is not producing or editing the content. By implication, this means that Nanopinion is not controlling the content. Getting back to practice, I would imagine that the Guardian editors are conscious that is an ethically complicated situation. It would be interesting to see what will happen to this paid-for-blog if ‘too many’ posts are negative or if their readership should decide this setup is so ethically questionable that they no longer trust or read the newspaper and/or its blogs.

The first posting on this blog by Kostas Kostarelos, professor of nanomedicine at University College London, on Apr. 23, 2013 is thoughtful (Note: Links have been removed),

There is beauty in exploring the nanoscale. But the idea gets more tainted the more we learn about it, like a young love affair full of expectation of the endless possibilities, which gradually becomes a dysfunctional relationship the more the partners learn about each other. One day we read about wonderful nanomaterials with exotic names such as zinc oxide nanowires, say, or silver nanocubes used to make ultra-efficient solar panels, and the next we read about shoebox bomb attacks against labs and researchers by anti-nanotechnology terrorist groups. It makes me wonder: is there a particular problem with nanotechnology?

As with all human relationships, we run the risk of raising expectations too high, too soon.

He goes on to discuss the dualistic nanotechnology discourse (good vs bad) and expresses his hope that the discourse will not degenerate into a ceaseless battle and says this,

… We should not allow vigilance, critical thinking and scientific rigor to transmute into polemic.

As someone who lives and breathes exploration on the nanoscale – which aims to create tools for doctors and other health professionals against some of our most debilitating diseases – I hope that this blog will offer an everyday insight into this journey and its great promises, flaws, highs and lows. We want to offer you a transparent and honest view of nanotechnology’s superhuman feats and its very human limitations.

I have mentioned Kostarelos in past postings, most recently in a Jan. 16, 2013 posting with regard to his involvement in a study on carbon nanotubes and toxicity.

As for Nanopinion, it put me in mind of another European Commission project, Nanochannels, mentioned in my Jan. 27, 2011 posting,

From the Jan. 17, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

Nanotechnology issues are about to hit the mass media in a big way. The new EC-funded NANOCHANNELS project was launched last week with a two-day kick-off meeting that led to the planning of a dynamic programme of communication, dialogue, and engagement in issues of nanotechnology aimed at European citizens.

Here’s how they describe Nanopinion (from the About Nanopinion page),

Nanopinion is an EC-funded project bringing together 17 partners from 11 countries with the aim of monitoring public opinion on what we hope for from innovation with nanotechnologies. The project is aimed citizens with a special focus on hard-to-reach target groups, which are people who do not normally encounter and give their opinion nanotechnologies at first hand.

Dialogue is facilitated online and in outreach events in 30 countries presenting different participatory formats.

To promote an informed debate, we also run a strong press & social media campaign and offer a repository with more than 150 resources.

Finally, nanOpinion offers an innovative educational programme for schools.

There are differences but they do have a very strong emphasis on communication, dialogue, and outreach both for the public and for schools. Although how a blog in the Guardian science blogs network will help Nanopinion contact ‘hard-to-reach’ target groups is a bit of a mystery to me but perhaps the blog is intended to somehow help them ‘monitor public opinion’? In any event, they sure seem to have a lot of these ‘nano’ dialogues in Europe.

The title of this new Guardian science blog (Small World) reminded me of an old Disney tune, ‘It’s a small world.’ I refuse to embed it here but if you are feeling curious or nostalgic, here’s the link: http://youtu.be/nxvlKp-76io.

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The yin and the yang of carbon nanotubes and toxicity

Wednesday, January 16th, 2013

 

Illustration courtesy of the University College of London (UCL). Downloaded from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0113/130115-chemistry-resolves-toxic-concerns-about-carbon-nanotubes

Illustration courtesy of the University College of London (UCL). Downloaded from http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0113/130115-chemistry-resolves-toxic-concerns-about-carbon-nanotubes

Researchers at the University College of London (UCL), France’s Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), and Italy’s University of Trieste have determined that carbon nanotube toxicity issues can be addressed be reducing their length and treating them chemically. From the Jan. 15,2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

In a new study, published January 15 [2013] in the journal Angewandte Chemie, evidence is provided that the asbestos-like reactivity and pathogenicity reported for long, pristine nanotubes can be completely alleviated if their surface is modified and their effective length is reduced as a result of chemical treatment.

First atomically described in the 1990s, carbon nanotubes are sheets of carbon atoms rolled up into hollow tubes just a few nanometres in diameter. Engineered carbon nanotubes can be chemically modified, with the addition of chemotherapeutic drugs, fluorescent tags or nucleic acids — opening up applications in cancer and gene therapy.

Furthermore, these chemically modified carbon nanotubes can pierce the cell membrane, acting as a kind of ‘nano-needle’, allowing the possibility of efficient transport of therapeutic and diagnostic agents directly into the cytoplasm of cells.

Among their downsides however, have been concerns about their safety profile. One of the most serious concerns, highlighted in 2008, involves the carcinogenic risk from the exposure and persistence of such fibres in the body. Some studies indicate that when long untreated carbon nanotubes are injected to the abdominal cavity of mice they can induce unwanted responses resembling those associated with exposure to certain asbestos fibres.

In this paper, the authors describe two different reactions which ask if any chemical modification can render the nanotubes non-toxic. They conclude that not all chemical treatments alleviate the toxicity risks associated with the material. Only those reactions that are able to render carbon nanotubes short and stably suspended in biological fluids without aggregation are able to result in safe, risk-free material.

Here’s a citation and link for this latest  research, from the ScienceDaily news item where you can also read the lead researcher’s comments about carbon nanotubes, safety, and unreasonable proposals to halt production,

Hanene Ali-Boucetta, Antonio Nunes, Raquel Sainz, M. Antonia Herrero, Bowen Tian, Maurizio Prato, Alberto Bianco, Kostas Kostarelos. Asbestos-like Pathogenicity of Long Carbon Nanotubes Alleviated by Chemical Functionalization. Angewandte Chemie International Edition, 2013; DOI: 10.1002/anie.201207664

The article is behind a paywall. I have mentioned long carbon nanotubes and their resemblance to asbestos fibres in several posts. The  Oct. 26, 2009 posting [scroll down about 1/3 of the way] highlights research which took place after the study where mice had carbon nanotubes injected into their bellies; in this second piece of research they inhaled the nanotubes.

ETA Jan. 21, 2013: Dexter Johnson gives context and commentary about this latest research into long multiwalled nanotubes (MWNTs) which he sums up as the answer to this question “What if you kept the MWNTs short?”  in a Jan. 18, 2013 posting on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website)

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Posted in health and safety, nanotechnology | 3 Comments »

Shades of 1939! Advance in x-ray imaging of nanomaterials

Wednesday, August 8th, 2012

The technique was first suggested in 1939 but wasn’t feasible until the advent of computers and their algorithms. Researchers at the University College of London have found a way to improve the quality of 3-D images of nanomaterials. From the Aug. 7, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

A new advance in X-ray imaging has revealed the dramatic three-dimensional shape of gold nanocrystals, and is likely to shine a light on the structure of other nano-scale materials.

Described today in Nature Communications, the new technique improves the quality of nanomaterial images, made using X-ray diffraction, by accurately correcting distortions in the X-ray light.

Dr Jesse Clark, lead author of the study from the London Centre for Nanotechnology [at the University College of London] said: “With nanomaterials playing an increasingly important role in many applications, there is a real need to be able to obtain very high quality three dimensional images of these samples.

“Up until now we have been limited by the quality of our X-rays. Here we have demonstrated that with imperfect X-ray sources we can still obtain very high quality images of nanomaterials.”

You can see the differences for yourself in this image provided by the researchers,

Figure: Shown on the left is the three dimensional image of a gold nanocrystal obtained previously while on the right is the image using the newly developed method. The features of the nanocrystal are vastly improved in the image on the left. The black scale bar is 100 nanometres (1 nanometre = 1 billionth of a meter). Downloaded from http://www.london-nano.com/research-and-facilities/highlight/advance-in-x-ray-imaging-shines-light-on-nanomaterials

The researchers have also provided two videos, the first features the current standard 3-D image of a gold nanocrystal and the second features the improved image,

Standard 3-D

Improved 3-D

The Aug. 7, 2012 news release originated from an article (Aug. 2012?) by Ian Robinson and Jesse Clark for the London Centre for Nanotechnology (part of the University College of London) giving context for the research and describing the technique (Note: I have removed a link),

Up until now, most nanomaterial imaging has been done using electron microscopy. X-ray imaging is an attractive alternative as X-rays penetrate further into the material than electrons and can be used in ambient or controlled environments.

However, making lenses that focus X-rays is very difficult. As an alternative, scientists use the indirect method of coherent diffraction imaging (CDI), where the diffraction pattern of the sample is measured (without lenses) and inverted to an image by computer.

Nobel Prize winner Lawrence Bragg suggested this method in 1939 but had no way to determine the missing phases of the diffraction, which are today provided by computer algorithms.

CDI can be performed very well at the latest synchrotron X-ray sources such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source which have much higher coherent flux than earlier machines.  CDI is gaining momentum in the study of nanomaterials, but, until now, has suffered from poor synchimage quality, with broken or non-uniform density.  This had been attributed to imperfect coherence of the X-ray light used.

The dramatic three-dimensional images of gold nanocrystals presented in this study demonstrate that this distortion can be corrected by appropriate modelling of the coherence function.

Professor Ian Robinson, London Centre for Nanotechnology and author of the paper said: “The corrected images are far more interpretable that ever obtained previously and will likely lead to new understanding of structure of nanoscale materials.”

The method should also work for free-electron-laser, electron- and atom-based diffractive imaging.

That mention of the UK’s Diamond Light Source reminded me of the Canadian Light Source located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I imagine this work will open up some possibilities for the researchers there.

For those who would like to read more about the work, here’s a citation for the article,

High resolution three dimensional partially coherent diffraction imaging, Nature Communications.  J.N. Clark, X. Huang, R. Harder, & I.K. Robinson Nature Communications 3, Article number: 993 doi:10.1038/ncomms1994

This article is behind a paywall.

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Sniffing old books

Thursday, May 3rd, 2012

I don’t know if it’s nano but this story about old books and their smell ‘speaks’ to me. Thanks to GrrlScientist for her May 1, 2012 posting about this interesting work on degradomics,

Every time I catch a whiff of that special old books smell, I am transported through time and space to the cool welcoming basement of The Strand Bookstore in New York City, where I spent many hot humid summer afternoons, searching for some used book I’ve never seen nor even heard of, or sitting on the cold concrete floor, reading. The smell of old books isn’t pleasant, exactly, but it is unmistakable — and powerfully evocative.

“A combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness,” writes an international team of chemists from University College London (UCL) and the University of Ljubljana (UL) in Slovenia in their scientific paper ([Material Degradomics: On the Smell of Old Books] doi:10.1021/ac9016049 [this paper is behind a paywall despite the fact the paper was published in 2009]).

Here’s an entertaining video about this work,

Not all old books are deteriorating and expelling gases. There are some very old books that are in pretty good condition. The problem arises with the paper production techniques of the 19th and 20th centuries. We put a lot of acid in our papers and that’s what’s breaking down the material. From GrrlScientist’s May 1, 2012 posting,

The one factor that speeds a book’s death more rapidly than any other is acidity: paper that is too acidic significantly decreases a book’s lifespan. These papers are cheap and easy to mass produce. This explains why a newspaper clipping left in the pages of a book creates an ugly orange-brown stain on the book’s pages. But books have also been printed on acidic paper. Many of the books now crowding onto shelves in used bookstores were published in the 19th and 20th centuries; yellowing books with brown spots and crackling bindings that were mass printed on cheap paper that was too acidic. These books are aging rapidly whilst much older books are still in good shape because the paper they were printed on was much purer.

The paper’s lead author, Matija Strlič, is a senior lecturer at the University College of London (UCL) and he has a research interest that I did not realize existed, Heritage Smells,

Research interests span multi-disciplinary research linked to cultural heritage. The focus of these efforts are the development of new scientific tools and methods of study of heritage materials, collections and their interactions with the environment. Among the pioneering contributions are the development of degradomics, use of Near Infrared Spectrometry with chemometric data analysis in heritage science, use of chemiluminometry for studies of degradation of organic heritage materials, and studies of emission and absorption of volatile degradation products in heritage collections. My current research interests include development and use of damage functions and integrated modeling of heritage collections.

Presently, Matija Strlic is the Principal Investigator of the UK AHRC/EPSRC Science and Heritage Programme project Collections Demography (2010-2013) and a Co-Investigator on Heritage Smells! (2010-2013).  He is also involved in  several other projects, including the EU projects POPART (2009-2012, “Preservation of plastic artefacts in museum collections”) and TEACH (2009-2011, “Technologies and tools to prioritize assessment and diagnosis of air pollution impact on immovable and movable cultural heritage”), and UK Technology Strategy Board-funded project Heritage Intelligence (2009-2011).
In the past few years he has been  involved in other large collaborative projects: coordination of SurveNIR (2005-2008, “Near Infrared Tool for Collection Surveying”), scientific coordination of Papylum (2001-2004, “Chemiluminescence – a novel tool in paper conservation studies”), and participation in PaperTreat (2005-2008, “Evaluation of mass deacidification processes”), InkCor (2002-2005, “Stabilisation of iron-gall ink containing paper”) and MIP (2002-2005, “Metals in paper”). He co-coordinated the 8th European Conference on Research for Protection, Conservation and Enhancement of Cultural Heritage, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 10-13 November 2008.

Our paper is crumbling, eh? That means song sheets with the notations from composers such as Beethoven, etc.; original editions of important books of literature and nonfiction; drawings and prints by important artists; and scientific and other research papers; in other words,  historical documents of all kinds will be disappearing unless researchers can find a solution to the problem.

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