Monthly Archives: January 2009

Public understanding/engagement of nanotechnology in Canada?

There’s an interesting series of postings about public Understanding of science (it has a hideous acronym: PUS although I think some people are now using this one: PUoS). The main discussion starts with Richard Jones on his blog Soft Machines. Basically, he sums up the history of public understanding of nanotechnology in UK while providing some additional discussion and Andrew Maynard writes a ‘companion’ piece about the situation in the US. Both Jones and Maynard are scientists and advisors to various government and non governmental organizations. For the Jones material, go here and for the Maynard material, go here. I started with Dexter’s Johnson’s (IEE) comments about both postings here.

I am deeply jealous that there are programmes and interest in the UK and the US since there aren’t any here in Canada. We’ve done some of that kind of work in the area of biotechnology (much of it focused on genomics) but the nanotechnology end of things has been pretty much ignored, so far as I can tell. (Note: Quebec may be an exception. I have not scanned French language materials.) There is a National Institute of Nanotechnology but they don’t give out much information about their projects or their role for that matter.

it’s tempting to condemn the Canadian federal government and its policies regarding science generally and nanotechnology specifically but I dunno. Formal processes such as public meetings and forums and exercises are useful and can be quite meaningful but they will not obliterate the possibility of public misunderstandings, panic and hysteria, one of the unstated goals of public understanding or engagement in science.

The big panic that comes to mind is ‘frankenfoods’. That word which fused a pop culture icon emblematic of anxieties about science to concerns about food came to describe the whole of biotechnology. It’s a more complicated story as there a number of actors in the drama  but this is the short version and for a lot of people the word ‘frankenfood’ acted as a kind of shorthand. They didn’t have to understand the debates or any of the issues. We all do that sort of thing one way or another. There’s just too much information and too many ideas with not enough time and, sometimes, not enough interest.

‘Frankenfood’ was first mentioned in a letter to the New York Times. It was written by someone who has written many letter criticizing science and technology and there was no way to know that this time something different was about to happen.

I will continue tomorrow.

Nano vitamins, honey bee mystery, and a history of risk

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has an event tomorrow, Jan. 14 2009 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am EST (with a 6:30 am PST start time, I think I’ll wait ’til they post the webcast). If you want to see the webcast (Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins) live or, if you’re planning to attend,  RSVP, go here. This seems more like a press conference than one of their standard events given the time and the planned distribution post webcast of a report on food supplement regulation as per nanotechnology innovations.

Genome BC has a free public forum coming up on January 20, 2009 (next Tuesday). It’s called ‘Why are Bees Disappearing and Could Poplar Trees be the Next Biofuel?’  There are speakers from the University of British Columbia and one from the BC Innovation Council.  Location is: Science World, 1455 Quebec St., Vancouver and the time is: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Go here for more details and for pre-registration.

I found an interesting aggregator, Allport, which offers amongst other topics a nanotechnology page listing ‘All the top nanotechnology news’ from various blogs. Go here for a look. Allport describes itself as: a “digital magazine rack of the internet” (from their About Allport page).

After noticing yesterday’s kerfuffle (in Canadian media) about risk, regulation, and nanotechnology, I decided to take another look at that report, ‘Small is different’ from the Council of Canadian Academies’. Here’s what they had to say in their summary,

Although the panel believes that it is not necessary to create new regulatory mechanisms to address the unique challenges presented by nanomaterials, existing regulatory mechanisms could and should be strengthened.  p. 9

(Arguably the regulatory mechanisms should be strengthened regardless of any innovations due to nanotechnology or other emerging technology.) In any event, it’s interesting to contrast the text in the report with the news items which suggest a more strident tone.

Mon oncle Camille Morissett

My uncle Camille died yesterday or today. My mother was not able to give me details, too upset. Camille was the last of her brothers. I’ve never been sure how many there were, mamman was one of 24 children (her brother, the priest, numbered them at 23 since one of the babies died before being baptized). I met most of them but mamman had moved away from Quebec, landing in BC finally and so the two of her brothers who followed (Camille and Gabriel, both electricians), were the siblings I knew the best. There was an economic downturn in the 1950s and that’s when mon oncle Camille moved to the US. He went there for work and eventually became a citizen.

He usually worked in California although he went, along with this wife, ma tante Eileen, hauling their mobile home to wherever there was work. They eventually retired to the northwest in Ferndale, WA. Ma tante Eileen is from Vancouver originally and is of a generation that never had any French classes and, despite with living mon oncle Camille for over 50 years I don’t think she learned any French along the way. This must have made for some interesting times as mon oncle Camille’s accent was quite thick.

It was an occasion when mon oncle Camille and ma tante Eileen visited. They’d always traveled from somewhere exotic such as California or Minnesota or wherever the latest construction project had offered work. They always had a very bad tempered Dachshund (my mother claimed that her brother drove the dogs crazy and that’s why they were more inclined to snap at you than lick you).

During my childhood, mon oncle Camille was a beacon of humour with  endless exuberance and appreciation for life. There was always a laugh to be had with him and for that I loved and love him dearly.

Kerfuffle (?) about regulating nano in Canada

Canadian Press has an article by John Cotter ‘Experts have wanted Ottawa to regulate nanotechnology Ottawa has yet to respond’ that’s making the rounds in the blogosphere. The report being discussed ‘Small is different’ was filed July 2008 and can be found here, just look down the list. I did mention the report here about the time it was released.

The thing that makes the article interesting to me is that it seems like there’s a kerfuffle but it’s one article that’s been picked up and published all over the place. It’s not obvious because a publication doesn’t necessarily use the whole piece, regardless, if you look, it’s always attributed to Canadian Press and you’ll notice that what you’re reading is an edited version (or, if they list the author John  Cotter, you’re reading the whole article).

Synthetic biology, ethics, and IT

I watched the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) live webcast yesterday (Jan.8.09) with Arthur Caplan, an ethicist, discussing ethical implications associated with synthetic biology. If you’re interested the webcast will be compressed and made available on their site in about five or six days. (I’ll put up a link when I see it there.)

There ware a couple of interesting bits. Caplan pointed out that emerging technology and science is often represented as appearing magically overnight  when in fact it’s the result of years of incremental work which was being discussed not only by scientists but also social scientists, ethicists, and policy makers.  I think that happens because it makes a better story and/or because a lot of reporters have no context. Reporters don’t necessarily spend much time on any particular beat and today’s science reporter might be yesterday’s sports reporter.

Caplan also mentioned Craig Venter who is determined to prove that there is no difference between life and nonlife. ie. That you can create a living organism by putting together ingredients such as synthesized DNA that you can purchase via the internet. Denise Caruso (blog posting Jan.7.09) alluded to that perspective in her PEN webcast on synthetic biology. She ascribed to the fact that a lot of the people involved in developing synthetic biology have engineering and/or IT backgrounds. As she pointed out, organismic biologists do not share the opinion and in fact use different language and, for the most part, are not involved in the synthetic biology discussions.

Synthetic conversation between Rick Weiss and Denise Caruso

The conversation took place under the auspices of the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) in November 2008 and thank goodness for webcasting since that means there’s a copy free for the viewing here [ETA Sept. 30, 2011: I have replaced the link as it points to the wrong page with this URL http://www.synbioproject.org/events/archive/synthetic_biology_coming_up_fast/]. The discussion is absorbing and I highly recommend it. However, it’s disturbing. They discuss bio error and bio terror along with mentioning how easy it would be to create synthetic life (this leads to a brief discussion about how we define life).  It’s provocative in a thoughtful way. Weiss was a science reporter who is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress. Caruso (former journalist) is the executive director of the Hybrid Vigor Institute which she founded in 2000.

There is an ethics discussion about synthetic biology tomorrow at PEN 9:30 – 10:30 am PST. Go here to enjoy the live webcast or to view it later.

Nano events

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a couple of events coming up later this month. The first one is this coming Thurs., Jan. 8, 2009 ‘Synthetic Biology: Is Ethics A Showstopper? from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm EST. The event features two speakers, Arthur Caplan, an ethicist from the University of Pennsylvania, and Andrew Maynard, the chief science advisor for PEN. They request an RSVP, if you are attending in person. Go here for more details and/or to RSVP. Or you can view the webcast live or later. Their other event is on Weds.,  Jan. 14, 2009 and is called ‘Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins’. The time for this event is 9:30 am – 10:30 am EST. The featured speakers, William B. Schultz and Lisa Barclay, are the authors of a report for PEN about the FDA and how it can address issues surrounding dietary supplements that use nanomaterials. For more details about the event and/or to RSVP, go here. There is also the webcast option. There is a link to the report from the event page but you have to log in to view it (as of Jan.6.09).

Nanotech BC is cancelling its Jan. 15, 2009 breakfast speaker event. Meanwhile, Nanotech BC organizers are preparing for the second Cascadia Symposium on April 20 – 21, 2009 at the Bayshore. They’ve gone for a larger venue (250 people) than last year’s. No other details are available yet.

Happy 2009!

I just read ‘How spintronics went from the lab to the iPod’ by W. Patrick McCray in the online January 2009 issue of Nature Nanotechnology, it’s here. The author is in the history department of the University of California at Santa Barbara and he provides an intriguing view of how nanotechnology, electronics, academic, military, and business interests converged in various applications, the best known being the iPod. He also provides a brief history of how the discovery (giant magnetoresistance) was made by two teams independently of each other (but almost simultaneously) who agreed to share credit and ultimately a Nobel prize. (BTW, that last bit contrasts nicely with Crick and Watson with their double helix and the way they took full credit when at least some should have gone to Rosalind Franklin.)

For anyone who doesn’t know about giant magnetoresistance (GMR), we start with magnetoresistance (from the article),

Magnetoresistance, a change in the electrical resistance of a conductor caused by an applied magnetic field was first observed … in 1857 (p. 2)

The source was not discovered until quantum mechanics became an area of interest,

… the physics underlying electron spin — which is the ultimate source of magnetism in most materials — dates back to … the golden era of quantum mechanics. The effect was quite small … but that all changed … in 1988. [One team in Germany and another team in France sandwiched very thin layers {1 nm} of nonmagnetic materials with magnetic materials to observe a significant {10% for one team and 50% for the other team} change in electrical resistance in the presence of a magnetic field. Presumably lowering the resistance which {researchers at IBM realized} meant that disc drives could become smaller and hold more information {which is how we ultimately with an iPod}.

GMR also represented the first example of a new kind of technology called ‘spintronics’, so-called because it exploits the spin of the electron, as well as its electric charge, store and process information. p. 2 (the stuff in square brackets is my attempt to massage the information so I don’t quote the entire article]

Do read the story.