Monthly Archives: November 2009

Vancouver political pundits puzzled by small business question; evolving theory about science, innovation, and business in Canada

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They gave me ‘Bambi eyes’ in response to my question about Vancouver city council’s performance vis a vis supporting small business. It happened on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009, when I attended Michael Geller’s “That Was the Year That Was”  1st anniversary review of Vancouver’s city council performance since its election. (I will link this to my evolving theory about science, innovation, and business but first I have to tell the story.)

It was a very interesting and very civil discussion. I was particularly thankful for the civility since I have been to political meetings where people rant and scream at each other. It was also very much an insider’s meeting. Most people knew each other and the majority were from the NPA. As you’d expect with people who know each other a nicety or two was forgotten. The first speaker did not identify himself and he introduced the 1st panel’s moderator so quickly that I missed the name although I did remark that the moderator is an architect.

The first panel offered a good review of the projects and problems that have been addressed since the election and panel members (Michael Geller, Gordon Price, and Jim Green) provided contrasting insights into various situations. The presentation could have done with a little editing.  Too long and a bit repetitive.

The second panel was on Vancouver’s economic development and the green economy. The moderator was Peter Ladner and panel members were Gordon Price (again), John Tylee, and James Fletcher. I was a bit disappointed in this one. Fletcher’s comments were on the academic side and at times vague; Price was cogent although he didn’t have any big revelations; and Tylee was focused on attracting big business (technology industries, I think) and developing ‘sticky’ relationships. (sigh) Do the marketing types really want to reference Madonna and/or poor sanitation practices? Or are they more scientifically minded and going for a reference to particle physics? It’s beside the point anyway. Large businesses care about their bottom line and when times get tough they cut employee numbers and/or facilities regardless of ‘sticky’ relationships. Since many of the technology businesses in Vancouver have headquarters in the US where the newly elected Democratic administration has committed to a ‘Made in the USA’ policy/protectionism, you can assume that they will cut in Canada first and more deeply.

(For some insight into the new US protectionism check this story about the City of Sacramento digging up newly laid pipe that had Made in Canada stamped on it. The irony: the pipes were made of materials imported from Texas. Go here for more.)

There wasn’t much about the green economy and virtually no detail  was offered.

The third panel featured media pundits Miro Cernetig, Jonathan Ross, Monte Paulsen, and Mike Klassen as panelists and Frances Bula as the moderator. This was the panel that responded with ‘Bambi eyes’ when I asked a perfectly simple question which I have to paraphrase as I don’t recall the exact wording. “What is your take on city council’s support for small business?” In my preamble I referenced the previous panel’s focus on big business and noted that small business owners contribute hugely to neighbourhoods and their character.  Klassen was the only person who attempted a response or even seemed to grasp the nature of the question. While he didn’t have anything substantive, he did note some of the problems that come with a strong focus on hosting big business facilities (i.e. branch plants) mentioning Kodak. If y0u want more proof that there is no such thing as a ‘sticky’ relationship with larger enterprises, check out this blog entry from someone working at Kodak’s facility in Burnaby (before its purchase this was the local business,  Creo Products).

I was shocked. Quite frankly I expected more of this panel. If nothing else they could have noted that it’s not on the agenda at the moment or …  Although how they’ve missed the fact that a lot of small businesses are having problems (I’m seeing vacancies (Edie’s Hats, Big News, etc.), departures (Jackson’s Meats, McKinnon’s Bakery, etc.)  coupled with some very large US retailers (American Apparel, Williams and Sonoma,  etc.) moving into my neighbourhood).

On another matter, Bula’s moderation was problematic and I should note here that she had the most challenging panel of the morning. Back to the problems. First, she seated herself in the centre of the table with panelists on either side of her in contrast the other two moderators stood a little removed and to the side of their panels. (Sitting in the center of the panel makes it harder to establish eye contact with individual panelists and makes it harder to manage them.)  She had a difficult panel member with Klassen who highjacked the discussion a few times.

Another problem with sitting in the middle of the panel is that you tend to forget that you’re moderating and not a member of the panel and so,  Bula forgot a few times. However, my biggest disappointment was that she didn’t shut down questions and comments that really had nothing to do with the topic at hand, the pundits’ perspective on the current city council’s performance. Instead, there was a substantive period of time devoted to the state of journalism, newspapers and newspaper writing, the roles of bloggers vis a vis journalists, and the question of how one makes money by blogging. Then, she had to cut off questions at the end because there wasn’t enough time. (As for the two other moderators, the first one had a smoothly oiled machine as panels go and needed only to keep time [I think he could have been a little more aggressive about that] and the second one, Peter Ladner, gave a mediocre performance with a low energy panel. He could have dome more to provoke comments  and/or questions from the panel and the audience.)

This all got me to thinking about business, science, and innovation. I’ve discussed in the past my issues with Canadian businesses not having their own commercial research labs and their general reluctance to invest in innovation.

Until this meeting, I hadn’t realized how little interest there is in Canadian business of any size. The plan for Vancouver’s economic development is to attract big business which generally means a business from the US (or another country). How are we going to encourage innovation and risk taking if we don’t support business large and small? It seems to me that we need to create a kind of business ecosystem which supports businesses and we need to start with the small ones, those local retailers that add so much to the experience of a neighbourhood. I think we need to change the mindset about business at every level and that focusing on Canada’s larger businesses and asking how we can get them to take more risks and become more innovative misses the point. We need to develop a culture around all of our businesses.

For anyone who’s interested in more comments about Geller’s event or Vancouver politics, you can visit: civicscene.ca, citycaucus.com, Michael Geller’s blog, and Frances Bula’s blog. My reservations notwithstanding, it was a worthwhile event and as these things go, came off remarkably well, Bravo to the organizers!

Pop culture, science communication, and nanotechnology

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A few years back I wrote a paper for the  Cascadia Nanotech Symposium (March 2007 held in Vancouver) called: Engaging Nanotechnology: pop culture, media, and public awareness. I was reminded it of a few days ago when I saw a mention on Andrew Maynard’s, 2020 Science blog about a seminar titled, Biopolitics of Popular Culture being held in Irvine, California on Dec. 4, 2009 by the Institute of Ethics for Emerging Technologies. (You can read more of Andrew’s comments here or you can check out the meeting details here.) From the meeting website,

Popular culture is full of tropes and cliches that shape our debates about emerging technologies. Our most transcendent expectations for technology come from pop culture, and the most common objections to emerging technologies come from science fiction and horror, from Frankenstein and Brave New World to Gattaca and the Terminator.

Why is it that almost every person in fiction who wants to live a longer than normal life is evil or pays some terrible price? What does it say about attitudes towards posthuman possibilities when mutants in Heroes or the X-Men, or cyborgs in Battlestar Galactica or Iron Man, or vampires in True Blood or Twilight are depicted as capable of responsible citizenship?

Is Hollywood reflecting a transhuman turn in popular culture, helping us imagine a day when magical and muggle can live together in a peaceful Star Trek federation? Will the merging of pop culture, social networking and virtual reality into a heightened augmented reality encourage us all to make our lives a form of participative fiction?

During this day long seminar we will engage with culture critics, artists, writers, and filmmakers to explore the biopolitics that are implicit in depictions of emerging technology in literature, film and television.

I’m not sure what they mean by biopolitics, especially after the lecture I attended at Simon Fraser University’s downtown campus last night (Nov. 12, 2009), Liminal Livestock. Last night’s lecture by Susan Squier highlighted (this is oversimplified) the relationship between women and chickens in the light of reproductive technologies.  From the lecture description,

Adapting SubRosa Art Collective’s memorable question, this talk asks: “What does it mean, to feminism and to agriculture, that women are like chickens and chickens are like women?” As liminal livestock, chickens play a central role in our gendered agricultural imaginary: the zone where we find the “speculative, propositional fabric of agricultural thought.” Analyzing several children’s stories, a novel, and a documentary film, the talk seeks to discover some of the factors that help to shape the role of women in agriculture, and the role of agriculture in women’s lives.

Squier did also discuss reproductive technologies at some length although it’s not obvious from the description that the topic will arise. She discussed the transition of chicken raising as a woman’s job to a man’s job which coincided with the rise of  chicken factory farms. Squier also noted the current interest in raising chickens in city and suburban areas without speculating on possible cultural impacts.

The lecture covered  selective breeding and the shift of university  poultry science departments from the study of science to the study of increasing chicken productivity, which led to tampering with genes and other reproductive technologies. One thing I didn’t realize is that chicken eggs are used for studies on human reproduction. Disturbingly, Squier talked to an American scientist, whose work concerns human reproduction, who moved to Britain because the chicken eggs are of such poor quality in the US.

The relationship between women and chickens was metaphorical and illustrated through popular children’s stories and pop culture artifacts (i.e. poultry beauty pageants featuring women not chickens) in a way that would require reproducing far more of the lecture than I can here. So if you are interested, I understand that Squier does have a book about women and chickens being published although I can’t find a publication date.

Squier’s lecture and the meeting for the Institute of Ethics for Emerging Technologies present different ways of integrating pop culture elements into the discussion about science and emerging technologies. Since I’m tooting my horn, I’m going to finish with my thoughts on the matter as written in my Cascadia Nanotechnology Symposium paper,

The process of accepting, rejecting, or changing new sciences and new technologies seems more akin to a freewheeling, creative conversation with competing narratives than a transfer of information from experts to nonexperts as per the science literacy model.

The focus on establishing how much awareness the public has about nanotechnology by measuring the number of articles in the newspaper or items in the broadcast media or even tracking the topic in the blogosphere is useful as one of a set of tools.

Disturbing as it is to think that it could be used for purely manipulative purposes, finding out how people develop their attitudes towards new technologies and the interplay between cognition, affect, and values has the potential to help us better understand ourselves and our relationship to the sciences. (In this paper, the terms science and technology are being used interchangeably, as is often the case with nanotechnology.)

Pop culture provides a valuable view into how nonexperts learn about science (books, television, etc.) and accept technological innovations (e.g. rejecting the phonograph as a talking book technology but accepting it for music listening).

There is a collaborative and interactive process at the heart of the nanotechnology ‘discussion’. For example, Drexler appears to be responding to some of his critics by revising some of his earlier suppositions about how nanotechnology would work. Interestingly, he also appears to be downplaying his earlier concerns about nanoassemblers running amok and unleashing the ‘goo’ scenario on us all. (BBC News, June 9, 2004)

In reviewing all of the material about communicating science, public attitudes, and values, one thing stands out: time. Electricity was seen by some as deeply disturbing to the cosmic forces of the universe. There was resistance to the idea for decades and, in some cases (the Amish), that resistance lives on. Despite all this, there is not a country in the world today that doesn’t have electricity.

One final note: I didn’t mean to suggest the inexorable adoption of any and all technologies, my intent was to point out the impossibility of determining a technology’s future adoption or rejection by measuring contemporary attitudes, hostile or otherwise.

’nuff said for today. Happy weekend!

Nano augments reality; PEN’s consumer nano products inventory goes mobile and interactive; Two Cultures; Michael Geller’s ‘Look at Vancouver’ event

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There was a nanotechnology mention hidden in a recent article (Augmented Reality is Both a Fad and the Future — Here’s Why by Farhad Manjoo in Fast Company) about a new iPhone application by Yelp, Monocle. From the article,

Babak Parviz, a bio-nanotechnologist at the University of Washington, has been working on augmented-reality contact lenses that would layer computer graphics on everything around us — in other words, we’d have Terminator eyes. “We have a vast amount of data on the Web, but today we see it on a flat screen,” says Michael Zöllner, an augmented-reality researcher at Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research. “It’s only a small step to see all of it superimposed on our lives.” Much of this sounds like a comic-book version of technology, and indeed, all of this buzz led the research firm Gartner to put AR on its “hype cycle” for emerging technologies — well on its way to the “peak of inflated expectations.”

Manjoo goes on to note that augmented reality is not new although he’s not able to go back to the 1890s as I did in yesterday’s (Nov. 11, 2009) posting about using clouds to display data.

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has produced an exciting new iPhone application, findNano which allows users to access PEN’s consumer products inventory via their mobile phones. From the news item on Azonano,

findNano allows users to browse an inventory of more than 1,000 nanotechnology-enabled consumer products, from sporting goods to food products and electronics to toys, using the iPhone and iPod Touch. Using the built-in camera, iPhone users can even submit new nanotech products to be included in future inventory updates.

That bit about users submitting information for their database reminds me of a news item about scientists in the UK setting up a database that can be accessed by mobile phones allowing ordinary citizens to participate in gathering science information (I posted about it here). I wonder how PEN will track participation and if they will produce a report on the results (good and/or bad).

One thing I did notice is that PEN’s consumer products inventory has over 1000 items while the new European inventory I mentioned in my Nov. 10, 2009 posting has 151 items.

I finally finished reading The Two Cultures: and A Second Look (a publication of the text for the original talk along with an updated view) by C. P. Snow. This year is the 50th anniversary. My interest in Snow’s talk was reanimated  by Andrew Maynard’s postings about the anniversary and the talk in his 2020 Science blog. He has three commentaries starting here with a poll, and his May 5, 2009 and May 6, 2009 postings on the topic.

I had heard of The Two Cultures but understood it to be about the culture gap between the sciences and the arts/humanities. This is a profound misunderstanding of Snow’s talk/publication which was more concerned with raising the standard of living and health globally. Snow’s second look was a failed attempt to redress the misunderstanding.

From a writer’s perspective, his problem started with the title which sets the frame for his whole talk. He then opened with a discussion of literary intellectuals and scientists (bringing us back to the number two), their differences and the culture gap that ensues. Finally, over 1/2 of his talk was over by the time he started the serious discussion about extending the benefits of what he termed ‘the scientific revolution’ globally.

It’s an interesting read and some of it (the discussion about education) is still quite timely.

Michael Geller,  local architect, planner, real estate consultant, and developer in Vancouver (Canada), has organized an event to review the happenings in the city since the last election in 2008. From the news release (on Frances Bula’s blog),

SATURDAY NOVEMBER 14, 20009 marks the one year anniversary of the last election day in Vancouver; a day that resulted in a significant change in the political landscape and leadership of our city.  The purpose of this event is to mark this anniversary with a review of the highlights of the past year in Vancouver municipal politics, particularly in terms of the accomplishments of Council and staff in the areas of housing, planning and development; fiscal management and economic development; and leadership.

The event will be held at the Morris J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue (lower level) at 515 West Hastings from 8:00 am to 12:30 pm. Admission by donation. Geller has arranged a pretty interesting lineup for his three panel discussions although one of the commenters on Bula’s blog is highly unimpressed with both the speakers and anyone who might foolishly attend.

Cloud project for London 2012 Olympics includes Umberto Eco?; University of Toronto researchers work on nano nose; Nano safety research centre in Scotland

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Shades of the 19th century! One of the teams competing to build a 2012 Olympics tourist attraction for London’s east end has proposed digital clouds. According to the article (Digital cloud plan for city skies) by Jonathan Fildes, online here at BBC News,

The construction would include 120m- (400ft-) tall mesh towers and a series of interconnected plastic bubbles that can be used to display images and data.

The Cloud, as it is known, would also be used [as] an observation deck and park

The idea of displaying images and data on clouds isn’t entirely new,

… the prospect of illuminated messages on the slate of the heavens … most fascinated experts and layman. “Imagine the effect,” speculated the Electrical Review [Dec. 31, 1892], “if a million people saw in gigantic characters across the clouds such words as ‘BEWARE OF PROTECTION’ and “FREE TRADE LEADS TO H–L!”

(The passage is from Carolyn Marvin’s book, When old technologies were new.) I’m not sure what protection refers to but the reference to free trade still feels fresh.

I always find technology connections to the past quite interesting as similar ideas pop up independently from time to time and I’d be willing to bet the 2012 cloud team has no idea that displaying messages on clouds had been proposed as far back as the 1890s.

The current project has some interesting twists. The team is proposing to fund it with micro-donations from millions of people. From the BBC article,

“It’s really about people coming together to raise the Cloud,” Carlo Ratti, one of the architects behind the design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) told BBC News.

“We can build our Cloud with £5m or £50m. The flexibility of the structural system will allow us to tune the size of the Cloud to the level of funding that is reached.”

The size of the structure will evolve depending on the number of contributions, he said.

The cloud will not consume power from the city’s grid.

“Many tall towers have preceded this, but our achievement is the high degree of transparency, the minimal use of material and the vast volume created by the spheres,” said professor Joerg Schleich, the structural engineer behind the towers.

Professor Schleich was responsible for the Olympic Stadium in Munich as well as numerous lightweight towers built to the same design as the Cloud.

The structure would also be used to harvest all the energy it produces according to Professor Ratti.

“It would be a zero power cloud,” he said.

The team in addition to designers, scientists, and engineers includes Umberto Eco, a philosopher, semiotician, novelist, medievalist, and literary critic.

Yes, they have a writer on the team for a truly interdisciplinary approach. Or not. Eco may have lent his name to the project and not been an active participant. Still, I’m much encouraged by Eco’s participation (regardless of the amount or type) in this project as I think writers have, for the most part, been fusty and slow to engage with the changes we’re all experiencing.

At the University of Toronto (U of T), researchers are working on a project that they hope will be of interest to NASA ([US] National Aeronautics and Space Administration). From the news item on Azonano,

Thankfully, there is no failure to launch at U of T’s new electron beam nanolithography facility where researchers are already developing smaller-than-tiny award-winning devices to improve disease diagnoses and enhance technology that impacts fields as varied as space exploration, the environment, health care and information and media technologies.

One of these novel nano-devices, being developed by PhD student Muhammad Alam, is an optical nose that is capable of detecting multiple gases. Alam hopes it will be used by NASA one day.

Alam is working on a hydrogen sensor which can be used to detect the gas. Hydrogen is used in many industries and its use is rising so there is great interest in finding ways to handle it more safely and effectively. As for NASA, sometimes those rockets don’t get launched because they detect a hydrogen leak that didn’t actually happen. The U of T ‘nose’ promises to be more reliable than the current sensors in use.

Scotland is hosting one of the first nanomaterials research centres in the UK. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Professor Anne Glover, Chief Scientific Adviser for Scotland officially launched the new centre today (Wednesday, November 11) at Edinburgh Napier’s Craighouse Campus.
She said: “Given the widespread use of nanomaterials in [a] variety of everyday products, it is essential for us to fully understand them and their potential impacts. This centre is one of the first in the UK to bring together nano-science research across human, environment, reproductive health and microbiology to ensure the safe and sustainable ongoing use of nanotechnology.”
Director of the Centre for Nano Safety, Professor Vicki Stone said: “Nanomaterials are used in a diverse range of products from medicines and water purifiers to make-up, food, paints, clothing and electronics. It is therefore essential that we fully understand their longterm impact. We are dedicated to understanding the ongoing health and environmental affects of their use and then helping shape future policy for their development. The launch of this new centre is a huge step forward in this important area of research.”

It’s hard to see these initiatives (I mentioned more in yesterday’s [Nov. 10, 2009] posting) in the UK and Europe and not contrast them harshly with the Canadian scene. There may be large scale public engagement, public awareness, safety initiatives, etc. for nanotechnology in Canada but nobody is giving out any information about it.

Detecting dangerous liquids in airline luggage with a Josephson junction; NANOvember in Albany, New York; nano haiku for November

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To be free of those clear plastic bags which hold all your bottles of liquids when you go through airport security with your luggage! That is a very worthwhile nanotechnology promise. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Restrictions on liquids in carry-on bags on commercial airliners could become a thing of the past thanks to a revolutionary nano-electric device which detects potentially hazardous liquids in luggage in a fraction of a second, according to a team of German scientists. Writing in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology, the researchers at the Forschungszentrum Juelich in western Germany claim that they have been able to do this using an optical approach that detects all existing and future harmful liquids within one fifth of a second.

Since the paper has been published, the researchers have been approached by industrial partners about producing a prototype. (sigh) Most likely this means they hope it will be about five years before we see the devices in airports. The device itself is known as a Josephson junction and you can read more about it on the Azonano site too.

I am happy to see that the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) at the University of Albany (New York, US) has held a remarkably successful nano event, Community Day, during NANOvember  attracting about 1000 people.  From the news item on Nanowerk,

NANOvember is part of “NEXSTEP,” or “Nanotechnology Explorations for Science, Training and Education Promotion,” a partnership between CNSE and KeyBank. Spearheaded by CNSE’s Nanoeconomics Constellation, the initiative features a variety of educational programs designed to promote greater understanding of the changing economic and business environment in the Capital Region and New York State being driven by nanotechnology. “As nanotechnology increasingly shapes the educational and economic landscapes of the Capital Region, NANOvember offers a platform through which the community can better understand the impact and opportunities driven by this emerging science,” said Jeffrey Stone, president, Capital Region, KeyBank N.A.

I’m impressed they attracted that large a crowd in a city with a population of about 100,000 (Albany county has a population of about 300,000) according the 2000 census statistics. By contrast, the city of Vancouver (Canada) has a population of about 600,000 with a regional population of approximately 2 million (from the City of Vancouver website on November 9, 2009) and I’m hard pressed to recall either of our local universities claiming a similar success for one of their community days.

One other point about Albany and nanotechnology, in a July 2008 posting I noted a $1.5B investment for a research centre  in Albany, NY, being made by IBM. So this nanotechnology communication/education event seems to dovetail very nicely with past occurrences and suggests an overall strategy is at work.

Some haiku from NISEnet’s (Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network) newsletter,

After you read this
Your finger nail will have grown
a nanometer
by Troy Dassler

We struggle to show
The size of a molecule.
Kids wait patiently.

by Mike Falvo

You can check out the organization’s The Nano Bite blog here.

Industrial production of carbon nanotubes?; Portland Art Museum’s China exhibit; scientific business not a good idea

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We hear a lot of hype about all the new products and materials that nanotechnology will make possible for us but it’s always at some unspecified future date or  something like ‘it will come to market in three to five years or, five to seven years’.  I’m still waiting for self-cleaning windows which, as far as I know, no one has promised to bring market at any time (sigh). There is a ray of light regarding new carbon nanotube-based materials according to an article by Michael Berger on Nanowerk. From the article,

For years now, nanotechnology researchers have been promising us carbon nanotubes as the basis for numerous breakthrough applications such as multifunctional high-strength fibres, coatings and transparent conducting films. Not to mention as a cure for cancer (see “Horeradish, carbon nanotubes and cancer therapy”) and a solution to the energy crisis. … CNTs are notoriously difficult to work with and, because researchers haven’t found efficient ways yet to assemble them, the resulting materials demonstrate only a small fraction of the possible single-object properties of CNTs. …

New research reported this week has now established an industrially relevant process for assembling carbon nanotubes that allows them to efficiently be made into fibers, coatings and films – the basic forms of material that can be used in engineering applications.

With the possibility of producing carbon nanotubes on a large scale, I would imagine some folks will be curious about health & safety and environmental issues. On occasion I’ve included information about research on carbon nanotubes and their resemblance to asbestos fibres. These carbon nanotubes are multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT) and the ones being made ready for industrial purposes in Berger’s article are single-walled CNTs. I have not come across anything yet which suggests that single-walled CNTs resemble asbestos fibres.

Back to China. The Portland (Oregon) Art Museum has a major exhibit called China Design Now according to an article by Steve McCallion, The Portland Art Museum Transforms an Art Exhibition into a Social Platform, in Fast Company. From the article,

As I mentioned in previous posts, the Portland Art Museum brought China Design Now, the London Victoria & Albert exhibit, to Portland to attract a new audience and elevate Portland’s cultural discourse to a global level. The exhibition documents China’s impressive advancement in graphics, fashion and design over the last 20 years. In my last post  I discussed how the Portland Art Museum used story and metaphor to make the exhibition even more meaningful. The museum’s most significant innovation, however, is not in the content of the exhibition–it’s the museum experience itself.

I’m very enthused about this and would dearly love to get to Portland to experience the various shows, that’s right plural–shows not show. The museum folks encouraged artists and people working in galleries to put on their own shows as part of a larger dialog for Portland. The art museum also extended itself online,

To extend community involvement online, the museum created CDNPDX.org where sixteen different blog editors from the community contribute content and editorial perspectives daily. They are not museum employees, but people from the community that have insight into China and/or design, and are willing to contribute to the discourse for free.

While including potentially offensive underground comics and “amateur” art may make some traditional museum-goers uncomfortable, the museum believes that inviting people to be part of the experience is necessary to remain relevant and worth the risk.

Meanwhile at the Vancouver Art Gallery, we continue with the traditional art museum experience (sigh).

Following my concerns about introducing scientific methods into government bureaucracies, I found this somewhat related article by Linda Tischler (in Fast Company) about scientific methods in business. From the article, a portion of the interview with Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto,

Martin: Well, yes. With every good thing in life, there’s often a dark shadow. The march of science is good, and corporations are being run more scientifically. But what they analyze is the past. And if the future is not exactly like the past, or there are things happening that are hard to measure scientifically, they get ignored. Corporations are pushing analytical thinking so far that it’s become unproductive. The future has no legitimacy for analytical thinkers.

Fast Company: What’s the alternative?

Martin: New ideas must come from a new kind of thinking. The American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce called it abductive logic. It’s a logical leap of the mind that you can’t prove from past data.

Fast Company: I can’t see many CEOs being comfortable with that!

Martin: Why not? The scientific method starts with a hypothesis. It’s often what happens in the shower or when an apple hits you on the head. It’s what we call ‘intuitive thinking.’ Its purpose is to know without explicit reasoning.

I’m relieved to see that Martin points out that scientific thinking does require creativity but his point that things which are hard to measure scientifically get ignored is well taken. While scientific breakthroughs often arise from a creative leap, the work (using the scientific method) to achieve that leap is painstaking and the narratives within the field tend to ignore the creative element. This is almost the opposite of an artistic or creative endeavour which also requires a creative leap and painstaking work to achieve but where narrative focuses primarily on the creative.

The scientific method for many is considered to be  rigorously objective and inspires a certain faith (at times, religious in its intensity). It is a tool and a very effective tool in some, not all, situations. After all, you use a hammer ti build something with a nail, you don’t use it to paint your walls.

As for the Thomson Reuters report on China, I tried but had no joy when trying to retrieve it.

Nano ties to protect against spreading the H1N1 virus; more about China and science

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Ties can carry viruses and germs just as easily as any other textile product so it makes sense that health and medical personnel would want to eliminate one more possible source of infection. The ‘nano’ tie (aka Safety Tie), which promises that you won’t inadvertently spread the H1N1 virus or other nasties,  is distributed by a company called SafeSmart.  From the company’s press release on Nanowerk,

Well before the swine flu outbreak, Florida-based SafeSmart developed a line of antimicrobial ties that has been widely accepted in healthcare, food service and other industries. SafetyTies, made of 100 percent nano-treated silk, have a built-in barrier that keeps dirt, liquids and bacteria out. In independent studies performed at BCS Laboratories of Gainesville, Florida, laboratory testing indicated that SafetyTies are 99.95 percent resistant to H1N1 influenza A.

I did try to find out about the “built-in barrier” but no details were offered in the press release or on the company’s website. Given that the tie is described as “antimicrobial,” I suspect they are binding silver nanoparticles to the silk and don’t want to make that information public.

The reluctance is understandable because of the concerns raised about silver nanoparticles, which are toxic, being washed off and ending up in the water supply. I recently noted a news item about Swiss researchers who published a study on washing silver nanoparticles off items of clothing and didn’t have time to include anything much more than links (the link to the study is no longer useful as the study is now behind a paywall). Michael Berger at Nanowerk has written in more depth about the research here. From Berger’s article,

“We found that the total released varied considerably from less than 1 to 45 percent of the total nanosilver in the fabric and that most came out during the first wash,” Bernd Nowack, head of the Environmental Risk Assessment and Management Group at the Empa-Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research, tells Nanowerk. “These results have important implications for the risk assessment of silver textiles and also for environmental fate studies of nanosilver, because they show that under certain conditions relevant to washing, primarily coarse silver-containing particles are released.”

I gather this research means that manufacturers can refine their products by using finer grained silver nanoparticles to minimize the number released through washing. All of which leads me to some other questions:

  • Should we insist that no silver nanoparticles be washed off?
  • Before considering that question, I’d like to find out if we had silver nanoparticles floating around in the water prior to the manufacture of textiles made by incorporating them into the fiber.
  • Did we ingest silver nanoparticles before we had antimicrobial fabrics?
  • Does the silver come off when you sweat and where does it go then? Could your sweat represent a bigger problem than the water supply?

There is at least one other line of query that can be taken as well. Is it a good idea to limit or eliminate our exposure to bacteria and germs? There are studies which suggest that our immune systems don’t work unless they’re stimulated by the very exposure we work so vigilantly to eliminate. I’m not suggesting that we expose people to dangerous diseases so they can build up their immune systems but this mania to eliminate all germs and bacteria from our personal environments seems ill-advised to me.

I found a news item about another report on China and its research output. From the news item on Nanowerk,

“If China’s research growth remains this rapid and substantial, European and North American institutions will want to be part of it,” said Jonathan Adams, director of research evaluation at Thomson Reuters. “China no longer depends on links to traditional G8 partners to help its knowledge development. When Europe and the USA visit China they can only do so as equal partners.”

I have requested a copy of the Thomson Reuters study, Global Research Report: China, mentioned. You can request your own copy from here.

China’s nanotechnology rise

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Eric Berger’s blog, SciGuy, recently highlighted some data about the number of nanotechnology/nanoscience articles published by Chinese researchers. You can see the entry and the table listing the world’s most prolific (overwhelmingly Chinese)  nanotech authors here. It’s interesting to contrast this data with a Nature Nanotechnology editorial from June 2008 where they had tables listing the countries with the most published nanotech articles and the most frequently cited articles. At the time, I thought China was under-represented although I don’t state it explicitly in my comments here.

Berger was inspired to write his commentary after seeing Eric Drexler’s posting on the topic (Oct. 30, 2009) but I’m directing you to Drexler’s followup comments where he provides some context for better understanding the statistics and cites sources that discuss the matter at more length.

The general consensus seems to be that some of China’s nanotech research is world class and the quality of majority of the research papers is either very good or improving rapidly.

There’s also this from the Center for Nanotechnology in Society University of California Santa Barbara (CNS-UCSB) paper, Chinese Nanotechnology Publications (scroll down the page to IRG 4-3 to read the full abstract),

China’s top-down and government-centered approach toward science and technology policy is succeeding in driving academic-publications output. By 2005 China had equaled or possibly surpassed the U.S. in terms of total output for academic/peer-reviewed publications, with a substantial increase in publication rate from around 2003. … We examined US and Chinese nanotechnology trends in the scientific literature and found that Chinese nanotechnology output is growing rapidly and will likely [outperform?] US output in terms of quality as well as quantity within a decade or less (Appelbaum & Parker 2008).

I include this portion of the abstract because  the phrase, “China’s top-down and government-centered approach to science and technology” points to something that’s not explicitly noted in the abstract, cultural and political climate. Nor was it noted in Bruce Alberts’ speech (in my Is science superior? posting) and as Inkbat noted in her comments to that posting. (My apologies to Mr. Alberts if he did make those points, unfortunately his speech is not available on the conference website so I’m depending on attendee reports.)

It’s a tricky matter trying to compare countries. China has more people and presumably more scientists than anyone else, all of which should result in more published articles if the area of research is supported by policy.

One of the issues for Canada is that we have a relatively small population and consequently fewer scientists. I commented on some work done by M. Fatih Yegul (in June 2008) where he contextualizes the number of Canadian articles published on nanotechnology and our focus on collaboration. Here’s part 2 of the series where I mentioned the numbers. (I did not post much material from Yegul’s paper as he was about to present it an international conference and it had yet to be published. I just checked today [Nov.4.09] and cannot confirm publication.)  My comments from part 3 of the series,

It’s all pretty interesting including the suggestion (based on a study that showed Canada as ranking 6th in numbers of science articles published from 1995-2005) that Canada is performing below its own average with regard to nanotechnology research.

I don’t know if the situation in Canada has changed since Yegul wrote and presented his paper but I strongly suspect it has not.

As for the roles that culture, social mores, history, and political environment play, I just can’t manage more than a mention in this posting in an effort to acknowledge their importance.

Do check out Rob Annan’s posting today (Nov. 4, 2009) about Science and Innovation in the wake of the 2009 Canadian Science Policy Conference.

Butterfly wings inspire nanotechnology; Canadian nanoscience and business breakthrough?; Visible Verse

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The iridescence and colours that you see on butterflies and other insects result from  nanoscale structures not pigment as was believed previously. From a news item on Azonano,

Insects’ colours and their iridescence (the ability to change colours depending on the angle) or their ability to appear metallic are determined by tiny nano-sized photonic structures (1 nanometre=10-9 m) which can be found in their cuticle. Scientists have focused on these biostructures to develop devices with light emitting properties that they have just presented in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics.

A joint team of researchers from the State University of Pennsylvania and the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid have developed a new technique for replicating these structures. From another news item on Azonano about the same research,

Up to now, the methods used to replicate biostructures on a nanometric scale have been limited, often damaging the original biostructure because of the high temperatures and toxic, corrosive substances that were applied.

The new method uses a normal temperature and avoids toxins.

Potential uses for this material (if and when it comes to market) include covers that maximize solar light cell absorption and optical diffusers, as well as, other optically active structures. What I found most intriguing is that the scientists have replicated the colours and iridescence that we see on butterfly wings and insects. I would imagine then that these structures will be quite beautiful (assuming the materials retain those properties at sizes much larger than butterflies and insects) and the aesthetics could help to increase consumer interest in solar cells.

There’s an interesting article (Canada strikes nanotech gold)  in Canadian Business by Rosie Lombardi about FP Innovations and a new material, NanoCrystalline Cellulose, which the company is readying for the market. I suspect FP could stand for ‘forest products although I couldn’t confirm it from viewing their website although the company tag line is highly suggestive, Creating forest sector solutions.

From the article,

Although the concept of NCC has been around for decades and its source — any kind of tree — is abundant, Berry and his team have cracked the code in developing a process to produce large-scale quantities economically.

NCC has many unusual properties, in addition to having all the biodegradable attributes associated with its cellulose source.  Materials scientists are in awe of NCC’s extraordinary potential due to its strength, optical properties, conductivity, reactivity, self-assembling, anti-microbial, self-cleaning and bio-compatibility characteristics. “NCC is beautiful,” says Orlando Rojas, chair of the American Chemical Society.

Design plans for a plant have been developed by NORAM Engineering +  Constructors,  a Vancouver-based company, and three Canadian forestry companies are currently vying for the right to host the federally-funded facility (competition results should be announced by the end of 2009).

Why all the excitement from forest companies? From the article,

But it’s hard-nosed economic imperatives, not just green goodwill, that are driving the battered forestry sector to pour millions into research for new products that may ensure its survival.

Over the past two years, the Canadian forestry sector lost 50,000 jobs and more than 250 mills closed or suspended operations, according to Avrim Lazar, CEO of the Forest Products Association of Canada.

The sector has been bleeding red ink since 2006, says Craig Campbell, leader of the Canadian forestry group at PricewaterhouseCoopers. “It’s been hard hit by the sub-prime mortgage crisis. Most of our lumber goes to the U.S. but housing starts were down 75% last winter. And newsprint is another key area: demand has been contracting every quarter since 9/11.”

As a result, the forestry industry is looking to transform itself by switching its focus beyond tissue paper and two-by-fours to producing higher-value materials with advanced technology.

I’ve commented before about Canadians being seen as ‘drawers of water and hewers of wood’ and so I find this development is very much in line with our history.  From the article,

Having conquered the science and start-up issues, Canadian researchers now have yet another mountain to climb. The real hurdles in developing NCC’s potential lie in economics, and the complicated realm of working with other industries outside the familiar confines of the forestry sector to develop new industrial applications.

To facilitate cross-industry development, a new R&D network called ArboraNano was set up this year through Industry Canada’s Business-led Centres of Excellence program. The initiative received $8.9 million in funding over four years, and is working with industry partners such as Bell Helicopter and Kruger, and scientists at McGill and other universities to develop and test new materials made with NCC for various industries.

Canada is doing a lot of things right, says Jones. [Phil Jones, Atlanta-based director of new ventures at IMERYS Mineral Ltd.] “Supporting the application development side is the critical bit. People talk about the valley of death: university guys spin out ideas, and then industry has to commercialize them. But that part is enormously expensive, and the five-year payback is usually low. Anyone in industry doing this is punished by Wall Street.”

I think Canadians support companies through their ‘valley of death’ stage quite well. We just don’t grow the companies afterward; we sell them, which contributes in part to the lack of  industrial innovation in Canada. No company gets big enough to support a large industrial laboratory.

Kudos to Rosie Lombardi for an exciting and hopeful article. Do read the article, there’s a lot I couldn’t include here.

My nitpicks have nothing to do with the writer but I would like to have seen some information about health and safety and environmental issues as per NCC production and some scientific information about NCC. I expect the magazine, Canadian Business, does not encourage forays into topics that are not usually considered part of the business scene but if business is based on economics, then health, safety, and environmental concerns are important and ignored economic issues in many business magazines. As for more science information, I have to admit that’s my personal preference.

Heather Haley’s annual videopoetry festival, See the Voice: Visible Verse 2009 will take place on November 19, 2009, 7:30 pm at Pacific Cinematheque (1131 Howe St., Vancouver, Canada). You can read more about the festival here. This year, in addition to the short videos, the festival features a live performance by Gabrielle Everall from Australia.