Monthly Archives: August 2010

Predicting how nanoparticles will react in the body

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A group of scientists at North Carolina State University have me a bit puzzled. Apparently they’ve developed a method of predicting how nanoparticles might behave in the human body (the paper is titled, An index for characterization of nanomaterials in biological systems, available online as of Aug. 15, 2010 at Nature Nanotechnology [Note: There’s a paywall.]).

I’ll start with what the scientists are saying (from the news item on physorg.com),

NC State researchers Dr. Jim Riviere, Burroughs Wellcome Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology and director of the university’s Center for Chemical Toxicology Research and Pharmacokinetics, Dr. Nancy Monteiro-Riviere, professor of investigative dermatology and toxicology, and Dr. Xin-Rui Xia, research assistant professor of pharmacology, wanted to create a method for the biological characterization of nanoparticles – a screening tool that would allow other scientists to see how various nanoparticles might react when inside the body.

“We wanted to find a good, biologically relevant way to determine how nanomaterials react with cells,” Riviere says. “When a nanomaterial enters the human body, it immediately binds to various proteins and amino acids. The molecules a particle binds with will determine where it will go.”

This binding process also affects the particle’s behavior inside the body. According to Monteiro-Riviere, the amino acids and proteins that coat a nanoparticle change its shape and surface properties, potentially enhancing or reducing characteristics like toxicity or, in medical applications, the particle’s ability to deliver drugs to targeted cells.

What I find somewhat disconcerting is the unspoken assumption that the scientists understand how various biological systems within the human body work. Knowledge on this topic, as far as I know, is still quite imperfect. For example, broken bones don’t always heal properly; people die unexpectedly from procedures that have been practiced for decades; the common cold is still a mystery, etc.

Using Shrinky Dinks for SANE nanopatterning

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I’m charmed. Scientists at a Northwestern University laboratory have taken to using a children’s arts and crafts product, Shrinky Dinks, for a new way to create large area nanoscale patterns on the cheap. First, something more about the Shrinky Dinks (from their website),

We are the Originators and Manufacturers of SHRINKY DINKS shrinkable plastics.

The very first SHRINKY DINKS were sold on October 17, 1973 at Brookfield Square Shopping Mall in Brookfield Wisconsin. Since that time there has been over 250 different Toy Activity and Craft Kits created and marketed.

SHRINKY DINKS SHRINK to approximately 1/3rd their original size and actually become 9 times thicker. Simply place the SHRINKY DINKS piece you created into a Home Oven or Toaster Oven for 2 magic minutes. Watch as your creation gets smaller and smaller.

It’s “MAGICAL” and it’s so quick and easy to do!

There’s also a video (sadly I can’t embed it here)  about the origins, some very simple science, and ideas on how to use Shrinky Dinks.

As for the scientists, there’s no word on how they decided to use this  product for their work (from the news item on physorg.com),

“Anyone needing access to large-area nanoscale patterns on the cheap could benefit from this method,” said Teri W. Odom, associate professor of chemistry and Dow Chemical Company Research Professor in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. Odom led the research. “It is a simple, low-cost and high-throughput nanopatterning method that can be done in any laboratory.”

Details of the solvent-assisted nanoscale embossing (SANE) method are published by the journal Nano Letters. The work also will appear as the cover story of the journal’s February 2011 issue.

The method offers unprecedented opportunities to manipulate the electronic, photonic and magnetic properties of nanomaterials. It also easily controls a pattern’s size and symmetry and can be used to produce millions of copies of the pattern over a large area. Potential applications include devices that take advantage of nanoscale patterns, such as solar cells, high-density displays, computers and chemical and biological sensors.

“No other existing nanopatterning method can both prototype arbitrary patterns with small separations and reproduce them over six-inch wafers for less than $100,” Odom said.

ETA Aug. 17, 2010: I emailed the originator of Shrinky Dinks, Betty J. Morris asking her how she came up with the name for her product yesterday. Here is her very kind reply,

You were wondering how we came up with the name Shrinky Dinks…To be honest, we were trying to come up with a name that would describe the process…the pieces “shrink” and they become “small”… what are words that mean small…one of the words we came up with was “dinky”…we thought of Shrink Dinky…Shrink Dinkies…Shrinkie Dinkies but ultimately liked the sound of Shrinky Dinks…it was just trying out different words that we thought might be unique and worthy of getting a Trademark…our product has now been on the market 37 years…we have Shrinky Dinks Trademarks in 42 different countries and there have been over 250 different SD kits created and marketed over the years…who would have ever imagined such a success story… not me…that’s for sure!

The story reminds me of how one writes a poem, playing with words.  As Betty says it is a remarkable story and, for me, the science (nanopaterning)/kid’s play (Shrinky Dinks) connection is the best part.

ETA Aug.17.10: I also contacted Teri W. Odom, professor at Northwestern University about why they use Slinky Dinks in their work. She very kindly responded with this:

Part of what we are interested in is the development of low-cost nanofabrication tools that can create macroscale areas of nanoscale patterns in a single step. For a variety of reasons, this end-product is hard to obtain—even though we and others have chipped away at this problem for years.

As an example, to achieve smaller and smaller separations between patterns, either expensive, top-down serial tools (such as electron beam lithography or scanning probe techniques) or bottom-up assembly methods need to be used. However, the former cannot easily create large areas of patterns, and the latter cannot readily control the separations of patterns.

We needed a way to obtain nanopatterns separated by specific distances on-demand. Here is where the Shrinky Dinks material comes in. My student had read a paper (published in 2007 in Lab on a Chip) about how this material was used to make microscale patterns starting from a pattern printed using a laser printer. I imagine his thought was: if this material could be used for microscale patterns, why not for nanoscale ones? It would be cheap, and it’s easy to order.

So, we combined this substrate with our new molding method—solvent assisted nanoscale embossing (SANE)—and could now heat the material to shrink the spacing between patterns. And thus, in some sense, we made available to any lab some of the capabilities of the billion-dollar nanofabrication industry for less than one-hundred dollars.

There is something pleasing about using an everyday, inexpensive product for high end technology. Brava!

ETA Aug.23.10: Michael Berger has written an in depth article at Nanoterk on this type of nanofabrication which includes an interview with Teri Odom.

Nano Bite for August 2010

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The August 2010 newsletter (Nano Bite) from NISE (Nanoscale Informal Science Education) Network features the nanosunscreen debate (from the newsletter),

It seems questions about the safety of nanoparticles in sunscreen come up every year around this time.  This year, Friends of the Earth posted an article that was critical of nano-particles in sunscreens (“make nano a no-no on your summer vacation!”).  Andrew Maynard, the Director of the University of Michigan Risk Science Center (and NISE Net advisor), posted a reply on his blog questioning some of the conclusions Friends of the Earth were drawing from the studies they cited.  The Environmental Working Group also has an investigation of nanotechnology and sunscreens that draws some different conclusions, read it here.

I also covered some of the debate here.

On a completely other note, there’s an online workshop being held on how to start a Nano Science Café,

Science cafes are live events in casual settings like pubs or coffeehouses, where scientists engage the public in conversations about current science topics. From September 13 – 24,  the NISE Network will offer a two-week online workshop that will introduce you to science cafes with a nano theme. Discussion will be led by three moderators who have run successful cafe series in their own communities: Amanda Thomas (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), Brad Herring (Museum of Life and Science), and Jen Larese (WGBH).

Enrollment for the workshop opens August 6 and closes on September 3.  You can find out more about the science cafe workshop and how to enroll on nisenet.org at http://www.nisenet.org/community/events/online_workshop/how_start_nanoscience_cafe

Exciting, yes?

As usual there’s nano haiku but this month there are two!

Teeny-tiny stuff,
you act so different now.
Wish you were still big.

by Leigha Horton of the Science Museum of Minnesota.  Interested in how teeny-tiny stuff acts different?  See the NISE Net’s science theater play Nano Dreams and Nano Nightmares and hands-on activity Exploring Properties – Surface Area.

A hot summer day?
Try some fresh nano ice cream
but in large portions.

by Luke Donev of the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, TX.  Brad’s recipe is posted on the Nano Bite blog here.

New metals, inflatable, origami-style, and self-healing

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I’m still having trouble imagining inflatable metal objects but according to Ariel Schwartz’s article in Fast Company, it does exist. There’s even a slide show about how to make an inflatable chair at the Fast Company website. (I decided to show the stool.)

Inflatable metal stool (from Fast Company slide show)

From the article,

Designed by architect Oskar Zieta and materials scientist Philipp Dohmen, the chair is built with thin sheet metal that has been inflated with tubes releasing high-pressure air. The pair have also built an inflatable metal stool. Zieta and Dohmen are also working on large-scale installations.

I wish there was more information about the technology but I’m reasonably certain this could be described as a nano-enabled product. It’s certainly an interesting product although I’m having difficulty understanding why someone would want an inflatable metal chair or stool but I’m pretty slow about these kinds of things. I see more more possibilities for the origami-based designs from Industrial Origami that will cut down on the amount of sheet metal needed for products such as ovens. As for the Fraunhofer Institute’s self-healing metal,  that seems like an excellent idea and is definitely nano-enabled technology.

Neuro Cover for latest New Scientist issue

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I don’t know if you caught it but there was a bit of noise earlier this week about ‘neuromarketing’ and the cover for the latest issue of New Scientist. From the article by Addy Dugdale at Fast Company,

In these quiet months of summer, when news is scarcer than an English-born ex-CEO of an oil firm [good dig at BP Oil’s Tony Hayward], New Scientist decided to make some for itself (using nothing but 19 right-handed Englishmen, an electroencephalograph machine, a trio of potential covers, the expertise of a Berkeley-based firm called NeuroFocus, and a man-sized petri dish). Could EEG, as it is known, give the editorial team a better handle on what sort of cover design would make a future issue fly off the shelves? Being scientists (or, at least, people who write about science and its ’tists) they were skeptical. Following the experiment, held in the obligatory darkened room, they were less so.

The design that scored highest on the brainometer was the central image at the top of this page. It did so for several reasons, one of which–the red lettering–is already known to magazine bods, the others being less easily decipherable: who would have known that the word fabric is attractive to one’s brain?

Here’s the trio of choices,

The cover in the middle was the final choice.

You can see a larger version of the cover choices at the Fast Company site. Personally and based on design and colour alone, I preferred the least favourite of the covers (it’s the one to the far right).

There’s been an awful lot of noise over the years about marketers being able to penetrate the psyche/the brain/the emotions or whatever else they may be targeting this week in an effort to persuade and/or manipulate. It does seem to work but only to  a point. (My story in yeserday’s August 12, 2010 posting about Edward Bernays and Stuart Ewen’s book, PR! A Social History of Spin, being a case in point. If Bernays, had been thoroughly successful, Ewen would be known internationally for his book.)

In fact, history is filled with stories of people attempting to coerce/force/manipulate large sectors of the population. Empires fall or fade away, dictatorships are overthrown, democratic governments are thrown out of office, and so it goes.

Nanoscience public relations at Rice University

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There’s an opportunity to interact with Nobel prize winner in Chemistry Sir Harry Kroto via the Nobel Prize’s YouTube channel and its Facebook page. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Harry Kroto, awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 1996, is the latest to take part in the “Ask a Nobel Laureate” series on YouTube and Facebook. “Ask a Nobel Laureate” gives online viewers worldwide the unique opportunity to put their questions directly to a Nobel Laureate and see the responses.

Harry Kroto received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996 with Robert Curl and Richard Smalley for the discovery of C60, a remarkable molecule composed of 60 carbon atoms arranged in a soccer-ball-like pattern. The configuration reminded Kroto of the futuristic geodesic domes designed by Richard Buckminster Fuller, and consequently C60 was given the name “buckminsterfullerine”, otherwise known by its more popular name of “buckyballs”.

You have until Sept. 4, 2010 to submit your questions via the Nobel Prize YouTube channel (where you will find a 3 minute video introduction to Sir Harry Kroto) or the Nobel Prize FaceBook page.

Video or text questions will be accepted (though video questions are preferred), and you can visit the channels to see questions that have already been posted and vote for your favourite ones. The deadline for submitting questions is 4 September 2010. Harry Kroto will then answer a selection of questions, and his answers will be broadcast on [the Nobel Prize] YouTube channel.

You can find out more about Sir Harry Kroto’s Nobel Prize here.

This item caught my attention since I’ve been noticing an increase in the number of news items about Rice University and/or the folks associated with the discovery of buckyballs. For example, Nanowerk has another news item about Rice University’s new state-of-the-art nanotechnology overview course (Continuing Studies) being launched in concert with Rice’s Year of the Nano 25th anniversary celebration of the discovery of the buckyball. From the news item,

In conjunction with Rice’s Year of Nano celebration of the 25th anniversary of the buckminsterfullerene molecule discovery – the buckyball – the Glasscock School is offering a course to the public featuring lectures by Rice’s top nano scientists. The course will cover applications of nanotechnology and the underlying scientific principles that relate to medicine, electronics, materials and energy. Participants will explore the environmental, health and safety aspects of nanotechnology, how Rice is leading the way in understanding and assessing the risks and how applications are brought to market and create jobs.

First among the lecturers is one of the buckyball’s discoverers, Robert Curl, Rice’s University Professor Emeritus and Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor Emeritus of Natural Sciences, who shared the Nobel Prize with the late Richard Smalley of Rice and Harold Kroto, then of the University of Sussex and now at Florida State University. [emphasis mine]

Curl will discuss the team’s work and subsequent impact of the buckyball, a 60-atom carbon molecule shaped like a soccer ball and one of the hardest substances in the universe. Wade Adams, director of Rice University’s Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, co-sponsor of the course, will join Curl for the presentation.

So the “Ask a Nobel Laureate” series focus on Sir Harry Kroto comes at an interesting time, non?

Really good public relations (pr) practice can be quite subtle and difficult if not impossible to detect unless you are in ‘the know’. So this Nobel YouTube/FaceBook interaction with Sir Harry K. may be happy coincidence or part of a pr campaign.

Stuart Ewen wrote a book titled, PR! A Social History of Spin, where he discusses a lengthy interview he had with Edward Bernays one of the pioneers in US public relations. Before I tell the story it’s best to know a little more about Bernays. From PR Watch.org (book review by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton),

Today, few people outside the public relations profession recognize the name of Edward L. Bernays. As the year 2000 approaches, however, his name deserves to figure on historians’ lists of the most influential figures of the 20th century.

It is impossible to fundamentally grasp the social, political, economic and cultural developments of the past 100 years without some understanding of Bernays and his professional heirs in the public relations industry. PR is a 20th century phenomenon, and Bernays–widely eulogized as the “father of public relations” at the time of his death in 1995–played a major role in defining the industry’s philosophy and methods.

Eddie Bernays himself desperately craved fame and a place in history. During his lifetime he worked and schemed to be remembered as the founder of his profession and sometimes drew ridicule from his industry colleagues for his incessant self-promotions. These schemes notwithstanding, Bernays richly deserves the title that Boston Globe reporter Larry Tye has given him in his engagingly written new book, The Father of Spin.

…

Bernays’ life was amazing in many ways. He had a role in many of the seminal intellectual and commercial events of this century. “The techniques he developed fast became staples of political campaigns and of image-making in general,” Tye notes. “That is why it is essential to understand Edward L. Bernays if we are to understand what Hill and Knowlton did in Iraq–not to mention how Richard Nixon was able to dig his way out of his post-Watergate depths and remake himself into an elder statesman worthy of a lavish state funeral, how Richard Morris repositioned President Bill Clinton as an ideological centrist in order to get him reelected, and how most other modern-day miracles of public relations are conceived and carried out.”

Ewen’s book published in 1996 likely features one of Bernays’ last interviews and fascinating insight into how pr can work. Partway through the interview Ewen asks Bernays for a practical example of how he practices pr and Bernays uses Ewen’s forthcoming book as the example. From the website where Dr. Ewen sells his book and offers chapter 1 as a reading sample,

If you said to me, ‘I would like more readers of this book’ [tapping the cover] …I would immediately get in touch with the largest American consumer association. And I would say to the head of the consumers association, ‘There are undoubtedly…I can’t tell you the exact percentage, but X percentage of your members who are very definitely interested in the images that come from a finance capitalist society, and who I think would enjoy hearing about that. Why don’t you devote one of your twelve meetings a year to consumer images, the name of a new book, and I think it may be possible for me to get the author to talk to the New York meeting and you then make an arrangement with American Tel and Tel and have a video tape made of him beforehand and in thirty of the largest cities of the United States that have the American Consumer League, you listen to an in-depth concept of consumers and images….’

Then Bernays turned to me and, with an abracadabra tone in his voice, he summarized the imaginable result of his hypothetical phone-call to the head of the country’s largest consumer association:

Every one of the consumer groups has contacts with the local paper, and in some cases the AP may pick it up, or Reuters, and you become an international star!

…

Then, about three months after the interview-the above incident having faded from my immediate memory-I received a most surprising telephone call. It was from Steven Brobeck, president of the Consumer Federation of America, one of the nation’s largest and most influential consumer organizations. Mr. Brobeck wanted to know if I would be willing to serve as a keynote speaker at the upcoming Consumer Congress in Washington, DC, a convention that would bring together more than a thousand members of consumer organizations from around the country. He wanted me to speak about American consumer culture and the ways that seductive commercial images are routinely employed to promote waste and disposability. C-Span, I was informed, would be taping my keynote, and would then cablecast it across the country.

I still do not know whether Bernays’ hand was behind this invitation, or whether the phone call was merely a result of sly coincidence. When I inquired as to the origin of the invitation, nowhere was there any clear-cut, or even circumstantial, evidence of Bernays’ intervention.

But then I recalled another point in our lengthy conversation, when Bernays sermonized on the invisibility with which public relations experts must, ideally, perform their handiwork. [emphasis mine]

Props to the folks at Rice if they are practicing some invisible pr.

I’ve written about Rice and their Year of the Nano before, May 13, 2010 and August 3, 2010.

Scientists as thieves

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The movies tend to portray scientists as naïve fools/hapless pawns or villains. There is a little bit of truth in these portrayals, at least for the villains, as Sarah Rose’s new book about Robert Fortune, For All the Tea in China, makes clear.

Previewed in an article by Jenara Nerenberg on Fast Company, the book lays out the means by which the British government got its hands on the tea plant and secret to producing to tea. From the article,

Sarah Rose is the author of For All the Tea in China, which tells the true story of how tea and industrial espionage fueled the great expansion of the British Empire and the East India Company in the 1800s. The book focuses on one central character, Robert Fortune, who was a scientist sent by the British government to literally steal the secret of tea production from China, plant the Chinese tea in Darjeeling, and thus make the British Empire less reliant on trade with the Chinese and more self-sufficient by harvesting its own tea in colonial India.

Rose, in response to a question about contemporary as opposed to 19th century industrial espionage had this to say (from the article),

The vast majority the microchips for computers in America are manufactured in China–including those for the U.S. military. This creates a ridiculously high risk of espionage. Those circuits are just too small for us to know how really bad it might be, but from what I understand from the defense and trade communities, it’s a top worry. Meanwhile, the US’s relationship with China is thoroughly interdependent, as was Britain’s in the 19th Century. China owns a lot of our debt, so it loans us the money to buy the stuff China needs to export as it manufactures its way out of the poverty cycle. The two countries don’t necessarily like each other, but they need each other. When each player is so suspicious, it multiplies the competitive advantages of espionage and secrecy.

Most of the article is about tea and Robert Fortune who apparently dressed up as a Chinese Mandarin and fought off pirates in his pursuit of the plant. The focus for the book is on an adventure story and I haven’t seen any mention yet of the ramifications this theft might have had on China’s (nor for that matter India’s) economy and subsequent history.

The Wikipedia essay on Robert Fortune offers a far less colourful story,

Robert Fortune (16 September 1812 – 13 April 1880) was a Scottish botanist and traveller best known for introducing tea plants from China to India.

While the essay goes on to mention his exploits and makes it clear that he obtained the tea plants illegally, it stops short of accusing the British government and Fortune of theft and industrial espionage.

If you’re interested in Rose’s book, there’s a video trailer where she describes the story,

There’s more at Rose’s website.

This all reminds me of a course about technology transfer taught by Pat Howard (Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada). We spent a fair amount of time talking about agriculture and seeds which surprised me mightily as I expected to be talking about computers and stuff.

Amongst other tasty tidbits, Pat mentioned that the Dutch burned out islands they didn’t own so they could destroy specific species of plants and retain control of the trade in spices that grew in their own territories.

Realism strikes nanotechnology market and employment forecasts

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There’s been a new kind of market forecast for nanotechnology kicking around lately. Instead of predicting market values in the trillions, the prediction is in the billions. There’s an item on Nanowerk about this new report,

It therefore is quite refreshing to finally see a market report titled “Nanotechnology: A Realistic Market Assessment” that estimates the worldwide sales revenues for nanotechnology to be $26 billion – yes, that’s illion with a b, not a tr – in 2015.

According to this report, the largest nanotechnology segments in 2009 were nanomaterials, with sales reaching $9 billion in 2009. This is expected to grow to more than $19 billion in 2015. Sales of nanotools, meanwhile, will experience high growth. From a total market revenue of $2.6 billion in 2009, the nanotools segment will increase at a 3.3% CAGR to reach a value of $6,812.5 million in 2015.

These numbers seem more realistic given the commentaries and critiques I’ve seen from more knowledgeable business analysts than me. (There’s more about the report and links to it and other related articles at Nanowerk.)

On the same track, I came across an August 10,2010 posting by Dexter Johnson (Nanoclast) on employment figures for the ‘nanotechnology industry’. From the posting ((Nanotech Employment Numbers Remain Inscrutable),

On the one hand, you have the ever-optimistic viewpoint of Mihail C. Roco, a senior adviser for nanotechnology at NSF [National Science Foundation], who helped develop the numbers back in 2000 that estimated that by 2015 2 million workers worldwide, and 800,000 in the US, would be needed to support nanotechnology manufacturing. According to Roco, we’re still on target with estimates that in 2008 there were 160,000 workers in nanotechnology, representing a 25% increase between 2000 and 2008. If that same percentage increase is applied to the years from 2008 to 2015, then you would get 800,000 by 2015 in Roco’s estimates.

As satisfying as it may be to be dead-on accurate with one’s projections, one cannot help be reminded of Upton Sinclair’s quote “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.” If you are given the task of predicting the unpredictable you have to stick to the methodology even when it hardly makes sense.

Dexter is providing commentary on an article by Ann M. Thayer in Chemical and Engineering News, Filling Nanotech Jobs. In the wake of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative’s (NNI) 10th anniversary this year, Thayer unpacks some of the numbers and projections about nanotechnology’s economic impacts. It is sobering. From the article,

Ten years down the road, and with 2015 just over the horizon, it’s clear that the hype has died down and investment momentum has slowed. Although U.S. government nanotech spending under NNI has totaled nearly $12 billion, according to market research firm Lux Research, the recession has further blunted demand for nanomaterials, slowed technology adoption, and reduced its market projections. Many small firms have closed their doors, and some state nanotech initiatives have stalled.

Beyond the likely effect of the economic downturn on employment, efforts to train a nanotech workforce face other uncertainties. The technology has moved into products and manufacturing, but it is still early in its commercial development path. And while it evolves, it must compete for government and investor attention from newer emerging technologies.

Much of the article focuses on educational efforts to support what was intended as a newly emerging and vibrant nanotechnology field. From Thayer’s article,

Reviews of NNI by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology and others have recommended improving coordination around education and workforce issues. Often near the top of the list is a call for increased participation by the Departments of Labor and Education, agencies new to NNI in 2006, to provide input and help strengthen efforts.

“This should be the next major step,” Roco agrees. “NSF has created a spectrum of methods and models in education, and now these need to be implemented at a larger scale.” He and others in government are counting on the Commerce Department to help assess industry needs and point universities in the right direction.

But the path forward is unclear, in part because the funding environment is in flux. For example, funding that jump-started some of the early nanotech centers, such as NCLT [National Center for Learning & Teaching], has ended, and the centers must recompete or find other ways to sustain their operations.

…

Education, like any business, responds to market needs. Murday [[James S. Murday, associate director in the University of Southern California’s Office of Research Advancement] supposes that nanoscience education could mirror the materials science field, which came together under government investment in the 1960s. “It’s sort of an existence proof in the past 50 years that you don’t have to be bound by the old disciplines,” Murday says. Instead of getting hung up on what nanotech is or isn’t, “maybe we ought to focus on what we really want, which is new products and figuring out how to design our educational system to make the fastest progress,” he suggests. [emphasis mine]

‘Designing an educational system to make the fastest progress’ as per Murday reeks of the Industrial Revolution. After all, the reason for near universal literacy was that industry in the name of progress needed better educated workers. But that’s a side issue.

What this whole discussion brings up is a question of strategy. The easiest comparison for me to make is between the US and Canada. As I’ve noted before (my Aug. 2, 2010 posting), the US has poured a lot money, time, and energy in a very focused nanotechnology strategy, e.g. NNI,  whereas in Canada, the nanotechnology effort has largely been rolled into pre-existing programs.

At this point, it’s impossible to say if there’s a clear cut right or wrong strategy, as Dexter points out, the people who made and continue to make the projections and decide strategy have a vested interested in being proved right.