Monthly Archives: September 2010

Nanotechnology-enabled robot skin

We take it for granted most of the time. The ability to sense pressure and respond to appropriately doesn’t seem like any great gift but without it, you’d crush fragile objects or be unable to hold onto the heavy ones.

It’s this ability to sense pressure that’s a stumbling block for robotmakers who want to move robots into jobs that require some dexterity, e.g., one that could clean yours windows and your walls without damaging one or failing to clean the other.

Two research teams have recently published papers about their work on solving the ‘pressure problem’. From the article by Jason Palmer for BBC News,

The materials, which can sense pressure as sensitively and quickly as human skin, have been outlined by two groups reporting in [the journal] Nature Materials.

The skins are arrays of small pressure sensors that convert tiny changes in pressure into electrical signals.

The arrays are built into or under flexible rubber sheets that could be stretched into a variety of shapes.

The materials could be used to sheath artificial limbs or to create robots that can pick up and hold fragile objects. They could also be used to improve tools for minimally-invasive surgery.

One team is located at the University of California, Berkeley and the other at Stanford University. The Berkeley team headed by Ali Javey, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences has named their artificial skin ‘e-skin’. From the article by Dan Nosowitz on the Fast Company website,

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, backed by DARPA funding, have come up with a thin prototype material that’s getting science nerds all in a tizzy about the future of robotics.

This material is made from germanium and silicon nanowires grown on a cylinder, then rolled around a sticky polyimide substrate. What does that get you? As CNet says, “The result was a shiny, thin, and flexible electronic material organized into a matrix of transistors, each of which with hundreds of semiconductor nanowires.”

But what takes the material to the next level is the thin layer of pressure-sensitive rubber added to the prototype’s surface, capable of measuring pressures between zero and 15 kilopascals–about the normal range of pressure for a low-intensity human activity, like, say, writing a blog post. Basically, this rubber layer turns the nanowire material into a sort of artificial skin, which is being played up as a miracle material.

As Nosowitz points out, this is a remarkable achievement and it is a first step since skin registers pressure, pain, temperature, wetness, and more. Here’s an illustration of Berkeley’s e-skin (Source: University of California Berkeley, accessed from http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2010/09/12_eskin.shtml Sept. 14, 2010),

An artist’s illustration of an artificial e-skin with nanowire active matrix circuitry covering a hand. The fragile egg illustrates the functionality of the e-skin device for prosthetic and robotic applications.

The Stanford team’s approach has some similarities to the Berkeley’s (from Jason Palmer’s BBC article),

“Javey’s work is a nice demonstration of their capability in making a large array of nanowire TFTs [this film transistor],” said Zhenan Bao of Stanford University, whose group demonstrated the second approach.

The heart of Professor Bao’s devices is micro-structured rubber sheet in the middle of the TFT – effectively re-creating the functionality of the Berkeley group’s skins with less layers.

“Instead of laminating a pressure-sensitive resistor array on top of a nanowire TFT array, we made our transistors to be pressure sensitive,” Professor Bao explained to BBC News.

Here’s a short video about the Stanford team’s work (Source: Stanford University, accessed from http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/september/sensitive-artificial-skin-091210.html Sept. 14, 2010),

Both approaches to the ‘pressure problem’ have at least one shortcoming. The Berkeley’s team’s e-skin has less sensitivity than Stanford’s while the Stanford team’s artificial skin is less flexible than e-skin as per Palmer’s BBC article. Also, I noticed that the Berkeley team at least is being funded by DARPA ([US Dept. of Defense] Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) so I’m assuming a fair degree of military interest, which always gives me pause. Nonetheless, bravo to both teams.

Nano Science Cafe workshop starts and other NISE Net tidbits

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I signed up for an online workshop on how to host and produce a Nano Science Café that the Nanoscale Informal Science Education Network (NISE Net) holds. It started this Monday and so far we’ve been introducing ourselves (approximately 80 people are signed up) and people are sharing ideas about how to hold these events successfully. Most of the participants are located in the US although there are two Canucks (me and someone from Ontario). Of course, not everyone has introduced themselves yet.

There’s a blog posting by Larry Bell about NISE Net’s increasing focus on nano’s societal implications,

Just about a year ago NISE Net launched an expanded collaboration with the Center for Nanotechnology in Society and you’ll hear more about upcoming activities in the months ahead. The conversation started when staff from seven science centers brought cart demos and stage presentations to the S.NET conference in Seattle on Labor Day weekend last year. S.NET is a new professional society for the study of nanoscience and emerging technologies in areas of the social sciences and humanities. I was a little naive and thought the participants were all social scientists, but learned that many were historians, political scientists, philosophers, and ethicists and really not social scientists.

I’m not entirely certain what to make of either NISE Net’s interest or S.NET (Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies) since this first meeting seems to have be focused primarily on hands-on demos and public outreach initiatives. There will be a 2nd annual S.NET meeting in 2010 (from the conference info.),

Second Annual Conference of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies

Darmstadt, Germany – Sept 29 to Oct 2, 2010

(Wednesday afternoon 2pm through Saturday afternoon 4pm)

The plenary speakers and program committee lists a few names I’ve come across,

This year’s plenary speakers are Armin Grunwald, Richard Jones [has written a book about nanotechnology titled Soft Machines and maintains a blog also titled Soft Machines], Andrew Light, Bernard Stiegler, and Jan Youtie.

Program Committee

Diana Bowman (Public Health and Law, University of Melbourne, Australia)

Julia Guivant (Sociology and Political Science, Santa Catarina, Brazil)

David Guston (Political Science/Center for Nanotechnology in Society, Arizona State University, USA) [guest blogged for Andrew Maynard at 2020 Science]

Barbara Herr Harthorn (Feminist Studies, Anthropology, Sociology/Center for Nanotechnology in Society,University of California Santa Barbara, USA)

Brice Laurent (Sociology, Mines ParisTech, France)

Colin Milburn (English, University of California Davis, USA)[has proposed a nanotechnology origins story which pre-dates Richard Feynman’s famous speech, There’s plenty of room at the bottom]

Cyrus Mody (History, Rice University, United USA)

Alfred Nordmann (Philosophy, nanoOffice, NanoCenter, Technische Universität Darmstadt and University of South Carolina – chair)

Ingrid Ott (Economics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany – co-chair)

Arie Rip (Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Twente, Netherlands) [read a nano paper where he introduced me to blobology and this metaphor for nanotechnology ‘furniture of the world’]

Ursula Weisenfeld (Business Administration, Leuphana Universität, Lüneburg, Germany)

This looks promising and I wish the good luck with the conference.

As far conferences go, there’s another one for the Association of Science and Technology Centers (ASTC) in Hawaii, Oct 3 – 5, 2010, which will feature some NISE Net sessions and workshops . You can check out the ASTC conference details here.

Here’s the monthly NISE Net nano haiku,

Vocabulary
Kit kit kit kit kit kit kit
There are no nodes now.

by Anders Liljeholm of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Those of you who may not remember that our regional hubs used to be call nodes (or those looking to brush up on their NISE Net vocabulary in general) can check out the NISE Net Glossary in the nisenet.org catalog.

Australians embrace Sci-Ku

Russian nanotechnology corporation (RUSNANO) develops joint Canada-Russian fund with VentureLink Funds

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RUSNANO (Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies) executives Mr. Alexander Losyukov, Mr. Kyrill Frolov and Mr. Rail Rafikov have signed an agreement with John Varghese, CEO and Managing Partner of Toronto based venture capital firm, VentureLink Funds. RUSNANO first visited and surveyed the Canadian nanotechnology scene in April 2009 (noted in my April 14, 2009 posting). From the Sept. 13, 2010 news item on Nanowerk,

During their visit [Sept. 7,2010], the delegation successfully concluded in-depth discussions with Mr. Varghese that commenced early in 2010. The goal of the meetings was to establish the basis on which to create a Canada-Russia Nanotechnology Venture Capital Fund co-founded by RUSNANO and Mr. Varghese in Canada. The Fund’s investment interests will mainly focus on nanotechnology based products and applications in the areas of information technology for Nano based applications, energy production and storage, (including renewable and clean energy sources), advanced materials, biomaterials, and other select sectors. The Fund will not be seeking out defense related projects.

Subject to certain conditions, RUSNANO has signed a ground breaking Memorandum of Understanding committing to be a very significant lead order and partner in this new Nano Fund. Final corporate approvals are expected prior to the end of 2010, allowing this Fund to be operational in 2011.

Richard Blackwell writing for the Globe & Mail newspaper notes (from his Sept. 13, 2010 article),

VentureLink managing partner John Varghese said Rusano is searching the world for advances in the field – a rapidly advancing technology that engineers materials at the atomic and molecular scale to create new products for medicine, electronics and energy production – and will provide most of the fund’s initial capital.

High net worth individuals in Canada will also be approached to invest, and the goal is to create a fund in the $100-million to $200-million range, Mr. Varghese said.

The advantage for Canadian companies in the sector is that Rusnano will help them find markets for their products in Russia.

According to the Nanowerk news item, Professor Roman Maev, at the University of Windsor (Ontario), was instrumental in developing this partnership. From Dr. Maev’s University of Windsor web page,

Dr. Roman Maev is the Chairholder of the NSERC/Chrysler/University of Windsor Industrial Research Chair in Applied Solid State Physics and Material Characterization. He came to Canada in 1994, through Inter-Governmental Canada-Russia technology exchange program. One year later Dr. Maev was appointed as a Full Faculty Professor in the School of Physical Sciences at University of Windsor and in 1997 he established the Center of Imaging Research and Advanced Material Characterization at University of Windsor.

In addition to some federal support, there appears to be substantive support from the province of Ontario (from the Sept. 13, 2010 news item on Azonano),

During their visit, RUSNANO also met with the Honourable Sandra Pupatello, Minister of Economic Development and Trade and with senior officials of the Ministry of Research and Innovation, to discuss this new initiative supporting the development of technology transfer partnerships between RUSNANO and Canadian companies. …

Those activities will be based upon regular consultations and coordination with various departments and agencies within the Federal and Provincial Government, including the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development & Trade and the Ministry of Research and Innovation.

“During our meetings, Minister Pupatello stated that Canada wants to go global. Well, Russia also wants to go global, thus we have a good platform to be partners. A partner that shares similar goals allows for unification of efforts. Political will, combined with the appropriate business environment and the right team makes this the ideal time to start this initiative” proudly stated Losyukov.

I was a little surprised that I found no mention of this development on the Nano, Nanotechnology Network of Ontario website as it seems quite a feather in the province’s, if not the organization’s, cap.

E-readers: musings on publishing and the word (part 3 of 3)

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Let’s add a comment from a writer, notably William Gibson in an interview with the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) prior to the launch of his latest book, Zero History.

William Gibson in a Sept.6, 2010 interview with Steven Kurutz for the WSJ blog, Speakeasy,

Will you mourn the loss of the physical book if eBooks become the dominant format?

It doesn’t fill me with quite the degree of horror and sorrow that it seems to fill many of my friends. For one thing, I don’t think that physical books will cease to be produced. But the ecological impact of book manufacture and traditional book marketing –- I think that should really be considered. We have this industry in which we cut down trees to make the paper that we then use enormous amounts of electricity to turn into books that weigh a great deal and are then shipped enormous distances to point-of-sale retail. Often times they are remained or returned, using double the carbon footprint. And more electricity is used to pulp them and turn them into more books. If you look at it from a purely ecological point of view, it’s crazy.

Gibson goes on to suggest that the perfect scenario would feature bookstores displaying one copy of each book being offered for sale. Prospective readers would be able to view the book and purchase their own copy through a print-on-demand system. He does not speculate about any possible role for e-books.

For a contrasting approach from writers, let’s take Neal Stephenson, Greg Bear and other members of the Mongoliad novel/project which is being written/conducted online. I’m inferring from the publicity and written material on the Mongoliad website that these writers, artists, and others are experimenting with new business and storytelling models in the face of a rapidly changing publishing and reading environment. I’ve posted about Mongoliad here (Sept.7,2010) and here (May 31,2010).

Edward Picot at The Hyperliterature Exchange has written a substantive essay, It’s Literature Jim… but not as we know i: Publishing and the Digital Revolution, which explores this topic from the perspective of someone who’s been heavily involved in the debate for many years. From the Picot essay,

It seems we may finally be reaching the point where ebooks are going to pose a genuine challenge to print-and-paper. Amazon have just announced that Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has become the first ebook to sell more than a million copies; and also that they are now selling more copies of ebooks than books in hardcover. [emphasis mine]

As for more proof as to how much things are changing, the folks who produce the Oxford English Dictionary (the 20 volume version) have announced that the 1989 edition may have been the last print edition. From Dan Nosowitz’s article on the Fast Company website,

The Oxford English Dictionary, currently a 20 volume, 750-pound monstrosity, has been the authoritative word on the words of the English language for 126 years. The OED3, the first new edition since 1989, may also be the first to forgo print entirely, reports the AP.

…

Nigel Portwood, chief executive of the Oxford University Press (isn’t that the perfect name for him?), says online revenue has been so high that it is highly unlikely that the third edition of the OED will be physically printed. The full 20-volume set costs $995 at Amazon, and of course it requires supplementals regularly to account for valuable words like “bootylicious.”

Meanwhile the Shifted Librarian weighs in by comparing her Kindle experience with a print book in a September 7, 2010 posting,

I knew my desire to share content was the prime driver of the format I was choosing, but I didn’t realize how quickly it was shifting in the opposite direction. I now want to share one-to-many, not one-to-one, and I just don’t have the time or resources to transcribe everything I want to share. It makes me sad to look at that long list of print books I’ve read over the past year that I likely won’t share here because I can’t copy and paste.

Jenny (The Shifted Librarian) ends her essay with this,

Of course, your mileage may vary, but I think I’ve finally crossed over to the ebook side. I’ll have to go to bookstores and the library just to touch new books for old time’s sake. Only time will tell if there’s a “feature” of print books that can draw me back. My reasons for converting are definitely an edge case, and I haven’t been a heavy user of print resources in libraries in quite some time, but I can’t help but wonder how this type of shift will affect libraries. I see more and more ereaders on my commute every day.

I was on the bus today and was struck by how many people were reading books and newspapers but I’m not drawing any serious conclusions from my informal survey. I think the lack of e-books, tablets and their ilk may be a consequence of the Canadian market where we tend to get digital devices after they’ve been on the US market for a while and when we get them, we pay more.

Despite all the discussion about e-books and tablets, I think what it comes down to is whether or not people are going to continue reading and, if we do , whether we”ll be reading the same way. Personally, I think there’ll be less reading. After all, literacy isn’t a given and with more and more icons (e.g., signage in airports, pedestrian walk signals, your software programmes, etc.) taking the place that once was occupied by written words then, why would we need to learn to read? In the last year, I’ve seen science journal abstracts (which used to be text only) that are graphical, i.e., text illustrated with images. Plus there’s been a resurgence of radio online and other audio products (rap, spoken word poets, podcasts, etc.) which hints at a greater investment in oral culture in the future.

These occurrences and others suggest to me that a massive change is underway. If you need any more proof, there’s Arthur Sulzburger Jr.’s admission at the recent International Newsroom Summit held in London England (from the Sept.8, 2010 article by Steve Huff in the New York Observer Daily Transom),

During a talk at the International Newsroom Summit held in London, Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. admitted that “we will stop printing the New York Times sometime in the future,” but, said Sulzberger, that date is “TBD.”

In the foreseeable future, we might need to read (although we may find ourselves moving to a more orally-based culture) but not as extensively as before. We won’t spend quite as much time learning to read and will better use the training time to learn about such topics as physics or coding computers or something. Knowledge, scientific and otherwise, is going to be transmitted and received via many channels and I don’t believe that the written word will be as privileged as it is today.

In the meantime, there are any number of avenues for writers and readers to pursue. One that I find personally fascinating is the subculture of literary tattoos (from The Word Made Flesh [Thanks to @ruthseeley for tweeting about the website.]),

It says “It rained for four years, eleven months and two days.” in portuguese. The illustration and phrase are from “100 years of solitude” by G.G. Márquez. That book means a lot to me. This picture was takes the same day i got the tattoo, so it’s a little bloody. It was very cold that day.

Given that I live in an area known for its rainy weather, this particular tattoo was a no-brainer choice.

E-readers: musings on publishing and the word (part 2 of 3)

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While the debates rage on about tablets versus e-readers and about e-ink vs LCD readers and about Kindle vs Nook and other e-reader contenders, there are other more fundamental debates taking place as per articles like E-reading: Revolution in the making or fading fad? by Annie Huang on physorg.com,

Four years ago Cambridge, Mass.-based E Ink Corporation and Taiwan’s Prime View International Co. hooked up to create an e-paper display that now supplies 90 percent of the fast growing e-reader market.

The Taiwanese involvement has led some observers to compare e-reading to the Chinese technological revolution 2,000 years ago in which newly invented paper replaced the bulky wooden blocks and bamboo slats on which Chinese characters were written.

But questions still hang over the Taiwanese-American venture, including the readiness of the marketplace to dispense with paper-based reading, in favor of relatively unfamiliar e-readers.

“It’s cockamamie to think a product like that is going to revolutionize the way most people read,” analyst Michael Norris of Rockville, Maryland research firm Simba Information Co. said in an e-mail. Americans use e-books at a rate “much, much slower than it looks.”

I don’t know that this constitutes proof that Micheal Norris is right (ETA Sept. 21, 2010, this Techdirt article Don’t Be Confused By Amazon’s Ebook Sales Claims by Mike Masnick cites research that supports Norris’ claim) but the essay E-reader revolt: I’m leaving youth culture behind by Emma Silvers certainly suggests that not all of the younger (Millenial) generation is necessarily as enamoured of e-readers and associated techno gadgets as is commonly touted,

At 26, I’m part of a generation raised on gadgets, but actual books are something I just refuse to give up

…

One recent story in the New York Times went so far as to claim that iPads and Kindles and Nooks are making the very act of reading better by — of course — making it social. As one user explained, “We are in a high-tech era and the sleekness and portability of the iPad erases any negative notions or stigmas associated with reading alone.” Hear that? There’s a stigma about reading alone. (How does everyone else read before bed — in pre-organized groups?) Regardless, it turns out that, for the last two decades, I’ve been Doing It Wrong. And funny enough, up until e-books came along, reading was one of the few things I felt confident I was doing exactly right.

…

o is my overly personal, defensive reaction to the e-reader boom nothing more than preemptive fear of the future, of change in general? I’d like to think I’m slightly more mature than that, but at its core my visceral hatred of the computer screen-as-book is at least partially composed of sadness at the thought of kids growing up differently from how I did, of the rituals associated with learning to read — and learning to love to read — ceasing to resemble yours and mine. Nine-year-olds currently exist who will recall, years from now, the first time they read “Charlotte’s Web” on their iPads, and I’m going to have to let that go. For me, there’s just still something universal about ink on paper, the dog-earing of yellowed pages, the loans to friends, the discovery of a relative’s secret universe of interests via the pile on their nightstand. And it’s not really hyperbole to say it makes me feel disconnected from humanity to imagine these rituals funneled into copy/paste functions, annotated files on a screen that could, potentially, crash.

I doubt I’m the only one, even in my supposedly tech-obsessed generation, who thinks this way.

Well, maybe Silvers is a minority but there is at least one market sector, education texts, that e-readers don’t seem to satisfy as Pasco Phronesis (David Bruggeman) in an August 12, 2010 posting notes evidence that e-readers are less efficient than regular books,

Edward Tenner (who you should be following on general principle) at The Atlantic gathers some findings that suggest e-readers are less effective than regular books from an efficiency perspective – something that matters to readers concerned with educational texts. Both in terms of reading speed and the distraction of hypertext links, e-Readers are not the best means to focus on whatever text you’re trying to read.

Those problems may be remedied with a new $46M investment in Kno, Inc. (from the Sept. 8, 2010 news item on physorg.com),

Founded in May 2009 and short for “knowledge,” Kno is developing a two-panel, touchscreen tablet computer that will allow users to read digital textbooks, take notes, access the Web and run educational applications.

“Kno is gearing up to launch the first digital device that we believe will fundamentally improve the way students learn,” said Osman Rashid, Kno’s chief executive and co-founder.

Rashid said the funding will “help us continue to deliver on our product roadmap and ultimately deliver on our vision to bring innovative digital technology to the world of education.”

Still, there’s another downside to e-readers as per this item, Reminder: You Don’t Own Your Ebooks; Amazon Locks Customer Out And Doesn’t Respond To Help Requests by Mike Masnik on Techdirt,

We’ve pointed out in the past that if you’re “buying” ebooks on devices like the Kindle or the iPad, it’s important to remember that you’re not really “buying” the books, and you don’t really own them. We’re seeing that once again with a story on Consumerist about a woman who was locked out of the ebooks on her Kindle for a month:

In fact, they can do a lot more than just lock you out of your account they can delete books that you’ve purchased as Amazon did with books such as George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and The Virtue of Selfishness, and some of the Harry Potter books. Apparently, these titles were illegally uploaded which is why Amazon removed them. Farhad Manjoo’s Slate essay Why 2024 Will Be Like Nineteen Eighty-Four; How Amazon’s remote deletion of e-books from the Kindle paves the way for book-banning’s digital future on these incidents explores the implications,

The worst thing about this story isn’t Amazon’s conduct; it’s the company’s technical capabilities. Now we know that Amazon can delete anything it wants from your electronic reader. That’s an awesome power, and Amazon’s justification in this instance is beside the point. As our media libraries get converted to 1’s and 0’s, we are at risk of losing what we take for granted today: full ownership of our book and music and movie collections.

Most of the e-books, videos, video games, and mobile apps that we buy these days day aren’t really ours. They come to us with digital strings that stretch back to a single decider—Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, or whomever else. … Now we know what the future of book banning looks like, too.

Consider the legal difference between purchasing a physical book and buying one for your Kindle. When you walk into your local Barnes & Noble to pick up a paperback of Animal Farm, the store doesn’t force you to sign a contract limiting your rights. If the Barnes & Noble later realizes that it accidentally sold you a bootlegged copy, it can’t compel you to give up the book—after all, it’s your property. The rules are completely different online. When you buy a Kindle a book [sic], you’re implicitly agreeing to Amazon’s Kindle terms of service. The contract gives the company “the right to modify, suspend, or discontinue the Service at any time, and Amazon will not be liable to you should it exercise such right.” In Amazon’s view, the books you buy aren’t your property—they’re part of a “service,” and Amazon maintains complete control of that service at all times. Amazon has similar terms covering downloadable movies and TV shows, as does Apple for stuff you buy from iTunes.

I certainly like owning my books and the idea that some unseen individual might decide to remove access with the click of a few keystrokes certainly gives me pause. As for whether or not people are using e-readers and their ilk, I have more about that along with my thoughts on these debates and what’s happening with ‘the word’ in part 3.

E-readers: musings on publishing and the word (part 1 of 3)

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There’ve been a lot of online articles about e-readers in the last few weeks in particular as debate rages as to whether or not this technology will be viable. It got me to thinking about e-literature, e-readers, e-books, e-paper, e-ink, e-publishing, literacy and on and on. I’ve divided my musings (or attempts to distinguish some sort of pattern within all these contradictory developments) into three parts.This first part is more concerned with the technology/business end of things.

Samsung just announced that it was moving out of the e-reader business. From an article (Aug. 25 2010) by Kit Eaton in Fast Company,

Need any evidence that the dedicated e-reader is destined to become a mere niche-appeal device? Here you go: Tech giant Samsung is ditching its clever e-paper business after years of clever successes and a ton of research into what may be the future for the technology.

Back in 2009 at CES Samsung teased its good-looking Kindle-challenging e-reader, the Papyrus, which used Samsung’s own proprietary electronic ink system for the display. At CES this year it followed up with its “E6” device, with a rumored cost of $400. Samsung had been shaking the e-paper world since late in 2008 with numerous e-paper announcements, including revealing a color 14-inch flexible e-paper display as long ago as October 2008, which used carbon nanotube tech to achieve its sharp image quality.

Now it seems that revolutions in the e-reader market (namely that odd race-to-the-bottom in pricing over quality of service) combined with revolutions in the tablet PC market (which means the iPad, which can do a million more things than the Papyrus or E6 could) and pricing that neatly undercuts Samsung’s planned price points has resulted in Samsung killing its e-paper research and development.

According to Eaton, Samsung hasn’t entirely withdrawn from the e-reader business; the company will be concentrating on its LCD-based systems instead. Samsung is also releasing its own tablet, Galaxy Tab as competition to Apple’s iPad, in mid-September 2010 (Sept. 2, 2010 news item at Financial Post website).

Dan Nosowitz also writing for Fast Company presents an opinion (Aug. 12, 2010 posting) which sheds light on why Samsung is focusing on LCD -based readers over e-ink-based readers such as Kindle and Nook,

E-ink is one of the more unusual technologies to spring up in recent years. It’s both more expensive and less versatile than LCD, a long-established product seen in everything from iPods to TVs. It’s incredibly specific, but also incredibly good at its one job: reading text.

E-ink e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook offer, in the opinion of myself and many others, the best digital book-reading experience available. …

…

E-ink will die mostly because it fundamentally can’t compete with tablets. That’s why announcements like today’s, in which E-Ink (it’s a company as well as that company’s main–or only?–product) claimed it will release both a color and a touchscreen version by early 2011, is so confusing. But color and interface are hardly the only obstacles e-ink has to overcome to compete with tablets: Its refresh rates make video largely impossible, it can’t cram in enough pixels to make still photos look any more crisp than a day-old McDonald’s french fry, and, most damnably, it’s still extremely expensive.

…

Amazon showed that the way to make e-book readers sell like blazes is to lower the price to near-impulse-item territory. Its new $140 Kindle sold out of pre-orders almost immediately, and there’s been more buzz around the next version than can be explained through hardware upgrades alone. It’s a great reader, don’t get me wrong, but its incredible sales numbers are due in large part to the price cut.

That comment about the price cut for the e-reader as being key to its current success can certainly be borne out by this article E-reader faceoff: Kindle or Nook? Here’s a comparison by Mark W. Smith on physorg.com

There’s a titanic battle brewing in the e-reader market. The Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook are leaving competitors in the dust this summer and are locked in a war that has dropped prices by more than half in just a year.

and with this article E-readers gain steam with lower prices and new models by Christine Matthias on Salon.com,

The Wall Street Journal and Tech News Daily have a few things you should consider before wading into the increasingly crowded e-book market, as well as new research that reveals folks with an e-reader tend to read a whole lot more than ever before. The Barnes and Noble Nook is trying to wrestle some market share away from the big boys, and Sharper Image just announced a new e-reader called the Literati that hopes to, maybe, nail down more male readers? It’s got a color screen, in any event.

Or you could get a library card. It’s free.

Addy Dugdale at the Fast Company site in her article, Borders Cuts E-Reader Prices as Kindle Goes to Staples, has this to say,

Borders has slashed the prices of E-Readers Kobo and Aluratek by $20, illustrating just how meh they’ve become in the tech world. The price drop is nothing new–both the Kindle and Nook, Amazon and Barnes & Noble’s market leaders, have seen their prices slashed recently, and they’re thought to be the most exciting brands in the sector. But who does the news bode worst for?

…

But most of all, this news proves that, as my colleague Kit Eaton pointed out a few months back, this is about as good as it gets for the e-Reader. It’s not quite dead, but it’s looking a bit peaky, like. The reason is, of course, the tablet.

There are efforts that may revive e-readers/e-books/e-paper such as this, a new development in the e-paper/e-reader market was announced in a news item on Azonano (Aug.27, 2010),

The FlexTech Alliance, focused on developing the electronic display and the flexible, printed electronics industry supply chain, today announced a contract award to Nyx Illuminated Clothing Company to develop a foldable display constructed from a panel of multiple e-paper screens.

Applications for this type of product are numerous. For consumer electronics, a foldable display can increase the size of e-reader screens without increasing the device foot-print. In military applications, maps may be read and stored more easily in the field. Medical devices can be enhanced with more accessible and convenient patient charts.

“To enable this unique technology to work, our engineers will develop circuitry to simultaneously drive six separate e-paper screens as one single display,” described John Bell, project manager for Nyx. “The screen panels will be able to be folded up into the area of a single panel or unfolded to the full six panel area on demand.”

Convenience is always important and a flexible screen that I could fold up and fits easily into a purse or a pocket offers a big advantage over an e-book or an iPad (or other tablet device). I’d be especially interested if there’s a sizing option, e.g., being able to view in 1-screen, 2-screen, 3-screen and up to 6-screen options.

As for the debate about tablets vs e-readers such as Kindle, Nook, and their brethren, I really don’t know. E-readers apparently offer superior reading experiences but that presupposes interest in reading will be maintained. Something like Mongoliad (as described in my Sept. 7, 2010 posting), for example, would seem ideally suited to a tablet environment where the reader becomes a listener and/or a participant in the story environment.

Tomorrow: Part 2 where I look at the reading and writing experience in this digital world.

Nanotechnology-enabled mineral foam wins Cleantech award

New interdisciplinary programmes on nanotechnology environmental impacts and policy; new NSF graduate environmental studies funding category: nanotechnology

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Coincidentally or not I’ve come across two items today about environmental studies and nanotechnology. The first concerns a new interdisciplinary programme in the environmental effects and policy implications of nanotechnology being offered jointly by Carnegie Mellon University and Howard University. From the news item on Nanowerk,

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Howard University in Washington, D.C. have received $3.15 million over the next five years from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to launch a new interdisciplinary program in the environmental effects and policy implications of nanotechnology.

Funding comes from a new NSF program called the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT), which enables creation of interdisciplinary programs educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers.

“The IGERT program at Carnegie Mellon and Howard will operate at the interface of science and environmental policy to produce an environmentally and policy literate generation of nanoscience professionals with the skills needed to create novel nanotechnologies and to assess and manage environmental risks associated with nanomaterials,” said Jeanne M. VanBriesen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Carnegie Mellon who will lead the program.

Graduate students from multiple disciplines will participate in a two-year-training program to learn the fundamentals of their core disciplines and gain proficiency in the analysis of environmental issues pertaining to nanotechnology, decision science, and policy-analysis in new nanotechnology-themed courses. Following this foundation, students will conduct research at the interface of policy and nanotechnology. Students also will participate in international laboratory exchange projects as well as internships at corporations active in nanotechnology.

I guess this is a consequence of the recent National Nanotechnology Initiative budget which dedicated more money to environmental research. In another development, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is offering fellowships for students pursuing graduate environmental study including those who want to focus on nanotechnology. From the news item on Nanowerk,

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Center for Environmental Research (NCER), invites applications for the Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowships for graduate environmental study for master’s and doctoral level students.

The deadline is November 5, 2010 at 4:00 PM for receipt of paper applications, and November 5, 2010 at 11:59:59 PM ET for submittal of electronic applications via Grants.gov.

…

This solicitation contains several important changes from the previous solicitation. First, Social Sciences and Tribes and American Indian/Alaska Native/Pacific Islander Communitieshave been added as topic areas in response to the EPA Administrator’s priorities. Secondly, Nanotechnology has been added in response to the Assistant Administrator’s articulated vision for the Office of Research and Development.

The relevant Funding Opportunity Numbers (FON) for the nanotechnology topic is EPA-F2011-STAR-C1.

You can get more information directly from the EPA here.

Sweating out silver nanoparticles

FrogHeart

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