Monthly Archives: January 2012

All about time, metronomes, and attoseconds

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Apparently there’s a metronome (the world’s most accurate) which makes it possible to get slow-motion videos/movies of atoms and molecules. The Jan. 16, 2012 news item on Nanowerk offers this,

The world’s most accurate metronome keeps stroke to an incredible 10 quintillionth of a second. The device enables slow-motion pictures from the world of molecules and atoms, scientists from the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) in Hamburg, Germany, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) report. The metronome, an ultrashort pulse laser, acting as an optical flywheel, is currently the most precise clock generator on short time scales, writes the research team headed by DESY scientist Prof. Franz X. Kärtner in the journal Nature Photonics (“Optical flywheels with attosecond jitter”). CFEL is a joint venture of DESY, the German Max Planck Society and the University of Hamburg.

I find this prospect gobsmacking (quite stunning), from the news item,

The accuracy of the laser beat is ten attoseconds (quintillionth of a second), or 0.000 000 000 000 000 01 seconds. [emphasis mine] Atomic clocks achieve a higher precision, yet on longer time scales. Only with this accurate laser beat it is possible to take motion pictures of the nanocosm, as the movement of electrons in molecules and atoms take place on time scales of some 100 attoseconds to femtoseconds. [emphasis mine] “That is about the time an electron needs for orbiting a hydrogen nucleus or for the electric charge to move through a molecule during photosynthesis,” Kärtner explains. With novel light sources, so-called free-electron lasers, researchers expect fundamental new insights into those processes.

I can hardly wait to see my first nanocosm in motion. There’s no word as to when this might be possible in either the news item on Nanowerk or on the Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) announcement page.

The sound of a flea walking across the floor or the movements of a cell

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Researchers at the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM) have found a way to detect the most minute of sound waves according to a Jan. 16, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

Their nanoear is a single gold nanoparticle that is kept in a state of levitation by a laser beam. Upon weak acoustic excitation the particle oscillates parallel to the direction of sound propagation. The scientists led by Dr. Andrey Lutich, who is a member of Professor Jochen Feldmann’s group at LMU Munich, managed to detect such tiny displacements using a dark-field microscope and an ordinary video camera. The nanoear is capable of detecting sound levels of approximately -60 dB. Thus, it is about a million times more sensitive than the hearing threshold of the human ear, which by convention is set at 0 dB (see paper in Physical Review Letters: “Optically Trapped Gold Nanoparticle Enables Listening at the Microscale”).

The new method realized by the Munich physicists opens a new world to scientists: for the first time, otherwise imperceptibly weak motions – minuscule sound waves – can be visualized. [emphasis mine]

I was able to download an image from the NIM webpage hosting the announcement about the nanoear,

In a water drop, an aggregate of gold nanoparticles is heated by a green laser. As a consequence, sound waves are emitted which displace a nearby single nanoparticle that is kept in levitation by a red laser. (from NIM)

Here’s how they did it (from the NIM announcement webpage),

In the first case, a needle serves as a sound source. It is glued onto a loudspeaker membrane and emits sound waves towards the trapped gold particle. The scientists successfully detected the oscillations of the trapped particle optically using a dark-field microscope and an ordinary digital camera. The recorded videos, each 30 seconds in length, clearly showed the particle oscillating parallel to the propagation direction of the sound waves.

In a second step, the physicists used the so-called nanoprinting method to fix a small number of gold particles on the cover slide. These particles are heated periodically using a green laser. As a result they emit very weak sound waves towards the single levitating gold nanoparticle. The interaction between the sound waves and the trapped particle is very weak. Therefore, the displacement of the particle cannot be detected directly with available optical methods. The scientists used the mathematical Fourier Transformation to obtain the frequency spectrum of the particle’s motion. The physicists could show that the frequency of the sound source is clearly enhanced in this spectrum. Control experiments in which the sound source is driven at varying frequencies confirmed this observation and the high sensitivity of the nanoear.

Here’s why they did it (from the NIM announcement webpage),

“With our nanoear, we have developed a nanomicrophone that allows us to get closer than ever to microscopic objects” Alexander Ohlinger, first author of the publication, explains. “By observing the oscillations of a single gold nanoparticle, tiny movements can be detected.” In this way, the nanoear could yield important information on the minute motions of cells, cell organelles or artificial microscopic objects. Additionally, no high-end devices are necessary as only well-established methods are used.

Champagne galaxy, drawing bubbles for science

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If you want to draw bubbles in the name of science and for a better understanding of this galaxy, go to The Milky Way Project to sign up.  Although you may want to read about the January 17, 2012 article by Paul Scott Anderson for physorg.com (originally published in Universe Today) for a better description than the project website offers,

Remember when you were a kid and blowing bubbles was such great fun? Well, stars kind of do that too. The “bubbles” are partial or complete rings of dust and gas that occur around young stars in active star-forming regions, known as stellar nurseries. So far, over 5,000 bubbles have been found, but there are many more out there awaiting discovery. Now there is a project that you can take part in yourself, to help find more of these intriguing objects.

…

They have been seen before, but now the task is to find as many as possible in the newer, high-resolution images from Spitzer [a space telescope]. A previous catalogue of star bubbles in 2007 listed 269 of them. Four other researchers had found about 600 of them in 2006. Now they are being found by the thousands. As of now, the new catalogue lists 5,106 bubbles, after looking at almost half a million images so far. As it turns out, humans are more skilled at identifying them in the images than a computer algorithm would be. People are better at pattern recognition and then making a judgment based on the data as to what actually is a bubble and what isn’t.

There are more details about The Milky Way Project in Anderson’s article which mentions the Zooniverse in passing. I was surprised to find out that (from the Zooniverse About page),

The Zooniverse is home to the internet’s largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. …

The Zooniverse began with a single project, Galaxy Zoo , which was launched in July 2007. The Galaxy Zoo team had expected a fairly quiet life, but were overwhelmed and overawed by the response to the project. Once they’d recovered from their server buckling under the strain, they set about planning the future!

…

The Zooniverse and the suite of projects it contains is produced, maintained and developed by the Citizen Science Alliance. The member institutions of the CSA work with many academic and other partners around the world to produce projects that use the efforts and ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers deal with the flood of data that confronts them.

As for the Citizen Science Alliance (CSA) group mentioned in About Zooniverse, here’s a description from their home page,

“ The CSA is a collaboration of scientists, software developers and educators who collectively develop, manage and utilise internet-based citizen science projects in order to further science itself, and the public understanding of both science and of the scientific process. These projects use the time, abilities and energies of a distributed community of citizen scientists who are our collaborators ”

The CSA takes proposals and the next selection round will be in February 2012. From the CSA’s proposal page,

Thanks to generous support from the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, Adler Planetarium and the Citizen Science Alliance are pleased to announce the first open call for proposals by researchers who wish to develop citizen science projects which take advantage of the experience, tools and community of the Zooniverse. Successful proposals will receive donated effort of the Adler-based team to build and launch a new citizen science project.

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Proposals are welcomed from scientists or researchers in any discipline that would significantly benefit from the active participation of tens or hundreds of thousands of volunteers. Building on the success of our existing projects, including Galaxy Zoo, Planet Hunters and Old Weather, successful proposals will be designed in partnership with the applicants, then implemented and hosted by the Zooniverse team. The applicants will therefore be free to concentrate on making good use of the work of volunteers for the benefit of their research.

We expect proposals to be made by a team who can take responsibility for defining the initial research problem, data set to be used, and who are committed to making use of the results.

They do recommend submitting your proposal by Jan. 15 by the latest which means this is a bit late but maybe next year, eh?

As for the champagne headline, thank you to Eli Bressert who compared the galaxy to champagne with all its bubbles (in Paul Scott Anderson’s article).

Removing pollutants from water with nano-brushes

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The Jan. 16, 2012 news item ( by Jim Hannah) on Nanowerk about nano-brushes and water pollution reminded of an MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) event at the last Venice Biennale, which featured a demonstration of nanotechnology-enabled oil-absorbing robots (my Aug. 26 2010 posting includes a video of the MIT project, Seaswarm).

Here’s an overview of the situation, from the news item,

The need to efficiently purify water is mushrooming into a massive global issue as human and industrial consumption of water grows.

The United Nations estimates that about 1.1 billion people currently lack access to safe water. Several forecasts suggest that freshwater may become the “oil” of the 21st century – expensive, scarce and the cause of geo-political conflicts.

In the United States, aging water-treatment infrastructure is struggling to keep up with growing threats to the clean-water supply, making water purification a major energy expense. Technologies like the “nano-brush” may provide some relief.

Dr. Sharmila Mukhopadhyay of Wright State University (Ohio, US) is working on the problem with her research team and they are developing (from the news item),

… near molecular-sized “nano-brushes.”

These fuzzy structures have bristles made up of thousands of tiny, jellyfish-like strands. The increased surface area of the bristles, with proper coatings, allows them to behave like powerful cleaners that kill bacteria and destroy contaminants that pollute water.

Here’s a brief description of how this would work,

Different materials can be broken down into nano-particles and then attached to the bristles of the brushes.

For example, particles of silver kill bacteria on contact without being dispersed as pollutants in the water. Particles of palladium break up carbon-tetrachloride and other water pollutants. And particles of titanium oxide can zap pollutants when activated by sunlight.

Mukhopadhyay plans to attach three or four different kinds of water-purifying particles to the nano-brushes. “So simultaneously you can combine multiple environmental cleanup applications into one single component,” she said.

They have been testing this solution in the lab and they appear to be confident that it will be deployed in the field in the next few years. I’m thrilled that the nanoparticles being used for the cleanup don’t become pollutants themselves (at least, not so far).

Nanodiamond research – a quick mention

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Nanotechnology and diamonds go together like a horse and carriage … I don’t often resist song references and this was not one of those times. (For anyone who doesn’t recognize it, “Love and marriage go together like …).

Given how strongly diamonds are associated with nanotechnology, it’s good to see that a team from the A. J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute has published a review of nanodiamond research. From the Jan. 11, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

Nearly 50 years ago scientists discovered that detonating powerful explosives had the ability to create, not just destroy. Nanodiamonds, diamond-structured particles measuring less than 10 nanometers in diameter, which are the resultant residue from a TNT or Hexogen explosion in a contained space, are now being studied in a variety of science, technology and health applications. A team of researchers who specialize in nanotechnology, led by Dr. Yury Gogotsi, director of the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, offered a review of nanodiamond research, in the December 18 edition of Nature Nanotechnology (“The properties and applications of nanodiamonds “) to sift through new ways scientists are using these tiny treasures.

Courtesy of reading Neal Stephenson’s science fiction novel, Diamond Age, I tend to think of materials made from nanodiamonds as being construction materials but this team is suggesting some other applications (from the news item),

According to the piece, nanodiamonds possess a unique combination of qualities, such as accessible surface area, versatile chemistry, chemical stability and biocompatibility. These traits, and the fact that nanodiamonds are non-toxic, make the particles ideal candidates for a variety of tasks including drug delivery cancer diagnostics, and mimicking proteins.

For anyone who’s interested about the Drexel Nanotechnology Institute and their Nanomaterials Group, here’s a link to their webpage.

International art/science script competition ceremony will be hosted by Trinity College Dublin’s nano centre and STAGE

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CRANN (Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices) at Trinity College Dublin has announced that it will be co-hosting the winner’s ceremony (and a reading of the winning script) for an international scriptwriting contest featuring science- and technology-inspired plays. From the Jan. 11, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

CRANN, the SFI [Science Foundation of Ireland] funded nanoscience centre based at Trinity College Dublin, today announced that it is bringing the STAGE International Script Competition to Ireland during Dublin City of Science 2012. The competition judges will include a Pulitzer Prize winner and a Nobel Laureate.

The STAGE International Script Competition is a unique collaboration between art and science that awards a prize of $10,000 for the best new play about science and technology. STAGE – Scientists, Technologists and Artists Generating Exploration – began as an alliance between the Professional Artists Lab, a dynamic artistic laboratory, and the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Through CRANN’s relationship with CNSI, Dublin has beaten off stiff international competition to bring STAGE to Ireland.

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As the 2012 City of Science, Dublin will host a programme of science-related events and activities throughout the year. The city will host Europe’s largest science conference, the Euroscience Open Forum (ESOF) 2012 from July 11-15, 2012, at which the winner of the 5th STAGE International Script Competition will first be announced to the public.

Later in the year, STAGE and CRANN will collaboratively host the award ceremony, at which the winning playwright will receive their STAGE Award from a science Nobel Laureate. In tandem with the ceremony, there will be a staged reading of the winning play, performed by professional Irish actors. Nancy Kawalek, Founder/Director of STAGE, will direct the reading.

Unfortunately, it’s too late for interested parties to submit their plays for this cycle (the 5th); submissions were closed as of Dec. 1, 2011.

The competition certainly seems to have attracted some high profile interest in past years (from the news item on Nanowerk),

Each cycle, the winner of the STAGE International Script Competition is chosen by a stellar panel of judges. Judges for the last cycle were Pulitzer Prize and Tony-Award winning playwright David Auburn; Tony, Olivier, and Obie Award-winning playwright John Guare; Nobel Laureate Alan Heeger; Nobel Laureate and KBE Sir Anthony Leggett; and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Lindsay-Abaire. In addition to Mr. Lindsay-Abaire, who has shown his support for STAGE by signing on as a judge ‘in perpetuity’, the judges for this 5th cycle of the competition will include two science Nobel Laureates and two additional distinguished writer-artists from the theatre world. The names of these jurors will be announced in early 2012.

The 3rd cycle winner was a play about Rosalind Franklin; I’ve long been interested in her story and  I mentioned it in a July 28, 2010 post about science-inspired knitting (there’s a ‘Rosalind’ scarf),

For anyone not familiar with Franklin (from the San Diego Super Computer Center at the University of Southern California web page),

There is probably no other woman scientist with as much controversy surrounding her life and work as Rosalind Franklin. Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. The story of DNA is a tale of competition and intrigue, told one way in James Watson’s book The Double Helix, and quite another in Anne Sayre’s study, Rosalind Franklin and DNA. James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received a Nobel Prize for the double-helix model of DNA in 1962, four years after Franklin’s death at age 37 from ovarian cancer.

Here’s a bit more about the 3rd cycle STAGE winner, Photograph 51, from the news item on Nanowerk,

A film version of third STAGE Competition winner Photograph 51 is being produced by Academy Award-nominated director Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan), Academy Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz, and Ari Handel. Playwright Anna Ziegler will adapt her play for the screen. Photograph 51 was featured at the 2011 World Science Festival in New York City; the play has also enjoyed prestigious productions in New York City and Washington, D.C.

 

…

About the Play: What does a woman have to do to succeed in the world of science? It is 1953 and Dr. Rosalind Franklin, brilliant, passionate and ambitious, pours herself into her work at King’s College Lab in London. When fellow scientists Watson and Crick find out about her discoveries in the field of DNA, her work is suddenly not her own – and shortly thereafter they claim credit for a major breakthrough. A compelling drama about a woman’s sacrifice for professional success, Photograph 51 asks how we become who we become, and whether we have any power to change.

I checked the playwright’s, Anna Ziegler, website for more information about the upcoming movie and found this,

Anna has been awarded [April 2011] a Tribeca Film Festival / Sloan Grant to adapt her play PHOTOGRAPH 51 into a film. Rachel Weisz, Ari Handel, Audrey Rosenberg and Darren Aronofsky are producers.

You can find out more about STAGE and other winners of the competition here.

Science tattoos and a brief chat with Carl Zimmer about his book, Science Ink

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I’m back with another New York Academy of Sciences public event (my Jan. 3, 2012 posting listed a number of events), this time it’s  Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed with Carl Zimmer. Here’s a description of the event (which will take place on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012 from 7 – 8:30 pm),

How much do you love science? Enough to get it permanently inked on your skin?

Join award-winning science journalist and New York Academy of Sciences regular Carl Zimmer for a talk on his latest book, Science Ink, which showcases over 300 tattoos dedicated to the pursuit of science.

Tattoos have been a part of human culture as far back as Neolithic times. Scientists have uncovered tattoos on mummified ancients from Western China to Egypt to Scandanavia. And the subjects of those tattoos vary as much as the cultures—from elaborate animal and organic designs to simple graphic designs thought to have therapeutic qualities. In more modern times in the Western world, tattoos came into vogue in the late 1800s when British elites began to tattoo themselves—both Winston Churchill and his mother, Lady Randolph Churchill, had tattoos. And today, it’s clear that in American culture, tattoos have had a resurgence in popularity.

Choosing what to mark your body with permanently is a source of much conversation and consternation. And as Carl Zimmer discovered after a blog post asking about science tattoos, there is a passionate group of people who made the choice to ink themselves with science.

In this special event, Zimmer will speak about the science and history of tattooing, and offer highlights from his book Science Ink, which features a gallery of scientific tattoos, spanning fields from evolutionary biology and neuroscience to mathematics and astrophysics. In addition, Zimmer is inviting a handful of those featured in the book to come and share the compelling personal stories behind their ink.

Here are more details about the event, pricing is as follows,

Member:                                                                   $15

Student / Postdoc / Fellow Member:           $10

Nonmember:                                                           $25

Student / Postdoc / Fellow Nonmember:   $20

In a Jan. 9, 2012 posting on his blog, The Loom, Carl Zimmer offers more information about his book and upcoming talk plus a discount,

Get $10 dollars off admission by using the promo code ZIMMER. Register [here or http://www.nyas.org/scienceink]

The address and contact details:

The New York Academy of Sciences

7 World Trade Center
250 Greenwich Street, 40th floor
New York, NY 10007-2157
212.298.8600
nyas@nyas.org

As for Carl Zimmer and science tattoos, I decided to investigate a bit further. Here’s an excerpt from Carl Zimmer’s website bio webpage,

The New York Times Book Review calls Carl Zimmer “as fine a science essayist as we have.” In his books, essays, articles, and blog posts, Zimmer reports from the frontiers of biology, where scientists are expanding our understanding of life. He is a popular speaker at universities, medical schools, museums, and festivals, and he is also a frequent guest on radio programs such as Radio Lab and This American Life.

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In addition to writing books, Zimmer has written hundreds of articles for the New York Times and magazines including National Geographic, Time, Scientific American, Science, and Popular Science. From 1994 to 1998 Zimmer was a senior editor at Discover, where he remains a contributing editor and writes a monthly column about the brain.

Since 2003, Zimmer has written the award-winning blog, The Loom. Along with essays about science, The Loom is also home to a popular gallery of science tattoos. In November 2011, Zimmer will publish a book of his favorite selections, called Science Ink: Tales of the Science Obsessed.

Zimmer is a lecturer at Yale University, where he teaches writing about science and the environment. He was also the first Visiting Scholar at the Science, Health, and Environment Reporting Program at New York University’s Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute.

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He is, to his knowledge, the only writer after whom a species of tapeworm has been named. [emphasis mine]

I do love a sense of humour. As for Zimmer’s latest book, Science Ink, his website offers some excerpts from it (here are a few samples),

Astrarium, p.71
“Although I’m not a scientist by trade,” writes Lauren Caldwell, “my work on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British literature has provided ample opportunity for me to become acquainted with the work of some brilliant scientific innovators. Though we have discarded some of their ideas, their work retains all of its vital visual force. ¶ “Years ago I discovered and fell in love with the comprehensive diagrams in Giovanni de’Dondi’s 1364 Il Tractatus Astarii, which contained the plans for the first famous astrarium. Each piece has its own delicate mechanical beauty, but I chose for my backpiece the Mercury wheelwork. Of course, you couldn’t track Mercury with it—de’Dondi followed Ptolemy—but his astrarium remains a lovely and impressive testament to human ingenuity and curiosity. ¶ “The more spare geometrical diagrams that surround the de’Dondi piece are taken from Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica—of which little enough, I imagine, need be said. Though in many respects these two men couldn’t have been more different, they shared a vision of a universe as elegant and aesthetically compelling today as it was when they lived and worked.”

Astrarium tattoo (from Science Ink by Carl Zimmer)

DNA monster, bottom p.102
Jay Phelan, a biologist at UCLA, got his DNA tattoo in 1990 while he was in graduate school. “As I got deeper into the study of evolution, genetics, and human behavior,” he writes, “I realized that there was a tension between what my genes ‘wanted’ me to do and what I wanted to do, from the fattiness of the foods I ate, to the selfishness/selflessness I showed to others, to issues with managing my money, my risk-taking, and my relationships, and more. It dawned on me that I was fighting a never-ending battle. Anyway, I tried to come up with a design that captured that tension and, once I did, decided to get it tattooed on my back.”

DNA monster tattoo (from Science Ink by Carl Zimmer)

I was sufficiently fascinated to send off a few questions to Carl Zimmer about science tattoos and his upcoming talk at the NYAS and he very kindly replied,

  • Given the title of your latest book (Science Ink: Tattoos of the Science Obsessed), I’m wondering if you have any tattoos.
    If so, what is it?

I don’t have any tattoos actually. I’ve never been particularly interested in getting one, and am no big fan of needles. But I find the lack of a tattoo is no impediment to appreciating the tattoos of scientists.  If I sell of whole bunch of copies of the book, maybe I’ll have to celebrate by getting one. I was thinking about getting  my wife’s name, Grace, spelled out as amino acids.

  • What most surprised you about this book?

At first the surprise was simply that any scientist at all had tattoos.  The initial flood of pictures that filled up my e-mail inbox was amazing. After I got accustomed to the idea that there is lots and lots of scientists with tattoos out there, the next big surprise was how many interesting stories there were, illustrated by these tattoos. Stories from the history of science, stories from the personal lives of the scientists. And since telling stories is my job, I decided to turn Science Ink into a book of miniature essays.

  • Is there any branch of science that attracts more people who are willing to ink their bodies?

I don’t see any field being way in the lead compared other ones. In fact, what really impressed me was that just about every branch of science I can imagine ended up being represented in the book. I have groups of linguistics tattoos in the book, astronomy tattoo,s medical tattoos ,tattoos about quantum physics, and so on. Basically, by looking at these tattoos you end up taking a tour of all science.

  • Could you briefly preview a little bit of your Ja.24.12 talk?

I’m going to be talking at the New York Academy of Sciences about what got me into this peculiar project, and some of the things I learned about scientists and science in the process. But I’m also going to be talking about tattooing itself. It’s actually a pretty fascinating scientific subject in its own right. Anthropologists have found evidence of tattooing in many cultures around the world, and it goes back thousands of years. So I think that tattoos speak to something really important about what it means to be human–and, in this particular case, what it means to be a scientist.

Dear Carl, Thank you for taking time out of a very busy schedule (he has a talk scheduled Jan. 20, 2012 too; scroll down to the next paragraph for information about that event plus all of his usual work) to respond. I hope the book is a huge success.

There is one other related Science Ink event that might be of interest. The ScienceOnline2012 conference, January 19 – 21, 2012 (no spaces left for attendees), held annually in Durham, North Carolina and (mentioned in my Nov. 2, 2011 posting) is hosting a Science of Ink tour for 30 people to the Dogstar Tattoo Company on Friday, Jan. 20, 2012. The webpage for the tour notes that it is completely booked but if you follow the Twitter hash tag (#SciInk) you may be able to get on the tour (as people do drop out of these things for one reason or another). From the tour webpage,

Join us on Friday afternoon, January 20th, at the Dogstar Tattoo Company in Durham, NC’s Golden Belt district for a lecture by Carl Zimmer on the science of tattoos, a reception & tour of the studio, and the opportunity to get inked (or just watch the process!). Carl will have his book, Science Ink: The Tattoos of the Science Obsessed available–and we can probably convince him to sign a few ☺

This isn’t your typical tattoo shop. When Carl Zimmer first saw the photos, he declared, “It’s like a cathedral of tattoo parlors.”

…

When you register, please indicate if you definitely plan to get a tattoo, might want to get a tattoo, or definitely don’t plan to get inked (but want to observe). [emphasis mine]

Good luck with getting on the tour or getting to the talk in New York. As for anyone from Vancouver who might be hoping that Carl Zimmer will be here for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2012 annual meeting, sadly, the answer is no.

Nano in Egypt and in Iran

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It’s great to get some information about what’s going on in Egypt and Iran with regard to nanotechnology and Julian Taub at the Scientific American blog network has posted a couple of very interesting interviews about what’s happening in those countries.  From Taub’s Jan. 12, 2012 posting (Felafel Tech: Nanotechnology in Egypt), here’s a description of his interview subject,

Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Mottaleb is the leading nanotechnology consultant in Egypt and Director of the Nano Materials Masters Program and the founding director for the Center of Nanotechnology at Nile University. He also helped write a chapter for NATO Science for Peace on nanomaterial consumer applications, as well as numerous research papers and articles on the issue of nanotechnology for developing countries. I sit down with him to discuss the importance of nanotechnology, the state of technological progress and public nanotechnology education after the revolution, and Egypt’s future role in the global nanotechnology landscape.

After talking about the impact that the recent revolution has had on the nanotech industry (briefly: not much since there wasn’t much of a nanotech industry in the first place) in Egypt, Abdel-Mottaleb discusses the impact on nanotechnology research at his center,

It has slowed things significantly, because now our students have to try to use facilities wherever available in Egypt. This always depends on the availability of the equipment and the response costs for us to use the equipment and the facilities at other universities or research centers. We’ve rented some labs from some companies located near the university, which are not even adequate. Our research has slowed down, students are frustrated but committed to finish and go to work, and contribute to the society and to Egypt. It has affected us deeply, negatively, but we are committed to solve it.

A significant hurdle we are facing now is the fact that the Egyptian government has stopped our move into our new campus. Since 2007, we have been operating out of temporary facilities and awaiting the completion the campus. The government has granted Ahmed Zewail (1999 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry) the full use of our campus, and since May 2010, he is refusing to allow the university to move into the facilities. This is despite the fact that the facilities were partly funded by donations to the university and the facilities remain unused to date.  Several rounds of negotiations have failed due to his insistence on shutting down the university. He plans to build a new university (Zewail University). It is very difficult to us to understand his position and intentions. We hope that the international community will support us and not allow the shutting down of a very young and successful university.

In answer to a question from Taub about the best way to advance Egyptian R&D (research and development) in nanotechnology,

I think we need a national nano initiative. It needs specific and measurable targets that all the resources that are going to be allocated for nanotechnology are going to be put into that area, and achieving targets. We need a significant collaboration with the international community. We need to find a way to establish such bi-lateral collaboration schemes, and in the end, we need the facilities. We have a huge untapped human resource power here, I mean, it’s really wonderful to see a fresh graduate from university writing a full proposal and standing up and defending it on a very scientific level, and really holding a sound argument. Unfortunately they are unable to execute these proposals because of the lack of funding and the lack of facilities.

This is really the way out, and nanotechnology can affect the culture in this region. You can use the interdisciplinary thinking and push the idea that you cannot do something on your own, you need collaborations, you need to blend other disciplines, and this is very similar to having foreigners or people in different language speaking countries having to find a way to work together. Nanotechnology really instills that into the minds of the students, and gives them the opportunity to question and challenge the conditions or the dogmas they have, whether it is about science, or culture, or politics. Nanotechnology is a wonderful venue to promote intercultural dialogue, and interfaith dialogue. You can really see the opportunities.

I find that last bit about nanotechnology’s  interdisciplinary nature as having an impact on dialogue in many spheres (Abdel-Mottaleb mentions science, culture, and politics) quite interesting and something I’ve not seen in either the Canadian or US discourses.

Egypt and nanotechnology were previously mentioned  in my Nov. 21, 2011 posting (Egyptian scientists win cash prize for innovation: a nano test for Hepatitis C) and I have also mentioned Egypt, science, and the revolution in my Feb. 4, 2011 posting (Brief bit about science in Egypt and brief bit about Iran’s tech fair in Syria). That gives me a tidy segue to Taub’s Jan. 13, 2012 posting (Science and Sanctions: Nanotechnology in Iran).

Here’s a little bit about  Dr. Abdolreza Simchi, the interview subject, from Taub’s introduction,

Dr. Simchi is a distinguished nanotechnology researcher heading the Research Center for Nanostructured and Advanced Materials (RCNAM) at the Department of Material Science and Engineering of Sharif University, where he focuses on biomedical engineering and sustainable technology. Nanotechnology is a new and interdisciplinary field where scientists can engineer atom and molecules on the nanoscale, fifty thousand times thinner than a human hair.

Dr. Simchi represents a bridge between Iran and the West. He has received many awards for his work, not only from Iran, but also from Germany, the UK, and the UN. He earned his PhD in a joint program between Sharif University and the University of Vienna and then worked at the German technology institute Fraunhofer at the beginning of his career.

Before excerpting a few more items from Taub’s post, I’m going to introduce a little information about Iran and its nanotechnology initiative from Tim Harper, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Cientifica. I interviewed Tim in my July 15, 2011 posting (Tim Harper, Cientifica’s CEO, talks about their latest report on global nanotechnology funding and economic impacts), where he mentioned Iran briefly and, after his visit to Iran’s Nano 2011 exhibition, he discussed it more extensively on his own blog. From Tim’s Nov. 17, 2011 posting on TNTLog,

Iran has always been a source of fascination, a place of ancient culture and history and now a country making a lot of noise about science and technology, so I was pleased to be invited by the Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council to attend the Iran Nano 2011 exhibition in Tehran.

…

The unique aspect of Iranian nanotechnology is that because of the various international sanctions over the past thirty years it’s not the kind of place where you can just order an AFM or an electron microscope from a major US or Japanese supplier. As a result there was lots of home made kit on display, from sputtering systems, through surface analysis to atomic force microscopes.

…

So, Iranian scientists have engineered their way around the embargo on selling high tech equipment of Iran – and there was no shortage of high-end laptops on display either – but so often science is not about how much stuff you have in your lab, but what you can do with it.

Here’s what Dr. Simchi had to say about sanctions in Taub’s interview (Jan. 13, 2012 posting),

I believe sanction has two faces. On one hand, it restricts the accessibility to facilities, equipment, and materials. This part is certainly disturbing the progress. However, I see another side that somehow is good! The sanction has limited the mobility of our students and experts. I believe the strength of the country is its talented and brilliant students and well-established academic media. This is the most important difference between Iran and other neighboring countries. Over three million students have now enrolled in Iranian Universities. Hundred thousands are now registered at graduate levels. This is a true strength and advantage of Iran. As far as the American and European banning of the mobility of Iranian students via visa restriction, we enjoy more and more from forced-prohibited brain drain.

What is the wonder in rapid development of Iran in scientific publication when thousands of talented graduate students join the university annually? This is a direct consequence of well-educated students, working hard even in a tough condition.  I am personally an example of this scenario (although I am not belonging to the upper 10% of talented scientists in Iran). I was unable to go to the US to visit Standford University due to the September 11 tragedy and was twice refused a visa to visit UC Berkeley. What would have happened if I had been successful to go to the US and possibly settle down? Up to now, I have graduated many talented students at SUT. They are really brilliant and I am very proud of them. Some of them left the country to continue their studies in Europe and the US but many are living in Iran and truly contribute to nanotechnology development.  Since my research area is not strategic and has no dual applications (mainly biomaterials and green technologies), I enjoy collaborating with many scientists in the US, Canada, Europe, South Korea, and Japan.

Simchi’s research focus is interesting in light of his specialty (from Taub’s Jan. 13, 2012 posting),

I am principally a metallurgist, and specifically a particulate materials scientist. However, I always look at science and technology side-by-side and shoulder-to-shoulder. In fact, it is of prime importance to me, as an engineer, to see where and how my research output might be utilized; the maximum and direct benefit for the nation and human beings are my utmost aims. In simple words, I look towards the national interests. My people suffer from cancer (Iran is a country with high-cancer risk), environmental pollution (for instance, Tehran is one of the most polluted cities in the world), and limited water resources (dry lands). Therefore, I keep trying to combine my knowledge on particulate materials with nanotechnology, i.e. size effect, to improve healthcare via biomedical applications of materials, and to combat environmental problems. I am particularly interested in developing nanoparticles for diagnosis and therapy and to use them in tissue engineering applications.

As for what Iran is doing with regard to commericalization, Tim notes this (from the Nov. 17, 2011 posting at TNTlog),

In terms of commercial products there were many on display. Agriculture was well represented, with fertilisers, pesticides, coatings to reduce fruit spoilage and even catalytic systems to remove ethylene from fruit storage facilities. Construction materials were another large area, with a wide range of building materials on display. Absent were areas such as semiconductors and medical devices, but once again their absence illustrates that INIC [Iran Nanotechnology Initiative Council] is focussing much more on the solutions demanded by Iranian industry rather than trying to compete with more advanced economies.

Tim’s view that the absence of medical devices at the exhibition he visited is evidence that INIC is focussed on industry solutions suggests Dr. Simchi’s interests in biomedical and tissue engineering applications may prove a little challenging to pursue. In any event, I heartily recommend reading Taub’s interviews and Tim’s posting in their entirely.

Mind the Science Gap and mentoring

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There’s a bunch of master’s of public health students at the University of Michigan who want to communicate about complex science to the public and you’re invited. Mind the Science Gap blog is a project of Dr. Andrew Maynard’s. The project is being presented as part of a course. Here’s a description of the course for the students (from the Syllabus webpage),

This course is designed to teach participants how to connect effectively with a non-expert audience when conveying complex science-based information that is relevant to public health, using the medium of a public science blog (http://mtsg.org).

In today’s data-rich and hyper-connected world, the gap between access to information and informed decision-making is widening.  It is a gap that threatens to undermine actions on public health as managers, policy makers, consumers and others struggle to fish relevant information from an ever-growing sea of noise.  And it is a gap that is flourishing in a world where anyone with a smart phone and an Internet connection can become an instant “expert”.

To bridge this gap, the next generation of public health professionals will need to be adept at working with new communication platforms, and skilled at translating “information” into “intelligence” for a broad audience. These skills will become increasingly relevant to communicating effectively with managers, clients and customers.  But more broadly, they will be critical to supporting evidence-informed decisions as social influences continue to guide public health activities within society.

Here’s a bit more about the blog itself and what the students will be doing (from the About page),

Mind the Science Gap is a science blog with a difference.  For ten weeks between January and April 2012, Masters of Public Health students from the University of Michigan will each be posting weekly articles as they learn how to translate complex science into something a broad audience can understand and appreciate.

Each week, ten students will take a recent scientific publication or emerging area of scientific interest, and write a post on it that is aimed at a non expert and non technical audience.  As the ten weeks progress, they will be encouraged to develop their own area of focus and their own style.

And they will be evaluated in the most brutal way possible – by the audience they are writing for!  As this is a public initiative, comments and critiques on each post will be encouraged, and author responses expected.

This is not a course on science blogging.  Rather, it is about teaching public health graduate students how to convey complex information effectively to a non-expert audience, using the medium of a science blog.

The blogging starts Jan. 16, 2012 and you are invited to participate.  You can be a casual commenter or Andrew has a list of almost 40 mentors (people who’ve committed to commenting on the content at least once per week) and he’s asking for more. BTW, I (Maryse de la Giroday) am on the list as is Robyn Sussel, health and academic communicator and principal for Signals, a Vancouver-based communications and graphic design company. If you’re interested in signing up as a mentor, you can contact Andrew through this email address: maynarda@umich.edu

You can also sign up for RSS feeds.

Animal love and nanotechnology

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The researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Modular State Technologies (EMFT) have announced a nanosensor technique they’re developing to minimize the use of animals in scientific experiments. From the Jan. 10, 2012 news item on the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) EurekAlert,

Countless mice, rats and rabbits die every year in the name of science – and the situation is getting worse. While German laboratories used some 2.41 million animals for scientific research in 2005, by 2009 this number had grown to 2.79 million. One third were destined for fundamental biology research, and the majority were used for researching diseases and developing medical compounds and devices. People demand medicines that are safe and therapies that are tolerable, but hardly anyone is happy to accept the need for animal testing. [emphasis mine]

Yes, having read studies where they used animals for pain research (I was doing some literature searches and reading for a psychiatrist whose specialty is pain reduction [and, if possible, elimination]), I heartily concur with that last comment. Thank you to all the scientists who are working to eliminate that practice.

Since I’m not sure how long a news item remains posted on EurekAlert, I tracked down the Fraunhofer’s Research News(letter) dated 01.2012 (EMFT) for a description of what they are doing and how they are using nanosensors,

“We’re basically using a test tube to study the effects of chemicals and their potential risks. What we do is take living cells, which were isolated from human and animal tissue and grown in cell cultures, and expose them to the substance under investigation,” explains Dr. Jennifer Schmidt of the EMFT. If a given concentration of the substance is poisonous to the cell, it will die. This change in “well-being” can be rendered visible by the sensor nanoparticles developed by Dr. Schmidt and her team. (p. 5)

Specifically, here’s what they’re tracking and how they’re doing it,

Cells – the tiniest living things – that are healthy store energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). High levels of ATP are indicative of high levels of metabolic activity in cells. If a cell is severely damaged, it becomes less active, storing less energy and consequently producing less ATP. “Our nanosensors allow us to detect adenosine triphosphate and determine the state of health of cells. This makes it possible to assess the cell-damaging effects of medical compounds or chemicals,” says Schmidt.

In order for the nanoparticles to register the ATP, researchers give them two fl uorescent dyes: a green indicator dye that is sensitive to ATP, and a red reference dye that does not change color. Next, the scientists introduce the particles to living cells and observe them under a fluorescence microscope. The degree to which the particles light up depends on the quantity of ATP present. The more yellow is visible in the overlay image, [emphasis mine] the more active are the cells. If their health were impaired, the overlay image would appear much redder. “We could in future use cancer cells to test the effectiveness of newly developed chemotherapy agents. If the nanosensors detect a low concentration of ATP in the cells, we’ll know that the new treatment is either inhibiting tumor cell growth or even killing them,” says Schmidt. “The most promising agents could then be studied further.” (p. 5)

This is the “overlay image” mentioned,

The yellow nanosensor signal in the overlay image (right) shows that the cells are active. If they were unhealthy, they would appear much redder. Center: the indicator dye signal. Left: the reference dye signal. Credit: Fraunhofer EMFT

I trust we’ll be hearing more about this research.