Monthly Archives: July 2013

‘Engendering Engineering Success’ at the University of British Columbia (Canada)

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Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) has committed $193, 732.00 to  Engendering Engineering Success, a project investigating why so few women in engineering reach senior level positions. From the June 21, 2013 University of British Columbia news release announcing the funds and the research,

Professor Elizabeth Croft of the Department of Mechanical Engineering has received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) to study why few women reach senior management in engineering firms. Along with an interdisciplinary team with expertise in women in engineering, organizational policy, social psychology and human resources, she will investigate Engendering Engineering Success with $193,732 of SSHRC funding over three years

I think at least one reason for so few women in the upper levels is explained by the next paragraph in the news release,

The low representation of women in the engineering profession remains a persistent problem in Canada. The most recent data from Engineers Canada indicates that 18% of engineering graduates and 11% of licensed engineers are women but very few reach senior management in engineering firms.

If only 18% of the graduates are women, then, purely from a numerical position, it’s not  likely many will reach senior level positions. Given the evidence in engineering and other related sectors (the Council of Canadian Academies’ assessment of Science, Women and Gender Part 1 and Part 2 [my Feb . 22, 2013 postings]), the dearth is not due to numbers alone. From the news release,

Surveys conducted by the NSERC Chairs for Women in Science and Engineering confirm that at graduation female students are equally committed to entering the engineering workplace as their male peers. However many more women than men leave the profession within 5 to 10 years of career start.

Recent Canadian and US studies identify workplace culture as a major barrier to the retention and advancement of women in the engineering profession. The loss of qualified women is a significant cost to employers in terms of lost intellectual capital and the need to recruit and retrain. The reduced numbers of the technically skilled workers in Canada impacts our ability to compete in a global economy.

The Engendering Engineering Success research intends to bring sustained change in the retention and advancement of women in the engineering profession through a unique partnership of social science researchers, women in engineering and their advocates, professional organizations and key industry stakeholders across Canada.

“The team recognizes there have been efforts to develop organizational policies to address retention and advancement of women in engineering,” says Professor Croft, NSERC Chair for Women in Engineering. “These are important steps, but they are not sufficient to change workplace culture and practices, particularly in a male-dominated profession.”

The interdisciplinary team collaborating with Croft includes co-applicants Professor Michelle Innes of the University of Alberta School of Business; Professor Emerita Valerie Davidson, PhD., P.Eng, past NSERC CWSE (Ontario); UBC Professor of Psychology Toni Schmader, Canada Research Chair in Social Psychology; and collaborators Courtnay Hughes of the Mining Industry Human Resources Council (MiHR), and Lianne Lefsrud, P.Eng, VP Canadian Centre for Women in Science, Engineering, Trades and Technology (WinSETT). Partner organizations are WinSETT, MiHR, Engineers Canada, the Network of NSERC CWSEs, WorleyParsons and Enbridge Pipelines Inc.

…

With expertise in engineering, organizational study of workplace dynamics, and social psychology of implicit bias, the research team aims to better understand and dismantle the obstacles that workplace culture can create for women in engineering. Engaging directly with practicing women engineers as well as managers and industry leaders, they will systematically examine current policies and practices and identify successful strategies. Partners from industry and professional organizations will be engaged in both data gathering and result dissemination.

“Through a combination of research, pilot implementation and evaluation, we will ensure that the policies, practices and interventions that are developed are practical and reflect the real situation of women working in engineering,” says Croft. “We believe that workplace cultures that support diversity are key economic drivers and will allow women to participate more fully in the technical workforce.”

For anyone who’s interested in investigating this project further, there is an Engendering Engineering Success group on Mendeley (members are Justin Yang, Nicole Wilson, and Dr. Elizabeth Croft) where you can get an overview of the research studies and literature being reviewed for this study.

Dr. Elizabeth Croft was mentioned here in a June 7, 2013 posting (scroll down 1/2 way) in conjunction with her June 13, 2013 talk at the HR MacMillan Space Centre (Vancouver, Canada) on robotics.  In addition to the faculty page mentioned in that posting, there’s also this one on the CARIS (Collaborative Advanced Robotics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory) web space.

Combining bacteriorhodopsin with semiconducting nanoparticles to generate hydrogen

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Scientists at the US Argonne National Laboratory have created a hybrid bio-assisted photocatalyst according to a July 19, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

A protein found in the membranes of ancient microorganisms that live in desert salt flats could offer a new way of using sunlight to generate environmentally friendly hydrogen fuel, according to a new study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory.

Argonne nanoscientist Elena Rozhkova and her colleagues combined a pigment called bacteriorhodopsin with semiconducting nanoparticles to create a system that uses light to spark a catalytic process that creates hydrogen fuel.

Before getting to the new hybrid the story starts with nano titanium dioxide (from the July 16, 2013 Argonne National Laboratory press release, which originated the news item),

Scientists have been aware of the potential of titanium dioxide nanoparticles for light-based reactions since the early 1970s, when Japanese researchers discovered that a titanium dioxide electrode exposed to bright ultraviolet light could split water molecules in a phenomenon that came to be known as the Honda-Fujishima effect. Since then, scientists have made continuous efforts to extend the light reactivity of titanium dioxide photocatalysts into the visible part of the spectrum. The promise of these photocatalysts prompted scientists to experiment with different modifications to their basic chemistry in hope of making the reaction more efficient, Rozhkova said.

“Titanium dioxide alone reacts with ultraviolet light, but not with visible light, so we used biological photoreactive molecules as a building block to create a hybrid system that could use visible light efficiently,” Rozhkova said.

Rozhkova and her colleagues turned to bacteriorhodopsin – which is responsible for the unusual purple color of a number of salt flats in California and Nevada – because it uses sunlight as an energy source that allows it to act as a “proton pump.”  Proton pumps are proteins that typically straddle a cellular membrane and transfer protons from inside the cell to the extracellular space.

Here’s an image of the purple membrane caused by bacteriorhodopsin (from University of Bari [Italy] Professor Angela Correlli’s webpage of Photorecptors and Olfactory Receptors,

Bacteriorhodopsin is the only protein of purple membranes, which contains few different lipids. [downloaded from the University of Bari: http://www.biologia.uniba.it/fisiologia/corcelli/en/ric2.html]

Bacteriorhodopsin is the only protein of purple membranes, which contains few different lipids. [downloaded from the University of Bari: http://www.biologia.uniba.it/fisiologia/corcelli/en/ric2.html]

The press release goes on to describe the hybrid system,

In the Argonne system, the protons provided by the bacteriorhodopsin are combined with free electrons at small platinum sites interspersed in the titanium dioxide matrix. “The platinum nanoparticles are essential for creating a distinct spot for the production of the hydrogen molecule,” said Peng Wang, an Argonne postdoctoral researcher in Rozhkova’s group at Argonne’s Center for Nanoscale Materials.

“It is interesting that in biology, bacteriorhodopsin does not naturally participate in these kind of reactions,” Rozhkova said. “Its natural function really doesn’t have much to do at all with creating hydrogen. But as part of this hybrid, it helps make hydrogen under white light and at environmentally friendly conditions.”

This bio-assisted hybrid photocatalyst outperforms many other similar systems in hydrogen generation and could be a good candidate for fabrication of green energy devices that consume virtually infinite sources — salt water and sunlight.

You can find the published paper with the link below,

High-Performance Bioassisted Nanophotocatalyst for Hydrogen Production by Shankar Balasubramanian, Peng Wang, Richard D. Schaller, Tijana Rajh, and Elena A. Rozhkova. Nano Lett., 2013, 13 (7), pp 3365–3371 DOI: 10.1021/nl4016655 Publication Date (Web): June 19, 2013
Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society

The paper is behind a paywall.

*The head for this posting was corrected from Combining bacteriorhodopsin with semiconduction nanopartcles to generate hydrogen to Combining bacteriorhodopsin with semiconductor nanoparticles to generate hydrogen on July 22, 2013 at 3:03 pm PDT.

** I changed the head for this posting again from ‘semiconductor’ to ‘semiconducting’ on July 23, 2013 at 6:50 am PDT.

‘Facebook for molecules’ tackles linguistic issues

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As the amount of information about chemicals and molecules continues to explode, scientists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a type of ‘Facebook for molecules’ which should make the process of searching through the data much easier according to a July 18, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

Social media has expanded to reach an unlikely new target: molecules. Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have created networks of molecular data similar to Facebook’s recently debuted graph search feature. While graph search would allow Facebook users to find all their New York-living, beer-drinking buddies in one quick search, the NIST-designed networks could help scientists rapidly sift through enormous chemical and biological data sets to find substances with specific properties, for example all 5-ring chemicals with an affinity for enzyme A. The search approach could help speed up the development of new drugs and designer materials.

There are vocabulary issues associated with creating a search function (from the news item),

Molecules don’t maintain their own online profiles, so a key challenge for the NIST research team was to develop a standard language for scientists to describe their research subjects. For example, one research group may describe a material’s properties as glassy while another team might use the word vitreous, even though the two words have the same meaning, explained Ursula Kattner, a researcher in the Materials Science and Engineering Division at NIST.

One approach to the problem could be to define a standard set of words, but NIST scientists opted for a more flexible approach that could evolve with time. The search language they developed is similar to Indo-European languages like Sanskrit and Latin, which use short roots to build words based on a set of rules, said Talapady Bhat, a research chemist at NIST who has been leading the effort to develop a shared vocabulary for NIST’s scientific databases. He gives the example of the Sanskrit word “yoga,” which is based on the roots “Y(uj),” which means to join, “O,” which means creator, God, or brain, and “Ga,” which means motion or initiation. Similarly, scientists could take the three simple root words “red,” “laser,” and “light,” and combine them into a single compound word “red-laser-light” that conveys a new concept. Using the root and rule-based approach will mean that scientists who know the roots can figure out the meaning of unfamiliar terms, and it also gives scientists flexibility to develop easily understandable new terms in the future.

The NIST team has already applied their root-based vocabulary rules to the chemical structures in PubChem, a “monstrous database” of millions of compounds and chemical substances, to the world wide protein data bank (PDB), and to specific NIST-based databases, said John Elliot, a biophysicist and another member of the team. While the scientific databases haven’t reached a Facebook-like level of more than a billion users, they are actively used by many scientists in the NIST community and beyond.

You can read more about the issues associated with getting precise search results on ScienceDaily and you may be able to access an abstract of the researchers’ (Talapady Bhat , John Elliott, Carelyn Campbell, Ursula Kattner, Shir Boger, Anne Plant)  Challenges and Solutions for Enabling Facebook like Graph-search on Small and Macro-molecular Structural Data presentation (I keep getting an error) which was given at the 2013 American Crystallographic Association (ACA) meeting.

Testing ‘Schroedinger’s cat’ on everyday objects at the University of Calgary (Canada)

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For decades physicists have been grappling with the question of why the rules for quantum mechanics/physics are so different from classical physics while they try to unify the theories into one coherent explanation for why things are the way they are. At the same time, they’ve also been trying to test how the rules of quantum mechanics might apply to everyday objects and it seems a team from the University of Calgary (Alberta, Canada) have made a breakthrough.

The July 21, 2013 University of Calgary news release on EurekAlert provides an explanation of Schroedinger’s thought experiment (the dead/alive cat), quantum mechanics, and difficulties testing the theory on everyday objects thus helping those of us without that knowledge to better understand the breakthrough,

In contrast to our everyday experience, quantum physics allows for particles to be in two states at the same time — so-called quantum superpositions. A radioactive nucleus, for example, can simultaneously be in a decayed and non-decayed state.

Applying these quantum rules to large objects leads to paradoxical and even bizarre consequences. To emphasize this, Erwin Schroedinger, one of the founding fathers of quantum physics, proposed in 1935 a thought experiment involving a cat that could be killed by a mechanism triggered by the decay of a single atomic nucleus. If the nucleus is in a superposition of decayed and non-decayed states, and if quantum physics applies to large objects, the belief is that the cat will be simultaneously dead and alive.

While quantum systems with properties akin to ‘Schroedinger’s cat’ have been achieved at a micro level, the application of this principle to everyday macro objects has proved to be difficult to demonstrate.

“This is because large quantum objects are extremely fragile and tend to disintegrate when subjected to any interaction with the environment,” explains Lvovsky [professor Alex Lvovsky].

Now for the breakthrough (from the news release),

The breakthrough achieved by Calgary quantum physicists is that they were able to contrive a quantum state of light that consists of a hundred million light quanta (photons) and can even be seen by the naked eye. In their state, the “dead” and “alive” components of the “cat” correspond to quantum states that differ by tens of thousands of photons.

“The laws of quantum mechanics which govern the microscopic world are very different from classical physics that rules over large objects such as live beings,” explains lead author Lvovsky. “The challenge is to understand where to draw the line and explore whether such a line exists at all. Those are the questions our experiment sheds light on,” he states.

While the findings are promising, study co-author Simon [professor Christoph Simon] admits that many questions remain unanswered.

“We are still very far from being able to do this with a real cat,” he says. “But this result suggests there is ample opportunity for progress in that direction.”

They want to try this on a real live  cat? hmmm

For those who’d like to satisfy their curiosity further, here’s a link to and a citation for the published paper,

Observation of micro–macro entanglement of light by A. I. Lvovsky, R. Ghobadi, A. Chandra, A. S. Prasad & C. Simon. Nature Physics (2013) doi:10.1038/nphys2682 Published online 21 July 2013

This paper is behind a paywall.

Desktop nanofabrication is in the laboratory but not in the marketplace yet

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Another Chad Mirkin, Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois, US), research breakthrough has been announced (this man, with regard to research,  is as prolific as a bunny) in a July 19, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily,

A new low-cost, high-resolution tool is primed to revolutionize how nanotechnology is produced from the desktop, according to a new study by Northwestern University researchers.

Currently, most nanofabrication is done in multibillion-dollar centralized facilities called foundries. This is similar to printing documents in centralized printing shops. Consider, however, how the desktop printer revolutionized the transfer of information by allowing individuals to inexpensively print documents as needed. This paradigm shift is why there has been community-wide ambition in the field of nanoscience to create a desktop nanofabrication tool.

“With this breakthrough, we can construct very high-quality materials and devices, such as processing semiconductors over large areas, and we can do it with an instrument slightly larger than a printer,” said Chad A. Mirkin, senior author of the study.

The July 19, 2013 Northwestern University news release (on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides details,

The tool Mirkin’s team has created produces working devices and structures at the nanoscale level in a matter of hours, right at the point of use. It is the nanofabrication equivalent of a desktop printer.

Without requiring millions of dollars in instrumentation costs, the tool is poised to prototype a diverse range of functional structures, from gene chips to protein arrays to building patterns that control how stem cells differentiate to making electronic circuits.

“Instead of needing to have access to millions of dollars, in some cases billions of dollars of instrumentation, you can begin to build devices that normally require that type of instrumentation right at the point of use,” Mirkin said.

The paper details the advances Mirkin’s team has made in desktop nanofabrication based upon easily fabricated beam-pen lithography (BPL) pen arrays, structures that consist of an array of polymeric pyramids, each coated with an opaque layer with a 100 nanometer aperture at the tip. Using a digital micromirror device, the functional component of a projector, a single beam of light is broken up into thousands of individual beams, each channeled down the back of different pyramidal pens within the array and through the apertures at the tip of each pen.

The nanofabrication tool allows one to rapidly process substrates coated with photosensitive materials called resists and generate structures that span the macro-, micro- and nanoscales, all in one experiment.

Key advances made by Mirkin’s team include developing the hardware, writing the software to coordinate the direction of light onto the pen array and constructing a system to make all of the pieces of this instrument work together in synchrony. This approach allows each pen to write a unique pattern and for these patterns to be stitched together into functional devices.

“There is no need to create a mask or master plate every time you want to create a new structure,” Mirkin said. “You just assign the beams of light to go in different places and tell the pens what pattern you want generated.”

Because the materials used to make the desktop nanofabrication tool are easily accessible, commercialization may be as little as two years away, Mirkin said. In the meantime, his team is working on building more devices and prototypes.

In the paper, Mirkin explains how his lab produced a map of the world, with nanoscale resolution that is large enough to see with the naked eye, a feat never before achieved with a scanning probe instrument. Not only that, but closer inspection with a microscope reveals that this image is actually a mosaic of individual chemical formulae made up of nanoscale points. Making this pattern showcases the instrument’s capability of simultaneously writing centimeter-scale patterns with nanoscale resolution.

Here’s a link to and a citation for the published paper,

Desktop nanofabrication with massively multiplexed beam pen lithography by Xing Liao, Keith A. Brown, Abrin L. Schmucker, Guoliang Liu, Shu He, Wooyoung Shim, & Chad A. Mirkin. Nature Communications 4, Article number: 2103 doi:10.1038/ncomms3103 Published 19 July 2013

This paper is behind a paywall. As an alternative of sorts, you might like to check out this March 22, 2012 video of Mirkin’s presentation entitled, A Chemist’s Approach to Nanofabrication: Towards a “Desktop Fab” for the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Alberta’s (Canada) science education gets shout-out from UK’s (United Kingdom) Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education, Elizabeth Truss

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On July 11, 2013 Elizabeth Truss, UK Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Education (H/T Nassif Ghoussoub’s Piece of Mind), spoke at an International Student Science Fair and cited Alberta’s science education and high performance, along with Singapore’s, in her speech,

So at primary, we want children to get a really solid foundation in the basics of scientific knowledge and language, backed up by more and higher quality practical work and experiments – building on the approaches to science education in high-performing jurisdictions like Singapore and Alberta.

Obviously, Truss is making a case for science and technology education as preparation for the future in a speech that amongst other things emphasizes “non-artificial intelligence,”

As the future comes hurtling towards us, the most important resource any country can boast is not physical, nor technological – but human.

Every leap forward, every flash of insight, relies not on infrastructure, capital or regulatory regimes – important as they are.

But on people. On their brains, their knowledge and their determination to succeed.

On the schoolchildren and students of today – the innovators of tomorrow.

We don’t know yet precisely what skills will be needed in the future.

But as technology transforms the working world – and jobs polarise between the low-skilled and the very high-skilled, highly-educated – we know that the value of high-level skills is growing.

The 21st century will need people who are equally comfortable manipulating numbers, words and lines of computer code; who have the skills and the knowledge to understand both foreign languages and mathematical equations. Rounded individuals who can analyse and think logically, who have mastered both arts and sciences.

Never mind Bitcoin, education is the currency of the future.

International evidence has proved that countries with successful education systems grow more quickly.

Given Truss is speaking at an International Student(s) Science Fair (this is the only site [ ISSF 2012] that seemed to fit the description), it does seem like she’s speaking to the ‘converted’. Students at an international science fair have shown a fair degree of interest and commitment and this speech while inspiring doesn’t address one of the major problems described in a rather interesting UK research project on children’s science attitudes. From my Jan. 31, 2012 posting,

One of the research efforts in the UK is the ASPIRES research project at King’s College London (KCL), which is examining children’s attitudes to science and future careers. Their latest report, Ten Science Facts and Fictions: the case for early education about STEM careers (PDF), is profiled in a Jan. 11, 2012 news item on physorg.com (from the news item),

Professor Archer [Louise Archer, Professor of Sociology of Education at King’s] said: “Children and their parents hold quite complex views of science and scientists and at age 10 or 11 these views are largely positive. The vast majority of children at this age enjoy science at school, have parents who are supportive of them studying science and even undertake science-related activities in their spare time. They associate scientists with important work, such as finding medical cures, and with work that is well paid.

“Nevertheless, less than 17 per cent aspire to a career in science. These positive impressions seem to lead to the perception that science offers only a very limited range of careers, for example doctor, scientist or science teacher. It appears that this positive stereotype is also problematic in that it can lead people to view science as out of reach for many, only for exceptional or clever people, and ‘not for me’.

Professor Archer says the findings indicate that engaging young people in science is not therefore simply a case of making it more interesting or more fun. She said: “There is a disconnect between interest and aspirations. Our research shows that young people’s ambitions are strongly influenced by their social backgrounds – ethnicity, social class and gender – and by family contexts. [emphases mine]

In that 2012 posting, I also featured a US project where researchers developed an intervention for stimulating more adolescent interest in science and technology studies by focusing on the adolescent students’ parents.

Both the UK’s ASPIRES project and the US project suggest getting children to pursue education and careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields has more to do with family and social culture than is often recognized.

Adding a somewhat ironic wrinkle to this discussion is a finding from a study by the Brookings Metropolitan Policy program that 20% of all jobs in the US—not 4%-5% of jobs as claimed by the US National Science Foundation—could be described as STEM jobs. From the June 10, 2013 article for Fast Company by Ariel Schwartz,

…, STEM jobs aren’t limited to workers with advanced degrees–50% don’t even require a bachelor’s degree. Many of the more blue-collar STEM jobs are in fields like construction, plant and system operation, and repair (telecommunications equipment, aircraft, computer, office machine, etc.).

The irony is that family members who think that science careers are for other ‘smart and exceptional’ people may themselves have a STEM-based job/career. You can find the Brookings Institute report here. It should be noted this report The Hidden STEM Economy) has a unique definition of STEM, from the Schwartz article,

The Institute explains in a press release: “Previous studies classified workers as STEM only if they worked in a small number of professional occupations, but the Brookings definition classifies occupations according to the level of knowledge in STEM fields that workers need to perform their jobs. As a result, many nonprofessional jobs in manufacturing, health care, construction, and mining industries could be considered STEM jobs.”

Take for example, car mechanics. Today’s mechanics need to know about computers and fairly complex electronics, such as lithium-ion batteries, in addition to standard mechanics. (BTW, In the late 1980s, I had a coop student job at a school board where even then they trying to integrate electronics and information technology into their trades education programmes.)

If you have the time, I do recommend reading Truss’s speech (by following either the link to Nassif’s website or the direct link to the speech) and/or Schwartz’s article.

Head of Turkey’s R&D (research and development) agency says nanotechnology will continue as a main Turkish research focus

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Given the recent international fascination with protests in the Turkish capital of Istanbul, it’s easy to forget that there are many other activities taking place in Turkey just as they always do. This July 18, 2013 World Bulletin news item is a reminder that scientific research and policymaking continue,

Turkey would not trail behind global developments in the area of nanotechnology, said Arif Adli, Deputy Chairman of Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK).

Adli said Thursday [July 18, 2013?]  nanotechnology is included among the eight major fields that research in Turkey is oriented towards.

“Nanotechnology has in recent years become a leading area in the world,” he said. “Turkey needs to keep up with this global trend.”

…

Turkey ranks modestly in terms of research in nanotechnology but has a number of notable research centers, Adli said.

“Turkey is in fact ahead of many countries, but is not at the same level as the US or Japan. …

There is a website/blog that features Turkish and international nanotechnology research and information, NanoTürkiye. It’s written mostly in Turkish but there is some information in English such as an embedded video in this April 16, 2013 posting about memristor research in Ireland. This site is maintained by Ahmet Yükseltürk, a graduate student at Turkey’s Bilkent University. Ahmet’s twitter handle is: @nanoturkiye or you can view his feed: https://twitter.com/nanoturkiye

Upsalite, an impossible material from Uppsala University (Sweden) and Disruptive Materials

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You can feel the researchers’ excitement crackling from the July 18, 2013 news release (English language version available at Uppsala University [Sweden]) about a new material that shares properties with zeolite, mesoporous silica, and carbon nanotubes and has some special properties all its own,

A novel material with world record breaking surface area and water adsorption abilities has been synthesized by researchers from Uppsala University, Sweden. The results are published today in PLOS ONE.

The magnesium carbonate material that has been given the name Upsalite is foreseen to reduce the amount of energy needed to control environmental moisture in the electronics and drug formulation industry as well as in hockey rinks and warehouses. It can also be used for collection of toxic waste, chemicals or oil spill and in drug delivery systems, for odor control and sanitation after fire.

Apparently this work represents a break with orthodoxy, from the news release,

-In contrast to what has been claimed for more than 100 years in the scientific literature, we have found that amorphous magnesium carbonate can be made in a very simple, low-temperature process, says Johan Forsgren, researcher at the Nanotechnology and Functional Materials Division

While ordered forms of magnesium carbonate, both with and without water in the structure, are abundant in nature, water-free disordered forms have been proven extremely difficult to make. In 1908, German researchers claimed that the material could indeed not be made in the same way as other disordered carbonates, by bubbling CO2 through an alcoholic suspension. Subsequent studies in 1926 and 1961 came to the same conclusion.

-A Thursday afternoon in 2011, we slightly changed the synthesis parameters of the earlier employed unsuccessful attempts, and by mistake left the material in the reaction chamber over the weekend. Back at work on Monday morning we discovered that a rigid gel had formed and after drying this gel we started to get excited, says Johan Forsgren.

A year of detailed materials analysis and fine tuning of the experiment followed.

-One of the researchers got to take advantage of his Russian skill since some of the chemistry details necessary for understanding the reaction mechanism was only available in an old Russian PhD thesis.

-After having gone through a number of state of the art materials characterization techniques it became clear that we had indeed synthesized the material that previously had been claimed impossible to make, says Maria Strømme, professor of nanotechnology and head of the nanotechnology and functional materials division. The most striking discovery was, however, not that we had produced a new material but it was instead the striking properties we found that this novel material possessed. It turned out that Upsalite had the highest surface area measured for an alkali earth metal carbonate; 800 square meters per gram. This places the new material in the exclusive class of porous, high surface area materials including mesoporous silica, zeolites, metal organic frameworks, and carbon nanotubes, says Strømme.

In addition we found that the material was filled with empty pores all having a diameter smaller than 10 nano meters. This pore structure gives the material a totally unique way of interacting with the environment leading to a number of properties important for application of the material. Upsalite is for example found to absorb more water at low relative humidities than the best materials presently available; the hydroscopic zeolites, a property that can be regenerated with less energy consumption than is used in similar processes today.

This, together with other unique properties of the discovered impossible material is expected to pave the way for new sustainable products in a number of industrial applications, says Maria Strømme.

The discovery will be commercialized though the University spin-out company Disruptive Materials (www.disruptivematerials.com) that has been formed by the researchers together with the holding company of Uppsala University

Here’s a link to and a citation for the researchers’ published paper,

A Template-Free, Ultra-Adsorbing, High Surface Area Carbonate Nanostructure by Johan Forsgren, Sara Frykstrand, Kathryn Grandfield, Albert Mihranyan, and Maria Strømme. PLoS ONE, 2013; 8 (7): e68486 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0068486

Here’s a little more abut Upsalite from the university’s spin-off company, Disruptive Materials homepage,

 Upsalite
A new material with world record breaking surface area and water adsorption abilities

It was supposed to be impossible, but… We did it! Disruptive Materials has succeeded to manufacture micro-porous magnesium carbonate and the properties are mind blowing. Over 800 m2/g in surface area, better water adsorbtion ability than the former champion Zeolite Y and a very low manufacturing cost. We have been testing the material for a long time, and we see new applications every week for this new and true super-material.

Finally for those with Swedish language skills, here’s the July 18, 2013 news release from Disruptive Materials.

TRIUMF announces both an interim director and an unusual job sharing plan with Japan

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A July 17, 2013 TRIUMF news release announces a new interim structure (CEO? and name change?) and an international search for a permanent replacement while they wish current director Nigel Lockyer well as he dances out the door to his new job as director of the US Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Chicago, Illinois,

TRIUMF’s Board of Management today announced plans for interim leadership of the laboratory.  Present director Nigel S. Lockyer will be leaving TRIUMF and headed to the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory as its new director effective September 3, 2013.  Interim leadership will be provided by the Board and a team of current senior staff.

…

In its discussions, the Board reviewed the following considerations:

+ The laboratory’s near-term activities and plans are well-defined and
publicly declared in its Five-Year Plan 2010-2015;
+ Effective stewardship of the laboratory in this interim period requires
familiarity and experience with TRIUMF;
+ The senior management team of the laboratory is successful and efficient;
and
+ The Board of Management, representing the university owners of TRIUMF, is
ultimately responsible for the laboratory and its operations and the
fulfillment of the laboratory’s mission.

To achieve these objectives, an interim-leadership structure composed of a management team, direct participation by members of the Board, and a new President and CEO of TRIUMF Accelerators, Inc. will be implemented on August 1, 2013 (thereby providing one-month overlap with the present Laboratory Director).

The Board of Management will exercise oversight and control of TRIUMF through weekly meetings between laboratory management and the Chair of the Finance Committee of the Board and monthly meetings between laboratory management and the Chair of the Board.

The laboratory will manage day-to-day operations using a team of existing senior staff.  The team will consist of three elements:

1. Scientific and Engineering Leadership Team (including the Heads of the Science, Engineering, Nuclear Medicine, and Accelerator Divisions);
2. Administrative Leadership Team (including the Chief Financial Officer; the Head of the Business and Administration Division; the Manager, Environment, Health and Safety; and the Head of Strategic Planning and Communication); and
3. An Interim Chief Executive Officer / Chief Administrative Officer (CEO/CAO) who will have signing authority for TRIUMF and will be responsible for the smooth operation and performance of the teams.  This role will be filled by Jim Hanlon who will be accountable to the Board on a day-to-day
basis for the laboratory. Jim is currently Head of the Business & Administration Division and Secretary to the TRIUMF Board of Management.

The new interim President and CEO of TRIUMF Accelerators, Inc. will be Jim Hanlon.  [emphasis mine] Other officers remain as they are.  The interim and transitional arrangement will be operative for six months, or extended following review, until the next director is appointed.
…

With regard to selecting a new director of the laboratory, the chair of the Search Committee has been identified and the full committee is being convened.  The international search will be launched by August 1.

This is fascinating and it’s nice to have a name for the new ‘head poobah’  although they’ve decided to restructure in a rather **unexpected and dramatic fashion with the decision to appoint a temporary Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and President, not a director as was Lockyer. Plus they seem to have changed the organization’s name in **the news release, TRIUMF Accelerators, Inc., as opposed to TRIUMF; Canada’s National Laboratory for Particle and Nuclear Physics. Oddly, the name change is not reflected on the website as of July 18, 2013 11:45 PDT nor is it officially announced in the news release.

I did speculate as to some of the issues that might arise when a leader departs in a June 21, 2013 posting where I used Tim Meyer (Head, Strategic Planning & Communications) as an example and described some of the issues that might arise regardless of whom is chosen from an internal pool for an interim position but I never anticipated this dramatic shift to a structure that mimics a corporation rather than a scientific enterprise. (It seems to me their appointee, Jim Hanlon, heads the Business & Administration Division and is Secretary to the Board of Management is in the unenviable position of not having much authority, other than signing authority,  in a situation where he carries a lot of responsibility.)

Assuming that this is a permanent change in structure, they will be searching for a president and CEO not a director which along with the name change suggests that the emphasis will be on business qualifications as much as, or perhaps more so, than on research qualifications. *Coincidentally or not, the new, as of July 15, 2013, Minister of State for Science and Technology, Gary Rickford has an MBA (Masters of Business Administration) in addition to his nursing qualifications and legal degree. I covered this latest cabinet shuffle and the change to the junior ministry (Sci & Tech) and its parent ministry, Industry Canada, in my July 17, 2012 posting.)

Given the Canadian federal government’s appetite for commodifying scientific research and imposing business models on the research community, this seems like a smart and strategic move on TRIUMF’s part. (For an example of the Harper government’s appetite, I wrote about Canada’s National Research Council and its change to a business-oriented focus in my May 13, 2012 posting and May 22, 2013 posting.)

I note this change to a corporate name and structure comes from within the science community and is not being imposed by the government. It seems that as scientists see how the wind is blowing they will turn direction. Of course, that’s pretty standard behaviour in any sector. What makes this situation at TRIUMF particularly interesting is the implication for the future as young scientists are likely to increasingly adopt business attitudes to their work. Since business is primarily about making money and the last time we encouraged youth to pursue money at all costs we ended up with at least two economic meltdowns and a generation of investment bankers, we are likely to run short (again) of critically needed skills in areas that **don’t promise ‘a fast buck’.

Finally, here’s my bit about a unique job sharing plan between TRIUMF (issued prior to the name change?) and a laboratory in Japan. From a July 11, 2013 TRIUMF news release,

In an unusual alliance between TRIUMF, Canada’s national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics, and the Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU) in Japan, a long-term joint research position has been created in order to recruit, develop, and
support a world-leading scientist in two countries.  The catch?  After working for the first four years with 75% of his time in Japan and 25% in Canada, the candidate will choose which laboratory’s long-term job offer to accept. American physicist Dr. Mark Hartz has been selected for this
high-stakes competition and in five years will be choosing his long-term home in Tokyo or Vancouver.

From either side of the Pacific Ocean, there will continue to be a great demand for Hartz. He has been appointed as assistant professor and is expected to carry out the full range of duties of a grant tenure track research scientist at both Kavli IPMU and TRIUMF. Additionally, he will serve on internal committees and represent both institutes at the national and international level. His cross-cultural and cross-laboratory experiences will be a great benefit for both Kavli IPMU and TRIUMF.

Dr. Nigel S. Lockyer, director of TRIUMF, acknowledged the rarity and significance of Hartz’s role. Lockyer said, “We need more competitive, cross-border positions like this to enrich and strengthen top talent. I’m delighted that Japan agrees that Hartz is worth fighting for, and yet I’m confident that in the long term Canada is the right place for him and his world-class research ambitions.”

Dr. Hitoshi Murayama, director of Kavli IPMU, said, “Mark is a tremendous addition to our team and will help expand our institutional role in the Japanese flagship T2K neutrino experiment. Once he comes to Kavli IPMU and sees our fantastic environment with interdisciplinary interactions with
astronomers and mathematicians, I have no doubt that he will settle down here.  We already have a great track record of keeping our non-Japanese scientists happy and productive.”

In recent years, Hartz experienced the enormous benefits of global collaboration through research at the Tokai to Kamioka (T2K) neutrino experiment-an international investigation into the behaviour of neutrinos as they travel from one location to another, where he led national efforts to develop beamline monitors and analysis specific to the experiment. With his advanced technical and engineering background, Hartz is an ideal candidate for this cross-laboratory role. He will continue to focus his tenure on the T2K collaboration and is expected to build a strong T2K experimental group at Kavli IPMU.

“The T2K experiment is a textbook example of scientists working across borders to drive new discoveries and pursue the best science,” said Hartz. “This joint position is a brilliant opportunity to work with research communities and give momentum to those interactions.  Although national
borders are invisible to the scientist in me, I am curious to see where I’ll end up in five years!”

As a post-doctoral fellow at both York University and the University of Toronto, Hartz gained extensive experience with the T2K Optical Transition detector and led both the beam analysis and Near Detector to Far Detector Extrapolation analysis groups. He completed detailed predictions of neutrino beam properties prior to the neutrino changing its form in a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation”. Additionally, Hartz developed sophisticated analysis tools to constrain the neutrino beam flux-an important element for analyzing the oscillations of neutrinos.

Other than being confused as to whether Hartz is making his choice of laboratory and country after four years or five, I do find this to be an innovative approach to recruiting researchers and I see advantages for both the researchers and the labs. I am curious as to why it’s a 75%/25% split in favour of the Kavli Institute (PMU) in Japan. Does it have something to do with initiating this unique opportunity? O perhaps since the researcher is Canadian and more time is needed in Japan so he might acclimate and make a more informed decision?

Regardless, bravo to both the Kavli Institute (PMU) and TRIUMF for taking a bold approach to attracting exciting researchers to their respective institutions.

* Opening paranthesis removed on July 19, 2013.

** ‘and’ removed, ‘the’ added’, and ‘didn’t’ changed to ‘don’t’ on Aug. 1, 2013

Super-black nanotechnology, space exploration, and carbon nanotubes grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD)

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Super-black in this context means that very little light is reflected by the carbon nanotubes that a team at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have produced. From a July 17, 2013 NASA news release (also here on EurekAlert),

A NASA engineer has achieved yet another milestone in his quest to advance an emerging super-black nanotechnology that promises to make spacecraft instruments more sensitive without enlarging their size.

A team led by John Hagopian, an optics engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., has demonstrated that it can grow a uniform layer of carbon nanotubes through the use of another emerging technology called atomic layer deposition or ALD. The marriage of the two technologies now means that NASA can grow nanotubes on three-dimensional components, such as complex baffles and tubes commonly used in optical instruments.

“The significance of this is that we have new tools that can make NASA instruments more sensitive without making our telescopes bigger and bigger,” Hagopian said. “This demonstrates the power of nanoscale technology, which is particularly applicable to a new class of less-expensive tiny satellites called Cubesats that NASA is developing to reduce the cost of space missions.”

(It’s the first time I’ve seen atomic layer deposition (ALD) described as an emerging technology; I’ve always thought of it as well established.)  Here’s a 2010 NASA video, which  provides a good explanation of this team’s work,

With the basic problem being less data due to light reflection from the instruments used to make the observations in space, the researchers determined that ALD might provide carbon nanotubes suitable for super-black instrumentation for space exploration. From the NASA news release,

To determine the viability of using ALD to create the catalyst layer, while Dwivedi [NASA Goddard co-investigator Vivek Dwivedi, University of Maryland] was building his new ALD reactor, Hagopian engaged through the Science Exchange the services of the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN), Australia’s largest nanofabrication research center. The Science Exchange is an online community marketplace where scientific service providers can offer their services. The NASA team delivered a number of components, including an intricately shaped occulter used in a new NASA-developed instrument for observing planets around other stars.

Through this collaboration, the Australian team fine-tuned the recipe for laying down the catalyst layer — in other words, the precise instructions detailing the type of precursor gas, the reactor temperature and pressure needed to deposit a uniform foundation. “The iron films that we deposited initially were not as uniform as other coatings we have worked with, so we needed a methodical development process to achieve the outcomes that NASA needed for the next step,” said Lachlan Hyde, MCN’s expert in ALD.

The Australian team succeeded, Hagopian said. “We have successfully grown carbon nanotubes on the samples we provided to MCN and they demonstrate properties very similar to those we’ve grown using other techniques for applying the catalyst layer. This has really opened up the possibilities for us. Our goal of ultimately applying a carbon-nanotube coating to complex instrument parts is nearly realized.”

For anyone who’d like a little more information about the Science Exchange, I posted about this scientific markeplace both on Sept. 2, 2011 after it was launched in August of that year and later on Dec. 19, 2011 in a followup about a specific nano project.

Getting back to super-black nanotechnology, here’s what the NASA team produced, from the news release,

During the research, Hagopian tuned the nano-based super-black material, making it ideal for this application, absorbing on average more than 99 percent of the ultraviolet, visible, infrared and far-infrared light that strikes it — a never-before-achieved milestone that now promises to open new frontiers in scientific discovery. The material consists of a thin coating of multi-walled carbon nanotubes about 10,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair.

Once a laboratory novelty grown only on silicon, the NASA team now grows these forests of vertical carbon tubes on commonly used spacecraft materials, such as titanium, copper and stainless steel. Tiny gaps between the tubes collect and trap light, while the carbon absorbs the photons, preventing them from reflecting off surfaces. Because only a small fraction of light reflects off the coating, the human eye and sensitive detectors see the material as black.

Before growing this forest of nanotubes on instrument parts, however, materials scientists must first deposit a highly uniform foundation or catalyst layer of iron oxide that supports the nanotube growth. For ALD, technicians do this by placing a component or some other substrate material inside a reactor chamber and sequentially pulsing different types of gases to create an ultra-thin film whose layers are literally no thicker than a single atom. Once applied, scientists then are ready to actually grow the carbon nanotubes. They place the component in another oven and heat the part to about 1,832  F (750 C). While it heats, the component is bathed in carbon-containing feedstock gas.

Congratulations to the team, I gather they’ve been working on this light absorption project for quite a while.