Monthly Archives: January 2014

Freezing transient events (frozen magnetic monopoles)

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A Jan. 20, 2014 news item on Nanowerk highlights a new phase in laboratory physics (Note: A link has been removed),

Many of the most interesting things in nature – from spectacular lightning strikes to the subtlety of life itself – are transient, or far-from-equilibrium. To discover the secrets of far from equilibrium states, physicists need simple yet appealing laboratory systems. Now a researcher at the London Centre for Nanotechnology [UK] has collaborated with workers in Grenoble (France), Cardiff [Wales], Oxford [UK] and Kitakyushu (Japan), to create just such a system in the magnetic material known as “spin ice” (“Far-from-equilibrium monopole dynamics in spin ice”).

The Jan. 19 (?), 2014 (?) London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) research brief by Steve Bramwell, which originated the news item. explains ‘spin ice’ in greater detail and the trickery employed by the scientists’,

Spin ice is an unusual magnetic material in that it contains the magnetic equivalent of electrical charges – so called magnetic monopoles. It has attracted great interest on account of the currents of these charges forming a magnetic equivalent of electricity or “magnetricity”.

The number of magnetic monopoles in spin ice diminishes as the temperature goes down in much the same way as does the number of electrical charge carriers in semiconducting materials such as silicon – the basis of the electronics industry. The monopoles or charges disappear at low temperatures by positive and negative charges annihilating each other.

The researchers found a trick that used magnetic fields to create a hot “gas” of magnetic monopoles in very cold surroundings. The surroundings then sucked the heat out of the magnetic monopole gas, resulting in many magnetic monopoles trapped at a fraction of a degree above the absolute zero. The frozen monopoles no longer annihilated each other but instead could be made to flow by applying magnetic fields.

“Our low temperature experiments will tell us a lot about how magnetic monopoles move, as well as about the physics of far-from equilibrium systems in general” explains Prof. Steve Bramwell.

The researchers have provided this artist’s illustration of their work,

Figure: Artist’s impression of a hot gas of magnetic monopoles in very cold surroundings. Eventually the surroundings suck the heat out of the monopole gas leaving it frozen at low temperature. [downloaded from http://www.london-nano.com/research-and-facilities/highlight/frozen-magnetic-monopoles-create-new-laboratory-physics]

Figure: Artist’s impression of a hot gas of magnetic monopoles in very cold surroundings. Eventually the surroundings suck the heat out of the monopole gas leaving it frozen at low temperature. [downloaded from http://www.london-nano.com/research-and-facilities/highlight/frozen-magnetic-monopoles-create-new-laboratory-physics]

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

Far-from-equilibrium monopole dynamics in spin ice by C. Paulsen, M. J. Jackson, E. Lhotel, B. Canals, D. Prabhakaran, K. Matsuhira, S. R. Giblin, & S. T. Bramwell. Nature Physics (2014) doi:10.1038/nphys2847 Published online 19 January 2014

This paper is behind a paywall with several payment options.

Nanopolis and China’s Showroom* for Nanotechnology

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Courtesy: HENN [Architects] [downloaded from http://www.henn.com/en/projects/culture/nanopolis-showroom]

Courtesy: Henn Architects [downloaded from http://www.henn.com/en/projects/culture/nanopolis-showroom]

Marija Bojovic’s Jan. 17, 2014 article for evolo.us offers the preceding image and more in an article* where she describes the building (Note: Links have been removed),

The layout of the curved building follows the classical inner courtyard typology and its form makes reference to the interplay of three ellipses. The largest ellipse defines the external size of the building, the smallest, the inner courtyard and the middle, the roof edge. At the lowest point, the pronounced slope of the annular allows a second access across the inner courtyard and opens the building to the forecourt opposite and the city. At the same time, the building rises from this point and terminates in the glass facade, which extends over the full height of the building and faces toward the water-scape.

The Showroom for Nanotechnology is part of a larger complex called Nanopollis, which in turn is part of an industrial park, in the city of Suzhou, China. The Nanopolis complex is expected to be opened in 2015. Here’s more about the project according to the agency which is responsible for it (from the Suzhou Nanotechnology webpage on the the Nanopolis website),

Founded in September 2010 as a state-owned company of Suzhou Industrial Park, Suzhou Nanotech focuses on nanotech industry promotion and service to establish an ecosystem for nanotech innovation and commercialization. The company actively works on recruitment and cooperation with industry and innovation resources, R&D facilities and platforms set-up and operation, investment and incubation, marketing and supporting services as well as the construction of “Nanopolis Suzhou”. Nowadays we have two wholly-owned subsidiaries named as Suzhou Nano Venture Capital Co.,Ltd. and SIP Nanotechnology Industry Institute Co., Ltd.

…

6 main Functions

• Nanopolis construction and operation
• Industry & innovation introduction and cooperation
• Nanotech industry cluster development
• Public platform construction and operation
• Investment and incubation
• Industry promotion & brand establishment

I did find two slides (PDF) describing the project in more detail on the Netherlands Enterprise Agency website,

The SIP [Singapore jointly developed Suzhou Industrial Park] has committed 10 billion RMB (about 1.5 BUSD) for the next five years to further develop Suzhou high-tech industries including nanotech enabled industries. Today the SIP is housed with 20000 national and multinational companies including 3M, Samsung, Siemens, Johnson & Johnson, Phillips, AMD, Bosch, Eli Lily and others within 288 square kilometers. Suzhou was ranked top 3 in “2010 China’s Most Innovative Cities” by Forbes.

… Suzhou intends to attract over 200 nanotech companies from all over the world and 10,000 nanotech experts within the next 5 years to make Suzhou the most global and innovative nanotech hub in China by 2015.

I look forward to hearing more about Nanopolis when it opens. In the meantime, here’s what the architects have to say about their approach to the project (from the HENN Nanopolis webpage),

Suzhou has set itself the target of closing the gap on the world’s leaders as a research and development location. Alongside the Biobay biotechnology park in the west of the city, Nanotech City marks another key element in that strategy. The program includes a total of 1.3 million square metres of floor area.

…

The creative leitmotif of the design is the relationship of scale between the molecular world, man and urban space. All elements of urban, architectural and landscape design range in density, size and height from the very large to the very small. The fractal logic of the division into units of diminishing size continues from the urban scale down to the facades, where elements of local architecture are reflected in aspects such as colour and structure.

As for HENN, here’s a little more about the company from the company’s About Us webpage,

HENN is an international architectural consultancy with 65 years of expertise in the design and realisation of buildings, masterplans and interior spaces in the fields of culture, administration, teaching and research, development and production as well as urban design.

The office is led by Gunter Henn and eleven partners with offices in Munich, Berlin, Beijing and Shanghai. 350 employees from 25 countries are able to draw upon a wealth of knowledge collected over three generations of building experience in addition to a worldwide network of partners and experts in a variety of disciplines.

* ‘arti6cle’ corrected to ‘article’ on Sept. 25, 2014.

*’showroon’ corrected to ‘showroom’ on Feb. 1, 2016.

Finding a successor to graphene

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The folks at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have announced a ‘natural’ 3D counterpart of graphene in a Jan. 16, 2014 Berkeley Lab news release (also on EurekAlert and on Azonano dated Jan. 17, 2014),

The discovery of what is essentially a 3D version of graphene – the 2D sheets of carbon through which electrons race at many times the speed at which they move through silicon – promises exciting new things to come for the high-tech industry, including much faster transistors and far more compact hard drives. A collaboration of researchers at the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has discovered that sodium bismuthate can exist as a form of quantum matter called a three-dimensional topological Dirac semi-metal (3DTDS). This is the first experimental confirmation of 3D Dirac fermions in the interior or bulk of a material, a novel state that was only recently proposed by theorists.

The news release provides a description of graphene and the search for alternatives (counterparts),

Two of the most exciting new materials in the world of high technology today are graphene and topological insulators, crystalline materials that are electrically insulating in the bulk but conducting on the surface. Both feature 2D Dirac fermions (fermions that aren’t their own antiparticle), which give rise to extraordinary and highly coveted physical properties. Topological insulators also possess a unique electronic structure, in which bulk electrons behave like those in an insulator while surface electrons behave like those in graphene.

“The swift development of graphene and topological insulators has raised questions as to whether there are 3D counterparts and other materials with unusual topology in their electronic structure,” says Chen [Yulin Chen, a physicist from the University of Oxford who led this study working with Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source (ALS)]. “Our discovery answers both questions. In the sodium bismuthate we studied, the bulk conduction and valence bands touch only at discrete points and disperse linearly along all three momentum directions to form bulk 3D Dirac fermions. Furthermore, the topology of a 3DTSD electronic structure is also as unique as those of topological insulators.”

I’m a bit puzzled as to how this new material can be described as “essentially a 3D version of graphene” as my understanding is that graphene must be composed of carbon and have a 2-dimensiional honeycomb structure to merit the name. In any event, this new material, sodium bismuthate, has some disadvantages but the discovery is an encouraging development (from the news release),

Sodium bismuthate is too unstable to be used in devices without proper packaging, but it triggers the exploration for the development of other 3DTDS materials more suitable for everyday devices, a search that is already underway. Sodium bismuthate can also be used to demonstrate potential applications of 3DTDS systems, which offer some distinct advantages over graphene.

“A 3DTDS system could provide a significant improvement in efficiency in many applications over graphene because of its 3D volume,” Chen says. “Also, preparing large-size atomically thin single domain graphene films is still a challenge. It could be easier to fabricate graphene-type devices for a wider range of applications from 3DTDS systems.”

In addition, Chen says, a 3DTDS system also opens the door to other novel physical properties, such as giant diamagnetism that diverges when energy approaches the 3D Dirac point, quantum magnetoresistance in the bulk, unique Landau level structures under strong magnetic fields, and oscillating quantum spin Hall effects. All of these novel properties can be a boon for future electronic technologies. Future 3DTDS systems can also serve as an ideal platform for applications in spintronics.

While I don’t understand (again) the image the researchers have included as an illustration of their work, I do find the ‘blue jewels in a pile of junk’ very appealing,

Beamline 10.0.1 at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source is optimized for the study of for electron structures and correlated electron systems. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt) Courtesy: Berkeley Lab

Beamline 10.0.1 at Berkeley Lab’s Advanced Light Source is optimized for the study of for electron structures and correlated electron systems. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt) Courtesy: Berkeley Lab

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

Discovery of a Three-dimensional Topological Dirac Semimetal, Na3Bi by Zhongkai Liu, Bo Zhou, Yi Zhang, Zhijun Wang, Hongming Weng, Dharmalingam Prabhakaran, Sung-Kwan Mo, Zhi-Xun Shen, Zhong Fang, Xi Dai, and Zahid Hussain. Published Online January 16 2014 Science DOI: 10.1126/science.1245085

This paper is behind a paywall.

Authenticating chocolate and a bit about coffee

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Apparently, not all premium chocolate is actually premium, like wine, expensive, premium product can be mixed with a more common variety to be sold at the higher, premium price.  Now, scientists in a collaboration which spans the US, China, and Trinidad and Tobago have found a way to authenticate premium chocolate according to a Jan. 15, 2014 news release on EurekAlert,

For some people, nothing can top a morsel of luxuriously rich, premium chocolate. But until now, other than depending on their taste buds, chocolate connoisseurs had no way of knowing whether they were getting what they paid for. In ACS’ Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, scientists are reporting, for the first time, a method to authenticate the varietal purity and origin of cacao beans, the source of chocolate’s main ingredient, cocoa.

Dapeng Zhang and colleagues note that lower-quality cacao beans often get mixed in with premium varieties on their way to becoming chocolate bars, truffles, sauces and liqueurs. But the stakes for policing the chocolate industry are high. It’s a multi-billion dollar global enterprise, and in some places, it’s as much art as business. There’s also a conservation angle to knowing whether products are truly what confectioners claim them to be. The ability to authenticate premium and rare varieties would encourage growers to maintain cacao biodiversity rather than depend on the most abundant and easiest to grow trees. Researchers have found ways to verify through genetic testing the authenticity of many other crops, including cereals, fruits, olives, tea and coffee, but those methods aren’t suitable for cacao beans. Zhang’s team wanted to address this challenge.

Applying the most recent developments in cacao genomics, they were able to identify a small set of DNA markers called SNPs (pronounced “snips”) that make up unique fingerprints of different cacao species. The technique works on single cacao beans and can be scaled up to handle large samples quickly. “To our knowledge, this is the first authentication study in cacao using molecular markers,” the researchers state.

Here’s an image, provided by the researchers, illustrating their work,

Courtesy American Chemical Society [downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf404402v]

Courtesy American Chemical Society [downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/jf404402v]

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

Accurate Determination of Genetic Identity for a Single Cacao Bean, Using Molecular Markers with a Nanofluidic System, Ensures Cocoa Authentication by Wanping Fang, Lyndel W. Meinhardt, Sue Mischke, Cláudia M. Bellato, Lambert Motilal, and Dapeng Zhang. J. Agric. Food Chem., 2014, 62 (2), pp 481–487 DOI: 10.1021/jf404402v Publication Date (Web): December 19, 2013
Copyright © 2013 American Chemical Society

This story reminded me that coffee too is sold at premium prices. Billed as the most expensive coffee in the world, Kopi Luwak, is harvested, so they say, from civet excrement and I have to wonder how anyone could authenticate that a bean had actually passed through a civet’s gastrointestinal tract and out the other end. I’ve also wondered how the practice of plucking coffee beans from civet excrement started (from the Kopi Luwak Wikipedia essay; Note: Links have been removed) here’s an answer to the second question,

The origin of kopi luwak is closely connected with the history of coffee production in Indonesia. In the early 18th century the Dutch established the cash-crop coffee plantations in their colony in the Dutch East Indies islands of Java and Sumatra, including Arabica coffee introduced from Yemen. During the era of Cultuurstelsel (1830—1870), the Dutch prohibited the native farmers and plantation workers from picking coffee fruits for their own use. Still, the native farmers wanted to have a taste of the famed coffee beverage. Soon, the natives learned that certain species of musang or luwak (Asian Palm Civet) consumed the coffee fruits, yet they left the coffee seeds undigested in their droppings. The natives collected these luwaks’ coffee seed droppings, then cleaned, roasted and ground them to make their own coffee beverage.[11] The fame of aromatic civet coffee spread from locals to Dutch plantation owners and soon became their favourite, yet because of its rarity and unusual process, the civet coffee was expensive even during the colonial era.[citation needed]

I guess that in the future when you eat premium chocolate you can be sure that you’ve gotten what you paid for. As for coffee, I’m sure that industry is working on its authentication processes too and in the meantime, you’ll have to rely on your palate.

Getting new information on trafficking viruses with gold nanoparticles

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Finnish researchers have developed a new technique for studying viruses according to a Jan. 15, 2014 news release on EurekAlert,

Researchers at the Nanoscience Center (NSC) of University of Jyväskylä in Finland have developed a novel method to study enterovirus structures and their functions. The method will help to obtain new information on trafficking of viruses in cells and tissues as well as on the mechanisms of virus opening inside cells.

The news release explains enteroviruses and describes the technique in more detail,

Enteroviruses are pathogenic viruses infecting humans. This group consists of polioviruses, coxsackieviruses, echoviruses and rhinoviruses. Enteroviruses are the most common causes of flu, but they also cause serious symptoms such as heart muscle infections and paralysis. Recently, enteroviruses have been linked with chronic diseases such as diabetes (2).

The infection mechanisms and infectious pathways of enteroviruses are still rather poorly known. Previous studies in the group of Dr. Varpu Marjomäki at the NSC have focused on the cellular factors that are important for the infection caused by selected enteroviruses (3). The mechanistic understanding of virus opening and the release of the viral genome in cellular structures for starting new virus production is still largely lacking. Furthermore, the knowledge of infectious processes in tissues is hampered by the lack of reliable tools for detecting virus infection.

The newly developed method involves a chemical modification of a known thiol-stabilized gold nanoparticle, the so-called Au102 cluster that was first synthesized and structurally solved by the group of Roger D Kornberg in 2007 (4) and later characterized at NSC by the groups of prof. Hannu Häkkinen and prof. Mika Pettersson in collaboration with Kornberg. (5) The organic thiol surface of the Au102 particles is modified by attaching linker molecules that make a chemical bond to sulfur-containing cysteine residues that are part of the surface structure of the virus. Several tens of gold particles can bind to a single virus, and the binding pattern shows up as dark tags reflecting the overall shape and structure of the virus (see the figure). The gold particles allow for studies on the structural changes of the viruses during their lifespan.

The study showed also that the infectivity of the viruses is not compromised by the attached gold particles which indicates that the labeling method does not interfere with the normal biological functions of viruses inside cells. This facilitates new investigations on the virus structures from samples taken from inside cells during the various phases of the virus infection, and gives possibilities to obtain new information on the mechanisms of virus uncoating (opening and release of the genome). The new method allows also for tracking studies of virus pathways in tissues. This is important for further understanding of acute and chronic symptoms caused by viruses. Finally, the method is expected to be useful for developing of new antiviral vaccines that are based on virus-like particles.

The method was developed at the NSC as a wide cross-disciplinary collaboration between chemists, physicists and biologists.

Here’s an image provided by the researchers, which illustrates their work,

Left: transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of a single CVB3 virus showing tens of gold nanoparticles attached to its surface. The particles form a distinct "tagging pattern" that reflects the shape and the structure of the virus. The TEM image can be correlated to the model of the virus (right), where the yellow spheres mark the possible binding sites of the gold particles. The diameter of the virus is about 35 nanometers (nanometer = one billionth of a millimeter). The figure is taken from the publication. Courtesy: University of Jyväskylä

Left: transmission electron microscopy (TEM) image of a single CVB3 virus showing tens of gold nanoparticles attached to its surface. The particles form a distinct “tagging pattern” that reflects the shape and the structure of the virus. The TEM image can be correlated to the model of the virus (right), where the yellow spheres mark the possible binding sites of the gold particles. The diameter of the virus is about 35 nanometers (nanometer = one billionth of a millimeter). The figure is taken from the publication. Courtesy: University of Jyväskylä

Unfortunately, the researchers have published in the Proceedings f the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). I noted in a previous posting that this publisher has developed a time-consuming process for getting access to a paper and payment options for reading it. I can provide a link to and a citation to the abstract for this paper but I’m not willing to spend several minutes trying to bypass the block they’ve placed on accessing papers and their payment options,

Site-specific targeting of enterovirus capsid by functionalized monodisperse gold nanoclusters by Varpu Marjomäki, Tanja Lahtinen, Mari Martikainen, Jaakko Koivisto, Sami Malola, Kirsi Salorinne, Mika Pettersson, and Hannu Häkkinenb. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA (2014), www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1310973111.

The University of Jyväskylä Jan. ??, 2014 news release about this work provides references (scroll down) to previous papers published on this work.

Controversial theory of consciousness confirmed (maybe)

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There’s a very interesting event taking place today (Jan. 16, 2014) in Amsterdam, Netherlands titled: NEW PROOF OF REVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS (programme).,which is one of a month’s worth of events themed around the brain (The Brainstorming Sessions).  The speakers at this event have recently published a paper and a Jan. 16, 2014 news item on ScienceDaily gives some insight into why theirbrainstorming session has the word revolutionary in the title,

A review and update of a controversial 20-year-old theory of consciousness published in Physics of Life Reviews claims that consciousness derives from deeper level, finer scale activities inside brain neurons. The recent discovery of quantum vibrations in “microtubules” inside brain neurons corroborates this theory, according to review authors Stuart Hameroff and Sir Roger Penrose. They suggest that EEG rhythms (brain waves) also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations, and that from a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

A Jan. 16, 2014 Elsevier press release,which originated the news item, provides more details about the theory,

The theory, called “orchestrated objective reduction” (‘Orch OR’), was first put forward in the mid-1990s by eminent mathematical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, FRS, Mathematical Institute and Wadham College, University of Oxford, and prominent anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff, MD, Anesthesiology, Psychology and Center for Consciousness Studies, The University of Arizona, Tucson. They suggested that quantum vibrational computations in microtubules were “orchestrated” (“Orch”) by synaptic inputs and memory stored in microtubules, and terminated by Penrose “objective reduction” (‘OR’), hence “Orch OR.” Microtubules are major components of the cell structural skeleton.

Orch OR was harshly criticized from its inception, as the brain was considered too “warm, wet, and noisy” for seemingly delicate quantum processes. However, evidence has now shown warm quantum coherence in plant photosynthesis, bird brain navigation, our sense of smell, and brain microtubules. The recent discovery of warm temperature quantum vibrations in microtubules inside brain neurons by the research group led by Anirban Bandyopadhyay, PhD, at the National Institute of Material Sciences in Tsukuba, Japan (and now at MIT), corroborates the pair’s theory and suggests that EEG rhythms also derive from deeper level microtubule vibrations. In addition, work from the laboratory of Roderick G. Eckenhoff, MD, at the University of Pennsylvania, suggests that anesthesia, which selectively erases consciousness while sparing non-conscious brain activities, acts via microtubules in brain neurons.

“The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?” ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review. “This opens a potential Pandora’s Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, ‘proto-conscious’ quantum structure of reality.”

After 20 years of skeptical criticism, “the evidence now clearly supports Orch OR,” continue Hameroff and Penrose. “Our new paper updates the evidence, clarifies Orch OR quantum bits, or “qubits,” as helical pathways in microtubule lattices, rebuts critics, and reviews 20 testable predictions of Orch OR published in 1998 – of these, six are confirmed and none refuted.”

An important new facet of the theory is introduced. Microtubule quantum vibrations (e.g. in megahertz) appear to interfere and produce much slower EEG “beat frequencies.” Despite a century of clinical use, the underlying origins of EEG rhythms have remained a mystery. Clinical trials of brief brain stimulation aimed at microtubule resonances with megahertz mechanical vibrations using transcranial ultrasound have shown reported improvements in mood, and may prove useful against Alzheimer’s disease and brain injury in the future.

Lead author Stuart Hameroff concludes, “Orch OR is the most rigorous, comprehensive and successfully-tested theory of consciousness ever put forth. From a practical standpoint, treating brain microtubule vibrations could benefit a host of mental, neurological, and cognitive conditions.

The review is accompanied by eight commentaries from outside authorities, including an Australian group of Orch OR arch-skeptics. To all, Hameroff and Penrose respond robustly.

The press release ends with this information about the event in Amsterdam,

Penrose, Hameroff and Bandyopadhyay will explore their theories during a session on “Microtubules and the Big Consciousness Debate” at the Brainstorm Sessions, a public three-day event at the Brakke Grond in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, January 16-18, 2014. They will engage skeptics in a debate on the nature of consciousness, and Bandyopadhyay and his team will couple microtubule vibrations from active neurons to play Indian musical instruments. “Consciousness depends on anharmonic vibrations of microtubules inside neurons, similar to certain kinds of Indian music, but unlike Western music which is harmonic,” Hameroff explains.

I wasn’t able to locate information about the three-day event in the press release but I did find this about the month-long series, The Brainstorm Sessions (Dutch language first, scroll down for English language version),

Europe and the USA are looking to completely unravel the secrets of our brains within the next ten years. Europe has designated 2014 as The Year of the Brain. We have decided to dedicate a month to the grey matter. A month in which guest curator Frank Theys – filmmaker, philosopher and visual artist – i.c.w. Damiaan Denys (neuroscientist, philosopher and professor of psychiatry at the AMC-UvA, the Amsterdam Medical Centre of the University of Amsterdam) will bring together elements he considers interesting from an artistic and philosophical viewpoint related to this theme.

Featuring an exhibition at the intersection between artistic and scientific experiments; the first ever performance by ‘stand-up scientist’ Damiaan Denys, Head of Psychiatry at the AMC hospital; a ‘neuro-concert’ by nanoscientist Anirban Bandyopadyay and a film programme in the Kriterion cinema in cooperation with Patricia Pisters, author of The Neuro-Image.

PROGRAMME FOR AN INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE
Fri 13 Dec – Sun 19 Jan: Exhibition Neurons Firing
Thur 09 Jan / 20h30: Sonic Soirée #22 a musical pillaging of the brain
Mon 13 Jan / 20h30: Lecture: Film and the Brain in Digital Era, by Patricia Pisters
Thu 16 Jan / 20h30: Lecture: Microtubules & the Big Consciousness Debate, by Roger Penrose & Anirban Bandyopadhyay
Fr 17 Jan / 20h30: Scientific demonstration Sapta Rishi (The Seven Stars)
Sa 18 Jan / 20h30: Scientific concert: Ajeya Chhandam – The Invincible Rhythm

I’m not sure what your chances are for attending the events on Jan. 17 or Jan. 18 but I wish you good luck! For those of us who weren’t able to attend the Jan.16, 2014 event featuring Penrose amd Hameroff, there are recently published papers.

First, the researchers offer a review of their theory along with some refinements,

Consciousness in the universe: A review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Physics of Life Reviews Available online 20 August 2013, Phys Life Rev. 2013 Aug 20. pii: S1571-0645(13)00118-8. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.08.002.

This paper is open access as of Jan. 16, 2014.

The next two papers have similar titles and were published at about the same time,

Reply to criticism of the ‘Orch OR qubit’ – ‘Orchestrated objective reduction’ is scientifically justified by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Physics of Life Reviews Available online 12 December 2013. Phys Life Rev. 2013 Dec 12. pii: S1571-0645(13)00191-7. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.11.014.

Reply to seven commentaries on “Consciousness in the universe: Review of the ‘Orch OR’ theory by Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose. Physics of Life Reviews Available online 12 December 2013 Phys Life Rev. 2013 Dec 12. pii: S1571-0645(13)00190-5. doi: 10.1016/j.plrev.2013.11.013.

These papers are behind a paywall.

Rice University (Texas) researchers ‘soften’ a buckyball (buckminster fullerene)

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A Jan. 16, 2014 Rice University news release landed in my mailbox this morning and revealed that researchers have ‘detuned’ or softened the atomic bonks in a molecule known as a buckminster fullenere (aka, buckyball),

Rice University scientists have found they can control the bonds between atoms in a molecule.

The molecule in question is carbon-60, also known as the buckminsterfullerene and the buckyball, discovered at Rice in 1985. The scientists led by Rice physicists Yajing Li and Douglas Natelson found that it’s possible to soften the bonds between atoms by applying a voltage and running an electric current through a single buckyball.

…

“This doesn’t mean we’re going to be able to arbitrarily dial around the strength of materials or anything like that,” Natelson said. “This is a very specific case, and even here it was something of a surprise to see this going on.

“But in general, if we can manipulate the charge distribution on molecules, we can affect their vibrations. We can start thinking, in the future, about controlling things in a better way.”

The effect appears when a buckyball attaches to a gold surface in the optical nano antenna used to measure the effects of an electric current on intermolecular bonds through a technique called Raman spectroscopy.

Natelson’s group built the nano antenna a few years ago to trap small numbers of molecules in a nanoscale gap between gold electrodes. Once the molecules are in place, the researchers can chill them, heat them, blast them with energy from a laser or electric current and measure the effect through spectroscopy, which gathers information from the frequencies of light emitted by the object of interest.

With continuing refinement, the researchers found they could analyze molecular vibrations and the bonds between the atoms in the molecule. That ability led to this experiment, Natelson said.

Natelson compared the characteristic vibrational frequencies exhibited by the bonds to the way a guitar string vibrates at a specific frequency based on how tightly it’s wound. Loosen the string and the vibration diminishes and the tone drops.

The nano antenna is able to detect the “tone” of detuned vibrations between atoms through surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS), a technique that improves the readings from molecules when they’re attached to a metal surface. Isolating a buckyball in the gap between the gold electrodes lets the researchers track vibrations through the optical response seen via SERS.

When a buckyball attaches to a gold surface, its internal bonds undergo a subtle shift as electrons at the junction rearrange themselves to find their lowest energetic states. The Rice experiment found the vibrations in all the bonds dropped ever so slightly in frequency to compensate.

“Think of these molecules as balls and springs,” Natelson said. “The atoms are the balls and the bonds that hold them together are the springs. If I have a collection of balls and springs and I smack it, it would show certain vibrational modes.

“When we push current through the molecule, we see these vibrations turn on and start to shake,” Natelson said. “But we found, surprisingly, that the vibrations in buckyballs get softer, and by a significant amount. It’s as if the springs get floppier at high voltages in this particular system.” The effect is reversible; turn off the juice and the buckyball goes back to normal, he said.

The researchers used a combination of experimentation and sophisticated theoretical calculations to disprove an early suspicion that the well-known vibrational Stark effect was responsible for the shift. The Stark effect is seen when molecules’ spectral responses shift under the influence of an electric field. The Molecular Foundry, a Department of Energy User Facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, collaborated on the calculations component.

Natelson’s group had spied similar effects on oligophenylene vinylene molecules used in previous experiments, also prompting the buckyball experiments. “A few years ago we saw hints of vibrational energies moving around, but nothing this clean or this systematic. It does seem like C-60 is kind of special in terms of where it sits energetically,” he said.

The discovery of buckyballs, which earned a Nobel Prize for two Rice professors, kick-started the nanotechnology revolution. “They’ve been studied very well and they’re very chemically stable,” Natelson said of the soccer-ball-shaped molecules. “We know how to put them on surfaces, what you can do to them and have them still be intact. This is all well understood.” He noted other researchers are looking at similar effects through the molecular manipulation of graphene, the single-atomic-layer form of carbon.

“I don’t want to make some grand claim that we’ve got a general method for tuning the molecular bonding in everything,” Natelson said. “But if you want chemistry to happen in one spot, maybe you want to make that bond really weak, or at least make it weaker than it was.

“There’s a long-sought goal by some in the chemistry community to gain precise control over where and when bonds break. They would like to specifically drive certain bonds, make sure certain bonds get excited, make sure certain ones break. We’re offering ways to think about doing that.”

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

Voltage tuning of vibrational mode energies in single-molecule junctions by Yajing Li, Peter Doak, Leeor Kronik, Jeffrey B. Neatonc, and Douglas Natelsona. PNAS.  doi: 10.1073/pnas.1320210111

This paper is behind a paywall so you need either a subscription to the journal or access to a research library with a subscription or, alternatively, there are two short-term rental options (which for reasons that escape me were difficult to access) here.

As business models go, I don’t believe that aspect of the PNAS model is going to prove successful. Why not make all the options available from the page containing the abstract as do other academic publishers?

Getting back to the buckyball, the researchers have provided an image to illustrate their work,

Rice University scientists discovered the bonds in a carbon-60 molecule – a buckyball – can be "detuned" when exposed to an electric current in an optical antenna. (Credit: Natelson Group/Rice University)

Rice University scientists discovered the bonds in a carbon-60 molecule – a buckyball – can be “detuned” when exposed to an electric current in an optical antenna. (Credit: Natelson Group/Rice University)

Canada-European Union research and Horizon 2020 funding opportunities

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Thanks to the Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals of Western Canada (ARPICO), I received a Jan. 15, 2014 notice about ERA-Can‘s (European Research Area and Canada) upcoming Horizon 2020 information sessions, i.e., funidng opportunities for Canadian researchers,

The Canadian partners* to ERA-Can+ invite you to learn about Horizon 2020, a European funding opportunity that is accessible to Canadians working in science, technology, and innovation.

Horizon 2020 is a multi-year (2014-2020) program for science and technology funded by the European Commission. With a budget of almost Euro 80 billion (CAD $118 billion) Horizon 2020 forms a central part of the EU’s economic policy agenda. The program’s main goals are to encourage scientific excellence, increase the competitiveness of industries, and develop solutions to societal challenges in Europe and abroad.

ERA-Can+ has been established to help Canadians access Horizon 2020 funding. Building on several years of successful collaboration, ERA-Can+ will encourage bilateral exchange across the science, technology, and innovation chain. The project will also enrich the EU-Canada policy dialogue, enhance coordination between European and Canadian sector leaders, and stimulate transatlantic collaboration by increasing awareness of the funding opportunities available.

The European Commission released its first call for proposals under Horizon 2020 in December 2013. Canadian and European researchers and innovators can submit proposals for projects in a variety of fields including personalized health and care; food security; the sustainable growth of marine and maritime sectors; digital security; smart cities and communities; competitive low-carbon energy; efficient transportation; waste management; and disaster resilience. Further calls for proposals will be released later this year.

You are invited to attend one of four upcoming information sessions on Horizon 2020 opportunities for Canadians. These sessions will explain the structure of research funding in Europe and provide information on upcoming funding opportunities and the mechanisms by which Canadians can participate. Martina De Sole, Coordinator of ERA-Can+, and numerous Canadian partners will be on hand to share their expertise on these topics. Participants also will have the opportunity to learn about current and developing collaborations between Canadian and European researchers and innovators.

ERA-CAN+ Information Session Dates – Precise times to be confirmed.

Toronto: Morning of January 28th
MaRS Discovery District, 101 College Street
…

Kitchener-Waterloo: Morning of January 29th
Canadian Digital Media Network, 151 Charles Street West, Suite 100, Kitchener

Ottawa: Morning of January 30th
University of Ottawa; precise location on campus to be confirmed.

Montreal: Morning of January 31st
Intercontinental Hotel, 360 Rue Saint Antoine Ouest

This session is organised in partnership with the Ministère de l’Enseignement supérieur, de la Recherche, de la Science, de la Technologie du Québec.

For further information please contact eracanplus@ppforum.ca.

* ERA-Can+ Project Partners
APRE – Agenzia per la Promozione della Ricerca Europea (Italy)
AUCC – Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (Canada)
CNRS – Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France)
DFATD – Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development Canada (Canada)
DLR – Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (Germany)
PPF – The Public Policy Forum (Canada)
ZSI – Zentrum fur Soziale Innovation (Austria)

You can go to ERA-Can’s Information Sessions webpage to register for a specific event.

There are plans to hold sessions elsewhere in Canada,

Plans to have Info Sessions in other parts of Canada are underway.

For further information please contact eracanplus@ppforum.ca

Congratulations to Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology (journal)

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Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, published by InTech, is an open access journal, which launched in 2011 as per my March 25, 2011 posting and this year (2014), the journal celebrate this (from a Jan. 16, 2014 news item on Nanowerk),

“Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology” journal has been accepted for indexing by Thomson Reuters. Following its acceptance by Scopus in 2013, this journal will soon be indexed in Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE) and Current Contents/Physical, Chemical & Earth Sciences (CC/PC&ES), beginning with volume 1(1) 2011.

A January ??, 2014 InTech news release (you may need to scroll down) provides a little more information about the journal and its scope,

Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology is an open access journal now in its 4th volume. Under the editorship of Dr. Paola Prete, the journal has featured articles by some of the most outstanding researchers in Nanoscience, quickly rising to the status of a renowned journal in this particular field of research and application.

Solely in 2013 the journal was browsed by + 30,000 readers across all continents looking for the newest results and innovative advances achieved nanoscale science and technology.

As for the 2013 acceptance by Scopus, the October ??, 2013 InTech news release (scroll down) noted the increased number of indexes which will includes Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology as well as a heads-up about the Thomson Reuters (ISI) acceptance,

Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology, currently in its 3rd volume, has officially been accepted for indexing in the Scopus database. The Content Selection & Advisory Board (CSAB) announced that the journal fulfilled all criteria necessary for its content to be processed and indexed.

Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology is indexed in Ulrich’s Periodical Directory, Scirus, EBSCO, WorldCat, BASE, DOAJ, Electronic Journals Library, Google Scholar, CAS. The journal is also being evaluated for indexing in ISI [Thomson Reuters] databases.

Again, congratulations to the Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology editorial team and authors. For anyone who hasn’t yet see the journal, here’s a link to the current issue. (2013).

SLIPS (Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces) lead the way to stain-free, self-cleaning clothes

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Thanks to the researchers at Harvard University’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, I have discovered a new word, omniphobicity. Before getting to this new word, here’s a little more information about the project which spawned the word. According to a Jan. 14, 2014 news item on Nanowerk,

The researchers behind SLIPS (Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces) have demonstrated a spate of sleek applications of the super-slick coating since unveiling it in a 2011 issue of Nature – and they just expanded its repertoire even more.

The Jan. ??, 2014 Harvard University Wyss Institute news release, which originated the news item, provides additional information about the SLIPS (Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces) technology explaining the engineers have taken their inspiration from the pitcher plant rather the lotus, as is more common,

The team from Harvard’s Wyss Institute and the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has demonstrated the uncanny ability of SLIPS – inspired by the pitcher plant – to repel nearly any material it contacts: water, ice, oil, saltwater, wax, blood, and more. They have demonstrated its versatility under extreme conditions of pH and temperature, and have successfully used SLIPS to coat everything from refrigeration coils to lenses, windows, and ceramics. What’s more, in 2012 they won an R&D 100 Award for the technology from R&D Magazine. This annual award honors the year’s 100 most significant products, the so-called game-changers of the technology scene.

Here’s what an image illustrating the pitcher plant and SLIPS,

Inspired by the Nepenthes pitcher plant... [Image credit: New Scientist; Bohn & Federie, PNAS 101, 14138-14143, 2004] Courtesy Wyss Institute

Inspired by the Nepenthes pitcher plant… [Image credit: New Scientist; Bohn & Federie, PNAS 101, 14138-14143, 2004] Courtesy Wyss Institute

The team’s latest work features cotton and polyster fabrics (from the news release),

And now, as reported January 10 [2014] in a special issue celebrating the 25th year of the journal Nanotechnology, the team has modified everyday cotton and polyester fabrics to exhibit traditional antifouling SLIPS behavior. The advance could meet the need for a robust, stain-resistant textile for a host of consumer and industrial applications.

“We took one page out of Nature’s book, and are finding that it has the potential to help us develop solutions to a variety of age-old challenges: ice we don’t want on refrigeration coils, bacteria that we don’t want on medical devices, and now stains we don’t want on clothes,” said Joanna Aizenberg, Ph.D., who leads the development of the technology. Aizenberg is a Core Faculty member of the Wyss Institute and the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials Science at SEAS

Most currently available state-of-the-art, stain-resistant fabrics draw their inspiration and design from the lotus leaf. Tiny nanotextures on the surface of lotus leaves resist water, causing droplets of water to bead up on a cushion of air at the edge of the surface. Lotus-inspired textiles therefore use air-filled nanostructures to repel water. These are capable of repelling most aqueous liquids and dirt particles, but they suffer from a series of shortcomings, explained Cicely Shillingford, a Wyss Research Assistant and lead author of the Nanotechnology publication. They require a stable solid-air layer for the beading process to occur and thus fail easily under pressure – as in a heavy rainstorm – and do not withstand physical damage, such as twisting and abrasion, very well. They also stain more easily from organic or complex liquids, such as oil.

On the other hand, SLIPS is inspired by the carnivorous pitcher plant, which locks in a water layer to create a slick coating that causes insects that land on it to literally hydroplane and fall into the plant. The SLIPS coating anchors a slippery lubricated film infused to a nanoporous solid surface, creating a material that performs exceedingly well under pressure or physical damage, and can resist all kinds of liquids, including oil.
To create a fabric with SLIPS-type functionality, the team bought off-the-shelf cotton and polyester fabrics from stores near their lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and developed two ways to chemically treat them. One involved coating them with tiny particles of silica (SiM), and the other required a treatment with sol-gel based alumina (SgB). …

What happened after the team put the SLIPS-fabrics through a ringer of tests performed according to industrial standards – from twisting to rubbing and staining attempts?

“The SLIPS-fabric showed an unprecedented ability to repel a wide range of fluids and resist staining, and it handles physical stresses and strains just fine,” said Aizenberg.

While not every SLIPS-fabric was as breathable (yet) as the researchers hoped, it outperformed currently available stain-resistant fabrics on just about every other measure. As such, the most likely immediate applications could be fabrics needed in potentially extreme environments where breathability is not paramount but exposure to challenging contaminating liquids and biological hazards is involved, such as tactical suits for the military, lab coats, medical clothing, specialty garments for construction and manufacturing, and perhaps even tents and sports stadiums.

The scientists have also provided an image of a lab coat that was partially (sleeves) converted to SLIPS and than stained with a variety of foodstuffs,

Former Wyss Postdoctoral Fellow Tak-Sing Wong, Ph.D., who is now an assistant professor at The Pennsylvania State University, wears a labcoat in which the sleeves were converted to SLIPS, after sprayed with wine, tomato juice, eggs, and more. Courtesy Wyss Institute

Former Wyss Postdoctoral Fellow Tak-Sing Wong, Ph.D., who is now an assistant professor at The Pennsylvania State University, wears a labcoat in which the sleeves were converted to SLIPS, after sprayed with wine, tomato juice, eggs, and more. Courtesy Wyss Institute

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

Fabrics coated with lubricated nanostructures display robust omniphobicity by Cicely Shillingford, Noah MacCallum, Tak-Sing Wong, Philseok Kim and Joanna Aizenberg. Nanotechnology 25 01 4019 doi:10.1088/0957-4484/25/1/014019

This paper is behind a paywall. As for an explanation of the word omniphobicity this abstract is helpful,

The development of a stain-resistant and pressure-stable textile is desirable for consumer and industrial applications alike, yet it remains a challenge that current technologies have been unable to fully address. Traditional superhydrophobic surfaces, inspired by the lotus plant, are characterized by two main components: hydrophobic chemical functionalization and surface roughness. While this approach produces water-resistant surfaces, these materials have critical weaknesses that hinder their practical utility, in particular as robust stain-free fabrics. For example, traditional superhydrophobic surfaces fail (i.e., become stained) when exposed to low-surface-tension liquids, under pressure when impacted by a high-velocity stream of water (e.g., rain), and when exposed to physical forces such as abrasion and twisting. We have recently introduced slippery lubricant-infused porous surfaces (SLIPS), a self-healing, pressure-tolerant and omniphobic surface, to address these issues. [emphasis mine] Herein we present the rational design and optimization of nanostructured lubricant-infused fabrics and demonstrate markedly improved performance over traditional superhydrophobic textile treatments: SLIPS-functionalized cotton and polyester fabrics exhibit decreased contact angle hysteresis and sliding angles, omni-repellent properties against various fluids including polar and nonpolar liquids, pressure tolerance and mechanical robustness, all of which are not readily achievable with the state-of-the-art superhydrophobic coatings.

If I understand it rightly the researchers are using the word omniphobic (omni meaning ‘all’ or ‘everything’) to imply that this surface repels liquids in many more situations, e.g. high-velocity stream of water (rain) than the superhydrophobic materials.