Monthly Archives: May 2014

China and Israel make big nanotechnology plans

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A recently launched $300M China-Israel project seems to signal a new intimacy in relations between the two countries. From a May 25, 2014 article by Ruthie Blum for Israel21c.org,

The launch of a $300 million joint research project between Tel Aviv University and Tsinghua University in Beijing has the academic communities and political echelons in both countries buzzing.

The opening of the XIN Center was announced at Tel Aviv University in mid-May amid great fanfare. The name is a play on words; “xin” means “new” in Chinese, and in English the “X” coupled with the “in” can stand for cross-innovation, cross-intelligence and/or cross-ingenuity.

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The endeavor, to be funded by government and private sources, will initially focus on nanotechnology, with an emphasis on medical and optics applications, and later branch out into fields such as biotech and energy.

So far, nearly a third of the money has been raised for the project, which will involve recruiting research fellows from among the best and brightest of the graduate students of both universities to work in tandem (and fly back and forth) to develop products for eventual commercialization.

To raise the rest of the money, an investment fund is being established by Infinity Group, Israel’s largest investment firm, to seed ventures initiated by XIN fellows.

According to Blum, the deal is the outcome of a trip,

The idea for the ambitious program began inauspiciously, during a trip by Israeli scientists to meet with their counterparts in China.

“The project started bottom-up in Beijing,” said Klafter [TAU President Joseph Klafter]. “We fell in love with one another.”

…

… language is not the main gap between the Israeli and Chinese students. As both Hanein [Prof. Yael Hanein, head of the Tel Aviv University Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology] and Jining [Tsinghua University President Chen Jining]  pointed out, it is the cultural differences that are the most pronounced – and also a positive contrast that can be mutually beneficial.

“The Israelis are less obedient than the Chinese,” observed Hanein.

“The Israelis challenge authority,” said Jining. “And the Chinese bring harmony. The two groups learn from each other and create a balance.”

Jining added that though Tsinghua University collaborates with other academic institutions around the world, “This is the first that is so in-depth. We see it as a vehicle for nurturing future leaders of innovation – for cultivating and training a new generation of entrepreneurs.”

Israel’s Prime Minister, Binyamin (Benjamin) Netanyahu provides an economic perspective,

“China is Israel’s largest trading partner in Asia and fast becoming perhaps Israel’s largest trading partner, period, as we move into the future,” Netanyahu said during a meeting with Vice Premier Yandong at his office in Jerusalem following the XIN launch in Tel Aviv.

There are more details in a May 20, 2014 article written by Niv Elis & Victoria Kezr for the Jerusalem Post,

The first round, which will focus only on nano-technology, will recruit only seven advanced degree students from Tel Aviv University and 14 in China this summer.

While governments are pitching in some money for the $300m. price tag, the universities will seek private donations for the rest.

Israel’s Infinity group set up $16m. fund, comprising investors from Chinese industries and Tsinghua University alumni to help foot the bill.

The Jerusalem Post article mentions this opening, which took place on the same day,

Also on Monday [May 19, 2014], students and delegates from across the globe gathered to see Vice Premier of The People’s Republic of China Lui Yandong speak at the inauguration of the Confucius Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Confucius Institutes have been established at universities around the world by the Chinese Ministry of Education to promote the learning of Mandarin Chinese and Chinese culture.

This is the second such institute, following the founding of Tel Aviv University’s Confucius Institute in 2007.

…

“The institute in Tel Aviv is for basic Chinese teaching. Here in the Hebrew University they have East Asian studies and they’ll be cooperation with that. Here there’ll be advanced study of Chinese history and culture,” said 21-year-old student Noa Yang, who not only helped organize the event but also sang during the ceremony.

Both the XIN Center and the new Confucius Institute are part of a much larger initiative according to the Jerusalem Post article,

The initiatives are the latest in a wave of cooperative agreements between Israel and China, not just in education, but also politics and business.

In September [2013], Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa received a $130m. grant from the Li Ka Shing Foundation to build an academy called the Technion Guangdong Institute of Technology as a joint venture with China’s Shantou University.

Blum’s article mentions yet another project, an agricultural technology incubator (Note: A link has been removed),

More recently, as ISRAEL21c reported in early May, a joint-venture agricultural technology incubator is slated to be built in Anhui Province, China. It will operate under the auspices of Trendlines Agtech, a specialized investment unit of Israel’s Trendlines Group, which supports early-stage, promising medical and agricultural technology companies in Israel.

These kinds of cooperative efforts are part of a comprehensive plan by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strengthen economic and technological ties with the People’s Republic. It was the impetus for his trip to China last year [2013].

Both these articles indicate that China and Israel are, as noted in the beginning of this post, developing more intimate relations both cultural and economic.

ETA May 28, 2014: JTA.org published a May 28, 2014 news item about a new Israel-China publication (Note: Links have been removed),

Introducing the Times of Israel Chinese on Wednesday [May 28, 2014], Times of Israel founding editor David Horovitz said in a column that it “focuses on the evolving high-tech and innovation areas of the Israeli-Chinese relationship.”

He added, “It also dips into Israeli culture and society, giving Chinese readers insights into Israel beyond the spheres of business and high-tech.”

You can find Times of Israel Chinese here but you will need Chinese language reading skills to fully appreciate it.

Nano and India’s pulp and paper industry

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PaperTech 2014 is the latest version of a pulp and paper industry conference held annually (?) in Hyderabad, India. A May 26, 2014 news item on Azonano describes an upcoming session at the conference being held June 20 – 21, 2014,

Industrial Nanotech, Inc., an emerging global leader in nanotechnology based energy saving solutions, is pleased to announce that they have received and accepted an invitation from the steering committee to present at PaperTech 2014, the annual conference that focuses on improvements and new technologies for use in India’s pulp and paper industry.

An Industrial Nanotech May 23, 2014 news release on Stockhouse.com,  which originated the news item, describes the current situation for India’s pulp and paper industry,

There is an increased focus in India by pulp and paper and other manufacturers on energy savings as liquid natural gas prices increase. According to Bloomberg News, India’s cabinet agreed to a price increase to double the $4.2 per million Btu price to $8.4 per million Btu starting April 2014. Conservation of energy is vital to the pulp and paper industry in India, which is expected to grow at the CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) of around 9.6% during 2012-2017, which will make their revenues reach up to USD 11.83 Billion by 2017.

The company, Industrial Nanotech, provides information on its website about energy-saving products in various industry sectors including pulp and paper on their Nansulate®
webpage, Scroll down about 1/4 of the way to find a summary of the Seshasayee Paper & Boards Ltd. case study/presentation at PaperTech 2011 (PDF of the full case study here).

I was not able to find a dedicated PaperTech 2014 conference site but I did find this conference registration/info page on 10times.com.

Flatland, an 1884 novella or optics with graphene?

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Flatland is both novella and a story about optics with graphene. First, here’s more about the novella from its Wikipedia entry (Note: Links have been removed),

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as “A Square”,[1] the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to offer pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture. However, the novella’s more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions.[2]

For the uninitiated, graphene is two-dimensional and, apparently, this characteristic could prove helpful for new types of optics (from a May 23, 2014 news item on Nanowerk; Note:  Links have been removed),

Researchers from CIC nanoGUNE, in collaboration with ICFO  [Institute of Photonic Sciences] and Graphenea, introduce a platform technology based on optical antennas for trapping and controlling light with the one-atom-thick material graphene. The experiments show that the dramatically squeezed graphene-guided light can be focused and bent, following the fundamental principles of conventional optics. The work, published yesterday in Science (“Controlling graphene plasmons with resonant metal antennas and spatial conductivity patterns”), opens new opportunities for smaller and faster photonic devices and circuits.

A May 23, 2014 CIC nanoGUNE news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item,

Optical circuits and devices could make signal processing and computing much faster. “However, although light is very fast it needs too much space”, explains Rainer Hillenbrand, Ikerbasque Professor at nanoGUNE and UPV/EHU. In fact, propagating light needs at least the space of half its wavelength, which is much larger than state-of-the-art electronic building blocks in our computers. For that reason, a quest for squeezing light to propagate it through nanoscale materials arises.

The wonder material graphene, a single layer of carbon atoms with extraordinary properties, has been proposed as one solution. The wavelength of light captured by a graphene layer can be strongly shortened by a factor of 10 to 100 compared to light propagating in free space. As a consequence, this light propagating along the graphene layer – called graphene plasmon – requires much less space.

However, transforming light efficiently into graphene plasmons and manipulating them with a compact device has been a major challenge. A team of researchers from nanoGUNE, ICFO and Graphenea – members of the EU Graphene Flagship – now demonstrates that the antenna concept of radio wave technology could be a promising solution. The team shows that a nanoscale metal rod on graphene (acting as an antenna for light) can capture infrared light and transform it into graphene plasmons, analogous to a radio antenna converting radio waves into electromagnetic waves in a metal cable.

“We introduce a versatile platform technology based on resonant optical antennas for launching and controlling of propagating graphene plasmons, which represents an essential step for the development of graphene plasmonic circuits”, says team leader Rainer Hillenbrand. Pablo Alonso-González, who performed the experiments at nanoGUNE, highlights some of the advantages offered by the antenna device: “the excitation of graphene plasmons is purely optical, the device is compact and the phase and wavefronts of the graphene plasmons can be directly controlled by geometrically tailoring the antennas. This is essential to develop applications based on focusing and guiding of light”.

The news release describes few of the more technical aspects of the research,

The research team also performed theoretical studies. Alexey Nikitin, Ikerbasque Research Fellow at nanoGUNE, performed the calculations and explains that “according to theory, the operation of our device is very efficient, and all the future technological applications will essentially depend upon fabrication limitations and quality of graphene”.

Based on Nikitin´s calculations, nanoGUNE’s Nanodevices group fabricated gold nanoantennas on graphene provided by Graphenea. The Nanooptics group then used the Neaspec near-field microscope to image how infrared graphene plasmons are launched and propagate along the graphene layer. In the images, the researchers saw that, indeed, waves on graphene propagate away from the antenna, like waves on a water surface when a stone is thrown in.

In order to test whether the two-dimensional propagation of light waves along a one-atom-thick carbon layer follow the laws of conventional optics, the researchers tried to focus and refract the waves. For the focusing experiment, they curved the antenna. The images then showed that the graphene plasmons focus away from the antenna, similar to the light beam that is concentrated with a lens or concave mirror.

The team also observed that graphene plasmons refract (bend) when they pass through a prism-shaped graphene bilayer, analogous to the bending of a light beam passing through a glass prism. “The big difference is that the graphene prism is only two atoms thick. It is the thinnest refracting optical prism ever”, says Rainer Hillenbrand. Intriguingly, the graphene plasmons are bent because the conductivity in the two-atom-thick prism is larger than in the surrounding one-atom-thick layer. In the future, such conductivity changes in graphene could be also generated by simple electronic means, allowing for highly efficient electric control of refraction, among others for steering applications.

Altogether, the experiments show that the fundamental and most important principles of conventional optics also apply for graphene plasmons, in other words, squeezed light propagating along a one-atom-thick layer of carbon atoms. Future developments based on these results could lead to extremely miniaturized optical circuits and devices that could be useful for sensing and computing, among other applications.

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

Controlling graphene plasmons with resonant metal antennas and spatial conductivity patterns by P. Alonso-González, A. Y. Nikitin, F. Golmar, A. Centeno, A. Pesquera, S. Vélez, J. Chen, G. Navickaite, F. Koppens, A. Zurutuza, F. Casanova1, L. E. Hueso1, and R. Hillenbrand. Science (2014) DOI: 10.1126/science.1253202 Published Online May 22 2014

This paper is behind a paywall.

You can find our more about the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) here and Graphenea, a graphene producer, here and CIC nanoGUNE here.

Canadian researchers develop test for exposure to nanoparticles*

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The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s online news features a May 21, 2014 article by Emily Chung regarding research from the University of Toronto that may enable a simple skin test for determining nanoparticle exposure,

Canadian researchers have developed the first test for exposure to nanoparticles — new chemical technology found in a huge range of consumer products — that could potentially be used on humans.

Warren Chan, a University of Toronto [U of T] chemistry professor, and his team developed the skin test after noticing that some mice changed colour and others became fluorescent (that is, they glowed when light of certain colours were shone on them) after being exposed to increasing levels of different kinds of nanoparticles. The mice were being used in research to develop cancer treatments involving nanoparticles.

…

There is some evidence that certain types and levels of exposure may be harmful to human health. But until now, it has been hard to link exposure to health effects, partly due to the challenge of measuring exposure.

“There’s no way to determine how much [sic] nanoparticles you’ve been exposed to,” said Chan in an interview with CBCNews.ca.

There was one way to measure nanoparticle exposure in mice —  but it required the animals to be dead. At that point, they would be cut open and tests could be run on organs such as the liver and spleen where nanoparticles accumulate.

A May 14, 2014 article by Nancy Owano on phys.org provides more details (Note: Links have been removed),

They [researchers] found that different nanoparticles are visible through the skin under ambient or UV light. They found that after intravenous injection of fluorescent nanoparticles, they accumulate and can be observed through the skin. They also found that the concentration of these nanoparticles can be directly correlated to the injected dose and their accumulations in other organs.

In their discussion over selecting nanoparticles used in mouse skin, they said, “Gold nanoparticles are commonly used in molecular diagnostics and drug delivery applications. These nanomaterials were selected for our initial studies as they are easily synthesized, have a distinct ruby color and can be quantified by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES).”

Work involved in the study included designing and performing experiments, pathological analysis, and data analysis. Their discovery could be used to better predict how nanoparticles behave in the body.

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

Nanoparticle exposure in animals can be visualized in the skin and analysed via skin biopsy by Edward A. Sykes, Qin Dai, Kim M. Tsoi, David M. Hwang & Warren C. W. Chan. Nature Communications 5, Article number: 3796 doi:10.1038/ncomms4796 Published 13 May 2014

This paper is behind a paywall.

* Posting’s head changed from ‘Canadians and exposure to nanoparticles; to the more descriptive ‘Canadian researchers develop test for exposure to nanoparticles’., May 27, 2014.

Richard Berry (CelluForce) wins TAPPI’s first technical award in the nanotechnology division

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Another day, another award for Dr. Richard Berry, as per this May 22, 2014 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),

Dr. Richard Berry of CelluForce has been named the first recipient of TAPPI’s International Nanotechnology Division’s Technical Award. This award recognizes outstanding accomplishments or contributions which have advanced the responsible and sustainable production and use of renewable nanomaterials. Dr. Berry will be presented with this award at TAPPI’s 2014 International Conference on Nanotechnology for Renewable Materials to be held June 23-26, 2014 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Currently Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer for CelluForce, Berry has had a storied career (from the news item),

Prior to moving to CelluForce in 2011 he was Principal Scientist and leader of the nanotechnology initiative at FPInnovations. … He’s received many awards including the Nano-industry award from Nano Québec for his exceptional contribution to the development of cellulose nanocrystals, the Purvis Memorial Award and he’s been named one of Canada’s Clean 50 honourees. The initiatives Dr. Berry has spearheaded in recent years have allowed Canada to position itself as a world leader in the development of the new nanotechnology industry. This work was recognised through the 2012 NSERC Synergy award for innovation given to McGill University, FPInnovations, ArboraNano, and CelluForce .. .

I notice that the news item uses the term cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) rather than nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC). Perhaps this means someone will put me out of my misery soon and declare one term or other the winner.

As for the reference to Canada as a “a world leader in the development of the new nanotechnology industry,” that seems a little grandiose and odd. To my knowledge, no one refers to a ‘nanotechnology industry’. I believe the writer is trying say that Canada is a leader in the production of CNC. I wonder if they’ve (CelluForce) dealt with their stockpile first mentioned here in an Oct. 3, 2013 posting and again in an April 10, 2014 posting about the US Dept. of Agriculture’s workshop on commercializing cellulose nanomaterials. Should anyone know of the stockpile’s status at this time, please do let me know.

Here’s a link to the 2014 TAPPI Nanotechnology conference website here. and an interview here (Aug. 27, 2010)  where Dr. Berry very kindly answered my questions about what was then called, indisputably, nanocrystalline cellulose.

Science…For Her!—a book for those of us who like our science to be funny

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The book, Science…For Her!, written by Megan Amram, a comedy writer whose credits include the Kroll Show and Parks and Recreation (US television programmes, won’t be available until Nov. 4, 2014 but it can be pre-ordered at Barnes & Noble or Powell’s (I figure Amazon gets enough advertising and I want to help bookstores that have a bricks & mortar presence, as well as, an online presence).

Thanks to David Bruggeman and the April 23, 2014 posting on his Pasco Phronesis blog where I first learned of this upcoming book (Note: Links have been removed),

There’s another science mashup coming your way later this year.  It’s a textbook written by comedy writer (Parks and Recreation) Megan Amram.  Science…For Her! comes out November 4, and stands a chance of provoking the same kind of reaction as the initial video for the European Commission’s campaign – ‘Science, it’s a girl thing‘.

For anyone unfamiliar with the European Commission’s campaign, check out Olga Khazan’s June 22, 2012 Washington Post story (h/t David Bruggeman) which is a relatively kind comment in comparison to some of the other responses to the campaign some of which I chronicled in my July 6, 2012 posting about it.

Getting back to Science…For Her!, here’s a bit more about the book from an April 22, 2014 posting by Madeleine Davies for Jezebel,

Of the book, Amram writes:

Science…For Her! is a science textbook written by a lady (me) for other ladies (you, the Spice Girls, etc.) It has been demonstrated repeatedly throughout history: female brains aren’t biologically constructed to understand scientific concepts, and tiny female hands aren’t constructed to turn most textbooks’ large, extra-heavy covers.

Finally, a science textbook for us.

[downloaded from http://meganamram.tumblr.com/post/83522299626/science-for-her]

[downloaded from http://meganamram.tumblr.com/post/83522299626/science-for-her]

As David notes elsewhere in his April 23, 2014 posting, the cover has a very ‘Cosmo’ feel with titles such as ‘orgasms vs. organisms’ and ‘sexiest molecules’. The Barnes & Noble ‘Science…For Her Page!, offers more details,

Megan Amram, one of Forbes’ “30 Under 30 in Hollywood & Entertainment,” Rolling Stone’s “25 Funniest People on Twitter,” and a writer for NBC’s hit show Parks and Recreation, delivers a politically, scientifically, and anatomically incorrect “textbook” that will have women screaming with laughter, and men dying to know what the noise is about.

In the vein of faux expert books by John Hodgman and Amy Sedaris, Science…for Her! is ostensibly a book of science written by a denizen of women’s magazines. Comedy writer and Twitter sensation Megan Amram showcases her fiendish wit with a pitch-perfect attack on everything from those insanely perky tips for self-improvement to our bizarre shopaholic dating culture to the socially mandated pursuit of mind-blowing sex to the cringe-worthy secret codes of food and body issues.

Part hilarious farce, part biting gender commentary, Amram blends Cosmo and science to highlight absurdities with a machine-gun of laugh-inducing lines that leave nothing and no one unscathed. Subjects include: this Spring’s ten most glamorous ways to die; tips for hosting your own big bang; what religion is right for your body type; and the most pressing issue facing women today: kale!!!

I appreciate the humour and applaud Amram’s wit. I also feel it should be noted that there is some very good science writing to be found (occasionally) in women’s magazines (e.g. Tracy Picha’s article ‘The Future of Our Body’ in an August 2009 issue  of Flare magazine [mentioned in my July 24, 2009 posting featuring human enhancement technologies’). As well, Andrew Maynard, physicist and then chief science advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, now NSF (US National Science Foundation) International Chair of Environmental Health Sciences and Director, University of Michigan Risk Science Center, once commented that one of the best descriptions of nanotechnology that he’d ever read was in an issue of Elle magazine.

Competition, collaboration, and a smaller budget: the US nano community responds

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Before getting to the competition, collaboration, and budget mentioned in the head for this posting, I’m supplying some background information.

Within the context of a May 20, 2014 ‘National Nanotechnology Initiative’ hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, the US General Accountability Office (GAO) presented a 22 pp. précis (PDF; titled: NANOMANUFACTURING AND U.S. COMPETITIVENESS; Challenges and Opportunities) of its 125 pp. (PDF version report titled: Nanomanufacturing: Emergence and Implications for U.S. Competitiveness, the Environment, and Human Health).

Having already commented on the full report itself in a Feb. 10, 2014 posting, I’m pointing you to Dexter Johnson’s May 21, 2014 post on his Nanoclast blog (on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website) where he discusses the précis from the perspective of someone who was consulted by the US GAO when they were writing the full report (Note: Links have been removed),

I was interviewed extensively by two GAO economists for the accompanying [full] report “Nanomanufacturing: Emergence and Implications for U.S. Competitiveness, the Environment, and Human Health,” where I shared background information on research I helped compile and write on global government funding of nanotechnology.

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While I acknowledge that the experts who were consulted for this report are more likely the source for its views than I am, I was pleased to see the report reflect many of my own opinions. Most notable among these is bridging the funding gap in the middle stages of the manufacturing-innovation process, which is placed at the top of the report’s list of challenges.

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While I am in agreement with much of the report’s findings, it suffers from a fundamental misconception in seeing nanotechnology’s development as a kind of race between countries. [emphases mine]

(I encourage you to read the full text of Dexter’s comments as he offers more than a simple comment about competition.)

Carrying on from this notion of a ‘nanotechnology race’, at least one publication focused on that aspect. From the May 20, 2014 article by Ryan Abbott for CourthouseNews.com,

Nanotech Could Keep U.S. Ahead of China

WASHINGTON (CN) – Four of the nation’s leading nanotechnology scientists told a U.S. House of Representatives panel Tuesday that a little tweaking could go a long way in keeping the United States ahead of China and others in the industry.

The hearing focused on the status of the National Nanotechnology Initiative, a federal program launched in 2001 for the advancement of nanotechnology.

As I noted earlier, the hearing was focused on the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) and all of its efforts. It’s quite intriguing to see what gets emphasized in media reports and, in this case, the dearth of media reports.

I have one more tidbit, the testimony from Lloyd Whitman, Interim Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office and Deputy Director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology. The testimony is in a May 21, 2014 news item on insurancenewsnet.com,

Testimony by Lloyd Whitman, Interim Director of the National Nanotechnology Coordination Office and Deputy Director of the Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology, National Institute of Standards and Technology

Chairman Bucshon, Ranking Member Lipinski, and Members of the Committee, it is my distinct privilege to be here with you today to discuss nanotechnology and the role of the National Nanotechnology Initiative in promoting its development for the benefit of the United States.

…

Highlights of the National Nanotechnology Initiative

Our current Federal research and development program in nanotechnology is strong. The NNI agencies continue to further the NNI’s goals of (1) advancing nanotechnology R&D, (2) fostering nanotechnology commercialization, (3) developing and maintaining the U.S. workforce and infrastructure, and (4) supporting the responsible and safe development of nanotechnology. …

,,,

The sustained, strategic Federal investment in nanotechnology R&D combined with strong private sector investments in the commercialization of nanotechnology-enabled products has made the United States the global leader in nanotechnology. The most recent (2012) NNAP report analyzed a wide variety of sources and metrics and concluded that “… in large part as a result of the NNI the United States is today… the global leader in this exciting and economically promising field of research and technological development.” n10 A recent report on nanomanufacturing by Congress’s own Government Accountability Office (GAO) arrived at a similar conclusion, again drawing on a wide variety of sources and stakeholder inputs. n11 As discussed in the GAO report, nanomanufacturing and commercialization are key to capturing the value of Federal R&D investments for the benefit of the U.S. economy. The United States leads the world by one important measure of commercial activity in nanotechnology: According to one estimate, n12 U.S. companies invested $4.1 billion in nanotechnology R&D in 2012, far more than investments by companies in any other country.  …

There’s cognitive dissonance at work here as Dexter notes in his own way,

… somewhat ironically, the [GAO] report suggests that one of the ways forward is more international cooperation, at least in the development of international standards. And in fact, one of the report’s key sources of information, Mihail Roco, has made it clear that international cooperation in nanotechnology research is the way forward.

It seems to me that much of the testimony and at least some of the anxiety about being left behind can be traced to a decreased 2015 budget allotment for nanotechnology (mentioned here in a March 31, 2014 posting [US National Nanotechnology Initiative’s 2015 budget request shows a decrease of $200M]).

One can also infer a certain anxiety from a recent presentation by Barbara Herr Harthorn, head of UCSB’s [University of California at Santa Barbara) Center for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS). She was at a February 2014 meeting of the Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues (mentioned in parts one and two [the more substantive description of the meeting which also features a Canadian academic from the genomics community] of my recent series on “Brains, prostheses, nanotechnology, and human enhancement”). II noted in part five of the series what seems to be a shift towards brain research as a likely beneficiary of the public engagement work accomplished under NNI auspices and, in the case of the Canadian academic, the genomics effort.

The Americans are not the only ones feeling competitive as this tweet from Richard Jones, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation at Sheffield University (UK), physicist, and author of Soft Machines, suggests,

May 18

The UK has fewer than 1% of world patents on graphene, despite it being discovered here, according to the FT –

I recall reading a report a few years back which noted that experts in China were concerned about falling behind internationally in their research efforts. These anxieties are not new, CP Snow’s book and lecture The Two Cultures (1959) also referenced concerns in the UK about scientific progress and being left behind.

Competition/collaboration is an age-old conundrum and about as ancient as anxieties of being left behind. The question now is how are we all going to resolve these issues this time?

ETA May 28, 2014: The American Institute of Physics (AIP) has produced a summary of the May 20, 2014 hearing as part of their FYI: The AIP Bulletin of Science Policy News, May 27, 2014 (no. 93).

ETA Sept. 12, 2014: My first posting about the diminished budget allocation for the US NNI was this March 31, 2014 posting.

The world’s smallest machines at Vancouver’s (Canada) May 27, 2014 Café Scientifique

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Vancouver’s next Café Scientifique is being held in the back room of the The Railway Club (2nd floor of 579 Dunsmuir St. [at Seymour St.], Vancouver, Canada), on Tuesday, May 27,  2014 at 7:30 pm. Here’s the meeting description (from the May 21, 2014 announcement),

Our speaker is Dr. Nicholas White from UBC Chemistry. The title and abstract of his talk is:

The world’s smallest machines

In the last 50 years, chemists have developed the ability to produce increasingly intricate and complex molecules. One example of this is the synthesis of “interlocked molecules”: two or more separate molecules that are mechanically threaded through one another (like links of a chain). These interlocked molecules offer potential use for a range of different applications. In particular they have been developed for use as molecular machines: devices that are only a few nanometers in size, but can perform physical work in response to a stimulus (e.g. light, heat). This talk will describe the development of interlocked molecules, and explore their potential applications as nano-devices.

Nicholas (Nick) White is a member of the MacLachlan Group. The group’s leader, Mark MacLachlan was mentioned here in a March 25, 2011 post regarding his Café Scientifique talk on beetles, biomimcry, and nanocrystalline cellulose (aka, cellulose nanocrystals). As well, MacLachlan was mentioned in a May 21, 2014 post about the $!.65M grant he received for his NanoMAT: NSERC CREATE Training Program in Nanomaterials Science & Technology.

As for Nick White, there’s this on the MacLachlan Group homepage, (scroll down about 25% of the way),

Nick completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Otago in his home town of Dunedin, New Zealand (working on transition metal complexes with Prof. Sally Brooker). After a short break working and then travelling, he completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford, working with Prof. Paul Beer making rotaxanes and catenanes for anion recognition applications. He is now a Killam Postdoctoral Fellow in the MacLachlan group working on supramolecular materials based on triptycene and silsesquioxanes (although he has difficulty convincing people he’s old enough to be a post-doc). Outside of chemistry, Nick is a keen rock climber, and is enjoying being close to the world-class rock at Squamish. He also enjoys running, playing guitar, listening to music, and drinking good coffee.

I wonder if a Café Scientifique presentation is going to be considered as partial fulfillment for the professional skills-building requirement of the MacLachlan’s NanoMAT: NSERC CREATE Training Program in Nanomaterials Science & Technology.

Futuristic fashion with Biocouture and other future-focused clothing companies

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Suzanne Lee and her ‘green tea’ couture are being featured in a May 20, 2014 article by Adele Peters about futuristic fashion and a new documentary, ‘The Next Black’, for Fast Company,

Fabric grown from bacteria. T-shirt designs that “refresh” themselves. Or how about a new way to dye fabrics without water or pollution? These are ideas for the future of fashion that blend style and sustainability.

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Biocouture is growing new fabric from bacteria using a process more like brewing beer than making any other textiles. The company hopes that eventually clothing could be grown directly on dress forms, creating zero waste. …

Studio XO, a company pioneering interactive digital fashion, shares their vision for a “Tumblr for the body”–a subscription service for clothing that could automatically refresh itself as you wear it (picture a T-shirt with an ever-evolving print curated by designers or your friends). …

You can find the full 45 min. documentary embedded in the Peters article. You can also find additional information about Suzanne Lee’s work in my June 8, 2012 post titled, Material changes, which also features other designers.

Water cages made of buckyballs could affect nuclear magnetic resonance and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)

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I wasn’t expecting to find this May 20, 2014 news item on Nanowerk to be* quite so fascinating, especially as It gets off to a slow start (a link has been removed),

In a new paper in The Journal of Chemical Physics (“Nuclear spin conversion of water inside fullerene cages detected by low-temperature nuclear magnetic resonance”), produced by AIP Publishing, a research team in the United Kingdom and the United States describes how water molecules “caged” in fullerene spheres (“buckyballs”) are providing a deeper insight into spin isomers — varieties of a molecule that differ in their nuclear spin. The results of this work may one day help enhance the analytical and diagnostic power of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

A May 20, 2014 American Institute of Physics (AIP) news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, provides some information about water molecules prior to describing the research in more detail,

Water molecules can exist as one of two isomers depending on how the spins of their two hydrogen atoms are oriented: ortho, where the spins are parallel and have a spin number of 1, and para, where the spins are antiparallel and have a spin number of 0. Scientists believe that any given molecule can transform from ortho- into para- spin states and vice versa, a process known as nuclear spin conversion.

“Currently, mechanisms for this conversion are not completely understood, nor how long it takes the molecules to transform from one spin isomer to the other,” said Salvatore Mamone, a post-doctoral physicist at the University of Southampton and lead author on the JCP paper. “To study this, we had to figure out how to reduce the strong intermolecular interactions that are responsible for aggregation and lower the rotational mobility of the water molecules.”

Next, there’s a brief summarized version of the research (from the news release),

The answer was to use chemical reactions to open a hole in fullerene (C60, also known as a buckyball) spheres, inject water molecules and then close the “cages” to form a complex referred to as H2O@C60. “At the end of this synthetic preparation nicknamed ‘molecular surgery,’ we find that 70 to 90 percent of the cages are filled, giving us a significant quantity of water molecules to examine,” Mamone said. “Because the [water] molecules are kept separated by the cages, there is a large rotational freedom that makes observation of the ortho and para isomers possible.”

This is followed by more technical details,

In their experiment, the researchers quickly cooled the individual H2O@C60 samples from 50 Kelvin (minus 223 degrees Celsius) to 5 K (minus 268 degrees Celsius) and then monitored their NMR signal every few minutes over several days.

“As the observed NMR signal is proportional to the amount of ortho-water in the sample [para-water with its spin number of 0 is “NMR silent”], we can track the percentages of ortho and para isomers at any time and any temperature,” Mamone explained. “At 50 K, we find that 75 percent of the water molecules are ortho, while at 5 K, they become almost 100 percent para. Therefore, we know that after the quick temperature jump, equilibrium is restored by conversion from ortho to para—and we see that conversion in real time.”

A surprising outcome of the experiment was that the researchers observed a second-order rate law in the kinetics of the spin conversion which proves that pairs of molecules have to interact for conversion to occur. “Previous studies have speculated that other nuclear spins can cause conversion but we found this not to be the case for H2O@C60,” Mamone said.

Next up, the research team plans to study the roles of isomer concentrations and temperature in the conversion process, the conversion of para-water to ortho (“back conversion”), how to detect single ortho- and para-water molecules on surfaces, and spin isomers in other fullerene-caged molecules.

Bravo to the news release writer for a very nice explanation of the science!

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

Nuclear spin conversion of water inside fullerene cages detected by low-temperature nuclear magnetic resonance by Salvatore Mamone, Maria Concistré, Elisa Carignani, Benno Meier, Andrea Krachmalnicoff, Ole G. Johannessen, Xuegong Lei, Yongjun Li, Mark Denning, Marina Carravetta, Kelvin Goh, Anthony J. Horsewill, Richard J. Whitby and Malcolm H. Levitt.  J. Chem. Phys. 140, 194306 (2014) DOI: 10.1063/1.4873343

This is an open access paper.

* ‘to be’ added on July 16, 2014.