Monthly Archives: August 2015

Risk assessments not the only path to nanotechnology regulation

Leave a reply

Nanowerk has republished an essay about nanotechnology regulation from Australia’s The Conversation in an Aug. 25, 2015 news item (Note: A link has been removed),

When it comes to nanotechnology, Australians have shown strong support for regulation and safety testing.

One common way of deciding whether and how nanomaterials should be regulated is to conduct a risk assessment. This involves calculating the risk a substance or activity poses based on the associated hazards or dangers and the level of exposure to people or the environment.

However, our recent review (“Risk Analysis of Nanomaterials: Exposing Nanotechnology’s Naked Emperor”) found some serious shortcomings of the risk assessment process for determining the safety of nanomaterials.

We have argued that these shortcomings are so significant that risk assessment is effectively a naked emperor [reference to a children’s story “The Emperor’s New Clothes“].

The original Aug. 24, 2015 article written by Fern Wickson (Scientist/Program Coordinator at GenØk – Centre for Biosafety in Norway) and Georgia Miller (PhD candidate at UNSW [University of New South Wales], Australia) points out an oft ignored issue with regard to nanotechnology regulation,

Risk assessment has been the dominant decision-aiding tool used by regulators of new technologies for decades, despite it excluding key questions that the community cares about. [emphasis mine] For example: do we need this technology; what are the alternatives; how will it affect social relations, and; who should be involved in decision making?

Wickson and Miller also note more frequently discussed issues,

A fundamental problem is a lack of nano-specific regulation. Most sector-based regulation does not include a “trigger” for nanomaterials to face specific risk assessment. Where a substance has been approved for use in its macro form, it requires no new assessment.

Even if such a trigger were present, there is also currently no cross-sectoral or international agreement on the definition of what constitutes a nanomaterial.

Another barrier is the lack of measurement capability and validated methods for safety testing. We still do not have the means to conduct routine identification of nanomaterials in the complex “matrix” of finished products or the environment.

This makes supply chain tracking and safety testing under real-world conditions very difficult. Despite ongoing investment in safety research, the lack of validated test methods and different methods yielding diverse results allows scientific uncertainty to persist.

With regard to the first problem, the assumption that if a material at the macroscale is safe, then the same is true at the nanoscale informs regulation in Canada and, as far as I’m aware, every other constituency that has any type of nanomaterial regulation. I’ve had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, we haven’t seen any serious problems associated with the use of nanomaterials but on the other hand, these problems can be slow to emerge.

The second issue mentioned, the lack of a consistent definition internationally, seems to be a relatively common problem in a lot of areas. As far as I’m aware, there aren’t that many international agreements for safety measures. Nuclear weapons and endangered animals and plants (CITES) being two of the few that come to mind.

The lack of protocols for safety testing of nanomaterials mentioned in the last paragraph of the excerpt is of rising concern. For example, there’s my July 7, 2015 posting featuring two efforts: Nanotechnology research protocols for Environment, Health and Safety Studies in US and a nanomedicine characterization laboratory in the European Union. Despite this and other efforts, I do think more can and should be done to standardize tests and protocols (without killing new types of research and results which don’t fit the models).

The authors do seem to be presenting a circular argument with this (from their Aug. 24, 2015 article; Note: A link has been removed),

Indeed, scientific uncertainty about nanomaterials’ risk profiles is a key barrier to their reliable assessment. A review funded by the European Commission concluded that:

[…] there is still insufficient data available to conduct the in depth risk assessments required to inform the regulatory decision making process on the safety of NMs [nanomaterials].

Reliable assessment of any chemical or drug is a major problem. We do have some good risk profiles but how many times have pharmaceutical companies developed a drug that passed successfully through human clinical trials only to present a serious risk when released to the general population? Assessing risk is a very complex problem. even with risk profiles and extensive testing.

Unmentioned throughout the article are naturally occurring nanoparticles (nanomaterials) and those created inadvertently through some manufacturing or other process. In fact, we have been ingesting nanomaterials throughout time. That said, I do agree we need to carefully consider the impact that engineered nanomaterials could have on us and the environment as ever more are being added.

To that end, the authors make some suggestions (Note: Links have been removed),

There are well-developed alternate decision-aiding tools available. One is multicriteria mapping, which seeks to evaluate various perspectives on an issue. Another is problem formulation and options assessment, which expands science-based risk assessment to engage a broader range of individuals and perspectives.

There is also pedigree assessment, which explores the framing and choices taking place at each step of an assessment process so as to better understand the ambiguity of scientific inputs into political processes.

Another, though less well developed, approach popular in Europe involves a shift from risk to innovation governance, with emphasis on developing “responsible research and innovation”.

I have some hesitation about recommending this read due to Georgia Miller’s involvement and the fact that I don’t have the time to check all the references. Miller was a spokesperson for Friends of the Earth (FoE) Australia, a group which led a substantive campaign against ‘nanosunscreens’. Here’s a July 20, 2010 posting where I featured some cherrypicking/misrepresentation of data by FoE in the persons of Georgia Miller and Ian Illuminato.

My Feb. 9, 2012 posting highlights the unintended consequences (avoidance of all sunscreens by some participants in a survey) of the FoE’s campaign in Australia (Note [1]: The percentage of people likely to avoid all sunscreens due to their concerns with nanoparticles in their sunscreens was originally reported to be 17%; Note [2]: Australia has the highest incidence of skin cancer in the world),

Feb.21.12 correction: According to the information in the Feb. 20, 2012 posting on 2020 Science, the percentage of Australians likely to avoid using sunscreens is 13%,

This has just landed in my email in box from Craig Cormick at the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education in Australia, and I thought I would pass it on given the string of posts on nanoparticles in sunscreens on 2020 Science over the past few years:
…

“An online poll of 1,000 people, conducted in January this year, shows that one in three Australians had heard or read stories about the risks of using sunscreens with nanoparticles in them,” Dr Cormick said.

“Thirteen percent of this group were concerned or confused enough that they would be less likely to use any sunscreen, whether or not it contained nanoparticles, putting them selves at increased risk of developing potentially deadly skin cancers.

“The study also found that while one in five respondents stated they would go out of their way to avoid using sunscreens with nanoparticles in them, over three in five would need to know more information before deciding.”

This article with Fern Wickson (with whom I don’t always agree perfectly but hasn’t played any games with research that I’m know of) helps somewhat but it’s going to take more than this before I feel comfortable recommending Ms. Miller’s work for further reading.

LEGO2NANO, a UK-China initiative

Leave a reply

LEGO2NANO is a ‘summer’ school being held in China sometime during September 2015 (I could not find the dates). The first summer school, held last year, featured a prototype functioning atomic force microscope made of Lego bricks according to an Aug. 25, 2015 news item on Nanowerk,

University College London students from across a range of disciplines travel to China to team up with students from Beijing, Boston (USA) and Taipei (Taiwan) for an action-packed two-week hackathon summer school based at Tsinghua University’s Beijing and Shenzhen campuses.

LEGO2NANO aims to bring the world of nanotechnology to school classrooms by initiating projects to develop low-cost scientific instruments such as the Open AFM—an open-source atomic force microscope assembled from cheap, off-the-shelf electronic components, Arduino, Lego and 3D printable parts.

Here’s an image used to publicize the first summer school in 2014,

LEGO2NANO – a summer school about making nanotechnology, 6–14 September 2014, Beijing, China LEGO2NANO关于纳米技术暑期学校2014年9月6-14日

LEGO2NANO – a summer school about making nanotechnology, 6–14 September 2014, Beijing, China
LEGO2NANO关于纳米技术暑期学校2014年9月6-14日

An August 20, 2015 University College of London press release, which originated the news item, provides more detail about the upcoming two-week session,

The 2015 LEGO2NANO challenge is focused on developing a range of innovative imaging and motion-sensitive instruments based on optical pick-up units available in any DVD head.

Aside from the intense, daily making sessions, the programme is packed with trips and visits to local Chinese schools, university laboratories, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing’s electronics markets, Shenzhen’s Open Innovation Laboratory (SZOIL)  and SEEED Studio. The students will also have daily talks and presentations from international experts on a variety of subjects such as the international maker movement, the Chinese education system, augmented reality and DIY instrumentation.

You can find more information about LEGO2NANO here at openafm.com and here at http://lego2nano.openwisdomlab.net/.

Carbon nanotubes as sensors in the body

Leave a reply

Rachel Ehrenberg has written an Aug. 21, 2015 news item about the latest and greatest carbon nanotube-based biomedical sensors for the journal Nature,

The future of medical sensors may be going down the tubes. Chemists are developing tiny devices made from carbon nanotubes wrapped with polymers to detect biologically important compounds such as insulin, nitric oxide and the blood-clotting protein fibrinogen. The hope is that these sensors could simplify and automate diagnostic tests.

Preliminary experiments in mice, reported by scientists at a meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston, Massachusetts, this week [Aug. 16 – 20, 2015], suggest that the devices are safe to introduce into the bloodstream or implant under the skin. Researchers also presented data showing that the nanotube–polymer complexes could measure levels of large molecules, a feat that has been difficult for existing technologies.

Ehrenberg focuses on one laboratory in particular (Note: Links have been removed),

“Anything the body makes, it is meant to degrade,” says chemical engineer Michael Strano, whose lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge is behind much of the latest work1. “Our vision is to make a sensing platform that can monitor a whole range of molecules, and do it in the long term.”

…

To design one sensor, MIT  researchers coated nanotubes with a mix of polymers and nucleotides and screened for configurations that would bind to the protein fibrinogen. This large molecule is important for building blood clots; its concentration can indicate bleeding disorders, liver disease or impending cardiovascular trouble. The team recently hit on a material that worked — a first for such a large molecule, according to MIT nanotechnology specialist Gili Bisker. Bisker said at the chemistry meeting that the fibrinogen-detecting nanotubes could be used to measure levels of the protein in blood samples, or implanted in body tissue to detect changing fibrinogen levels that might indicate a clot.

The MIT team has also developed2 a sensor that can be inserted beneath the skin to monitor glucose or insulin levels in real time, Bisker reported. The team imagines putting a small patch that contains a wireless device on the skin just above the embedded sensor. The patch would shine light on the sensor and measure its fluorescence, then transmit that data to a mobile phone for real-time monitoring.

Another version of the sensor, developed3 at MIT by biomedical engineer Nicole Iverson and colleagues, detects nitric oxide. This signalling molecule typically indicates inflammation and is associated with many cancer cells. When embedded in a hydrogel matrix, the sensor kept working in mice for more than 400 days and caused no local inflammation, MIT chemical engineer Michael Lee reported. The nitric oxide sensors also performed well when injected into the bloodstreams of mice, successfully passing through small capillaries in the lungs, which are an area of concern for nanotube toxicity. …

There’s at least one corporate laboratory (Google X), working on biosensors although their focus is a little different. From a Jan. 9, 2015 article by Brian Womack and Anna Edney for BloombergBusiness,

Google Inc. sent employees with ties to its secretive X research group to meet with U.S. regulators who oversee medical devices, raising the possibility of a new product that may involve biosensors from the unit that developed computerized glasses.

The meeting included at least four Google workers, some of whom have connections with Google X — and have done research on sensors, including contact lenses that help wearers monitor their biological data. Google staff met with those at the Food and Drug Administration who regulate eye devices and diagnostics for heart conditions, according to the agency’s public calendar. [emphasis mine]

This approach from Google is considered noninvasive,

“There is actually one interface on the surface of the body that can literally provide us with a window of what happens inside, and that’s the surface of the eye,” Parviz [Babak Parviz, … was involved in the Google Glass project and has talked about putting displays on contact lenses, including lenses that monitor wearer’s health]  said in a video posted on YouTube. “It’s a very interesting chemical interface.”

Of course, the assumption is that all this monitoring is going to result in  healthier people but I can’t help thinking about an old saying ‘a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing’. For example, we lived in a world where bacteria roamed free and then we learned how to make them visible, determined they were disease-causing, and began campaigns for killing them off. Now, it turns out that at least some bacteria are good for us and, moreover, we’ve created other, more dangerous bacteria that are drug-resistant. Based on the bacteria example, is it possible that with these biosensors we will observe new phenomena and make similar mistakes?

Self-assembling copper and physiology

Leave a reply

An Aug. 24, 2015 news item on Nanowerk highlights work at Louisiana Tech University (US) on self-assembling copper nanocomposites in liquid form,

Faculty at Louisiana Tech University have discovered, for the first time, a new nanocomposite formed by the self-assembly of copper and a biological component that occurs under physiological conditions, which are similar those found in the human body and could be used in targeted drug delivery for fighting diseases such as cancer.

The team, led by Dr. Mark DeCoster, the James E. Wyche III Endowed Associate Professor in Biomedical Engineering at Louisiana Tech, has also discovered a way for this synthesis to be carried out in liquid form. This would allow for controlling the scale of the synthesis up or down, and to grow structures with larger features, so they can be observed.

An Aug. 24, 2015 Louisiana Tech University news release by Dave Guerin, which originated the news item, describes possible future  applications and the lead researcher’s startup company,

“We are currently investigating how this new material interacts with cells,” said DeCoster. “It may be used, for example for drug delivery, which could be used in theory for fighting diseases such as cancer. Also, as a result of the copper component that we used, there could be some interesting electronics, energy, or optics applications that could impact consumer products. In addition, copper has some interesting and useful antimicrobial features.

“Finally, as the recent environmental spill of mining waste into river systems showed us, metals, including copper, can sometimes make their way into freshwater systems, so our newly discovered metal-composite methods could provide a way to “bind up” unwanted copper into a useful or more stable form.”

DeCoster said there were two aspects of this discovery that surprised him and his research team. First, they found that once formed, these copper nanocomposites were incredibly stable both in liquid or dried form, and remained stable for years. “We have been carrying out this research for at least four years and have a number of samples that are at least two years old and still stable,” DeCoster said.

Second, DeCoster’s group was very surprised that these composites are resistant to agglomeration, which is the process by which material clumps or sticks together.

“This is of benefit because it allows us to work with individual structures in order to separate or modify them chemically,” explains DeCoster. “When materials stick together and clump, as many do, it is much harder to work with them in a logical way. Both of these aspects, however, fit with our hypothesis that the self-assembly that we have discovered is putting positively charged copper together with negatively charged sulfur-containing cystine.”

The research discovery was a team effort that included DeCoster and Louisiana Tech students at the bachelor, master and doctoral level. “The quality of my team in putting together a sustained effort to figure out what was needed to reproducibly carry out the new self-assembly methods and to simplify them really speaks well as to what can be accomplished at Louisiana Tech University,” DeCoster said. “Furthermore, the work is very multi-disciplinary, meaning that it required nanotechnology as well as biological and biochemical insights to make it all work, as well as some essential core instrumentation that we have at Louisiana Tech.”

DeCoster says the future of this research has some potentially high impacts. He and his team are speaking with colleagues and collaborators about how to test these new nanocomposites for applications in bioengineering and larger composites such as materials that would be large enough to be hand-held.

“Our recent publication of the work could generate some interest and new ideas,” said DeCoster. “We are working on new proposals to fund the research and to keep it moving forward. We are currently making these materials on an ‘as needed’ basis, knowing that they can be stored once generated, and if we discover new uses for the nanocomposites, then applications for the materials could lead to income generation through a start-up company that I have formed.”

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

MediumGeneration of Scalable, Metallic High-Aspect Ratio Nanocomposites in a Biological Liquid Medium by Kinsey Cotton Kelly, Jessica R. Wasserman, Sneha Deodhar, Justin Huckaby, and Mark A. DeCoster. J. Vis. Exp. [Journal of Visual Experimentation; JoVE] (101), e52901, doi:10.3791/52901 (2015).

This paper/video is behind a paywall.

The Gaza is running out of water by 2016 if the United Nations predictions are correct

Leave a reply

If the notion that people are in imminent danger of dying from thirst isn’t compelling enough, there’s this account of the situation and a possible solution in an August 24, 2015 posting by observers, Abou Assi and Majdi Fathi, with journalist, Dorothée Myriam Kellou for observers.france24.com,

Each year, Gaza’s population uses 180 million cubic metres of water but only has capacity for 60 million cubic metres of water usage per year. Running out of water is a constant fear for Gazans.

…

To understand the context of the crisis, we first spoke to our Observer Majdi Fathi, a photographer who lives in Gaza. He described the daily struggles of living in a place with a shortage of potable water.

The water that comes out of the taps in Gaza is too salty to drink. We only use it for washing. We have to buy bottled water to drink. Each family goes to water vendors. [Editor’s note : Often, families buy water from private companies who run desalination plants with little regulation. Though the water quality is often criticised, it’s still very expensive]. People frequently pay about $2 for 500 litres of water. There are ten people in my family and we can live on 500 litres for about 25 days. Though the authorities give some free water to the very poorest, it’s not enough.

We are all worried about the water shortage. Often, the taps run dry and we end up having to use the drinking water that we purchased for cleaning. Buying water from vendors is not a long-term, sustainable solution!

In a June 25, 2013 posting, I included (in an update) some information about the Gaza situation in the context of water issues in Israel and a special project with the University of Chicago designed to address those issues,

ETA June 27, 2013: There is no hint in the University of Chicago news releases that these water projects will benefit any parties other than Israel and the US but it is tempting to hope that this work might also have an impact in Palestine given its current water crisis there as described in a June 26, 2013 news item in the World Bulletin (Note: Links have been removed),

A tiny wedge of land jammed between Israel, Egypt and the Mediterranean sea, the Gaza Strip is heading inexorably into a water crisis that the United Nations says could make the Palestinian enclave unliveable in just a few years.

With 90-95 percent of the territory’s only aquifer contaminated by sewage, chemicals and seawater, neighbourhood desalination facilities and their public taps are a lifesaver for some of Gaza’s 1.6 million residents.

But these small-scale projects provide water for only about 20 percent of the population, forcing many more residents in the impoverished Gaza Strip to buy bottled water at a premium.

“There is a crisis. There is a serious deficit in the water resources in Gaza and there is a serious deterioration in the water quality,” said Rebhi El Sheikh, deputy chairman of the Palestinian Water Authority (PWA).

A NASA study of satellite data released this year showed that between 2003 and 2009 the region lost 144 cubic km of stored freshwater – equivalent to the amount of water held in the Dead Sea – making an already bad situation much worse.

But the situation in Gaza is particularly acute, with the United Nations warning that its sole aquifer might be unusable by 2016, with the damage potentially irreversible by 2020.

Abou Assi, a Palestinian engineer, thinks he may have a solution (from the observers.france24.com Aug. 24, 2015 posting),

The water table, which is the main source of drinking water in Gaza, is being over-exploited and is also polluted by both nitrates used in agriculture and by sea water. Gaza’s groundwater could run out as soon as next year, according to the United Nations.

While I was working on my masters in engineering at the Islamic University in Gaza, I started looking for a radical solution to the problem. Seeing as Gaza is located on the shores of the Mediterranean, I started considering a filtration system that could desalinate sea water.

There are seven different desalination plants in Gaza. They each produce between 45 and 80 cubic metres of water an hour. The problem is that all of these factories use the reverse osmosis procedure [Editor’s note: This is a water purification system that uses a semipermeable membrane to remove larger particles, including salt molecules, from water molecules].

Even though the method is ingenious, it requires a lot of energy. This is a problem in Gaza, because we also have a major energy shortage. Our power plant, which provides Gaza with about a third of its energy, regularly stops working due to fuel shortages.

…

My team and I conducted 170 experiments in 14 months before we managed to create a machine that reduced the salinity of the seawater enough to make it drinkable.

The machine is very simple: it pumps sea water very quickly through iron pipes. The water passes through electrical boxes that push the water through membranes made from nanomaterials. The membranes have tiny, microscopic pores that block the sodium chloride (salt) molecules but allow the water molecules to go through. After the water is filtered, the useful minerals are re-injected. After all this, the water that comes out of the taps is clean enough to drink!

…

With this machine, it’s possible to treat one cubic metre of water per day, using 60% less energy than with the old system. The water meets the quality standards of the World Health Organisation, which puts limits on a number of substances, including chlorine, limestone, lead, nitrates, pesticides and bacteria. For now, some so-called “drinkable” water in Gaza has nitrate levels that can reach up to 220 mg per litre even though the WHO recommends a limit of 50 mg per litre. Poorly treated drinking water can cause many health problems, especially for children. [Editor’s note: The WHO recently noted an increase in cases of children with diarrhea in Gaza].

Assi has gone into debt to finance his research despite the fact he has received grants for this work (from the observers.france24.com Aug. 24, 2015 posting),

In order to transition from the prototype to a practical application, I need more financial support. I would like to create a model of a smaller version that could be put into people’s homes in Gaza. In order to develop this, all I need is about $20,000.

That said, in order to really resolve the drinking water crisis across Gaza, we would need to build a desalination plant that uses this technique. That would be expensive — about $300,000 million – and there would always be the fear that the plant would be bombed, like with the power plant.

We have attempted to discuss our ideas with officials in both Gaza and Ramallah but, for the time being, we have received no response. We hope for support both from Palestinian institutions and from the international community.

There doesn’t yet seem to be a website or Facebook page or other means of contacting and/or lending other kinds of support to Assi. Hopefully, he will have something soon.

In a February 24, 2014 posting, I featured a nanotechnology laboratory in Oman where they were studying and working to develop desalination technologies. (I noticed that Assi received a grant for his work from the  Middle East Desalination Research Center in Oman.)

Corrections: Hybrid Photonic-Nanomechanical Force Microscopy uses vibration for better chemical analysis

Leave a reply

*ETA  Nov. 4, 2015: I’m apologizing to anyone wishing to read this posting as it’s a bit of a mess. I deeply regret mishandling the situation. In future, I shall not be taking any corrections from individual researchers to materials such as news releases that have been issued by an institution. Whether or not the individual researchers are happy with how their contributions or how a colleague’s contributions or how their home institutions have been characterized is a matter for them and their home institutions.

The August 10, 2015 ORNL news release with all the correct details has been added to the end of this post.*

A researcher at the University of Central Florida (UCF) has developed a microscope that uses vibrations for better analysis of chemical composition. From an Aug. 10, 2015 news item on Nanowerk,

It’s a discovery that could have promising implications for fields as varied as biofuel production, solar energy, opto-electronic devices, pharmaceuticals and medical research.

“What we’re interested in is the tools that allow us to understand the world at a very small scale,” said UCF professor Laurene Tetard, formerly of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. “Not just the shape of the object, but its mechanical properties, its composition and how it evolves in time.”

An Aug. 10, 2015 UCF news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the limitations of atomic force microscopy and gives a few details about the hybrid microscope (Note: A link has been removed),

For more than two decades, scientists have used atomic force microscopy – a probe that acts like an ultra-sensitive needle on a record player – to determine the surface characteristics of samples at the microscopic scale. A “needle” that comes to an atoms-thin point traces a path over a sample, mapping the surface features at a sub-cellular level [nanoscale].

But that technology has its limits. It can determine the topographical characteristics of [a] sample, but it can’t identify its composition. And with the standard tools currently used for chemical mapping, anything smaller than roughly half a micron is going to look like a blurry blob, so researchers are out of luck if they want to study what’s happening at the molecular level.

A team led by Tetard has come up with a hybrid form of that technology that produces a much clearer chemical image. As described Aug. 10 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, Hybrid Photonic-Nanomechanical Force Microscopy (HPFM) can discern a sample’s topographic characteristics together with the chemical properties at a much finer scale.

The HPFM method is able to identify materials based on differences in the vibration produced when they’re subjected to different wavelengths of light – essentially a material’s unique “fingerprint.”

“What we are developing is a completely new way of making that detection possible,” said Tetard, who has joint appointments to UCF’s Physics Department, Material Science and Engineering Department and the NanoScience Technology Center.

The researchers proved the effectiveness of HPFM while examining samples from an eastern cottonwood tree, a potential source of biofuel. By examining the plant samples at the nanoscale, the researchers for the first time were able to determine the molecular traits of both untreated and chemically processed cottonwood inside the plant cell walls.

The research team included Tetard; Ali Passian, R.H. Farahi and Brian Davison, all of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and Thomas Thundat of the University of Alberta.

Long term, the results will help reveal better methods for producing the most biofuel from the cottonwood, a potential boon for industry. Likewise, the new method could be used to examine samples of myriad plants to determine whether they’re good candidates for biofuel production.

Potential uses of the technology go beyond the world of biofuel. Continued research may allow HPFM to be used as a probe so, for instance, it would be possible to study the effect of new treatments being developed to save plants such as citrus trees from bacterial diseases rapidly decimating the citrus industry, or study fundamental photonically-induced processes in complex systems such as in solar cell materials or opto-electronic devices.

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

Opto-nanomechanical spectroscopic material characterization by L. Tetard, A. Passian, R. H. Farahi, T. Thundat, & B. H. Davison. Nature Nanotechnology (2015) doi:10.1038/nnano.2015.168 Published online 10 August 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

*ETA August 27, 2015:

August 10, 2015 ORNL news release (Note: Funding information and a link to the paper [previously given] have been removed):

A microscope being developed at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory will allow scientists studying biological and synthetic materials to simultaneously observe chemical and physical properties on and beneath the surface.

The Hybrid Photonic Mode-Synthesizing Atomic Force Microscope is unique, according to principal investigator Ali Passian of ORNL’s Quantum Information System group. As a hybrid, the instrument, described in a paper published in Nature Nanotechnology, combines the disciplines of nanospectroscopy and nanomechanical microscopy.

“Our microscope offers a noninvasive rapid method to explore materials simultaneously for their chemical and physical properties,” Passian said. “It allows researchers to study the surface and subsurface of synthetic and biological samples, which is a capability that until now didn’t exist.”

ORNL’s instrument retains all of the advantages of an atomic force microscope while simultaneously offering the potential for discoveries through its high resolution and subsurface spectroscopic capabilities.

“The originality of the instrument and technique lies in its ability to provide information about a material’s chemical composition in the broad infrared spectrum of the chemical composition while showing the morphology of a material’s interior and exterior with nanoscale – a billionth of a meter – resolution,” Passian said.

Researchers will be able to study samples ranging from engineered nanoparticles and nanostructures to naturally occurring biological polymers, tissues and plant cells.

The first application as part of DOE’s BioEnergy Science Center was in the examination of plant cell walls under several treatments to provide submicron characterization. The plant cell wall is a layered nanostructure of biopolymers such as cellulose. Scientists want to convert such biopolymers to free the useful sugars and release energy.

An earlier instrument, also invented at ORNL, provided imaging of poplar cell wall structures that yielded unprecedented topological information, advancing fundamental research in sustainable biofuels.

Because of this new instrument’s impressive capabilities, the researcher team envisions broad applications.
“An urgent need exists for new platforms that can tackle the challenges of subsurface and chemical characterization at the nanometer scale,” said co-author Rubye Farahi. “Hybrid approaches such as ours bring together multiple capabilities, in this case, spectroscopy and high-resolution microscopy.”

Looking inside, the hybrid microscope consists of a photonic module that is incorporated into a mode-synthesizing atomic force microscope. The modular aspect of the system makes it possible to accommodate various radiation sources such as tunable lasers and non-coherent monochromatic or polychromatic sources.

…

ETA2 August 27, 2015: I’ve received an email from one of the paper’s authors (RH Farahi of the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL]) who claims some inaccuracies in this piece.  The news release supplied by the University of Central Florida states that Dr. Tetard led the team and that is not so. According to Dr. Farahi, she had a postdoctoral position on the team which she left two years ago. You might also get the impression that some of the work was performed at the University of Central Florida. That is not so according to Dr. Farahi.  As a courtesy Dr. Tetard was retained as first author of the paper.

*Nov. 4, 2015: I suspect some of the misunderstanding was due to overeagerness and/or time pressures. Whoever wrote the news release may have made some assumptions. It’s very easy to make a mistake when talking to an ebullient scientist who can unintentionally lead you to believe something that’s not so. I worked in a high tech company and believed that there was some new software being developed which turned out to be a case of high hopes. Luckily, I said something that triggered a rapid rebuttal to the fantasies. Getting back to this situation, other contributing factors could include the writer not having time to get the news release reviewed the scientist or the scientist skimming the release and missing a few bits due to time pressure.*

Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement

Leave a reply

First the news, Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement is going to be broadcast on KCTS 9 (PBS [Public Broadcasting Service] station for Seattle/Yakima) on Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015 at 7 pm PDT. From the KCTS 9 schedule,

From botox to bionic limbs, the human body is more “upgradeable” than ever. But how much of it can we alter and still be human? What do we gain or lose in the process? Award-winning documentary, Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, explores the social impact of human biotechnologies. Haunting and humorous, poignant and political, Fixed rethinks “disability” and “normalcy” by exploring technologies that promise to change our bodies and minds forever.

This 2013 documentary has a predecessor titled ‘Fixed’, which I wrote about in an August 3, 2010 posting. The director for both ‘Fixeds’ is Regan Brashear.

It seems the latest version of Fixed builds on the themes present in the first, while integrating the latest scientific work (to 2013) in the field of human enhancement (from my August 3, 2010 posting),

As for the film, I found this at the University of California, Santa Cruz,

Fixed is a video documentary that explores the burgeoning field of “human enhancement” technologies from the perspective of individuals with disabilities. Fixed uses the current debates surrounding human enhancement technologies (i.e. bionic limbs, brain machine interfaces, prenatal screening technologies such as PGD or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, etc.) to tackle larger questions about disability, inequality, and citizenship. This documentary asks the question, “Will these technologies ‘liberate’ humanity, or will they create even more inequality?”

You can find out more about the 2013 Fixed on its website or Facebook page (they list opportunities in the US, in Canada, and internationally to see the documentary). There is also a listing of PBS broadcasts available from the Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement Press page.

I recognized two names from the cast list on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) page for Fixed: The Science/Fiction of Human Enhancement, Gregor Wolbring (he also appeared in the first ‘Fixed’) and Hugh Herr.

Gregor has been mentioned here a few times in connection with human enhancement. A Canadian professor at the University of Calgary, he’s active in the field of bioethics and you can find out more about Gregor and his work here.

Hugh Herr was first mentioned here in a January 30, 2013 posting titled: The ultimate DIY: ‘How to build a robotic man’ on BBC 4. He is a robotocist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

The two men offering contrasting perspectives, Gregor Wolbring, ‘we should re-examine the notion that some people are impaired and need to be fixed’,  and Hugh Herr, ‘we will eliminate all forms of impairment’. Hopefully, the 2013 documentary has managed to present more of the nuances than I have.

Graphene gains metallic powers after laser-burning

Leave a reply

Rice University (Texas, US) researchers have developed a technique for embedding metallic nanoparticles in graphene with the hope of one day replacing platinum catalysts in fuel cells. From an August 20, 2015 news item on ScienceDaily,

Laser-induced graphene, created by the Rice lab of chemist James Tour last year, is a flexible film with a surface of porous graphene made by exposing a common plastic known as polyimide to a commercial laser-scribing beam. The researchers have now found a way to enhance the product with reactive metals.

An August 20, 2015 Rice University news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, provides further description,

With the discovery, the material that the researchers call “metal oxide-laser induced graphene” (MO-LIG) becomes a new candidate to replace expensive metals like platinum in catalytic fuel-cell applications in which oxygen and hydrogen are converted to water and electricity.

“The wonderful thing about this process is that we can use commercial polymers, with simple inexpensive metal salts added,” Tour said. “We then subject them to the commercial laser scriber, which generates metal nanoparticles embedded in graphene. So much of the chemistry is done by the laser, which generates graphene in the open air at room temperature.

“These composites, which have less than 1 percent metal, respond as ‘super catalysts’ for fuel-cell applications. Other methods to do this take far more steps and require expensive metals and expensive carbon precursors.”

Initially, the researchers made laser-induced graphene with commercially available polyimide sheets. Later, they infused liquid polyimide with boron to produce laser-induced graphene with a greatly increased capacity to store an electrical charge, which made it an effective supercapacitor.

For the latest iteration, they mixed the liquid and one of three concentrations containing cobalt, iron or molybdenum metal salts. After condensing each mixture into a film, they treated it with an infrared laser and then heated it in argon gas for half an hour at 750 degrees Celsius.

That process produced robust MO-LIGs with metallic, 10-nanometer particles spread evenly through the graphene. Tests showed their ability to catalyze oxygen reduction, an essential chemical reaction in fuel cells. Further doping of the material with sulfur allowed for hydrogen evolution, another catalytic process that converts water into hydrogen, Tour said.

“Remarkably, simple treatment of the graphene-molybdenum oxides with sulfur, which converted the metal oxides to metal sulfides, afforded a hydrogen evolution reaction catalyst, underscoring the broad utility of this approach,” he said.

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

In situ Formation of Metal Oxide Nanocrystals Embedded in Laser-Induced Graphene by Ruquan Ye, Zhiwei Peng, Tuo Wang, Yunong Xu, Jibo Zhang, Yilun Li, Lizanne G. Nilewski, Jian Lin, and James M. Tour. ACS Nano, Just Accepted Manuscript DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.5b04138 Publication Date (Web): August 18, 2015
Copyright © 2015 American Chemical Society

This paper is open access provided you have an ACS ID, which is a free registration. ACS is the American Chemical Society.

Foldable glass (well, there’s some plastic too)

Leave a reply

Michael Berger has written a fascinating Aug. 11, 2015 Nanowerk Spotlight article on folding glass,

Have you ever heard about foldable glass?

Exactly.

Glass is notorious for its brittleness. Although industry has developed ultra-thin (∼0.1 mm), flexible glass (like Corning’s Willow® Glass) that can be bent for applications liked curved TV and smartphone displays, fully foldable glass had not been demonstrated. Until now.

…

Khang [Dahl-Young Khang, an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Yonsei University] and his group have now demonstrated substrate platforms of glass and plastics, which can be reversibly and repeatedly foldable at pre designed location(s) without any mechanical failure or deterioration in device performances.

…

“We have engineered the substrates to have thinned parts on which the folding deformation should occur,” Moon Jong Han, first author of the paper a graduate student in Khang’s lab, says. “This localizes the deformation strain on those thinned parts only.”

He adds that this approach to engineering substrates has another advantage regarding device materials: “There is no need to adopt any novel materials such as nanowires, carbon nanotubes, graphene, etc. Rather, all the conventional materials that have been used for high-performance devices can be directly applied on our engineered substrates.”

Intriguingly, even ITO (indium tin oxide), a very brittle transparent conducting oxide, can be used as electrode on this novel foldable glass platform.

What makes the approach especially intriguing is the ability to reverse the fold and that it doesn’t require special nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes, etc. From Berger’s Aug. 11, 2015 article,

The width of the thinned parts, the gap width, plays the key role in implementing dual foldability. The other key element is the asymmetric design of the gap width for the second folding.

The researchers achieved foldability, in part, by copying a technique used for folding mats and oriental hinge-less screens which have thinned areas to allow folding.

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

Glass and Plastics Platforms for Foldable Electronics and Displays by Moon Jung Han and Dahl-Young Khang. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201501060 First published: 21 July 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

Berger’s article is not only fascinating, it is also illustrated with some images provided by the researchers.