Tag Archives: BC

Nano haiku, nano in Finland, and NanoTech BC ‘pauses’

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A haiku from NISE Net News: The Nano Bite (Feb. 10, 2009)

Space Elevator
Take me up into the sky.
It’s a long way down.
by Anders Liljeholm of the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry

According to a news item on the Nanowerk website here, Finland has tripled the number of nanotechnology companies in four years. In 2004, there were 61 nanotechnology companies while in 2008, there were 202 active companies. I noticed the item particularly because I came across a notice about a presentation By Kaija-stina Magnusson) part of a series sponsored by Nature magazine) that’s going to be contrasting the social capital aspect of the R&D investments in UK and Finland. If you’re in London (England) on March 12, 2009 and want to attend, you can get the details here.

Sadly, NanoTech BC is curtailing some of its activities for the next while as they deal with funding issues. The Cascadia Symposium won’t take place this spring (April 2009 as originally planned) and the breakfast meetings are cancelled for now. They’re hoping to schedule these activities for Fall 2009. They will be continuing their safe practices project with ICON (International Council on Nanotechnology based at Rice University in Texas) and working on a nanotechnology asset map for Alberta. You can read more details here.

Nano vitamins, honey bee mystery, and a history of risk

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has an event tomorrow, Jan. 14 2009 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am EST (with a 6:30 am PST start time, I think I’ll wait ’til they post the webcast). If you want to see the webcast (Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins) live or, if you’re planning to attend,  RSVP, go here. This seems more like a press conference than one of their standard events given the time and the planned distribution post webcast of a report on food supplement regulation as per nanotechnology innovations.

Genome BC has a free public forum coming up on January 20, 2009 (next Tuesday). It’s called ‘Why are Bees Disappearing and Could Poplar Trees be the Next Biofuel?’  There are speakers from the University of British Columbia and one from the BC Innovation Council.  Location is: Science World, 1455 Quebec St., Vancouver and the time is: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Go here for more details and for pre-registration.

I found an interesting aggregator, Allport, which offers amongst other topics a nanotechnology page listing ‘All the top nanotechnology news’ from various blogs. Go here for a look. Allport describes itself as: a “digital magazine rack of the internet” (from their About Allport page).

After noticing yesterday’s kerfuffle (in Canadian media) about risk, regulation, and nanotechnology, I decided to take another look at that report, ‘Small is different’ from the Council of Canadian Academies’. Here’s what they had to say in their summary,

Although the panel believes that it is not necessary to create new regulatory mechanisms to address the unique challenges presented by nanomaterials, existing regulatory mechanisms could and should be strengthened.  p. 9

(Arguably the regulatory mechanisms should be strengthened regardless of any innovations due to nanotechnology or other emerging technology.) In any event, it’s interesting to contrast the text in the report with the news items which suggest a more strident tone.

Nano events

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a couple of events coming up later this month. The first one is this coming Thurs., Jan. 8, 2009 ‘Synthetic Biology: Is Ethics A Showstopper? from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm EST. The event features two speakers, Arthur Caplan, an ethicist from the University of Pennsylvania, and Andrew Maynard, the chief science advisor for PEN. They request an RSVP, if you are attending in person. Go here for more details and/or to RSVP. Or you can view the webcast live or later. Their other event is on Weds.,  Jan. 14, 2009 and is called ‘Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins’. The time for this event is 9:30 am – 10:30 am EST. The featured speakers, William B. Schultz and Lisa Barclay, are the authors of a report for PEN about the FDA and how it can address issues surrounding dietary supplements that use nanomaterials. For more details about the event and/or to RSVP, go here. There is also the webcast option. There is a link to the report from the event page but you have to log in to view it (as of Jan.6.09).

Nanotech BC is cancelling its Jan. 15, 2009 breakfast speaker event. Meanwhile, Nanotech BC organizers are preparing for the second Cascadia Symposium on April 20 – 21, 2009 at the Bayshore. They’ve gone for a larger venue (250 people) than last year’s. No other details are available yet.

Nano funding — BC-India expressions of interest

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Way back in June 2008, the BC government announced that they had committed $1M which was matched by the government of India to support collaborative research between BC and Indian research scientists. On Friday, Oct. 10, 2008, the BC Minister of Technology, Trade, and Economic Development, Ida Chong, announced that the collaborative funding programme, which is being administered by ISTP (International Science and Technology Partnerships Canada), is asking for expressions of interest in the fields of convergent medical technologies, clean biotechnology, health, and biopharma by October 24, 2008. More details about the announcement here and about the programme here. Plus, for anyone who’s interested in knowing more about the delegation of Indian scientists who visited Canada in August you can find copies of the presentations that were made and some information about their itinerary on the ISTP site. There’s also some information in my interview with Darren Frew, Nanotech BC’s executive director (postings dated Sept. 26 and Sept. 29, 2008).

I just heard from poet Heather Haley that she will be featured on CBC Radio 2 (105.7)  tonight on the On the Signal show at 10 pm. If you’re curious about her work, you can check it out here.

India-Canada Confab in Edmonton

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Just got a notice from Nanotech BC that there’s going to be a Canada-India Nanotechnology Bionanotechnology workshop Aug. 10-11, 2008 in Edmonton at the National Institute of Nanotechnology. 10 scientists from India will be there and Nanotech BC is leading a delegation from BC attendees. If you want to collaborate with scientists in India, you can join the BC delegation by contacting:

  • Darren Frew, Executive Director, BC Nanotech Alliance at 604.602.5260 or darren.frew@nanotech.bc.ca

I can’t find this info. on the Nanotech BC website (which is here if you’re curious) or on the National Institute of Nanotechnoloy website here in their newsroom.

This comes in the wake of a new Canada-India Science and Technology agreement which launched 10 initiatives totalling $17M and was announced in June 2008.  Details here.

Nano on Mars and a nano safety talk in Vancouver

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An atomic force microscope (AFM) on something called the Mars Lander (part of the Phoenix Mars mission) demonstrated full functionality on July 8,  2008. The AFM recorded a test grid as part of a calibration process and sent the image back to Earth proving it could function under the harsh conditions found on Mars. The image was 40 microns x 40 microns, “small enough to fit on an eyelash.” For more details, go here.

Nanotech BC is holding a breakfast meeting on July 23, 2008 featuring Dr. Kristen Kulinovsky from the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). She will be focusing on their proposed nano safety practices wiki. I don’t know if they have that up and running yet and I’m guessing that she’s going to talk this up in the hope of getting people to participate.

Wednesday July 23, 2008 at the Listel Hotel, 1300 Robston St, 8 am to 10 am,  $25 reserved seat, $30 at the door.  More details and registration here.

Nano, wikis, and the sun

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About a week or so ago, I read about a new nano wiki being proposed or developed by the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). This wiki is  going to focus on international best practices for environmental health and safety vis a vis nanoparticles. I’d forgotten about it until this morning when I saw some comments about the wiki on an IEEE blog.  The writer also questions whether or not council truly is international. (You can go see the comments here.) It’s a bit of a puzzle trying to get representation that’s truly international.  For example, I’ve had a proposal accepted for a presentation at the Language and the Scientific Imagination  conference in Helsinki and I’ve noticed that most of the people presenting are from the UK, a few are from Australia, and then there are assorted single presenters (Belgium, Canada, Germany). I’m willing to bet the organizer worked really, really hard and that group is as diverse as she could manage.

IBM was busy announcing some sort of advance that could reduce the costs fro solar panels (more here). Don’t know why but it reminded me of IBM’s pr stunt last year where they reproduced a famous paining (17th century, I think) of the sun. I’m being a little facetious but it does seem as if IBM wants to brand the sun.

Oh, and the British Columbia Nanotechnology Alliance is putting on a golf tournament June 19, 2008. It’s a benefit for BC Technology Social Venture Partners. You can register and get more details about the golf tournament here and about the charitable society here.