Tag Archives: Cientifica

There’s gold in them thar nano hills; study on nanotechnology practices; robot actresses in Korea

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The World Gold Council has released a paper, Gold for Good: gold and nanotechnology in the age of innovation which highlights the many benefits of using gold nanoparticles in areas ranging from medicine to the environment. From the news item on Azonano,

The report, which was produced in conjunction with Cientifica Ltd, the world’s leading source of global business and investor intelligence about nanotechnologies, demonstrates how gold nanoparticles offer the potential to overcome many of the serious issues facing mankind over the coming decades.

Gold nanoparticles exhibit a variety of unique properties which, when harnessed and manipulated effectively, lead to materials whose uses are both far-ranging in their potential and cost effective. This report explores the many different applications that are being developed across the fields of health, environment and technology.

I found the report a useful (and rosy) overview of gold nanoparticles, their various benefits, and their potential for business investors as to be expected when one of the report’s authors is Tim Harper of the TNT Blog and principal of Cientifica. The report can be found here.

Michael Berger over at Nanowerk has written up a spotlight feature on a study about safety practices in  nanotechnology laboratories that was published in Feb. 2010 in Nature Nanotechnology.  From Nanowerk,

Published in the February issue of Nature Nanotechnology (“Reported nanosafety practices in research laboratories worldwide”), Jesus Santamaria, who heads the Nanostructured Films and Particles (NFP) Group at the University of Zaragoza, and his team have conducted an online survey to identify what safety practices researchers are following in their own labs.

“The results of our survey indicate that environmental health and safety practice in many research laboratories worldwide is lacking in several important aspects, and several reasons may contribute to this” Santamaria tells Nanowerk. “Toxicity of nanomaterials is a complex subject because it depends on multiple factors including size, surface area, chemical composition, shape, aggregation, surface coating and solubility. Furthermore, most published research emphasizes acute toxicity and mortality, rather than chronic exposure and morbidity.”

Meanwhile, Andrew Maynard at 2020 Science has written up a pointed critique. From Andrew,

Out of all those researchers surveyed who thought the materials they were using might become airborne at some stage, 21% didn’t use any form of “special protection” and 30% didn’t use respiratory protection.  Yet there is no way of telling from the survey whether “special protection” (the authors’ terminology) was needed, or indeed whether any respiratory protection was needed.  A researcher handling small amounts of fumed silica for example – used as a food additive amongst other places – might well handle it using established lab safety procedures that are entirely adequate and don’t include the use of a respirator – in this survey they would be classed in the category of “most researchers” not using “suitabe personal and laboratory protection.”

Unfortunately the Nature Nanotechnology article is behind a paywall but it is worth looking at Andrew’s critique both for the insight it gives you into laboratory practices and for a better understanding of the problems posed by the questions in the survey. Properly framing questions and the answers respondents get to choose from is one of the most difficult aspects of creating a questionnaire.

Andrew never mentions it and I can’t get past the paywall to find out but the questionnaire (or instrument as it’s often called) should have been tested before it was used. I suspect it was not. That said, testing won’t necessarily identify all the problems once you start dealing with a larger sample but it should help.

I have a couple of other comments. I didn’t see any mention of demographic information. For example, are they more careful in smaller labs or does lab size make any difference in safety processes? Does age or experience as a researcher have an impact? Are chemists more careful than physicists? Are men more careful than women or vice versa?

My second comment has to do with self-selected respondents. Why did these people respond to a survey? Generally, if you are surveying people about an issue, the most likely to respond are the ones who feel most strongly about the issue and this can give you a false picture of the general population. In other words, your sample is not generalizable. I don’t think that’s necessarily the situation here but it is a factor that needs to be taken into account. I would expect most social scientists (I gather the Spanish team is not composed of social scientists) to use a number of instruments and not just a self-reporting survey although that may be the first step as more work is undertaken.

I should mention the GoodNanoGuide as sharing handling and safety practices are the reasons this site was developed by the International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON). From their website,

The GoodNanoGuide is a collaboration platform designed to enhance the ability of experts to exchange ideas on how best to handle nanomaterials in an occupational setting.

Now for something completely different, Korean robot actresses. From the news item on physorg.com,

EveR-3 (Eve Robot 3) starred in various dramas last year including the government-funded “Dwarfs” which attracted a full house, said Lee Ho-Gil, of the state-run Korea Institute of Industrial Technology.

The lifelike EveR-3 is 157 centimetres (five feet, two inches) tall, can communicate in Korean and English, and can express a total of 16 facial expressions — without ever forgetting her lines. Lee acknowledged that robot actresses find it hard to express the full gamut of emotions and also tend to bump into props and fellow (human) actors. But he said a thespian android was useful in promoting the cutting-edge industry.

Here’s a shot of the robot actress as Snow White (from physorg.com where you can see a larger version if you wish),

Courtesy of the Korean Institute of Technology, Eve Robot 3 in costume for Robot Princess and 7 Dwarfs

That’s it.

Nano haiku and the Good Nano Guide

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So hard to imagine
Tiny atoms one by one
Make new properties
Thank you to the folks at NISE (Nanoscale Informal Science Education) Network and, of course, Robin Marks. NISE Network has added a few items to their site that I think are really great. They have an image collection which includes copyright free and scientifically vetted images well worth checking out in their Viz Lab.  Here’s a sample image of a silicon nanomembrane from the collection,
Shelley Scott, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Shelley Scott, University of Wisconsin-Madison

NISE is also offering a nano play, Attack of the Nanoscientist, courtesy of the Science Museum of Minnesota. They have the script and instructions for anyone interested in mounting the play.
The Good Nano Guide (a wiki administered by ICON [International Council on Nanotechnology] at Rice University) which Victor Jones mentioned a few weeks ago in his comments here has been cited  in a commentary on regulating nanotechnology in Nature magazine. The commentary is behind a paywall but you can find an earlier version of the article on Andrrew Maynard’s (he’s one of the authors) 2020 Science blog here.
I finally took a few minutes to check the Good Nano Guide and find it quite interesting. They offer a glossary of terms and a search engine that I used for the term ‘titanium dioxide’ amongst other features. The search engine brought up the standards for using titanium dioxide. It includes current standards and standards being developed by every organization you can imagine (IEEE, BSI, ISO, ASTM, etc.) so it seems quite comprehensive.  I do not find the glossary definitions to be helpful to me (but I’m an amateur and this project is oriented to the science community). I checked out the term nanoparticle and variants and the definitions seem vague.
Finally and because it’s Friday, I couldn’t resist this
tidbit on Nanowerk News about nanotechnology used for cleansing the colon. It originated on Tim Harper’s TNT blog here in one of his June 30, 2009 postings. Harper is associated (I think he’s the principal/CEO/president) with Cientifica, a nanotechnology business consultancy.

Government funding for nanotechnology and some thoughts on Nanotech BC

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Cientifica has a new white paper, Nanotechnology Funding in 2009, that provides an international overview of government funding for nanotechnology. There’s more information about the white paper here and Cientifica’s white paper is here. Briefly, government spending is slowing down in response to a growing maturity, i.e. nanotechnology innovations are moving out of the laboratories and into production. $40B has been invested over the last five years. From Nanowerk News,

Cientifica’s research has also reveals [sic] that the long-time leaders of nanotechnology funding, the United States and Japan, have now fallen to third and fourth behind the EU and Russia, with the US being tied with China for third.

It’s interesting that the current economic situation, according to Cientifica, is not having a major impact at this time.

I’m sure the folks at Nanotech BC (or what remains of it) would agree with Cientifica re: the slowdown in funding since they’ve had to effectively cease operation du to their failure to secure government funding. I don’t think they’d agree that it has nothing to do with the economic downturn.

And, it seems mildly ironic that Nanotech BC folks have produced a nanotechnology asset map for BC and were in the midst of developing one for Alberta when they had to yank the plug. The  irony lies in the fact that NanoKTN has just announced something similar to an asset map, a new online directory of nanotechnology enterprises for the UK. Clearly, they’re more willing to fund these types of organizations and projects in the UK.

India’s investment in nanotechnology and Cientifica’s new report

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Apparently, India’s annual expenditure on nanotechnology development is about $7M. (See this news report for more details.) Compared to government expenditure in the US ($1.5B) and in Europe (UK over $300M and France over $300M) it’s a small amount. (Note: The numbers change all the time so think of these ones as a rough guide.) According to the report, more money is being allocated, in the near future, to nanotechnology efforts in India. (The upcoming India-Canada nano meeting in Edmonton has sparked my interest in Indian nanotechnology.)

Cientifica’s new report called The Nantotechnology Opportunity Report (NOR) 2008 (executive summary available for free here) looks funding and various nanotechnology sectors globally. The full report is over 1000 pages. Interestingly, the authors single out India in their executive summery by offering an analysis of what happens to their government funding. Hint: it’s not good news. They admit that the problem exists in Europe too but here’s where they damn all government funding everywhere,

So, when we are looking at government funding, the fact that around a third of projects are managed by total incompetents with project officers in various funding bodies turning a blind eye to avoid having to justify their decisions has to be taken into consideration. Couple that with the fact that much curiosity driven research yields no results and our figure of 90% of academic research cash going down the plughole looks about right.

In the paragraph which directly follows (and the really good part),

Of course from our point of view we want to see an economic effect, but that is not to say the 90% of non-commercial research is wasted, it just adds to the ever swelling body of scientific knowledge which speeds up our future understanding.

Let’s start with the littlest thing,  the ‘sweliing’. Generally speaking and leaving aside any references to sex, this is not something you want to experience. Now, let’s add in the fact that they’ve were talking about money in the previous paragraph and that a “swollen” or “swelling” budget is bad. Intentionally or not, it cancels out what appears to be a faint attempt at fairness but that’s not my biggest problem with this.

Here’s my real problem. They say, 90% of government funded research is wasted (first para) but 90% of the non-commercial research is not wasted (2nd para).  Overall, the thinking here seems a little muzzy. and based on what I’ve seen in the executive summary I have doubts about the rest of their material.