Tag Archives: Dave Bruggeman

Could science funding in the European Union have an impact on Canadian nanotechnology?

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Unexpectedly they’re upping the research budget in the European Union. According to the item online at  BBC News,

The EU has announced 6.4bn euros (£5.4bn) of funding for scientific research and innovation next year – a 12% increase on this year’s allocation.

The programme is aimed at creating more than 165,000 jobs and developing “a more competitive and greener Europe”, the European Commission says.

The focus is on tackling climate change, energy projects, food security, health and Europe’s ageing population.

Grants will be awarded to about 16,000 research bodies and businesses.

“Research and innovation are the only smart and lasting route out of crisis and towards sustainable and socially equitable growth,” said the EU Commissioner for Research and Innovation, Maire Geoghegan-Quinn.

“There is no other way of creating good and well-paid jobs that will withstand the pressures of globalisation.”

EU-funded research currently accounts for about 5% of the total public funding for research in the EU, she said.

The investment includes more than 600m euros for health research, about 206m euros of which will go into clinical trials for new drugs.

Nanotechnologies will get 270m euros, while about 600m euros is earmarked for advanced computer technologies. [emphasis mine]

Another 400m euros is to be spent on computer applications that address the challenges of building a low-carbon economy and managing ageing populations.

I was inclined to view it as a piece of delightful news without really analyzing it, then David Bruggeman (Pasco Phronesis) made a salient comment,

I suspect that the European spending will be insufficient even if individual nations hold the line on their own science funding. Because even those nations are looking at significant cuts to their universities, which affect both the training of the next generation of researchers and a certain amount of research. At best the funding boosts and cuts will be a wash, but the future doesn’t look like the best. What might happen is a greater shift in attention to European Union level research compared to country level research.

David also provides a brief description of the  ‘framework programme’ that the European Union uses to fund science research so that readers (such as me) have a better understanding of the bigger picture. If you’re interested in this kind of thing, do check out his posting.

David’s commentary was particularly timely as, this morning, I came across an article about the French government funding nanotechnology research in Canada (Sherbrooke, Québec to be precise). Since the article is in French, I’m going to be relying on my translation skills (Note: I will reproduce at least some of the French, so do let me know if you spot any errors.)

There is an abbreviated version of the article (Nanotechnologies: un petit bout de France à L’UdeS) by Jonathan Custeau for the Sherbrooke Tribune here (fyi, somebody sent me a copy of the full article).

The University of Sherbrooke’s current nanotechnology laboratory (Laboratoire international associé en nanotechnologies et nanosystèmes [LIA-LN2]) is about to receiving funding to the tune of ! million Euros over three years from France’s CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) putting  it in a category occupied by only eight other labs in the world.

I gather the lab’s current LIA-LN2 status is a consequence of previous French funding since the university’s vice-president of research describes the current bonanza as ‘jumping to a new level’, i.e. jumping to Unité mixte international (UMI) status,

“Nous étions tellement en avance que nous sautons à un autre niveau”, fait valoir Jacques Beauvais, vice-recteur à la recherche de l’Université de Sherbrooke.

L’autre niveau, c’est l’Unité mixte internationale, un laboratoire financé par le Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS français. Il n’en existe que huit à travers le monde.

“Une UMI coûte très cher, parce que c’est un vrai laboratoire, avec des chercheurs financés par le CNRS, des fonds de recherches français et européens. C’est comme s’il y avait un bout de France sur le campus de l’Université de Sherbrooke”, fait valoir Vincent Aimez, codirecteur du LIA-LN2.

The nanotechnology researchers at the University of Sherbrooke (L’UdeS) have been liaising and collaborating with researchers in Varennes, Lyon, and Grenoble, France for over two years,  so this new funding is an acknowledgment of the quality of their work.

Bravo—the award is all the more extraordinary given the concerns about science and university funding in Europe.

January 2012 is the launch date for the University of Sherbrooke’s UMI which will have a focus on bringing at least some of the academic research to the market. Miniaturized integrated circuit boards are mentioned specifically and my translation skills failed a bit here,

Les applications des recherches pourraient notamment permettre de relever le défi de la miniaturisation des puces électroniques [integrated circuit boards?]. “Nous cherchons à faire des puces avec plus de fonctions, mais qui consomment moins d’énergie, pour qu’elles restent efficaces pendant un mois par exemple. Nous voulons aussi développer des biocapteurs [?] pour des contrôles environnementaux [?] ou des analyses médicales [medical diagnostics?]”, précise Abdelkader Souifi, également codirecteur du LIA-LN2.

I found the comments regarding products quite interesting in light of the Québec government’s recent moves to improve innovation in that province as per the article (June 30, 2010) by Peter Hadekel in the Montréal Gazette. (Idle thought: This casts a new light on the recent Domtar-FPInnovations collaboration on nanocrystalline cellulose (my July 16, 2010 posting).

A couple comments about science in Japan and China

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A few weeks ago there was a new global research report (written by Jonathan Adams, Christopher King, Nobuko Miyairi, and David Pendlebury) from Thomson Reuters that focused on Japan. From the news release,

This latest report, Global Research Report: Japan, found that:

For the period 2005-2009, physics proved to be Japan’s focus, with roughly 54,800 papers constituting just over 11 percent of the field

The average rate of citation is significantly below those of the other G7 nations. Japan scores 2 percentage points below the world average for the period 2005-2009

Regional collaboration with China and South Korea are likely to be of increasing significance as their domestic research bases grow – another illustration of an emerging Asia/Pacific regional network

This report suggests that Japan is underperforming. From the report,

We now turn to Japan, a G7 economy and the traditional scientific leader of Asia. Japan drove its post-war reconstruction at a phenomenal pace. The post-war baby-boomers, shaped by the nation’s industrious character, provided a committed labor force that enabled strong economic growth into the 1960s and 1970s. However, by the time Japan established its well-founded reputation for excellence based on the quality of its innovative industrial products, the nation was falling into a so-called “Lost Decade” after the economy peaked in the 1980s. This was followed by chronic economic stagnation which continues until today. (p. 3)

There are some opportunities,

The quality of research has improved markedly in some institutions across the Asia-Pacific region and that pattern is likely to become pervasive. The leading institutions will want to partner with established regional centers of excellence. Japan could benefit enormously in gaining access by joining with new partners with new ideas who are just a few hours’ flight away.

Is there a threat here for Japan? The lack of impetus in what has evidently been a very strong research base must be worrying for any policy maker. But regional diversification may be just the stimulus that is needed to rebuild the momentum that enabled Japan to do so well in the post-war period. There is no doubt about the national capacity for rapid and dynamic intellectual and technological advancement. The research challenges of disease, ageing, food security, information technology and social inclusion are all targets to which that capacity could be applied collaboratively with enormous mutual benefit across the region.

I was particularly interested in this report since Japan has been one of the leaders in nanoscience/nanotechnology research. Strangely there’s no mention of either. Here’s the list of main science fields which were included (and which I excerpted) in Table 1 on page 6 of the report,

Physics
Pharmacology & Toxicology
Materials Science
Biology & Biochemistry
Chemistry
Molec. Biology & Genetics
Microbiology
Neuroscience & Behavior
Clinical Medicine
Immunology
Engineering
Space Science
Plant & Animal Science
Geosciences
Agricultural Sciences
Computer Science

I assume research in nanoscience/nanotechnology has been included in several of these classifications. Personally, I think it would be useful to analyse a nanoscience/nanotechnology data subset to find out if it is consistent with or contradicts the conclusions.

You can check out other global reports from Thomson Reuters here. Note: I had to sign up in order to access the reports. It’s free and you do get announcements of newly published reports.

On the China front, there was a June 29, 2010 posting by Dave Bruggeman at Pasco Phronesis about scientific research in China. Dave was responding to an article in the Washington Post by John Pomfret,

Last year, Zhao Bowen was part of a team that cracked the genetic code of the cucumber. These days, he’s probing the genetic basis for human IQ.

Zhao is 17.

Centuries after it led the world in technological prowess — think gunpowder, irrigation and the printed word — China has barged back into the ranks of the great powers in science. With the brashness of a teenager, in some cases literally, China’s scientists and inventors are driving a resurgence in potentially world-changing research.

Unburdened by social and legal constraints common in the West, China’s trailblazing scientists are also pushing the limits of ethics and principle as they create a new — and to many, worrisome — Wild West in the Far East.

First, some of Dave’s response as he unpacks part of this article,

As I suspect this article could get some play in science advocacy and debates over economic competitiveness, I’ve read it a few times, closely. I find it a bit of a puzzle, because it manages to hint at a lot more than it explains. That the headline fails to note the complexity of the issue, which the article tries to express, is no surprise. Where things fall short is in the lack of a consistent theme to the piece and in the continued emphasis on the quantitative in assessing scientific output. [emphases mine]

Since Dave goes on to talk about some of the ethical issues as well I’m going to focus on one of the dominant and damning metaphors used to set this piece.

Conflating cucumbers and IQs is interesting but the kicker (a three word paragraph)  is the 17 year old researcher. We then have China “barging” into research with the “brashness of a teenager” who is “unburdened by social and legal constraints”  and “pushing the limits of ethics and principles” in a “Wild West.”  In case anyone should miss the point, Pomfret’s article ends with this,

“If I had stayed in America, the chances of making a discovery would have been lower,” he said. “Here, people are willing to take risks. They give you money, and essentially you can do whatever you want.” [emphasis mine]

The article carries a somewhat patronizing tone and a blithe disregard for attitudes commonly found in scientists (and others) everywhere not just in China. As for why there are more research checks and balances in what he describes as “The West,” that’s very simple. Researchers crossed ethical lines and public outcry necessitated changes.

For example, there’s the Tuskegee Syphillis Experiment. In the 1920’s a charitable organization approached the US Public Health Service (PHS) about providing medication for men suffering from syphillis in parts of the US South. The project started and then the money ran out so someone decided to change the project. It now became an experiment where doctors could observe the effects of untreated syphillis. No one informed the men. The Tuskegee experiment was continued until the 1970s. From the Tuskegee University website,

While study participants received medical examinations, none were told that they were infected with syphilis. They were either not treated or were treated at a level that was judged to be insufficient to cure the disease.

Over the course of the project, PHS officials not only denied study participants treatment, but prevented other agencies from supplying treatment.

During World War II, about 50 of the study subjects were ordered by their draft boards to undergo treatment for syphilis. The PHS requested that the draft boards exclude study subjects from the requirement for treatment. The draft boards agreed.

In 1943, the PHS began to administer penicillin to patients with syphilis. Study subjects were excluded.

Beginning in 1952, the PHS began utilizing local health departments to track study participants who had left Macon County. Until the end of the study in the 1970s, local health departments worked with the PHS to keep the study subjects from receiving treatment.

The project was finally brought to a stop 1972 when Peter Buxton told the story of the Tuskegee Study to an Associated Press reporter.

Jaw dropping, isn’t it?

To get back to my point, ‘The West’ is not inherently more ethical and while Pomfret does indicate the source for at least some of the funding for this ‘Wild West-type’ (or is it adolescent?) research in China, I’m willing to bet that at least some of it comes from ‘Western’ business interests.

There’s also some implied criticism of the ‘West’ from the Chinese researchers. After all, we’re afraid to “take risks.”

I’d like to see some open and honest discussion (i.e., let’s abandon the imagined moral superiority on anyone’s part) about some of these issues around ethics, competitiveness, and risktaking.

Isotopes, beverages, and nuclear isotope shortages

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Nanowerk recently posted a news item about isotopes and beverages which indicates that scientists can track your geographic location because the beverages you drink leave a signature or trace  in your hair. From the news item,

The scientists analyzed isotope patterns in bottled water, soda pop, and beer from 33 cities and found that patterns in the beverages generally matched those already known for the tap water. They noted that the isotope pattern in beverages tends to vary from city to city in ways that give cities in different regions characteristic “iso-signatures.” A person who drinks a beer or soda in Denver, Des Moines, or Dallas, for instance, consumes a different isotope signature than a person in Las Cruces, Las Vegas, or Laramie. The finding may help trace the origin of drinks or help criminal investigators identify the geographic travels of crime suspects and other individuals through analysis of hair strands, the study suggests.

I think Sherlock Holmes would have liked this. On another note, for anyone (like me) who’s not quite sure what an isotope is, I found a number of definitions and this one best fits the use described in the news item,

some elements have more than one form. They differ only in nuclear terms rather than chemical ones and have different relative atomic mass as a result. They may behave slightly differently which allows us to use them in geography for a number of measurements relating to constructing past conditions. http://www.tuition.com.hk/geography/i.htm

On other isotopic fronts, Dave Bruggeman at Pasco Phronesis posted about a move by the Government of British Columbia (a Canadian province) to address the shortage of medical isotopes. There was a bit of a scandal last year when Canadians found out that the Chalk River facility which produces a fair chunk (1/3 according to this Wikipedia essay) of the global supply of  isotopes used for medical purposes was badly deteriorating.

There have been a number of problems with the facility since 2007 culminating in a shutdown in 2009 which helped to precipitate a worldwide shortage and a Canadian scandal. The Chalk River facility has yet to reopen but (from Pasco Phronesis),

… The B.C. Premier recently announced that a $63 million (Canadian) accelerator facility will be developed at the national physics lab [TRIUMF] in Vancouver (H/T Science Canada). The use of an accelerator for generating isotopes is critical, as it’s a relatively new means for doing so. It allows for a means to move away from using fission reactors for isotope generation.

Bravo Premier Campbell! Margaret Munro in her June 23, 2010 article about the initiative noted in the Vancouver Sun,

Premier Gordon Campbell, who handed over $30.7 million for the project, talked up the more down-to-earth benefits, such as helping alleviate the global medical-isotope shortage, and demonstrating that B.C. is home to “world-class ” science and groundbreaking technology.

The new accelerator promises “a new way to produce the radio isotopes needed by doctors and patients everywhere,” Campbell said.

The provincial money means construction can begin this summer on the powerful accelerator that is expected to beam Canada into the forefront of subatomic and isotope research. The Canada Foundation for Innovation has invested $18 million, and $14 million will come from core federal funding for TRIUMF.

…

Isotopes, used for medical scans and treatments, are now made by aging and increasingly unreliable nuclear reactors [Chalk River]. Researchers at TRIUMF are working with teams across Canada to explore new options.

This doesn’t sound like the same kind of isotope the chemists were talking about with the beverages and the discussion of geographic tracking. If I understand the difference rightly, the isotopes in the beverages are naturally occurring while these other isotopes are engineered and, I imagine, less stable. For anyone who loves definitions, here’s another one for isotopes,

an atom that has more neutrons in the nucleus than its stable counterpart. For example: Hydrogen has one electron and a nucleus containing one proton, Deuterium (an isotope of hydrogen) has one electron plus a nucleus containing one proton and one neutron. www.hiper-laser.org/glossary.asp

Interacting with stories and/or with data

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A researcher, Ivo Swarties, at the University of Twente in The Netherlands is developing a means of allowing viewers to enter into a story (via avatar) and affect the plotline in what seems like a combination of what you’d see in 2nd Life and gaming. The project also brings to mind The Diamond Age by Neal Stephenson and its intelligent nanotechnology-enabled book along with Stephenson’s latest publishing project, Mongoliad (which I blogged about here).

The article about Swarties’ project on physorg.com by Rianne Wanders goes on to note,

The ‘Virtual Storyteller’, developed by Ivo Swartjes of the University of Twente, is a computer-controlled system that generates stories automatically. Soon it will be possible for you as a player to take on the role of a character and ‘step inside’ the story, which then unfolds on the basis of what you as a player do. In the gaming world there are already ‘branching storylines’ in which the gamer can influence the development of a story, but Swartjes’ new system goes a step further. [emphasis mine]The world of the story is populated with various virtual figures, each with their own emotions, plans and goals. ‘Rules’ drawn up in advance determine the characters’ behaviour, and the story comes about as the different characters interact.

There’s a video with the article if you want to see this project for yourself.

On another related front, Cliff Kuang profiles in an article (The Genius Behind Minority Report’s Interfaces Resurfaces, With Mind-blowing New Tech) on the Fast Company site describes a new human-computer interface. This story provides a contrast to the one about the ‘Virtual Storyteller’ because this time you don’t have to become an avatar to interact with the content. From the article,

It’s a cliche to say that Minority Report-style interfaces are just around the corner. But not when John Underkoffler [founder of Oblong Industries] is involved. As tech advistor on the film, he was the guy whose work actually inspired the interfaces that Tom Cruise used. The real-life system he’s been developing, called g-speak, is unbelievable.

…

Oblong hasn’t previously revealed most of the features you see in the later half of the video [available in the article’s web page or on YouTube], including the ability zoom in and fly through a virtual, 3-D image environment (6:30); the ability to navigate an SQL database in 3-D (8:40); the gestural wand that lets you manipulate and disassemble 3-D models (10:00); and the stunning movie-editing system, called Tamper (11:00).

Do go see the video. At one point, Underkoffler (who was speaking at the February 2010 TED) drags data from the big screen in front of him onto a table set up on the stage where he’s speaking.

Perhaps most shockingly (at least for me) was the information that this interface is already in use commercially (probably in a limited way).

These developments and many others suggest that the printed word’s primacy is seriously on the wane, something I first heard 20 years ago. Oftentimes when ideas about how technology will affect us are discussed, there’s a kind of hysterical reaction which is remarkably similar across at least two centuries. Dave Bruggeman at his Pasco Phronesis blog has a posting about the similarities between Twitter and 19th century diaries,

Lee Humphreys, a Cornell University communications professor, has reviewed several 18th and 19th century diaries as background to her ongoing work in classifying Twitter output (H/T Futurity). These were relatively small journals, necessitating short messages. And those messages bear a resemblance to the kinds of Twitter messages that focus on what people are doing (as opposed to the messages where people are reacting to things).

Dave goes on to recommend The Shock of the Old; Technology and Global History since 1900 by David Edgerton as an antidote to our general ignorance (from the book’s web page),

Edgerton offers a startling new and fresh way of thinking about the history of technology, radically revising our ideas about the interaction of technology and society in the past and in the present.

I’d also recommend Carolyn Marvin’s book, When old technologies were new, where she discusses the introduction of telecommunications technology and includes the electric light with these then new technologies (telegraph and telephone). She includes cautionary commentary from the newspapers, magazines, and books of the day which is remarkably similar to what’s available in our contemporary media environment.

Adding a little more fuel is Stephen Hume in a June 12, 2010 article about Shakespeare for the Vancouver Sun who asks,

But is the Bard relevant in an age of atom bombs; a world of instant communication gratified by movies based on comic books, sex-saturated graphic novels, gory video games, the television soaps and the hip tsunami of fan fiction that swashes around the Internet?

[and answers]

So, the Bard may be stereotyped as the bane of high school students, symbol of snooty, barely comprehensible language, disparaged as sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, representative of an age in which men wore tights and silly codpieces to inflate their egos, but Shakespeare trumps his critics by remaining unassailably popular.

His plays have been performed on every continent in every major language. He’s been produced as classic opera in China; as traditional kabuki in Japan. He’s been enthusiastically embraced and sparked an artistic renaissance in South Asia. In St. Petersburg, Russia, there can be a dozen Shakespeare plays running simultaneously. Shakespeare festivals occur in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Sweden and Turkey, to list but a few.

Yes to Pasco Phronesis, David Edgerton, Carolyn Marvin, and Stephen Hume, I agree that we have much  in common with our ancestors but there are also some profound and subtle differences not easily articulated.  I suspect that if time travel were possible and we could visit Shakespeare’s time we would find that the basic human experience doesn’t change that much but that we would be hardpressed to fit into that society as our ideas wouldn’t just be outlandish they would be unthinkable. I mean literally unthinkable.

As Walter Ong noted in his book, Orality and Literacy, the concept of a certain type of list is a product of literacy. Have you ever done that test where you pick out the item that doesn’t belong on the list? Try: hammer, saw, nails, tree. The correct answer anybody knows is tree since it’s not a tool. However, someone from oral culture would view the exclusion of the tree as crazy since you need both tools and  wood to build something and clearly the tree provides wood. (I’ll see if I can find the citation in Ong’s book as he provides research to prove his point.) A list is a particular way of organizing information and thinking about it.

About the BP oil spill, greening the desert, and using bicycle power to recharge your mobile

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I found a couple more comments relating to the BP oil spill  in the Gulf. Pasco Phronesis offers this May 30, 2010 blog post, Cleaning With Old Technology, where the blogger, Dave Bruggeman, asks why there haven’t been any substantive improvements to the technology used for clean up,

The relatively ineffective measures have changed little since the last major Gulf of Mexico spill, the Ixtoc spill in 1979. While BP has solicited for other solutions to the problem (Ixtoc was eventually sealed with cement and relief wells after nine months), they appear to have been slow to use them.

It is a bit puzzling to me why extraction technology has improved but cleanup technology has not.

An excellent question.

I commented a while back (here) about another piece of nano reporting form Andrew Schneider. Since then, Dexter Johnson at Nanoclast has offered some additional thoughts (independent of reading Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science post) about the Schneider report regarding ‘nanodispersants’ in the Gulf. From Dexter’s post,

Now as to the efficacy or dangers of the dispersant, I have to concur that it [nanodispersant] has not been tested. But it seems that the studies on the 118 oil-controlling products that have been approved for use by the EPA are lacking in some details as well. These chemicals were approved so long ago in some cases that the EPA has not been able to verify the accuracy of their toxicity data, and so far BP has dropped over a million gallons of this stuff into the Gulf.

Point well taken.

In the midst of this oil spill, it was good to come across a successful effort at regreening a desert. From the Fast Company article by Cliff Kuang,

Today, the Buckminster Fuller Institute announced the winner of its 2010 Challenge: Allan Savory, who has spent the last 50 years refining and evangelizing for a method of reversing desertification that he calls “holistic management.” The African Center for Holistic Management International, an NGO he helped found, will take home a $100,000 grant.

The Buckminster Fuller Challenge is meant to award big, sweeping solutions to seemingly intractable problems. …

… Savory’s prescription seems shockingly simple–and it’s taken him 50 years of work to convince others that he’s not crazy. The core of Holistic Management is simply grazing local livestock in super dense herds that mimic the grazing patterns of big-game (which have since disappeared). Those livestock in turn till the soil with their hooves and fertilize it with their dung–thus preparing the land for new vegetation in a cycle that was evolved over millions of years.

Savory works in Zimbabwe which is where the greatest success for this method is enjoyed but it has also been employed in the Rockies (between Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho Note: As a Canadian, I would not describe this area as the ‘northern Rockies’ as Kuang’s article does) and in the Australian outback.

… Savory’s African Center for Holistic Management has transformed 6,500 acres of land [in Zimbabwe]. There, even though livestock herds have increased by 400%, open water and fish have been found a half mile above where water had ever been known during dry season.

Bravo!

On a similar good news front, Nokia has announced a mobile phone charger that you can power up while riding your bicycle. From the Fast Company article by Addy Dugdale,

The Finnish firm’s [Nokia] Bicycle Charger Kit consists of a little bottle dynamo that you attach to the wheel of your bicycle to power up your phone as you pedal away. It comes with a phone holder that attaches to the handlebars using a hi-tech system composed of an elastic band and a plastic bag, in case of rain. Its price (in Kenya) is a little over $18 bucks, and it’s a wonder that no other phone manufacturer has thought of this before.

…

The Nokia Bicycle Charger Kit starts to work when you’re pedaling at just under 4mph and clicks off at 31mph. Hit 7.5mph and your bike will be charging your cell as quickly as a traditional charger would.

This reminds me a little of the projects where they try to create textiles that will harvest energy from your body that can be used to power mobile phones and other battery-powered devices that you carry around.