Tag Archives: ETH Zurich

RoboEarth (robot internet) gets examined in hospital

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RoboEarth sometimes referred to as a robot internet or a robot world wide web is being tested this week by a team of researchers at Eindhoven University of Technology (Technische Universiteit Eindhoven, Netherlands) and their colleagues at Philips, ETH Zürich, TU München and the universities of Zaragoza and Stuttgart according to a Jan. 14, 2014 news item on BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news online,

A world wide web for robots to learn from each other and share information is being shown off for the first time.

Scientists behind RoboEarth will put it through its paces at Eindhoven University in a mocked-up hospital room.

Four robots will use the system to complete a series of tasks, including serving drinks to patients.

It is the culmination of a four-year project, funded by the European Union.

The eventual aim is that both robots and humans will be able to upload information to the cloud-based database, which would act as a kind of common brain for machines.

There’s a bit more detail in Victoria Turk’s Jan. 13 (?), 2014 article for motherboard.vice.com (Note: A link has been removed),

A hospital-like setting is an ideal test for the project, because where RoboEarth could come in handy is in helping out humans with household tasks. A big problem for robots at the moment is that human environments tend to change a lot, whereas robots are limited to the very specific movements and tasks they’ve been programmed to do.

“To enable robots to successfully lend a mechanical helping hand, they need to be able to deal flexibly with new situations and conditions,” explains a post by the University of Eindhoven. “For example you can teach a robot to bring you a cup of coffee in the living room, but if some of the chairs have been moved the robot won’t be able to find you any longer. Or it may get confused if you’ve just bought a different set of coffee cups.”

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And of course, it wouldn’t just be limited to robots working explicitly together. The Wikipedia-like knowledge base is more like an internet for machines, connecting lonely robots across the globe.

A Jan. 10, 2014 Eindhoven University of Technology news release provides some insight into what the researchers want to accomplish,

“The problem right now is that robots are often developed specifically for one task”, says René van de Molengraft, TU/e  [Eindhoven University of Technology] researcher and RoboEarth project leader. “Everyday changes that happen all the time in our environment make all the programmed actions unusable. But RoboEarth simply lets robots learn new tasks and situations from each other. All their knowledge and experience are shared worldwide on a central, online database. As well as that, computing and ‘thinking’ tasks can be carried out by the system’s ‘cloud engine’, so the robot doesn’t need to have as much computing or battery power on‑board.”

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It means, for example, that a robot can image a hospital room and upload the resulting map to RoboEarth. Another robot, which doesn’t know the room, can use that map on RoboEarth to locate a glass of water immediately, without having to search for it endlessly. In the same way a task like opening a box of pills can be shared on RoboEarth, so other robots can also do it without having to be programmed for that specific type of box.

There’s no word as to exactly when this test being demonstrated to a delegation from the European Commission, which financed the project, using four robots and two simulated hospital rooms is being held.

I first wrote about* RoboEarth in a Feb. 14, 2011 posting (scroll down about 1/4 of the way) and again in a March 12 2013 posting about the project’s cloud engine, Rapyuta.

* ‘abut’ corrected to ‘about’ on Sept. 2, 2014.

Silver nanoparticles: we love you/we hate you

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We seem to have a love/hate affair with silver nanoparticles. Long recognized as biocides capable of killing bacteria, silver nanoparticles are used both in hospital settings and in sports wear. As the use of silver nanoparticles increases, there are concerns about unintended consequences to the environment and to human health. An Apr. 12, 2013 news item on Nanowerk highlights some research done in Europe in 2011 (Note: Links have been removed),

As part of an EU funded project called Prosuite, Walser [Tobias Walser, researcher at the Institute for environmental engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zürich {ETH}] and colleagues analysed the environmental impact of nanosilver T-shirts during their entire life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life disposal (“Prospective Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Nanosilver T-Shirts”). This, according to Walser, is the first of its kind for a nanomaterial. The scientists found that the T-shirt’s environmental impact during use would be reduced if they are washed less often than conventional ones, due to their antimicrobial properties. This would even compensate for a slightly higher climate footprint during production. Walser explains: “In comparison to all toxic releases during the life cycle of a T-shirt, the toxic releases from nanosilver from washing appear to be of minor relevance.” [emphasis mine]

The Apr. 11, 2013 article by Constanze Böttcher for Youris.com, which originated the news item, expands on the theme of toxicity, nanosilver, and wastewater (Note: A link has been removed),

Previous studies looked at single impacts of antibacterial textiles. For example, scientists found that nanosilver leaches into the wastewater during washing. According to other studies, this silver may not be that harmful to the environment because it is transformed into a nearly insoluble substance called silver sulphide in wastewater treatments. A study published by the Danish Environmental Protection Agency in 2012 did not find “specific risks” to health or environmental effects of nanosilver textiles available in Denmark.

This finding contrasts with more recent research at Duke University’s CEINT (Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology) mesocosm project where a study did point to adverse responses (noted in my Feb. 28, 2013 posting where I highlighted two nanosilver environmental studies, a Finnish/Estonian research project and the CEINT project),

In experiments mimicking a natural environment, Duke University researchers have demonstrated that the silver nanoparticles used in many consumer products can have an adverse effect on plants and microorganisms.

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The main route by which these particles enter the environment is as a by-product of water and sewage treatment plants. [emphasis] The nanoparticles are too small to be filtered out, so they and other materials end up in the resulting “sludge,” which is then spread on the land surface as a fertilizer.

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The researchers found that one of the plants studied, a common annual grass known as Microstegium vimeneum, had 32 percent less biomass in the mesocosms treated with the nanoparticles. Microbes were also affected by the nanoparticles, Colman [Benjamin Colman, a post-doctoral fellow in Duke’s biology department and a member of the Center for the Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (CEINT)] said. One enzyme associated with helping microbes deal with external stresses was 52 percent less active, while another enzyme that helps regulate processes within the cell was 27 percent less active. The overall biomass of the microbes was also 35 percent lower, he said.

As I’ve suggested before, analysing the impact that new products and materials may have on the environment and on our health is a complex process.  From Böttcher’s 2013 article (Note: Links have been removed),

Some experts are concerned about their environmental risks, however. The study “is very relevant” because it “gives a fingerprint” about the impact of such T-shirts, Anders Baun says. But the professor in risk assessment of nanomaterials at the department of environmental engineering at the Technical University of Denmark, based in Lyngby, considers it “a bad idea to distribute silver in the environment”. He points to a study that found evidence for nanosilver accumulating in the food web based on a study of plants and animals of an experimental wetland environment. Moreover, he says, it is unknown how the coating of nanosilver influences its environmental behaviour. Baun has previously criticised the European policies regarding nanosilver and is currently enrolled in a scientific committee on the topic as invited expert. The expert group will publish its opinion later this year, he says.

There’s also the possibility that bacteria will develop resistance with increased use of silver nanoparticles in medical environments and in sportswear and in other applications.

For those who want to conduct their own investigations, here’s a link to and a citation for Walser’s 2011 paper,

Prospective Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Nanosilver T-Shirts by Tobias Walser, Evangelia Demou, Daniel J. Lang, and Stefanie Hellweg.  Environ. Sci. Technol [Environmental Science and Technology], 2011, 45 (10), pp 4570–4578 DOI: 10.1021/es2001248 Publication Date (Web): April 20, 2011
Copyright © 2011 American Chemical Society

This paper is open access.

A description of PROSUITE (PROspective SUstaInability assessment of TEchnologies project) can be found here and the PROSUITE project website can found here.

ETA Apr. 18, 2013: An Apr. 18, 2013 news item (Barely any nanosilver from consumer products in the water) on Nanowerk provides some insight into why at least one European country views the presence of silver nanoparticles in sewage sludge without any particular alarm,

The study did not examine what happens to nanosilver in the sewage sludge thereafter. In Switzerland, it is not permissible to use sewage sludge on farmland, and most of the sludge is therefore burned. [emphasis mine] The heavy metals separated in this process should not be released into the environment in large quantities.

Here’s a link to and citation for the Swiss study,

Fate and transformation of silver nanoparticles in urban wastewater systems by Ralf Kaegia, Andreas Voegelina, Christoph Orta, Brian Sinneta, Basilius Thalmanna, Jasmin Krismerb, Harald Hagendorferc, Maline Elumelua, and Elisabeth Muellerd. Water Research, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2012.11.060 Available online 26 March 2013

The article is behind a paywall.

Bend it, twist it, roll it—composites inspired by nature

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Researchers at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) Zurich have developed a new composite material with bioinspired microstructures, from the Apr. 16, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Plant components that bend, roll or twist in response to external stimuli such as temperature or moisture are fairly commonplace in nature and often play a role in the dispersal of seeds. Pine cones, for instance, close their scales when wet and open them again once they have dried out. André Studart, a professor of complex materials at ETH Zurich’s Department of Materials, and his group have now applied the knowledge of how these movements come about to produce synthetically a composite material with comparable properties …

The Apr. 16, 2013 ETH Zurich news article by Maja Schaffner, which originated the news item, goes on to describe how the pine cone comes by its abilities,

Studart and co-workers knew from the literature how pine cone scales work: two firmly connected layers lying on top of each other inside a scale are responsible for the movement. Although the two layers consist of the same swellable material, they expand in different ways under the influence of water because of the rigid fibres enclosed in the layers. In each of the layers, these are specifically aligned, thus determining the direction of expansion. Therefore, when wet only one of the two layers expands in the longitudinal direction of the scale and bends on the other side.

The scientists then devised an artificial means of achieving the pine cone’s ability to swell in two orientations (from the article),

Inspired by nature, the scientists began to produce a similar moving material in the lab by adding ultrafine aluminium oxide platelets as the rigid component to gelatine – the swellable base material – and pouring it into square moulds. The surface of the aluminium oxide platelets is pre-coated with iron oxide nanoparticles to make them magnetic. This enabled the researchers to align the platelets in the desired direction using a very weak rotating magnetic field. On the cooled and hardened first layer, they poured a second one with the same composition, differing only in the direction of the rigid elements.

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The scientists cut this double-layered material into strips. Depending on the direction in which these strips were cut compared to the direction of the rigid elements in the gelatine pieces, the strips bent or twisted differently under the influence of moisture: some coiled lengthwise like a pig’s tail, others turned loosely or very tightly on their own axis to form a helix reminiscent of spiral pastries. “Meanwhile, we can programme the way in which a strip should take shape fairly accurately,” explains Studart.

The researchers also produced longer strips that behave differently in different sections – curl in the first section, for instance, then bend in one direction and the other in the final section. Or they created strips that expanded differently length and breadthwise in different sections in water. And they also made strips from another polymer that responded to both temperature and moisture – with rotations in different directions.

However, Studart was most interested in rotational movements (from the article),

“Bending movements,” he says, “are relatively straightforward.” Metallic bilayer compounds that bend upon temperature changes are widely used in thermostats, for instance. The new method, however, is largely material-independent, which means that any material that responds to external stimuli – and, according to Studart, there are quite a few – can potentially be rendered self-shaping. “Even the solid component is freely selectable and can be made magnetically responsive through the iron-oxide coating,” he says.

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

Self-shaping composites with programmable bioinspired microstructures by Randall M. Erb, Jonathan S. Sander, Roman Grisch, & André R. Studart. Nature Communications 4, Article number: 1712 doi:10.1038/ncomms2666 Published 16 April 2013

This article is behind a paywall.

According to Schaffner’s article, Studart believes this work could have applications in the field of medical devices and for self-shaping ceramic devices.

Almost bombed in 2010, the IBM nanotechnology center in Zurich receives a William Tell Award in 2013

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It certainly seems likely that IBM’s Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center in Zurich is the same center that suffered an attempted bombing in 2010. Here’s more about the 2010 incident, from my July 25, 2011 posting about what happened to the bombers after they got caught,

I hoped to get this final update about the trio who tried to bomb an IBM nanotechnology facility in Switzerland posted sooner. The three individuals who were held and tried last week were sentenced to three years in jail. From the July 22, 2011 news article by Jessica Dacey on swissinfo.ch,

A 26-year-old Swiss-Italian from Ticino and an Italian couple aged 29 and 34 were found guilty by the Federal Criminal Court of conspiring to destroy the IBM centre in Rüschlikon, near Zurich, while it was under construction.

They were also found guilty of importing explosives into Switzerland, then illegally hiding and transporting them.

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The three detainees were caught last year [April 2010] about 3km from the IBM facility in possession of 476 grams of explosives and other components needed to build an improvised explosive device.

This group does not appear to be affiliated or associated with the group that has been sending bombs to nanoscientists in Mexico. My Mar. 14, 2013 posting is the latest information I have on that situation.

Here’s more about Switzerland’s William Tell Award and IBM’s nanotechnology center from the Mar. 17, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

The Switzerland Trade and Investment Promotion, the Swiss federal agency that assists companies expanding internationally, bestowed its annual Tell Awards to IBM, Intermune, Kayak, Maxwell Technologies and Procter & Gamble. The awards, named for legendary Swiss hero William Tell, honor U.S. companies for significant recent investment projects in Switzerland. IBM received the award for the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center.

…  the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center is the latest extension to IBM’s research lab in Zurich. The facility is the centerpiece of a 10-year strategic partnership in nanoscience between IBM and ETH Zurich [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich] where scientists research novel nanoscale structures and devices to advance energy and information technologies. The building represents an investment of $60 million in infrastructure costs and an additional $30 million for tooling and equipment which, including the operating costs, are shared by the partners. As the laudation states: The center demonstrates IBM’s “magnitude of innovation and reinvestment in Switzerland”.

So, those folks wanted to blow up a facility which cost, according to this news item, approximately $90 million for infrastructure and equipment alone. The level of investment certainly explains the interest from the bombers (success would have meant major mainstream news coverage and notice) and this recent award fro IBM’s investment. Here’s a bit more about the center (from the news item),

The Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center offers a cutting-edge, collaborative infrastructure for advancing nanoscience. It is part of IBM Research – Zurich, which was opened in 1956 as IBM’s first research laboratory outside the U.S. The nanotechnology center features a cutting-edge exploratory 950 m2 cleanroom fabrication facility and six uniquely designed so-called “noise-free labs” which shield extremely sensitive experiments from any disturbances, such as mechanical vibrations, electro-magnetic fields, temperature fluctuations and acoustic noise.

The news item also offers some information about why the center bears the Binnig and Rohrer names,

The center is named for Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, the two IBM scientists and Nobel laureates who invented the scanning tunneling microscope at IBM Research – Zurich in 1981, thus enabling researchers to see atoms on a surface for the first time. In 1986 Binnig and Rohrer received the Nobel Prize in Physics for this achievement, widely acknowledged for laying the foundation for nanotechnology research.

The Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center opened in 2011 and there’s more information about that,  Binnig and Rohrer, and their work with scanning tunneling microscopes in my May 26, 2011 posting which also features a link to an audio interview with the two Nobel Laureates.

RoboEarth’s Rapyuta, a cloud engine for the robot internet

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Described in a 2011 BBC news item as an internet/wikipedia for robots only, RobotEarth was last mentioned here in a Feb. 14, 2011 posting (scroll down about 1/3 of the way) where I featured both the aforementioned BBC news item and a first person account of the project on the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineering) Spectrum’s Automaton Robotics blog.

Today, Mar. 12, 2013, there’s a news release on EurekAlert about a new RoboEarth development,

Researchers of five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers – the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon – for robotics tasks and robot learning.

With the development of the RoboEarth Cloud Engine the team continues their work towards creating an Internet for robots. The new platform extends earlier work on allowing robots to share knowledge with other robots via a WWW-style database, greatly speeding up robot learning and adaptation in complex tasks.

Here’s how the cloud engine is described,

The developed Platform as a Service (PaaS) for robots allows to perform complex functions like mapping, navigation, or processing of human voice commands in the cloud, at a fraction of the time required by robots’ on-board computers. By making enterprise-scale computing infrastructure available to any robot with a wireless connection, the researchers believe that the new computing platform will help pave the way towards lighter, cheaper, more intelligent robots.

“The RoboEarth Cloud Engine is particularly useful for mobile robots, such as drones or autonomous cars, which require lots of computation for navigation. It also offers significant benefits for robot co-workers, such as factory robots working alongside humans, which require large knowledge databases, and for the deployment of robot teams.” says Mohanarajah Gajamohan, researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and Technical Lead of the project.

“On-board computation reduces mobility and increases cost.”, says Dr. Heico Sandee, RoboEarth’s Program Manager at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands, “With the rapid increase in wireless data rates caused by the booming demand of mobile communications devices, more and more of a robot’s computational tasks can be moved into the cloud.”

Oddly, there’s never any mention of the name for the cloud engine project in the news release. I found the name (Rapyuta) on the RoboEarth website, from the home page,

Update: Join (or remotely watch) the Cloud Robotics Workshop at the EU Robotics Forum on Wednesday 20. March, 4-6pm CET. Details: http://www.roboearth.org/eurobotics2013

It is our pleasure to announce the first public release of Rapyuta: The RoboEarth Cloud Engine. Rapyuta is an open source cloud robotics platform for robots. It implements a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) framework designed specifically for robotics applications.

Rapyuta helps robots to offload heavy computation by providing secured customizable computing environments in the cloud. Robots can start their own computational environment, launch any computational node uploaded by the developer, and communicate with the launched nodes using the WebSockets protocol.

Interestingly, the final paragraph of today’s (Mar. 12, 2011) news release includes a statement about jobs,

While high-tech companies that heavily rely on data centers have been criticized for creating fewer jobs than traditional companies (e.g., Google or Facebook employ less than half the number of workers of General Electric or Hewlett-Packard per dollar in revenue), the researchers don’t believe that this new robotics platform should be cause for alarm. According to a recent study by the International Federation of Robotics and Metra Martech entitled “Positive Impact of Industrial Robots on Employment”, robots don’t kill jobs but rather tend to lead to an overall growth in jobs.

I’d like to see some more data about this business of robots creating jobs. In the meantime, there’s  more information about RoboEarth and the Rapyuta cloud engine in the links the news release provides to materials such as this video,

Unexpectedly, the narrator sounds like she might have been educated in Canada or the US.

Phone up a kidney cell—scientists at ETH Zurich create a mammalian ‘cell phone’

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The Sept. 17, 2012 news item on Nanowerk lays out the standard telephoning process, then applies it to mammalian cells (Note: I have removed a link),

Telephoning is a mutual exchange of information: A phones B and they both agree what B should do. Once this is done, Party B phones Party A to let him or her know. A no longer phones B. During this two-way communication, electrical signals are sent, and for their transmission suitable devices are necessary.

Based on this formula, a team of bioengineers headed by Martin Fussenegger and Jörg Stelling at ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel has programmed mammalian cells in such a way that two cells can communicate via chemical signals (“Synthetic two-way communication between mammalian cells”).

Peter Ruegg’s Sept. 17, 2012 ETH Life article, (ETH is a science and technology university; in German: Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) which originated the news item, outlines the research,

The researchers used suitable signal molecules and constructed “devices” out of biological components that receive, process and respond accordingly to the signals. The devices consist of suitable genes and their products, proteins, which are linked to each other logically.

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An enzyme produces the amino acid L-tryptophan from indole, which has been introduced into the sender cell from outside. This little molecule enters the receiver cell, which processes the signal. The response to L-tryptophan is that the receiver produces acetaldehyde, which the sender cell can receive. If, after a certain time, a particular concentration of acetaldehyde has been attained or the indole is depleted, the sender cell stops producing L-tryptophan and the system switches itself off again.

Here are the specifics (from the Ruegg article),

For their experiment, the Basel-based researchers used so-called HEK cells – human kidney cells, in other words, which are often used in research. Moreover, the biological components necessary to construct the signal network can be used in a modular way. With these modules, the researchers were also able to connect other signal paths, including a signal cascade leading from the sender cell, through the information processing cell to the performing receiver cell without any feedback.

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Thanks to their “cell phone”, the ETH-Zurich biotechnologists were able to simulate the latter accurately in a cell culture. They placed the sender and receiver module in the culture dish along with a population of endothelial cells, which line the blood-vessel walls. In response to the tryptophan signal, the receiver module formed the messenger VEGF [vascular endothelial growth factor, a signal protein] as well as acetaldehyde. This increases the permeability of the endothelial cells, which is a key prerequisite for blood-vessel growth.

Due to the acetaldehyde response, the sender module ultimately produced the signal molecule Ang1, which stops the permeability of the endothelial cells to inhibit blood-vessel growth.

At least one future application for this research is medical (from the Ruegg article),

This signal system is also found in the human body. If VEGF spirals out of control, however, too many blood vessels form, which ultimately feeds a growing tumour. The “cell phone” could therefore be a plausible strategy to halt the pathological formation of new blood vessels. “Communication is extremely important in controlling blood vessels,” says Fussenegger, “and we hope to be able to use synthetic ‘cell phones’ to correct or even cure disease-related cell communication systems precisely in the future with a ‘therapeutic call’.”

The scientists have found a way to illustrate their ‘cell phone’ research,

Researchers from ETH Zurich designed a “cell phone” made of biological components. A “therapeutical call” halts the pathological formation of new blood vessels. (Image: Andrea Lingk / ETH Zurich)

I have written for telecommunications companies and I think it’s safe to include my colleagues when I  say that neither I nor any of them imagined the possibility of making therapeutic calls to our cells.

Where do all those particles go or what does degradable mean at the nanoscale?

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Scientists at Switzerland’s ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich) note that cerium oxide nanoparticles do not degrade. From the May 21, 2012 article by Simone Ulmer on the ETH Zurich website,

Tiny particles of cerium oxide do not burn or change in the heat of a waste incineration plant. They remain intact on combustion residues or in the incineration system, as a new study by researchers from ETH Zurich reveals.

Over 100 million tons of waste are incinerated worldwide every year. Due to the increasing use of nanoparticles in construction materials, paints, textiles and cosmetics, for instance, nanoparticles also find their way into incineration plants. What happens to them there, however, had not been investigated until now. Three ETH-Zurich teams from fields of chemistry and environmental engineering thus set about finding out what happens to synthetic nano-cerium oxide during the incineration of refuse in a waste incineration plant. Cerium oxide itself is a non-toxic ceramic material, not biologically degradable and a common basic component in automobile catalytic converters and diesel soot filters.

Here’s their reasoning (from Ulmer’s article),

Experts fear that non-degradable nanomaterials might be just as harmful for humans and the environment as asbestos. As yet, however, not enough is known about the properties of nanomaterials (see ETH Life, 25 March 2010). One thing is for sure: they differ greatly from larger particles of the same material. Nanoparticles are more mobile and have a different surface structure. Knowledge of these properties is important with the increasing use of nanomaterials as, as they are transferred through incineration plants or sewage, and as they are absorbed by people in food (see ETH Life, 15 July 2008) and perhaps even through the skin and respiration, and can thus enter the body. [emphases mine]

Recent research suggests that there are many, many naturally occurring nanoparticles which we and other living beings have been innocently ingesting for millenia as noted in my Feb. 9, 2012 posting and my Nov. 24, 2011 posting. More recently, Dr. Andrew Maynard at his 2020 Science blog posted about carbon nanoparticles, which are  ubiquitous. From Andrew’s May 19, 2012 posting,

This latest paper was published in the journal Science Progress a few weeks ago, and analyzes the carbon nanoparticle content of such everyday foods as bread, caramelized sugar, corn flakes and biscuits.  The authors found that products containing caramelized sugar – including baked goods such as bread – contained spherical carbon nanoparticles in the range 4 – 30 nm (with size being associated with the temperature of caramelization).

Getting back to the cerium oxide project, here’s what the Swiss scientists found (from Ulmer’s article),

The researchers’ tests revealed that cerium oxide does not change significantly during incineration. The fly-ash separation devices proved extremely efficient: the scientists did not find any leaked cerium oxide nanoparticles in the waste incineration plant’s clean gas. That said, the nanoparticles remained loosely bound to the combustion residues in the plant and partially in the incineration system, too. The fly ash separated from the flue gas also contained cerium oxide nanoparticles.

Nowadays, combustion residues – and thus the nanoparticles bound to them – end up on landfills or are reprocessed to extract copper or aluminium, for instance. The researchers see a need for action here. “We have to make sure that new nanoparticles don’t get into the water and food cycle via landfills or released into the atmosphere through further processing measures,” says Wendelin Stark, head of the study and a professor of chemical engineering at ETH Zurich. Moreover, the fact that nanoparticles that could be inhaled if inadequate protection is worn might be present in the incineration system needs to be taken into consideration during maintenance work.

I have a couple questions for the researchers. First, is nanoscale cerium dioxide dangerous and do you have any studies?  Second, does anything ever degrade? As I recall (dimly), matter cannot be destroyed. Are they trying to break down the nanoscale cerium oxide to a smaller scale? And, what would the impact be then?

All in all, this is very interesting research to me as it has raised some questions in a way I had not previously considered. Thanks to Nanowerk where I found the May 24, 2012 news item that alerted me to the article.

Scientific research, failure, and the scanning tunneling microscope

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“99% of all you do is failure and that’s maybe the most difficult part of basic research,” said Gerd Binnig in a snippet I’ve culled from an interview with Dexter Johnson (Nanoclast blog on the IEEE [Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers] website) posted May 23, 2011 where Binnig discussed why he continued with a project that had failed time and time again. (The snippet is from the 2nd audio file from the top of the posting)

Binnig along with Heinrich Rohrer is a Nobel Laureate. Both men won their award for work on the scanning tunneling microscope (STM), which was the project that had failed countless times and that went on to play an important part in the nanotechnology narrative. Earlier this month, both men were honoured when IBM and ETH Zurich opened the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center in Zurich. From the May 17, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

IBM and ETH Zurich, a premiere European science and engineering university, hosted more than 600 guests from industry, academia and government, to open the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center located on the campus of IBM Research – Zurich. The facility is the centerpiece of a 10-year strategic partnership in nanoscience between IBM and ETH Zurich where scientists will research novel nanoscale structures and devices to advance energy and information technologies.

The new Center is named for Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer, the two IBM scientists and Nobel Laureates who invented the scanning tunneling microscope at the Zurich Research Lab in 1981, thus enabling researchers to see atoms on a surface for the first time. The two scientists attended today’s opening ceremony, at which the new lab was unveiled to the public.

Here’s an excerpt from Dexter’s posting where he gives some context for the audio files,

As promised last week, I would like to share some audio recordings I made of Gerd Binnig and Heinrich Rohrer taking questions from the press during the opening of the new IBM and ETH Zurich nanotechnology laboratory named in their honor.

This first audio file features both Binnig’s and Rohrer’s response to my question of why they were interested in looking at inhomogenities on surfaces in the first place, which led them eventually to creating an instrument for doing it. A more complete history of the STM’s genesis can be found in their joint Nobel lecture here.

The sound quality isn’t the best but these snippets are definitely worth listening to if you find the process of scientific inquiry interesting.

For anyone who’s not familiar with the scanning tunneling microscope, I found this description in the book, Soft Machines; Nanotechnology and Life, by Richard Jones.

Scanning probe microscopes rely on an entirely different principle to both light microscopes and electron microscopes, or indeed our own eyes. Rather than detecting waves that have been scattered from the object we are looking at, on feels the surface of that object with a physical probe. This probe is moved across the surface with high precision. As it tracks the contours of the surface, it s moved up or down in a way that is controlled by some interaction between the tip of the probe and the surface. This interaction could be the flow of electrical current, in the case of a scanning tunneling microscope, or simple the force between the tip and the surface in the case of an atomic force microscope. pp. 17-18

Enriching food with nanoparticles?

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There’s a team of Swiss researchers addressing the problem of anemia (iron deficiency) and zinc deficiency by adding iron and/or zinc nanoparticles to food. According to the article by Eric Bland on the Discovery News website,

“Iron and zinc deficiencies are common around the world,” said Michael Zimmermann, a scientist at ETH Zurich and a co-author of a recent Nature Nanotechnology article. “Yet many compounds used in food fortification are either absorbed poorly or, when they have high absorption, change the color, taste and smell of food.”

Anemia, or a lack of iron, affects more than 2 billion people worldwide and is arguably the most widespread micronutrient deficiency. Without enough iron the the body can become lethargic and cognitively impaired. For some pregnant women, the lack of iron can kill them during childbirth. Some economists have even speculated that a nation’s gross domestic product is depressed because of anemic and lethargic workers, said Zimmermann.

Lack of zinc impairs a person’s normal growth and can lead to diarrhea, pneumonia, anorexia and other conditions.

Standard ways of fortifying food with zinc and/or iron present various challenges including this one as noted by Zimmermann only a limited amount of iron can be added as it affects the food’s taste, smell, and/or appearance (this and other challenges are detailed in Bland’s article). So scientists continue to work on better ways to fortify food so that more people on the planet can benefit. The Swiss team’s approach,

The new research solves this conundrum. To create the nanoparticles the Swiss scientists dissolved iron in water, then sprayed the solution over very hot fire. The intense heat quickly evaporates the water, leaving tiny iron or zinc crystals, each one about 10 nanometers across. Those nanocrystals then clump together.

The large clumps do not change the taste, color or smell of food. When the clumps drop into the stomach acid, however, they break apart into tiny particles, which are easily absorbed by the body.

These zinc and/or iron nanoparticles, which do not affect the food’s taste, smell, or appearance, have been tested on rats. (I wonder how they figured out that taste isn’t affected since there haven’t been any human clinical trials.) More research needs to be done before humans get a chance to try these nanotechnology-enabled foods but this does seem promising.

By the way, the rats were fed chocolate milk and banana smoothies.