Tag Archives: Florida

Dealing with mosquitos: a robot story and an engineered human tissue story

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I have two ‘mosquito and disease’ stories, the first concerning dengue fever and the second, malaria.

Dengue fever in Taiwan

A June 8, 2023 news item on phys.org features robotic vehicles, dengue fever, and mosquitoes,

Unmanned ground vehicles can be used to identify and eliminate the breeding sources of mosquitos that carry dengue fever in urban areas, according to a new study published in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases by Wei-Liang Liu of the Taiwan National Mosquito-Borne Diseases Control Research Center, and colleagues.

It turns out sewers are a problem according to this June 8, 2023 PLOS (Public Library of Science) news release on EurekAlert, provides more context and detail,

Dengue fever is an infectious disease caused by the dengue virus and spread by several mosquito species in the genus Aedes, which also spread chikungunya, yellow fever and zika. Through the process of urbanization, sewers have become easy breeding grounds for Aedes mosquitos and most current mosquito monitoring programs struggle to monitor and analyze the density of mosquitos in these hidden areas.

In the new control effort, researchers combined a crawling robot, wire-controlled cable car and real-time monitoring system into an unmanned ground vehicle system (UGV) that can take high-resolution, real-time images of areas within sewers. From May to August 2018, the system was deployed in five administrative districts in Kaohsiung city, Taiwan, with covered roadside sewer ditches suspected to be hotspots for mosquitos. Mosquito gravitraps were places above the sewers to monitor effects of the UGV intervention on adult mosquitos in the area.

In 20.7% of inspected sewers, the system found traces of Aedes mosquitos in stages from larvae to adult. In positive sewers, additional prevention control measures were carried out, using either insecticides or high-temperature water jets.  Immediately after these interventions, the gravitrap index (GI)—  a measure of the adult mosquito density nearby— dropped significantly from 0.62 to 0.19.

“The widespread use of UGVs can potentially eliminate some of the breeding sources of vector mosquitoes, thereby reducing the annual prevalence of dengue fever in Kaohsiung city,” the authors say.

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

Use of unmanned ground vehicle systems in urbanized zones: A study of vector Mosquito surveillance in Kaohsiung by Yu-Xuan Chen, Chao-Ying Pan, Bo-Yu Chen, Shu-Wen Jeng, Chun-Hong Chen, Joh-Jong Huang, Chaur-Dong Chen, Wei-Liang Liu. PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pntd.0011346 Published: June 8, 2023

This paper is open access.

Dengue on the rise

Like many diseases, dengue is one where you may not have symptoms (asymptomatic), or they’re relatively mild and can be handled at home, or you may need care in a hospital and, in some cases, it can be fatal.

The World Health Organization (WHO) notes that dengue fever cases have increased exponentially since 2000 (from the March 17, 2023 version of the WHO’s “Dengue and severe dengue” fact sheet),

Global burden

The incidence of dengue has grown dramatically around the world in recent decades, with cases reported to WHO increased from 505 430 cases in 2000 to 5.2 million in 2019. A vast majority of cases are asymptomatic or mild and self-managed, and hence the actual numbers of dengue cases are under-reported. Many cases are also misdiagnosed as other febrile illnesses (1).

One modelling estimate indicates 390 million dengue virus infections per year of which 96 million manifest clinically (2). Another study on the prevalence of dengue estimates that 3.9 billion people are at risk of infection with dengue viruses.

The disease is now endemic in more than 100 countries in the WHO Regions of Africa, the Americas, the Eastern Mediterranean, South-East Asia and the Western Pacific. The Americas, South-East Asia and Western Pacific regions are the most seriously affected, with Asia representing around 70% of the global disease burden.

Dengue is spreading to new areas including Europe, [emphasis mine] and explosive outbreaks are occurring. Local transmission was reported for the first time in France and Croatia in 2010 [emphasis mine] and imported cases were detected in 3 other European countries.

The largest number of dengue cases ever reported globally was in 2019. All regions were affected, and dengue transmission was recorded in Afghanistan for the first time. The American Region reported 3.1 million cases, with more than 25 000 classified as severe. A high number of cases were reported in Bangladesh (101 000), Malaysia (131 000) Philippines (420 000), Vietnam (320 000) in Asia.

Dengue continues to affect Brazil, Colombia, the Cook Islands, Fiji, India, Kenya, Paraguay, Peru, the Philippines, the Reunion Islands and Vietnam as of 2021. 

There’s information from an earlier version of the fact sheet, in my July 2, 2013 posting, highlighting different aspects of the disease, e.g., “About 2.5% of those affected die.”

A July 21, 2023 United Nations press release warns that the danger from mosquitoes spreading dengue fever could increase along with the temperature,

Global warming marked by higher average temperatures, precipitation and longer periods of drought, could prompt a record number of dengue infections worldwide, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Friday [July 21, 2023].

Despite the absence of mosquitoes infected with the dengue virus in Canada, the government has a Dengue fever information page. At this point, the concern is likely focused on travelers who’ve contracted the disease from elsewhere. However, I am guessing that researchers are keeping a close eye on Canadian mosquitoes as these situations can change.

Malaria in Florida (US)

The researchers from the University of Central Florida (UCF) couldn’t have known when they began their project to study mosquito bites and disease that Florida would register its first malaria cases in 20 years this summer, from a July 26, 2023 article by Stephanie Colombini for NPR ([US] National Public Radio), Note: Links have been removed,

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First local transmission in U.S. in 20 years

Heath [Hannah Heath] is one of eight known people in recent months who have contracted malaria in the U.S., after being bitten by a local mosquito, rather than while traveling abroad. The cases comprise the nation’s first locally transmitted outbreak in 20 years. The last time this occurred was in 2003, when eight people tested positive for malaria in Palm Beach, Fla.

One of the eight cases is in Texas; the rest occurred in the northern part of Sarasota County.

The Florida Department of Health recorded the most recent case in its weekly arbovirus report for July 9-15 [2023].

For the past month, health officials have issued a mosquito-borne illness alert for residents in Sarasota and neighboring Manatee County. Mosquito management teams are working to suppress the population of the type of mosquito that carries malaria, Anopheles.

Sarasota Memorial Hospital has treated five of the county’s seven malaria patients, according to Dr. Manuel Gordillo, director of infection control.

“The cases that are coming in are classic malaria, you know they come in with fever, body aches, headaches, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea,” Gordillo said, explaining that his hospital usually treats just one or two patients a year who acquire malaria while traveling abroad in Central or South America, or Africa.

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All the locally acquired cases were of Plasmodium vivax malaria, a strain that typically produces milder symptoms or can even be asymptomatic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the strain can still cause death, and pregnant people and children are particularly vulnerable.

…

Malaria does not spread from human-to-human contact; a mosquito carrying the disease has to bite someone to transmit the parasites.

Workers with Sarasota County Mosquito Management Services have been especially busy since May 26 [2023], when the first local case was confirmed.

Like similar departments across Florida, the team is experienced in responding to small outbreaks of mosquito-borne illnesses such as West Nile virus or dengue. They have protocols for addressing travel-related cases of malaria as well, but have ramped up their efforts now that they have confirmation that transmission is occurring locally between mosquitoes and humans.

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While organizations like the World Health Organization have cautioned climate change could lead to more global cases and deaths from malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases, experts say it’s too soon to tell if the local transmission seen these past two months has any connection to extreme heat or flooding.

“We don’t have any reason to think that climate change has contributed to these particular cases,” said Ben Beard, deputy director of the CDC’s US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] division of vector-borne diseases and deputy incident manager for this year’s local malaria response.

“In a more general sense though, milder winters, earlier springs, warmer, longer summers – all of those things sort of translate into mosquitoes coming out earlier, getting their replication cycles sooner, going through those cycles faster and being out longer,” he said. And so we are concerned about the impact of climate change and environmental change in general on what we call vector-borne diseases.”.

Beard co-authored a 2019 report that highlights a significant increase in diseases spread by ticks and mosquitoes in recent decades. Lyme disease and West Nile virus were among the top five most prevalent.

“In the big picture it’s a very significant concern that we have,” he said.

…

Engineered tissue and bloodthirsty mosquitoes

A June 8, 2023 University of Central Florida (UCF) news release (also on EurekAlert) by Eric Eraso describes the research into engineered human tissue and features a ‘bloodthirsty’ video. First, the video,

Note: A link has been removed,

A UCF research team has engineered tissue with human cells that mosquitoes love to bite and feed upon — with the goal of helping fight deadly diseases transmitted by the biting insects.

A multidisciplinary team led by College of Medicine biomedical researcher Bradley Jay Willenberg with Mollie Jewett (UCF Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences) and Andrew Dickerson (University of Tennessee) lined 3D capillary gel biomaterials with human cells to create engineered tissue and then infused it with blood. Testing showed mosquitoes readily bite and blood feed on the constructs. Scientists hope to use this new platform to study how pathogens that mosquitoes carry impact and infect human cells and tissues. Presently, researchers rely largely upon animal models and cells cultured on flat dishes for such investigations.

Further, the new system holds great promise for blood feeding mosquito species that have proven difficult to rear and maintain as colonies in the laboratory, an important practical application. The Willenberg team’s work was published Friday in the journal Insects.

Mosquitos have often been called the world’s deadliest animal, as vector-borne illnesses, including those from mosquitos cause more than 700,000 deaths worldwide each year. Malaria, dengue, Zika virus and West Nile virus are all transmitted by mosquitos. Even for those who survive these illnesses, many are left suffering from organ failure, seizures and serious neurological impacts.

“Many people get sick with mosquito-borne illnesses every year, including in the United States. The toll of such diseases can be especially devastating for many countries around the world,” Willenberg says.

This worldwide impact of mosquito-borne disease is what drives Willenberg, whose lab employs a unique blend of biomedical engineering, biomaterials, tissue engineering, nanotechnology and vector biology to develop innovative mosquito surveillance, control and research tools. He said he hopes to adapt his new platform for application to other vectors such as ticks, which spread Lyme disease.

“We have demonstrated the initial proof-of-concept with this prototype” he says. “I think there are many potential ways to use this technology.”

Captured on video, Willenberg observed mosquitoes enthusiastically blood feeding from the engineered tissue, much as they would from a human host. This demonstration represents the achievement of a critical milestone for the technology: ensuring the tissue constructs were appetizing to the mosquitoes.

“As one of my mentors shared with me long ago, the goal of physicians and biomedical researchers is to help reduce human suffering,” he says. “So, if we can provide something that helps us learn about mosquitoes, intervene with diseases and, in some way, keep mosquitoes away from people, I think that is a positive.”

Willenberg came up with the engineered tissue idea when he learned the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was looking for new in vitro 3D models that could help study pathogens that mosquitoes and other biting arthropods carry.

“When I read about the NIH seeking these models, it got me thinking that maybe there is a way to get the mosquitoes to bite and blood feed [on the 3D models] directly,” he says. “Then I can bring in the mosquito to do the natural delivery and create a complete vector-host-pathogen interface model to study it all together.”

As this platform is still in its early stages, Willenberg wants to incorporate addition types of cells to move the system closer to human skin. He is also developing collaborations with experts that study pathogens and work with infected vectors, and is working with mosquito control organizations to see how they can use the technology.

“I have a particular vision for this platform, and am going after it. My experience too is that other good ideas and research directions will flourish when it gets into the hands of others,” he says. “At the end of the day, the collective ideas and efforts of the various research communities propel a system like ours to its full potential. So, if we can provide them tools to enable their work, while also moving ours forward at the same time, that is really exciting.”

Willenberg received his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the University of Florida and continued there for his postdoctoral training and then in scientist, adjunct scientist and lecturer positions. He joined the UCF College of Medicine in 2014, where he is currently an assistant professor of medicine.

Willenberg is also a co-founder, co-owner and manager of Saisijin Biotech, LLC and has a minor ownership stake in Sustained Release Technologies, Inc. Neither entity was involved in any way with the work presented in this story. Team members may also be listed as inventors on patent/patent applications that could result in royalty payments. This technology is available for licensing. To learn more, please visit ucf.flintbox.com/technologies/44c06966-2748-4c14-87d7-fc40cbb4f2c6.

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

Engineered Human Tissue as A New Platform for Mosquito Bite-Site Biology Investigations by Corey E. Seavey, Mona Doshi, Andrew P. Panarello, Michael A. Felice, Andrew K. Dickerson, Mollie W. Jewett and Bradley J. Willenberg. Insects 2023, 14(6), 514; https://doi.org/10.3390/insects14060514 Published: 2 June 2023

This paper is open access.

That final paragraph in the news release is new to me. I’ve seen them list companies where the researchers have financial interests but this is the first time I’ve seen a news release that offers a statement attempting to cover all the bases including some future possibilities such as: “Team members may also be listed as inventors on patent/patent applications that could result in royalty payments.“

It seems pretty clear that there’s increasing concern about mosquito-borne diseases no matter where you live.

Sunscreens: 2018 update

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I don’t usually concern myself with SPF numbers on sunscreens as my primary focus has been on the inclusion of nanoscale metal particles (these are still considered safe). However, a recent conversation with a dental hygienist and coincidentally tripping across a June 19, 2018 posting on the Schrodinger’s Cat blog shortly after the convo. has me reassessing my take on SPF numbers (Note: Links have been removed),

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So, what’s the deal with SPF? A recent interview of Dr Steven Q Wang, M.D., chair of The Skin Cancer Foundation Photobiology Committee, finally will give us some clarity. Apparently, the SPF number, be it 15, 30, or 50, refers to the amount of UVB protection that that sunscreen provides. Rather than comparing the SPFs to each other, like we all do at the store, SPF is a reflection of the length of time it would take for the Sun’s UVB radiation to redden your skin (used exactly as directed), versus if you didn’t apply any sunscreen at all. In ideal situations (in lab settings), if you wore SPF 30, it would take 30 times longer for you to get a sunburn than if you didn’t wear any sunscreen.

What’s more, SPF 30 is not nearly half the strength of SPF 50. Rather, SPF 30 allows 3% of UVB rays to hit your skin, and SPF 50 allows about 2% of UVB rays to hit your skin. Now before you say that that is just one measly percent, it actually is much more. According to Dr Steven Q. Wang, SPF 30 allows around 1.5 times more UV radiation onto your skin than SPF 50. That’s an actual 150% difference [according to Wang’s article “… SPF 30 is allowing 50 percent more UV radiation onto your skin.”] in protection.

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Schrodinger’s Cat (author of the ‘eponymous’ blog) offers a good overview of the topic in a friendly, informative fashion albeit I found the ‘percentage’ to be a bit confusing. (S)he also provides a link to a previous posting about the ingredients in sunscreens (I do have one point of disagreement with Schrodinger’s Cat regarding oxybenzone) as well as links to Dr. Steven Q. Wang’s May 24, 2018 Ask the Expert article about sunscreens and SPF numbers on skincancer.org. You can find the percentage under the ‘What Does the SPF Number Mean?’ subsection, in the second paragraph.

Ingredients: metallic nanoparticles and oxybenzone

The use of metallic nanoparticles  (usually zinc oxide and/or (titanium dioxide) in sunscreens was loathed by civil society groups, in particular Friends of the Earth (FOE) who campaigned relentlessly against their use in sunscreens. The nadir for FOE was in February 2012 when the Australian government published a survey showing that 13% of the respondents were not using any sunscreens due to their fear of nanoparticles. For those who don’t know, Australia has the highest rate of skin cancer in the world. (You can read about the debacle in my Feb. 9, 2012 posting.)

At the time, the only civil society group which supported the use of metallic nanoparticles in sunscreens was the Environmental Working Group (EWG).  After an examination of the research they, to their own surprise, came out in favour (grudgingly) of metallic nanoparticles. (The EWG were more concerned about the use of oxybenzone in sunscreens.)

Over time, the EWG’s perspective has been adopted by other groups to the point where sunscreens with metallic nanoparticles are commonplace in ‘natural’ or ‘organic’ sunscreens.

As for oxybenzones, Schrodinger’s Cat in a May 23, 2018 posting about sunscreen ingredients notes this (Note: Links have been removed),

Oxybenzone – Chemical sunscreen, protects from UV damage. Oxybenzone belongs to the chemical family Benzophenone, which are persistent (difficult to get rid of), bioaccumulative (builds up in your body over time), and toxic, or PBT [or: Persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances (PBTs)]. They are a possible carcinogen (cancer-causing agent), endocrine disrupter; however, this is debatable. Also could cause developmental and reproductive toxicity, could cause organ system toxicity, as well as could cause irritation and potentially toxic to the environment.

It seems that the tide is turning against the use of oxybenzones (from a July 3, 2018 article by Adam Bluestein for Fast Company; Note: Links have been removed),

On July 3 [2018], Hawaii’s Governor, David Ig, will sign into law the first statewide ban on the sale of sunscreens containing chemicals that scientists say are damaging the Earth’s coral reefs. Passed by state legislators on May 1 [2018], the bill targets two chemicals, oxybenzone and octinoxate, which are found in thousands of sunscreens and other skincare products. Studies published over the past 10 years have found that these UV-filtering chemicals–called benzophenones–are highly toxic to juvenile corals and other marine life and contribute to the fatal bleaching of coral reefs (along with global warming and runoff pollutants from land). (A 2008 study by European researchers estimated that 4,000 to 6,000 tons of sunblock accumulates in coral reefs every year.) Also, though both substances are FDA-approved for use in sunscreens, the nonprofit Environmental Working Group notes numerous studies linking oxybenzone to hormone disruption and cell damage that may lead to skin cancer. In its 2018 annual sunscreen guide, the EWG found oxybenzone in two-thirds of the 650 products it reviewed.

The Hawaii ban won’t take effect until January 2021, but it’s already causing a wave of disruption that’s affecting sunscreen manufacturers, retailers, and the medical community.

For starters, several other municipalities have already or could soon join Hawaii’s effort. In May [2018], the Caribbean island of Bonaire announced a ban on chemicals sunscreens, and nonprofits such as the Sierra Club and Surfrider Foundation, along with dive industry and certain resort groups, are urging legislation to stop sunscreen pollution in California, Colorado, Florida, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Marine nature reserves in Mexico already prohibit oxybenzone-containing sunscreens, and the U.S. National Park Service website for South Florida, Hawaii, U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa recommends the use of “reef safe” sunscreens, which use natural mineral ingredients–zinc oxide or titanium oxide–to protect skin.

Makers of “eco,” “organic,” and “natural” sunscreens that already meet the new standards are seizing on the news from Hawaii to boost their visibility among the islands’ tourists–and to expand their footprint on the shelves of mainland retailers. This past spring, for example, Miami-based Raw Elements partnered with Hawaiian Airlines, Honolulu’s Waikiki Aquarium, the Aqua-Aston hotel group (Hawaii’s largest), and the Sheraton Maui Resort & Spa to get samples of its reef-safe zinc-oxide-based sunscreens to their guests. “These partnerships have had a tremendous impact raising awareness about this issue,” says founder and CEO Brian Guadagno, who notes that inquiries and sales have increased this year.

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As Bluestein notes there are some concerns about this and other potential bans,

“Eliminating the use of sunscreen ingredients considered to be safe and effective by the FDA with a long history of use not only restricts consumer choice, but is also at odds with skin cancer prevention efforts […],” says Bayer, owner of the Coppertone brand, in a statement to Fast Company. Bayer disputes the validity of studies used to support the ban, which were published by scientists from U.S. National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, the nonprofit Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, Tel Aviv University, the University of Hawaii, and elsewhere. “Oxybenzone in sunscreen has not been scientifically proven to have an effect on the environment. We take this issue seriously and, along with the industry, have supported additional research to confirm that there is no effect.”

Johnson & Johnson, which markets Neutrogena sunscreens, is taking a similar stance, worrying that “the recent efforts in Hawaii to ban sunscreens that contain oxybenzone may actually adversely affect public health,” according to a company spokesperson. “Science shows that sunscreens are a key factor in preventing skin cancer, and our scientific assessment of the lab studies done to date in Hawaii show the methods were questionable and the data insufficient to draw factual conclusions about any impact on coral reefs.”

Terrified (and rightly so) about anything scaring people away from using sunblock, The American Academy of Dermatology, also opposes Hawaii’s ban. Suzanne M. Olbricht, president of the AADA, has issued a statement that the organization “is concerned that the public’s risk of developing skin cancer could increase due to potential new restrictions in Hawaii that impact access to sunscreens with ingredients necessary for broad-spectrum protection, as well as the potential stigma around sunscreen use that could develop as a result of these restrictions.”

The fact is that there are currently a large number of widely available reef-safe products on the market that provide “full spectrum” protection up to SPF50–meaning they protect against both UVB rays that cause sunburns as well as UVA radiation, which causes deeper skin damage. SPFs higher than 50 are largely a marketing gimmick, say advocates of chemical-free products: According to the Environmental Working Group, properly applied SPF 50 sunscreen blocks 98% of UVB rays; SPF 100 blocks 99%. And a sunscreen lotion’s SPF rating has little to do with its ability to shield skin from UVA rays.

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I notice neither Bayer nor Johnson & Johnson nor the American Academy of Dermatology make mention of oxybenzone’s possible role as a hormone disruptor.

Given the importance that coral reefs have to the environment we all share, I’m inclined to support the oxybenzone ban based on that alone. Of course, it’s conceivable that metallic nanoparticles may also have a deleterious effect on coral reefs as their use increases. It’s to be hoped that’s not the case but if it is, then I’ll make my decisions accordingly and hope we have a viable alternative.

As for your sunscreen questions and needs, the Environment Working Group (EWG) has extensive information including a product guide on this page (scroll down to EWG’s Sunscreen Guide) and a discussion of ‘high’ SPF numbers I found useful for my decision-making.

Silver nanoparticles and wormwood tackle plant-killing fungus

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I’m back in Florida (US), so to speak. Last mentioned here in an April 7, 2015 post about citrus canker and zinkicide, a story about a disease which endangers citrus production in the US, this latest story concerns a possible solution to the problem of a fungus, which attacks ornamental horticultural plants in Florida. From a May 5, 2015 news item on Azonano,

Deep in the soil, underneath more than 400 plant and tree species, lurks a lethal fungus threatening Florida’s $15 billion a year ornamental horticulture industry.

But University of Florida plant pathologist G. Shad Ali has found an economical and eco-friendly way to combat the plant destroyer known as phytophthora before it attacks the leaves and roots of everything from tomato plants to oak trees.

Ali and a team of researchers with UF’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, along with the University of Central Florida and the New Jersey Institute of Technology, have found that silver nanoparticles produced with an extract of wormwood, an herb with strong antioxidant properties, can stop several strains of the deadly fungus.

A May 4, 2015 University of Florida news release, which originated the news item, describes the work in more detail,

“The silver nanoparticles are extremely effective in eliminating the fungus in all stages of its life cycle,” Ali said. “In addition, it has no adverse effects on plant growth.” [emphasis mine]

The silver nanoparticles measure 5 to 100 nanometers in diameter – about one one-thousandth the width of a human hair. Once the nanoparticles are sprayed onto a plant, they shield it from fungus. Since the nanoparticles display multiple ways of inhibiting fungus growth, the chances of pathogens developing resistance to them are minimized, Ali said. Because of that, they may be used for controlling fungicide-resistant plant pathogens more effectively.

That’s good news for the horticulture industry. Worldwide crop losses due to phytophthora fungus diseases are estimated to be in the multibillion dollar range, with $6.7 billion in losses in potato crops due to late blight – the cause of the Irish Potato Famine in the mid-1800s when more than 1 million people died – and $1 billion to $2 billion in soybean loss.

Silver nanoparticles are being investigated for applications in various industries, including medicine, diagnostics, cosmetics and food processing.  They already are used in wound dressings, food packaging and in consumer products such as textiles and footwear for fighting odor-causing microorganisms.

Other members of the UF research team were Mohammad Ali, a visiting doctoral student from the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan; David Norman and Mary Brennan with the University of Florida’s Plant Pathology-Mid Florida Research and Education Center; Bosung Kim with the University of Central Florida’s chemistry department; Kevin Belfield with the College of Science and Liberal Arts at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and the University of Central Florida’s chemistry department.

Ali’s comment about silver nanoparticles not having any adverse effects on plant growth is in contrast to findings by Mark Wiesner and other researchers at  Duke University (North Carolina, US). From my Feb. 28, 2013 posting (which also features a Finnish-Estonia study showing no adverse effects from silver nanoparticles  in crustaceans),

… there’s a study from Duke University suggests that silver nanoparticles in wastewater which is later put to agricultural use may cause problems. From the Feb. 27, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

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.

“Our field studies show adverse responses of plants and microorganisms following a single low dose of silver nanoparticles applied by a sewage biosolid,” Colman said. “An estimated 60 percent of the average 5.6 million tons of biosolids produced each year is applied to the land for various reasons, and this practice represents an important and understudied route of exposure of natural ecosystems to engineered nanoparticles.”

“Our results show that silver nanoparticles in the biosolids, added at concentrations that would be expected, caused ecosystem-level impacts,” Colman said. “Specifically, the nanoparticles led to an increase in nitrous oxide fluxes, changes in microbial community composition, biomass, and extracellular enzyme activity, as well as species-specific effects on the above-ground vegetation.”

Getting back to Florida, you can find Ali’s abstract here,

Inhibition of Phytophthora parasitica and P. capsici by silver nanoparticles synthesized using aqueous extract of Artemisia absinthium by Mohammad Ali, Bosung Kim, Kevin Belfield, David J. Norman, Mary Brennan, & Gul Shad Ali. Phytopathology  http://dx.doi.org/10.1094/PHYTO-01-15-0006-R Published online April 14, 2015

This paper is behind a paywall.

For anyone who recognized that wormwood is a constituent of Absinthe, a liquor that is banned in many parts of the world due to possible side effects associated with the wormwood, here’s more about it from the Wormwood overview page on WebMD (Note: Links have been removed),

Wormwood is an herb. The above-ground plant parts and oil are used for medicine.

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Wormwood is used in some alcoholic beverages. Vermouth, for example, is a wine beverage flavored with extracts of wormwood. Absinthe is another well-known alcoholic beverage made with wormwood. It is an emerald-green alcoholic drink that is prepared from wormwood oil, often along with other dried herbs such as anise and fennel. Absinthe was popularized by famous artists and writers such as Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Manet, van Gogh, Picasso, Hemingway, and Oscar Wilde. It is now banned in many countries, including the U.S. But it is still allowed in European Union countries as long as the thujone content is less than 35 mg/kg. Thujone is a potentially poisonous chemical found in wormwood. Distilling wormwood in alcohol increases the thujone concentration.

Returning to the matter at hand, as I’ve noted previously elsewhere, research into the toxic effects associated with nanomaterials (e.g. silver nanoparticles) is a complex process.

Virtual Reality (VR) becomes educational (at Case Western Reserve University and Miami Children’s Hospital)

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I have two virtual reality news bits the most recent concerning Case Western Reserve University (CWRU; located in Cleveland, Ohio) and Microsoft’s HoloLens in an April 29, 2015 CWRU press release (also on EurekAlert), Note: Some of this academic press release reads like marketing collateral,

Case Western Reserve University Radiology Professor Mark Griswold knew his world had changed the moment he first used a prototype of Microsoft’s HoloLens headset. Two months later, one of the university’s medical students illustrated exactly why.

“There’s the aortic valve,” Satyam Ghodasara exclaimed as he used Microsoft’s device to examine a holographic heart. “Now I understand.”

Today, Griswold told tens of thousands of people how HoloLens can transform learning across countless subjects, including those as complex as the human body. Speaking to an in-person and online audience at Microsoft’s annual Build conference, he highlighted disciplines as disparate as art history and engineering–but started with a holographic heart. In traditional anatomy, after all, students like Ghodasara cut into cadavers to understand the body’s intricacies.

With HoloLens, Griswold explained, “you see it truly in 3D. You can take parts in and out. You can turn it around. You can see the blood pumping–the entire system.”

In other words, technology not only can match existing educational methods–it can actually improve upon them. Which, in many ways, is why Cleveland Clinic CEO Toby Cosgrove contacted then-Microsoft executive Craig Mundie in 2013, after the hospital and university first agreed to partner on a new education building.

“We launched this collaboration to prepare students for a health care future that is still being imagined,” Cleveland Clinic CEO Delos “Toby” Cosgrove said of what has become a 485,000-square-foot Health Education Campus project. “By combining a state-of-the-art structure, pioneering technology, and cutting-edge teaching techniques, we will provide them the innovative education required to lead in this new era.”

As Cosgrove, Case Western Reserve President Barbara R. Snyder and other academic leaders engaged more extensively with Microsoft, the more potential everyone saw.

“For more than a century, our medical school has been renowned for inventing and reinventing approaches to teaching and learning that take root nationwide,” President Snyder said. “When we match that expertise with the interdisciplinary knowledge of our faculty, we create a rich environment to explore the educational potential of Microsoft’s extraordinary technology.”

After a small group including Griswold, engineering professor Marc Buchner and Cleveland Clinic education technology leader Neil Mehta first experienced HoloLens in December, the faculty returned to Cleveland to create a core team dedicated to exploring the technology’s academic potential. In February, 10 members of the team–including Ghodasara–returned to Microsoft for a HoloLens programming deep dive.

Ghodasara already had taken the traditional anatomy class at Case Western Reserve, but it wasn’t until he used the HoloLens headset that he first visualized the aortic valve in its entirety–unobstructed by other elements of the cardiac system and undamaged by earlier dissection efforts. Members of the Microsoft team were in the room when Ghodasara had his “aha” moment; a few weeks later, the heart demonstration became part of the Build conference agenda.

Case Western Reserve is the only university represented during the three-day event, a distinction Griswold attributes in part to the core team’s breadth of expertise and collegial approach.

“Without all of those people coming together,” Griswold said, “this would not have happened.”

When Griswold took the stage as part of Microsoft’s opening keynote at the Build conference, Ghodasara, Buchner and Chief Information Officer Sue Workman also were in the audience. Back in Cleveland, three of Professor Buchner’s undergraduates–John Billingsley, Henry Eastman and Tim Sesler–demonstrated some of the potential of the HoloLens technology live in the Tinkham Veale University Center.

Buchner, whose specialties include simulation and game design, believes Microsoft’s innovation “has the capability to transform engineering education.”

Because the technology is relatively easy to use, students will be able to build, operate and analyze all manner of devices and systems. “[It will] encourage experimentation,” Buchner said, “leading to deeper understanding and improved product design.”

In truth, HoloLens ultimately could have applications for dozens of Case Western Reserve’s academic programs. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory already has worked with Microsoft to develop software that will allow Earth-based scientists to work on Mars with a specially designed rover vehicle. A similar collaboration could enable students here to take part in archeological digs around the world. Or astronomy students could stand in the midst of colliding galaxies, securing front-row view of the unfolding chaos. Art history professors could present masterpieces in their original settings–a centuries-old castle, or even the Sistine Chapel.

“The whole campus has the potential to use this,” Griswold said. “Our ability to use this for education is almost limitless.”

For now, however, the top priority is creating a full digital anatomy curriculum, a process launched with the advent of the Health Education Campus, and now experiencing even greater momentum. Among the key collaborators are a team of medical students and anatomy and radiology faculty who are already investigating the use of these kinds of technology. This team, led by Amy Wilson­Delfosse, the medical school’s associate dean for curriculum, and Suzanne Wish-Baratz, an assistant professor who is one of the primary leaders of anatomy education, fully expects to have a digital curriculum ready for the new Health Education Campus.

Also essential, Griswold said, has been the advice and assistance of Microsoft’s HoloLens team and executives.

“It’s been a joy to work with them. They have been so friendly, so collaborative, so willing to work with us on this,” Griswold said. “We’re going to do incredible things together.”

Ohio is not the only state where virtual reality is being incorporated into medical education.

Florida

From an April 30, 2015 Next Galaxy Corp. news release,

Incorporating eye gaze control, gestures, and voice commands while “walking around” inside an emergency medical experience, Next Galaxy’s Virtual Reality Model educates participants far beyond today’s methodology of passively watching video and taking written tests.

Next Galaxy Corp (OTC: NXGA) recently announced the signing of an agreement with Miami Children’s Hospital to use the Company’s VR Model to develop immersive Virtual Reality medical instructional content for patient and medical professional education. Per the multi-year agreement, Next Galaxy and Miami Children’s Hospital are jointly developing VR Instructionals on cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and other lifesaving procedures, which will be released as an application for smartphones.

Assessments are incorporated directly into the medical VR models, creating situations where participants are required to make the appropriate decisions about proper techniques. The Virtual CPR instructional will measure metrics and provide real-time feedback ensuring participants accurately perform CPR techniques. Further, the instructional will explain any mistake and prompt users to try again when errors are made. Supportive messages are delivered upon success.

The medical VR models will be viewable through smartphones and desktops as 3D, and via VR devices such as Google Cardboard, VRONE and Oculus Rift.

About Next Galaxy Corporation

Next Galaxy Corporation is a leading developer of innovative content solutions and fully Immersive Consumer Virtual Reality technology. The Company’s flagship consumer product in development is CEEK, a next-generation fully immersive entertainment and educational social virtual reality platform featuring a combination of live action and 3D experiences. Next Galaxy’s CEEK simulates the communal experience of attending events, such as concerts, sporting events, movies or conferences through Virtual Reality. Next Galaxy is developing entertainment and educational experiences for VR Cinema, VR Concerts, VR Sports, VR Business, VR Tourism and more. In short, Next Galaxy is building the meeting places of the future. For further information, visit www.nextgalaxycorp.com

This seems to be the second time this information has been distributed (March 11, 2015 news release on PRNewswire), a widely adopted practice. Consequently and thankfully, there’s a March 11, 2015 article by Celia Ampel for the South Florida Business Journal which provides more details about the technology and explaining how a smartphone fits into virtual reality,

The best way to learn CPR is an immersive experience, Miami Children’s Hospital leaders believe — not a video.

…

“If I’m watching a video, I can pause and count, but there’s no way to tell if I counted to six or seven,” Next Galaxy President Mary Spio said. “Because [the virtual reality application] is voice-activated, they’re going to be able to count out loud and self-assess whether they’re doing it correctly.”

Next Galaxy (Pink Sheets: NXGA)’s virtual reality technology uses a smartphone app. Users can put their smartphone into a virtual reality headset for an immersive experience, or see 3D content through the phone.

…

The application will be available to the public in the next few months, Spio said.

This deal and another with Miami-Dade Country Public Schools are transforming Next Galaxy Corp according to Ampel’s article,

The five-person company will be hiring about 20 full-time employees in the next six months, focusing on developers with 3D modeling and gaming experience, she said.

Quadrupling the size of your company in six months can be quite a challenge. I wish them good luck with their expansion and their virtual reality course materials.

As to what all this mixed-reality/virtual reality might look like, there’s this image from Case Western Reserve University,

Courtesy: Case Western Reserve University

Courtesy: Case Western Reserve University

US Dept. of Agriculture awards $3.8M for nanotechnology research grants

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I wonder just how much funding the US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA) is devoting to nanotechnology this year (2015). I first came across an announcement of $23M in the body of a news item about Zinkicide (my April 7, 2015 posting),

Found in Florida orchards in 2005, a citrus canker, citrus greening, poses a serious threat to the US state’s fruit industry. An April 2, 2105 news item on phys.org describes a possible solution to the problem,

Since it was discovered in South Florida in 2005, the plague of citrus greening has spread to nearly every grove in the state, stoking fears among growers that the $10.7 billion-a-year industry may someday disappear.

Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded the University of Florida a $4.6 million grant aimed at testing a potential new weapon in the fight against citrus greening: Zinkicide, a bactericide invented by a nanoparticle researcher at the University of Central Florida.

An April 29, 2015 article by Diego Flammini for Farm.com describes the latest USDA nanotechnology funding announcement,

In an effort to increase America’s food security, nutrition, food safety and environmental protection, the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) announced $3.8 million in nanotechnology research grants.

Flammini lists three of the eight recipients,

University of Georgia
With $496,192, the research team will develop different sensors that are able to detect fungal pathogens in crops. The project will also develop a smartphone app for farmers to have so they can access their information whenever necessary.

Rutgers University
The school will use its $450,000 to conduct a nationwide survey about nanotechnology and gauge consumer beliefs about it and its relationship to health. Among the specifics it will touch on is the use of visuals to communicate nanotechnology.

University of Massachusetts
The researchers will concentrate their $444,200 on developing a platform to detect pathogens in food that is better than the current methods.

A full list of the recipients can be found in the April 27, 2015 USDA news release featuring the $3.8M in awards,

  • The University of Georgia, Athens, Ga., $496,192
  • University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa., $496,180
  • University of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington, Ky., $450,000
  • University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Mass., $444,200
  • North Dakota State University, Fargo, N.D., $149,714
  • Rutgers University, New Brunswick. N.J., $450,000
  • Pennsylvania State University, University Park, University Park, Pa., $447,788
  • West Virginia University, Morgantown, W. Va., $496,168
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wis., $450,100

You can find more details about the awards in this leaflet featuring the USDA project descriptions for the eight recipients.

Citrus canker, Florida, and Zinkicide

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Found in Florida orchards in 2005, a citrus canker, citrus greening, poses a serious threat to the US state’s fruit industry. An April 2, 2105 news item on phys.org describes a possible solution to the problem,

Since it was discovered in South Florida in 2005, the plague of citrus greening has spread to nearly every grove in the state, stoking fears among growers that the $10.7 billion-a-year industry may someday disappear.

Now the U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded the University of Florida a $4.6 million grant aimed at testing a potential new weapon in the fight against citrus greening: Zinkicide, a bactericide invented by a nanoparticle researcher at the University of Central Florida.

An April 2, 2015 University of Central Florida news release by Mark Schlueb (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, describes the problem and the solution (Zinkicide),

Citrus greening – also known by its Chinese name, Huanglongbing, or HLB – causes orange, grapefruit and other citrus trees to produce small, bitter fruit that drop prematurely and is unsuitable for sale or juice. Eventually, infected trees die. Florida has lost tens of thousands of acres to the disease.

“It’s a hundred-year-old disease, but to date there is no cure. It’s a killer, a true killer for the citrus industry,” said Swadeshmukul Santra, associate professor in the NanoScience Technology Center at UCF.

The bacteria that causes HLB is carried by the Asian citrus psyllid, a tiny insect that  feeds on leaves and stems of infected citrus trees, then carries the bacteria to healthy trees.

Zinkicide, developed by Santra, is designed to kill the bacteria.

The $4.6 million grant is the largest of five totaling $23 million that were recently announced by the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

The evaluation of Zinkicide is a multi-institute project involving 13 investigators from six institutions. Evan Johnson of UF’s [University of Florida] Citrus Research and Education Center at Lake Alfred is the project director, and there are a dozen co-principal investigators from UF, UCF, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Auburn University, New Mexico State University and The Ohio State University.

”Managing systemic diseases like HLB is a difficult challenge that has faced plant pathologists for many years,” said Johnson “It is a privilege to work with an excellent team of researchers from many different disciplines with the goal of developing new tools that are both effective and safe.”

A portion of the grant money, $1.4 million, flows to UCF, where Santra leads a team that also includes Andre Gesquiere, Laurene Tetard and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory collaborator, Loukas Petridis.

HLB control is difficult because current bactericidal sprays, such as copper, simply leave a protective film on the outside of a plant. The insect-transmitted bacteria bypasses that barrier and lives inside a tree’s fruit, stems and roots, in the vascular tissue known as the phloem. There, it deprives the tree of carbohydrate and nutrients, causing root loss and ultimately death. For a bactericide to be effective against HLB, it must be able to move within the plant, too.

Zinkicide is a nanoparticle smaller than a single microscopic cell, and researchers are cautiously optimistic it will be able to move systemically from cell to cell to kill the bacteria that cause HLB.

“The bacteria hide inside the plant in the phloem region,” Santra said. “If you spray and your compound doesn’t travel to the phloem region, then you cannot treat HLB.”

Zinkicide is derived from ingredients which are found in plants, and is designed to break down and be metabolized after its job is done. [emphasis mine]

It’s the first step in a years-long process to bring a treatment to market. UF will lead five years of greenhouse and field trials on grapefruit and sweet orange to determine the effectiveness of Zinkicide and the best method and timing of application.

The project also includes research to study where the nanoparticles travel within the plant, understand how they interact with plant tissue and how long they remain before breaking down. [emphasis mine]

If effective, the bactericide could have a substantial role in combatting HLB in Florida, and in other citrus-producing states and countries. It would also likely be useful for control of other bacterial pathogens infecting other crops.

The Zinkicide project builds as a spinoff from previous collaborations between Santra and UF’s Jim Graham, at the Citrus Research and Education Center to develop alternatives to copper for citrus canker control.

The previous Citrus Research and Education Foundation (CRDF)-funded Zinkicide project has issued three reports, for June 30, 2014, Sept. 30, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2014. This project’s completion date is May 2015. The reports which are remarkably succinct, consisting of two paragraphs, can be found here.

Oddly, the UCF news release doesn’t mention that Zinkicide (although it can be inferred) is a zinc particulate (I’m guessing they mean zinc nanoparticle) as noted on the CRDF project webpage. Happily, they are researching what happens after the bactericide has done its work on the infection. It’s good to see a life cycle approach to this research.

Florida and its Advanced Development and Manufacturing (NANO-ADM) Center

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A new ‘nano’ manufacturing facility to be located in Florida state is featured in a November 25, 2013 news item on Azonano,

Nanotherapeutics, Inc. announced today that on November 20, 2013, the Company held a Type C meeting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”), providing an opportunity for the FDA to review and provide feedback on Nanotherapeutics’ plans for its Advanced Development and Manufacturing (NANO-ADM) Center facility to be located in Copeland Park, Alachua, FL.

The review and subsequent discussions with the FDA focused on its cGMP [Current Good Manufacturing Practice] manufacturing space, which will provide Nanotherapeutics with capabilities to develop and produce bulk vaccines and biologics for the Department of Defense (DOD), other government agencies and industry. The Company expressed its appreciation to the FDA for granting the meeting, which represents the achievement of a major milestone in the ongoing design of a successful NANO-ADM Center.

You can find out more about Nanotherapeutics, Inc. here and for anyone curious about cGMPs, there’s this page on the FDA website,

Current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) for human pharmaceuticals affect every American.  Consumers expect that each batch of medicines they take will meet quality standards so that they will be safe and effective.  Most people, however, are not aware of cGMPs, or how FDA assures that drug manufacturing processes meet these basic objectives.  Recently, FDA has announced a number of regulatory actions taken against drug manufacturers based on the lack of cGMPs.  This paper discusses some facts that may be helpful in understanding how cGMPs establish the foundation for drug product quality.

What are cGMPs?

cGMP refers to the Current Good Manufacturing Practice regulations enforced by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).  cGMPs provide for systems that assure proper design, monitoring, and control of manufacturing processes and facilities….

Prior to this latest announcement about the NANO-ADM, there was some information offered in the company’s Oct. 23, 2013 news release about the groundbreaking event,

Nanotherapeutics, Inc. today announced that a groundbreaking ceremony for its Advanced Development and Manufacturing Center (NANO-ADM) in Copeland Park, Alachua, FL, will be held this morning [Oct. 23, 2013] at 9:00 am ET. …

The ceremony celebrates the groundbreaking of the 30-acre NANO-ADM center being constructed through privately secured financing to fulfill the contract awarded to Nanotherapeutics by the US Department of Defence (DOD) earlier this year. … The goal of the contract is to enable faster and more effective development of medical countermeasures designed to treat and protect military populations against chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear attacks and outbreaks of naturally occurring, emerging and genetically engineered infectious diseases.

Nanotherapeutics and its network of 16 world-class teaming partners and collaborators for this project are currently able to furnish core services in response to the DOD’s requirements, should the need arise. … single-use equipment of one-of-a-kind, 165,000 square foot facility. The NANO-ADM Center will integrate new biomanufacturing technologies with existing capabilities enabling the development of both small molecule and biologic products. …

The Nov. 21, 2013 news release, which originated the news item on Azonano, provided this additional detail,

Construction of the NANO-ADM Center is scheduled for completion in early 2015, with commissioning, qualification and full occupancy expected by mid-March 2015.

It seems to me that while New York State has garnered a lot of attention for its nanotechnology model, as evidenced by a book on the topic: New York’s Nanotechnology Model: Building the Innovation Economy: Summary of a Symposium (2013), and much more, Florida has been quietly establishing itself as another center for nanotechnology and innovation.

Spirit of the law, the rule of law, Kiera Wilmot, and a science experiment in Florida

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It’s tempting to ride my moral high horse regarding the Kiera Wilmot situation but on second thoughts I’ve decided to dismount. For those who are not familiar with the situation, Kiera Wilmot went to her Florida school on Monday, Apr. 29, 2013 and attempted a science experiment—unauthorized and in the school yard which resulted in an explosion that sounded like a firecracker going off. Shortly afterwards she found herself arrested, taken away in handcuffs, and expelled from school. She was charged on two felony charges (I believe) and will be tried as an adult.

As for the experiment, Wilmot brought a plastic bottle to school and, before classes started, decided to pour into it a quantity of household plumbing cleaner (Drano) and added a piece of aluminum foil resulting in smoke and an explosion that bystanders described as sounding like a firecracker. No one was injured and there was no damage. According to all the reports I’ve seen so far, Wilmot gets good grades and has never been in trouble.

Here’s the quote that Kyle Murzenrieder obtained for his Apr. 26, 2013 posting [as far as I can determine the incident occurred on Apr. 29 but, mysteriously, Murzenrieder’s posting is dated prior to that) on the Miami (Florida) New Times blog,

“She made a bad choice. Honestly, I don’t think she meant to ever hurt anyone,” principal Ron Pritchard told the station [local Miami tv station WTSP]. “She wanted to see what would happen [when the chemicals mixed] and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked, too.”

The story has attracted international attention. Richard Luscombe in a May 2, 2013 story for the UK’s Guardian newspaper recounts the events and provides a perspective from a US educator of educators,

The unsupervised experiment on school grounds ended with Wilmot, 16, led away to a juvenile detention facility in handcuffs, expelled and charged as an adult with felony possession of a weapon and making or discharging a destructive device, with a possible penalty of up to 20 years in jail.

The episode has pitted campaigners for a common-sense approach to school discipline against an unrepentant school district that insists it is just following rules, warning parents to advise their children that there will always be “consequences to actions”.

“This is totally insane,” Dr Kathleen Nolan, a lecturer in teacher preparation at Princeton University and author of Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School told the Guardian.

Steven D, a retired lawyer (not licenced to practice in Florida), provides a legal perspective on the charges Wilmot is facing in his May 2, 2013 posting on the Daily Kos,

Was Kiera’s science experiment a “destructive device” that she willingly made, possessed and intended to use as such?

In Florida, a person commits a felony when he or she “willfully and unlawfully makes, possesses, throws, projects, places, discharges, or attempts to make, possess, throw, project, place, or discharge any destructive device.”

…

No report I’ve seen suggests that her the result of her “experiment” caused any bodily harm to anyone or any property damage.  However, for the sake for argument let’s concede that her science experiment was a destructive device.  That doesn’t end the inquiry, however, regarding her guilt.  You see the law clearly states that for Kiera to be guilty of a felony, she must have both constructed her “destructive device,” and used it, willfully and unlawfully.  In short, the issue of her intent again appears, and it should give any prosecutor pause before pursuing felony charges against this young woman.  Why?  Because she herself has stated she just wanted to see what would happen when she mixed the aluminum foil strips with the chemicals in her toilet cleaner. ….

It’s well worth reading the full piece for the way Steven D. breaks down the language used in the laws under which Wilmot is being charged and examines the case. If I understand his points correctly, the prosecutor will have a very hard time proving there was any attempt to harm or cause damage to anyone or anything, which is what those laws are designed to discourage.

Scientific American is covering this evolving situation in a number of ways. Ashutosh Jogalekar (Ashutosh [Ash] Jogalekar is a chemist interested in the history and philosophy of science, according to the  description on his blog, The Curious Wavefunction; a member of the Scientific American blog network) wrote an essay on science, scientific query, youth, and Kiera Wilmot titled, America hates science, for Scientific American which was also published on Salon.com (Note: Links have been removed),

She [Wilmot] definitely deserved to be reprimanded and perhaps even punished in some way, maybe by putting her on probation. But when you arrest and expel students for slaking their scientific curiosity, whatever the other consequences of that action, be advised that you are almost certainly sacrificing a valuable scientist at the altar of arbitrarily wielded state and school power.

The latest incident however is only a reflection of, on one hand, the draconian measures that our educational and political institutions are taking to achieve the ostensible goal of “disciplining” American children, and on the other hand, the public obsession with chemophobia and “chemicals”. The absurdly named “chemical free” chemistry sets are already depriving students of the joy of chemistry. When I was growing up my chemistry set had a lot of potentially harmful chemicals like copper sulfate and potassium ferricyanide. On every bottle there were clear labels advising us of the hazards of that particular chemical, antidotes against poisoning and the phone number of the poison center. None of these labels deterred me or my parents, and the set opened up the wonderful world of chemistry to me.

…

Society’s ardent wish to enforce this principle of maximum precaution – whether it involves reacting to terrorism or to school pranks – is turning schools into straitjacketed environments with armed guards and law enforcement where misdemeanors, pranks and honest mistakes that would have gotten a student detention twenty years ago are leading instead to arrests and expulsions. The school environment in many states has turned into an overactive immune system.

Jogalekar is expressing a sentiment echoed not only by Dr. Kathleen Nolan in Luscombe’s UK Guardian story but elsewhere too, as per Tim Elfrink’s May 2, 2013 posting for the Miami New Times,

As the tale of Kiera Wilmot — the Bartow, Florida student expelled and charged with two felonies over a science project gone wrong — went viral yesterday, a wide movement to support the 16-year-old blossomed from blogs to radio shows to Change.org petitions. Best of all, though, has been a Twitter campaign by scientists and science fans with a simple premise: writing about the craziest stuff they’ve blown up over the years, all in the name of science. [emphasis mine]

The difference, of course, is that they were congratulated on their curiosity or slapped on the wrist, not hit with life-altering felonies.

Andrew David Thaler of the Southern Fried Science blog has started at least one of  the Twitter campaigns (this is the tag: #KieraWilmot) and you can find his commentary about the situation and tweets here on Storify.

While I am in agreement that the response to Wilmot’s ill-advised experiment is an extraordinary overreaction, I can understand the impact the act of setting off an explosive device in a schoolyard a scant two weeks after the Boston Marathon bombing incident (April 15, 2013) where four people were killed (including one of the bombers) and many others injured likely had on the authorities. The timing is spectacularly bad and points to a degree of self-absorption that one might expect of a 16-year-old.

That said, I think rather than trying Wilmot as an adult on two felony charges for a science experiment, it might be more useful to involve the community (Wilmot and her family, the other school children, the teachers, the administrators, and the parents) and have them review Wilmot’s actions and determine the appropriate response to her transgression.

Laws are meant to help us maintain social order. It seems to me that the spirit of the laws under which Wilmot is being charged is aimed at protecting the community from violence and harm and that spirit is being violated although authorities may be following the rule of law. Wilmot is a member of the community and she is being harmed by an unthinking response from adults who really should know better.

ETA May 3, 2013 4:45 pm PDT: Here’s a petition you can sign, if you are so inclined: https://www.change.org/petitions/polk-county-state-s-attorney-drop-felony-charges-against-16-year-old-kiera-wilmot

NanoForArt in Mexico

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Mexico recently hosted (Feb. 7 – 8, 2013) a pair of conferences focused on nanotechnology and art conservation. The country is part of an international consortium in the European Commision’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7), NanoForArt project. Before mentioning the conference, here’s a little information about the NanoForArt project from its homepage,

The main objective of the NANOFORART proposal is the development and experimentation of new nano-materials and responsive systems for the conservation and preservation of movable and immovable artworks. [emphasis mine]

While the progress in material science has generated sophisticated nanostructured materials, conservation of cultural heritage is still mainly based on traditional methods and conventional materials that often lack the necessary  compatibility with the original artworks and a durable performance in responding to the changes of natural environment and man-made activities.

The main challenge of NANOFORART is the combination of sophisticated functional materials arising from the recent developments in nano-science/technology with innovative techniques in the restoration and preventive conservation of works of art, with unprecedented efficiency.

Immovable artworks tend to be things like cave art, frescoes, and other forms of wall and rock art. The Feb. 2013 conferences in Mexico as per a Feb. 27, 2013 Agencia EFE news item on the Global Post website featured (Note: Links have been removed),

Baglioni [Piero Baglioni, a researcher and professor at the University of Florence] and Dr. Rodorico Giorgi, also of the University of Florence, traveled to Mexico earlier this month to preside over a conference on Nanotechnology applied to cultural heritage: wall paintings/cellulose, INAH [Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia] said.

The project includes specialists from Italy, Spain, Britain, France, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Germany,  Slovenia and Mexico and is coordinated by the CSGI center [Center for Colloids and Surface Science] at the University of Florence.

NANONFORART is set to conclude in December 2014 with the “validation of the technology and the methods developed, as well as training activities,” INAH said.

Until now, preservation of cultural treasures has been carried out using conventional materials that are often incompatible with the works and can, over time, alter the appearance of the object.

Baglioni has worked with INAH personnel to clean and restore pre-Columbian murals at the Cacaxtla, Cholula, Tlatelolco, Mayapan, El Tajin, Monte Alban and Teotihuacan sites.

I have mentioned Baglioni’s work in Mexico previously in a Sept. 20, 2010 posting about  some work at La Antigua Ciudad Maya de Calakmul, an archaeological site which is located in the Campeche state.

Unfortunately, there aren’t too many details about the conferences, the Feb. 7, 2013 conference sported the previously noted title (in the Agencia EFE news item), Nanotechnology Applied to Cultural Heritage: Wall Paintings/Cellulose, and the Feb. 8, 2013 conference was titled, Nanotechnology for the Cleaning of Cultural Heritage.

There’s more information about nanotechnology aspects on the NanoForArt Overall page (Note: Links have been removed),

The work plan will start with design and formulation of nanostructured systems with special functionalities (WP1) such as deacidification of movable artworks (paper, parchment, canvas, leather), cleaning of movable artworks (paper, parchment, canvas paintings), protection of movable artworks (paper, canvas), consolidation of immovable artworks (wall-paintings, plaster and stones), and cleaning of immovable artworks (wallpaintings, plaster and stones). These systems, whose formulation will be optimized according to their functions, will include microemulsions, micellar solutions, gels and dispersions of different kinds of nanoparticles. A physico-chemical characterization of the developed materals (WP2) will constantly support the formulation activity. This will allow to understand and control the nature of interaction mechanisms between these nanostructures and the target substances/supports.

Assessment of the applicability of materials (WP3) will start in the second half of the first year. In this phase the up-scale of the technologies from the laboratory to the market level will be tackled. All the partners will interact in order to clarify and merge the priority from all the points of view. Evaluation of possible human health effects and environmental impacts of developed nanomaterials for restoration (WP7) will also start in the second half of the first year. Special emphasis will be given to potential hazardousness of nanoparticles used for design and formulation of nanostructured systems, as well as environmental impacts associated with the use of these nano-based products.

Nanotechnology developed by NANOFORART will aim also to significantly reduce the use of harmful solvents, as well as to introduce new environmentally friendly nanomaterials. Once the applicability and safety of the developed materials will be assessed, the development of industry process (WP4, WP5) will start in order to transfer technology on the market by the standardization of the applicative protocols and production of the nanomaterials on medium and large scale. Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) partners will have their main competence in this phase, that should start at the beginning of the second year. Safety and health risks of the industry processes will be also assessed. At the end of the first year, a study of the long-term behavior of the products and of the treated works of art (WP6) will be started by means of artificial ageing, in order to avoid damages due to unforeseen phenomena. The partners will have their main competence in ageing, monitoring of environmental pollution, and control of exhibitions and museums conditions.

The project is scheduled for completion in 2014.

The aspect I find most interesting is the ‘immovable art’. There was a controversy in Spain in 2011 over the prospect of opening some caves to tourists, from the Oct. 26, 2011 news item on ScienceDaily,

Plans to reopen Spain’s Altamira caves are stirring controversy over the possibility that tourists’ visits will further damage the 20,000-year old wall paintings that changed views about the intellectual ability of prehistoric people. That’s the topic of an article in the current edition of Chemical & Engineering News, ACS’ weekly newsmagazine. The caves are the site of Stone Age paintings so magnificent that experts have called them the “Sistine Chapel of Paleolithic Art.”

Carmen Drahl, C&EN associate editor, points out in the article that Spanish officials closed the tourist mecca to the public in 2002 after scientists realized that visitors were fostering growth of bacteria that damage the paintings. Now, however, they plan to reopen the caves. Declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations’ Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Altamira’s rock paintings of animals and human hands made scientists realize that Stone Age people had intellectual capabilities far greater than previously believed.

You can find an Oct. 6, 2011 piece about the Altamira rock paintings by Drahl titled, Keeping Visitors Out To Keep Cave Paintings Safe, on the Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) blog. For anyone interested in more about rock art, there’s a UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) World Rock Archives project or, as they call them, activity,

Due to their long sequence chronology, susceptibility to climate changes and vandalism, rock art sites are also among the most vulnerable on the World Heritage List.

Rock art, in the form of paintings and engravings, is a clear and lasting evidence of the transmission of human thoughts and beliefs through art and graphic representations. It functions as a repository of memory, enabling each culture to speak about themselves and their origins in all geographical settings.

I have two more items on cave art. The first is a piece I’ve been wanting to feature for almost two years. It’s an article on Slate by John Jeremiah Sullivan dated March 21, 2011 and titled, America’s Ancient Cave Art
Deep in the Cumberland Plateau, mysterious drawings, thousands of years old, offer a glimpse of lost Native American cultures and traditions. It’s an excerpt of an essay Sullivan wrote for the Paris Review. A fascinating exploration of a cave system that isn’t nearly as well known as France’s Lascaux Caves, here’s a snippet,

Over the past few decades, in Tennessee, archaeologists have unearthed an elaborate cave­-art tradition thousands of years old. The pictures are found in dark­ zone sites—places where the Native American people who made the artwork did so at personal risk, crawling meters or, in some cases, miles underground with cane torches—as opposed to sites in the “twilight zone,” speleologists’ jargon for the stretch, just beyond the entry chamber, which is exposed to diffuse sunlight. A pair of local hobby cavers, friends who worked for the U.S. Forest Service, found the first of these sites in 1979. They’d been exploring an old root cellar and wriggled up into a higher passage. The walls were covered in a thin layer of clay sediment left there during long­ ago floods and maintained by the cave’s unchanging temperature and humidity. The stuff was still soft. It looked at first as though someone had finger­-painted all over, maybe a child—the men debated even saying anything. But the older of them was a student of local history. He knew some of those images from looking at drawings of pots and shell ornaments that emerged from the fields around there: bird men, a dancing warrior figure, a snake with horns. Here were naturalistic animals, too: an owl and turtle. Some of the pictures seemed to have been first made and then ritually mutilated in some way, stabbed or beaten with a stick.

That was the discovery of Mud Glyph Cave, which was reported all over the world and spawned a book and a National Geographic article. No one knew quite what to make of it at the time. The cave’s “closest parallel,” reported the Christian Science Monitor, “may be caves in the south of France which contain Ice Age art.” A team of scholars converged on the site.

…

The sites range from Missouri to Virginia, and from Wisconsin to Florida, but the bulk lie in Middle Tennessee. Of those, the greater number are on the Cumberland Plateau, which runs at a southwest slant down the eastern part of the state, like a great wall dividing the Appalachians from the interior.

If you do decide to read the excerpt, you may want to reserve 30 to 45 minutes (at least).

For the last tidbit, here’s an introduction to TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Fellow, Genevieve von Petzinger’s work on cave art,

Genevieve von Petzinger’s [from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada] database of prehistoric geometric shapes in cave art reveals some startling insights. More than mere doodles, the signs used across geological boundaries suggest there may have been a common iconography before people first moved out of Africa. When did people begin graphic communication, and what was its purpose? Genevieve studies these questions of our common heritage.

A very interesting interview follows that introduction.

As I more often cover movable art, I thought it was time to devote, again, at least part of a posting to immovable art.