Tag Archives: India

Nanomedicine and the immune system

Leave a reply

Interest in how the body reacts to nanoparticle drug delivery materials seems to be gaining momentum (see my Sept. 9, 2016 post about how the liver prevents nanoparticles from reaching cancer cells and my April 27, 2016 post about the discovery that fewer than 1% of nanoparticle-based drugs reach their destination). Now, we can add this research to the list according to an Oct. 4, 2016 news item on phys.org,

Katie Whitehead, assistant professor of chemical engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, has focused her research efforts on two clear objectives: treating and preventing disease. Her clinical-minded approach to laboratory research has recently led her to join forces with immunologists at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay on a project that will explore how the immune system reacts to nanoparticle drug delivery materials.

“At its face, it may seem like an obvious goal. You would want a drug delivery system that doesn’t provoke an immune response,” says Whitehead. “However, the immune response to drug delivery vehicles is an understudied area because it’s complicated and expensive—but it deserves more attention.”

An Oct. 4, 2016 Carnegie Mellon University news release, which originated the news item, describes the research in more detail (Note: A link has been removed),

If the immune system reacts to a drug delivery system, the body mistakenly identifies the material as an invading pathogen and goes into a heightened state of alert. This response can trigger inflammation throughout the body and lead to a host of issues. According to Nature, about 25 percent of all Phase II and III clinical trials fail, not because the drug did not treat the disease, but because of safety concerns.

Creating a drug delivery system that effectively treats disease at the same time as avoiding immune response are two separate aims in drug delivery research. But for Whitehead, “My argument has always been that both pieces of the puzzle are equally important. If a system causes an immune response, then it’s a nonstarter. It may yield great results in treating disease in the lab, but it won’t ever reach a patient.”

Unfortunately, very little is understood about how the chemical molecules that make up nanoparticles ultimately affect our body’s immune response. “This research, however, is going to fill a critical gap in our knowledge base that will allow us to create nanoparticle systems that effectively deliver drugs without provoking our body’s natural defense mechanisms,” explains Whitehead. “Such knowledge will give us a head start in moving our delivery systems into clinical settings.”

Whitehead’s lab creates a number of nanoparticle drug delivery systems for diseases ranging from inflammatory bowel disease to Mantle cell lymphoma. She is tackling the challenge of immune response head-on with the help of a four-year, $500,000 grant from the Wadhwani Foundation for her work with IIT Bombay. She’ll specifically study how the chemical structure of the drug delivery nanoparticles affects the immune system.

Here’s a video of Katie Whitehead discussing her work in a simplified fashion,

 

Using fish ‘biowaste’ for self-powered electronics

Leave a reply

Researchers in India have found a way to make use of fish ‘biowaste’ according to a Sept. 6, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,

Large quantities of fish are consumed in India on a daily basis, which generates a huge amount of fish “biowaste” materials. In an attempt to do something positive with this biowaste, a team of researchers at Jadavpur University in Koltata, India explored recycling the fish byproducts into an energy harvester for self-powered electronics.

Caption: Waste fish scales (upper left corner) are used to fabricate flexible nanogenerator (lower left) that power up more than 50 blue LEDs (lower right). An enlarged microscopic view of a fish scale shows the well-aligned collagen fibrils (upper right). The possibility of making a fish scale transparent (middle) and rollable (extreme left lower corner) is also illustrated. Credit: Sujoy Kuman Ghosh and Dipankar Mandal/Jadavpur University

Caption: Waste fish scales (upper left corner) are used to fabricate flexible nanogenerator (lower left) that power up more than 50 blue LEDs (lower right). An enlarged microscopic view of a fish scale shows the well-aligned collagen fibrils (upper right). The possibility of making a fish scale transparent (middle) and rollable (extreme left lower corner) is also illustrated. Credit: Sujoy Kuman Ghosh and Dipankar Mandal/Jadavpur University

A Sept. 6, 2016 American Institute of Physics news release on EurekAlert, which originated the news item, describes the research in more detail,

The basic premise behind the researchers’ work is simple: Fish scales contain collagen fibers that possess a piezoelectric property, which means that an electric charge is generated in response to applying a mechanical stress. As the team reports this week in Applied Physics Letters, from AIP Publishing, they were able to harness this property to fabricate a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator.

To do this, the researchers first “collected biowaste in the form of hard, raw fish scales from a fish processing market, and then used a demineralization process to make them transparent and flexible,” explained Dipankar Mandal, assistant professor, Organic Nano-Piezoelectric Device Laboratory, Department of Physics, at Jadavpur University.

The collagens within the processed fish scales serve as an active piezoelectric element.

“We were able to make a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator — a.k.a. energy harvester — with electrodes on both sides, and then laminated it,” Mandal said.

While it’s well known that a single collagen nanofiber exhibits piezoelectricity, until now no one had attempted to focus on hierarchically organizing the collagen nanofibrils within the natural fish scales.

“We wanted to explore what happens to the piezoelectric yield when a bunch of collagen nanofibrils are hierarchically well aligned and self-assembled in the fish scales,” he added. “And we discovered that the piezoelectricity of the fish scale collagen is quite large (~5 pC/N), which we were able to confirm via direct measurement.”

Beyond that, the polarization-electric field hysteresis loop and resulting strain-electric field hysteresis loop — proof of a converse piezoelectric effect — caused by the “nonlinear” electrostriction effect backed up their findings.

The team’s work is the first known demonstration of the direct piezoelectric effect of fish scales from electricity generated by a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator under mechanical stimuli — without the need for any post-electrical poling treatments.

“We’re well aware of the disadvantages of the post-processing treatments of piezoelectric materials,” Mandal noted.

To explore the fish scale collagen’s self-alignment phenomena, the researchers used near-edge X-ray absorption fine-structure spectroscopy, measured at the Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology in Indore, India.

Experimental and theoretical tests helped them clarify the energy scavenging performance of the bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator. It’s capable of scavenging several types of ambient mechanical energies — including body movements, machine and sound vibrations, and wind flow. Even repeatedly touching the bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator with a finger can turn on more than 50 blue LEDs.

“We expect our work to greatly impact the field of self-powered flexible electronics,” Mandal said. “To date, despite several extraordinary efforts, no one else has been able to make a biodegradable energy harvester in a cost-effective, single-step process.”

The group’s work could potentially be for use in transparent electronics, biocompatible and biodegradable electronics, edible electronics, self-powered implantable medical devices, surgeries, e-healthcare monitoring, as well as in vitro and in vivo diagnostics, apart from its myriad uses for portable electronics.

“In the future, our goal is to implant a bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator into a heart for pacemaker devices, where it will continuously generate power from heartbeats for the device’s operation,” Mandal said. “Then it will degrade when no longer needed. Since heart tissue is also composed of collagen, our bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator is expected to be very compatible with the heart.”

The group’s bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator may also help with targeted drug delivery, which is currently generating interest as a way of recovering in vivo cancer cells and also to stimulate different types of damaged tissues.

“So we expect our work to have enormous importance for next-generation implantable medical devices,” he added.

“Our end goal is to design and engineer sophisticated ingestible electronics composed of nontoxic materials that are useful for a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic applications,” said Mandal.

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

High-performance bio-piezoelectric nanogenerator made with fish scale by Sujoy Kumar Ghosh and Dipankar Mandal. Appl. Phys. Lett. 109, 103701 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4961623

This paper appears to be open access.

Graphene in the bone

Leave a reply

An international team of US, Brazilian, and Indian scientists has developed a graphene-based material they believe could be used in bone implants. From a Sept. 2, 2016 news item on ScienceDaily,

Flakes of graphene welded together into solid materials may be suitable for bone implants, according to a study led by Rice University scientists.

The Rice lab of materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan and colleagues in Texas, Brazil and India used spark plasma sintering to weld flakes of graphene oxide into porous solids that compare favorably with the mechanical properties and biocompatibility of titanium, a standard bone-replacement material.

A Sept. 2, 2016 Rice University news release (also on EurekAlert), which originated the news item, explains the work in more detail,

The researchers believe their technique will give them the ability to create highly complex shapes out of graphene in minutes using graphite molds, which they believe would be easier to process than specialty metals.

“We started thinking about this for bone implants because graphene is one of the most intriguing materials with many possibilities and it’s generally biocompatible,” said Rice postdoctoral research associate Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, co-lead author of the paper with Dibyendu Chakravarty of the International Advanced Research Center for Powder Metallurgy and New Materials in Hyderabad, India. “Four things are important: its mechanical properties, density, porosity and biocompatibility.”

Tiwary said spark plasma sintering is being used in industry to make complex parts, generally with ceramics. “The technique uses a high pulse current that welds the flakes together instantly. You only need high voltage, not high pressure or temperatures,” he said. The material they made is nearly 50 percent porous, with a density half that of graphite and a quarter of titanium metal. But it has enough compressive strength — 40 megapascals — to qualify it for bone implants, he said. The strength of the bonds between sheets keeps it from disintegrating in water.

The researchers controlled the density of the material by altering the voltage that delivers the highly localized blast of heat that makes the nanoscale welds. Though the experiments were carried out at room temperature, the researchers made graphene solids of various density by raising these sintering temperatures from 200 to 400 degrees Celsius. Samples made at local temperatures of 300 C proved best, Tiwary said. “The nice thing about two-dimensional materials is that they give you a lot of surface area to connect. With graphene, you just need to overcome a small activation barrier to make very strong welds,” he said.

With the help of colleagues at Hysitron in Minnesota, the researchers measured the load-bearing capacity of thin sheets of two- to five-layer bonded graphene by repeatedly stressing them with a picoindenter attached to a scanning electron microscope and found they were stable up to 70 micronewtons. Colleagues at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center successfully cultured cells on the material to show its biocompatibility. As a bonus, the researchers also discovered the sintering process has the ability to reduce graphene oxide flakes to pure bilayer graphene, which makes them stronger and more stable than graphene monolayers or graphene oxide.

“This example demonstrates the possible use of unconventional materials in conventional technologies,” Ajayan said. “But these transitions can only be made if materials such as 2-D graphene layers can be scalably made into 3-D solids with appropriate density and strength.

“Engineering junctions and strong interfaces between nanoscale building blocks is the biggest challenge in achieving such goals, but in this case, spark plasma sintering seems to be effective in joining graphene sheets to produce strong 3-D solids,” he said.

The researchers have produced an animation depicting of graphene oxide layers being stacked,

A molecular dynamics simulation shows how graphene oxide layers stack when welded by spark plasma sintering. The presence of oxygen molecules at left prevents the graphene layers from bonding, as they do without oxygen at right. Courtesy of the Ajayan and Galvão groups

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

3D Porous Graphene by Low-Temperature Plasma Welding for Bone Implants by Dibyendu Chakravarty, Chandra Sekhar Tiwary, Cristano F. Woellner, Sruthi Radhakrishnan4, Soumya Vinod, Sehmus Ozden, Pedro Alves da Silva Autreto, Sanjit Bhowmick, Syed Asif, Sendurai A Mani, Douglas S. Galvao, and Pulickel M. Ajayan. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201603146 Version of Record online: 26 AUG 2016

© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim

This paper is behind a paywall.

How might artificial intelligence affect urban life in 2030? A study

Leave a reply

Peering into the future is always a chancy business as anyone who’s seen those film shorts from the 1950’s and 60’s which speculate exuberantly as to what the future will bring knows.

A sober approach (appropriate to our times) has been taken in a study about the impact that artificial intelligence might have by 2030. From a Sept. 1, 2016 Stanford University news release (also on EurekAlert) by Tom Abate (Note: Links have been removed),

A panel of academic and industrial thinkers has looked ahead to 2030 to forecast how advances in artificial intelligence (AI) might affect life in a typical North American city – in areas as diverse as transportation, health care and education ­– and to spur discussion about how to ensure the safe, fair and beneficial development of these rapidly emerging technologies.

Titled “Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030,” this year-long investigation is the first product of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence (AI100), an ongoing project hosted by Stanford to inform societal deliberation and provide guidance on the ethical development of smart software, sensors and machines.

“We believe specialized AI applications will become both increasingly common and more useful by 2030, improving our economy and quality of life,” said Peter Stone, a computer scientist at the University of Texas at Austin and chair of the 17-member panel of international experts. “But this technology will also create profound challenges, affecting jobs and incomes and other issues that we should begin addressing now to ensure that the benefits of AI are broadly shared.”

The new report traces its roots to a 2009 study that brought AI scientists together in a process of introspection that became ongoing in 2014, when Eric and Mary Horvitz created the AI100 endowment through Stanford. AI100 formed a standing committee of scientists and charged this body with commissioning periodic reports on different aspects of AI over the ensuing century.

“This process will be a marathon, not a sprint, but today we’ve made a good start,” said Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and the Stanford faculty director of AI100. “Stanford is excited to host this process of introspection. This work makes practical contribution to the public debate on the roles and implications of artificial intelligence.”

The AI100 standing committee first met in 2015, led by chairwoman and Harvard computer scientist Barbara Grosz. It sought to convene a panel of scientists with diverse professional and personal backgrounds and enlist their expertise to assess the technological, economic and policy implications of potential AI applications in a societally relevant setting.

“AI technologies can be reliable and broadly beneficial,” Grosz said. “Being transparent about their design and deployment challenges will build trust and avert unjustified fear and suspicion.”

The report investigates eight domains of human activity in which AI technologies are beginning to affect urban life in ways that will become increasingly pervasive and profound by 2030.

The 28,000-word report includes a glossary to help nontechnical readers understand how AI applications such as computer vision might help screen tissue samples for cancers or how natural language processing will allow computerized systems to grasp not simply the literal definitions, but the connotations and intent, behind words.

The report is broken into eight sections focusing on applications of AI. Five examine application arenas such as transportation where there is already buzz about self-driving cars. Three other sections treat technological impacts, like the section on employment and workplace trends which touches on the likelihood of rapid changes in jobs and incomes.

“It is not too soon for social debate on how the fruits of an AI-dominated economy should be shared,” the researchers write in the report, noting also the need for public discourse.

“Currently in the United States, at least sixteen separate agencies govern sectors of the economy related to AI technologies,” the researchers write, highlighting issues raised by AI applications: “Who is responsible when a self-driven car crashes or an intelligent medical device fails? How can AI applications be prevented from [being used for] racial discrimination or financial cheating?”

The eight sections discuss:

Transportation: Autonomous cars, trucks and, possibly, aerial delivery vehicles may alter how we commute, work and shop and create new patterns of life and leisure in cities.

Home/service robots: Like the robotic vacuum cleaners already in some homes, specialized robots will clean and provide security in live/work spaces that will be equipped with sensors and remote controls.

Health care: Devices to monitor personal health and robot-assisted surgery are hints of things to come if AI is developed in ways that gain the trust of doctors, nurses, patients and regulators.

Education: Interactive tutoring systems already help students learn languages, math and other skills. More is possible if technologies like natural language processing platforms develop to augment instruction by humans.

Entertainment: The conjunction of content creation tools, social networks and AI will lead to new ways to gather, organize and deliver media in engaging, personalized and interactive ways.

Low-resource communities: Investments in uplifting technologies like predictive models to prevent lead poisoning or improve food distributions could spread AI benefits to the underserved.

Public safety and security: Cameras, drones and software to analyze crime patterns should use AI in ways that reduce human bias and enhance safety without loss of liberty or dignity.

Employment and workplace: Work should start now on how to help people adapt as the economy undergoes rapid changes as many existing jobs are lost and new ones are created.

“Until now, most of what is known about AI comes from science fiction books and movies,” Stone said. “This study provides a realistic foundation to discuss how AI technologies are likely to affect society.”

Grosz said she hopes the AI 100 report “initiates a century-long conversation about ways AI-enhanced technologies might be shaped to improve life and societies.”

You can find the A100 website here, and the group’s first paper: “Artificial Intelligence and Life in 2030” here. Unfortunately, I don’t have time to read the report but I hope to do so soon.

The AI100 website’s About page offered a surprise,

This effort, called the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, or AI100, is the brainchild of computer scientist and Stanford alumnus Eric Horvitz who, among other credits, is a former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

In that capacity Horvitz convened a conference in 2009 at which top researchers considered advances in artificial intelligence and its influences on people and society, a discussion that illuminated the need for continuing study of AI’s long-term implications.

Now, together with Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and computer science at Stanford, Horvitz has formed a committee that will select a panel to begin a series of periodic studies on how AI will affect automation, national security, psychology, ethics, law, privacy, democracy and other issues.

“Artificial intelligence is one of the most profound undertakings in science, and one that will affect every aspect of human life,” said Stanford President John Hennessy, who helped initiate the project. “Given’s Stanford’s pioneering role in AI and our interdisciplinary mindset, we feel obliged and qualified to host a conversation about how artificial intelligence will affect our children and our children’s children.”

Five leading academicians with diverse interests will join Horvitz and Altman in launching this effort. They are:

  • Barbara Grosz, the Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at HarvardUniversity and an expert on multi-agent collaborative systems;
  • Deirdre K. Mulligan, a lawyer and a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborates with technologists to advance privacy and other democratic values through technical design and policy;

    This effort, called the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, or AI100, is the brainchild of computer scientist and Stanford alumnus Eric Horvitz who, among other credits, is a former president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

    In that capacity Horvitz convened a conference in 2009 at which top researchers considered advances in artificial intelligence and its influences on people and society, a discussion that illuminated the need for continuing study of AI’s long-term implications.

    Now, together with Russ Altman, a professor of bioengineering and computer science at Stanford, Horvitz has formed a committee that will select a panel to begin a series of periodic studies on how AI will affect automation, national security, psychology, ethics, law, privacy, democracy and other issues.

    “Artificial intelligence is one of the most profound undertakings in science, and one that will affect every aspect of human life,” said Stanford President John Hennessy, who helped initiate the project. “Given’s Stanford’s pioneering role in AI and our interdisciplinary mindset, we feel obliged and qualified to host a conversation about how artificial intelligence will affect our children and our children’s children.”

    Five leading academicians with diverse interests will join Horvitz and Altman in launching this effort. They are:

    • Barbara Grosz, the Higgins Professor of Natural Sciences at HarvardUniversity and an expert on multi-agent collaborative systems;
    • Deirdre K. Mulligan, a lawyer and a professor in the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, who collaborates with technologists to advance privacy and other democratic values through technical design and policy;
    • Yoav Shoham, a professor of computer science at Stanford, who seeks to incorporate common sense into AI;
    • Tom Mitchell, the E. Fredkin University Professor and chair of the machine learning department at Carnegie Mellon University, whose studies include how computers might learn to read the Web;
    • and Alan Mackworth, a professor of computer science at the University of British Columbia [emphases mine] and the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence, who built the world’s first soccer-playing robot.

    I wasn’t expecting to see a Canadian listed as a member of the AI100 standing committee and then I got another surprise (from the AI100 People webpage),

    Study Panels

    Study Panels are planned to convene every 5 years to examine some aspect of AI and its influences on society and the world. The first study panel was convened in late 2015 to study the likely impacts of AI on urban life by the year 2030, with a focus on typical North American cities.

    2015 Study Panel Members

    • Peter Stone, UT Austin, Chair
    • Rodney Brooks, Rethink Robotics
    • Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT
    • Ryan Calo, University of Washington
    • Oren Etzioni, Allen Institute for AI
    • Greg Hager, Johns Hopkins University
    • Julia Hirschberg, Columbia University
    • Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan, IIT Bombay
    • Ece Kamar, Microsoft
    • Sarit Kraus, Bar Ilan University
    • Kevin Leyton-Brown, [emphasis mine] UBC [University of British Columbia]
    • David Parkes, Harvard
    • Bill Press, UT Austin
    • AnnaLee (Anno) Saxenian, Berkeley
    • Julie Shah, MIT
    • Milind Tambe, USC
    • Astro Teller, Google[X]
  • [emphases mine] and the Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence, who built the world’s first soccer-playing robot.

I wasn’t expecting to see a Canadian listed as a member of the AI100 standing committee and then I got another surprise (from the AI100 People webpage),

Study Panels

Study Panels are planned to convene every 5 years to examine some aspect of AI and its influences on society and the world. The first study panel was convened in late 2015 to study the likely impacts of AI on urban life by the year 2030, with a focus on typical North American cities.

2015 Study Panel Members

  • Peter Stone, UT Austin, Chair
  • Rodney Brooks, Rethink Robotics
  • Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT
  • Ryan Calo, University of Washington
  • Oren Etzioni, Allen Institute for AI
  • Greg Hager, Johns Hopkins University
  • Julia Hirschberg, Columbia University
  • Shivaram Kalyanakrishnan, IIT Bombay
  • Ece Kamar, Microsoft
  • Sarit Kraus, Bar Ilan University
  • Kevin Leyton-Brown, [emphasis mine] UBC [University of British Columbia]
  • David Parkes, Harvard
  • Bill Press, UT Austin
  • AnnaLee (Anno) Saxenian, Berkeley
  • Julie Shah, MIT
  • Milind Tambe, USC
  • Astro Teller, Google[X]

I see they have representation from Israel, India, and the private sector as well. Refreshingly, there’s more than one woman on the standing committee and in this first study group. It’s good to see these efforts at inclusiveness and I’m particularly delighted with the inclusion of an organization from Asia. All too often inclusiveness means Europe, especially the UK. So, it’s good (and I think important) to see a different range of representation.

As for the content of report, should anyone have opinions about it, please do let me know your thoughts in the blog comments.

Synthite and its new ‘nano’ line of intensely coloured natural extracts

Leave a reply

Synthite Industries, an Indian firm, has just announced a new line of intensely coloured natural extracts  using a nanotechnology process. There’s a little more detail in an Aug. 25, 2016 news article by Robin Wyers for foodingredientsfirst.com,

Indian extracts company Synthite has introduced a new line of colors derived from a nanotechnology process that offers a much brighter and better hue and therefore requires far lower dosages in use. Vextrano is the result of incessant research and scientific deliberations with an aim to give key characteristics to spices and spice derived products at an elemental level. The purpose of the exercise is multi-faceted with a view to develop an array of novel products that can achieve customized applications in food, beverage, cosmetics and pharmaceutical industries.

…

Ashish Sharma (…) at Synthite briefly explained the concept to FoodIngredientsFirst: “This is a new product range which we commercialized in the market two months ago. We have bought a new plant for the production of these products. We are deriving this range from natural sources. For red colors we are using chili or paprika. For yellow, turmeric, and for green colors we are using black pepper [piperin]. …

“The key thing,” he notes, “is that when we are reducing the size of the particles to a very small level [to a particle level of 180-200 mesh], the dispersion of the light in any solvent is very good. That’s why you get the hue of the color much better.” In scientific terms, the process of maximizing the various active ingredients in a spice by reducing the size and inter molecular porosity to a feasible and ideal extent, without altering its molecular structure, leads to reduced energy consumption, waste generation and time required to achieve the end result in an application.

Sharma stresses that there are no regulatory issues around the use of this new line.  …

Synthite is just starting to roll the product out into market. …

So far, however, the product is only being sold in India, but it will be exported too, with the next promotion occurring at Fi South America, which is currently taking place in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

…

Vextrano is positioned as a vision for the future based on value addition to the bio-ingredients from spices. Synthite’s range includes: turmeric, spinach, piperine, marigold, paprika, black pepper, annatto and lutein.

Synthite Industries has a Wikipedia entry (Synthite Industrial Chemicals); Note: Links have been removed),

Synthite Industries Ltd (Synthite) is an Indian oleoresin extraction firm, supplying ingredients to the major food, fragrance and flavour houses. The company is based in Kochi. In 2008, it had 30% of the world’s market share,.[1][2]

The company was established in 1972 with 20 employees. It was founded by C.V. Jacob, who started the company after working in civil construction for two decades. Initially it produced industrial chemicals before shifting to oleoresins.[3] The oleoresin business was initially based on research by the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore. However, the technology developed was not yet mature, and it took several years of additional research and development by Synthite to make the technology viable. It took another four years before they convinced food producers that they could produce quality products on time.[2]

By 2008, it has grown to 450 crore and 1200 employees, with a 2012 goal of 1,000 crore.[1] The company achieved this goal, with a total of 2,000 employees. The company only began selling directly to consumers in its native India in 2014.[4] Some of its major clients include Nestle, Bacardi and Pepsi.[4] The company is currently run by the founder’s son, Viju Jacob.[5]

The company produces oleoresin spices, essential oils, food colors, and sprayed products. It also has products that are organic and fair-trade. The company also has investments in realty and hospitality.[1]

You can find Synthite here but I haven’t found anything about Vextrano on that site. However, there is a LinkedIn account for Vextrano here.

SciFi novel “Divided Minds” from India

Leave a reply

Thanks to an Aug. 23, 2016 news item on nyoooz.com I found out about an Indian science fiction writer,

Sanjay Koppikar’s book, Divided Minds is the harbinger of good news for sci-fi fans in India. Nanotechnology can take over the world and Sanjay Koppikar’s book Divided Minds tells its readers how Science fiction in India needs a push.

The summary on nyoooz.com is derived from an Aug. 22, 2016 article by Sahitya Poonacha for The Hindu, which features an interview with the author,

How did the idea of Divided Minds strike you?

I am basically a storyteller. Even in my job I do the same thing. I run a software company, I create technology stories that solve some problem, and send it to the customers. Then a few years ago I started saying no, I should not just be stuck with work. I should try and do something different so I started drawing. I travel a lot. I would sit at the airport and look at people’s faces, and sketch them. I also started making up stories to keep myself busy in ways other than work. I had this story in June, 2011. To finally get it to reality took five years. I had to do a lot of research. The story is about nanotechnology that is to be injected into the bloodstream. To make this story believable I had to study a little bit about that to realise that there are people already working on those lines.

…

… if you put an electronic chip into your bloodstream will that be acceptable to the bloodstream? It won’t be; so how will it react? Or how is it going to charge itself? You can’t think of putting a battery inside and replacing it. There were all these kinds of questions. Then there was the medical part of it. I spoke to at least six to seven doctors and kept picking their brains for information.

…

How did Delhi become the centre of activity in the book?

None of the places I have mentioned in the book I’ve ever been to. If you have followed the news, the story happened because of some different incidents knit together.

One of them is when General V.K. Singh was heading the Army — there was some news about the Army moving towards Delhi and later on there was a lot of denial and they said it was a general exercise. So, why did they move?

There is another story where a particular inspector took his family to a restaurant, had dinner and shot himself. These stories were eating me up — what must be going on in his head when he did that? A lot of people commit suicide but this is not the way to go about it. These people then became characters in my book. If at all I had to show the power that this phenomenon will bring about, it had to be set in the Capital.

I’m impressed by Koppikar’s interest in some of the real life issues with putting a computer chip into your bloodstream. A lot of science fiction writers use ‘nano devices’ merely as a means of moving the narrative forward and in those worlds, nano devices don’t have any of the shortcomings and problems one might expect in a real world medical application. Not having read the book I’m not sure how many of these concerns and what weight they have, if any, can be found in Koppikar’s narrative but it certainly sounds promising.

He has also integrated political concerns as per the article but no mention is made of the romance element evident in the book trailer,

For anyone interested in purchasing the book, go here.

Using mung bean extract to synthesize silver nanoparticles

Leave a reply

Not everyone is quite as enthusiastic as whoever wrote this press release about silver nanoparticles (due to potential environmental issues as more manufactured silver nanoparticles enter the ecosystem). Still, it’s good news that there may be a greener way to synthesize them. A July 20, 2016 news item on Azonano ‘spills the beans’,

…

… researchers from the Guru Nanak National College, the Institute of Microbial Technology, Mata Gujri College and Punjab University, have found a simple, non-toxic and environmentally friendly way to synthesize AgNPs [silver nanoparticles] using seed extract of Vigna radiata, commonly known as the mung bean or green gram.

…

Manoj Kumar Choudhary and colleagues used aqueous seed extract of mung beans to break up aqueous silver nitrate solution into NPs, as well as to reduce and stabilize the particles. The NPs were characterized by UV–visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction. They were then tested for antimicrobial effectiveness.

As reported in Applied Nanoscience, the researchers found that phytochemicals present in the seed extract were effective at reducing and stabilizing the Ag metal ions. They found they could synthesize crystalline, spherically-shaped NPs, with a size range of 5 to 30 nm. The particles remained highly stable for months at room temperature, even after five months.

Antibacterial activity was assayed by the standard well-diffusion method, which showed that the biogenic silver NPs had broad-spectrum antibacterial activity against the Gram-negative bacteria Escherichia coli and the Gram-positive bacteria Staphylococcus aureus.

“In the present paper, we report a simple, eco-friendly and cost-effective synthesis method of AgNPs at ambient conditions using seed extract of Vigna radiata as a reducing and stabilizing agent,” say Choudhary and team. “The AgNPs synthesized by this method have efficient antimicrobial activity against pathogenic bacteria.”

The researchers say the next step would be further investigation of the potential applications of the synthesized AgNPs, as the outcome of the study could be useful for applications in nanotechnology-based applications in pharmacology and medicine.

Fig. 1: A Vigna radiata seeds. b Reddish brown solution of silver nanoparticles formed after 3 h due to reduction of silver ions [downloaded from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13204-015-0418-6]

Fig. 1: A Vigna radiata seeds. b Reddish brown solution of silver nanoparticles formed after 3 h due to reduction of silver ions [downloaded from http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13204-015-0418-6]

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

A facile biomimetic preparation of highly stabilized silver nanoparticles derived from seed extract of Vigna radiata and evaluation of their antibacterial activity by Manoj Kumar Choudhary, Jyoti Kataria, Swaranjit Singh Cameotra, Jagdish Singh. Appl Nanosci (2016) 6: 105. doi:10.1007/s13204-015-0418-6 First Online: 19 February 2015

This paper is open access.

Nanotechnology-enhanced roads in South Africa and in Kerala, India

Leave a reply

It’s all about road infrastructure in these two news bits.

Road building and maintenance in sub-Saharan Africa

A July 7, 2016 news item on mybroadband.co.za describes hopes that nanotechnology-enabled products will make roads easier to build and maintain,

The solution for affordable road infrastructure development could lie in the use of nanotechnology, according to a paper presented at the 35th annual Southern African Transport Conference in Pretoria.

The cost of upgrading, maintaining and rehabilitating road infrastructure with limited funds makes it impossible for sub-Saharan Africa to become competitive in the world market, according to Professor Gerrit Jordaan of the University of Pretoria, a speaker at the conference.

The affordability of road infrastructure depends on the materials used, the environment in which the road will be built and the traffic that will be using the road, explained Professor James Maina of the department of civil engineering at the University of Pretoria.

Hauling materials to a construction site contributes hugely to costs, which planners try to minimise by getting materials closer to the site. But if there aren’t good quality materials near the site, another option is to modify poor quality materials for construction purposes. This is where nanotechnology comes in, he explained.

…

For example, if the material is clay soil, it has a high affinity to water so when it absorbs water it expands, and when it dries out it contracts. Nanotechnology can make the soil water repellent. “Essentially, nanotechnology changes the properties to work for the construction process,” he said.

These nanotechnology-based products have been used successfully in many parts of the world, including India, the USA and in the West African region.

There have also been concerns about road building and maintenance in Kerala, India.

Nanotechnology for city roads in Kochi

A March 23, 2015 news item in the Times of India describes an upcoming test of a nanotechnology-enabled all weather road,

Citizens can now look forward to better roads with the local self-government department planning to use nanotechnology to construct all-weather roads.

For the district trial run, the department has selected a 300-metre stretch of a panchayat road in Edakkattuvayal panchayat. The trial would experiment with nanotechnology to build moisture resistant, long-lasting and maintenance-free roads.

“Like the public, the department is also fed up with the poor condition of roads in the state. Crores of rupees are spent every year for repairing and resurfacing the roads. This is because of heavy rains in the state that weakens the soil base of roads, resulting in potholes that affect the ride-quality of the road surface,” said KT Sajan, assistant executive engineer, LSGD, who is supervising the work.

The nanotechnology has been developed by Zydex Technologies, a Gujarat-headquartered firm. The company’s technology has already been used by major private contract firms that build national highways in India and in other major projects in European and African countries.

Oddly, you can’t find out more about the Zydex products mentioned in the article on its Roads Solution webpage , where you are provided a general description of the technology,

Revolutionary nanotechnology for building moisture resistant, long lasting & maintenance free roads through innovative adaptation of Organosilane chemistry.

Zydex Nanotechnology: A Game Changer

Zydex Nanotechnology has a value propositions for all layers of the road

SOIL LAYERS
Zydex Nanotechnology makes the soil moisture resistant, reduces expansiveness and stabilizes the soil to improve its bearing strength manifold. If used with 1% cement, it can stabilize almost any type of soil, by improving the California Bearing Ratio (CBR) to even 100 or above.

Here is the real change in game, as stronger soil bases would now allow optimization of road section thicknesses, potentially saving 10-15% road construction cost.

BOND COATS
Prime & Tack coats become 100 % waterproofed, due to penetration and chemical bonding. This also ensures uniform load transfer. And all this at lower residual bitumen.

ASPHALTIC LAYERS
Chemical bonding between aggregates and asphalt eliminates moisture induced damage of asphaltic layers.

Final comment

I hadn’t meant to wait so long to publish the bit about Kerala’s road but serendipity has allowed me to link it to a piece about South Africa ‘s roads and to note a resemblance to the problems encountered in both regions.

Building a regulatory framework for nanotechnology in India

Leave a reply

For the second time in less than six weeks (the first time is described in my June 13, 2016 posting on India’s draft guidelines for the safe handling of nanomaterials) I’ve stumbled across an article about the need for more nanotechnology safety measures in India. From a June 23, 2016 article by Prateek Sibal for The Wire (Note: Links have been removed),

India ranks third in the number of research publications in nanotechnology, only after China and the US. This significant share in global nanotech research is a result of sharp focus by the Department of Science and Technology (DST) to research in the field in the country. The unprecedented funding of Rs 1,000 crore for the Nano Mission was clearly dictated by the fact that India had missed the bus on the micro-electronic revolution of the 1970s and its attendant economic benefits that countries like China, Taiwan and South Korea continue to enjoy to this day.

At the same time, the success of the Nano Mission is not limited to research but also involves training the required human resource for further advancement in the field. An ASSOCHAM and TechSci Research study reported in 2014: “From 2015 onwards, global nanotechnology industry would require about two million professionals and India is expected to contribute about 25% professionals in the coming years.”

A missing element in India’s march towards becoming a nanotechnology powerhouse is the lack of focus on risk analysis and regulation. A survey of Indian practitioners working in the area of nano-science and nanotechnology research showed that 95% of the practitioners recognised ethical issues in nanotech research. Some of these concerns relate to the possibly adverse effects of nanotechnology on the environment and humans, their use as undetectable weapon in warfare, and the incorporation of nano-devices as performance enhancers in human beings.

One reason for lack of debate around ethical, and public-health and -safety, concerns around new technologies could be the exalted status that science and its practitioners enjoy in the country. A very successful space program and a largely indigenous nuclear program has ensured that policymakers spend much of their time feting achievements of Indian science than discussing the risks associated with new technologies or improving regulation.

After describing some of the studies raising health concerns, Sibal describes the issue for policymakers (Note: Links have been removed),

The challenge that remains in front of policymakers is that of regulating a field where vast areas of knowledge are still being investigated and are unknown. In this situation, over-regulation may end up stifling further development while under-regulation could expose the public to adverse health effects. Further, India’s lack of investment in risk studies only sustains the lull in the policy establishment when it comes to nanotech regulations.

The Energy and Resources Institute has extensively studied regulatory challenges posed by nanotechnology and advocates that an “incremental approach holds out some promise and offers a reconciliation between the two schools- one advocating no regulation at present given the uncertainty and the other propounding a stand-alone regulation for nanotechnology.”

Kesineni Srinivas, the Member of Parliament from Vijayawada, has taken cognisance of the need for incremental regulation in nanotechnology from the view point of public health and safety. (Disclosure: The author worked with the Vijayawada MP on drafting the legislation on nanotechnology regulation, introduced in the winter session of Parliament, 2015.)

In December 2015, Srinivas introduced the Insecticides (Amendment) Bill in the Lok Sabha to grant only a provisional registration to insecticides containing nanoparticles with a condition that “it shall be mandatory for the manufacturer or importer to report any adverse impact of the insecticide on humans and environment in a manner specified by the Registration Committee.” This is an improvement over the earlier process of granting permanent registration to insecticides. However, the fate of the bill remains uncertain as only 14 private member bills have been passed in Parliament since the first Lok Sabha in 1952.

…

Prateek Sibal will be joining Sciences Po (the Paris Institute of Political Sciences), Paris, as a Charpak Scholar in 2016.

I always appreciate these pieces as they help me to adjust my Canada-, US-, Commonwealth- and European-centric views.

India’s draft guidelines for the safe handling of nanomaterials

Leave a reply

I believe this is the first time I’ve seen any guidelines for the safe handling of nanomaterials that are neither from Europe nor from the US. I imagine that’s due to translation issues or lack of publicity rather than a failure to create guidelines.

In any event, Indrani Barpujari, Advisor (Governance) at the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Institute of Good Governance and Policy Analysis, Bhopal, India, has written a commentary on draft regulations for India (from her Draft Guidelines for Safe Handling of Nanomaterials commentary in Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 51, Issue No. 23, 04 Jun, 2016 ISSN [Online] – 2349-8846 [appears to be open access]),

It is indeed laudable that as a first step towards regulation of nanotechnology in India, the Nano Mission under the Department of Science and Technology has come out with the draft “Guidelines and Best Practices for Safe Handling of Nanomaterials in Research Laboratories and Industries.” Taking cognisance of the imperative for safe handling of nanomaterials, the Nano Mission has constituted a task force consisting of eminent experts who have prepared this document. Involving the control of matter at the nanoscale, nanomaterials are characterised by small dimensions, large surface area, and high reactivity which while making them amenable to a large variety of applications in various sectors also render them potentially dangerous for human health and environmental safety, with considerable scientific uncertainty regarding the risks. Nanotechnology presents before policymakers a classic case of “Collingridge dilemma” or a “dilemma of control” with policy decisions required to be taken on the basis of uncertain scientific facts and under conditions of some urgency. It is the unique combination of “high expectations and huge uncertainties” (Van Lente 2010) associated with nanotechnology which has provided the required thrust for the current guidelines.

The draft guidelines, basically intended as standard operating procedure (SOP) for handling nanomaterials in research laboratories and industries, prescribe a combination of engineering controls, work practices and personal protective equipment as part of a robust exposure control strategy. These lay down the process for identifying hazards, taking note of the specific effect of surface chemistry, shape, size and morphology on toxicity caused to various organs. These address the potential exposure pathways and concomitant safety measures to mitigate the same. While prescribing certain best practices for handling nanomaterials generally, the guidelines also lay down another set of best practices specifically pertaining to the making and handling of nanopowders and use of products relating to food and healthcare. A precautionary approach is advocated with detailed life cycle assessment and strong binding procedures with respect to stakeholder involvement for various players while formulating best practices in the food sector particularly.

While the draft guidelines as a first step cover reasonable ground, it may be relevant to look at these in the context of the discourse on nanotechnology regulation abroad as well as in India. The focus of modern “risk societies” being more on “manufactured risks” or risks which are the product of human activity (Giddens 1999), governments, particularly in the developed world, are increasingly realising the need for risk-based regulation, to address potential risks from emerging technologies like nanotechnology, while promoting their development. Preliminary steps have been taken to regulate nanotechnology despite the admitted difficulty in doing so owing to the scientific uncertainty regarding its risks and limited amenability to traditional risk management approaches (Schummer and Pariotti 2008).

…

Thus, it may be surmised that the developed world’s engagement with nanotechnology to harness its benefits has been characterised by an almost unprecedented focus on regulating its risks and developing an anticipatory governance framework, taking on board different stakeholders including the public and incorporating societal concerns. On the other hand, with an almost single-minded focus on promotion in the initial years, the official pursuit of nanotechnology in India has not accorded much priority to its potential risks with the result than a large number of nano-based products are already out in the markets, without any regulation (Barpujari 2011a). In India, the government is the primary promoter of nanotechnology, pursued under the mission on nanoscience and technology (Nano Mission) with a huge budget outlay targeted at the development of nano-applications and creating adequate infrastructural and human capabilities for this purpose.

The Indian scientific establishment has high expectations from nanotechnology, with the technology expected to help meet the development needs of the country, while also positioning India as a forerunner in the global arena. Srivastava and Chowdhury (2008) observe that Indian scientists at the helm of affairs perceive that Indian science should not lose out on this opportunity to establish itself as a global leader and that it should not “miss the bus” as it did during the previous semiconductor revolution. Sahoo and Deshpande Sarma’s (2010) survey on risk perceptions among thirty scientists working in public-funded scientific institutions/laboratories indicate that Indian scientists are not very much perturbed by the risks of nanotechnology, and few take special precautions while working with nanomaterials, while very few are interested in taking up risk research.

The fact that the policy establishment is yet to take into serious consideration the potential risks of the technology is also evident from the low priority accorded to risk research, which should precede regulation. A very small number of projects are being publicly funded to look into toxicity issues, and there is almost no engagement with the social sciences and humanities, as evidenced by the lack of government funding for such studies.

At the same time, it must be acknowledged that different stakeholders in India particularly policy researchers, civil society actors and research institutions pursuing risk research have been persistently making the case for nanotechnology regulation in the country and taken the lead in charting the way ahead. It is acknowledged that problems in developing risk-based regulation are particularly compounded for a developing country like India, owing to a lack of resources, expertise and regulatory mandate. The absence of regulation, it is anticipated, would be even worse as in the event of some of the risks materialising, developing countries would be ill-equipped to handle and mitigate these (Barpujari 2011b).

Particularly noteworthy is a regulatory matrix for India developed by TERI [The Energy and Resources Institute] (2009) comprising several central legislation, rules and notifications which could have relevance for regulation of environmental risks, occupational health and safety risks arising from nanotechnology development and applications in India. Another report (TERI 2012) has provided leads for adopting a precautionary approach and developing an anticipatory regulatory framework for nanotechnology in the South Asian region, taking the particular case of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Vajpayee offers more insight with her suggestions for “The Way Ahead” and I strongly suggest reading her commentary if you’re interested in a perspective from South Asia. There’s also a list of references at the end of the commentary, should you wish to explore further.