Tag Archives: musings

Mapping geographies of the planet and of ourselves

Why are there so many maps? We’re mapping our brains; various genomes; fantasy and literary environments; with increasing granularity, our cities (thank you, Google); and more, both on and off the planet.

The urge of map something or anything is old, stretching back at least 8,000 years (according to the History of Cartography essay on Wikipedia) and it spans various cultures, Arab, Chinese, Indian, European, Mongolian, and others .

We seem compelled to create maps as a means of understanding and exploring our planet, ourselves, and more. Lately, it seems there’s been a ‘mapping explosion’ and I’m not the only one to notice. Brian Timoney in a Sept. 1, 2011 posting on Mapbrief.com comments,

That the web mapping explosion of the past few years has ushered in a new Golden Age of Cartography has been noted more than once (here, here, and here). But what is really exciting is that the increasing variety of tools for map-making are engaging folks from a variety of disciplines, including the emerging field of Information Design. For those of us with traditional GIS training, the delight of encountering great cartography in unexpected places is tempered by the realization that while we GISers are good at making maps, we seem especially adept at making ugly maps.

…

…, why does any of this matter? Because good design enhances comprehension. As the stories we are trying to tell with maps become more multivariate and nuanced, the penalty for thoughtless design is at best puzzlement, at worst misunderstanding. We have arrived at a point where the ‘general user’ does notice the difference in cartographic presentation between Google Maps, Bing, Mapquest, and Open Street Map.

As per my mention of brains and genomes (human, bacteria, plant, etcl) earlier, scientists seem to have discovered a new passion for mapping.

Strangely, we don’t tend to remember that all maps are inaccurate; they are only approximations. This is certainly not mentioned in this BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) produced short video from Episode 3 of the Beauty of Maps, which extolls what’s described as a golden age of cartography in Amsterdam,

I wonder how the practice of science is going to change as we map and visualize data with more frequency and the written word loses its primacy.

Big data, data visualization, and spatial relationships with computers

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I’m going to tie together today’s previous postings (Sporty data science, Digitizing and visualizing the humanities, and Picture worth more than a thousand numbers? Yes and no with a future-oriented Feb. 2010 TED talk by John Underkoffler (embedded below). I have mentioned this talk previously in my June 14, 2012 posting titled, Interacting with stories and/or with data. From his TED speaker’s webpage,

Remember the data interface from Minority Report? Well, it’s real, John Underkoffler invented it — as a point-and-touch interface called g-speak — and it’s about to change the way we interact with data.

…

When Tom Cruise put on his data glove and started whooshing through video clips of future crimes, how many of us felt the stirrings of geek lust? This iconic scene in Minority Report marked a change in popular thinking about interfaces — showing how sexy it could be to use natural gestures, without keyboard, mouse or command line.

John Underkoffler led the team that came up with this interface, called the g-speak Spatial Operating Environment. His company, Oblong Industries, was founded to move g-speak into the real world. Oblong is building apps for aerospace, bioinformatics, video editing and more. But the big vision is ubiquity: g-speak on every laptop, every desktop, every microwave oven, TV, dashboard. “It has to be like this,” he says. “We all of us every day feel that. We build starting there. We want to change it all.”

Before founding Oblong, Underkoffler spent 15 years at MIT’s Media Laboratory, working in holography, animation and visualization techniques, and building the I/O Bulb and Luminous Room Systems.

He’s talking about human-computer interfaces but I found the part where he manipulates massive amounts of data (from approx. 8 mins. – 9.5 mins.) particularly instructive. This video is longer (approx. 15.5 mins. as opposed to 5 mins. or less) than the videos I usually embed.

I think the real game changer for science (how it’s conducted, how it’s taught, and how it’s communicated) and other disciplines is data visualization.

ETA Aug. 3, 2012 1:20 pm PDT: For those who might want to see this video in its ‘native’ habitat, go here http://www.ted.com/talks/john_underkoffler_drive_3d_data_with_a_gesture.html.

Intelligent tablet (pill) packaging for medication regimes

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Most people who take a lot of pills/medications either own elaborate pill boxes or have their medications prepared in special blister packages so they can track their use. After an initial period of hypervigilance, it can be easy to lose track of whether or not you took your pill two hours ago.

Holst Centre (a Belgian/Dutch collaborative, independent, and open innovation R&D [research and development] centre) and Qolpac (a pharmaceutical packaging company) are developing a new, intelligent type of packaging for medications. Here’s what the July 17, 2012 news item on Nanowerk has to say about it,

Smart blisters are pharmaceutical packages capable of monitoring when a pill is taken out of its packaging. Qolpac and Holst Centre have jointly developed a technology that integrates an ultra-low-power processor and radio into a thin plastic foil that could replace the standard backing foil of a blister package. Drawing on Qolpac’s expertise in therapy adherence solutions, the two partners will further develop this technology for mass-market use. This includes finding suppliers and manufacturers capable of supporting a high-volume application.

I can certainly understand how helpful it would be to know when the pill was removed from the package (e.g., knowing a pill was removed two hours ago tells me I took it the pill at 10 am so I can now take my 12 pm pill with confidence). Still, this is one more piece of life being monitored and, sometimes, it seems as if every activity (breathing, sweating, blinking, etc.) will be. It reminds of the koan, if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear, does it make a sound? But, I’m changing it to this:: if we start monitoring all our activities and no one is there to notice, do we really exist?

My ‘Whose electric brain?’ talk on March 15, 2012

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Later this week (March 15, 2012), I will be giving a talk in Vancouver,

The Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars

Notice of Meeting

Date: Thursday, March 15, 2012

Time: 7:30 pm

Place: Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, BC campus, 515 West Hastings Street (between Seymour and Richards Streets) in the Diamond Alumni Lounge, Room 2065 (second floor)

Speaker: Maryse de la Giroday

Topic: Whose electric brain?

Memristors are collapsing the boundaries between humans and machines and ushering in an age where humanistic discourse must grapple with cognitive entanglements. Perceptible only at the level of molecular electronics (nanoelectronics), the memristor was a theoretical concept until 2008. Two different researchers without knowledge of each other had postulated its probable existence respectively in the 1960s and the 1970s. Traditionally in electrical engineering there are resistors, inductors, and capacitors. The new circuit element, the memristor, was postulated to account for anomalies that had been experienced and described in the literature since the 1950s.

Conceptually, a memristor remembers how much and when current has been flowing. In 2008 when it was proved experimentally, engineering control was achieved months later in both digital and analogue formats. The more intriguing of the two formats is the analogue where a memristor is capable of an in-between state similar to certain brain states as opposed to the digital format where it’s either on or off. As some have described it, the memristor is a synapse on a chip making neural computing a reality. In other words, with post-human engineering we will have machines that can think like humans.

The memristor moves us past Jacques Derrida’s notion of undecidability (a cognitive entanglement) as largely theoretical to a world where we confront this reality on a daily basis.

A Brief Bio:

Maryse de la Giroday is a science communications consultant and writer who focuses on nanotechnology and science in Canada. Her blog (www.frogheart.ca) offers “Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts” and it currently enjoys an average of 50,000+ visits per month.

She has a BA (honors-Communications) from SFU and an MA (Creative Writing and New Media) De Montfort University, UK.

As an independent academic, she has presented on the topic of nanotechnology at the 2009 International Symposium on Electronic Arts, the 2008 Congress of Humanities and the Social Sciences, the 2008 Cascadia Nanotechnology Symposium, and the 2007 Association of Internet Researchers.

She gratefully acknowledge the 2011 grant from the Canadian Academy of Independent Scholars which makes the publication of her latest paper, Whose electric brain? possible.

I expect to be exploring ideas about machines and humans as buttressed by the notion of the memristor. The talk will be recorded (tarted up/edited) by Sama Shodjai and posted, in the near future, here and elsewhere online.

Blood-, milk-, and mucus-powered electronics

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Researchers at Tel Aviv University ([TAU] Israel) have already begun to develop biodegradable display screens in their quest to create electronic devices powered by blood, milk, and mucus proteins found in our bodies. From the March 7, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

… a team including Ph.D. students Elad Mentovich and Netta Hendler of TAU’s Department of Chemistry and The Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, with supervisor Dr. Shachar Richter and in collaboration with Prof. Michael Gozin and his Ph.D. student Bogdan Belgorodsky, has brought together cutting-edge techniques from multiple fields of science to create protein-based transistors — semi-conductors used to power electronic devices — from organic materials found in the human body. They could become the basis of a new generation of nano-sized technologies that are both flexible and biodegradable.

The March 7, 2012 news release on the American Friend of TAU website notes some of the issues with silicon-based electronics,

One of the challenges of using silicon as a semi-conductor is that a transistor must be created with a “top down” approach. Manufacturers start with a sheet of silicon and carve it into the shape that is needed, like carving a sculpture out of a rock. This method limits the capabilities of transistors when it comes to factors such as size and flexibility.

The TAU researchers turned to biology and chemistry for a different approach to building the ideal transistor. When they applied various combinations of blood, milk, and mucus proteins to any base material, the molecules self-assembled to create a semi-conducting film on a nano-scale. In the case of blood protein, for example, the film is approximately four nanometers high. The current technology in use now is 18 nanometers, says Mentovich.

Together, the three different kinds of proteins create a complete circuit with electronic and optical capabilities, each bringing something unique to the table. Blood protein has the ability to absorb oxygen, Mentovich says, which permits the “doping” of semi-conductors with specific chemicals in order to create specific technological properties. Milk proteins, known for their strength in difficult environments, form the fibers which are the building blocks of the transistors, while the mucosal proteins have the ability to keep red, green and, blue fluorescent dyes separate, together creating the white light emission that is necessary for advanced optics.

Overall, the natural abilities of each protein give the researchers “unique control” over the resulting organic transistor, allowing adjustments for conductivity, memory storage, and fluorescence among other characteristics.

I have previously featured work on vampire (blood-powered) fuel cells and batteries in my July 18, 2012 posting and my April 3, 2009 posting so the notion of using blood (and presumably other bodily fluids) as a source for electrical power is generating (pun intended, weak though it is) interest in many research labs.

While the researchers don’t speculate about integrating these new carbon-based devices, which are smaller and more flexible than current devices, in bodies (from the American Friends of TAU news release),

Technology is now shifting from a silicon era to a carbon era, notes Mentovich, and this new type of transistor could play a big role. Transistors built from these proteins will be ideal for smaller, flexible devices that are made out of plastic rather than silicon, which exists in wafer form that would shatter like glass if bent. The breakthrough could lead to a new range of flexible technologies, such as screens, cell phones and tablets, biosensors, and microprocessor chips.

Just as significant, because the researchers are using natural proteins to build their transistor, the products they create will be biodegradable. It’s a far more environmentally friendly technology that addresses the growing problem of electronic waste, which is overflowing landfills worldwide.

The biodegradability of these proposed devices may be a problem if they are integrated into our bodies but it is certain that this will be attempted as we continue to explore machine/flesh possibilities.

Machine/flesh, robotic venus flytraps, and artificial muscles

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On the heels of yesterday’s musings about machine/flesh in the context of my Carbon nanotubes, neurons, and spinal cords … posting, there’s a new Spotlight essay (on Nanowerk) by Michael Berger titled, Robotic Venus flytrap aids artificial muscle research. From the essay,

Mohsen Shahinpoor, Richard C. Hill Professor & Chairman Mechanical Engineering Department at the University of Maine, has created a robotic replica of the carnivorous Venus flytrap with nanosensors and a thin, pliable metal composite material that he invented as part of his ongoing artificial muscle research. The device offers promise in the development of electrically stimulated artificial muscle that could be implanted in people to help overcome muscular disease or paralysis.

It’s the Venus flytrap’s (Dionaea muscipula) trigger sensitivity to movement (when the plant feels movement along certain hairs, it snaps shut within milliseconds to trap its prey). Here’s an image from the Botanical Society of America’s Mysterious Venus Flytrap webpage which illustrates the hairs (cilia) that act as triggers,

Venus flytrap trigger hairs

I have briefly glanced at the research paper, Biomimetic robotic Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula Ellis) made with ionic polymer metal composites (open access PDF), published by IOP Publishers in its Bioinspiration & Biomimetics journal (vol. 6, no. 4). The introduction, the conclusion, and the images are the most accessible for someone (like me) who doesn’t have a background in electrical engineering. Here’s a bit from the introduction (Note: I have removed the bibiographic notes),

The rapid closure of the VFT lobes in about hundreds of milliseconds is one of the fastest nastic movements in higher plants. Darwin described the VFT plant as ‘one of the most wonderful plants in the world’. Mechanical stimulation of trigger hairs in the lobes of the VFT by a prey causes the traps to close rapidly. The reader is referred to a number of studies on the mechanism of closing of lobes of the VFT as described in … Note that Batalin was the first to propose a possible mechanism for such nastic movements in higher plants. Sibaoka discussed the physiology of rapid movements in higher plants.

…

Here, we propose that the mechanisms of sensing of the prey wiggling in its lobes by the trigger hairs and the trap closing of VFT are very similar to sensing and actuation mechanisms in IPMCs and thus one can design, fabricate and operate a biomimetic robotic VFT equipped with IPMCs [ionic polymeric metal composite].

The researchers don’t mention any applications (none I could find in the paper) for these progenitors to artificial muscles but Berger notes at the end of his essay,

The development of artificial muscles is one of the key areas for bionic enhancements or replacements. Artificial muscles like these could find applications in the medical field or for engineering applications.

I suppose you can’t call the possible integration in medical applications of these artificial muscles machine/flesh so much as they are plant/machine/flesh.

Carbon nanotubes, neurons, and spinal cords (plus a brief plug for the Isabelle Stengers talk being livestreamed today)

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Mention scaffolds, nanotechnology, and cells and I think of tissue engineering. Michael Berger’s March 2, 2012 Spotlight essay, Exploring the complexity of nanomaterial-neural interfaces, on Nanowerk mentions all three. From the essay,

Carbon nanotubes, like the nervous cells of our brain, are excellent electrical signal conductors and can form intimate mechanical contacts with cellular membranes, thereby establishing a functional link to neuronal structures. …

Now, researchers have, for the first time, explored the impact of carbon nanotube scaffolds on multilayered neuronal networks. Up to now, all known effects of carbon nanotubes on neurons – namely their reported ability to potentiate neuronal signaling and synapses – have been described in bi-dimensional cultured networks where nanotube/neuron hybrids were developed on a monolayer of dissociated brain cells.

In their work, a team of scientists in Italy, led by professors Maurizio Prato and Laura Ballerini, used slices from the spinal cords of mice to model multilayer-tissue complexity. They interfaced these spinal segments to multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT) scaffolds for weeks at a time to see whether and how the interactions at the monolayer level are translated to multilayered nerve tissues.

I found this part of the explanation a little easier to understand,

According to the team, interfacing spinal cord explants [cells removed from living tissue and cultivated in artificial media] to purified carbon nanotubes over a longer period (weeks) induces two major effects: First, the number and length of neuronal fibers outgrowing the spinal segment increases, associated with changes in growth cone activity and in fiber elastomechanical properties. And, secondly, the researchers point out that after weeks of MWCNT interfacing, neurons located at as far as five cell layers from the substrate display an increased efficacy in synaptic responses – which could represent either an improvement or a pathological behavior – presumably mediated by ongoing plasticity driven by the neuron/MWCNT hybrids.

If this increased efficacy in synaptic responses should represent an improvement, it suggests to me that it could be helpful with spinal cord injuries at some point. The researchers themselves are not speculating that far into the future (from the Berger essay),

They [Prato and Ballerini] note that this is important because it exploits the design of artificial micro- and nanoscale devices that cooperate with neuronal network activity, thereby creating hybrid structures able to cross the barriers between artificial devices and neurons.

Taken in conjunction with today’s (March 5, 2012) earlier posting (Carbon and neural implants), it seems that there is a great deal of work being done to integrate ‘machine’ and flesh so we achieve machine/flesh. While I don’t believe that philosopher and chemist Isabelle Stengers will be addressing those specific issues in her talk, Cosmopolitics, being livestreamed here later today (3:30 pm PST) from Halifax (Nova Scotia), she does touch on this,

Professor Stengers’ keynote address will examine sciences and the consequences of what has been called progress. Is it possible to reclaim modern practices, to have them actively taking into account what they felt entitled to ignore in the name of progress? Or else, can they learn to “think with” instead of define and judge? [emphasis mine]

I don’t know what she means by ‘think with’ but it strikes me that it represents a significant shift of thought as it implies a relationship that is not separated (or bounded) in the ways we have traditionally observed. Defining and judging are made possible by the notion of separation (boundaries); machine and flesh have been viewed from the perspective of boundaries and separation; machine/flesh seems more like ‘thinking with’.

New research on nanoscale titanium dioxide shows toxic effects on marine life

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Up till now, nanoscale titanium dioxide in water has not been viewed as toxic to marine life. A newly released study by researchers from the University of California (UC) Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology (UC CEIN) in the Jan. 20 in the journal PLoS ONE suggests otherwise. From the Jan. 24, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

“Previous experiments have suggested that TiO2 does not affect aquatic organisms, but these experiments used artificial lighting that generated much lower levels of UVR than sunlight,” Miller [lead author and assistant research biologist Robert Miller] explains. “In these new experiments, we used lights simulating natural sunlight.”

But now, the authors say, “We show that relatively low levels of ultraviolet light, consistent with those found in nature, can induce toxicity of TiO2 nanoparticles to marine phytoplankton, the most important primary producers on Earth.

So, the relatively low levels of ultraviolet light in natural sunlight can induce toxicity in titanium dioxide nanoparticles. Here’s the reason for the concern,

“Application of nanomaterials in consumer products and manufacturing is quickly increasing, but there is concern that these materials, including nanoparticles, may harm the environment,” says Miller. “The oceans could be most at risk, since wastewater and factory discharges ultimately end up there.”

In all of the kerfuffle that the Friends of the Earth (FoE) and The ETC Group (and I assume others as well) have made over nanoscale ingredients in sunscreens they seem to have ignored the impact that these ingredients, when washed off our skin and into our water supply, may have on aquatic life. I wonder if that will matter in the end. I mean if it turns out that nanoscale titanium dioxide is going to kill/damage “… the most important primary producers on Earth”, does it matter if FoE and the others succeed in mobilizing opposition to its use for what most experts might consider the wrong reasons.

Commercializing nano: US, Spain, and RUSNANO

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Late September 2011 saw the Nanomanufacturing Summit 2011 and 10th Annual NanoBusiness conference take place in Boston, Massachusetts (my Sept. 21, 2011 posting). Dr. Scott Rickert (President and CEO of Nanofilm) writing for Industry Week noted this about the events in his Oct. 14, 2011 posting,

I witnessed an American revolution catch fire in Boston, and I feel like a latter-day Paul Revere. “The nanotech economy is coming, the nanotech economy is coming!” and that’s good news for the U.S. — and you — because we’re at the epicenter.

…

Let’s start with commercialization. Ten years ago, when I walked into the inaugural version of this conference, I was one of the few with money-making nanotechnology products on the market. This time? The sessions were packed with executives from multi-million dollar businesses, and the chatter was about P&L as much as R&D. Nano-companies are defying Wall Street woes and going public. And even academics were talking about business plans, not prototypes.

…

Dozens of companies from Europe, Asia and the Middle East were at the conference. Their goal was tapping into the American know-how for making science into business.

Seems a little euphoric, doesn’t he? It’s understandable for anyone who’s worked long and hard at an activity that’s considered obscure by great swathes of the population and finally begins to see substantive response. (Sidebar: Note the revolutionary references for a conference taking place in what’s considered the birthplace of the American Revolution.)

Speakers at MIT’s (Massachusetts Institute of Nanotechnology) EmTech event held in Spain on Oct. 26-27, 2011 were are a bit more measured, excerpted from the Oct. 27, 2011 posting featuring highlights from the conference by Cal Pierce for Opinno,

Javier García Martínez, founder of Rive Technology and Tim Harper, founder of Cientifica.com presented their view of how nanotechnology will transform our world.

Harper took the stage first.

“We have spent $67 billion on nanotechnology research this decade, so you can imagine this must be an important field,” he said.

Harper believes that nanotechnology is the most important technology that humans have developed in the past 5,000 years. However, he spoke about the difficulties in developing nanotechnology machinery in that we cannot simply shrink factories down to nano-scales. Rather, Harper said we need to look to cells in nature as they have been using nanotechnology for billions of years.

….

Harper spoke about the dire need to use nanotechnology to develop processes that replace scarce resources. However, the current economic climate is hindering these critical innovations.

…

Javier Garcia then spoke.

“Graphene, diamond and other carbon structures are the future of 21st-century nanotechnology,” he said.

Garcia says that the next challenge is commercialization. There are thousands of scientific articles about nanotechnology published every year which are followed by many patents, he explained. However, he reflected on Cook’s ideas about funding.

“There is still not a nanotechnology industry like there is for biotechnology,” he said.

…

Finally, Garcia said successful nanotechnology companies need to build strong partnerships, have strong intellectual property rights and create a healthy balance between creativity and focus. Government will also play a role with simplified bureaucracy and tax credits.

Hang on, it gets a little more confusing when you add in the news from Russia (from Dexter Johnson’s Oct. 26, 2011 posting titled, Russia Claims Revenues of One-Third-of–a-Billion Dollars in Nanotech This Year on his Nanoclast blog on the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineering [IEEE] website),

One of the first bits of interesting news to come out of the meeting is that: “In 2011, Rusnano has earned about 10 billion rubles ($312 million) on manufacturing products using nanotechnology — nearly half of the state corporation’s total turnover.”

…

We should expect these estimates to be fairly conservative, however, ever since Anatoly Chubais, RusNano’s chief, got fed up with bogus market numbers he was seeing and decided that RusNano was going to track its own development.

…

I have to say though, no matter how you look at it, over $300 million in revenues is pretty impressive for a project that has really only existed for three years.

Then RUSNANO announced its investments in Selecta Biosciences and BIND Biosiences, from the Oct. 27, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

BIND Biosciences and Selecta Biosciences, two leading nanomedicine companies, announced today that they have entered into investment agreements with RUSNANO, a $10-billion Russian Federation fund that supports high-tech and nanotechnology advances.

RUSNANO is co-investing $25 million in BIND and $25 million in Selecta, for a total RUSNANO investment of $50 million within the total financing rounds of $94.5 million in the two companies combined. …

…

The proprietary technology platforms of BIND and Selecta originated in laboratories at Harvard Medical School directed by Professor Omid Farokhzad, MD, and in laboratories at MIT directed by Professor Robert Langer, ScD, a renowned scientist who is a recipient of the US National Medal of Science, the highest US honor for scientists, and is an inventor of approximately 850 patents issued or pending worldwide. Drs. Langer and Farokhzad are founders of both companies. [Farokhzad was featured in a recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation {CBC}, Nature of Things, television episode about nanomedicine, titled More than human.] Professor Ulrich von Andrian, MD, PhD, head of the immunopathology laboratory at Harvard Medical School, is a founder of Selecta.

…

Selecta pioneers new approaches for synthetically engineered vaccines and immunotherapies. Selecta’s lead drug candidate, SEL-068, is entering human clinical studies as a vaccine for smoking cessation and relapse prevention. Other drug development programs include universal human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, universal influenza vaccine, malaria vaccine, and type 1 diabetes therapeutic vaccine.

BIND develops targeted therapeutics, called Accurins™, that selectively accumulate at the site of disease to dramatically enhance effectiveness for treating cancer and other diseases. BIND’s lead candidate, BIND-014, is in human clinical trials as a targeted therapy for cancer treatment. BIND’s development pipeline also includes a range of cancer treatments and drugs for anti-inflammatory and cardiovascular conditions.

Here’s an excerpt from Dexter Johnson’s Oct. 28, 2011 posting where he muses on this development,

It seems the last decade of the US—along with parts of Europe and Asia—pouring money into nanotechnology research, which led to a few fledgling nanotechnology-based businesses, is finally paying off…for Russia.

…

In the case of these two companies, I really don’t know to what extent their initial technology was funded or supported by the US government and I wouldn’t begrudge them a bit if it was significant. Businesses need capital just to get to production and then later to expand. It hardly matters where it comes from as long as they can survive another day.

Dexter goes on to note that RUSNANO is not the only organization investing major money to bring nanotechnology-enabled products to the next stage of commercialization; this is happening internationally.

Meanwhile, Justin Varilek posts this (Nanotech Enthusiasm Peaks) for the Moscow Times on Oct. 28, 2011,

In nanotechnology, size matters. But federal funding for the high-tech field has tapered off in Russia, flattening out at $1.88 billion per year through 2015 and losing ground in the race against the United States and Germany.

If this were a horse race, nanotechnology-enabled products are in the final stretches toward the finish line (commercialization) and it’s still anyone’s horse race.

Note: I didn’t want to interrupt the flow earlier to include this link to the EmTech conference in Spain. And, I did post a review (Oct. 26, 2011) of More than Human, which did not mention Farokhzad by name, the second episode in a special three-part series being broadcast as part of the Nature of Things series on CBC.

Vive Nano and the American Chemistry Council Award and a philosphy of awards

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Vive Nano recently received a 2011 Responsible Care Performance Award from the American Chemistry Council. From the May 11, 2011 news release,

The Responsible Care Performance Award recognizes those member companies who excelled at helping ACC meet industry-wide safety and product stewardship targets. ACC Responsible Care award winners qualify based on exemplary performance, and are selected by an external expert committee. Other award winners this year include Chevron Phillips Chemical Company, ExxonMobil Chemical Company, Nova Chemicals and Honeywell.

At this point I want to make a distinction between Vive Nano’s acceptance of the award and the award’s credibility and to make a personal confession. First the confession, I don’t probe too deeply when I win award and I probably should. Now onto the issue of an award’s credibility. Something in the news release caught my attention,

“Responsible Care is the chemical industry’s commitment to sustainability, enabling us to enhance environmental protection and public health, as well as improve worker safety and plant security,” said Greg Babe, chair of ACC’s Board Committee on Responsible Care and president and CEO of Bayer Corp. [emphases mine]

One of the Bayer companies (Babe is the Chief Executive Officer of the parent corporation), Bayer CropScience has a product used as a pesticide which has been strongly implicated as a factor in the calamitous collapse of bee colonies in North America and elsewhere. From a Dec. 14, 2010 article by Ariel Schwartz for Fast Company,

Beekeepers across the U.S. are reporting record low honey crops as their bees fail to make it through the winter. One-third of American agriculture, which relies on bee pollination, is at stake. And the problem may be at least partially attributable to clothianidin, a Bayer-branded pesticide used on corn and other crops.

But as we revealed last week, the EPA knew that clothianidin could be toxic when the product came on the market in 2003. So why is it still on the market?

The bee-toxic pesticide problem can be traced back to 1994, when the first neonicotinoid pesticide (Imidacloprid) was released. Neonicotinoids like imidacloprid and clothianidin disrupt the central nervous system of pest insects, and are supposed to be relatively non-toxic to other animals. But there’s a problem: The neonicotinoids coat plant seeds, releasing insecticides permanently into the plant. The toxins are then released in pollen and nectar–where they may cause bees to become disoriented and die.

….

The EPA first brought up the link between clothianidin and bees before the pesticide’s release in February 2003. The agency originally planned to withhold registration of the pesticide because of concerns about toxicity in bees, going so far as to suggest that the product come with a warning label (PDF): “This compound is toxic to honey bees. The persistance [sic] of residues and the expression clothianidin in nectar and pollen suggest the possibility of chronic toxic risk to honey bee larvae and the eventual stability of the hive.”

But in April 2003, the EPA decided to give Bayer conditional registration. Bayer could sell the product and seed processors could freely use it, with the proviso that Bayer complete a life cycle study of clothianidin on corn by December 2004. Bayer was granted an extension until May 2005 (and permission to use canola instead of corn in its tests), but didn’t complete the study until August 2007. The EPA continued to allow the sale of clothianidin, and once the Bayer study finally came out, it was flawed.

There’s more about the bees and Bayer both in this article and in a Dec. 17, 2010 article by Schwartz for Fast Company.

Here’s an excerpt from the company’s Dec. 22, 2010 response to the concerns,

Bayer CropScience was recently made aware of an unauthorized release [emphasis mine] from within the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a document regarding the seed treatment product, clothianidin, which is sold in the United States corn market. Bayer CropScience disagrees with the claims by some environmental groups against this product and we believe these are incorrect and unwarranted with regard to honey bee concerns.

The study referenced in the document is important research, conducted by independent experts and published in a major peer-reviewed scientific journal. The long-term field study conducted in accordance with Good Laboratory Practices (GLP) by independent experts using clothianidin-treated seed showed that there were no effects on bee mortality, weight gain, worker longevity, brood development, honey yield and over-winter survival. The EPA reviewed and approved the study protocol prior to its initiation and it was peer-reviewed and published in the Journal of Economic Entomology*. Upon reviewing the results of the long-term trial, the Agency noted the study as “scientifically sound and satisfies the guideline requirements for a field toxicity test with honey bees.

According to Schwartz, the ‘unauthorized release’ was in response to a freedom of information (FOI) query.

If the product is suspected of being unsafe, why not make the data available for analysis by respected scientists who are not associated with Bayer in any way? Given the magnitude of the problem, shouldn’t the company go above and beyond? And, what does this mean for its commitment to the American Chemistry Council’s Responsible Care program?

The issue is not Vive Nano; it’s the credibility of the award. For example, the Nobel Peace Prize is funded from the proceeds of a fortune derived from the invention of dynamite, amongst other things. (I was not able to confirm that Alfred Nobel was a munitions manufacturer although I’ve heard that any number of times.) Does the source for the funding matter or has the Nobel Peace Prize accrued credibility over the years from the reputations of the award recipients?

Could Vive Nano and companies like it (assuming they are genuinely living up to the standards of the Responsible Care program) possibly give the award credibility over time?

There you have it. An award is not just an award; it is a complex interplay between the recipient, the organization giving the award, and reputation.