Tag Archives: New Zealand

Prediction about New Zealand’s $166M R&D gamble from Izon’s van der Voorn

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It’s an interesting problem and one that governments worldwide are attempting to solve in any number of ways. Funding research and development with one eye to stimulating ‘innovation’, i.e. commercialization and economic prosperity in the near future, while keeping  one eye to supporting the grand scientific  discoveries and thinking that will influence future generations but  have no immediate prospects for development is a tricky balancing act.

Having gone through a recent review of Canadian federal government funding in research and development (R&D) where there was an attempt to redress that balance here, I found  the May 28, 2012 article by Hamish Fletcher for the New Zealand Herald provided some insight into how at least one other jurisdiction is responding,

The Government said last week it would dedicate $90 million of operating funding and $76.1 million of capital funding over the next four years to create the Advanced Technology Institute (ATI).

…

A number of scientists welcomed news of the funding and New Zealand Association of Scientists’ president Shaun Hendy said it would build stronger links between science and industry.

But the chairman of Izon Science, Hans van der Voorn, said the ATI was a bad idea and would not be successful in driving innovation.

…

Van der Voorn said although Crown research institutes “do good science”, they had no track record when it came to commercialisation. Instead of putting money into the ATI, van der Voorn said the Government should look at giving more funding to research centres at universities.

New Zealand’s Minister of Science and Innovation, Steven Joyce, noted van der Voorn’s criticism was justified and replied the government was carefully designing the new centre so it was being driven by industry rather than science.

I look forward to seeing how this experiment in New Zealand works as Joyce’s and van der Voorn’s comments remind me of one of the recommendations from Canada’s recent R&D review,

Recommendation 4: Transform the institutes of the National Research Council (NRC) into a constellation of large-scale, sectoral collaboration R&D centres involving business, the university sector and the provinces while transferring public policy-related research activity to the appropriate federal agencies. (p. E12 print version, p. 26 PDF, Innovation Canada: A Call to Action)

I’ve not gotten word yet as to whether this recommendation has been adopted or whether it’s being implemented. Some days I think it’s more likely I’ll hear about what’s going on with New Zealand’s initiative before I find out about the Canadian one.

One final note, I have written about Izon Science before notably in my Sept. 26, 2011 posting regarding a race they sponsored to make measurements at the nanoscale. I believe they will be holding the race again in  Sept. 2012 and this time there may be some Canadian participation. For anyone who’s interested in Izon, from their home page,

Izon provides the world’s most comprehensive nanoparticle analysis system in a single instrument.

Virtually all particles including nanoparticles, viruses, bacteria and bioparticles (such as exosomes and liposomes) can be measured and characterised. Particle size, concentration, electrophoretic mobilty and aggregation may all be analysed. Monitoring subtle changes in the characteristics of particle sets allows interactions between particles and particles and biomolecules to be monitored in real time. Explore our technology, learn about our applications and ask how we can take your research to the next level.

YouTube space lab contest winners

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The YouTube Space Lab contest (mentioned here in an Oct. 12, 2011 posting) recently announced its two global winners (winners will get to have their research carried out on the space station). From the March 22, 2012 Space Adventures press release,

YouTube, Lenovo, and Space Adventures today announced the two global winners of YouTube Space Lab (youtube.com/spacelab), the worldwide science competition that challenged 14-18 year-olds to design a science experiment that can be performed in space.

Amr Mohamed from Egypt (17-18 year old age group) and Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma from the U.S. (14-16 year old age group) were awarded the honor at a ceremony in Washington, DC, attended by members of Space Lab partners including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).  The students will have their experiments conducted by astronauts 250 miles above Earth aboard the International Space Station (ISS) and live streamed to the world on a Lenovo ThinkPad laptop via YouTube later this year.

…

Amr Mohamed, 18, from Alexandria, Egypt, came up with an experiment to explore the question: “Can you teach an old spider new tricks?”  Amr proposed investigating the effects of microgravity on the way the zebra spider catches its prey and whether it could adapt its behavior in this environment.  “The idea of sending an experiment into space is the most exciting thing I have ever heard in my life,” said Amr. “Winning YouTube Space Lab means everything to me, to my family, and to the people of the Middle East.”

Dorothy Chen and Sara Ma, both 16, who attend Troy High School in Troy, Michigan, created an experiment that asks: “Could alien superbugs cure disease on Earth?”  Dorothy and Sara want to send bacteria to the space station to see if introducing different nutrients and compounds can block their growth in the hopes of providing new tools to fight germs on Earth.  “The idea that something that is your experiment being sent up into space and actually becoming a reality is incredible,” said Sara. “I definitely want to pursue science as a career,” added Dorothy.

The global winners were in Washington, DC, with the regional winners, from the article by Nidhi Subbaraman on the Fast Company website,

Six teens between the ages of 14 and 18 from the U.S., Spain, Egypt, India, and New Zealand were just rewarded for their stellar science projects with a Zero-G flight above Washington, D.C., courtesy of Space Adventures.

… [Four regional winners:]

  • Patrick Zeng and Derek Chan from New Zealand hoped to see if heat transfers between hot and cold fluids would occur differently in a gravity-free environment. The results of their experiment could lead to more efficient heating and cooling systems here on Earth.
  • Spanish middle schoolers Laura Calvo and María Vilas wanted to test how weightless liquids behave–their surface behavior in low gravity have valuable insights into the construction of microelectronics.
  • Emerald Bresnahan, from the U.S., was curious to see how snowflakes would form in space.
  • Indian mechanical engineer in training Sachin Kukke is studying magnetic liquids called ferro fluids, towards understanding if they can absorb heat from the engines of spaceships, pushing them further into space.

You can find the contest videos (190 of them) here at YouTube Space Lab.  To whet your appetite, here’s the video from Amr Mohamed,

Congratulations to everyone who entered the contest.

Hockey and nanotechnology; size issues in Australia

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The snippet was intriguing, I mean just how does hockey, Australia, and nanotechnology link together? Anyway, there aren’t many Canadians who could resist the urge to check it out. From the Oct. 19, 2011 article by Guy Hand for ninemsn.com,

Imagine a pro golfer being told the hole will be made smaller, or a tennis player who finds his racquet has been swapped for a table tennis bat.

That’s the scenario facing new Kookaburras goalkeeper Tristan Clemons in this week’s four-nations hockey tournament in Perth with new rules in which the goals have been made a metre wider.

Hold on, the nanotechnology is coming,

For a player who will be confronted with size issues for the remainder of this week, strangely in his day job, Clemons works with the smallest of the small.

He is involved in nanotechnology, doing a PhD in developing medical technology from the tiniest of particles that can be absorbed into the bloodstream, aimed at finding cures for diseases such as cancer.

This tournament will also be attracting teams from Pakistan, New Zealand, and India. Another hockey tournament taking place at this time features Australian and Malaysian hockey players. Oh, they’re playing field hockey. (Yes, it took me until this morning [Oct. 21, 2011] before I remembered that hockey isn’t always played on ice.)

Nano art and a solution for space junk from New Zealand

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I don’t hear much about New Zealand usually but two items popped up on the radar yesterday. There’s a nano art exhibit opening on Aug. 11, 2010 in Christchurch at Our City O-Tautahi, corner of Worcester Boulevard and Oxford Terrace. Admission is free. More from the news item on Voxy,

A new exhibition at Our City O-Tautahi merges art with the atom in an effort to explain nanotechnology.

Nanotechnology, one of the key technologies of the 21st Century, is probably the least understood despite being well on its way to becoming an integral part of our everyday lives.

Now the University of Canterbury and the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Material and Nanotechnology, in collaboration with artists and scientists, is offering a better understanding of nanotechnology through art.

Their exhibition: The Art of Nanotechnology at Our City O-Tautahi from Wednesday 11 August through to Friday 10 September presents intriguing nanotechnology images and art inspired by nanotechnology.

Researchers from around New Zealand were asked to enter the most interesting images from their work in a competition, and the best images are displayed in the exhibition. The MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, which is a government-funded Centre of Research Excellence, kindly donated $2000 in prizes.

Alongside these images are works from artists Claire Beynon (in a collaboration with biologist Sam Bowser), Nicola Gibbons, Sue Novell and Robyn Webster. These artists attempt to shed light on the incredible and tiny new worlds of nanotechnology. Each have selected one little corner of a vast subject, and examined it up close, just as a scientist uses a microscope.

This is one of a series of events being put on by the University of Canterbury this August. You can read more here.

Space junk

As for the space junk item, that comes from an article by Kit Eaton in Fast Company. 1992 was the first I heard that outer space was in fact a floating junk yard. For example, when satellites and other space equipment stop functioning, it’s easier to send a new model up then try and repair them. I imagine that in the 18 years since the situation has gotten worse. Amongst other ideas on how to clean things up, there’s this one (from the Fast Company article, The Most Beautiful Way to Clean Up Space Junk: A Giant GOLD Balloon),

Dr. Kristen Gates has one idea, and it’s beautiful and simple. It’s dubbed GOLD–the Gossamer Orbit Lowering Device–and it’s just been revealed at the “Artificial and Natural Space Debris” session of the AIAA Astrodynamics Specialists Conference.

GOLD is not much more than a football-field sized balloon (made of gossamer-thin but super-tough material, a little like solar sails) that is flown into orbit deflated in a suitcase-sized box and then fastened to a dead satellite. It’s then inflated to maximum size, and the huge bulk of the balloon massively increases the atmospheric drag that satellites experience up there in the void. This drag is due to the rare molecules of gas that hover around above the fringe of the atmosphere, and it’s the same drag that resulted in the premature deorbiting of the famous Skylab satellite in the 1970s, when the mechanics of orbital drag weren’t as well understood. The drag acts to slow a satellite in its orbital path, and then simple orbital mechanics means the satellite descends into the atmosphere where the denser air heats it to the point it burns up.

I guess gold is my other theme for this post.