Tag Archives: NINT

Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology gets first Hitachi H-95000 microscope outside of Japan

Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) has just opened a facility (which was mentioned as a future project in my July 20, 2009 posting) with three new Hitachi microscopes in a $15M funding partnership. From the July 13, 2011 article by Dave Cooper for the Edmonton Journal,

The Hitachi Electron Microscopy Products Centre [HEMiC; Note: This was formerly called the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Products Development Centre] at NINT opened Tuesday, a $15-million partnership between the federal and provincial governments and Hitachi, that marks the entry of Edmonton as the North American microscope leader.

…

One of the three new machines -the H-9500 environmental transmission electron microscope -is so new it is only the second in the world after one at a Toyota research centre in Japan.

“This technology suite (of three new microscopes) has enabled Alberta and Canada to establish a centre that will be the leading edge of nanotechnology research and development for many years to come,” Hidehito Obayashi, chairman of Hitachi High Technologies, said Tuesday.

I found some more information about the H-9500 microscope in this July 13, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

The Hitachi H-9500 Environmental transmission electron microscope (ETEM) can study in-situ chemical reactions of samples in liquids and gases. It will offer a very low background pressure (in the 10-8 torr region) ensuring low sample contamination rate and low effect of background gases on the in-situ experiment. Its capabilities include the possibility to heat the sample to temperatures exceeding 1500° C while exposed to various gases or study liquid samples at temperatures exceeding 300° C. The analytical capabilities of the instrument include electron energy loss spectroscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry for chemical analysis. This instrument offers standard TEM imaging and diffraction capabilities allowing the investigation of sample structure and morphology.

As for the HEMiC facility (more from the news item on Nanowerk),

HEMiC will have two streams of activity: the provision of a wide range of electron microscopy services to industrial and academic clients; and a research collaboration between NINT and Hitachi researchers that will develop new electron microscope tools and techniques. The Centre will also be a Hitachi reference site, allowing Hitachi to showcase its latest microscopes, giving potential clients from North America an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with new instruments and techniques before buying.

I have mused on this before but I really do wonder what happens when there’s a scheduling conflict between research interests and commercial interests. In other words, what happens when you need to use the microscope for research purposes at the same time the sales people want to show it to potential customers? What is the protocol and who decides?

Arxis, healing with liquid bone

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I spotted this Dec. 8, 2010 news item about liquid bone on the Azonano website,

Here’s the vision: an elderly woman comes into the emergency room after a fall. She has broken her hip. The orthopaedic surgeon doesn’t come with metal plates or screws or shiny titanium ball joints.

Instead, she pulls out a syringe filled with a new kind of liquid that will solidify in seconds and injects into the break. Over time, new bone tissue will take its place, encouraged by natural growth factors embedded in the synthetic molecules of the material.

Although still early in its development, the liquid is real. In the Brown engineering lab of professor Thomas Webster it’s called TBL, for the novel DNA-like “twin-base linker” molecules that give it seemingly ideal properties. The biotech company Audax Medical Inc., based in Littleton, Mass., announced on Dec. 7 an exclusive license of the technology from Brown. It brands the technology as Arxis and sees similar potential for repairing broken vertebrae.

In chasing down more information about this particular liquid bone technology, I went to Brown University’s website to find an article by David Orenstein,

In some of his work, Webster employs nanotechnology to try to bridge metals to bone better than traditional bone cement. But TBL is an entirely new material, co-developed with longtime colleague and chemist Hicham Fenniri at the University of Alberta. [emphasis mine] Fenniri synthesized the molecules, while Webster’s research has focused on ensuring that TBL becomes viable material for medical use.

The molecules are artificial, but made from elements that are no strangers to the body: carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. At room temperature their aggregate form is a liquid, but the material they form solidifies at body temperature. The molecules look like nanoscale tubes (billionths of a meter wide), and when they come together, it is in a spiraling ladder-shaped arrangement reminiscent of DNA or collagen. That natural structure makes it easy to integrate with bone tissue.

Yes, there is a University of Alberta connection! In fact, Fenniri (his university webpage is here) also works for Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) in the Supramolecular Nanoscale Assembly group (webpage here). Why isn’t NINT making some sort of an announcement about this? (I digress.)

Back to the bone. You can see a video demonstration of the liquid bone by visiting the Orenstein article on the Brown University website. The following image is also from the Orenstein article,

Buttressing bones Twin-based linker molecules, top left, self-assemble into six-molecule rings. Stacked in a tube shape, the rings of molecules not only provide a new scaffold for bone growth, but can also store growth factors and helpful drugs inside. Credit: Websterlab/Brown University

While this is a promising development, there are yet to be any clinical trials,

The molecules are artificial, but made from elements that are no strangers to the body: carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. At room temperature their aggregate form is a liquid, but the material they form solidifies at body temperature. The molecules look like nanoscale tubes (billionths of a meter wide), and when they come together, it is in a spiraling ladder-shaped arrangement reminiscent of DNA or collagen. That natural structure makes it easy to integrate with bone tissue.

In the space within the nanotubes, the team, which includes graduate student Linlin Sun, has managed to stuff in various drugs including antibiotics, anti-inflammatory agents, and bone growth factors, which the tubes release over the course of months. Even better, different recipes of TBL, or Arxis, can be chemically tuned to become as hard as bone or as soft as cartilage, and can solidify in seconds or minutes, as needed. Once it is injected, nothing else is needed.

“We really like the fact that it doesn’t need anything other than temperature to solidify,” Webster said. Other compounds that people have developed require exposure to ultraviolet light and cannot therefore be injected through a tiny syringe hole. They require larger openings to be created.

For all of TBL’s apparent benefits, they have only been demonstrated in cow bone fragments in incubators on the lab bench top, Webster said. TBL still needs to be proven in vivo and, ultimately, in human trials.

I gather it will be years before we can expect to experience the scenario (breaking a hip and being injected with liquid bone) that opened this posting.

Thoughts on nanotechnology and national science convos in Canada

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I was asked two weeks ago (via twitter in late October by @ Connexscience) this question, “What do you think is there value in bringing Nano types together with others?” in the context of my Oct. 28,2010 posting about the newly announced public engagement effort, Connex Science (CS). CS is soliciting comments and participation from the greater Canadian ‘science’ community to a create a national online science community (working title: HUB).

I use the word ‘greater’ to indicate that this intended to engage not just working scientists but students of all stripes, science teachers, engineers, citizen scientists, science communications personnel, science journalists, science museums, artists whose work (in one fashion or another) is oriented to or based in science, science writers (fiction and non fiction), science librarians, etc.

Getting back to the question about nano types and others, I answered, “Yes, there is value.” Then, I started thinking about it. The question itself assumes a nano community of sorts and that’s an interesting proposition.

First off, Canada unlike the US hasn’t created a nanotechnology community as such. The US National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) has acted as a hub or organizing principle in a way that Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) has not. From the NNI’s About page,

The National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) is the program established in fiscal year 2001 to coordinate Federal nanotechnology research and development.

The NNI provides a vision of the long-term opportunities and benefits of nanotechnology. By serving as a central locus for communication, cooperation, and collaboration for all Federal agencies that wish to participate, the NNI brings together the expertise needed to guide and support the advancement of this broad and complex field.

The NNI creates a framework for a comprehensive nanotechnology R&D program by establishing shared goals, priorities, and strategies, and it provides avenues for each individual agency to leverage the resources of all participating agencies.

Today the NNI consists of the individual and cooperative nanotechnology-related activities of 25 Federal agencies with a range of research and regulatory roles and responsibilities. Thirteen of the participating agencies have R&D budgets that relate to nanotechnology, with the reported NNI budget representing the collective sum of these. The NNI as a program does not fund research; however, it informs and influences the Federal budget and planning processes through its member agencies.

The enterprise here in Canada has been much more fragmented despite NINT’s existence.From NINT’s About page,

The National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) is an integrated, multi-disciplinary institution involving researchers in physics, chemistry, engineering, biology, informatics, pharmacy and medicine. Established in 2001, it is operated as a partnership between the National Research Council and the University of Alberta, and is jointly funded by the Government of Canada, the Government of Alberta and the university.

NINT researchers are focused on the revolutionary work being done at the nano-scale, the world of individual atoms or molecules. The main focus of nanotechnology research is the integration of nano-scale devices and materials into complex nanosystems that are connected to the outside world. The long-term objective is to discover ‘design rules’ for nanotechnology, and develop platforms for building nanosystems and materials that can be constructed and programmed for a particular application.

NINT’s Business Development Office will assist Edmonton-based nanotechnology firms. The goal is to develop a cluster of nanotechnology companies using and producing nanotech. NINT will be the nexus of this cluster by fostering collaboration, providing access to the facility and researcher expertise, and assisting companies with commercialization, licensing and other business activities.

Located in Edmonton, Alberta on the University of Alberta campus, NINT’s 20,000 square-metre building is one of the world’s most technologically advanced research facilities and houses the quietest laboratory space in Canada.

NINT is one of many institutes associated with the National Research Council as opposed to the NNI which sits by itself. Rob Annan in his April 7, 2010 posting at ‘Don’t leave Canada behind’ offers a history and a lively analysis of the organization at large. Here’s an excerpt,

Last week, the Government announced John McDougall’s appointment as the new President of the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada. His appointment provides an opportunity to point something out:

The NRC is a mess.

And the mess of the NRC neatly encapsulates much that’s wrong with Canadian science policy. No direction, no cohesion, multiple conflicting purposes.

What is the NRC?

The NRC was founded more than 90 years ago to advise the government on matters related to science and technology. It evolved into a federal research laboratory with the construction of the Sussex Dr. [Drive] labs in the 1930s, and was the focus of Canada’s research efforts during WWII. Post-war, the NRC expanded and was a major source of Canadian research success, with notable achievements like the invention of the pacemaker, development of Canola and the crash position indicator.

The last time (about 2 years ago) I checked, the NINT (located in Edmonton) was funded 50% federally through the NRC and 50% by the province of Alberta. I’ve tried a number of times to get more information about NINT (I chased Martha Piper, one of the board members, for 2 years and I chased Nils Petersen, director general, for about 4 months and was never able to get a response to my questions about NINT). I mention this because the information I’ve received has come from the province of Alberta naturally, this makes it very Alberta-centric). That situation has changed in the last few months and there’s been slightly more information of general interest (a few twitter messages and one news release, this represents all of the public communication in 2010 so far) coming from NINT.

As far as I can tell, national communication efforts are close to nonexistent and, if there’s no communication, there’s no community. Pushing this further, f you don’t have a community, then you can’t mix with other communities.

There are meetings and conferences but they attract nanotechnology experts who focus on specific areas (such as biocomposites) and any networks that arise are very loose and informal—the kind of thing that tends to die quickly due to lack of attention.

There are a few provincial networks, notably in Alberta, Ontario, and Québec. They usually include businesses, academics (the majority membership), and venture capitalists and are heavily focussed on commercialization.

Amongst academic scientists, there are nanoscientists (sometimes they describe themselves as working in nanotechnology) in Canada but they are often part of a longer-standing academic department, e.g. physics or chemistry or engineering.

Funding for nanotechnology (other than NINT’s) is a grab bag of monies from different ministries and the tricouncil funding agencies (the Natural Sciences and Engineering Council, the Canadian Institutes of Health, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council). I received a copy(from MP Peter Julian’s office) of the government’s response to his request for information about federal funding for nanotechnology. It’s some 80 pages of data organized in some fashion that I don’t entirely fathom.

This scattered approach to the nanotechnology enterprise may or may not be a good strategy. It’s possible that ‘nanoscience’ or ‘nanotechnology’ will fade into physics or chemistry or engineering as a specialization within the discipline rather than emerging as a distinct specialty. I’ve already seen some discussion along those lines as per this October 3, 2010 entry on Richard Jones’s Soft Machines blog,

Last week I spent a couple of days in Darmstadt, at the second meeting of the Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET). This is a relatively informal group of scholars in the field of Science and Technology Studies from Europe, the USA and some other countries like Brazil and India, coming together from disciplines like philosophy, political science, law, innovation studies and sociology.

Arie Rip (president of the society, and to many the doyen of European science and technology studies) kicked things off with the assertion that nanotechnology is, above all, a socio-political project, and the warning that this object of study was in the process of disappearing (a theme that recurred throughout the conference). [emphasis mine] Not to be worried by this prospect, Arie observed that their society could keep its acronym and rename itself the Society for the Study of Newly Emerging Technologies.

Getting back to the question about ‘nano types getting together with other science types’, for me, has a subtext: how do we identify and reach out to the various science communities in Canada and what value would they see in connecting with each other in a national conversation? I’m going to add another question here, can we get them to use social media publicly? [Note the emphasis] As far as I can tell there is only a very small Canadian science community in the public blogosphere (at the most, there are about one dozen blogs) or on Twitter (am not sure about other social media).

The social media issue is an interesting one. Here’s an excerpt from an article about government agencies (where much science is practiced) and social media by Stephanie Levitz in the Winnipeg Free Press,

For bureaucrats used to filling out forms in triplicate and waiting days for approval to open their mouths, freedom in the form of 140 characters was a novelty.

But then the Clerk of the Privy Council started tweeting.

Since Wayne Wouters began using the social messaging site, his online presence has been taken as a call to thumbs by the public service.

Tweeted one user: “When the Clerk is tweeting, it shows the rest of (the Government of Canada) that it’s ok for the rest of us.”

Well, not quite.

As government departments rush to embrace social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to connect with the public, there are different rules for individual public servants.

Interestingly given the concerns about their scientists being muzzled (my Sept. 16 2010 posting), Natural Resources Canada, amongst federal agencies, is considered a model for using social media,

Many departments are taking their lead from Natural Resources Canada.

The department is widely held up as the gold standard for how, and why, public servants need access to the web.

They started with a wiki, an online site that allows people to post and edit content, with the goal of getting 101 users over 101 days as a test of whether people were interested in using the technology.

At the end of their 101 days, they had 270 users and several hundred pages of content, said Peter Cowan, director of enterprise information management for Natural Resources.

Now they have internal blogs and an internal video channel, all of which helped break down barriers between different sectors of the department. [emphasis mine]

Yes, it’s all internal communication for Natural Resources Canada. So the social media are being embraced from within which begs the question: can scientists and other staff from Natural Resources Canada and other departments, such as Environment Canada and Health Canada said to have muzzles, participate in a public national science convo?

All of that said, I do see signs of life with scientists organizing a science policy conference for themselves two years in a row; interest in citizen scientists; and a Canadian science blogosphere which has recently attracted some new members. I am hopeful this HUB idea will enrich these efforts and allow them to develop deep roots.

As for my speculations about the Canadian nanotechnology scene, if your mileage varies about that or anything else I’ve got here and you feel inclined to comment, please do.

Canada and synthetic biology in the wake of the first ‘synthetic’ bacteria

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Margaret Munro’s excellent article on Craig Venter’s recently published synthetic biology achievement provides some Canadian perspective on the field as a whole. Titled as Synthetic genome inspires both awe and apprehension in the Vancouver Sun’s (it was titled elsewise in other CanWest publications), May 21, 2010 edition, the article offers,

“It is a remarkable technological feat,” said University of Toronto bioengineer Elizabeth Edwards.

“It’s paradigm-shifting,” said University of Calgary bioethicist and biochemist Gregor Wolbring, adding the fast-moving field of synthetic biology is ushering in “cyber” cells and life.

It could be as “transformative” as the computer revolution, said Andrew Hessel, of the Pink Army Cooperative, an Albertabased initiative promoting doit-yourself bioengineering.

Hessel said Venter deserves the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in creating “a new branch on the evolutionary tree” — one where humans shape and control new species.

Munro also provides a strongly cautionary position from Pat Roy Mooney of the ETC Group (a civil society or, as I sometimes say, activist group) as well as a good explanation for what all the excitement is about.

Wolbring (quoted in Munro’s article) has long commented on issues around nanotechnology, human enhancement, synthetic biology and more. His blog is here and his Twitter feed is here.

Andrew Hessel’s Pink Army Cooperative can be found here. If you go, you will find that the organization’s aim is,

A new approach to developing breast cancer treatments. Pink Army is a community-driven, member owned Cooperative operating by open source principles. Using synthetic biology and virotherapy to bring individualized treatments tailored to each patient’s DNA and cancer, faster and cheaper than ever before.

The ETC Group has written a news release on this latest synthetic biology event,

As Craig Venter announces lab-made life, ETC Group calls for Global Moratorium on Synthetic Biology.

In a paper published today in the journal Science, the J. Craig Venter Institute and Synthetic Genomics Inc announced the laboratory creation of the world’s first self-reproducing organism whose entire genome was built from scratch by a machine.(1) The construction of this synthetic organism, anticipated and dubbed “Synthia” by the ETC Group three years ago, will stir a firestorm of controversy over the ethics of building artificial life and the implications of the largely unknown field of synthetic biology.

As for the state of synthetic biology research in Canada, that might be available in an international agency’s publication. As far as I’m aware, there is no national research agency although I did (recently) find this mention on the National Institute of Nanotechnology’s Nano Life Sciences page,

The Nano Life Sciences researchers investigate the fields of synthetic biology, computational biology, protein structure, intermolecular membrane dynamics and microfluidics devices for biological analysis. [emphasis mine]

I will continue digging and come back to this topic (synthetic biology in Canada) as I find out more.

Synbio (Synthetic Biology) in society a May 12, 2010 panel discussion hosted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies

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The proper title for this event, hosted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) is: Synbio in Society: Toward New Forms of Collaboration? which will be webcast live (I hope they’re able to pull that off this time) this coming Wednesday, May 12, 2010. The time is listed as 12:30 pm ET (9:30 am PT) but a light lunch (for attendees at the Washington, DC live event) is also mentioned and the folks at PEN haven’t distinguished (as per their usual practice) the time that the panel starts.

From the news release,

One response to society’s concerns about synthetic biology has been to institutionalize the involvement of social scientists in the field. There have been a series of initiatives in which ethics and biosafety approaches have been purposely incorporated into synthetic biology research and development. The collaborative Human Practices model within the NSF-funded SynBERC project was the first initiative in which social scientists were explicitly integrated into a synthetic biology research program. But these new collaborations have also flourished in the UK where four research councils have funded seven scientific networks in synthetic biology that require consideration of ethical, legal and social issues. Another example is the US-UK Synthetic Aesthetics Project, which brings together synthetic biologists, social scientists, designers and artists to explore collaborations between synthetic biology and the creative professions.

Similarly, the European Commission’s Seventh Framework Programme funds projects like Synth-ethics, which “aims at discerning relevant ethical issues in close collaboration with the synthetic biology community.” (http://synthethics.eu/) and SYBHEL, which aims to examine ethical legal and social aspects of SynBio as it applies to health care (http://sybhel.org/).

On May 12, 2010, the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars will present a panel discussion to explore new forms of collaboration that have emerged between scientists and social scientists working on synthetic biology. A distinguished group of speakers will explore the many ways in which the new science of synthetic biology–far from standing apart from the rest of the academic disciplines–is in constant conversation with the social sciences and the arts.

While I’m not a big fan of the whole synthetic biology movement, I do find this collaboration between sciences/social sciences/arts to be quite intriguing.

You can read more about the event or click on to the live streaming webcast on Weds. or RSVP to attend the actual event here.

Quite by chance I found out that Canada’s National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) includes synthetic biology in its programme focus. From the Nano Life Sciences at NINT page,

The Nano Life Sciences researchers investigate the fields of synthetic biology, computational biology, protein structure, intermolecular membrane dynamics and microfluidics devices for biological analysis.

* Synthetic biology is a young field that uses genetic engineering and DNA synthesis to develop new proteins and genetic circuits. Proteins are the nanoscale machinery of life while genetic circuits represent computational “logic” capabilities in cells. Research in this field could lead to a “toolkit” for “re-programming” bacteria to produce useful functions.

I haven’t been able to find any more details about the Canadian synbio endeavour on the NINT website.

NANO Magazine’s April 2010 issue country focus: Canada

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I’m a little late to the party but the month isn’t over yet so, today I’m going to focus on Nano Magazine‘s April 2010 issue or more specifically their article about Canada and it’s nanotechnology scene. The magazine (available both in print and online) has selected Canada for its country focus this issue. From the April 2010, issue no. 17 editorial,

The featured country in this issue is Canada, notable for its well funded facilities and research that is aggressively focused on industrial applications. Although having no unifying national nanotechnology initiative, there are many extremely well-funded organisations with world class facilities that are undertaking important nano-related research. Ten of these centres are highlighted, along with a new network that will research into innovative plastics and manufacturing processes, and added value can be gained in this field – with the economic future benefit for Canada firmly in mind!

It’s always an eye-opening experience to see yourself as others see you. I had no idea Canadian research was “aggressively focused on industrial applications.” My view as a Canadian who can only see it from the inside reveals a scattered landscape with a few pockets of concentrated effort. It’s very difficult to obtain a national perspective as communication from the various pockets is occasional, hard to understand and/or interpret at times, and not easily accessible (some of these Canadian nanotechnology groups (in government agencies, research facilities, civil society groups, etc.) seem downright secretive.

As for the ‘aggressive focus on industrial applications’ by Canadians, I found it interesting and an observation I could not have made for two reasons. The first I’ve already noted (difficulty of obtaining the appropriate perspective from the inside) and, secondly, it seems to me that the pursuit of industrial applications is a global obsession and not confined to the field of nanotechnology, as well, I’m not able to establish a basepoint for comparison so the comment was quite a revelation. Still, it should be noted that Nano Magazine itself seems to have a very strong bias towards commercialization and business interests.

The editorial comment about “not have a unifying national nanotechnology initiative” I can heartily second, although the phrase brings the US National Nanotechnology Initiative strongly to mind where I think a plan (any kind of plan) would do just as well.

The article written by Fraser Shand and titled Innovation finds new energy in Western Canada provides a bit of word play that only a Canadian or someone who knows the province of Alberta, which has substantive oil reserves albeit in the sands, would be able to appreciate. Kudos to whoever came up with the title. Very well done!

I have to admit to being a bit puzzled here as I’m not sure if Shand’s article is the sole article about the Canadian nanotechnology scene (it profiles only the province of Alberta) or if there are other articles profiling pockets of nanotechnology research present, largely in Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia with smaller pockets in other provinces. I apologize for giving short shrift to six provinces but, as I’ve noted, information is difficult to come by and most of the information I can obtain is from the four provinces mentioned.

From the article,

Steeped in a pioneering spirit and enriched by ingenuity, one of the most exciting, modern day outposts on the nanotechnology frontier is located on the prairies of Western Canada. The province of Alberta is home to some of Canada’s most significant nanotechnology assets and has quickly become a world-destination for nanotechnology research, product development and commercialization.

While Alberta is rooted in the traditional resource sectors of energy, agriculture and forestry, it is dedicated to innovation. The Government of Alberta launched its nanotechnology strategy in 2007, committing $130 million to growth and development over five years. It also created a dedicated team.

Shand goes on to note Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT), located in Edmonton, Alberta’s capital city, and its role in attracting world class researchers (see News Flash below). Other than the brief mention of a federal institution, the focus remains unrelentingly on Alberta and this is surprising since the title misled me into believing that the article would concern itself with Western Canada, which arguably includes the prairie provinces (Manitoba and Saskatchewan) and British Columbia.

Meanwhile, the editorial led me to believe that I would find a national perspective with mention of 10 research centres somewhere in the April 2010 issue. If they are hiding part of the issue, I wish they’d note that somewhere easily visible (front page?) on their website and clarify the situation.

If this is the magazine’s full profile of the Canadian nanotechnology scene, they’ve either come to the conclusion that the only worthwhile work is being done in Alberta (I’m making an inference) or they found the process of gathering information about the other nanotechnology research pockets so onerous that they simply ignored them in favour of pulling a coherent article together.

I have been viewing the site on a regular basis since I heard about the April 2010 issue and this is the only time I’ve seen an article about Canada made available. They seem to have a policy of rotating the articles they make available for free access.

One other thing, a Nanotechnology Asset Map of Alberta is going to be fully accessible sometime in May 2010. I gather some of the folks from the now defunct, Nanotech BC organization advised the folks at nanoAlberta on developing the tool after the successful BC Nanotechnology Asset Map was printed in 2008 (?). I’m pleased to see the Alberta map is online which will make updating a much easier task and it gives a very handy visual representation that is difficult to achieve with print. You can see Alberta’s beta version at nanoAlberta. Scroll down and look to the left of the screen and at the sidebar for a link to the asset map.

I have to give props to the people in the province of Alberta who have supported nanotechnology research and commercialization efforts tirelessly. They enticed the federal government into building NINT in Edmonton by offering to pay a substantive percentage of the costs and have since created several centres for commercialization and additional research as noted in Shand’s article. Bravo!

News Flash: I just (in the last five minutes, i.e., 11:05 am PT) received this notice about the University of Alberta and nanotechnology. From the Eureka Alert notice,

A University of Alberta-led research team has taken a major step forward in understanding how T cells are activated in the course of an immune response by combining nanotechnology and cell biology. T cells are the all important trigger that starts the human body’s response to infection.

Christopher Cairo and his team are studying how one critical trigger for the body’s T cell response is switched on. Cairo looked at the molecule known as CD45 and its function in T cells. The activation of CD45 is part of a chain of events that allows the body to produce T cells that target an infection and, just as importantly, shut down overactive T cells that could lead to damage.

Cairo and crew are working on a national/international team that includes: “mathematician Dan Coombs (University of British Columbia), biochemist Jon Morrow (Yale University Medical School) and biophysicist David Golan (Harvard Medical School).” Their paper is being published in the April issue of the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Now back to my regular programming: I should also mention Nano Québec which I believe was the first provincial organization founded in Canada, circa 2005, to support nanotechnology research and commercialization efforts. French language site / English language site

NaNO Ontario has recently organized itself as the Nanotechnology Network of Ontario.

Unfortunately, Nanotech BC no longer exists.

If you know of any other provincial nanotechnology organizations, please do let me know.

UK’s scientific century; les nanotechnologies and la perception publique; some Australian titanium dioxide research; nanotoxicology and fullerenes*

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The scientific century: securing our future prosperity is a report that was launched yesterday, March 9,2010, by the Royal Society (which is currently celebrating its 350th anniversary). I haven’t read it yet but Andrew Maynard at the 2020 Science blog provides a preliminary overview of the recommendations. From the Society’s report website page,

It distils two urgent messages. The first is the need to place science and innovation at the heart of the UK’s long-term strategy for economic growth. The second is the fierce competitive challenge we face from countries which are investing at a scale and speed that we may struggle to match.

You can download a copy of the full 70 odd page report here.

Not having read it, I can’t comment but I can look wistfully from an environment (Canada) where scientists appear to be largely indifferent to the notion of public outreach/education/engagement, developing policy statements and/or developing any kind of national vision for science.

While on their website, I noticed that the Royal Society is celebrating its 350th anniversary with a project (amongst many others) called Fulcrum/Writing a World, poetry in the London underground. Go here if you want to see the poems and accompanying commentaries by scientists responding to the work.

In January 2010, I mentioned there was a series of nanotechnology public debates in France which had been disrupted. I later (February 2010) noted a followup announcement of a report being published as an outcome for the debates and a call for more debates. Since the French are the only ones to get this agitated about nanotechnology, I’ve been curious as to why this is so. Thankfully, the folks at Je vote pour la science have a podcast interview (French language) with two Québec academics providing commentary as to possible reasons.

You can go here to get the podcasts or if your French isn’t up to it and you’re willing to deal with my wonky French skills, here’s my brief summary in English.

Two Québec academics, Sébastien Richard, PhD student at the Université de Montréal, and Celine Lafontaine, professor of sociology specializing in the cultural, social and symbolic aspects of technoscience at the Université de Montréal were interviewed. They noted that the French have a tradition of militancy and highly critical analysis. In addition, as far as the militant groups were concerned these debates/public engagement exercises were being held after the fact since nanotechnology products are already becoming prevalent. Also, Grenoble has become one of the biggest centres for nanotechnology work in Europe. All of this without any discussion beforehand. Finally, the debates were focused on smaller, more technical concerns rather than larger global issues such as, What are the effects on the environment?

When the academics were asked why this situation (concern/anger about nanotechnology) has not occurred in Québec, or Canada for that matter, I got confused. As far as I can tell, they felt that there’s just not enough nanotechnology or awareness of nanotechnology to spark any discussion. They did make mention of the ETC Group as one of the few activist (civil society) groups in Canada.

Lafontaine has a book, Nanotechnologies et Société, being published by Éditions Boréal in late March 2010 and Richard is one of her collaborators on the book.

A few comments I want to add: Canada has a National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) located in Edmonton, AB, and funded by the National Research Council (NRC) and the Province of Alberta. NINT is either the only or one of the very few such institutes which are considered a partnership by the NRC and the province where it is located. By contrast, Québec is the only province which supports a nanotechnology sector with specific and substantive money and provincial policies. (You can get more information at the NanoQuébec website.)

I have commented on titanium dioxide and its use in sunscreens previously (you can start here and follow subsequent links if you’re curious). Last year the Environmental Working Group (EWG, website here) came out with a report where they had analyzed all of the research on titanium dioxide (within certain parameters) and reluctantly come to the conclusion that its use in sunscreens was safe relative to the research accomplished to that time. Since then there have been some other studies which suggest there may be problems. These things are hard to assess if you don’t understand the parameters within which the research work was done. It takes a long time with lots of different ways of approaching the question before you can state confidently that something is safe or not and, in some cases, you’ll never be able to. According to Michael Berger (in an article on Nanowerk about nanotoxicology and carbon nanotubes [correction Mar.11.10: this should read as ‘nanotoxicology and fullerenes’]),

The cynics argue that it is impossible to fully explore the toxicological impact of every existing and future nanomaterial with its many millions of variants, so why bother with a few half-hearted and underfunded research projects. Rather, let’s wait until nanotechnology has its asbestos moment and some people drop dead – then we have something concrete to look into.

People who are taking a more thoughtful approach to the complexities of nanotoxicological research agree that most likely we never will have full scientific certainty about the environmental and health impact of nanomaterials. Today we don’t even know what the impact of most chemicals is, and that includes products we have been using for many years.

This has been a long of saying is that an Australian researcher, Dr. Amanda Barnard, has published a study in Nature Nano where she finds that certain sizes of titanium dioxide are more toxic than others. From the news item on Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC),

Dr Barnard found that the size and concentrations of nanoparticles that gave the best transparency and sun protection also gave the highest potential for production of free radicals.

“Where we have the highest sun-protection factor – and it’s pretty – it [the sunscreen] is also toxic, potentially,” she said.

“Ultimately we have to trade off. We can’t have our cake and eat it too.”

Dr Barnard found that only particles less than 13 nanometres in size would minimise free radical production while maximising transparency and sun protection.

But, she cautions against concluding that all particles under 13 nanometres in size would be free of potential risk.

“We only looked at free radical production and tiny particles like that could still be toxic for other reasons that still need to be tested,” she said.

She says further studies on the environmental impacts of nanoparticles in sunscreens are also required.

“All of these things wash off, when we’re swimming, and we wash them off and flush them down the sink,” Barnard says.

Presumably Barnard is concerned about water sources and about aquatic life and, as one should, calls for more research.

Tomorrow: I’ll point you to another UK report, this one about risk and trust.

Preston Manning Interview (part 1 of 2) and PEN’s nanotechnology product inventory

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After my informal series on innovation in Canada (July 13 – 15, 2009), I contacted Mr. Preston Manning as I mentioned his speech at Science Day in Canada (Ottawa) on May 27, 2009 in the context of the series and asked him some questions which he has kindly answered. For the introduction, I have taken the liberty of copying some biographical information about Mr. Manning from his website, the Manning Centre for Building Democracy,

Mr. Manning served as a Member of the Canadian Parliament from 1993 to 2001. He founded two new political parties – the Reform Party of Canada and the Canadian Reform Conservative Alliance – both of which became the official Opposition in the Canadian Parliament. Mr. Manning served as Leader of the Opposition from 1997 to 2000 and was also his party’s critic for Science and Technology. In 2007 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.

Since retirement from Parliament in 2002, Mr. Manning has released a book entitled Think Big (published by McClelland & Stewart) describing his use of the tools and institutions of democracy to change Canada’s national agenda. He has also served as a Senior Fellow of the Canada West Foundation and as a Distinguished Visitor at the University of Calgary and University of Toronto. He is a member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and is an Institute Certified Corporate Director.

He is also according to the National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) a member of their board.

In your May 27, 2009 speech you mentioned that Canada’s beginnings are based in science and technology as per the establishment of the Geological Survey of Canada. This contrasts with the line of thought which suggests that Canadians have always been “drawers of water and hewers of wood” as per Harold Adams Innis’ staples theory. Can you reconcile these two views or do you consider them to be competing views? And why do you hold this opinion?

It’s true that Canada, particularly in the beginning, had a resource-based economy (Innis’ theory). But it is also true that Canada made a very early commitment to science and technology through establishing the Geological Survey of Canada. The Survey identified the water, wood, and other natural resources that Innis’ theory focuses on.

There are two more questions and answers from this interview which will be posted tomorrow. Meanwhile, I’ve been getting information from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) about various upcoming events (more about those tomorrow) and about their product inventory. From the news release about the product inventory,

Over 1,000 nanotechnology-enabled products have been made available to consumers around the world, according to the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN). The most recent update to the group’s three-and-a-half-year-old inventory reflects the increasing use of the tiny particles in everything from conventional products like non-stick cookware and lighter, stronger tennis racquets, to more unique items such as wearable sensors that monitor posture.
“The use of nanotechnology in consumer products continues to grow rapidly,” says PEN Director David Rejeski. “When we launched the inventory in March 2006 we only had 212 products. If the introduction of new products continues at the present rate, the number of products listed in the inventory will reach close to 1,600 within the next two years. This will provide significant oversight challenges for agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and Consumer Product Safety Commission, which often lack any mechanisms to identify nanotech products before they enter the marketplace.”
Health and fitness items continue to dominate the PEN inventory, representing 60 percent of products listed. More products are based on nanoscale silver—used for its antimicrobial properties—than any other nanomaterial; 259 products (26 percent of the inventory) use silver nanoparticles. The updated inventory represents products from over 24 countries, including the US, China, Canada, and Germany. This update also identifies products that were previously available, but for which there is no current information.

You can view the rest of the news release here and you can view the inventory here. It’s interesting to see that so many(60%) products have silver nanoparticles which have been a matter of great concern regarding their impact on humans and other species as they enter the water supply. One note, the inventory includes products that may no longer be on the market.

One last bit before I sign off for today, I went to a luncheon welcoming a new dean (Dr. Cheryl Geisler) for a new faculty, the Faculty of Communication, Art, and Technology, at Simon Fraser University (SFU in Vancouver, Canada). They’ve taken a disparate group of departments and schools housed in different faculties to create this new faculty and Geisler is the founding or inaugural dean.

The audience was a mix of SFU brass (academic, administrative, and board of governors types) with business interests (Boeing, IBM, and the local business media guy, Peter Ladner) and the arts community (Max Wyman, Christopher Gaze, Terry Hunter, and Dalannah Gail Bowen) along with many others whom I did not recognize.

In her speech, Geisler did a good job of bringing together the disparate pieces of her portfolio and emphasizing her interest and belief in community both internally and externally to the university. She lost focus a few times, notably towards the end of the speech portion and during the ‘town hall’ portion of her presentation. I think maintaining focus is going to be one her biggest challenges since in addition to the disparate groups being united in the new faculty (being called FCAT for short) her portfolio is spread on multiple campuses (Burnaby mountain, Harbour Centre, Surrey, and the new Woodward’s building in the downtown eastside). I hope to have more from Geisler soon as she has indicated she’ll give me an interview for this blog.

Alberta welcomes a new nanotechnology product and research centre plus some news on a kissing phone

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The new facility will be called the Hitachi Electron Microscopy Products Development Centre (HEMiC) at Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) at the University of Alberta, Edmonton. From the media release (on Azonano),

“Alberta’s strength in nanotechnologies, and the province’s coordinated strategy for nanotechnology made our decision to seek a partnership here easy,” said John Cole, President of Hitachi High-Technologies Canada, Inc. “This initiative engages Hitachi with Alberta’s nanotechnology community at the leading edge of research while contributing to commercial opportunities.”

…

The Centre will house three new electron microscopes valued at $7 million, including the first-ever Hitachi environmental transmission electron microscope Model H-9500 in operation outside of Japan.

There are many quotes in the media release, surprisingly, none from Dr. Nils Petersen, NINT’s Director General.

Fast Company is featuring an article by Kit Eaton about phones that won’t require buttons for control (more touch screen-type technology but introducing a new level of innovation). As it turns out, these phones will be coming from Nokia. Kissing the phone as a gesture that you want to contact a loved is just one of the ideas being explored. More here including a Nokia video about the project. The product designers are looking at how people gesture and, depending on your culture, the meaning behind gestures can vary greatly as the Nokia designer notes in the video. Anyway, this type of project relates to my interest in multimodal discourse and my suspicion that we won’t be writing (or for the matter reading) as much as we do now.

Rob Annan over at Don’t leave Canada behind has picked up on my series of last week’s about innovation in Canada, in his posting Canada not simply hewers and drawers.

Finland, nanotechnology and innovation

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I wasn’t planning it but this has turned into a series about Finland, innovation, and the Canadian approach to innovation. Today should be the final installment (ooops, it changed again) with this one focusing on nanotechnology.

In February 2009, a study, prepared for Tekes, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation, showed that nanotechnology companies had tripled in number between 2004 and 2008. From their media release on Nanowerk News,

In 2008, private investments in nanotechnology were for the first time greater than public investments. The industry received public funding worth 38 million euros, industry investments were 56.6 million euros and venture capital funding 9.5 million euros. …

“The internationalisation of nanotechnology companies requires ongoing improvement of the funding opportunities. According to the study, exporting products to international markets requires dozens of million euros within the next two years. Both public and private funding are required,” says Markku Lämsä, the FinNano Programme Manager at Tekes. The nanotechnology industry’s shift from research to commercialization is giving a boost to Finnish industry during the current economic downturn.

This whole approach contrasts somewhat strongly with what we appear to be doing here in Canada. We talk about innovation instead we fund infrastructure projects (see the Don’t leave Canada behind blog for confirmation..particularly items like the funding for Arctic research stations which I linked to in yesterday’s posting). On the nanotechnology front, the Canadian NanoBusiness Alliance shut its doors either late last year or early this year, Nanotech BC has not been able to secure the funding it needs, and the National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT) has lost its individual brand and been swept back under the National Research Council (NRC) brand. As for a nanotechnology policy or initiative, Canada seems to be one of the few countries in the world that simply doesn’t have one. As for the business end of things, I will write about that tomorrow.

FrogHeart

Commentary about nanotech, science policy and communication, society, and the arts

Tag Archives: NINT

Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology gets first Hitachi H-95000 microscope outside of Japan

Arxis, healing with liquid bone

Canada and synthetic biology in the wake of the first ‘synthetic’ bacteria

Synbio (Synthetic Biology) in society a May 12, 2010 panel discussion hosted by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies

NANO Magazine’s April 2010 issue country focus: Canada

UK’s scientific century; les nanotechnologies and la perception publique; some Australian titanium dioxide research; nanotoxicology and fullerenes*

Preston Manning Interview (part 1 of 2) and PEN’s nanotechnology product inventory

Alberta welcomes a new nanotechnology product and research centre plus some news on a kissing phone

Finland, nanotechnology and innovation