Tag Archives: P2i

Female triathlete from Iran and a nanotechnology solution to water repellent gear

The style is a bit breathless, i.e., a high level of hype with very little about the technology, but it features an interesting partnership in the world of sport and a nanotechnology-enabled product (from an Oct. 7, 2014 news item on Azonano; Note: A link has been removed),

Shirin Gerami’s story is one which will go down in history. Shirin is the first Iranian female to represent her country in a triathlon and is paving the way for setting gender equality both in Iran and across the world.

In order to race for Iran, it was essential that Shirin respected the rules of her country, and raced in clothes that covered her body and hair. It was necessary to design clothes those both adhered to these conditions, whilst ensuring her performance was not affected.

An Oct. 7, 2014 P2i press release, which originated the news item, goes on to describe it role in Shirin Gerami athletic career,

Previously, waterproof fabrics Shirin had tried were uncomfortable, lacked breathability and slowed down her performance. Shirin contacted P2i upon hearing of the liquid repellent qualities of our patented nano-technology. Our nano-technology, a thousand times thinner than a human hair, has no effect on the look or feel of a product. This means we can achieve the highest levels of water repellency without affecting the quality of a fabric. A P2i coating on the kit meant it was water repellent whilst remaining highly breathable and light – essential when trying to remain as streamlined as possible!

Here’s a picture of Gerami wearing her new gear at a recently held triathlete event held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada,

[downloaded from http://www.p2i.com/news/articles/P2i_and_Shirin_Gerami_A_partnership_changing_history]

[downloaded from http://www.p2i.com/news/articles/P2i_and_Shirin_Gerami_A_partnership_changing_history]

The press release describes her first experience with her P2i-enabled running gear (Note: A link has been removed),

Shirin only received approval for her race kit from the Iranian government days before the race, so it was quite literally a race to the starting line. Consequently, Shirin did not have time to test the P2i coated kit before she began the World Triathlon Grand Final in Edmonton, Canada. Shirin explains, ‘I cannot tell you how relieved and happy I am that the coating worked exactly as I hoped it would. It was bone dry when I took my wetsuit off!’

I believe Gerami is using the term ‘wetsuit’ as a way of identifying the kit’s skintight properties similar to the ‘wetsuits’ that divers wear.

The press release concludes (Note: A link has been removed),

You can find out more about UK-based P2i on its website. I was not able to find more information about its products designed for use in sports gear but was able to find a May 11, 2012 press release about its partnership with UK Sport.

As for the Aug. 25 – Sept. 1, 2014 TransCanada Corp. World Triathlon Grand Final where Gerami tested her suit, you can find out more about the event here (scroll down).

Nanocoating for LED lighting, smartphones, etc.

Coatings may not sound exciting but nanotechnology is have a big impact in that area. P2i, a UK-based company that’s been mentioned here before, will be bringing a nanocoating for LED lighting and smartphones to IFA 2011, the largest consumer trade show for electronics and home appliances in the world. From the August 31, 2011 news item on Nanowerk,

P2i brings its award-winning liquid repellent nano-coating technology, Aridion™, to IFA for the first time in 2011. Show visitors will be able to witness the ‘magic’ of Aridion™ in action at P2i’s booth – water simply forms beads and rolls off protected items, leaving no trace.

Aridion™ technology creates a complete nanoscopic protective coating for consumer electronics devices such as smartphones and MP3 players. By providing superior liquid repellency Aridion™ effectively fights corrosion, thus substantially reducing warranty failure and repair costs.

While the news item mentions smartphones, the company’s big announcement seems to be focused on LED lighting,

As IFA opens, P2i also announces it has entered into an exclusive worldwide license agreement to protect LED lighting solutions with SavWatt USA, Inc. Aridion™ technology will transform the reliability of the lights through reduced failure and repair rates.

For anyone who’d like more details about the Aridion™ coating,

Aridion™ is applied using a special pulsed ionized gas (plasma), which is created within a vacuum chamber, to attach a nanoscopic polymer layer, one thousand times thinner than a human hair – to the lighting system. This dramatically lowers the product’s surface energy, so that when liquids or moisture come into contact with it, they form beads and simply roll off.

Plus, because Aridion™ coats every aspect of a finished product at the nanoscopic level, it protects much more thoroughly than alternative approaches where individual components are treated prior to assembly. The result is a truly durable liquid repellent coating that does not affect the working components of electronic devices, maintaining the look, feel and functionality of the product.

My previous mentions of  P2i, a company, which supplies nanocoatings for Nike and to the military amongst other customers, are in a November 17, 2009 posting, a January 5, 2010 posting, and an April 20, 2010 posting. (You will need to scroll through the postings.)

Canada Foundation for Innovation “World’s Best”?; Ping hoodie, clothing that networks socially; life protection clothing; getting spiders to weave building materials?; open access archive for nano papers

The headline for the news release on Marketwire (via the Canadian Science Policy site) is: Canada Foundation for Innovation(CFI) Practices is Called ‘World’s Best’. As it’s been a bit slow for news here I began wondering ‘which practices in which countries are being compared’? After reviewing the reports quickly, I can’t answer the question. There are no bibliographies in any of the three reports related to this KPMG study while the footnotes make reference only to other KPMG and Canadian studies. It was a bit of surprise, I was expecting to see reports from other countries and/or from international organizations and some insight into their analysis as comparing agencies in different countries can be complicated.

I’m not sure how they arrived at their conclusion although they provide some interesting data. From the Overall Evaluation report (p. 28 PDF, p. 24 print),

Exhibit [Table] 4.16 shows that, on average, there have been about 6.4 collaborations with end-users per PL/PU in the past year, three-quarters of which used the CFI projects as key resources, and about 10.2 collaborations per Department Head, about 70% of which using CFI projects in a significant way. For PLs/PUs, there are only small differences in use of CFI projects as a key resource by type of end-user, but Department Heads show more variation in the use of CFI project by type of user; it is unknown if this is significant.

Note that 64% of PL/PUs’ and 80% of Department Heads’ end-user collaborations, respectively, are with Canadian organizations; there is a significant international component (with OMS data suggesting that the CFI projects are a significant attractor for international organizations to collaborate [emphasis mine]).

It certainly seems laudable although I question whether you can conclude that the CFI is a significant international organization attractor by inference alone. Shouldn’t this be backed up with another instrument, such as a questionnaire for a survey/poll of the international organizations, asking why they are collaborating with Canadian scientists? I was not able to find any mention of such a survey or poll taking place.

From everything I hear, Canadians are excellent at academic science research and attracting researchers from around the world and because of our penchant for collaboration we (as they say) “punch above our weight.” I just wish this report did a better job of providing evidence for its assertions about the CFI’s ‘best practices’.

Ping hoodie

Thanks to Adrian Covert’s article on Fast Company, I found information about a prototype for a piece of wearable computing, the Ping hoodie. From Covert’s article,

The Ping clothing concept makes use of embedded electronics and haptics controlled by the Arduino Lilypad system, which transmits to your device (most likely a smartphone) using the Lylipad Xbee. This tech serves as the core interface between you and the information you need. If someone special is sending you a call or text, you can set the hoodie to vibrate in a specific manner, letting you know it’s them. Actions as simple as lifting or dropping the hood can be used to send status updates and messages on Facebook, with the potential to target certain groups of friends.

There’s more at Fast Company or you can check out electricfoxy where the designer, Jennifer Darmour has her site which is where I found this image,

Ping hoodie (wearable computing) designed by Jennifer Darmour at electricfoxy

Do go to Darmour’s site (although Fast Company offers a pretty good selection) if you want to see all the images including close ups of the fabric (don’t forget to scroll horizontally as well as vertically).

Clothing that protects your life

P2i, a company I’ve mentioned here before, has announced a ‘new’ revolutionary form of protective clothing. Actually, it sounds like an improvement rather than a revolutionary concept but maybe I’m getting jaded. From the news item on Nanowerk,

A revolutionary new generation of high-performance body armour, launched today, is lighter, more comfortable and more protective than any previous design, thanks to P2i’s liquid-repellent nano-coating technology.

The new G Tech Vest is a joint development between two world-class UK companies with very strong credentials for the life protection market: P2i, whose technology was originally developed to make soldiers’ protective clothing more effective against chemical attack; and Global Armour, which has been at the leading edge of product innovation in the armour industry for over 30 years.

The G Tech Vest employs brand-new lightweight materials, both in the physical armour itself (a closely-guarded trade secret) and the fabric that forms the armour into a garment. P2i’s technology reduces weight by avoiding the need for bulky durable water repellents and increases comfort by preserving the natural airflow and drape of the garment material.

I recently (April 15, 2010) made a comment about how modern soldiers are beginning to resemble medieval knights and this talk of armour certainly reinforces the impression.

Spiders weaving building materials?

Michael Berger at Nanowerk has written an in-depth article about spider silk and its possible application, amongst others, as a building material. He’s interviewed one of the authors (Markus J. Buehler) of a recent paper that lays out “… a framework for predicting the nanostructure of spider silk using atomistic principles.” More from the Spotlight article on Nanowerk,

In a paper published as the cover article in Applied Physics Letters on April 12, 2010 (“Atomistic model of the spider silk nanostructure”), [Sinan] Keten and Buehler demonstrate an innovative application of replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations on a key spider silk repeating sequence, resulting in the first atomistic level structure of spider silk.

More specifically, the MIT researchers found the formation of beta-sheet structures in poly-Ala rich parts of the structure, the presence of semi-extended GGX domains that form H-bonded 31 helix type structures and a complete lack of alpha-helical conformations in the molecular structures formed by the self-assembly of MaSp1 proteins. These results resolve controversies around the structure of the amorphous domains in silk, by illustrating for the first time that these semi-extended, well-oriented and more sparsely H-bonded structures that resemble 31 helices could be the molecular source of the large semi-crystalline fraction of silks and the so-called ‘pre-stretched’ configuration proposed for these domains.

Shy of reading the original research, which I likely wouldn’t understand easily, Berger’s article provides an excellent entry into the subject.

Open access archive for nano papers

My final item for today is about a project to give free access to papers on nanotechnology that they host and/or publish.  Hooray! It’s very frustrating to get stuck behind paywalls so I’m thrilled that there’s an agency offering free access. From the news item on Nanowerk,

The Nano Archive, the online open-access repository for nanoscience and nanotechnology, invites you to submit research papers to be published free online for users across the globe.

Submitted papers can include peer-reviewed articles, journal articles, review articles, conference and workshop papers, theses and dissertations, book chapters and sections, as well as multimedia and audio-visual materials. The Nano Archive also welcomes new, unpublished research results to be shared with the wider community.

The Nano Archive is part of the ICPC NanoNet project, funded by the EU under FP7. It brings together partners from the EU, Russia, India, China and Africa, and provides wider access to published nanoscience research and opportunities for collaboration between scientists in the EU and International Cooperation Partner Countries.

The Nano Archive currently hosts over 6000 papers. You can read more about the sponsoring agency, the ICPC (International Cooperation Partner Countries) NanoNet here. It has funding for four years and was started in 2008.

Forthcoming report by UK House of Lords on nanotechnologies and food; Nike uses nanocoating for new running shoe; quick reference to OECD scorecard; funny technology predictions

Later this week (Jan.8.10), the UK House of Lords Science and Technology Committee will be releasing a report on nanotechnologies and the food industry. From the news item on Azonano,

The Committee has been looking in detail at the use of nanotechnologies in the food industry and has explored how these technologies are likely to develop. It has considered where government might need to develop regulations and effective communications to ensure public confidence is maintained.

The news item (media advisory) tells you who to contact if you want to attend a press conference, interview the principals, and/or get your hands on the embargoed report in advance.

For most people nanotechnology continues to be something associated with sports equipment and clothing and the latest  from Nike will do nothing to change that. From the news item on Azonano,

Sneakerheads will get an additional performance benefit with the latest launch of Nike Lunar Wood TZ. Using technology by P2i, the world leader in liquid repellent nano-coating technology, Nike’s new lightweight and comfortable running shoe will keep wearers dry during the wettest of winters.

P2i’s ion-mask™ technology applies a nanoscopic protective polymer layer to the whole shoe, on which water forms beads and simply rolls off, instead of being absorbed. Because ion-mask™ gives the whole shoe (including the stitching) superior water repellency, it delivers two crucial benefits; one, it stops external water getting in and two, it encourages evaporated perspiration to flow out.

According to P2i, this coating technology (ion-mask) is environmentally friendly. I have mentioned them before but the last time was in relation to military and police use of their coating technology.

The OECD has released its Science, Technology and Industry ‘scoreboard’ which also includes individual country notes for seven countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, and US). I have looked at some of the country notes and some of the material in the scoreboard online. Unfortunately, this is one of those things I find easier to read in print as they have set up a system that requires a lot of clicking. The news item on Azonano is here, the link to information about the scoreboard, country notes, and more is here, and the link to the web version of the scoreboard document is here. Or you may want to wait for Rob Annan’s (Don’t leave Canada behind) promised in his Jan.4.10 posting comments and analysis.

Thanks to the NISE (Nanoscale Informal Science Education) Network January 2010 newsletter, I found a Wall Street Journal (online) article by L. Gordon Crovitz on technology predictions that has these gems,

“The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys,” Sir William Preece, chief engineer at the British Post Office, 1878.

“Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?” H.M. Warner, Warner Bros., 1927.

“I think there is a world market for maybe five computers,” Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943.

“Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night,” Darryl Zanuck, 20th Century Fox, 1946.

“The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most,” IBM executives to the eventual founders of Xerox, 1959.

“There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home,” Ken Olsen, founder of mainframe-producer Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

“No one will need more than 637 kb of memory for a personal computer—640K ought to be enough for anybody,” Bill Gates, Microsoft, 1981.

“Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput,” Sir Alan Sugar, British entrepreneur, 2005.

It’s a good read (there are more gems) but I can’t laugh too hard as whenever I need to take myself down a peg or two I remember my first response to VCRs. I didn’t see any point to them.

Finally, thanks again to the NISE Net newsletter for the monthly haiku,

Cash @ nanoscale:
Nickel, copper, zinc atoms…
My account balance?
by David Sittenfeld, Program Manager of Forums at the Museum of Science, Boston.