Tag Archives: Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies

Marketing, safety, and nanotechnology plus there’s another Synthetic Bio event

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There’s a new study that suggests that scientists and the general public (in the US) have differing attitudes to nanotechnology. The study conducted by Dietram Scheufele and Elizathe Corley (professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Arizona State University, respectively) shows that scientists are focusing on potential risks and economic values while the public is focusing on potential benefits when asked about regulating nanotechnology. More details about the study and where it’s been published can be found here on Azonano.

This information provides an interesting contrast to a media release about a conference in Brussels (June 10, 2009) where Dr. Andrew Maynard, Chief Science Advisor for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnolgies, expressed concern that companies in Europe are beginning to drop the mention of nanotechnologies on product labels.

“We have seen some companies drop the ‘nano’ claim while continuing to use nanotechnology. This suggests nanotechnology is going underground,” [Maynard]said.

Harald Throne, researcher at the National Institute for Consumer Research in Norway, echoed concerns that companies may be becoming less inclined to highlight nanomaterials.

He searched a website run by a major international cosmetics company, using keywords like ‘nanotechnology’ and ‘nano’, to estimate how many products contain nanotechnology. Throne’s search turned up 29 products in 2007, but when he repeated the same exercise recently, there were zero hits.

This, he said, suggests that companies may now view ‘nano’ as a negative label rather than an added value.

You can read more about it here on the Euractiv website. I couldn’t find the Brussels conference they mention but maybe you’ll have better luck.

These contrasting reports would suggest that attitudes in Europe differ from attitudes in the US where we’re discussing the general public. I make this inference from the fact that companies in Europe are not making the nanotechnology claim and presumably that is because they are concerned about the public’s attitude.  It should be noted that a European industry representative quoted in the media release claims that the problem lies with the difficulty of actually defining a nanomaterial. The representative does have  a point of sorts. Still, I do wonder why companies were able to make the nanotechnology claim in 2007 despite the lack of definitions.

There’s a synthetic biology event coming up this Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 9:30 am. to 10:30 am PST.

When
Wednesday, June 24, 2009, 12:30-1:30 PM (light lunch available at 12 noon)
Who
Erik Parens, Senior Research Scholar, The Hastings Center
Gregory Kaebnick, Research Scholar, The Hastings Center
David Rejeski, Moderator, Director, Synthetic Biology Project
The emerging field of synthetic biology will allow researchers to create biological systems that do not occur naturally as well as to re-engineer existing biological systems to perform novel and beneficial tasks. Synthetic biology promises significant advances in areas such as biofuels, specialty chemicals, agriculture, and medicine but also poses potential risks. As the science and its applications develop, a comprehensive approach to addressing ethical and social issues of emerging technologies as a whole is called for if scarce intellectual resources are to be used optimally, according to a new report authored by Erik Parens, Josephine Johnston, and Jacob Moses of The Hastings Center.
In Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology: An Overview of the Debates, the authors examine how the ethical issues raised by a variety of emerging technologies are often similar and familiar.  They find that these similarities are abundant enough to justify an effort to develop an ethical framework that cuts across emerging and converging technologies.  Indeed, rather than stovepiping ethical questions into the hyphenated areas of bio-ethics, nano-ethics, neuro-ethics and so on, it is time to begin speaking about the ethics of emerging technologies as a whole.
On June 24, Erik Parens will discuss the report’s findings, exploring the differences between physical and non-physical harms and pro-actionary and pre-cautionary frameworks, in an effort to better define the ethical issues around synthetic biology.  Gregory Kaebnick, also of The Hastings Center, will describe the Center’s new, multi-year project that will examine the ethical issues raised in the report in greater depth.


UK government minister twitters about science; science festival in Canada, and open source synthetic biology

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Last week, June 10, 2009. Nature’s Richard van Noorden posted a news piece about changes for the UK government’s science portfolio. (The article itself is behind a paywall but if you can access it, it’s here.)

Business department expands its remit as government department is scrapped.

It’s a little confusing as I’ve found some comments on Andrew Maynard’s 2020 Science blog which indicate that Lord Drayson, the UK Minister of Defence Procurement will now also have responsibility for science. I’m not sure how this all fits together but what it makes quite interesting to me is that Lord Drayson recently discussed issues about the merger with concerned individuals on Twitter. If you want to see some comments about and a transcript of the Twitter convo, go here to the I’m A Scientist, Get Me Out Of Here blog. (Thanks Andrew, for leading me to ‘I’m A Scientist’.)

I found it quite unexpected that the minister would engage directly with citizens and quite refreshing in comparison to our situation here in Canada where our Prime Minister and his ministers seem to insulate themselves from direct and unmediated (no communication flacks managing a ‘spontaneous’ event) contact with the people they are elected to represent.

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (actually it’s a spinoff called, Synthetic Biology Project)  sent a notice about their Synthetic Biology event coming up on Wednesday, June 17, 2009, which I announced here a few weeks ago. From the invitation,


When
Wednesday, June 17, 2009, 12:30-1:30 PM (light lunch available at 12 noon) (NOTE: 9:30 – 10:30 am PT)

Who
Arti K. Rai, Elvin R. Latty Professor of Law, Duke Law School
Mark Bünger, Director of Research, Lux Research
Pat Mooney, Executive Director, ETC Group
David Rejeski, Moderator, Director, Synthetic Biology Project

Where

5th Floor Conference Room, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars

If you’re planning to attend you can RSVP here or you can watch the webcast live or later at your leisure. I find it interesting that a representative from the ETC group will be there as they are fierce critics of many emerging technologies. I’m glad to see that as the organization provides valuable information inside their research papers although some of their communication can by hyperbolic.

I’m pretty sure the folks at the Perimeter Institute are not stealing ideas from this blog but following on last Friday’s (June 12, 2009) post where I mentioned a science festival in New York, they’ve announced a science festival, Quantum to Cosmos: Ideas for the Future. It will be held in October 15 – 25, 2009 for 10 days in an around Waterloo, Ontario and will commemorate the institute’s 10 anniversary.  You can get more details here on the festival website or you can see the media release here.

Entanglement issues and open source synthetic biology

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According to current thought, entanglement makes quantum computing possible and the more of it you have, the more powerful the quantum computing. Scientists, David Goss at the Institute of Mathematical Physics in Braunschweig, Germany; S. T. Flammia at the Perimter Institute in Waterloo, Canada; and Jens Eisert at the University of Postdam, Germany) have recently published findings which suggest that there is such a thing as too much entanglement. There’s more in the article on physorg.com including this description of entanglement,

Entanglement, explains both Eisert and Gross, represents correlations in behavior. One system is related to another on a global scale, each affecting the other. In quantum computing, the way systems are entangled – correlated – can help scientists perform powerful computational tasks. However, entanglement is about more than just correlations. “Entanglement introduces a certain randomness into the system,” Gross says. “This randomness appears in the measurement outcomes. However, as the entanglement goes up, so does the randomness. When entanglement increases to a certain point, there is so much randomness that the system ends up being about as useful as coins tossed into the air. You don’t get any useful information.”

Now onto synthetic biology. The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a June 17, 2009 event (9:30 am to 10:30 am PST) titled, Synthetic Biology: Feasibility of the Open Source Movement.

According to the website description, this event is about IP issues and synthetic biology. From the website,

Will this open source movement succeed? Are life sciences companies ready for open source? What level of intellectual property (IP) protection is necessary to secure industry and venture capital involvement and promote innovation? And does open source raise broader social issues? On June 17, a panel of representatives from various sectors will discuss the major challenges to future IP developments related to synthetic biology, identify key steps to addressing these challenges, and examine a number of current tensions surrounding issues of use and ownership.

The focus will be on US law, which is significantly different than Canadian law but if you’re interested, there will likely be a webcast posted on their site afterward or if you’re in Washington, DC, you can RSVP here to attend.

Nanotech BC scoop: part 2 interview with Victor Jones

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The next part of the interview focuses on just how many companies in Canada could be defined as selling nanotechnology-based products and Jones’ role with Nanotech BC. He also provides more information about the organization’s projects.

(3) How big is the nanotechnology industry in BC? and in Canada? i.e. how many companies?

BC HAS ABOUT 15 CO; ALBERTA CLAIMS ABOUT 40 CO AND THEN ONTARIO AND QUEBEC HAVE A SIMILAR NUMBER EACH.   BUT BC ALSO HAS A LARGE  ~~ 120 OR SO – RESEARCHERS – RESEARCH EFFORT  COVERING A DIVERSE AREAS OF ADVANCED MATERIALS, COATINGS; LAB ON A CHIP, QUANTUM PHYSICS, DRUG DELIVERY AND NANO BIO WORK  ON-GOING.   MOST OF THIS IS STILL IN LABS AT UBC  – AMPEL;   ALSO SFU – 4D LABS AND  UVIC HAS SOME EXCELLENT WORK TOO.  E.G. ONE BC  COMPANY IS   A LEADER IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF A QUANTUM COMPUTER. ONE SPECIALIZES IN COATINGS….ETC.

NANO IS NOT AN INDUSTRY  – IT IS A BROAD ENABLING TECHNOLOGY – A GENERAL PURPOSE TECHNOLOGY ( GPT) AND THEREFORE GETS  EMBEDDED INTO A RANGE OF PRODUCTS AND PROCESSES WHERE MANIPULATION OF MATTER AT THE ATOMIC SCALE ENABLES MATERIAL CHARACTERISTICS AND PROCESSES NOT  OTHERWISE ACHIEVABLE.    SO FAR  MOST OF THE MATERIALS  ARE FINDING APPLICATION  IN COATINGS, TEXTILES;  COMPOSITE MATERIALS AND PERSONAL CARE PRODUCTS  E.G. SUNCREEN/ HAIR CARE.; ADVANCED ELECTRONICS….   SEE  THE WOODROW WILSON PROJECT ON EMERGING NANOTECHNOLOGIES. (here)  ADOPTION TIMES FOR NEW MATERIALS ARE OFTEN YEARS IN THE MAKING,  BUT SOME 800 PRODUCTS USING NMATERIALS ARE IN THE MARKET NOW.

(3) Can you tell me about your role with Nanotech BC given its current situation? I’ve seen your website and am wondering if you might be able to tell me a little more about what you do professionally.

I AM NO LONGER A BOARD MEMBER  SO I HAVE NO OFFICIAL CAPACITY WITH NANOTECH BC NOR DO I SPEAK FOR THE ORGANIZATION.  OF COURSE I AM SUPPORTIVE OF THE ORGANIZATION BUT NOW REFER ENQUIRIES TO MICHAEL ALLDRITT – DIRECTOR – AT NRC-IRAP WHO HAS BEEN A GREAT SUPPORTER OF THE PROJECT GOING BACK TO 2001.

I CONTINUE TO DO CONSULTING IN THE ARENA OF CANADIAN STANDARDS  WORK ON NANOMATERIALS AND ALSO THE DEVELOPMENT OF WWW.GOODNANOGUIDE.ORG.   THIS  WEBSITE WAS A CONCEPT OF ICON ( RICE U) WHICH WAS ASSISTED THROUGH NANOTECH BC AND OTHER CANADIAN ORGANIZATIONS AS I ARRANGED THE FUNDING FOR THE BETA  STAGE.  IT IS NOW OPEN TO WORLD INVOLVEMENT IN SHARING PROTOCOLS FOR THE SAFE HANDLING OF NANOMATERIALS.   MY ROLE WITH THE ICON COMMITTEE WAS TO ROUND UP THE CANADIAN FUNDING TO REACH THIS STAGE AND AS A MEMBER OF THE IMPLEMENTATION COMMITTEE WORK THROUGH THE DETAILS OF THE FUNCTIONALITIES. THIS PROJECT CONTINUES AND IS INTERNATIONAL IN SCOPE WITH AN EXCELLENT COMMITTEE. – REPS FROM NIOSH  EPA  ETC…   AS OHS PROCESSES WILL BE KEY TO BOTH RESEARCHER/ INDUSTRIAL SAFETY AND PUBLIC ACCEPTANCE OF NANOMATERIAL ENABLED PRODUCTS   I EXPECT INTEREST IN THE SITE AS A SOURCE FOR OHS INFORMATION FOR PUBLIC AND SPECIALISTS TO GROW. (OHS = Occupational Health and Safety)

If I read Jones’ response correctly, we have almost 100 companies in Canada that are producing nano-enabled products. I’m not sure I worded that sentence  so well but point well taken about the nonexistence of a nanotechnology industry (as I referred to it in my question) per se. One of the difficulties writing about nanotechnology is its rather amorphous quality. I made some comments along with other people on Andrew Maynard’s blog (2020 Science) about these difficulties.

I did not realize that BC hosts a company which is a leader in quantum computers.  That’s pretty exciting stuff as is the work on occupational health and safety. Part 3 of the interview will be posted on Monday, May 18, 2009.

Some scoop on what happened to Nanotech BC: part 1 of an interview with Victor Jones

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Victor Jones who was a board member and chair of Nanotech BC kindly agreed to answer a few question about the organization and where it stands now. For anyone who doesn’t know, they recently had to suspend operations due to funding shortfalls. This is a the first of a three part series.

1) What was Nanotech BC’s purpose? Was it meant to raise awareness of nanotechnology in the general public? Was it industry/academic liaison?

ALL OF THE ABOVE  –  SEE  MISSION ON THE WEB SITE (here) – INCLUDING ANNUAL CONFERENCE,   WORKSHOPS; OUTREACH FOR BC LOCATED COMPANIES AND MARKET INFORMATION FOR RESEARCHERS, AND REPRESENTING BC RESEARCH AND COMPANIES AT OTHER CONFERENCES   IT DID DO THESE; INCLUDING REFERENCES FOR PROJECTS.   THE 2007/08 ASSET MAP – AVAILABLE ON LINE, LISTED THE RESEARCHERS AND COMPANIES  AND THEIR AREAS OF FOCUS.

(2) What happened? I understand the funding dried up but I never did understand where it came from. Did the federal government freeze/cutback on science funding have an impact? Or was it a lack of interest from the provincial government? Did the industry fail to support it?

FUNDING CAME FROM FEDERAL AND PROVINCIAL AGENCIES  –  MOST NOTABLY  NRC-IRAP,   WESTERN ECONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION (WED) AND THE MINISTRY OF SMALL BUSINESS TRADE AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT  (SBTED).   PROVINCIAL FUNDING WAS NOT AVAILABLE TO MATCH THE NRC AND WED FUNDING OFFER FOR SEVERAL MONTHS; HENCE IT WAS NOT POSSIBLE TO MAINTAIN AS AN OPERATIONAL ENTITY – SO IT IS ON PAUSE. BUT DISCUSSIONS ARE CONTINUING. THERE HAVE CERTAINLY BEEN ENCOURAGING WORDS,  BUT FUNDING FOR ALL SUCH ORGANIZATIONS IS DIFFICULT TO SOURCE

I thought the organization might be dead but it should like there is hope so maybe I should not have phrased that first set of question in past tense. Also, I’m sure the folks at Nanotech BC wanted to raise public awareness but the other projects Jones mentions took priority and in an organization that’s strapped for money and time it’s clear that something is going to be ignored. I wish that wasn’t the case but I do understand why. That said, I think more emphasis needs to be placed on public awareness here in BC.

As for funding, it’s discouraging to find out that the provincial government is dragging its metaphorical feet. Given the worldwide focus on nanotechnology and the amount of money being invested elsewhere (as I noted here and I recently looked at NanoQuebec’s annual report for 2007/8 and saw that that provincial government invested over $2M for that year), I’m surprised there isn’t more interest provincially. Of course, I can’t find a science policy on the BC government website so maybe surprise isn’t the right word.

I got an invite from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) to a congressional briefing. Yup, it’s in Washington, DC so I’m not likely to get there but if you are, there’s a panel discussion on May 20, 2009. You can contact emiller@keystone.org for more information.

The White House hosted a Poetry, Music, and SpokenWord event this last Tuesday (May 12, 2009). From the New York Times review,

Spoken word dominated the program, with poetry performances by Mayda del Valle (whose tribute to her abuela included the placenta reference), Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio and Joshua Bennett.

The webcast will be available on whitehouse.gov. I checked this morning and could not find it so I hope it shows up soon.

More bureaucracy for nanotechnology oversight?

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J. Clarence (Terry) Davies has authored a second report on nanotechnology oversight for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies calling for a new government department, an environmental and consumer protection agency. The report and a brief video interview with Davies are here.

I did watch the video and as I’ve noted elsewhere I don’t think that Davies understands nanotechnology very well. His responses were a little over-rehearsed as were the questions. The most interesting part of the video was when he said that the reason for suggesting a new government agency was to stimulate discussion and thought rather than an exhortation to create yet another government entity.

Meanwhile, I got a notice today that Nanotech BC has suspended operations until they secure funding. As of May 1, 2009 the mailing address and telephone number will be:

Nanotech BC
c/o Michael Alldritt
FP Innovations — Forintek Division
2665 East Mall Vancouver, BC V6T 1W5
tel (604) 222-5728
fax (604) 222-5690
info@nanotechbc.ca

Maskwriting facilities at 4D Labs and some bottom-up engineering news

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Following up on yesterday’s news from Simon Fraser University (SFU), I gather that maskwriting has to do with fabricating nanoscale materials and the facility they will be building for their 4D Labs will allow them to create nanoscale structures that measure less than 20 nanometres.

“This capability will eventually be as key to nanoscale materials fabrication as the photocopier is to information dissemination,” explains [Byron] Gates, 4D LABS’ director of nanofabrication. “With our new maskwriting facility, we’ll be able to fabricate the next generation of technologies, particularly in the fields of alternative energy and biomedical engineering.”

Local companies will not have send off to Alberta to get this work done and it will give 4D Labs some revenue.  Given that universities are under pressure these days to develop new revenue streams, this has to be good news.

Meanwhile, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have recently published a paper describing their work on bottom-up engineering of DNA ‘seeds’. The two main approaches to engineering in nanotechnology (and this is simplified) are top-down and bottom-up. Traditional enginerring has been top-down; we make things smaller and smaller. The bottom-up approach means taking your cue from biological processes (or nature) and encouraging objects to build themselves or to ‘grow’. There’s more here.

The Project for Emergining Nanotechnologies’ June 17, 2009 event (mentioned in yesterday’s posting) has been rescheduled to Fall 2009.


Ongoing nano oversight discussions

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a couple of ‘oversight’ events coming up. The first is on Tuesday, April 28,2009 at 9 am PST and features discussion of a report ‘Oversight of Next Generation Nanotechnology‘ by J. Clarence Davies, a former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) official. I wasn’t particularly thrilled the last time PEN had one of these events back in July 2008. Davies was the speaker that time too and the talk was very EPA-centric and I did not feel that Davies had a good grasp of nanotechnology.  For more information about this event or to RSVP if you’re planning to attend, go here.

Their second event will be on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 at 9 am PST. It’s called, ‘Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies‘. This event is the result of a collaboration between the London School of Economics, Chatham House, Environmental Law Institute, and PEN.Here’s something from their email notice,

[The purpose] is aimed at generating and examining new ideas to enable greater transatlantic convergence on nanotechnology oversight today and in the future.

For more details or to RSVP, you can go here.

Finally I have an update on the Martha Cook Piper situation. (She was appointed as the chair to Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology [NINT] last April and I’ve been trying to get an interview for several months.) I just heard today that I will be getting some answers to my question in the next few weeks. Plus, I notice that she was finally listed on NINT’s website. You can see the listing and a bit of a biography here.

Canadian attosecond researcher wins medal

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The Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC)  awarded Dr. Paul Corkum at the University of Ottawa with $1M in funding and the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Science and Engineering. Corkum’s work is in the field of attosecond science.

I looked up attosecond to find out that it is one quintillionth of a second or one thousandth of a femtosecond. I found the description of the work a little more helpful (from Attosecond science researcher wins Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal),

Dr. Paul Corkum and his team at NRC used the world’s fastest laser light pulses to capture the first image of an electron, one of the smallest bits of matter in the universe.

And this helped too,

Dr. Paul Corkum and his team … used the world’s fastest laser light pulses to capture the first image of an electron, one of the smallest bits of matter in the universe. This manipulation of electrons could lead to breakthroughs in fields as diverse as computing, engineering and medicine.

I’m still trying to find ways to describe nanotechnology and now there’s attosecond science. Not to mention synthetic biology (I’m still not sure I can define the difference between that and biotechnology). Btw, there’s a Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies event, Synthetic Biology: The Next Biotech Revolution Is Brewing on Wednesday, March 25, 2009 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am PST. It will be webcast live and posted on their website a few days later. If you’re in the Washington, DC area and want to attend please RSVP by clicking on the event title link. The event features Michael Rodemeyer from the University of Virginia. He’s the author of a report titled New Life, Old Bottles: Regulating First-Generation Products of Synthetic Biology and will be discussing the US regulatory framework for biotechnology and whether synthetic biology can be contained within that framework.

Is nano good for jobs?

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The idea that nanotechnology might be able to help pull the US economy out of it’s current economic crisis is certainly being discussed seriously. For example, Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, announced a nanotechnology investment of $7B in February 2009.  (There’s more about this in my blog posting of Feb. 11, 2009). Now the folks at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies have announced  a new event, Nanotechnology: Will It Drive a New Innovation Economy for the U.S.? on Monday, March 23, 2009 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am PST (if you’re on the East Coast and can attend they will serve a light lunch but you need to RSVP. More info. here.)The two speakers, Philip Shapira and Alan Porter, both have links to the Georgia (US)  Institute of Technology. I mention that because last October (2008) the Japanese government announced they were funding four research satellite projects in institutions outside of Japan. it was described as a unique collaboration and the Georgia Institute of Technology is the location for one of these research satellites. There’s more information here at Azonano. (Note: The headline focuses on the University of Cambridge so you do have to read on to find the information about the other sites.)

I attended a lecture or nanotechnology which was part of the University of British Columbia’s (Canada) research week. Professor Alireza Nojeh (electrical engineering) gave a charming presentation. I was curious about how he would deal with some of the problems you encounter when explaining nanotechnology. He focused on measurements, size, and scale at the beginning and did a better job than I do when I’m presenting. Still, I haven’t seen anyone really crack that barrier of how you describe something that’s unseen. The images help to convey scale but there’s a point at which most people are going to have to take a huge leap in imagination. Of course, we did that with germs but the ‘germ’ leap occurred before living memory so we’ll probably have to relearn that skill.

Dr. Nojeh had another problem, it’s a very big topic. I noticed that he avoided much talk of biology and medicine (I do too) and only briefly discussed potential health concerns. I think they will be webcasting this (they were recording it) but this is probably one of those talks that were better attended in person. I will try to find out where the webcast will be posted.