Tag Archives: regulations

Transatlantic nanotechnology, kids learning about nano, and a bit about Playboy bunnies

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) will be hosting an event in September 2009,

Transatlantic Regulatory Cooperation: Securing the Promise of Nanotechnologies
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC
September 23, 2009

Nanotechnology will impact our lives on a global scale. Over the past year experts from the London School of Economics (LSE), Chatham House, Environmental Law Institute (ELI) and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies have been examining issues of transatlantic regulatory cooperation.

The main purpose of this event is to discuss recommendations from this research effort that are part of a forthcoming report by LSE and ELI being published by Chatham House. It also is aimed at generating and examining new ideas to enable greater transatlantic cooperation on nanotechnology oversight today and in the future.

The forthcoming report will be launched in the European Union at Chatham House, London UK, September 10 – 11, 2009.

If you can get to PEN’s event in Washington, DC, registration is here. (If you can’t get to Washington, the event will be webcast, live and also archived for later viewing). As for the London event,  you can go here to the London School of Economics for more details. Or you can register for it by emailing: Ms. Carmen Gayoso (nanotech@lse.ac.uk)

I’d heard of the Nano Brothers before but, until this morning, I’d never seen their act. It’s part of a clip from a kid’s PBS series (dragonflytv) where the two hostesses (Ebony and Jasmine) investigate nanotechnology and what the measurement one billionth of a metre actually means.  There’s a transcript and a clip here.

Physorg.com alerted me to this tidbit. The Lower Key Marsh rabbit in Florida was declared an endangered species in 1990, today there are fewer than 300 rabbits, which are also known as Playboy Bunnies (Sylvilagus palustris hefneri). They are subspecies of marsh rabbit named to honor Hugh Hefner after his organization donated money to support field research.  There are more details in the media release on physorg.com here.

credit: Rosanna Tursi (downloaded from physorg.com)

credit: Rosanna Tursi (downloaded from physorg.com)

Good on Hugh Hefner and it was smart of the researchers to find a new way to publicize their bunny’s plight.

Nano sheds some light on incandescence and a Framing Nano report

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The news caught my eye immediately,  ‘Scientists at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) have created the world’s smallest incandescent lamp‘. It reminded me of Oliver Saks’ memoir, Uncle Tungsten, which dwelled at length on his uncle’s light bulb factory and their mutual fascination with the filament. Very briefly, the scientists are exploring the boundary between two incompatible theories, thermodynamics and quantum mechanics. There’s more here.

I mentioned the Framing Nano project  in a previous post (July 28, 2008), a European nano governance project. In January 2009, they released a report with an enormous title, ‘Framing Nano Project: A multistakeholder dialogue platform framing the responsible development of Nanosciences & Nanotechnologjes‘. It’s mostly concerned with risk and regulation in Europe but there’s also a bit of information the situation in other parts of the world. There is mention of Canada,

Australia and Canada are also rather active on nanoregulation. Both have important programmes on EHS (Environment, Health and Safety) research and have published in-depth reviews of their regulations to assess eventual limits when dealing with nanotechnology. Even though no specific laws have been set up, the adoption of a precautionary approach principle, when dealing with nanotechnology application, is envisaged in both countries. (p. 4)

The report does not cite source for its contentions about Canada, which means that I’m not sure what to make of it. Last year at the Cascadia Nanotechnology Symposium (March 2008), there seemed to be a general consensus that virtually no analysis had been done or was being done on whether or not existing regulatory frameworks could accommodate nanotechnology. Of course, the problem with these things is that the federal government is huge so it’s possible that none representatives from the National Research Council and other government agencies could be unaware of those developments. If you’re interested in the Framing Nano report, you can read more about it and/or get a copy of it here .

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

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.

Nano vitamins, honey bee mystery, and a history of risk

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has an event tomorrow, Jan. 14 2009 from 9:30 am to 10:30 am EST (with a 6:30 am PST start time, I think I’ll wait ’til they post the webcast). If you want to see the webcast (Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins) live or, if you’re planning to attend,  RSVP, go here. This seems more like a press conference than one of their standard events given the time and the planned distribution post webcast of a report on food supplement regulation as per nanotechnology innovations.

Genome BC has a free public forum coming up on January 20, 2009 (next Tuesday). It’s called ‘Why are Bees Disappearing and Could Poplar Trees be the Next Biofuel?’  There are speakers from the University of British Columbia and one from the BC Innovation Council.  Location is: Science World, 1455 Quebec St., Vancouver and the time is: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. Go here for more details and for pre-registration.

I found an interesting aggregator, Allport, which offers amongst other topics a nanotechnology page listing ‘All the top nanotechnology news’ from various blogs. Go here for a look. Allport describes itself as: a “digital magazine rack of the internet” (from their About Allport page).

After noticing yesterday’s kerfuffle (in Canadian media) about risk, regulation, and nanotechnology, I decided to take another look at that report, ‘Small is different’ from the Council of Canadian Academies’. Here’s what they had to say in their summary,

Although the panel believes that it is not necessary to create new regulatory mechanisms to address the unique challenges presented by nanomaterials, existing regulatory mechanisms could and should be strengthened.  p. 9

(Arguably the regulatory mechanisms should be strengthened regardless of any innovations due to nanotechnology or other emerging technology.) In any event, it’s interesting to contrast the text in the report with the news items which suggest a more strident tone.

Kerfuffle (?) about regulating nano in Canada

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Canadian Press has an article by John Cotter ‘Experts have wanted Ottawa to regulate nanotechnology Ottawa has yet to respond’ that’s making the rounds in the blogosphere. The report being discussed ‘Small is different’ was filed July 2008 and can be found here, just look down the list. I did mention the report here about the time it was released.

The thing that makes the article interesting to me is that it seems like there’s a kerfuffle but it’s one article that’s been picked up and published all over the place. It’s not obvious because a publication doesn’t necessarily use the whole piece, regardless, if you look, it’s always attributed to Canadian Press and you’ll notice that what you’re reading is an edited version (or, if they list the author John  Cotter, you’re reading the whole article).

Nano events

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The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) has a couple of events coming up later this month. The first one is this coming Thurs., Jan. 8, 2009 ‘Synthetic Biology: Is Ethics A Showstopper? from 12:30 pm to 1:30 pm EST. The event features two speakers, Arthur Caplan, an ethicist from the University of Pennsylvania, and Andrew Maynard, the chief science advisor for PEN. They request an RSVP, if you are attending in person. Go here for more details and/or to RSVP. Or you can view the webcast live or later. Their other event is on Weds.,  Jan. 14, 2009 and is called ‘Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins’. The time for this event is 9:30 am – 10:30 am EST. The featured speakers, William B. Schultz and Lisa Barclay, are the authors of a report for PEN about the FDA and how it can address issues surrounding dietary supplements that use nanomaterials. For more details about the event and/or to RSVP, go here. There is also the webcast option. There is a link to the report from the event page but you have to log in to view it (as of Jan.6.09).

Nanotech BC is cancelling its Jan. 15, 2009 breakfast speaker event. Meanwhile, Nanotech BC organizers are preparing for the second Cascadia Symposium on April 20 – 21, 2009 at the Bayshore. They’ve gone for a larger venue (250 people) than last year’s. No other details are available yet.

Incremental regulation and nanotechnology

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I think today will be the end of this series. So, for the last time, the article is ‘Risk Management Principles for Nanotechnology’ by Gary E. Marchant, Douglas J. Sylvester, and Kenneth W. Abbott in Nanoethics, 2008, vol. 2, pp. 43-60.

The authors contend that the regulatory model proposed by Ayers and Braithwaite (discussed in yesterday’s post) is not sufficiently flexible to accommodate nanotechnology as their model assumes

“a fully developed regulatory system that can effectively manage a particular set of risks. …  advanced nations with  highly developed legal systems in which legislatures and agencies can create, communicate, and utilize a range of regulatory options. … high levels of information and understanding on the part of regulators. p. 52

In turn, the authors are proposing a refinement of the Ayers/Braithwaite model, ‘Incremental Regulation’, which they describe by using an example from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The EPA Nanomaterials Stewardship Program reflects precisely the approach we espouse here: begin with information gathering and assessment, encourage experiments with self-regulation and multi-stakeholder norms, move gradually to greater governmental involvement to standardize, scale up and supervise voluntary programs, perform all the steps with high levels of transparency and participation, and over time build up a regulatory end state that retains the best of these voluntary mechanisms … along with formal regulation …, as required. p. 57

Seems more like a plea to ‘go slow’ rather than rush to regulating before you understand the implications. The approach seems reasonable enough. Of course, implementing these ideas always provides a stumbling block. I’ve worked in enough jobs where I’ve had to invoke policy in situations that the policy makers never envisioned due to the fact [1] they had no practical experience and [2] it’s impossible to create policies that cover every single contingency. That’s kind of a big problem with nanotechnology, none of us has much practical experience with it and I think the question that hasn’t been addressed is whether or not we are willing to take chances. Then we need to figure out what kind, how long, and who will be taking the chances? More soon.

Inspiration for a new approach to risk regulation for nanotechnology

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I’m getting into the home stretch now regarding the ‘Risk Management Principle for Nanotechnology’ article. After dealing with the ‘classic’ risk principles and the newer precautionary principles, the authors (Marchant, Sylvester, and Abbott) unveil a theory for their proposed ‘new principles’. The theory is based on work by I. Ayres and J. Braithwaite on something they call, ‘Responsive Regulation’. Briefly, they suggest avoiding the regulation/deregulation debate in favour of a flexible regulatory approach where a range of strategies are employed.

With this tool kit [range of strategies] in hand, regulators can play a tit-for-tat strategy: they allow firms to self-regulate so long as the firms reciprocate with responsible action; if instead some firms act opportunistically, regulators respond to the defectors with appropriate penalties and more stringent regulation. p. 52 (Nanoethics, 2008, vol. 2 pp. 43-60

There are some difficulties associated with this approach but that is being saved for my next posting in this series.

The Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies has two events coming up. ‘Synthetic Biology: Is Ethics a Showstopper?’ on Thursday, January 8, 2009 from 12:30 pm – 1:30 pm (EST). For information on location (you have to RSVP) or how to attend via webcast (no RSVP required), check here. The other event is called, ‘Nanotech and Your Daily Vitamins; Barriers to Effective FDA Regulation of Nanotechnology-Based Dietary Supplements’ and will be held on Thursday, January 15 (?) from 9:30 am – 10:30 am (EST). The date listed on their website and in their invitation is January 14, which is incorrect. I imagine they’ll correct either the date or date soon. For more details about the event itself, the physical location (If you’re planning to go, please RSVP), or the webcast directions (RSVP) not required) please check here.