Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions shock!!

On August 23, 2010, in Health & Safety, Nanotech, Publications, geoengineering, by Tim

Ever since someone choked a mouse with carbon nanotubes in an attempt to prove their toxicity, people have been running round giving huge doses of nanomaterials to everything from bacteria to fish. Of course the huge doses involved, far in excess of anything that would be encountered in the real world, could be equally well used to prove that bananas are dangerous.

In the same spirit, a team of researchers have determined in the words of New Scientist that “Antibacterial socks may boost greenhouse emissions” the lead reseracher seems to have a bit of an issue with nanom aterials anyway, stating that “These particles are developed with the express purpose of killing things.” Hmmm.

As one commenter points out the tub dosed with 55 micrograms of silver nanoparticles per gram of sludge, which is allegedly a concentration of silver similar to levels often found in waste water, is some 35 micrograms above the level where silver recovery is economically viable.

However, the results are inclusive, leading the researchers to conclude

a) that further experiments are necessary, “including the setting up of a complete wetland ecosystem to measure how it might be affected by waste water containing silver nanoparticles” and

b) that if the results were replicated on a large scale, it could “further contribute to concerns about global changes in climate”.

This all leads me to conclude that New Scientist is becoming less scientific and more like the Daiy Mail.

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A Cunning Plan To Avoid Nanotech Risks?

On June 14, 2010, in Europe, Nanotech, Publications, by Tim

Michael Berger at Nanowerk has a look at the the new EU Communication Roadmap and wonders what is is for. I had a similar issue when we were involved with the Nanoforum project years ago, and pulled out when

  1. No one involved in it could explain why they were doing it or explain
  2. why the EU taxpayers were being billed to try to put other EU taxpayers who were trying to make a living from European nanotech information out of business) and
  3. a project officer admitted it was pointless rubbish but refused to kill it and
  4. I simply couldn’t stomach the idea of producing meaningless irrelevant drivel and having my name associated with it.

That aside, it does raise the issue of the barrage of documentation where roadmap after roadmap is produced with no reference to the preceding version and with no attempt to measure progress, something a number of people have been grumbling about. As Berger notes:

In case of the EC, if this roadmap fails (which would require to have someone check in a few years time how it has done) nobody will be blamed or even fired. A new group, or the same group, of bureaucrats will then spend a few million euros in taxpayer money to conduct surveys and workshops and seminars and just write a new one.

It’s not just an European Commission problem,  the UK has got so good at this that one speaker from a government department at a conference last week boasted that the UK is a world leader in talking about health and safety aspects of nanotechnologies.

Talking about risk and communication is obviously less hazardous than doing anything, but blowing the entire budget on paperwork is not a particularly brilliant long term plan!

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Another Boring Pointless Nanotech Spat Or Does It Tell Us Something?

On April 23, 2010, in Health & Safety, Nanotech, Publications, by Tim
The ongoing spat between a journalist determined to prove nanotech is dangerous and the Nation Nanotechnology Coodination Office tells us a lot about how science is perceived, and about ourselves.
The problem is that, as a journalist, you are far more likely to get a story published which alerts people to some kind of hidden danger, preferably as a result of a government conspiracy or cover up, than  if you write something about science being wonderful. And it is an unequal contest. As this incident, and many others illustrate, to ‘prove’ that something is dangerous you only need to point to one study, as we saw with the MMR vaccine in the UK. However, proving that something is safe requires an infinite number of studies conducted an infinite number of times with no statistical error, so you lose the argument in the first paragraph.  Of course after a reasonable amount of data has been gathered, it may turn out that something isn’t dangerous after all, but returning to an argument five years later is not of much interest in the world of journalism. Just like bankers, you collect your royalty cheque and move on to the next issue without looking back.
Any solution doesn’t lie with with risk management and perception, but with understanding the difference between scientists and the general public, a category which includes journalists and politicians, amongst others. Scientists are trained to be rational, to repeat the experiment, to gather statistical evidence and make decisions based on fact. Most people don’t have time for that sort of palaver. They open the newspaper, read that microwave ovens, vaccines, coffee, GMOs, Toyotas, nanobots are dangerous/cause cancer/will destroy the planet/make bankers even richer, and that’s it. An opinion is formed, and no further research and experimentation is needed. Having a rational scientist reciting ‘facts’ is as exciting to most people as having Gordon Brown pop round to explain tax credits to your family over breakfast.
After ten years of dealing with journalists trying to find scare stories about nanotech, I advise most people to leave them to it. If you wanted to prove that physics was dangerous you could point to nuclear weapons, or someone getting knocked off their bike while listening to an iPod instead of watching for bendy busses, but no one is yet suggesting that physics as a whole is dangerous.
Bad news sells newspapers as a result of human nature – we love to be scared and disgusted more than we want to be amazed.

After ten years of nanotech scare stories I feel that we have a fairly balanced research agenda, with plenty of good science being backed up by excellent toxicology and risk management studies.

But it’s a balance that is impossible to get right without second guessing what the applications will be.

 
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Nailing The Innovation Myths

On February 16, 2010, in Economy 2.0, Publications, Sustainability, VC2.0, venture capital, by Tim

Good to see a new report from the Judge Business School in Cambridge highlighting some of the myths about how high tech firms are created. Much of Europe tends to focus on large multi partner research schemes such as Framework 7 whereas much of business wold prefer something like the SBIR and DARPA contracts common in the US.

The report found little enthusiasm amongst successful, fast growing high-tech firms for the kinds of multi-partner research grants involving university-industry collaboration that are favoured by UK policy makers and, in contrast to the US, a dearth of R&D contracts with public sector customers. It argues that for decades UK Government policy has been based on three fundamental myths about how new hi-tech firms are created:

-       that university research is the key source of technology and innovation for new hi-tech firms

-       that venture capital is the primary source of finance

-       and that the best way for Government to support technology development in companies is by funding multi-partner research collaborations between universities and private sector firms

While the first two points may be true (to some extent) in Silicon Valley (at certain times),  countless billions have been frittered away trying to create new Silicon Valleys in various parts of the world.

The report also calls “for the establishment of “Intermediate R&D Institutes”, similar in some respects to the Fraunhofer Institutes in Germany, to provide a more mission orientated environment than is possible in universities to develop and commercialise technologies with long lead times.”

 
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“Something Should Be Done” – Nanotechnology: a UK Industry View

On January 17, 2010, in Europe, Nanotech, Publications, by Tim

The new report “Nanotechnology: a UK Industry View” finally surfaced, and its recommendations are to spend more money, develop more skills, have more dialogue and..sorry, I must have nodded off, but it’s pretty standard stuff, and the recommendations are exactly the same as every other nanotech report produced over the past ten years.

I have to question why we go through this process again and again and again, with each report calling for the same things and nothing ever changing. We need to establish a few ground rules if UK nanotechnology is ever going to break out of it’s post Oxonica rut:

  1. Stop calling for more government money to be spent on stuff, it is as effective as wring a letter to Santa Claus. Unless you have been living in a cave (or an ivory tower) for the past year you will know that the UK government doesn’t have any, and the little it has left will go on ring fencing politically significant projects such as the National Health Service.  Forking over huge sums to an ‘industry’ that has been characterised by hype followed by spectacular crashes simply isn’t going to happen, no matter how many reports get written.
  2. Stop calling for The Government to do something – in this case “assisting the banking and insurance companies in understanding nanotechnology to enable sound investments to be made.” The Government won’t exist after May, and until then no one will have much interest in nanotechnology compared to saving their careers. If you want the Government to do something useful, ask them to make sure that a business and innovation friendly climate exists.
  3. Stop expecting anyone to do take any action as a result of educating and informing people about nanotechnology. No banker or investor is interested in being educated about nanotechnology, but we all love good business ideas.
  4. Get out of the ghetto. The UK nanotechnology industry only exists in the mind of people who produce reports like this. Creating an artificial entity just so that targets can be set and measured is pointless and there are far more effective ways of measuring the impact of a technology on an economy.
  5. Make the best use of existing resources – we have a variety of nanotech facilities already up and running (although I’m still not quite sure Nanoforce is supposed to do, something with the creative industries?) so it should be possible to  leverage entrepreneurial expertise and external cash to make sure that these can create the economic impact that was undoubtedly promised in their initial funding applications.

Anyway, here’s their version….

POLICY AND REGULATION

1. Nanotechnology innovation and exploitation is business driven.The department responsible for leading and coordinating nanotechnology activities across Government should be the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to ensure investment provides added value for the UK.

2. TheTechnology Strategy Board must implement its NanoscaleTechnologies Strategy with specific funded calls to deliver commercialisation of value adding nanotechnology based products.

3. Government should address the need for responsible development of all emerging technologies, including nanotechnologies, by putting in place a framework through which product risk assessments can be carried out alongside industry’s need to focus on innovation.

4. Defra, other Government Departments, relevant KTNs and trade associations should engage with industry to ensure the effective operation of a simplified Voluntary Reporting Scheme in the UK for nanomaterials and to work with EU regulators to ensure ongoing REACh regulations take account of nanotechnology fully and effectively.

SKILLS

1. Develop world class professional education programmes at all levels covering all aspects of nanotechnology.

2. Improve and promote vocational training in nanotechnology from technician level to develop individuals with the skills and expertise to support commercialisation of nanotechnology in the UK.

FUNDING

1. Provide more accessible and commercially focussed funding for SMEs as well as larger companies engaged in the development of nanotechnology based products to support innovation in the UK.

2. Invest in key establishments and organisations to build world class capability in nanotechnology product development.

3. Provide funding for cross-sectoral initiatives to apply developments achieved in one sector to other sectors and applications.

4. Continue to invest in standardisation activities to maintain UK leadership in creating international standards for nanotechnology and National Measurement System facilities.

5. Continue to support knowledge transfer activities to deliver innovation in nanotechnology and pull through academic research into commercial applications.

ENGAGEMENT

1. Ensure that the general public is informed of product developments based on nanotechnology.

2. Industry and Government should engage in an evidence based dialogue with the Unions and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs).

3. Provide support for two-way international collaboration to gather and share information on nanotechnology.

4. Government and industry should assist banking and insurance companies in understanding nanotechnology to enable sound investments to be made.

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UK Nanotech Stagnates?

On January 15, 2010, in Europe, Nanotech, Publications, by Tim

Here’s an interesting snippet from an FT report about a forthcoming report by the UK Knowledge Transfer Network on nanotechnologies

The report found that UK investment in nanotechnology was low. Per capita public funding was $1.96 (£1.20) in 2008, compared with $5.06 for the US and $6.07 for Germany.

As we all know, getting reliable funding numbers is very tricky, and the recent devaluation of the pound against the Euro will have distorted numbers by 20-30%, but it does seem from this that the UK is losing its way in nanotechnology.

Perhaps a more reliable indicator of progress would be the number of new companies turning up, but unfortunately every UK Nanotech event seems to draw the same crowd. Some of them are great companies and good friends, but it does seem to qualitatively indicate a degree of stagnation, at least among what would be classed as ‘nanotech companies.’

This mirrors, to a large extent, the picture worldwide. The last few years have seen a shift from nanotechnology being used as a reason to found a company to it becoming just another piece of the toolkit. As a result the number of companies calling themselves ‘nano’ has not really increased even as the penetration of the technology has.

Getting rid of the obsession with a ‘nanotechnology industry’ would help get a real sense of the impact of nanotechnologies.

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House of Lords set to publish it’s long awaited report on “Nanotechnologies and Food”

On January 5, 2010, in Europe, Nanotech, Products, Publications, by Tim

The UK’s House of Lords is to publish its long awaited report on “Nanotechnologies and Food” this week, but it’s all top secret until a minute past midnight on Friday. We’re curious to see whether the report contains some of oft quoted but wildly inaccurate numbers and/or calls for the usual ‘further public consultation’ or indeed whether there are any actionable conclusions at all, something sadly lacking in UK government science and technology publications of late.

Reports from some of the folks interviewed  suggest that the committee wasn’t the stereotypical bunch of old buffers put out to grass and that there was some real knowledge involved. You can see the evidence given here, and a bit about how the UK Government views nanotechnology and food here.


 
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Happy New Year – 10 Years of TNT Weekly!

On January 5, 2010, in Europe, Nanotech, Publications, by Tim

This year we are celebrating ten years of TNT Weekly which has progressed from an email newsletter based on manually trawling the web to a blog and twitter feed over the years. When we started it looked more like the example from January 2001 below.

While the format may have changed, the mission hasn’t, and we still hope that we provide not just a source of information but also an enjoyable read.

Happy New Year!

TNT Weekly

Week 2, 2001.

The Trends in Nanotechnology (TNT) newsletter provides links and introductions to articles and press releases that have appeared on the web in the last week on the subject of nanotechnology.  It is widely believed that in the near future nanotechnology will spawn a variety of world-changing industries, leveraging developments in a broad range of scientific disciplines, from the biological sciences, through chemistry and classical and quantum physics.

The editorial team that compiles this newsletter consists of leaders from the scientific & business communities. A key advantage of our editorial team is the ability to cut through the nanotechnology hype. As such, we will occasionally bring you some of that hype (and our critique) to assist in the learning process for those who need it.

Our mission is twofold:

- to inform researchers in all disciplines relevant to nanotechnology, a field where, like no other in history, multidisciplinary collaborations will bear the greatest fruit

- to provide lay and business readers with access to the latest and most relevant information on research and existing and upcoming businesses poised to capitalise on the vast potential of nanotechnology

Given the diversity of these two groups, our focus is on providing a concise, readable, first-stop resource for busy people that will enable them to home in quickly on the latest news of interest to them. There may be dozens of (highly-technical) nanotechnology-related papers published each week in the various subscription-only academic journals. We do not attempt to comprehensively review these, looking instead for freely-available, not-too-technical reviews that will be accessible to the bulk of our readers. The more technical reader can always follow through to the original publication. We will make exceptions to this rule at times, where an article or an issue of a journal warrants, and hope to extend this service in the future.

Our brief commentary on links is intended to help the reader’s selection process (once they have come to trust our judgement). We hope it will also raise the occasional smile or two, and that you come to look forward to receiving our newsletter as not just a source of information but as an enjoyable read.

——————————————————————————————–

KEEPING MOORE’S LAW ALIVE

Berkeley Labs’ Science Beat brings us a report (http://enews.lbl.gov/Science-Articles/Archive/maskless-chips.html) of a project at that institution to develop commercially-applicable nanolithographic techniques using ion beams. Certainly the ability to dispense with the masks, resists and etching used with prevailing lithographic techniques seems appealing.

For the broader picture on miniaturisation in semiconductor technology using more traditional techniques, see the rather ponderous article in EETimes on the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (http://www.eetimes.com/story/technology/OEG20001222S0013), or, also from EETimes (http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG20010105S0023), a comparison of progress in ultraviolet and electron beam lithographic approaches, that also includes some skepticism about the potential of maskless techniques.

Better, though, and covering the areas of both the EETimes links and more, is a fine article from Red Herring (http://www.redherring.com/insider/2000/1220/tech-mag-88-litho122000.html). This article has broad coverage, clear non-technical explanations of difficult issues and injects some humour too. It stops short of looking into the more exotic possibilities for going beyond the limits of lithographic techniques, e.g. using nanowires (as mentioned below), nanotubes (such as in the latest edition of Science; abstract at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/291/5501/97), or self-assembling molecular electronics (also mentioned below), but that would be a whole new article. Red Herring at its best.

Beyond lithographic techniques, there may be nanowires. The Financial Times briefly reports on a letter in the current issue of Nature on the assembly of doped nanowires into a variety of basic electronic elements (http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=010104001278). Several other recent papers on the production and manipulation of nanowires have pointed to the advantages of such over carbon nanotubes for basic nanoelectronics (but nanotubes have other interesting properties, such as high tensile strength or the ability to act as rheostats when rotated, that offer other possibilities). The summary of the letter in Nature is at http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v409/n6816/abs/409066a0_fs.html&filetype=&_UserReference=C0A804EE46B40E658A9C06C0A0653A57DC36.

A STEAK IN THE FUTURE?

The UK’s Guardian newspaper brings us a year-end look at the future of nanotechnology (courtesy of the Financial Times site – http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=001231000969) that offers just a few possibilities and ends with some of the wilder predictions of the potential of self-replicating nanomachines, this time not the dreaded grey goo but the even more implausible vision of nanobots picking vegetable matter apart atom by atom and rebuilding it into juicy steaks. Harrumph.

Part of the same Guardian ‘Science 2001′ special section is an article (http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=001231000968) that hardly mentions nanotechnology (and badly when it does) but we felt worth including because it’s tremendous fun, and because it does cover well the other of the great fears of Sun co-founder Bill Joy (nanotechnology being the first), as expressed in his now infamous Wired article. This other fear is hyper-intelligent computers taking over the world, which we actually find far more plausible than nanobot-assembled best brisket.

EVENTS

A two-day event to present Swiss micro- and nanotechnology research to UK companies is announced at http://www.itp.org.uk/swissbiomst/info.htm.

Announcement of a prestigious-looking event, The Mitsubishi International Fullerene Workshop 2001, can be found at http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/010104/az_fic.html.

LOOKING BACK AT Y2K

One we missed last week (no-one’s perfect), a review of 2000 in Chemical and Engineering News online (http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/7851/7851sci1.html). This sumptuous piece, with some nice pics (unfortunately not synchronised with the text in this web version), contains many items touching on the nanoworld. On the self-assembly front, check out the bit in the ‘Materials’ section on membranes containing actin (one of the two proteins that makes up the ratchet mechanism behind muscle contraction) and in the ‘Molecular Electronics’ section, on self-assembling microelectronic systems. There is also a ‘Nanomaterials’ section, predominantly on nanotubes, and a ‘Chemistry-physics Interface’ section that includes one of many uses of silicon cantilevers that have appeared in the last year. Rich pickings.

TROUBLES OUT EAST

The Yomiuri Shimbun/Daily Yomiuri seems fond of making recommendations on science and technology in Japan, and their article on the Kansai region’s declining economy (at the Financial Times site – http://globalarchive.ft.com/globalarchive/articles.html?id=010104001721) is no exception. The region is home to prominent nanotechnology research groups.

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Dodgy Statistics and Seasonal Cheer (hic!)

On December 2, 2009, in Economy 2.0, Europe, Finance, Nanotech, Publications, by Tim

It seems to be the season for dodgy statistics as well as good cheer – though perhaps overdoing the good cheer has an impact on the statistics (hic!).

Firstly the UK Governmemt’s £1Bn innovation fund is accused of shaky maths by Richard Tyler in the Telegraph who also questions the wisdom of the Government setting up its own fund rather than giving the private sector tax incentives to do it.

The weirdest statistic comes from the normally excellent UK Trade and Investment who claim that the town of Lowestoft is the ‘Enterprise Capital of Britain’ on the basis of having set up 50,000 new businesses. Given that the town’s population is only 60,000, it’s ether even more impressive or total and utter rubbish (unless of course that the numbers are calculated for businesses set up in ‘Greater Lowestoft’ over the last three millennia).

More serious is dodgy numbers in the business plan I was reviewing earlier for a nanomaterials company. All of the market numbers came from a rather infamous report which predicted nanotech markets in the trillions of dollars with phenomenal growth rates across the board, which led the company to expect fantastic revenues in half a dozen diverse and unrelated market segments. I usually suggest that any business plan which relies entirely on third party market research, and in this case the sunniest and most optimistic research imaginable, goes straight in the bin.

Most of the market research we perform at Cientifica helps validate data acquired elsewhere by our clients, and helps to build an overall picture of the oppotunities and inform discussions about strategy. Clients are sometimes disappointed that our numbers are not as big as other forms would predict, but in a long tern business such as nanotechnology it’s better to spend more time worrying about the accuracy of the numbers than their magnitude.

 
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Selective Use of The Precautionary Principle

On October 21, 2009, in Health & Safety, Nanotech, Products, Publications, by Tim

I almost found myself agreeing with our neighbours (across the road from Foxbat) at the Ecologist, which gave me a bit of a shock.

The article in question concerned antimicrobials, and nanosilver in particular, and I have to admit that I’m more likely to be encouraging my kids to eat earthworms than to spraying them with antibacterial agents. As the old adage goes, you have to eat a peck of dirt before you die, and with good reason.

But we also have to ask, yet again: why have we become so frightened of ‘germs’ that we feel the need to go to ever more extreme measures to vanquish them? Are there really people out there so terrified of their washing machine becoming a festering mass of life threatening germs that they feel the need to invest in a nanosilver coated machine? And if there are, wouldn’t an investment in cognitive behavioral therapy be money better spent?

Well said, but then the article is spoiled at the last by the usual mindless invocation of the precautionary principle – which for some reason applies to nanotechnology but doesn’t apply to more obviously foolhardy and downright suicidal activities such as cycling to work in Spitalfields.

 
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