I’m not convinced that the science budget can be ring fenced. Despite what politicians are saying now, the huge black hole in the UK budget needs to be plugged, and for most people science is a very remote and irrelevant thing when compared to rubbish collection or heath care.

But a crisis can also be an opportunity, and as spelled out in last week’s ‘Vision for UK Research‘ report there is also a need to start thinking about science in a different way. In fact we really need to look at the whole process of scientific innovation from primary education to technology funding. Long term, sustained and focussed funding is required, but getting the message across to the non science community is very difficult.

Perhaps the most frightening chart in the Royal Society report is this one. If we don’t have any qualified maths and science teachers then where are the researchers of the future to come from?

Our old friends the ETC group, who spent the last ten years objecting to nanotechnology on rather questionable grounds, have reactivated their global network to write an open letter to “the upcoming privately organized meeting on geoengineering in Asilomar, California” which aims to look at a voluntary code “for the least harmful and lowest risk conduct of research and testing of proposed climate intervention and geoengineering technologies.”

What really gives the game away is their objection, or rather their outrage on behalf of a number of Philippines farmers groups, to the “almost exclusively white male scientists from industrialized countries” who will be at the conference.

Come on guys, why don’t you just come out and say that you are outraged by the lack of ethnic diversity in science, peeved about people making money out of it and hopping mad about not being seen as being important enough to be invited? What’s geoengineering, synthetic biology, nanotechnology or biotech got to do with it? Apparently absolutely nothing.

On several occasions when I’ve been in a bar with eminent toxicologists they have admitted that there is absolutely no way that we could ever understand the toxicology of every kind of nanoparticle, and there is no point in trying. What you can do is draw broad conclusions, so that if we have a high aspect ratio structure such as a long carbon nanotube we know that it won’t be cleared by an alveolar macrophage etc, and then we usually get into a discussion about whether anyone is ever likely to inhale enough of the stuff to have a problem, given that we treat most nanomaterials with rather more caution than we did asbestos.

So for most toxicologists the choice is clear. Get paid to do some science or sit about for a bit?

When toxicologists ask for a global well funded long term study to allow the modelling of the interaction of various categories of nanomaterials with the environment, the funding agencies can only manage rustle up a few hundred thousand euros for a two or three year project. That gets you nowhere in understanding a new and rapidly emerging class of materials, so we just end up paying great scientists to sit on their backsides and browse the web for a few years.

Stop that talk of nanobots, this is getting silly!

The UK Ministry of Defence released its latest ‘Global Strategic Trends – Out to 2040‘ study last month, and it’s a good read (even for non spooks) covering everything from terrorism to to climate change and their impact on geopolitics.

The report identifies four key issues, Globalisation, Climate Change, Global Inequality & Innovation which will dominate the next thirty years. The first three are fairly obvious, but I liked the rather rational approach to innovation which seems to put the military at odds with much of the ‘Cleantech industry.’

Innovation and technology will continue to facilitate change. Energy efficient technologies will become available, although a breakthrough in alternative forms of energy that reduces dependency on hydrocarbons is unlikely. The most significant innovations are likely to involve sensors, electro-optics and materials. Application of nano-technologies, whether through materials or devices, will become pervasive and diverse, particularly in synthetic reproduction, novel power sources, and health care. Improvements in health care, for those who can afford it, are likely to significantly enhance longevity and quality of life.

For those interested in how the military see nanotechnologies, there is a specific mention:

Nanotechnology focuses on manipulating matter at the atomic and molecular scale, generally at less than 100 nanometres in size. At this size, and using other scientific disciplines, the characteristics of matter can be changed. This will create new and unique properties with profound and diverse applications. Advances in nanotechnology, at the interdisciplinary frontier where physics, chemistry and biology meet, will be a key enabler of technological advance, involving: new additives and coatings; materials and sensor development; and medical treatments and heath diagnosis. Products will be smaller and more energy efficient. They will be designed and manufactured with atomic precision and less production waste. Out to 2020, defence applications, in convergence with other disciplines, are likely to be predominantly in sensors, electro-optics and materials, including biologically active agents and surface- engineered materials. Additionally, integrated nano-devices will lead to the emergence of small, swarmed and autonomous systems. The application of nanotechnologies, whether through materials or devices, will become pervasive and diverse, particularly in manufacturing (strong lightweight materials for transportation applications), synthetic reproduction, novel power (battery) sources and health care (targeted drug delivery and augmented medical treatments).

Much of it is sensible, but the term ’synthetic reproduction’ pops up a few times, perhaps a hangover from the old nanobot days when planners envisaged hordes of nanobots devouring enemy tanks?

The Vision for UK Research document goes to great lengths to compare the UK to China, but if you look at primary education , and I have first hand experience, the UK SATS test only requires a level of knowledge that many Chinese children would be expected to have by the age of eight.

If the UK is to be serious about science, it needs a coherent science strategy covering the entire chain from primary school to grown up entrepreneurs. No amount of grand schemes will work if a growing proportion of the population is illiterate and innumerate.

I particularly liked the clarity of this report, being written in such a way that even our current crop of rather dim politicians (Lord Drayson excepted) might be able to understand it. Who knows, if it could be rewritten in the style of the Daily Mail there might be a chance of someone other than the scientific community actually reading it.

A couple of issues stand out for me.

Firstly is the section on terminology, and the report suggests moving away from the divisive terms of pure and applied research, and looking at it in terms of upstream and downstream research.

Research should be about asking important questions. Existing terminology – in particular the attempts to distinguish between pure (or basic or blue skies) and applied (or directed) research – causes problems and division amongst the research community. At the same time, some descriptors such as curiosity-driven research are both misleading and damaging.

Most current terminologies get in the way of understanding the relationship between research and social and economic benefits. We should think in terms of excellence which carries the potential for impact and harvesting the products of the research base to maximise impacts.

The other idea is the creation of Large Technology Platforms, i.e market driven approaches to solving major problems and strengthening UK industrial competitiveness.

Suggested criteria for Large Technology Platforms

New technologies often need to be further developed by substantial teams for a number of years before they are commercial. These teams need to be larger than the research teams which first made the discovery. They often need expensive production equipment to make the research industrially useful. This requires a dedicated environment with a clear focus for a period of 5 to 10 years.

This can only be achieved through a major partnership between universities, government and industry for those very few exceptional opportunities that meet the following criteria:

• Large (£multi-billion) market

• Verified global UK technical leadership

• Defensible technology position (patents, know-how)

• UK absorptive capacity for the developed platform (skill base, sector companies)

• The opportunity to create a platform technology with wide applicability

Funding

Funding should come from various public sources (TSB, EPSRC, European Framework Programme, RDAs, Universities etc) but should have a substantial industrial component, possibly starting at 25% in the beginning and expanding to 70% over time.

To make a difference in a global context we suspect that each of these platform technologies will need between £50 to £100m over a 5 to 10 year period to become the basis of numerous start-ups and licensed projects to large companies. This will lead to clusters of expertise in these sectors that feed off each other in a virtuous circle enabling the UK to retain global leadership in large markets. The particular amount required will need to be specifically justified in each case.

The problem with this approach is that the last few decades have seen plenty of similar attempts to recreate ‘The Cambridge Effect’, Silicon Valley or to create new industries, and in almost all cases they have been a total waste of  money, and not just in the public sector. Plastic Logic for example, have already burnt through over £100m, only to launch a monochrome e-book reader ten days before apple announce their iPad!

I’m all in favour of research excellence, but any large scale long term ambitions will need to be both properly funded, and properly thought out.

This report does help to mover the agenda in the right direction.

Where did they all go?

My colleague Dexter Johnson (aka the Nanoclast) highlights a forthcoming report about the decline in the number of Australian nanotech companies, but it’s hardly surprising. Before anyone heralds the death of anything consider this:

• The global economy has resulted in a reduction of the number of companies in just about every sector of the economy. High streets where a third of the shops have closed are now common outside London, and everyone from estate agents to Starbucks have been rationalising, downsizing or going bust.
• As I mentioned back in 2001, most nanomaterials companies will go bust, some sooner, some later, but there is almost no way that anyone apart from large diversified chemical and materials companies can create a sustainable business in that sector. Of course if you told your VCs that nanotubes were the new gold you probably got closed down five years ago.
• Nanotech has been subject to a large amount of M&A activity, Singular ID being snapped up by Bilicare for example, thereby disappearing from the Singapore register of nanotech companies and joining the Indian pharmaceutical industry.
• Most nanotech companies were start ups, and most start ups don’t survive too long, whatever the sector.
• I can think of plenty of companies making use of nanotechnologies that no one would consider being nanotech companies, so how a nanotech company is defined is also part of the problem.

Of course I’m pre judging the report, and there may be more granularity and methodology than in this brief report. However what isn’t in doubt is the stupid and irresponsible nanotech market numbers that Lux Research keep repeating and which keeps finding its way into business plans and foresight documents. Any business plan that starts waffling on about the ‘nanotech market’ gets binned straight away. In our investment business we interested in tangible and quantifiable numbers not abstract, artificial and absurd concepts.

Now if I was working in a government agency which was being judged on the number of nanotechnology companies created/attracted/sustained I’d be looking trying to figure out how far and how fast I could move the goalposts.

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.”

Gold for Good

I first came across the World Gold Council back in 2002 at a nanotechnology conference in Ireland. While most gold goes into jewellery, and doesn’t require too much marketing, a growing amount goes into high technology applications, everything from microelectronics to drug delivery.

Today we can publish the fruits of our recent collaboration with the World Gold Council, a white paper called “Gold for Good” which looks at the history of gold and nanotechnology.

One of the most fascinating parts of working on this publication was the realisation that gold nanoparticles have been used for several millennia, from the Romans to Michael Faraday, but it is only recently that we have been able to understand why they have the properties that they do, which has led to a host of other applications.

While the World Gold Council is often seen as a marketing organisation, they do actually invest in companies making use of gold – for example Nanostellar who use gold nanoparticles in catalysts to reduce diesel emissions.

Good for Gold!

Or is it?

One of the debates that has been taking place recently is over the nature of science and how to stimulate its value to the economy. Should it be driven by economic or strategic need or do we take a chance on basic research coming up with the goods? Obviously we need both, and in the right proportion.

However science isn’t very important to politicians unless you are the science minister, and is even less important to ordinary voters. If you ask non scientists questions such as What is more important, a free at point of care health service or science? Should public sector pay be cut to improve science funding? Should we spend money on foreign aid or science?  then you soon see the magnitude of the problem.

While science ministers from all parties will be pledging increased funding and talking up the importance of science to the economy, the reality is that science is invisible to most people and in an almost bankrupt UK it can and probably will have its budget hacked to bits without anyone noticing (for a few years anyway).

UK politicians are not as enlightened as their Korean counterparts, and the political battleground is to do with ordinary people in marginal constituencies, not the minority that toil in laboratories, nor the majority that will benefit from their toil in ten years time.

Smart science administrators will be preparing a new streamlined and efficient research environment, whoever wins the next election.

Dr. William Deagle Exposes The Secrets Of Nanotechnology, Underground Cities & The Alien Influence In Our History

"En Route To The Nanotech Debate"

It’s always odd how nanotechnology gets blamed for a lot of the world’s ills

A common accusation is that nanotech will lead to a loss of privacy, although this is surely more due to the proliferation of databases and processing power to enable facial or car number plate recognition. It is ironic that some of the most vocal protesters use Facebook & Twitter.

Chemistry World has been reporting on the protests at French nanotechnology debates, which seem to have degenerated into attempts to disrupt any public engagement. Perhaps they are mindful of the UK engagement exercises, which usually ended up with the general public being generally in favour of nanotechnology, or perhaps just carrying on an old French tradition of angry mobs of peasants/farmers/students smashing things up. But it raises wider questions about the understanding of the consequences of technology, both good and bad.

GMO’s are a case in point, and a perfect example of how, despite having the technology to address some of the worlds major problems with food production and nutrition, the fear of someone making any money out of just one aspect of the technology has condemned millions to a rather more dismal existence then they may have had. While opposition to GMOs has been softening of late, many other emerging technologies from geoengineering to synthetic biology are facing similar hype driven backlashes.

The nightmare scenario is that we have the ability to address, solve or mitigate a major problem, but that a decision has already been made not to use that technology. Synthetic biology may, for instance, be able to provide some shortcuts to the production of sustainable fuels and vaccines for H1N1 and other flu variants, but what if it winds up like GMOs and is unable to be used?

Can anything be done about it? Perhaps. Information and education are the key. Pitchfork wielding mobs descending on universities, or its modern French equivalent doesn’t get us very far, and as usual it comes down to information , as Mark Twain noted in 1869

Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.

The same is true for most single issue groups, whether anti capitalist, environmental or even pro business!

All technologies have pros and cons, but the trick is to manage them in such a way that you encourage the positive aspects while keeping tight rein over any potential downside. There is nothing new here, we have been doing it with drugs for decades.

Nanotechnology - According to the Soil Association

The UK’s well known and respected science magazine The Daily Mail has an article by Peter Melchet, Policy Director of the Soil Association who seems to need his head examined for equating nanotechnology with “Turkey Twizzlers,” but I suppose you have to do these things if you write for the tabloids.

It’s the usual Daily Mail journalism, take a few bits of fact and then extrapolate them into a nightmarish vision of scientists turning cats inside out for fun and then relaxing by forcing toxic substances down babies throats for profit.

Now I know the Soil Association is committed to organic farming, and that’s fine, but prancing around attempting to ban things that no one is planning to use seems a bit silly to me. If people want to eat food that is brewed in vats using biotech that’s fine, even organic beer and wine is brewed in vats and the waste products are then turned into a quintessentially British food, Marmite!

A "nightmare food" - brewed in vats

Here are a few of the choice bits of (dis)information from the article for you to enjoy:

Of the £5.5billion invested in nanotechnology globally each year, much goes into the development of cosmetics and health products.

Five years ago, when top scientists advised in the strongest possible terms to avoid the use of nanoparticles, the Government acknowledged the risk but took no action.

Nanotech food was part of a nightmarish vision for the future of global farming and food. Some thought that GM and nanotechnology were the keys to overcoming the multiple problems of falling yields from artificial fertiliser and pesticide-laden crops, continuing hunger and starvation, obesity and an increasing scarcity of the raw materials, such as oil, on which nonorganic food depends.

Food would be brewed in vast vats using GM ingredients, with added nanotech nutrients and vitamins. Scientists believed that the world could continue dramatic increases in dairy and meat consumption, even if the milk and steaks of the future actually came from laboratories, not cows.

The South Korean government said Thursday it will increase the amount of investment in developing technology to enhance the nation’s competitiveness.

According to the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, it will spend up to 354.9 billion won (316.0 million U.S. dollars) this year, up 18 percent from the 2009 expenditure, which will be focused on nano tech, biotech, technology convergence and energy.

Of the total amount, 80 billion won (71.4 million U.S. dollars) will be used for new investments, surging 43 percent from the previous year, the ministry said.

The increase in fund comes as part of South Korea’s national plan to advance in the basic technology research and development areas by 2021, local media said, quoting a ministry official.

The ministry, in particular, is supposing domestic technology creation will benefit the country by curtailing patent lawsuits and royalty payments, according to media reports.

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.