Hello Mr. Lovy,
My name is Samir and I am one of the editors at NanomedicineCenter.com, a website dedicated to nanomedicine and bionanotechnology. We are a group of students interested in nanotechnology in general, but especially in it's medical division. I came across your website and was wondering if you could include a link to our site there? It would mean a lot to us.
Thank you in advance.
Looking forward to your reply.
Best regards,
Samir
When A Good Nanoparticle Goes Bad: Well, now that's the story of my life. I AM that nanoparticle.
Actually, it's more about detecting which nanoscale gold particles are good catalysts and which suddenly go bad. Separating good from evil will help create better fuel cells or more efficient cars.
You can't start the energy revolution without a nanoscale spark. All it takes are a few good particles.
As for the bad ones ... throw away the key.
Backgrounder
From Wilkes-Barre to Wolfe
Philippines to launch NanoPower Revolution
Philippines to launch NanoPower Revolution: Part II
Up in the desolate, frozen wastelands of Minnesota, there arises a small ray of hope for the future at Dakota County Technical College in Rosemount, where students study for a big future in nanotech.
They have a blog that chronicles their struggles, large and ... small, including a sample class schedule in their two-year nanoscience degree program.
Maybe these smart engineers can help with the recount up there and finally send Al Franken to Washington. Perhaps a little nanoscale gerrymandering, Minnesota style?
Related News
Lansing Community College to help start scientific center in nanotechnology
Backgrounder
High School Nails Nano
The Reuters video above frightened me for a moment. Judging from the title, "The Creep of Nanotech," I thought it might be about me.
Instead, I was relieved to see an interesting report on companies working on nanotech disease detectors, including one for MRSA, which I touched on previously here.
Backgrounder
Nano shows no MRSA against superbugs
When The Christian Science Monitor decided to discontinue its dead-tree edition and go Web only, there was a great deal of whining and wailing in the journalism world about the "end of an era" and other such nonsense cliches.
But the folks at Samsung Electronics and Unidym (owned by my old employers at Arrowhead Research) "have demonstrated the world’s first carbon nanotube-based color active matrix electrophoretic display (EPD) e-paper." The advantages, according to the companies:
EPDs have very low power consumption and bright light readability, which means that even under bright lights or sunlight, the user would be able to view the display clearly. Furthermore, since the device uses the thin CNT films, applications can include e-paper and displays with thin, flexible substrates. Power consumption is lowered due to the EPD’s ability to reflect light and therefore able to preserve text or images on the display without frequently refreshing. More here
Translation: Remember that scene in the movie "Minority Report," where newspaper advertisements are all animated and stuff? Yeah. This brings that world closer, for better or worse.
Translation 2: Don't worry about the loss of dead-tree newspapers and the rise of all-digital publications. You'll be able to take The Christian Science Monitor into your household "reading room" again soon.
Backgrounder
Customers Googled while newspapers burned
Hope in paperless newspapers (Detroit Free Press)
Possible wireless newspapers? (BoingBoing)
The "NanoAnalogy" above comes from the Web page for a nanotech course offered at Ballston Spa High School in New York, where visionary biology teacher John Balet understands the important role nanotech will play in his students' future employment opportunities, not to mention the pervasive role it will play in their lives no matter what their future careers.
And that reminds me, it's been months since I've clipped my nails ...
Backgrounder
Nanotech for undergrads
Nano Nerd 2.0
Not your father's 'shop' class
Assistant Professor John Hart shows us that not all that spews forth from the University of Michigan is small time. Here, he gerrymanders some carbon nanotubes into ... what else ... Nanobama.
Backgrounder
Freedom is no small thing
Your one vote is small, but not insignificant. You fail to vote and you take away your freedom. Without freedom, you are nobody, you are left to rot, you do not matter, your life is at the mercy of small men. I know this to be true. Do not let them get away with it. Vote.
Backgrounder
Sakharov on Freedom
Feynman on freedom
'Freedom [is] the first-born daughter of science.'
Nanotech continues to be the driving force behind innovation in the auto industry, where the biggest challenge right now is providing those plug-in hybrids with enough long-lasting power to make them more than fancy golf carts.
GE recently made another investment in battery maker A123Systems, which "uses nanotechnology to produce rechargeable lithium-ion batteries with a combination of greater power density, lower weight, lower cost and improved safety than other battery types, based on materials licensed from MIT. Unlike standard lithium-ion batteries, A123's batteries are not prone to overheating."
I wrote a little on the advantages of nano-enabled Li-ion last year:
Current NiMH technology - the one powering the Toyota Prius, for example - is guaranteed to keep a car running for seven or eight years, he says. The next generation will go as long as a decade. But automakers are asking for 15-year battery life, and NiMH can't do that. Li-ion, once perfected, will.Plus, Li-ion will do it cheaply once production is ramped up, since the material is not as price sensitive as nickel. And Li-ion is two to three times lighter than NiMH. More here
Technology Review gives us a little more on A123 and its competitors and partners:
A123 uses a new lithium-ion chemistry that allows its batteries to be much lighter and more compact than the nickel metal hydride batteries in existing hybrids today, and safer than the conventional lithium ion batteries found in consumer electronics. In June GM announced that it is working with the South Korean company LG Chem, and its subsidiary Compact Power, based in Troy, MI, to make both battery packs and the individual cells inside them. They also signed an agreement with an LG Chem competitor, the Frankfurt, Germany-based Continental Automotive Systems, to develop battery packs. Continental had planned to use A123 as a subcontractor to supply the batteries for these packs. The new agreement puts A123 in direct contact with GM on the Volt project. More here
I covered the unveiling of the Volt concept vehicle at the North American International Auto Show a couple of years ago (PDF 219k) and interviewed the creator of the all-electric Tesla (PDF 197k).
The story of battery development appeals to me because it hits on the two primary topics I've been reporting on these past few years: nanotech and the auto industry.
Related Patent
Nanoscale Ion Storage Materials
Backgrounder
March goes out like a Li-Ion
Who's driving the revolution?
My old Rust Belt Blues blog fell upon the sword about five months ago, but with the help of a Knight Foundation journalism grant, it will hopefully live again as Rust Belt News. Read and rate my proposal here.
Superbad superbugs are invading. They're in our schools, hospitals and our filthy, overcrowded jails. The criminal is Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), and I've seen the general fear it causes in closed-in populations.
Fortunately, nanotech is coming to the rescue against this villain. The London Center for Nanotechnology reports on how nano is boosting the war on superbugs:
Scientists from the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL are using a novel nanomechanical approach to investigate the workings of vancomycin, one of the few antibiotics that can be used to combat increasingly resistant infections such as MRSA. The researchers, led by Dr Rachel McKendry and Professor Gabriel Aeppli, developed ultra-sensitive probes capable of providing new insight into how antibiotics work, paving the way for the development of more effective new drugs. More here
Backgrounder
Dendrimers: The unpublished story
pSivida's biosilicon does its job, then goes away
Diseases betrayed by cantilevers of love
I apologize for horribly neglecting this blog during the past few months. I see, though, that a great many NanoBot readers are searching for a video I posted last year of Jim Carrey and Conan O'Brien discussing quantum physics. It's a classic moment in the geek world. My previous posts here and here now lead to video dead-ends, so I found another source for the discussion (which also includes E Street Band drummer Max Weinberg). Just click the video above (or go here) and enjoy.
Backgrounder
Einstein's dice and the nano Sopranos
NanoVlog
Space Elevator: The Music Video
Longtime nanotech venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson poses with Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Joe Biden. Jurvetson writes:
When I mentioned that we are one of the most active energy and cleantech VC investors, Joe Biden quickly replied: "Well, then you are going to love what we are going to do." More here
As we know, nanotech is the primary technology that makes cleantech possible, so anybody who is interested in how nanotech develops should pay close attention to what the new administration is "going to do" if the Democrats win.
The U.S. government's push for nanotech funding began with Clinton and continued under Bush, so this should remain nonpartisan. And, of course, thank goodness for folks like Jurvetson, who uses his wealth to push mankind forward -- regardless of who's in power.
Backgrounder
Who's driving the revolution?
The business of imagination
Cleantech's the new nano; nano's the new dot-bomb
Here's an excellent piece by my colleague Alex Schmidt, who explains why "nano" is not appearing in the fine print on product packages these days.
A few years ago, plenty of companies hopped on the “nano” bandwagon, using the word in advertisements and product names. In some cases, the word "nano" was used to brand products that didn’t even contain nano-scale particles! Apparently, marketers imagined that the word would trickle into the mainstream to mean something vaguely cool, mysterious and futuristic. But those vague associations don't make for a particularly meaningful branding concept. You may have bought the iPod nano, but probably not because of its name.Now PR folks have gone so far as to invent a new investment sector for companies that use nanotechnology: Cleantech. It’s a word meant to suggest an innovative, environmentally friendly product that won’t be associated with “nano” if it loses its good name. More here.
Alex is an excellent radio and print journalist who, like me, discovered the hard way that it's tough to sell a nanotech-themed story to the mainstream media because after all the hype and the scare-mongering are weeded out, real nanotech is, well, kind of hard to wrap your brain around. So, the stories that see print and make the airwaves are the ones that focus on dreams or nightmares. Or, like Alex's story, how companies choose to "spin" their atoms.
I spoke with Alex sometime last year, when she was attempting to sell her piece. She wrote to me about how publications that are already biased for or against nanotech development are the ones that are most likely to buy a nano story.
"These are the only types of magazines that will cover nano, because they're the only ones willing to be completely biased on the topic," she said. "That is, other publications that are more level-headed would never cover the topic because the "gray area" truth about nanotechnology just isn't sexy enough."
Higher journalistic standards, it seems, brings out those "gray areas" and make for a less-sexy story with no definitive conclusions about whether nano is "good or bad."
One national publication killed her story outright after a frustrating back-and-forth with an editor. Why? Well, to paraphrase her editor: It was not as provocative as it could have been and he became confused about what nanotechnology really is. There was no central thesis over whether we should worry about nanotech or not.
In short, it was killed because nanotech is still, essentially, a basic science story with an awful lot of hype, fear, hope and hucksterism surrounding it.
She sounded a lot like me after having covered nanotech a few years longer than she has.
"I reported the *&^% out of my piece and feel I have lots of good info in my head at this point," she said.
I know. I know. Maybe we'll start a support group.
But with The New Plastic, Alex, you done good.
Backgrounder
The Case Of God v. Nanotech
Cleantech's the new nano; nano's the new dot-bomb
What I Did On My Summer Vacation: I was "off the grid" and not blogging. Yet, writing continued through the use of old fashioned pen-upon-paper technology. Watch this small space for more from "the little guy."
Andrew Maynard, chief science adviser for the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies in Washington, honored me with a footnote in his blog post on Elle's recent coverage of nanotech in cosmetics (You can download the entire Elle feature here).
Well, not exactly a footnote. Actually, it's under the subhed "trivia." Maynard writes:
In 2004, nanotech commentator and fellow blogger Howard Lovy drew a link between Madonna and nanotechnology in the Salon article Nanotech angels.
I thank Andrew for the mention, despite our difference of opinion on other issues -- mainly his organization's overuse of the "nano" label on questionably nano products.
Maynard recognized our differences in an e-mail to me recently.
"I suspect you will find the context of allegedly nano consumer products a little tedious, but I thought the Elle nanotech story that I kick off with was interesting - as was your 2004 piece, which I stumbled across while researching the entry," Maynard wrote.
Thank you, Andrew. But, you know, I am certainly not like a virgin in the subject of nanocosmetics. I've been writing and assigning stories on it for years, including recruitment of the very first nanocosmetics guinea pig back in 2004.
And I've been looking at the issue since 2003.
A great deal has been written about Nokia's nanotech-inspired Morph concept on display at New York's Museum of Modern Art and online at MOMA'S Design and the Elastic Mind.
But I am more interested in another item in the MOMA display: DNA Origami, featured here in Scientific American.
The smiley-faced DNA above (and, yes, looking at it does put me in a better mood) is the work of Paul Rothemund of CalTech. In March 2006, Rothemund achieved what became known in the science world as "DNA origami." He discovered how to synthesize one DNA strand that acts as a "scaffolding" for hundreds of other short strands microscopically "stapled" to it. The result is a 3-D shape that can be formed into literally anything.
Mark Sims, CEO of the nanotech computer-aided-design company Nanorex was so inspired by the breakthrough that he decided to change his company's mission to focus his company's first product, NanoEngineer-1, on designing DNA structures for research and education. I wrote about his company for a Detroit-area tech magazine (PDF 158 KB) a little while ago.
Mark recently contacted me to let me know that the first public release of NanoEngineer-1 is only about a week away. You can see some screen shots here.
I first met Mark on the plane ride home from a Foresight Institute Conference in Washington back in 2004 (when I won the Dork of the Year Award) and we have been in touch on and off ever since.
I know this achievement has been a long time coming for Mark and his little company-by-the-lake, so I wish him all the best as more users take his DNA design CAD for a test ride.
Backgrounder
Everything is animated
This little joint is jumping
DNA's Fellowship of the Nanorings
Blogger's note: Here's another freebie. It's an article that I wrote a month or two ago. Then it sat in my files, doing nothing, as I became distracted with other concerns. So, unfortunately, this one never saw the light of day. It's too outdated to sell now, but I think there are still some worthwhile points in here about public and media perception of nanotechnology. Enjoy
By Howard Lovy
It took almost literally an act of God to bring the confusing subject of nanotechnology into the mainstream media the past few months. A nanotech-themed survey found that a "significant percentage of Americans" do not find nanotechnology "morally acceptable" because researchers are viewed as "playing God."
It's a good story, since it brings the subject to at least one level where nanotech meets the public. Unfortunately, most media coverage of God v. Nanotech ended up as confusing as the survey, itself, and as convoluted as most nanotech media reports tend to be.
It's partly the fault of a survey that asked for moral opinions about a technology that is not any single technology at all, and is so undeveloped that much of the "information" circulating about nanotech is based on hopes and fears rather than actual science. Media coverage generally reflects this, with different definitions and perceptions of nanotech sometimes even contradicting themselves within the same story. It's what happens when you mix a sprinkling of real science with popular opinion.
I don't mean to pick on science writer Lee Dye, but his coverage of this story on the ABC News Web site, Big Debate Over Small Science, provides us with a good Rosetta Stone to help us translate nanotech from myth to reality. Dye writes:
If scientists could produce a tiny robot that could travel through your body and heal damaged tissue, eradicate disease-carrying microbes, and even wipe out a cancerous tumor, would you support their efforts?…
Biotechnology promises to ease our suffering, but many fear the real goal is to create super-humans, and super-warriors.
…
Nanotechnology comes with great hype, much promise, and some risk. Machines built to operate on such a small scale could be engineered to self-replicate, like human cells, thus raising the specter of a world run amok."
What Dye is describing is a vision of nanotech largely shaped by Hollywood and the writings of futurists, but has little to do with nanotechnology as it is being developed today. In this case, nanotech is being defined as biotech-plus -- meaning, take anything hopeful or frightening (curing disease, horrific warfare) and then take it a step further.
This vision of nanotech was likely what the survey participants were thinking when they answered that they had a few moral problems with nanotechnology. Qualms about biotech are transferred to nanotech.
This problem of "definition" has far-reaching impact on how nanotech is perceived and covered. It is such a broad term that it does not mean any one thing even to companies and researchers developing it. It could be semiconductors, advanced materials, cancer drug delivery vehicles, cosmetics, stain-resistant fabrics.
On top of that, reporters and editors covering nanotech are working with their own definitions. Often, these differing definitions of what nanotech "is" and what is "is not" have a number of different players talking past each other: reporters and sources, reporters and editors.
Here's a good illustration of this definition problem -- again, with the same God v Nanotech story. It comes from Katherine T. Phan of The Christian Post under the headline Americans Reject Morality of Nanotechnology on Religious Grounds.
She goes with what you'd think would be the safest route in defining nanotechnology: directly to the dictionary. But old reliable Merriam-Webster completely flubs it, defining it as "the art of manipulating materials on an atomic or molecular scale especially to build microscopic devices."
Well, the first part represents one vision, one ideal of nanotech, but current technology is not quite up to manipulating atoms in any meaningful way beyond the laboratory in small quantities. In fact, IBM only recently discovered a way of measuring exactly how much force it takes to manipulate an atom. For more on that, read this excellent report by Kenneth Chang of The New York Times.
Yes, companies pushing nanotech will attempt to achieve this as part of their long-term goals. But the sloppy solution they come up with in the meantime, they will still call nanotechnology.
Phan's report also illustrates how nanotech and biotech are confusingly intertwined in public and media perception. Phan works for a Christian publication, so her "localization" of the story for her audience has to be from the Christian perspective. Trouble is, there is a well established body of opinion on biotech issues for conservative Christians, but nanotech appears to be on the radar as simply biotech redefined. Phan writes that nanotech's "application to controversial fields like embryonic stem cell research is where it draws its critics."
Well, no. Nanotech has little to do with embryonic stem cell research. In fact, nanotech is the way around the need for embryonic stem cell research. Repairing cells and killing diseases within damaged organs removes the need to use stem cells to repair or replace them.
Phan almost rises to the task to inform her readers, but it turns out that her mention of stem cell research is cut-and-paste boilerplate for her niche audience.
"Many Christian advocate groups have asked the U.S. government to instead provide further funding for adult stem cell research, which has resulted in numerous therapies whereas research involving embryos has produced none. They have also asked the scientific community to explore non-embryonic alternatives for stem cells including a recent breakthrough technique that re-programs an adult cell to possess embryonic-like qualities."
Many of the recent breakthroughs Phan is referring to involves nanotechnology. One example can be found here.
Some of the best reporting on this story came from blogs, and my favorite came from Ben Worthen of the Wall Street Journal, who wrote:
"Our first reaction was that 70% of people must not know what nanotechnology is – President Bush, who has openly relied on moral views to shape his scientific agenda, has made nanotechnology one of his scientific priorities, after all."
Wired's Rob Beschizza got it right, too, in his blog entry:
"I think he's hyping an angle: religious belief merges neatly into irreligious fear of the new and other objections to science. He specifically chooses to forget about the science-skeptical nature of postmodernists, feminists, environmentalists and countless other non-religious factions."
So, with nanotech comes these issues of perception, myth and definition, how exactly is a responsible journalist supposed to cover the topic?
All too often, nanotech stories begin with what is not known -- usually the dreams of futurists or the nightmares of alarmists. That's going backward. Begin, like any good reporter, by confirming what is known.
We know that most nanotech research focuses simply how materials behave at the nanoscale -- or "fundamental nanoscale phenomena and processes." Along with that, an industry is being built around developing the tools and measurement devices to manipulate and see at the nanoscale. And more is being learned about environmental health and safety of nanomaterials.
None of these elements are ready to have a moral value placed on them yet -- and certainly not a negative one.
How do I know this? I start with what is known.
All three of the categories named above are central focuses of the recently released proposed 2009 National Nanotechnology Initiative budget.
It's not the most exciting document in the world. No predictions of doom, no cryonically perserved heads in stasis waiting to be reconnected with young bodies in 500 years. Not a document that you'd wave in your hands as you interrupt a news meeting. However, journalists who are interested in telling the real story -- where the science and business of nanotech actually is at this point, might want to start there.
It's not all there is, but it is a good place to start.
As for those who contemplate the societal, ethical, religious and moral aspects of a technology that has not yet developed into anything outside the imagination of its proponents and detractors, you'll get studies like God v Nanotech – further contemplation of a navel that is still obscured by its umblical cord.
A poem -- part of Richard Feynman's address to the National Academy of Sciences in 1955. And still inspirational today, even though I loath poetry in general.
Backgrounder
Standing at the feet of giants
Feynman on freedom
Feynman's missing pieces
Driving under the influence of Feynman
Yet another reason why I sometimes wish I lived on the West Coast. I think I would enjoy this event a great deal. I really, really would.
Odd Comedy - Stem Cell Research / Nanotech Stand-up (Berkeley)Controversial comedy on the subject of life-extension and physical immortality. Followed by open audience discussion. Hear the particular viewpoints of comedian Ira Brightman presented as stand-up comedy on the above topics then have a chance to present your viewpoints (or just listen to those of the other audience members).
Areas to be covered include: extreme life-extension as possible, perhaps inevitable — and desirable or undesirable, technological vs. natural, the morality of using modalities such as embryonic stem cells to save lives, creating new body parts, nanotechnology, the latest advances in biotechnology." More here
Backgrounder
Berkeley to play with tiny tinkertoys
'Transhuman cybersomething crazy ...'
I don't make this stuff up. Just reporting the facts, misplaced apostrophes and all ...
Nano Dogs the Movie (2009) Nanobots - /nan'oh-bots/ n. Robots of microscopic proportions. The future of computer science with astronomical potential. As of yet, only used experimentally. -Until Now! Nano-scientist Richard Spano has them, and his competitors will do anything to get them, but when his twelve-year old son, Matt, toys with a nano-solution, the family dogs ingest them and become the "talk" of the town. The nanos give them super abilities allowing them to speak and ultimately increasing their brainpower to telepathic levels. Matt tries to keep them a secret from everyone; until his next-door friends, Peg and Brandon, inadvertently find out and a couple of bumbling techno-spies steal one of the dogs, it's up to Matt and Peg to find his dog, Ozzy, before he becomes another casualty of the science lab. In the first film of it's kind, set in the science-fiction world of nanotechnology, "Nano Dogs the Movie" is a comedy caper-esque adventure that will be a journey of fun for the entire family! More here
Now, your NanoBot is working, so you don't have to, and some far-fetched claims need to be "checked out." If this little film does, indeed, make it to the big screen, it would not be the first of "it's" kind, or even its kind. Don't ask me why I remember this, but 1989's fantastic voyage into the nanorealm, "Honey I Shrunk The Kids" featured a dog named Quark.
But next year's small release does have one thing going for it. The writer involved, Michael David Murphy, apparently has a long rap sheet when it comes to making movies with mutts.
This Just In! We go now to Richard Jones in England, with some breaking news. Richard? Scooby Doo, nano too
(Sorry, my day job these days is in TV news)
Backgrounder
Government Created Killer NanoRobot Infection
Roxxi the Foxxi 'Bot has the cure -- Part II
Antediluvian NanoBots
'When Pants Attack'
Autos are another area, like nanotech, where technological innovation meets market realities. My coverage can be found here.
