DARPA is providing following up funding to develop 10 gram UAVs (Nano Unmanned Aerial Vehicles- NAV) (4 page pdf) Phase 2 will end in the summer of 2010.

The U.S. Air Force is also funding a number of research projects in universities across the country. An Air Force Research Laboratory report, obtained by the Air Force Times and described in a recent article, suggests just where the Air Force wants to go with this research: The Air Force wants so-call Micro-Air Vehicles, or MAVs, about the size of a sparrow, ready to fly by 2015 and even smaller, dragonfly-sized drones ready to fly in swarms by 2030. Currently popular are Raven UAVs. They are about 4.5 feet across, weigh six pounds and can stay aloft for about an hour and a half.

The goals of the NAV program; namely to develop an approximately 10 gram aircraft that can hover for extended periods, can fly at forward speeds up to 10 meters per second, can withstand 2.5 meter per second wind gusts, can operate inside buildings, and have up to a kilometer command and control range; will stretch our understanding of flight at these small sizes and require novel technology development.

Nano air vehicles will be revolutionary in their ability to harness flapping wing, low Reynolds number physics, navigate in complex environments, and communicate over significant distances. Flight-enabling nano air vehicle system technologies being developed in the program include:
• Aerodynamic design tools to achieve high lift-to-drag airfoils;
• Lightweight, efficient propulsion and power subsystems; and
• Advanced manufacturing and innovative subsystem packaging and configuration layout.

The program will continue to develop conformal, multifunctional structural hardware and strong, light, robust aerodynamic lifting surfaces for efficient flight at low Reynolds numbers (15,000). In addition, researchers will remain focused on developing advanced technologies that enable collision avoidance and navigation systems for use in GPS-denied indoor and outdoor environments as well as improving efficiency and stability in hovering flight and during the deployment or emplacement of sensors.

A micro aircraft(6 inches or less) in size and carrying all necessary systems on
board, such as energy sources and flight control sensors achieved 20 seconds of hovering in December of 2008.

The challenge of the Phase II effort will concentrate on optimizing the aircraft for longer flight endurances, transition capability from hover to forward flight and back, as well as reducing the size, weight, and acoustic signature. All of which are distinct technical challenges in their own right, that actually conflict with each other." Keennon elaborates. Dr. Hylton added, “There are still many hurdles to achieve the vehicle we envisioned when the program was started, but we believe that the progress to date puts us on the path to such a vehicle.”

Two types of emerging terahertz detectors are based on novel nanoelectronic technologies. Future work to combine the two will enable a real time terahertz video camera.

1. A highly sensitive and frequency tunable terahertz detector based on a carbon nanotube (CNT) quantum dot (QD).

Observations have been made of electron tunneling via terahertz-photon detection, called photon-assisted tunneling. This result means that the CNT-QD structure can be utilized as a frequency tunable terahertz detector. CNT-QD detector functions properly up to approximately 7 K. Higher-temperature operation of the CNT-QD terahertz detector is also possible with more refined fabrication techniques.

The next important step is to improve detector performance in two important ways: sensitivity and frequency selectivity. A much more sensitive readout of the terahertz-detected signal could be achieved by capacitively coupling a CNT-QD with a quantum point contact device on a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, which makes it possible to observe single-electron dynamics. And frequency selectivity could be improved by using a double-coupled CNT-QD, in which photon-assisted tunneling takes place as a result of electron transitions between two well-defined discrete levels.

2. A near-field terahertz detector for high-resolution imaging.

Contrary to the situation in the microwave and visible-light region, the development of near-field imaging in the terahertz region has not been well established. Japan RIKEN has developed a new device for near-field terahertz imaging in which all components—an aperture, a probe, and a detector—are integrated on one gallium arsenide/aluminum gallium arsenide (GaAs/AlGaAs) chip. This scheme allows highly sensitive detection of the terahertz evanescent field alone, without requiring optical or mechanical alignment.

Two approaches can be used to achieve high spatial resolution in optical imaging: a solid immersion lens and near-field imaging. Though we have previously constructed a terahertz imaging setup based on a solid immersion lens, its resolution is restricted by the diffraction limit.3 A powerful method for overcoming the diffraction limit is the use of near-field imaging. This technique has been well established in visible and microwave regions using either a tapered, metal-coated optical fiber or a metal tip, and either a waveguide or a coaxial cable. However, the development of near-field imaging in the terahertz region has been hindered by the lack of terahertz fibers or other bulk terahertz-transparent media suitable for generating near-field waves, as well as the low sensitivity of commonly used detectors in the terahertz region.

In conventional near-field imaging systems, the propagation field arising from the scattering of the near-field (evanescent) wave is measured with a distant detector, which requires detecting very weak waves (and the influence of far-field waves is unavoidable). In contrast, our near-field terahertz imager places the aperture, probe, and detector in close proximity. The 8-µm-diameter aperture and planar probe, each of which is insulated by a 50-nm-thick silicon dioxide (SiO2) layer, are deposited on the surface of a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure chip.


An optical micrograph (left) and a schematic representation (right) shows the design of a highly sensitive on-chip near-field THz detector. The 8-µm-diameter aperture and planar metallic probe, each of which is insulated by a 50-nm-thick silicon dioxide (SiO2) layer, are deposited on the surface of a GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure chip. (Courtesy of RIKEN)

Because integration with the CNT-QD detector requires improvements in the device fabrication process (specifically, by using higher-performance electron-beam lithography equipment), a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG)—located only 60 nm below the chip surface—is used as the terahertz detector.




Why Terahertz Detection is Tough

The photon energy of the terahertz wave, on the order of millielectron volts (meV), is two to three magnitudes lower than that of the visible light, making the development of a high-performance terahertz detector a difficult task. Another problem with terahertz detection is low spatial resolution of terahertz imaging, which results from the longer wavelengths of terahertz radiation compared to that of visible light.

Work to Combine the Carbon Nanotube Quantum Dot Detector for Near Field Detection

One of the challenges for future terahertz sensing technology is to achieve high detection sensitivity and high spatial resolution simultaneously. To realize this, we are now trying to combine the two techniques described above; namely to modify the CNT-QD terahertz detector into a similar structure for near-field detection. Compared to the 2DEG detector, the CNT detector exhibits much higher sensitivity and has a much smaller sensing area (approximately 200 nm compared to 8 µm for the 2DEG detector). This detector, integrated with an aperture and a probe, would show ultrahigh sensitivity and nanometer resolution simultaneously.

We further expect that when many CNTs are integrated in a two dimensional configuration, the resulting device will serve as a real-time, high-resolution terahertz imaging detector; in effect, a terahertz video camera.

Eric Drexler is apparently at the Renaissance Weekend with the intent to speak to the assembled interesting people about how “advanced nanotechnology can address the climate change problem providing low-cost solar energy and by removing accumluated CO2 from the atmosphere.”  In the same spirit, for the rest of us, here’s how I think we should go about using advanced nanotechnology to address the problem of climate change:

• Develop advanced nanotechnology already!  In particular, develop a self-replicating machine technology at the molecular scale. This could be done by using any or many of the approaches outlined in the Roadmap or by a direct approach I call the Feynman Path which I will be writing more about in detail in the coming weeks. But the bottom line is simple, and can be stated: “Just do it.” There isn’t any major, well-funded effort to do this, by whatever pathway.  There should be, and at best, all the possibilities should be explored in parallel.
• Decide what the Earth’s climate ought to be.  It strains the bounds of credibility to imagine that the optimal climate is just what we happened to have in 1950 (or any other particular year). This includes how much natural variability we want to allow: In the absence of any human influence, climate ranges to the steaming jungles of the dinosaur age 100 million years ago to the ice ages of 100 thousand. Do we want to freeze any possible dinosaurs out of our future?  Do we want to preclude any ice ages?

  
  (note that the apparent levelling off of temperature is due to the logarithmic scaling of the time axis — the 10,000 year holocene is the same width as the peaks in the Pleistocene or the squiggles in the Pliocene, and wouldn’t show up at all on the left side of the chart.)

• Decide how much CO₂ we want in the atmosphere. This is essentially independent of the question of temperature: CO₂ is a relatively minor greenhouse gas, the major one being of course H₂O. Greenhouses are typically kept at 1000 ppm for good plant
  growth (think agricultural productivity) and OSHA limits for humans allow up to 5000 ppm. Set the CO₂ level to whatever we want by choking or amplifying the natural flows to and from sources and sinks:
  
  (Probably the easiest flow to interdict is rotting vegetation; nanoengineer a way to make plastic from cornstalks, hay, etc.)
• If the temperature we want is higher than the equilibrium one for the level of CO₂ we want, add additional greenhouse gases to the air. We are actually doing that in a fairly major way by irrigation, raising the humidity of the air in large areas (e.g. California) where it would naturally be dry. However, there are other gasses such as methane which are quite potent and could be used.
• If we want it colder, we either remove some water from the air, or construct a negative GHG using nanotech — that is, a molecule or nanoballoon which reflects near-IR and is transparent to thermal IR — and administer whatever amount is necessary.
• If all else fails, build a Weather Machine. Be careful, though: while natural climate variability is not an existential risk — we do fine in steaming jungles and have lived through ice ages — a Weather Machine run by the same people who ran our financial system recently could be a very dangerous toy.

Robert Freitas published a major new theory paper on aspects of medical nanorobot control, providing an early glimpse of future discussions of this topic that are planned to appear in Chapter 12 (Nanorobot Control) of Nanomedicine, Vol. IIB: Systems and Operations, the third volume of the Nanomedicine book series (still in preparation).

The paper is part of an edited book collection on bio-inspired nanoscale computing that was published about a week ago by Wiley.




Robert Freitas contributed the 15th chapter:

Robert A. Freitas Jr., “Chapter 15. Computational Tasks in Medical Nanorobotics,” in M.M. Eshaghian-Wilner, ed., Bio-inspired and Nano-scale Integrated Computing, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2009, pp. 391-428.

The chapter is about 5.2 MB in size and a draft preprint version may be downloaded from the nanomedicine website: http://www.nanomedicine.com/Papers/NanorobotControl2009.pdf

Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine: the preservation
and improvement of human health, using molecular tools and molecular knowledge
of the human body. Medical nanorobotics is the most powerful form of
future nanomedicine technology. Nanorobots may be constructed of diamondoid
nanometer-scale parts and mechanical subsystems including onboard sensors,
motors, manipulators, power plants, and molecular computers. The presence of
onboard nanocomputers would allow in vivo medical nanorobots to perform
numerous complex behaviors which must be conditionally executed on at least a
semiautonomous basis, guided by receipt of local sensor data and constrained by
preprogrammed settings, activity scripts, and event clocking, and further limited
by a variety of simultaneously executing real-time control protocols. Such
nanorobots cannot yet be manufactured in 2007 but preliminary scaling studies
for several classes of medical nanorobots have been published in the literature.
These designs are reviewed with an emphasis on the basic computational tasks
required in each case, and a summation of the various major computational
control functions common to all complex medical nanorobots is extracted from
these design examples. Finally, we introduce the concept of nanorobot control
protocols which are required to ensure that each nanorobot fully completes its
intended mission accurately, safely, and in a timely manner according to plan. Six
major classes of nanorobot control protocols have been identified and include
operational, biocompatibility, theater, safety, security, and group protocols. Six
important subclasses of theater protocols include locational, functional, situational, phenotypic, temporal, and identity control protocols.

Robert Freitas' nanomedicine books remain freely available online at http://www.nanomedicine.com, with links to MNT-based medical nanorobot designs at http://www.nanomedicine.com/index.htm#NanorobotAnalyses.

I am working on my next blog of current events in nano when I came across this: The NanoSong with puppets.

More.

We have one breakthrough and twelve (12) noteworthy articles and report and a pile of honorable mentions. This is the last post for a week until I can catch up on a stack of reports.


BREAKTHROUGH

U of Georgia researchers have developed a successful way to grow molecular wire brushes that conduct electrical charges, a first step in developing biological fuel cells that could power pacemakers, cochlear implants and prosthetic limbs.
See EurekaAlert, June 19, 2009 and Chemical Science, June 5, 2009.

NEWSWORTHY

1. EARLY DETECTION OF BLINDNESS.
Researchers from the U Kentucky claim to be able to detect abnormal blood vessels in the living eyes of mice by attaching anti-CCR3 antibodies to tiny semiconductor nanocrystals called "quantum dots" and injecting these into the mice. Early detection may improve treatment regimens.
See Nanowerk, June 15, 2009 and Nature, June 14, 2009.

2. DRUG DELIVERY
Cornell and Shenzhen U researchers claim to have developed a technique that could one day be used to deliver vaccines, drugs or genetic material to treat cancer and blood and immunological disorders. The research involved nanocapsules containing a small-interfering RNA.
See Cornell Chronicle, June 25, 2009 and Gene Therapy Online, June 25, 2009.

3. REACH HAVING CLASSIFICATION ISSUES
Confusion over classification of nanomaterials under the Reach chemicals legislation has led to two groups of companies using different criteria to submit data on carbon nanotubes to the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). Currently there is so much uncertainty about dealing with nanomaterials under the Reach regulations (which came into force in 2008) that different groups of companies are forming separate data-gathering bodies, called substance information exchange forums (SIEFs), to deal with carbon nanotubes (CNTs).
See Chemistry World, June 16, 2009.

4. EPA ISSUES NANO RULE
U.S. EPA issued a final rule for carbon nanotubes under the Toxic Substances and Control Act, subjecting them to a "new-use" regulation that gives the agency greater authority. Makers of certain carbon nanotubes, as well as those of 21 other chemicals, now must notify EPA at least 90 days before starting manufacturing. The rule takes effect Aug. 24.
See EENewsNet, June 24, 2009.

5. NANO TERM ADDED VALUE OR NOT
A researcher at the National Institute for Consumer Research in Norway claims companies may be less inclined to highlight nanomaterials in their products. While his sample is small, he searched a website run by a major international cosmetics company, using keywords like 'nanotechnology' and 'nano', to estimate how many products contain nanotechnology. His search turned up 29 products in 2007, but when he repeated the same exercise recently, there were zero hits. This, he said, suggests that companies may now view 'nano' as a negative label rather than an added value. Another interpretation could be these products were never marketed or their composition changed to reflect any negative association OR companies have decided to simply move on, add nano-ingredients, and fail to inform consumers. Interesting theses.
See EurActiv, June 15, 2009


6. MAKING SILVER NON-CYTOTOXIC.
Researchers at the U of Trieste described the development of a novel non-cytotoxic nanocomposite hydrogel material based on natural polysaccharides and silver nanoparticles for antimicrobial applications.
See Nanowerk, June 29, 2009 and Biomacromolecules, April 30, 2009.


7. NANO-ALUMINUM AND AGGLOMERATION.
San Diego researchers found that the aluminum particles quickly clustered and stuck together. They also found that the surface charge of the particles affected their movement through soil.
See Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry, 2009

8. CNTS COULD HURT PLANTS.
U Lancester researchers have shown that carbon nanotubes can pierce plant root cells, providing a rapid route for other pollutants to infiltrate the cellular structure of plants.
See Chemistry World, June 10, 2009

9. BREAST CANCER DIAGNOSIS.
Washington U research claim photoacoustic imaging with a carbon single-walled nanotube (SWNT) contrast agent could provide a non-invasive alternative to sentinel lymph-node biopsy.
See NanotechWeb, June 16, 2009 and Physics in Medicine and Biology, 2009.


10. NANO AND LUNG CANCER (IN VITRO).
Researchers at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing reported several types of PAMAMs (ployamidoamine dendrimers) killed human lung cells in the lab.
See Nanowerk, June 11, 2009 and Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, June 11, 2009.

11. ANOTHER NANO-ASBESTOS CLAIM (SORT OF).
The Investor Environmental Health Network (IEHN) outlines disturbing parallels between asbestos and nanotechnology in order to illustrate the eight needed steps that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) should take to improve disclosures made to investors.
See Nanowerk, June 15, 2009.

12. NANOPARTICLE UPTAKE IN MARINE ECOSYSTEMS.
Researchers at the U of South Carolina observed that clams and biofilms accumulating the most nanoparticles by mass. This could be a serious problem if the same thing happened in the natural environment because biofilms are used as food sources for several different kinds of detritivores, some of which are prey for larger arthropods and small fish.
See NanoTechWeb, June 24, 2009 and Nature Nanotechnology, June 21, 2009.

HONORABLE MENTION


NEW SOCIAL SCIENCE DATA
Researchers from the U Wisconsin found that the public tends to focus on the benefits — rather than potential environmental and health risks — when making decisions about nanotechnology regulation, whereas scientists mainly focus on potential risks and economic values.
See Press Release, June 19, 2009 and the Journal of Nanoparticle Research, June 19, 2009.

LIKELY NANO-SCAM IN AFRICA
An alleged nano product marketed in Uganda looks like a piece of glass and costs between Shs 500,000- 1,000,000. The glass claims to make sick people get nutrients from its use. One pours water and drinks. It is also claimed that carrying it in one’s pocket makes them healthier.
See Sunday Monitor, June 28, 2009

NEW MAGAZINE
India has published a new monthly magazine in nanotechnology called NANO DIGEST. If anyone has a PDF version, let me know or send it along.
See IndiaPRWire, June 15, 2009

STAR TREK TRANSPORTERS????
Stanford researchers pass nanoparticles through rock. With video (at least for now).
See ABC, June 28, 2009.

PAKISTAN AND NANOSCIENCE
Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission (HEC) will spend US$196.7 million — 30 per cent more than last year — on scientific projects and scholarships in public-sector universities. Much of this money will be used to upgrade science libraries and laboratories and establish centers of excellence for nanotechnology, endocrinology, virology and bioinformatics.
See Science and Development Network, June 29, 2009.

MORE SOLAR
A team of researchers from U Florida and Savannah River National Laboratory are studying how nanostructured coatings mimic structures found in nature that increase the usefulness of solar energy.
See Nanowerk, June 25, 2009.

WAR ON SLEEPING SICKNESS
Researchers at the Institute of Primate Research (IPR) in Nairobi and counterparts from the EU are using nanoscience principles to develop more effective ways of diagnosing and treating trypanosomiasis disease in humans, which is also known as nagana in livestock. Experts have said they may develop a more effective kit for detecting sleeping sickness and medication against the condition in the next three years.
See Daily Nation, July 1, 2009.

RUSSIA AND JAPAN CONNECTION
RUSNANO and the Japanese Ministery of Economy, Trade and Industry, have agreed to establish a workgroup for cooperation in the field of nanotechnology. The decision was made at a meeting during a visit to Japan by a delegation of RUSNANO. The initiative for the agreement was issued by the Japanese.
See RUSNANO, June 17, 2009.


EU AND MALAYSIA CONNECTION
The European Union has called on Malaysian Research and Technological Development (RTD) institutions to fully utilize the EU New Framework Programme 7, aimed at boosting innovation and research capacity. This would build on the five projects already underway. Climate change including technology transfer, carbon capture and storage, bio fuels and renewable energy, nanotechnology and ICT were highlighted as priority areas for EU-Malaysia cooperation.
See Bernama, June 10, 2009.

ANOTHER ROADMAP – PHILIPPINES.
The Philippines revealed a 10-year strategy to create a commercially viable industry using nanotechnology.
See Inquirer.net, June 17, 2009.

HONG KONG AND NANO-INDUSTRY.
Hong Kong’s Innovation and Technology Fund established in 1999 with an allocation of 5 billion HK dollars (645.79 million U.S. dollars has supported about 1,400 projects with a total investment of about 4 billion HK dollars (516.63 million U.S. dollars), biotech and nanotech account for more than 12 percent of the funding. Projects that have been supported include those in nanomaterials, nanoelectronics, green nanotech, nanotech for textile and apparel applications, and nanotech for medical and healthcare applications.
See Xinhuanet, June 22, 2009.

BAYER BUILDING NANOTUBE PLANT IN GERMANY
Bayer MaterialScience has begun construction of a new facility for the production of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in Chempark Leverkusen, Germany. The new plant will have a capacity of 200 tons/year. The company will invest about 22 million euros in the planning, development and construction of the plant.
See Nanoforum, June 10, 2009.

NANO AND SURFBOARDS.
Entropy Surfboards and Bayer MaterialScience (BMS) have teamed up to deliver a new line of custom-made surfboards that incorporate carbon nanotubes from BMS.
See Nanoforum, May 22, 2009.


NANOCRYSTALLINE CELULOSE AND THE FORESTRY INDUSTRY
Nanocrystalline cellulose, or NCC for short, has yet to make an impact on the marketplace, but in a few years companies could find commercial uses in goods as diverse as lipstick to SUVs because of properties such as strength and toughness, biodegradability and ability to “tune” colors without dye.
See Edmonton Journal, June 24, 2009.

Going for Lasik surgery soon. Might be due to reading all these nano-articles.

Yikes.

China Daily reports: China is planning for an installed nuclear power capacity of 86 gigawatts (gW) by 2020, up nearly 10-fold from the 9 gW capacity it had by the end of last year, two people familiar with the matter said. the new target is higher than targets earlier this year of 70-75 GW and higher than two-three years ago when the target was 40 GW.

The goal, which is part of an alternative energy development roadmap covering 2009-20, seeks to have at least 12 gW of installed nuclear power capacity by 2011.

The plan "will call for the government to accelerate nuclear power development in coastal provinces and autonomous regions, namely Liaoning, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangxi, Jiangsu, Shandong and Hainan," the sources said.

In order to achieve the goal, the government will also set up a "reasonable number of nuclear power plants in inland provinces in Jiangxi, Anhui, Hunan and Hubei", they said.

The government is also planning to have 150 gW of installed wind power capacity by 2020, of which 30 gW will come from offshore wind farms. Installed wind power capacity should reach 35 gW by the end of 2011, of which 5 gW will come from offshore wind farms.

The [Energy] industry would attract investment worth 2.97 trillion yuan by 2011, creating 5 million jobs. And, total investment in the sector would touch 13.5 trillion yuan and create 20 million jobs by 2020

Chinese nuclear build continues apace with procurements for multi-unit power plants Hongyanhe and Ningde.

Having already won a contract for a simulator for Hongyanhe 1 and 2, Canada's L3-MAPPS has now been picked to provide another for Hongyanhe 3 and 4.

The plant's first two nuclear power generators are currently under construction on the Hongyan river in Liaoning province with first concrete for those coming in August 2007 and April 2008. First concrete at Hongyanhe 3 was poured on 15 March this year with the same for Hongyanhe 4 set for 15 September.

A similar plant, also based on domestic CPR-1000 pressurized water reactors, is being built at Ningde in Fujian province. The first two units there had first concrete in February and November 2008, the second two are set for 15 November this year and July 2010.

Both the plants are based on the domestic CPR-1000 design and are being managed by China Guangdong Nuclear Power Company (CGNPC) which is the lead partner in both projects They will both also feature forged steel valves from China Valves Technology after a contract signed a few days ago. CGNPC has paid 10% of the contract value up front, with the rest due on delivery. Half of the valves are required by the end of this year, with the others before March 2010.

Robert A. Freitas Jr., author of the Nanomedicine series of books, has just published a major new theory paper on aspects of medical nanorobot control, providing an early glimpse of future discussions of this topic that are planned to appear in Chapter 12 (Nanorobot Control) of Nanomedicine, Vol. IIB: Systems and Operations, the third volume of the series (still in preparation).

The paper is part of an edited book collection, available for purchase from Amazon, on bio-inspired nanoscale computing that was published about a week ago by Wiley.

Freitas’ contribution to the book is the following chapter:

Robert A. Freitas Jr., “Chapter 15. Computational Tasks in Medical Nanorobotics,” in M.M. Eshaghian-Wilner, ed., Bio-inspired and Nano-scale Integrated Computing, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 2009, pp. 391-428.

The chapter is about 5.2 MB in size and a draft preprint version may be downloaded from Freitas’ nanomedicine website. From the abstract:

Nanomedicine is the application of nanotechnology to medicine: the preservation
and improvement of human health, using molecular tools and molecular knowl-
edge of the human body. Medical nanorobotics is the most powerful form of
future nanomedicine technology. Nanorobots may be constructed of diamondoid
nanometer-scale parts and mechanical subsystems including onboard sensors,
motors, manipulators, power plants, and molecular computers. The presence of
onboard nanocomputers would allow in vivo medical nanorobots to perform
numerous complex behaviors which must be conditionally executed on at least a
semiautonomous basis, guided by receipt of local sensor data and constrained by
preprogrammed settings, activity scripts, and event clocking, and further limited
by a variety of simultaneously executing real-time control protocols. …
[W]e introduce the concept of nanorobot control
protocols which are required to ensure that each nanorobot fully completes its
intended mission accurately, safely, and in a timely manner according to plan. Six
major classes of nanorobot control protocols have been identified and include
operational, biocompatibility, theater, safety, security, and group protocols. Six
important subclasses of theater protocols include locational, functional, situa-
tional, phenotypic, temporal, and identity control protocols.

The nanomedicine books remain freely available online here, with links to MNT-based medical nanorobot designs here.

Smallest optical transistor brings all-optical circuits and optical computing a step closer

Here is the chart and composition of the PowerShares Lux Nanotech (ETF), probably the best Nanotech ETF in the market.



The fund holdings are as of 7/1/2009:

(Fund Holdings are subject to change)
% of Fund

Consumer Discretionary
3.00%
TM Toyota Motor Corp. (ADS) 3.00%

Financials
4.88%
TINY Harris & Harris Group Inc. 4.88%

Health Care
26.79%
FLML Flamel Technologies S.A. (ADS) 5.71%
BDSI BioDelivery Sciences International Inc. 5.54%
ACCL Accelrys Inc. 5.44%
ELN Elan Corp. PLC (ADS) 5.12%
NSPH Nanosphere Inc. 4.97%

Industrials
11.19%
HEV Ener1 Inc. 4.91%
MMM 3M Co. 3.19%
GE General Electric Co. 3.08%

Information Technology
31.24%
NVEC NVE Corp. 5.61%
VECO Veeco Instruments Inc. 5.52%
FEIC FEI Co. 5.47%
SMMX Symyx Technologies Inc. 5.20%
INTC Intel Corp. 3.24%
HPQ Hewlett-Packard Co. 3.14%
IBM International Business Machines Corp. 3.07%

Materials
22.90%
SDTH ShengdaTech Inc. 6.02%
HW Headwaters Inc. 5.58%
ALTI Altair Nanotechnologies Inc. 5.04%
DD E.I. DuPont de Nemours & Co. 3.16%
APD Air Products & Chemicals Inc. 3.09%

Shwann cells are shown here in a salamander limb. When the limb regrew after being amputated, only these cells wrapped around nerve fibers; other cell types did not turn into Shwann cells. Credit: D. Knapp/E. Tanaka

The salamander is a superhero of regeneration, able to replace lost limbs, damaged lungs, sliced spinal cord — even bits of lopped-off brain. In a paper set to appear Thursday in the journal Nature, a team of seven researchers, including a University of Florida zoologist debunk the source of the salamander regeneration as “pluripotent” cells.

The researchers show that cells from the salamander’s different tissues retain the “memory” of those tissues when they regenerate, contributing with few exceptions only to the same type of tissue from whence they came. The new findings suggest that harnessing the salamander’s regenerative wonders is at least within the realm of possibility for human medical science.

The researchers’ main conclusion: Only ‘old’ muscle cells make ‘new’ muscle cells, only old skin cells make new skin cells, only old nerve cells make new nerve cells, and so on. The only hint that the axolotl cells could revamp their function came with skin and cartilage cells, which in some circumstances seemed to swap roles, Maden said.

MIT Technology review has coverage.

Tanaka's team employed a novel method for tracking the fate of cells from different tissues in a type of salamander called the axolotl. The researchers first created transgenic axolotls that carried green fluorescent protein (GFP) in their entire bodies. When the animals were still embryos, the researchers removed a piece of tissue from the limb region of the transgenic animals and transplanted the tissue into the same location in nontransgenic axolotls. The transplants were incorporated into the growing body as normal cells, and when the limb of the transplant recipients were then severed, the researchers could track the fate of the fluorescent cells as the limb regrew.

Sánchezalso says that the idea that blastemas held several different cell types was a "minority hypothesis" and that this study "shows that this hypothesis turns out to be correct." He cautions that scientists now need to determine whether this phenomenon is the same in adult axolotls and in newts, which are a primary model organism for regeneration studies. But if the same mechanism turns out to underlie other cases of regeneration, it would change what scientists believe is required to regrow body parts, Sánchezsays. But it leaves a major question unanswered: if humans already have tissue-specific stem cells, what exactly is the difference between our cells and those of salamanders?

Maden said the findings will help researchers zero in on why salamander cells are capable of such remarkable regeneration. “If you can understand how they regenerate, then you ought to be able to understand why mammals don’t regenerate,” he said.

Maden said UF researchers will soon begin raising and experimenting on transgenic axolotls at UF as part of the The Regeneration Project, an effort to treat human brain and other diseases by examining regeneration in salamanders, newts, starfish and flatworms.

A blog makes a point that the healthcare funding battles are like generals fighting the last war. The new healthcare should focus on cures and cheap tests.

This site covered the detailed statistics that most of the healthcare costs are focused on the chronic diseases for the sickest 5% of people.

Curing cancer is worth $50 trillion to the USA alone according to a 2006study by Kevin M. Murphy and Robert H. Topel of the University of Chicago.

- A 10% reduction in cancer death rates has a value of roughly 5 trillion dollars to current and future Americans
- Reducing cancer death rates by 10% would generate roughly 180 billion dollars annually in value for the U.S. population
- These figures don’t even count any gains from reduced morbidity and improved quality of life
- Gains in longevity from 1970 to 2000 were worth roughly 95 trillion dollars to current and future Americans
- This amounts to a gain of over 3 trillion dollars per year (roughly 25% of annual GDP)
-Value of reducing the death rate by 1/10,000 worth roughly $630 to one person
- This corresponds to a value of a statistical life of $6.3 million

A critical factor is not to implement care that is more expensive then the value of the benefit in order to improve the economics of healthcare. (Only pay for what we can afford.) This is illustrated in the following example.





Simple Example
200 billion dollar “war on cancer”
50% probability of success – 50% probability of total failure
Success = 10% reduction in cancer death rates
Based on Murphy & Topel – value of success = $5 trillion
What about costs of care?


Costs of care Two scenarios:
“good” outcome = treatment adds 2.5 trillion (50% of value) to costs of care
“bad” outcome = treatment adds 10 trillion (200% of value) to costs of care

Assume each scenario is equally likely
Three potential outcomes:
50% chance of “Failure” = -$200 billion
25% chance of “Good Success” = +$2.3 trillion
25% chance of “Bad Success” = -$5.2 trillion
Expected gain = -$825 billion

What matters in this calculation?
* Costs of research are small by comparison to costs and benefits (making them $100 billion or $300 billion has little effect)
Probability of success matters some but not much
Expected costs of care matter a lot
* Question: What can we do to improve the situation?
* Answer: Make good care decisions!

* Improve care system = don’t implement if costs of care are high
* Chance of “failure” now 75%
* But expected gain now +$425 billion
* Bottom line: appropriate cost containment RAISES the value of research by eliminating the major downside
* The potential downside to research is not failure but unaffordable “success”

Best solution: improve incentives and decisions in the delivery system – research will follow
Second best: change the direction of research to look only for lowest costs solutions
Both enhance the case for more research

Improve incentives for doctors and patients to control costs
Use technologies appropriately – not all or nothing – many treatments will be cost effective for some patients not for others
Focus on treatments with low incremental costs – reduces problem of over use

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7553898.html

This patent for the Research Foundation of the State University of New York teaches a flame retardant polymer composite incorporating nanomaterials and resistant to degradation when exposed to UV radiation. Claim 1 reads:

1. A flame retardant composition comprising:

from about 30% to about 50% by weight of a polyolefin;

from about 10% to about 25% by weight a brominated polystyrene or from about 30% to about 40% by weight decabromodiphenyl ether;

from about 10% to about 30% by weight of an exfoliated nanoclay; and

from about 5% to about 15% by weight carbon nanotubules or metal oxide fillers in the nanometer particle range.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7553681.html

This patent from Intel teaches forming a carbon nanotube based sensor for detecting stresses formed between integrated circuit dies and packaging. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method comprising:

depositing a first array of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) aligned in a first orientation at a first location on a substrate or a die in a wafer;

intercalating the first array with polymer;

covering the first polymer-intercalated array with a nitride layer;

depositing a second array of CNTs aligned in a second orientation at a second location on the substrate or the die; and

intercalating the second array with polymer.

Precise graphene ribbons can be made by chemically unzipping carbon nanotubes.

This adds one more large molecule to the nanoscale construction toolbox. The ribbons may be useful in electronics, since a film of them should be even more conductive than a film of buckytubes. So they will likely be researched.

The article didn't say so, but I also speculate that these ribbons may be useful as reinforcements in composite materials (like a better kind of carbon fiber), since they seem to be water-soluble (which helps with processing) and might be easier to attach other molecules to than nanotubes are. The researchers estimate that they could be available in ton amounts in a couple of years, if there's demand for them.

In any case, I'm sure they'll be experimented on in many ways. They may turn out to be useful in mechanical nanosystems, though they'd probably be pretty floppy in comparison with buckytubes.

The unzipping process was discovered by Dmitry Kosynkin, a post-doctoral research associate at Rice University, who was studying oxidation of nanotubes. Yes, a lot of nanotechnology is accessible through chemistry.

(Hat tip to Mike Treder.)

Chris Phoenix

I must remark how impressed the Meridian coverage of nano has been.

NEWSWORTHY

1. CANCER CELLS: DETECT, TRACK AND KILL

Researchers at the U of Arkansas demonstrated that it is possible not only to monitor and detect nanomaterials moving through the circulation, but also to detect single cancer cells tagged with carbon nanotubes. This study was in vivo and in real time and helped explain how these nanoparticles travel through a living system.

See Biooptics World, May 22, 2009.

2. SMELLING LUNG CANCER

Researchers in Haifa and another team at U. Bari have experimented with the use of nanotechnology sensors to detect the presence of cancer by "smelling" air molecules in the breath of patients with and chronic obstructive pulmonary (COPD).

See Associated Content, May 25, 2009.

3. DRUG ABSORPTION ADVANCE.

U South Australia researchers are reporting a potential solution to a problem that limits the human body’s ability to absorb and use medications for heart disease, Type-2 diabetes, cancer and other conditions. It is a “nano-hybrid microcapsule” that enables the stomach to absorb more of these so-called “poorly soluble” medicines

See Nanowerk, May 27, 2009 and Molecular Pharmaceutics, June 1, 2009.

4. NANORUST TEST IN MEXICO.

Researchers at Rice U Rice University researchers announced that the first field tests of "nanorust," the university's revolutionary, low-cost technology for removing arsenic from drinking water, will begin later this year in Guanajuato.

See Eureka Alert, May 27, 2009

5. MORE EFFICIENT FUEL CELL CATALYST

Researchers at Washington U have developed a technique for a bimetallic fuel cell catalyst that is efficient, robust and two-to-five times more effective than commercial catalysts.

See Press Release, May 14, 2009

6. MERCURY SENSOR

Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology researchers have used a breakthrough nanotechnology to create a pioneering sensor that can precisely measure one of the world’s most poisonous substances, mercury.

See Press Release, May 27, 2009 and Physical Chemistry and Chemical Physics, 2009

7. ZINC OXIDE AND BRAIN DAMAGE IN MICE.

Researchers from Shanghai U reported zinc oxide nanoparticles can damage or kill stem cells in the brains of mice. Their findings may suggest that further precautions should be taken to protect people working with nanomaterials.

See NatureAsia, May 11, 2009 and Nanotechnology, 2009.

8. IMPLANTABLE DEVICE FOR CONTINUOUS CANCER MONITORING.

Researchers at MIT have designed implants using magnetic nanoparticles that could be implanted at the time of biopsy, could also be tailored to monitor chemotherapy agents, allowing doctors to determine whether cancer drugs are reaching the tumors. They can also be designed to measure pH (acidity) or oxygen levels, which reveal tumor metabolism and how it is responding to therapy.

See MIT News, May 12, 2009 and Biosensors and Bioelectronics, April 15, 2009.

HONORARY MENTION

ARAB PROPOSAL TO DISCUSS NANOTECHNOLOGY

The proposal for establishing an Arab Council on Nanotechnology (ACON) was

presented by Al-Quds University’s Mukhles Sowwan while discussing about

‘Nanotechnology and molecular manufacturing: manufacturing: Towards balanced plans for responsible worldwide use.’

See Meridian Institute, May 20, 2009.

UN FORUM TO ADDRESS NANOTECHNOLOGY

A UN global chemicals forum on safe and sustainable chemicals management agreed to address four emerging policy issues in the sector: nanotech, e-waste, chemicals in everyday products and lead in paint

See EuroActiv, May 29, 2009.

IOM LAUNCHES ENPRA.

The Institute of Occupational Medicine (IOM) is pleased to announce the launch of ENPRA (Engineered NanoParticle Risk Assessment) - a major new European Framework 7 project to develop and implement a novel integrated approach for engineered nanoparticle (ENP) risk assessment.

See IOM World, May 2009.

ASPIRIN SUBSTITUTE

Researchers from Banaras Hindu U are reporting discovery of a potential new alternative to aspirin, ReoPro, and other anti-platelet agents used widely to prevent blood clots in coronary artery disease, heart attack and stroke.

See Nanowerk, May 27, 2009 and ACS Nano, June 23, 2009

AEROSOL ANTIBIOTICS.

Researchers at Washington U demonstrated the effectiveness of antibiotics

by allowing the medicine to be put into an aerosol form in mice.

See Forbes, May 15, 2009.

MODELING TO PREDICT CONTAMINATION

Researcher at Duke U with colleagues at UCLA found a way to estimate the quantity of titanium oxides in the environment by combining science and engineering knowledge with business and economic modeling.

See Press Release, May 20, 2009.

PATENT LANDSCAPE REPORT

The UK Intellectual Property Office has compiled a nanotechnology patent landscape for the UK.

See Nanowerk, May 12, 2009 and GlobalWatch Online.

GATES AWARD

Researchers at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in Cape Town (CSIR), won a grant from the Gates Foundation for a proposal to use cutting-edge “nanotechnology” to save the lives of tuberculosis patients who forget to take their pills.

See The Times, May 24, 2009.

CUBA AND SOUTH AFRICA AGREEMENT

South Africa and Cuba have agreed to work together in the field of technology. the focus would be on biotechnology, climate change, renewable energy technologies and nanotechnology.

See News 24, May 19, 2009.

BULGARIA AND IBM AGREEMENT

Bulgaria and IBM signed an agreement for a $35billion research center to develop nanotechnologies as part of Bulgaria's drive to boost competitiveness.

See The Guardian, May 22, 2009.

More coming. The holiday weekend is almost upon us, but the nanoworld doesn't stop for anyone, so it seems. I am going to take a few day to vet the new FOE-Australia report on silver.

Researcher from Tel Aviv University has found a new electrochemical process that is better than the conventional processes. Prof Noam Eliaz is behind the innovation and he found that the new implant improves function and longevity as well and therefore the newly developed process can significantly enhance the life of patients who have undergone the [...]

Researchers in Singapore have successfully fabricated a family of aligned one-dimensional C-curved nanoarches of different compositions by a simple and scalable method for the first time. Article in ACS Nano: A Family of Aligned C-Curved Nanoarches. The nanoarches are actually nanotubes with their extremities firmly attached to the silicon surface, thereby forming a turned letter C.

One-dimensional (1-D) nanomaterials are basic building blocks for the construction of nanoscale devices. However, the fabrication and alignment of 1-D nanomaterials with specific geometry and composition on a given substrate is a significant challenge. Herein we show a successful example of fabricating a family of aligned 1-D C-curved nanoarches of different compositions on an extended Si surface by a simple and scalable method. The nanoarches are made up of either single-crystalline Sn nanorods encapsulated in carbon nanotubes (CNTs), SnO2 nanotubes, or CNTs. The aligned 1-D C-curved nanoarches of single-crystalline Sn nanorods in CNTs are prepared first by a facile in situ reduction of SnO2 nanoparticles under standard chemical vapor deposition conditions. Nanoarches of CNTs and SnO2 nanotubes were then derived from the Sn@CNT nanoarches by acid etching and by calcination in air, respectively.

Coverage at Nanowerks.com as well.

The new methodology for synthesizing tin oxide nanotubes using in situ formed carbon nanotubes as the active template. Our fabrication method is generic and could, in principle, be applied to the preparation of other aligned 1-D nanomaterials.

Things let up a bit though a lot of this seems interesting. It's been difficult since we lost postings from Julia Moore from WWI-PEW and the UCSB folks who forwarded listings.

Good news has been that both Nanowerk and NanotechWeb have been doing a great job covering the nano-frontier.

The new PCAST - Co-Chair, John Holdren, the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy AND Co-Chair, Eric Lander, Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard U.

• Rosina Bierbaum, Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan.
• Christine Cassel, President of the American Board of Internal Medicine.
• Christopher Chyba, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton U.
• S. James Gates Jr., Professor of Physics,
• Shirley Ann Jackson is the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
• Richard Levin, President of Yale U. and economist.
• Chad Mirkin, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern U.
• Mario Molina, Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California.
• Ernest J. Moniz, Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems, MIT
• Craig Mundie, Chief Research and Strategy Officer at Microsoft Corporation.
• William Press, Professor of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
• Maxine Savitz, retired general manager of Technology Partnerships at Honeywell, Inc.
• Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google Inc.
• Daniel Schrag, Professor of Geology, Harvard University.
• David E. Shaw, Cief scientist of D. E. Shaw Research, LLC.
• Harold Varmus, President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
• Ahmed Zewail, Professor of Chemistry and Physics at Caltech.


NEWSWORTHY

1. NANO SPENDING ADJUSTMENT
According to Cientific, governments will be spending nearly $10 billion on nanotechnology research in 2009, but despite this huge figure government spending has begun to slow down. Spending will only grow by 9.3% from 2008-2012 compared with the 130% increase witnessed from 2004-2008. Countries are now emphasizing the importance of application-driven research in this emerging field.
See NanoTech Wire, May 1, 2009.

2. PORTABLE X-RAY.
Researchers from the Advanced Defect-Characterization Research Group, the
Research Institute of Instrumentation Frontier of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), In cooperation with Dialight Japan Co., Ltd. and Life Technology Research Institute, Inc., has developed practical portable X-ray sources with a cold-cathode electron source using carbon nanostructures.
See Nanowerk, April 24, 2009.

3. DIABETES ALERT
Chinese researchers from Nankai U in Tianjin have developed polymer nanoparticles that can release insulin in response to changes in glucose concentration, creating a potential treatment for diabetes.
See Chemistry World, May 7, 2009.

4. STD ALERT
Researchers at the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have now designed a unique method for inducing immunity to chlamydia infection. The findings could accelerate progress toward the development of a vaccine against Chlamydia trachomatis infections. Their study described the use of a novel vaccine platform that utilizes an engineered nanoparticle delivery system.
See Eureka Alert, April 29, 2009 and PLoS ONE, April 30 ,2009.

5. NIOSH UPDATES ON WORKPLACE SAFETY.
The document, Approaches to Safe Nanotechnology, reiterates the agency's recommendation that employers take measures to control occupational exposure in the manufacture and industrial use of engineered nanomaterials.
See Risk and Insurance, May 4, 2009 and NIOSH

6. NEW VACCINES
Liquidia Technologies presented data at the National Foundation of Infectious Disease (NFID) Annual Meeting which supports new insight into a technology that could provide more safe and effective vaccines for a wide variety of diseases. Results of the study show that the desired immune response elicited by a vaccine can be enhanced up to 10-fold when the vaccine protein is linked to nano-particles of a particular size and shape.
See Press Release, April 28 2009.

7. MORE CANCER AND GOLD.
Researchers at MIT claim to have developed tiny gold particles that can home in on tumors, and then, by absorbing energy from near-infrared light and emitting it as heat, destroy tumors with minimal side effects.
See MIT News, May 4, 2009.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

AUSSIES PUSH FOR NANO LABELING.
The Minister for Science and Medical Research for the NSW Government will push for national mandatory labeling of nano-sized particles used in workplaces and improved testing facilities to assess the safety of new nanomaterials.
See Sydney Morning News, May 5, 2009.

STAPH INFECTIONS TARGETED
Researchers at Yeshiva U have combined their revolutionary new drug-delivery system involving biocompatible nanoparticles with a powerful antimicrobial agent to treat potentially deadly drug-resistant staph infections in mice.
See Press Release and April 30, 2009 and Journal of Investigative Dermatology, April 23, 2009.

INTEL AND SAUDIS SIGN AGREEMENT
Intel and King Abdul-Aziz City of Science and Technology (KACST), Kingdom of Saudi Arabia signed a collaborative research agreement to establish CENA, a world-class Center of Excellence in Nano-manufacturing Applications.
See AMEInfo, April 27, 2009.

USING NANO TO COMBAT DRUG RESISTANCE.
Researchers at Northeastern U combine two different anticancer agents in one nanoscale construct, providing a one-two punch that can prove lethal to such resistant cells. The nanoemulsion entraps both paclitaxel and curcumin.
See NCI News, April 2009 and Molecular Pharmaceutics, March 11, 2009.

NANO AND BLADDER REGENERATION
Brown U researcher are using nanotechnology is in regenerative medicine, particularly by creating nanometer pores and associated nanometer surface features to improve bladder tissue growth while inhibiting bladder calcium stone formation, which is a common disease affecting 5.2% of adults in the US with a high rate of recurrence.
See NanotechWeb, April 23, 2009.

EU STUDENT OUTREACH
NANOYOU will design and undertake a communication and outreach program in nanotechnology (NT) aimed at European youth. The project will reach 11-18 year olds through school programs to take place in at least 20 EU Member States and Associated States. Additional programs aimed at young adults aged 19-25 will be offered in science centers.
See ZSI Release, June 9, 2009

Enjoy. More on the way.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7553471.html

This patent from Honda teaches a method of making carbon nanotubes dispersible in aqueous solutions without clumping which could be useful in forming carbon nanotube inks and paints. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method of manufacturing hydrophilic carbon nanotubes, comprising the steps of introducing hydrophilic functional group(s) into the surface of carbon nanotubes by irradiating the carbon nanotubes with an ultraviolet ray at an output ranging from 10 to 70 mW/cm2, wherein the hydrophilic functional group(s) is one or more groups selected from the group consisting of a hydroxyl group (—OH), a carbonyl group (—CO—), an aldehyde group (—CHO), a carboxyl group (—COOH), a nitro group (—NO2), and an amino group (—NH2).

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7552636.html

This patent from UT-Battelle teaches a gyroscope formed with dimensions small enough to be influenced by quantum phase interference effects. Claim 1 reads:

1. A nanomechanical (NEMS) gyroscope, comprising:

an integrated circuit substrate;

a pair of spaced apart contact pads disposed on said substrate, and

a movable nanoscale element forming at least a portion of a first electrically conductive path electrically coupling said contact pads, wherein said movable element experiences movement comprising rotation, changes in rotation, or oscillation upon said gyroscope experiencing angular velocity or angular acceleration, said movement inducing phase changes in current flow through said movable element.

Week of March 1, 2009

There were 7 major events and many honorable mentions.

1. FOOD STORAGE MATERIAL SILVER NANOPARTICLES INTERFERES WITH DNA – teams from Taijin and Jiaotong Universities found that silver nanomaterials can directly interact with genomes. Reported in online edition of Nanotechnology (02/02/09) (http://www.iop.org/EJ/abstract/0957-4484/20/8/085102).

2. NATIONAL NANOTECHNOLOGY INITIATIVE AMENDMENTS (H.R. 554) PASSES THE HOUSE (http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-02/poen-sdh021109.php).

3. NANO REGULATION BROUHAHA IN EUROPE - The European Parliament currently is drafting a report on regulatory aspects of nanomaterials (http://www.bioworld.com/servlet/com.accumedia.web.Dispatcher?next=bioWorldHeadlines_article&forceid=50024) AND the European Commission's independent Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks (SCENIHR) publishes its opinion on the most recent developments in the risk assessment of nanomaterials (http://www.flex-news-food.com/pages/22145/Additive/European-Commission/ecs-scientific-committee-adopts-opinion-assessing-risks-nanotechnology.html).

4. EPA TO ENFORCE PREMANUFACTURE REVIEWS FOR CARBON NANOTUBES (http://www.merid.org/NDN/more.php?id=1728).

5. TA-SWISS NANOFOOD STUDY released with recommendation on regulation and transparency (http://www.ta-swiss.ch/a/nano_nafo/MedienmitteilungNanoLebensmittel_e.pdf).

6. FP7 FramingNano REPORT released. The report gives an insight on the international debate on risks and concerns related to nanotechnologies (EHS issues and ELSI), and provides an ample overview of the different regulatory approaches proposed or already developed to deal with these issues (http://www.nanotechwire.com/news.asp?nid=7432).

7. TOP TEN REASONS FOR USING NANOTECH IN FOOD (http://dsc.discovery.com/technology/tech-10/top-10-nanotechnology-food.html).


HONORABLE MENTIONS

• Drug delivery – team designed polymeric nanoparticles for cancer drug delivery. –J. Am. Chem Soc. DOI;10.1021/ja807416t AND Applied Pharma Research s.a. ("APR") announces the acquisition of a new platform technology consisting of a patented nanocoating process for the preparation of new patent protected biotechnology products for the treatment of several critical diseases in multiple therapeutic areas (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/139668.php) AND Researchers at North Carolina State University have successfully modified a common plant virus to deliver drugs only to specific cells inside the human body, without affecting surrounding tissue (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090212125139.htm).

• Important Nano and Developing Countries report – Schumacher Centre for Technology and Development Report – with Nano-Dialogues in Zimbabwe in new book NANOTECHNOLOGY APPLICATIONS FOR CLEAN WATER (ISBN-13: 978-0-8155-1578-4).

• Current-carrying capacity of the nanotubes enhanced by U. Illinois team (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090209110644.htm).

• Ohio State University team traces typical life cycle of polymer nanocomposite (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es802101x).

• Researchers at Stanford University have made several new PEGylated surfactants capable of suspending nanomaterials in aqueous solution (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja809086q?prevSearch=[author%3A+hongjie+dai]&searchHistoryKey=).

• New Zealand team used nanoparticles to coat paper to produce magnetic, electrically conductive or optically active specialist paper products (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0902/S00038.htm).

• Texas A&M team researching PADLOC is what they have already named the futuristic kit – Pathogen Detection Lab-On-a-Chip (http://www.physorg.com/news154628642.html).

• Tel Aviv University team developed a nano-sized laboratory, complete with a microscopic workbench, to measure water quality in real time. Their “lab on a chip” is a breakthrough in the effort to keep water safe from pollution and bioterrorist threats (http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090217125732.htm).

Week on February 1, 2009.

Been on the road at ILSI-NA inTucson and a ski trip to Utah.

There were six major events and some minors ones.

1. THE “A” WORD (ASBESTOS)

The 2020 Science Blog hosted by Andrew Maynard addresses the high aspect ration of nanoparticles (HARN) reviewing the recently released DEFRA Report. Andrew adds we are funding the wrong research and this failure and specifically to HARN issue “could cost some sectors of the nanotechnology industry dearly if clear information and safe working guidelines aren’t forthcoming soon.” This post is a fairly good review of what has been said and reported to date. Go to http://2020science.org/2009/01/23/asbestos-like-nanomaterials-should-we-be-concerned/. The Report on Project CB0406 was dated August 13, 2008 (http://www.safenano.org/Uploads/HARN.pdf). Andrew does a good job of examining HARN and the fiber paradigm.

2. REGULATION ON TWO FRONTS

Switzerland’s Centre for Technology Assessment (TA-Swiss) has called for the existing legislation on foods and chemicals to be adapted to meet the demands of nanotechnology. See http://www.foodproductiondaily.com/content/view/print/233888. This is another food and nano report. You can read the abstract at http://www.ta-swiss.ch/e/them_nano_nafo.html. AND we are anticipating the release of regulations on industrial use of engineered nanoparticles in Canada (http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9060.php).

3. SELF DISINFECTING FILM

Developed by ETH Zurich and being produced by Perlen Converting AG Company this film has anticipated uses at hotspots for germ transmission in hospital facilities. See http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=8997.php.

4. DEMRON PATENT

This is presumably the world’s first and only protective material for all types of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents. Demron is an advanced radiopaque nanopolymeric compound fused between layers of fabric and manufactured into lightweight nuclear radiation blocking garments including full-body suits, vests, blankets and medical X-ray vests and aprons. Pretty cool. http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9042.php

5. NANOTUBE, BONE GROWTH, AND STEM CELLS

UC San Diego team plans to work with orthopedic colleagues to bring discovery to clinical application.
http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9099.php

6. WORKFORCE PREPARATION

NanoTecNexus (NTN) is launching the first program of-its-kind this February -- unveiling a new NTN Chapter University program at UC San Diego’s NanoEngineering department arming students with the leadership skills, industry readiness, and career path knowledge needed for careers in nanotechnology. It will be interesting to see how this works and its effectiveness. Hopefully, someone will collect assessment data. See http://www.prweb.com/releases/2009/01/prweb1911084.htm.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

NANOAFRICA 09 – 3RD International Conference in Pretoria where South Africa progress was noted by Technology Minister Mangena.
http://www.buanews.gov.za/news/09/09012911451001

CATALYTIC CONVERTER - Mazda Motor Corporation is launch nanocatalyst technology in automotive catalytic converters. It will be introduced in the new Mazda3 (known as the Mazda Axela in Japan), which will go on sale across the globe later this year
http://www.miningweekly.com/article.php?a_id=150859

REPORT FROM THE NANODESK - Joint WMHT Educational Telecommunications ("WMHT") and the U Albany College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering ("CNSE") TV venture.
http://www.wmht.org/index.php?s=3

ORAL ANTICANCER DRUG DELIVERY - A team from Johns Hopkins reported on a unique composition of nanoparticles that readily incorporated water-insoluble drugs and were capable of delivering those drugs into the bloodstream after oral administration.
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=9462

AURIMUNE - Aurimune is entering its second human trials. Aurimune involved solid-gold nanoparticle coated with a tumor-weakening agent. Because blood vessels around cancerous tumors are leaky, Aurimune nanoparticles can slip out of the vessels near a tumor and cluster around it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/26/AR.

ARSENIC - The Idaho National Laboratory and Water Technology Group Inc., (WTG) Harvard, Mass. signed a licensing agreement that provides exclusive
rights to commercialize the Nano-Composite Arsenic Sorbent (N-CAS) that will improve the ability to remove arsenic from contaminated water supplies.
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=9673

There were over seven notable events and many honorable mentions.

1. NANO BIOFUELS – QuantumSphere, Inc. today announced that it was awarded a research grant from the California Energy Commission to develop a process using nanocatalysts to convert biomass into biofuels (see http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9404.php).

2. EFSA NANOFOOD REPORT – The European Food Safety Authority has concluded its assessment of the potential risks of nanotechnologies for food and feed, stating that a cautious, case-by-case approach is needed as many uncertainties remain over its safe use (see http://www.foodnavigator.com/Legislation/EFSA-publishes-final-nano-risk-opinion).

3. JAPANESE GUIDELINES – The Japanese Ministry of the Environment released guidelines on March 10, 2009, with the intent of reducing the risk of environmental harm from nanomaterials (see http://www.merid.org/NDN/more.php?id=1770).

4. RUSSIA TAKES ACTION ON NANOSAFETY – The Russian agency for Health and Consumer Rights and the Russian Corporation for Nanotechnologies signed an agreement to provide mutual systematic, scientific and technical support in validation and confirmation of nanoproducts safety, implementation of nanotechnologies and creation of nanotechnological production (see http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=10072).

5. NANO – ENERGY (FOUR reports).

a. EMISSIONS BASED ENERGY – Very interesting piece on turning emissions of Co2 into using carbon nanotubes. U. Messina team describes the process in length (see http://ec.europa.eu/research/research-eu/57/article_5727_en.html).

b. NANO METHANE - A Penn State team wants to use captures CO2 to produce methane. The process involves used arrays of nitrogen-doped titania nanotubes (see http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=10144).

c. NANO SOLAR – Researchers at Canada's National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and the University of Alberta have engineered an approach that is leading to improved performance of plastic solar cells (hybrid organic solar cells) (see http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=10100).

d. NANO-ETHANOL – A Iowa State University researchers are working to produce clean, renewable energy by developing a new, low-emissions burner and a new catalyst for ethanol production using carbon based nanoparticles (see http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9568.php).

6. IMPACT OF TOXICITY TESTING – Interesting article on the costs of toxicity testing for regulation. “for the United States that costs for testing existing nanoparticles ranges from $249 million for optimistic assumptions about nanoparticle hazards (i.e., they are primarily safe and mainly require simpler screening assays) to $1.18 billion for a more comprehensive precautionary approach” (see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es802388s).

7. FDA INITIATIVE IN NANOMEDICINE – The FDA announced the creation of a nanotechnology initiative in collaboration with the eight Texas academic institutions that make up the Houston-based Alliance for NanoHealth. The FDA's announcement describes the initiative's goal as "to help speed development of safe and effective medical products.” This is something worth watching (see http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23103/).

HONORABLE MENTIONS

• AFRICA-JAPAN EFFORT – South Africa and Japan discussing cooperation on biosciences, energy, climate change, space science, astronomy and nanotechnology (see http://allafrica.com/stories/printable/200902231286.html).

• OECD VISION PAPER – The Business and Industry Advisory Committee's Expert Group on Nanotechnology recently issued a "vision paper" with the above title, with the goal of identifying "strategic priorities from the perspective of the OECD Business Community (see http://www.biac.org/statements/nanotech/FIN09-01_Nanotechnology_Vision_Paper.pdf).

• LIFE CYCLE STUDY – Ohio State researchers completed a study on the life cycle energetic implications of carbon nanofiber reinforced polymer nanocomposite materials (see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es802101x).

• NANO RAINMAKING – Researchers at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN) at UCL have discovered a novel one dimensional ice chain structure built from pentagons that may prove to be a step toward the development of new materials which can be used to seed clouds and cause rain (see http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9536.php).

• NANO AIDS TREATMENT? – Hungary’s Power of the Dream Ventures, Inc. announced its DermaVir Patch, a nanomedicine grounded treatment for HIV/AIDS. "Proof of concept" for the immunological and antiviral activities of Genetic Immunity's product was demonstrated in infected macaques, some of them with advanced stages of AIDS (see http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0477678.htm).

• INDIA SEES A WAY OUT OF THE RECESSION WITH NANO – An interesting spin on the new technology (see http://www.sakaaltimes.com/2009/03/11115048/NANOTECH-A-BIG-WAY-TO-BEAT-RE.html

• PLANT UPTAKE – Clemson team reporting on research studying the uptake of nanoparticles by rice plants (see http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=9516.php).

• NANO-PLUMBING – Duke U. engineers demonstrate carbon buckyballs may be able to keep the nation's water pipes clear in the same way clot-busting drugs prevent arteries from clogging up (see http://www.physorg.com/news155457592.html).

• AIRPLANE SAFETY – MIT team argues nanocarbon tubes stitched together to produce aerospace materials could make airplane skins and other products some 10 times stronger at a nominal increase in cost (see http://www.nanotech-now.com/news.cgi?story_id=32334).

• GREEN NANO – Interesting ES&T article on the promises of green nanotechnology (see http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es900021v).

• REGULATION DISSERTATION – Hansen’s (from DTU) dissertation is available for download. I have been watching Steffan’s work for some time now. He is a bright young mind in the nano SEIN field. (see http://www.nanolawreport.com/Steffen%20Foss%20Hansen%20PhD%20Thesis%20web-version.pdf).

• BIOMASS TO PRODUCE CARBONTUBE – Japanese team developed a new method for producing ultra-lightweight hollow carbon fine particles from lignin (see http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=9480.php).

SORRY for the delay but I have been all over the place. Went to DC for a SRA meeting on Regulatory Impact Analysis and to Chicago for a meeting of the International Food Information Council Foundation Trustees meeting. I spoke (officially) in Chicago.

The nano-frontier is still pretty wild and I hope to run out some data we recently compiled on experts and their understanding of nanoparticles very soon. Some of the findings were leaked at the IFIC meeting and you can find that at our web site (pcost.org).

As for March 2009, we have nine (9) notable and a smattering of honorable mentions.

1. TOXICITY TESTING QUANDARY
U. Minnesota and U. British Columbia researchers reported if all existing nanomaterials were to be tested for toxicity, it would cost U.S. industries between $249 million and $1.18 billion, but the testing could take as long as 53 years at current levels of investment. Does this mean we need a bigger investment in toxicity testing or find new ways to test nanomaterials or both? (See ES&T DOI 10.1021/es802388s)

2. NEW WAY TO TEST FOR INHALATION
Scientists at the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich designed a sealed glove box system where nanoparticles are simultaneously made in aerosol form and then deposited onto lung tissue cells.

3. GREEN NANOMATERIALS
Researchers are creating green nanomaterials, with an eye toward their hazards as well as cleanup potentials and pitfalls. (See ES&T, 43:5, 2009, 1247-1249)

4A. CANCER GENE THERAPY
Cancer Research UK scientists have for the first time developed a treatment that transports 'tumor busting' genes selectively to cancer cells (mice study).

4B. MORE CANCER GENE THERAPY
U London School of Pharmacy reports a way to switch off cancer-causing genes and trigger cell death. It is based on nanotubes used to deliver small interfering RNA (siRNA) directly into the tumor mass, which it is hoped will have a significant impact in the battle against lung cancer.

5. PESTICIDE APPLICATIONS
Cornell U researchers how found a way to apply pesticides by encapsulating them in biodegradable nanofibers, which keeps then intact until needed and minimizes loss to drift or being washed away from the plants they are intended to protect.

6. GATES FOUNDATION AND NSF
The Gates Foundation money will be used to bring in researchers from around the world, particularly developing countries. The new program is called BREAD, Basic Research to Enable Agricultural Development. NSF Program Director Deborah Delmer said it will cast a wide net for new ideas and approaches to common problems like poor soil quality, crops that spoil during storage and plant strains that wilt in today's heat — and may fare even worse as climate change raises the planet's temperature.

7. FDA – TEXAS CONSORTIUM ANNOUNCED
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced the creation of a nanotechnology initiative in collaboration with the eight Texas academic institutions that make up the Houston-based Alliance for NanoHealth. (These include Rice U, the U of Texas, and the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.)

8. EU COSMETICS REGULATIONS ON THE HORIZON
Parliament approved an update of EU legislation on cosmetics when it votes on a first-reading agreement thrashed out between EP and Council representatives. The basic aim of the new regulation is to remove legal uncertainties and inconsistencies, while increasing the safety of cosmetics. Parliament's amendments add further improvements, especially regarding the claims companies make for their products and the safety of nanomaterials used in cosmetics.

9. SUNSCREENS ALLEGATIONS
U Toledo researchers found nano-titanium dioxide used in personal care products reduced biological roles of bacteria after less than an hour of exposure. Utah State U and U Utah researchers found beneficial soil bacteria cannot tolerate silver, copper oxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles. Both presented at ACS meeting in Salt Lake City.

HONORABLE MENTION

PAPER FOR ELECTRONIC DEVICES
Kyoto University researchers made transparent paper from nanosized cellulose fibers (renewable) as alternative to glass and polymers in electronic devices. Findings were presented at the Salt Lake ACS meeting.

EU NANOFOOD CONCERNS
In a legislative report dealing with an update of the EU rules on novel foods, the European Parliament calls on the Commission to interdict the placing on the market of food derived from cloned animals and their descendants. MEPs also want food being produced by nanotechnology processes to undergo a specific risk assessment before being approved for use and be labeled.

SAUDIS NEW NANO COMPANY
Saudis open the Saudi Nanotechnology Company. According to chairman Prince Bader Bin Saud said the firm would provide the Kingdom with a means of keeping pace with worldwide developments in nanotechnology, rather than it having to rely on foreign research.

HYPE ALERT
Check the Mental Floss website, for How to Destroy Civilization with Nanotechnology" directed by Ransom Riggs. WIRED Science reports: Several teams of social scientists are hard at work, trying to answer that question, and movies like this could turn their world upside down. Nice rhetoric but hardly.

TUNNELING NANOTUBES
Glowing infectious proteins called prions move through a network of mouse brain cells linked by tunneling nanotubes. Experiments are revealing that the tiny threads ferry both beneficial and harmful cargo between cells.

CHINA’S NANO-SPEAKERS
Tsinghua U. used a slim film of see-through plastic to transform almost any surface into an auditorium. It is made from nanocarbon tubes which, when heated, make the air around them vibrate, producing the sound.

NANOLUB
NanoLub has produced a nanotechnology-based (tungsten disulfide)lubricant which can enhance compression efficiency and a reduction of over 5% in fuel consumption of the vehicles.

This took some time. A lot happened in April. There were three notable breakthroughs, nine (9) noteworthy news stories, and quite a few honorable mentions. My students convinced me to work harder on my hyperlinks. We read every article that comes across our desks and aggressively search out everything we can find.

Tell your friends and let me know which format you prefer.

 

BREAKTHROUGH – NANOSCALE RINGS

Researchers at Cal Tech and Berkeley report a direct catalytic route for making nanoscale rings with potential applications in drug delivery and organic photovoltaic devices.

See C&EN, April 20, 2009 and J Am Chem Soc,

BREAKTHROUGH – NANOPARTICLE THIN FILMS

Researchers at MIT have used capillary condensation to functionalize inorganic nanoparticle coatings that could be used to make transparent thin films for applications like imaging devices and memory storage. The technique also bypasses the need for toxic, co-solvents during processing.

See NanotechWeb, April 24, 2009.

BREAKTHROUGHS – DNA SEQUENCING

Researchers at Oxford and Oxford Nanopore Technologies demonstrated that the four standard DNA nucleotides—adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine can be distinguished from one another reliably by the amount of current they each block as they flow through a nanopore. Taking DNA apart one nucleotide at a time, directing the nucleotides sequentially into a nanopore, and detecting them with an electrical current meter may seem an unlikely DNA-sequencing concept, but it is closer than ever to being a reality.

See C&EN, March 9, 2009 and Nature Nanotechnology, DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2009.12.

NEWSWORTHY

1. AUSTRALIAN TRADE UNION DEMAND NANO-REGISTRY

The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is calling for a mandatory national register of who is importing, manufacturing, supplying and selling nanomaterials.

See Sydney Morning News, April 13, 2009.

2. PRINTABLE ELECTRONICS

Researchers from ETH Zurich report a new technique that uses flame spray synthesis in combination with a simple in-situ functionalization step to synthesize graphene coated copper nanoparticles which are air-stable and can be easily handled at ambient conditions.

See Nanowerk, April 24, 2009.

3. FLEXIBLE BATTERIES USING VIRUSES

Researchers at MIT use viruses to build both the positively and negatively charged ends of a battery, the cathode and anode. The virus was coaxed into binding with iron phosphate and then carbon nanotubes to create a highly conductive material. While the prototype battery is currently the size of a coin, the scientists believe it can be scaled and be used to create flexible batteries that can take the shape of their container, which is perfect for mobile or small devices.

See BBC News, April 2, 2009.

4A. SOLAR CELLS USING DIATOMS

Researchers at OSU and Portland State U have created a new way to make "dye-sensitized" solar cells using diatoms, in which photons bounce around like they were in a pinball machine, striking these dyes and producing electricity. This technology may be slightly more expensive than some existing approaches to make dye-sensitized solar cells, but can potentially triple the electrical output.

See Science Daily, April 9, 2009.

4B. SOLAR ADVANCES USING RESIDUE

Researcher from Northeastern U and NIST discovered, serendipitously, that a residue of a process used to build arrays of titania nanotubes-a residue that wasn't even noticed before this-plays an important role in improving the performance of the nanotubes in solar cells that produce hydrogen gas from water. By controlling the deposition of potassium on the surface of the nanotubes, engineers can achieve significant energy savings in a promising new alternate energy system.

See AtoZ Nano, April 24, 2009.

5. GAS STORAGE

Researchers at the Ural Division of the Russian Academy of Sciences report using molecular dynamics to model the behavior of a lock and fill nanocapsule. The closed-cage design could offer a safe and effective way of storing gases such as methane under normal conditions.

See NanotechWeb, March 17, 2009.

6. OIL FROM ALGAE

Researchers from Ames and Iowa State U. reportedly developed "nanofarming" technology that safely harvests oil from the algae so the pond-based "crop" can keep on producing.

See AtoZ Nano, April 24, 2009.

7. NANO-AVIATION

Researchers from Canada’s FP Innovations have unveiled plans for a factory that will use nanotechnology to extract cellulose from wood and use it to form composite materials for airplanes.

See Blog Wired, April 24, 2009

8. LISTERIA SENSOR

Researchers from Purdue and IIT are reporting development of a new biosensor for use in a faster, more sensitive test for detecting the deadliest strain of Listeria food poisoning bacteria.

See Nanowerk, April 22, 2009

and

Analytical Chemsitry, March 24, 2009.

9. SILVER WORKING GROUP

The Silver Institute and the Silver Research Consortium announced the formation of the Silver Nanotechnology Working Group (SNWG). The SNWG is an industry effort intended to foster the collection of data on silver nanotechnology in order to advance the science and public understanding of the beneficial uses of silver nanoparticles in a wide-range of consumer and industrial products

See AtoZ Nano, April 24, 2009.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

EU “NO DATA, NO MARKET”

The European Parliament's environment committee this week adopted a report by Swedish Green MEP Carl Schlyter which calls for tighter controls on nanotechnology, including the application of the 'no data, no market' principle contained in the REACH Directive. The own-initiative, non-binding report calls for products containing nanotechnology which are already on the market to be withdrawn until safety assessments can be made.

See EuroActiv, April 2, 2009.

EU FUNDS PPPs FOR GREEN REVOLUTION 2

€1.2 billion will be earmarked for R&D as part of the Factories for the Future programme; €1 billion will be dedicated to researching energy efficient buildings; and the much-vaunted Green Car Initiative is worth a total of €5 billion. The first calls for research projects linked to these PPPs are expected in July 2009, with the Commission keen to see the first projects underway in spring 2010.

See EuChemMS Brussels News Update, May 2009.

RUSSIA INVESTING IN CANADIAN NANO

According to Canwest News Service, a state-owned Russian venture capital fund is poised to pump millions of dollars into Canada's fledgling nanotechnology industry. The fund is RUSNANO and is one of the largest technology capital funds on the planet.

See Canwest News, April 13, 2009.

CLINICAL STUDY ANNOUNCED

NanoBio Corp. announced today that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the company’s Investigational New Drug (IND) application for the Phase 1 clinical study of NB-1008, a seasonal influenza vaccine administered via a nasal dropper.

See Nanowerk, April 24, 2009.

CANCER AND GOLD NANORODS

Researcher at U Missouri announced a systematic investigation on the design and development of targeted gold nanorods. A recent result of this work has been the design of a novel peptide-based nanovector for carrying drug payloads to cancer sites.

See Nanowerk, April 15, 2009 and Nano Letters, April 7, 2009

MELANOMA RESEARCH USING GOLD NANOSPHERES.

UC Santa Cruz, Berkeley, and the Houston MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston reported using hollow gold nanospheres to enhance the cell-killing effects of photothermal ablation. The researchers equipped the nanospheres with a protein fragment that targets melanoma cells while avoiding healthy skin cells. When exposed to near-infrared light, which penetrates deeply through the skin, the nanospheres heat up and destroy the cancer cells.

See NanotechWeb. April 24, 2009.

DRUG DELIVERY RESEARCH

Researchers at Brown U have come up with a means for delivering the cancer-fighting drug cisplatin directly to tumor cells in breast-cancer patients. The researchers created a dumbbell-like twin nanoparticle by attaching a gold nanoparticle to an iron-oxide nanoparticle.

See NanotechWeb. April 24, 2009. and J. Am. Chem. Soc. 131 4216.

A Purdue team reported similar findings combining gold nanorods with magnetic iron-oxide particles.

See NanotechWeb. April 24, 2009 and Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 48 2759.

BREAST CANCER BIOMARKERS

Researchers at Duke U have demonstrated multiplexed detection of breast cancer biomarkers using structures dubbed "molecular sentinel" (MS) nanoprobes.

See NanotechWeb, May 19, 2009.and Nanotechnology. February 11, 2009.

ORTHOPEDICS AND DENTISTRY DRUG DELIVERY

Titanium dioxide nanotubes might be incorporated into orthopaedic or dental implants to deliver drugs in a local area over a period of several weeks. So say researchers at the universities of California, San Francisco, and Pennsylvania State who have shown that the nanotubes can release albumin, a large protein molecule, as well as sirolimus and paclitaxel, common small molecule drugs.

See NanotechWeb, April 3, 2009.

NANOGENERATORS

Researchers at Georgia Tech and U Wisconsin-Madison announced an advance in nanogenerators. Nanoscale generators can turn ambient mechanical energy--vibrations, fluid flow, and even biological movement—into a power source. Now researchers have combined a nanogenerator with a solar cell to create an integrated mechanical- and solar-energy-harvesting device.

See Technology Review, April 9, 2009.

NCSU BATTERY RESEARCH

Researchers from North Carolina State University are using an industrially viable electrospinning technique and subsequent carbonization processes to fabricate porous carbon nanofibres (PCNFs). These prepared PCNFs can provide fast lithium charge/discharge kinetics.

See NanotechWeb, April 24, 2009 and Nanotechnology.

CHEMICAL SENSORS

Imperial College researchers announced developments in metallic nanostructure sensing involving a device that could be tailored to detect different chemicals by decorating the nanostructure surface with specific 'molecular traps' that bind the chosen target molecules. Once bound, the target molecules would change the colors that the device absorbs and scatters, alerting the sensor to their presence.

See Science Daily, April 13, 2009.

NO MORE PAINFUL INJECTIONS

The end of deep, painful vaccine injections is in sight. One of the first widespread applications of nanotechnology in medicine could be a painless, needle-free vaccine "nanopatch" being developed by Australian scientists.

See Sydney Morning News, April 23, 2009

NEW BOOK ON COMMUNICATION AND NANO

The book, entitled Nanotechnology, Risk and Communication (published by Palgrave Macmillan 2009) analyses the way the traditional media has covered the early development of nanotechnology. It also uses that coverage to contribute to the debate about the effectiveness of scientists and journalists in communicating science-related stories to the wider public. The book is co-authored by Stuart Allan of Bournemouth University.

See AtoZ Nano, April 23, 2009.

INDIAN NANO DEGREE

Maitreyi College, Delhi University, will be offering a full-time postgraduate diploma in nanotechnology from this academic year.

See The Times of India, April 6, 2009.

I am struggling to keep up.

Today I found myself once again in Westminster, giving evidence to a House of Lords Select Committee, which is currently carrying out an inquiry into the use of nanotechnology in food. Readers not familiar with the intricacies of the British constitution need to know that the House of Lords is one of the branches of Parliament, the UK legislature, with powers to revise and scrutinise legislation, and through its select committees, hold the executive to account. Originally its membership was drawn from the hereditary peerage, with a few bishops thrown in; recently as part of a slightly ramshackle program of constitutional reform the influence of the hereditaries has been much reduced, with the majority of the chamber being made up of members appointed for life by the government. These are drawn from former politicians and others prominent in public life. Whatever the shortcomings of this system from the democratic point of view, it does mean that the membership includes some very well informed people. This inquiry, for example, is being chaired by Lord Krebs, a very distinguished scientist who previously chaired the Food Standards Agency.

All the evidence submitted to the committee is publicly available on their website; this includes submissions from NGOs, Industry Organisations, scientific organisations and individual scientists. There’s a lot of material there, but together it’s actually a pretty good overview of all sides of the debate. I’m looking forward to seeing their Lordships’ final report.

Anisotropic, long-range voltage profiles could guide wires up to live cells

It is demonstrated by means of density functional and ab-initio quantum chemical calculations, that transition metal - carbon systems have the potential to enhance the presently achievable area density of magnetic recording by three orders of magnitude (1000 times more). As a model system, Co2-benzene with a diameter of 0.5 nm is investigated. It shows a magnetic anisotropy in the order of 0.1 eV
per molecule, large enough to store permanently one bit of information at temperatures considerably larger than 4 K. A similar performance can be expected, if cobalt dimers are deposited on graphene or on graphite. It is suggested that the subnanometer bits can be written by simultaneous application of a moderate magnetic and a strong electric field.

Long-term magnetic data storage requires that spontaneous magnetization reversals
should occur significantly less often than once in ten years. This implies that the total magnetic anisotropy energy (MAE) of each magnetic particle should exceed 40 kT where k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature.

More recently, the magnetic properties of transition metal dimers came into the focus
of interest. Isolated magnetic dimers are the smallest chemical objects that possess a magnetic anisotropy as their energy depends on the relative orientation between dimer axis and magnetic moment. Huge MAE values of up to 100 meV per atom were predicted by density functional (DFT) calculations for the cobalt dimer.

The researchers predict that bonding of Co dimers on hexagonal carbon rings like benzene or graphene results in a perpendicular arrangement of the dimers with respect to the carbon plane and in a magnetic ground state. In this structure, a division of tasks takes place: while the Co atom closer to the carbon ring is responsible for the chemical bonding, the outer Co atom hosts the larger share of the magnetic moment. The huge magnetic anisotropy of the free dimer is preserved in this structure, since the degeneracy of the highest occupied 3d- orbital is not lifted in a hexagonal symmetry. Thus, it should be possible to circumvent the hitherto favored use of heavy metal substrates to achieve large magnetic anisotropies. On the contrary, robust and easy-to-prepare carbon-based substrates are well suited for this task. Once confirmed, the present results may constitute an important step towards a molecular magnetic storage technology.

Carnival of Space 109 is up at Twisted physics, a discovery blog.

This site contributed its article about General Fusion getting funded by the Canadian government.

Astroengine.com:
The Event Horizon Telescope: Are We Close to Imaging a Black Hole?

(Sub)Millimeter VLBI observations in the near future will combine the angular resolution necessary to identify the overall morphology of quiescent emission, such as an accretion disk or outflow, with a fine enough time resolution to detect possible periodicity in the variable component of emission. In the next few years, it may be possible to identify the spin of the black hole in Sgr A*, either by detecting the periodic signature of hot spots at the innermost stable circular orbit or parameter estimation in models of the quiescent emission. Longer term, a (sub)millimeter VLBI "Event Horizon Telescope" will be able to produce images of the Galactic center emission to the see the silhouette predicted by general relativistic lensing

The paper that discusses very long baseline interferometry and black hole imaging challenges. (13 page pdf)

Several technological advancements are currently in progress to increase the sensitivity of the millimeter VLBI array. A phased array processor to sum the collecting area on Mauna Kea (Weintroub 2008) has been tested. Similar hardware could be used to increase sensitivity at CARMA, Plateau de Bure, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/ submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Digital backends (DBEs) have been developed to process 1 GHz of data (4 Gbit s−1 with 2-bit Nyquist sampling), and next-generation DBEs will improve upon this by a factor of four. Mark 5B+ recorders can already record 2 Gbit s−1 data streams (presently requiring two at each site per DBE), and the Mark 5C recorders currently being developed will be able to handle even faster data rates. Cryogenic sapphire oscillators are being examined as a possible frequency standard to supplement or replace hydrogen masers to provide greater phase stability, which may improve coherence at higher frequencies.

Future observations will initially focus on improving sensitivity by observing a wider bandwidth and using phased array processors. Dual polarization observations will become a priority not only for the p2 improvement in sensitivity for total-power observations but also to allow full polarimetric VLBI of Sgr A*. Higher frequency observations, such as in the 345 GHz atmospheric window, will provide even greater spatial resolution in a frequency regime where interstellar scattering and optical depth effects are minimized.

The timing is right to move forward on building an Event Horizon Telescope to produce high-fidelity images of Sgr A* as well as other scientifically compelling sources, such as M87. Receivers currently being produced en masse for ALMA could be procured for other millimeter VLBI stations, in many cases providing substantial improvements in sensitivity. Studies of climate and weather will be necessary to provide information on the astronomical suitability of prospective sites for future telescopes, such as those at the present ALMA Test Facility or additional telescopes constructed specifically for millimeter VLBI (which would mesh well with present ALMA construction). Some existing telescopes will require improvements to their systems, such as increasing the bandwidth of the intermediate frequency signal after mixing. It will also be highly desirable to install permanent VLBI hardware at all sites to allow turnkey VLBI observing in order to maximize the efficiency of VLBI observations in terms of personnel time and transportation costs.

Current 1.3 mm VLBI observations have established that the millimeter emission emanates from a compact region offset from the center of the black hole. These data are already being used to constrain key physical parameters (e.g., spin, inclination, orientation) in models of the emission (e.g., RIAF models). Future additions to the VLBI array would allow the millimeter emission to be imaged directly

Phil Plait, Bad Astronomer, looks at the conflicting studies of Saturn's moon Enceladus. One study finds evidence of salt water ocean and the other finds the opposite.

Check out the Carnival of Space 109 at Twisted physics for a lot more.

It's not nanotech, except in the sense that anything small and interesting enough counts as nanotech. But it's a significant milestone toward a game-changing technology.

An electronic quantum processor with two qubits, each made of about a billion aluminum atoms, has been created at Yale university. They can get the qubits to maintain their state for about a microsecond. And they have a "quantum bus" that can pass information between the bits.

I don't understand all the cool things you can do with a quantum computer, but apparently it can be useful for simulating quantum chemistry. I suspect we'll have covalent-solid molecular manufacturing before this quantum computer technology develops to the point where it can help, but I've been surprised before by how fast technologies can advance.

Chris Phoenix

Eric Lerner interview.

Mr. Lerner heads the Focus Fusion Society, which is a charitable organization attempting to create focus fusion technology. He believes that his technique is fundamentally superior to Tri-alpha Energy (Colliding beam fusion in the reverse field configuration) and EMC2 fusion (inertial electrostatic confinement/pollywell fusion) because it results in more of the proton-boron fuel being burned. He is confident that this technology could lead to electricity generation at 2 cents per kilowatt hour. We should know if this technology if feasible or not within the next two years. If it is successful as Lerner hopes, this technology could have a profound impact on the world.




Question: Tell us about the DB-11 fusion reactor


Answer: We are using a technique which we call focus fusion. This technology involves using dense plasma to burn hydrogen-boron fuel (PB-11). The advantage of this approach is that the reaction does not produce neutrons but rather charged particles. So we get the energy out in the form of moving charged particles which is already electricity. So we don't need to use any turbine, and this dramatically reduces size, costs, and energy requirements.


Question: How easy would this fusion reactor be to operate? Would there be any danger of a meltdown, or a terrorist incident with this technology?

: The safe and easy operation of this device is one of its selling features. The amount of fuel being burned at any given time is extremely small, so the possibility of uncontrolled release of energy is nil - a misfire will simply cause the device to stop operating. Furthermore the container will be shielded by water and boron-10, which absorbs neutrons. So radioactivity simply isn't an issue.







Question: What major milestones has your project achieved?

Answer: We developed the general theory for this back in the 1980s, based on astrophysical phenomena such as quasars and solar flares. NASA's jet propulsion lab funded us in the 1990s, and in 2001 we demonstrated that we could achieve the extremely high temperatures (over a billion degrees) that would be needed for fusion,. Unfortunately NASA ceased funding fusion in 2001, but with some difficulty we were able to obtain private funding to continue our research. We are now performing experiments which will test out the scientific feasibility of our approach, and trying to obtain net energy production. We will begin to build the energy device within weeks, and we hope to get the experimental data back by fall 2009.


Question: How does your reactor compare to the EMC2 fusion reactor?

Answer: We, Bussard [those who carry on the late Robert Bussard's fusion project], and a company called Tri-Alpha Energy are all trying to burn the PB-11 fuel, which is difficult to burn but otherwise highly desirable. EMC2 and Tri-Alpha require stable plasma. Our approach, however, uses a very dense, unstable plasma, which results in more of the fuel being burned. On this metric we are several orders of magnitude closer to the goal of maximum fuel efficiency than either EMC2 or tri-Alpha. We strongly support the funding of competing projects but believe we have a superior approach that will yield the quickest results.

Question: Your website claims that electricity could be produced for 1/50th the cost of conventional plants. Is 2/10 cent per kilowatt hour feasible?

Answer: We are confident that 2/10 of a penny per kilowatt hour is eventually attainable for several reasons. First, for conventional energy sources, the equipment for energy conversion production costs about $1 per watt produced. We are planning on building a 5 megawatt generator that when in mass-production should cost approximately $300,000. So that comes out to about 6 cents per watt for the equipment. Second, the fuel itself is virtually free, and each generator only consumes about 5 pounds of fuel per year. Third, labor costs should be quite modest since few workers are required to run these plants.



: Your website mentions 5 megawatt plants, but larger 5 gigawatt plants will be required. Is this technology scalable?



: Not in individual units, since there are limits as to how frequently these machines can be pulsed. It should be possible, however, to build large numbers of modules in one location. So for instance an aluminum plant might want to construct 100 fusion generators at their plant.



Question: You have divided your fusion development projects into stages. What are these stages, and are you meeting the timetables?

Answer: There are three basic stages. We are currently trying to determine the scientific feasibility of our approach. This involves constructing a laboratory device that generates net energy and unequivocally proves viability. This phase has just begun and should be completed within the next two years. The second stage would result in a working prototype, and that will be a much larger project, involving about $20 million and taking about 3 years. The final stage would be implementation - getting our fusion technology out to the economy.

Question: How long do you anticipate between a successful prototype demonstration and commercial production?


Answer: We anticipate having a commercial reactor no more than eighteen months after the prototype is completed. So eighteen months after the prototype there should be significant numbers of reactors being manufactured. If this technology can generate electricity for 1/10 the cost of current approaches, as we believe, then it will quickly supplant them. We could eventually see a million of these units being produced per year.


Question: You have given a talk on fusion at google. Is google or any other corporation funding any of your research?

Answer: No corporation is currently funding our research. The Abell foundation in Baltimore is our only institutional funder, and they have invested a half million. That has constituted half of our budget. We hope that the Federal Government will fund our research, and we are currently applying for a grant from ARPA-E. We are also hoping to garner funding from private accredited investors.

Question: Can this proposed fusion reactor use multiple fuel sources, or is it limited to hydrogen-boron fuel?

Answer: It is limited to hydrogen-boron fuel. Although we plan on experimenting with other fuels, such as deuterium, we don't anticipate that there is a way of using other fuels to economically generate energy using our fusion approach.


Question: At what point do you anticipate that your company, Lawrenceville Plasma Physics, will become consistently profitable?

Answer: Shortly after the successful completion of our second stage, we plan on selling licenses for the production of these generators, since demand for the product will overwhelm any single corporation. Although we haven't worked out the details of these license agreements, we intend to ensure that the price of focus fusion power is as close as possible to the cost of production.

Discovery Channel's Mega-engineering discusses a proposal to place a dome over Houston if climate change threats fully materialized. The Houston dome would even be more economical even without addressing climate change but as a more efficient way to keep residents confortable than using air conditioning for cars and buildings. A detailed cost and efficiency analysis might show that such structures and a retrofit of many cities could be economically and environmentally justified.

Economic benefits:
1. Removes or greatly reduce the need or cost for individual hurricane and weather insurance
2. Shifts the costs for air conditioning and temperature control of buildings
3. Reduces/shifts environmental damage from structures under the dome to the dome

If we rethink and retrofit how we climate control cities, it could turn out to make more sense than climate control for all the buildings inside the city.









For such dome cities all vehicles under the dome should be zero emission and electrically powered.

For farming/agriculture in a climate change scenario where such domed cities are common there should be vertical farming (farming in high rise buildings).




Eden Project
These city dome proposals are an extension of the work of famed architect Buckminister Fuller and of the Eden project in the UK where domes were actually built.


One mile wide Buckminster Fuller proposed dome

The Eden Project is a visitor attraction in the United Kingdom, including the world's largest greenhouse. Inside the artificial biomes are plants that are collected from all around the world.


Sir Robert McAlpine and Alfred McAlpine constructed the Eden Project and MERO designed and built the biomes. The project took 2½ years to construct and opened to the public on 17 March 2001. It is made of steel and thermoplastic

The Rainforest Biome, which is the largest greenhouse in the world, covers 1.559 hectares (3.9 acres) and measures 180 feet (55 m) high, 328 feet (100 m) wide and 656 feet (200 m) long. It is used for tropical plants, such as fruiting banana trees, coffee, rubber and giant bamboo, and is kept at a tropical temperature.

The Mediterranean Biome covers 0.654 hectares (1.6 acres) and measures 115 feet (35 m) high, 213 feet (65 m) wide and 443 feet (135 m) long. It houses familiar warm temperate and arid plants such as olives and grape vines and various sculptures.

The biomes are constructed from a tubular steel space-frame (hex-tri-hex) with mostly hexagonal external cladding panels made from the thermoplastic ETFE. Glass was avoided due to its weight and potential dangers. The cladding panels themselves are created from several layers of thin UV-transparent ETFE film, which are sealed around their perimeter and inflated to create a large cushion.

Eden Project has received £130 million of funding from various sources.

How stuff works describes the construction of the Eden Project

Eden's designers decided not to use these traditional materials in their greenhouses -- they went with glazed ethyl tetra fluoro ethylene (ETFE) foil instead. ETFE foil is a perfect covering for a greenhouse because it is strong, transparent and lightweight. A piece of ETFE weighs less than 1 percent of a piece of glass with the same volume. It is also a better insulator than glass, and it is much more resistant to the weathering effects of sunlight








More technical details:
- The dome can be made of Texlon ETFE which can protect the city from 180 MPH winds, water and fire.
- Houston dome area would be over 21 Million square feet.
- Houston Dome's broadest panels will be 15 feet across. It will take 147,000 panels to cover the city of Houston



FURTHER READING
Monolithic domes at nexgbigfuture.

Bolonkin air supported city dome for missile protection and other uses.

Cordis: Danish and Chinese researchers are making advances in the world of nanotechnology as they work together to develop electronic components. The fruits of their labour will contribute to fuelling the electronic, energy and communications industries.

Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology: IBN‘s Minute Antibacterial Particles Destroy Drug-Resistant Germs.

Nanomedicine is one of the branch of nanotechnology where thousands of researchers working hard day and night to explore the use of this branch for treating many diseases including life-threatening diseases. Many applications of nanomedicine such as nanobiomaterial, nano drug delivery and nanopharmaceuticals are on the fast track, which will enhance the efficacy and at [...]

Theoretical work on creating an earthquake cloak (pdf, 9 page) To protect a building 10 metres across, each ring (concrete with precise properties) would have to be about 1 to 10 metres in diameter and 10 centimetres (4 inches) thick. Several rings are needed to guide the destructive surface waves around buildings.

Borrowing from the physics of invisibility cloaks could make it possible to hide buildings from the devastating effects of earthquakes.

The seismic waves of an earthquake fall into two main groups: body waves that propagate through the Earth, and surface waves that travel only across the surface.

Although Enoch's team have calculated that controlling body waves would be too complex, controlling surface waves is within the ability of conventional engineering, they say. Fortunately, it is surface waves that are more destructive, says team member Sebastien Guenneau at the University of Liverpool in the UK.

The new theoretical cloak comprises a number of large, concentric rings made of plastic fixed to the Earth's surface. The stiffness and elasticity of the rings must be precisely controlled to ensure that any surface waves pass smoothly into the material, rather than reflecting or scattering at the material's surface.

When waves travel through the cloak they are compressed into tiny fluctuations in pressure and density that travel along the fastest path available. By tuning the cloak's properties, that path can be made to be an arc that directs surface waves away from an area inside the cloak. When the waves exit the cloak, they return to their previous, larger size.

Unlike some of the optical invisibility cloaks that have been studied in physics labs in recent years, the new cloak is "broadband", meaning that it can divert waves across a range of frequencies.

"The outer rings remain nearly still, but the pair of rings tuned to the frequency of the wave move like crazy, bending up and down and twisting," says Guenneau. "For each small frequency range, there's one pair of rings that does most of the work." The team has simulated cloaks containing as many as 100 rings, says Guenneau, although fewer would be needed to protect against the most common kinds of earthquake surface waves.

When it comes to installing them into buildings, they could be built into the foundations, Guenneau suggests. It should be possible to make concrete structures with the right properties. To protect a building 10 metres across, each ring would have to be about 1 to 10 metres in diameter and 10 centimetres thick.

Achieving control of in-plane elastic waves: Applied Physics Letters

We derive the elastic properties of a cylindrical cloak for in-plane coupled shear and pressure waves. The cloak is characterized by a rank 4 elasticity tensor with spatially varying entries, which are deduced from a geometric transform. Remarkably, the Navier equations retain their form under this transform, which is generally untrue [G. W. Milton et al., N. J. Phys. 8, 248 (2006)]. The validity of our approach is confirmed by comparison of the analytic Green's function in homogeneous isotropic elastic space against full-wave finite element computations in a heterogeneous anisotropic elastic region surrounded by perfectly matched layers

Dan Yurman at Idaho Samizdat has several recommendations for improving the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and actions for small and large nuclear reactor companies

1. Change the formula by which the NRC recovers costs from small reactors for design certification reviews. Instead of requiring the start-ups to pay for all of the costs, require them to pay for a complete application.

2. Establish a line item appropriation to fund the NRC to conduct the design certification reviews of new reactors that are docketed and which meet certain technical criteria. Examples include power (less than 500 MW), the benefits of simplified design and below grade installation, in terms of reduced risk of coolant and core damage accidents, less fuel handling due to longer period of burn up of initial fuel load, and so on.

3. Large reactor vendors are well positioned to help sell and service these reactor designs once they are certified by the NRC.

4. The small reactors should consider forming a trade group to promote their interests which includes legislative proposals like this one. The cost of a lawyer and an engineer in Washington, DC, for a year probably could be had for less than $500,000. These firms should also form technical and regulatory working groups to provide input to the NRC on how it could streamline the current reactor design certification process for their innovative reactors without compromising safety.

5. Take the show on the road to the large reactor vendors. Convince them that there are potential profits to be had through joint ventures for manufacturing, sales, and services. Investors in small reactors want the fastest path possible to a return on investment.

Scientists wonder if Brooke Greenberg, now 16, will help point the way to new discoveries about the genetics of aging. Pictured from left to right on Brooke's 12th birthday are sister Caitlin, 15; Brooke; sister Emily, 18; mom Melanie Greenberg; and sister Carly, 9.

Brooke Greenberg does not age normally and is immune to growth hormone. ABC's 20-20 news show will feature her Friday, June 26, 2009. Brooke's story is also to be shown in a documentary, "Child Frozen In Time," Sunday, Aug. 2 at 10 p.m. on TLC.

Brooke hasn't aged in the conventional sense. Dr. Richard Walker of the University of South Florida College of Medicine, in Tampa, says Brooke's body is not developing as a coordinated unit, but as independent parts that are out of sync. She has never been diagnosed with any known genetic syndrome or chromosomal abnormality that would help explain why.

In a recent paper for the journal "Mechanisms of Ageing and Development," Walker and his co-authors, who include Pakula and All Children's Hospital (St. Petersburg, Fla.) geneticist Maxine Sutcliffe chronicled a baffling range of inconsistencies in Brooke's aging process. She still has baby teeth at 16, for instance. And her bone age is estimated to be more like 10 years old.

"There've been very minimal changes in Brooke's brain," Walker said. "Various parts of her body, rather than all being at the same stage, seem to be disconnected."

Ten photos are here.

In her first six years, Brooke went through a series of medical emergencies from which she recovered, often without explanation. She survived surgery for seven perforated stomach ulcers. She suffered a brain seizure followed by what was diagnosed as a stroke that weeks later left no apparent damage.

At 4, she fell into a lethargy that caused her to sleep for 14 days. Then, doctors diagnosed a brain tumor, and the Greenbergs bought a casket for her.

"We were preparing for our child to die," Howard Greenberg said. "We were saying goodbye. And, then, we got a call that there was some change; that Brooke had opened her eyes and she was fine. There was no tumor. She overcomes every obstacle that is thrown her way."

Brooke's doctor said the source of her sudden illnesses remains a mystery.

ABC News video of Brooke Greenberg

To try to determine why Brooke's aging process has been so irregular -- and what it means to the understanding of our genetic makeup -- Walker and Sutcliffe have studied samples of Brooke's cells and DNA to look for what they think may be a genetic mutation never seen before that has affected the way she ages.

Walker, of the University of South Florida, believes that if the gene can be isolated, it may provide clues to questions about why we age and die.

"Without being sensational, I'd say this is an opportunity for us to answer the question, why we're mortal, or at least to test it," Walker said. "And if we're wrong, we can discard it. But if we're right, we've got the golden ring."

If the gene -- or complex of genes -- is identified, Walker plans to test laboratory animals to determine whether the gene can be switched off and, if so, whether it will cause the animal's aging to slow.

New Scientist magazine reports on this as well.

Walker thinks that Brooke is the first recorded case of what he describes as "developmental disorganization". His hypothesis is that the cause is disruption of an as-yet unidentified gene, or genes, that hold the key to ageing by orchestrating how an organism matures to adulthood, reproduces, then gradually ages and dies. Walker believes that Brooke lacks this "regulator" of development

Video from 2005 of Brooke Greenberg

A laser pulse traveling through a plasma accelerates free electrons in its wake


Berkeley Lab scientists are leading in a race to develop laser-based accelerator capable of zapping electron beams to energies exceeding 10 GeV in a distance of just one meter. Groups in the UK and France are working feverishly to best the record set by Leemans’ group in 2006. China has also deemed it a high-priority growth area.

In about four years, the Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator, or BELLA, will demonstrate the promise of a novel and compact method of accelerating high-energy particles, by making use of a series of synchronized laser systems.

This group achieved a major breakthrough in 2006 when they broke the world record for laser-wakefield acceleration, a technique in which particles are accelerated by waves in plasma generated by intense pulses of laser light. In the wake of the laser pulse, electrons surf the waves of the ionized gas. Leemans and coworkers used this concept to accelerate electron beams to energies of more than 1 GeV in a distance of just 3.3 centimeters. Compare that to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC, which takes 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) to boost electrons to 50 GeV.

Although the main purpose of the project is to develop a new generation of more compact accelerators for high energy physics research, laser plasma wakefield technology has several potential applications.


100 of the 10GeV accelerators could enable a 100 meter long teravolt accelerator.

A multi-GeV beam could be used to produce highly-collimated, high-energy photons that could penetrate cargo in a nondestructive way, allowing inspectors to remotely “see” inside a package, which would be highly useful for national security. BELLA could also be used to build free-electron lasers (FEL). Like all lasers, FELs emit energetic beams of light. But unlike conventional lasers, they operate on a different set of principles that make them highly tunable. Because of this property, free-electron lasers can provide extraordinarily valuable tools for materials scientists, chemists, biologists, and researchers in various fields working on problems in fundamental energy research, allowing them to probe ultrashort, nanoscale phenomena. Their tunability also makes them useful for medical diagnosis.






Finally, with some modification, BELLA could produce a narrow bandwidth x-ray beam that could be used to take very high-resolution x-ray images for medical use. If the laser technology that drives the laser plasma accelerators keeps on improving by becoming less expensive and more compact, it could one day be an alternative to conventional x-ray machines, offering a new technique for better images with reduced x-ray dose.

Completing BELLA will require:

Completing BELLA will require a 1-Hz, 1-PW laser — the highest average power (40 W) petawatt-class laser in the world.

To achieve BELLA’s main objective of 10-GeV electrons, a new and much more powerful laser will have to be put in place, a state-of-the-art laser that can fire a 40-joule pulse in a brief 40 femtoseconds, then build up to fire again and again, once every second, a repetition rate of one hertz (1 Hz). Such a laser will have an average power of 40 W and a peak power of a quadrillion watts — a petawatt, 1 PW.

“Since the time we designed and built the LOASIS 40-TW laser ourselves, there has been a revolution in the field of laser technology,” Leemans says. “Advances are now driven by commercial companies, and by military requirements, and we have been talking with two companies who want to build a laser for BELLA under our supervision.”

FURTHER READING
Plasma Accleration at wikipedia

During a presentation on June 26, 2009 chip-making consortium Sematech outlined ways to enable Moore's Law

Sematech also warned about a gap in Extreme Ultra-violet mask inspection tools.

To enable EUV in mass production fabs, IC makers must get their hands on defect-free photomasks. Today's EUV masks have 1 defect per cm^2 at 18-nm. The ultimate goal is to devise EUV masks with 0.003 defects per cm^2 at 18-nm. In other words, there is a ''25X gap'' in terms of enabling defect-free masks for EUV pilot production and a ''100X gap'' for EUV fab production

Technology that can help continue Moore's Law
1. Zero low-k interface. In current 45-nm designs from Intel Corp., there is the silicon substrate and the high-k/metal-gate scheme. A low-k material sits between the silicon and high-k structure. But with a zero low-k interface, the low-k material is removed, enabling more drive current and less leakage. This is an option for the 16-nm node or sooner.

2. Single metal gate stack. Instead of a traditional transistor, a high-k/metal-gate scheme makes use of a single metal gate stack. This improves the performance but lowers the power consumption of the device.

3. Gate stacks on III-V semiconductors. Intel, Sematech and others have talked about using an InGaAs/high-k interface for future designs. Would also boost performance and lower power.

4. Quantum-well MOSFETs. The use of silicon-germanium on silicon as a means to boost performance. Intel recently demonstrated a high-speed, low-power quantum well field effect transistor. The p-channel structure will be based on a 40-nm indium antimonide (InSb) material.

III-V MOSFETs for future CMOS transistor applications


Cross-sectional schematic view of a) a PHEMT and b) a III-V quantum well MOSFET with virtual drain/source extensions.













5. 3-D chips using through-silicon-via (TSVs). Sematech on Friday disclosed plans to set up a 300-mm R&D ''test bed'' [by 2010] for the production of 3-D devices based on TSV technology.




Report progress in areas such as next generation high-k/metal gate (HKMG) materials, advanced flash memory, planar and non-planar CMOS technologies and HKMG defect metrology

La-doped Metal/High-K nMOSFET for Sub-32nm HP and LSTP Application – Investigates the suitability of nMOSFETs with the La-doped high-k/metal gate stack to see its suitability for sub-32nm low standby power (LSTP) and high performance applications.

Extending spectroscopic ellipsometry for identification of electrically active defects in Si/SiO2/high-k/metal gate stacks – Explores a new method using spectroscopic ellipsometry to non-invasively identify oxygen vacancy defects in the bottom interfacial SiO2 layer of the scaled high-k/metal gate stacks.

Reliability Assessment of Low Vt Metal High-k Gate Stacks for High Performance Applications – Describes of reliability characterization techniques and models targeting HKMG lifetime predictions.

Additive Mobility Enhancement and Off-State Current Reduction in SiGe Channel pMOSFETs with Optimized Si Cap and High-k Metal Gate Stacks – Demonstrates high mobility pMOSFETs with high quality epitaxial SiGe films selectively grown on Si (100) substrates.

Band Engineered Tunnel Oxides for Improved TANOS-type Flash Program/Erase with Good Retention and 100K Cycle Endurance – Demonstrates, for the first time, that band-engineered tunnel oxides integrated with a high-k/metal gate can improve program, erase, and endurance in charge-trapped flash memory devices.

High Mobility SiGe Shell-Si Core Omega Gate PFETs – Explores the use of Omega gate-type pFETs with a SiGe shell (high mobility channel) on a Si core.

New levelized cost of powerplants being built now and being completed and ready in 2016. The costs are without state and federal subsidies

















The latest IHS CERA Power Capital Costs Index (PCCI) shows the costs of constructing new power plants fell an additional three percent over the past six months, signaling a broader downward trend that has now spread beyond nuclear to all classes of power plants. H/T Nuclear Green

Wind has shown the sharpest decrease at 11 percent due to a combined drop in wind turbine and tower costs and a short-term slowdown in orders. Wind was also the most impacted by the current economic and financial crisis, which led to a drying up of tax equity and debt investors. Lower costs for turbines, towers and construction and civils could lead to a continued decrease in costs in the near term.

The decline in nuclear plant costs slowed over the past six months, falling by one percent, due to lower materials costs and additional manufacturing capability for key components. Despite an active pipeline, falling steel prices are likely to push costs down further in the near term

India also seems to be preparing to develop and then export low cost small nuclear reactors. Again a H/T to Nuclear Green's Charles Barton

Reportedly capital costs of small Indian Reactors may run as low as $0.90 per watt [$200 million for 220 megawatts], but such cost estimates are based on prevailing Indian wage rates. An unnamed official of NPCIL told Hindu Business Line, “Currently, India is perhaps the only country to have an actively working technology, design and infrastructure for manufacture of small reactors with a unit capacity of 220 MWe. These units have a great potential for exports, particularly to nations with small grids that are planning nuclear forays with relatively lower investment levels.”

Nuclear Green also has a EIA cost projection of levelized energy costs to 2016.

In Russia, 59% of deaths in men and 33% of deaths in women between the ages of 15-54 were caused by alcohol. Most of these alcohol-attributed deaths were from alcohol poisoning, accidents, violence, or one of eight disease groups strongly related to alcohol, such as TB, pneumonia, pancreatitis or liver disease.

Professor Sir Richard Peto of the Clinical Trial Service Unit (CTSU) at the University of Oxford, who led the statistical analyses said: ‘If current Russian death rates continue, then about 5% of all young women and 25% of all young men will die before age 55 years from the direct or indirect effects of drinking.

Russian deaths from disease are further aggravated by widespread smoking. Male lung cancer rates (which are driven by smoking and not by drinking) are about 50% higher in Russia than in Western Europe or North America. After the age of 55, tobacco may well cause more deaths than alcohol, but at younger ages alcohol has been shown to cause, in Russia, even more deaths than tobacco.

National mortality statistics show that the overall risk of death among people of working age in Russia is now more than four times as great as in Western Europe

Alcohol May Be Related to 3.8% of Global Deaths

The study, published in The Lancet, estimates the percentage of alcohol-related deaths based on accidents, alcohol abuse, and various health conditions -- including certain cancers, high blood pressure, and liver problems -- in which alcohol may play a role.

The researchers -- who included Jurgen Rehm, PhD, of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto -- analyzed 2003 data from the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations, and other sources.

Protein plays a key role in drug discovery and understanding the structure of these molecules could significantly enhance the development of new stable and efficient drug. At present with the conventional technologies available, the drug development is very slow due to various conditions including the instability of protein. Researchers at Birmingham and Warwick Universities have found [...]

Material could make good tunnel field effect transistor with high on-off current

Michael Jackson suffered a cardiac arrest and is dead.

Megamix of Michael Jackson's Greatest Hits.


25th Anniversary of Thriller Teaser Video


Farrah Fawcett's death from cancer was not unexpected.








There was some speculation that Steve Jobs used his wealth to jump the queue for his liver transplant. Someone with money can get on more transplant waiting lists and be able to fly their within the required 7-8 hours to get the transplant. Someone with money can hire people to perform inquiries at all the transplant hospitals and jurisdictions to find the shortest waiting lists. My comment on that is any billionaire would be an idiot to not use their money to get preferential access to life saving care.

Also, billionaires are foolish not to follow the example of Peter Thiel and put significant funds to SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence) and the Methuselah Foundation to help achieve medical breakthroughs in life extension. They could also follow the example of Dr. Don Listwin who founded the Canary Foundation which is developing effective screening procedures and technology for early detection of cancer.

1. Kirk Sorensen will be presenting an upgraded molten-salt reactor (the liquid-fluoride thorium reactor, or LFTR) concept as one of a dozen finalists at the Manchester Festival. Kirk will also be presenting at Google as part of the Google Talk series in July.

A dozen of the most promising applicants will be invited to present their idea to a high-calibre panel of experts in front of a live audience at Manchester Town Hall on the weekend of 4 and 5 July. The panel, chaired by Lord Bingham, previously the UK's chief justice, and featuring leading lights from the worlds of science, business and policy, will rate the various ideas in terms of their feasibility, impact and commercial potential. .

The results of this landmark event will form the basis of a report – the Manchester Report – to be published two weeks later at the end of the festival. The report will not only be made available online but also sent to policy-makers, to help them decide which low-carbon solutions to support in the run up to this year's crucial climate summit in Copenhagen.

A previous presentation of the liquid fluoride reactor concept. (60 minutes long) This site had an article which summarizes the factory mass produced concept of liquid fluoride reactors that would burn almost all of the thorium and uranium (almost zero nuclear waste/zero unburned fuel)



2. A presentation was made of research work on fluoride reactors in the Czech Republic. They have been working towards an actinide burning reactor for several years.





3. New Energy and Fuel has an article that PowerSat Corp. has filed a provisional patent for two technologies called BrightStar and Solar Power Orbital Transfer, that are expected make the transmission of space solar power more cost-effective by reducing the price for launch and operation of systems as large as 2,500 megawatts by about $1 billion.

Today I’ve been at Parliament in London, at an event sponsored by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology to launch the second phase of the Environmental Nanoscience Initiative. This is a joint UK-USA research program led by the UK’s Natural Environment Research Agency and the USA’s Environmental Protection Agency. This is a very welcome initiative to give some more focus to existing efforts to quantify possible detrimental effects of engineered nanoparticles on the environment. It’s important to put more effort into filling gaps in our knowledge about what happens to nanoparticles when they enter the environment and start entering ecosystems, but equally it’s important not to forget that a major motivation for doing research in nanotechnology in the first place is for its potential to ameliorate the very serious environmental problems the world now faces. So I was very pleased to be asked to give a talk at the event to highlight some of the positive ways that nanotechnology could benefit the environment. Here are some of the key points I tried to make.

Firstly, we should ask why we need new technology at all. There is a view (eloquently expressed, for example, in Bill McKibben’s book “Enough”) that our lives in the West are comfortable enough, the technology we have now is enough to satisfy our needs without any more gadgets, and that the new technologies coming along - such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, robotics and neuro-technology - are so powerful and have such potential to cause harm that we should consciously relinquish them.

This argument is seductive to some, but it’s profoundly wrong. Currently the world supports more than six billion people; by the middle of the century that number may be starting to plateau out, perhaps between 8 and 10 billion people. It is technology that allows the planet to support these numbers; to give just one instance, our food supplies depend on the Haber-Bosch process, which uses fossil fuel energy to fix nitrogen to use in artificial fertilizers. It’s estimated that without Haber-Bosch nitrogen, more than half the world’s population would starve, even if everyone adopted a minimal, vegetarian diet. So we are existentially dependent on technology - but the technology we depend on isn’t sustainable. To escape from this bind, we must develop new, and more sustainable, technologies.

Energy is at the heart of all these issues; the availability of cheap and concentrated energy is what underlies our prosperity, and as the world’s population grows and becomes more prosperous, demand for energy will grow. It is important to appreciate the scale of these needs, which are measured in 10’s of terawatts (remember that a terawatt is a thousand gigawatts, with a gigawatt being the scale of a large coal-fired or nuclear power station). Currently the sources of this energy are dominated by fossil fuels, and it is the relentless growth of fossil fuel energy since the late 18th century that has directly led to the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. This rise, together with other greenhouse gases, is leading to climate change, which in turn will directly lead to other problems, such as pressure on clean water supplies and growing insecurity of food supplies. It is this background which sets the agenda for the new technologies we need.

At the moment we don’t know for certain which of the many new technologies being developed to address these problems will work, either technically or socio-economically, so we need to pursue many different avenues, rather than imagining that some single solution will deliver us. Nanotechnology is at the heart of many of these potential solutions, in the broad areas of sustainable energy production, storage and distribution, in energy conservation, clean water, and environmental remediation. Let me focus on a couple of examples.

It’s well known that the energy we use is a small fraction of the total amount of energy arriving on the earth from the sun; in principle, solar energy could provide for all our energy needs. The problems are ones of cost and scale. Even in cloudy Britain, if we could cover every roof with solar cells we’d end up with a significant fraction of the 42.5 GW which represents the average rate of electricity use in the UK. We don’t do this, firstly because it would be too expensive, and secondly because the total world output of solar cells, at about 2 GW a year, is a couple of orders of magnitude too small. A variety of nanotechnology enabled potential solutions exist; for example plastic solar cells offer the possibility of using ultra-cheap, large area processing technologies to make solar cells on a very large scale. This is the area supported by EPSRC’s first nanotechnology grand challenge.

It’s important to recognise, though, that all these technologies still have major technical barriers to overcome; they are not going to come to market tomorrow. In the meantime, the continued large scale use of fossil fuels looks inevitable, so the idea of the need to mitigate their impact by carbon capture and storage is becoming increasingly compelling to politicians and policy-makers. This technology is do-able today, but the costs are frightening. Carbon capture and storage increases the price of coal-derived electricity by between 43% and 91%; this is a pure overhead. Nanotechnologies, in the form of new membranes and sorbents could reduce this. Another contribution would be finding a use for carbon dioxide, perhaps using photocatalytic reduction to convert water and CO2 into hydrocarbons and methanol, which could be used as transport fuels or chemical feedstocks. Carbon capture and utilization is the general area of the 3rd nanotechnology grand challenge, whose call for proposals is open now.

How can we make sure that our proposed innovations are responsible? The idea of the “precautionary principle” is one that is often invoked in discussions of nanotechnology, but there are aspects of this notion which make me very uncomfortable. Certainly, we can all agree that we don’t want to implement “solutions” that bring there own, worse, problems. The potential impacts of any new technology are necessarily uncertain. But on the other hand, we know that there are near-certain negative consequences of failing to act. Not to actively seek new technologies is itself a decision that has impacts and consequences of its own, and in the situation we are now in these consequences are likely to be very bad ones.

Responsible innovation, then, means that we must speed up research to fill the knowledge gaps and reduce uncertainty; this is the role of the Environmental Nanotechnology Initiative. We need to direct our search for new technologies in areas of societal need, where public support is assured by a broad consensus about the desirability of the goals. This means increasing our efforts in the area of public engagement, and ensuring a direct connection between that public engagement and decisions about research priorities. We need to recognise that there will always be uncertainty about the actual impacts of new technologies, but we should do our best to choose directions that we won’t regret, even if things don’t turn out the way we first imagined.

To sum up, nanotechnologies, responsibly implemented, are part of the solution for our environmental difficulties.

The five most costly medical conditions in 2002 for the USA.










The Center for Disease Control looks at the top chronic diseases by deaths caused.

- The medical care costs of people with chronic diseases account for more than 75% of the nation’s $2 trillion medical care costs.
- Chronic diseases account for one-third of the years of potential life lost before age 65.
- The direct and indirect costs of diabetes is $174 billion a year.
- Each year, arthritis results in estimated medical care costs of nearly $81 billion, and estimated total costs (medical care and lost productivity) of $128 billion.
- The estimated direct and indirect costs associated with smoking exceed $193 billion annually.
- In 2008, the cost of heart disease and stroke in the U.S. is projected to be $448 billion.
- The estimated total costs of obesity was nearly $117 billion in 2000.
- Cancer costs the nation an estimated $89 billion annually in direct medical costs.
- Nearly $98.6 billion is spent on dental services each year.

Concentration of healthcare expenses.

-Five percent of the population accounts for almost half (49 percent) of total health care expenses.
- The 15 most expensive health conditions account for 44 percent of total health care expenses.
- Patients with multiple chronic conditions cost up to seven times as much as patients with only one chronic condition.
- The top-spending 25 percent of Medicare beneficiaries incurred average per-person costs of $24,800. In this group, 42 percent had coronary artery disease, 30 percent had congestive heart failure, and 30 percent had diabetes.

Existing Cost Effective Prevention

An analysis of the cost of disease prevention methods shows that not all disease prevention is cost effective.

- For every $1 spent on water fluoridation, $38 is saved in dental restorative treatment costs.
- Implementing proven clinical smoking cessation interventions would cost an estimated $2,587 for each year of life saved, the most cost-effective of all clinical preventative services.
- For each $1 spent on the Safer Choice Program (a school-based HIV, other STD, and pregnancy prevention program), about $2.65 is saved on medical and social costs.
- Every $1 spent on preconception care programs for women with diabetes, can reduce health costs by up to $5.19 by preventing costly complications in both mothers and babies.
- Implementing the Arthritis Self-Help Course among 10,000 individuals with arthritis will yield a net savings of more than $2.5 million while simultaneously reducing pain by 18 percent among participants.
- A mammogram every 2 years for women aged 50–69 costs only about $9,000 per year of life saved. This cost compares favorably with other widely used clinical preventive services.






Strategic research investments and accelerated approval of treatments and more effective and cheaper detection would enable a dramatic drop in the costs of chronic disease and increase the rate of cures and improve the health of the population. The diseases are chronic because we do not have actual cures, but can only manage the diseases.

There are possibilities for cheap diabetes cures and/or prevention.

Cancer costs could be greatly reduced with effective early detection when cancer is cheaper to treat and treatments are more effective and new immune system boosting cures and more effective and affordable cancer drugs


The Current Most Cost Effective Screening Tests for Heart Disease
On June 22, 2009Governor Rick Perry of Texas signed HB1290, the nation's first preventive cardiovascular screening bill for early detection of coronary artery disease

The preventive screening [for heart and cardiovascular disease] of asymptomatic [no symptom] men and women could have the following outcomes:

- Prevent more than 4,300 deaths from cardiovascular disease each year in Texas.
- Reduce the history of heart attack– currently estimated to be 1.4 million – by as much as 25 percent in the Texas Population.
- Save approximately $1.6 billion in healthcare costs annually [Texas alone].

The legislation, which will take effect on September 1, requires Texas insurers to pay up to $200 for a either a non-contrast computed tomography (CT) scan measuring coronary artery calcification, commonly known as a Calcium scoring exam, or ultrasonography for measuring carotid intima-media thickness and plaque.

The reimbursement is being made available to men between 45 and 76 years of age and women between 55 and 76 who are either diabetic or who have an intermediate or higher risk of developing coronary artery disease, based on the Framingham Heart Study coronary prediction algorithm. The test may be conducted every five years by a certified laboratory.

New Cheaper Heart and Cardio Health Tests
A new credit-card sized device could provide a way to test people for heart disease using a pinprick of blood. Developed by a team of researchers from Harvard and Northeastern universities in Boston the device can measure and collect a type of cells, called endothelial progenitor cells, using just 200 microliters of blood.

The depletion or ageing of these bone-marrow derived endothelial progenitor cells is a risk factor for vascular disease, as they can enter the bloodstream and go to areas of blood vessel injury to help repair damage. This is because they have the ability to become the cells that make up the lining of the blood vessels (endothelial cells). So the device, which enables the easy collection of these cells, could also bring efforts to create tissue in the laboratory for vascular bypass surgeries another step closer to reality. The device works much more easily than current techniques for collecting endothelial progenitor cells.

Five ways to boost your HDL [HDL stands for high density lipoprotein. It helps the body get rid of bad cholesterol, which protects it against heart disease.]

The enzyme WWP-1, shown in green, is a key player in the signaling cascade that links dietary restriction to longevity in roundworms. Sensory neurons are shown in red. Image: Courtesy of Dr. Andrea C. Carrano, Salk Institute for Biological Studies


Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have identified a pivotal role for two enzymes that work together to determine the health benefits of diet restriction.

- enzyme wwp-1 is required and specific for the extension of lifespan by dietary restriction.
- WWP-1 ubiquitin ligase activity is essential for diet-restriction-induced longevity.
- WWP-1 exhibits ubiquitin ligase activity in a UBC-18 dependent manner in vitro.
- WWP-1 and UBC-18 function together to regulate diet-restriction-induced longevity.


a, Lifespan analysis of eat-2(ad1116) mutant worms fed bacteria expressing ubc-18 dsRNA or control vector initiated after hatching of eggs (L1) or day 1 adults (D1). b, c, Lifespan analysis of isp-1(qm150) (b) and daf-2(e1368) (c) fed bacteria expressing ubc-18 dsRNA or control vector. d, Lifespan analysis of eat-2(ad1116) mutant animals fed bacteria expressing wwp-1 dsRNA and vector (wwp-1 RNAi), ubc-18 dsRNA and vector (ubc-18 RNAi), wwp-1 and ubc-18 dsRNA (wwp-1 + ubc-18 RNAi), or control vector. e, Lifespan analysis of wwp-1 overexpressing worms (GFP::WWP-1) or control worms (GFP) fed bacteria expressing ubc-18 dsRNA or control vector.

There are only three known genetic networks that ensure youthfulness when manipulated. One centers on the insulin/insulin growth factor-1, which regulates metabolism and growth; the second is driven by mitochondria, the cell's power plants; and the third is linked to diet restriction.

Author Andrea C. Carrano, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in American Cancer Society Professor Tony Hunter's laboratory, hadn't set out to unravel the molecular connection between dietary restriction and increased lifespan when she started to investigate the role of the mammalian enzyme WWP-1. "I only knew that WWP-1 was a ubiquitin ligase and that mammalian cells contain three copies, which would make it difficult to study its function."

Ubiquitin ligases work in tandem with so called ubiquitin-conjugating enzymes to attach a chain of ubiquitin molecules to other proteins. This process, called ubiquitination, flags protein substrates for destruction but can also serve as a regulatory signal.

Since the laboratory roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans only contains one copy, Carrano teamed up with Salk researcher Dillin, who studies aging and longevity in C. elegans. Initial experiments revealed that worms without the WWP-1 gene seemed normal but were more susceptible to various forms of stress. "This finding was the first hint that WWP-1 might play a role in the aging process since mutations that affect stress very often correlate with longevity," she says.

Prompted by the findings, Carrano's next set of experiments focused on WWP-1's potential role in the regulation of lifespan. When she genetically engineered worms to overexpress WWP-1, well-fed worms lived on average 20 percent longer. Deleting PHA-4, which was discovered in Dillin's lab and so far is the only gene known to be essential for lifespan extension in response to diet restriction, abolished the life-extending effects of additional WWP-1 placing the ubiquitin ligase as a central rung on the same genetic ladder as PHA-4. Without WWP-1, cutting down on calories no longer staved off death.

When a study by others found that UBC-18 interacts with WWP-1, Carrano wondered whether it could play a role in diet-restriction-induced longevity as well. She first confirmed that the UBC-18 functions as an ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme and gives WWP-1 a hand. She then tested whether it played a role in lifespan regulation. "Overexpression of UBC-18 was not enough to extend the lifespan of worms but depleting it negated the effects of caloric restriction," says Carrano, who is busy looking for potential substrates of the UBC-18-WWP-1 ubiquitination complex.

Journal Nature: A conserved ubiquitination pathway determines longevity in response to diet restriction

Dietary restriction extends longevity in diverse species, suggesting that there is a conserved mechanism for nutrient regulation and prosurvival responses. Here we show a role for the HECT (homologous to E6AP carboxy terminus) E3 ubiquitin ligase WWP-1 as a positive regulator of lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans in response to dietary restriction. We find that overexpression of wwp-1 in worms extends lifespan by up to 20% under conditions of ad libitum feeding. This extension is dependent on the FOXA transcription factor pha-4, and independent of the FOXO transcription factor daf-16. Reduction of wwp-1 completely suppresses the extended longevity of diet-restricted animals. However, the loss of wwp-1 does not affect the long lifespan of animals with compromised mitochondrial function or reduced insulin/IGF-1 signalling. Overexpression of a mutant form of WWP-1 lacking catalytic activity suppresses the increased lifespan of diet-restricted animals, indicating that WWP-1 ubiquitin ligase activity is essential for longevity. Furthermore, we find that the E2 ubiquitin conjugating enzyme, UBC-18, is essential and specific for diet-restriction-induced longevity. UBC-18 interacts with WWP-1 and is required for the ubiquitin ligase activity of WWP-1 and the extended longevity of worms overexpressing wwp-1. Taken together, our results indicate that WWP-1 and UBC-18 function to ubiquitinate substrates that regulate diet-restriction-induced longevity.

12 megabyte pdf with supplemental information.

BBC News coverage: Scientists tell Nature magazine that the liquid water may reside in caverns just below the surface of the moon.

If confirmed, it is a stunning result. It means the Saturnian satellite may be one of the most promising places in the Solar System to search for signs of extraterrestrial life.

New interpretation of the Cassini spacecraft finding of water near Saturn's moon Enceledus. According to Schneider, both his team and Kempf’s now agree that the jets of water vapor emanating from Enceladus’ jets shouldn’t be viewed as “near-surface geysers connected to an ocean” near the surface, as first proposed. The lack of sodium in the jets suggest that the jets arise from a gentle, gradual evaporation of water from a deep ocean rather than a more violent, geyser-like process from a liquid reservoir near the surface.

From 2005 to 2009, the Cassini spacecraft has found strong evidence that Saturn’s tiny moon Enceladus has an ocean beneath its icy surface. If the liquid water finding is confirmed, it would suggest that the moon may be one of the most promising places in the solar system to search for signs of past or present extraterrestrial life.





Cassini flybys planned for the fall could glean more information on the ocean-geyser link.

The water and other key life ingredients such as organic material found in the plumes, could provide a suitable environment for life precursors, said lead researcher Frank Postberg of the Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany.

Jupiter's Europa, Ganymede and Callisto also are strong candidates for liquid oceans.

Clams and biofilms accumulate the most nanoparticles by mass in test system

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7551884.html

Cleaning blades are important to laser printers for removing toner from the photosensitive drum used in transferring images to paper. This patent from Toshiba teaches how to use carbon nanotube or fullerene material to enhance the durability and lifetime of such cleaning blades. Claim 1 reads:

1. A cleaning apparatus provided with a cleaning blade which removes a developer remaining on a surface of an image carrier, wherein the cleaning blade is made of a resinous matrix dispersion in which at least one of a fullerene and a carbon nano tube is dispersed, and at least one of the fullerene and the carbon nano tube is mixed and dispersed in a total amount of from 0.02 to 20 parts by weight based on 100 parts by weight of the resinous matrix in the cleaning blade.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7550907.html

This patent from Hon Hai Precision teaches wrapping carbon nanotube yarn around an elongated structure to form an electron emitting device with enhanced efficiency. Claim 1 reads:

1. A field emission element, comprising:

an elongated solid body;

a carbon nanotube yarn wrapping round the elongated solid body;

an electrically conductive adhesive agent applied between the elongated solid body and the carbon nanotube yarn, the electrically conductive adhesive agent being configured for fixing the carbon nanotube yarn to the elongated solid body, wherein substantially all of the carbon nanotube yarn is entirely adhered on a peripheral surface of the elongated solid body by the adhesive agent.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7550747.html

Since electron beam lithography usually uses only a single electron source it is usually considered too slow to be used in the semiconductor processing necessary for mass production. However, the inclusion of massively parallel arrays of electron sources can increase throughput. This patent teaches using a high density of carbon nanotube electron emitters as both a lithography tool and an alignment sensor. Claim 1 reads:

1. A Parallel Electron Beam Lithography Stamp (PEBLS) apparatus comprising:

a substrate with a first side and a second side;

an array of lithographic nanotips capable of electron emission formed substantially normal to the first side of the substrate;

a target to be lithographically patterned by the array of lithographic nanotips; and

an array of sensing nanotips formed substantially normal to the first side of the substrate and provided on at least two sides of the lithographic nanotips so as to provide an alignment reference for the lithographic nanotips,

wherein the array of lithographic nanotips is formed in a pattern corresponding to a desired lithographic pattern on the target to be processed and wherein the apparatus is constructed to allow at least a portion of the first side of the substrate to contact the target during lithography.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita predictions from February 2009 on Iran. The above is a 20 minute TED presentation.

- Prediction based on self-interest
- Need to look at all of the influencers on the key decision maker
- 5 people is 120 interactions, 10 people is 3.6 million interactions
- CIA notes that the computer model is right 90% of the time when the experts who provide the inputs are wrong
- Inputs are what what people have a stake in a decision, people say they want, how focused are they on the issue, how much influence do they have
















Predictions on Iran

1. Iranian government will tone down its nuclear ambitions to the point where it will devleop weapons-grade nuclear material only for research purposes

2. Real power rests not with the mullahs or even with the Supreme Leader, but with what he calls the “moneyed interests” of Iranian society: “the banker, the oil people, the bazaris”. Currently quiet and moderate mullahs will become more vocal.

3. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad influence will decline and has been in decline.

UPDATE: Current situational analysis:
A backstage struggle among Iran's ruling clerics burst into the open Sunday when the government said it had arrested the daughter and other relatives of an ayatollah who is one of the country's most powerful men.

Rafsanjani heads the cleric-run Assembly of Experts, which can remove the supreme leader, the country's most powerful figure. He also chairs the Expediency Council, a body that arbitrates disputes between parliament and the unelected Guardian Council.

H. Richard Sindelar, a professor of foreign policy at the University of St. Thomas, served as the State Department’s deputy director of the Office of Near East & South Asia Analysis, which included the Iran portfolio.

The mullahs have miscalculated, and the fascinating panorama that is Iran now seems destined for a severe, long-term and possibly regime-changing crisis. The question will be whether protesters are willing to become martyrs.

there is the 18th of Tir factor, the anniversary of violent student protests in 1999 that arrives July 8-9. A declaration confirming Ahmadinejad as victor would almost certainly inspire more protests and a predictably harsh regime response, and this new round of violence could then segue into renewed anniversary rioting “honoring” the 18th of Tir protests.

Iran faces potentially a month or more of leadership fracturing, popular discontent, crackdowns and thuggery, all vectoring toward regime instability. Whether the protesters have the will to persist over many days in these wide-ranging and massive demonstrations — and publicly risk death in the streets as their brethren did in 1978-79 — remains uncertain; time and lack of success in the shorter term have a way of dissipating interest.

The final ingredient in the stew, in the eyes of those in the street, is presidential challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi himself. He possesses a quiet charisma and is well-respected as a former prime minister who exhibited solid leadership during the troubling 1980s. Protesters from all walks of life, faced with accepting Ahmadinejad’s flailing leadership, may prove tenacious in supporting a change to Mousavi.

In the end, the protests may not bring the fall of the Islamic regime itself, but they might cost Khamenei his role, and could bring to power a president with the ability to stabilize Iran economically and politically. A reformer in the Iran context, Mousavi is still a very conservative leader by Western standards. He is also a pragmatist willing to engage the West.

One of Iran's shrewdest political operators, Ali Larijani, the speaker of Iran's parliament, is the country's perennial political bellwether. Ali Larijani could be the kingmaker who decides how events in Iran turn. Uniquely and deeply loyal to the Supreme Leader, Larijani is a bedrock conservative, and a former member of the Revolutionary Guard. But he also has a PhD in Western Philosophy and has written four books on Kant, and is generally seen as someone open to better ties with the West.

What began as groundswell protest of alleged vote fraud increasingly appears to be splintering into random acts of rage and frustration against emboldened and well-armed security forces determined to hold their ground.

Many experts in Iranian affairs do not believe the dwindling street protests signal an end for the challenges to Khamenei and the regime. Many foresee lower-risk but still potent acts of dissent such as general strikes, blocking traffic with sit-ins, and the nightly cries of protest from rooftops and balconies.

"It will carry on until the regime changes: Weeks, months, years. You'd be a fool to predict," said Robert Hunter, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO and head of Middle East Affairs in the Carter administration. "But the beast of the desire for something different is on the prowl."

Senior Israeli Defense Ministry official Amos Gilad said that he sees no "signs of Ahmadinejad's regime collapsing any time soon."

"The intelligence community worldwide were surprised by the protests," he said.

There are still signs of life in the protest movement. Small groups battled police Wednesday and there were calls on reformist Web sites for a gathering Thursday at the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

An analysis of the Iranian situation from the point of view of Israel.

END UPDATE


















































Previous article discusses Bruce Bueno de Mesquita game theory political and global predictions.

FURTHER READING
Time Magazine: In Iran, One Woman's Death May Have Many Consequences

Although it is not yet clear who shot Neda (a soldier? a pro-government militant? an accidental misfiring?), her death may have changed everything. The cycles of mourning in Shi'ite Islam actually provide a schedule for political combat — a way to generate or revive momentum. Shi'ite Muslims mourn their dead on the third, seventh and 40th days after a death, and these commemorations are a pivotal part of Iran's rich history. During the revolution, the pattern of confrontations between the Shah's security forces and the revolutionaries often played out in 40-day cycles.

Neda is already being hailed as a martyr, a second important concept in Shi'ism. With the reported deaths of 19 people on June 20, martyrdom provides a potent force that could further deepen public anger at Iran's regime.

The revolutionaries exploited the deep passion of martyrdom as well as the timetable of Shi'ite mourning in whipping up greater opposition to Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi. With the deaths of Neda and others, they may now find the same phenomena used against them.

Here is a 17 page look chapter by chapter at Bueno de Mesquita's book Principles of International Politics, 2nd Edition.



De Mequita book Predictioners Game is coming out Sept 2009

1. South African nuclear technology firm PBMR plans to have its first 80 megawatt (MW) power and heat processing plant based on its pebble-fuel technology by 2018. Previously there was a target date of 2014, but the project was cancelled for a few months, but appears to be back on track.

The global economic slowdown has forced the company to change the design to include industrial applications as well, using PBMR's ability to create high temperatures to attract buyers among companies including those active in Canada's oil sands projects and petrochemicals group Sasol (SOLJ.J).

Ferreira said that while the first plant would take some four years to be built from the time the company expects to take a final commercial decision in 2014, the next ones would take only two years to be constructed.

China is scheduled to start construction of its 200 MWe pebble reactor in Sept, 2009.

2. Work to build a new reactor at Fuqing, China has been officially launched - three months ahead of schedule. Construction at various stages is now ongoing for six units at the site.

Preliminary permission was granted for the other four units in April by the National Development and Reform Commission with ground being broken for units 3 and 4 early this month, and excavation for units 5 and 6 already about 30% complete. The overall 6000 MWe project is expected to cost 100 billion yuan ($14.7 billion).

China National Nuclear Company (CNNC) said that preliminary design work for units 1 and 2 is complete and it is satisfied that construction and equipment design work meets the requirements for the project. Procurement of major components is running on schedule, with contracts for units 3 to 6 under development.

The astonishing pace of nuclear development in China - Fuqing is just one of seven multiple reactor power plants currently being built - is part of a national plan to have 72 GWe of nuclear capacity by 2020






3. Bob Metcalfe, a venture capitalist with Polaris Venture Partners wrote a pro nuclear energy piece in the Wall Street Journal. He is a trustee of MIT and a 2005 recipient of the National Medal of Technology for leadership in the invention, standardization and commercialization of Ethernet.

Today, 20% of our electricity is provided by 104 nuclear energy plants in the United States. These are already cheaper and cleaner than burning coal, oil and gas with all their pollutants, especially CO2. But these plants are all run on big old nuclear reactors, which nobody but the utility companies likes very much.

The good news is that the big names in nuclear energy -- like Areva, Hitachi, General Electric and Toshiba -- have recently been joined by a bevy of high-tech start-ups seeking to develop advanced nuclear-reactor designs for both fission and fusion energy production. So far, there are five fission and two fusion start-ups [actually there are more nuclear fusion and fission startups. He is probably just counting Tri Alpha Energy and EMC2 Fusion and not General Fusion or Lawrenceville Plasma], among them Hyperion, NuScale and Tri Alpha.

The fission-reactor designs of the start-ups are very different from the existing plants and even from the advanced designs put out by the established players. Rather than proposing a few more big nuclear reactors, the start-ups are advocating many small nuclear reactors, variously called small, right-sized or modular. Though big power plants might still be built, they'll run on numerous small reactors.

These new small reactors meet important criteria for nuclear power plants. With no control rods to jam, they are far safer than the old models -- you might well call them nuclear batteries. By not using weapons-grade enriched fuels, they are nonproliferating. They minimize nuclear waste. And they're economical.

Small enough to fit on a large kitchen table, the new reactors can be manufactured at very low cost and shipped by truck to power-plant sites. As an Internet guy, these small fission reactors seem to me like the microprocessors that took over from the huge, air-conditioned, glasshouse mainframe computers.

As venture capitalists, we at Polaris might have invested in one or two of these fission-energy start-ups. Alas, we had to pass. The problem with their business plans weren't their designs, but the high costs and astronomical risks of designing nuclear reactors for certification in Washington.

The start-ups estimate that it will cost each of them roughly $100 million and five years to get their small reactor designs certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. About $50 million of each $100 million would go to the commission itself. That's a lot of risk capital for any venture-backed start-up, especially considering that not one new commercial nuclear reactor design has been approved and built in the United States for 30 years.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Department of Energy were both formed in the 1970s to develop nuclear energy and thereby reduce our dependence on foreign oil. But neither has reduced our dependence on foreign oil, especially not with nuclear energy. To find out why start by watching the movie "The China Syndrome," which came out in the 1970s immediately before the Three Mile Island nuclear incident. Since then, the Greens have been anti-nuke obstructionists.

4. GE’s Eric Loewen made a public presentation about a PRISM reactor. PRISM is GE’s name for an integral fast reactor, or IFR. It would be a fourth-generation nuclear power station which runs on the nuclear waste generated by all the previous generations of nuclear power stations. A GE-led industrial team has completed the advanced conceptual design, which is an evolution of the Power Reactor Innovative Small Module.

One nice thing about the S-PRISM is that they’re modular units and of relatively low output (one power block of two will provide 760 MW). They could be emplaced in excavations at existing coal plants and utilize the same turbines, condensers (towers or others), and grid infrastructure as the coal plants currently use, and the proper number of reactor vessels could be used to match the capabilities of those facilities. Essentially all you’d be replacing is the burner (and you’d have to build a new control room, of course, or drastically modify the current one). Thus you avoid most of the stranded costs. If stranded costs can thus be kept to a minimum, both here and, more importantly, in China, we’ll be able to talk realistically not just about stopping to build new coal plants but replacing the existing ones, even the newest ones.

And best of all they’re eminently affordable: Loewen showed that they could be profitable selling energy at just 5 cents per KwH — which means that you don’t need to price carbon emissions at all to make these power stations economically attractive. With pricing on carbon emissions, of course, they become even economically compelling.

Here is an 11 page 2007 presentation of PRISM by Loewen. This will get converted into its own article with whatever other updates can be found.

FURTHER READING
Previous coverage of China's nuclear construction.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7550129.html

This patent from Catalytic Materials teaches manufacturing a variation of carbon nanotubes in which the nanotube walls are faceted instead of cylindrical. Claim 1 reads:

1. A crystalline graphitic nanofiber consisting essentially of at least one uninterrupted, unbroken, substantially graphite sheet that is aligned substantially parallel to the longitudinal axis of the nanofiber and which has a substantially non-cylindrical multifaceted tubular structure, wherein when two or more of said sheets is present they are present as a tube within a tube structure and wherein the distance between graphite sheets is from about 0.335 nm to about 0.67 nm, wherein said substantially crystalline graphitic nanofiber has a crystallinity greater than about 95%.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7550097.html

Thermal conduction and electrical conduction is found in metallic materials but for electronics cooling it can be undesirable to provide electrical conduction which can short out circuitry. This patent from Momentive Performance Materials teaches a nanocomposite thermal interface which provides the thermal conduction while avoiding electrical conduction. Claim 1 reads:

1. A thermal interface composition, comprising:

a blend of a polymer matrix, wherein the polymer matrix comprises a curable polymeric composition, at least one micron-sized filler, and nanoparticles that are electrically conductive relative to the micro-sized filler, wherein the thermal interface composition is thermally conducting and electrically non-conducting.