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Arxiv- Prisoners of their own device: Trojan attacks on device-independent quantum cryptography (7 pages) Device-independent cryptographic schemes aim to guarantee security to users based only on the output statistics of any components used, and without the need to verify their internal functionality. Since this would protect users against untrustworthy or incompetent manufacturers, sabotage or device degradation, this idea has excited much interest, and many device-independent schemes have been proposed. We point out here a critical weakness of device-independent quantum cryptography for tasks, such as key distribution, that rely on public communication between secure laboratories. Untrusted devices may record their inputs and outputs and reveal encoded information about them in their outputs during later runs. Reusing devices thus compromises the security of a protocol and risks leaking secret data. Possible solutions include securely destroying used devices or isolating them until previously generated data need no longer be kept secret. However, such solutions are costly and impose severe constraints on the practicality of many device-independent quantum cryptographic schemes. A malicious manufacturer who wishes to mislead users or obtain data from them can equip devices with a memory and use it in programming them. The full scope and seriousness of this threat seems to have been overlooked in the quantum cryptographic literature to date. A task is potentially vulnerable to our attacks if it involves secret data generated by devices and if Eve can learn some function of the device outputs. Since even causing a protocol to abort communicates some information to Eve, the class of tasks potentially affected is large indeed. In particular, for the most important application, device independent QKD, every protocol so far proposed (as far as we are aware) is acutely vulnerable. One can think of the problems our attacks raise as a new issue of cryptographic composability. One way of thinking of standard composability is that a secure output from a protocol must still have all the properties of an ideal secure output when combined with other outputs from the same or other protocols. The device independent key distribution protocols examined above fail this test because the reuse of devices causes later outputs to depend on earlier ones. In a sense, the underlying problem is that the usage of devices is not composably secure. This applies too, of course, for devices used in different protocols: devices used for secure randomness expansion cannot then securely be used for key distribution without potentially compromising the generated randomness, for example. We should stress that our attacks do not apply to all device-independent quantum tasks. For example, even devices with memories cannot mimic nonlocal correlations in the absence of shared entanglement, and so device-independent entanglement testing remains viable. In addition, in applications that require only short lived secrets, devices may be reused once such secrets are no longer required. Partially secure device-independent protocols for bit commitment and coin tossing in which the committer supplies devices to the recipient are also immune from our attacks so long as the only data entering the devices comes from the committer. Nonetheless, in our view, the attacks are generic and problematic enough to merit a serious reappraisal of the scope for device-independent quantum cryptography as a practical technology. If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on ycombinator or StumbleUpon. Thanks

Nature - Public consultation and safety assessment would pave the way for embryo manipulation to treat genetic diseases. Britain has set out a road map towards the first clinical tests of reproductive techniques that combine parents’ genes with DNA from a third party. The approach raises ethical questions, but could spare children from inheriting some rare diseases, including forms of muscular dystrophy and neurodegenerative disorders that affect around 1 in 5,000 people. These conditions are caused by defects in the mitochondria, the ‘power packs’ of the cell, which are inherited from a child’s mother through the egg. Experiments on primates, and with defective human eggs, have already shown that genetic material can be removed from an egg that has faulty mitochondria and transferred to a healthy donor ovum, leaving the flawed mitochondrial DNA behind. In principle, the resulting egg could then develop into a healthy child carrying both the parents’ nuclear genes and mitochondrial DNA from the donor. But the work amounts to genetic modification of embryos — which is currently illegal in the United Kingdom — and also involves destroying fertilized eggs. Two procedures are being developed: pronuclear transfer and maternal spindle transfer. Nature - Scientists and politicians are working together to bring new reproductive techniques to Britain. Spindle Transfer US researchers have already used maternal spindle transfer to produce two healthy rhesus monkeys. Nature - Mitochondrial gene replacement in primate offspring and embryonic stem cells Mitochondria are found in all eukaryotic cells and contain their own genome (mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA). Unlike the nuclear genome, which is derived from both the egg and sperm at fertilization, the mtDNA in the embryo is derived almost exclusively from the egg; that is, it is of maternal origin. Mutations in mtDNA contribute to a diverse range of currently incurable human diseases and disorders. To establish preclinical models for new therapeutic approaches, we demonstrate here that the mitochondrial genome can be efficiently replaced in mature non-human primate oocytes (Macaca mulatta) by spindle–chromosomal complex transfer from one egg to an enucleated, mitochondrial-replete egg. The reconstructed oocytes with the mitochondrial replacement were capable of supporting normal fertilization, embryo development and produced healthy offspring. Genetic analysis confirmed that nuclear DNA in the three infants born so far originated from the spindle donors whereas mtDNA came from the cytoplast donors. No contribution of spindle donor mtDNA was detected in offspring. Spindle replacement is shown here as an efficient protocol replacing the full complement of mitochondria in newly generated embryonic stem cell lines. This approach may offer a reproductive option to prevent mtDNA disease transmission in affected families. Pronuclear Transfer Neurologist Douglass Turnbull of Newcastle University, UK, and his team have performed pronuclear transfer on defective human eggs, and found that normal development occurred in a small minority. Nature - Pronuclear transfer in human embryos to prevent transmission of mitochondrial DNA disease Mutations in mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are a common cause of genetic disease. Pathogenic mutations in mtDNA are detected in approximately 1 in 250 live births and at least 1 in 10,000 adults in the UK are affected by mtDNA disease. Treatment options for patients with mtDNA disease are extremely limited and are predominantly supportive in nature. Mitochondrial DNA is transmitted maternally and it has been proposed that nuclear transfer techniques may be an approach for the prevention of transmission of human mtDNA disease. Here we show that transfer of pronuclei between abnormally fertilized human zygotes results in minimal carry-over of donor zygote mtDNA and is compatible with onward development to the blastocyst stage in vitro. By optimizing the procedure we found the av

Ultrathin films of graphene oxide and diamond-like carbon have highly selective permeability

Periodic patterning and doping is the key

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European Parliament: On 19 January, the European Parliament adopted new biocides regulation including risk assessment and labelling for products containing nanomaterials.

New technique allows researchers to better understand biomolecule behaviour

Simulation reveals surprising attraction

Less than four years ago we asked here whether online gamers playing Foldit could help perfect the de novo design of proteins that do not exist in nature. Four months ago we reported that Foldit players had succeeded where scientists had failed in solving the structure of an important viral enzyme. Now Scientific American reports that Foldit players have topped scientists in redesigning a protein—the challenge we suggested less than four years ago. From “Online gamers achieve first crowd-sourced redesign of protein“:

Obsessive gamers’ hours at the computer have now topped scientists’ efforts to improve a model enzyme, in what researchers say is the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein.

The online game Foldit, developed by teams led by Zoran Popovic, director of the Center for Game Science, and biochemist David Baker, both at the University of Washington in Seattle, allows players to fiddle at folding proteins on their home computers in search of the best-scoring (lowest-energy) configurations.

The researchers have previously reported successes by Foldit players in folding proteins, but the latest work moves into the realm of protein design, a more open-ended problem. By posing a series of puzzles to Foldit players and then testing variations on the players’ best designs in the lab, researchers have created an enzyme with more than 18-fold higher activity than the original. The work was published January 22 in Nature Biotechnology [abstract].

“I worked for two years to make these enzymes better and I couldn’t do it,” says Justin Siegel, a post-doctoral researcher working in biophysics in Baker’s group. “Foldit players were able to make a large jump in structural space and I still don’t fully understand how they did it.” …

The latest effort involved an enzyme that catalyses one of a family of workhorse reactions in synthetic chemistry called Diels-Alder reactions. Members of this huge family of reactions are used throughout industry to synthesize everything from drugs to pesticides, but enzymes that catalyze Diels-Alder reactions have been elusive. In 2010, Baker and his team reported that they had designed a functional Diels–Alderase computationally from scratch [abstract], but, says Baker, “it wasn’t such a good enzyme”. The binding pocket for the pair of reactants was too open and activity was low. After their attempts to improve the enzyme plateaued, the team turned to Foldit.

In one puzzle, the researchers asked users to remodel one of four amino-acid loops on the enzyme to increase contact with the reactants. In another puzzle, players were asked for a design that would stabilize the new loop. The researchers got back nearly 70,000 designs for the first puzzle and 110,000 for the second, then synthesized a number of test enzymes based on the best designs, ultimately resulting in the final, 18-fold-more-active enzyme.…

The article was written by Jessica Marshall and reprinted in Scientific American with permission from Nature, where it was originally published as “Victory for crowdsourced biomolecule design: Players of the online game Foldit guide researchers to a better enzyme.” The article does an excellent job of describing how researchers and game players collaborated to achieve the final result. The gamers explored much more radical changes to the protein than can be done by conventional molecular biology techniques such as directed evolution, which typic[a]lly explores only single amino acid substitutions. The researchers then physically constructed and characterized the enzyme designed by the gamers.

The choice as design target of an enzyme to catalyze Diels-Alder reactions is particularly interesting from the standpoint of developing advanced nanotechnology, also referred to as molecular manufacturing. As noted in the 2010 Science paper, this reaction is a “cornerstone” in organic synthesis, and no naturally occurring enzymes are known to catalyze this reaction. As early as 1994 Markus Krummenacker proposed the use of Diels-Alder cycloaddition in a strategy to develop molecular building blocks for molecular manufacturing (“Steps towards molecular manufacturing“).

What roles crowd-sourcing, citizen science, and de novo protein design will play in the development of molecular manufacturing, or productive nanosystems, remains to be seen, but this latest result looks like an important step alog the way.
—James Lewis

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8102063.html

This patent from Advance Materials Corporation uses nanostructured films to improve the corrosion and scratch resistance of electrical contact pads. Claim 1 reads:

1. A pad structure, comprising:

a copper trace pattern on a substrate;

a nickel layer stacked on the copper trace pattern;

a gold layer stacked on the nickel layer; and

a nano-structured coating film stacked on the gold layer, wherein the nano-structured coating film infiltrates surface grain boundary of the gold layer.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8101980.html

This patent from Samsung teaches a simplified method for manufacturing graphene nano-ribbon transistors. Claim 1 reads:

1. A graphene device comprising:

at least one embedded gate on a substrate;

an upper oxide layer on the at least one embedded gate; and

a graphene channel and a plurality of electrodes on the upper oxide layer, the plurality of electrodes including a source electrode and a drain electrode,

wherein the at least one embedded gate does not overlap with the source electrode and the drain electrode.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8101474.html

It has been found that the gate dielectric can deteriorate the channel mobility of graphene transistors. This patent from IBM teaches a way to manufacture a graphene transistor to avoid this problem. Claim 10 reads:

10. A buried channel graphene device comprising:

a substrate;

a layer of graphene on said substrate;

a layer of amorphous silicon on said graphene layer;

a gate dielectric layer on said amorphous silicon layer;

source and drain contact regions in contact with said graphene layers; and

a gate electrode on said gate dielectric layer in between said source and drain contact regions.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8101149.html

Companies and patent attorneys involved in carbon nanotechnologies may want to note this patent from Mitsubishi Corporation. The patent priority goes back to 1990 so it is a potential submarine patent. The patent includes some very basic claims to carbon molecular structures that could arguably be applied to carbon nanotubes and other carbon nanostructures. A parent patent (US 7494638) issued back in 2009 but only included claims limited to C60 and C70. The first seven claims of this more recent patent are listed below.

1. Purified cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms.

2. Purified cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms in solid form.

3. Crystalline cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms.

4. A macroscopic amount of purified cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms.

5. A formed or molded product comprising purified C60 and/or C70.

6. A free-flowing particulate comprising cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms in microcrystalline form.

7. A solid comprising a macroscopic amount of cage molecules consisting of carbon atoms in crystalline form.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8100314.html

Electromigration is the transport of material due to ion drift and can be damaging to solder at high current densities. This patent from Intel teaches using carbon nanotubes to form a solder in which electromigration problems are reduced. Claim 1 reads:


1. A bump comprising:

a solder paste comprising solder powder and a paste ingredient mixed with the solder powder; and

carbon nanotubes (CNTs) dispersed within the solder paste with a pre-defined volume fraction, wherein the pre-defined volume fraction ranges from approximately 30% to 40%, to provide high electrical conductivity;

wherein the solder paste is attached to at least one of a die or a package substrate.

Foresight Institute Co-Founder and Past President Christine Peterson was among four panelists addressing the role of technology in human existence for a Stanford University Continuing Studies series. From a report in The Stanford Daily by Marshall Watkins “Bay Area thinkers ponder ‘life’“:

Christine Peterson, co-founder and president of The Foresight Institute, a public interest group seeking to educate the community on forthcoming technological advances, emphasized the increasingly prominent role that nanotechnology has come to play.

Peterson noted that nanotechnology has the potential to create new materials and make vast advances without the side effects, such as pollution, that would currently ensue. She allowed, however, that the near-invisible and highly sensitive technology might enable intrusions on privacy.

“We need to know what data is collected,” Peterson said, “how it is used and how long it is retained. We have those rights.”

Peterson highlighted the medical benefits of nanotechnology, noting, “The ability to control atoms and molecules would mean that there really isn’t a physical illness [that] we wouldn’t be able to address.”

The report quotes the moderator of the panel, author Piero Scaruffi, as stating that the four panelists were picked because “They discussed life as in the future, rather than life as in the past.” We can certainly expect that life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.

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http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8099035.html

This patent from Xerox teaches a way to use carbon nanotubes to form a heater layer in a fuser of a printer. Claim 1 reads:

1. A fuser member comprising:

a substrate;

a continuous phase metal heat inductive layer disposed on the substrate, the continuous phase metal heat inductive layer comprising an interpenetrating network of carbon nanotubes dispersed therein; and

an outer layer comprising a fluoropolymer disposed on the heat inductive layer.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8097922.html

Strain engineering is a technique used in transistor manufacture to increase the carrier mobility and transistor switching speed but can also result in a reduction in thermal conductivity leading to overheating. This patent from the Regents of the University of California teaches an alternative way to increase transistor speed using a high thermal conductivity nanoscale barrier shell. Claim 1 reads:

1. A transistor having high carrier mobility comprising:

a drain structure;

a source structure;

a channel formed of a channel material and extending between the drain structure and the source structure, wherein at least one of a thickness and a diameter of the channel is in an order of a thermal phonon wavelength of the channel material;

a barrier shell formed of a barrier shell material having an acoustic impedance of at least 2 times an acoustic impedance of the channel material that at least substantially surrounds a portion of the channel such that the barrier shell confines acoustic phonons in the channel material of the channel;

a gate structure; and

a gate insulator between a portion of the gate structure and the barrier shell.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8097233.html

This patent teaches a laser pyrolysis manufacturing method of nanoparticles which is suggested to provide the advantages of more uniform nanoparticle sizes with a higher hourly yield. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method for synthesizing nanoparticles by laser pyrolysis, in which at least one precursor interacts, in the vapor phase, with a laser beam in a pyrolysis reactor to produce nanoparticles, wherein the precursor is:

first in the liquid phase, then, converted to the vapor phase in an evaporator, before injection into the reactor, and

wherein a flow rate of the precursor in the liquid phase is controlled for continuous injection into the reactor,

wherein the precursor in the liquid phase has a flow rate that is substantially continuous and controlled by a mass flow controller.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8096263.html

Inkjet printing of nanoparticles has been under development over the past decade to provide inexpensive manufacture of conductive lines in microcircuitry. This patent from Samsung attempts to address the problem of nanoparticle dispersion during inkjet printing using a magnetic field generator. Claim 1 reads:

1. A circuit line forming device, comprising:

an inkjet head to eject a conductive ink onto one side of a substrate, the conductive ink containing nanoparticles comprising a ferromagnetic core and a conductive layer surrounding the ferromagnetic core; and

a magnetic field generator part, positioned on the other side of the substrate in correspondence with the inkjet head, wherein the magnetic field generator part comprises a power source and a coil receiving an electric current from the power source to form a magnetic field and applies a magnetic field on the conductive ink, when the conductive ink is ejected to form circuit lines.

Pure carbon-12 is a better conductor

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Charge mobilities are significantly enhanced

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8094247.html

Metal and metal oxide nanowires are being developed as a transparent conductive electrode material for flexible displays. This patent from Cambrios Technologies suggests metal nanowires to form the conductive layers in touch panel displays. Claim 4 reads:

4. A multi-layer structure comprising:

a substrate;

a conductive layer formed on the substrate, wherein the conductive layer comprises a first plurality of metallic nanowires, the first plurality of metallic nanowires reaching an electrical percolation level; and

an overcoat formed on the conductive layer, the overcoat incorporating a second plurality of conductive particles, the second plurality of conductive particles being below the electrical percolation level, and wherein the overcoat is surface conductive.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8093786.html

This patent from the Stevens Institute of Technology teaches a method to form piezoelectric nanofibers via electrospinning which may help enable the creation of nanoscale sensors and actuators. Claim 1 reads:

1. An article, comprising a nanoscale piezoelectric structure including a branched structure having a stem with a plurality of branches extending therefrom wherein said stem and at least one of said plurality of branches includes a piezoelectric material.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8093669.html

This patent from Honda Motor teaches a new type of nanotransistor based on switching the magnetic moment of a particle attached to a carbon nanotube. Claim 1 reads:

1. A magnetic nanotransistor, comprising:

a first magnetizable electrode;

a second magnetizable electrode; and

at least one nanotube arranged between the first magnetizable electrode and the second magnetizable electrode wherein the nanotube has at least one magnetic particle attached thereto and wherein the magnetic moment of the particle is capable of being reversed by application of an external magnetic field.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8093144.html

This patent from MIT has priority going back to 2002 and teaches a type of nanoscale bottom up assembly based on the use of charge patterns to attract molecular structures. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method for forming a feature, the method comprising:

creating a net charge pattern on a substrate by means of at least one energy beam, the charge pattern having a first type of charge; and

introducing a plurality of at least one of molecular-size scale and nanoscale building blocks to a region proximate the charge pattern, the building blocks having a second type of charge and directly imaging the charge pattern to form the feature, the building blocks being introduced by dusting, such that the building blocks adhere only to the charge pattern.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8092904.html

Static charges can attract dust and have an adverse effect during the manufacture of optical articles such as the glass used in flat panel displays. This patent from 3M teaches a solution to this problem by using an antistatic layer formed from single walled carbon nanotubes. Claim 1 reads:

1. An optical article comprising:

a first optical layer;

a second optical layer; and

an antistatic layer disposed between the first and second optical layers, the antistatic layer comprising conducting particles having an aspect ratio greater than about 10 and comprising single-walled carbon nanotubes having a length of 100 um or less and a diameter of 2 nm or less, wherein the antistatic layer has an average total thickness of less than about 10 nm and exhibits a surface resistivity of greater than about 1×108 ohms/sq.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8092566.html

This patent from DuPont teaches an alternative filter media for HVAC air filters based on polymer nanofibers which can improve the filtration efficiency and reduce the chance of health hazard from the more conventional microglass filters. Claim 1 reads:

1. A composite fabric comprising a web of electroblown polymeric nanofibers solvent-bonded to a first support web comprising fibers of larger average diameter than the nanofibers and spun from a material compatible with said nanofibers, in the absence of an adhesive between the webs and wherein the nanofibers are solvent-bonded to the support web by the processing solvent from which the polymeric nanofibers are blown and which is entrained in the nanofiber web.

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IM2NP – CNRS – University Paul Cézanne – Marseilles – France: NANOSEA2012 International Conference is the fourth edition of NANOSEA, six years after the successful start in July 2006 at Aix-en-Provence (France) , four years after NANOSEA 2008 held in the magnificent Villa Mondragone Conference Centre, and two years after NanoSEA 2010 held at the unforgettable Cassis, French Riviera.<br /> NANOSEA 2012 will be held, from 25 to 29 June, in S.Margherita di Pula (Cagliari, Italy), situated in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, at the four star Hotel Flamingo (http://www.hotelflamingosardinia.com/).

Material can generate electron-hole pairs and separate the charge carriers too

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The UK’s Science Minister, David Willetts, gave a speech last week on “Our High Tech Future”. The headlines about it were dominated by one somewhat odd policy announcement, which I’ll come to later, but what’s more interesting is the fact that he chose (apparently at quite short notice) to give the speech at all, only weeks after the publication of a strategy for “Innovation and Research for Growth”, that was widely regarded as, at best, a retrospective attempt to give coherence to a series of rather random acts of policy. I’m tempted to interpret the speech as a signal that a not completely formed government policy is still evolving in some quite interesting directions. In short, after 32 years, the Conservatives are rediscovering the need for industrial policy.

To recap the story so far, the Coalition government came to power in 2010 led by a party with very few views about science one way or another, but with determination above all quickly to reduce public spending. Whereas commitments had been made to protect budgets in areas such as health and education, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) – in which the budgets for science and higher education reside was “unprotected”, so had to take a disproportionately large cut. Given the large fraction of this budget taken up by Universities and science spending, something had to give. The outcome was that recurrent spending for science was protected in cash terms, but the price for this was to slash university teaching budgets by a near-tripling fees and to more or less halve science capital budgets. Political discourse in 2011 was dominated by the controversial student fees policy, and a summer 2011 White Paper on higher eduction barely mentioned research at all. Meanwhile, however, the rapid bounce-back in the economy that the coalition was counting on has failed to materialise, and the question of how the government was going to promote economic growth was, by the autumn of 2011, becoming very pressing. In this context, the preservation of the recurrent science budget in cash terms was given new political prominence as a central part of the government’s attempt to present a narrative about promoting economic growth, and the autumn saw some rather abrupt new spending initiatives, for example a research centre for graphene and money for high performance computing, which restored some, but not all, of the cuts to capital budgets.

Unsurprisingly, then, Willetts’s speech starts by emphasising growth as the central problem facing the government, and outlining some of the supply side measures in place to promote it. The dilemma that Willetts faces is that, while it’s clear that generic policies such as regulatory reform aren’t by themselves enough to promote growth, there’s a deep reluctance to support specific business sectors – that government can’t “pick winners” is now an article of faith. But Willetts acknowledges not only that government does need to make choices – for example in deciding where our energy is going to come from, but also that choices the government has made in the past have, in effect, amounted to a tacit industrial policy. The example Willetts uses to illustrate this is a particularly striking one – when the government funded the extension to the Jubilee line (at a cost estimated at £3.5 billion in 1999), this was justified as necessary for the development of the financial service industry in its new centres in East London. So if we do have an industrial policy, we might as well be open and thoughtful about what it is, and when the government talks, as it does, about rebalancing the economy away from financial services towards manufacturing we must recognise that what we are talking about is, indeed, an industrial policy.

So we soon get back to the familiar question of how we can turn a strong science base into “high tech growth”. The speech celebrates the strength of the research base across the board – specifically including arts, humanities and social sciences – and points to the recent report The International Comparative Performance of the UK Research Base as evidence of this strength. Willetts’s stated aim is to make the UK “the best place in the world to do science”, and this means it must be properly funded – hence the maintenance of the science budget (in cash terms, excluding capital, one needs to add here).

But how do we decide how this money is spent? Here Willetts makes a strong claim that one source of the strength of UK science is its independence from government – that it is “protected by the Haldane principle that Ministers do not decide on funding for particular research projects or particular university departments”. Many readers in academia will contrast this statement with the evident reality that funding agencies are being increasingly directive about what sort of science they will support, and increasingly active in pushing the scientific enterprise to support their strategic priorities – surely, they will ask, this tendency is running contrary to the Haldane principle? Like so many things in British public life, the Haldane principle is an invented tradition that is used by all sides in support of their own arguments; note that Willetts defines his version of it precisely here, in a way that is entirely consistent with research councils, or for that matter ministers, making judgements about which areas of science to prioritise. Within the research councils, there is a balance between “responsive mode” research and more directed programmes, though Willetts does make the point that this distinction doesn’t really map directly onto a division between “blue skies” and more applied research – some applied research is funded through responsive mode, while some directed programmes look pretty blue skies (the example he chose for the latter category – CERN – is important though hardly typical). But for those in the scientific community currently agitating against things like EPSRC’s “Shaping Capability” activity, it’s clear that he has only limited sympathy – “there comes a point when the Research Councils have to think about impact and priorities. I know this is controversial – and I do receive mass letters from aggrieved sections of academia who fear the Research Councils have failed to recognise their special significance. But it has to be done and the Councils try to do it in an open way that commands the consent of the research community they serve.”

One slightly unusual feature of the UK research system in comparison to much of the rest of the world is the dominance of universities in the publicly funded research landscape – in contrast, say, to the importance of Max Planck Institutes in Germany and National Laboratories in the USA. We do have some institutes with the characteristics of national labs in the UK – Harwell/Rutherford Lab, Daresbury, Norwich and Babraham. There does seem to be a growing emphasis on non-University research centres, with extra funding going to these campuses and the very large funding going into the new Crick Laboratory at St Pancras. But Willetts does recognise that universities do have a very large role in our research system, and that the number of UK universities in the top 100 and 200 of the various league tables is a source of strength. In fact, he wants to increase this number, saying “Today I set our ambition of aiming for the number of our universities in the top 100 to grow”.

At the moment, the number of UK top 100 universities is between 10 and 19 according to which ranking you use. This prompts two thoughts. For some years now, there’s been an explicit policy from government of increased concentration of research in a smaller number of universities. This has been enthusiastically supported by lobby groups of the most research-intensive universities, such as the Russell Group (my own university, Sheffield, is one of the twenty members of this group). But there’s been a certain amount of worry, even paranoia, that the current government’s research concentration agenda, together with a greater focus on national labs, might go further than that, with most research ending up in the top 5 or so. Since research strength is a major ingredient in these league tables, further research concentration is probably not consistent with pushing up our numbers in the world top 100.

But this discussion about league tables brings out another important point. In the evolution of the government’s strategy on higher education, there’s been an almost complete separation of research and teaching, and indeed a sense that the two missions are in tension. But the lesson of the league tables is that university reputation isn’t partitioned in this way. High league table places attract students, even when (as in the case of the Shanghai Jiao Tong table) the league table place depends entirely on measures of research performance. The students are not being irrational at all here – a substantial part of the value of the degree depends on the reputation of the university that grants it, and that reputation is driven largely by research. This separation of research and teaching in the thinking of government about universities has had another consequence – an almost complete neglect of the important role of postgraduate students in universities.
Postgraduates do, for a change, get a mention in Willetts’s speech, but in a rather puzzling context – the announcement that “the Coalition is inviting proposals for a new type of university with a focus on science and technology and on postgraduates.” It’s this announcement that gathered the headlines, with many people subsequently pointing out the difficulties of doing this in the absence of any government money. There’s not much I can add to other people’s analysis here (for example, this Nature editorial).

How do we turn excellent research into money? Not for the first time, Willetts expresses his scepticism about the emphasis on commercialising protectable IP through venture capital funded spin-outs – “the classic model expects venture capitalists to be following what is happening in universities and to invest in the IP after the university has spun out a company. This is the conventional sausage machine and it can work on some occasions but it is not widespread or straightforward. We have expected venture capital firms to finance early stage start-ups much further upstream than is realistic. Then we beat up on ourselves that our venture capitalists do not take risks they do in the US when even there the model is rather different.” But the reference to the USA does lead to an important new development – a growing realisation in the government that the USA, for all its free market rhetoric, is a state that is as shamelessly interventionist in technology and innovation as France or Korea. As Willetts says, the scales falling off his eyes: “The land of free enterprise has an innovation and research system which depends on federal and state government just like everywhere else in the Western world.”

In the UK, state intervention in nearer market technology is the role of the Technology Strategy Board, and our colleagues in TSB will be pleased to see the centrality of their role asserted in this way, especially since they had a few nervous months after the formation of the Coalition in which no-one in government seemed to mention them. Our TSB friends might also note that their budget wasn’t included in the science ring fence, even with flat cash, so at the same time as they’ve had reduced resources they’ve had an increasing number of responsibilities and new initiatives given to them to handle, such as the new “Catapult Centres” for translational research in collaboration with industry.

Once one has accepted the need for government to intervene, and has identified the agencies to deliver this intervention, the next question is how to decide what interventions to make. Here we do see more policy evolution from the government, with the idea of “sector leadership councils” set up by BIS to identify priorities. We already have such councils for space, automotive, aerospace, and life sciences, and further ones for e-Infrastructure and synthetic biology are being set up now. I think this is a positive development. I’ve written before of the difficulties research councils face (Some questions for British research policy) in being expected to deliver science in support of national priorities when there isn’t really a mechanism for deciding what those priorities are or should be, and when it isn’t obvious that the research councils have the capacity to make such judgements themselves. So a more thoughtful and informed way of deciding on those priorities should be a good thing.

But any such approach isn’t without dangers – to state the obvious, the quality of the advice these councils give depends on the quality of people on them. There’s the danger of incumbency bias and group-think, and a worry that the interests of existing industry have too strong a voice. This could have the effect of locking in place the existing UK industrial structure, and excluding the voices of those who might be able to deliver truly disruptive innovation. And there’s an even greater danger that the voice of ordinary people, those who will be profoundly affected by new technology without necessarily having a big stake in it, will be excluded as well. This will certainly be a very pointed issue for synthetic biology. The Minister has in the past spoken very approvingly of the public dialogue about synthetic biology that the research councils organised; the question must be, as the technology develops, will this involvement of the public continue to ensure that this technology is developed in a way that meets widely shared public goals and aspirations and recognises public worries?

Talking about “sector councils” makes clear that their are different ways of classifying and organising science and technology areas. Classifying by the technological needs of a particular industry sector – the automotive sector, say – is one extreme, while classifying by academic discipline and field – synthetic chemistry, for example – is another. A third classification which has been growing in prominence recently refers to societal grand challenges such as the ageing population, sustainable energy, or food security. Willetts finishes by talking about a fourth classification, with a nod to the idea of “general purpose technologies”, which have the potential to transform many different industries. The formulation Willetts uses is one with origins in the USA – the “bio-info-nano-cogno” technologies – though he is sceptical of the more overheated claims about the convergence of these technologies and wishes to add “carbo” for low carbon energy.

Using this as a checklist, we find bio covered via the government’s Life Sciences strategy, an emphasis on agricultural biotechnology, especially food security as envisaged by BBSRC, and a new roadmap for synthetic biology. For info and cogno, the East London TechCity development gets a mention, but the focus is on high performance computing and a new government report from Unilever’s Dominic Tildesley (which actually calls for quite a lot of government intervention). For nanotechnology, there’s the new investment in graphene research, but another new industry group has been set up to look at it. This is of particular interest to me, of course; it’s been a year or two since the last nanotechnology strategy and in the meantime the subject disappeared from UK science policy, prompting my post last summer Why has the UK given up on nanotechnology?

For low carbon, Willetts notes that “High on our agenda now is nuclear fission and fusion after a challenging report from the Science and Technology Committee of the House of Lords”. The report being referred to here – Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities – is “challenging” in the sense of offering withering criticism of the government’s belief that it is possible to have a significant new build of nuclear power without an underpinning strategic research effort (though of course the main culprit here is the Dept for Energy and Climate Change, which is not Willetts’s responsibility).

So, to summarise, what we’re seeing here is a small-government Conservative rather thoughtfully working through the implications of a realisation that more government intervention is needed in order to deliver on the promise of economic growth from the science base. For me, two issues arise. Firstly, the obvious problem seems to be that Willetts is willing the ends while being unable to provide the means, in terms of the resources needed. Secondly, what I don’t yet see is a connection between this important debate about where our growth is going to come from and the widespread dissatisfaction with the particular variety of capitalism we seem to have ended up with. This was the subject of my earlier post Good capitalism, bad capitalism and turning science into economic benefit. The argument here is that rebalancing the economy will have to involve discouraging bad capitalism as well as encouraging the innovation we’re all in favour of. Bad capitalism crowds out responsible innovation.

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Trapped nanoparticle could listen to micro-organisms

New microencapsulation technique helps fills in cracks and imperfections

Back in 2010 I published an article in the Nanotechnology Law &Business Journal (link) discussing the business prospects of memristive electronics. I recently updated the data from this article to be current as of Jan 01, 2012 including data sorted by patent issue year, claimed application (memory, logic/computing, or neuromorphics) and claimed material (phase change, solid electrolyte, metal oxide, or molecular/polymer). The updated data is available at this link.

Below is the list of the top 10 patent holding companies along with the primary class of material covered by the patents.

1) Samsung (387 US patents, phase change)
2) Micron (371 US patents, solid electrolyte)
3) Macronix (171 US patents, phase change)
4) Ovonyx (165 US patents, phase change)
5) IBM (126 US patents phase change)
6) HP (108 US patents, molecular)
7) Toshiba (108 US patents, metal oxide)
8) Sharp (107 US patents, metal oxide)
9) Intel (89 US patents, phase change)
10) Qimonda (88 US patents, phase change)

It is notable that the material covered by these patents may not necessarily be the same material that these companies are actually pursuing. For example, Micron seems to be committed to phase change memory rather than the solid electrolyte memory described in the bulk of their patents (link). Also, as I have mentioned in this blog before, HP and Hynix are working on metal oxide ReRAM which HP is claiming as the fabled "missing memristor" of Leon Chua. Most of HP's memory resistor patents focus on using molecular materials for resistance switching and Hynix Semiconductor (#13 on the list) have almost all of their patents (62/71) dedicated to phase change material. Meanwhile, Samsung (e.g. US Patent 7417271) and Sharp (e.g. US Patent 7796416) hold the bulk of the metal oxide patents which HP and Hynix would require to commercialize their "memristor".

It is curious to me that Hynix is working towards manufacturing a form of ReRAM that, if successful, will render most of their phase change memory resistor patents useless. If I were cynical I would almost think that someone at Hynix were working behind the scenes (perhaps with other of the companies heavily invested in phase change memory) to screw over HP in 2013.

A spreadsheet containing the complete patent data is available by sending an E-mail to tinytechip@gmail.com including the subject “memresistor patents”.

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http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8089797.html

This patent from Samsung includes a memory technology sounding similar to the racetrack memory invented by IBM using nanowires formed of ferromagnetic material. Claim 1 reads:

1. A memory cell comprising:

a memory cell array unit including a plurality of nano wires arranged vertically on a substrate, each of the plurality of nano wires having a plurality of domains for storing information;

a nano wire selection unit formed on the substrate, the nano wire selection unit being configured to select at least one of the plurality of nano wires;

a domain movement control unit formed on the substrate and configured to control a domain movement operation with respect to at least one of the plurality of nano wires; and

a read/write control unit formed on the substrate and configured to control at least one of a read operation and a write operation with respect to at least one of the plurality of nano wires.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8089152.html

One of the ways to extend Moore's Law is to find new dielectrics with higher permittivity in place of the silicon dioxide used as the gate insulator of MOSFETs. This patent from Nanosys teaches an interesting technique to engineer dielectric material using nanostructures to provide a graded permittivity. Claim 1 reads:

1. A memory gate stack comprising a graded artificial dielectric, comprising:

(a) a dielectric material;

(b) a first region within the dielectric material with a plurality of nanostructures having one or more characteristics embedded therein; and

(c) a second region within the dielectric material with a plurality of nanostructures having one or more characteristics embedded therein;

wherein at least one of the one or more nanostructure characteristics is spatially varied from the first region to the second region, wherein the spatial variance is gradual and consistent from the first region to the second region.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088855.html

This patent from Industrial Technology Research Institute includes some broad claims for an electrically conductive powder coating spray including carbon nanocapsules which helps dissipate static electricity. Claim 1 reads:

1. A powder coating paint, comprising:

90 to 99.9 parts by weight of a resin matrix; and

0.1 to 10 parts by weight of a carbon nanocapsule dispersed in the resin matrix, wherein the powder coating paint is in a powder form.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088674.html

Nanowire transistor designs based on vertically grown nanowires have been proposed but are incompatible with common transistor structures in which the channel is parallel to the silicon substrate. This patent teaches one method for growing semiconductor nanowires laterally which may provide better compatibility with conventional transistor manufacture. Claim 1 reads:

1. A method of growing a nanowire made from single-crystal semi-conductor material, comprising successively:

providing a substrate with two electrodes made from metallic material on a layer of dielectric material, one of the electrodes comprising a layer of catalyst directly in contact with the layer of dielectric material; and

growing the nanowire made from single-crystal semi-conductor material by means of the catalyst, the nanowire growing in contact with the dielectric material and with a diameter equal to a thickness of the layer of catalyst.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088643.html

Since the late 1990's Micron Technology has been experimenting with new types of non-volatile memory based on ionic chalcogenide materials. This latest patent teaches how nanoparticles can be used to assist in filament electroformation of these memories. Claim 1 reads:
1. A method of forming a memory device, comprising:

providing a first electrode;

providing a nanoparticle over said first electrode;

providing a chalcogenide glass over and surrounding the nanoparticle except where the nanoparticle is in contact with said first electrode; and

providing a second electrode over said chalcogenide glass.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088614.html

This patent from Aurora Algae teaches a way to use carbon-based nanomaterials to extract oil from biomaterial. Claim 1 reads:

1. A process for recovering an oil product from an organism, comprising:

(a) obtaining a crude extract from an organismal biomass;

(b) applying said crude extract to a composition comprising a nanomaterial; and

(c) recovering said oil product from said composition comprising the nanomaterial.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088544.html

Perhaps the most widely used application of microparticles is in toners for laser printers. This patent from Xerox teaches nanosized toner particles which lowers the temperature necessary to fuse the toner to paper. Claim 1 reads:

1. Core-shell nano-sized particles comprising particles having a core and a shell,

wherein the core of the particles comprises crystalline polyester and the shell of the particles comprises amorphous polyester and is substantially to completely free of crystalline material,

wherein the shell encapsulates the core, and wherein the nano-sized particles have an average particle size of about 1 nm to about 250 nm.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088484.html

This patent teaches a new type of nanostructured photosensor based on the plasmon resonance absorption effect which provides improved wavelength selectivity. Claim 1 reads:

1. A metallic structure comprising a metallic nano-chain with plasmon resonance absorption,

wherein the metallic nano-chain is formed of a plurality of metallic nanoparticles mutually linked with a plurality of bottlenecks; and

each of the metallic nanoparticles is formed in any one of a circular shape, a triangle shape, and a rhomboid shape.

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/8088193.html

This patent from inventor Taofang Zeng teaches an inexpensive chemical method to manufacture nanoparticles using polishing equipment from chemical-mechanical planarization (CMP). Claim 1 reads:

1. A method for making nanoparticles, comprising:

dipping a metal element in a solution that contains metallic ions or ions with a metal, wherein the metal element has a lower electronegativity or redox potential than that of the metal in the ions; and

rubbing the metal element to make nanoparticles.

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"Wonder material" could compete with silicon for analogue devices

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I wrote this piece as a briefing note in connection with a study being carried out by the Nuffield Council on Bioethics about Emerging Biotechnologies. I’m not sure whether bionanotechnology or nanomedicine should be considered as emerging biotechnologies, but this is an attempt to sketch out the connections.

Nanotechnology is not a single technology; instead it refers to a wide range of techniques and methods for manipulating matter on length scales from a nanometer or so – i.e. the typical size of molecules – to hundreds of nanometers, with the aim of creating new materials and functional devices. Some of these methods represent the incremental evolution of well-established techniques of applied physics, chemistry and materials science. In other cases, the techniques are at a much earlier state, with promises about their future power being based on simple proof-of-principle demonstrations.

Although nanotechnology has its primary roots in the physical sciences, it has always had important relationships with biology, both at the rhetorical level and in practical outcomes. The rhetorical relationship derives from the observation that the fundamental operations of cell biology take place at the nanoscale, so one might expect there to be something particularly powerful about interventions in biology that take place on this scale. Thus the idea of “nanomedicine” has been prominent in the promises made on behalf of nanotechnology from its earliest origins, and as a result has entered popular culture in the form of the exasperating but ubiquitous image of the “nanobot” – a robot vessel on the nano- or micro- scale, able to navigate through a patient’s bloodstream and effect cell-by-cell repairs. This was mentioned as a possibility in Richard Feynman’s 1959 lecture, “Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, which is widely (though retrospectively) credited as the founding manifesto of nanotechnology, but it was already at this time a common device in science fiction. The frequency with which conventionally credentialed nanoscientists have argued that this notion is impossible or impracticable, at least as commonly envisioned, has had little effect on the enduring hold it has on the popular imagination.

Another important dimension of the rhetorical relationship between biology and nanotechnology arises from the observation, forcefully made by Eric Drexler in 1981, that cell biology offers an existence proof that an advanced nanotechnology, involving sophisticated machines and devices that operate on the nanoscale, must be possible, since cell biology offers many examples of such devices. Thus cell biology can be regarded as a source of components to be reassembled in synthetic or partially synthetic contexts, or as a source of inspiration by providing models that can be emulated using synthetic materials.

The most immediate impact of nanotechnology on the life sciences has been the use of new tools for investigating the nanoscale. Techniques such as scanning probe microscopies and optical tweezers have, since their introduction in the 1980s, allowed the properties of individual biomolecules and assemblies of biomolecules to be studied in conditions close to those found in nature. This has permitted the quantitative analysis of the mode of operation of biological machines such as molecular motors and ribosomes, as part of the new field of single molecule biophysics. Other nanoscale technologies – such as quantum dots – have offered useful, though not transformative, additions to the experimental arsenal of cell biologists. One long-standing ambition of bionanotechnology, if achieved, would be transformative – this would be the ability to read, on a DNA single molecule, the sequence of bases. Early attempts to accomplish this by imaging a single molecule with a scanning probe microscope have proved unsuccessful so far. However, another approach, in which the bases are read out as single molecules of DNA are threaded through a nanoscale pore, has generated significant momentum since Deamer and Branton proposed the method in 1996, and is currently the subject of a significant commercialisation effort. If this is successful it will permit the sequencing of complete individual genomes of humans and other organisms rapidly and at relatively low cost.

If these new tools and new techniques represent what nanotechnology has given biology, we might ask what biology has given to nanotechnology. Hybrid constructions involving biological molecular machines integrated with artificial nanostructures have yielded striking demonstrations, for example the “nano-propellers” produced by Carlo Montemagno in 2000, powered by the biological rotary motor F1-ATPase. A more obvious path to application presents itself for various schemes for artificial photosynthesis, which similarly combine functioning biological sub-cellular systems in synthetic constructs.

Biological inspiration also underlies the idea of using DNA synthesised to a prescribed sequence as a building material for quite complex nanoscale structures, exploiting the precise rules of base-pairing to design desired self-assembly characteristics. For many years this was pursued single-mindedly and without a great deal of competition by Nadrian Seeman, who had demonstrated the principle in 1989. Seeman’s persistence has been rewarded in the last ten years by a series of new developments, facilitated by technical advances in the synthesis of DNA, which greatly reduced the cost, and increased the available quantities of the material. These developments included demonstrations that DNA can be used as the basis, not just of nanoscale structures, but also of functional devices such as motors and logic gates. For many years DNA nanotechnology could have been viewed as a marvellous technical tour-de-force with little potential for real applications, but the continuing exponential falls in the cost of synthetic DNA and the increasing sophistication of the devices being created in the growing number of laboratories working in this field makes this conclusion less certain.

In the area of nanomedicine, there are already applications of nanotechnology in clinical use. Having said this, one needs to be aware of the continuity, mentioned above, between pre-existing technologies and those that subsequently have been encompassed by the nanotechnology label. Thus there is a blurred line between some older products, which used quite sophisticated formulation science, and what are now described as nanomedicines. Nonetheless, a number of products (perhaps a couple of dozen in total) have come to be recognised as first generation nanomedicines – these include Abraxane, an anticancer drug formulated as a nanoparticle, Caelyx/Doxil, another anticancer drug encapsulated in liposomes –nanoscale containers made from self-assembled lipid bilayers, and Cimzia, an antibody (i.e. a protein molecule) attached to a synthetic polymer molecule. These illustrate some of the driving forces for nanomedicine in drug delivery.

Perhaps the simplest is the possibility of formulating drug compounds which are otherwise difficult to get into solution; for example Abraxane, approved by the FDA in 2005, is a nanoparticle based formulation of an older anticancer drug, paclitaxel, which avoids the need to use a toxic solvent. Such reformulations may improve the efficacy of older drugs and reduce their side-effects; they may also be motivated by the possibility of extending the profitable life-time of a drug after the expiry of an original period of patent protection.

Caelyx and Doxil are alternative names for a nanoscale formulation of another old anticancer drug, doxorubicin. In this form, approved by the FDA in 1995, the drug is encapsulated in molecular containers made from self-assembled lipid molecules; this reduces side-effects and helps concentrate the drug in the tissues where it is needed. A number of physical and chemical mechanisms have been proposed by which this kind of nanoscale delivery device might preferentially deliver a drug to a target, such as a solid tumour, or carry it across an otherwise impenetrable obstacle, such as the blood-brain barrier, though the examples in current use are far less advanced than some of the concepts being explored in the laboratory.

Cimzia, approved in 2008 by the FDA for Crohns disease, and in 2009 by the EMEA for arthritis, is a fragment of an antibody coupled to a water-soluble polymer. This is an example of the way the need for nanoscale drug delivery devices is being heightened by the increasing use of proteins and protein fragments, such as antibodies, as new therapeutic agents. These can intervene with great specificity with biological processes at the molecular level, but in their bare form they are rapidly eliminated from the body, hence the need for effective nanoscale delivery devices of one kind or another.

The same issues are heightened when one considers the potential therapeutic use of nucleic acids – whether DNA fragments in gene therapy, or small RNA fragments such as siRNA (small interfering RNA). Since the relatively recent discovery of the importance of such RNA molecules in controlling gene regulation in eukaryotes, there has been a great deal of excitement about the possibility that these offer an entirely new class of therapeutic molecules, but this is tempered by the realisation that organisms, including humans, are highly sensitive to the presence of foreign nucleic acids and are well equipped with mechanisms to remove them. Thus, in order to be able to get nucleic acids into the cells whose genetic mechanisms they might regulate, nanoscale molecular delivery devices will be required. Thus nanotechnology in this case will be an essential enabling technology if the discovery of regulatory RNA molecules is to be converted into something useful for medical applications.

In a similar way, it is possible that bionanotechnology may prove to be an essential enabling technology for stem cells to fulfil their promise of allowing the growth of new tissues and organs. It is becoming clear that the fate of stem cells as they differentiate is strongly influenced by the local nanoscale mechanical properties and biochemical environment. Synthetic mimics of an appropriate extra-cellular matrix material will probably need to incorporate quite precise control, both in space and time, of this local environment, particularly as the targets of our attempts to engineer new tissue move from the (only relatively) simpler problems of creating new skin, bone and cartilage to the even more difficult problems of regenerating cardiac tissue and nerve cells.

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