Prez Candidates Answer Science Questions

September 29, 2008

If you don't yet know about Science Debate 2008, then this is definitely worth checking out. At its core are 14 science- and technology-based questions that have been posed to the presidential candidates. The idea for submitting the questions started in November 2007 by six every day people and expanded to include more than 38,000 people. The questions originally numbered in excess of 3,400. But they were narrowed down to 14.

The questions are organized by the following topics: Innovation, Climate Change, Energy, Education, National Security, Pandemics and Biosecurity, Genetics, Stem Cells, Ocean Health, Water, Space, Scientific Integrity, Research and Health.

You can read the answers side-by-side to compare. There are some differences between the candidates, but I wouldn't say the differences are drastic. For example, they both want to appoint a science and tech advisory to the White House, they are both want to implement a cap-and-trade system to help reduce CO2 emissions, they both want to invest in non-oil energy, they both want to promote science in education, etc., etc.

And yes, there are some differences. For example, Obama wants to reduce CO2 emissions by 80 percent by 2050. McCain wants to reduce emissions by 60 percent by 2050. When it comes to bioterrorism, McCain has a layered strategy that focuses on containment and response in the United States. Obama's strategy is more global, with plans to reach out to international intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

But what struck me in addition to what the candidates had to say, was HOW and WHEN they have addressed science as a part of their campaign.

Obama submitted his answers to the Science Debate 2008's questions on August 30; McCain submitted his on September 15.

Obama answered an invitation by Nature, a prestigious science journal, to answer 18 questions.  McCain never answered the invitation.

Obama and Biden issued a science policy plan to "investing in America's future" on September 25. (Sixty-one U.S. Nobel laureates back the plan). McCain has issued no such plan.

These disparities are more striking to me. And I'm not the only one who sees science and technology as an important part of the presidential debate. A poll, conducted by lake Research Partners last May, shows that

• 85 percent of U.S. adults agree that the presidential candidates should participate in a debate on how science can be used to help tackle America's major challenges
• 87 percent of the U.S. public is more likely to vote for candidates that will invest in scientific education
• 43 percent consider science to be “extremely important” in influencing policy decisions

Photos: Obama (AP Photo/Alex Brandon); Mccain (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Do People Form or Frame Opinions About Nano?

September 26, 2008

It's election time and everyone has their opinions. I always feel a little guilty around this time because I never feel like I know ENOUGH about my candidate of choice and yet I feel pretty sure that I would never vote for the other guy.

How people form opinions about political candidates is similar to how they form attitudes toward emerging technologies, especially those like nanotechnology or stem cell research that are rife with controversy. You'd think -- or at least you'd hope -- that people (including me) would form their opinions by gathering all of the facts, sorting them into the appropriate issues, and coming to a reasoned (right?) conclusion. You'd think that the more informed we were, the better decision we'd make.

Well, last week, while attending the "Nano Meets Bio" conference at the University of Wisconsin-Madison one of the speakers made a strong case for the opposite. Deitram Scheufele, is a professor of communication (among many other things) and co-leader of the Public Opinion and Values Research Team for the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, told us that knowledge plays a small role in shaping people’s opinions and attitudes about science and technology.

Here's the thing. We only have so much brain power and capacity and try as we may to gather up all of the facts about nanotechnology or stem cell research or a political candidate, we can't. It's not humanly possible. And in fact, we are using our brains to do other, arguably more important things, like our jobs and eat and survive and makes sure our kids survive and pay the freakin' mortgage and remember our mother's birthday. We can't be bothered to know everything. So we take cognitive short cuts, something called heuristics.

According to Scheufele, how we interpret information has to do with the way it's framed. Are we exploring for new energy or drilling for oil? We're used to the media and politicians framing their message. But guess what? We do it to ourselves. We have a mental framework, a schemata, which we use to organize current knowledge and future understanding. And the external messages that stick with us are those that trigger our internal schemata.

You can see, then, how the same message may be interpreted differently by two different people. And what's more interesting is that having more information about a particular topic won't necessarily alter a person's opinion.

I've asked Scheufele to write something up for the Tech site about this intriguing idea and in the meantime, he's given me permission to share this article he wrote, which goes into more detail. It's a good read. Not sciency or jargony at all. It's pretty clear, after reading it, what he does for a living.

Image:                 John Lund

Nano Has Flower Power

September 24, 2008

Cell phones, iPods and other electronic device need battery power. And if you own any of these, you know firsthand how quickly those batteries wear down. I got my cell phone plugged in right now and know that even if I leave it tethered to the socket for infinity plus one, I'll still see the battery bar depleted by the end of the day tomorrow.

Scientists own cell phones, too. And they get just as irked. Some of them, like Hao Zhang at the Research Institute of Chemical Defense and his colleagues at Peking University, are working on a solution:  nanoflower/carbon nanotube composite electrodes. They report their work in ACS' Nano Letters.

The researchers grew nano-sized flowers (right) made from manganese oxide, a metallic material already used in batteries. According to Zhang (I emailed him in China and asked), the flower shape has several powerful advantages.

First, each manganese oxide nanoflower is connected directly with the current collector (below) by two or more electron "stems" made from carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes are strong, so they offer good mechanical support, and they are excellent for shuttling electrons. As a result, this shape "allows for efficient charge transport and enhances the electronic conductivity of composite significantly," said Zhang.

Second, the small nanometer size means the charged particles (ions) don't have to travel very far, which  ensure that their charge is fully utilized and very little goes to waste.

Third, micropores in the flower offer low resistance to the ions.

Fourth, because every manganese oxide flower is connected to the conducting framework, the need for binders or conducting additives, which add extra contact resistance or weight, is eliminated.

Images: Courtesy Hao Zhang

Fun Fact #581

September 19, 2008

During on the talks I attended this past week at the Nano-Bio conference (UW-Madison), one of the speakers made a remark that I found pretty incredible. He said that humans have made more transistors than bricks. Really? So I looked it up and found this from Mark Hill, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

"We make over a billion transistors/second. One transistor per man/woman/child 10 seconds (humankind has made many more transistors than bricks!)"

And according to Yusuf Leblebici of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, transistors are the "most of abundant man-made object on earth."

If nanotechnology is ever harnessed to supplant the computer chip, we're sure gonna have a lot of nanotubes on our hands.

Photo: Yellow Dog Productions

Seventeen Going on Gates

September 18, 2008

So on the last day of the nano-bio conference in Madison, the attendees heard a talk given by Philip Streich, winner of the 2007 Intel Young Scientist Award.

Phil is 17 -- was 16 when he won the award -- and has since co-founded a company in Wisconsin called Graphene Solutions based on his discovery. The discovery? Well, it has to do with carbon nanotubes. These tiny little molecules are super strong and conductive. (See my post from yesterday.) But they also like to clump together and when they are all clumped together, they are about as strong and conductive as a plate full of spaghetti.

Scientists have been trying for some time to get the carbon nanotubes to unclump. But haven't been able. So along comes this teenager and he figures out a way to do it. The solution to the problem is, in fact, a solution in the liquid form. The result is....well...imagine all of that spaghetti mixed into a large bowl of jello before it has solidified. The noodles unclump from each other. Then at some point the jello hardens. And you have a solid layer of material containing noodles that are not sticking to each other.

That's what Phil did. Except instead of noodles, he used carbon nanotubes. And instead of jello, he used a polymer (thin layer of plastic).

His presentation was over my head in terms of the science and math. But the message for me was pretty clear: he found a way to do it and he's only 17. In another 10 years or so, he'll probably be running a large corporation ala Microsoft.

Photo: Intel

Power of Nanotubes

September 17, 2008

Spend two-and-a-half days in a nano-bio conference and you here a lot stuff about nanotechnology and it's potential. I can't share all of the stuff I heard with you here, but I can share some of it. Namely some numbers that I find pretty impressive:

• Carbon nanotubes (the cool kids say CNTs) are 10 times more thermal conductive than silicon (this means they can theoretically wick away all of that heat being generated by those hard-working processors in your computer).
• Electrons travel 100 times faster through CNTs than through silicon.
• CNTs are 500 times stronger than steel by weight.
• CNTs are 1000 times more conductive than copper.

This is why everyone is so darned excited about carbon nanotubes, even though it may be years and years and years before they reach their desired potential.

Photo: The Image Bank

Hello From Madison, WI

September 14, 2008

For the first part of this week, I'm in Madison, WI (right), attending a nanotech conference specially designed for reporters. The conference, "Nano Meets Bio: The Risks and Rewards," is off to good start. I wasn't sure what to expect really. I've been to a lot of conferences in my day and they can sometimes be too sciency (read: booooring!) But the first talk, by Wendy Crone, associate professor in the dept of engineering, was anything but.

Crone spent her time getting us all familiar with the concept of nanotechnology. We humans are pretty dense about stuff we can't see. Out of sight, out of mind, don't cha know. So she had us do a little activity to put nanotech into perspective. She gave us all strips of paper about the length of a pencil and safety scissors (there was wine drinking, after all). She asked us to cut that strip in half, then cut that half in another half, then cut that half in half, etc., etc., and to see how far we could get. I could only do it 7 times. Granted I don't have the most delicate lotus-petal-like fingers in the world nor was I using the most advanced cutting technology. But the point became quickly tangible. I couldn't get that far and even though my mere spec of a paper was just that, mere, I would need another 20 snips or so for it to count as nano-sized.

Try it, if you don't believe me.

She made a lot of great points, namely that nano is small, and when things get down that small, they sometimes behave in ways that they don't on a larger scale. It's like the particles are on Las Vegas time or something. They become very volatile or change color or get drunk and blow all of their cab fare on the nickel slots.

Crone also pointed to a great graph (right) that originated in a 2001 report from Merrill Lynch, called "The Next Small Thing: An Introduction to Nanotechnology." It makes the point that, basically, nanotech is an innovation on par with the car and the computer. Today, the technology is new, we don't know too much about it, what it can do, how it will help or hurt us, the possibilities it will open up. In fifty years, it will be everywhere and like the hundreds of computers that surround us, we may not even think twice about its existence.

Photo: Jeff Miller, UW-Madison University Communications

Nanotech Pain Kills Bugs

September 10, 2008

A funny thing happens when you add titanium dioxide to paint and then hit it with fluorescent light: bacteria die. Well, okay. Not so funny for bacteria. But it could be an effective way to destroy superbugs in hospitals, public and commercial facilities, schools and residential kitchens, baths and floors would be significant . Think about it. Just add titanium dioxide -- the white compound that makes the "M" on M&M candies -- to paint, put it on the walls and then turn on the lights.

In lab tests, Lucia Caballero from Manchester Metropolitan University, found that the food poisoning bacterium Escherichia coli was killed under normal, fluorescent light. Here's why: When the titanium dioxide absorbs energy from the light, a chemical reaction occurs that results in two molecules, hydroxyl radicals and superoxide anions. Both work to decompose  microorganisms by causing cell rupture and leakage of vital composition.

With rising concern about the spread of hospital superbugs, this new kind of paint could be one cost-effective way to healthcare maintain hygienic standards.

Photo: AP Photo/Jeff Christensen

Scientists Ask the Public What They Think

September 05, 2008

There's a tendency for policy makers and scientists to do their studies, draw their conclusions and make their recommendations from way up high in their ivory towers. Meanwhile us peasants are standing around, looking around....wondering what just happened. So I was surprised and delighted to hear about two projects where the public was (and is being) invited to provide their opinions about nanotechnology.

The first I one is the National Citizen's Technology Forum, which involves researchers and citizen-panelists at Arizona State University, the University of California-Berkeley, the Colorado School of Mines,  the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of New Hampshire, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison to

• Generate informed, deliberative public opinion about how to manage the technology
• Demonstrate that average, non-expert citizens can understand even quite complex issues
  
• Provide information to other concerned citizens about techniques that can enhance the abilities of ordinary citizens to help shape public policy on important issues

The forum head this past March examined four areas of scientific and technological growth: nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technologies, and cognitive science. The results of the workshop are on the Web site.

The other publication participation forum I read about is happening next week in Maryland. On September 8, the FDA is holding a public meeting to gather comments from people that will help the agency develop guidelines about nanoproducts for the FDA Nanotechnology Task Force Report.

This is amazing. I'm so intrigued that I'll be looking more deeply into this forum and the idea of involving the public in these kinds of policies. Coming soon: a My Take on this very subject. Stay tuned. 

Photo: Roy Rainford

Nano 50 Award Winners Announced

September 03, 2008

Every industry has their award ceremonies and nanotechnology is no different. This fall, Nanotech Briefs,the country’s largest-circulation design engineering magazine, is rolling out it fourth annual Nano 50 to recognize the top 50 innovators, technologies and products that move nanotechnology forward.

Nanotech Briefs will present the awards at the National Nano Engineering Conference, November 12-13, at the Boston Colonnade Hotel.

A brief overview of who and what's gotten an award.

Innovators
"An individual recognized as a leader or pioneer in a specific area of nanotechnology, with a significant background of accomplishments in advancing the state of the art in nanotechnology."

• Amit Goyal, Oak Ridge National Laboratory/UT-Battelle, Oak Ridge, TN
• Timothy Swager, MIT, Cambridge, MA

Technologies
"Technology breakthroughs that have, or are expected to have, a significant impact in one or more application areas."

• Nanoconcrete
• Biodegradable Nanosphere Polymer

Products
"A product that incorporates nanotechnology in its design and/or operation, with significant current or near-term commercial applications."

• Nanofiber Buckypapers
• Nanodiamond Powder

The complete list is here.

Photo: NanoBriefs