Public Ambivalent About Human Enhancing Nanotech

December 04, 2008

A team of researchers from North Carolina State University and Arizona State University recently released their "Public Awareness of Nanotechnology Study," the first national survey to examine public opinion on the use of nanotechnology for human enhancement. Enhancement meaning, among other things, artificial eyesight, human biomarkers that detect diseases early, implants  to improve performance of soldiers on the battlefield and brain implants to permit basic computer to brain functions.

The researchers say, "Overall, we find that attitudes are largely ambivalent and dependent on the information provided in the question wording, but also that interest declines as they learn more and that equity is fairly important concern regarding the long-term distribution of potential benefits."

Some interesting findings:

• Most people say they have not heard anything about nano for human enhancements (61%), while just 38% say they have heard nothing about nanotechnology in general.
• Of those who have heard something about nanotechnology, most people associate it with “machines and computers” (84%) rather than “consumer products” (47%), even though nano-based applications are mostly enhancements to consumer products.
• Interestingly, far fewer people believed that human enhancements were important at the end of the survey after they had been asked more questions about it (55%) than at the beginning before they heard much about it (81%).   

I think the last point is the most interesting and harkens back to a post I did in October about how people filter scientific information. An increase in knowledge about the benefits of a particular scientific approach isn't necessarily going to garner more support. 

Image: Flatliner

Obama Raises Awareness of Nanotech

November 19, 2008

Okay, it's not Barack, personally, who is raising awareness of nanotech, but his face. John Hart, an assistant professor at the University of Michigan, has created 3-D portraits of the president-elect out of carbon nanotubes, and he's called them "nanobamas." Each one is smaller than a grain of salt and contains about 150 million carbon nanotubes that rise vertically like millions of trees in a dense forest. The growth, when looked down upon from a "bird's-eye" view, resembles the big O.

Hart's Mechanosynthesis Group makes nanostructures and studies how to use them as components in electronics, energy devices and high-performance materials.

The team create the nanobamas by using a laser to create a pattern in a glass plate. Then they shined UV light through the pattern onto a silicon wafer. Next, they grew the carbon nanotubes in the pattern on the wafer.

Hart has a whole gallery of images of nanostructures on his Nanobliss website. Worth checking out.

Photo: Courtesy John Hart

How Do Researchers Find Out How People Filter Science Info?

October 23, 2008

Two days ago, I posted a blog about Dietram Schuefele's study that we may wasting our time trying to educate the public about scientific issues without first trying understand how people will filter the information. That's all well and good, but I wondered how researchers could, in Schuefele's words develop "a better understanding of how different groups will filter or reinterpret this information when it reaches them, given their personal value systems and beliefs"?

I posed the question to Schuefele and here's what he said:

• Science needs to stop looking at research as separate from its societal impacts. For emerging technologies like nano and stem cell research, the boundaries between science, politics, and ethics are
increasingly blurry, and many of the questions raised over human enhancement or virtually invisible surveillance devices have more to do with ethics than with understanding the science behind them. And the reluctance on the part of many scientists to address these questions stifles any dialogue with the
public.

• Our research shows that information is not everything. In fact, the same piece of information may mean very different things to different people, depending on their value systems or beliefs. The assumption that we can simply put the facts out there and expect the public to "get it" eventually is naïve.  rather, we need to understand what people's concerns and hopes are, which cultural and social factors shape these hopes and concerns, and how we can use this knowledge to communicate with the public in a way that (a) reaches as many different groups as possible, and (b) addresses their concerns and questions in a way that makes sense to them.

Photo: Betsie Van der Meer

Nanowire Sensor Teams Up with Immune System to Detect Disease

October 22, 2008

When it comes to figuring out what kind of disease or infection your body might have, well, your immune system is the best sensor. It has a variety of T-cells, each uniquely equipped with particular surface receptors that are designed to match up like puzzle pieces to prongs on the surface of bacteria or viruses. When a match happens, the T-cells begin to multiply, producing identical copies of itself that have the right surface receptor to attach to the bacteria or virus and eventually destroy it. In the process, the T-cells produce an acid and a tiny electric current.

Researchers at Yale have found a way to sense the T-cell's response using a nanowire and a computer chip. The electronic device could allow doctors to diagnose disease, such the flu, tuberculosis, E. coli, or HIV infection, and even identify that strain.

Tarek Fahmy, assistant professor of biomedical engineering, say that their system detects as few as 200 activated immune cells and can produce results in seconds. The researchers envision an iPod like device that analyzes cells from a patient and provides a digital readout of the disease present.

Caption for images: (top) A mixture of T cells, each with different surface receptors (purple, red, and green) are contained in a fluid and added to a reservoir above an array of nanosensors (gray). (bottom) When a T-cell links up a disease, it becomes activated (yellow glow) and produces an acid and a tiny electric current. The nanosensor picks up the electric current (orange glow) and the computer chip sends the signal to a read out on the device.

We May Be Wasting Our Time Educating Public

October 21, 2008

Scientists really like the idea that if you line up all of the facts, you'll draw a tidy conclusion. But more and more it seems that values influence scientific conclusions. That's what Dietram Schuefele and his colleagues report in a recent study published in the Public Understanding of Science. It makes sense. A person who is fairly conservative in his/her religious beliefs will draw different conclusions about stem cell research or using nanorobots to treat disease. And that's important information to take into consideration because if you're trying to promote science to masses....if you're trying to advocate funding for some avenue of research, well, you might be talking to a wall.

Says Schuefele: "we may be wasting valuable time and resources by focusing our efforts on putting more and more information in front of an unaware public, without first developing a better understanding of how different groups will filter or reinterpret this information when it reaches them, given their personal value systems and beliefs."

Image: Purestock

How Nanotech Can Address Global Problems

October 14, 2008

Here's an interesting Q&A from Nanotech Briefs. It asks four industry experts to discuss the world's environmental and energy challenges and how nanotechnology could help address them.

The experts:
Jens Greiser, strategic marketing manager at FEI Co.
Michael Naughton, professor of physics at Boston College
Bart Riley, founder and CTO of A123 Systems
B.J. Stanbery, CEO and founder of HelioVolt Corp.

The editors asked these experts eight questions, among them:

• In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges we face in the 21st century with regard to energy and the environment?
• How will nanotechnology help us deal with these global challenges?
• Fossil fuels account for nearly three-quarters of the world's energy consumption. How can nanotech change this dependency?
• How does the U.S. compare globally with regard to nanotech advancements/funding in these areas?

Some highlights:

• The biggest challenges: National infrastructure and balancing energy demands with sustainability.
• How will nanotech help? It allows you to access physical and chemical mechanisms that are otherwise inaccessible.
• How can nanotech change fossil fuel dependency? Better performance of energy generation and storage.
• How does the United States compare to Europe? Venture capital in the United States  is better and Europe has a lot to  learn from it.

This is just a smattering of some very interesting and insightful comments. It's not a long article, so I suggest you read it.

Image: Igor Kopelnitsky  

Nanotechnology? What the Heck is That?

October 07, 2008

A new poll from the guys at the Project of Emerging Nanotechnology finds that almost half of U.S. adults have heard nothing about nanotechnology.

Half. Nothing.

Honestly, I'm not surprised. There's a lot of stuff going on right now that demands more of our attention. The upcoming election. The economic meltdown. Who has room in their brain to think about these things that are so esoteric to the nonscientist?

But it's not just the people. It's the federal government, too. For the last eight years, the Bush administration has not appropriately funded scientific research and in fact, for the last two years, funding has declined. This has forced universities to dip into their endowment funds. But you can imagine how, in the aftershocks of the Wall Street bail out, how deep those pools of money are. Not. 

It's not just that the money hasn't been there. But by giving science a cold shoulder, the Bush administration is also neglecting to educate its citizens about the potential benefits and risks posed by these technologies.

Let's hope the new administration, whatever and whoever it is, does a better job at putting science front and center in national policies and budgets.

Photo: Don Farrall

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