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Dr. Devesh Misra, Director of the Center for Structural and Functional Materials and Stuller Endowed Chair and Professor of Chemical Engineering, developed the research, which was recently patented.
"Using nanotechnology, we can get the drugs right inside the cells," said Misra. "With this method, we can deliver high concentration of medicines to the appropriate area without the medicine having to travel all over the body."
Nanotechnology refers to a technological field, which deals with matter on an atomic and molecular scale.
Misra's research uses magnetic nanocrystals (much like salt crystals) coated with a polymer or binding agent that helps the medicine attach to the tumor. The nanocrystals are non-toxic and biodegradable, so they are no harm to the body.
They travel directly to the tumor once a magnetic field is established outside of the body and around the tumor.
"The medicine wouldn't have to go all over the body and possibly kill healthy cells," said Misra.
When the magnetic field is released, the nanocrystals would be flushed from the body naturally.
"The payoff for the doctors and patients include lower drug toxicity, effective treatment and reduced costs," said Misra.
A second facet of his patented research includes wound protection using magnetic properties.
Misra's patent is one of 10 patents established or pending at UL Lafayette.
"This is an extremely important component for the university and is part of a cycle that we envision," said Dr. Ramesh Kolluru, assistant vice president for Research and Graduate Studies. "We have professors doing valuable research that is then patented and commercialized, generating revenues for the university and its researchers. This research is an investment in our future - as a university and as a society."

JEFF RANDALL, editor-at-large, The Daily Telegraph
If you thought 2008 was a tough year, then hold tight: 2009 will be worse. The Government's bail-out of the banks will start to fall apart: more capital will need to be pumped in if all mainstream lenders are to survive. The Treasury's forecast for state borrowing – an eye-popping £118 billion – will be readjusted upwards, as revenues collapse at a faster rate than predicted and unemployment escalates. Another well-known retailer will join Woolworths in administration. The City will be hit by a blockbusting scandal.
JOHN LLOYD, comedy writer and producer
Working on QI, I've come to realise that nothing is predictable. Yet, one would hope, in the aftermath of the credit crisis, that people will start to remember there are things a good deal more interesting than money and consumerism. In a world where the sophistication of technology seems inversely proportional to the sophistication of what it produces, I hope 2009 is the year when culture finally catches up with technology.
SIMON HEFFER, associate editor, The Daily Telegraph
June: Labour rescues British economy. Prosperity is restored and happy, smiling people give thanks for the wonder of Gordon Brown. July: Hell freezes over.
JOAN SMITH, critic and novelist
There will be flurries of excitement about a snap election in February or June. Brown likes pulling stunts, even though he bottled out last time. He's better at springing surprises than thinking long-term, but I can't help feeling voters will want to punish him for the collapse of the pound. I look forward to the first articles expressing disappointment in Barack Obama by March at the latest.
SIR JAMES DYSON, inventor
Nanotechnology is yielding exciting changes. A great amount of research and development goes into crease-free shirts and dirt-repellent trousers, for example. But nanotechnology has wider applications: scientists are working on paint with photovoltaic nano-particles that can absorb sunlight and conduct electricity.
PETER ALLISS, golf commentator
It doesn't matter what they say, Tiger has been missed – but his absence has allowed a few others to flourish. Harrington is amazing. I hope we get more consistency from our array of young talent that so far has flattered to deceive. I've put £20 on Henrik Stenson to win the Masters.
DR JAMES LE FANU, Telegraph columnist
It is possible to predict with absolute certainty there will be no let-up in the remorseless tide of contradictory health scares that pass for medical research. There will be yet more studies confirming that sausages do (or do not) cause cancer or that salt is (or is not) bad for the heart.
SHAMI CHAKRABARTI, Liberty
I don't think I'm original in predicting a general election next year. Such an event always seems imminent when politicians escalate the tough rhetoric about home affairs. The danger of a political arms race during an economic recession is that it will help to foster the kind of polarisation and extremism that Britain experienced in the run-up to 1934, when Liberty (then the National Council for Civil Liberties) was founded.
AMBROSE EVANS-PRITCHARD, international business editor, The Daily Telegraph
We will stop talking about banks. Interest rates will flirt with zero across the world. This will not be enough to prevent debt deflation leading to a light global depression. Job losses will reach one million a month in the US. The damage will be slower in Europe, but last longer. The great surprise will be the ferocity of the downturn in China. By the middle of the year, the geopolitical landscape will look very different: those without a deep-rooted democracy and rule of law will lose legitimacy. In the eurozone, the markets will look closely at Spain, Italy, Greece, Austria, and Ireland. By late 2009, the emergency fiscal stimulus will feed through. Those first into recession will be first out, led by the US. Wall Street will anticipate a US rebound. Equities, oil and gold will rally. Bonds will be slaughtered.
XANTHE CLAY, cookery writer, The Daily Telegraph
This year's baking craze spread to home cooking generally. Restaurants will have to fight hard to get us in, as dinner parties become chic again. We'll be buying more cheap cuts, such as chicken thighs, and making gutsy, peasant-style Spanish food. The big losers will be organic suppliers, as cash shortages make us cynical about the advantages.
VINCE CABLE, Lib Dem economic spokesman
Next year will be dominated by the economics of recession: growing unemployment, home repossessions and negative equity, the shrinkage in private pensions and savings, businesses struggling to survive. I hope to see signs of recovery, but I fear that the crisis will be deeper and longer than expected.
Sukhdev Sandhu, film critic, The Daily Telegraph
Expect Kate Winslet to be rewarded with an Oscar for her terrific turn in Revolutionary Road. Frost/Nixon, Milk and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button should all do well, but expect a good showing, too, for Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire. Heath Ledger is likely to get posthumous kudos, while Wall·E and Tropic Thunder will be largely overlooked.
CHARLIE MAYFIELD, chairman, John Lewis Partnership
I predict a riot. Not the stone-throwing, car-burning type but a quiet riot of ideas that will begin to lay the foundations for a new form of capitalism – more just, fairer and more sustainable capitalism.
KEVIN GARSIDE, chief sports writer, The Daily Telegraph
Andy Murray to ease Fred Perry's grip on tennis myth by becoming the first British male to win a grand slam since 1936, possibly as early as January in Australia. Kevin Pietersen to reprise the summer of 2005 and lead an open-top bus tour of the capital after regaining the Ashes. The Lions to triumph in South Africa in June, with Danny Cipriani converting his own try under the posts to seal it (we can but dream).
Tony Hall, chief executive, Royal Opera House
The arts and culture will be more important than ever, with the power to uplift and inspire. One highlight for me will be the coming together of the Royal Opera and the Royal Ballet under the direction of Wayne McGregor, for new productions of Dido and Aeneas, and Acis and Galatea in March.
BARRY NORMAN, film critic
I actually think that 2009 could be the year that people start being nicer to each other. The past 20 years have sometimes seemed rather brutish and greedy, but as recession takes hold hopefully people will be more prepared to help one another.
TOM HORAN, arts editor, The Daily Telegraph
In the past five years or so, we've had Boys With Acoustic Guitars, followed by Girls With Acoustic Guitars. Now it is the turn of Girls With Synthesizers, as out of their darkened bedrooms emerge a crop of young women who write catchy introspective pop tunes that you can dance to. Leading the pack is Blackpudlian eccentric Little Boots, 19, whose Youtube channel www.youtube.com/user/littleboots videos is loaded with her digital-folk covers of other peoples' hits.
DEREK PRINGLE, former England cricketer and Telegraph columnist
England will not win the World Twenty20 in 2009 but could win the Ashes 2-1, providing they drop fewer catches than Australia. The captain losing the Ashes will resign.
BONNIE GREER, novelist
Obama's "Team of Rivals" will turn out to be his undoing by going "rogue" and he will have to make a major sacking. His honeymoon will be short in the US, but he will continue to enjoy worldwide popularity. Meanwhile, the UK will weather the downturn, which will turn out to have been a good thing. It will cut the fat.
ANDREW MARR, TV presenter
It will snow heavily in July and August, and Westminster will be consumed by a series of scandals that will be forgotten soon afterwards.
ALEXANDER MCCALL SMITH, novelist
One prediction is sure to come true: that all predictions will be proved wrong. Notwithstanding that, here are some very convincing ones. In finance, penitent bankers will renounce personal greed in thought and deed; in the arts, the Turner Prize judges will proclaim that artists should be able to paint and draw; and in politics, the Speaker will say: "It was my fault entirely."
RICHARD DORMENT, art critic, The Daily Telegraph
We will start to feel the delayed effect of Norman Rosenthal's departure from the Royal Academy, with fewer and less ambitious loan exhibitions and more shows of work by Royal Academicians. Exhibitions at smaller institutions like the Courtauld and Wallace will become popular in the dark days ahead because they don't charge an entrance fee.
ALAN HANSEN, football commentator
I started the season believing that Chelsea would win the Premier League and I am sticking with that. But Liverpool will win the Champions League. The "big four" monopoly of Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool is also likely to remain. Even if a club like Everton finish fourth, they need to sustain that for four or five seasons to be part of the group.
JIM WHITE, columnist, The Daily Telegraph
The 2012 Olympics are sold to Abu Dhabi as the makeweight in a package deal with Woolworths; Bernie Ecclestone seeks government assistance to underwrite Formula One; and Cristiano Ronaldo is used as surety as Manchester United's owners seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the US. Plus, after Martin Johnson's resignation, Rebecca Adlington is asked to take over as manager of the England rugby team on the basis that, to revive a team shattered by record defeat to Italy in the Six Nations, they need someone who can walk on water.

A recent study in Nature Nanotechnology shows augmentation of neurons by growing them on a base of carbon nanotubes. The author’s hypothesis is that this is due to the carbon nanotubes conducting electrical impulses from the axon back to the dendrites, thus acting as a shortcut for the normal process of back propagation of action potentials.
Back propagation (propagation in the direction opposite to the arrow in the above diagram) occurs when the action potential flows not only along the axon, but also back to the dendrites. Back propagation of the action potential is required for synaptic potentiation, as it allows for extra excitation of the dendrites at those occasions when the axon has fired, thus leading to better coincidence detection via Hebbian learning (Magee and Johnston, 1997). Neurons strengthen connections based on the close timing between presynaptic and postsynaptic excitation (’fire together, wire together’), so it is important for signals of postsynaptic excitation to propagate back to the dendrites where the synapses are, so that the synapse may be strengthened or weakened accordingly.
In a sense, then, the augmentation of neurons in this study is similar to that seen in NR2B transgenic mice (aka ‘Doogie mice’), which overexpress the gene for a subunit of NMDA channel - a channel involved in long-term potentiation (LTP) of synaptic connections. The facilitation of more back-propagated action potentials would also result in enhanced learning and memory, if carbon nanotubes were seeded into key parts of the brain. This would, however, cause similar problems to the NR2B Tg mice. There is more to learning than simple recall, as forgetting is important too. We have a limited number of neurons to play with, and therefore a blanket increase in memorisation is an inferior solution compared to a highly-regulated memory augmentation, where things we need to remember are remembered and things we don’t wish to recall are forgotten.
But, this study was basically a random arrangement of nanotubes and neurons, which created some interactions which proved to be functional. It will be very interesting to see future neurotechnology based on carbon nanotubes, as these ‘wires’ are small enough to connect not just to a single neuron but between individual parts of that neuron. Yet still many of the issues of brain-computer interfaces will exist even with the enhanced biocompatability afforded by the carbon nanotubes - one needs to be able to interpret signals used by neurons and compute them, and this computation needs to be done with a small, preferably implantable computer. Still, I have a feeling nanotechnology will be essential for any cyborg (which is the main reason I had nanotechnology as my second field of study on my Bachelor of Science, after my first love - neuroscience).
http://hplusbiopolitics.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/neuron_parts.gif?w=2...
Reference: Cellot et al (2008) Carbon nanotubes might improve neuronal performance by favouring electrical shortcuts, Nature Nanotechnology, AOP 21 December 2008, doi: 10.1038/nnano.2008.374

For the more than 800 consumer products using nanotechnology, the NRC has said that no federal agency including FDA and EPA "has failed to prove that the diminutive particles are not dangerous." Of course, this isn't the same as saying the particles ARE dangerous. But if the standard being used by the government is to prove that nanotechnologies are SAFE, not just that they aren't harmful. Then no agency has proven that yet.
Moreover, the NRC has said that National Nanotechnology Initiative, the overarching government plan to fund and oversee nanotechnology in the United States, "lacks a coherent plan for ensuring that current and future uses of nanotechnology do not pose a risk to human health or the environment."
So what does this mean for the average human being? Well, we know that there are exposures to nanoparticles in everyday life--but we simply don't know what significance that risk has. Without that data, regulation to ensure that those levels aren't breached or that certain products do not contain to great a level of a certain chemical or compound does not do much good.
So really there are two problems here: lack of research funding for risk assessment and epidemiological data regarding what we know about the nanoparticles already released in the environment and then the regulatory framework to enforce reasonable policies based on that data.
So it's time for the federal government to start spending the research dollars in the right areas, then pass the regulations necessary, and to stop passing the buckyball.
Summer Johnson, PhD

NSW chief scientist professor Mary O'Kane has been asked to set up the committee, which will explore a number of the 18 recommendations coming from the inquiry, science minister Jodi McKay said.
"This was the first parliamentary inquiry into nanotechnology in Australia and one that looked specifically at both the benefits and potential risks of nano materials," Ms McKay said. "It is important we capitalise on this inquiry, and fully explore the viability of nanotechnology in NSW."
NSW will work with a range of groups to ensure safe working and living environments are maintained while researching the technology.
The Government's response to the inquiry and its recommendations is due at the end of April 2009. The parliamentary inquiry into nanotechnology was conducted by the legislative council standing committee on state development.

The Tainan Hydraulics Laboratory of National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) in Taiwan and the College of Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences of University College Dublin (UCD) - National University of Ireland, Dublin, have finalized a partnership agreement and signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), covering student and faculty exchange and research collaboration on cultural, technological and scientific cooperation. An area of special interest is the collaboration in the field of renewable energy and nanotechnology.
The MOU was signed on Friday, December 26th, 2008, by Professor Hweng-Hwung Hwung, the NCKU senior executive vice president and Professor Chen-Ching Liu, associate dean of the UCD College of Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences.
Professor Hweng-Hwung Hwung said that Ireland and Taiwan have in common geography, oceanic resource, technology advancement and economic development. "It is expected that the academic research, industry development and global reputation could be promoted through the communication and collaboration between both sides," added Professor Hwung, the SEVP of NCKU.
Professor Chen-Ching Liu of UCD expected more university-scale academic activities undergoing in the future after inking the MOU, instead of currently limited topics on energy and hydraulics. "UCD is interested in not only energy, but also in biology, medicine and nanotechnology," added Professor Liu from UCD.
Professor Hwung stressed that after singing the MOU, more communications and substantial collaborations should be taken into practice. "The NCKU Tainan Hydraulics Laboratory could be activated as the onset point of collaboration, such as to co-organize conferences, and professors should be encouraged to seek long-term substantial collaboration," said Professor Hwung. In addition, Professor Hwung, the NCKU SEVP, also promised to financially support the collaboration between both sides.

The Winthrop Rockefeller Institute is sponsoring a Nanotechnology for Health Care Conference on Jan. 7-10 at its conference center atop Petit Jean Mountain.Organizers say the conference "will explore the role of these new nanomaterials in faster, better drug delivery; in diagnosing and attacking cancer; combating heart disease; and knitting broken bones." The goal of the conference is to build a force that will use nanotechnology to affect the support and quality of health care.
Another goal of the conference is to establish a team that would become a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Center of national significance, which organizers say would put Arkansas at the forefront of nanotechnology research in health care.
Investigators and administrators from the NIH, National Cancer Institute and National Science Foundation will be at the conference to discuss how researchers in Arkansas can best contribute to the goals that these agencies have set in nanotechnology and nanomedicine.
The Nanotechnology for Health Care Conference is the first of two nanotechnology conferences funded by the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute. The second is scheduled for October 2009. The institute wants to develop yearly, self-sustaining nanotechnology research conferences.
For more information about the conference, contact Sherry Walker, director of programs at the Rockefeller Institute, at (501) 727-6299 or swalker@uawri.org.
Named after the late former Arkansas Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller, the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute of the University of Arkansas System is a educational center with conference and lodging facilities. Its mission is to develop diverse programs that nurture ideas, policies and activities to make life better in Arkansas.

When you get down to scales of a billionth of a metre, even the simplest, best-known materials can take on surprising new properties. Strength, adhesion and absorption can all be multiplied manyfold if you just find the right nanoscale structure. And, in 2008, many engineers did.
Tangled manganese-oxide nanowires were shaped into a kind of paper tissue that guzzles up oil spills without absorbing a drop of water. While a different nano-textured pattern that can be applied to any fabric proved able to make cloth unwettable, even emerging dry after two months underwater (see image, right).
A material that mimics nanostructures found on that marvel of stickiness – a gecko's foot – is so successful it is up to 10 times as adhesive as the real thing. See an image of the material side by side with a real gecko's foot. Energy answers
Novel nanotech ideas were also harnessed in the search for alternatives to existing energy sources in 2008.
A novel mixture of gold-filled carbon nanotubes and lithium hydride proved capable of converting radiation directly into electricity and may provide a new way to power spacecraft with long missions.
Carbon nanotubes were also part of a plan to create a new kind of artificial photosynthesis. The tubes act as a temporary store for electrons harvested from light by dye molecules, before the electrons are used to drive chemical reactions that remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
It could even be possible to transform the greenhouse gas into fuel.
Turning to more established green technologies, the hunt for a better battery to unlock the potential of electric carsMovie Camera also depends on nanoscale advances, that pack more powerful chemistry into a smaller volume. Electric appeal
Silicon chip designers have been venturing into the nanoscale for years – the latest chips have features as small as 45 nanometres. But as silicon comes close to being unable to shrink further, nanocomponents could offer improved performance at similar scales.
A material called graphene – a sheet of carbon just a single atom thick – is one contender. This year it was discovered to be capable of smashing the conductivity record for a material at room temperature, something that sets a speed limit on computation.
Borrowing one of nature's nanostructures – DNA fibres which measure just 2 nm across – to create a kind of tiny fibre-optic cable could provide a way to connect up the components of future computers that send data with light not electricity. Safety controls
But nanotechnology is not just about neat new discoveries. Just as when any exotic new class of materials comes along, the safety of nanomaterials must be assessed.
The extent to which we have already started releasing nanoparticles into the environment is essentially unknown, but the process is certainly under way. The silver nanoparticles commonly added to clothing such as socks to kill off bacteria were found to easily leak into waste water during washing. There are likely more findings like this to come. Some everyday products like cleaners and sun cream already contain nanoparticles, and nanoscale structures are increasingly used in industry.
Lab-based investigations of the health effects of nanoparticles also produced worrying results. One study found that mice that inhaled nanotubes suffered effects similar to those caused by asbestos. Another showed that earthworms that eat nanotubes suffer a reduced reproductive rate.
Yet very few such studies have taken place, leading the UK's Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution to declare that "urgent" work is needed to asses the effects of nanoscale objects on health and the environment.
However, defaulting to a position of declaring all artificial nanostructures bad is not the answer. Nature works on the nanoscale too, and as our editorial pointed out there's no reason to assume that man-made nanoparticles are automatically better or worse than the many natural ones.

These days many science fiction authors freely use nanotechnology to suit their ends, and it’s obviously working out well for them; using an emerging technology, that can be used for basically nothing right now, gives their books a certain fictional depth; a way to explore human nature, to preach morality or even just to teach the protagonist(s) of the story an important lesson. In the realm of science fiction (or perhaps sci-fi) almost anything can be done with nanotechnology - it can even make people into living gods or destroy the world.
The question is, will nanotechnology ever reach the heights that fiction writers claim it can reach, or will it just remain a quaint idea and a useful book-building tool? I admit that the subject is interesting as well as thought-provoking. Nanorobotics is immensely complicated, and right now almost solely theoretical, but as the human imagination is endless, we’ll get there someday. We’ve already managed to utilize a tiny part of nanotechnology’s potential, and tought up a myriad of uses; but we’ve also discovered a lot of potential risks.
One of the earliest-recognized and probably the most known danger of nanotechnology is the risk that self-replicating nano-robots start converting all available materials into replicas of themselves. This scenario is sometimes referred to as “grey goo”. The correct “scientific” term for something like this probably is “global ecophagy” (the consuming of an ecosystem).
So, is there some kind of horrendous clock ticking down to the N-day, the day the rogue nanites bust out and consume everything? At least that’s what many science fiction authors seem to think. Perhaps one day we’ll get a message from our tiny creations: “You are our raw materials”, or if you prefer nanites with a sense of humor: “all your molecules are belong to us”.
The most likely gray goo scenario, in my book, would be a goo with no personality or “sentience”, as we know it. It would be a mindless, self-replicating technology destroying everything for no reason other than, that’s just what it does; extinction via coding error - what an ironic way for the human race to go.
Not to worry, though. Even if this could happen, it would probably be after you’re long dead - and to be honest; any gray goo scenario sounds wildly unlikely to me. A “nano-organism” would face a much harder task than merely replicating itself. It would have to survive in the environment, move around, and also convert whatever matter it finds into raw materials and “power”. To achieve something like that, the nanite would require sophisticated chemistry and massive computing power. Even if you use strictly theoretical concepts, it seems more than a bit unlikely that you could fit all that into something a billionth of a meter in size.
Though, there may be other dangers of molecular manufacturing for us to actually worry about. Happy reading.
EDIT: I’ve gotten a few emails, and feel I have to add that I am well aware of the fact that there already are a lot of products/materials on the market that are the result of nanotechnological research. This article deals (more or less) only with more advanced/theoretical uses (and risks) of this emerging technology - focusing on the use of nanotech in science fiction literature.

Spallation Neutron Source Sends First Neutrons To ‘Big Bang’ Beam Line
New analytical tools coming on line at the Spallation Neutron Source, the Department of Energy’s state-of-the-art neutron science facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, include a beam line dedicated to nuclear physics studies.
D’oh! A Pipe Dream!? Thomas saw it coming–but Homer never did. “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.” ~Thomas Edison, in a conversation with Henry Ford in 1931 “And Lord, we are especially thankful for nuclear power, the cleanest, safest energy source there is. Except for solar, which is just a pipe dream.” ~ Homer Simpson, saying his prayers before a meal (Homer emulating his hero Thomas Edison)
Partnership for Advancing Technology in Housing - Omaha Neat blog from Fine Homebuilding magazine on building Green in Omaha. I was a charter subscriber to FHB, one of two magazines (the other being Journal of Light Construction) that bridges the gap between “fine architecture” and “getting it built”. FHB was one of the first to look at double and trombe walls, insulated foundation [.]
Goodbye To Batteries And Power Cords In Factories A broken cable or a soiled connector? If a machine in a factory goes on strike, it could be for any of a thousand reasons. Self-sufficient sensors that provide their own power supply will soon make these machines more robust.
Modern Energy (Plan) is Number 2! If you read this blog [please forward this wonderful info to all of your family and friends :) ] you care about a. the environment and/or b. saving a little money in these times of rising, fluctuating energy costs. That said, you need to go out and toss some solar panels on your roof, right? Wrong. Solar-panel-”tossing” is not the first step to (a) creating zero emissions while creating your own energy. Nor is it the first step in saving money on your utility bill. Step 1 is getting a Modern Energy Plan for your home. SNI’s Modern Energy Plan.
SNI is Hiring! SNI is looking for a Commercial Design Engineer. For more information on the skills and qualifications required to work for this great company, click here. Best of luck!!!
Europe Rallies Behind Nanotechnology To Wean World From Fossil Fuels Nanotechnologies can be used to develop sustainable energy systems while reducing the harmful effects of fossil fuels as they are gradually phased out over the next century. This optimistic scenario is coming closer to reality as new technologies such as biomimetics and Dye Sensitized solar Cells (DSCs) emerge with great promise for capturing or storing solar energy, and nanocatalysis develops efficient catalysts for energy-saving industrial processes. Europe is ready to accelerate development of these technologies, as delegates heard at a recent conference, Nanotechnology for Sustainable Energy.
As Seen in the St. Charles County Journal: Farmergy Installs Solar Panels on Busch Estate As Seen October 31, 2007 in the St. Charles County Journal Busch estate installs solar panels By Eric Becker Kirkwood-based Farmergy on Oct. 23 completed the installation of what it says is the largest private solar energy panel project in the region at Adolphus Busch IV’s Belleau Farms in St. Charles County. But the topic of the day was improving the state’s standing for usage of renewable energy sources. Busch’s hope in installing the solar panels was to push the state toward increased consciousness of renewable energy sources, something he said the state sorely lacks. With the passage of the.

It's perfect that Joe DeSimone is a chemist.
The science, founded on an ancient quest to turn rocks into gold, is fundamentally preoccupied with transformation.
So, too, is DeSimone, a chemist lauded with the highest honors and a potent force of change in North Carolina and beyond.
Since arriving at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1990, a fresh-out-of-grad-school assistant professor, DeSimone has become one of the nation's premier scientists -- the youngest member named to the National Academy of Engineering and, last summer, winner of the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize, which many consider a step to the Nobel.
Along the way, he has founded companies, led the university into entrepreneurial ventures, received more than 100 U.S. and international patents, pulled in millions of dollars in federal grants and built a research empire poised to become a major player in the emerging field of nanotechnology.
At 44, DeSimone hasn't even hit midcareer.
"To say he is extraordinary would be an understatement," says Erskine Bowles, president of the University of North Carolina system.
DeSimone's current research in nanotechnology -- mass producing microscopic particles in any size or shape -- could be a blockbuster. Nanoparticles hold promise because, among other things, they can be loaded with chemotherapy drugs or completely composed of medicine, like tiny pills, and home in on disease sites in the body.
"The potential power is quite significant," said Dr. Anna Barker of the National Cancer Institute. On the strength of DeSimone's breakthrough, Barker said, the government agency awarded UNC-CH one of eight national centers for nanotechnology research, providing $5 million a year for five years.
It's the kind of attention that makes DeSimone highly sought after. Keeping him from leaving North Carolina, say Bowles and others, is the academic equivalent of retaining a Dean Smith. Twice DeSimone has been wooed by top universities, and twice he has been persuaded to stay, given salary raises, promotions and other inducements.
What has held DeSimone more than anything, however, is the university's willingness to consider change -- change in the way academic science is conducted, change in how discoveries are brought to the market.
Such an approach is crucial to curing cancer, curbing global warming, creating technologies that improve the world -- the things DeSimone says he wants to do.
"This is how we can solve the greatest problems of our time," he says.
DeSimone doesn't know his IQ, but his mental agility might rank in the freaks-of-nature category.
"He's in the upper 1 percent of people I've dealt with, in terms of brilliance and importance to an institution," said James Moeser, the former chancellor at UNC-CH who helped craft incentive packages to keep DeSimone from leaving.
Friends and colleagues say DeSimone's genius lies in applying complex science to solve everyday problems. It's what caught the attention of the Lemelson-MIT Prize committee, which cited DeSimone for the breadth of his innovations -- from green manufacturing to medical devices to nanomedicine -- and his "unique ability to transfer his novel solutions from the lab to the marketplace."
That ability was evident from the start, when he gained fame in the early 1990s for developing an environmentally friendly dry-cleaning process using carbon dioxide instead of a toxic petrochemical. The process, licensed by UNC-CH, became the foundation for Hangers Cleaners, a dry-cleaning franchise DeSimone founded in 1996. savery@newsobserver.com or 919-829-4882

I'm not ordinarily inclined to become alert or alarmed about stories aimed at alerting and alarming the populace at large.
While others get their knickers in a knot over genetically modified produce and product, for example, for my money, nanotechnology is more exciting in a good and a bad way.
Nanotechnology sounds pretty spiffy, but it's not exactly new, and future applications are airy-fairy, ill-defined. Mostly stuff, like much of what we hear reported from medical science, will never come to fruition in a town near you or me.
Sunscreens, much touted as an essential accessory to protect humans from the death rays of the sun, not to mention premature aging, contain nanoparticles, which might turn out to be a boo-boo.
"The tricky thing for sunscreen makers is this: the two key sun-blocking ingredients, titanium dioxide and zinc oxide, come in relatively big particles not easily rubbed into the skin.
Since 1990, makers have pulverised them into nanoparticles 1000 times smaller than the width of a human hair or 200 times smaller than a blood cell. This gets rid of the white residue.
But laboratory tests have established that nanoparticles of metal oxides can penetrate cells and damage DNA."
That's not really the bit that got my attention though. Far more alerting and alarming was finding out that sunscreens containing nanoparticles damage steel - in a big way.
"BlueScope Steel has recommended its workers avoid some sunscreens after hand and finger-shaped damage was detected on some steel products.
It seems installers had left nanoparticle sunscreens on the steel and in six weeks it caused damage equal to 15 years' weather damage."
Holy crap: we're told to put this stuff on our skin, as often as possible?

The partner for this project was selected by the Corporation among the leading Russian business schools. It is the Moscow Management School SKOLKOVO, which will raise the 1 billion rubles adding to the fund’s chartered capital. The total fund amount will reach 2 billion rubles. The Managing Company of the fund will be Troyka Dialog.
From the opinion of the managing director, member of RUSNANO Board of Directors Dionis Gordin, the joint project of RUSNANO and SKOLKOVO is a striking example of melding the Corporation’s educational and investment objectives: the trust activity will be directed towards discovery of the commercial potential of the Russian nanotechnologies, providing the trust investors with high return of their investments as well as improving the quality of training in the sphere of innovative management and building of the efficient practice within the business school framework.
- One of the problems with venture business today is that there is a gap between a business idea and its implementation in the investment project, says Dionis Gordin. – In average, less than 10% of the projects submitted to the venture trusts pass through the primary consideration stage. It happens due to low quality of the business plans, calculations, marketing researches, scientific and technical substantiation etc. The venture trust will involve the students and tutors of SKOLKOVO into business planning and pre-investment preparation of the most interesting projects submitted into the Fund.
- We value the advantages and perspectives opening for our students thanks to cooperation with the Russian Corporation of Nanotechnologies, emphasized Andrey Volkov, Head of Moscow Management School SKOLKOVO. – Program SKOLKOVO MBA which will be launched in 2009 implies the development of own business projects by students. The best projects will obtain venture financing. The criterion of the project selection is their innovative component. We are sure that our cooperation with RUSNANO will motivate them for creating truly advanced technologies beneficial not only for their authors but for our country as well.

Scientists at the University of Idaho are engineering multifunctional and dynamic nanowires coated in gold that swim through the bloodstream and attach to specific cancerous cells. Once there, an electromagnetic field heats the nanowires, which destroys the targeted cells. The research is supported by a new $425,000 grant, part of a multimillion dollar project funded by the Korean government as part of the International Global Collaboration Pioneer Program.
“Cancer is a dangerous enemy because radiation and chemical treatments cause a lot of side effects,” said Daniel Choi, associate professor of materials science and engineering at the University of Idaho and leader of the project. “We can’t avoid side effects 100 percent, but these nanowires will minimize the damage to healthy cells.”
The technology involves many steps requiring lots of continuing research, but each of the basic concepts already have been proven in laboratory tests.
Choi and his team have already created nanowires that can “swim” to their targets and heat up when exposed to low frequency electromagnetic fields, which are not harmful to human body. The next step is to make them biocompatible, meaning safe to introduce to the human body, and able to seek out specific cancer cells.
Choi believes the gold plating will take care of the biocompatibility. If not, he has several polymers in mind that he also believes would work.
As for seeking out specific cancer cells, Choi also is a member of and working with a University of Idaho group called BANTech – an interdisciplinary group that integrates nanomaterials research with cell biology and bioscience research. The group has identified several promising candidates for antibodies with which to coat the nanowires that would seek out and attach to specific cancer cells.
Once the technology has proven itself in the laboratory, it will be tested in live animals, and eventually human beings. Several Korean institutions, which are helping in every phase of research, will take the lead in that project. The institutions are Seoul National University, Korea University and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology.
“Collaborating with Korean institutions has been a wonderful experience full of mutual benefits and great achievements,” said Choi. “Multi-institutional, multi-national projects can provide students and researchers with opportunities to engage in cutting-edge investigations within an international research environment, which is very important to advancing science.”

Some dozen years after introduction, farmers have embraced biotechnology as an effective and efficient part of their crop management strategies and claim reduced pesticide use, decreased trips across fields (and resultant energy savings) and no yield drag from transgenic varieties.
They have more too look forward to, says Jane Dever, cotton breeder at the Texas A&M Research and Extension Center in Lubbock.
Dever addressed the Sourcing USA Summit recently in Austin and said biotechnology for cotton “is beyond the first generation of value-added plants” that began with resistance to over-the-top herbicides and Lepidoptera insect pests.
Improved agronomic traits, food and feed quality enhancements, industrial products and functional foods are on the horizon, Dever said. “We’re looking closely at water and energy (efficiency) and stress management.
“Fiber quality will be the third wave,” she said. “We want longer fiber with better strength.”
Cotton breeders are looking at ways to change cotton fibers without changing “the look and feel” of cotton. She said changing chemical properties may improve dyeability. Adding wrinkle resistance and flame retardant characteristics also make the wish list.
“We have opportunities for yield enhancement, new fiber types, and environmental stress tolerance,” Dever said. “Yield enhancement and stress tolerance will be next. Nitrogen efficiency is one of the avenues we’re exploring.” Salt tolerance is another possibility.
Conventional breeding will continue to play a role in improving cotton. “We’ll combine traditional research with biotechnology,” she said.
Nanotechnology also may capitalize on cotton’s fiber qualities, said Brian Francois, business director for Pulcra Chemicals, LLC.
“Cotton is the best fiber for nanotechnology treatment,” Francois said. “It’s natural, absorbent, permeable, and reactive. That combination makes it the most desired fiber.”
He said the textile industry provides several opportunities for nanotechnology. Possibilities include stain and odor resistance, ULV protection and wrinkle resistance. “Surface area is the key. One teaspoon of nano particles equals the surface area of ten soccer fields. These particles are designed to self-assemble into the fiber.”
He said carbon, an abundant, stable, versatile, absorbent, and both conductive and semi-conductive material, also holds promise for nanotechnology. Nano carbon tubes, made from nano carbon fibers, which are 10 times lighter and 500 times stronger than steel, offer numerous uses.
“The textile industry is leading the way in nanotechnology,” Francois said. “And cotton is the ideal fiber. Think small: it’s the future.”
He said companies in Europe already use nano technology in textile manufacture.
“It’s exciting,” said Monty Christian, director of Cotton Technology and Fiber Business for Bayer CropScience, and a member of a technology panel at the summit. “We’re looking at in-plant solutions combined with nanotechnology.”
“Without nanotechnology and biotechnology, we probably wouldn’t be gathered here today,” said Wally Darnell, president and CEO of the Plains Cotton Cooperative Association in Lubbock.
Darnell said biotechnology has had a profound effect on West Texas cotton farmers. “Because of biotechnology, West Texas cotton producers get $300 to $400 more per acre. We hope in the future that biotechnology will allow us to put some characteristics in cotton that are in synthetics.”
John Purcell, Cotton Technology lead for Monsanto, said biotechnology has helped more than the farmer’s bottom line. “Increased productivity per acre means a reduced effect on the environment,” he said.
That productivity likely will get even better, Christian said. “Technology will be there. We believe the potential in the cotton genetic code is unlimited. Mapping the genetic code will be a breakthrough.”
Darnell said the possibility of using nano sensors to target crop inputs also offers opportunity for farmers.
Francois said the nano carbon tubes may be useful moisture sensors.
The panel said global acceptance of the two technologies continues to present a challenge. The regulatory environment may affect the next wave of products, which will be different as they substitute technology for crop protection chemistry.
“Acceptance is high on the farm level,” Purcell said. “But we continue to see political barriers in spite of the safety information.”
email: rsmith@farmpress.com

RECEPTRONICS is a research project funded by the European Commission within the VIth Work Program under the Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences priority. The goal of this project is to develop low-cost, label-free biomolecular detectors/sentinels by integrating concepts and methods from bionanotechnology and microelectronics. More specifically, the project aims to design, fabricate, test and validate a biomorphic hybrid technology by which biological self-assembling structures are interfaced with advanced electronic circuits for signal detection, amplification and conditioning.
So doing, we exploit the strength of biotechnology to achieve a very high sensitivity and selectivity, as well as the great potential of micro- and nano-electronics to address system miniaturization, low-power consumption, and low cost. The approach is based on arrays of independent and electrically addressable micro-spots where functional lipid bilayers are self-assembled either in structured micron-scale apertures, or in artificial nanometric pores.
Membrane functionalization is determined by embedding bioengineered ion channels or receptors in the lipid bilayers, to achieve highly specific interactions with target molecules. The array is organized so as to couple each spot with a smart and miniaturized electronic interface for the detection, amplification and conditioning of the signals produced by the transmembrane ion fluxes induced by the target molecules. An additional goal of this approach is to boost the overall system performance by means of advanced data processing and storage architectures.
An important objective of the proposal will be the evaluation and the assessment of the technology as a valuable platform in health applications with respect to state of the art counterparts. For this purpose, validation exercises will be undertaken within the program, using different kinds of receptors for several applications.

The discovery of an alien form of life would be discovery of the century, with profound scientific and philosophical implications. Within the next fifty years, there’s a serious chance that we’ll make this discovery, not by finding life on a distant planet or indeed by such aliens visiting us on earth, but by creating this new form of life ourselves. This will be the logical conclusion of using the developing tools of nanotechnology to develop a “bottom-up” version of synthetic biology, which instead of rearranging and redesigning the existing components of “normal” biology, as currently popular visions of synthetic biology propose, uses the inspiration of biology to synthesise entirely novel systems.
Life on earth is characterised by a stupendous variety of external forms and ways of life. To us, it’s the differences between mammals like us and insects, trees and fungi that seem most obvious, while there’s a vast variety of other unfamiliar and invisible organisms that are outside our everyday experience. Yet, underneath all this variety there’s a common set of components that underlies all biology. There’s a common genetic code, based on the molecule DNA, and in the nanoscale machinery that underlies the operation of life, based on proteins, there are remarkable continuities between organisms that on the surface seem utterly different. That all life is based on the same type of molecular biology – with information stored in DNA, transcribed through RNA to be materialised in the form of machines and enzymes made out of proteins – reflects the fact that all the life we know about has evolved from a common ancestor. Alien life is a staple of science fiction, of course, and people have speculated for many years that if life evolved elsewhere it might well be based on an entirely different set of basic components. Do developments of nanotechnology and synthetic biology mean that we can go beyond speculation to experiment?
Certainly, the emerging discipline of synthetic biology is currently attracting excitement and foreboding in equal measure. It’s important to realise, though, that in the most extensively promoted visions of synthetic biology now, what’s proposed isn’t making entirely new kinds of life. Rather than aiming to make a new type of wholly synthetic alien life, what is proposed is to radically re-engineer existing life forms. In one vision, it is proposed to identify in living systems independent parts or modules, that could be reassembled to achieve new, radically modified organisms that can deliver some desired outcome, for example synthesising a particularly complicated molecule. In one important example of this approach, researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a strain of E. coli that synthesises a precursor to artmesinin, a potent (and expensive) anti-malarial drug. In a sense, this field is a reaction to the discovery that genetic modification of organisms is more difficult than previously thought; rather than being able to get what one wants from an organism by altering a single gene, one often needs to re-engineer entire regulatory and signalling pathways. In these complex processes, protein molecules – enzymes – essentially function as molecular switches, which respond to the presence of other molecules by initiating further chemical changes. It’s become commonplace to make analogies between these complex chemical networks and electronic circuits, and in this analogy this kind of synthetic biology can be thought of as the wholesale rewiring of the (biochemical) circuits which control the operation of an organism. The well-publicised proposals of Craig Venter are even more radical – their project is to create a single-celled organism that has been slimmed down to have only the minimal functions consistent with life, and then to replace its genetic material with a new, entirely artificial, genome created in the lab from synthetic DNA. The analogy used here is that one is “rebooting” the cell with a new “operating system”. Dramatic as this proposal sounds, though, the artificial life-form that would be created would still be based on the same biochemical components as natural life. It might be synthetic life, but it’s not alien.
So what would it take to make a synthetic life-form that was truly alien? In principle, it seems difficult to argue that this wouldn’t be possible in principle – as we learn more about the details of the way cell biology works, we can see that it is intricate and marvellous, but in no sense miraculous – it’s based on machinery that operates on principles consistent with the way we know physical laws operate on the nano-scale. These principles, it should be said, are very different to the ones that underlie the sorts of engineering we are used to on the macro-scale; nanotechnologists have a huge amount to learn from biology. But we are already seeing very crude examples of synthetic nanostructures and devices that use some of the design principles of biology – designed molecules that self-assemble to make molecular bags that resemble cell membranes; pores that open and close to let molecules in and out of these enclosures, molecules that recognise other molecules and respond by changes in shape. It’s quite conceivable to imagine these components being improved and integrated into systems. One could imagine a proto-cell, with pores controlling traffic of molecules in and out of it, containing an network of molecules and machines that together added up to a metabolism, taking in energy and chemicals from the environment and using them to make the components needed for the system to maintain itself, grow and perhaps reproduce.
Would such a proto-cell truly constitute an artificial alien-life form? The answer to this question, of course, depends on how we define life. But experimental progress in this direction will itself help answer this thorny question, or at least allow us to pose it more precisely. The fundamental problem we have when trying to talk about the properties of life in general, is that we only know about a single example. Only when we have some examples of alien life will it be possible to talk about the general laws, not of biology, but of all possible biologies. The quest to make artificial alien life will teach us much about the origins of our kind of life. Experimental research into the origins of life consists of an attempt to rerun the origins of our kind of life in the early history of earth, and is in effect an attempt to create artificial alien life from those molecules that can plausibly be argued to have been present on the early earth. Using nanotechnology to make a functioning proto-cell should be an easier task than this, as we don’t have to restrict ourselves to the kinds of materials that were naturally occurring on the early earth.
Creating artificial alien life would be a breathtaking piece of science, but it’s natural to ask whether it would have any practical use. The selling point of the most currently popular visions of synthetic biology is that they will permit us to do difficult chemical transformations in much more effective ways – making hydrogen from sunlight and water, for example, or making complex molecules for pharmaceutical uses. Conventional life, including the modifications proposed by synthetic biology, operates only in a restricted range of environments, so it’s possible to imagine that one could make a type of alien life that operated in quite different environments – at high temperatures, in liquid metals, for example – opening up entirely different types of chemistry. These utilitarian considerations, though, pale in comparison to what would be implied more broadly if we made a technology that had a life of its own.

Nanotechnology seems to be a huge buzzword in the dental industry right now. In composites, "nano-filled" resins have seen a massive surge in marketing. This trend will only continue upward over the next few years. One area where I would not have expected to see nano technology make a splash would be in the world of preventative dentistry.
Science News is reporting that 2 scientists used nano technology to polish enamel to such a point that plaque could no longer adhere to it. Igor Sokolov and Ravi Gaikwad from Clarkson University used techniques from the semiconductor industry to polish enamel down to "nanoscale roughness."
To overcome plaque aggregation is to overcome the beast that is biofilm. Biofilm research is huge right now and researchers are starting to realize how big of an enemy biofilms really are. I can't say that I know very much about biofilms other than what we all learned in dental school, however that should change soon. I am a member of the local chapter of the Seattle Study Club and in April we are bringing in Dr. J. William Costerton who is the world's leading researcher on biofilms and actually coined the term biofilm. I think that most of us underestimate how formidable of an opponent biofilms actually are.
As far as nano-polishing of enamel, I have a few questions about its practicality. Can we effectively polish teeth to this level intraorally without frying pulps from heat build up? If so, I'm sure polishing the buccal of a central incisor is a no brainer, but how do we polish the distal of #15? What about interproximals? Can we nano-polish interproximally without obliterating contact? Obviously, this technology has a long way to go before becoming clinically viable, but I find the application of the technology interesting.

Sequencing is the process of working out the order in which nucleotide bases appear in a strand of DNA. Until recently, this was only possible for short portions of DNA, so the most common technique involved chopping DNA into short strands, working out the sequence in each and then stitching the data together to recreate the complete genome. This process has to be repeated many times with overlapping strands of DNA to get an accurate map, which is one reason it takes so long.
A more promising approach is to watch a molecule of double-stranded DNA being constructed from a single strand in real time. The trouble is that this occurs on such a small scale that it has been impossible to see. Now a team at Pacific BioSciences in Menlo Park, California, says it has worked out how this can be done (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1162986).
DNA is assembled by an enzyme called DNA polymerase. This takes a single strand of DNA and adds the appropriate nucleotide bases to form a double strand. The new technique involves attaching a different coloured fluorescent dye to each of the four types of nucleotide and watching these flash as they are incorporated into the strand (see diagram). The sequence of coloured flashes in this molecular fireworks display indicates the order in which the nucleotides appear.
The technique relies on two breakthroughs. First, the team developed a hollow metal cylinder 20 nanometres wide in which the DNA and the polymerase sit, known as a zero-mode waveguide (ZMW). In here, the flashes can be seen directly because the small size of the ZMW significantly reduces the amount of background light, which would otherwise overwhelm the flashes.
The second is a new way to attach the dye to a nucleotide. Instead of being attached to the part that gets incorporated into the DNA strand, as happens now, the dye is linked to a part of the nucleotide that gets discarded after the reaction. That allows the DNA to be built without adding a huge number of fluorescent tags.
So far, the team has built a chip housing 3000 ZMWs, which the company hopes will hit the market in 2010. By 2013, it aims to squeeze a million ZMWs onto a single chip and observe DNA being assembled in each simultaneously. Company founder Stephen Turner estimates that such a chip would be able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999 per cent accuracy for under $1000.
Michael Metzker from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, is less confident, saying: "Their projection appears very optimistic."