Blog @ NanoVic - Nanotechnology Blog

It’s a problem that’s been identified across the globe- inspiring girls into careers in science and technology. Nanotechnology in particular covers a range of sciences where women have traditionally been under-represented such as the physical and computer sciences. It’s one of the questions that always puzzled me as a science undergraduate- where DO all the women in science go, there appears to be plenty around in undergraduate and at early-career stages, but at the higher levels all the senior researcher, lab head and professorship positions definitely seemed to be filled by more men than women.

So what’s going on? Is the problem in encouraging girls in school to take more of an interest in science, engineering and technology subjects? As someone working in this area, I think that encouraging all students to take a more active interest in science subjects is beneficial (of course, I would think that), but it was interesting at one workshop I went to which was based on computer science for year 9 girls, in which the initial response from a table of girls was that the workshop had been too much ‘for boys’.

I don’t think that the latest doll released over at Mattel- Space Barbie, is the answer. Do girls still even play with Barbie? I thought it was all Bratz these days (and even then only for the under-10s?) Even if they do, I don’t think Barbie is all of a sudden going to make science ‘cool’, though I can’t fault them for at least giving it a try. According to the website Space Barbie is ‘ready to learn about Space Shuttle Systems, life aboard the Space Station, how to sleep and eat in space, and more!’

For some real women in science, there’s a nice website which, though looking very clunky and old-school, does have some nice biographies of women in science in the last 4000 years. And there’s a short video documentary about a 3-year WomenInNano project funded by the EU to encourage women in nanotechnology to act as ambassadors and mentors for the field.

What do you think? Are women under-represented in nanotechnology? Is that a problem that needs addressing? Where do you start to address the problem, at school, university or career level?

Image: from Space Camp Barbie 

Premier John Brumby has launched a new Victorian web-based stem cell educational resource Stem Cell Channel at the Bio2008 international biotechnology conference in San Diego, California. Innovation Minister Gavin Evans has described the site as

“a go-to resource for students and teachers, and covers ethics, the science and scientists, career information, patients, legislation and has an ‘ask-a-scientist’ function”.

The Stem Cell Channel has been developed by the Australia Stem Cell centre with the support of the Victorian Government. It has been cited by Premier Brumby to represent

“a human capital investment in the next generation of scientists”.

The Stem Cell Channel is reminiscent of educational material supported by Nanovic, such as the SHINE secondary school nanotechnology education website. In particular, the new resource is consistent with the views of Francesca Calati and other co-creaters of the SHINE website, in that it offers secondary school students a direct window into the world of modern and current science-in-action. The Australian Stem Cell Centre Chief Executive Officer Professor Stephen Livesey said

“We need to acknowledge and understand that young people now learn in different ways. Technology is driving their style of learning and we need to adapt to this new approach.”

This approach is also consistent with a new nanotechnology educational resource to be launched by the Australian Office of Nanotechnology later in 2008.

Dye-sensitized solar cells are a type of solar cell which uses an organic dye to to absorb incoming photons and produce excited electrons. Have a look here for a nice diagram of one. Typically, these sorts of cells contain a transparent, conductive coating (typically an oxide such as titanium dioxide, on glass), acting as the anode. A separate coating, on the other plate, consists of platinum and acts as a catalytic conductor.

These types of coatings have their drawbacks though. The oxide films work best when they are spread on rigid, stable structures such as glass, limiting the types of structures that can be made. Platinum films are effective, but expensive to produce.

In order to tackle these problems researchers tried to replace both of the films with nanotubes. This meant finding a way to achieve the optimal parameters for transparency, conductivity and catalytic function. Ordinarily, carbon nanotubes are mid-range for these three properties. Researchers found that introducing defects into the tubes, by exposing them to ozone which adds extra chemical groups into the tube, they actually found a big increase in the catalytic function. A great example of how changes in the structures of nanomaterials can have such huge effects on their properties. The link to the research article can be found here.

The researchers are currently applying to patent this technology, which will hopefully mean cheaper, more flexible solar cells on their way to meet the demands of the ever increasing renewable energy market.

Good news that Science Outside the Square in South Australia is re-running the ‘Nanotech for the terrified!’ event. 200 people attended the first event held earlier this year with over 230 more on a waiting list. Such a turnout for an evening of nanoscience is quite an accomplishment and really exciting.

Prof Joe Shapter and Brenton Banham from Flinders University and Kylie Turton from CSIROSEC will provide an entertaining, hands-on exploration of the nano by encouraging people to take part in ‘The Nanotube Challenge’, and make some of the Graffiti Research Lab’s ‘Throwies’. All in the name of discovering more about the possibilities of nanotechnology.

The next ‘Nanotech for the terrified!’ is at The Governor Hindmarsh Hotel, 59 Port Road, Adelaide on Wednesday 2 July 2008 from 6.30pm - 8.00pm. This event is in association with the CSIRO Science Education Centre and sponsored by the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, Government of South Australia; and The Advertiser. It’s free but registrations are essential. Contact Kate for more information or to make a booking.

I enjoyed Jennifer Rohn’s thoughtful and simple account of having ‘faith in the small stuff’ (i.e. what you can’t see!) as a laboratory scientist in her Mind the Gap blog this morning. Follow this link. Anyone out there in nano research have a similar tale?

The recent reports of the potential medical risks associated with carbon nanotubes, with a study in Nature showing asbestos-like responses in mice, has highlighted the urgent need for toxicity studies with nanomaterials.

But with so many new materials being created, and a huge variety of ways which toxicity can be measured, what is the best way for this field to go forward? The gold standard for examining toxicity of any material is animal testing, which is a laborious and costly process. Animal testing also tends to focus testing few types of material at a time, when there are many factors which may contribute towards nanomaterial toxicity including particle shape, size, composition and surface.

So why not go the way that drug discovery has gone in the last couple of decades, and get robots to do the work for you? Exactly this has been done by a group of researchers headed by Stanley Shaw at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Their approach, reported in the latest issue of PNAS, uses a cell-based assay. Human and mouse cells from different tissues including liver and blood were placed into small wells. A robot was then used to dispense the different nanoparticles into each well. In this initial study they have tested 50 different types of nanoparticles at a time, testing each nanoparticle at different concentrations. Various cellular markers of viability and metabolic activity were then measured in response to the addition of the nanoparticles, to create a profile for each material tested. This makes this study one of the largest of it’s kind so far, analysing about 24,000 different wells for nanotoxicity!

Nanoparticles that clustered together showing similar profiles in the cell assay were then tested by injection into mice, and showed that they also behaved similarly in vivo.

Whilst tests like this will never replace animal toxicity studies, it provides a much better starting point, allowing researchers to identify new particles whose effects on cells are similar to those of particles that are known to be safe. This makes it easier to pick which ones to test in animals.

This pilot study holds promise for allowing researchers to rapidly evaluate the ever increasing number of nanomaterials produced, something that consumers are demanding of these new products.

Following on from Lisa’s last post, Japanese scientists have discovered that carbon nanotubes could also help to speed up the recovery of broken bones.

Carbon nanotubes placed in contact with damaged bones were found to not only help to regenerate bone tissue, but to also reduce inflammation during healing. Measurements taken as the new bone was forming revealed that the carbon nanotubes become integrated into the bone matrix and appear to act as a starting point for new bone tissue to begin to grow. When the nanotubes were used in conjunction with a bone morphogenetic protein (BMP), commonly used to facilitate bone regrowth, the production of new bone material was also accelerated even further.

Conventional methods for treating broken bones is a lengthy process, that involves weeks of cast or splint wearing for the patient. The new technology could lead to much faster healing processes for those who experience broken bones.

The recent publication of a research paper describing asbestosis-like pathological changes in mice exposed to carbon nanotubes has captured world attention. Nothing like a bit of bad news to get everyone focussed on nanotechnology, huh?!

The new study was performed by an alliance of researchers from the USA and the UK, and involved injecting multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) into the abdominal cavities of mice. In this animal model, long, rigid MWNTs were found to trigger chronic inflammatory changes in abdominal mesothelial cells, a response comparable to that seen in control mice injected with asbestos fibres. A similar inflammatory response is thought to lead to fatal mesothelioma in some humans exposed to asbestos. Taken in a very broad sense, the findings suggests that human exposure to long, rigid MWNTs could have consequences that we do not yet fully understand. Clearly further studies do need to be conducted in this area. Interestingly, short MWNTs and single-walled carbon nanotubes had no apparent deleterious effects under the same study conditions. So let’s not shut the door on carbon nanotubes just yet…..

……..but now that everyone is watching, what’s going to happen next? Well for a start nanotechnology researchers and industries relying on the future of nanotechnology do need to take studies such as this into account. Social and environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth have a strong and informed involvement in the nanotechnology debate; they are already calling for greater public involvement in nanotechnology research and believe that the health implications of exposure to nano-sized materials need to be better characterised. Public forums like that recently conducted by the Australian Office of Nanotechnology may assist in this regard. I am interested as to whether any general news agencies picked up this story: use the comments option on this blog to let me know if you heard or saw wind of this research on your local radio or news stations. Let’s get a discussion going!

The use of nanotechnology in wound healing has been reported before, with the anti-microbial properties of nanoparticles (see here for a big selection of the literature) of silver being incorporated into band-aids by companies such as Nucryst. Another spin-out company Arch therapeutics has just started up coming out of research performed in the US, where researchers have found remarkable properties of a liquid they’ve dubbed ‘Nanohemostat’, that when applied to wounds stops bleeding almost instantly.

The study, reported in Nanomedicine, showed that the Nanohemostat solution stops blood flow in less than 10 seconds at surgical cut sites in the brain, spinal cord, femoral artery, and liver. The solution contains a mixture of small protein fragments, or peptides, which when applied form a nanoscale fibrous scaffold, producing a gel like seal on wounds, instantly stopping bleeding. Exactly how or why this scaffold is formed and why it is so effective is yet to be determined.

Kristin and I (both from Bridge8) attended the Australian Office of Nanotechnology (AON) public forum in Adelaide on the 8th of May. Host Belinda Barr (representing Primary Industries and Resources, SA and Australian Science Communicators) was not only scientifically literate, but a barrel of laughs to boot. She unashamedly illustrated the itty-bitty scale of what we were talking about by describing the size descrepancy between the tips (blond, diameter = 15-50,000 nanometres) and the roots of her hair (dark, diameter = 50-180,000 nanometres).  Belinda also introduced us to the interactive voting gadgets provided by the AON to gauge audience responses to nanotechnology issues throughout the evening. We managed to ascertain that 80% of attendees thought that the benefits of nanotechnology outweighed the risks, and that 95% of us believed it was worth spending more money on nanotechnology research. 81% of respondants would buy a product that they knew had nanotechnology in it.  Unfortunately, the technology then failed us and we had to resort to good old-fashioned hand raising to answer questions. This raised an interesting point in itself, which was that as soon as the anonymity was removed, most respondants were too shy to publically admit their opinions on issues around nanotechnology. Surely this is a problem! Not just with nanotechnology, but with science on the whole - members of the public don’t feel informed and confident enough to discuss new and emerging technologies. This issue later emerged as a uniting theme across all 3 speakers at the forum.

Joe Shapter (School of Chemistry, Physics and Earth Sciences, Flinders University)
- “Science drives change! The public as a whole needs to be informed and involved in science”.

Georgia Miller (Friends of the Earth, Australia)
- “There is almost no recognition that the public has the right to be involved in decision-making” with respect to nanotechnology and other new technologies.
- “We are here today because we don’t want nanotechnology to repeat the mistakes associated with past technologies”.

Once Asa Janting (National Measurement Institute) reassured us that “Yes, we can measure things we can’t see!”, the evening progressed, and some interesting discussions occurred between the audience and panel members. Topics covered included:
- what is nanotechnology?;
- what can nanotechnology offer us now and in the future?;
- the public should be actively involved in the development and use of nanotechnology.

We look forward to more AON events bringing nanotechnology to the public. Next time, I would be very interested to see a breakdown of the types of people attracted to attend - were they students, scientists, university graduates, teachers? This at least would give us an idea of what societal groups are already aware that nanotechnology exists, and who we need to target to improve public access into the future.