Blog @ NanoVic - Nanotechnology Blog

Australia has been introduced to the work of NanoVic’s artist-in-residence Leah Heiss through a ‘Designing the Future’ segment on The New Inventors and a segment on Radio National’s By Design programme. This is just the latest in a strong of extraordinary success for Leah - see more news here.

Is there anything nanotubes cannot do? Kristin recently posted about looking for nano in the iPod nano, well, here is one way that it could be incorporated in the future.

New scientist report about sheets of nanotubes which can act as loudspeakers. The sound is not produced as a function of the sheet vibrating (as in a conventional speaker), but acts as a thermoacoustic device. As an alternating current is passed through the nanotube sheet, the temperature fluctuates. This rapid rise and fall in temperature causes rapid pressure changes in the air close to the film, which produces the sound. Because the sound isn’t produced by the vibration of the sheet, it can retain it’s flexibility and elasticity, and will produce sound even if a part of the sheet is torn or damaged.
This thin flexible and transparent sheets could be attached to the front of LCD screens to provide speaker systems for devices. More interestingly, they could also be incorporated into fabrics for clothing or bags. I will now resist making any comments about ‘loud shirts’. Check out the video below (it’s at about 1min15s in…)

Reference:  Nano letters DOI 10.1021/nl802750z (open access article yay!)

Best-selling author Michael Crichton passed away this week aged 66. Whether he always had the science right, or even plausible, Crichton caught the public imagination like very few other modern science-fiction writers.
He was responsible for one of the best-known pieces of fiction relating to nanotechnology, the 2002 novel Prey “which fuses together the lenses of science with science fiction in a story of nanobot swarms that are self-sustaining, self-reproducing, and deadly”. The idea of the grey-goo style nanobot swarms, while not exactly helpful for accurately describing the current direction of nanoscience research, at least introduced millions of people to the idea and scope of nanoscale structures.
For some more detailed analysis, check out last years publication of the article ‘Are we really the Prey? Nanotechnology as Science and Science Fiction’, written by the Monash Centre for regulatory studies in conjunction with NanoVic CEO Dr Peter Binks. Chris Phoenix from Nanotechnology Now also published this critique of Prey. But while many in the scientific establishment have criticized his work for creating a public fear and mistrust of technology, after selling 150 million copies of his books he must have tapped into something that resonated with his audience. And he could write a page-turning story.

The idea of small nanobots cruising through the human body, targeting diseases with special drug delivery is a little step closer. Reported in Technology Review, the Nanorobotics lab at the École Polytechnique de Montréal, in Canada have coupled nanobeads to bacteria which contain magnetic particles. Magnetotactic bacteria contain minute particles of magnetic material which they use to position and move themselves in response to a magnetic field. Most of these class of bacteria are sensitive to oxygen, and use this ability to navigate between oxygen-rich and oxygen-starved environments.
This property has been exploited to control the movement of the bacteria couples to the nanobeads in a microfluidic device. They have been directed through simulated humanblood vessels, where the bacteria/bead devices (dubbed ‘bacteria bots’) were able to be moved against the flow of red blood cells under the guidance of the MRI. (See video)

Move over Movember, it’s time for Nanovember!  While not quite as catchy (or hairy) as the moustache-led fun of Movember, the Albany College of Nanoscale Science is cashing in on the calendar inspired pun fun and launching a month of nanoscience related activities.  I guess it’s more catchy than truncated icosahedecember perhaps? 

More nanotechnology mixing with art in an installation called ‘Molecules that matter’ in the Frances Tang Young Teaching museum and art college in New York. The exhibition showcases ten molecules, each associated with a decade of the 20th century. Buckyballs get in there as the star molecule of the 1990s.

(Image courtesy Tang)

Earlier this year I mentioned how a fluke nano based microscopy image bagged a prize in the Materials Research Society ‘Science as art’ competition. This month, the winners of Nikons Small World competition for Best microscope images was announced, and nanotechnology again gets a look in the 2008 awards. Coming in second, behind a stunning photo of diatoms taken through polarized light, is a photo taken by Paul Marshall of Canada’s Institute for Microstructural Sciences. The image is a 30-times magnification of the growth of red-hot carbon nanotubes, a process which Marshall’s lab is trying to optimize.

The image, which I guess does resemble a Christmas bauble, was used as the image on the Christmas card that Marshall sent out to his students.
The images are worth a look through as they reveal a level of breathtaking beauty on a scale beyond the reach of the human eye.

(Image taken from Nikon Small World website, credit Paul Marshall, Canada)

One of the difficult parts of my job working in the science education field is the idea of getting across what scientists actually do in day to day life. How to get across an idea of what a career in research might look like. It’s something I encourage researchers to talk about when they visit schools, and by day to day life that of course means the bits that happen outside of the lab too. I think this is even more important for new fields like nanotechnology, where it’s very hard to describe what a ‘nanotechnologist’ might do on a day to day basis.

I love this which someone passed on to me a couple of weeks ago. It’s a project where year 7 students have been asked to draw and describe what they think a scientist looks like, and then after visiting Fermilab (a US particle physics research facility), they make another drawing and description.

My favourite description of what a scientist is really like was from Amanda, “. . . . anyone can be a scientist. I saw people walking around in sweatshirts and jeans. Who knows? Maybe I can be a scientist.

Cute.

A year ago, Peter Binks, Francesca Calati and I were in Canberra to celebrate Francesca’s success in winning the Prime Minister’s Prize for Excellence in Science Teaching in Secondary Schools. Since her win, there has been a lot of activity in nanotechnology education. Francesca, and her colleague Amanda Clarke, have covered a lot of ground this year, from Adelaide to Darwin to to Canberra and Brisbane, all over Victoria and across to New Zealand, providing Teacher Professional Development and guidance on implementing nanotechnology in the classroom. Francesca has moved to La Trobe University, where as a science outreach coordinator she runs activities and oversees chemistry and nanotechnology for a range of interested schools. We have also created AccessNano for the Australian Office of Nanotechnology, which stems from the work Francesca, Amanda and their colleagues did with SHINE at St Helena Secondary College. Wow!

Tomorrow Francesca and I will return to Canberra to celebrate a new secondary science winner. And we hope that thier success leads to as many opportunities and adventures.

Leigh Dayton has written a small piece in today’s Australian newspaper describing growing pressure within the Australian food industry to disclose the use of nano-ingredients on food packaging.  The story stems from a recent Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) call for public comment on draft amendments to a document outlining procedures companies must follow to have products approved for sale.

Click here to read a fact sheet on nanotechnology in food produced by FSANZ.

[photo thanks to the American Diabetes Association]