The Great Debate

It appeared in my e-mail in-box innocuously enough.  In the daily media update from the American Chemical Society, there was a notice that the award-winning high school chemistry magazine ChemMatters had created its first video podcast.  This video appears as part of the Bytesize Science programs and is titled "Nanotechnology's Big Impact".  I watched the 7 minute video and was surprised that the applications of nanotechnology highlighted early on were about the creation of autonomous nanobots for medical uses to combat microbial infections from a sore throat to a cut on your toe.  This was followed by a description of "self-assembly" that veered from the typical molecular description of interaction driven monolayer formation to a more sci-fi version (straight out of Michael Crichton's novel "Prey") of self-reproducing "nanomachines".

This concept brought to mind something I have been thinking about recently -- the 2003 "debate" between Eric Drexler, formerly of the Foresight Institute, and the late Rick Smalley, 1996 Nobel Laureate in chemistry and professor at Rice University.  In the "Point-Counterpoint" originally published in Chemical and Engineering News (Dec. 1, 2003), these two great thinkers sparred over the future of nanotechnology and how best to inspire the public as to its benefits, while not overly hyping both the promises and the uncertainties.  Drexler is convinced that molecular assemblers will be able to create an infinite variety of nanomachines by controlled placement of atoms using specific chemical reactions.  At the same time, Drexler is the author of the influential nanotechnology text "Engines of Creation" (1986) which postulates that such machines have the potential to drastically alter the earth and life on it, and in fact coined the term “gray goo”.  Smalley counters with chemical logic that argues against such assembly, and ends the debate by relating the already developing apprehension among middle and high school students that nanobots are a realistic threat and that fear-mongering of this sort is an impediment to progress.  As impassioned as the argument was in writing, I don't think either man was convinced by the words of his opponent.

The fear of run-away nanobots, while extreme, is just one of the reasons why so much attention has been paid to creating a nano-literate public (see many of my earlier posts), proceeding with openness about research results, and addressing the societal and ethical impacts (SEI) of a nano-enabled world.  Many have expressed the notion that there would be a considerable loss to science and society if nanotechnology becomes the next genetically modified organisms (GMO), referring to the technology that has been stifled due to public misunderstanding and fear.  On the other hand, a recent editorial in Nature Nanotechnology ("Keeping the public under the microscope", Vol. 4, No. 11, November 2009) relates that while only 31% of survey respondents have heard about nanotechnology (about the same as 5 years earlier), there is little anxiety among the uninformed and that "twice as many people think that the benefits will outweigh the risks" and “public attitudes…remain open to the guidance of sound science.”

Perhaps Rick Smalley won that debate after all.

National Chemistry Week

Happy National Chemistry Week!  NCW, as it is affectionately known, is an annual community-based program of the American Chemical Society (ACS) that seeks to communicate the importance of chemistry and the role that chemists play in improving our quality of life.  Every year the ACS chooses a new theme for NCW, and since this year marks the 140th anniversary of Mendeleev’s Periodic Table, the theme for 2009 is “Chemistry – It’s Elemental!” 

The Georgia local section of the ACS is sponsoring and promoting many NCW activities throughout Metro Atlanta this week, and I was able to contribute to two of them.  On Tuesday night, a small but enthusiastic crowd gathered at the Fernbank Science Center for a Science Café entitled “Nanotechnology: It’s Bigger than You Think,” which I facilitated together with Joyce Palmer.  The discussion was based upon the three-part series “Power of Small”, which ran on PBS last year.  Each episode is a panel discussion (including some luminaries of the nano-world such as George Whitesides and Andrew Maynard, among others) where scenarios about the applications of nanotechnology and its impact on society are considered.  Joyce and I used video segments along with targeted questions to engage the audience in a spirited conversation about nanotechnology and issues related to privacy, health and medical care, and the environment.  I encourage everyone to visit the “Power of Small” website, where you can watch the video clips and download related material.

On Wednesday, I joined several chemists in a unique media experiment at Georgia Tech.  Pete Ludovice and Bill Hunt of the Georgia Tech College of Engineering host a weekly radio show on WREK (91.1 FM) titled INSIDE THE BLACK BOX, or as they like to call it "science, only funnier."  In honor of NCW, we assembled a panel of “chemistry geeks” to talk about the work that we do. The other panelists were David Sherrill, Christine Payne, and Facundo Fernandez from the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry & Biochemistry, and Vernita Lockhart from The Coca-Cola Company.  The media experiment was that Warren Matthews (GA Tech OIT) arranged a live, video teleconference with chemistry students at Apalachee H.S. in Barrow County, GA and North Hall H.S. in Hall County, GA.  The students posed many excellent questions, including the benefits and risks of drinking Coke beverages to my friend Vernita, and we were all asked to reminisce about the “aha moment” in our lives when we realized that science was our calling.

In honor of the NCW theme, here is a link to “The Elements” sung by Tom Lehrer (Lyrics by Dmitri Mendeleev, Music by Gilbert & Sullivan).

From Curiosity to Commodity

Is it me, or is the pace of scientific research and technological advancement occurring at an ever increasing rate?  Although I am not a science historian, I think if you look at previous technological revolutions, you usually find an initial discovery or set of discoveries that can take decades or centuries to find their way into applications and common usage (See my earlier post about the TV series “Connections”).  Now the geometric nature of Moore’s Law seems to have taken over the entire (nano)technology landscape.

It seems like only a few years ago that no one but a few insiders had heard of graphene, the single layer carbon sheet with interesting electrical, mechanical, and thermal properties.  Now, a recent article in Nature Nanotechnology (Vol. 4, pp. 612-514) entitled "Selling graphene by the ton" describes the commoditization of this unique material.  The starting material, graphite, is readily and cheaply available, and the processing to extract the graphene platelets is relatively simple and inexpensive.  Associate Editor Michael Segal relates that three U.S. start-up companies (Vorbeck Materials, Angstron Materials, and XG Sciences) are already producing more than 15 tons/year for use in composite materials and electrodes.  It is expected that this production will exceed 200 tons in a few years.  Although this seems like a lot to you and me, apparently this is still small potatoes to the chemical industry giants (Dow, 3M, BASF and DuPont) who have reservations about the economic benefits.  The short article also describes the dispute between the research and industry communities over the definition of graphene, whether it constitutes only a single carbon sheet or a multilayer.

Of course, once a technology becomes a business it has to have its own trade press.  Okay, Graphene Times is not really a newspaper or magazine, but rather a website created by Mike Sprinkle, a Georgia Tech physics grad student in Walt de Heer’s lab.  This website compiles (similar to Google Reader) the continuing accumulation of research papers and other news about graphene.  If you want to learn about the latest findings hot off the peer-reviewed press or see where commercialization of this novel material is heading, this is a good place to start.

And the Envelope Please…

Okay, so it wasn’t the Academy Awards. Still it was a testament to our past performance and a chance to raise public awareness of the Georgia Tech Nanotechnology Research Center when we were nominated for the TechAmerica Spirit of Endeavor Award for “Leadership in Technology Education”. According to the TechAmerica website, the “Spirit of Endeavor Awards are open to the entire technology industry and honor those people and companies based in [the south] who have had significant accomplishments within the technology industry.”

The nomination for this award came by way of Habif, Arogeti, and Wynne, LLP (HAW), an Atlanta firm of certified public accountants and business advisors that is one of the sponsors of the awards program. I recently gave a presentation on the NRC to their Technology and Manufacturing groups, and this initiated a request for the nomination materials, which described our wide variety of education activities in training researchers and educating the general public about nanotechnology. (E-mail me if you would like a copy.)

The awards program was held on Sept. 17 at the Fox Theatre, with Nancy Healy and Joyce Palmer attending and graciously hosted by Susan O’Dwyer and Mitchell Kopelman from HAW. When the 9 nominees for this category were narrowed to 4 finalists, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the NRC was among them. While we did not win the award, at least Kanye West did not interrupt any acceptance speech.

Thanks again to HAW and TechAmerica and kudos to Nancy, Joyce and the rest of the NRC.

What Molecules Look Like

I know that not everyone will find this Science paper [Gross et al. (2009) “The Chemical Structure of a Molecule Resolved by Atomic Force Microscopy”, 325, 1110-1114] as amazing as I do.  But I am a chemist, and when someone shows that they can actually visualize all of the atoms and bonds in a single molecule, I take notice.  Chemists have used a variety of analytical and spectroscopic methods, such as NMR, X-ray diffraction, and mass spec, combined with indirect analysis of chemical reactions, bond theory, and quantum mechanics to deduce the structures of molecules.  We have come a long way technologically since the days of Kekule, who, so the legend goes, deduced the structure of benzene by dreaming of a snake swallowing its own tail.  Still, nobody had actually seen a complete molecule, until now.  We can now imagine what von Leeuenhoek felt when he trained his microscope on the “animalcules” on a sample of pond water for the first time.

If you don’t wish to read the original paper, at least take a look at this feature article about the research in Chemical and Engineering News.  This link also includes a great video that describes the research and its implications.

Become an NRC Fan on Facebook

If you look at the top right side of this page, you will notice a new button to become a fan of the Georgia Tech Nanotechnology Research Center Facebook page.  We will use this social media tool to provide an interactive forum for users, friends, staff, and other interested parties of the NRC.  Feel free to post photos, events, links, and other information that you think NRC fans might find useful.

At the same time, I want to give credit to the Mashable website posting 10 Ways Universities Share Information Using Social Media which suggested that Facebook can provide a valuable tool for marketing and public relations.  This posting has some interesting concepts that other universities are using to connect constituents and provide information.

Connections: From iTunes to NanoSlang

I used to love watching the PBS series “Connections” hosted by James Burke. Burke’s thesis was that scientific discovery and technology development often do not follow a straight line trajectory, but rather depend upon complex relationships and serendipity. In one memorable episode he explained how Napoleon’s need for food storage led to manned space travel; in another he illustrated how standardizing metals in ancient coins inevitably resulted in the atomic bomb.

In this post, I present my less grand version of this, a series of nanoconnections, and along the way alert you to some interesting nanotechnology resources:

1. I began by listening to one in a series of lectures on nanomanufacturing by A.J. Hart (University of Michigan) which I downloaded from iTunesU, a subset of the famous music site, which has scholarly material hosted by a variety of academic institutions around the world. Although Georgia Tech is not among them, there you can find lectures, seminars, and videos on a wide variety of topics. Resource #1

2. During his lecture on electrical and optical properties of nanomaterials, Hart reminded the class that a good way to remain informed is to subscribe to news sites and journal contents via an RSS aggregator such as Google Reader. This is more convenient than receiving a barrage of individual emails, and any website can be added to the subscription list, even the one you are reading right now. Shameless plug for Resource #2.

3. Following Hart’s advice, I added some sites to my Google Reader, including the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer. This site is a compilation of all things related to the diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer diseases that are located at the intersection of nanoscale science and engineering. Resource #3

4. Now stay with me as things take a turn: I noticed that seven of the eight articles that came from the NCI in August included the term or prefix “nano” in their titles. I could not ignore the use of nanobees, nanoparticle (3 times), nanotubes, nanoflares, and nanotags.

5. I found this curious and interesting, how nano had come to be used as more than a metric prefix meaning one-billionth, so I decided to check an online dictionary to see how many other nano-prefixed words are recognized. At dictionary.com, there were 36 words that included a nano prefix, and only 5 of these were related to a conventional metric unit (curie, gram, liter, meter, second).

6. This was when I discovered that there is nanoslang-- words that have been created using the nano prefix to connote smallness, not for scientific usage but in humorous or unusual ways. My two favorites were found in the online Urban Dictionary:

nanoEinstein: One devoid of general cultural knowledge but possessing extensive learning in an incredibly microscopic field of study.

nanonap: An unintentional, seconds-long nap that you take most often in class or a really boring meeting. So short that usually nobody but you notices.

I imagine that one might take a nanonap while listening to the droning on of a nanoEinstein. In any case, if the measure of a concept’s acceptance into the popular culture is its appearance in the lingo used by the youth of that generation, then all this is good news for the nanologists (a person who studies the infinitesimally small) among us.