Nanotechnology News: July 2008

Legendary Rice professor retiring

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Robert Curl never had a 20-year plan, but his natural curiosity led the way to a Nobel Prize

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Robert Curl never sought the limelight that accompanied the Nobel Prize in Chemistry he won a dozen years ago.

In his quiet way, Curl simply went on teaching, thinking, experimenting and riding his bicycle to Rice University.

Now, after 50 years at Rice, Curl plans to retire Tuesday. With a hint of a smile, Curl, 74, says he doesn't want to turn into "one of these people who hangs on so long that they have become a blithering idiot."

Curl shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Rice's Rick Smalley and a British scientist, Harold Kroto. They discovered a unique form of carbon in which 60 atoms are clustered neatly into a tiny, soccer-shaped ball. They christened their finding a buckyball — or fullerene — after Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic designs the molecules resemble.

The discovery heralded the dawn of nanotechnology, the science of building very small materials with unique properties.

After winning the award, Smalley catapulted to fame, becoming an evangelizer for nanotechnology and bringing funding to Houston for further research. He died in 2005 of leukemia at age 62. Kroto used his fame to further his interest in creating science education programming.

Curl followed a quieter path.

"After winning a Nobel, you can either become a scientific pontificator, or you can have some idea for a new science project and you can use your newfound notoriety to get the resources to do it," Curl said. "Or you can say, 'Well, I enjoy what I was doing, and I want to keep doing that.' "

Throughout his life, Curl often has gone wherever his curiosity has led him.

Like many leading scientists of his age, Curl's passion for research dates to a childhood Christmas, when his parents bought him a chemistry set. Soon, the 9-year-old was mixing chemicals, making gunpowder and blowing things up.

In one memorable event, some nitric acid boiled over onto his mother's porcelain stove, eating away the fine finish. His mother never forgave him, he said, but Curl was hooked on chemistry.

"It was not scientific at all," he said, "but it was sure fun."

His parents were supportive of his interest. His father, Floyd, was a Methodist minister who moved every year or two, as was the church's custom at the time. The family wound up in San Antonio for Curl's high school years after his father earned a senior position in the Southwest Texas Conference.

As acting president of the first Board of Trustees for the Methodist Hospital there in 1955, Floyd Curl helped formulate the plan to open the new facility, which became the nucleus of San Antonio's medical center.

A lack of direction
The family lived on a tight budget, so Rice's no-tuition policy — a dictate of its original endowment from William Marsh Rice — proved irresistible to the young Curl. Rice University of 1950 was a vastly different place, with an administration consisting solely of a president, dean, registrar and bursar.

"I think that made it a little bit easier for the school to afford to have no tuition," Curl said.

Rice's governing board changed the policy of charging no tuition in 1965.

The young scientist liked chemistry, but he lacked direction after earning his bachelor's degree in 1954.

Curl considered graduate programs at Harvard University, the University of Wisconsin and the University of California, Berkeley. He applied to the latter first because its application lacked a question asked by the others, "What do you see yourself doing 20 years from now?" He didn't know, and before Curl got around to applying to Harvard, Berkeley had accepted him in its chemistry program.

Curl said he felt similarly listless after earning a doctorate at Berkeley and taking a postdoctoral position at Harvard.

"I was getting panicky, I must admit," he said. "When I look back, I'm kind of amazed at the way I just kind of wandered through life. This business about not being able to fill in a 20-year plan actually should have told me something."

Then Rice called him back to Texas.

A lucky turn
One of the school's chemistry professors, George Bird, was leaving for a job at Polaroid. Would Curl be interested? "You bet," he replied.

"It was really a beautiful thing to fall into," he said. "I was doing microwave spectroscopy, and I sort of liked it, but I can't claim to have had any brilliant ideas about what to work on. The guy that was leaving was working on problems that I found really interesting, and he had a working apparatus. He had a brilliant graduate student. It just solved all my problems."

The graduate student was James Kinsey, who eventually would become Curl's boss as dean of Rice's School of Natural Sciences. Like most people asked about Curl, Kinsey credits him with two qualities in particular.

"He's scary smart," Kinsey said. "But he is also an extraordinarily decent human being. A sweet person. What you see is what you get."

Rice's current president, David Leebron, echoes the sentiment: "On top of all the achievement, Bob is one of the kindest and most generous people I know."

Those qualities made Curl a good mentor. He gave brilliant and not-as-brilliant graduate students the same attention and respect, colleagues said.

Surrogate parent
Curl also became ingrained in the Rice culture. He has sat on nearly every imaginable committee, including chairing one that ended the abhorred practice of Saturday classes. He was a college master, meaning he lived on campus with his wife, Jonel, and was essentially a surrogate parent for a few hundred students.

All the while, he diligently worked at elucidating some of nature's most fundamental molecules.

"He has, more than anybody I know, followed his curiosity," Kinsey said.

Curiosity led Curl to a collaboration with Smalley, whom he describes as "by far the most talented constructor of scientific instrumentation I have ever known."

Smalley's machines excelled at studying clusters of tiny molecules, and together the pair were investigating semiconductors when Kroto approached them. He was interested in the properties of molecules found in the barren reaches of interstellar space.

Kroto wanted to investigate the nature of long chains of carbon atoms that astronomers had observed between stars. Were the carbon chains, he wondered, blown into space from stars similar to the sun when, as part of their life-cycle, they had expanded and then violently collapsed before dying?

'Totally unexpected'
Curl and Smalley believed they could approximate the conditions of dying stars, which are rich in carbon, by using lasers to blast a chunk of graphite. At the time, graphite and diamonds were the two known forms of carbon. The scientists hoped to create the long carbon chains seen in interstellar space.

Instead, when they pored over the collected data, they found a blip that turned out to be a spectacular, third form of carbon.

"Our buckyball discovery was a complete piece of serendipity and totally unexpected," Curl said.

"It's kind of embarrassing. Reporters asked us, 'Tell us how you made this great discovery.' Well, it was a stroke of luck. The only credit you can claim is not ignoring your stroke of luck."

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chron.com
eric.berger@chron.com

Red Pill 8 - "Biotechnology and nanotechnology: the hard cell"

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"… In a climate of declining public trust in both government and industry, new approaches to increase the public's technology I.Q. are needed — approaches that can bridge the credibility gap and scale-up rapidly to reach large segments of the population. An innovative word-of-mouth campaign could place nanotechnology into the world of everyday conversation, where messages are built on trust and understanding rather than hype and jargon."

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– David Rejeski, Director, Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, "Hey, Have You Heard About Nanotechnology? Improve Nanotech Awareness through A Word-of-Mouth Campaign" Nanotechology Now

According to David Rejeski from the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies, what the nanotechnology field needs to fill the credibility gab is a good old-fashioned, word-of mouth marketing campaign built on trust and education. He is, of course, a spokesperson for the industry, and we assume that he is touting the beneficial claims of nanotechnology — that is those applications of the technology that are designed to help fight disease, help in diagnostic work, and perhaps even clean beaches after an oil spill.

But, unfortunately for Mr. Rejeski it must be increasing hard to sell nanotechology and its twin sister, biotechnology, when articles like Ultramicro, nonlethal, and reversible: looking ahead to military biotechnology are so easily found in the public domain.

This article written by Chinese scientists Guo Ji-wei and Xue-sen Yang and published in the July-August, 2005 issue of Military Review explores the many multifaceted, pragmatic uses of biotechnology in future warfare. Here's an example of how these new emerging technologies in the hands of madmen can create Hieronymus Bosch-like nightmares:

"In the final analysis, war is simply human behavior that forces enemies to lose the power of resistance. Biotechnological weapons can cause destruction that is both more powerful and more civilized than that caused by conventional killing methods like gunpowder or nuclear weapons… A military attack, therefore, might wound an enemy's genes, proteins, cells, tissues, and organs, causing more damage than conventional weapons could. However, such devastating, nonlethal effects will require us to pacify the enemy through postwar reconstruction efforts and hatred control."

As far as warfare goes, using nano-bioweapons could be considered more humane than say dropping cluster bombs or phosphorus on Iraqi children or nuking entire cities. Biowarfare is much less messy — no splattered brain parts or entrails to pick up, no clean-up crews needed to hose the blood off the streets, no burning flesh to assault your olfactory sensibilities; it's all very clean, precise and "civilized." All you need is a firm committed group of sociopaths willing to ensure their survival by targeting certain evildoers' genotypes or cells for death or disability.

But, let's not stop here as Guo Ji-wei and Xue-sen Yang are creative geniuses, so you won't want to miss these fanciful fantasies under "Possible Military Uses of Biotechnology":

"From the perspective of military medicine, proteomics, which examines the structure-function relationship at the molecular level, is a bridge between military goals and practical technologies. With the development of proteomics, we can discover and interpret the key proteins in any single human physiological function and the multiple physiological functions any single protein possesses. All of this will provide accurate models for military attack and make it possible to develop small-scale or ultramicro-scale destructive weapons."

And here they give us an example of what they mean by ultramicro-scale destructive weapons:

"… a microbullet out of a 1-[micro]m tungsten or gold ion, on whose surface plasmid DNA or naked DNA could be precipitated, and deliver the bullet via a gunpowder explosion, electron transmission, or high-pressured gas to penetrate the body surface. (10) We could then release DNA molecules to integrate with the host's cells through blood circulation and cause disease or injury by controlling genes."

Lovely. And, how about death and disease by stealth:

"Modern biotechnology makes it possible to combine two or more pathogenic genes and place them inside a susceptible living body to create a multiple-vulnerating effect. In addition, delaying the time required for a causative agent to take effect is possible by using a living body with a relatively longer incubation period or a pathogenic living body that produces no symptoms when inserted into the human body."

What's particularly interesting is that this article is listed under the U.S. Army's Professional Writings Collection and Guo Ji-wei is Director of the Department of Medical Affairs, Southwest Hospital, Chongqing in the People's Republic of China. Does anyone find it odd the U.S Army CGSC is copywriting work from a director of medical affairs from the People's Republic of China?

What's clear is that there is lack of condemnation for this kind of hypothetical warfare on the Army's website, thereby giving the impression that these programs are acceptable to some. And, according to international law professor and bioweapons expert, Francis Boyle, these are exactly the kinds of programs that the DoD would be working on today as they've gotten the nod, and the funding, by the neo-con Bush administration.

"…the Pentagon 'is now gearing up to fight and "win" biological warfare' pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted 'without public knowledge and review' in 2002.

For fiscal years 2001-2004, the federal government funded $14.5 billion 'for ostensibly 'civilian' biowarfare-related work alone,' a 'truly staggering' sum, Boyle wrote.

Another $5.6 billion was voted for 'the deceptively-named 'Project BioShield,' under which Homeland Security is stockpiling vaccines and drugs to fight anthrax, smallpox and other bioterror agents, wrote Boyle. Protection of the civilian population is, he said, 'one of the fundamental requirements for effectively waging biowarfare.' "

–Bush "Developing Illegal Bioterror Weapons" for Offensive Use

Now that we know that these terrible programs are being contemplated and developed by the dark side of humanity, we should consider Mr. Rejeski marketing campaign again. He is right about one thing: we do need an innovative word-of-mouth campaign to inform the public about the threats of nanotechnology and biotechnology.

Pandora's box is open and there is no way to get the lid back on it except by calling for a general moratorium on nanotechnology and biotechnology research and development. Today many scientists familiar with the technology are doing just that (see Size Matters! The Case for a Global Moratorium ).

Let's start our own innovative, word-of-mouth marketing campaign in which we call out the dangers of nanotechnology and biotechnology and call for a moratorium on research and development. All you have to do is email this article to ten of your friends and ask them to forward it to ten more of their friends, and so on and so on. And, the best thing about this, it's viral campaign you can feel good about.

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digitizedrevolution.wordpress.com

NANOTECHNOLOGY USED AS A WEAPON TO FIGHT CANCER

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NEW ORLEANS—June 29, 2008—A novel technique for reducing tumors in rats-using nano-sized, oil-based emulsions may be the latest weapon in fighting cancer.

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The technique, part of the burgeoning field of nutraceuticals, involves creating nanoemulsions, or nano-sized capsules made from oil and water. The emulsions, which are so small they are measured in nanometers—or 1/100 of a meter—are then filled with various antioxidants or anti-cancer fighting compounds, and tests show they can reduce tumors in rats.

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Lowell injected rats with neuroblastoma, so they would develop tumors, and then treated them with nanoemulsions containing antioxidants. They found that while the rats fed in the control group continued to develop tumors, the growth rate for those fed antioxidants was actually negative 65 percent, meaning the tumors actually shrank.

"They had about 70 percent total tumor regression," said Professor Robert Nicolosi, director of UMass Lowell's Center for Health and Disease Research.

When researchers exposed melanoma cancer cells to a nanoemulsion containing curcumin, an anti-cancer compound found in turmeric, cancer cell proliferation was greatly reduced, Nicolosi said. And when they used a nanoemulsion containing tamoxifen, a drug used to fight breast cancer, they just about eliminated the ability of the cells to proliferate—at least in a cell culture, Nicolosi said. Nanoemulsion delivery systems have been shown to increase the bioavailablity and efficacy of certain drugs. The advantage, particularly for some of the toxic compounds used in fighting cancer, is that less of that compound is needed to achieve the same effect. That means the patient would suffer fewer damaging side effects.

"There's no question we're reducing the toxicity when we use 10 to 20 times less," Nicolosi said.
Umass has been using Microfluidizer materials processing equipment to develop the nutraceutical products. The equipment has helped standardize the size of the nanoemulsions, making them more commercially viable. Prior to the Microfluidizer, nanoemulsions came out in varying sizes, making them less effective and less likely to gain approval by the US Food and Drug Administration, according to Scott McMeil, director of the Nanotechnology Characterization Laboratory at SAIC-Frederick, Inc.

"Nanoemulsions have been around for several years, but they weren't very stable. But with a Microfluidizer, it looks like it's overcoming the stability issue," McNeil said.

McNeil, whose company is subcontracted by the National Cancer Institute, said the FDA requires that a compound is stable before it will grant its seal of approval. Before researchers began using the Microfluidizer, the size of the various nanoemulsions might vary from five nanometers to five microns, in one solution, making the solution less stable.

"A company would not move forward with something that was that high risk," McNeil said. "The Microfluidizer has opened up new opportunities, such as nanoemulsions."

In order to create the nanoemulsion, scientists mix water, an emulsifier like lecithin, and an antioxidant or anti-cancer fighting compound, and then pour it into a Microfluidizer processor. The processor then compresses the solution and drives it through tiny microchannels, and then in a reaction chamber, it splits the solution into two streams, which collide with each other at extremely high speeds. The collision creates a nanoemulsion that has a long shelf life.

Researchers, such as UMass are also using the Microfluidizer processors to create foods, beverages, and nutritional supplements that can reduce inflammation or inhibit the intestines ability to absorb cholesterol, thus reducing blood cholesterol levels as well as the risk of heart disease.

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Contacts:
Robert Nicolosi, UMass/Lowell, 978-934-4501
Scott McNeil, SAIC-Frederick Inc., 301-846-6939

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Scientists integrate living brain cells into organic semiconductors

Bionics - a word formed from biology and electronics - has become a quickly expanding research field, exploring ways and materials to bridge the interface between electronics and biology. Basically, there are three levels of biocommunications where electronics and biology could interface: molecular, cellular and skeletal. For any implanted bionic material it is the initial interactions at the biomolecular level that will determine longer term performance. While bionics is often associated with skeletal level enhancements, electronic communication with living cells is of interest with a view to improving the results of tissue engineering or the performance of implants such as bionic ears or eyes. Researchers have worked for more than 20 years on interfacing neurons and silicon devices. Analysis of the electro-physiological activity of neurons could one day enable scientists to develop artificial prostheses for bypassing injured zones and restore brain functionality, or to realize neuro-diagnostic tools for monitoring the reaction of biological neurons to selected chemical species or newly developed drugs. Making another step in this direction, researchers in Europe have now demonstrated the possibility of integrating living neural cells and organic semiconductor thin-films made of a few monolayers of pentacene.

Nanotechnology News

Thursday, July 3, 2008

15 Ways Nanotechnology is Making Life Better Today

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Wednesday, July 2, 2008

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Red Pill 8 - "Biotechnology and nanotechnology: the hard cell"

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NANOTECHNOLOGY USED AS A WEAPON TO FIGHT CANCER

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Scientists integrate living brain cells into organic semiconductors

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