2020 Science

Carbon nanotubes as a potent cancer promoter – new data from NIOSH

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 13:19:51 +0000

On Monday, the National Institute for Occupational Safety released new data on the potential role multi-walled carbon nanotubes play as a cancer-promoter – a substance that promotes the development of cancer in the presence of a carcinogen. In the study, mice were injected with methylcholanthrene – a cancer initiating agent – and subsequently exposed to airborne multi-walled carbon nanotubes. Compared to a control group, the methylcholanthrene and carbon nanotube-exposed mice were significantly more likely to develop tumors than a control group, developed more tumors, and developed larger tumors. The study provides a strong indication that this particular form of carbon nanotube material can synergistically increase the likelihood and severity of cancer in the presence of a carcinogen.

The NIOSH research was one of a number of presentations on carbon nanotube safety at this year’s Society of Toxicology meeting. The results won’t appear in the peer review literature for some time yet, and so it is premature to draw too many conclusions. However, there is a growing body of research indicating that some forms of carbon nanotubes can present a significant health hazard if used inappropriately.

Unfortunately, there is still considerable uncertainty over which of the many attributes of different carbon nanotubes and nanotube materials are associated with their toxicity, release routes leading to significant exposure, and what constitutes a significant exposure. These are all areas of extremely high research priority if carbon nanotube material is to be produced, used and disposed of/recycled responsibly.

The carbon nanotubes in this study were inhaled multi-walled carbon nanotubes with a predominantly long, straight fiber-like morphology. Mice were exposed at a level of 5 mg/m3 for 5 hours per day, over a 15 day period. From the NIOSH post:

Mice receiving both the initiator chemical plus exposure to MWCNT were significantly more likely to develop tumors (90% incidence) and have more tumors (an average of 3.3 tumors/mouse lung) than mice receiving the initiator chemical alone (50% of mice developing tumors with an average of 1.4 tumors/lung). Additionally, mice exposed to MWCNT and to MWCNT plus the initiator chemical had larger tumors than the respective control groups. The number of tumors per animal exposed to MWCNT alone was not significantly elevated compared with the number per animal in the controls. These results indicate that MWCNT can increase the risk of cancer in mice exposed to a known carcinogen. The study does not suggest that MWCNTs alone cause cancer in mice.

For further background insight into the complexities of interpreting carbon nanotube toxicity with respect to nanotube exposure and physicochemical characteristics, check out this week’s Risk Bites video:

Additional resources:

NIOSH (2013) New Findings on Lung Tumor Formation in Laboratory Mice Exposed to Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes.

Wikipedia: What are carbon nanotubes used for?

Donaldson et al. (2006) Carbon Nanotubes: A Review of Their Properties in Relation to
Pulmonary Toxicology and Workplace Safety. Toxicol. Sci. 92 (1): 5-22. [Free download]

Poland et al. (2008) “Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study” Nature Nanotechnology 3, 423 – 428

NIOSH (2010) Occupational Exposure to Carbon Nanotubes and Nanofibers (Draft)

Top 10 Most Promising Technology Trends 2013, from the World Economic Forum

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 11:45:53 +0000

The World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technology trends. Based on expert assessment from council members and others, the list provides insight into technologies that have the potential to have a significant economic and social impact in the near to mid term.

This year’s list includes:

Source: World Economic Forum

OnLine Electric Vehicles (OLEV)

Already widely used to exchange digital information, wireless technology can now also deliver electric power to moving vehicles. In next-generation electric cars, pick-up coil sets under the vehicle floor receive power remotely via an electromagnetic field broadcast from cables installed under the road surface. The current also charges an onboard battery used to power the vehicle when it is out of range. As electricity is supplied externally, these vehicles require only a fifth the battery capacity of a standard electric car, and can achieve transmission efficiencies of over 80 percent. Online electric vehicles are currently undergoing road tests in Seoul, South Korea.

3-D printing and remote manufacturing

Three-dimensional printing allows the creation of solid structures from a digital computer file, potentially revolutionising the economics of manufacturing if objects can be printed remotely in the home or office rather than requiring time and energy for transportation. The process involves layers of material being deposited on top of each other in order to create free-standing structures from the bottom up. Blueprints from computer-aided design are sliced into cross-section for print templates, allowing virtually-created objects to be used as models for ‘hard copies’ made from plastics, metal alloys or other materials.

Self-healing materials

One of the defining characteristics of living organisms is the inherent ability to repair physical damage done to them. A growing trend in biomimicry is the creation of non-living structural materials that also have the capacity to heal themselves when cut, torn or cracked. Self-healing materials which can repair damage without external human intervention could give manufactured goods longer lifetimes and reduce the demand for raw materials, as well as improving the inherent safety of structural materials used in construction or to form the bodies of aircraft.

Energy-efficient water purification

Water scarcity is a worsening ecological problem in many parts of the world due to competing demands from agriculture, cities and other human uses. Where freshwater systems are over-used or exhausted, desalination from the sea offers near-unlimited water but at the expense of considerable use of energy – mostly from fossil fuels – to drive evaporation or reverse osmosis systems. Emerging technologies offer the potential for significantly higher energy efficiency in desalination or purification of wastewater, potentially reducing energy consumption by 50 percent or more. Techniques such as forward osmosis can additionally improve efficiency by utilising low-grade heat from thermal power production or renewable heat produced by solar-thermal geothermal installations.

Carbon dioxide (CO₂) conversion and use

Long-promised technologies for the capture and underground sequestration of carbon dioxide have yet to be proven commercially viable, even at the scale of a single large power station. New technologies that convert the unwanted CO2 into saleable goods can potentially address both the economic and energetic shortcomings of conventional CCS strategies. One of the most promising approaches uses biologically-engineered photosynthetic bacteria to turn waste CO2 into liquid fuels or chemicals, in low-cost, modular solar converter systems. Whilst only operational today at the acre scale, individual systems are expected to reach hundreds of acres within as little as two years. Being 10 to 100 times as productive per unit of land area, these systems address one of the main environmental constraints on biofuels from agricultural or algal feedstock, and could supply lower carbon fuels for automobiles, aviation or other large-scale liquid fuel users.

Enhanced nutrition to drive health at the molecular level

Even in developed countries millions of people suffer from malnutrition due to nutrient deficiencies in their diets. Efforts to improve the situation by changing diets have met with limited success. Now modern genomic techniques have been applied to determine at the gene sequence level the vast number of naturally-consumed proteins which are important in the human diet. The proteins identified may have advantages over standard protein supplements in that they can supply a greater percentage of essential amino acids, and have improved solubility, taste, texture and nutritional characteristics. The large-scale production of pure human dietary proteins based on the application of biotechnology to molecular nutrition can deliver health benefits such as in muscle development, managing diabetes or reducing obesity.

Remote sensing

The increasingly widespread use of sensors that allow often passive responses to external stimulae will continue to change the way we respond to the environment, particularly in the area of health. Examples include sensors that continually monitor bodily function – such as heart rate, blood oxygen and blood sugar levels – and if necessary trigger a medical response such as insulin provision. Advances rely on wireless communication between devices, low power sensing technologies and, sometimes, active energy harvesting. Other examples include vehicle-to-vehicle sensing for improved safety on the road.

Precise drug delivery through nanoscale engineering

Pharmaceuticals which can be precisely delivered at the molecular level within or around the cell offer unprecedented opportunities for more effectively treatments while reducing unwanted side effects. Targeted nanoparticles that adhere to diseased tissue allow for the micro-scale delivery of potent therapeutic compounds while minimizing their impact on healthy tissue, and are now advancing in medical trials. After almost a decade of research, these new approaches are now finally showing signs of clinical utility, through increasing the local concentration and exposure time of the required drug and thereby increasing its effectiveness. As well as improving the effects of current drugs, these advances in nanomedicine promise to rescue other drugs, which would otherwise be rejected due to their dose-limiting toxicity.

Organic electronics and photovoltaics

Organic electronics – a type of printed electronics – is the use of organic materials such as polymers to create electronic circuits and devices. In contrast to traditional (silicon based) semiconductors that are fabricated with expensive photolithographic techniques, organic electronics can be printed using low-cost, scalable processes such as ink jet printing- making them extremely cheap compared with traditional electronics devices, both in terms of the cost per device and the capital equipment required to produce them. While organic electronics are currently unlikely to compete with silicon in terms of speed and density, they have the potential to provide a significant edge in terms of cost and versatility. The cost implications of printed mass-produced solar photovoltaic collectors for example could accelerate the transition to renewable energy.

Fourth-generation reactors and nuclear waste recycling

Current once-through nuclear power reactors only utilise 1% of the potential energy available in uranium, leaving the rest radioactively contaminated as nuclear ‘waste’. Whilst the technical challenge of geological disposal is manageable, the political challenge of nuclear waste seriously limits the appeal of this zero-carbon and highly scaleable energy technology. Spent-fuel recycling and breeding uranium-238 into new fissile material – known as ‘Nuclear 2.0’ – would extend already-mined uranium resources for centuries while dramatically reducing the volume and long-term toxicity of wastes, whose radioactivity will drop below the level of the original uranium ore on a timescale of centuries rather millennia. This makes geological disposal much less of a challenge (and arguably even unnecessary) and nuclear waste a minor environmental issue compared to hazardous wastes produced by other industries. Fourth-generation technologies, including liquid metal-cooled fast reactors, are now being deployed in several countries and are offered by established nuclear engineering companies.

Links:

Top 10 Emerging Technology Trends for 2013 infographic

World Economic Forum: The Top 10 Emerging Technology Trends for 2013

Washington Post: Top 10 Emerging Technologies for 2013

At the frontiers of the science of health risk – five areas to watch

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 23:00:43 +0000

Cross-posted from Risk Sense

This week’s Risk Bites video takes a roller-coaster ride through some of the hottest topics in risk science.

Admittedly this is a somewhat personal list, and rather constrained by being compressed into a two and a half minute video for a broad audience. But it does touch on some of the more exciting frontier areas in reducing health risk and improving well-being through research and its application.

Here are the five topics that ended up being highlighted:

BIG DATA

Click to watch segment

Despite pockets of cynicism over the hype surrounding “big data”, the generation and innovative use of massive amounts of data are transforming how health risks are identified and addressed. With new approaches to data curation, correlation, manipulation and visualization, seemingly disconnected and impenetrable datasets are becoming increasingly valuable tools for shedding new insights into what might cause harm, and how to avoid or reduce it. This is a trend that has been growing for some years, but is now rapidly gaining momentum.

Just four examples of how “big data” is already pushing the boundaries of risk science include:

High throughput toxicity screening, where rapid, multiple toxicity assays are changing how the potential hazards of new and existing substances are evaluated;
“Omics”, where genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, exposomics and similar fields are shedding new light on the complex biology at the human-environment interface and how this impacts on health and well-being;
Risk prediction through the integrated analysis of related datasets; and
Designing new chemicals, materials and products to be as safe as possible, by using sophisticated risk data analysis to push risk management up the innovation pipeline.

CLOUD HEALTH, or C-HEALTH

Click to watch segment

Hot on the tails of mobile-health, the convergence of small inexpensive sensors, widespread use of smart phones and cloud computing, is poised to revolutionize how risk-relevant data is collected, processed and used to make decisions. Sensors already built into smart phones are already being used to collect basic information on environmental factors that could impact on health – and increasingly sophisticated add-on sensors are becoming more and more available. On their own, these data aren’t that valuable. But with cloud computing it is becoming possible to process and analyze risk-related data from thousands or millions of users – and then provide contributors with personal, near real-time information on potential risks and avoidance strategies. We’re not there yet – but C-Health is on the way!

RESPONSIBLE INNOVATION

Click to watch segment

The idea of responsible innovation has been around for some time. The idea is to reduce the potential for future adverse health and environmental impacts by integrating risk management and avoidance strategies into the technology innovation process. And with new technologies emerging at an increasing rate, the social and economic importance of responsible innovation has never been greater. In fields ranging from advanced manufacturing, sophisticated materials and synthetic biology, to 3D printing and remote charging, there is an increasing push to ensure that technological development is informed by the science of risk. And it isn’t only to ensure actual risks are avoided – societal and economic success through responsible innovation also depends on addressing perceived risks.

“HEADOLOGY”

Click to watch segment

The psychology and sociology of how individuals and groups make risk-relevant decisions, and the subsequent consequences of these decisions, is a critical component of the science of risk. Just because it is social science rather than natural science does not diminish its importance. In fact, without a sophisticated understanding of how empirical data on hazard, exposure and risk translate into human understanding and action, risk assessment and the science behind it is pretty worthless. But why call this frontier “headology” – which is a made-up word from satirical author Terry Pratchett? Apart from being a little tongue in cheek, I wanted to get away from some of the baggage associated with terms like “risk communication” and “social science”. But whatever you call it, in today’s increasingly connected world, understanding the human element linking data and action on risk is becoming increasingly important.

COMPLEX INTERACTIONS

Click to watch segment

This is a bit of a catch-all, but as the “simpler” challenges associated with health risks are resolved (and I use the word “simple” with caution) we are being faced with an ever-growing array of more complex challenges. These include:

Exploring and understanding the importance of non-linearity in dose-response relationships – especially at low doses;
Getting a better handle on the health-relevance of low level exposures to some substances – especially over long time periods;
Better understanding the science behind exposure to synthetic chemicals with hormone-like properties; and
Understanding that nature and significance of epigenetic interactions – both within a generation and across generations.

These and similar areas arise from complex interactions between our bodies and the environment we live in – and create for ourselves. The list could be a lot longer, but the bottom line is that some of the knottiest and most significant challenges in risk science involve understanding the positive and adverse impacts of interactions that are not yet well understood.

There are other areas that could have easily made this list – and in all cases these are areas that will continue to remain important well beyond 2013. So feel free to expand on the list in the comments below. And have a great 2013!

On the benefits of wearing a hat while dancing naked, and other insights into the science of risk

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 23 Dec 2012 21:44:35 +0000

Risk Bites – my new foray into the world of YouTube informal education – was officially launched a few weeks ago (although the transition from “unofficial” to “official” simply meant posting new videos more regularly!). The channel is an experiment in overcoming the tedium and seeming irrelevance of much academic online content by unbundling the things that I research and teach and talking about the interesting stuff in an engaging and accessible way.

Is it working? It’s too early to say yet. I’m getting good feedback from my peers. But I have yet to crack how to get a much wider pool of eyeballs onto the videos (any offers of publicity here gratefully received – the url is http://youtube.com/riskbites – just in case you need it!). What I’m really looking for is a growing number of subscribers and viewers who are entertained and informed by the videos.

That said, I’m learning a lot from the experience. The workflow is admittedly crude (idea, script, voice-over, storyboard, film, edit, post – all fit into an already packed schedule). But that in turn means that the videos can be nearly as responsive as writing a blog post – as last week’s response to the Sandy Hook shootings showed. In fact, the whole feel of the exercise is very much like the early days of writing posts for 2020 Science.

: Filming Risk Bites (click the image to see the video)

The big difference though is the challenge of taking my work on risk and evidence-informed decision-making and dividing it into very short pieces that create a coherent narrative. A 1 – 2 minute video allows for between 200 – 400 words, which isn’t a whole lot to handle the intricacies of the science of human health risk. Even seemingly basic concepts like dose-response need a surprising amount of groundwork. But the beauty of a series of videos like this is that simple self-contained “bites” can be combined to develop a much more complex bigger picture over time. It’s more like having a conversation with your viewers – albeit a rather drawn out one – than hitting them with the full weight of risk science all at once (intellectually satisfying to the lecturer, but terrifying for everyone else!).

Brave new territory for me. But quite exhilarating. And a lot of fun!

All I need now is as many subscribers as I can scarf up.

COP18 Doha, Qatar: A positive view point from low on the totem pole

Candace Rowell — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:00:55 +0000

A guest post by Candace Rowell MPH. Candace is an alum of the University of Michigan School of Public Health Department of Environmental Health Sciences, and a former contributor to Mind The Science Gap. She is currently a research associated with the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute in Doha, Qatar.

The traffic in Doha is horrendous. Ask anyone who lives here. It might take you 45 minutes to commute a mere 15 km. The summers are brutal – the temperature bounces around the 50⁰C mark and the humidity threatens to drown you on the doorstep.

Yes, this is Doha; this is a landscape of harsh arid conditions and congested development. But this jungle of sci-fi architecture is a land of development, creativity, and innovation. This is the appropriate place for the 18^th session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the 8^th Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP8).

This place, Doha, is a land of new beginnings and a platform for breaking the rules of convention. In a time when we need big change, big ideas and the gumption to break the barriers of “what we have always done” we need to gather at the hubs of change and development. So we gather in Doha, Qatar.

I’m new here. I’ve been here working for the Qatar Environment and Energy Research Institute (QEERI), an institute of Qatar Foundation (QF), for approximately 12 weeks, 2 days, and 4 hours. I’m a research associate (which means I’m low on the totem pole) and I’m just starting to get into the groove of my life here. And it’s tough. This is a harsh environment that not even the humid summers of South GA could prepare me for. But it’s an environment worth saving- and the people here know it.

On this 18^th anniversary of the Conference of Parties (COP18) I’m disappointed at the negative press that Qatar is getting. It cannot be denied that there are environmental concerns here. It cannot be denied that the development is rapid and the effects are great. BUT it cannot be denied that Qatar is setting precedence for environmental concern and priority that have never existed. Develop first, worry later. This has been the motto of countries for years and continues to be. My home is no exception. Now, a country with one of the fastest growing GDP in the world is attempting to do it the right way.

I don’t want to use the word sustainability – I think this word has become more complex and less meaningful than I choose to delve into. But I will say that, from my perspective, Qatar is attempting to balance their dramatic economic and industrial growth without disregard for their environment. Annually, Qatar commits 2.8 % of its GDP to scientific research, this includes environment. This is a change in development that should be celebrated, should be acknowledged. Who have we, let’s use the word “environmentalists”, become that we give credit to no one for their efforts? Who are we that doom a gathering of the world’s leaders to discuss climate change mitigation before it even begins?

Our predecessors, those who worked to bring the environment and it’s connection to our daily lives into the lime light, I think, they would cringe to read the headlines, cringe to see us shoot ourselves in the foot. Now is not the time for condemning those that try, now is not the time for cynicism, now is the time to acknowledge change can happen, is happening. Now is the time to encourage our leaders to make decisions for the good of our life and the good of our children’s lives. Now is the time, in the hot arid country of Qatar, to encourage one another to continue the pursuit of an environmentally responsible civilization.

You can find out more about what’s happening in Qatar here.

Open access academics: Experiments with YouTube, the Science of Risk, and Professional Amateurism

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 18:54:46 +0000

YouTube intrigues me. Having been dragged into the YouTube culture by my teenagers over the past two years, I’ve been fascinated by the shift from seemingly banal content to a sophisticated social medium. But what has really grabbed my attention is the growth of YouTube as a unique and powerful platform for informal education which is being driven not by the educational establishment, but by an emerging educational counterculture.

Of course, as a fully paid up Prof in one of those educational establishments, this is a little embarrassing! But at the same time it raises a really interesting question – is there a way of connecting institutional academics with an educational counterculture that is hungry for learning – but on its own terms?

It’s questions like this that led to the genesis of Risk Bites – a personal experiment in bridging formal institutionalized education with informal social education.

The first seeds of Risk Bites were planted at VidCon this year – the annual YouTube convention. As I wrote back in June after sitting in a room full of rapt young people listening to a panel on science on YouTube:

There’s a hunger for science knowledge and insights amongst these folk;

The world is changing, and this new breed of community-grown science communicators are leaving more conventional approaches to science communication in the dust!

As a science community, if we want to engage and connect with people outside our field more effectively, we need to be actively partnering these YouTube science stars rather than waiting for them to come to us.

Yet by on large, the educational establishment is not reaching this audience.

Just as an example, I had a search around the various University of Michigan channels to find a widely viewed video with educational content. One of the highest viewed videos was this one on the Higgs boson:

At just over 19,000 views, this isn’t bad – this is significantly higher than many other UM education-oriented videos. But compare it to Henry Reich’s video on the Higgs boson:

Over 900,000 views. And nearly 11,000 likes (in contrast to the UM video’s 49 likes)

UM is by no means flagging in relation to other academic institutions here. But it’s hard to deny that there is a large gap between the establishment and what people like Reich are achieving.

But what is to stop places like UM drawing on the vast experience of their faculty, and creating content as successful as Reich’s that sets out to engage and inform rather than “educate”?

To explore this, I started to look at my own teaching material. I lecture on a wide range of subjects, from risk assessment and aerosol dynamics, to technology innovation and responsible development. Amongst all this, there’s some really cool stuff, and some stuff that I suspect many people would find interesting (assuming that I’m not suffering from the usual delusions that come with academic status) – it’s just that it isn’t that cool or interesting when buried in the middle of a 2-hour lecture!

So why not un-bundle pieces of information that might be interesting, and present them in videos that are accessible? After all, this is exactly what is happening in many of the more successful education-based channels such as the Khan Academy, MinutePhysics and SciShow.

One of the cautions from established educators here is that by doing this, the learning process is no longer controlled by the instructor. And as a result it’s harder to teach to a deep level of understanding (and to specific competencies) in a linear and systematic manner. But I think this is a concern that belongs to an age of formal education that relies on a model of information-flow that has been swept away by the internet. Instead, “social media information unbundling” supports a complementary perspective on informal education as a tapestry of small but intriguing insights that together paint a picture that is far greater than the sum of the parts.

Having decided to unbundle some of my own teaching material into bite-sized chunks, I was faced with two immediate problems: I’m really bad at making videos (at least ones that involve me talking to an imagined audience), and I’m somewhat time-challenged! The solution I arrived at that seemed to work best was to play around with the doodling technique that people like Vi Hart and Henry Reich to such great affect. This also had the appeal that I’ve always enjoyed the “chalk and talk” style of teaching – and am fascinated by how YouTube is helping bring this style back in vogue.

Of course, as well as not being able to make videos, I also cannot draw! But here I’m hoping that by speeding up the footage, the clips will be over before anyone realizes this! The result could be described as “professional amateurism” – a style that is really quite crude, but is backed up by careful thought and planning and is designed to use this crudeness to good effect.

The outcome of all of this is a series of short (~60 seconds) doodle-videos on the science behind human health risk. Each video takes on a specific topic related to science of understanding and addressing risk, and covers it in what I hope is a short, accessible and entertaining way. Here’s a trial run on exploring the difference between hazard and risk for instance:

The videos posted so far have helped iron out the process of developing content and putting together a work flow – things start in earnest on November 24.

The presentation style by the way is pure me – it may be worthy of a few eye-rolls, but at least when the rejections come in, I’ll know it’s me being rejected rather than someone I was pretending to be (reading this back – is this a good thing?).

Will the experiment succeed? I’m not sure. But whatever happens, I’m certain Risk Bites will help shed more insight into how the knowledge-rich world of academia might better be connected with with a knowledge-hungry YouTube generation.

Risk Bites videos are viewable at http://youtube.com/riskbites. There’s also an accompanying website at http://riskbites.org.

Why should I wash my hands if I only pee?

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 00:16:04 +0000

Credit: Gillian Mayman

Cross-posted from Risk Sense

“Why should I wash my hands if I only pee?” It’s the sort of question most parents have had to handle at some time – especially if you have pretentious kids who delight in telling you how pure pee is! It’s also the subject of the first post in this semester’s Mind The Science Gap – a student science-writing blog I have great fun in overseeing.

Mind The Science Gap takes ten public health graduate students and helps them hone their science communication skills in one of the toughest but most effective ways I know – by requiring them to post articles and respond to comments every week (without fail) for ten weeks. The rules are pretty simple – start with science, write about what you are interested in, in a style you want to explore, for an audience who you want to connect with; solicit and respond to comments; and repeat. For ten weeks.

Although the course is about developing translatable communication skills, the discipline of posting and responding to comments on a blog is incredibly effective at sharpening those skills, and helping develop the ability to take complex science and communicate it to a diverse audience. But the course depends heavily on readers, and people who are willing to comment on the posts and to spread the word.

So if you would like to help the next generation of science and risk communicators excel at what they do, please take the time to read their posts, tell others about them (as many people as possible!), and let them know what works, and what they could do better – more than anything, these writers are after critical comments that help them improve.

You can subscribe to Mind The Science Gap from the home page to receive daily updates of posts, or simply bookmark the site at http://mindthesciencegap.org. Or if your memory is as shot as mine, http://mtsg.org will also get you there.

Thanks for reading, responding, and supporting a great group of students!

Jumping the gap between a US and UK high school education

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 29 Jul 2012 18:51:26 +0000

Tomorrow, my 16 year old daughter is leaving her home in the US for the UK. She’ll be there for the next two years while she studies for her A levels. It was a heart-rending decision for my wife and I to agree to her living apart from us in a different country. But the stark reality is that my daughter’s high school education here is just not good enough to prepare her for a British University – and in two years’ time, that’s where she wants to be.

I’ve long been worried about the US approach to science education in particular. When I was at school in the UK, we started studying physics, chemistry and biology in parallel from the age of 13. It didn’t suit everyone. But I wouldn’t be here as a science professor and department chair in a major university without this early start. It was key to me getting hooked on physics at an early age, while gaining a broad and integrated understanding of how the different disciplines complemented each other. In contrast, both of my kids have been following a sequential science track – biology (grade 9), geophysical science (grade 10), chemistry (grade 11) then physics (grade 12).

Seeing physics pushed back to 12th grade still breaks my heart. It makes some sense if you view students as a blank slate to be written on. But for those students who are primed to fall in love with discovering how the universe works and just don’t know it yet – they’re lucky if they don’t have that capacity for awe crushed out of them before they get to the really interesting stuff (if you’ll forgive my bias).

The same goes for chemistry and biology, and all the ill-defined areas that cross between the three big disciplines. With biology, how can you possibly inspire students with an intense year of teaching when they are just 14 years old, before dumping it as you move on to geophysical sciences the next year? My daughter was potentially interested in biology. But a year of didactic teaching five days a week (they didn’t do labs) wore her out. And that was it – her one and only shot at being hooked, blown.

Them came chemistry. Up until this last year, my daughter had done minimal chemistry, and no real lab work at school. She took chemistry as she is interested in studying medicine. And because of this she took the Advanced Placement (AP) course – the equivalent of A level. In other words, an A level in 12 months. With minimal preparation.

This would have been tough, even with the best teacher and resources. But to make matters worse, she was in an overcrowded, under-resourced class in a school that doesn’t think much of science, surrounded by kids that seemed to adopt the school philosophy. And remember, this was her one-shot chance to get the chemistry bug!

I admit, when I visited the class at the beginning of the year, I nearly cried. There were half a dozen lab benches at the back of a small room with a smattering of tired equipment that were being stretched to serve a class of over 30 students. And this was the only AP Chemistry class in a high school with over 1600 students. It was a shambles compared to the chemistry classrooms I had at a mainstream comprehensive school in the UK 30 years ago. It did not inspire confidence.

Then the classes started. I’ve spoken with my daughter’s teacher and I am convinced she was doing the best she possibly could. But is was quickly apparent that my daughter would not come out of this class knowing much about chemistry – and certainly being no-where near what was needed for a chemistry-related degree course in the UK. Labs were the worst. This was the first time my daughter had actually carried out experiments on a regular basis in a science class. Yet these were little more than chemistry recipes – instruction sets with no explanation of what was going on or why, and minimal tie-in with class work. And no lab write-ups!

Early on, my daughter told me she would get an A in this class and not understand a word of chemistry at the end of it. She got an A-, and I’m pretty sure she would admit that she still struggles with some of the most basic concepts in chemistry!

So rather than endure a final year of US high school getting and education that is little more than worthless in the UK, she is heading back to study for A levels. This means doing an extra year at school. And it means living apart from the rest of us for two years. But if she wants to get into a UK university and do anything remotely connected with science, it’s the only option at this point.

Of course, I have no illusions about British schools or A levels. Fortunately the school she will be attending has a good reputation – and are very responsive and accommodating of their students. Likewise, to judge the US education system on one school would be foolish – although you might have expected more from a state school co-located with one of the top US universities.

In the meantime, we have another related challenge – my son. He is at the same school my daughter is leaving, and is heading into AP Chemistry next year. Unlike my daughter though, he has discovered his inner enthusiasm for science, independently of anything the school has done to prevent this. And because of this, I think he will do fine. But despite the system rather than because of it. He indulges his interest in science outside the school. He reads widely, and participates in Science Olympiad – one of those US initiatives designed to inspire young people. But where in other schools his extra curricular activities might be supported and applauded, here they are ignored.

Earlier this year the Science Olympiad team got to State, and did well. This was ignored in a school that applauds every minor sporting and musical triumph. I asked about this and was told by one official that the school is good at everything, and so you couldn’t expect this one event to stand out above others. This is rubbish. But what is worse – the students know it’s rubbish, and privately scorn the school and the system that strives to keep them down. (I was also told by the same person that I could always teach my son myself if I didn’t think the school was up to it, but that’s another story.)

I’m hoping that my son will continue to thrive despite the system and the school, and that he will succeed without anything as radical as leaving home at 16. For my daughter, this is a move we will just have to live with. Fortunately she will be living with family in the UK, and with today’s inter-connectivity my guess is that we will remain closely connected (I’m envisioning daily homework help requests over Skype!). It’ll be interesting to see how her experiences in a US high school compare with doing A levels in the UK. And it will be exciting to see where she ends up going to university in two years’ time – and what she ends up doing.

But it remains sobering that a 16 year old is leaving for the UK to complete school because the local US education system failed her.

Update 8/3/12 – this piece was written quite hastily, and on refection there are a few things that I probably should clarify:

1. There are two primary issues here (I think one of the comments below identifies this) – the US approach to science teaching generally, and the ability of one specific school to teach it well specifically. On the former, clearly the US system isn’t completely broken, otherwise there would be fewer incredibly talented science majors graduating here. But there are indications that the heavy lifting in science education in particular is done in the first year of college, and that as long as you graduate from high school with good grades what you actually know and understand doesn’t matter so much. This is OK if you stay within the US – but a problem if you don’t. I also suspect (but have no empirical data) that the US system favors the top fraction of a percent of highly self-motivated students – especially in the sciences – and does little to either encourage more students to follow a science-based career, or to provide a valuable baseline education in/enthusiasm for science. On the latter point, it would clearly be a mistake to judge all US high schools by the performance of one college town high school, although I had naively expected the schools in a town with a leading university to be a little better!

2. The UK has it’s own problems with pre-university education, and I wouldn’t want to give the impression that I am blind to this! I’ve been out of the country long enough that I am probably out of touch with some of the changes that have come into the A level curriculum over the past couple of decades. But it is still reasonably clear that the current UK approach to education is a better match for what my daughter is looking for (and likely to respond well to) than the US approach. More importantly though, my wife and I were pretty thorough in checking out and vetting the school she will be going to.

3. This is where irony kicks in – the initial impetus for us exploring my daughter moving back to the UK was the need for her to get a good chemistry education if she was to study medicine in the UK. However, her experience with chemistry in the US was so traumatic that she has dropped it for next year! (She is wisely going to be doing A levels that keep her future options open while playing to her strengths). Despite this, we are still 100% behind the move.

“We took a rat apart and rebuilt it as a jellyfish”

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 22 Jul 2012 20:58:18 +0000

Sometimes you read a science article and it sends a ~~shiver~~ tingle down your spine. That was my reaction this afternoon reading Ed Yong’s piece on a paper just published in Nature Biotechnology by Janna Nawroth, Kevin Kit Parker and colleagues.

The gist of the work is that Parker’s team have created a hybrid biological machine that “swims” like a jellyfish by growing rat heart muscle cells on a patterned sheet of polydimethylsiloxane. The researchers are using the technique to explore muscular pumps, but the result opens the door to new technologies built around biological-non biological hybrids.

To get a sense of what Parker et al. have achieved, it’s worth watching this video of the “medusoid” in action – the movement comes about by a single layer of heart muscles grown on the substrate contracting synchronously as an electric field is applied to the liquid.

For a more detailed account of the research, I would also recommend reading Ed Young’s excellent piece, and the original paper.

What particularly intrigues me here is the fusion between the biological and the non-biological. While synthetic biology has typically focused on manipulating organisms through designer-DNA, this more practical approach to engineering biology could go a long way very fast – even before genetically engineered components are added.

In the case of the machine above, the result is a relatively functionless entity that moves when an external voltage is applied. But it wouldn’t take much to engineer in a self-contained voltage source and pulse regulator, and maybe some control elements – fueled by further hybrid biological components. What you end up with is an engineering construction kits for biological machines that could be as attractive to the DIY bio community as mainstream technologists. With the addition of genetically designed components, this is likely to be a technology to watch.

Of course, the other reason why this story sent a ~~shiver~~ tingle down my spine is the quote that I used for the title of this piece – which must be one of the coolest biotech quotes ever!

Nawroth, J. C. et al. (2012) A tissue-engineered jellyfish with biomimetic propulsionNature Biotechol. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2269

(Does shiver denote dread? Meant this was spine-tinglingly awesome!)

Social Media and the art of Academic Juggling

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 14:13:39 +0000

It had to happen – despite deluding myself that I could squeeze everything into a 140 hour work week, something’s going to have to give. And that something is going to be regular posts on 2020 Science. I’ll still be posting here, just not as frequently. Chairing a department, directing a center, teaching, research, doing cool stuff with cool people, writing killer blog posts – it should be possible to do it all. But apparently I have a family who would like to see me occasionally. And I’ve heard that other people have this thing called “a life” – I’m intrigued to find out what that is!

I’ll still be doing plenty of stuff on line, so please do carry on engaging with me and my work in these places:

On Twitter at @2020science – 140 characters is so much easier than a 500 word blog post. What do department chairs tweet about? I guess I’ll find out!

On the Risk Sense blog – I’ll be putting more energy into building up the Risk Science Center blog – please spread the word, as this has the potential to be a great resource and forum on the science of human health risk. Also, please follow the Risk Science Center on Twitter at @umrsc

On the Risk Bites YouTube channel (and also on Twitter at @microriskbites). This is a tremendously exciting project we’re launching that provides bite-sized and highly accessible nuggets on cool stuff about science, risk and health. We officially launch in November, but there will be a number of teasers posted before then. Please spread the word and subscribe!

At Mind The Science Gap. I’m running this science communication course twice a year now for our students – please subscribe to get notifications of blog posts, and support the students by commenting and spreading the word. The next course starts in September.

And of course, there will still be the occasional must-read piece posted here – all part of the juggling act!

YouTube does the the Higgs Boson – Science communication on the quick!

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 15:35:01 +0000

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s announcement on the Higgs Boson, some of YouTube’s most viewed science communicators have been burning the midnight oil to explain why this is so exciting. Wrapping up this series of posts on YouTube, I thought I would call out three prominent YouTubers who were at VidCon this last week, yet still found the time to pull together a video following the news.

First out of the blocks was Brady Haran with this video on the SixtySymbols channel, following the CERN seminar surrounding the announcement:

Next came Vi Hart’s “Sonnet on a Higgs-Like Particle”

And at 9:00 AM promptly this morning, Henry Reich of MinutePhysics posted his much-anticipated piece on the Higgs Boson:

What interests me especially with all three videos is how fast they were pulled together and posted, how effectively they connect with a broad audience, and how many views they have already had (not to mention the comments). Vi Hart’s and Brady Haran’s are well over 30,000 views at the time of writing (around 24 hours after posting), while Henry Reich’s video had over 1600 likes and 450 comments within the first couple of hours of going up. Compare this with the more mainstream (but still excellent) video from Cara Santa Maria at Huffington Post:

At the time of writing (2 days after being posted), it had 2,580 views and 19 comments. Not shabby by any means. But it’s clear who had the further reach here!

Update: Henry Reich pointed out that Cara gets most of her views on the Huffington Post video channel, not YouTube. You can check out her HuffPo Higgs Boson video here [link]

And while I’m at it, here’s a late-breaking entry from Derek Muller (Veritasium on YouTube)

VidCon 2012: Online learning is where online music was five years ago

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 23:19:24 +0000

YouTube is gearing up to transform the way we learn. At least that’s the message that came across loud and clear at this morning’s VidCon breakout panel on education. In an overflowing room of well over two hundred conference goers, head of YouTube Education Angela Lin led a panel of five leading video makers in a lively discussion, that gave a compelling glimpse of the future of online education. And it was a future that didn’t feature too many conventional lessons or institutionalized videos!

As the panel included John and Hank Green (SciShow, CrashCourse and a gazillion other things) I was expecting a room packed to the brim with their incredibly engaged teen fans – which it was. An odd audience you might think for a panel on education. But this was a serious, intelligent and engaged crowd, eager to listen to the panel, ask questions and provide their own insight on online learning. Joining the Green brothers were physics blogger Henry Reich (minutephysics), science YouTuber Brady Haran (The Periodic Table of Videos), Mike Rugnetta, host of the PBS Idea Channel and Vi Hart of Mathemusician and the Khan Academy.

What was notable was that these panelists are all a) successful online educators (extremely so in some cases), b) not formally trained in teaching (to my knowledge) and c) not representing mainstream educational institutions (not counting PBS). This is important, because there was no doubt here that the excitement and impact surrounding online education is occurring outside conventional educational circles – and in many cases leaving them standing. John Green talked about this emerging online education community as being “disruptive,” while brother Hank talked about a “new kind of learning.” And everyone the panel agreed that education content on YouTube is where online music was five or six years ago, and on the cusp of something really big. But a big that might not necessarily include conventional educational institutions unless they get their act together!

On this point Henry Reich made the distinction between learning and teaching. Formal educators (as well as “informal educators” in museums and on educational TV programs) teach to a curriculum or a plan, with competencies, learning objectives and evaluation being the name of the game. But at the cutting edge of community online education, content developers are using their passion and interests to facilitate user-driven learning. And as John Green pointed out – endorsed by the packed room – people want to learn!

Bridging this gap between learning and teaching is perhaps going to be one of the biggest challenges – and opportunities – of online education over the next few years. Without question, there is a global hunger for learning, and some very talented individuals who are beginning to satisfy this hunger using an increasing array of online tools. This will undoubtedly help people develop and grow as individuals – but how do you also give them the tools to “do stuff” as opposed to simply enriching their understanding and satisfying their curiosity?

As new tools come online, educational institutions are jumping on the band-wagon to provide instructional content. Initiatives like Coursera and edX are bringing college course material to a far wide audience using online video. But even these innovations are in danger of looking turgid and outmoded in comparison to the new breed of community educators.

There are some moves to close this gap. Brady’s Periodic Table videos for instance are used by teachers to kick-start classes and inspire kids. And the Khan Academy is leading the field in terms of combining user-driven learning with practical teaching. But if teaching institutions want to keep up with the revolution in online learning, it seems pretty clear that they are going to have to radically rethink their ideas of web-based content. They are going to have to start partnering with and learning from the masters of online community education. And they are going to have to let go a bit and embrace the mess and madness of online educational content as they respond to a growing community’s desire to learn.

What seems clear after this panel is that we are at the beginning of an exciting revolution in online educational content. What is not clear is whether the teaching institutions can get their act together fast enough not to be sidelined in the rush toward online learning.

10/8/12: This article is translated to Serbo-Croatian language by Jovana Milutinovich from Geeks Education.

VidCon 2012: Community-grown science communicators smoking’ it!

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 23:40:34 +0000

I‘m over half way through the first day at VidCon 2012, and thought I would jot a few notes down on the science scene here. OK, so maybe 7,000 people haven’t come to the Anaheim Convention Center to hear the latest on the Higgs boson and other interesting science stuff (although you’d be surprised by how many of them are interested), but after last year, I’ve become increasingly interested in how YouTube is developing as a platform for science communication, education and engagement.

After last year’s experience of a distinctly counter-culture nature, I wrote this:

Next year, VidCon will be held at the Anaheim Convention Center in LA, and I suspect will attract a much larger crowd than this year. As planning gets underway for the event, it would be really good to see participation from some of the big names in science communication on YouTube, and a greater integration of science and technology YouTube communities into the program.

I doubt very much that Hank Green – the driving force behind VidCon – is a sufficiently avid reader of 2020 Science that he read this and acted on it. But nevertheless science has clearly moved up the agenda this year. This in part reflects a massive increase in science content and viewership on YouTube over the past year – including the launch of Hank’s own channel SciShow. It also reflects the fact that grass roots and alternative science communicators on YouTube are – not to put too fine a point on it – smokin’ it when it comes to connecting with today’s youth.

In this morning’s opening main stage session, Henry Reich (MinutePhysics) gave a packed audience in the Anaheim Convention Center Arena a quick lesson in quantum mechanics and the paradox of Schrödindgers cat. And it went down a storm! Think about that – when was the last time you saw a physicist commanding the rapt attention of around 7,000 people in a live show? Over the past year, Henry has shot up to over 300,000 YouTube subscribers and regularly gets several hundred thousand views on his videos. His secret? I suspect it’s in part due to his skills as an educator and the simplicity of his delivery – this the classic “chalk and talk; and a damn good teacher” model transported to YouTube, and it works!

(Minutephysics is one of the few YouTube channels my son watches regularly btw)

This afternoon, Henry was joined by Derek Muller (veritasium) and Destin (Smarter Every Day) to talk about physics on YouTube in a breakout session. Also in the room were Vi Hart (Mathemusician on YouTube, and currently with the Khan Academy) and Brady Haran (The Periodic Table of Videos and a ton of other science communication projects). All have an enviable reach on YouTube and videos that get tens to hundreds of thousands of hits.

The room was packed to overflowing. I’d guess that there were around 150 or so VidCon attendees there, which believe me is impressive in a breakout session when a gazillion other things are going on. (I think last time I spoke at a major conference at the Anaheim Convention Center, you were lucky if you got 50 people to your breakout!) And the audience were fully engaged, with the session teetering on the edge of a physics Q&A session the whole time.

Three things in particular struck me in this room predominantly filled with young people – many of them young women:

There’s a hunger for science knowledge and insights amongst these folk;
The world is changing, and this new breed of community-grown science communicators are leaving more conventional approaches to science communication in the dust!
As a science community, if we want to engage and connect with people outside our field more effectively, we need to be actively partnering these YouTube science stars rather than waiting for them to come to us.

Tomorrow we have a breakout session on education with Henry Reich, Brady Haran, Hank Green (SciShow), John Green (CrashCourse) and Mike Rugnetta (PBS Idea Channel). Another science-heavy lineup that again emphasizes the growing importance of YouTube and its grass-roots science communication/engagement community.

Hank may not have read my blog from last year on upping the science at VidCon, but he certainly got the message it seems!

Update: In my haste to post, I forgot to mention BrainSTEM – an unconference of science YouTubers held in Ontario Canada a couple of days before VidCon. The place to be if you want to experience the cutting edge of online scicoms entrepreneurship. Here’s a flavor from veritasium:

VidCon and YouTube Science

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 14:32:22 +0000

Having been initiated into the alternative world of teen YouTube culture last year, I am once again being dragged along to VidCon – the Comic-Con of the online video community. This year – the third year for VidCon – promises to be bigger than better than ever with around 6,000 signed up for a two day extravaganza next week at the Anaheim Convention Center. And it looks like science communicators and video-makers are going to have a greater presence than in the past. Given the size, median age and enthusiasm of the participants, this is rather exciting.

I’ll be there with my daughter and a fellow vlogger from their YouTube channel Fellowshipofthening (highly recommended btw), one of a gaggle of bemused parents. But I’ll also be on the lookout once again for how the YouTube community is intersecting with science engagement and communication.

Particularly exciting this year is the increased presence of science types at the jamboree. Derek Muller (creator of the video blog Veritasium) is a speaker at the event, and Brady Haran of the phenomenally popular Periodic Table of Videos will be there. Also attending (hopefully) will be Joanne Manaster, who writes for the PsiVid blog at Scientific American as well as her own video-rich blog Joanne Loves Science.

Actually, a bit of a plug here – as Joanne is self-financing the trip, she’s looking for donations to help make it happen. If you care about kids and science, please throw a few dollars her way – here’s where you can do that.

Then of course there is the mastermind behind the whole VidCon shebang Hank Green, who launched the SciShow YouTube channel earlier this year. It already has nearly 200,000 subscribers and close on ten million video views – not bad!

I’m sure there will be many other science communicators/videographers/groupies at VidCon – if you’re going to be there, drop me a line in the comments or on Twitter and we’ll see what we can do about getting folks together.

YouTube is becoming an increasingly powerful medium for engaging teens and others in science. But the success stories are arising from the grass roots community rather than engineered from the top down. This is what makes the medium and the culture surrounding it so intriguing and exciting. And thanks to my daughter, I’ll have another chance to explore this weird and wonderful world in a few days’ time. I might even have the time to post the odd tweet while I’m tracking down YouTube celebs (I still need a cheat sheet to let me know who the celebs are!) and meeting up with fellow YouTube/SciComms geeks!

Update June 20 – I missed Henry Reich (minutephysics) from the list of science communicators participating in VidCon – not sure how that happened! Who else have I missed?

Top ten reasons professors become chairs!

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 13 Jun 2012 23:13:19 +0000

A good colleague sent these to me the other day – I think I’m #1, but I wouldn’t rule out #7!

Top Ten Reasons Professors Become Chairs*

10. Because you don’t want someone else to do it, even though you don’t.

9. Because you’re burned out teaching the same thing over and over again for 20 years and writing articles two people in the whole country read.

8. For the money.

7. For the petty power, having, in middle age, experienced a precipitous decline… and needing an alternative thrill.

6. Because you lack imagination and can’t think of anything better and more original to do.

5. Because you have imagination and fantasize about all the things you will do back to your peers that they did to you while they were chair.

4. Because some dean made you an offer you can’t refuse.

3. Because your peers elect you to slow down your rate-busting activity by loading you up with administrative trivia.

2. Because your peers elect you, thinking you are useless at research and teaching and this way you can at least fill out administrative reports.

1. because you temporarily became insane, forgetting why you came into academics in the first place, momentarily in a state of confusion, mistaking your college or university for General Motors or Microsoft, thinking you will climb the ladder.

*From Chairing an Academic Department by Walter Gmelch and Val. D. Miskin, Atwood Publishing, Madison, Wisconsin 2004

Fool for a year!

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 00:31:07 +0000

Fool! At least that was what came out of my wife’s mouth as we were discussing my latest failure to say “no!” In this case, it was a request to take over as Interim Chair of the University of Michigan School of Public Health Environmental Health Sciences Department.

You know that feeling where volunteers are asked for and before you know it everyone else has taken a step back? It wasn’t really like that, but with the current Chair Howard Hu moving onto bigger and better things at the University of Toronto, I did find myself unexpectedly in the firing line.

All joking aside, this is a tremendous opportunity to work with a great department and build on the solid foundation laid by my predecessors. The appointment is just for a year while plans are laid for a more permanent incumbent (on my insistence – one day I hope to get a life!), but over the next twelve months there are exciting plans to further strengthen the department’s research, education and translation programs. I’m also taking over leadership of the department at a time when we are looking to re-frame environmental health science within the broad context of human-environment interactions and their consequences. This is a tremendously exciting point in the department’s history as we develop powerful synergies within a highly interdisciplinary department to address complex health challenges from a science perspective.

In the meantime, I will still be directing the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, and trying my best to write here and elsewhere about interesting stuff. But this in particular was the source of my wife’s derision. When I asked her whether I should refer to my self as “Interim Chair or simply “Chair”, she replied “fool”!

Well, I guess it’s just fool for a year.

Communicating about communicating science at the National Academies

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:46:05 +0000

I‘ve just spent the last two days at the National Academies of Science listening to a long strong of folks talk about the Science of Science Communication. It was a bit of a guilty pleasure for me as I wasn’t a speaker and so could just kick back and listen – but I did get a couple of questions in. The meeting was in the series of Arthur M. Sackler Colloquia that the National Academies organize each year – meetings designed to cut across traditional disciplinary boundaries. And in this respect the colloquium was certainly a success, bringing together over 400 participants from a wide range of disciplines to discuss empirical research on the nature, practice and effectiveness of science communication.

Although there was plenty of room for improvement in the scope and execution of the colloquium (as was amply commented on in the Twitter stream accompanying the event*), I must confess that I did find the meeting both useful and enjoyable – mainly because it prompted me to start thinking again about several aspects of science communication that I’ve pushed to one side as a myriad other things have slid onto my plate. Summarizing the meeting as I type this (and wait for a delayed flight back to Michigan) is largely beyond my tired brain at this point – I still need to take time to digest much of the stuff that was presented. But I would encourage you to check out the videos of the talks, which have been posted here. That said, it’s worth noting three things that struck me as I listened to the presenters:

It’s important that the National Academies of Science are taking the study of science communication (and its practice) seriously. Inviting a bunch of social scientists into the National Academies – and into a high profile colloquium like this – was a big deal. And irrespective of the meeting’s content, it flags a commitment to work closely with researchers studying science communication and decision analysis to better ensure informed and effective communication strategies and practice. Given the substantial interest in the colloquium – on the web as well as at the meeting itself – I hope that the National Academies build on this and continue to engage fully in this area.

Moving forward, there needs to be more engagement between science communication researchers and practitioners. Practitioners of science communication – and the practical insight they bring – were notable by their absence (in the main) from the colloquium program. If the conversation around empirical research is to connect with effective practice, there must be better integration of these two communities.

Better mechanisms of establishing a science communication agenda are needed. Climate change dominated the conversation over the past two days – perhaps understandably. But it’s not the only issue that depends on effective science communication. Issues such as the water-food-energy nexus, chronic exposure to low level synthetic chemicals, non-communicable disease, even the current global economic crisis, and many others, need to be part of the science communication agenda. Instead, there is a sense that researchers and practitioners are attracted to the bright shiny issues that attract (or are engineered to attract) people’s attention, while overlooking many less eye catching but equally important issues. Moving forward, it would be good to see more systematic approaches to identifying where science communication research and practice is focused.

There’s an awful lot more that could be said about the meeting, but at this point I will leave this to others, and end by thanking the organizers for a stimulating two days.

*The extensive Twitter chatter associated with the meeting (using the hashtag #sackler) picked up on poor coverage of digital communication, a lack of science communication practitioners in the program, and a preponderance of while middle class (and beyond) men in the presenters lineup. But what really bugged me – and was the subject of much online derision – was that internet access at the meeting was so poor that in-person attendees struggled to either contribute to the online discussion or submit questions – which were supposed to be sent in via email! A bit of a faux pas for a meeting on communication!

Think Design – an alternative take on nanotech (in 11 minutes!)

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 22 May 2012 13:00:14 +0000

A few weeks ago I was asked to give a “TED style talk” on nanotechnology for the University of Michigan Environmental Health Sciences department 125th anniversary. What they got was a short talk on “thinking small”:

The other talks in the series are also worth checking out – covering topics as diverse as epigenetics, cancer, exposure science, obesity, endocrine disruptors, global health and mercury in the environment. Watch them here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF87730C0E0C26FEA

Carbon nanoparticles could be ubiquitous to many foods

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 19 May 2012 20:08:15 +0000

: TEM images of carbon particles from foods containing caramelized sugar. Click to see larger image. Source: Palashudding et al.

Nanotechnology leads to novel materials, new exposures and potentially unique health and environmental risks – or so the argument goes. But an increasing body of research is showing that relatively uniformly sized nanometer scale particles are part and parcel of the environment we live in. For instance a number of simple organisms such as bacteria and diatoms have the capability to produce nanoparticles, either as part of their natural behavior or under specific conditions. Nanoscale minerals, it seems, play an important role in shaping the world we live in. Metals like silver wantonly shed silver nanoparticles into our food and water according to research published last year. And now a group of researchers have shown that food containing caramelized sugar contains uniformly sized amorphous carbon particles.

This latest paper was published in the journal Science Progress a few weeks ago, and analyzes the carbon nanoparticle content of such everyday foods as bread, caramelized sugar, corn flakes and biscuits. The authors found that products containing caramelized sugar – including baked goods such as bread – contained spherical carbon nanoparticles in the range 4 – 30 nm (with size being associated with the temperature of caramelization). This isn’t that surprising as nanoparticle formation is closely associated with hot processes. The authors point out that, as caramelized products have been eaten with no apparent health impacts for centuries, these particles are probably safe. But the bigger question perhaps is whether these particles are sufficiently similar to some nanoparticles now being intentionally produced to provide insight into the safety of engineered nanoparticles, or whether there remain fundamental differences between the particles we are exposed to everyday, and those that smart technologists are dreaming up in laboratories around the world. As Gwyneth Shaw writes in the New Haven Independent,

“The presence of carbon nanoparticles in hamburger buns only illustrates the depth and complexity of the challenge for policymakers, in the U.S. and internationally, in ultimately deciding what’s “safe” and what might not be.”

This is not an easy question. Hypothetically, it is possible to produce nanoscale particles that are so unlike anything we have evolved to handle that they interfere with our biology in potentially destructive ways. And when some of the more esoteric types of nanomaterials now being explored are considered, this possibility is easy to imagine. Yet in many cases commercial nanomaterials show a striking resemblance to those found in this study and elsewhere. In these cases, there is a need to understand what is new in the context of what we are already regularly exposed to.

To do this requires more research into the nature of naturally occurring nanomaterials and our exposure to them. And I can guarantee that this will be a contentious area of research, as it questions the prevalent dogma that exposure to uniform nanoparticles is both new and potentially dangerous. In fact research in this area is so sensitive that my first reaction on reading the Science Progress paper was to wonder how valid the findings were. Fortunately, the analysis stands up to scrutiny. The authors were careful to test their findings using electron microscopy – which showed the presence of very uniform nanoparticles associated with caramelized sugar. And to make sure the observed particles weren’t an artifact they carried out similar tests on uncaramalized sugar solutions – where they found no evidence of nanoparticles.

As usual though, the research raises as many questions as it answers. While the size and composition of these particles has been measured, their concentration and precise chemical nature remains unknown. So as ever there is more research to be done to pin down how many – or how few – carbon nanoparticles you are ingesting with your morning bowl of corn flakes, and to understand how these data affect how we approach intentionally manufactured nanoparticles. But what is becoming increasingly clear is that the safe use of engineered nanomaterials cannot be understood in isolation from the nanopaterials that we eat and breathe every day of our lives.

End Notes:

Gwyneth Shaw has an excellent piece on this paper at the New Haven Independent: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/how_long_have_we_been_eating_nanoparticles/ I would strongly recommend anyone interested in following nanotechnology implications issues to subscribe to her writing in this area.

The papers cited above are:

Palashuddin Sk M., Jaiswal A., Paul A., Ghosh, S. S., and Chattopadhyay A. (2012) Presence of Amorphous Carbon Nanoparticles in Food Caramels. Scientific Reports 2:383, DOI: 10.1038/srep00383

POPESCU M., VELEA A., and LÖRINCZI A. (2012) Biogenic Production of Nanoparticles. Digest Journal of Nanomaterials and Biostructures 5:4 pp1035-1040.

Hochella Jr. M. F., Lower S. K., Maurice P. A., Penn R. L. Sahai N., Sparks D. L., Twining B. S. (2008) Nanominerals, Mineral Nanoparticles, and Earth Systems. Science 319 pp1631-1635. DOI: 10.1126/science.1141134

Glover R. D., John M. Miller J. M., and Hutchison J. E. (2011) Generation of Metal Nanoparticles from Silver and Copper Objects: Nanoparticle Dynamics on Surfaces and Potential Sources of Nanoparticles in the Environment. ACS Nano, 2011, 5 (11), pp 8950–895 DOI:10.1021/nn2031319

Maynard A. D., Warheit D. B. and Philbert, M. A (2011) The New Toxicology of Sophisticated Materials: Nanotoxicology and Beyond. Tox. Sci. 120 (suppl 1): S109-S129. doi: 10.1093/toxsci/kfq372

And finally, any paper with a methods section that starts like this gets my approval

Bread buns were purchased from the local market (Homa Bread, Guwahati, India) and analysed to check the presence of CNPs within it. The top brown layer of bread was carefully excised and 1 g of it was dissolved in 20 mL methanol by sonicating it at 35 kHz in a bath sonicator (Elmasonic TI-H-5 Elma, Germany) for 10 min. Following sonication, the volume of the methanol was reduced to 3 mL in a rotary evaporator before further purification.

New journal on Environment, Systems and Decisions looking for contributions

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 15 May 2012 20:34:23 +0000

Call me a fool, but I recently agree to join the editorial board of the new Springer journal Environment, Systems and Decisions (formerly The Environmentalist). Actually it was a bit of a no-brainer – I’ve been looking for a journal to get involved with that more closely matched my interests in risk, technology innovation and decision-making for some time, and this fit the bill pretty well.

The newly re-branded journal is set to hit the streets next year, and to kick things off we are putting together a special issue on Scenario and Risk Analysis – details below (and also downloadable here). If you are interested in submitting a paper for the special edition, the deadline for submission is June 30.

____________________________________

CALL FOR PAPERS:

SPECIAL ISSUE OF ENVIRONMENT, SYSTEMS AND DECISIONS ON SCENARIO AND RISK ANALYSIS

Prospectus

Uncertainty about the future cuts across disciplines, e.g., natural sciences (sea level rise and climate patterns), social sciences (societal trends such as voting behaviors), etc. Uncertainty has different scales, e.g., individual (markets and retirement investing), global (pandemics, military wargaming), etc. Addressing future scenarios is essential to the strategies of individuals, organizations, communities, and nations. Scenario analysis is a multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach that effectively negotiates the risks and benefits associated with emergent and future conditions.

There is no consensus on how and when to conduct a scenario analysis. How do we elicit, formulate, and identify scenarios? How do we account for stakeholder biases? How can we manage the uncertainty? What are the best ways to mitigate future risks and maximize future opportunities?

This special issue of Environment, Systems, and Decisions will explore the theory, methods, and applications of scenario analysis, along with its linkages with other subject areas such as risk management.

Invitation

The Editors-in-Chief invite submissions in the area of Scenario Analysis. Papers are encouraged in, but not limited to, the following areas:

Theory
• Scenario development
• Uncertainty reduction
• Extreme and rare events
• Connection to risk analysis
• Scenarios and decision making • Scenario elicitation

Methods
• Impact analysis
• Simulation
• Forecasting
• Contingency planning • Strategic gaming
• Stochastic analyses

Applications
• Global climate change
• Environment and ecology • Technology and society
• Economic impacts
• Social issues
• Planning and policy

Contact Details & Schedule:

Inquiries regarding this Call for Papers should be directed to either/both of the Editors-in-Chief:
Dr. Igor Linkov, US Army Engineer Research and Development Center: Igor.Linkov@usace.army.mil Dr. James H. Lambert, University of Virginia: Lambert@virginia.edu

We welcome the submission of your abstracts anytime, with your papers by 30 June 2012 leading to publication of a special issue of Environment, Systems and Decisions in early 2013.

Camaraderie through adversary: The art of building functional teams

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 06 May 2012 21:12:07 +0000

For everyone who has struggled with team building exercises and writing course syllabuses, I thought you might enjoy this syllabus (in the approved format of course) for a much anticipated (ha!) faculty team-building exercise that I’m leading this week.

Enjoy!

COURSE TITLE

Camaraderie through adversary: The art of building functional teams.

PRE-REQUISITES

A thick skin and a willingness to make a fool of oneself. A sense of humor is also helpful.

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Having fun with others – whether you like it or not.

READING MATERIALS:

A Survival Guide for Working with Humans: Dealing with Whiners, Back-Stabbers, Know-It-Alls, and Other Difficult People by Gini Graham Scott (AMACOM, 2004)
How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie (Pocket Books, 1990)
The complete idiots guide to idiots by M. Anne Thrope (Random Publications, 1998)

COURSE EVALUATION

Participation: 50%
Not being done for GBH: 25%
Being the last person standing: 25%

COURSE OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this course are:

To group-experience a series of cruel and unusual tasks
To demonstrate why if you want a job done properly – you do it yourself
To explore the aphorism “if you want a friend – get a dog!”
To entertain the instructor – who will not be participating in the tasks
To finish as fast as possible and head for the bar.

COURSE OUTCOMES

After taking this course, students will be able to:

Think critically (mainly about other team members)
Problem solve (in their head at least – problem solving in practice is not anticipated)
Express themselves verbally – and possibly through hand signals as well.
Work within a dysfunctional team to complete a meaningless task – sometimes.

MAJOR COURSE TOPICS

Milling around with bits of paper
Playing with a stick
Re-purposing random stuff from a sack
Being shackled to colleagues
Group hug (NO – there are some limits!)

Nanoparticles, cosmetics and sunscreens – again!

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 03 May 2012 17:08:52 +0000

Robin Erb has a good piece on cosmetics and safe ingredients in the Detroit Free Press this week – it tackles the very limited regulation over what goes into cosmetics, but balances this with a useful perspective on consumer choice and how this in turn can drive business decisions on what is used and how. I mention it because the issue of nanoparticles in sunscreens comes up briefly, and I am quoted on the matter.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have been fairly vocal about the safety of nanoparticles in sunscreens. I still contend that the weight of published evidence suggests that titanium dioxide and zinc oxide nanoparticles in sunscreens do not present a significant when the relevant products are developed and used responsibly – and that the benefits of using this technology over others may in fact outweigh any residual risk. But I’m also aware that this isn’t a closed issue – there are niggling questions on the use of photoactive particles, on nanoparticle sunscreen applications on delicate or compromised skin, and on dermal penetration of chemicals within the nanoparticles, that all need further research. So I was surprised to read that my mind is apparently made up here!

After talking with Robin about cosmetics, sunscreen and nanoparticles, she sent me draft of my comments to check for factual accuracy before the piece went to press. The original text read:

“…Agreed Andrew Maynard, director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health: “The industry seems reasonably well self-regulating.”

In his research, Maynard asked whether nanomaterials in sunscreen — the nearly molecular-sized particles that ease the lotion into our skin pores – are dangerous. His conclusion: They’re not.

“It was really surprising, to be honest,” he said.”

This was uncommonly generous of Robin by the way – many reporters will not do this (for good reason – they don’t want people interfering with the story), and in general I don’t expect it.

My response:

Hi Robin, and thanks for letting me see this – Scott’s comments are great here btw.

If you are able, could I just change one thing: instead of “In his research, Maynard asked whether nanomaterials in sunscreen — the nearly molecular-sized particles that ease the lotion into our skin pores – are dangerous. His conclusion: They’re not.”, is it possible to have something along the lines of “In his research, Maynard asked whether nanomaterials in sunscreen — the nearly molecular-sized particles that protect the skin from the sun – are dangerous. His conclusion: Not if they’re used responsibly”

It’s not as black and white admittedly, but there are still niggling uncertainties associated with the use of nanoparticles that I am on record as highlighting (as there are with other sunscreen ingredients), and it would look odd if I was quoted as saying something that seemed to contradict my usual message.

I should note at this point that, under these circumstances, my policy is to treat the reporter’s work with respect, and refrain from editing the text unless there is a compelling reason to do so. But in this case I was concerned about the overstatement of my position on nanoparticle safety, and I thought that the technical error on the purpose of the nanoparticles being to ease the lotion into the skin pores should be addressed (in sunscreen the particles coat the skin and protect against UV exposure. In some cosmetics, nanoparticles are used to help penetrate through the outer dead layers of skin cells – there may have been some confusion between the two here).

Robin responded back:

“Thanks for the response. No problem on tweaking the wording. I want it correct, of course.

Let me just ask this though: What would be an “irresponsible” use of sunscreen? I’m not trying to be funny – I just want to make sure the qualifier “if used responsibly” really translates for consumers.”

To which I replied:

“Understand – “responsible” can be a bit of an irresponsible blanket term

Here, I mean using nanoparticles after giving possible health and environmental impacts due consideration, and doing everything possible to ensure minimal impacts and significant benefits. A bit of a mouthful, but feel free to tweak the quote. I won’t be able to respond as I’m about to board a plane back to Michigan from Denmark (hence the delay with this response) – but am sure whatever you arrive at will be fine.”

I may have been a bit generous with that last statement, as what was published on Monday came out as:

“Andrew Maynard, director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, agreed. “The industry seems to be reasonably well self-regulating.”

In his research, Maynard asked whether nanomaterials in sunscreen — the nearly molecule-sized particles that ease the lotion into our skin pores — are dangerous. His conclusion: They’re not.

“It was really surprising, to be honest,” he said.”

The adherence to the original text isn’t a particularly big deal, and to be fair I almost definitely didn’t express myself as clearly as I could have in the original phone interview. But just in case you read this and thought that the book was closed on nano-sunscreens from my perspective – it’s not!

Nano M&Ms?

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 15:40:27 +0000

Not in the technical sense I’m afraid, but thought it would be fun to post this image of nano-branded M&Ms. They were used as part of a recent NanoDays session with local school kids exploring the broader implications of nanotechnology.

The only substantive link they have with real nano-enabled products as far as I can tell is the cost – they’re not cheap!

Nano quadrotors – a game-changing technology innovation, but can we handle it?

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 20:25:30 +0000

It’s been hard to avoid the buzz surrounding nano quadrotors this week, following the posting of Vijay Kumar’s jaw-dropping TED talk – and the associated viral video of the semi-autonomous machines playing the James Bond theme.

The quadrotors are impressive – incredibly impressive. But I’m sure I am not the only person watching these videos who felt a shiver of apprehension about where the technology might lead.

When people talk about emerging technologies – especially when the focus is on potential risks and unintended consequences – it doesn’t take long for the usual suspects to emerge: with nanotechnology, synthetic biology and geoengineering usually appearing toward the top of the list. But I wonder whether focusing on big, well-publicized technology trends sometimes masks some of the less discussed but more important technology innovations that are already impacting on people’s lives.

Tim Harper and I underscored this concern in a report from the World Economic Forum last year where we suggested we should be focusing just as much on the innovations that build on synergistic connections between technology platforms (see below), because this is where many of the more significant disruptive and game-changing technologies will emerge.

It’s partly because of this that I have been so intrigued by the nano quadrotor work coming out of the GRASP lab at the University of Pennsylvania.

: Technology innovation – building on technology platforms. World Economic Forum: Building a Sustainable Future

The nano quadrotors that Vijay Kumar’s team are developing are a prime example of synergistic innovation leading to a game-changing technology. The quadrotors combine components from multiple technology platforms – sensors, materials, information processing and others – and as a result they present opportunities and risks that depend on the synergism between these platforms. In other words, the potential disruption comes not from the platforms, but how they are combined into products.

Just thinking briefly about the potential impacts of the nano quadrotors, it’s not hard to see how it could shake things up. In fact Chris Anderson, the curator of TED, tweeted after Vijay’s talk:

On the plus side, the nano quadrotor technology clearly opens new avenues into the areas of search and rescue, exploration and surveillance. But it’s also frighteningly easy to see how it could lead down darker paths. I’m sure I am not the first to have the sensation of dystopic Sci-Fi movies playing out before my eyes as I watch the video above.

Applications in military intelligence are a no-brainer – as well as in tracking terrorist activities, or any other activities that goverments and others want to monitor for that matter. The swarming ability of the nano quadrotors also opens up intriguing new options for semi-autonomous offensive systems that are able to outsmart defensive screens. And it’s not hard to imagine the devices being deployed on search and destroy missions, equipped with advanced face recognition capabilities and some suitably nasty toxin. And that’s just after giving the possibilities a cursory thought.

Of course, the technology is almost definitely not as mature as the videos suggest – just yet. The most impressive videos – including the nano quadrotors playing the James Bond theme – downplay the complexity of the external feedback and control systems needed and the limited range of the devices. But this is where synergistic technology innovation that builds on advanced technology platforms comes into its own.

For instance, take these four possible limitations of the technology, and the likely availability of technology-based solutions (and I’m speculating a little here, not being a nano quadrotor insider):

Sensors: To work effectively, the nano quadrotors need feedback – and lots of it. In the lab, this is provided through a combination of on-board and remote sensors. Although out of lab use is possible, it seems to be limited in part by the size, range, speed and sensitivity of on-board sensors at present. This will change. With advances in sensor technology that are already on the horizon, it will be easier to equip the devices with small, lightweight sensors that will allow increasingly autonomous operation.

Materials: The nano quadrotors depend on lightweight, high performance materials to ensure minimum power requirements and maximum maneuverability. Nanoscale science and engineering are already leading to a new generation of lightweight high performance materials that will further improve performance, as well as enabling further miniaturization.

Data processing: The current generation of nano quadrotors depend on incredibly powerful and sophisticated data processing capabilities. The next generation will demand even more. My guess is that there is still a shortfall between what can be achieved and what is needed for strong out of lab performance. But we’re getting there. There is still no end in sight to the exponential growth in processing power, or in smart new ways of using this power to process complex datasets on the fly.

Power. Vijay Kumar estimates that the current crop of nano quadrotors consume 15 watts of power – giving them in my estimate a maximum of 10 – 20 minute operating time between charges using current battery technologies. Not a lot if you are on an extended search and rescue mission! But battery technology is still advancing rapidly, and over the next few years it is entirely conceivable that this range will be doubled or more. Perhaps more intriguingly, it’s not too hard to imagine extending the range of a nano quadrotor to tens of miles by combining the its semi-autonomous behavior with hundreds of well-placed recharging stations. And if those stations used wireless power-transmission technologies currently under development – and thousands of them were air-dropped over a region – the effective range of nano quadrotor swarms could be extended to hundreds of miles or more.

Even looking at these four potentially limiting factors on nano quadrotor performance and use, it becomes apparent that current technology platforms are close to providing solutions that will make this a viable, powerful, and probably highly disruptive technology. Whether this will lead to a net gain or a net loss for society is by no-means clear yet. What I think is clear is that focusing on the responsible development of technology platforms, to the exclusion of the innovations that arise at the intersections between them, runs the risk of us missing what is most likely to change the world we live in.

Dip into Mind The Science Gap

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 13:45:26 +0000

If you haven’t been reading the Mind The Science Gap blog, you really should.

Ten Masters of Public Health students have been excelling themselves as they hone their ability to take published research and translate it into something accessible to a broader audience – all the while finding that elusive balance between simply telling a good story and having an impact on their readers.

Feeling lucky? Click image to open a random Mind The Science Gap post

Over the past six weeks this group has tackled everything from guns and play dates to biochar use, and obesity to environmental pollutants. But the number and diversity of the posts is now so great that simply browsing through them isn’t that easy. So I have devised a cunning plan:

Clicking the image above will take you to a random blog post on Mind The Science Gap. Repeated clicks will take you to different random posts (usually – it’s random!).

It’s the perfect way to catch up with a growing body of high quality science blogging on issues that could be impacting your health.

Is Maynard going over to the nano-dark side?

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:56:01 +0000

A few weeks ago I spent some time chatting with Howard Lovy for an article for the Nanobusiness Commercialization Association. That interview was posted by Vincent Caprio on his blog a few days ago, and raised a few eyebrows – was I showing signs of becoming a nano-risk skeptic?

I hope not, as as I still feel emerging evidence and trends indicate major perceived and real risk-related barriers lie in the path of developing nanoscale science and engineering successfully, if we aren’t smart. But I have always adhered to the idea that successful and responsible technology development depends on taking an evidence-based approach – even if that evidence is sometimes uncomfortable. And so these days I sometimes worry that too much is made of artificial constructs surrounding “nanotechnology”, and not enough is made of the underlying science.

Reading through Howard’s piece, I felt it was a pretty accurate reflection of our conversation. There are a couple of places where it possibly indicates less concern on my part than is warranted. Toward the end of the piece for instance I am quoted as saying “there is no need [for the nanobusiness community] to respond to individual challenges such as this lawsuit against the FDA”, referring to a recent lawsuit by consumer advocates against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which claims the FDA is failing to regulate nanomaterials in products.

I’m pretty sure I did say something along these lines. But the context was that lawsuits like these are a relatively widely used mechanism for holding federal agencies to account and prodding them into action. And while they are often important, the nanobusiness community need to understand this context and be aware of the bigger picture when it comes to responsible and sustainable development.

Overall though, the piece captures my increasing interest in getting to the bottom of what can go wrong as new technologies are developed, and how we need to start exploring better ways of ensuring responsible innovation.

Here’s the piece that Howard wrote – the original can be read on Vincent Caprio’s blog Evolving Innovations.

When Andrew Maynard, director of the Risk Science Center at the University of Michigan, read the text of a recent lawsuit by consumer advocates against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which claims the FDA is failing to regulate nanomaterials in products, one phrase jumped out at him. The groups used the words “fundamentally unique properties” when referring to nanoscale ingredients.

The phrase, in fact, comes directly from marketing material of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. So, in one sense, the nanotech industry is a victim of its own public relations, Maynard believes. A phrase used to promote nanotech commercialization is being thrown back at nanotech advocates by those who would use the same logic to demand strict regulations.

“There is an assumption that you can have everything your own way,” Maynard says. “You can say something was unique and important and world-changing, selling the hype, and yet not really understanding what the long-term consequences of that hype are.”

This is what Maynard does for a living. He tries to reach beyond hype and beyond gloom to assess and communicate the real risks associated with emerging technologies, including nanotechnology. But he approaches these assessments from a starting point that seems increasingly difficult to achieve in these polarized political times – one based on scientific principles rather than political agenda.

The problem with that “unique properties” phrase that has been so misused over the years is that the science does not necessarily back it up. Material at the nanoscale is not necessarily any different from its macroscale cousin.

“Now, with the research that’s been generated in the last few years, it’s become increasingly clear that there’s no well-defined set of materials that raise red flags when it comes to size,” Maynard says. “About the best you can do is say that the smaller and more sophisticated you make things the more you have to think about a wide range of questions when you’re evaluating safety.”

So, when Maynard now discusses nanotechnology and potential risk, he’s not likely to even use the “n” word. He’s talking about advanced materials, or “sophisticated materials.”

For example, he says, what questions do you ask when trying to determine whether quantum dots are safe? Well, you talk about the composition of the quantum dot, how its physical and chemical structure determines how it interacts with biological systems, and how its size effects where it goes in the body and how it interacts within it.

“But those are not nano-specific questions,” he says. “They’re the questions associated with a specifically designed material.”

The same thing with titanium dioxide found in sunscreens. Shrink them down to nanosize and you get concerns raised by advocacy groups such as the Friends of the Earth and others involved in the lawsuit against the FDA, but the research says titanium dioxide, even at that size, is still pretty benign.

It has taken Maynard a few years to reach this point in his thinking about nanotech. Many in the nanotech business community might remember Maynard when he was scientific adviser for the Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) between 2005 and 2008. The PEN raised many questions about the potential risks of nanomaterials. Has he changed since his Wilson Center days?

“I have, which is I think inevitable. If you take a young field, our knowledge is going to change over time,” Maynard says. “And if we don’t change our opinions based on that knowledge there’s something wrong.”

But one thing that has not changed is his belief that if nanotech is going to develop into a sustainable industry that is economically robust, it needs to also be “socially robust” and develop with an eye toward social implications.

“It makes a lot of business sense, if you’re developing any new technology – not just nanotech or whatever – to be aware of the possiblities of what might go wrong with that technology and those products and shore things up as early as possible,” he says.

The problem, though, is that roughly 10 years after these questions were first asked, after the U.S. government has invested millions in looking at the environmental and health implications of nanotechnology, we still are not much wiser.

“We know a lot more now,” Maynard says. “The question is do we know a lot more that’s useful now. That’s what I would debate.” The problem, he says, is that the wrong questions are being asked.

Take, for example, carbon nanotubes. There is an assumption by many researchers, Maynard said, that the material is similar to asbestos. But nanotubes are not straight, long, rigid fibers, yet this assumption is driving the research.

“I am quite often concerned that you talk to toxicology groups doing research on carbon nanotubes, I don’t think many of them could actually accurately describe to you the physical form or nature of a carbon nanotube. And yet they’re doing research under various assumptions of what these things are like.”

So, this is the mission of Maynard’s Risk Science Center – to start discussions about the risks of technology with a grounding in real science and not on speculation, taking and “evidence-based approach.”

He’s come a long way since the early 1990s, Maynard, now 46, worked on his Ph. D. at Cambridge in the UK, using advanced microscopy techniques to analyze airborne particles. At the time, many of his colleagues told him he was wasting his time. There would be no future in tiny materials. They were wrong, of course, and Maynard got involved further and further into studying emerging technologies. Eventually, he made the jump from doing science to studying the proper ways of communicating it to the public.

Next on his agenda is looking at issues involved in advanced manufacturing, which overlaps with nanotech. Again, he said he is asking questions having to do with how businesses using new manufacturing technologies, producing new materials, can predict where economic and social barriers are going to be and have a plan to get over them. That includes codes of conduct, standards and best practices. It is up to the industry, itself, to make sure these are in place. The alternative is unwanted regulation.

The most-important advice Maynard gives to the nanotech business community is to simply be aware of the possible implications of the technology they’re developing and make sure regulatory agencies are properly informed of what is being done. But there is no need to respond to individual challenges such as this lawsuit against the FDA.

“It’s worthwhile playing the long game and not being too reactionary to what happens,” Maynard says. “What’s happened over the last 10 years is that concerns over nanotechnology really haven’t gained that much traction.”

In fact, it’s just the opposite. People, in general, remain excited about the prospects of nanotechnology.

“I think the bottom line is to be as honest as possible, and talk to people,” Maynard says. “One of the biggest problems is if you come across as trying to hide things or trying to obscure things. Generally, people are really excited about this technology. They just want to know what’s going on. They want to know what it’s about.”

For more on where my thinking is going on sophisticated materials, check out:

Maynard, A. D., Philbert, M. A. and Warheit, D. B. (2011) The New Toxicology of Sophisticated Materials: Nanotoxicology and Beyond. Toxicol. Sci. 120 (suppl 1): S109-S129. [Free download]

Maynard, A. D. (2011) Don’t Define Nanomaterials. Nature 475, 31 [Accessible here]

Maynard, A. D., Bowman, D., Hodge, G. (2011) The problem of regulating sophisticated materials. Nature Materials 10, 554–557 [Accessible here]

Are consumers risking skin cancer because of fears over nanoparticles in sunscreens?

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 03:40:17 +0000

This has just landed in my email in box from Craig Cormick at the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education in Australia, and I thought I would pass it on given the string of posts on nanoparticles in sunscreens on 2020 Science over the past few years:

At Australia’s International Conference on Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICONN 2012) earlier this month, the results of a public perception study were released that indicate some Australian consumers would rather risk skin cancer by not using sunscreen than use a product containing nanoparticles. This despite increasing evidence that nanoparticles in sunscreens do not present a significant risk to health. The study was complimented by tests conducted by Australia’s National Measurement Institute that suggest some sunscreens labeled as “nano free” contain nanostructured material.

According to the media release on the public perceptions study,

“An online poll of 1,000 people, conducted in January this year, shows that one in three Australians had heard or read stories about the risks of using sunscreens with nanoparticles in them,” Dr Cormick said.

“Thirteen percent of this group were concerned or confused enough that they would be less likely to use any sunscreen, whether or not it contained nanoparticles, putting them selves at increased risk of developing potentially deadly skin cancers.

“The study also found that while one in five respondents stated they would go out of their way to avoid using sunscreens with nanoparticles in them, over three in five would need to know more information before deciding.”

A news release sent out a couple of weeks ago to coincide with ICONN 2012 also noted

Scientists from Australia’s National Measurement Institute and overseas collaborators reported on a technique using the scattering of synchrotron light to determine the sizes of particles in sunscreens. They found that some commercial sunscreens that claim to be ‘nano-free’ do in fact contain nanostructured material. The findings highlight the need for clear definitions when describing nanomaterials.

This study allegedly led to Friends of the Earth Australia removing their Safe Sunscreen Summer Guide 2011-2012 from the web – a guide which advises against using nanoparticle-containing sunscreens – until further information is available. The guide’s website currently states:

“Doubt has been cast over the accuracy of the nano status of some sunscreen brands in our guide. It appears that some companies may have been deceived as to the nano-content of their products. We are working flat-out to get a resolution to this matter.

We advise people to continue to be sun safe when spending time in the sun: seek shade, wear protective clothing, a hat and sunglasses and use sunscreen.

This page will be updated as soon as possible.

Thanks for your patience.”

While early questions concerning the possible dangers of using nanoparticle-containing sunscreens were legitimate given the state of science ten years ago, research over the intervening years has failed to substantiate concerns (see this review for example). Despite this, this latest opinions survey indicates that people may be at risk of placing themselves in greater danger because of concerns that continue to be articulated. Although it’s always hard to estimate how answers to questions like the ones asked here translate into actual actions, the survey does beg the questions – at what point does asking questions stimulate actions that lead to greater risks; and how should the public dialogue around a speculative risk respond to new evidence as it emerges?

Full details of the sunscreen perceptions and awareness survey can be found here.

Also worth reading: The safety of nanotechnology-based sunscreens – some reflections

Wonders and Worries – Retro nano at its best!

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 23:02:26 +0000

Here’s an introduction to the “wonders and worries of nanotechnology” that I think is rather brilliant:

It’s part of a series being produced by the Science Museum of Minnesota for the Nanoscale Informal Science Education network (NISE Net). The series is designed to stimulate discussions addressing the societal and ethical implication of nanotechnology – but in an accessible and non-threatening way.

Keep your eyes peeled for further episodes with Mindy and Denny – having read through some of the draft scripts, I think you will enjoy them!

World Economic Forum: Top Emerging Technologies Trends

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 17:46:27 +0000

For the past few months, the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies has been working on identifying some of the most significant trends in technology innovation. Published yesterday by WEF, these represent ten areas that we as a council felt are likely to shake things up over the next few years in terms of their economic and social impact.

The plan is to update this assessment on an annual basis

Here’s the list:

Informatics for adding value to information

The quantity of information now available to individuals and organizations is unprecedented in human history, and the rate of information generation continues to grow exponentially. Yet, the sheer volume of information is in danger of creating more noise than value, and as a result limiting its effective use. Innovations in how information is organized, mined and processed hold the key to filtering out the noise and using the growing wealth of global information to address emerging challenges.

Synthetic biology and metabolic engineering

The natural world is a testament to the vast potential inherent in the genetic code at the core of all living organisms. Rapid advances in synthetic biology and metabolic engineering are allowing biologists and engineers to tap into this potential in unprecedented ways, enabling the development of new biological processes and organisms that are designed to serve specific purposes – whether converting biomass to chemicals, fuels and materials, producing new therapeutic drugs or protecting the body against harm.

Green Revolution 2.0 – technologies for increased food and biomass

Artificial fertilizers are one of the main achievements of modern chemistry, enabling unprecedented increases in crop production yield. Yet, the growing global demand for healthy and nutritious food is threatening to outstrip energy, water and land resources. By integrating advances across the biological and physical sciences, the new green revolution holds the promise of further increasing crop production yields, minimizing environmental impact, reducing energy and water dependence, and decreasing the carbon footprint.

Nanoscale design of materials

The increasing demand on natural resources requires unprecedented gains in efficiency. Nanostructured materials with tailored properties, designed and engineered at the molecular scale, are already showing novel and unique features that will usher in the next clean energy revolution, reduce our dependence on depleting natural resources, and increase atom-efficiency manufacturing and processing.

Systems biology and computational modelling/simulation of chemical and biological systems

For improved healthcare and bio-based manufacturing, it is essential to understand how biology and chemistry work together. Systems biology and computational modelling and simulation are playing increasingly important roles in designing therapeutics, materials and processes that are highly efficient in achieving their design goals, while minimally impacting on human health and the environment.

Utilization of carbon dioxide as a resource

Carbon is at the heart of all life on earth. Yet, managing carbon dioxide releases is one of the greatest social, political and economic challenges of our time. An emerging innovative approach to carbon dioxide management involves transforming it from a liability to a resource. Novel catalysts, based on nanostructured materials, can potentially transform carbon dioxide to high value hydrocarbons and other carbon-containing molecules, which could be used as new building blocks for the chemical industry as cleaner and more sustainable alternatives to petrochemicals.

Wireless power

Society is deeply reliant on electrically powered devices. Yet, a significant limitation in their continued development and utility is the need to be attached to the electricity grid by wire – either permanently or through frequent battery recharging. Emerging approaches to wireless power transmission will free electrical devices from having to be physically plugged in, and are poised to have as significant an impact on personal electronics as Wi-Fi had on Internet use.

High energy density power systems

Better batteries are essential if the next generation of clean energy technologies are to be realized. A number of emerging technologies are coming together to lay the foundation for advanced electrical energy storage and use, including the development of nanostructured electrodes, solid electrolysis and rapid-power delivery from novel supercapacitors based on carbon-based nanomaterials. These technologies will provide the energy density and power needed to supercharge the next generation of clean energy technologies.

Personalized medicine, nutrition and disease prevention

As the global population exceeds 7 billion people – all hoping for a long and healthy life – conventional approaches to ensuring good health are becoming less and less tenable, spurred on by growing demands, dwindling resources and increasing costs. Advances in areas such as genomics, proteomics and metabolomics are now opening up the possibility of tailoring medicine, nutrition and disease prevention to the individual. Together with emerging technologies like synthetic biology and nanotechnology, they are laying the foundation for a revolution in healthcare and well-being that will be less resource intensive and more targeted to individual needs.

Enhanced education technology

New approaches are needed to meet the challenge of educating a growing young population and providing the skills that are essential to the knowledge economy. This is especially the case in today’s rapidly evolving and hyperconnected globalized society. Personalized IT-based approaches to education are emerging that allow learner-centred education, critical thinking development and creativity. Rapid developments in social media, open courseware and ubiquitous access to the Internet are facilitating outside classroom and continuous education.

Superstition and science – another A World Of Surprises video

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 19:13:43 +0000

Another product of the A World Of Surprises project with James King and a bunch of extremely talented public health and science students. This is a video from Gracie Trinidad, and explores the frisson between superstition and science through medieval paintings – with a contemporary twist at the end [make sure you watch to the very end of the video for the final quote].

The Tale of Rhino Banana(TM)

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:42:19 +0000

A product of the A World Of Surprises project with James King and a bunch of extremely talented public health and science students.

The task was to explore the confluence between mundane and catastrophic risk, which the team does beautifully. Love the technique, and the subtle touches (note the progressive effect of Rhino Bananas on their creator). And the news/web mockups are priceless. Brilliant!

[Make sure you watch to the quote at the end]

Many thanks to:

Chad Warhola
Janae Adams
Anirudha Rathnam
Sarah Kang
Alejandro Mendoza

(Needless to say, this is a bit of speculative fiction!)

Exploring speculated catastrophe and mundane reality

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 21:33:54 +0000

: Credit: James King

Last semester, speculative designer James King worked with myself and a small group of science and public health students at the University of Michigan to explore how a fusion of science and creative art can lead to new insights and modes of communication. The exercise was part of the A World of Surprises project – a project James is working on as the Witt Artist in residence at the UM School of Art and Design.

Part of the aim was to take these science-grounded students out of their comfort zone, expose them to some radical new ideas and perspectives, and see what happens.

The results were impressive! Once the students realized that they weren’t bound by the rigid limitations of their science education, they became enthused over using creative techniques to tell science-grounded stories that connected with people on a far deeper level than just the facts would allow.

Today the group presented the fruits of their final assignment: to produce a piece of creative work that captures the tension – in narrative form – between imagined catastrophic risks and experienced mundane risks. As a group, we were interested in the tension between the catastrophic consequences often imagined to arise from human endeavors, and the mundane reality that often develops.

I’ll try to showcase all of the projects over the next few weeks. They were all, in their own way, quite brilliant. Coming up in future posts there will be:

The Tale of Rhino Banana (a brilliant story of a technological breakthrough that runs up against public resistance);
Salutary lessons from the struggle between evil and the divine in the middle ages;
A visual juxtaposition of comparative risks related to Fukushima; and
A new-future story of technological sophistication and mundane consequences.

(I’ll add the links as they are posted – The Tale of Rhino Banana will be up first)

James will be back in Ann Arbor for the culmination of the A World Of Surprises project in March – stay tuned on that.

National Academy publishes new nanomaterials risk research strategy

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 23:38:00 +0000

The US National Academy of Science today published its long-awaited Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials. I won’t comment extensively on the report as I was a member of the committee that wrote it. But I did want to highlight a number of aspects of it that I think are particularly noteworthy:

Great progress so far, but it’s time to change gears. Something we grappled with as a committee was what the value of yet another research strategy was going to be. After all, it wasn’t so long ago that the US federal government published a well received strategy of its own. A key driver behind our strategy was a sense that the past decade has been one of defining the challenges we face as the field of nanotechnology develops, while the next decade will require more focus as an ever greater number of nanotechnology-enabled products hit the market. In other words, from a research perspective it’s time to change gears, building on past work but focusing on rapidly emerging challenges.

Combining life cycle and value chain in a single framework for approaching nanomaterial risk research. As a committee, we spent considerable time developing a conceptual framework for approaching research addressing the health and environmental impacts of engineered nanomaterials. What we ended up using was a combination of value chain – ranging from raw materials to intermediate products to final products – and material/product life cycle at each stage of the value chain. This effectively allows risk hot spots to be identified at each point of a material and product’s development, use and disposal cycle.

Principles, not definitions. Rather than rely on a single definition of engineered nanomaterial to guide risk-related research, we incorporated a set of principles into our conceptual framework to help identify materials of concern from an environment, health and safety impact perspective. These build on the principles proposed by myself, Martin Philbert and David Warheit in a toxicology review published last year. From the National Academies report:

…the present committee focuses on a set of principles in lieu of definitions to help identify nanomaterials and associated processes on which research is needed to ensure the responsible development and use of the materials. The principles were adopted in part because of concern about the use of rigid definitions of ENMs that drive EHS research and risk-based decisions … The principles are technology-independent and can therefore be used as a long-term driver of nanomaterial risk research. They help in identifying materials that require closer scrutiny regarding risk irrespective of whether they are established, emerging, or experimental ENMs. The principles are built on three concepts: emergent risk, plausibility, and severity; …

Emergent risk, as described here, refers to the likelihood that a new material will cause harm in ways that are not apparent, assessable, or manageable with current risk-assessment and risk-management approaches. Examples of emergent risk include the ability of some nanoscale particles to penetrate to biologically relevant areas that are inaccessible to larger particles, the failure of some established toxicity assays to indicate accurately the hazard posed by some nanomaterials, scalable behavior that is not captured by conventional hazard assessments (such as behavior that scales with surface area, not mass), and the possibility of abrupt changes in the nature of material-biologic interactions associated with specific length scales. Identifying emergent risk depends on new research that assesses a novel material’s behavior and potential to cause harm.

Emergent risk is defined in terms of the potential of a material to cause harm in unanticipated or poorly understood ways rather than being based solely on its physical structure or physicochemical properties. Thus, it is not bound by rigid definitions of nanotechnology or nanomaterials. Instead, the principle of emergence enables ENMs that present unanticipated risks to human health and the environment to be distinguished from materials that probably do not. It also removes considerable confusion over how nanoscale atoms, molecules, and internal material structures should be considered from a risk perspective, by focusing on behavior rather than size.

Many of the ENMs of concern in recent years have shown a potential to lead to emergent risks and would be tagged under this principle and thus require further investigation. But the concept also allows more complex nanomaterials to be considered—those in the early stages of development or yet to be developed. These include active and self-assembling nanomaterials. The principle does raise the question of how “emergence” is identified, being by definition something that did not exist previously. However the committee recognized that in many cases it is possible to combine and to interpret existing data in ways that indicate the possible emergence of new risks. For example, some research has suggested that surface area is an important factor that affects the toxic potency of some ENMs; ENMs that have high specific surface area and are poorly soluble might pose an emergent risk.

Plausibility refers in qualitative terms to the science-based likelihood that a new material, product, or process will present a risk to humans or the environment. It combines the possible hazard associated with a material and the potential for exposure or release to occur. Plausibility also refers to the likelihood that a particular technology will be developed and commercialized and thus lead to emergent risks. For example, the self-replicating nanobots envisaged by some writers in the field of nanotechnology might legitimately be considered an emergent risk; if it occurs, the risk would lie outside the bounds of conventional risk assessment. But this scenario is not plausible, clearly lying more appropriately in the realm of science fiction than in science. The principle of plausibility can act as a crude but important filter to distinguish between speculative risks and credible risks.

The principle of severity refers to the extent and magnitude of harm that might result from a poorly managed nanomaterial. It also helps to capture the reduction in harm that may result from research on the identification, assessment, and management of emergent risk. The principle offers a qualitative reality check that helps to guard against extensive research efforts that are unlikely to have a substantial effect on human health or environmental protection. It also helps to ensure that research that has the potential to make an important difference is identified and supported.

Together, those three broad principles provide a basis for developing an informed strategy for selecting materials that have the greatest potential to present risks. They can be used to separate new materials that raise safety concerns from materials that, although they may be novel from an application perspective, do not present undetected, unexpected, or enhanced risks. They contribute to providing a framework for guiding a prioritized risk-research agenda. In this respect, the principles were used by the committee as it considered the pressing risk challenges presented by ENMs.

Maintaining current research and development funding levels. As a committee, we felt that the current US federal government of ~$120 million into environment, health and safety-specific nanotechnology research was reasonable, especially given the current economic climate. However, we did recommend that, as knowledge develops and commercialization of products using nanomaterials increases, funded research is aligned with areas and priorities identified within the strategy.

Developing cross-cutting activities. There were five areas where the committee felt that further funding was needed to ensure the value of nano-risk research was fully realized. Each of these cuts across areas of research, and provides the means to maximize the benefit of the science being supported. From the report:

Informatics: $5 million per year in new funding for the next 5 years should be used to support the development of robust informatics systems and tools for managing and using information on the EHS effects of ENMs. The committee concluded that developing robust and responsive informatics systems for ENM EHS information was critical to guiding future strategic research, and translating research into actionable intelligence. This includes maximizing the value of research that is EHS-relevant but not necessarily EHS-specific, such as studies conducted during the development of new therapeutics. Based on experiences from other areas of research, investment in informatics of the order of $15 million is needed to make substantial progress in a complex and data rich field. However, within the constraints of nanotechnology R&D, the committee concluded that the modest investment proposed would at least allow initial informatics systems to be developed and facilitate planning for the long-term.

Instrumentation: $10 million per year in new funding for the next 5 years should be invested in translating existing measurement and characterization techniques into platforms that are accessible and relevant to EHS research and in developing new EHS- specific measurement and characterization techniques for assessing ENMs under a variety of conditions. The committee recognized that the proposed budget is insufficient for substantial research into developing new nanoscale characterization techniques— especially considering the cost of high-end instruments such as analytic electron microscopes—in excess of $2 million per instrument. However, the proposed budget was considered adequate to support the translation of techniques developed or deployed in other fields for the EHS characterization of ENMs.

Materials: Investment is needed in developing benchmark ENMs over the next 5 years, a long-standing need that has attracted little funding to date. The scope of funding needed depends in part on the development of public-private partnerships. However, to assure that funding is available to address this critical gap, the committee recommends that $3-5 million per year be invested initially in developing and distributing benchmark ENMs. While more funds could be expended on developing a library of materials, this amount will assure that the most critically needed materials are developed. These materials will enable systematic investigation of their behavior and mechanisms of action in environmental and biologic systems. The availability of such materials will allow benchmarking of studies among research groups and research activities. The committee further recommends that activities around materials development be supported by public- private partnerships. Such partnerships would also help to assure that relevant materials are being assessed.

Sources: $2 million per year in new funding for the next 5 years should be invested in characterizing sources of ENM release and exposure throughout the value chain and life cycle of products. The committee considered that this was both an adequate and reasonable budget to support a comprehensive inventory of ENM sources.

Networks: $2 million per year in new funding for the next 5 years should be invested in developing integrated researcher and stakeholder networks that facilitate the sharing of information and the translation of knowledge to effective use. The networks should allow participation of representatives of industry and international research programs and are a needed complement to the informatics infrastructure. They would also facilitate dialogue around the development of a dynamic library of materials. The committee concluded that research and stakeholder networks are critical to realizing the value of federally funded ENM EHS research and considered this to be an area where a relatively small amount of additional funding would have a high impact—both in the development of research strategies and in the translation and use of research findings. Given the current absence of such networks, the proposed budget was considered adequate.

Authority and accountability. In our report, we talk quite a bit about the need for an entity within the federal government to take the lead in implementing a risk research strategy. While the US National Nanotechnology Initiative have done a great job coordinating interagency activities, we felt that there is only so far coordination without authority can go if socially and economically important research is to be conducted in a timely and relevant manner. What this “entity” might look like – we left that to the federal government to chew over.

There’s a lot more to the report – including (as you would expect) a broad assessment of research areas that need attention if the science of nanomaterial human health and environmental impacts is to continue to develop effectively.

This is the first of two reports- the second is due in around 18 months, and will look at progress toward implementing a relevant and effective research strategy.

The National Academies report “A Research Strategy for Environmental, Health, and Safety Aspects of Engineered Nanomaterials” can be downloaded here.

Mind the Science Gap – Helping science students connect with a non-science audience

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 22:33:11 +0000

Cross-posted from the Scientific American Incubator blog:

Studying for a Masters degree in Public Health prepares you for many things. But it doesn’t necessarily give you hands-on experience of how to take complex information and translate it into something others can understand and use. Yet as an increasing array of public health issues hit the headlines, from fungicide residues in orange juice to the safe development of new technologies, this is exactly where public health professionals need to be developing their skills. And it’s not only in the public domain: the ability to translate complex science into actionable intelligence is more important now than ever in supporting policy makers and business leaders make decisions that are grounded in evidence rather than speculation.

These were just some of the drivers behind a new course I have just started teaching at the University of Michigan School of Public Health that built around science blogging. OK, so maybe I wanted to have a little fun with the students as well. But my experiences with the blog 2020 Science have taught me that the discipline of writing a science-based blog for a broad audience is invaluable for developing highly transferrable communication skills. And it’s not just me. Emailing with the scientist, author and blogger Sheryl Kirshenbaum about the course, she admitted “blogging taught me how to effectively communicate with broad audiences”. (Sheryl also added that she’s also learned a great deal from many wonderful editors – to which I can only add “me too!”).

The new course throws ten Masters of Public Health students in at the deep end by challenging each of them to publish ten posts over ten weeks on the blog Mind The Science Gap – and to respond to the comments they receive. As this is a science blog, each post will be based around published health-related research. The challenge for the writers will be to translate this into a science-grounded piece that is relevant and accessible to a broad audience.

The key objective here is to develop new skills through experience. And for this, I am encouraging as many people as possible to comment on the posts. As any science blogger will tell you, even simple comments like “I liked this” or “this was confusing” are extremely helpful in understanding what works and what doesn’t. But I am also hoping readers will look beyond the educational aspects of the exercise, and engage with the students on the subjects they are writing about. This is where I suspect the experience will become most empowering.

There’s another aspect of the course that intrigues me. Rather naively, I started this exercise imagining a series of impersonal posts that focused on intellectually interesting but emotionally ambivalent scientific studies. What I forgot is that public health matters to people. And so it’s going to be tough for our bloggers to separate what they write about from their passions – and those of their readers. In fact I’m not even sure that such a separation would be appropriate – for communication to be relevant, it needs to go beyond the numbers. But how do you effectively combine science with a desire to make the world a better place in a blog? I try to achieve this on my own blog, but I must admit don’t have any easy answers here. So as the Mind The Science Gap students develop their skills, I’m going to be doing some learning of my own as I watch how they respond to this particular challenge.

At the end of the day, Mind The Science Gap is about teaching the next generation of public health professionals how to connect more effectively with non-specialist and non-technical audiences – whether they are managers, clients, policy makers or members of the public. It isn’t about creating a new wave of science bloggers. But in the process, I like to think that some of the participants will get the blogging bug. Whether they do or not, I’m looking forward to ten weeks of engaging, entertaining and hopefully challenging posts from ten talented students.

2012 World Economic Forum Global Risk Report

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:52:09 +0000

Cross-posted from the Risk Science Blog

The World Economic Forum Global Risks Report is one of the most authoritative annual assessments of emerging issues surrounding risk currently produced. Now in its seventh edition, the 2012 report launched today draws on over 460 experts* from industry, government, academia and civil society to provide insight into 50 global risks across five categories, within a ten-year forward looking window.

: Global Risk Landscape 2012. Source: World Economic Forum Global Risks 2012, Seventh Edition

As you would expect from such a major undertaking, the report has its limitations. There are some risk trends that maybe aren’t captured as well as they could be – chronic disease and pandemics are further down the list this year than I would have expected. And there are others that capture the headlining concerns of the moment – severe income disparity is the top-listed global risk in terms of likelihood. But taken as a whole, the trends highlighted capture key concerns and the analysis provides timely and relevant insight.

Risks are addressed in five broad categories, covering economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological risks. And cutting across these, the report considers three top-level issues under the headings Seeds of Dystopia (action or inaction that leads to fragility in states); How Safe are our Safeguards? (unintended consequences of over, under and unresponsive regulation); and The Dark Side of Connectivity (connectivity-induced vulnerability). These provide a strong framework for approaching the identified risks systemically, and teasing apart complex interactions that could lead to adverse consequences.

But how does the report relate to public health more specifically?

The short answer is that many of the issues raised have a direct or indirect impact on public health nationally and globally. Many of the issues are complex and intertwined, and are deserving of much more attention than I’ve been able to give the report so far. I did however want to pull out some of the points that struck me on a first read-through:

Unintended consequences of nanotechnology. Following a trend seen in previous Global Risks reports, the unintended consequences of nanotechnology – while still flagged up – are toward the bottom of the risk spectrum. The potential toxicity of engineered nanomaterials is still mentioned as a concern. But most of the 50 risks addressed are rated as having a higher likelihood and/or impact.

Unintended consequences of new life science technologies. These are also relatively low on the list, but higher up the scale of concern that nanotechnologies. Specifically called out are the possibilities of genetic manipulation through synthetic biology leading to unintended consequences or biological weapons.

Unforeseen consequences of regulation. These are ranked relatively low in terms of likelihood and impact. But the broad significance of unintended consequences is highlighted in the report. These are also linked in with the potential impact and likelihood of global governance failure. Specifically, the report calls for

“A shift in mentality … so that policies, regulations or institutions can offer vital protection in a more agile and cohesive way.”

The report’s authors also ask how leaders can develop anticipatory and holistic approaches to system safeguards; how businesses and governments can prevent a breakdown of trust following the emergence of new risks; and how governments, business and civil society can work together to improve resilience against unforeseen risks.

Vulnerability to pandemics. Pandemic-associated risks are in the middle of the pack when it comes to potential impact, but not as high as might be expected on the likelihood scale. In 2007 and 2008 pandemics were listed in the top five global risks in terms of impact in the Global Risks Report, but have not appeared this high since 2009. With increasing talk about flu strains like H5N1, I wonder whether the relegation of pandemics from the top-tier risks is an oversight.

Antibiotic-resistant bacteria. These are flagged up right in the middle of the risk-pack as an emerging risk, and are one of the highest-ranked risks directly related to public health. The report provides little additional information beyond this though.

Food and water shortage crises. Thee are the highest-ranked risks in terms of impact below major systemic financial failure. And while they are both addressed as systemic risks, failure in each area has clear public health implications.

Rising rates of chronic disease. While overshadowed by higher profile risks, this remains an area of significant anticipated adverse impact and likelihood in the report.

Dystopic trends. The chapter addressing potential drivers of a dystopic future does not directly address public health issues. But trends that have an indirect impact on health thread through it. The impact of the current global financial crisis on jobs, working hours and benefits is highlighted, and it is noted that young people have been especially hard hit recently by a lack of career opportunities. The challenges of an aging population are also flagged. Both areas impact indirectly (and sometimes not so indirectly) on health and well-being. One of the questions for stakeholders posed here is “What measures should be taken today to deal with the changing socio-economic dynamics of an ageing population and a bulging young population?” One could equally well ask what measures should be taken to ensure the health of these two populations.

Regulatory risks. In the case addressing asking “How Safe are our Safeguards?” the report’s authors conclude that:

“far-reaching weaknesses in regulations [suggest] that we may be falling behind in our capacity to protect the systems that underpin growth and prosperity”

This report considers regulation extremely broadly, and spans everything from financial regulation to safety regulation. Yet it also stresses the need for integrated approaches to systemic challenges. The highlighted questions to stakeholders at the end of this section are particularly pertinent to health risk-related regulation and governance:

How can leaders break the pattern of crisis followed by reactionary regulation and develop anticipatory and holistic approaches to system safeguards?

How can appropriate regulations be developed so that firms will undertake effective safeguards?

How can businesses and governments prevent a rapid breakdown of trust following the emergence of a new widespread risk?

How can businesses, government and civil society work together to improve resilience against unforeseen risks?

Emerging technologies and emerging risks: In examining information on technologies and risks, the report concludes

“globally, the latest technologies are increasingly accessible to local industries, but indicators relating to confidence in the institutions responsible for developing safeguards, including those that manage the risks of emerging technologies, have not shown proportional increases.”

Special report on the 2011 Japan earthquake. The March 11 earthquake that hit Japan last year and the following tsunami resulted in widespread social, economic and health impacts. In a special report, the 2011 Global Risk Report takes a holistic look at factors, events and impacts. This is a case review that is well worth reading from a systemic risk perspective.

Risk centers of gravity. The report concludes with a fascinating analysis of risk “Centers of Gravity” within the five sectors it focuses on – these are described as the risks perceived to be of greatest systemic importance, or the most influential and consequential in relation to others, within each sector. The risk centers of gravity that emerged in each sector were:

Economic: Chronic fiscal imbalances
Environmental: Rising greenhouse gas emissions
Geopolitical: Global governance failure
Societal: Unsustainable population growth
Technological: Critical systems failure

: Source: World Economic Forum Global Risks 2012, Seventh Edition

The bottom line? The report concludes that

Decision-makers need to improve understanding of incentives that will improve collaboration in response to global risks;

Trust, or lack of trust, is perceived to be a crucial factor in how risks may manifest themselves. In particular, this refers to confidence, or lack thereof, in leaders, in systems which ensure public safety and in the tools of communication that are revolutionizing how we share and digest information; and

Communication and information sharing on risks must be improved by introducing greater transparency about uncertainty and conveying it to the public in a meaningful way.

The Global Risks 2012 Seventh Edition is available at http://reports.weforum.org/global-risks-2012/

*I was marginally involved in the report as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Emerging Technologies

Spare a comment – student science writers need your help!

Andrew Maynard — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 00:32:00 +0000

In a little over a week, ten of my University of Michigan Masters of Public Health students will embark on an intensive science blogging course – and they need your help!

Every week for ten weeks, each student will take a recent scientific publication or emerging area of scientific interest, and write a public blog post on it that is aimed at a non expert and non technical audience. And as they do this, they will be evaluated in the most brutal way possible – by the audience they are writing for!

The blog is Mind The Science Gap (mindthesciencegap.org, or mtsg.org for short), and the course is designed to use the medium of science blogging to develop more generally applicable communication skills.

This is where you come in: We are looking for people who are willing to read and comment on the posts each week, and help the participants hone their skills. You don’t have to be an expert in what is being written about – you just have to have an opinion over whether the pieces connect with you or not, and how they could be improved. Even comments as short of “I liked this” or “I don’t get this” are tremendously helpful in indicating what works, and what does not.

Whether you are a public health expert, a science communicator, or simply someone who enjoys reading about science and health, please consider checking into the blog regularly and commenting on what you read. If you can commit to leaving a couple of comments a week, please consider becoming a mentor – check out the blog’s Mentor page for details. Even if you can’t, please do read the posts and comment when you get the chance.

And please do spread the word – the more readers and the more comments, the quicker these ten students will develop the skills necessary to communicate complex science to a broad audience.

Blogging starts on January 16th – Thank you for your support, and see you there!

Innovation resolutions for 2012

Andrew Maynard — Sat, 31 Dec 2011 20:34:30 +0000

Note to self: When being swept up in the inevitable innovation frenzies* that 2012 will bring, don’t forget to:

Be aware of where change is needed, and where it is not;
Focus on inventiveness that will foster new solutions to pressing challenges;
Develop the foresight to explore and respond to the consequences of actions arising from new ideas;
Have the humility to ask others for help in areas where expertise runs thin; and
Not discount simple solutions to seemingly complex problems.

Oh, and go easy on the chocolate and booze.

Hope you all have a happy, fulfilled and productively innovative new year!

Andrew

__________________________________________________

*As well as working on and writing about technology innovation as usual, I’m expecting 2012 to be a big year for innovation in the “day job”, including exploring some new approaches to teaching and knowledge translation.

Brain candy for the intellectually incapacitated – the sequel

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 13:18:25 +0000

Two years ago I posted links to ten (relatively) mindless online “games” as a bit of fun, and as something not too taxing to indulge in over the holiday break. Having reached that point again where anything more intellectually challenging than tic tac toe makes my head hurt, I thought I would revisit and update the 2020 Science Compendium of Mindless Games. The only criteria for inclusion: an ability to retain my attention for more than 10 seconds, minimal thinking required, a high smile-factor, and absolutely nothing of overtly educational value!

Just in case you are looking for something a tad more intellectually stimulating, you can always try the Royal Statistical Society Christmas Quiz instead!

Have fun, and Happy Holidays!

___________________

Science Crossword

Two years ago I started off with a simple crossword to give the illusion of intellectual integrity – here’s another one in the series.

If you enjoyed this, there are fifteen other science crosswords to keep you amused ScienceCrossword.com

Levers

Retained from two years ago – a deceptively engaging bit of fun from VectorPark. Like all games from VectorPark, it’s up to you to discover the rules by trial and error. Or you could just sit and watch your mobile twist and turn on the screen – my recommendation after a heavy Holiday meal!

Monkey Lander

I spent some time looking for an alternative to Monkey Lander – but failed to find anything quite so mindlessly enjoyable. And the neat thing is, the gravity-thruster simulation isn’t half bad

Acrobats

Another brilliant offering from VectorPark, and something that’s new to this collection. Just play with the controls, move the acrobats with your cursor, and enjoy!

Simon Says

Confession: I was going to include something with a more artistic bent from Paul Neave’s great online collectionbut I couldn’t resist this piece of retro-nostalgia!

Gravity Launch

Another game I had to keep! Gravity Launch almost didn’t make it into the mindless game compendium last time round – it teeters on the edge of being too educational. But despite this obvious flaw, it’s still a lot of fun – and simple too. Just adjust the rocket’s thrust and takeoff angle, and try to dock with an increasingly complex array of space stations.

Snowflake Designer

I must confess that the simplicity of this application had me enchanted. Design beautiful “snowflakes” to your heart’s content.

Seasons

Yet another VectorPark application that’s new to this compendium. It has all the hallmarks of other applications from the same shop – deceptive simplicity, beautifully imagined graphics, and delightful serendipity. Move the cursor around and see what happens. To move to the next season, simply move the cursor to the right of the screen.

A load of Jackson Pollock?

Not a new application, but still worthy of this collection: design your own Jackson Pollock lookalike painting. The secret is in knowing when to stop!

Feed the Head

In 2009 I finished the brain candy collection with a really trippy piece from Vector Park. And here it is again – I couldn’t resist! Follow the mouse, and see where it leads…

Chris Mocella and The Chemistry of Fireworks

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 01:30:47 +0000

A couple of weeks back I had the pleasure of moderating an American Chemistry Society webinar on the Chemistry of Fireworks with pyrotechnics guru Chris Mocella. It’s not quite emerging technologies, but Chris gave such an engaging talk that I thought I would post it here. It’s a great intro to some chemistry basics, and perfect for high school chemistry classes

You can read more about the ACS webinar here.

Metaphorically speaking, it’s photo caption time

Andrew Maynard — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:54:20 +0000

A question for you: How many science literacy/communication/engagement metaphors can you see in the photo below?

Answers on a metaphorical post card in the comments area below please – I’m really interested to see what you come up with!

The photo by the way is the header image for a student science blog that will be launching in January – I’ll be writing more about that in a couple of weeks. The blog is called Mind the Science Gap, and is designed to improve the science communication skills of public health masters students.

Pencasts – a useful educational tool?

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:49:44 +0000

I picked up a new toy this weekend. (If you want to cut to the chase and see what I’ve been doing with it, please head straight to the end of the post).

I’m fascinated by the combination of old tech (essentially “chalk and talk”) and new media that Sal Kahn has been successfully using to teach mathematics and science on-line. The basic approach he uses of writing and drawing while talking is as old as the hills. But he successfully enhances this through “debundling” topics (breaking things down into small digestible chunks) and making his digitized chalk and talk lessons freely available as short online videos.

Chalk and talk is a way of teaching I still find effective, as it forces me to develop ideas at a measured pace, while allowing my students to follow the thought process and take notes. But it’s an approach that is increasingly out of vogue as educators feel they have to pander to today’s tech-savvy and social media-immersed students. So inspired by Sol Kahn, I’ve been looking at ways of combining this approach with new online tools to provide teaching resources that extend what can be achieved in the classroom.

My first approach was to look at Kahn’s setup – essentially using a drawing tablet and software as a digital blackboard, and recording short videos to teach specific concepts and skills. But after just a few minutes, I realized that this was a learning curve that was too steep for me (put it down to age!) – tablets have a remarkable ability to make everything look like it was drawn by a 3 year old, until you get the hang of it!

Then I came across pencasts.

Imagine working through a maths or science problem with a student, and sketching out your workings on a sheet of paper as you do. Now imagine that you can give that student a digital document that replays your scribbles and your verbal commentary on their computer in real time. And finally, imagine that the student can skip to any part of the document to see and hear how a particular step was developed, and replay this until they get it.

This is a pencast. Using a Livescribe Smartpen and a dedicated notebook, it’s possible to develop concepts or work through problems using pen and paper, and then to create a dynamic digital document from this that replays the pen strokes and the accompanying commentary. The resulting pencasts can be viewed online. But the real beauty is that they can saved as PDFs, and replayed using the latest version of Adobe Acrobat – so, for instance, it’s possible to email someone a solution to a maths problem as a PDF that takes them through it step by step, as if they were working through it with you by their side – apart that they can rewind and repeat the hard bits.

I was intrigued – is this the ideal combination of old tech “chalk and talk” with new tech “digital replay”? To explore further, I grabbed myself a Smartpen and started to play.

My first attempts at using the technology are basic to say the least (see below). But the learning curve is shallow compared to using tablets and YouTube videos, and the resulting file format potentially much more versatile. Having got to grips with some of the possibilities and limitations (the software for pencasts only works effectively on PC’s at the moment for instance, and the audio quality isn’t that great), I think I will be experimenting with augmenting next semester’s lectures with pencast documents.

But in the meantime, I would be extremely interested in comments and feedback on the technology.

Nanomaterial specific surface area and number concentration – three crude explorations of using pencasts to explain concepts

To play each pencast, simply click on the “play” button. They typically look better displayed full screen. By default, you can see all of the material on the page but it is greyed out until those pen strokes are reached. When in full screen mode though, you can choose to hide stuff until the pen strokes are reached, using the button in the bottom left hand corner.

NANO-03 Particle Size & Surface Area
(Download PDF)

NANO-04 Specific Surface Area & Particle Size
(Download PDF)

NANO-05 Number Concentration vs Size
(Download PDF)

A few Small Issues about Public Engagement on Nanotechnology

Craig Cormick — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 02:35:13 +0000

A guest blog by Craig Cormick.

Over the past decade there has been a significant growth in public engagement activities relating to nanotechnology and when you look across all the data being generated you can learn a lot about how the public view the risks and benefits of the technology. That’s probably not news for anybody who follows this blog. But what might be news is to look closely at who is driving these engagements. Is it the public? Generally no.

The majority of the public are still rather unengaged on nanotechnology, and tend to think it’s all rather good (not including food). Media coverage is predominantly positive and concern-stories don’t get much traction. And yet there is a lot of funding going into public engagement of nanotechnology – so engagement has to happen.

The premise behind most government funding of nanotechnology engagement world-wide is that we need to avoid a replication of what happened with Genetically Modified Foods, and so the errors of that public debate need to be addressed early in the nanotechnology debate. But is that a valid premise? Nanotechnologies and Genetic Modification (GM) technologies, while similar in some ways, are significantly different too. Most importantly GM technology was a “black hat technology” (which was its starting position in the publics’ eyes, as a risky thing, and there was little impact that positive information and engagement campaigns had on that) while nanotechnology is a “white hat technology” (and likewise negative information campaigns are having little impact on changing its initial perception of being more beneficial than risky).

So now let’s look at the engagements that are happening and who attends them. The majority of activities involve bringing a range of experts and the public together in some manner, or bringing lay publics together, to discuss nanotechnology issues, with research being conducted into what and how and why the public react to the engagement activity. That’s all good, and activities are getting better and better at developing two-way learnings. But there are publics and there are publics, and most engagement activities recruit people who self-select to attend, and as a result are more likely to represent those with some interest in the technology or its impacts already. So you could argue that a lot of activities are engaging with those people who least need to be engaged with, as they are already engaged.

So issue number 1: Most engagement activities favour the engaged, and there are not enough methodologies to engage with the broader unengaged people in our communities.

That brings us to the types of engagement activities happening. A useful GM analogy to use here is the difference between laboratory trials, greenhouse trials and field trials. Many nanotechnology engagements are the equivalent of laboratory trials – being conducted in artificial environments (focus groups, deliberative dialogues and citizens juries) that, while providing useful data, might not be easily transferable to the real world.

There are other engagements that we might consider greenhouse trials, such as online forums, café scientifics and so on, that are much closer to the real world that most people live in, but still aren’t quite it.

Then there are some good examples of engagements that are what we might call field trials (community group meetings and shopping center interviews), but not many.

Issue number 2 is the need to find engagements that replicate real world experiences as much as possible for the broad unengaged publics, both to allow research into real world experiences, and to provide modelling that people might be able to transfer to their homes and work places etc.

And this raises issue number 3, which is that while there is an expectation that people who take part in engagement activities – whether they be laboratory experiments, greenhouse trials or field trials – they will take their new knowledge or attitudes and go forth and multiply it within the broader community, there is very little data to demonstrate whether this actually happens or not.

So while it is useful to pool all the research data being obtained and make meta-analysis of the findings, as happens regularly, it might be more helpful at the moment to look for gaps in the data and then find ways to fill them. And that, I suggest, is the next major challenge not just for those undertaking public engagement activities, but for anyone seeking an effective way to come to good understandings of how the broad public actually relate to the risks and benefits of new technologies.

Dr Craig Cormick is Manager of Public Awareness and Community Engagement within the National Enabling Technologies Strategy in the Australian Department of Innovation.

Didn’t get a reply to your email? This might be why:

Andrew Maynard — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:47:32 +0000

You sent me an email and didn’t hear back? This might explain it:

OK so it’s not a serious decision chart. But it’s beginning to look increasingly attractive!

I always have the best of intentions when it comes to keeping up with my email correspondence. But increasingly I find myself struggling to keep up. The problem isn’t so much the volume, as the expectations. I have a constant stream of email asking me for stuff – presentations, reviews, advice, comment. Each request is important to the sender I’m sure. But if you are asking me to do something that I’m not directly paid to do, doing what you ask means that I to sacrifice something else to respond. And that inevitably ends up being my personal time, family time, meal time or sleep time.

That said, I don’t begrudge people asking me to do things for them, and I usually try and accommodate requests. But if you have sent me an email that seems to have disappeared into a black hole, the chances are that it has been swamped by hundreds of others like it, or I had to decide whether to spend time with my wife and kids or with your request. And if it was really important, there’s never any harm in resending!

Note: In the “Is it from someone important?” box, I should point out that this includes family and friends!

Exposure to silver nanoparticles may be more common than we thought

Andrew Maynard — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:58:27 +0000

The past few years has seen an explosion of interest in silver nanoparticles. Along with a plethora of products using the particles to imbue antimicrobial properties on everything from socks to toothpaste, nanometer scale silver particles have been under intense scrutiny from researchers and policy makers concerned that they present an emerging health and environmental risk. But a paper published last month in the journal ACS Nano suggests that, contrary to popular understanding, we’ve been exposed to silver nanoparticles for as long as we have been using the metal.

I became aware of work in Jim Hutchison’s lab at the University of Oregon some months ago that showed nanoscale silver particles are readily released from larger particles and pieces of metal. I remember the shiver (quite literally) as I saw data that seemed to challenge the current obsession with nanoscale silver as a possible new and unusual risk to people and the environment. And at the time I wondered just how people would react when they discovered how ubiquitous exposure to nano-silver has probably been for the past few thousand years.

But rather than headlines screaming “feds invest millions in researching a centuries old non-problem” when the work was published last month, the response was rather muted. Since publication, there has been a piece in Chemical & Engineering News, a long article written by Gwyneth Shaw in the New Haven Independent, a bizarrely headlined article claiming “Nanoparticles ‘no threat to health’” in TG Daily (as if the inverted commas justify the clearly unfounded statement)… and that’s about it. And I’m not quite sure what to make of this deafening indifference.

: From the paper in ACS Nano: Over a period of four weeks and in the presence of moisture, 75 nm silver particles became surrounded by large numbers of much smaller particles.

The research itself shows that under certain conditions, metallic silver will release large numbers of silver nanoparticles. Researchers attached small silver particles to electron microscope grids and exposed them to moisture. Over a period of weeks, the particles became surrounded by large numbers of much smaller particles – the silver was shedding silver nanoparticles (see images to the right). Nanoparticle release was also seen when resting large silver objects on the grids. And the effect wasn’t confined to silver – copper also released nanoparticles in the presence of moisture. To be sure that this wasn’t a product of how the research was conducted, the researchers checked to make sure that the particles weren’t being produced because of conditions on the grid or in the electron microscope – they weren’t.

The implications of this work are quite stunning. It implies – although verification is needed – that any object made out of silver or coated in silver will slowly release silver nanoparticles into the environment. Silver jugs and cutlery – used since ancient times – will have been releasing silver nanoparticles into food and drink. Silver jewelry will have been releasing silver nanoparticles onto wearer’s skin. Silver tongue studs will have been releasing silver nanoparticles into people’s gastrointestinal tract. As soon as you start to think about it, there are all sorts of places where people and the environment could have been coexisting with silver nanoparticles for some time!

Assuming that this is the case, what are the implications for current research on the health and environmental impacts of silver nanoparticles, of which there is rather a lot? (A search of the ICON nanoEHS Virtual Journal returns over 300 papers mentioning silver published since 2005). Is nano silver a sufficiently unusual and potentially dangerous substance to justify millions of dollars being spent on researching its risks? Does the new wave of nano silver products represent an emergent risk, or simply a repackaged old risk? And if exposure to nano silver has been occurring for millennia, where is the evidence for harm associated with this exposure?

Of course, a critical factor here is how much stuff are people and the environment exposed to – how much nano silver will you be exposed to eating with premium silverware for instance, and how does this compare to wearing the latest offering of nano-silver socks? It may be that the new interest in using nano silver in commercial products is leading to a significant jump in exposure.

Be that as it may, the most significant implication of the research to me is that it undermines the assumption that products carrying the “nanotechnology” label automatically present new and unusual risks. Silver nanoparticles have been touted as a product of nanotechnology, and indeed they do fit the bill – intentionally engineered at the nanoscale to be used in unique ways. And this association with nanotechnology has led to research and policy organizations to invest an awful lot of time and effort in them – from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to the US Environmental protection Agency. Yet from a health and environmental impact perspective, it is looking increasingly likely that many engineered silver nanoparticles are indistinguishable from those nanoparticles shed by every piece of silver and silver plated stuff in common use.

So where does this leave us? Should we abandon research into the health and environmental impacts of silver nanoparticles? Probably not, because we still need to understand the risks associated with what we intentionally use. But we might want to ease back on the passion that seems to be driving interest in nano silver risks, almost to the exclusion of other materials.

And we might want to rethink framing nano silver as a new threat from an emerging technology – unless someone can convincingly demonstrate that the nanoparticles from my silver spoon are not as worrisome as those from my nano-engineered socks.

Techno Hype or Techno Hope? Two panel discussions on technology innovation

Andrew Maynard — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 15:46:59 +0000

I’ve been up to my eyeballs this past few weeks in stuff, and haven’t had as much time as usual to post here. So this weekend I thought I would take the easy route and post a couple of videos from the recent Symposium on Risk, Uncertainty and Sustainable Innovation.

These were back to back panel discussions that were designed to set the scene for the symposium by helping to distinguish technology reality from technology hype. They make interesting viewing, as well as providing what I thought was a rather interesting take on significant areas of technology innovation – especially the second panel.

The full set of symposium videos can be viewed here.

Enjoy

Techno-hype or techno-reality?

Mark Banaszak Holl, UM Associate VP, Office of Vice President for Research. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, UM College of Engineering. Paula Olsiewski, Program Director, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. James Bagian, Director of the UM Center for Healthcare Engineering and Patient Safety.

How are new technologies changing the world?

Gil Omenn, Director of the UM Center for Computational Medicine & Bioinformatics. James Baker, Director of the Michigan Nanotechnology Institute for Medicine. Ann Marie Sastry, CEO and Co-Founder of Satki3. Jörg Lahann, Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering, University of Michigan.

New US federal strategy for nanotechnology safety research released

Andrew Maynard — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 22:01:38 +0000

The latest iteration of the US National Nanotechnology Initiative’s Environmental, Health and Safety Research Strategy was released today – downloadable from nano.gov. A draft of the document has been on the streets since last December – this version was compiled after a public comment period on that draft that closed earlier this year (the key comments received are listed here).

Given the comments received, I was interested to see how much they had influenced the final strategy. If you take the time to comment on a federal document, it’s always nice to know that someone has paid attention. Unfortunately, it isn’t usual practice for the federal government to respond directly to public comments, so I had the arduous task of carrying out a side by side comparison of the draft, and today’s document.

As it turns out, there are extremely few differences between the draft and the final strategy, and even fewer of these alter the substance of the document. Which means that, by on large, my assessment of the document at the beginning of the year still stands.

Perhaps the most significant changes were on chapter 6 – Risk Assessment and Risk Management Methods. The final strategy presents a substantially revised set of current research needs, that more accurately and appropriately (in my opinion) reflect the current state of knowledge and uncertainty (page 66). This is accompanied by an updated analysis of current projects (page 73), and additional text on page 77 stating

“Risk communication should also be appropriately tailored to the targeted audience. As a result, different approaches may be used to communicate risk(s) by Federal and state agencies, academia, and industry stakeholders with the goal of fostering the development of an effective risk management framework.”

There is also an additional bullet in the section on Implementation and Coordination of the NNI EHS Research Strategy (page 94):

“Refocus NEHI. Through consultation with agency representatives, the leadership of the NEHI Working Group adapted its meeting format to ensure better coordination of research to achieve the goals of the NNI EHS Research Strategy. Four priority areas were identified: ongoing updates on agency nanoEHS activities; new opportunities for collaboration; research strategy implementation, coordination, and evaluation; and planning and outreach.”

But these are the most significant changes I could find.

Below, I’ve listed the key changes I came across reading through the document. I’ve also looked at how some of the most specific public comments received – from Günter Oberdörster – have been addressed, as an indicator of how seriously the NNI took the comments received.

Looking at these differences – and where Günter’s comments have and have not been responded to – I can’t but help conclude that minimal attention was paid to the public comments. Even where very specific page and line comments were made, only the most trivial to respond to have been addressed.

This doesn’t worry me too much – for a federal document, the strategy isn’t bad, and certainly has the potential to help focus nanotechnology safety research efforts. But I do wonder whether the federal government needs to get its public engagement act together, and either not bother with public consultation if it is simply a box-checking exercise, or have the courtesy of responding to comments – even if they aren’t acted on – if they do take them seriously.

_________________________________________

Specific significant changes between the draft and final strategies.

I have probably missed some – but these are the ones that jumped out at me.

Vision

There was a subtle change in wording here:

Draft version: “In support of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the vision for environmental, health, and safety research in nanotechnology is a future in which nanotechnology provides maximum benefit to human social and economic well-being and to the environment.”

Final version: “In support of the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the vision for environmental, health, and safety research in nanotechnology is a future in which nanotechnology provides maximum benefit to the environment and to human social and economic well-being.”

1. Introduction to the 2011 NNI Environmental, Health, and Safety Research Strategy

Page 1: Revised text: “… ensuring a clean water supply and remediating soil contamination.” instead of “… ensuring a clean water supply and soil remediation.”

Page 2: New text added: “Overall priority is given to the EHS research that decreases the uncertainty in assessing and managing risk and that addresses the EHS objectives in the NNI 2011 Strategic Plan.”

Page 2: New text added: “Research and development remain essential to the fundamental understanding and development of tools and materials for nanotechnology. Fundamental research, development of infrastructure, and education will continue to contribute to the knowledge needed for Federal nanoEHS research.”

Pages 3 & 4: Figs 1-2: Figures, and the accompanying text, have been clarified.

Page 5: The figure to fig. 1-3 emphasizes the importance of research management framework underpinning the strategy.

Page 7: New text added: “A draft version was posted at strategy.nano.gov for public comment (Dec. 1, 2010-Jan. 21, 2011). Where appropriate, this strategy was updated in response to comments and new information.”

2. Nanomaterial Measurement Infrastructure

Page 16 of draft report: Deleted text: “Finally, NIST has requested funding in the FY2011 NNI Supplement to the President’s Budget to develop measurement methodologies and models for dynamic physico-chemical properties (e.g., transformations) of key nanomaterials; this funding would greatly accelerate research to address research need #3.”

Page 21: There is a stronger emphasis compared to the original text on the need for more research “More effort is needed for all research in this revised category: research need #5 is a newly defined research need, so no relevant projects were reported in the FY 2009 data call. However, there is work underway at NIST and at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to evaluate ENM release mechanisms from NEPs due to incineration, mechanical degradation, and consumer interactions.”

3. Human Exposure Assessment

Page 24: New text: “These challenges also make international harmonization of exposure assessment methodologies and international collaboration in conducting health surveillance studies critically important.”

Page 25: Updated text: “Develop quantitative assessment methods appropriate for target population groups and conduct assessments of those population groups most likely to be exposed to engineered nanomaterials”

Page 26: New text: “Development of health surveillance projects with international partners would leverage funding and study populations, thus accelerating our understanding of human exposures and potential adverse health effects.”

Page 28: New text: “and (3) development and international harmoniza-tion of exposure assessment methodologies appropriate for epidemiological studies, studies of the effectiveness of control technologies, and other research areas.”

4. Human Health

Page 36: A new research need added: “ Evaluate the degree to which an in vitro response correlates with an in vivo response”

Page 43: Research need #3 transposed with research need #4, compared to the draft report.

5. Environment

Page 43 of the draft report: Deleted text: “and to instilling public confidence in the safety of nanomaterials and nano-enabled products that could benefit society.”

Page 58: Clarification that “An additional 9 projects include environmental transport components and are included under “Multiple Research Needs.””

Page 59: New text added “They may also bind to other contaminants in the environment.”

Page 50 of the draft report: Deleted text: “In other words, nanoscale may not be a characteristic that supports assumptions about potential toxicity for all nanomaterials.”

6. Risk Assessment and Risk Management Methods

Page 65: Clarifying text added: “The risk assessment process incorporates the best available data on the potential health effects of a nanomaterial and the exposure potential to humans and to the environment; thus, the data needs described in previous chapters and the quality of the results of studies in measurement, exposure assessment, human health, and the environment directly impact the reliability of risk estimates.”

Page 66: All research needs bullets updated.

Page 73: Significant new text added under Analysis of Current Projects

Page 77: New text: “Risk communication should also be appropriately tailored to the targeted audience. As a result, different approaches may be used to communicate risk(s) by Federal and state agencies, academia, and industry stakeholders with the goal of fostering the development of an effective risk management framework.”

7. Informatics and Modeling for NanoEHS Research

Page 80: New text: “Identifying regions in which small changes in nanomaterial structures lead to large differences in their properties (high sensitivity) and/ or large uncertainty and error in the data or models would provide a quantifiable measure of the need for greater understanding of the underlying mechanisms and help target priority areas for additional research and funding.”

8. The Path Forward

Page 95: Expanded bullet “ Name NNCO EHS Coordinator. Consistent with the PCAST recommendation, OSTP has named an NNCO Coordinator for EHS to assist agencies in integrating research across the nanoEHS continuum to achieve the objectives presented in the NNI 2011 Strategic Plan. The new NNCO EHS Coordinator serves on the NSET/NEHI leadership team; leads the NNCO and NSET Subcommittee’s efforts in identifying and leveraging research collaborations domestically and internationally; serves as the NNI point of contact for stakeholders with nanoEHS concerns; and spearheads the NNI EHS Research Strategy’s implementation, coordination, and evaluation.”

Page 95: New bullet “Refocus NEHI. Through consultation with agency representatives, the leadership of the NEHI Working Group adapted its meeting format to ensure better coordination of research to achieve the goals of the NNI EHS Research Strategy. Four priority areas were identified: ongoing updates on agency nanoEHS activities; new opportunities for collaboration; research strategy implementation, coordination, and evaluation; and planning and outreach.”

Comparing the final strategy to public comments from Günter Oberdörster on the draft document. I decided to do this as Günter provided some of the most specific public comments, and because he is one of the most respected experts in the field. The specificity of his comments also provided an indication of the extent to which they had been directly addressed in the final strategy.

Comment: Page 31, lines 7-13: Although the need for developing appropriate, reliable, etc. in vitro and in vivo assays need to be identified, this need could include and emphasize the validation of any in vitro system through in vivo studies. In addition, the choice of realistic, relevant doses/concentrations should be informed by data from exposure assessment which should be stressed.

Response: New bullet added.

Comment: Page 31, line 35: The nose is listed here as a non-traditional route of entry, it certainly is not, nasal and oral inhalation are both very traditional portals of entry.

Response: The recommended change made here, but not later on in the strategy.

Comment: Page 32, lines 3 and 4: When designing dose response and time course studies, the need for inclusion of realistic doses should be mentioned.