Welcome to the 2020 Science Archive
2020 Science started life in 2007 as a nanotechnology blog written by Andrew Maynard on SafeNano. In the following years it developed into a personal blog addressing emerging technologies, responsible innovation, risk, science communication, and the intersection between science and society more generally.
Andrew made he decision to wind the blog down in 2019 as his focus and writing developed in new directions. This archive contains most of the original posts (there have been occasional clean-ups of content). For more recent articles etc. please visit andrewmaynard.net. And thanks for visiting!
BROWSE THE ARCHIVE
When risk gets personal
When you're facing a life or death situation, what do the odds mean - to you personally? As Brian Zikmund-Fisher from the University of Michigan School of Public Health pointed out to Robert Siegel on NPR yesterday, "We're never 95 percent alive. We either live or...
The gathering storm of lab safety
Pathogen safety in federal labs Over the past few weeks, revelations of potentially dangerous errors in US federal labs handling pathogens have placed health and safety high on the national agenda. In June, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)...
Who’s afraid of carbon nanotubes?
I've been fascinated by the coverage of Surrey nanosystems' carbon nanotube-based Vantablack material this week. The material's had widespread coverage - just Google "vantablack" to see what I mean. But in amongst all the geeked-out media excitement over the world's...
New York Times does nanoparticles in sunscreens
What are the risks of nanoparticles in sunscreens? The New York Times has just posted an "Ask Well" article today by Deborah Blum answering the questions What are the risks from nanoparticles of titanium in sunscreens? and I am curious about the dangers of...
How safe is the world’s darkest material?
Vantablack - the new black? Over the past few days, the interweb's been awash with virtual "oohs" and "ahs" over Surrey Nanosystems' carbon nanotube-based Vantablack coating. The material - which absorbs over 99.9% of light falling onto it and is claimed to...
Nanotubes create the blackest black – Douglas Adams would be proud
If your nanotechnology stream is anything like mine today, it will have been swamped by accounts like this one of "Vantablack" fabric - supposedly the world-s blackest-ever material! The material relies on a carbon nanotube forest that absorbs 99.965% of visible light...
Nanoparticle donut math – crunching the numbers
Having written yesterday about nanoparticle titanium dioxide (TiO2) concentrations in donuts, Raphaël Lévy asked for some clarification on where I got my figures from. I thought it easiest to post the analysis in full - it goes a little deep into particle analysis,...
Nanoparticles in Dunkin’ Donuts? Do the math!
Nanoparticles in food products Over the past couple of years a number of articles have been posted claiming that we're eating more food products containing nanoparticles than we know (remember this piece from a couple of weeks ago?). One of the latest appeared on The...
Nanojuice for GI tract imaging – is it safe?
Nanojuice: drinkable nanoparticles for studying the gut Over the past few days, my news and social media streams have been inundated by articles on "nanojuice". The "juice" - developed by researchers at the University of Buffalo and published in the journal Nature...
Do we need a better definition for synthetic biology?
Jim Thomas of the ETC Group has just posted a well reasoned article on the Guardian website on the challenges of defining the the emerging technology of "synthetic biology". The article is the latest in a series of exchanges addressing the potential risks of the...