Can India make 'wonder Land' with Nano? Doubtful!

By Rana Indos

The Union Government's budgetary provision of Rs 1,000 crore for the development of nanotechnology in India is a topsy-turvy decision that is an expression of a layman political establishment's flattery of the Indian scientific community.
Suddenly, there is a lot of interest and excitement over nanotechnology, and everybody beginning with Prof C N R Rao, the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council, and a proclaimed spear-head in the "drive towards nanotechnology in India", is exhibiting it in a child-like fashion over its the future.
Nanoscience deals with study of molecules the size of which range between one nanometre and a 100 nanometre (nm). One nanometre is one-billionth of a metre -- that small! And the excitement stems from revolutionary possibilities of super-miniaturising machines that today fill up an average Indian living room.
For instance, nanotechnology can arrange atoms in such a manner that a microscopic structure of a cannon can be built in nano dimensions. These micro-cannons can be sent into the blood stream of a cancer patient to hunt and destroy cancer cells completely; or nano-particles coated on soldiers' uniforms could be able to provide bullet-proof features to save soldiers from enemy fire.
But mostly, the potential and the promise in this field is towards a huge medical revolution using nanotechnology, that could give us a world that is close to a never-land.
Now this is what has been talked about. It has not yet happened in reality anywhere in the world. But nano-scientists believe it can work.
This explains why Union Science and Technology minister Kapil Sibal pressured the government to take note of this field, especially the strides in nano research made by Japan and USA. He probably rose the fear bar to such an extent that the government finally yielded to provide for the Rs 1,000 crore for the development of nanotechnology -- lest we miss the bus, as has happened for almost always in the past in almost everything except the invention of 'zero'.
All that is not fine.
The problem here is that the government allocation is aiming at setting up six nano centres across India to facilitate catching up with nano resercah the world over.
How are we going to manage that? Where is the human resources in terms of qualified faculty members going to fill these institutions which are planned to be autonomous in nature? Will there be enough students taking up this field and plan to conduct research to make it another IT revolution?
As it is, scientists are cribbing about the lack of interest in science among the Indian youth who are preferring a more lucrative career in IT, management, or some creative field that pays (science for them is not a creative field, though it can be, but may not pay well).
There is a shocking shortage of quality research papers coming from Indian scientists. The research that happens is either mediocre, inconclusive, or inconsequential.
Such a scenario afflicting science in general has led to India not being able to manufacture its own indigenous car engine, leave alone their efforts in struggling to develop an aircraft engine, Kaveri, for an aircraft that again was once dreamt to be a completely indigenous fighter.
Sadly, neither the engine nor the aircraft can be completely indigenous as the foreign contribution in building the aircraft is only growing. Now considering the project delays and the technical snags that the Indian scientists were not able to handle foreign engine makers and aircraft manufacturers are stepping in, aiming to improve upon the existing designs or partly bring in their own designs wherever suited.
And the man who has been screaming from the top of his voice from the roof-tops about this poor trend affecting Indian science is none other than the man who is most excited about these six nano centres coming up -- Prof C N R Rao himself!
As it is, there is hardly any research coming from the universities, which should be playing the key role in rolling out applicable research to be acquired by the industry for commercial applications.
The pressure therefore lies on the few institutions like the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, and the seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). But ironically, they themselves are complaining about declining interest of the youth towards science.
Now the Union government is planning more of both these too. This is happening when the new field of nanotechnology is dawning upon us with plans of the six new centres to propel this field.
Everyone is excited about a "perfect future" in which people could probably live for ever, because the verbal claims made over the futuristic prowess of nanotechnology points at something like that.
So typically an Indian response to something as "revolutionary" as nanotechnology -- a layman government, excited scientists, Rs 1,000 crore provision, .......and dreams of living in "Wonder Land"?
But how does one begin, Prof Rao? India might just replay its earlier performances. So just make sure she doesn't!

Cosmetics at the cost of science?

The multi-billion-dollar global cosmetics and skin-care-product industry sometimes is beset by a me-too mindset in which research and development focuses on matching the competition rather than applying sound science to improve products, a scientist told the 234th national meeting of the American Chemical Society.

As a result, it could be missing a golden opportunity to provide consumers with more effective products, according to a Stig E. Friberg, Ph.D. a chemist who studies cosmetic ingredients.

As an example, Friberg points out that previously unknown changes occur in the structures of colloids used in skin care lotions. As a result, the lotion sitting in the bottle, he said, is actually different from the same lotion applied to the skin.

Friberg has spent years in fundamental studies of the backbone of any lotion -- a mixture or "emulsion" of oil and water. Along with a third ingredient, a surfactant that keeps the liquids from separating, emulsions are the basis of almost every skin lotion. Although the system may sound simplistic, Friberg said it's not as straightforward as scientists once believed.

Friberg's work has revealed that after application, evaporation causes a lotion's internal structure to change, a fact that has not captured the attention of the skin-care industry. Initially in a liquid phase, the structure transforms while on the skin to a more orderly state, such as a liquid crystalline or solid amorphous phase, that allows for a higher tendency for molecules to enter the skin, he said. Previously, scientists have assumed the structure of an emulsion remains intact as lotions evaporate.

But this isn't the case. "In fact, the appearance of liquid crystalline structures in the emulsion acts as if you have a much higher concentration of the active substance on the skin," said Friberg, who is with the University of Virginia. "Knowledge of the structure change will make the formulation of skin lotions more systematic."

A main goal of the system is to find the best active ingredients for a given emulsion. In the land of lotion, these ingredients do the dirty work by penetrating the skin to protect or improve it. Well known active ingredients are salicylic acid used for complexion and camphor as an analgesic. Lotions on the market today, while effective, are based on limited understanding of how the active ingredients smooth and moisturize the skin. Research therefore has been based primarily on efforts to improve traditional, successful combinations of surfactants, oils and active substances.

In a sense, studying new structures would remove some guess work in manufacturing effective lotions because it would remove an unknown from the equation: companies could work from the template of the new structure rather than one that is nonexistent or, at best, flawed.

"I think it would be possible to save some lab work by knowing what is going on, and it could open a new marketing opportunity," Friberg said.

As for cosmetics, tradition has a head start on science, Friberg said. For instance, the latest interest in skin care -- hydroxy acids, the active ingredients in anti-wrinkle creams -- have been used for thousands of years and date back to Cleopatra, whose bath contained lactic acid (a hydroxy acid) which the classic beauty obtained from sour donkey milk.

"Cosmetics have a very long period of use," he said. "The companies involved have a tremendous knowledge of what works and doesn't work just from experience. Once they show somewhere that something works, then everyone jumps on the bandwagon."

Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by American Chemical Society.

Nano (dwarf) may turn Goliath

Nanotechnology is going to be the next greatest revolution in the world. On the eve of India unveiling Bangalore Nano 2007, the first of its kind I would like to help sharing about nano as the next big thing. Read on.
I highly recommend that you go see this page at HowStuffWorks. It's called How Nanotechnology Will Work.
See: http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm.

This would help oyu realise the vast and revolutionary potential this field offers us.
Cheers to the future!

Life-form unknown

Unconventional life-forms?

By Al Ian

Looks like we humans are going in circles and arriving at the same place, yet wondering how we haven't found a new way out.
Man's quest for extra-terrestrial life is somwhat on those lines.
We have all along been wanting to find out an ET who is in many ways like us. Many of the ET films that we have been fed with have feasted on that restricted possibility of how an ET would look -- they are all two-footed, upright positioned, with eyes like us and even a nose, and almost inevitably 'learn' to speak the way we do, or, if not, 'demonstrate' their super-human telepathic abilities.
A little more into advanced science, a scientist of an ET seeker is only looking for a carbon-based organism. only because humans are carbon-based.
May be there is a secret, sub-conscious excitement about it. Why should we even expect something which nothing like us? With who we cannot relate at all?
Forget the shape of their bodies, how boring it would be if almost everything about them was completely different?
But that boredom-turning-to-reality has at least got a kick-start.
Intriguing new evidence of life-like structures that form from inorganic substances in space have been revealed in the New Journal of Physics.
The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks.
They also point to a possible new ex planation for the origin of life on earth.
Could extra-terrestrial life be found in particles of interstellar dust?
Life on earth is organic. It is composed of organic molecules, which are simply the compounds of carbon, excluding carbonates and carbon dioxide.
Now, an international team has discovered that under the right conditions, particles of inorganic dust can become organised into helical structures.
These structures can then interact with each other in ways that are usually associated with organic compounds and life itself.
V.N. Tsytovich of the General Physics Institute, Russian Academy of Science, in Moscow, working with colleagues there and at theMax-Planck Institute for Extra-terrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany and the University of Sydney, Australia, has studied the behaviour of complex mixtures of inorganic materials in a plasma.
Plasma is essentially the fourth state of matter beyond solid, liquid and gas, in which electrons are torn from atoms leaving behind charged particles.
Until now, physicists assumed that there could be little organisation in such a cloud of particles. However, Tsytovich and his colleagues demonstrated, using a computer model of molecular dynamics, that particles in a plasma can undergo self-organisation as electronic charges become separated and the plasma becomes polarised.
This effect results in microscopic strands of solid particles that twist into corkscrew shapes, or helical structures.
These helical strands are themselves electronically charged and are attracted to each other.
Quite bizarrely, not only do these helical strands interact in a counter-intuitive way in which like can attract like, but they also undergo changes that are normally associated with biological molecules, such as DNA and proteins, say the researchers.
They can,for instance, divide, or bifurcate, to form two copies of the original structure. These new structures can also interact to induce changes in their neighbours and can even evolve into more structures as less stable ones break down, leaving behind only the fittest structures in the plasma.
So, could helical clusters formed from interstellar dust be somehow alive?
"These complex, self-organised plasma structures exhibit all necessary properties to qualify them as candidates for inorganic living matter," says Tsytovich. "They are autonomous, they reproduce and they evolve."
The researchers hint that perhaps an inorganic form of life emerged on the primordial earth, which then acted as the template for the more familiar organic molecules we know today.

Plastic poison?

Plastic Drink Bottles risky?

An independent panel of scientists convened by the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) of the National Toxicology Program (NTP) will review recent scientific data and expects to reach conclusions regarding whether or not exposure to a widely used chemical, Bisphenol A (BPA) is hazardous to human development or reproduction.
The NTP is located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, at the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the National Institutes of Health.

The expert panel met in March, 2007 and worked for 2.5 days to review and assess the more than 500 scientific BPA-related studies cited in the report.

Because of the length and complexity of this evaluation, the panel was unable to complete its review and has scheduled this second meeting to review and revise the draft expert panel report at and write its summary, conclusions and critical data needs.

Bisphenol A (BPA) is a high production volume chemical used in the production of polycarbonate plastic and several types of resins. Polycarbonate plastics are widely used in a variety of products including food and drink containers, CDs, DVDs, electrical and electronic equipment, automobiles, sports safety equipment.

Resins are used as a protective lining in metal food and drink containers and water supply pipes. In vitro and animal data indicate that BPA may mimic the natural female sex hormone, estradiol. Exposure to the general population can occur through direct contact to BPA or by exposure to food or drink that has been in contact with material containing BPA.

The Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR) selected this compound for evaluation because of its high volume of production, widespread human exposure, evidence of reproductive toxicity in animal studies, and public interest and concern.

The CERHR was established by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) as part of the National Toxicology Program in 1998. CERHR convenes a scientific expert panel that meets in a public forum to review, discuss, and evaluate the scientific literature on a selected chemical.

CERHR selects chemicals for evaluation based upon several factors including production volume, extent of human exposure, public concern, and the extent of published information from reproductive and developmental toxicity studies.

The 417 page draft report is available at http://cerhr.niehs.nih.gov/chemicals/bisphenol/BPA_Interim_DraftRpt.pdf

Heart matter

Heart Attack Treatment Lacking, Study Finds

Far more of today's heart attack patients receive emergency angioplasty treatment or clot-busting drugs to re-open their clogged heart arteries than even a decade ago, a new study finds.
But 10 percent of patients who could benefit from this urgent treatment -- which is known to save lives and prevent lasting damage to the heart muscle -- don't get it at all, the study shows.

And the chance of missing out on lifesaving emergency treatment was highest among those patients whose heart attack symptoms don't include typical symptoms like chest pain, those who didn't reach the hospital until six or more hours after the start of their attack, women, people over age 75, and non-white people.

The study, published in the American Journal of Medicine by a team led by cardiologists from the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center and the Yale University School of Medicine, is based on data from 238,291 patients who had had a type of heart attack for which this therapy is appropriate between 1994 and 2003.

It's the most current and comprehensive look at the use of emergency "reperfusion" -- a term that describes treatments that can break up blood clots and other blockages in the tiny blood vessels of the heart and restore blood flow to the heart muscle.

In the ten-year study period, the percentage of patients who could have received emergency reperfusion but didn't declined from more than 20 percent to 10 percent -- a notable achievement that the authors attribute to the increasing evidence of the benefit of emergency angioplasty, and the rise in the availability of the treatment at American hospitals and concerted national efforts to improve care.

The database used for the study, called the National Registry of Myocardial Infarction, includes detailed information about each patient's condition that can be used to determine if they would meet the criteria to receive emergency angioplasty or treatment with fibrinolytic (clot-busting) medications.

But it's those details that reveal the troubling gap between the number of patients who could have received the treatments, and those who actually did.

"We may never be able to get to 100 percent, but 10 percent of eligible patients going untreated is still too many," says first author Brahmajee Nallamothu, M.D., MPH, assistant professor of cardiovascular medicine at the U-M Medical School. "We hope our study highlights the opportunities to improve care and particularly some of the "at-risk" subgroups still less likely to receive reperfusion therapy despite eligibility, so that we can focus our clinical efforts on them."

Adds senior author Harlan Krumholz, M.D., S.M., "This study has good and bad news. We have definitely made progress in treating appropriate patients, but our findings indicate that we need to improve further to be sure that no patient who could benefit from this treatment is missed." Krumholz is the Harold H. Hines, Jr. Professor of Medicine in the Section of Cardiovascular Medicine and director of the Yale-New Haven Hospital Center for Outcomes Research and Evaluation.

The study was funded by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health. Genentech, Inc. provided the researchers access to the registry, which it sponsors.

To track the changes in acute (emergency) reperfusion therapy over time, the researchers divided the study data into three time periods: June 1994 through May 1997, June 1997 through May 2000, and June 2000 through May 2003.

The rise in emergency angioplasty was fastest from the first time period to the second; the rate of increase leveled off from the second time period to the third. Correspondingly, the number of patients receiving medication-based reperfusion dropped over the study period.

This is an appropriate shift, says Nallamothu: shifting patients from clot-busting medications to emergency angioplasty may save 12 to 20 lives for every 1,000 heart attack patients treated, if the angioplasty is performed in a timely manner.

The study involved patients who had a particular type of heart attack, called STEMI, for ST-elevated myocardial infarction. Emergency angioplasty is considered the best immediate treatment for STEMI. However, the study did not look specifically at the time that elapsed from the moment the STEMI patient arrived at the hospital to the time when the reperfusion treatment began. This is often called "door to balloon time" because of the use of tiny artery-opening balloons in the angioplasty procedure.

Hospitals around the nation, including U-M and Yale, are taking part in a national campaign to reduce this time interval for patients who receive emergency angioplasty, and studies have shown that patients who are treated within an hour or two of arrival at the hospital do better in the long term than those who wait longer for angioplasty.

But the fact that 10 percent of possible emergency angioplasty candidates still aren't even getting the procedure at all is a significant issue of its own, the authors say. Increasing its use in these patients could save up to an additional 30 lives for every 1,000 heart attack patients treated when performed in a timely manner.

In fact, the authors state that hospitals should be judged in part by their ability to deliver acute reperfusion to as many candidate patients as possible. "Our findings support the incorporation of a measure of reperfusion use into national quality improvement efforts," they write. An American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association task force has endorsed this same idea.

In the meantime, the study results again point to the importance of rapid response to heart-attack symptoms by individuals and their loved ones -- and the need to recognize that chest pain may not occur in everyone who has a heart attack.

In the study, patients who came to the hospital with no chest pain but with other symptoms of heart attack were less than one-third as likely as those with chest pain to get emergency reperfusion treatment. Patients who waited six or more hours before they reached the hospital were 40 percent less likely to get emergency reperfusion.

Reference: American Journal of Medicine, Vol. 120, No.8, August, 2007

Energy needs

Stepping out of 'dark ages'


By Galileo

So, many among the Mumbaikars feel the city is going back into the 'dark' ages. Its a new phenomenon. Mumbai hardly had power cuts like it does now, especially in the suburbs.
May be, that way, some Mumbaikars are justified to feel that they are going backwards instead of forward.
But what about Bangalore, the 'Science Capital' of India?
It is time to call it the shame of modern India. Why on earth should the city be termed as 'Science Capital of India' while offerring no imaginative solutions to overcome the power problems its has been suffering over the decades now.
If Mumbaikars feel being pushed into the dark ages, just imagine the plight of Bangaloreans. Probably, they have got used to the dark ages by now.
And why just Mumbai or Bangalore, or for that matter any urban centre in an apparently resurgent India, what about the huge rural hinterland? Who is to strive for 'power' there?
Our learned politicians are doing every bit they can to achieve power, but still no power to light up the homes of the millions living in villages?
Amidst this scenario, Bangalore recently hosted Solar India 2007, a conference tat brought several international players in solar energy on a single platform.
One of the delegates was a person named Pranav R Mehta. He happens to be the Director (India operations) for a California-based company named Space Island Group Inc. In his remarkable presentation, he made an even more remarkable offer - that India exploit the solar power given to them from space at just 10 cents (about Rs 4?) per kilowatt-hour. And this rate is to remain unchanged till the year 2030.
The company, formed by a group of former astronauts and technocrats, plans to launch two solar satellites which would be placed in a geo-stationary orbit. This means that the satellites woud constantly be above a particular reference point on Earth. In other words, the satellite's revolution around the Earth would take the same time as the earth's rotational time.
The two satellites that would be loocated in space about 22,000 miles altitude, and each over opposite sides of the Earth, would store solar power procured from the high radiation conditions that prevail in space and send it down to Earth through microwave signals.
Specialised antennae spread across the globe would receive the signals, convert the microwave signals into electricity and distribute it in the immediate localituies or a unit household.
Mehta says, this is a revolutionary technology that would emulate the direct-to-home (DTH) television concept in bringing electricity from solar power.
Which means transmission and distribution losses that have bugged countries like India would be completely eliminated.
The company has already spoken to the Ministry of new and Renewable Energy to accept power through this mode and also play the role of a 'broker' in helping set up the antennae in other countries to help rural areas there be electrified.
The deal is tempting, because India's projected energy requirement by the year 2031-32 would be about 800,000 MW, while its is 160,000 MW at present. imagine the costs incurred if India had to meet the projected requirement using the conventional energy sources. It would be in the region of an estimated $570 billion.
Also, solar power procured this way could ensure meeting at least 90 per cent of the energy needs in the country.
Now when such an offer comes by, it is up to the 'power'ful politicians to prove what their real aims are - power retention or 'power' to the people.
Since imaginative solutions are failing us, it is time we at least opened our ears to crativity coming from abroad. At least some consolation to the ultra-patriotic that it was ultimately an Indian who carried this concept to them.
Whay say?