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From Nanonews: One of the most active and important current areas of research and application of nanotechnology is in the field of life sciences and healthcare. Many industry and business analysts now expect nanotechnology to revolutionize the pharmaceutical, medical devices, diagnostics and imaging sectors with annual markets of billions of pounds likely within five-ten years. The Impact of Nanotechnology on the Life Sciences and Healthcare Market to 2015 includes:

Analysis of key nanotechnologies and commercialization activity thereof
Analysis of impact of nanotechnology on the life science and healthcare markets to 2015
Analysis of most promising product areas in Pharmaceuticals, Drug Delivery, Medical Supplies and Devices, Implants, Coatings, Wound Care, Diagnostics, Non-Invasive Therapy, Imaging and Tissue Engineering
Profiles of companies and research centres developing nanotechnologies for commercial application in Life Sciences and Healthcare

Read more here - note: full report is not freely accessible

The U.S.-based Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) and U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will be hosting the premiere of a new three-part television series called “Nanotechnology: Power of Small” which airs in April and focuses on the potentially implications of nanotechnology for privacy, the environment, and human health. According to the article, the series will begin airing on local public television stations in April 2008.

Read more about the upcoming series here

This might be of interest to Nanotech researchers looking for submicron particle shape analysis.

FEI Company and Malvern Instruments have released Quanta Morphologi, a new solution combining the performance of FEI's Quanta FEG scanning electron microscope and Malvern's proven Morphologi particle characterization software. Quanta Morphologi users, including pharmaceutical quality control method development labs, will have direct analysis methods to obtain both size and shape information on sub-micron particles. This solution will provide pharmaceutical companies greater control over new products and drug formulations that require particle manufacture at increasingly smaller nanoscale dimensions for a wide variety of advanced therapeutic applications. With Quanta Morphologi, users will be able to create reference methods for quality control process design, perform automated particle analysis, obtain surface detail, and perform statistical analysis to more fully characterize particle size and shape distributions. The most important morphological parameters f! or differentiating a set of samples, such as good and bad sample batches, can be defined and subtle changes in a product or process can be readily identified.

Read more at: http://www.fei.com/applications/biology/particle-analysis.aspx

The highest markets in the total markets for plasctic additives are in the field of fire protection and anitmicrobials. USA, Europe, China and other Asia Pacific Countries consume about a third of the plastic additive volume, followed by other Countries. The market is relatively new and will develop in the near future. Major developments and growth will be seen in China, India, and the rest of the Asian countries. With the increasing awareness of disinfection and potential liaabilties for microbes and foodborne pathogens, we can also expect a high growth in the food industy (Food and Beverages), pharmaceutical and chemical and water disinfection. In depth data are reported in a new Helmut Kaiser Foundation study.

Read more over at azonano.com

Researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the U.S. have conducted research showing that the first step in the development of new cell walls in plants is the “assembly of a scaffold made of structural proteins,” a finding which could enable the engineering of plants better suited for biofuels production and a variety of nanotechnology applications. Researcher Maura Cannon said: "Plant cell walls are the most abundant biomass on Earth. If we know how the cell wall assembles, we can exploit this information to engineer plants with cell wall structures and compositions that are commercially desirable.” Canon also said that observing the self-assembly process of cell wall growth could additionally provide insights on how other molecules can self assemble into structures.

Go here for more info

Foods produced using emerging nanotechnology are less likely to come up against consumer hurdles than genetically modified foods since they do not involve tinkering with genes, and therefore have a greater perception of naturalness, says a new paper.

The paper, to be published in the journal Trends in Food Science and Technology, sets out to assess the factors that affect public acceptance of innovative technologies and food products by reviewing existing literature on the subject.

More info here

MIT's Technology Review magazine has just published its annual list of the top ten emerging technologies. Dubbed the TR10, these revolutionary innovations are poised to have a dramatic impact on computing, medicine, nanotechnology, our energy infrastructure, and more, say the magazine's editors. Number 10 on the list are nanotubular based radios...

"If you own a sleek iPod Nano, you've got nothing on Alex Zettl. The physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, and his colleagues have come up with a nanoscale radio, in which the key circuitry consists of a single carbon nanotube.

Any wireless device, from cell phones to environmental sensors, could benefit from nanoradios. Smaller electronic component­s, such as tuners, would reduce power consumption and extend battery life. Nanoradios could also steer wireless communications into entirely new realms, including tiny devices that navigate the bloodstream to release drugs on command."

Read more here

Here is a somewhat shocking article that may come as a suprise to students.

"Study groups may be a virtual trademark of the Ivory Tower – but a virtual study group has been slammed as cheating by Ryerson University.

First-year student Chris Avenir is fighting charges of academic misconduct for helping run an online chemistry study group via Facebook last term, where 146 classmates swapped tips on homework questions that counted for 10 per cent of their mark.

The computer engineering student has been charged with one count of academic misconduct for helping run the group – called Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions after the popular Ryerson basement study room engineering students dub The Dungeon – and another 146 counts, one for each classmate who used the site...."

Read more over at TheStar.com

My take on this - professors (and I am one of them) need to adjust to realities of the new digital age and become more creative in grading rather than dishing out conventional homeworks.....

Some really interesting work by colleagues on campus. This from the press article:

Nanopores, holes less than one-thousand the width of a human hair, are capable of isolating strands of DNA or therapeutic drugs from a solution, based mostly on the size of the pores. Now, a chemist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has created nanopores that can recognize and interact with certain molecules, actively controlling their movement across synthetic membranes. Results were published online Feb. 3 in Nature Nanotechnology.

Read more here

Not only is our body made of individual organs, our cells themselves are made of tiny organelles, a variety of separate compartments that fulfill different tasks. Such functional, nanostructured systems would also be useful for technical applications, such as biosensors, self-repairing materials, optoelectronic components, or nanocapsules.

However, it has not been possible to recreate structures with sufficient complexity in the lab. Researchers in the Netherlands, led by Jan van Esch at the Universities of Delft and Groningen as well as the BioMaDe Technology Foundation, are now pursuing a new angle.

As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, they allow surfactants and gelators to form aggregates. These aggregates coexist without interfering with each other and thus make versatile, highly complex structures with separate compartments.

Cells contain various components, such as channels, “motors”, structural frameworks (cytoskeleton), and “power plants” (mitochondria). In order for these to form, their building blocks, mainly proteins and lipids, must “recognize” each other and form the correct assembly by self-aggregation.

Read more here

In an advance in food safety, researchers in New York are reporting development of a nano-sized sensor that detects record low levels of the deadly prion proteins that cause Mad Cow Disease and other so-called prion diseases.

The sensor, which detects binding of prion proteins by detecting frequency changes of a micromechanical oscillator, could lead to a reliable blood test for prion diseases in both animals and humans, the researchers say.

Read more here

For centuries, engineers have bent and torn metals to test their strength and ductility. Now, materials scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science are studying the same metals but at nanoscale sizes in the form of wires a thousand times thinner than a human hair.

Ju Li, an associate professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Penn, and his collaborators at the Georgia Institute of Technology have combined transition state theory, explicit atomistic energy landscape calculation and computer simulation to establish a theoretical framework to predict the strengths of small-volume materials. Unlike previous models, their prediction can be directly compared with experiments performed at realistic temperature and loading rates. This research appeared as a cover article in Volume 100 of Physical Review Letters.

Their study demonstrated that the free, exterior surface of nanosized materials can be fertile breeding grounds of dislocations at high stresses. Dislocations are string-like defects whose movements give rise to plastic flow, or shape change, of solids. In large-volume materials, it is easy for dislocations to multiply and entangle and to maintain a decent population inside; however, in small-volume materials, dislocations could show up and then exit the sample, one at a time. To initiate and sustain plastic flow in this case, dislocations need to be frequently nucleated fresh from the surface.

Read more here

Here is an interesting article, albeit not related to Food Science, but to the fact that political decisions are not always made on the basis of sound science. In this case, introduction of the "daylight savings time" was based on absolutely no evidence that is saves energy whatsoever. A recent study no clearly proves that point. From the article:

"For decades, conventional wisdom has held that daylight-saving time, which begins March 9, reduces energy use. But a unique situation in Indiana provides evidence challenging that view: Springing forward may actually waste energy.

Up until two years ago, only 15 of Indiana's 92 counties set their clocks an hour ahead in the spring and an hour back in the fall. The rest stayed on standard time all year, in part because farmers resisted the prospect of having to work an extra hour in the morning dark. But many residents came to hate falling in and out of sync with businesses and residents in neighboring states and prevailed upon the Indiana Legislature to put the entire state on daylight-saving time beginning in the spring of 2006."

Read more here

From Nano to Bulk:

Ever since scientists first figured out how to make carbon nanotubes—tiny cylinders of carbon with diameters of a few tens of nanometers—they’ve been touted as the material of the future: as strong as steel but far lighter, with the ability to conduct electricity in useful ways. The problem is that because they’re so small, it’s been difficult to make them at scales that would be useful to industry. You can’t really build a lightweight airplane a few microns at a time, after all.

Now a New Hampshire company, Nanocomp Technologies of Concord, says it has overcome that limitation, producing sheets of carbon nanotubes that measure three feet by six feet and promising slabs 100 square feet in area as soon as this summer.

Read more here

The latest FBN review article has just come online. From the abstract: "The inclusion of bioactive compounds, such as carotenoids, omega-3 fatty acids, or phytosterols, is an essential requisite for the production of functional foods designed to improve the long-term health and well-being of consumers worldwide. To incorporate these functional components successfully in a food system, structurally sophisticated encapsulation matrices have to be engineered, which provide maximal physical stability, protect ingredients against chemical degradation, and allow for precise control over the release of encapsulated components during mastication and digestion to maximize adsorption. A novel encapsulation system initially developed in the pharmaceutical industries to deliver lipophilic bioactive compounds is solid lipid nanoparticles (SLN). SLN consist of crystallized nanoemulsions with the dispersed phase being composed of a solid carrier lipid–bioactive ingredient mixture. Contrary to larger colloidal solid lipid particles, specific crystal structures can be “dialed-in” in SLN by using specific surfactant mixtures and ensuring that mean particle sizes are below 100–200 nm. Moreover, in SLN, microphase separations of the bioactive compound from the solidifying lipid matrix can be prevented resulting in an even dispersion of the encapsulated compound in the solid matrix thereby improving chemical and physical stability of the bioactive. In this review article, we will briefly introduce the structure, properties, stability, and manufacturing of solid lipid particles and discuss their emerging use in food science."

You can read the full article here (subscription required)