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You’re in your favorite Italian restaurant, ready to enjoy the best spaghetti head. The plate arrives and, surprise! You are a tangle of spaghetti in front of all sizes and all colors. Everything looks edible but what you prefer, it is the medium yellow. It will take many hours to do the sorting.
Physicists are experiencing the same problem with carbon nanotubes. The manufacturing conditions of nanomaterials are poorly controlled. The result looks like our spaghetti: different categories of different sizes. Each type of nanotube has different electronic properties and gives rise to different uses. For 20 years, research is underway to find quick and cheap methods to separate the different categories.
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How far inform citizens about nanotechnology? What is it that everyone knows to make informed choices? How to ensure proper consideration of issues by the public? The recent public debate on nanotechnologies in France has shown the difficulty of providing an appropriate response to these questions. In the U.S., the reaction of public opinion on nanotechnology is also scrutinized.
The country has not experienced a major food crisis as was the case in Europe in the ’90s with the crisis of “mad cow” or the dioxin. Genetically modified organisms have not raised in the United States the emotion that we know on the old continent. The European situation worried the Atlantic. Given the economic stakes, a strong focus is on the conduct of peaceful revolution nano. To this end, the National Science Foundation has funded the establishment of two Centers for Nanotechnology in Society (CNS) [1] [2]. These centers aim to conduct studies on the degree and level of public information about nanotechnology. Researchers are also studying the views of citizens on the development of new products or understanding of the hazards posed by nanomaterials.
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The particles constituting the micro-gels can be regarded as intermediaries between colloids and solid polymer systems, whose properties are variable. They have such remarkable abilities of swelling by absorbing liquid. A micro-gel is the most studied poly (N-Isopropyl-Acrylamide) or PNIPAM. The lower critical solution temperature of PNIPAM at 33 ° C below the transition, the adsorbed polymer molecules absorb water and swell, and beyond, they expel these molecules and their size decreases. The exact conditions of the elastic phase, shedding light on the nature of the transition has been the subject of a study published in Fribourg in Physical Review Letters [1].
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On 25 February, the Swedish Chemicals Agency (KemI) has released a new report entitled “A safe use of nanomaterials – need for regulation and other measures.” This report responds to the request of the Government to consider the need for measures to support the development of nanomaterials. New regulations, for example, could allow an optimum consideration of risks to health and the environment.
These new materials are found today in a wide range of consumer products and in industrial products. Their number is very likely continue to increase. Knowledge about the potential impact of nanomaterials on humans and the environment are still incomplete.
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In recent decades, the Nordic countries have created a knowledge economy, whose development and competitiveness objectives based on creativity and technological innovation of Nordic companies. With 3.63% of its GDP on research and development, Sweden is the OECD country that invests most heavily in R & D, followed by Finland with 3.47% of GDP. These actors have quite logically soon realized the enormous potential opened by nanoscience and do not want to miss the “revolution” of nanotechnology. Products containing nanomaterials are already on the market and the nanoparticles, which can be metal, ceramics, fullerenes (a type of nanoparticles, the best known), nanotubes, including carbon tubes, spread over more about us. 
Nanomaterials are also not a new phenomenon since we already breathe every day many nanoparticles as carbon black, long used in tires, and as particles which are created in the combustion process since that they are used industrially.
However, as in all other countries, have many questions about the risks that nanomaterials pose to humans and the environment as well as ethical issues. The prospect of a new public health problem comparable to that of asbestos is present at all levels. Despite the insistence of the Nordic agencies involved in the field of “nano” that highlight the need for better knowledge of these dangers, they are still poorly understood.
In France, on the model of the Grenelle Environment Forum, a debate has been launched to bring together all stakeholders in the field of nanotechnology and representatives of civil society in order to make the dialogue around the risks that accompany these technologies. Less passionate than France, there exists a lively debate in the Nordic countries around the development of nanotechnology.
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Known as the Profile of Sequential Adjustment by Regression (SPAR), this new statistical analysis technique identifies and eliminates the bias, noise and artifacts related equipment. It could then lead to experimental measurements on nanomaterials and nanostructures more accurate and reliable and, subsequently, allow for industrial application.
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| Category: Nanotechnology | Tags: artifacts, bias, industrial applications, microscope, Nanobelts, nanomaterials, nanoscale, nanostructures, noise, Profile of Sequential Adjustment by Regression, signals |
