#WomenTweetSciencetToo. The excellent hashtag circulating on Twitter after the male dominated list of top scientist Twitterers was published by Sciencemagazine (http://tinyurl.com/px8f6jh) in response to the article published in Genome Biology by Neil Hall ‘The Kardashian index: a measure of discrepant social media profile for scientists‘ (http://genomebiology.com/2014/15/7/424).
Scientists can make your wine better with nanotechnology. A great headline this week, basically the story goes that researchers at the iNANO in Aarhus have developed a nanosensor that can measure the effect of astringency in your mouth when you drink wine. It uses salivary proteins to measure the sensation that occurs in your mouth when you drink. The researchers are researching how the proteins in saliva change upon interaction with the wine, and they can use this to describe the effect of the wine. http://tinyurl.com/k5zuj8m
Nanomaterials for Environmental Protection was published: http://tinyurl.com/kpc5pr8
Nano for extending the life of your iPhone. A paper published this week (http://tinyurl.com/npmkrot pay walled) is good news for all those tech junkies. As quoted from the paper ‘ we show that coating the lithium metal anode with a monolayer of interconnected amorphous hollow carbon nanospheres helps isolate the lithium metal depositions and facilitates the formation of a stable solid electrolyte interphase......This is significantly better than the bare unmodified samples....our results indicate that nanoscale interfacial engineering could be a promising strategy to tackle the intrinsic problems of lithium metal anodes. To read that in semi English see this link: http://tinyurl.com/nodu49j
More news on the wonders of Graphene. Nanosized hydrogen generator (http://tinyurl.com/o85rh36), scale ups (http://tinyurl.com/ocu8ahl), cooling down (http://tinyurl.com/la8yf5u) and the EU’s plan for Graphene (http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-14-1005_en.htm)
The OECD Issued a Report of the Questionnaire on Regulatory Regimes for Manufactured Nanomaterials 2010-2011 http://bit.ly/1wI6zcn. The Working Party on Manufactured Nanomaterials (WPMN) aims to gather information on the nanomaterials notified in OECD jurisdictions to provide an indication of regulatory activity and trends over time. This new document presents the info obtained from a questionnaire on said topic which was issued in 2010-2011. The main conclusion (as per the executive summary):
1. There was agreement between the responses on utilizing existing regulatory frameworks to regulate nanomaterials
2. Developing regulatory definitions is still a challenge for regulatory bodies
3. Challenges such as lack of test methodologies, information on uses of nanomaterials and approaches to consider nano-relevant endpoints hinder the risk assessment and risk management.
4. Collaboration remains critical in progressing our understanding of nanomaterials.
5. The international regulatory landscape has significantly changed since the original questionnaire (2008) but most jurisdictions are using existing frameworks to regulate nanomaterials, while there have been some developments on nano-specific reporting regimes (such as in France).