Finally, some good research on zombies

I’ll keep this short and sweet. Hilarious research to come out of the University of Ottawa and Carleton University:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/scholars-put-braaaaains-together-to-thwart-zombies/article1253006/

I love when science has a sense of humour.

In this case, the researcher’s modeled a zombie attack, basing their assumptions on popular movies.

Their conclusion?

“We show that only quick, aggressive attacks can stave off the doomsday scenario: the collapse of society as zombies overtake us all.”

In other words, if the human race is going to survive a zombie attack we’ve got to get “extremely aggressive.”

I personally feel much more prepared in the event of a future breakout of zombification.

(For anyone who is interested in the actual academic paper, it can be found here: http://www.mathstat.uottawa.ca/~rsmith/Zombies.pdf)

Documentary

I am going to college next year. (Yes, this fact is just sinking in now).

I will be studying documentary at the graduate level.

This is a strange thing for me as I’ve always been in the academic stream, and although journalism was semi-practical it wasn’t nearly as hands-on as a college program.

I am also starting to get really excited. I won't be going away on any fabulous adventures overseas next year, but I will be a certified (quite literally!) filmmaker when I'm done.

Poor but happy. I'd say it's a good trade off!

Welcome to the government, may I take your order?

I work for the government. But I am not a government worker.

There’s a difference.

I am a student. That isn’t to say that student’s can’t be government workers, but there seems (in my observations) to be a special breed of them that take to the job, while the rest of us just do it for the money, until something better comes along.

Those students seem all too content to work at their nice little box of a job, in their nice little box of a cubicle in their nice little box of a department. Everything is neatly divided into divisions, directorates, sections and groups.

That’s all well and good, and I would never begrudge someone their employment (they’re working after all) but to me, there seems to be something wrong with people in their early 20’s being content with this life. A good pension shouldn’t come before happiness.

I see employment with the government as the means to an end. A way to get a bit of money saved so I can be a starving filmmaker later on in life. I also see it as a place for people who don’t know what to do with their lives. I see it as a safe place, where people with families can have job security and benefits.

I certainly don’t see it as the end. The place where you want to end up.

I have been working with a certain department for over a year now, and it’s been slowly getting me down, more and more, the longer I stay. And until last night I was unable to put a finger on what exactly was getting to me. Then I realized that it was the complete and utter lack of anything that is mine.

Throughout school every piece of work I’ve done has been mine. I have had a sense of ownership over it. If it turned out well, it was my success. If it turned out poorly, my failure. Even when my profs would absolutely tear a piece apart, in the end it was still my words and my work.

Working for the government does not allow you to have ownership over anything. Not your own work, not even your own ideas. Everything is reviewed, edited, re-written, sent up the chain of command, approved, sent back, and picked apart again. And in the end, it all belongs to some deputy minister anyway.

Even in my crappy retail jobs (of which I had many) I had ownership over what I did. When someone asked me a question, the answer was still mine. I didn’t have to get it approved by higher management.

I’m switching jobs soon. Still within the government, but I am sincerely hopeful that the department that I am moving to will be a little more free-flowing. I think it will be, and I can’t wait.

My brain needs to breathe, people.

Treasure hunting in the Glebe

I went to the Great Glebe Garage sale today, something i've always meant to do but have never really gotten around to.

It was insanity.

For starters, it is Race Weekend, which means that half of downtown is closed as it is, and there are that many more people in the area. Add to that the conference at Carleton this weekend AND the garage sale and you have the most spectacular gridlock (both people and cars, of course) ever.

My intention was to get a decently early start and take the number 7 bus to Glebe Street. Wrong. I walked.

From Carleton.

Once I actually got there it WAS a pretty awesome place to spend an otherwise unoccupied Saturday morning. Almost the entirety of the Glebe was participating in the garage sale and it's amazing the sheer amount of stuff people have! I saw everything from beautiful antique pieces of furniture to used bedding and shoes for sale.

I stayed away from the latter two. Ew.

After some rummaging I managed to find a brilliant necklace that I am now very excited about.



Funny, eh? What you can find in someone's junk. Garage sales really offer a lot of potential for metaphysical-type analysis of today's society.

I'll skip that part and just say that it is surprising how very amusing it is to spend a Saturday looking at old stuff.

Hello from the land of kilts and haggis...and yes, I have seen both already

So we just arrived in Edinburgh on our great UK adventure. London was really fantastic, although I already like Edinburgh better. London is that place you go to because you HAVE to, because it's London. It's beautiful, and interesting and a great place to visit but i just couldn't get as into it as I have other places i've visited. Don't get me wrong though, I really did love the time we spent there. We managed to see most of the major "tourist" sites, with the exception of Westminister Abbey. It was being taken over by members of NAFAS, the National Association of Flower Arrangement Societies. So Desperate Housewives meets a nursing home. Wall to wall old ladies and flowers, not my idea of a good time.

Other than that though, everything was wonderful. Saw Wicked for a THIRD time. I figure I will probably never see it again, so what the heck.

And now, we're in Edinburgh. It's so gorgeous here!! I can't get over it. And I really can't wait to get out and explore. So with that, i'm off to see the sights...or at least get something to eat.

Pictures to come later ;)

ps. please excuse any horrid spelling mistakes I may have made. I only have half an hour on the computer!

Four thoughts in four minutes

Blog
So far i'm proving to be pretty bad at this blog thing. It's not that I don't want to write, or don't have time to write, or even that I don't have anything to write about. I have all those things. I just don't. I shall have to remedy this.

Le Petit Prince
But, as you can see i've played around with layout and such. The blog title and description are actually both from one of my favorite books, "Le Petit Prince". I foresee a post about flowers and sheep and very small planets in my near future.

Science Communications
Yesterday I applied for a science communications program in Banff. I have no idea if I will get it. It's only a two-week kinda deal, in August, but it would be so amazing to be there with all these professionals in the field. That, and Jay Ingram from the Discovery Channel runs it. And I love him.

Travel!
In other news, I am leaving for the UK in just over a week (one week, one day!) and I am so excited!!! I can't even describe it. I'm sure everyone feels this way when they're about to leave on a trip. But I just feel so absolutely lucky to be going, and to be going with my best friend in the entire world. What more could you ask for?

Catalyst Online

Well, the original idea for even STARTING this whole blogging thing was so i'd have somewhere to write about science. We'll see how well that goes, but for now here's the unabridged version of my nano standards story that I wrote for science reporting. Personally, i'm rather proud of the fact that I managed to make sense of it all!

A shorter, but web-ready version can be found at: www.carleton.ca/catalyst

Finding the smallest of standards

Standards govern most facets of your daily life, whether or not you’re aware of it.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has over 16, 500 international standards including:

• 567 applying to road vehicles
• 193 applying to fasteners
• One for “comprehensibility and comprehension of graphical symbols” (better known as, can men and women find the right bathroom based on the symbol on the door?)
• And one for wine tasting glasses. Yes, wine tasting.

Nanotechnology is also finding its way into our daily lives. It is now found in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, sporting goods and even socks, to name a few.

So it’s no wonder that the ISO is thinking small, and setting its sights on creating standards for the rapidly developing field of nanotechnology.

The move to create international standards for nanotech started four years ago, in 2005. Standardization is overseen by ISO technical committee number 229, which is then broken down into four working groups, one dealing with terminology and nomenclature, the second with measurement and characterization, the third with health, safety and environment and the fourth with material specifications.

The process involves not just the ISO, but individual countries that contribute their own research. Canada is one of these countries, acting as convener for the terminology and nomenclature working group and is involved with the others as well.

Jennifer Decker, chair of ISO working group two, works with dimensional metrology at the National Research Council’s Institute for National Measurement Standards. She says that the need to create standards arose when nanotechnology started to move from being a discovery science to a technology. The ability to measure and characterize objects will enable this change, she says.

“Nanotechnology is predicted to have a huge economic impact, so when we look at what we need to know to be able to use nano to have commercial benefit, the first thing is we need to be able to make things, so we need to be able to measure things well enough to make things.”


Standards: Good for the researcher, good for the consumer

Maria DeRosa, an assistant professor in the department of Chemistry at Carleton University in Ottawa has encountered the same issues that Decker describes.

“With nanomaterials there are no guidelines about what it is. What is a nanoparticle? What is it made of? What are the impurities and what is pure? There are no definitions for any of these things.”

DeRosa’s lab, affectionately nicknamed aptamertopia, focuses on building devices on the nanoscale, such as sensors and catalysts. She says one of the major problems with not having standards is, as the field of nanotech grows, it can be difficult to replicate another lab’s experiments because they may or may not be using comparable materials.

“In chemistry we know that the name is related to the structure, and the structure is related to the chemistry. In nano people are just naming things, and especially on the nanoscale, small differences are going to make a big difference in the properties,” says DeRosa.

She goes on to say that standards will also be useful when it comes to creating consumer goods. Ken Bosnick, principal investigator of applied nanomaterial technologies at the NRC’s National Institute for Nanotechnology agrees, saying that it’s not always the cutting-edge sciences that standards apply to, it’s also the practical applications.

“Now it’s at the point where you can produce large volumes of carbon nanotubes, people have studied their basic properties and we’re now looking at real applications of them such as making composite materials for car parts and so on,” he says.

“And now you’ve got the problem where you’ve got a lot of people who make carbon nanotubes and when they try to make a composite out of it they’re all getting different results because no one really knows what sample of carbon nanotubes they’re putting in, in the first place.”

DeRosa says the average consumer will witness a trickle-down effect of standardization. She says there will be a better awareness of what is in our current products, which will eventually lead to regulations.

“Maybe right now it’s totally fine, and no one notices that there’s nanosilver on our anti-microbial socks but maybe once they go though this process of standardizing and figuring out the properties and toxicity of something like nanosilver, then maybe they’re going to say ‘OK, we can’t allow this to be in our socks.’”


Not That Simple

But creating standards for nanomaterials is not as simple as whipping out a ruler, says Peter Hatto, chairman of ISO technical committee 229 and director of research for IonBond Ltd.

“You don’t take a ruler and measure a particle, you’ve got to use some sort of physical properties of that particle.”

Actual measurements of nanomaterials are achieved through a combination of methods, including imaging using electron microscopy to create a larger image of the object in question, thermogravimetric analysis to look at changes in weight based on changes in temperature and photoluminescence spectroscopy to help determine the electronic structure of the material.

“There isn’t just one technique that we can use to tell us everything about carbon nanotubes, for example. You measure it using a whole suite of techniques to find the information you need,” says Decker.

It is also a long process. Creating a technical specification is the work of about two years and requires the consensus of at least five of the ISO technical committee’s participating countries. A full international standard however, must go through all of the 160 member countries of ISO, whether or not they participated in the initial standard. This takes about three years.

And even then, nothing is for sure. Standards are subject to review every two to three years, depending on whether they are technical specifications or international standards.

“Standards just provide agreed ways of doing things, or naming things or describing things or specifying things and they’re not written in stone, they’re not the Ten Commandments,” says Hatto.


What’s coming down the (nano) tube?

Since the ISO started to consider nanotechnology in 2005, two standards have been published, including one for terminology of nano objects, which includes particles, fibers and plates. The next standard is due to come out within the next four or five months, and deals with terminology for carbon nano objects specifically.

Decker says the development of these standards is happening very rapidly. ISO technical committees normally meet once a year, but technical committee 229 for nanotechnologies is currently on an accelerated schedule and meets every six months. She says this is because nanotechnology is recognized as a technology in rapid development, but with a lack of documentary standards. In order to promote nanotech as a commercial technology, standards must be established.

Hatto says is all boils down to knowing what you’re getting.

“Nanomaterials are difficult to evaluate and there’s a need to have confidence in what you’re purchasing. No one buys steel without buying it against a specification. If you’re going to have extensive trade in these materials, you need specifications that you can rely upon. In any area of commerce, specifications give you confidence.”

Getting things figured out!

This is still highly under construction...so for anyone who might read this (i'm looking at you Hez) forgive me for a bit while I get everything set up!