Careers in Nanotechnology

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are the study and application of extremely small things and can be used across the other science fields, such as chemistry, biology, physics, materials science, and engineering. By extremely small I mean... extremely small... a sheet of paper is 100 000 nanometers thick. If the diameter of a marble was one nanometer, then one meter would be the size of the earth.

The field of nanotechnology originated from a talk by Richard Feynman in 1959 called "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom". The name "nanotechnology" was coined in 1974 by professor Norio Taniguchi from the Tokyo Science University. Today, scientists are able to take advantage of the enhanced properties that materials made at the nanoscale have over their conventional counterparts, such as, higher strength, lighter weight, increased control of light spectrum, and greater chemical reactivity. Research in nanotechnology has even made your golf balls fly straighter. A group of prostate cancer researchers at the University of Alberta are developing a sort of homing beacons on the nanoscale that can detect and deliver drugs straight to tumors. This expected to be significantly better than chemotherapy, which kills both healthy and cancerous cells. They expect to have an impact on patients in two years. 

It is not necessary to have a PhD in science or engineering to have a career in nanotechnology. he National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network lists different levels of education and expected salaries for these levels of education.

Trasportation By Car: A Problem We Just Can't aFord

A third of the air pollution we emit comes form transportation. This pollution causes many negative effects on the environment and human health. The main pollutants from transportation that cause smog are carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds, and sulfur dioxide. These pollutants react with ammonia, water, and other compounds to produce the noxious vapors, ground level ozone, and small particles that comprise smog.

A simple way to prevent this air pollution is to use public transport. It is estimated that effective public transportation could cut emissions from transportation by over half by 2050, save $100 trillion, and prevent 1.4 million premature deaths. This article from the BBC describes these findings from a study at the University of California, Davis. The means to reach these goals involves what the authors of the study call, "a high shift scenario," in which a far greater proportion of urban passengers travel using a clean method of public transit, walk, or bike. However, without investments into clean methods of transportation, the report predicts that emissions from transportation will double by 2050.

I believe that public transportation is definitely a key to keep our cities clean. There are also, however, many other reasons why public transportation is a good idea. It decreases traffic and therefore decreases stress on people while driving. The alternatives of walking and biking are also keep us active and are good for our health.

So, do you think that we should increase investments into clean transportation?

Our Lawns: The Seeds of Our Destruction

What crop do you think consumes the most water in North America? Is it corn? No. Wheat? No. Rutabaga? No. The crop that actually consumes the most water per year in North America is grass. That's right, keeping our lawns green and our yards pretty uses more water than the food that keeps us alive.

But, do our lawns have other negative effects on the environment? This article from the University of Vermont shows the negative effects of chemical fertilizers on the environment. The highly soluble nitrates used in fertilizers can leach into groundwater and are hazardous to human health and cause blue-baby syndrome. The highly soluble ammonium used in fertilizers gets washed into the water system when it rains and can be harmful to the health of local fish populations. And the phosphates (which are usually seen as compounds with ammonium, such as (NH3)3PO4) used in fertilizer cause algal blooms, and eutrophication, which can lead to a "dead lake." 70% of these phosphates entering the water come from non-point sources, such as lawn and garden fertilizers, and pet wastes.

Personally, I don't really understand why people still have grass lawns; they're time consuming, water consuming, and nutrient consuming. And we readily have access to alternatives like clover lawns which don't need to be cut, don't require nearly as much water, and don't need to be fertilized. Switching to clover lawns could save us a lot of water, decrease the amount of pollution in our water, and decrease the amount of air pollution from cutting our lawns.

So, do you think we should still be using grass lawns, or do you think that there are better alternatives?

Lithium Hydroxide and the International Space Station

Carbon dioxide poisoning can have many adverse effects on a person, from headaches, to an increased heart rate, to death. In space these effects, especially ones that can affect behavior, are augmented due to the close crew contact and highly confined spaces.

This journal article by Dr. John T. James, and Dr. Ariel Macatangay explores the many troubles required to keep the air in the ISS safe for the astronauts to breathe.

The ISS currently uses a CO2 removal system called Vozdukh. The Russian Vozdukh absorbs carbon dioxide into an absorption bed and then vacuum desorbed into space. However, if the crew on the space station requires more oxygen, this can be supplemented using lithium hydroxide canisters. These canisters are the only carbon dioxide removal system used in the Space Shuttles, and rely on a reaction between the lithium hydroxide and carbon dioxide. This reaction can be modeled by the equation 2LiOH + CO₂ → Li₂CO₃ + H₂O. The main downfall of these canisters is that they do not regenerate and need to be replenished. To know how much lithium hydroxide is needed, NASA uses measurements of the amount of carbon dioxide exhaled by its astronauts (about 1kg per day), and uses stoichiometric calculations to determine the amount required to keep carbon dioxide levels below the exposure limits.

I personally just think it's awesome that we can put these white pellets into space and they remove a deadly toxin from the air. And the carbon dioxide removal is so important that when the explosion crippled the Apollo 13 Command/Service Module, the main concern was to be able to create breathable air for the astronauts.

So, do you think these lithium hydroxide canisters are necessary? Or should we take them out of the space stations?

Cyanide in Water

El Salvador is known to be one of the worst places in the world in terms of access to clean water. It has been estimated that 98% of the surface water in El Salvador is polluted.

Most of this pollution is from years of mining and the waste produced processing these minerals. One of the most commonly mined minerals in El Salvador was gold (all mining in El Salvador is currently banned by the government due to the significant health concerns of the population, although The International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes is currently hearing a case from a Canadian company, Pacific Rim, who is trying to sue the government of El Salvador for hundreds of millions of dollars for rejecting a possible gold mine).This gold mining caused a significant amount of cyanide pollution in country's water.

One possible solution for the cyanide pollution in the water is the addition of iron (II) sulfate and iron (III) chloride into the water. The ferrous sulfate reacts with the sodium cyanide in a three step process which can be represented by the equations:

FeSO4(aq) + 2NaCN(aq) → Fe(CN)2(aq) + Na2SO4(aq)

Fe(CN)2(aq) + 4NaCN (aq) → Na4Fe(CN)6(aq)

3Na4Fe(CN)6(aq) + 4FeCl3(aq) → Fe4[Fe(CN)6]3(s) + 12NaCl(aq)

These reactions can be classified as a double displacement, followed by a synthesis, and another double displacement. The final products of this process are sodium sulfate, an iron salt (Prussian blue, or iron (II,III) hexacyanoferrate (II,III)), and sodium chloride. Sodium sulfate is classified as non-toxic by the WHO, Prussian blue has been used in paints for hundreds of years and is only toxic in situations where the pH is extremely high and the salt dissolves, releasing cyanide ions, and sodium chloride is harmless table salt.

This is one of two common reactions to reduce the amount of cyanide in water. The other reaction is an addition of sodium hypochlorite to the polluted water. Both methods are valid and have products with low toxicity.

I personally think that the ban on mining is a good idea so to prevent the water pollution that causes the adverse health effects on the local populations, and to prevent a need or the costly cleanup measures of water pollution.

So, what do you think is preventing the implementation of a process like this to help clean the water of El Salvador, and is continuing the ban on mining a good idea there?

Chemical Dispersants and Oil Spills

Anytime that an oil spill occurs, many very important decisions have to be made. One of these decisions is whether or not to use chemical dispersants to break up surface oil slicks.

Water molecules are made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. The hydrogen and oxygen have different electronegativities, and because this difference is between 0.5 and 1.6--and because water molecules are asymmetrical--water is polar. This means that water molecules have a strong attraction to each other due to hydrogen bonding. Oil molecules, on the other hand. are non polar and held together by the relatively weak London dispersion force. These differences in polarity and intermolecular forces keep the oil and water from mixing, and cause oil slicks on the water surface. These oil slicks can be very harmful to the ecosystems in which they occur.

Because of this, chemical dispersants are often considered as options to help clear oil spills. Dispersants break up oil spills by containing molecules that have both polar and non-polar ends, attracting both the water and the oil molecules, breaking up the slick and forming the oil into small droplets, allowing it to both spread out easier and get broken down easier by bacteria in the water.

However, the chemical dispersants that we are currently using can have negative effects on human health and underwater ecosystems. In this article from the CBC, John Davis from No More Rigs suggests that Bill C-22 would streamline the process of using chemicals to break up oil spills. The article also stated that, while oil and dispersant were equally toxic while separate, their toxicity increased by a factor of 52 when combined. It also raised that Environment Canada says both that Corexit 9500A is 27 times safer than dish soap, but also poses a "high and immediate human health risk," seemingly contradicting itself.

There are, however, other ways to clean up oil spills. If caught early the surface of the water can be skimmed, and the surface oil removed. Also, if left for long enough, the wind and waves will naturally disperse the oil. Another common method of cleaning up oil spills is adding bacteria to the water that eat the oil, speeding up the natural biodegration.

So, are chemical dispersants a good choice for cleaning up oil spills?