Nanotechnology: MEDICINE

During our second lecture on ‘Future Visions’ we briefly talked about a technology which is rapidly being developed and it is thought that it will be a massive element of medical technology in the near future. This technology is called nanotechnology. Firstly, it is important to try and explain what ‘nanotechnology’ literally means.

Although ‘an internationally standardized definition of nanotechnology has not yet been established’ we can try and come up with some sort of way of explaining what ‘nanotechnology’ is. Firstly the word ‘‘nano’ means one billionth. One nanometer...is 1/1,000,000,000 of a meter...To get a sense of the nano scale, a human hair measures 50,000 nanometers across, a bacterial cell measures a few hundred nanometers across...The smallest things seeable with the unaided human eye are 10,000 nanometers across.’

This image shows how small nano is.

The simplest way I found to describe what ‘nanotechnology’ actually is as a whole is: ‘Nanotechnology, shortened to “nanotech”, is the study of the controlling matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures sized between 1 to 100 nanometer in at least one dimension, and involves developing materials or devices within that size’

A brief history of ‘nanotechnology’

Although ‘The term ‘nanotechnology’ was introduced by Professor Norio Taniguchi in 1973...’ Richard Freynman actually came up with the idea of ‘nanotechnology in 1959 with his famous lecture ‘There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom’. ‘In it, Feynman challenged scientists to think about constructing atomic scale devices; a speech that 20 years later encourages Drexler to publish his early nanotechnology speculations’

Freynman

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Taniguchi

During my research I came across a flash website which featured a pretty cool timeline showing where nanotechnology originated from, who has developed it and how up to the present day. A very intresting and detailed education tree about nanotechnology

Nanotechnology and Health care

‘Nanotechnology has the potential to revolutionise healthcare for the next generation. There are three key areas in which it could do this: Diagnosis, Prevention and Treatment.’

‘The vision of the future is of harnessing the qualities of nanotechnology to eventually provide healthcare which operates purely from a preventative state, identifying and stopping potential sources of disease/illness in the body before they even get started.’

Diagnosis

‘Nanotechnology is of great use for medical diagnosis and various nanoparticles have exhibited tremendous potential for detecting disease markers, pre-cancerous cells, fragment of viruses and other indicators. Various metal coating and metal nanoparticles functionalized with different biomolecules has been found useful in detecting specific proteins, antibodies and other disease indicators.’

Prevention

‘The majority of healthcare is reactive rather than preventative. This is often some time after the initial infection or trauma, which means that tissue damage and suffering has already occurred. In some cases this damage can be irreparable, in others permanent reminders remain (such as loss of function of that body part or scarring). ‘

.Therefore, possibly the most important aspect of nanomedicine in the future will be its potential to prevent illness, rather than simply treating it. Nanotechnology will contribute to this through more effective monitoring of individuals’ health (allowing diseases to be caught in their infancy) and more sterile hospital environments (limiting the opportunity for bacteria, viruses and other microbes to cause secondary disease). Understanding the genetic make-up of the patient will also allow the doctor to prescribe personalised medicine.’

Using nanotechnology in order to prevent illness is an amazing thought. It means that hundreds maybe even thousands of lives could potentially be saved and doctors will be able to treat patients with more confidence as they would know exactly what medication a patient’s body needs. ‘It will be possible to provide personalised medicine designed for individual patients and their particular illness.’

Treatment

‘At present, treatment of illness tends to use quite old-fashioned, well-established methods. These methods are obviously not always entirely successful, with general solutions and treatments often being applied to very specific problems.

Furthermore, current healthcare can often cause additional problems such as rejection or a bad reaction to a transplant.

The danger of implant rejection can be minimised through ‘body-friendly’ nano-coatings, whilst there are also new techniques being developed to allow drugs to be more accurately targeted.’

The above image shows 'nanotechnology' at work reparing a damaged red blood cell.

I think that the use of 'nanotechnology' in medicine is an amazing achievement and after learning more about it I believe a huge growth in the development and use of 'Nanotechnology' in the near future.

Although this blog focuses on 'nanotechnology' in medicine, it is also being used in other sectors for example

Cosmetics

Food

Clothes

These links will take you to some blogs I found whilst doing my research and I think you will find them very intresting...

Refrencing

Books

Malanowski, N, 2006, ‘Growth market nanotechnology: an analysis of technology and innovation’.  Wiley VCH, P. 8.

Ratner, M, 2003, ‘Nanotechnology: a gentle introduction to the next big idea’. Pearson Education, P.7

Tibbals, H, ‘Medical nanotechnology and nonomedicne’. CRC Press, P.31

Online sources

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanotechnology Last Accessed 20/10/2010

 http://www.nanoforum.org/educationtree/othersections/nanotimeline.htm Last Accessed 20/10/2010

 No named Author, 2010,’Nanotechnology in cosmetics’, No date, Available at; http://www.idea.ideabing.com/2010/08/15/nanotechnology-in-cosmetics/# Last Accessed: 20/10/10

http://www.nanoforum.org/educationtree/healthcare/healthcare.htm Last Accessed 20/10/2010

http://www.nanoforum.org/educationtree/healthcare/healthcare-prevention.htm Last Accessed 20/10/2010

http://www.nanoforum.org/educationtree/healthcare/healthcare-treatment.htm Last Accessed 20/10/2010

http://www.nanotechnologydevelopment.com/medical/nanotechnology-for-medical-diagnosis.html Last Accessed 20/10/2010

Garber, C, 2007, ‘Nanowork’, ‘Nanotechnology food coming to a fridge near you’, 28^th December 2006, Available at;  http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1360.php Last Accessed; 20/10/2010

No named author, 2004, ‘Nanotech in fashion: The trend in New Fabrics’, 7^th September 2004, Available at:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3892457 Last Accessed; 20/10/2010  

Images

How technology works: http://science.howstuffworks.com/nanotechnology.htm Last Accessed: 20/10/10

Freynmann: http://particlezoo.wordpress.com/2008/09/08/what-would-feynman-do/ Last Accessed 20/10/10

Taniguchi http://www.euspen.eu/default.asp?ContentID=712 Last Accessed 20/10/10

Nanotechnology at work http://www.piercemattie.com/blogs/2006/05/nanotech_sunscreens_at_risk_co.html Last Accessed 20/10/10

'Is our wild digital world a blessing or a curse?'

During out first lecture on ‘Emergent Media and Markets’ we studied an academic journalist called Dr. Aleks Krotoski. ‘Krotoski’ has been writing for over 10 years, she studies technology and interactivity writing columns for ‘The Guardian’ and ‘The Observer’.

After the lecture I decided that my first blog was going to focus on Aleks Krotoski looking at her views of new technologies, studying her articles and blogs.

As a starting point to my research I decided to watch ‘The Virtual Revolution’, a documentary presented by 'Aleks Krotoski', aired on BBC 2 in January of this year. It is a documentary which focuses on the World Wide Web and how it had changed our lives, ‘20 years on from the invention of the World Wide Web Dr Aleks Krotoski explores how it is reshaping almost every aspect of our lives.’

The four part series was extremely interesting to watch however, it was something that Aleks Krotoski said during the first episode that made me change the main focus of this blog...

During the first episode Krotoski asks ‘Is our wild digital world a blessing or a curse?’ this is something which got me thinking, therefore the main body of this blog will try and evaluate both sides too this statement, focusing on the Internet  and social networking, looking at theorists and writers  to try and come to some sort of conclusion.

When asked the question’ Is our digital world a blessing or a curse?’ Most of us would start by arguing that a digital world is of course a blessing. It has given us the Internet, the whole world at our finger tips. If there is anything that we need to find out or learn about we could have all the answers in under a second just by using a search engine like ‘Google’. Around 20-25% of the world’s population have access to the Internet, this may not sound like a massive amount of people but considering the Internet only became widely available in the mid 1990’s this is quite a remarkable figure.  It is a free way to stay connected, not only with friends and family by using social networking sites such as ‘facebook’ but also with what is going on in the world with live news feeds or sports results sent straight to your phone.

 ‘Linked out' is a journal written about social networking looking by Aleks Krotoski. It discusses social networking and other online communities, a very worthwhile read. Linked out?

So a bit about ‘facebook’...’facebook’ was launched in February 2004 and was created by ‘Mark Zuckerberg’. It is the number one social networking site; it has more than 500 million active users of which 50% of the users are active daily. Each user has an average of 130 friends, and people spend over 700 billion minutes of ‘facebook’ per month. (Statistics from the ‘facebook’ website http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics)

This month has also seen the release of the film ‘The Social Network’ a film about 'facebook' that I haven’t yet seen but will be going to watch in the near future.

Storyline

 ‘On a fall night in 2003, Harvard undergrad and computer programming genius Mark Zuckerberg sits down at his computer and heatedly begins working on a new idea. In a fury of blogging and programming, what begins in his dorm room soon becomes a global social network and a revolution in communication. A mere six years and 500 million friends later, Mark Zuckerberg is the youngest billionaire in history... but for this entrepreneur, success leads to both personal and legal complications.’

The Internet has not only allowed us to have access to endless information it has also ‘helped to reintroduce us to one another and has inspired us to get involved with our local communities.’ ‘The Internet has become a vital source of information, sociability and engagement. The people we know online are our global friends and family, but by bringing them together from all over the world, the Internet has become our most important avenue for local change.’ 

We have looked at some advantages it is now important to look at the other side of the argument. This phenomenon has been blamed for creating a generation of web addicts. Children spend hours a day sat in front of a computer playing games or on ‘facebook’ how can this be healthy? Susan Greenfield is someone who would definitely argue that the Internet and social networking damages children. Greenfield is a professor who studies including brain physiology. She went to the House of Lords claiming that modern technology, in particular social networking sites may have a negative impact on a child’s development.  She believes that it hinders the development of social skills. She also states that they reduce the attention span of children. ‘Social networking websites are causing alarming changes in the brains of young users, an eminent scientist has warned.’ 

This article in ‘The Mail’ highlights the problems of social networking and takes a very negative approach towards it.  The Mail

Even though the Internet provides us with endless information not everything we are presented with may not be accurate. ‘Wikipedia’ is a great example of this. It can be claimed that ‘Wikipedia’ will give you the answer to any question or give you information about almost any topic you could think of. However, it is very hard to know if what you are reading is accurate or not. Anyone who has Internet access can edit information which is put onto ‘Wikipedia’, as highlighted in the documentary ‘The Virtual Revolution’. It empowers each and every one of us and with 65 million people using it each month how many of them are being given the wrong information?

Another disadvantage of social networking and the Internet in general is the issue of privacy. Anything you put onto ‘facebook’ will never be deleted, somewhere in the world of the web something you thought you have deleted will still be ‘floating’ around in cyberspace. There is also the issue of hackers. Thousands maybe even millions of people a year get hacked losing money and valuable information. There is so much information about people online but it only takes one person to find out everything they need to know to empty your bank account.

In my opinion I believe that the world is a much better place now we have the Internet. It is a place for us to work, play and socialize with people that live across the globe. Its quick, it’s easy, and it’s convenient. We can learn so much, voice our opinions too millions and join in with other people who have the same moral and beliefs as ourselves. Some children may spend too long surfing the web but maybe they might be learning something? Not everything we see online has a negative impact.

References 

Newspapers and Journals

Derbyshire.D, 24th February 2009, 'Social websites harm children's brains: Chilling warnings to parents from top neuroscientist', The Mail.co.uk. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1153583/Social-websites-harm-childrens-brains-Chilling-warning-parents-neuroscientist.html (Last Accessed 16/10/10)

Krotoski. A, 'Linked Out?', RSA. Available at: http://www.thersa.org/fellowship/journal/features/features/linked-out. (Last accessed 16/10/10)

No author, 'About The Virtual Reveloution', BBC. Available at:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/virtualrevolution/about.shtml, ( Last accessed 16/10/10)

No author, 'Digital innovation and it's effects on overall culture'. Available at: http://ccit205.wikispaces.com/Pros+and+Cons+of+the+new+digital+world. (Last Accessed 16/10/10)

Other web sources

IMDB, 'The social network' , http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/. (Last Accessed 16/10/10)

Youtube, 'Trailer', http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB95KLmpLR4. (Last Accessed 16/10/10)

Image 1

Aleks Krotoski

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2009/mar/11/indie-game-engine-technology-development (Last accessed 16/10/10)

Image 2

Facebook

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=http://www.montana.edu/freshmen/facebook_pic.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.montana.edu/freshmen/&usg=__dQaPNQWrMZPy-HwLXU2FvKpcCPU=&h=790&w=2100&sz=135&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=WnsmOCuSOUlvmM:&tbnh=52&tbnw=138&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfacebook%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D663%26bih%3D514%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=52&vpy=123&dur=130&hovh=138&hovw=366&tx=223&ty=75&ei=5fa5TPv8M46A5Ab2pLWvDw&oei=5fa5TPv8M46A5Ab2pLWvDw&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=12&ved=1t:429,r:0,s:0

(Last Accessed 16/10/10)