Social Media 101

Does social media influence decision-makers?
“I hope that governments wake up and take notice,” said Sue Huff, an Edmonton Public School Board Trustee, when asked how governments should address the influence that social media seemingly provides. “There needs to be a willingness to share power and more genuine communication by politicians. I think people have felt very disconnected from governments.”
I got into this discussion when I brought up ChangeCamp Edmonton. After hearing about ChangeCamp in Toronto, I invited some locals to participate on a steering committee with the intent of holding a similar event here. I’m proud to say that on October 17th at U of A’s Lister Hall, Edmontonians will get a chance to participate in a day of democratic engagement. People from all levels of government and areas of society can register at changecampedmonton.ca for this free event.
I believe ChangeCamp will help citizens discover, discuss and engage in debate over key issues that pertain to their lives. Further, it is a demonstration of our ability to self-organize and create a construct that allows for deep conversations about how to enable government to serve us better. Huff liked the idea too, “ChangeCamp seems to be based on the wisdom of the crowd.”
I talked with her about many things social media-related. She believes that “influence goes both ways and I’d like to think I’m influencing public opinion in some way.” I wondered if this exchange of ideas online translated back to the Board of Trustees. Huff provided an example: She researched information she received on Twitter and her blog regarding issues around H1N1 and brought back to the board. “The things that I learn I share and that expands the knowledge of the entire board.”
Regarding whether social media has influence, many speculated online that fusedlogic’s live streaming webcast entitled The Great Edmonton Airport Debate actually influenced some on City Council when deciding the airport’s fate. I asked Councillor Kim Krushell if she had viewed the streaming video debate. Her response? Yes! Did she think that the social media activity around the airport issue influenced councillors? “Oh yeah! I do think it had influence on councillors. Bloggers directed people to e-mail… part of it was we were getting form letter e-mails from Cal Nichols’ side and personal e-mails from the NextGen crowd, complete with e-mail addresses. I found it all fascinating.”
Many are familiar with President Barack Obama’s now famous election campaign and its use of social media to influence American voters. How about closer to home? “I’m really just scratching the surface of the direct voter connection,” said Danielle Smith, who’s running for the leadership of the Wildrose Alliance Party. Phil Klein, father of former Premier Ralph Klein has joined Smith’s party. “The first thing I did was ask if I could put it out on Twitter,” she said. She admits, “I don’t have a blog yet, I’m not sure I will… being so busy, I like the efficiency of Twitter.
“We don’t have a very functional democracy here in Alberta. Decisions are being made out of the blue. From a policy point of view, the point of Twitter is to have direct connections—un-distilled commentary from average people.” Smith offered further, “Ralph Klein continued to be reachable.” Referencing that direct connection capability that Twitter provides, I mentioned that Premier Ed Stelmach has two Twitter accounts, and asked hypothetically if she ever become premier would she continue to use Twitter herself. Smith replied, “It’s obvious that the premier is not using Twitter himself. My intention is to continue to monitor what’s being said online. Should I win the leadership race, I would propose that Wildrose integrate social media into our operations at the policy level.”
So does social media influence decision-makers? Clearly, in different ways and at different levels, the answer is yes. How much depends on the situation and the issue at hand. There seems to be experiential evidence to suggest that this trend will only grow. As we get nearer to the day of ChangeCamp Edmonton—coincidently, the day Smith finds out if she won her leadership race—I’m sure that social media will play a part in whether some of you come out to offer some cool ideas for government to consider.
Repurposing Sue Huff’s comment, I agree with her and hope that governments take notice and come out chat with us average Albertans. “Let social media continue to lend power to the people.” √

Goodbye, Alberta Bonjour, Québec

Dr. John Cormier
Picomole Instruments founder and CEO

Picomole Instruments Inc. is leaving town.
Company founder and CEO Dr. John Cormier is relocating his company to Quebec City. In the works is an exciting new partnership with a yet to be revealed Quebec company which will help Picomole turn its prototype into a commercial product.
While the move is Edmonton’s loss, this is actually a good news story for Picomole, and we should anticipate it will have a happy, prosperous ending.
Picomole Instruments is a startup technology company that has developed a platform medical technology that could revolutionize the way doctors diagnose disease.
When asked to give his elevator pitch, Dr. Cormier fires without pause. “Picomole is all about LifeSens which is a point of care, diagnostic tool for rapid, ultra sensitive gas analysis. Basically, you blow into the box, you get an analysis of what’s in your breath within minutes. And the specific compounds that are found in your breath can be indicators of specific disease states, like diabetes, various cancers, cardio-vascular problems, and much more.”
Hence the company tagline, “Just Breathe”.
That’s the pitch that helped Cormier capture the Fast Growth Grand Prize in the 2007 VenturePrize Business Plan Competition, the largest competition of its kind in Canada. Since then, Picomole has gone on to win the BioAlberta Emerging Company of the Year award in 2008, and was recently named one of the Top 10 Canadian Angel Capital Companies by the National Angel Capital Organization. And just to top it all off, this summer, Dr. Cormier was named one of Alberta’s top 50 people of influence.
For a company that was only formed in 2005, what has turned it into the darling of Edmonton’s innovation community? Quite simply, Dr. Cormier has done all the right things for a startup as he moves from concept to commercialization.
He’s kept focused, surrounded himself with competent people, been frugal, and developed good partnerships with Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, Alberta Ingenuity, and the National Research Council through its IRAP program.
I first met Dr. Cormier early in 2006. He was moving into the Research Transition Facility on the University of Alberta campus where I also had an office. This was only months after he’d made the big move to Edmonton from Washington DC, taking a short stint as chief scientific officer at Synodon, then setting up his first office at the Advanced Technology Centre in Edmonton’s Research Park. He would later move from RTF to the new NINT building on campus as his company ramped up activity on the LifeSens prototype.
My initial interview with him was in an office devoid of anything except a desk, phone and laptop. Our voices echoed off the walls as he told me about his invention, referring to graphics on his laptop.
Three and a half years later, Dr. Cormier is leaving Edmonton with a working prototype, a dedicated team of people, and the chance to make millions while changing the face of diagnostic medicine.
“The potential is enormous,” he says, somewhat in awe. “We’re working with a group of consultants who think that there is the potential for a 100,000 units sold, which really is astronomical.
“But I think what it says is that in the right hands and the right minds, people who understand how to produce and market a medical technology, it really is limitless potential.” Possible applications include clinical diagnostics, occupational health and safety, law enforcement, and environmental monitoring.

And then comes the zinger. “I don’t think this is too much of an exaggeration. This is a once in a 50-year kind of technology.”

Dr. Cormier hails from Moncton, New Brunswick. After receiving his PhD in Physic from the University of Toronto, he went on to do post doctorate work in Washington DC at the National Institute for Standards and Technology. His focus was a laser spectroscopy experiment with applications in greenhouse gas detection.
The Institute was hit with massive budget cuts, according to Dr. Cormier, “I think in order to fund the department of Homeland Security. Management came down and talked to various people and pointed out that the National Institutes of Health down the road didn’t have their budget cut. And so they asked us if they could find linkages between our research and health issues. And so, when you’re an atmospheric scientist, you’re always thinking about air. You know, air, breathe, hmmm, is there something there?”
With some research, Dr. Cormier discovered scientists had been trying for quite some time but without much luck to connect atmospheric analysis with medical diagnosis. Technically speaking, it was far too difficult a challenge. That is, until he came along.
“At that time, I was looking at an apparatus that was spread out on, above and below a 4 x 8 photo optical table. It was absolutely not automated by any stretch of the imagination. It required this simultaneous twiddling of six or seven knobs to get any data. And I kind of made that leap in my mind. I said, ‘I think there is something that could be adapted from this technology that would allow for ultra sensitive gas analysis but comprehensive so you can measure hundreds of compounds at the same time.’ And that was really the genesis of the idea for LifeSens.”
As for the name of the company, Dr. Cormier explains a picomole is a scientific measurement meaning a trillionth of a mole. “I just thought the name sounded really cool. What we’re doing is setting our ambition right in our name. We’re saying that our goal at Picomole Instruments is to build instrumentation that can detect a picomole of a given anilide in an exhaled air sample.” Anilides are class of chemical compounds, many of which are associated with various diseases.
Come mid-September, Cormier and Picomole Instruments Inc. will be moving out of the incubators and into the real world of business. “I’ve never had to read a lease in French. And I have to think about what our needs are going to be, because the commercial landlords are interested in five-year leases. So this is about getting more real in a sense. We’re going to be shoulder-to-shoulder with a chicken rotisserie and a tanning salon and a veterinary clinic. You know… real people who have real businesses that have to make a dollar to survive.”
What attracted Cormier to join up with his new partner in Quebec is the company’s vast experience in product development in the photonics sector. “We’re a relatively small team. We’re only five right now. And it would be difficult for us to productize our own technology with our limited experience in this area. But this company has over 200 engineers and scientists so it’s a very large company with a lot of depth of expertise in a lot of areas that are very relevant to what we are doing.”
While Picomole will be paying for the services of its new partner to scale up production on the LifeSens prototype, the partnership also involves an investment from the Quebec company.
Among the many plans for the future is shrinking the size of the LifeSens technology from that of a push around cart to a handheld device. And, looking ahead five years, says Dr. Cormier, “Well, if you believe our business plan, we’ll have about 140 employees.”
But for now, there is the immediate concern of getting a product to market. “This company asked me during our discussions to define what success would look like in our case. And the simplest way that I could put it for them is to say I need something I can sell in about a year.”
And they said? “Well, we’d better get started.” √

Cheryl Croucher

Innovotech receives green light for sale of bioFILM PA™ test

Dr. Wolfgang Muhs, chairman of Innovotech, Dr. Robert Rennie, Melanie, Ken Boutilier, president of Innovotech, Dr. Neil Brown, Dr. Merle Olson, researchdirector at Innovotech

In June, writer Greg Gazin interviewed Ken Boutilier, president and CEO of Innovotech Inc. for the July issue of Edmontonians. The focus of the article was the company’s breakthrough test that allows doctors to more accurately identify the right antibiotics required to treat serious, chronic infections that are biofilm based. Since at least 80 per cent of infections in the developed world are caused by biofilms, the development of bioFILM PA™ is of immense significance to the medical community.
Chronic infections place a major cost burden on the health system. Patients spend more time in hospitals, antibiotic costs and treatment costs increase as more aggressive treatment options are explored, and the potential always exists for these infections to cause death.
Now, bioFILM PA™ has shown very positive results in selecting proper antibiotic treatment for serious lung infections in patients with Cystic Fibrosis (CF), a population recognized as having among the most life threatening lung infections. Clinical research of bioFILM PA™ shows how the test can provide guidance to doctors on the right antibiotics to treat infections in a biofilm state. The University of Alberta Hospital laboratory, under the direction of Dr. Robert Rennie, site chief of Laboratory Medicine, and Dr. Neil Brown, director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Clinic, conducted the clinical research from 2007 to 2009.
The clinical research involved 14 patients with cystic fibrosis at the University of Alberta hospital CF clinic. The patients ranged from 9 to 51 years of age. One patient was receiving intravenous antibiotics for a lung infection but continued to decline in health and lung function. The same antibiotics had been used for an earlier infection and had been successful. The patient was hospitalized, the antibiotics were changed, but the patient continued to decline. Using the bioFILM PA™ kit as guidance, an additional antibiotic not normally used in CF lung infections was added. The patient responded to the treatment, was discharged and is still symptom free after more than one year.
In another case, a patient was on a lung transplant waiting list, and was receiving oral and inhaled antibiotics, but showed a continuous decline in health and lung function. The doctors admitted the patient to hospital in an attempt to stabilize the patient prior to transplantation. A bioFILM PA™ test was ordered and consequently a new combination of antibiotics was administered. The lung transplant was conducted successfully and the patient has been symptom free for more than two years.
At a news conference at the end of July, it was announced that bioFILM PA™ has received regulatory approval by Health Canada and is available for sale in Canada. It has also met all current standards of the Clinical Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) for reproducibility and consistency. Among those in attendance was Melanie, a young CF patient who had been part of the clinical trial and responded to treatment following the bioFILM PA™ test.
A further clinical evaluation of bioFILM PA™ on more than 200 CF patients is now underway at the Hospital for Sick Children and St. Michaels Hospital in Toronto. √

~ Barb Deters

Will nano crystalline cellulose save our forest products industry?

George Weyerhauser Jr.

According to forestry giant George Weyerhauser Jr., trees will play a big role in the nano revolution, and nano crystalline cellulose will be the hot new raw material.
Nano crystalline cellulose comes from all parts of the tree where cellulose and lignin are broken down into their molecular components. Then through nano fabrication, these molecules can be built up again into materials where the properties are precisely managed, designed and engineered.
At the recent TAPPI and Alberta Ingenuity Conference on Nanotechnology and Forest Products, Weyerhauser addressed the economics of this nano revolution for an industry facing tough times.
“The forest industry is just beginning to think [about] how we can turn these new materials into competitive products,” says the former president of Weyerhauser Canada. “And it’s going to take a major re-investment, a retooling of our labs in order to take products to the next commercialization step. On the other hand, the facilities that we use are all there. So getting the raw material from the woods to the factory, that’s not going to be any different. Getting the initial breakdown of the tree into the components, that will likely be the same. So we have the basic platform ready to go. It’s the knowledge that we have to invest in still. “
Because nano crystalline cellulose could supplant petroleum based chemicals as a manufacturing feedstock, Weyerhauser believes that, over the next two decades, the nano revolution in forest products will actually help the world reduce its energy consumption and carbon footprint.√

~ Cheryl Croucher

The mystery of misfolded prions

John Paul Glaves

Transmission is a big question for scientists studying prion disease. Misfolded prions are associated with mad cow and chronic wasting disease. What makes the misfolded prion infectious within a species, and what stops it from being transmitted between different species?
In his research, University of Alberta biochemist John Paul Glaves studied fragments of peptide fibrils or threadlike strands from elk and hamsters. Elk are susceptible to chronic wasting disease, but it’s very hard for hamsters to develop prion disease.
Glaves outlined his surprising results in a poster presented at the recent Prion Conference in Edmonton.
“We’ve taken small fragments of the prion protein that have been known to form fibrils, and we’ve basically generated those based on different species. So there’s a small amount of variability in the sequences that we’ve chosen… we’re highlighting residues number 127 to 147 of the prion protein. You can just basically drop these small fragments of the prion protein in water and they spontaneously form fibrils.”
Glaves goes on to explain that, although there are only four changes in the 20 residue pepties, the researchers found there are gross morphological differences between the fibrils of elk and hamsters.
“What we hope to do,” he says, “is gain some high resolution information about these fibrils so we can see each individual residue and how it contributes to fibril formation. Then we can start to dissect whether these variations in sequences that we see between species… are important for so-called species barriers and transmission between different species.”
The next step for Glaves and his colleagues is to expand their research to other species and different parts of the prion protein. √

~ Cheryl Croucher

Artificial lake to replace Syncrude Oilsands Mine

Jim Lorentz

In 2012, Syncrude will finish a pit where it has been  mining oil sands over the last two decades. In its place, the company will build a huge experimental lake it is calling Base Mine Lake.
As Syncrude’s technology development officer Jim Lorentz explains, dried tailings left over from oil sands production will form the lake bottom.
“That is where we add a layer of mature fine tails and then we cap it with a freshwater cap. The lake is designed to have latoral zones which are the shallow zones where some of the vegetation and stuff you see in lakes grow from, allowing a lot of sunlight to permeate through and encouraging biological activity.
“The belief is after 10 years, we would have enough biological activity at the point where we could start introducing more complex life, like fish and amphibians, those kind of things.”
According to Lorentz, Base Mine Lake builds on the success of a previous pilot program which involved the construction of a four-acre lake. He stresses future monitoring of the aquatic environment at will be extensive. √

~ Cheryl Croucher

Social Media 101

This year’s Edmonton International Fringe Festival was absolutely terrific. As of my deadline, I’ve seen a total of four shows: Pitch Blond by Vancouver-born Laura Harris; Garret Spellicy’s local production The Lavender, South Korea; and Red Bastard by Eric Davis out of New York.
I saw the latter two because the fusedlogic team streamed both shows live via video over the Internet as part of our social media project with Fringe Theatre Adventures (FTA), the folks behind North America’s largest and longest running fringe festival.
The FTA had yet to engage in the social web beyond a Facebook group. This year, however, Industry Canada’s Marquee Tourism Program enabled a specific focus on generating awareness and interest in the festival and the city tourism options for fringe enthusiasts abroad.
Edmonton’s Fringe Festival broke new social media ground in several ways, including the streaming of three live webcasts all across Canada and for international audiences in places like the Philippines, United Kingdom and United States, plus Greece and Belgium.  A key approach to this campaign was to involve the Fringe community directly, encouraging both international and local performers to blog about their experiences at showyouourblog.com.  In the first six days of the festival, more than 100 blog posts from 10 different bloggers, including me, were generated.  Local photographers who are on Twitter also showcased our city and festival. Starting with a brand new group for this year, Edmonton now has the largest Flickr group of Fringe-related pictures in the world.  Well over 1300 photos in under 10 days – amazing.  Top contributors by Twitter handle were @Livingsantuary, @Sirthinkd, @Pixelens, @Cyclopsphoto, @Eadnams, @Wburris, and @PaulNey.  And thanks to everyone else who posted pictures.
To continue in the spirit of the Fringe,  I decided to take advantage of being around so many talented perfomers.  I interviewed the very talented Edmonton native street magician, Billy Kidd.  We talked about her life spent performing on the world’s streets, and her use of social media to promote her act.  Currently living in Bath, England, she still enjoys coming home.  From a perfomer’s perspective, she says “Edmonton’s Fringe crowds are great and there are less street performers here to compete with”, as compared to say Edinburgh’s Festival Fringe which tends to have far more performers.
When talking to Kidd about her online activities, she explained that she’s on Facebook under different name and for different purpose related to “nose flutes”. Bill Kidd is her magician persona and currently her social media activity is next to zero in support of that particular act. Although she admits that Internet does help: ” I get lots of e-mails from people who have seen the show.”  Kidd’s website billykiddshow.com is fairly basic and if, you Google her name, there is little in terms of a content footprint.  Certainly this result doesn’t support the great live audience experience produced when she “works her magic” curb side. I suspect it’s because she’s only been performing the Billy Kidd magic act for the “past year or so”.

We did an on-camera interview which is up on the Fringe-focused ShowYouOurs Youtube channel. Further, the pictures and video docummenting her performances here should definetly help increase exposure for her around the world – increased evidence that Edmonton has a “magical world ambassador” in Billy Kidd.

Investing in start-ups “a challenging, hands-on sport”

AVAC Ltd. isn’t exactly a household name but one of the products it helped bring to market certainly is. Cold-fx, might not have made it off the lab bench onto supermarket shelves if it hadn’t been for the early stage investment by AVAC, an Alberta venture capital company.
According to Ross Bricker, president and CEO of AVAC Ltd., “One of our earliest and probably our best known success story in the early days was a company called CV Technologies, now called Afexa, with their Cold-fx product. We were able to participate back in 1997-98 in helping them with their clinical trials to take that nutraceutical or their medical, natural product to market. “
Twelve years later, Cold-fx is distributed around the globe, making millions for its parent company. As for AVAC, it has now invested in 110 promising companies. The portfolio of companies that have made it to market attributes almost $400 million in revenue or commercial sales to AVAC’s investment.
“Our primary job is to help catalyze homegrown business successes in agriculture,” says Bricker as he talks about why this venture capital fund was established in 1997.
“The agriculture minister of the day thought it was important that we start to generate more value from post farmgate activity. The data that had been generated prior to that showed Alberta lagging quite a way behind. We were being known as the hewers of wood and haulers of water. AVAC was created at that time to help catalyze those companies that could value-add commodities.”
The Alberta government put up $35 million and the federal government, through Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, contributed $10 million to get AVAC up and running as a not-for-profit, private venture capital company. In recent years, an additional $79 million from the province has helped AVAC expand its role beyond agribusiness into life sciences, industrial technology, and information and communications technology. This includes the IVAC initiative, spearheaded by Alberta Advanced Education and Technology in 2007.
In the past year, AVAC has also developed partnerships by attracting three other venture capital firms to Alberta: iNovia, Avrio and Yaletown.
Bricker has been with AVAC since 2000. No stranger to the world of agriculture, he grew up on the farm and continues to farm today. His degrees in agriculture and molecular biology, combined with his extensive experience in public policy, corporate finance and strategic planning, give him unique insight into the areas where AVAC is investing and into the obstacles these new ventures face.
According to Bricker, “The reality is that investing in early stage companies is a very challenging and very high risk area. Typically governments get involved in supporting research and innovation… that’s working in universities and through tech transfer areas. But then there’s a void in terms of available resources until you get to a company that’s profitable and generating revenue. Then, you’ll see later stage of venture capital get involved. In the area that we participate, the other investors are angels, the owners themselves… (and) some interested strategic partners who are prepared and interested in supporting early stage companies. But it’s very much a challenging, hands-on sport, so to speak.”
When deciding whether to invest in a startup company, Bricker stresses the number one rule is “people, people, people. If you’ve got the right kind of motivation and the right kind of people involved, then they will make it happen. I know from our experience—and we’ve invested in just over 110 companies over the last 12 years—that almost without exception, if they were good people leading the opportunity, it does well. If we take a risk on some people who aren’t quite where they need to be, then it’s not quite so promising an outcome.”
When early stage companies come to AVAC looking for venture capital, they are usually at the pre-commercial stage. Sometimes, however, AVAC will invest even earlier, supporting research at the university level, helping the venture along from idea through to marketable product.
Says Bricker, “We’re really a patient, hands-on investor. We come alongside and conduct very rigorous due diligence, making sure the investments are sound and appropriate, even though they are super high risk and early stage. We spend a lot of time helping the entrepreneurs, make sure that what they want to do is appropriate and is feasible.”
As for amounts of investment capital, that has ranged from a few thousand dollars to flesh out an idea to over $5 million on a single company with a blockbuster innovation. AVAC’s return on investment comes as a royalty when the companies finally get their products or services to market.
So just where are these AVAC investments? Bricker shoots off examples in rapid fire succession.
“SemBioSys has two blockbuster opportunities that will have a profound impact on healthcare with being able to produce safe insulin at a lower cost from plants that is identical to human insulin for Type 2 diabetics. And their latest product is a small molecule that again is produced in plants that is effective for treatment of blood cholesterol….These have a profound opportunity to mitigate what is going to be a significant healthcare cost in the future.”
On the ICT side, Bricker points to the Internet. “One investment we made this past year was in a social networking company called Tynt, which basically has a system for layering over top of the existing Web 2.0 world some data tracking systems to help monetize for investors and advertisers what they are spending their time and money on.”
Other companies include Under the Roof, a Calgary based company creating consumer products for the home renovating market. Cadillac Coatings of Edmonton has developed a technology to powder coat wood with a super durable, eco friendly finish.
On the health and neutraceutical side, there’s SciMed Technologies which has developed kits that allow producers to test in-house the levels of vitamins A and D in milk and baby formula. Botaneco has commercialized an ingredient for cosmetics called Hydresia. It’s made from safflower seeds and is a better emulsifier than those currently on the market.
And then there’s a lot of activity and interest in biofuels and alternative energy sources. For example, Highmark Renewables markets technology that turns organic waste from feedlots and sewage systems into energy.
These are just a few. A look at AVAC’s annual report indicates an extensive list of a broad range of companies and projects at various stages of development.
“Our primary objective is to see a vibrant, well diversified industry and I’ll emphasize home grown successes here in Alberta,” reiterates Bricker. “For those companies that do succeed, they are going to generate significant economic activity, employment, and quality jobs for Albertans.”
With all this energy and activity, what could grease the wheel even more? Taking another look at AVAC’s royalty model. While it works for the early stages of venture capital investment, Bricker says when companies grow to the point where they need later stage investment from outside sources, other venture capital funds look at AVAC’s royalty as a liability and are hesitant to invest.
Discussions are ongoing with the provincial government about allowing more flexibility in how AVAC can invest. √

Mining Trees for nano-enabled biomaterials

If Dr. Carlo Montemagno has his way, no one will ever look at trees the same way again.
Montemagno is the Dean of Engineering at the University of Cincinnati. He was in Edmonton for the recent conference on nanotechnology and forest products, sponsored by TAPPI and Alberta Ingenuity.
In Montemagno’s world, trees produce more than lumber and pulp. They are a cornucopia of proteins and molecules that form the basis of nano-enabled biomaterials.
He explains, “Forest products produces a large amount of biomass but all of their focus has been on cellulose. They look at using wood, fibre and pulp and that’s what they focus on. But there is a huge amount of potential resources in terms of the fundamental biological components that support the living mechanism of the tree that we should be able to harvest and use as value-added products—products that have more value intrinsically than the actual fibre that the industry is so heavily focused on.”
Montemagno says these nano-engineered biomaterials are renewable, offering a replacement for petroleum-based chemicals which will significantly reduce the carbon and energy footprint of industry. And we can expect to see some of nano-enabled products on the market within the next five years. √

Are nano particles risky?

Engineering new materials at the nano or atomic scale holds great potential for improving products and industrial processes.
But what risks do these novel materials pose human health or the environment?
Joanne Shatkin addressed this issue at the recent Conference on nanotechnology and forest products hosted by TAPPI and Alberta Ingenuity.
Shatkin is an author and managing director of CLF Ventures, an affiliate of the Conservation Law Foundation in the United States.
According to Shatkin, “All the properties that make nanomaterials so exciting as new materials are really novel properties. They behave differently from existing substances that we’re used to working with. That’s what raises the concern. If they behave differently from an engineering perspective, they also may behave differently from a biological and environmental perspective. So it raises some concerns that we need to address as these materials are being developed before they go widely out into the market.”
That’s why Shatkin advocates industry and regulators take a proactive approach toward nanotechnology. “My goal,” she says, “is to try to build sustainability into these new products early on. The exciting piece about nanotechnology is that you can engineer out the properties that you don’t want. So if we are looking for those properties now… if we’re thinking about potential harm, then we can identify it early and deal with it.”
These issues are outlined in her book, entitled Nanotechnology: Health and Environmental Risks. √