Responding to sustainability requires going beyond the integration of key ideas into the existing higher education curriculum; the commissioning of a new sustainable building or supporting the sustainability action projects which often occur in the fringes of the institution. Instead, the sustainability journey engages universities and colleges in a quest for participatory pedagogies, ‘real world’ research, and most importantly to the opening of institutional boundaries so that the notion of sustainable communities is extended beyond university and college walls. In short, sustainability challenges the current paradigms, structures as well as predominant practices in higher education. Universities and colleges are facing this reality as they seek to contribute meaningfully to sustainability.

Parallel to the realisation that sustainability is a paradigm shifting exercise for higher education, is a trend for greater accountability for the sector. As national debt increases, governments are forced to rethink their investment strategies. They are asking questions regarding the value and impact of higher education activity on economic as well as social development. Universities are being held to account and through various funding mechanisms encouraged to establish stronger links with their local-regional communities to support the recovery. The result is a reorientation of university activity to provide this greater accountability in terms of outreach. This shift has led to an array of studies such as that undertaken by the New Economics Foundation which found that the social impact of universities in the UK is worth over £1.31 billion. It opens with the strap-line: ‘benefits are felt by everyone, not just those who go to university’.

These benefits are not limited to communities that geographically surround the University. In an era of globalisation, universities and colleges have extended their relationships through global procurement, offshore partnerships as well as through the education of national and international students. Their role in economic development, poverty alleviation but also health and community building beyond their immediate locality, in other regions of the world, cannot be understated.

The recent GUNI World in HE Report (2011) suggests that Higher Education has commenced its transformation process towards sustainability. How can communities of practice challenge the community of academic thinkers, researchers and teachers so that Higher Education can be transformative and assist with the transition towards more sustainable societies?

Innovation of new nanotechnologies has been a priority for countries across Europe, and the European Union itself. Nanotechnologies aim to harness advances in science that make it possible to engineer matter down to the nanometre – that is a billionth of a metre. This means, for example, that materials can be designed on the same scale as the width of a strand of DNA.

Many materials behave differently at the nano-scale. They may be more reactive, they may have different electronic properties, and some will react differently with living organisms. This ‘nano’ behaviour can be harnessed to create new technologies across a wide range of application areas. And yet, with this great promise comes a series of important questions. What purposes are these technologies designed to achieve, and who gets to decide? What risks might they pose to human health and the environment, and how are these risks regulated? How will unintended side effects be monitored and dealt with?

You set the questions

In this series of online debates we invite a wide range of views on five different application areas of nanotechnology. Our approach is that we need to think through the issues raised by nanotechnology in relation to concrete examples, which you will find in the introduction to each of the five debates. We have a clear and simple goal. To arrive at key questions that can be researched by members of the PERARES consortium. We make you a commitment to follow up the questions that emerge through this dialogue, and we will communicate back to you what the research finds.

Contributing to the responsible development of nanotechnologies

PERARES partners believe that if wider civil society has more of a say in setting research questions, then innovation is more likely to develop in ways that are responsive to societies’ needs. That’s our vision. Please take part and help us to promote research that directly addresses your hopes, concerns, and curiosity.

With the era of peak oil upon us – and growing concerns about the impact of climate change - there are ongoing debates in Ireland and elsewhere about future energy, with various alternative energies proposed from renewable to wind, to hydroelectric power and wave. Nuclear energy has also re-emerged as an option. But other, newer technologies are also being talked about, and indeed are well into research and development stages, in the areas of biotechnology and nanotechnology. For more background on energy planning and debates in Ireland, please see the ‘Ireland’s Energy Challenges’ document.

A proposed “bionano” solution at DCU

One of the bioengineered solutions offered by Dublin City University is a project funded by QUESTOR in Belfast  exploring bioelectricity production from wastewater in Microbial Fuel Cells , being investigated and developed by one of our biotechnology researchers at DCU, Dr. Enrico Marsili. There are two ‘green’ technological processes derived from this idea:  1) wastewater treatment and 2) the use of microbial cells as miniature ‘batteries’ to produce energy.  With increased populations, synergetic exercises like this are increasingly common – in this case how do we treat wastewater as well as creating a new type of energy production?

Clean water demands increase the consumption of fossil fuel-based energy reserves as well as global greenhouse gas emissions. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) operation accounts for 1.5% of the electricity consumption and 5% of greenhouse gas emissions. Energy recovery technologies are proposed to reduce cost and energy consumption of WWTPs. MFCs convert the chemical energy of wastewater directly into electrical energy, through microbial catalysts. MFCs are very simple bioreactors, essentially vats that harnesses energy from biological processes. In one example, a “biofilm” is created from an organism called Shewanella oneidensis. It has been seen that these organisms are good at transferring electrons across metals. Bionanoscientists have been able to create special ”nanowires” as extended “arms” on these organisms, making them more electrochemically active.

However, there are some issues raised specifically about these microbial fuel cell (MFC) technologies, questions that could be described as both scientific and socio-political.

We need to gather as much knowledge on these issues as possible. Questions that we now open for wider discussion online are:

• Specifically, how do bio/nano innovations compare, in MW output, to 1)wind  2) wave and 3) nuclear?  How can microbial fuel cells (MFCs) be made more efficient? What is expected of an MFC as a practical output for Irish homes?
• Can an MFC solution be used in the short term to address municipal wastewater and energy needs in the greater Dublin area? What protocol can be implemented that allows community and local council influence on such a process?
• How would a wind or wave strategy for Europe work , combined with  bio-nano solutions?
• More generally, how ‘natural’ are bio- or nanotechnological innovations? How important is it for a ‘green Ireland’ to use ‘natural resources’ in partnership with our European neighbours?

‘Public Engagement in Sustainable Development, Dublin City University’

Although researchers maintain that liposomal based drug delivery system will prove especially effective for future cancer diagnosis and treatment, they recognize that this assumption is shaped, to a great extent, by researchers’ unique frame of reference or mindset, which may be different from the mindsets of other stakeholders. We need to engage and learn from these diverse mindsets by improving communication between nano researchers and their stakeholders. A dialogue between nano researchers and their diverse stakeholders may prove to be the best way of optimizing the potential benefits of liposomal drug or imaging agent delivery systems. Indeed, dialogue may lead to co-creation of new knowledge, and discovery of unique pathways that may lead to novel discoveries and inventions. This cancer nanotechnology thematic strand has been designed to further such a dialogue.

Key questions that could be explored in this online discussion include:

1) Where are we now in cancer diagnosis and treatment?

2) How could advances in liposomal R&D revolutionalize or change cancer diagnosis and treatment?

3) In the promotional efforts of nano researchers, how can we tell the realistic from the unrealistic visions in describing the future benefits to cancer research from these technologies?

4) What safety concerns are raised by liposomal drug delivery systems?

5) What alternative cancer related research pathways are articulated by other networks of scientific, biomedical, and other patients’ advocacy groups?

6) What are diverse stakeholders’ perceptions or opinions about liposomal drug delivery systems?

cancer-nanotechnology-further-information

A current development in healthcare is to move from hospital care to home care (care-at-a-distance). Promises of Ambient Intelligence can contribute to the realization of this future vision of healthcare, namely the realization of: “an environment that is aware of our presence and responsive to individual needs.” (Aarts 2003; Rathenau 2004).

An example of a body-area network (source: human ++ program IMEC):

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The patient wears two sensors on his chest that monitor and collect ECG data. These sensors connect to a small device that is worn on the upper arm. This contains a processor that collects the data and makes real-time analysis. When unusual heart rhythm patterns are registered, an alarm goes off. In order to detect unusual patterns, the ECG patch is adjusted for each patient separately.

ECG Patch for early detection of epileptic seizures

In collaboration with a centre for epilepsy, IMEC, nano-electronics research centre, has developed an ECG patch to give early warnings of impending epileptic seizures, based on heart rhythm. Current methods for detection are based on acoustics or patient motions, but these do not detect some severe seizures which are noiseless and motionless. This is something heart rhythm can detect. This is an example of one of the sensors that is part of the body-area network.

This  nano-enabled application raises some questions:

We would like to invite you to articulate your questions, concerns and ideas about the embedding of the ECG patch and body-area-networks in general to stimulate care-at-a-distance.  Please leave your message below.

Nano jungle, by Dr. Qin Hu

Life Cycle Analysis is a way to look at all environmental impacts of a certain product or application over its entire life-span. You take into account all the environmental impacts of mining for metals, drilling for oil, transporting ores, and you can even discern between scarce and abundant materials. Then you measure the impact of making half products and the final products in factories (including the energy used for all that), and calculate all the environmental impacts during the use of the product. Finally you take into account the environmental impact of discarding the products.
With this method, abbreviated to LCA, you can compare two products that deliver the same service, such as two different cars. You compare them on total toxic materials emitted into the environment, greenhouse gas emissions, total energy use per driven km, etc. You can correct for number of km’s driven or lifetime of the car. You can also calculate the effect of recycling (e.g. if recycled aluminium is used in producing your car, the environmental impact of the car is lowered; and for other products it may even be so that if you could use it twice, you already half the environmental impact). You can thus calculate where you can change the materials used or production method used to lower the impact.
Since the use of nano particles may have advantages, such as higher quality of a product, reduced energy use, etc, it would be interesting to see how the use of nano-particles compares to alternatives, e.g. through an LCA. Since learning how to perform an LCA is one of the competences for students in environmental studies, we think that questions like these should be suitable for student-research.
The fact that not all environmental impacts of nano-particles are known yet, complicates matters and puts a challenge on methodological refinement of the LCA method. In general, nano-particles behave different from larger particles. This gives them the special properties that makes them well suited for certain applications. However, it also makes them behave differently in the environment and body. Nano-particles have a relatively large surface per weight unit. Since reactions occur on the surface, they are much more reactive than larger particles. Thus, environmental standards that are based on weight units are not suitable to control nano-sized particles of a certain substance. However, nano-particles can be firmly attached to a matrix and when they do not become free, they can not enter the environment as nanoparticles. All these aspects need to be taken into account when studying environmental impacts of nano-particles.

We would gladly open the floor to discuss the use of LCA for nano-particle applications. Which other issues do you have where an LCA study could be of help to clarify the pros and cons, and alternatives?

Along with the promise of technological benefits come questions about safety, desirability and unintended consequences. The European Union has addressed some of these questions during 2011.

• The European Food Standards Agency (EFSA) has published guidelines that acknowledge that there may be specific risks posed by nanomaterials and set out a ‘case-by-case’ approach to risk assessment. You can read the EFSA guidance here.
• The European Parliament and Commission have agreed rules that require the labelling of any engineered nanomaterials in food. Here is the final version of the new regulation.

However, some significant questions remain, such as:

• How will the labelling rules be implemented? Will this give consumers the information they need to make informed decisions?
• Should governments and regulatory agencies require the food industry to be more open about research they are doing on nanotechnologies? This might help regulators stay ‘ahead of the game’ rather than having to catch up with developments. One idea is that there should be a mandatory register of nanomaterials being developed.
• What role should wider public debate play in informing technology choices made by business and publicly funded research?

We very much hope that this debate about the potential applications of nanotechnologies for food will raise questions about the appropriate regulation and support for this technology. In particular, we hope that this debate will generate research questions to help clarify what steps are needed in order to ensure food technologies are developed and applied in the public interest.

Created by Howard Dickins

There is a wide array of potential applications of nanotechnology in the food industry. These applications range from using nano-sized particles to reduce fat content without losing taste, to nano-sensors for continuously monitoring food to detect presence of dangerous bacteria or other contamination. You can find more examples in the UK Food Standard Agency’s Bite magazine.

Head of Public Engagement