We’ve deployed nanoparticles (that is, particles measured in billionths of a meter) in the war on cancer for awhile now. For example, Abraxane packages the breast-cancer drug Taxol with albumin, a tiny blood protein that improves drug delivery and reduces side-effects.

Now, scientists have begun testing a new generation of nanoparticles that attack malignancies in a different way. By focusing energy from external sources, the new nanoparticles destroy cancers physically rather than chemically.

Jennifer West at Rice University for example, has developed gold- and silicon-based nanoparticles that absorb infra-red light and then heat up. If we can deliver these nuggets exclusively to the site of a cancer and turn on the juice, the tumor cooks while normal tissue remains unharmed.

It turns out this is quite possible because the pores of tumor capillaries are many nanometers larger than normal. It’s just a matter of creating nanoparticles exactly the right size to exploit the difference.

West’s nanoparticles have proven effective and safe in mice and dogs. Her team has begun testing them in humans with head and neck cancer.

Other teams are deploying nanoparticles of their own. The privately held German company MagForce Nanotechnologies for example, injects iron-containing particles directly into tumors and heats them with magnetic fields.

And the Taxol/albumin vehicle is only the first of what will likely be many cancer-fighting, drug-based nanoparticles. CytImmune Sciences of Rockville, Maryland has initiated a study of another gold nanoparticle that delivers tumor necrosis factor, while Calando Pharmaceuticals of Pasadena, California has enclosed camptothecin in a protective nanoparticle made of sugar.

The particular nanoparticles mentioned here may or may not prove effective, but those leaky tumor capillaries provide an opening big enough to drive a truck through.

Just months ago, gas cost more than Chanel No. 5 and the presidential candidates loved every green technology they could name. But the Great Economic Crisis of 2008 took the steam out of clean.

T. Boone Pickens, who bet $58 million on wind power said last week that plummeting oil prices and challenging credit markets will “put off” the boom. The NEX, an index of clean-tech stocks, is down twice as much as the Dow since January, and several American utilities have slashed near-term investments in clean energy.

Florida Power and Light for example, reduced by 400 megawatts its investment in wind power for next year, while North Carolina’s Duke Energy slashed $50 million from next year’s solar power budget.

But long term prospects remain excellent for green tech. The world still needs energy, argues Steve Sawyer, head of the Global Wind Energy Council in last week’s Economist. And investing in fossil fuel-derived sources carries risks of its own, as recent oil price gyrations have demonstrated.

Meanwhile, the Big O argues persuasively that green tech addresses global warming while creating jobs that can’t be shipped overseas (someone has to unwind the rubber bands attached to the wind farm propellers, right?). Even Congress gave green tech the green light by adding renewable energy subsidies to last month’s bailout.

Green companies with solid business plans, especially those likely to generate revenue in the short term, are raising capital even now. EDF Nouvelles, a European renewable-energy firm, just raised $734 million in a secondary share issue. GridPoint, a US start-up focusing on improving electrical grid efficiency, just raised $120 million. And wind turbine and solar panel manufacturers still have long waiting-lists

Which is good because long term, global warming is a bigger problem than global economic cooling.

In the US, utilization of CT and MRI scanning increased 43% between 2002 and 2007 to 96 million procedures. PET scanning tripled over the same period.

Americans did not get sicker during this time, nor had the medical community been inundated with evidence suggesting the tests were underutilized beforehand. In fact before the most recent imaging fiesta began, experts had estimated that 30% of all scans were unnecessary.

The drivers of inappropriate scanning haven’t changed in 30 years. Patients want the reassurance. Physicians want protection from litigation and sometimes, physicians benefit financially from the tests they order.

This state of affairs is unacceptable for two reasons. First, the scans can cause harm, either by direct radiation exposure in the case of CT, or by obligating risky invasive interventions to track down false positive results. Second, imaging tests are expensive. It costs $228 dollars for a CT scan, $977 for an MRI and $2,000 for a PET.

Health care providers see themselves as guardians of the quality of care, but for the most part their efforts to do so are patchwork and ineffective. There are some guidelines, an occasional implementation strategy, a performance measurement system or two, and a rare link between pay and performance, but the whole thing doesn’t add up as the above statistics suggest.

Yet they howl like coyotes when payers hire radiology benefits managers, known lovingly in the industry as Radiology Police, to oversee the matter. No less than three such organizations, CareCore National, American Imaging Management and National Imaging Associates turn a profit doing just that.

Those profits are a measure of waste in the US health care system.

The situation begs for providers to take ownership of the situation, and now for the first time they have the tools to do so. Plenty of good guidelines are available and EMR systems that support real time, guidelines-based quality checks give providers an unprecedented opportunity. We can do this, guys!