Nanotechnology. Nanobots, NanoRobots. Dangers of
Nanotechnology. Is Nanotechnology dangerous?
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Nanotechnology
Dangers
Dangerous issue with Nanotechnology.
Nanotechnology may cause problems and Humans may suffer because of
nanotechnology it has been claimed.
NanoTechology
(Nanorobotics - Wikipedia) is Technology build on a atomic or sub-atomic scale, that is
built form atoms. Many be known as Nanites, Nanoagents, and Nanorobots They have dimensions of a few nanometers (nm) or less. Where 1 nm = 1^10−9 m (engineering notation) or 1 E-9 m (exponential notation). Meaning 1/1,000,000,000 metres.
Nanotechnology, sometimes shortened to nanotech, refers to a field of applied science whose theme is the control of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Generally nanotechnology deals with structures 100 nanometers or smaller, and involves developing materials or devices within that size.
Nanotechnology is an extremely diverse and multidisciplinary field, ranging from novel extensions of conventional device physics, to completely new approaches based upon molecular self-assembly, to developing new materials with dimensions on the nanoscale, or the scale of nothing, even to speculation on whether we can directly control matter on the atomic scale.
There has been much debate on the future implications of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology has the potential to create many new materials and devices with wide-ranging applications, such as in medicine, electronics, and energy production.
On the other hand, nanotechnology raises many of the same issues as with any introduction of new technology, including concerns about the toxicity and environmental impact of nanomaterials, and their potential effects on global economics, as well as speculation about various doomsday scenarios, (Jump to Nanotechnology Dangers) . These concerns have lead to a debate among advocacy groups and governments on whether special regulation of nanotechnology is warranted.
The International Council on Nanotechnology (ICON) is the only global organization aimed at providing
such interactions for a broad set of members. Managed by Rice University's Center for Biological and Environmental Nanotechnology,
Meet the nano-spiders: The DNA robots that could one day be walking through your body. Scientists have created microscopic robots
out of DNA molecules that can walk, turn and even create tiny products of their own on a nano-scale assembly line. The ground-breaking devices outlined in the journal Nature, could one day lead to armies of surgeon robots that could clean human arteries or build computer components. In one of the projects a team from
New York's Columbia University created a spider bot just four nanometres across. This is about 100,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair...
DNA-based robots that can walk along a specific path unaided or collect various nanoparticles
along an assembly line, according to two studies published this week in Nature.
The Sykes Research Group at Tufts University uses scanning tunneling microscopy to study molecular rotation to determine if individual molecules can be used as nanomachines. Made from a single molecule.
PhysOrg report IBM Research in Zurich has demonstrated a new nanoscale patterning technique that could replace
electron beam lithography (EBL).
The demonstration carved a 1:5 billion scale three-dimensional model of the Matterhorn, a 4,478 meter high mountain lying on the border between Italy and Switzerland, to show how their technique could be used for a number of applications, such as creating nanoscale lenses on silicon chips for carrying optical circuits at a scale so small that electronic circuits are inefficient.
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:00:01 EST - Within a few years, people in remote villages in the developing world may be able to make their own solar panels, at low cost, using otherwise worthless agricultural waste as their raw material.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:03 EST - In a paper published this week in Science, a Manchester team lead by Nobel laureates Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov has literally opened a third dimension in graphene research. Their research shows a transistor that may prove the missing link for graphene to become the next silicon.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:10:52 EST - In order to find a method for more cost-effective data storage, a group of researchers from the DFG-Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have created a DNA-based “write-once-read-many-times” (WORM) memory device.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:00:04 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Because of its physical limitations, silicon use in tiny integrated logic circuits will have to one day soon be replaced by something that can work in a smaller state. That is, if we want to see miniaturization of computer components to continue. For several years, graphene has been seen as the most likely heir to the throne because it’s only one atom thick, which seems to be the physical limit for non-quamtum based computers. The problem with graphene though, is that it’s not a semiconductor in its natural state; it has to be put through special processes to make it so. Molybdenite (MoS2), on the other hand is a true semiconductor and it, like graphene can be produced in atom thick sizes, perhaps making it the ideal material to replace silicon once it reaches its size limits. Andras Kis and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, seem to believe so, their research into a way to create an actual integrated logic circuit from this material has been published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:53:34 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- A relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods - rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals - to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic structures has been developed by a team of researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This technique should enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices and sensors. It should also help boost the electrical and mechanical properties of nanorod-polymer composites.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:30:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- In optical devices designed and used to collect light, there has always been a loss of light due to reflection, now, new research by a team of physicists from Spain and England has found, via calculation, that if charged graphene disks of just the right size were made and placed the right distance from one another, they should be able to achieve 100% light absorption. On the team were Sukosin Thongrattanasiri and Javier García de Abajo from Spain and Frank Koppens from the UK. Together they have published a paper in Physical Review Letters describing their research.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:21:12 EST - Rice University scientists have created a nano-infused oil that could greatly enhance the ability of devices as large as electrical transformers and as small as microelectronic components to shed excess heat.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:02 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers have built the first carbon nanotube (CNT) transistor with a channel length below 10 nm, a size that is considered a requirement for computing technology in the next decade. Not only can the tiny transistor sufficiently control current, it does so significantly better than predicted by theory. It even outperforms the best competing silicon transistors at this scale, demonstrating a superior current density at a very low operating voltage.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:04:57 EST - Photodetectors made from graphene can process and conduct light signals as well as electric signals extremely fast. Within picoseconds the optical stimulation of graphene generates a photocurrent. Until now, none of the available methods were fast enough to measure these processes in graphene. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany, now developed a method to measure the temporal dynamics of this photo current. Furthermore they discovered that graphene can emit terahertz radiation.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:54:51 EST - Atomic-level defects in graphene could be a path forward to smaller and faster electronic devices, according to a study led by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:24:24 EST - A painstaking study by Rice University has brought a wealth of new information about single-walled carbon nanotubes through analysis of their fluorescence.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:28:09 EST - Nanomedicine faces two main challenges: controlling the synthesis of extremely small vectors containing one or several active ingredients and releasing these agents in the right place at the right time, in controlled forms and doses. Researchers from the Organic Polymer Chemistry Laboratory (Institut Polytechnique de Bordeaux, France) have recently encapsulated nanovesicles within slightly larger vesicles. This “Russian doll” structure mimics the organization of cell compartments. Reproducing it is a first major step towards triggering controlled reactions within the structure of the cell. This work is already opening up new possibilities in terms of multiple encapsulation, compartmentalized reactors and the administration of vectors via new delivery routes (e.g. oral absorption). These results are published on 27 January 2012, in Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:05:59 EST - Dr Tim Wilkinson is combining liquid crystals with nanotechnology to try and create 3D displays which would look like real life.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:30:01 EST - To the lengthy list of serendipitous discoveries – gravity, penicillin, the New World – add this: Scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they've also discovered how to correct the problem.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:10:04 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Rice University are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and non-invasive medical imaging systems as well as fundamental studies of low-dimensional condensed matter systems.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:00:01 EST - Sometimes bigger isn't better. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory have successfully shown that they can replace useful little particles of monosodium titanate (MST) with even tinier nano-sized particles, making them even more useful for a variety of applications.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:14:55 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, has experimentally confirmed a theory by Rice University Professor Boris Yakobson that foretold a pair of interesting properties about nanotube growth: That the chirality of a nanotube controls the speed of its growth, and that armchair nanotubes should grow the fastest.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:20:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- When gold vanishes from a very important location, it usually means trouble. At the nanoscale, however, it could provide more knowledge about certain types of materials. A recent discovery that enables scientists to replace gold nanoparticles with dummy "spacers" has allowed scientists to create materials with never-before-seen structures, which may lead to new properties.
Sat, 28 Jan 2012 06:27:41 EST - A new physical form of proteins developed by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could drastically improve treatments for cancer and other diseases, as well as overcome some of the largest challenges in therapeutics: delivering drugs to patients safely, easily and more effectively.
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:06 EST - Graphene is one of the wonders of the science world, with the potential to create foldaway mobile phones, wallpaper-thin lighting panels and the next generation of aircraft. The new finding at the University of Manchester gives graphene's potential a most surprising dimension – graphene can also be used for distilling alcohol.
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 10:13:27 EST - A new system for delivering a drug to organ transplant patients, which could avoid the risk of harmful side effects, is being developed by scientists at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 11:26:37 EST - Despite extensive investment in nanotechnology and increasing commercialization over the last decade, insufficient understanding remains about the environmental, health, and safety aspects of nanomaterials. Without a coordinated research plan to help guide efforts to manage and avoid potential risks, the future of safe and sustainable nanotechnology is uncertain, says a new report from the National Research Council. The report presents a strategic approach for developing research and a scientific infrastructure needed to address potential health and environmental risks of nanomaterials. Its effective implementation would require sufficient management and budgetary authority to direct research across federal agencies.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:58:06 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- When Gang Ren whirls the controls of his cryo-electron microscope, he compares it to fine-tuning the gearshift and brakes of a racing bicycle. But this machine at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a bit more complex. It costs nearly $1.5 million, operates at the frigid temperature of liquid nitrogen, and it is allowing scientists to see what no one has seen before.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:23:36 EST - A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a property of "bilayer graphene" (BLG) that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:20:38 EST - The Bren School-based authors of a study published Jan. 20 in the journal PLoS ONE have observed toxicity to marine organisms resulting from exposure to a nanoparticle that had not previously been shown to be toxic under similar conditions.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:35 EST - The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), along with other funding agencies, helped a Rice University research team make graphene suitable for a variety of organic chemistry applications—especially the promise of advanced chemical sensors, nanoscale electronic circuits and metamaterials.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:09 EST - Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for creating elastic conductors made of carbon nanotubes, which will contribute to large-scale production of the material for use in a new generation of elastic electronic devices.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:50:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most promising methods for increasing the efficiency of solar cells consists of coating the cells’ surfaces with a thin layer of metal nanoparticles. The nanoparticles scatter incoming light in different directions, which allows the solar cells to absorb more light than they otherwise would. The scattering occurs when the incoming light stimulates the nanoparticles’ surface plasmons (SPs), which are coherent electron oscillations in the metal atoms that can reach a resonance mode when the electrons’ frequency matches the photons’ frequency. Under these conditions, the resulting “surface plasmon resonance” induces light scattering and enhances the light absorption of the surface.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:10:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The integration of electronics with materials opens up a world of possibilities, the surface of which is just being scratched. Professor Arokia Nathan has joined the University to take up a new Chair in Engineering, where he will be exploring the application of research that allows us to glimpse a world rivalling our wildest dreams of the future.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:20:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- While most people know of DNA as the building blocks of life, these large molecules also have potential applications in areas such as biosensing, nanoparticle assembly, and building supramolecular structures. And now scientists have added another use to the list: invisible ink.
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 07:00:01 EST - Within a few years, people in remote villages in the developing world may be able to make their own solar panels, at low cost, using otherwise worthless agricultural waste as their raw material.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:00:03 EST - In a paper published this week in Science, a Manchester team lead by Nobel laureates Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov has literally opened a third dimension in graphene research. Their research shows a transistor that may prove the missing link for graphene to become the next silicon.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:00:04 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Because of its physical limitations, silicon use in tiny integrated logic circuits will have to one day soon be replaced by something that can work in a smaller state. That is, if we want to see miniaturization of computer components to continue. For several years, graphene has been seen as the most likely heir to the throne because it’s only one atom thick, which seems to be the physical limit for non-quamtum based computers. The problem with graphene though, is that it’s not a semiconductor in its natural state; it has to be put through special processes to make it so. Molybdenite (MoS2), on the other hand is a true semiconductor and it, like graphene can be produced in atom thick sizes, perhaps making it the ideal material to replace silicon once it reaches its size limits. Andras Kis and his colleagues at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, seem to believe so, their research into a way to create an actual integrated logic circuit from this material has been published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:53:34 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- A relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods - rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals - to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic structures has been developed by a team of researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). This technique should enable more effective use of nanorods in solar cells, magnetic storage devices and sensors. It should also help boost the electrical and mechanical properties of nanorod-polymer composites.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 13:21:12 EST - Rice University scientists have created a nano-infused oil that could greatly enhance the ability of devices as large as electrical transformers and as small as microelectronic components to shed excess heat.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:54:51 EST - Atomic-level defects in graphene could be a path forward to smaller and faster electronic devices, according to a study led by researchers at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:24:24 EST - A painstaking study by Rice University has brought a wealth of new information about single-walled carbon nanotubes through analysis of their fluorescence.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:05:59 EST - Dr Tim Wilkinson is combining liquid crystals with nanotechnology to try and create 3D displays which would look like real life.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:30:01 EST - To the lengthy list of serendipitous discoveries – gravity, penicillin, the New World – add this: Scientists with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered why a promising technique for making quantum dots and nanorods has so far been a disappointment. Better still, they've also discovered how to correct the problem.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:00:01 EST - Sometimes bigger isn't better. Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory have successfully shown that they can replace useful little particles of monosodium titanate (MST) with even tinier nano-sized particles, making them even more useful for a variety of applications.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:14:55 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The Air Force Research Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio, has experimentally confirmed a theory by Rice University Professor Boris Yakobson that foretold a pair of interesting properties about nanotube growth: That the chirality of a nanotube controls the speed of its growth, and that armchair nanotubes should grow the fastest.
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:00:06 EST - Graphene is one of the wonders of the science world, with the potential to create foldaway mobile phones, wallpaper-thin lighting panels and the next generation of aircraft. The new finding at the University of Manchester gives graphene's potential a most surprising dimension – graphene can also be used for distilling alcohol.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 15:23:36 EST - A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a property of "bilayer graphene" (BLG) that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:35 EST - The Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), along with other funding agencies, helped a Rice University research team make graphene suitable for a variety of organic chemistry applications—especially the promise of advanced chemical sensors, nanoscale electronic circuits and metamaterials.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 11:00:09 EST - Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new method for creating elastic conductors made of carbon nanotubes, which will contribute to large-scale production of the material for use in a new generation of elastic electronic devices.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 13:27:39 EST - Graphene is the thinnest material known to science. The nanomaterial is so thin, in fact, water often doesn't even know it's there.
Thu, 19 Jan 2012 09:00:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- When single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are made, they come out in both metallic and semiconducting material form. Unfortunately, different applications require one or the other of these materials, but not both, which means they need to be separated. Even more unfortunately, efforts to do so have proven to be very expensive. Now, though, due to the efforts of a British team of physicists, as they describe in their paper in ACS Nano, a new method has been devised that allows SWCNTs to be separated cheaply enough to allow for bulk manufacturing.
Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:29:24 EST - Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the company Dioxide Materials have demonstrated that randomly stacked graphene flakes can make an effective chemical sensor.
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 09:40:01 EST - University of Illinois materials scientists have developed a new reactive silver ink for printing high-performance electronics on ubiquitous, low-cost materials such as flexible plastic, paper or fabric substrates.
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:40:02 EST - Material scientists at ETH-Zürich are working on composite materials that mimic the structure of seashells. Such complex structures are produced using tiny magnetic particles which guide the composites' stiffer elements into place. This technique enables new technologies from durable coatings to stronger and lighter materials.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:26:52 EST - Physicists at Linköping University have shown that a dose of hydrogen or helium can render the "super material" graphene even more useful.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 05:32:16 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- In the super-small world of nanostructures, a team of polymer scientists and engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered how to make nano-scale repairs to a damaged surface equivalent to spot-filling a scratched car fender rather than re-surfacing the entire part. The work builds on a theoretical prediction by chemical engineer and co-author Anna Balazs at the University of Pittsburgh.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:58:35 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- UT Dallas researchers are making strides in understanding the workings of quantum dots – nanosized particles that have immense potential in several industry applications.
Wed, 11 Jan 2012 08:42:02 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Many physical and chemical processes necessary for biology and chemistry occur at the interface of water and solid surfaces. Researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory publishing in Nature Nanotechnology have now shown that semiconducting carbon nanotubes—light emitting cylinders of pure carbon—have the potential to detect and track single molecules in water.
Tue, 10 Jan 2012 12:40:01 EST - Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed a new method for creating advanced nanomaterials that could lead to highly efficient refrigerators and cooling systems requiring no refrigerants and no moving parts. The key ingredients for this innovation are a dash of nanoscale sulfur and a normal, everyday microwave oven.
Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:27:12 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Imagine if instead of relying on special x-ray or electrical current testing technology to find really tiny cracks in the skin that covers an airplane, microcapsules filled with easily detected materials could be rolled around on their surface, stopping here and there to fill such cracks automatically so that they could then be easily found using a simple black light. That day may be coming soon, thanks to a joint effort between two teams. One, from the University of Pittsburgh, led by Anna Balazs, the other from the University of Massachusetts, led by Todd Emrick. Together they have created just such a type of capsule, as will be described in their paper to be published in Nature Nanotechnology.
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:08:29 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Rice University researchers have figured out what gives armchair nanotubes their unique bright colors: hydrogen-like objects called excitons.
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:16:54 EST - A University of California, Riverside engineering professor and a team of researchers have made a breakthrough discovery with graphene, a material that could play a major role in keeping laptops and other electronic devices from overheating.
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:53:21 EST - Research from Rice University and the University of California at Berkeley may give science and industry a new way to manipulate graphene, the wonder material expected to play a role in advanced electronic, mechanical and thermal applications.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 17:10:52 EST - In order to find a method for more cost-effective data storage, a group of researchers from the DFG-Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have created a DNA-based “write-once-read-many-times” (WORM) memory device.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 14:30:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- In optical devices designed and used to collect light, there has always been a loss of light due to reflection, now, new research by a team of physicists from Spain and England has found, via calculation, that if charged graphene disks of just the right size were made and placed the right distance from one another, they should be able to achieve 100% light absorption. On the team were Sukosin Thongrattanasiri and Javier García de Abajo from Spain and Frank Koppens from the UK. Together they have published a paper in Physical Review Letters describing their research.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:30:02 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Engineers have built the first carbon nanotube (CNT) transistor with a channel length below 10 nm, a size that is considered a requirement for computing technology in the next decade. Not only can the tiny transistor sufficiently control current, it does so significantly better than predicted by theory. It even outperforms the best competing silicon transistors at this scale, demonstrating a superior current density at a very low operating voltage.
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 14:04:57 EST - Photodetectors made from graphene can process and conduct light signals as well as electric signals extremely fast. Within picoseconds the optical stimulation of graphene generates a photocurrent. Until now, none of the available methods were fast enough to measure these processes in graphene. Scientists at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, Germany, now developed a method to measure the temporal dynamics of this photo current. Furthermore they discovered that graphene can emit terahertz radiation.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:10:04 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at Rice University are using carbon nanotubes as the critical component of a robust terahertz polarizer that could accelerate the development of new security and communication devices, sensors and non-invasive medical imaging systems as well as fundamental studies of low-dimensional condensed matter systems.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:20:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- When gold vanishes from a very important location, it usually means trouble. At the nanoscale, however, it could provide more knowledge about certain types of materials. A recent discovery that enables scientists to replace gold nanoparticles with dummy "spacers" has allowed scientists to create materials with never-before-seen structures, which may lead to new properties.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:58:06 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- When Gang Ren whirls the controls of his cryo-electron microscope, he compares it to fine-tuning the gearshift and brakes of a racing bicycle. But this machine at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is a bit more complex. It costs nearly $1.5 million, operates at the frigid temperature of liquid nitrogen, and it is allowing scientists to see what no one has seen before.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:50:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the most promising methods for increasing the efficiency of solar cells consists of coating the cells’ surfaces with a thin layer of metal nanoparticles. The nanoparticles scatter incoming light in different directions, which allows the solar cells to absorb more light than they otherwise would. The scattering occurs when the incoming light stimulates the nanoparticles’ surface plasmons (SPs), which are coherent electron oscillations in the metal atoms that can reach a resonance mode when the electrons’ frequency matches the photons’ frequency. Under these conditions, the resulting “surface plasmon resonance” induces light scattering and enhances the light absorption of the surface.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 06:10:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The integration of electronics with materials opens up a world of possibilities, the surface of which is just being scratched. Professor Arokia Nathan has joined the University to take up a new Chair in Engineering, where he will be exploring the application of research that allows us to glimpse a world rivalling our wildest dreams of the future.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:37:28 EST - For the 26 million Americans with diabetes, drawing blood is the most prevalent way to check glucose levels. It is invasive and at least minimally painful. Researchers at Brown University are working on a new sensor that can check blood sugar levels by measuring glucose concentrations in saliva instead.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 18:00:41 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- By tweaking the smallest of parts, a trio of University at Buffalo engineers is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity.
Fri, 20 Jan 2012 08:30:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The best performing solar cells are those that are thick enough to absorb light from the entire solar spectrum, while the cheapest solar cells are thin ones, since they require less, and potentially cheaper, material. In an attempt to combine the best of both worlds, a team of scientists has outlined designs for solar cells that can absorb light from the entire solar spectrum yet are as little as 10 nanometers thick. The new design approach, which could lead to improved low-cost solar cells, requires overcoming a thermodynamic light-trapping limit proposed in the 1980s.
Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:51:02 EST - The map, produced on a tiny sliver of polymer, measures just 22 by 11 micrometers. To put that into perspective, 1000 copies of the map could fit within a single grain of salt.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 13:57:03 EST - A Rice University laboratory has found a way to turn common carbon fiber into graphene quantum dots, tiny specks of matter with properties expected to prove useful in electronic, optical and biomedical applications.
Thu, 12 Jan 2012 11:56:30 EST - Polymer nano-films and nano-composites are used in a wide variety of applications from food packaging to sports equipment to automotive and aerospace applications. Thermal analysis is routinely used to analyze materials for these applications, but the growing trend to use nanostructured materials has made bulk techniques insufficient.
Wed, 11 Jan 2012 06:50:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Similar to the way pavement, softened by a hot sun, will slow down a car, graphene—a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon with wondrous properties—slows down an object sliding across its surface. But stack the sheets and graphene gets more slippery, say theorists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, who developed new software to quantify the material's friction.
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 16:05:17 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The prospect of electronics at the nanoscale may be even more promising with the first observation of metallic conductance in ferroelectric nanodomains by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:40:04 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- The development of polymer nanostructures and nanoscale devices for a wide variety of applications could emerge from new information about the interplay between nanoscale interfaces in polymeric materials, thanks to research carried out at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory.
Sun, 08 Jan 2012 13:00:09 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Can organic matter behave like a fridge magnet? Scientists from The University of Manchester have now shown that it can.
Fri, 06 Jan 2012 09:53:10 EST - Semiconductor gallium nitride nanowires show great promise in the next generation of nano- and optoelectronic systems. Recently, researchers at the McCormick School of Engineering have found new piezoelectric properties of the nanowires that could make them more useful in self-powered nanodevices.
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:00:11 EST - The narrowest conducting wires in silicon ever made – just four atoms wide and one atom tall – have been shown to have the same electrical current carrying capability of copper, according to a new study published today in the journal Science.
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:14:28 EST - Researchers have demonstrated a write-once-read-many-times information-storage device, made of DNA embedded with silver nanoparticles, that uses ultraviolet light to encode data.
Thu, 05 Jan 2012 05:10:01 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- If graphene is to live up to its promise as a revolutionary component of future electronics, the interactions between graphene and the surrounding materials in a device must be understood and controlled.
Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:00:01 EST - Researchers at Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden) have for the first time demonstrated a novel subharmonic graphene FET mixer at microwave frequencies. The mixer provides new opportunities in future electronics, as it enables compact circuit technology, potential to reach high frequencies and integration with silicon technology.
Thu, 29 Dec 2011 10:48:14 EST - Stable two-dimensional networks of organic molecules are important components in various nanotechnology processes. However, producing these networks, which are only one atom thick, in high quality and with the greatest possible stability currently still poses a great challenge. Scientists from the Excellence Cluster Nanosystems Initiative Munich have now successfully created just such networks made of boron acid molecules. The current issue of the scientific journal ACS Nano reports on their results.
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:32:03 EST - Creating semiconductor structures for high-end optoelectronic devices just got easier, thanks to University of Illinois researchers.
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:00:07 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers have shown how arrays of tiny "plasmonic nanoantennas" are able to precisely manipulate light in new ways that could make possible a range of optical innovations such as more powerful microscopes, telecommunications and computers.
Thu, 22 Dec 2011 07:31:59 EST - The Japan Synchrotron Radiation Research Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology, the National Institute for Materials Science, and Kyoto University confirmed for the first time in the world that it is possible to achieve ultra-high speed switching in a time of 200 nanoseconds with a new piezoelectric thin film which possesses micro regions called “nanodomains.” The new material is expected to enable higher speeds in operation changes (switching).
Wed, 21 Dec 2011 11:00:01 EST - Scientists have uncovered how nature minimises energy costs in rings of liquids with an internal nanostructure made of two chemically discordant polymers joined with strong bonds, or di-blocks, deposited on a silicon surface, in an article about to be published in European Physical Journal E.
Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:05:14 EST - (PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a prototype device capable of absolute measurements of optical power delivered through an optical fiber.
The Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory provides state-of-the-art capabilities for the fabrication
and study of nanoscale materials, with an emphasis on atomic-level
tailoring to achieve desired properties and functions. The CFN is a
science-based user facility, simultaneously developing strong scientific
programs while offering broad access to its capabilities and
collaboration through an active user program. The overarching scientific
theme of the CFN is the development and understanding of nanoscale
materials that address the Nations challenges in energy security,
consistent with the Department of Energy mission.
Encouraging the young women to follow a scientific career
Attracting young generations to "Nano"
Networking women scientists working in Nano-Science at national, regional and European level.
Increasing the visibility of female scientists in the international "Nano"-scientific community.
Mobilizing women scientists in Nano-Science to participate at EU programmes
Mobilizing stakeholders in favour of gender equality in scientific research
Stimulating and facilitating a science-society dialogue
"...acting as ambassadors for women in nano-science"
The Specific Support Action (SSA) Strengthening the Role of Women Scientists in Nano-Science = WomenInNano is funded by the 6th Framework programme of the European
Commission in Science and Society/ "Women and Science"
It brings
together 11 partners from 9 European countries - Germany, Romania,
Sweden, Spain, Slovenia, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Italy and France
under the coordination of the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research IFW Dresden, Germany. The basic idea of the project is to allow high-level women
scientists working in Nano-science to act as Ambassadors for Women and
Science in order to raise awareness of gender issues in science (more
specific, in Nano-Science) and to provide role models for girls and
women, with a view to encouraging them to consider studies and pursue
careers in scientific fields. The project will empower and enlarge the
women scientists group working in Nano-Science and increase its
visibility in the international scientific community.
CSIRO Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation is Australia's national science agency and one of the largest and most diverse research agencies in the world.
Berkeley, CA For millions of years, green plants have employed photosynthesis to capture energy from sunlight and convert it into electrochemical energy. A goal of scientists has been to develop an artificial version of photosynthesis that can be used to produce liquid fuels from carbon dioxide and water. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have now taken a critical step towards this goal with the discovery that nano-sized crystals of cobalt oxide can effectively carry out the critical photosynthetic reaction of splitting water molecules.
Cobalt oxide nanocrystals can effectively be used to
split water molecules, one of the half reactions critical to an artifical photosynthesis system for producing liquid fuels from sunlight.
An aqueous solution contains silica particles that have been embedded with photooxidizing cobalt oxide nanocrystals plus a sensitizer to allow the water-splitting reaction to be driven by visible light. When laser light hits the solution it turns blue as the sensitizer absorbs light. Bubbles soon begin to form as oxygen gas is released from the spilt water molecules
More information.
Micro and nanotechnologies are revolutionising medicine
'Almost invisible' tools are being developed by European researchers to discover diseases earlier and to treat patients better.
The miniaturisation of instruments to micro and nano dimensions promises to make our future lives safer and cleaner.
A team of European researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Biomedical Technologies Institute near Saarbruecken is using nanotechnology to improve diagnostic capabilities.
A breakthrough in nanotechnology by researchers at Boston College and MIT could lead to increased economic interest in solar panels. Researchers have improved the efficiency of solar-thermal flat panels by seven to eight times using nanonstructured thermoelectric materials to create a better light absorbing surface. The material was then placed within an energy-trapping, vacuum-sealed flat panel.
The combination of these two changes resulted in the improved overall efficiency of electricity production, and opens the door to expanding the technology's economic potential. Another exciting advance is the development of a flat panel hybrid that is capable of generating hot water and electricity in the same system. The ability of this new technology to generate electricity by improving existing technology at a minimal expense makes it an appealing option from a cost standpoint.
Experts are of the opinion and belief that Nanotechnology (also known as nanotech) is going to be principal sunrise industry of the 21st Century. Although Nanotechnology is a recent development in the field of scientific research, innumerable primary and ancillary business modules have been developed around the wide ranging applications of Nanotechnology.
Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology presented a report recently, in which it estimates the Nanotechnology based products industry to register an impressive growth rate of 19% between 2011 & 2013. The report further forecasts the Nanotechnology industry to reach revenues of $2.4 trillion by 2015.
This Industry has been able to sustain such phenomenal growth as a result of the huge investments in research and development by government agencies and leading corporate across the globe. This is a clear indication and testimony of the immense growth potential of the Nanotechnology industry
A company specializing in energy conserving solutions is making nanotechnology news by declaring its intentions to start a number of pilot projects in association with universities and hospitals across the US to make steam processing equipment more efficient using the company's Nansulate thermal insulation and corrosion prevention coatings.
The company, called Industrial Nanotech, is working to introduce universities and hospitals to their energy-saving coatings, which can bring significant energy-saving benefits to these organizations. The company had earlier assisted Erenko Textile company in reducing its energy consumption y 20%, which ended up saving them a total of 10% in production costs. It also allowed another sports apparel producing company to cut down its level of liquid natural gas consumption to 20%. The total savings for this company amounted to around $852,000 in 2007 and 2008.
Small Times, a division of
PennWell, is the leading source of business information and analysis about micro and
nanotechnology. Small Times offers full news coverage through its business trade magazine, daily news Web site and weekly e-mail newsletter. Small Times also offers custom research
services
Foresight Nanotech Institute (NanoDot), Advancing Beneficial Nanotechnology with a mission is to ensure the beneficial implementation of nanotechnology :-
Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:16:40 +0000 - Scientists at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have combined DNA origami and DNA motors to take another step toward programmed artificial molecular assembly lines.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 04:03:15 +0000 - Two competing companies have introduced 3D printers for the personal manufacture of complex digitally-designed plastic consumer items. Will this start a trend toward personal digital manufacture of increasingly complex items?
Sun, 29 Jan 2012 04:35:32 +0000 - A National Academy of Sciences panel has recommended a four-part research effort focused on preventing and managing any potential health and environmental risks of nanomaterials.
Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:17:37 +0000 - Foldit game players have again out-performed scientists in protein design, this time improving the design of a protein designed from scratch to catalyze Diels-Alder cycloadditions.
Mon, 23 Jan 2012 17:35:49 +0000 - Human life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 20:01:39 +0000 - An array of 96 iron atoms on a copper nitride surface, assembled using an STM and used to write a byte, demonstrates how small magnetic storage could shrink and may lead to novel nanomaterials for quantum computers.
Fri, 13 Jan 2012 03:12:53 +0000 - An article in The Guardian quotes Christine Peterson and Robert Freitas on the vision of molecular manufacturing. Freitas is quoted as expecting that the development of nanofactories could be done in 20 years for "on the order of" one billion dollars.
Fri, 06 Jan 2012 22:31:33 +0000 - The first Master's of Science in Nanomedicine degree program in US is announced. As an example of the rapidly developing potential of nanomedicine, a novel type of nanoparticle succeeded in two different mouse models in destroying a type of brain cancer that had previously been completely resistant to all treatment attempts.
Fri, 30 Dec 2011 20:51:56 +0000 - A four-step unidirectional molecular motor driven by light and temperature changes catalyzes different chemical reactions at different steps of its rotary cycle.
Thu, 29 Dec 2011 21:27:44 +0000 - A tutorial review available after free registration presents a theory-based exploration of the difficulty in moving from simple molecular switches to arrays of artificial molecular machines capable to doing substantial, useful external work.
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When the size of materials is reduced to the nanoscale dimension, physical and chemical properties can change dramatically. In addition, nanostructures also afford new exciting opportunities of low-cost processing. We are interested in a broad range of nanoscale properties including electronic, photonic, electrochemical, mechanical, catalytic and interfacial properties.
Understanding these properties has important technological implications in energy conversion and storage, electronics, biotechnology and environmental technology. We study fundamentals of nanomaterials including nanowires, colloidal nanocrystals and patterned nanostructures, develop low-cost processings and address critical issues in real-world applications.
A blazing coating lets microscopic carbon nanotubes generate electricity
Engineers at MIT have devised what they call a new way of producing electricity. By coating a microscopic carbon nanotube with
a layer of fuel and igniting one end with a spark or laser, they're able to send a wave of heat shooting through the nanotube's interior.
This
thermal wave pushes electrons in its path, generating a significant electric current. Prototypes already have energy density 100 times
greater than lithium-ion batteries, and they can be stored indefinitely without leaking charge. The researchers are now investigating optimal
fuels and, to make the system reusable, will have to invent a way to automatically apply a fresh layer of fuel after the first burns away.
How It Works:
1. Heat the Tube. One end of a microscopic carbon nanotube, coated with reactive fuel, is ignited by a laser.
2. Herd the Particles. A wave of heat races through the inside of the tube, pushing electrons toward the other end.
3. Harvest the Energy. The movement of the electrons forms an electric current.
Nanotechnology promises to enable tiny, intricate circuits powering devices on any surface. But unless they’re harvesting energy from something like a heartbeat, the devices can only be as small as the smallest battery.
Now researchers at Rice University have combined the two, packing an entire lithium-ion battery into a single nanowire. The developers say it’s as small as such a device can possibly get.
Researchers led by Rice University professor Pulickel Ajayan, (Ajayan Group Nanomaterials Laboratory at Rice University.), built a hybrid energy storage device, which serves as a battery and a supercapacitor. The first version sandwiched an electrolyte between a nickel/tin anode and a cathode made of a polymer called polyaniline. The cathode also served as a supercapacitor, storing lithium ions in bulk, as this writeup by Rice University explains. The prototype proved that lithium ions would move through the electrolyte and into the cathode.
Advanced nanotechnology (More Blog Links). Tracking the advances along different development pathways to molecularly precise manufacturing. Top down and bottom
up approaches. Primary pathways incrementally improving biopolymer-based systems, scanning probe microscopes to do direct mechanosynthesis of diamondoid systems, and a traditional machining approach to build small systems that can perform increasingly precise operations.
Scientists
have created a robot that can replicate itself in minutes. The team behind
the machine says the experiment shows that self- reproduction is not unique to
living organisms The researchers add that the ability could be harnessed to
drive major advances in nanotechnology, the science of the very small, and may
even lead to space colonization by robots. (National
Geographic)
Nanosensor peers inside cell A new virus-sized probe can look deeper into cells than ever before, and finally allows scientists to monitor intracellular activities without disrupting the cells' external membranes, according to a study published today in Science. "This new transistor is so small and sharp that it can penetrate inside the wall of the cell,". "This is going to have a big impact from the technical point of view and the cellular biology point of view."
Power From The Air. Ambient Electromagnetic Energy Harnessed for Small Electronic Devices. Researchers have discovered a way to capture and harness energy transmitted by such sources as radio and television transmitters, cell phone networks and satellite communications systems. By scavenging this ambient energy from the air around us, the technique could provide a new way to power networks of wireless sensors, microprocessors and communications chips. Professor Manos Tentzeris displays an inkjet-printed rectifying antenna used to convert microwave energy to DC power. It was printed on flexible material. "There is a large amount of electromagnetic energy all around us, but nobody has been able to tap into it," said Manos Tentzeris, a professor in the Georgia Institute of Technology, The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is leading the research. "We are using an ultra-wideband antenna that lets us exploit a variety of signals in different frequency ranges, giving us greatly increased power-gathering capability." Not free power see Crystal Set, power without batteries
Higher nanoparticle production rates. Commercial manufacturing of nanoparticles.
Ed has been working with supercritical fluids for the last 8 years with a particular focus on supercritical water reactor design. His background in image analysis techniques helped to solve the blockage problems that occur during continuous hydrothermal synthesis. This process involved the instantaneous mixing of a cold aqueous metal salt with a superheated water stream. The final solution came in the form of a pipe in pipe counter current reactor which is now patented. .
The secret habits of silver nanoparticles while cutting graphene, were recorded live at Technical University of Denmark 2009-2011....
Graphene is a 1 atom thin sheet of carbon atoms, in honeycomb lattice. The electronic, mechanical and chemical properties are outstanding.
Some of the fantastic applications requires that we can cut the sheet extremely precisely, with perfectly crystalline edges.
The methods we know cant do that well enough.
It is long known that nanoparticles can cut narrow tracks in graphite and recently, in graphene (which graphite is made of). Silver nanoparticles in oxygen atmosphere do it down to 300 Celsius (although very slowly) .
The tracks are very narrow, can be very smooth but are hard to control. The BEST thing is: they follow always one of the three "zigzag" crystal directions of graphene.
The hope is to "program" the particles to become the worlds most precise scissors, neatly and perfectly cutting graphene along the crystal directions, with perfect edges.
TryNano.A
resource for anyone interested in learning about Nanoscience and Nanotechnology.
Nanoscience and Nanotechnology are technical fields that focus on matter at the
nanoscale - dimensions that are roughly 1 to 100 nanometers (1nm = 10-9m). Nanotechnology Links
NanoHype:
Nanotechnology Implications and Interactions. This More Blog Links
reports on a host of
issues associated with research and policy of nanotechnology.
16 Aug 2010 14:00:00 -0400 - We recently obtained an honorable mention in the micrograph contest in The 54th International Conference on Electron, Ion and Photon Beam Technology and Nanofabrication.
14 Mar 2010 14:00:00 -0400 - We had a paper come out today in Nature Nanotechnology on Templating Method Permit Complex Control of Self-Assembly. This was a collaboration with Profs. Ross in DMSE at MIT.
03 Jan 2010 11:00:00 -0400 - Joel Yang, a graduate from the quantum nanostructures group, earned an A*STAR investigatorship from the Singaporean Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
04 Sep 2009 17:51:00 -0400 - A research position in nanotemplating is available in collaboration with the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL).
Fri, 15 Aug 2008 10:49:00 -0400 - We had a paper come out today in Science on templating of block-copolymers using nanopatterned pillars. This was a collaboration with Profs. Ross and Thomas, both in DMSE at MIT. This paper addresses a major problem in lithography--how to scale lithographic dimensions down to the smallest length scales.
Fri, 27 Jul 2007 10:00:00 -0400 - We have recently had two new papers appear in print in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity. These papers address two major problems in superconductive nanowire single-photon detectors
Thu, 12 Apr 2007 4:00:00 -0400 - We have recently had several new papers appear in a variety of journals--please go to our publications page to read the latest research coming out of our group
Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:02:54 -0400 - Our recent paper, "Kinetic-inductance-limited reset time of superconducting nanowire photon counters" has appeared in Applied Physics Letters.
Tue, 31 Jan 2006 10:02:54 -0400 - Technology Review has run an article ("Interplanetary Broadband," by Kevin Bullis) on our collaborative work on single-photon-detection with Lincoln Laboratory. The article discusses applications to interplanetary communication and quantum cryptography.
Mon, 23 Jan 2006 14:07:11 -0400 - Our demonstration of an integrated cavity with a nanowire single-photon detector to yield 67% detection efficiency at 1.06 mm optical wavelength is now available. An on-line version the Optics Express paper is in this week's issue. The publication was titled "Nanowire single-photon detector with an integrated optical cavity and antireflection coating"
Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:37:23 -0400 - Hardcopy version of Science paper is in this week's issue. The publication was co-authored by group leader Karl Berggren and titled "Mach-Zehnder Interferometry in a Strongly Driven Superconducting Qubit."
Fri, 2 Dec 2005 19:02:05 -0400 - Our paper "Pumped quantum systems: Immersion fluids of the future?" has appeared in print in the Journal of Vacuum Science and Technology B. This paper outlines a method of achieving high indexes of refraction without net loss of optical power, which could be useful for immersion lithography applications. An ArXiV preprint of the paper is also available.
Mon, 14 Nov 2005 10:36:01 -0400 - A publication co-authored by group leader Karl Berggren titled "Mach-Zehnder Interferometry in a Strongly Driven Superconducting Qubit" has appeared in Science Express, the express publication of Science Magazine. The paper will appear in the print version of Science in a few weeks.
Mon, 31 Oct 2005 15:20:20 -0400 - We are seeking a qualified graduate student interested in nanofabrication research to develop a new method of nanoimprint lithography that is being pursued in the group. The student should be admitted as a graduate student at MIT (not necessarily in the EECS department) and have experience, either in coursework or in research, with nanofabrication.
To arrange an interview, please email Cindy Gibbs with your resume and a cover letter stating your interest in this position.
Wed, 26 Oct 2005 16:00:43 -0400 - We have posted a new preprint to ArXiv.org titled "Kinetic-inductance-limited reset time of superconducting nanowire photon counters." This document will be available starting 10/27.
Mon, 12 Sep 2005 11:02:46 -0400 - Manuscript "Pumped quantum systems: immersion fluids of the future" accepted to J. Vac. Sci. Tech. B (preprint available)
Mon, 12 Sep 2005 11:02:46 -0400 - Eric Dauler and Joshua Leu are new graduate students in the group as of Sept. 1, 2005.
Eric Dauler joins us from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, where he worked as an associate staff member. He has a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT.
Joshua Leu joins us from Stanford University, where he recently completed his bachelors degree jointly in Electrical Engineering and Physics.
Tue, 14 Jun 2005 11:00:51 -0400 - Manuscripts "Fabrication development for nanowire GHz-counting-rate single-photon detectors,""Resonant readout of a persistent current qubit," and "Energy relaxation times in a Nb persistent current qubit," appear in IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity.
Tue, 2 Mar 2004 14:11:55 -0400 - Manuscript "Energy Relaxation Time between Macroscopic Quantum Levels in a Superconducting Persistent Current Qubit" published in Physical Review Letters
Foresight
was instrumental in the production of the Productive Nanosystems Roadmap
and is a sponsor and particpant in the
AGI Roadmap effort, (PDF
Format).
Such roadmaps can be a valuable aid to organizing a research effort in
developing new technologies. In this talk I will give an overview of
research strategies, pointing out some similarities between the two
fields that are not commonly taken into account, and examine the
synergies expected between the two technologies.
Nanotechnology Factory used to build things for use.
How a Nanofactory may manufacture things for the atom up.
These thing will have practicable uses for people e.g. it could manufacture form a pin to an anchor, a pen, a car a computer, possible a living tree, or maybe even an actual person.
Nanooze Nanooze is a place. A place to hear about the latest exciting stuff in science and technology. What kind of stuff? Mostly discoveries about the world that is too
small to see and making tiny things. Making things using something called nanotechnology.
But nanooze is also about other things in all sorts of different areas of science. Nanooze was created for kids, so inside you will find interesting
articles about the most recent discoveries and what it might mean for the future
NanoHand is a European funded project,
where leading researchers and industry collaborate to create the world's first
nanorobotic production system inside of a scanning electron microscope.
Nanorobotics, controlled and even automated manipulation using nanoscale tools,
manipulators and soldering techniques, will allow tiny carbon nanotubes to be
placed as components anywhere in a circuit to replace ordinary components or to
form altogether novel devices that could not be produced using conventional
methods.
Too small to see is a five-thousand square foot interactive exhibition
that zooms into the world of nanotechnology providing a fun, interactive experience for visitors of all ages.
Nanotechnology and Nanocomputers MITRE Nanotechnology and Nanocomputers Home Page. Find out more about Nanotechnology and Nanocomputers.
NASA Nanotechnology at Ames
The Life Sciences Division at NASA Ames Research Center conducts
research and development in nanotechnology to address critical life
science questions.
Division expertise in biology, nanotechnology, and information
processing, combined with research capabilities elsewhere within Ames,
is driving the development of novel biotechnologies that will benefit
both space exploration and life on Earth.
Nanotechnology, the creation of structures, devices, and systems on the
atomic scale, holds the potential to revolutionize many aspects of space
exploration and create novel biotechnologies with broad applications to
life on Earth. At Ames, the study of nanotechnology works towards the
development of ever smaller and more powerful sensors and information
storage devices. These include devices that can detect single molecules
of nucleic acids, such as DNA, and rapidly decode the genetic blueprints
of a diverse range of model organisms from yeast to humans. Other
projects combine biology with materials science to develop
bio-nanotechnology techniques with the potential to open new horizons in
electronics technologies. As well as conducting research supporting
NASA's visions for space exploration, scientists at Ames are continually
working with government, academic, and industrial partners in Silicon
Valley and throughout the country to enhance the research, development,
and application of nanotechnology.
MADE IN IBM LABS: Computer memory that combines the high performance and reliability of flash with the low cost and high capacity of the hard disk drive could be closer than you think, thanks to a team of IBM scientists.
In two papers published recently in the journal Science, IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and colleagues at the IBM Almaden Research Center in San Jose describe both the fundamentals of a technology dubbed "racetrack" as well as a milestone in that technology. This milestone could lead to electronic devices capable of storing far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today, with lightning-fast boot times, far lower cost and unprecedented stability and durability.
Within the next ten years, racetrack memory, so named because the data "races" around the wire "track," could lead to solid state electronic devices -- with no moving parts, and therefore more durable -- capable of holding far more data in the same amount of space than is possible today. For example, this technology could enable a handheld device such as an mp3 player to store around 500,000 songs or around 3,500 movies -- 100 times more than is possible today -- with far lower cost and power consumption. The devices would not only store vastly more information in the same space, but also require much less power and generate much less heat, and be practically unbreakable: the result, massive amounts of personal storage that could run on a single battery for weeks at a time and last for decades.
The commercial availability of racetrack stands to take microelectronics into the third dimension, exceeding the two-dimensional limits of Moore's Law. And IBM is no stranger to creating entirely new markets that spring from exploratory research such as this. Just a few of the many game-changers invented at IBM Research include the memory chip, the hard disk drive and the relational database.
ABSTRACT
Nanowires and nanocrystals represent important nanomaterials with one-dimensional and zero-dimensional morphology, respectively. Here I will give an overview on the research about how these nanomaterials impact the critical applications in faster transistors, smaller nonvolatile memory devices, efficient...
Development of nanoelectronics and highly efficient solar cell Danish nanophysicists have developed a new method for manufacturing the cornerstone of nanotechnology research - nanowires. The discovery has great potential in solar power.
PhD student Peter Krogstrup, Nano-Science Center at the Niels Bohr Institute, developed the method during his dissertation. We have changed the recipe for producing nanowires. This means that we can produce nanowires that contain two different semiconductors, namely gallium indium arsenide and indium arsenide. It is a big breakthrough, because for first time on a nanoscale, we can combine the good characteristics of the two materials, thus gaining new possibilities for the electronics of the future, explains Peter Krogstrup.
A transparent coating that isn't just impermeable to water but actually makes it bounce off a surface has a number of potentially interesting applications. It could prevent corrosion, protect electronics and antiquities, or provide a new, more efficient surface to collect pure water. Modeled from Nature, the Brinker group used sol-gel chemistry to make a patent-applied-for, simple-to-prepare coating solution that, upon simple drying, develops a nanoscopically rough silicon dioxide surface decorated with hydrophobic (water-hating) ligands.
CG2 NanoCoatings Inc. has considerable experience with anti-stain technology. The technology uses easily available and economical ceramic nanoparticles. These nanoparticles are essentially nano-chemical reactors that can be functionalized in various ways to meet your specific needs.
The following movie demonstrates the capabilities of our technology. Note that the coating shown was not optimized for this specific substrate.
Demonstrating the capabilities of CG2 NanoCoatings Inc's technology.
How does nanotechnology make a difference in your life? (University at Buffalo) Imagine the Possibilities. Could objects ten-thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair change life as we know it? What if windows could also function as solar panels, converting light from the sun into clean and renewable electrical power?
(Also see Environmental solutions videos. Environmental solutions, Solutions to CO2 emission ) And what if cancer detection and diagnosis could be easy as breathing? it's not science fiction, it's our future. And the University at Buffalo is building the foundations for developments like these with groundbreaking research in the field of integrated nanostructured systems :-
2012-01-20T00:00:00-05:00 - By tweaking the smallest of parts, a trio of University at Buffalo engineers is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity.
2012-01-09T00:00:00-05:00 - In the images of fruit flies, clusters of neurons are all lit up, forming a brightly glowing network of highways within the brain. It's exactly what University at Buffalo researcher Shermali Gunawardena was hoping to see: It meant that ORMOSIL, a novel class of nanoparticles, had successfully penetrated the insects' brains.
2011-09-30T00:00:00-05:00 - Scientists at the University at Buffalo have received $1.3 million from the National Institute of Mental Health to test how tiny, magnetic particles can be used to remotely control neurons in the brains of mice. If the work is successful, the research team will have given neuroscientists a powerful, new tool: a non-invasive technique for triggering activity deep inside the brain.
2011-09-13T00:00:00-05:00 - "Beyond the Imagination of Nature: Spin, Quantum Optics and Metamaterials," a workshop for researchers studying metamaterials and transformation optics will be presented by the University at Buffalo and the U.S. Army Research Office on Sept. 19-20 in Buffalo.
2011-07-18T00:00:00-05:00 - Quantum dots made from cadmium and selenium degrade in soil, unleashing toxic cadmium and selenium ions into their surroundings, a University at Buffalo study has found.
2011-07-13T00:00:00-05:00 - At an atomic scale, the tiniest bridge of gold -- that made of a single atom -- is actually the strongest, according to new research by engineers at the University at Buffalo's Laboratory for Quantum Devices.
2011-06-29T00:00:00-05:00 - At the smallest scales, magnetism may not work quite the way scientists expected, according to a recent paper in Physical Review Letters by Rafal Oszwaldowski and Igor Zutic of the University at Buffalo and Andre Petukhov of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
2011-06-08T00:00:00-05:00 - Researchers at the University at Buffalo are pleased -- but not surprised -- that a recent national study of "hot spots" for scientific disciplines ranks Buffalo as one of the state's top cities for physics and chemistry. An additional ranking found that UB's Department of Chemistry is among the best in the nation.
2011-05-24T00:00:00-05:00 - University at Buffalo chemist Javid Rzayev has been selected to receive the Herman F. Mark Young Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society's Division of Polymer Chemistry. The award, a prestigious prize in the field, recognizes excellence in research and leadership in polymer science among scientists 35 and younger.
2011-04-07T00:00:00-05:00 - New materials science research from the University at Buffalo could hasten the creation of "smart" windows that reflect heat from the sun on hot summer days but let in the heat in colder weather.
The findings concern a unique class of synthetic chemical compounds that are transparent to infrared light at lower temperatures, but undergo a phase transition to begin reflecting infrared when they heat up past a certain point. An article detailing some of these discoveries appears today (April 7) on the cover of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters.
The Institute of Nanotechnology (IoN). It is a registered Charity, whose core activities are focused on education and training in nanotechnology. It grew out of the Centre for Nanotechnology, part funded by the DTI, now the Department for Innovation and Skillsthrough the UK's National Initiative on Nanotechnology (NION). The Institute was one of the world's first nanotechnology information providers and is now a global leader.
The Institute works closely with governments, universities, researchers, companies and the general public to educate and inform on all aspects of nanotechnology. It also organises various international scientific events, conferences and educational courses that examine the implications of nanotechnology across a wide variety of themes and sectors :-
Institute of Nanotechnology News
The Institute of Nanotechnology seeks to constantly reinforce and improve its position as the leading global educator in nanotechnology. It will strive to provide information to industry, government bodies, academia and the public at large through a culture of entrepreneurship, initiative and creativity.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:07:51 +0000 - Atomic-level defects in graphene could be a path forward to smaller and faster electronic devices, according to a study led by researchers at the Department of Energy"s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 10:28:29 +0000 - A relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods - rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals - to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic structures has been developed by a team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:01:16 +0000 - The IoN is pleased to announce that Marie Krogsgaard of the Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Center (iNANO) at Aarhus University has been selected as the winner of the IoN Student Award 2012.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:31:27 +0000 - Extremely thin, more stable than steel and widely applicable: the material graphene is full of interesting properties. As such, it is currently the shining star among the electric conductors. Photodetectors made with graphene can process and conduct both light signals and electric signals extremely fast.
Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:00:54 +0000 - The quest to develop novel methods to combat drug-resistant and infectious diseases such as Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE), which continue to pose serious challenges to human health worldwide due to the inherent ability of the disease-causing microbes to develop antibiotic resistance, has been spurring innovative research into the medical applications of nanotechnology in recent years.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 16:47:15 +0000 - On Tuesday 31st January at 15.00h GMT there will be a live webcast of panel discussion at the Guardian newspaper, including the UK Government"s Minister of State for Universities and Science, David Willetts.
Mon, 30 Jan 2012 11:08:59 +0000 - The gap between a safe, effective dose of the treatment and a toxic dose is extremely narrow but the Strathclyde scientists have found a way of capturing CsA in very small amounts.
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 16:29:53 +0000 - In a recent BBC News article, technology reporter Dave Lee highlights the role innovative gadgets could play in helping motivate people into participating in sport and fitness activities. Increasingly, these are becoming integrated into social networking tools that enable an individual, for example, to upload their data to a personalised webpage...
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 12:24:05 +0000 - An endoscope that can provide high-resolution optical images of the interior of a single living cell, or precisely deliver genes, proteins, therapeutic drugs or other cargo without injuring or damaging the cell, has been developed by researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Thu, 26 Jan 2012 11:59:17 +0000 - Rice University physicists have gone to extremes to prove that Isaac Newton"s classical laws of motion can apply in the atomic world: They"ve built an accurate model of part of the solar system inside a single atom of potassium.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:22:53 +0000 - A research team led by physicists at the University of California, Riverside has identified a property of "bilayer graphene" (BLG) that the researchers say is analogous to finding the Higgs boson in particle physics.
Wed, 25 Jan 2012 09:30:18 +0000 - Custom modifications of equipment are an honored tradition of the research lab. In a recent paper, two materials scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) describe how a relatively simple mod of a standard scanning electron microscope (SEM) enables a roughly 10-fold improvement in its ability to measure the crystal structure of nanoparticles and extremely thin films.
The London Centre for Nanotechnology is a UK-based multidisciplinary enterprise operating at the forefront of science and technology. Our purpose is to solve global problems in information processing, healthcare, energy and environment through the application of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Founded in 2003, the LCN is a joint venture between University College London and Imperial College London and based at the Bloomsbury and South Kensington sites.
Printing Solar Cells With New Nanomaterials. (Nano Website), New materials make it possible to produce photovoltaic cells on paper or fabric, nearly as simply as printing a document.
Graduate student Miles Barr hold a flexible and foldable array of solar cells that have been printed on a sheet of paper. The sheet of paper looks like any other document that might have just come spitting out of an office printer, with an array of colored rectangles printed over much of its surface. But then a researcher picks it up, clips a couple of wires to one end, and shines a light on the paper.
Instantly an LCD clock display at the other end of the wires starts to display the time. Almost as cheaply and easily as printing a photo on your inkjet, an inexpensive, simple solar cell has been created on that flimsy sheet, formed from special “inks” deposited on the paper. You can even fold it up to slip into a pocket, then unfold it and watch it generating electricity again in the sunlight. The new technology, developed by a team of researchers at MIT, (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), is reported in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials, published online July 8 2011.
While you’re up, print me a solar cell, MIT. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), MIT-developed materials make it possible to produce photovoltaic cells on paper or fabric, nearly as simply as printing a document. The new technology, developed by a team of researchers at MIT, is reported in a paper in the journal Advanced Materials, published online July 8, 2011. The technique represents a major departure from the systems used until now to create most solar cells, which require exposing the substrates to potentially damaging conditions, either in the form of liquids or high temperatures. The new printing process uses vapors, not liquids, and temperatures less than 120 degrees Celsius. These “gentle” conditions make it possible to use ordinary untreated paper, cloth or plastic as the substrate on which the solar cells can be printed
Brad Hein's Nanotechnology SiteForesight nanotechnology Preparing for nanotechnologyCenter of Integrated Nanomechanical Systems (COINS)! Our multifaceted research focuses
on molecular and nanoscale mechanics at the interface of hard and soft matter.nanoHUB A rich, web-based resource for research, education and collaboration in nanotechnology. The nanoHUB hosts over 1600 resources which will help you learn about nanotechnology, including
Online Presentations, Courses, Learning Modules, Podcasts,
Animations, Teaching Materials, and more. Most importantly, the nanoHUB offers simulation tools which
you can access from your web browser, so you can not only learn about but also simulate nanotechnology devices. The nanoHUB also provides collaboration environment via Workspaces,
Online meetings and User groups. Resources come from over 600 contributors in the nanoscience community, and are used by
thousands of users from over 170 countries around the world. Most of our users come from academic institutions and use nanoHUB as part of their research and educational activities. But we also have users from national labs
and from industry. nanoHUB has now cited over 260 times in the scientific literature. About 60 percent of the
citations stem from authors not affiliated with the NCN. Over 200 of the citations refer to nanotechnology research, with over 150 of them citing concrete resource usage. A
list of tools ranked by citations is available. 20 citations elaborate on nanoHUB use in education and over 30 refer to nanoHUB as an example of a national
cyberinfrastructure.
NanoCap project.
Nanotechnology is a major growth area in research and industry. Applications of nanotechnology include advanced materials, textiles, prosthetic implants, food and drugs. Nanosizing products has many benefits. However, there is also a serious debate about the potential hazards of nano-particles (<100 nm), when introduced into the environment and the workplace. NanoCap was a European project that is set up to deepen the understanding of environmental, occupational health and safety risks and ethical aspects of nanotechnology. Therefore a structured discussion was organised between environmental NGOs, trade unions, academic researchers and other stakeholders.... In addition to NGOs and trade unions, NanoCap has developed recommendations to enable public authorities to address the health, safety and environmental risk issues related to the rapid introduction of nanotechnology into society. At the same time it was the goal of this Coordination Action to give also industry the tools to introduce a “responsible nanotechnology”, i.e. to stimulate industrial and academic R&D performers to focus on source reduction regarding nano-particles and to make risk assessment an important dimension in their work.
Nanovirtualium - a Nano-Communication tool. An initiative to develop an interactive communication e-tool on nanotechnologies has been undertaken within the framework of the NanoCap project. This web based application entitled NanoVirtualium is designed as a futuristic virtual reality dome which invites visitors to wander into the world of nanotechnology. It provides both basic and advanced information about this new emerging scientific field and its implications at all levels such as health, environment, society and regulation.
Nanowerk A source for nanotechnology information. Apart from our unique Nanomaterial Database, the most extensive industry directory, a packed conference calendar, complete nanotechnology news coverage, and business resources, etc.. :-
Apart from graphene, other two-dimensional structures are also known to have unique properties which researchers are eager to exploit for novel nanotechnology applications in nanoelectronics and sensor or energy storage technology. Particular interest has been on semiconducting materials, such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), an abundant material in nature, which exhibits the unique physical, optical and electrical properties correlated with its single-layer atomic layer structure. Researchers have now fabricated a mechanically exfoliated single-layer MoS2 based phototransistor and investigated its electric characteristics in detail. These new findings show that, when compared with a 2D graphene-based device, the single-layer MoS2 phototransistor exhibits a better photoresponsivity.
A team of University of Bristol scientists explores whether new models or concepts are needed to tackle one of the 'grand challenges' of chemical biology: understanding enzyme catalysis.
Polyera has achieved a certified world-record 9.1% efficient polymer/fullerene organic solar cell in an inverted bulk heterojunction architecture using its newest proprietary ActivInk PV2000 semiconductor material.
Researchers have used graphene to develop a new composite material which can produce the toughest fibres to date - even tougher than spider silk and Kevlar.
Researchers from the NIST Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology have made a grating coupler that transmits over 45 % of the incident optical energy from a plane wave into a single surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode propagating on a flat gold surface, an order-of-magnitude increase over any SPP grating coupler reported to date.
Engineers have developed a prototype device that could power a pacemaker using a source that is surprisingly close to the heart of the matter: vibrations in the chest cavity that are due mainly to heartbeats.
Today sees the announcement of full details of how an additional GBP50 million will be spent to keep the UK at the forefront of research into 'wonder material' graphene. Also below are details of further investment strands for graphene engineering and research technology.
DNA is a useful building material for nanoscale structures. In a way similar to origami, a long single strand of DNA can be folded into nearly any three-dimensional shape desired with the use of short DNA fragments. The DNA nanostructure can also be equipped with specific docking sites for proteins. Researchers have now introduced a new method for attaching the proteins by means of special "adapters" known as zinc-finger proteins.
Back in the early 2010s, food nanotechnology seemed to be a very hot topic and large industrial food companies were eager to explore new opportunities offered by nanotechnology applications. Then, as critical voices from NGOs and regulators appeared, the food industry went into silent mode. But that doesn't mean that food nanotechnologies aren't being researched and developed in labs around the world. Here is an overview of what nanotechnology applications are currently being researched, tested and in some cases already applied in food technology. It appears that we are still some way from seeing "Frankenfoods" in supermarket shelves. According to a recent commentary by an FDA official, what's holding back the introduction of nanofoods is the hesitation of the food industry, fearing a public backlash along the lines of what happened wit genetically modified foods.
A Manchester team lead by Nobel laureates Professor Andre Geim and Professor Konstantin Novoselov has literally opened a third dimension in graphene research. Their research shows a transistor that may prove the missing link for graphene to become the next silicon.
Nanostart AG has acquired two shares in its portfolio-holding Holmenkol AG from co-shareholder Nanogate. It now holds 50 per cent plus one share, giving it a majority stake in Holmenkol.
Magnetic random-access memory based on new spin transfer technology achieves higher storage density by packing multiple bits of data into each memory cell.
A fabrication method that does not require etching and pattern transfer pushes recording densities in bit-patterned media to 3.3 terabits per square inch.
Samples can have lines and holes, or have multi-layer structures. The new Motorized Tilt and Rotation Sample Holder allows analysis of the sample from all visible sides and enables a unique 3D image of your sample.
On February 2, 2012, experts in the field of nanoparticle and aerosol research will come together to discuss background information, present implementation options, and answer questions for any and all interested in this ever more important topic in the free webinar "Nanotechnology Emission Assessment Technique".
Nikon Corporation announced that the NSR-S621D ArF immersion scanner began shipping to IC manufacturers in January to deliver ultra-high productivity and superior overlay accuracy for the most demanding immersion double patterning layers.
A new form of proteins discovered by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could drastically improve treatments for cancer and other diseases, as well as overcome some of the largest challenges in therapeutics: delivering drugs to patients safely, easily and more effectively.
A relatively fast, easy and inexpensive technique for inducing nanorods - rod-shaped semiconductor nanocrystals - to self-assemble into one-, two- and even three-dimensional macroscopic structures has been developed by a team of researchers with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Physicists at JILA have created the first "frequency comb" in the extreme ultraviolet band of the spectrum, high-energy light less than 100 nanometers (nm) in wavelength.
A study that combines experimental observations of spider webs with complex computer simulations shows that web durability depends not only on silk strength, but on how the overall web design compensates for damage and the response of individual strands to continuously varying stresses.
Students from Albany High School slipped on goggles and gloves to participate in hands-on classes today in the nanobioscience labs at the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE), part of the successful "NanoHigh" program developed by the City School District of Albany and CNSE.
NT-MDT announces that it has released the SOLVER Nano SPM. The Solver Nano is an SPM that offers advanced features and capability for users with research needs or for new SPM users in an ergonomic compact design at an affordable price.
Dr Clemens Franz leads a group of researchers at the DFG-Center for Functional Nanostructures at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology where he works on expanding the use of AFM for cell biological applications.
Ziel des mit 10,4 Millionen Euro gefoerderten Vorhabens ist es, industrierelevante Mengen von hochwertigen Nanoteilchen moeglichst energieeffizient und umweltschonend herzustellen.
Despite offering technological innovation in biosensing and THz metamaterials design, plasmonics faces fundamental physical limitation in the visible frequency band due to high absorptive losses of metals. The major setback to practical applications of plasmonics is high radiative and/or dissipative losses of noble-metal nanostructures in the visible frequency range. Although metal nanostructures enable unrivalled high concentration of optical energy well beyond the diffraction limit, a significant part of this energy is converted into an inherently lossy kinetic motion of free electrons in metal, and is dissipated rapidly as heat. Researchers have now demonstrated a new way to efficiently trap, enhance and manipulate light in nanoscale structures and nanopatterned thin films. This novel approach can significantly improve performance of photonic and electronic devices such as nanosensors, thin-film organic solar cells and optical nanochips.
In order to find a method for more cost-effective data storage, a group of researchers from the DFG-Center for Functional Nanostructures at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan have created a DNA-based "write-once-read-many-times" (WORM) memory device.
Nanotech Now (NN)
Covering future sciences such as Nanotechnology, Molecular Nanotechnology (MNT),
MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS),
Nanomedicine, Nanobiotechnology, Nanoelectronics, Nanofabrication, Computational
Nanotechnology, Quantum Computers, and Artificial Intelligence - to name just a
few.
NANOnetwork ( University of Toronto ) To leverage the
strengths of individual researchers by facilitating cooperation. This involves sharing tools, training and technical insights. Since the early 90s the University of Toronto has been a leader in the field, hosting
major conferences and since 2001 providing the undergraduate degree program in nanoengineering. Useful additional links are
found at the website of the student-run UT-Nanoclub.
Advanced nanotechnology Tracking the advances along different development pathways to molecularly precise manufacturing. Top down and bottom
up approaches. Primary pathways incrementally improving biopolymer-based systems, scanning probe microscopes to do direct mechanosynthesis of diamondoid systems, and a traditional machining approach to build small systems that can perform increasingly precise operations. More Blog Links.
Nano2Life European Network of
Excellence in nanobiotechnology. Its objective was to make Europe a leader
in nanobiotechnology by merging existing expertise and knowledge in the
field of nanobiotechnology. Founded in 2004, Nano2Life comprised sucessfully
23 major European organizations within the field of nanobiotechnology.
Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:25:00 GMT
2011-11-07T10:25:00Z - Yvette Hancock documents the remarkable properties of graphene and rounds up some of the potential applications that have grabbed the attention of scientists worldwide
Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:41:26 GMT
2011-10-28T13:41:26Z - Nanoplasmonic streaking, photonic crystals and superconductivity are the key themes in this second instalment of our multimedia update series
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 09:16:55 GMT
2011-10-21T09:16:55Z - Center director Jagannathan Sankar explains how the ERC fits into North Carolina's growing nanobiotechnology hub and details the foundations that have been put in place to create smart implants for treating orthopedic, craniofacial and cardiovascular ailments
Thu, 04 Aug 2011 09:00:05 GMT
2011-08-04T09:00:05Z - A better understanding of the electric field profile and its effect on the electrospinning jet together with upgrades in mechanical set-ups are allowing researchers to fabricate ever more elaborate structures based on a stream of nanofibre. Writing in our partner journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, Wee-Eong Teo, Ryuji Inai and Seeram Ramakrishna track the developments.
Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:00:00 GMT
2011-04-13T10:00:00Z - nanotechweb.org teams up with the journal Measurement Science and Technology to highlight progress in the field of nanometrology
Wed, 02 Mar 2011 14:49:39 GMT
2011-03-02T14:49:39Z - Multimedia updates on modified graphene, re-writable nanolithography, qubits, resistance switching in amorphous carbon and flow control of nano objects, presented by the people who know the work best â the researchers
Fri, 21 Jan 2011 09:00:00 GMT
2011-01-21T09:00:00Z - Highlights from a special issue of the journal Semiconductor Science and Technology celebrating the 80th birthday of Zhores Alferov
Thu, 13 Jan 2011 09:00:00 GMT
2011-01-13T09:00:00Z - Writing in a special issue of the journal Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, Heinrich Rohrer lists four key elements that add function to materials at the nanoscale
Thu, 06 Jan 2011 14:33:51 GMT
2011-01-06T14:33:51Z - Joe McEntee quizzes Ian Robertson, incoming director of the NSF's Division of Materials Research, on priority topics for 2011 and beyond
Nano Forum :-
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To make solar electricity affordable on a large scale, scientists and engineers worldwide have long been trying to develop a low-cost solar cell, which is both highly efficient and easy to manufacture with high throughput.
Graphite intercalation compounds (GICs) are formed by the insertion of arrays of guest species between the layered sheets of the graphite host. This can greatly modify the electronic properties of the graphite and can lead to interesting phenomena, for example, superconductivity.
Scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have conducted experiments confirming which of three possible mechanisms is responsible for the spontaneous formation of three-dimensional (3-D) pillar arrays in nanofilms (polymer films that are billionths of a meter thick).
The ability to image single biological molecules in a living cell is something that has long eluded researchers; however, a novel technique, using the structure of diamond, may well be able to do this and potentially provide a tool for diagnosing, and eventually developing a treatment for, hard-to-cure diseases such as cancer
Engineers at Brown University and in India have a promising new approach to treating heart-attack victims. The researchers created a nanopatch with carbon nanofibers and a polymer.
Researchers from the University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine have found that inhaled carbon black nanoparticles create a double source of inflammation in the lungs.
Scientists from NPL, in collaboration with LinkĂśping University, Sweden, have shown that regions of graphene of different thickness can be easily identified in ambient conditions using Electrostatic Force Microscopy (EFM).
As a resist member of SEMATECHâs lithography program, FUJIFILM will collaborate with SEMATECH engineers on critical resist issues in extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography.
Hundreds of scientists in the Netherlands make use of the national supercomputing facility Huygens at SARA to tackle important scientific and societal challenges like climate change, water management, improvement of medical care, nanotechnology and green energy.
A Toledo, Ohio, physicist has implemented a new mathematical approach that accelerates some complex computer calculations used to simulate the formation of micro-thin materials.
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:04:42 +0000 - Â Konarka Photo The secret to better solar panels just might be in a big magnet.The industrial-strength magnet is inside a roomful of experimental work
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:03:12 +0000 - Washington, DC–(ENEWSPF)–January 3, 2012. Â A coalition of six consumer safety groups filed suit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on December 21, 2011,
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:56:32 +0000 - University of Alberta researcher shrinks medical tests, makes them more affordable University of Alberta oncology professor Linda Pilarski, along with her research team, has created
Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:55:32 +0000 - NVE Corp., an Eden Prairie company that makes magnetic nanotechnology products for computer memory, filed a lawsuit Tuesday in federal court charging a competitor with
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:02:03 +0000 - Around the world nanotechnology is taking off across a broad spectrum of industries and is changing the way we bring food from the farm to
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:56:49 +0000 - Nanostartâs investment in ItN Nanovation starting to show real potential ItN Nanovation is a portfolio company of Germany’s Nanostart (ETR:NNS, PINK:NASRY), a leading nanotechnology investment
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:54:45 +0000 - Future smartphone tech: HzO Nanotechnology water-proofing Most smartphone users worry about getting their handset wet and often use a protective case to make sure their
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:53:19 +0000 - What’s the Latest Development? Using nanoscale light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, computer engineers at Princeton have found a way to transmit information via microchips using much
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:51:55 +0000 - Nanotechnology focus in healthcare NanoKTN want to bring the ICT and healthcare sectors closer together NanoKTN, the knowledge based network for micro and nanotechnologies, want
Thu, 17 Nov 2011 19:49:04 +0000 - Two companies to locate to SUNYIT, up to 185 jobs possible By WKTV News MARCY, N.Y. – Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Utica Assemblyman Anthony
MINAM European Technology Platform for Micro- and NanoManufacturing (MINAM). The Working Group MicroManufacturing and NanoManufacturing :-
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Memristor is a name of passive two-terminal circuit elements in which there is a functional relationship between charge and magnetic flux linkage. A Memristor could be used to replace the Transistor within devices such as memory, CPU devices, and because of the nonvolatile nature, (do not lose stored data when switched off), Solid State Hard drives. It has been stated that these Memristors could lead to new designs of computers. They may be able to be used in an analogue way that mimics the human brain. They could , of course, also be used in other devices.
Nature Nanotechnology offers a unique mix of news and reviews alongside top-quality research papers. Published monthly, in print and online, the journal reflects the entire spectrum of nanotechnology, pure and applied.
2011-12-28 - The golem stories of Jewish history can provide a framework for thinking about some of the ethical questions involved in nanotechnology and nanomedicine, as Chris Toumey explains.
2011-12-28 - A four-level conductance switch can be created by using a scanning tunnelling microscope to remove a hydrogen atom from the central cavity of a porphyrin molecule.
2011-12-28 - Laser-based imaging can distinguish between semiconducting and metallic nanotubes in vitro and in vivo, offering a way to study the interactions of carbon nanostructures in biological systems without the use of labels.
2011-11-06 - The cycle of cell birth, growth and division can affect the uptake and dilution of nanoparticles in cells, suggesting that the evolution of nanoparticle dose within a cell population is linked to the life cycle of cells.
2011-12-18 - Nanodiamonds have excellent mechanical and optical properties, high surface areas and tunable surface structures. This article reviews the synthesis of nanodiamonds and their use in a variety of applications including drug delivery, tissue engineering and nanocomposites.
2011-12-11 - Hollow DNA-based spacer particles are used in the synthesis of nanoparticle superlattices with well-defined geometries, one of which has never been observed before.
2011-12-04 - The conductance of a single molecule of 1,4'-benzenedithiol bridged between two gold electrodes increases as it is stretched because the energy of the highest occupied molecular orbital is shifted towards the Fermi energy of the electrodes, leading to a resonant enhancement of the conductance.
2011-12-11 - A porphyrin molecule anchored to a silver surface can function as a four-level conductance switch in which a single hydrogen atom in the inner cavity of the molecule is manipulated by electrons from the tip of a scanning tunnelling microscope.
2011-12-18 - Spin doublets of holes in nanowires with a germanium core and a silicon shell can be manipulated in fast-gated double quantum dots to create quantum bits with long spin lifetimes.
2011-12-04 - A new contrast technique allows semiconducting and metallic single-walled carbon nanotubes to be imaged separately, offering a way to study their interactions in biological environments.
2011-11-06 - Cells in different phases of the cell-division cycle accumulate different amounts of nanoparticles, suggesting that biological and toxicological studies of nanoparticles should take into account the cell cycle.
2011-11-13 - Optical microcavities have been fabricated in single-crystal diamond and tuned into resonance with the zero phonon line of an ensemble of silicon-vacancy colour centres, which results in an enhancement of spontaneous emission.
Nature Nanotechnology offers a unique mix of news and reviews alongside top-quality research papers. Published monthly, in print and online, the journal reflects the entire spectrum of nanotechnology, pure and applied.
2012-01-29 - A single point defect in graphene can act as an atomic antenna in the petaHertz frequency range, leading to surface plasmon resonances at the subnanometre scale.
2012-01-22 - A combination of Fizeau interferometry and Raman spectroscopy can be used to probe the motion and strain in a nanoelectromechanical system.
2012-01-22 - A molecular motor can be programmed to follow a route through a network of tracks using instructions added externally or carried by the motor itself.
2012-01-15 - Hot carriers dominate energy transport across graphene pân junctions that are excited by ultrafast laser pulses, and set fundamental limits on device speeds.
2012-01-10 - Oil droplets stabilized with a polymer surfactant can repair cracked polymer surfaces by selectively delivering nanoparticles into the cracks.
2012-01-10 - Arrays of vertical silicon nanowires can record and stimulate neuronal activity from within mammalian nerve cells, and can also map multiple individual synaptic connections between these cells.
2011-12-18 - A silicon nanowire field-effect transistor coupled to the interior of a cell by means of a hollow silicon dioxide nanotube can detect changes in the electric potential of the intracellular fluid.
2011-12-18 - Phase-estimation algorithms applied to single electronic spins in diamond allow weak magnetic fields to be measured with high sensitivity and a large dynamic range.
2011-12-18 - Phase-estimation algorithms applied to single nitrogen nuclear spins in diamond allow weak magnetic fields to be measured with high sensitivity and a large dynamic range.
2011-12-18 - A nanowire waveguide attached to an optical fibre can deliver payloads into cells and act as an endoscope capable of imaging single living cells with high spatial resolution.
2011-12-11 - Combining solid-state nanopores and nanowire field-effect transistors allows the translocation of single DNA molecules through the nanopore to be detected with a high intrinsic bandwidth and large-scale integration.
2011-12-11 - The thermal conductivity of a bundle of boron nanoribbons can be significantly higher than that of a single free-standing ribbon, and can be switched between this enhanced value and that of a single nanoribbon by wetting the interface between the nanoribbons with various solutions.
2011-12-04 - A tunnel junction that consists of a ferroelectric barrier layer sandwiched between two electrodes can operate as a fast, low-power and non-volatile nanoscale solid-state memory.
2011-12-04 - A topological insulator illuminated with circularly or linearly polarized light produces a photocurrent that depends on the helicity or polarization of the light, respectively.
2012-01-15 - The electrophoretic mobilities of ions in membranes made of subnanometre carbon nanotubes are approximately three times higher than the bulk values, and the induced electro-osmotic velocities are four orders of magnitude faster than those measured in conventional porous materials.
2012-01-10 - Photoluminescence microscopy can be used to image exciton quenching in semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes during the early stages of chemical doping.
Physicists are used to the idea that subatomic particles behave according to the bizarre rules of quantum mechanics, completely different to human-scale objects. In a breakthrough experiment, Aaron O'Connell has blurred that distinction by creating an object that is visible to the unaided eye, but provably in two places at the same time. In this talk he suggests an intriguing way of thinking about the result.
Aaron O'Connell is the first person to experimentally induce and measure quantum effects in the motion of a humanmade object, bridging the quantum and classical worlds.
Stanford University researchers have developed a new method of attaching nanowire electronics to the surface of virtually any object, regardless of its shape or what material it is made of.
The method could be used in making everything from wearable electronics and flexible computer displays to high-efficiency solar cells and ultrasensitive biosensors.
IBM researcher published a breakthrough technique in the peer-reviewed journal Science that measures how long a single atom can hold information, and giving scientists the ability to record, study and "visualize" extremely fast phenomena inside these atoms.
Single spins in solid-state systems are often considered prime candidates for the storage of quantum information, and their interaction with the environment the main limiting factor for the realization of such schemes.
The lifetime of an excited spin state is a sensitive measure of this interaction, but extending the spatial resolution of spin relaxation measurements to the atomic scale has been a challenge. We show how a scanning tunneling microscope can measure electron spin relaxation times of individual atoms adsorbed on a surface using an all-electronic pump-probe measurement scheme.
The spin relaxation times of individual Fe-Cu dimers were found to vary between 50 and 250 nanoseconds. Our method can in principle be generalized to monitor the temporal evolution of other dynamical systems.
Ted. What would happen if we could generate power from our windowpanes? In this moving talk, entrepreneur Justin Hall-Tipping shows the materials that could make that possible, and how questioning our notion of 'normal' can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs.
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Featured speakers have included Al Gore on climate change, Philippe Starck on design, Jill Bolte Taylor on observing her own stroke, Nicholas Negroponte on One Laptop per Child, Jane Goodall on chimpanzees, Bill Gates on malaria and mosquitoes, Pattie Maes on the "Sixth Sense" wearable tech, and "Lost" producer JJ Abrams on the allure of mystery. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, and TEDTalks cover these topics as well as science, business, development and the arts.
Closed captions and translated subtitles in a variety of languages are now available at Ted Translate.
Nanotechnology Dangers Dangerous issue with Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology may cause problems
and Humans may suffer because of nanotechnology it has been claimed.
One way is such small particles as nanoparticles could be breathed in causing similar problems to that of asbestos. Another issue is that the nanoparticles may behave in unpredictable and dangerous way.
Even poisonous and or radioactive materials may be used causing problems to humans with nanotechnology.
Although once at the atomic size of nanoparticles atoms may behave differently.
Any mechanical device could be dangerous take all safely precaution's
Safer Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Initiative, (SNNI]). The goals of the Safer Nanomaterials and Nanomanufacturing Initiative [SNNI] are to develop new nanomaterials and nanomanufacturing approaches that offer a high level of performance, yet pose minimal harm to human health or the environment.
The Initiative brings together chemists, biologists, materials scientists and engineers from the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute [ONAMI] to pioneer new approaches to the design, production and use of nanomaterials.
Jeff Grossman, UC Berkeley, (video above), Talks about the growing
involvement of nanotechnology in solar power development. He starts off
with a discussion of the basics of Nanotechnology, the moves into the
challenges around new energy, and the limitations of traditional solar
PV cells. Jeff concludes that nano does hold the potential to overcome
those limitations, even though he doesn't believe those breakthroughs
will happen for a few years. Finally, Jeff addresses the concern of
nanotoxicity and exposure.
Recorded at the Down to a Science event on 3/23/09
Toxic nanotechnology - a problem that could result in surprising benefits. (Nanowerk Spotlight) The fight against infections is as old as civilization. Silver,
for instance, had already been recognized in ancient Greece and Rome for its infection-fighting proerties and it has a long and intriguing history as an antibiotic in human health care. Modern day pharmaceutical companies developed powerful antibiotics - which also happen to be much more profitable than just plain old silver - an apparent high-tech solution to get nasty microbes such as harmful bacteria under control. In the 1950s, penicillin was so successful that the U.S. surgeon general at the time, William H. Stewart, declared it was "time to close the book on infectious diseases, declare the war against pestilence won." Boy, was he wrong! These days, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that the infections acquired in hospitals alone (of all places! it's 2007 and we can't even make our hospitals safe - how scary is that?) affect approximately 2 million persons annually. In the U.S., between 44,000 and 98,000 people die every year from infections they picked up in hospitals. As our antibiotics become more and more ineffective researchers have begun to re-evaluate old antimicrobial substances such as silver. Antimicrobial nano-silver applications have become a very popular early commercial nanotechnology product. Researchers have now made a first step to add carbon nanotubes to our microbe-killing arsenal.
They were surprised, however, to find that nanoparticles activated a special inflammatory process and killed cells in a way that further increased inflammation. She said the research showed that the intake of carbon black nanoparticles from sources such as diesel fuel or printer ink caused an initial inflammatory response in lung cells. The surprising results came when the team discovered that these nanoparticles killed macrophages -- immune cells in the lungs responsible for cleaning up and attacking infections -- in a way that also increases inflammation. The study was a collaborative project involving researchers in the Department of Internal Medicine in the UI Carver College of Medicine and the Department of Chemistryin the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In addition to Monick, a key contributor to the research was Vicki Grassian, Ph.D., UI professor of chemistry who holds the F. Wendell Miller Professorship.
Now is the time to wrestle with the ethics of this Pandora's Box Nanotechnology can learn much from history.
As the biotechnology industry recently discovered, ignoring public policy and social issues namely, possible heath and environmental hazards from genetically modified foods invites a public backlash that crippled progress and sent corporate stocks
plummeting.
If nanotechnology is billed as the "Next Industrial Revolution", It also must raise a host of important social and ethical questions that we need to consider now. Some of issues in "nanoethics." Many of them are
familiar to philosophy and ethics, but considering them in the context of nanotechnology is important and can reveal new insights.
Nanotechnology: benefits s toxic risks. A consequence of the new physical and chemical properties of nanotechnology, substances that could not have been used in a particular media previously because of instability or incompatibility (such as pH sensitivities or incompatibilities of solvents), may now have new applications. Some of these new nanotechnological advantages include enhanced solubilization, controlled delivery and absorption of ingredients.Could humans be infected by computer viruses? Dr Mark Gasson, from the School of Systems Engineering, contaminated a computer chip which had been inserted into his hand as part of research into human enhancement and the potential risks of implantable devices.
Groups Demand EPA Stop Sale of 200+ Potentially Dangerous Nano-Silver Products
Nanotech Watchdog Launches First-Ever Legal Challenge To EPA Over Unregulated Nanotech Pesticide Pollution. The International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA) and a coalition of consumer, health, and environmental groups today filed a legal petition with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demanding the agency use its pesticide regulation authority to stop the sale of numerous consumer products now using nanosized versions of silver. The legal action is the first challenge to EPA's failure to regulate nanomaterials. International Center for Technology Assessment (CTA). Increasingly manufacturers are infusing a large and diverse number of consumer products with nanoparticle silver ("nano-silver") for its enhanced "germ killing" abilities. Nanosilver is now the most common commercialized nanomaterial. CTA found over 260 nano-silver products currently on the market, ranging from household appliances and cleaners to clothing, cutlery, and children's toys to personal care products and coated electronics. Yet as CTA's legal petition addresses, the release of this unique substance may be highly destructive to natural environments and raises serious human health concerns.
Nanotechnology is the catch-all term used to describe, in short, science and engineering on an insanely small scale. Carbon nanotubes one of the more common nanoscale structures in use today are long, thin cylinders of carbon roughly 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair.
These molecular scale tubes are stronger than steel yet lighter than aluminum and today, they are being developed for use in a variety of consumer products. But under a microscope, CNTs look identical to asbestos fibers, leading scientists to believe that they could cause similar health problems.
Nanotoxic Exploring the uneasy topic of nanotoxicology. Many countries have already banned experiments involving nanotechnology and toxicology. Nanotechnology News :-
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:50:47 -0500 - By Cameron Chai Scientists from the North Dakota State Universityâs Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) have developed an antennaless radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, which...
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:48:47 -0500 - By Cameron Chai Qcept Technologies, a company specializing in wafer inspection solutions, has declared its participation in several major key nanotechnology conferences to be conducted during Q1 of...
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:47:16 -0500 - By Cameron Chai A Rice University research team comprising Jaime Taha-Tijerina, Tharangattu Narayanan and Matteo Pasquali has discovered that trace quantities of hexagonal boron nitride nanoparticles...
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:45:01 -0500 - By Cameron Chai High conductivity is one of the major issues of graphene and this restricts it to be used as a base material for producing computer chips. Researchers have been seeking for a...
Sat, 04 Feb 2012 00:40:18 -0500 - By Cameron Chai Northern Graphite has consented to deliver its +32 mesh and +48 mesh extra-large-flake, high- carbon graphite to Grafen Chemical Industries for use in graphene research. Northern...
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:17:50 -0500 - By Cameron Chai United Microelectronics, a major semiconductor foundry, and Faraday Technology, a provider of ASIC and silicon IP, have signed a deal for reinforcing their IP alliance to add basic...
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:43:17 -0500 - By Cameron Chai Innova Biosciences, known for its easy-to-use antibody labeling kits called Lightning-Link or Lightning-Link Rapid, has released a new informative guide titled âA Beginners Guide to...
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:41:46 -0500 - By Cameron Chai Research and Markets now offers a new book titled âNanoscale Multifunctional Materials: Science & Applicationsâ published by John Wiley and Sons. The book covers nanoparticles...
Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:40:21 -0500 - By Cameron Chai A research team comprising Leonhard Prechtel and Leonhard Prechtel from the Technische Universitaet Muenchenâs Walter Schottky Institut has devised a method to improve the time...
Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:05:36 -0500 - NanoProfessor, a division of NanoInk Inc. focused on nanotechnology education, announced today a partnership with City Colleges of Chicago. This will involve two City Colleges students to complete a...
The structural DNA path toward productive nanosystems has achieved another step forward with the demonstration that a DNA origami scaffolding can be used to program a DNA motor to navigate a network of tracks. A hat tip to PhysOrg.com for reprinting this news release from Kyoto University “DNA Motor Programmed to Navigate a Network of Tracks“:
Kyoto, Japan — Expanding on previous work with engines traveling on straight tracks, a team of researchers at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have successfully used DNA building blocks to construct a motor capable of navigating a programmable network of tracks with multiple switches. The findings, published in the January 22 online edition of the journal Nature Nanotechnology [abstract], are expected to lead to further developments in the field of nanoengineering.
The research utilizes the technology of DNA origami, where strands of DNA molecules are sequenced in a way that will cause them to self-assemble into desired 2D and even 3D structures. In this latest effort, the scientists built a network of tracks and switches atop DNA origami tiles, which made it possible for motor molecules to travel along these rail systems.
“We have demonstrated that it is not only possible to build nanoscale devices that function autonomously,” explained Dr. Masayuki Endo of Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), “but that we can cause such devices to produce predictable outputs based on different, controllable starting conditions.”
The team, including lead author Dr. Shelley Wickham at Oxford, expects that the work may lead to the development of even more complex systems, such as programmable molecular assembly lines and sophisticated sensors.
“We are really still at an early stage in designing DNA origami-based engineering systems,” elaborated iCeMS Prof. Hiroshi Sugiyama. “The promise is great, but at the same time there are still many technical hurdles to overcome in order to improve the quality of the output. This is just the beginning for this new and exciting field.”
Courtesy Sugiyama Lab, Kyoto University iCeMS
A depiction of a DNA origami tile with a built-in network of tracks. The DNA engine or motor, in red, can be programmed to navigate a series of junctions to reach one of four desired end points.
Perhaps the next step is to have multiple addressable DNA motors bring different components together to be joined?
—James Lewis
The coming era of atomically precise manufacturing will provide digital control of the structure of matter for a very wide range of possible products and will make possible personal manufacturing of most products. Steps toward digital control of the structure of matter and personal manufacturing, although on a scale much less precise than atomic and for a much more limited range of products, are to be seen with today’s rapidly developing 3D-printing technology. Rival technologies were on display a few weeks ago in Las Vegas. From BBC News “CES 2012: 3D printer makers’ rival visions of future” by Leo Kelion:
With a whir and a click the job is done. In the space of 20 minutes a plastic bottle opener has been constructed by the Replicator – a 3D printing machine capable of making objects up to the size of a loaf of bread.
The device is made by the New York start-up Makerbot Industries and was launched this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
The newly-created bottle opener feels warm to the touch and has to be prised away from its base.
It has been created by using extrusion technology – a process in which a spindle of plastic thread is unravelled, melted and fed through a print head which draws the object layer by layer – in this case at a rate of 40mm per second. …
Objects can be created on a computer using free online software such as TinkerCAD or Google Sketchup, before being transferred to the Replicator on a SD memory card.
Alternatively other people’s designs can be downloaded from Makerbot’s community website Thingiverse. …
Take a walk to the other side of the convention centre and you will find another plastic printer maker with another new product, but a very different way of thinking.
3D Systems is a North Carolina-based veteran of the business.
“We invented 3D printers,” its Israeli-born chief executive Abe Reichental says.
“For 25 years we have taken the classic journey of taking expensive, complex technology and bringing it down in price.
“We have about 1,000 workers worldwide. We are a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange. We have almost as many patents as employees.”
The firm is at CES to publicise the launch of Cube, its first consumer-focused product.
The $1,299 device is smaller than Makerbot’s but looks more user-friendly, utilising cartridges rather than spools of plastic thread.
It also boasts its own app store. The launch library includes software to customise belt buckles, a program to turn your voice into a bracelet design, and perhaps most excitingly software from developer Geomagic for Microsoft’s Kinect sensor that allows the peripheral to replicate the user’s face. …
Philippe Van Nedervelde, Foresight’s Executive Director-Europe, contributes his thoughts on the significance of current developments in 3D printers,
The era of Personal 3D Printing for consumers [has officially started], it seems. And what with its existing track record of excellence plus the slew of key 3D printing companies it has been buying up the company 3D Systems is well poised to become the IBM, Apple, or HP of this new space. (25 years from now, someone should kick me if I do not buy any shares now.)
My sense is that this launch is a close analog to the start-of-an-era-marking launch of the first PC by IBM on August 12, 1981. In some ways, a possibly even closer analog may be the launch of the original Mac on January 24, 1984.
Very interesting times ahead!…
~ Philippe ~
Perhaps Philippe is not exaggerating the significance of this emerging personal manufacturing technology. Personal manufacturing of plastic consumer items may accelerate developing productive nanosystems to make possible personal manufacturing of complex atomically precise consumer products.
—James Lewis
Foresight’s principal focus has been the development of advanced nanotechnology for atomically precise manufacturing, but the incremental development and application of current nanotechnology is also a major interest. Meeting the challenges of incremental nanotechnology development and application includes adequately addressing any potential environmental, health, and safety issues (see Foresight’s “Nanoparticle safety” policy brief.). We therefore note with pleasure that an expert panel of the National Academy of Sciences has recommended that the potential health and environmental risks of nanomaterials should be studied further and that they will revisit the issue in 18 months, when it is to be hoped that the necessary research will be moving forward. From “With Prevalence of Nanomaterials Rising, Panel Urges Review of Risks” by Cornelia Dean:
… Nanoscale forms of substances like silver, carbon, zinc and aluminum have many useful properties. Nano zinc oxide sunscreen goes on smoothly, for example, and nano carbon is lighter and stronger than its everyday or âbulkâ form. But researchers say these products and others can also be ingested, inhaled or possibly absorbed through the skin. And they can seep into the environment during manufacturing or disposal.
Nanomaterials are engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter, perhaps one ten-thousandth the width of a human hair, or less. Not enough is known about the effects, if any, that nanomaterials have on human health and the environment, according to a report issued by the academyâs expert panel. The report says that âcritical gapsâ in understanding have been identified but âhave not been addressed with needed research.â
And because the nanotechnology market is expanding â it represented $225 billion in product sales in 2009 and is expected to grow rapidly in the next decade â âtodayâs exposure scenarios may not resemble those of the future,â the report says.
The panel called for a four-part research effort focusing on identifying sources of nanomaterial releases, processes that affect exposure and hazards, nanomaterial interactions at subcellular to ecosystem-wide levels and ways to accelerate research progress. …
Less than four years ago we asked here whether online gamers playing Foldit could help perfect the de novo design of proteins that do not exist in nature. Four months ago we reported that Foldit players had succeeded where scientists had failed in solving the structure of an important viral enzyme. Now Scientific American reports that Foldit players have topped scientists in redesigning a protein—the challenge we suggested less than four years ago. From “Online gamers achieve first crowd-sourced redesign of protein“:
Obsessive gamers’ hours at the computer have now topped scientists’ efforts to improve a model enzyme, in what researchers say is the first crowdsourced redesign of a protein.
The online game Foldit, developed by teams led by Zoran Popovic, director of the Center for Game Science, and biochemist David Baker, both at the University of Washington in Seattle, allows players to fiddle at folding proteins on their home computers in search of the best-scoring (lowest-energy) configurations.
The researchers have previously reported successes by Foldit players in folding proteins, but the latest work moves into the realm of protein design, a more open-ended problem. By posing a series of puzzles to Foldit players and then testing variations on the players’ best designs in the lab, researchers have created an enzyme with more than 18-fold higher activity than the original. The work was published January 22 in Nature Biotechnology [abstract].
“I worked for two years to make these enzymes better and I couldn’t do it,” says Justin Siegel, a post-doctoral researcher working in biophysics in Baker’s group. “Foldit players were able to make a large jump in structural space and I still don’t fully understand how they did it.” …
The latest effort involved an enzyme that catalyses one of a family of workhorse reactions in synthetic chemistry called Diels-Alder reactions. Members of this huge family of reactions are used throughout industry to synthesize everything from drugs to pesticides, but enzymes that catalyze Diels-Alder reactions have been elusive. In 2010, Baker and his team reported that they had designed a functional DielsâAlderase computationally from scratch [abstract], but, says Baker, “it wasn’t such a good enzyme”. The binding pocket for the pair of reactants was too open and activity was low. After their attempts to improve the enzyme plateaued, the team turned to Foldit.
In one puzzle, the researchers asked users to remodel one of four amino-acid loops on the enzyme to increase contact with the reactants. In another puzzle, players were asked for a design that would stabilize the new loop. The researchers got back nearly 70,000 designs for the first puzzle and 110,000 for the second, then synthesized a number of test enzymes based on the best designs, ultimately resulting in the final, 18-fold-more-active enzyme.…
The article was written by Jessica Marshall and reprinted in Scientific American with permission from Nature, where it was originally published as “Victory for crowdsourced biomolecule design: Players of the online game Foldit guide researchers to a better enzyme.” The article does an excellent job of describing how researchers and game players collaborated to achieve the final result. The gamers explored much more radical changes to the protein than can be done by conventional molecular biology techniques such as directed evolution, which typic[a]lly explores only single amino acid substitutions. The researchers then physically constructed and characterized the enzyme designed by the gamers.
The choice as design target of an enzyme to catalyze Diels-Alder reactions is particularly interesting from the standpoint of developing advanced nanotechnology, also referred to as molecular manufacturing. As noted in the 2010 Science paper, this reaction is a “cornerstone” in organic synthesis, and no naturally occurring enzymes are known to catalyze this reaction. As early as 1994 Markus Krummenacker proposed the use of Diels-Alder cycloaddition in a strategy to develop molecular building blocks for molecular manufacturing (“Steps towards molecular manufacturing“).
What roles crowd-sourcing, citizen science, and de novo protein design will play in the development of molecular manufacturing, or productive nanosystems, remains to be seen, but this latest result looks like an important step alog the way.
—James Lewis
Foresight Institute Co-Founder and Past President Christine Peterson was among four panelists addressing the role of technology in human existence for a Stanford University Continuing Studies series. From a report in The Stanford Daily by Marshall Watkins “Bay Area thinkers ponder ‘life’“:
Christine Peterson, co-founder and president of The Foresight Institute, a public interest group seeking to educate the community on forthcoming technological advances, emphasized the increasingly prominent role that nanotechnology has come to play.
Peterson noted that nanotechnology has the potential to create new materials and make vast advances without the side effects, such as pollution, that would currently ensue. She allowed, however, that the near-invisible and highly sensitive technology might enable intrusions on privacy.
âWe need to know what data is collected,â Peterson said, âhow it is used and how long it is retained. We have those rights.â
Peterson highlighted the medical benefits of nanotechnology, noting, âThe ability to control atoms and molecules would mean that there really isnât a physical illness [that] we wouldnât be able to address.â
The report quotes the moderator of the panel, author Piero Scaruffi, as stating that the four panelists were picked because “They discussed life as in the future, rather than life as in the past.” We can certainly expect that life after advanced nanotechnology has been developed will be fundamentally different from life up until that point.
Researchers at I.B.M.’s Almaden Research Center have used a scanning tunneling microscope to assemble an array of 96 iron atoms into an antiferromagnetic structure that encodes one byte (eight bits) of information. As reported in the NY Times by John Markoff “New storage device is very small, at 12 atoms“:
SAN JOSE, Calif. â Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible.
The findings, being reported Thursday in the journal Science, could help lead to a new class of nanomaterials for a generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power. And they may offer a new direction for research in quantum computing. …
The group at I.B.M.âs Almaden Research Center here, led by Andreas Heinrich, has now created the smallest possible unit of magnetic storage by painstakingly arranging two rows of six iron atoms on a surface of copper nitride. …
Although the research took place at a temperature near absolute zero, the scientists wrote that the same experiment could be done at room temperature with as few as 150 atoms. …
The remainder of the article quotes Dr. Heinrich as saying that these tiny devices built with scanning tunneling microscopes are primarily of interest as a way to explore the quantum mechanical properties of the antiferromagnetic effect in the hope of developing novel nanomaterials that might lead to quantum computers. He also noted that many research groups are exploring self-assembly methods that could lead to practical manufacturing technologies to replace current microelectronic technologies.
The potential of advanced nanotechnology is getting some attention from mainstream media. Late last year The Guardian web site posted a brief article on the prospects for nanofactories and atomically precise manufacturing, featuring quotes from Christine Peterson and Robert Freitas. From “Nanofactories â a future vision” by Penny Sarchet:
Mimicking nature is a recurring theme in nanotechnology and molecular nanotechnology, inspired by the natural nanostructures found in our own bodies, offers many exciting potential outcomes.
“Molecular nanotechnology is the expected ability to build our products with molecular-level precision, as nature can do,” says Christine Peterson, president of the Foresight Nanotech Institute in California. “It will bring unprecedented quality, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability”.
The recent development of an electron-powered molecular “nanocar”, by a team led by chemist Ben Feringa at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, hints at the potential. Further indications that molecular nanotechnology is achievable are being found in the quest for ever-smaller computing.
Many of these efforts attempt to use nature’s own method of storing and transferring information â DNA. “DNA computing is the goal of building devices out of DNA that are able to act like computers, initially doing simple calculations but eventually doing everything that a macroscale computer can do,” says Peterson. …
One future prospect for molecular-scale nanotechnology is to build nanofactories. “The nanofactory is a proposed compact molecular manufacturing system that could build a diverse selection of large-scale, atomically precise products,” explains Robert Freitas Jr, senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, also in California. “The products of a nanofactory would be atomically precise, with every atom in exactly the right place, offering the ultimate in quality control. It could make products out of the strongest materials known to man â especially diamond, sapphire, and related ultra-strong ceramics. In manufacturing, it’s hard to do better than that.”
The first two-dimensional structure to be built atom-by-atom was made from silicon in 2003. However, Freitas says nanofactories are still a long way off. “We expect this will require a 20-year research and development effort and on the order of $1bn (ÂŁ622m) in funding to achieve.” …
If anyone knows someone with a billion dollars they will not need for twenty years, ask them to contact Christine or Robert.
Radiological Technologies University VT, located in South Bend, Indiana is pleased to announce the approval of the first Master’s of Science in Nanomedicine degree program in the country. The formal approval was granted today through the Indiana Commission for Postsecondary Proprietary Education. Nanomedicine is the medical application of Nanotechnology which focuses its work at the cellular level to do everything from repairing tissue, to cleaning arteries, to attacking cancer cells and viruses like AIDS. The RTU Nanomedicine program is the first of its kind in the country by combining Nanotechnology with an emphasis on Medical Physics. Radiological Technologies University offers degree programs ranging from a Bachelor’s degree in Medical Dosimetry to Master’s of Science degrees in Medical Dosimetry, Medical Physics, Medical Health Physics, and Nanomedicine.
Glioblastoma is one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer. Rather than presenting as a well-defined tumor, glioblastoma will often infiltrate the surrounding brain tissue, making it extremely difficult to treat surgically or with chemotherapy or radiation. Likewise, several mouse models of glioblastoma have proven completely resistant to all treatment attempts.
In a new study, a team led by scientists at Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute (SBMRI) and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies developed a method to combine a tumor-homing peptide, a cell-killing peptide, and a nanoparticle that both enhances tumor cell death and allows the researchers to image the tumors. When used to treat mice with glioblastoma, this new nanosystem eradicated most tumors in one model and significantly delayed tumor development in another. These findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA [abstract].
“This is a unique nanosystem for two reasons,” said project leader Erkki Ruoslahti of the SBMRI. “First, linking the cell-killing peptide to nanoparticles made it possible for us to deliver it specifically to tumors, virtually eliminating the killer peptide’s toxicity to normal tissues. Second, ordinarily researchers and clinicians are happy if they are able to deliver more drugs to a tumor than to normal tissues. We not only accomplished that, but were able to design our nanoparticles to deliver the killer peptide right where it acts, at the mitochondria, the cell’s energy-generating center.”
The nanosystem developed in this study is made up of three elements. First, a nanoparticle acts as the carrier framework for an imaging agent and for two peptides. One of these peptides guides the nanoparticle and its payload specifically to cancer cells and the blood vessels that feed them by binding cell surface markers that distinguish them from normal cells. This same peptide also drives the whole system inside these target cells, where the second peptide wreaks havoc on the mitochondria, triggering cellular suicide through a process known as apoptosis.
Together, these peptides and nanoparticles proved extremely effective at treating two different mouse models of glioblastoma. In the first model, treated mice survived significantly longer than untreated mice. In the second model, untreated mice survived for only eight to nine weeks. In sharp contrast, treatment with this nanosystem cured all but one of ten mice. What’s more, in addition to providing therapy, the nanoparticles could aid in diagnosing glioblastoma; they are made of iron oxide, which makes them and the tumors they target visible by magnetic resonance imaging.
In a final twist, the researchers made the whole nanosystem even more effective by administering it to the mice in conjunction with a third peptide. Ruoslahti and his team previously showed that this peptide, known as iRGD, helps co-administered drugs penetrate deeply into tumor tissue. iRGD has been shown to substantially increase treatment efficacy of various drugs against human breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancers in mice, achieving the same therapeutic effect as a normal dose with one-third as much of the drug. Here, iRGD enhanced nanoparticle penetration and therapeutic efficacy.
In this study, the researchers tested their nanoparticles on mice that developed glioblastomas with the same characteristics as observed in humans with the disease. Once the nanoparticles reached the tumors’ blood vessels, they delivered their payload directly to the cell’s power producer, the mitochondria. By destroying the blood vessels and also some surrounding tumor cells, the investigators found they were able to cure some mice and extend the lifespan of the rest.”
An important milestone in the development of nanotechnology leading to atomically precise manufacturing (molecular manufacturing) is the development of artificial molecular machines that can control molecular transformations. Two scientists from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, published a paper in Science [abstract] earlier this year demonstrating control of a chemical reaction by an artificial molecular machine. They constructed a light-driven molecular motor that catalyses different chemical reactions as the motor is stepped through its rotary cycle. The researchers’ institute has made the full text of “Dynamic Control of Chiral Space in a Catalytic Asymmetric Reaction Using a Molecular Motor” available here.
The authors constructed a rotary motor molecule in which the rotor and stator halves of the molecule rotate about an axle consisting of a carbon-carbon double bond. Rotation occurs in only one direction in a four-stage cycle driven by light absorption and by temperature change. Because the molecule is helical in shape, it is chiral, that is, it exists in two different conformations (shapes) that are mirror images of each other.
The rotor and stator halves of the molecule are each attached to a different chemical function so that when rotation about the axle brings the two functional groups spatially close to each other, they catalyze a chemical reaction. At the four different stages of the rotary cycle, the two groups are either widely separated (two trans configurations) and thus have low catalytic activity, or close to each other and therefore have high catalytic activity (the two cis configurations). In one cis configuration the active catalyst is in one chiral orientation; in the other cis configuration, the catalyst is in the opposite chiral orientation. As expected, when used to catalyze an appropriate chemical reaction that can produce either one of two chiral products, the two trans forms of the motor have low activity and they produce a mixture of the two chiral products. The two cis forms of the motor have high activity. One chiral cis form produces predominantly one chiral product; the other produces predominantly the other chiral product.
The authors conclude:
Coupling of unidirectional switching to catalytic function, as demonstrated here, may prove to be a key design tool in the construction of future catalysts that can perform multiple tasks in a sequential manner.
The molecular specificity of this initial proof-of-principle demonstration is only partial. The differences in catalytic activity and the differences in chiral ratios of the reaction products are only of the order of three- or four-fold. We can hope that continued work in this direction will lead to cleaner reaction specificities resulting from programmable control of artificial molecular machines. Eventually we hope to see arrays of programmable molecular catalysts executing complex reaction sequences, leading to productive nanosysems and atomically precise manufacturing.
A few weeks ago we noted the publication of a tutorial review that asks whether artificial molecular machines can deliver the performance that visionaries expect. Upon learning that the full text is available after a free registration, I downloaded the review to learn what the authors think about the prospects of eventually doing atomically precise manufacturing with artificial molecular machine systems.
The authors begin with the observation that, despite “remarkable progress” in synthesizing molecular switches, there have been only few and very rudimentary examples of harvesting useful work from such molecular switches. They then ask whether only incremental progress will be necessary for artificial molecular machines to achieve the levels of function so elegantly achieved by biological molecular machines, or whether some paradigm shift in thinking will be necessary (they believe the latter).
The fundamental theory of molecular machines is applied to two questions. (1) Can artificial molecular machines be developed to manipulate or chemically transform other molecular or nanoscale structures? (2) Can artificial molecular machines be assembled into integrated systems that work together to manipulate or fabricate structures at the meso- and macroscopic levels? The overall conclusion of these authors with respect to these two questions is optimistic:
Indeed, nanoscale-based machinery has been envisaged ever since the days of Feynman and today the Feynman’s Grand Prize offers a $250,000 reward to the first persons to create a nanoscale robotic arm, capable of precise positional control. While, in pursuit of this goal, the “top-down” fabrication strategies have so far failed rather dismally, we are convinced that a “bottom-up” approach, utilizing AMMs [artificial molecular machines], can deliver. Engineering a macromolecular architecture capable of robotic function will no doubt be a considerable synthetic challenge. We feel, however, that the time is ripe for such an undertakingâfor instance, by combining AMMs with the DNA-origami materials, such that the former would provide the actuation within precisely folded DNA nanoscaffolds of the latter.
A major focus of this tutorial review is to describe the recently developed theoretical concepts “that distinguish simple molecular switches from fully fledged molecular machines.” Simple molecular switches differ from familiar macroscopic switches in that the switching between the states of the switch is driven by thermal noise. To advance from simple molecular switches to molecular machines, it must be possible to drive chemical reactions uphill, away from equilibrium, as do biological motor molecules. This can be accomplished by using molecular switches to alter the energy profile of the reaction by first lowering the energy of the intermediate to be less than the energy of the starting material, and then switching again to raise the energy of the intermediate above that of the product, and finally switching again to reset the system to the original energy profile. Switching makes each molecular transformation along the way spontaneous, but the end result is shifted way from the equilibrium without switching.
The authors give the example of doubly stable bistable rotaxanes—dumbbell-shaped molecules in which an electrochemical input can move reactants to different positions along the central part of the dumbbell to alter an energy profile and drive a reaction uphill. An example is given of a molecule that can be switched by an oxidation-reduction event between contracted and extended states. If such a molecule is attached to a molecular spring, then the extended form of the molecule could store energy in the spring molecule. If the architecture of the device as a whole allows the spring to be detached from the oxidation-reduction switch, then the energy stored in the spring can be harvested to do external work. Thus an oxidation-reduction switch becomes part of a simple molecular motor.
Having considered how to extract external work from externally switchable molecules, the authors consider how sufficient energy to perform macroscopic work could be harvested from mesoscopic arrays of AMMs. They note that in biological systems molecular motors are organized spatially and synchronized to act together, and consider approaches to fabricate such arrays through self-assembly. They cite metal oxide frameworks as one potentially promising type of scaffolding that might be used to array AMMs.
The brief roadmap presented in this tutorial review outlines the challenges and opportunities involved in transforming simple molecular switches into AMMs. The authors are optimistic:
On the horizon lie new types of “mechanized” enzyme-like mimicks, addressable nanomaterials, nanorobots, and possibly more into the bargain.
How will nanotechnology change the world? How will nanotechnology
change privacy? The impact of Nanotechnology on health, some may
live healthier and longer, (but who will it be and what will be the
impact of living longer?). Other Nanotech Issues
Nanotechnology is a rapidly moving and all-encompassing suite of technologies that promises to change almost every aspect of our lives, from our health to our security to our ability to create a sustainable environment. As part of a multi-component project,
Fred Friendly Seminars is producing a three-part series - Nanotechnology: The Power of Small - that will explore the social, ethical, and legal implications of this field.
Dangers Ed. Says. Humans a higher form of animals. What types
of control will the be trying to do next?
Clusters of heated, magnetic nanoparticles targeted to cell membranes can remotely control ion channels, neurons and even animal
behavior, according to a paper published by University at Buffalo physicists in Nature Nanotechnology. The research could have broad application, potentially resulting in innovative cancer treatments that remotely manipulate selected
proteins or cells in specific tissues, or improved diabetes therapies that remotely stimulate pancreatic cells to release
insulin.
Using nanoparticles and a magnetic field, UB researchers were able to make worms reverse course when the nanoparticles were heated
to 34 degres Celsius. Video Credit: University at Buffalo.
The work also could be applied to the development of new
therapies for some neurological disorders, which result from
insufficient neuro-stimulation. "By developing a method that allows us to use magnetic fields to
stimulate cells both in vitro and in vivo, this research will help
us unravel the signaling networks that control animal behavior,"
says
Arnd Pralle, PhD, assistant professor of physics in the
University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences and
senior/corresponding author on the paper.
The UB researchers demonstrated that their method could open
calcium ion channels, activate neurons in cell culture and even
manipulate the movements of the tiny nematode, C. elegans. "We targeted the nanoparticles near what is the 'mouth' of the
worms, called the amphid," explains Pralle. "You can see in the
video that the worms are crawling around; once we turn on the
magnetic field, which heats up the nanoparticles to 34 degrees
Celsius, most of the worms reverse course. We could use this method
to make them go back and forth. Now we need to find out which other
behaviors can be controlled this way."
How does nanotechnology make a difference in your life?
Grey goo (alternatively spelled gray goo) From Wikipedia. A hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario involving molecular nanotechnology in which out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all matter on Earth while building more of themselves, a scenario known as ecophagy ("eating the environment"). Self-replicating machines of the macroscopic variety were originally described by mathematician John von Neumann, and are sometimes referred to as von Neumann machines. The term grey goo was coined by nanotechnology pioneer Eric Drexler in his 1986 book Engines of Creation, stating that "we cannot afford certain types of accidents." In 2004 he stated "I wish I had never used the term 'grey goo'
NanoCap project.
Nanotechnology is a major growth area in research and industry. Applications of nanotechnology include advanced materials, textiles, prosthetic implants, food and drugs. Nanosizing products has many benefits. However, there is also a serious debate about the potential hazards of nano-particles (<100 nm), when introduced into the environment and the workplace. NanoCap was a European project that is set up to deepen the understanding of environmental, occupational health and safety risks and ethical aspects of nanotechnology. Therefore a structured discussion was organised between environmental NGOs, trade unions, academic researchers and other stakeholders.... In addition to NGOs and trade unions, NanoCap has developed recommendations to enable public authorities to address the health, safety and environmental risk issues related to the rapid introduction of nanotechnology into society. At the same time it was the goal of this Coordination Action to give also industry the tools to introduce a “responsible nanotechnology”, i.e. to stimulate industrial and academic R&D performers to focus on source reduction regarding nano-particles and to make risk assessment an important dimension in their work.
Nanovirtualium - a Nano-Communication tool. An initiative to develop an interactive communication e-tool on nanotechnologies has been undertaken within the framework of the NanoCap project. This web based application entitled NanoVirtualium is designed as a futuristic virtual reality dome which invites visitors to wander into the world of nanotechnology. It provides both basic and advanced information about this new emerging scientific field and its implications at all levels such as health, environment, society and regulation
Nanotech not a nano-sized threat
Kai Ryssdal(Audio Talk). Good things come in small packages, the saying goes. And scientists are certainly counting on it.
Nanotechnology has been used in hundreds of consumer products — everything from cosmetics to clothing. Some groups have called for tougher oversight and proof of the safety of nanotechnology. But last week, the FDA declined to require additional regulations for products made with nanotech.
Commentator and chemical engineer Bill Hammack offers some advice.
Bill Hammack, (see Engineer Guy Main Web Site), is a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana.
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