As the impact of the atomic force microscope is felt more and more in nanobiotechnology, physical scientists continue to use and develop this versatile instrument.
Nanomedicine offers new opportunities to fight diseases but a global effort is needed to safely translate laboratory innovation to the clinic. Seven priority areas have been identified for this endeavour.
Synthetic biology and nanotechnology have much in common, including the presence of competing schools of thought within each field. Richard Jones explores the parallels between the two subjects.
Could a mechanical principle familiar from the playground be the key to a new means of computation? Research on tiny gallium arsenide bridges points in that direction.
Environmental toxicologists, chemists and social scientists have identified three priorities for research into the impact of engineered nanoparticles on the environment.
A new generation of scanning transmission electron microscopes will allow researchers to study the composition and bonding of all the atoms in a solid material.
Green plants have an in-built protection system that prevents their photosynthetic machinery from being damaged by excessive levels of light. Researchers have now demonstrated a similar mechanism in an artificial molecular system.
The atomic force microscope has evolved from an imaging technique to a powerful tool for many areas of nanobiotechnology, including fundamental research, medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring.
(National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)) Researchers at NIST have reported a new technique to sort batches of carbon nanotubes by length using high-speed centrifuges. The technique should be easy to scale to industrial quantities for a variety of nanotube applications where length is an important factor.
(Massachusetts Institute of Technology) MIT engineers have improved the power output of one type of fuel cell by more than 50 percent through technology that could help these environmentally friendly energy storage devices find a much broader market, particularly in portable electronics.
(University of California - San Diego) University of California, San Diego electrical engineers are working toward thin-film "single junction" solar cells with the potential for nearly 45 percent sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies. This is well above theoretical limit of 31 percent efficiency for conventional single junction cells. Nanostructures such as quantum wells and nanoparticles are the keys to the new work that recently received a big funding boost from the US Department of Energy's Solar America program.
(University of California - Davis) Nanotechnology researchers at UC Davis have shown that they can use a red blood cell to calibrate a sensitive instrument, an atomic force microscope.
(Eindhoven University of Technology) Physicist Bram Hoex and colleagues at Eindhoven University of Technology, together with the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany, have improved the efficiency of an important type of solar cell from 21.9 to 23.2 percent (a relative improvement of 6 percent). This new world record is being presented on Wednesday May 14 at a major solar energy conference in San Diego.
(National Physical Laboratory) Fibers present massive challenges and opportunities for micro and nano technologies. These challenges are not in the manufacturing of the fibers but in the control and understanding of their behavior. This one-day workshop will focus on the many challenges of fiber analysis at the micro and nano-scale using state-of-the art surface chemical analysis, including SIMS, XPS and SPM techniques.
(Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) Paul Morrow, who will graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on May 17, has come a long way from his days as an elementary school student, pulling apart his mother's cassette player. The talented young physicist has developed two innovations that could vastly improve magnetic data storage and sense extremely low level magnetic fields in everything from ink on counterfeit currency to tissue in the human brain and heart.
(Wiley-Blackwell) Researchers led by Shu-Yan Yu have recently made a "golden crown" with a diameter of only a few nanometers, a large ring-shaped molecule containing 36 gold atoms.
(University of California - San Diego) University of California-San Diego electrical engineers have created experimental solar cells spiked with nanowires that could lead to highly efficient thin-film solar cells of the future.
(Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies) How does a company like Paris-based cosmetics leader L'Oreal -- which ranks No. 6 among nanotechnology patent holders in the US -- apply "The Precautionary Principle" to nanotechnology cosmetic products? What specific safety tests and post-market surveillance measures are used? How do US and European regulations differ when applied to nanotechnology products? How does L'Oreal communicate with customers about this cutting-edge technology?
(North Carolina State University) The arm of the federal government responsible for coordinating nanotechnology research and regulations across the country has called on experts from North Carolina State University to craft a white paper that will lay out how government and industry officials should communicate potential risks associated with nanotechnology to the media and the public. NC State communication expert Dr. David Berube has been negotiating this project for nearly 18 months.
(Harvard University) Applied scientists at Harvard University in collaboration with researchers from the German universities of Jena, Gottingen, and Bremen, have developed a new technique for fabricating nanowire photonic and electronic integrated circuits that may one day be suitable for high-volume commercial production.
(University of Oklahoma) Researchers at the OU Cancer Institute have identified a new gene that causes cancer. The ground-breaking research appears in Nature's cancer journal Oncogene.
