Berkeley Lab’s nanotechnology enlivens Nanosys’ displays, enhancing the color and saving energy.
Outside his career as a noted nanochemist, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) director Paul Alivisatos is an avid photographer. To show off his photos, his preferred device is a Kindle Fire HDX tablet because “the color display is a whole lot better than other tablets,” he says. (more…)
What do Velcro, Tang, penicillin, the structure of DNA and the World Wide Web have in common?
They all involved serendipitous discoveries—chance discoveries made by alert, curious scientists who were looking for other things when they happened across a fortuitous finding. Rather than ignoring their accidental discoveries, these curious, open-minded scientists harnessed their luck. “Chance favors only the prepared mind,” as Louis Pasteur put it. (more…)
Thin films of spin ice have been shown to demonstrate surprising properties which could help in the development of applications of magnetricity, the magnetic equivalent of electricity.
Published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers based at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (LCN), in collaboration with scientists from Oxford and Cambridge, found that, against expectations, the Third Law of Thermodynamics could be restored in thin films of the magnetic material spin ice. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — Simply making nanoparticles spin coaxes them to arrange themselves into what University of Michigan researchers call ‘living rotating crystals’ that could serve as a nanopump. They may also, incidentally, shed light on the origin of life itself.
The researchers refer to the crystals as ‘living’ because they, in a sense, take on a life of their own from very simple rules. (more…)
Applications range from protective coating to sterilize hospital surfaces and medical equipment or as an injection to more effectively treat patients
SAN JOSE, Calif. – 24 Jan 2013: Researchers from IBM and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology revealed today an antimicrobial hydrogel that can break through diseased biofilms and completely eradicate drug-resistant bacteria upon contact. The synthetic hydrogel, which forms spontaneously when heated to body temperature, is the first-ever to be biodegradable, biocompatible and non-toxic, making it an ideal tool to combat serious health hazards facing hospital workers, visitors and patients.
Traditionally used for disinfecting various surfaces, antimicrobials can be found in traditional household items like alcohol and bleach. However, moving from countertops to treating drug resistant skin infections or infectious diseases in the body are proving to be more challenging as conventional antibiotics become less effective and many household surface disinfectants are not suitable for biological applications. (more…)
Nanotechnology for drug delivery shows promise in treatment of pediatric leukemia
Nanotechnology developed by Delaware scientists could potentially deliver chemotherapy to children in a way that attacks cancer cells without harming healthy cells, greatly reducing side effects.
The work, conducted by researchers in the University of Delaware’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research, was published this month in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – A South American butterfly flapped its wings, and caused a flurry of nanotechnology research to happen in Ohio.
Researchers here have taken a new look at butterfly wings and rice leaves, and learned things about their microscopic texture that could improve a variety of products.
For example, the researchers were able to clean up to 85 percent of dust off a coated plastic surface that mimicked the texture of a butterfly wing, compared to only 70 percent off a flat surface. (more…)
UD professor reports smart fluids research in scientific journal
Imagine a computer chip that can assemble itself.
According to Eric M. Furst, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at the University of Delaware, engineers and scientists are closer to making this and other scalable forms of nanotechnology a reality as a result of new milestones in using nanoparticles as building blocks in functional materials.
Furst and his postdoctoral researchers, James Swan and Paula Vasquez, along with colleagues at NASA, the European Space Agency, Zin Technologies and Lehigh University, reported the finding Sept. 17 in an article in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS) online edition. (more…)
