nanotech

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Cheers! Scientists have created what may be the world's first pill that can make you sober if you've gone a little too far with the booze. Russian meteorite fragments go up for sale online, as do Milla Jovovich's shorts. And later this year a man will have surgery to attach a bionic hand that can feel touch sensations. … Read more

A new line of men's suits from custom online menswear brand Indochino might not contain aloe vera and algae extracts like these new patootie-pampering blue jeans, but they still join the denims in the fancy-futuristic-fabric category.

The Ultimate Tech Collection boasts nanotech suits that supposedly repel liquid and stains and resist odors and wrinkles, all while staying breathable and comfortable. If the suits live up to their promise, you should be able to run through a rainstorm while sweating profusely, then break a ballpoint pen over your leg -- and still show up at the board meeting looking (and smelling) no worse for the wear. … Read more

When it comes to detecting a wide range of extremely faint scents, including the primary vapor that emanates from TNT-based explosives, dogs are the gold standard. But researchers out of the University of California at Santa Barbara, report in the journal Analytical Chemistry that they just may have man's best friend beat -- in the form of a fingerprint-sized silicon microchip.

"Like a person, a dog can have a good day or a bad day, get tired or distracted," Carl Meinhart, a mechanical engineering professor who led the research, said in a school news release. "We … Read more

Researchers have created the smallest room-temperature laser, a breakthrough that could lead to faster optical computers.

A group at the University of California at San Diego published a paper in Nature today that describes a new method for making lasers smaller than ever before. The technique allows for low-power lasers smaller than one micron in diameter. A human hair is about 600 microns wide and air-borne particles such as pollen are as small as 10 microns.

The advance in producing a low-power laser opens up many applications, according to the UC San Diego team. Nanolasers could be used to send … Read more

RavenBrick is developing a window that knows when it's hot enough for shade.

The Denver-based company has been working on a window coating that creates a heat-blocking tint triggered by the outdoor temperature. The company is in the process of raising $3 million in venture capital with plans to build a factory that will start operating in about a year, according to co-founder and President Wil McCarthy.

One of the trends in building design is to use large windows to bring in daylight, which creates a pleasing workspace and lowers the need for artificial lighting. One of the challenges … Read more

Rice University researchers are bending graphene to meet their needs with a technique that promises progress on the road to nano-scale electronic circuits.

In a paper published yesterday in Nature Communications, researchers describe a way to alter graphene into "hybrid superlattices," a material potentially suitable for electronics and optical devices.

Graphene, which is a one-atom thick layer of carbon atoms interconnected in a honeycomb structure, is touted as a wonder material for a variety of uses, including faster and smaller electronics. As a material, it has excellent electrical conductivity but because it is a semimetal, researchers are still … Read more

Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed tiny gold-studded scaffolds that can be used to build tissue in which cells have a synchronous beat, a possible repair tool for treating heart-attack victims.

In a study reported in Nature Nanotechnology, Daniel Kohane, a professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and colleagues improved the electrical conductivity of scaffolds used to grow cardiac cells.

They devised a new scaffold material but based it on alginate, an organic substance that's already used in tissue scaffolds. They combined the alginate with a solution containing gold nanowires, which are good conductors.

After cardiac cells were seeded on the composite scaffold, the researchers compared the conductivity of the gold-enhanced cells with cells grown on regular alginate. They checked each for the presence of calcium, which helps electrical signals travel in the tissue. … Read more

Imagine a day when doctors could inject you with cheap synthetic antibodies if your body wasn't producing enough of the virus- and bacteria-fighting proteins. While that scenario is a ways off, scientists from the University of California at Irvine may have taken the first step by successfully injecting "plastic antibodies" into the blood of mice to halt the spread of deadly bee venom.

The researchers created nanoparticle-size plastic polymers to encase melittin, a toxic peptide in bee venom that causes cells to rupture. Large quantities of melittin can lead to organ failure and death.

The researchers injected one group of mice with a lethal dose of melittin, and then injected them with the plastic antibodies.

The nanoparticles succeeded in "capturing" the antigens before they could disperse, thus greatly reducing deaths among the rodents, which also fared well in the weeks following the antibody injection, according to UCI chemistry professor Kenneth Shea, who worked on the project along with scientists from Stanford University and Japan's University of Shizuoka.

Mice in a separate control group were injected with the toxin but not the antibodies; they did not survive.

"Never before have synthetic antibodies been shown to effectively function in the bloodstream of living animals," Shea said. "This technique could be utilized to make plastic nanoparticles designed to fight more lethal toxins and pathogens." … Read more

Nanosheets are, by definition, ultrathin (nano being a billionth). But when scientists use the term "ultrathin nanosheet," they are being more than merely redundant.

Around the world, scientists working on nanosheets are locked in a race to find ever-thinner materials to meet ever-growing demands, for surgeries and supercapacitors alike. The recent unveiling of a biodegradable nanosheet that is just 20 nanometers thick pushes the researchers at Tokyo's Waseda University to the front of the pack.

Professor Shinji Takeoka of the Department of Life Science & Medical Bio-Science at Waseda says that nanosheets have powerful features for tissue … Read more