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Tag: nanotechnology

  • 3D Printed Nanomachines May Soon Be A Reality

    3D printing is usually used to create visible objects. It’s very rare that we get to see people experimenting in the creation of nanoscale objects. The few experiments in the field thus far have been used in medical applications, but the future may in fact lie in manufacturing.

    Aalto University researchers have found a way to shape 3D objects by creating bends with compressive stress induced by an ion beam. It’s utterly fascinating, and could lead to a future of simple nanoscale manufacturing.

    So where does 3D printing fit into all of this? The above technology is all about the shaping of objects. It can’t be used to create the actual parts that power the devices. In the future, 3D printers will be able to create the necessary components needed to power these incredibly small devices.

    Fabbaloo suggests that the technology can be used to create the invisible machines of the future. It seems like something out of science fiction, but nanotechnology is becoming more advanced all the time. It won’t be long until we have thousands of nanomachines floating around in our bloodstreams and regulating our health.

    Until then, the rest of us can appreciate the artistry that’s inherent to science. For those who want to dig a bit deeper, the researchers have posted their findings on this wiki. It also includes the various publications that they’re work has been featured in. Anybody with even a passing interesting in nanoelectronics will want to check it out.

    [h/t: Kurzweil]

  • Pee: Bill Gates’ Latest Investment To Save The World

    Do you recall a Time article last year that featured Bill Gates’ latest idea to improve sanitation in the developing and poorer areas of the world with the bold idea of turning human waste into a usable natural resource? He talked the talk, and now he’s walking the walk.

    You may have heard that the next big thing to worry about after the oil shortage crisis – if we even survive that – will be a shortage of clean drinking water. Lack of access to clean water is already a dire situation in developing and poorer parts of the world, but that problem looks to become a global pandemic if humans don’t come up with something to confront the shortage. But Bill Gates is on the case: he’s investing in a new technology that would effectively turn your urine-mixed toilet water into clean, refreshing drinking water.

    The Microsoft founder is reportedly funding a new technology that’s currently being developed at Manchester University. Dr. Sarah Haigh, who specializes in the nanotechnology field of transmission electron microscopy, spoke with the Daily Mail about the funding she’s received from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to pursue the research. She says that by constructing a scaffold into a toilet’s design containing a mix of nanoparticles and bacteria would “react with the water to extract useful hydrogen, with the remainder filtered again to produce clean water.”

    Her research team has already received $100,000 to get started but if they can demonstrate that their technology actually works, they stand to receive an additional $1 million to develop their research.

    But Bill Gates isn’t done with your pee just yet.

    The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have also invested in something called microbial fuel cells (MFCs) that will essentially transform urine into electricity. The Foundation is financing a research proposal by a team at the Bristol Robotics Lab in the United Kingdom who plan create a sustainable source of natural energy from urine and “other waste-streams” (wanna guess what that is?). Dr. Ioannis Ieropoulos, one of the researchers working on the project, believes that this type of technology could change the course of humanity’s future.

    Dr Ieropoulos said: “Urine is chemically rich in substances favourable to the MFCs. At the moment the output from one MFC is small. Through this study and the related work carried out by our group over the years, we were able to show that by miniaturisation and multiplication of the number of MFCs into a stack and regulating the flow of urine, it may be possible to look at scales of use that have the potential to produce useful levels of power, for example in a domestic or small village setting.”

    What’s the saying, “We’re the ones we’ve been waiting for”? Think about that the next time you flush the toilet and consider that sometime in your lifetime, that may very well be how you stay hydrated and keep the lights on.

    [Via Daily Mail & Fuel Cell Dispatch.]

  • Nanotechnology Leaps Forward With New Cancer Drug

    Nanotechnology Leaps Forward With New Cancer Drug

    A team of scientists, engineers and physicians have found promising effects of a first-in-class targeted cancer drug called BIND-014 in treating solid tumors.

    BIND-014 is the first targeted and programmed nanomedicine to enter human clinical studies. In the study, the researchers demonstrate BIND-014’s ability to effectively target a receptor expressed in tumors to achieve high tumor drug concentrations, as well as show remarkable efficacy, safety and pharmacological properties compared to the parent chemotherapeutic drug, docetaxel (Taxotere).

    “BIND-014 demonstrates for the first time that it is possible to generate medicines with both targeted and programmable properties that can concentrate the therapeutic effect directly at the site of disease, potentially revolutionizing how complex diseases such as cancer are treated,” said Omid Farokhzad, MD, a physician-scientist in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital Department of Anesthesiology, associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and study co- senior author.

    “Previous attempts to develop targeted nanoparticles have not successfully translated into human clinical studies because of the inherent difficulty of designing and scaling up a particle capable of targeting, long-circulation via immune-response evasion, and controlled drug release,” said Robert Langer, ScD, David H. Koch Institute Professor, MIT and study co-senior author.
    According to the researchers, the drug is the first of its kind to reach clinical evaluation and demonstrates a differentially high drug concentration in tumors by targeting drug encapsulated nanoparticles directly to the site of tumors. This leads to substantially better efficacy and safety.

    “It is wonderful to witness a world-class team of scientists, engineers, physicians, for-profit and non-project organizations converge to develop this potentially revolutionary technology for treatment of cancers. The effectiveness of this team has been remarkable and serves as model for translational research” said Edward J. Benz, Jr. MD, President of Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

    The research and development of the first targeted programmable nanomedicine to show anti-tumor effects in humans represents the culmination of more than a decade of investigation initially carried out in academic labs at BWH and MIT.

  • Carbon Nanotube Scale Can Weigh a Single Proton

    A group of scientists at the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Barcelona, Spain have succeeded in creating a scale so sensitive that it can measure accurately to the smallest unit of mass – the yoctogram. A yoctogram is one-septillionth of a gram, and a proton weighs about 1.7 yoctograms, meaning the scale is sensitive enough to measure a single proton.

    The scale doesn’t work the same way a larger scale might. The abstract for the team’s paper, published yesterday in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, states that the scale uses the carbon nanotubes as a nanomechanical resonator that can detect absorption events of naphthalene molecules and measure the binding energy of a xenon atom on the nanotube surface. They state these sensitive scales could have applications in mass spectrometry, magnetometry, and surface science.

    NewScientist is reporting that Adrian Bachtold, one of the authors of the paper, said the team used short nanotubes. Short nanotubes give the best resolution and work at the low temperatures best for measuring frequency. They performed their measurements in a vacuum, and the nanotubes were heated shortly before measuring to disrupt any bonds to atoms.

    Though I can’t even imagine how small a yoctogram is, I’m sure something that can measure such small things will be useful, especially for biological applications, in the near future. So, How useful do you find such a sensitive scale? Ever added up how many yoctograms you weigh? Let me know in the comments section below.

  • Nanopills Release Meds Inside Cells

    Nanopills Release Meds Inside Cells

    UAB researchers developed a new vehicle to release proteins with therapeutic effects. The vehicles are known as “bacteria inclusion bodies”, stable insoluble nanoparticles which are found normally in recombinant bacteria. Even though these inclusion bodies traditionally have been an obstacle in the industrial production of soluble enzymes and biodrugs, they were recently recognised to have large amounts of functional proteins with direct values in industrial and biomedical applications.

    The research team led by Antoni Villaverde from the Institute of Biotechnology and Biomedicine (IBB) at UAB worked to verify the value of these nanoparticles as natural “nanopills” with a strong capacity to penetrate cells and carry out biological activities. The nanopill concept represents a new and promising platform for drug administration and illustrates the yet to be explored power of microbial materials in medicine.

    The researchers, in a multidisciplinary study at UAB led by Dr Esther Vàzquez, packaged four proteins containing different therapeutic effects into experimental nanopills, the inclusion bodies of the bacteria Escherichia coli. They put the bacteria in contact with cell cultures of mammals under similar conditions to those found in real clinical pathologies, “sick” cells with low viability, and achieved to recover their activity.

    Once the technology was licensed to Janus Developments, the tolerance of its administration in vivo was confirmed through experiments conducted by UAB researcher Ester Fernández. The results and detailed description of the “nanopill” were published in the last issue of the journal Advanced Materials.

  • Spray-On Antennas Unveiled at Google’s Solve For X Event

    At Google’s Solve for X fest, Chamtech Operations unvelied thier new nanotech-based spray-on antenna kit, for use on existing antennas, as well as relatively antenna-shaped, upright builds.

    The science is basically nano-capacitors in a can, that can be sprayed onto a tree or a pole to make an antenna. The “paint” also can boost an existing antenna’s signal by over 100 times, and if put underwater, it can send a radio signal a mile.

    Chamtech asserts that their spray-on nanotech makes existing antennas more energy-efficient by limiting the amount of heat they put off, but the obvious boost in signal ranges has more profound implications. While it is not too clear how one would go about picking the right sized tree to transmit the right signal, existing antennas are perfect to be coated with the nano-paint. To have a signal boosted from 1.5 to 200 meters in a matter of minutes is a pretty big deal, and Chamtech’s underwater capabilities might help to solve historically difficult submarine communication.

  • Nanowelding With Light – Amazing Possibilities

    A team of engineers at Stanford has demonstrated a promising new nanowire welding technique that harnesses plasmonics to fuse the wires with a simple blast of light.

    At the heart of the technique is the physics of plasmonics, the interaction of light and metal in which the light flows across the surface of the metal in waves, like water on the beach.

    “When two nanowires lay crisscrossed, we know that light will generate plasmon waves at the place where the two nanowires meet, creating a hot spot. The beauty is that the hot spots exist only when the nanowires touch, not after they have fused. The welding stops itself. It’s self-limiting,” explained Mark Brongersma, an associate professor of materials science engineering at Stanford and an expert in plasmonics.

    “The rest of the wires and, just as importantly, the underlying material are unaffected,” noted Michael McGehee, a materials engineer and also senior author of the paper. “This ability to heat with precision greatly increases the control, speed and energy efficiency of nanoscale welding.”

    To demonstrate the possibilities, they applied their mesh on Saran wrap. They sprayed a solution containing silver nanowires in suspension on the plastic and dried it. After illumination, what was left was an ultrathin layer of welded nanowires.

    “Then we balled it up like a piece of paper. When we unfurled the wrap, it maintained its electrical properties,” said co-author Yi Cui, an associate professor materials science and engineering. “And when you hold it up, it’s virtually transparent.”

    This could lead to inexpensive window coatings that generate solar power while reducing glare for those inside, the researchers said.

    In a similar vein of research, Justin Hall-Tipping of “Nanoholdings” explains some of the aims of nanotechnology here: