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Iron-laden nanoparticles make non-toxic stem cell labels for magnetic resonance imaging. Imaging agents are used to enhance the resolution in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which allows internal structure of the body to be visualised. Xiaoyuan Chen at the National Institute of Health, Bethesda, has modified iron-oxide nanoparticles to make non-toxic and more efficient imaging agents.  The iron nanoparticles can enter cells without killing them Iron oxide has been used for cell labelling before but transfection agents are needed to aid uptake into cells. This can make them toxic and result in cell death, particularly in sensitive cell lines such as stem...

Nov 15, 2009 — Biomimetics is the new science of imitating nature – but why not save a step, and just copy the design directly?  That’s what Aussie and British researchers did.  They wanted a self-cleaning surface that could repel moisture and dust, so they made a template of an insect wing.  And why not?  “Insects are incredible nanotechnologists,” reported Science Daily.  Their wings are self-cleaning, frictionless and super-water-repellant. Insect wings have these properties due to their properties at the scale of billionths of a meter.  “For instance, some wings are superhydrophobic, due to a clever combination of natural chemistry...

Enlarge ImageStoking Fears. A new study has raised fresh concerns about nanoparticles, but they may be unfounded. Credit: Nandiyanto/Wikimedia The headlines are laced with fear. "Nanoparticles 'can damage DNA.'" "Nanoparticle Safety Looking More Complicated." "Nanoparticles Indirect Threat to DNA." All seem to suggest that a new study, released yesterday, has found that nanoscale materials, used in everything from medical imaging to cancer treatment, can damage genetic material in our bodies, feeding public fears. But this particular study has little relevance to human exposure risks, experts say, and it is deeply flawed in other ways. "I think it's a meaningless...

An Oopart (Out Of Place ARTifact) is a term applied to dozens of prehistoric objects found in various places around the world that, given their level of technology, are completely at odds with their determined age based on physical, chemical, and/or geological evidence. Ooparts often are frustrating to conventional scientists and a delight to adventurous investigators and individuals interested in alternative scientific theories. In 1991, the appearance of extremely tiny, coil-shaped artifacts found near the banks of Russia’s Kozhim, Narada, and Balbanyu rivers brought about a debate that has continued to this day. These mysterious and minuscule structures suggest that...

Vincenzo Amendola and Moreno Meneghetti, at the University of Padova, Italy, take inspiration from nature to design materials that can repair themselves.Nature uses self-healing in all living systems to repair damage caused by environmental interactions. A simple case is repairing a skin wound - without this mechanism, we could not live. DNA repair, which must occur routinely in every living organism, is another example. But at what level do repairing mechanisms occur? Looking at the components of a living system, we find cells, which typically have micrometre dimensions. But we have to zoom in further, namely to the nanoscale, to...

US and French scientists say the term 'nanoparticle' needs to be redefined to provide a focus for environmental, health and safety studies, and future regulation. According to the researchers, nanomaterials should be categorised based on novel properties that are related to their small size - not, crucially, their size alone.In most countries, few or no specific regulations exist to govern the safe use of nanoparticles, despite their wide use in cosmetics, sun screens and some drug products. Until a decision can be reached on what exactly constitutes a nanoparticle, however, there can be no clear path forward. Although traditionally thought...

German researchers have developed a hybrid, light activated nanomaterial that can target, label and kill harmful antibiotic resistant bacteria such as Escherichia coli. The zeolite-based material may one day play a major role in both diagnosing and treating infectious diseases and possibly cancer, suggests the team.So-called 'photodynamic therapy' is a well-established technique in which a light source is used to trigger the action of a light-sensitive drug, and is already used to treat cancer and macular degeneration. However, scientists have been eager to develop cheaper therapeutic approaches with more functions. One such approach would be to develop a single nanomaterial that...

Nanotechnology – the art and science of manipulating matter at the scale of 1 to 100 nanometers – is a field with seemingly limitless potential. But if researchers and politicians = are not careful, that potential will vanish. Nanotech firms have a choice between being entrepreneurs, or being corporate welfare recipients. They choices they make today could determine whether the future of nanotech is one of dynamism and innovation, or one of dull, bureaucratic stasis. A nanotech boom is already underway. Just this week, the number of products that scientists have invented or improved passed the 1,000 mark. In two...

Could nanoparticles cause some lung damage?C. Juste/Miami Herald/Newscom Claims that seven Chinese factory workers developed severe lung damage from inhaling nanoparticles are stoking the debate over the environmental-health effects of nanotechnology.A paper published in the European Respiratory Journal claims to be the first to document cases of ill health caused by nanoparticles in humans (Y. Song, X. Li and X. Du Eur. Respir. J. 34, 559 - 567; 2009). Other experts are sceptical as to whether nanoparticles are actually to blame, but the paper has triggered lively discussions."The study raises the bar for doing appropriate research as fast as possible to...

USresearchers have made nano-sized boxes from nickel and tin - marking the first time that patterned 3D structures have been built on the nanoscale. The boxes and fabrication process could have great potential for making interesting nanostructures, for applications ranging from electronics to drug delivery.'I'm interested in miniaturising the world,' says David Gracias, who led the research at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US. 'We have a lot of nanotechnology techniques that allow us to build very well in 2D - but building in 3D is more difficult.'The cubes resemble tiny dice around 100nm in size - patterned on each side with the university initials,...

Researchers creating the tiny engines that could drive mini-starshipsMassive particle accelerators are exploring the world of the very small, but similar technology may someday propel needle-sized spacecraft to distances on a scale so large as to be almost unimaginable — between star systems. Thanks to research on nano-sized thrusters that act like portable particle accelerators, tiny spacecraft might be accelerated to near-lightspeed and sent to explore nearby stars — perhaps within our lifetimes.

Researchers at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland have created nanocapacitors capable of both high power concentrations and large storage capacities. Traditionally, capacitors offer high levels of power discharge and batteries offer large amounts of storage but this is the first time scientists have managed to combine both properties in the same device, albeit one too small to be practical.   Arrays of capacitors shown in an electron micrograph overlaid onto a diagram outlining their design (Credit: A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland) The new battery system, developed by Gary Rubloff and his team...

Common table salt - normally a brittle crystalline material - can be pulled into nanowires that will extend by more than twice their own length without breaking, US researchers have found. Nathan Moore and his team at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, were investigating water adsorption onto salt crystals using an interfacial force microscope (IFM) to probe the salt surface when they stumbled upon their discovery. 'When we poked the salt surface, we saw some unusual force behaviour [between the tip of the microscope probe and the surface]. It seemed crazy at the time, but we thought: "could...

Nanotechnology will tap into your HEARTBEAT and footsteps to charge phones - and most everything else. The researchers have also developed nano-powered biosensors to be embedded in humans as well.

Israel is the promised land for technology. Israel became a high-tech hothouse because she had to. Ambition for a better quality of life and higher standards of living has led to the creation of an export-driven economy. And most Israelis are aware that the ability to sell and succeed in the international marketplace is dependent on their products being more innovative and better priced than those of the country’s competitors. According to Larry Ellison, the founder of Oracle, "What's really different about Israel compared with other places we do business is the number of partners we have in the technology...

Home Business & Finance News U.S. Politics International Technology Entertainment Sports Lifestyle Oddly Enough Environment Health Science Special Coverage Video Pictures Your View The Great Debate Blogs Weather Reader Feedback Do More With Reuters RSSRSS Feed Widgets Mobile Podcasts Newsletters Your View Make Reuters My Homepage Partner Services CareerBuilder Affiliate Network Professional Products Support (Customer Zone) Reuters Media Financial Products About Thomson Reuters Experts use nanotech to deliver anti-cancer genes Tue Mar 10, 2009 12:31pm EDT Email | Print | Share | Reprints | Single Page [-] Text [+] LONDON (Reuters) - British scientists said on Tuesday they had developed...

A group of researchers led by Peidong Yang, a professor of chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, have recently created nanoscale particles that can self-assemble into various optical devices. These include photonic crystals, metamaterials, color changing paints, components for optical computers and ultrasensitive chemical sensors, among many other potential applications. The new technology works by controlling how densely the tiny silver particles assemble themselves.   Professor Peidong Yang (Credit: University of California, Berkeley) The nanoparticles have been used to increase the sensitivity of arsenic detection by an order of magnitude. Researchers also made a very robust kind of photonic...

Photonic circuit in which optical force is harnessed to drive nanomechanics. New Haven, Conn. — Science fiction writers have long envisioned sailing a spacecraft by the optical force of the sun’s light. But, the forces of sunlight are too weak to fill even the oversized sails that have been tried. Now a team led by researchers at the Yale School of Engineering & Applied Science has shown that the force of light indeed can be harnessed to drive machines — when the process is scaled to nano-proportions. Their work opens the door to a new class of semiconductor devices that...

Combining a nanotech method of getting genes inside cancer cells with genetic engineering of a potent suicide gene driven by control signals that are very active only in cancer cells effectively killed cell lines derived from pancreatic cancer, a deadly cancer for which there is currently no effective treatment. From Thomas Jefferson University, via AAAS EurekAlert “Jefferson scientists deliver toxic genes to effectively kill pancreatic cancer cells“:

One of our family’s reasons for immigrating from Russia to the West (in 1972) was the danger to the free West from totalitarian societies like Russia and China. But hey presto! In 1986, Eric Drexler had finished a cycle of his nano research and published the results in a volume, entitled “Engines of Creation” and containing a chapter entitled “Engines of Destruction,” such as weapons that can destroy a country without the latter’s retaliation, that is, without “mutually assured destruction.” What is “mutually assured destruction”? Every powerful nuclear country can prepare a secret depository of nuclear bombs. After an enemy...

A drug developed using nanotechnology and a fungus that contaminated a lab experiment may be broadly effective against a range of cancers, U.S. researchers reported on Sunday. The drug, called lodamin, was improved in one of the last experiments overseen by Dr. Judah Folkman, a cancer researcher who died in January. Folkman pioneered the idea of angiogenesis therapy -- starving tumors by preventing them from growing blood supplies. (snip) "I had never expected such a strong effect on these aggressive tumor models," she said. The researchers believe lodamin may also be useful in other diseases marked by abnormal blood vessel...

This newspaper is printed on paper made from cellulose fibers obtained from wood pulp. The fibers are fairly large, on the order of tens of micrometers wide, and the resulting paper is fairly weak — pulls on it and it tears easily. Researchers in Sweden and Japan have developed a much stronger paper, made from much smaller fibrils of cellulose. This "nanopaper" has a tensile strength greater than that of cast iron. Marielle Henriksson of the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and colleagues used enzymes and a gentle beating technique to produce fibrils on the order of tens of...

Enlarge ImageDangerous similarity.Long, multiwalled nanotubes (bottom) and asbestos (top) cause similar chronic inflammation in mice.Credit: C. A. Poland et al., University of Edinburgh The poster child for the nanotechnology revolution, the nanotube, is beginning to look a bit like the poster child of environmental contamination, asbestos. New research with mice suggests that certain nanotubes can cause potentially dangerous inflammation similar to that caused by asbestos, the culprit behind the worst occupational health disaster in United States history. Discovered nearly 20 years ago, carbon nanotubes have been described as the wonder material of the 21st century. Light as plastic and...

Researchers at Boston College and MIT have used nanotechnology to achieve a major increase in thermoelectric efficiency, a milestone that paves the way for a new generation of products -- from semiconductors and air conditioners to car exhaust systems and solar power technology -- that run cleaner. The team's low-cost approach, details of which are published in the journal Science, involves building tiny alloy nanostructures that can serve as micro-coolers and power generators. The researchers said that in addition to being inexpensive, their method will likely result in practical, near-term enhancements to make products consume less energy or capture energy...

BriefingAs big as a bed sheet, and the carbon won't rub off.NANOCOMP TECHNOLOGIES A company in the United States has made a sheet from tiny carbon nanotubes. Nature News finds out whether bigger is better when it comes to the very small. I thought the whole point about carbon nanotubes was that they are 'nano' — really, really small. True. As the name implies, nanotubes are on the order of 10-9 metres in size: they are famed for being thinner than human hair, and are typically less than a millimetre long. But they pack a lot of punch into such...

Is nanotechnology morally acceptable? For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans' attitudes about the science of the very small. Addressing scientists in Boston today (Feb. 15, 2008) at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, presented new survey results that show religion exerts far more influence on public views of technology in the United States than in Europe. "Our data show a much lower percentage of people who agree that nanotechnology is morally acceptable...

BOSTON, MA - China aims to leapfrog the United States in technological development with substantial investment in nanotechnology, but whether those efforts will actually pay off is still unclear. That was the message from University of California at Santa Barbara researchers presenting their findings on the state of Chinese nanotechnology here at the AAAS annual meeting. Richard Applebaum and Rachel Parker from the Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UCSB conducted about sixty interviews with Chinese officials to piece together a picture of the current state of Chinese nanotechnology. Applebaum set the specific research effort within the context of China's...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Transistor radios tinier than a grain of sand, made using nanotechnology, can not only tune in to the traffic report, but may end up outperforming current silicon-based electronics, U.S. researchers said on Monday. The researchers made the microscopic radios out of carbon nanotubes -- tiny strands of carbon atoms -- and say in theory they could lead to faster devices. They overcame a series of obstacles that have defeated efforts to make nano-radios, including getting amplification, by making their devices on quartz wafers. "Our goal is not to make tiny radios per se, but really to develop...

Indians had the know-how for nanotechnology, one of the latest branches in science, from 18th century only, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry said on Monday. Robert F Curl, the Nobel Laureate, said right from the 18th Century, Indians were using nanotechnology, and the sword of Tipu Sultan is one example. However, he refused to comment as to whether they were using it knowingly or unknowingly. Similarly, there are examples of the use of nanotechnology in preparing glass in Rome, he said speaking to media persons on the sidelines of a lecture. He also said that there are several examples of...

There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom An Invitation to Enter a New Field of Physics by Richard P. Feynman I imagine experimental physicists must often look with envy at men like Kamerlingh Onnes, who discovered a field like low temperature, which seems to be bottomless and in which one can go down and down. Such a man is then a leader and has some temporary monopoly in a scientific adventure. Percy Bridgman, in designing a way to obtain higher pressures, opened up another new field and was able to move into it and to lead us all along. The...

Opening King Tut's tomb brought to light treasures and curses hidden for thousands of years. One of the lat ter still haunts us -- the curse of King Tut's tooth. Tut, like many teenagers, needed a tooth extraction, in his case, an impacted wisdom tooth. Sadly, ancient Egyptian dentistry was unable to help the boy-pharaoh, as extractions were done only on very loose teeth, by the gentle touch of fingers. Even forceps (pliers) were probably not employed until long after Tut died. Astonishingly, modern dental extraction procedures are still mired in the technology of the an cient world. Recently, I...

Science Daily — St. Andrews scientists have discovered a new way of levitating tiny objects - paving the way for future applications in nanotechnology. Artist's impression of a mirror levitating using a repulsive version of the Casimir effect. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of St Andrews) Theoretical physicists at the University of St. Andrews have created 'incredible levitation effects' by engineering the force of nature which normally causes objects to stick together by quantum force. By reversing this phenomenon, known as 'Casimir force', the scientists hope to solve the problem of tiny objects sticking together in existing novel nanomachines. Professor...

Presto chango! Dumping graphene oxide particles in water (top) causes them to begin binding together spontaneously into superstrong sheets.Credit: Rod Ruoff Researchers have developed a remarkably simple way to convert ordinary graphite particles into very thin but superstrong sheets that are tougher than steel and as flexible as carbon fiber but can be made much more cheaply. The discovery could spawn entirely new types of materials for applications as diverse as protective coatings, electronic components, batteries, and fuel cells. For tensile strength and stiffness, carbon is king. So it's no surprise that scientists have been working for years to develop...

Possible New Bio-Terrorist Attack on US

Researchers have developed a new material that can fill in its own surface cracks.Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have made a polymer material that can heal itself repeatedly when it cracks. It's a significant advance toward self-healing medical implants and self-repairing materials for use in airplanes and spacecraft. It could also be used for cooling microprocessors and electronic circuits, and it could pave the way toward plastic coatings that regenerate themselves. The first self-healing material was reported by the UIUC researchers six years ago, and other research groups have created different versions of such materials since...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A cheap glue that gets stronger at high temperatures might be useful around the house, but make it 100,000 times thinner than a human hair and you have nanoglue, a sticky substance that could help make extremely tiny computer chips, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday. Developed by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, nanoglue is made from ultrathin materials that are already commercially available. "It is really mind-boggling to think about a single layer of molecules improving the adhesion of something," said materials science researcher Ganapathiraman Ramanath, whose work appears in the journal Nature....

Caption: Design student Olivia Ong '07 hugs two garments, treated with metallic nanoparticles through a collaboration with fiber scientists Juan Hinestroza and Hong Dong, that she designed as part of her fashion line, "Glitterati." Fashion designers and fiber scientists at Cornell have taken "functional clothing" to a whole new level. They have designed a garment that can prevent colds and flu and never needs washing, and another that destroys harmful gases and protects the wearer from smog and air pollution. The two-toned gold dress and metallic denim jacket, featured at the April 21 Cornell Design League fashion show, contain...

China is increasing its competitiveness in the nanotechnology market, according to research announced Friday. The United States is still a leader in nanotech, but the low cost of doing business in China is boosting that country's ranking for nanotech research and development investments, according to a report that Lux Research released Friday. Public and private groups invested $12.4 billion in the industry's research and development worldwide in 2006, while companies sold more than $50 billion worth of nano-enabled products, according to the report, "Profiting from International Nanotechnology." Lux researchers viewed government spending, patents, publications, and other metrics to analyze the...

The first molecular keypad lock which works like by entering a series of numbers in a pre-set sequence has been designed by chemists at the Weizmann Institute. The main difference is that the Rehovot scientists created a molecule that can function like a super-miniaturized keypad locking mechanism. Their work recently appeared in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. What possible uses are there for minuscule keypads? They aren't likely to become a practical alternative to today's anti-theft devices. But Shanzer believes this first-ever design will lead to new inventions in other areas such as information security and even medicine....

It's no secret that China's economy is fast becoming an economic powerhouse, but I wasn't prepared for the signs everywhere of hyperactive growth when I landed in China last month to meet with numerous advanced materials start-ups and fellow venture capitalists. Shanghai and Beijing are cityscapes of cranes operating in every direction around the clock. Everywhere highways and buildings were being raised, and the presence of Western investors and businesspeople was ubiquitous. Clearly, change is coming to China on a massive scale. But it is also happening at the nanoscale. China is now rapidly trying to catch up to the...

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) -- The U.N. called Monday for tighter regulation on technology to change or create materials at the atomic and molecular level, a process being used to develop new drugs, foods and other commercial products. In its annual report of the global environment, the U.N.'s Environment Program said ''swift action'' was needed by policy makers to properly evaluate the new science of nanotechnology. Although nanotechnology could transform electronics, energy industries and medicine, more research is needed to identify environmental, health and socio-economic hazards, Achim Steiner, who heads UNEP, said in the 87-page report. The report was released on...

The first in a new generation of nanotechnology-based cancer treatments will likely begin clinical trials in 2007, and if the promise of animal trials carries through to human trials, these treatments will transform cancer therapy. By replacing surgery and conventional chemotherapy with noninvasive treatments targeted at cancerous tumors, this nanotech approach could reduce or eliminate side effects by avoiding damage to healthy tissue. It could also make it possible to destroy tumors that are inoperable or won't respond to current treatment. One of these new approaches places gold-coated nanoparticles, called nanoshells, inside tumors and then heats them with infrared light...

In the nanoworld, three square millimeters is pretty big territory A droplet of liquid and a few seconds are all that researchers need to produce neatly spaced ridges of molecules that cover a huge area--at least by the standards of nanotechnology. In a feat of so-called self-assembly, a group reports that disk-shaped molecules can stack themselves by the millions into lines of up to a millimeter in length and covering several square millimeters. The process might help ease the fabrication of sensors such as liquid crystal displays (LCDs) that register the presence of offending chemicals. "You just drop a droplet...

Chemists at Rice University have discovered how to assemble gold and silver nanoparticle building blocks into larger structures based on a novel method that harkens back to one of nature's oldest known chemical innovations -- the self-assembly of lipid membranes that surround every living cell. The research appears in the Nov. 29 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS 2006, 128, 15098). Researchers believe the new method will allow them to create a wide variety of useful materials, including extra-potent cancer drugs and more efficient catalysts for the chemical industry.The method makes use of the hydrophobic effect,...

An individual "dopant" atom has been spied interfering with the flow of electrons through a silicon transistor for the first time. Researchers say the feat could help scientists squeeze more power out of conventional computers and ultimately develop silicon-based quantum computers. Dopants are chemical impurities that affect the flow of electrons through a conducting or semiconducting material. They are deliberately added to pure silicon, for example, to create different types of electronic component. To analyse a lone dopant atom in action, Sven Rogge and colleagues at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands cryogenically cooled 35-nanometre-wide silicon wires, taken from...

WASHINGTON -- Consumer products using extremely small particles of silver to kill germs will need Environmental Protection Agency approval, part of the government's first move to regulate the burgeoning nanotechnology industry. The EPA said Wednesday it was changing federal policy to require that manufacturers provide scientific evidence that their use of nanosilver won't harm waterways or public health. Environmentalists and others are concerned that after the material is discarded and enters the environment, it may be killing helpful bacteria and aquatic organisms or even pose a risk to humans. Nanosilver is used to kill germs in shoe liners, food-storage containers,...

Carbon nanotubes are no longer the proud boast of 21st century materials scientists. It appears their discovery was unwittingly pre-empted by mediaeval Muslim sword-smiths whose tough Damascus blades taught the Crusaders the true meaning of cold steel when they fought over the Holy Land. Peter Paufler and colleagues at Dresden’s Technical University discovered carbon nanotubes in the microstructure of a 17th century Damascus sabre. Intriguingly, the nanotubes could have encapsulated iron-carbide nanowires that might give clues to the mechanical strength and sharpness of these swords. To Europeans, Damascus steel blades seemed magical. Not only could they cut a piece of...

Researchers at MIT's George R. Harrison Spectroscopy Lab have detected tiny twitches and vibrations in the membranes of individual cells and neurons by using a powerful and noninvasive imaging technique. Down the line, Michael Feld, director of the lab, hopes to use the technique to create three-dimensional images, illuminating even finer activities within living cells. The goal, says Feld, is to "study the structure of a living cell and the way it changes as circumstances change." Today's molecular imaging techniques come with a host of pros and cons. Among the most widely practiced techniques is electron microscopy, which creates highly...

Secret's out for Saracen sabres 15 November 2006 NewScientist.com news service DURING the middle ages, the Muslims who fought crusaders with swords of Damascus steel had an edge - a very high-tech one. Their sabres contained carbon nanotubes. From about AD 900 to AD 1750, Damascus sabres were forged from Indian steel called wootz. Peter Paufler of the Technical University of Dresden, Germany, and colleagues studied samples of a 17th-century sword under an electron microscope and found clear evidence of carbon nanotubes and even nanowires. The researchers think that the sophisticated process of forging and annealing the steel formed the...

A way of controllably shrinking carbon nanotubes has been developed by US researchers. They say the technique could someday be used to make faster computers and other novel electronic devices. Carbon nanotubes have been used to make a variety of different nanoscale electronic devices, including sensors and transistors. These can outperform conventional components, working at higher frequencies and sensitivities, thanks to the novel physical and electronic properties of nanotubes. These properties, however, depend strongly on the dimensions of each tube. And, until now, there has been no reliable way to make nanotubes to order. This means "nanotube device fabrication is...