Free Republic

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...