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An artificial "black hole" designed to capture wayward atoms has been created. It paves the way for an atom trap that could yield previously unknown states of matter. A team led by Lene Hau of Harvard University has mimicked the death spiral of matter falling into a cosmic black hole by applying a voltage across a carbon nanotube – a rolled-up sheet of carbon atoms. This created a powerful electric field that tugged at nearby rubidium atoms, which had been chilled to a fraction of a degree above absolute zero: a positive charge on the surface of the nanotubes attracts...

Techniques used to image tumours and infections improve when the carbon nanotube 'contrast agents' are gold plated, researchers in the US have discovered. The gold plating reduces the nanotubes' potential toxicity while boosting their effect as contract agents, thereby allowing far fewer of them to be used for the same effect.Doctors use both photoacoustic and photothermal imaging to examine diseased tissue. The techniques involve shining a laser onto the tissue and measuring either the emitted heat - that is, the infrared radiation - or ultrasound. By adding contrast agents, such as pigmented biomolecules, the tissue responds better to the laser and...

MSSC Salinity Summit 2008Posted January 11, 2008 by Categories: Water Desalination Research and Development Last February I wrote a piece called California Solar’s Revolutionary Energy Business Model for Desalination PumpsYuck. Lousy title.The point of the piece was that sometime in the future California public utilities might be able to offload a part of their energy costs for pipeline pumping–by using net metering.Along the way I mentioned that photo voltaic companies like NanoSolar would be collapsing the cost of solar power. This past December NanoSolar made good on their promise. Nanosolar (as recorded in Popular Science Magazine) is now producing solar...

Researchers at IBM have overcome an important obstacle to building computers based on carbon nanotubes, by developing a way to selectively arrange transistors that were made using the carbon molecules. The achievement, described in the current issue of Nano Letters, could help make large-scale integrated circuits built out of carbon nanotubes possible, leading to ultrafast, low-power processors. For decades, the size of silicon-based transistors has decreased steadily while their performance has improved. As the devices approach their physical limits, though, researchers have started looking to less conventional structures and materials. Single-walled carbon nanotubes are one prominent candidate -- already researchers...

SEATTLE--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 25, 2005--LiftPort Group, the space elevator companies, today announced plans for a carbon nanotube manufacturing plant, the company's first formal facility for production of the material on a commercial scale. Called LiftPort Nanotech, the new facility will also serve as the regional headquarters for the company, and represents the fruition of the company's three years of research and development efforts into carbon nanotubes, including partnering work with a variety of leading research institutions in the business and academic communities. Set to open in June of this year, LiftPort Nanotech will be located in Millville, New Jersey, a community...