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A $16 device could provide a family of five with clean water for an entire year About 780 million people—a tenth of the world’s population—do not have access to clean drinking water. Water laced with contaminants such as bacteria, viruses, lead and arsenic claims millions of lives each year. But an inexpensive device that effectively clears such contaminants from water may help solve this problem. Thalappil Pradeep and his colleagues at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras developed a $16 nanoparticle water filtration system that promises potable water for even the poorest communities in India and, in the future, for...

A state representative in Massachussetts is being investigated after allegedly sending pictures of his genitals to a government computer. The investigation is ongoing and the committee has not formally reprimanded the individual in charge, but it is being widely reported that Democratic State Representative John Fresolo is the one behind the scandal.

Some scientists question the existence of self-assembling stripes on nanoparticles © NPGA prickly controversy has erupted in the rarefied world of nanoscience revolving around the strength of the evidence that molecules can assemble themselves into discrete stripes around gold nanoparticles. The issue highlights the difficulty of interpreting images of nanoscale objects.For many years researchers have been decorating gold nanoparticles with thiolated ligands to imbue the nanoparticles with a range of properties. In 2004, a group led by Francesco Stellacci, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, published a paper in Nature Materials demonstrating that if two different...

Nanotechnologies that deliver fertilizers to plants offer promising ways of improving farm productivity while reducing the risk of water contamination. But the scientists behind a new Swiss-funded study caution that while the technology is still evolving, potential risks must be considered. The European Union’s Horizon 2020 research program proposes heavy investment in developing materials and machines that are built from an atomic or molecular scale, with the European Commission proposing some €6 billion ($7.7 billion) in financing for nano and other advanced technologies. A UN Food and Agriculture Organization conference held earlier this year in Rome identified nanotechnology as potentially...

New nanotechnology can be used for Type 1 diabetes, food allergies and asthma New nanoparticle tricks and resets immune system in mice with MSFirst MS approach that doesn't suppress immune systemClinical trial for MS patients shows why nanoparticle is best optionNanoparticle now being tested in Type 1 diabetes and asthma CHICAGO --- In a breakthrough for nanotechnology and multiple sclerosis, a biodegradable nanoparticle turns out to be the perfect vehicle to stealthily deliver an antigen that tricks the immune system into stopping its attack on myelin and halt a model of relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) in mice, according...

Enlarge Image Nanopower. Yarn made of intertwined carbon nanofibers and wax can expand and contract like muscle. Credit: Images Courtesy of Science/AAAS Here's a twist: Scientists have designed a flexible, yarnlike artificial muscle that can also pack a punch. It can contract in 25 milliseconds—a fraction of the time it takes to blink an eye—and can generate power 85 times as great as a similarly sized human muscle. The new muscles are made of carbon nanotubes filled with paraffin wax that can twist or stretch in response to heat or electricity. When the temperature rises, the wax melts and...

French researchers have made the longest molecular machines that can be shrunk on demand in a collective motion that emulate muscle fibres.1Nicolas Giuseppone from the University of Strasbourg and his teammates linked together strings of around 3000 macromolecular daisy-chain rotaxane monomers that contract under basic conditions. The resulting polymer went from 15.8 µm to 9.4 µm, movement in the range of that produced by sarcomere proteins, the basic building blocks of muscle. That amplifies a single daisy-chain rotaxane’s contraction by nearly four orders of magnitude, Giuseppone tells Chemistry World. ‘This is a result long expected by the community, but it...

Nature assesses the aftermath of a series of nanotechnology-lab bombings in Mexico — and asks how the country became a target of eco-anarchists. The shoe-box-sized package was addressed to Armando Herrera Corral. It stated that he was the recipient of an award and it was covered in official-looking stamps. Herrera, a computer scientist at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in Mexico City, shook the box a number of times, and something solid jiggled inside. What could it be? He was excited and a little nervous — so much so, that he walked down the hall to the...

http://phys.org/news/2012-08-explore-li-air-battery-reversibility-nanoscale.html Researchers explore Li-air battery reversibility on the nanoscale August 8, 2012 by Lisa Zyga (Phys.org) – Researchers explore Li-air battery reversibility on the nanoscale August 8, 2012 by Lisa Zyga (Phys.org) ----------------------------------------As their name suggests, Li-air batteries use air to operate, pulling out oxygen molecules to use in a porous, carbon-based cathode, while using lithium in the anode. Because using air means the battery doesn’t have to store a heavy charge source at the cathode, the batteries can provide an extremely high energy density, holding nearly as much energy in a given volume as gasoline, and 5-10 times...

Galleries - (1) INVISIBLE EYES The animal kingdom boasts many an impressive form, from arching giraffe necks to spoon-shaped bird beaks to gigantic beetle claws. But evolution has worked on much smaller scales too, producing finely honed nanostructures--parts less than a millionth of a meter across, or smaller than 1/20th of the width of a human hair--that help animals climb, slither, camouflage, flirt, and thrive. ......

Think of it as Liquid-Plumr for the circulatory system. Researchers have designed a clump of tiny particles that rides the current of the bloodstream, seeks out life-threatening blood clots, and obliterates them. The approach works in mice and could soon move on to human trials. Blood clots are bad news for the brain, heart, and other organs. These masses of blood cells can grow big enough to choke off veins and arteries, preventing oxygen from flowing to critical organs. One of the chief obstacles to dealing with blood clots is finding where they have lodged in the body. Even if...

President Barack Obama, accompanied by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, center, holds a silicon wafer, as they tour the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at State University of New York at Albany's Nano-Tech complex, Tuesday, May 8, 2012, in Albany, N.Y., with Chris Borst, assistant V.P. for Engineering and Integration. ALBANY — Using the University at Albany's nanotechnology center as a backdrop, President Barack Obama delivered a speech about the U.S. economy that touted a combination of private and public funds that go into the high-tech school.He also fired a broadside at Republicans in Congress who he blamed for...

Nanoparticles heated by radio waves switch on genes in mice Researchers have remotely activated genes inside living animals, a proof of concept that could one day lead to medical procedures in which patients’ genes are triggered on demand. The work, in which a team used radio waves to switch on engineered insulin-producing genes in mice, is published today in Science1. Jeffrey Friedman, a molecular geneticist at the Rockefeller University in New York and lead author of the study, says that in the short term, the results will lead to better tools to allow scientists to manipulate cells non-invasively. But with...

Researchers in the US have created a DNA-based nanorobot that can work its way through cell cultures, delivering cargo only at specific targets. The development could pave the way for programmable therapeutics, in which nanorobots would provide medical treatment only to certain types of cell or tissue.  The DNA barrel only opens to release its cargo at specific cells © AAAS The field of nanomachines has taken off in recent years, mostly thanks to so-called DNA origami. In this technique, DNA strands can be folded controllably into a structure, onto which different molecules can be attached. Researchers have already shown...

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Researchers at I.B.M. have stored and retrieved digital 1s and 0s from an array of just 12 atoms, pushing the boundaries of the magnetic storage of information to the edge of what is possible. The findings, being reported Thursday in the journal Science, could help lead to a new class of nanomaterials for a generation of memory chips and disk drives that will not only have greater capabilities than the current silicon-based computers but will consume significantly less power. And they may offer a new direction for research in quantum computing. “Magnetic materials are extremely useful...

Enlarge Image Flipping brilliant! Using only light, scientists can switch this little bridge of silicon between its "bowed up" configuration (top) and its "bowed down" configuration. Credit: M. Bagheri et al., Nature Nanotechnology, Advance Online Publication (2011) The feeble force of light alone can flip a nanometer-sized mechanical switch one way or the other, a team of electrical engineers reports. The little gizmo holds its position without power and at room temperature, so it might someday make a memory bit for an optical computer. Other researchers say it also introduces a promising new twist into the hot field of...

Researchers in the UK and Belgium have measured the work performed by a single manmade molecule. The result demonstrates that manmade molecules can generate similar forces to natural molecular machines, and could help chemists to design artificial molecular machines for meaningful tasks. Many biological molecules can perform useful work. The protein motors kinesin and dynein, for example, transport cargo around cells using the chemical energy stored in ATP, the chemical fuel of biological systems. Scientists have created their own molecular machines that perform useful work, such as moving liquid droplets uphill or rotating microscale objects. But these synthetic machines have all...

The theoretical physicist and author of 'Physics of the Future' talks about how nanotechnology will change our lives.Will the future bring us the teleportation devices of "Star Trek" or the sinister machines of "The Matrix"? Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku of the City College of New York says that many of the things that were once the domain of science fiction — cars that navigate rush-hour traffic on their own, wallpaper that can switch colors when you remodel, an elevator that takes you into outer space — are already here, or well on their way. His book "Physics of the Future,"...

Scientists in the US and Singapore have made self assembling micelles of cationic polymers that kill bacteria but are biodegradable - raising further hope of a nanotechnology solution to the problem of antibiotic resistance.Conventional antibiotics typically kill by penetrating the cell wall and disrupting vital cellular processes inside. But bacterial resistance to such antibiotics is growing because bacteria that survive treatment go on to proliferate, thereby spreading their genetic advantage.Some cationic peptides can kill bacteria by disrupting the cell wall of the bacteria instead, and resistance in this case is less likely to arise. But these peptides are often toxic to the host and...

Enlarge Image All together now. Arrays of silicon tips with a springlike polymer support can pattern materials cheaply over large areas. Credit: C. Mirkin/Northwestern University Someday, nanotechnologists fancy, they'll be able to build materials atom by atom from the bottom up, LEGO-style. Right now they're still working on the two-dimensional equivalent: writing ultrafine lines and dots of selected molecules on ultrasmooth surfaces. Unfortunately, all the molecular "pens" developed so far have been either too blunt-tipped or too costly for broad use. Now a new technique might enable nanotechnologists to quickly and cheaply write molecular features across a large area....