Futurismic

Personally, I won’t believe it till I hear some guy on cable screaming about it at the top of his lungs. But how about a nanowire-mesh “paper towel” that can clean up 20 times its weight in oil, and recycle the gunk for future use? It might filter and purify water, too.

The new material appears to be completely impervious to water. “Our material can be left in water a month or two, and when you take it out it’s still dry,” [MIT materials scientist Francesco] Stellacci said. “But at the same time, if that water contains some hydrophobic contaminants, they will get absorbed.”

[Photos: Francesco Stellacci, MIT, and Nature Nanotechnology] [story via Gregory Frost]

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Well, as long as I’m posting about nanotechnology, check this out (Via PhysOrg):

Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light. Known as a “nanoimpeller,” the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.

The study was conducted jointly by Jeffrey Zink, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. A little further along in the press release:

The pores of the particles can be loaded with cargo molecules, such as dyes or anticancer drugs. In response to light exposure, a wagging motion occurs, causing the cargo molecules to escape from the pores and attack the cell. Confocal microscopic images showed that the impeller operation can be regulated precisely by the intensity of the light, the excitation time and the specific wavelength.

The cells they killed were only in vitro, of course, and there’s the usual caveat:

Tamanoi and Zink say the research represents an exciting first step in developing nanomachines for cancer therapy and that further steps are required to demonstrate actual inhibition of tumor growth.

The accomplishment is detailed in the nanotechnology journal Small. You can find the citation here, but you’ll have to pay to read the article.

And look out for the fine print. One would think that in a nanotechnology journal, it might be very fine indeed.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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A new $15 million research project is being launched to enable manufacturing at the almost unimaginably small scale of one atom at a time. (Via Responsible Nanotechnology.)

The technology is based on the established ability to remove individual hydrogen atoms from a silicon surface using a scanning tunneling microscope, and could enable a wide variety of devices and products, including:

* Ultra-low-power semiconductors for cellphones and other wireless communications.
* Sensors with ultra-high sensitivity.
* Data encryption orders of magnitude more secure than existing technology.
* Optical elements that enable unprecedented performance in computing and communications.
* Customized surfaces that would have an array of applications in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries.
* Nanoscale genomics arrays that would enable a person’s complete genetic sequence to be read in less than two hours.

The Atomically Precise Manufacturing Consortium is being led by Zyvex Labs LLC, a molecular nanotechnology company based in Richardson, Texas. The project includes a mixture of funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Texas Emerging Technology Fund and cost sharing from the team members.

As Mike Treder at the Responsible Nanotechnology blog notes:

This is still not quite equivalent to molecular manufacturing, but it does represent a major step along the way. And make no mistake, that is the eventual goal of this team.

(Image: Kristian Molhave, via Wikimedia Commons.)

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Nanotechnology is perhaps the most rapidly advancing new technology out there right now. All kinds of nanomachines based on biochemical mechanisms, tiny structures of metal or other techniques are being created and studied in universities and laboratories around the world.

Scientists have now created a device two billionths of a metre in size that could work as a chemical ‘brain’ for a group of nanomachines. Potentially this could lead to their use in medical techniques such as nano-surgery on tumours.

“If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there,” explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan. “But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place.”

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

“That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain,” he told BBC News.

[story and image via BBC Science/Nature. Thanks to Kian Momtahan for the link!]

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Oh, carbon nanotubes, is there anything you can’t do?  Researchers at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have come up with a radio, all of whose reception components are made of carbon nanotubes.  This is pretty much just a proof-of-concept, no one’s going to be mass-producing nano-radios anytime soon, and the actual amplifier and headphone jack can’t really be scaled down, limiting the lower size limit. 

What it does show is that nanotubes can be grown in arranged structures and the conductive properties are good enough that they may be a suitable replacement for silicon.  This is good news for solar manufacturers worried about a silicon shortage.  Not to mention it’d help with that pesky ewaste problem.  Listen to an interview with one of the researchers here.

(via Science Friday) (photo from flickr user jschneid)

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Via the blog Responsible Nanotechnology, Mike Treder, Executive Director of the Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology presents his thoughts on the state of the emerging science of nanotech, five year’s since the centre’s creation. He begins by highlighting the original positions made by CRN in 2003:

“Early in 2003, we published the following foundational statements that summarized CRN’s basic positions:

• Effective use of nanotechnology can benefit everyone.
• Unwise use of nanotechnology can be very dangerous.
• Nanofactory technology can be used safely.
• Preventing nanotechnology is impossible; careful study will be necessary for wise use.
• Effective use of nanotechnology will require intelligent and prudent policy-making.
• The situation is urgent; nanofactories may be developed within a decade.“

The following post then analyses each of these in turn, comparing things now in 2008 to how it was then back in 2003. There’s been a lot of progress in the field since then but they believe their assumptions remain true. As new ways to manipulate matter at the nanoscale are discovered, potential beneficial uses and dangers will increase exponentially. Theodore Judson’s forthcoming novel ‘The Martian General’s Daughter’ for instance, has a Roman-like empire collapsing because a nanotechnology plague is destroying the metal inside computers and equipment.

[DNA tetrahedron created by Andrew J. Turberfield, Department of Physics, University of Oxford. Image via Nanorex, Inc.]

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After work by Stanford University found that carbon nanotubes don’t seem to have any detrimental effect inside the bodies of mice, researchers are looking for more ways of utilising the growing technology in medicine. DARPA has awarded a grant to Rice university to study whether a carbon nanotube based pill would be a good way of treating radiation sickness. Radiation in the body deforms cells and molecules, releasing terribly damaging free radicals which then cause more damage to the body.

“More than half of those who suffer acute radiation injury die within 30 days, not from the initial radioactive particles themselves but from the devastation they cause in the immune system, the gastrointestinal tract and other parts of the body. Ideally, we’d like to develop a drug that can be administered within 12 hours of exposure and prevent deaths from what are currently fatal exposure doses of ionizing radiation,” said James Tour, Rice University’s Chao Professor of Chemistry and director of Rice’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.

The Carbon pills would absorb large quanties of the radiation within the body, as well as the free radicals, which could dramatically cut down on the post-exposure spread of damaged cells. As DailyTech mention in their article about the discovery, video game Fallout had carbon-based anti-radiation pills way back in 1997. The third Fallout game is being released this year by the makers of Oblivion, Bethesda, for your post-apocalyptic gaming pleasure.

[story and Fallout 3 teaser poster via DailyTech]

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Those nanoparticles sure are handy. Whether it’s increasing the efficiency of computer chips and solar cells, giving prosthetic limbs sensation or extending the lifetime and capacity of batteries, the applications of the rapidly advancing technology are seemingly endless.

A collaboration of researchers from the US Army and the University of Missouri-Columbia have found that by mixing a nanomaterial that acts as a fuel and one that acts as an oxidizer, they can create explosions that are on such a small scale they are useable within the human body. These ‘nanoengineered thermites’ can create shockwaves that can target drug-delivery to cancer cells, leaving nearby normal cells unharmed. They hope to bring the technology into a working prototype within 2 to 5 years.

[story and image via The Daily Galaxy]

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Two good examples of nanotechnology in action today from Science Daily. The first comes in the field of solar technology. There are two main forms of solar nanotech: thin films of nanoparticles like titanium oxide doped with nitrogen, and so-called ‘quantum dots’, tiny semiconducting crystals that absorb the energy from light to release conducting electrons. Scientists from California, Mexico and China have shown that both methods can be combined into one material that performs better together than either method alone!

The second article discusses LED lights, which use far less energy than even energy-saving flourescent bulbs. However, whilst LEDs work great for smaller uses like book-lights, computers or mobile phones, they aren’t bright enough to light a room. The method to improve this is to make thousands of tiny holes on the bulb itself, allowing more light to escape the LED. Whilst before this process has been extremely time and money intensive, using nanotechnology lithography to imprint the holes makes the process far cheaper - which could lead to a massive growth in usage of LEDs in our homes and gadgets.

EDIT: As Larry mentions in the comments, there’s also been great progress making solar antennas using nanoscale spirals imprinted onto the material. This method could be printed on flexible materials and potentially is as much as 80% Efficient. Thanks for the heads up Larry!

[via Science Daily, image via NIST]

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Glen Hiemstra of Futurist.com has a video on his home page called ‘Outlook 2008′ in which he discusses his five big stories for the coming year, plus a wild card. He talks about oil prices, the economy and the political changes (or non changes with the presidential elections so close to the end of the year) of 2008. Two more technological comments caught my eye.

He mentioned both Solar and Nano technologies as big movers in the coming year. In particular he highlighted NanoSolar, whose thin-film solar cells have just started reaching commercial grade at potentially cheaper prices than coal. The other company on his watch list was Altairnano, which uses ceramic nanomaterials to create long-living batteries that should see the market in a number of forms in 2008, including in electric cars such as the pictured Tesla Roadster.

His most interesting comment was in the ‘population’ section, talking about young entrepreneurs:

“The leading edge of the digital native generation is now 18-25 or so. The first generation to grow up in the personal computing and internet age is now at work. The venture capital world increasingly focuses on this generation, the very young creatives, for the breakthrough ideas. Thus 2008 marks a change-over to the next generation for innovation leadership.”

It will be interesting to see if these predictions come true. Other turn of the year predictions include a pessimistic James Kunstler and an optimistic 50-year prediction by Climate Progress.

[via Futurist.com, image by Jurvetson]

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According to researchers at Tsinghua University, nanotubes made from Boron could have many of the same properties as nanotubes made from carbon - and for some electronic applications, they should even be better than carbon:

Accoring to Xiaobao Yang, Yi Ding and Jun Ni from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, the best configuration for boron is to take the unstable hexagon lattice and add an extra atom to the centre of some of the hexagons. They calculate that this is the most stable known theoretical structure for a boron nanotube.

Their simulation also shows that, with this pattern, boron nanotubes should have variable electrical properties: wider ones would be metallic conductors, but narrower ones should be semiconductors. If so, then boron tubes might be used in nanodevices similar to the diodes and transistors that have already been made from carbon nanotubes.

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Lithium-ion batteries, such as those used in your laptop, mobile phone or hybrid car, are extremely important in today’s world but are limited by the amount of lithium ions that the typically carbon anode can hold. Stanford announced this week they’ve developed a new method that can increase the amount of charge held by as much as 10 times.

 The new battery uses what is perhaps the technology of the next ten years - nanowires.  At large scale, the swelling of the lithium ions when they absorb positive charge breaks the structure of the silicon holding them. The researches instead used a mesh of microscopic silicon nanowires that bend and swell under the pressure but do not break. The researcher, Yi Cui, said:

Manufacturing the nanowire batteries would require “one or two different steps, but the process can certainly be scaled up,” he added. “It’s a well understood process.”

 I’ll look forward to my laptop with 25 hour battery life in a few years, then.

[via Daily Kos, image from the Stanford article, apologies for my absence this week - I've been wrestling with my wireless connection on Ubuntu Gutsy]

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Bullets don’t just bounce off Superman, they don’t even slow him down. Real-life police and soldiers can’t say the same, even when they’re wearing a bulletproof jacket of Kevlar or something similar. Although bullets don’t penetrate–the bulletproof material spreads their force–the force is still tranmsitted to the tissue underneath the bulletproof shell, causing severe bruising or even organ damage.

Now engineers from the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology at the University of Sydney have found a way to use carbon nanotubes to not only stop bullets penetrating material but actually rebound their force, so bullets can be repelled with "minimum or no damage to the wearer of a bullet proof vest.” (Via Science Blog.)

If they can just nail the X-ray vision, super-strength and flying stuff, they can break out the red-and-blue tights. (Image from Wikimedia Commons.)

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Building off of Tomas’ post on nanowires and the cool stuff they can do, we see a letter to Nature discussing the possibility of nanowires that can be powered by the sun, thereby requiring no external power source.  Supposedly, these nanowires would be more efficient than a crystal in creating electricity from solar energy. 

(via Ars Technica) (image from Inexpressible is possible)

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While researchers at IBM’s Zurich Research Lab have devised a way to print particles as small as 60 nanometers in diameter using conventional lithography techniques, scientists from the University of Pennsylvania have used self-assembly, a process by which chemical reactants crystallize at lower temperatures mediated by nanoscale metal catalysts, to spontaneously form nanowires that were 30-50 nanometers in diameter and 10 micrometers in length.

The University of Pennsylvania scientists used germanium antimony telluride, which is a phase-changing material that switches between amorphous and crystalline structures. These phase-changes can be used to store data. The scientists were able to demonstrate a memory device that showed extremely low power consumption for data encoding (0.7mW per bit) while writing, erasing and retrieving data 1,000 times faster than conventional Flash memory. Tests also indicated the device would not lose data even after approximately 100,000 years of use. This all has the potential to realize a terabit-level nonvolatile memory device.

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So, for my first real post, how about some good news combining bioengineering and nanotechnology, making it very futurismic–er, futuristic. Whatever.

Researchers at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland have developed (and patented) a nanoparticle that, they believe, can deliver vaccines "more effectively, with fewer side effects, and at a fraction of the cost" of current vaccination methods.

Once upon a time, vaccines were made from dead-but-whole or living-but-weakened pathogens. Recently, researchers have figured out how to generate an immune response with a singe protein from a virus or bacterium. They’ve also discovered that the best way to get sustained immunity is to deliver an antigen directly to the specialized immune cells known as dendritic cells (DCs).

The trouble is, DCs aren’t all that common in skin or muscle, where injections are usually made, and in order to use them to activate the whole immune system, you also have to deliver a kind of "danger signal"–which there hasn’t been a good way to do, until now.

The new nanoparticles are so tiny they slip right through the skin and into the lymph nodes, where there are lots of DCs, and they carry a chemical coating that mimics the surface chemistry of bacterial cell walls. The result: a strong immune response without nasty side effects.

The researchers believe these nanoparticles could make it possible to vaccinate against diseases like hepatitis and malaria with a single injection, and at a cost of only a dollar a dose, far cheaper than current vaccines. The research team also plans to try using the technique to target cancer cells. And best of all, they say, the technique could be in use within five years. [Photo from Wikimedia Commons]

(Via Science Daily.)

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