Lifeboat Foundation

DNA used in a thermometer.

A thermometer 20,000-times smaller than a human hair has been developed by researchers using DNA that is capable of measuring temperatures within living cells.

The thermometer, unveiled this week in the journal Nano Letters, was built by scientists at the University of Montreal and is expected to improve human understanding of nanotechnologies.

Continue reading “DNA used to build the world’s smallest thermometer” »

Nano-particles to treat Acute Myeloid Leukaemia.

A new therapeutic strategy for treating Acute Myeloid Leukaemia could involve using nano-particles to deliver a genetic molecule to fight the disease.

The nanoparticles carrying microRNA miR-22, (a small non-coding RNA molecule that regulates gene expression), showed therapeutic potential in mouse models of Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML).

Continue reading “Nanoparticles may help treat blood cancer” »

Many recent big technological advances in computing, communications, energy, and biology have relied on nanoparticles. It can be hard to determine the best nanomaterials for these applications, however, because observing nanoparticles in action requires high spatial resolution in “messy,” dynamic environments.

In a recent step in this direction, a team of engineers has obtained a first look inside phase-changing nanoparticles, showing how their shape and crystallinity—the arrangement of atoms within the crystal—can have dramatic effects on their performance.

The work, which appears in Nature Materials, has immediate applications in the design of energy storage materials, but could eventually find its way into data storage, electronic switches, and any device in which the phase transformation of a material regulates its performance.

Researchers at Rice University are working on self-assembling wires that can move matter, essentially “force fields” powered by Tesla coils.

They’ve been working “very quietly,” said adjunct assistant professor Paul Cherukuri. He describes the project, which incorporates Tesla coils and nano-scale filaments, as “self-assembly at a distance.” The project started when the researchers were working with nanotubes, just seeing what they could do when pairing the coils with the electrification from Tesla coils.

Continue reading “A New Use for Tesla Coils: Self-Assembling Nanotubes” »

HANOVER, N.H., April 26 (UPI) — Proteins are the contractors of the nanoscale natural world, assembling and building at the atomic, molecular and cellular levels. Increasingly, materials scientists are working to harness that power.

Recently, researchers at Dartmouth College created protein capable of crafting buckyball molecules. “Buckyball” is a nickname for buckminsterfullerene molecules, a soccer ball-shaped molecule of 60 carbon atoms.

The newly synthesized protein organizes buckyballs into a periodic lattice — a wall of buckyballs.

Continue reading “New artificial protein assembles materials at the nanoscale” »

Thin films of crystalline materials called perovskites provide a promising new way of making inexpensive and efficient solar cells. Now, an international team of researchers has shown a way of flipping a chemical switch that converts one type of perovskite into another—a type that has better thermal stability and is a better light absorber.

The study, by researchers from Brown University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Qingdao Institute of Bioenergy and Bioprocess Technology published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, could be one more step toward bringing perovskite solar cells to the mass market.

“We’ve demonstrated a new procedure for making solar cells that can be more stable at moderate temperatures than the perovskite solar cells that most people are making currently,” said Nitin Padture, professor in Brown’s School of Engineering, director of Brown’s Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation, and the senior co-author of the new paper. “The technique is simple and has the potential to be scaled up, which overcomes a real bottleneck in perovskite research at the moment.”

Continue reading “Flipping a chemical switch helps perovskite solar cells beat the heat” »

Very nice.

Many technologies rely upon nanomaterials that can absorb or release atoms quickly and repeatedly. New work by Jennifer Dionne’s research group provides a first look inside these phase-changing nanoparticles, showing how their shape and crystallinity affect their performance for battery applications.

In a new study, researchers detail the culturing and transfecting of cells with genetic material on an array of carbon nanotubes, which appears to overcome the limitations of other gene editing technologies.

Gene editing techniques hold great promise. They allow targeted and specific edits of genes, and have nearly limitless possibilities in the field of medicine.

Which is not to say that they are perfect. These techniques still have a range of limitations, from precision to toxicity. But a new study shows that can be changed.

Continue reading “Gene Editing Made Easier, Thanks to Carbon Nanotubes” »

Who says playing around is a waste of time?

Researchers at the University of California at Irvine (UCI) said that’s exactly what they were doing when they discovered how to increase the tensile strength of nanowires that could be used to make lithium-ion batteries last virtually forever.

Researchers have pursued using nanowires in batteries for years because the filaments, thousands of times thinner than a human hair, are highly conductive and have a large surface area for the storage and transfer of electrons.

Continue reading “Scientists can now make lithium-ion batteries last a lifetime” »