NanoComputer

 In the super-small world of nanostructures, a team of polymer scientists and engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered how to make nano-scale repairs to a damaged surface equivalent to spot-filling a scratched car fender rather than re-surfacing the entire part. The work builds on a theoretical prediction by chemical engineer and co-author Anna Balazs at the University of Pittsburgh. Their discovery is reported this week in the current issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

The new technique has many practical implications, especially that repairing a damaged surface with this method would require significantly smaller amounts of material, avoiding the need to coat entire surfaces when only a tiny fraction is cracked, says team leader and UMass Amherst polymer scientist Todd Emrick. "This is particularly important because even small fractures can then lead to structural failure but our technique provides a strong and effective repair. The need for rapid, efficient coating and repair mechanisms is pervasive today in everything from airplane wings to microelectronic materials to biological implant devices," he adds. 

Source: http://www.umass.edu/newsoffice/newsreleases/articles/144533.php

Dreamweaver International Inc, an US company based  in Greenville, South Carolina, has developed a new non woven battery separator made from a combination of nanofibers that provides 300% higher power. The technology allows  higher transmission of electricity in the battery, improving the power available in electric vehicles, power tools and other high power applications. 

The job of a battery separator is to be a perfect barrier between the electrodes, while also acting as a perfect window to the electrolyte. Because of the above attributes, the technology allows for thinner, lighter and smaller batteries.

Source: http://www.dreamweaverintl.com/

By shining infrared light on specially designed, gold-filled silicon wafers, scientists at The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (Houston, Texas) have successfully targeted and burned breast cancer cells. If the technology is shown to work in human clinical trials, it could provide patients a non-invasive alternative to surgical ablation, and could be used in conjunction with traditional cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy, to make those treatments more effective.

"Hollow gold nanoparticles can generate heat if they are hit with a near-infrared laser," said Research Institute Assistant Member Haifa Shen, M.D., Ph.D., the report's lead author. "Multiple investigators have tried to use gold nanoparticles for cancer treatment, but the efficiency has not been very good — they'd need a lot of gold nanoparticles to treat a tumor. "Instead, Shen and his colleagues turned to a technology developed by the study's principal investigator, Mauro Ferrari, Ph.D., to amplify the gold particles' response to infrared light.

"We developed a system based on Dr. Ferrari's multi-stage vector technology platform to treat cancers with heat," Shen said. "We found that heat generation was much more efficient when we loaded gold nanoparticles into porous silicon, the carrier of the multistage vectors."

The research is presented in the first issue of the new Advanced Healthcare Materials, a Wiley journal.

Source: http://www.methodisthealth.com/breast-cancer-cells-targeted-then-burned-by-gold-filled-silicon-wafers

How noisy is a walking flea? What sort of sound waves are caused by motile bacteria? Phycisists at the Nanosystems Initiative Munich (NIM) have managed for the first time to detect sound waves at such minuscule lengh scales. Their nanoear is a single gold nanoparticle that is kept in a state of levitation by a laser beam. Upon weak acoustic excitation the particle oscillates parallel to the direction of sound propagation. The scientists led by Dr. Adurey Lutich, who is member of Prof. Jochen Feldmann's group at LMU Munich, managed to detect such tiny displacements using a dark-field microscope and an ordinary video camera. The nanoear is capable of detecting sound levels of approximatively *60dB. Thus, it is about a million times more sensitive than the hearing threshold of the human ear, which by convention is set at 0 dB.

Trapped gold nanoparticle (left) acts as nanoear

The new method realized by the Munich physicists opens a new world to scientists: for the first time, otherwise imperceptibly weak motions – minuscule sound waves – can be visualized. The researchers developed the nanoear in two stages. “First, we validated the basic principle using a relatively strong sound source” group leader Andrey Lutich explains. “In the second step we were able to detect significantly weaker acoustic excitations.” The main element in both cases is a gold nanoparticle, 60 nm in diameter, which is kept in levitation by a so-called optical trap us­ing a red laser. Each of the experiments was done in a small water drop on a cover slide. 
Source: http://www.nano-initiative-munich.de/en/news/news/article/1/a-nanoear-to-listen-into-the-s/

Scientists from IBM and the German Center for Free-Electron Laser Science (CFEL) have built the world's smallest magnetic data storage unit. It uses just twelve atoms per bit, the basic unit of information, and squeezes a whole byte (8 bit) into as few as 96 atoms. A modern hard drive, for comparison, still needs more than half a billion atoms per byte. The team present their work in the weekly journal Science (13 January 2012). CFEL is a joint venture of the research centre Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, the Max-Planck-Society (MPG) and the University of Hamburg.  "With CFEL the partners have established an innovative institution on the DESY campus, delivering top-level research across a broad spectrum of disciplines," says DESY research director Edgar Weckert.

 An illustration of I.B.M.'s technique for storing data on a single atom. An iron atom on a copper surface could store a single bit of binary data, with "0" or "1" indicated by the orientation of the atom's magnetic field. 

Source: http://www.desy.de/information__services/press/pressreleases/@@news-view?id=2141&lang=eng

In the images of fruit flies, clusters of neurons are all lit up, forming a brightly glowing network of highways within the brain. It's exactly what University at Buffalo researcher Shermali Gunawardena was hoping to see: It meant that ORMOSIL, a novel class of nanoparticles, had successfully penetrated the insects' brains. And even after long-term exposure, the cells and the flies themselves remained unharmed.

The particles, which are tagged with fluorescent proteins, hold promise as a potential vehicle for drug delivery. Each particle is a vessel, containing cavities that scientists could potentially fill with helpful chemical compounds or gene therapies to send to different parts of the human body. Gunawardena is particularly interested in using ORMOSIL — organically modified silica — to target problems within neurons that may be related to neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease.

Source: : http://www.buffalo.edu/news/13116

The narrowest conducting wires in silicon ever produced are shown to have the same electric current arrying capability as copper. This means electrical interconnects in silicon can be shrunk to the atomic-scale without losing their functionality - Ohm's law holds true at the atomic-scale. The University of New South Wales  (UNSW) researchers will use these wires to address individual atoms – a key step in realising a scalable nanocomputer."Interconnecting wiring of this scale will be vital for the development of future atomic-scale electronic circuits," says the lead author of the study, Bent Weber, a PhD student in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Quantum Computation and Communication Technology at UNSW, in Sydney, Australia, supervised by Dr Michelle Simmmons.

Driven by the semiconductor industry, computer chip components continuously shrink in size allowing ever smaller and more powerful computers,” Simmons says. “Over the past 50 years this paradigm has established the microelectronics industry as one of the key drivers for global economic growth.  A major focus of the Centre of Excellence at UNSW is to push this technology to the next level to develop a silicon-based nanocomputer, where single atoms serve as the individual units of computation,” she says. “It will come down to the wire. We are on the threshold of making transistors out of individual atoms. But to build a practical quantum computer we have recognised that the interconnecting wiring and circuitry also needs to shrink to the atomic scale.”

Source: http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/

The wires were made by precisely placing chains of phosphorus atoms within a silicon crystal, according to the study, which includes researchers from the University of Melbourne and Purdue University in the US.

 Engineering researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (Troy, New-York, USA) have developed a new method for creating advanced nanomaterials that could lead to highly efficient refrigerators and cooling systems requiring no refrigerants and no moving parts.

The key ingredients for this innovation are a dash of nanoscale sulfur and a normal, everyday microwave oven.  You do not need to spend more than 40$!

Source: http://news.rpi.edu/update.do?artcenterkey=2971&setappvar=page(1)

Honing chemotherapy delivery to cancer cells is a challenge for many researchers. Getting the cancer cells to take the chemotherapy "bait" is a greater challenge. But perhaps such a challenge has not been met with greater success than by the nanotechnology research team of Omid Farokhzad, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH)- Department of Anesthesiology Perioperative and Pain Medicine and Research.
In their latest study with researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Massachusetts General Hospital, the BWH team created a drug delivery system that is able to effectively deliver a tremendous amount of chemotherapeutic drugs to prostate cancer cells.

The process involved is akin to building and equipping a car with the finest features, adding a passenger (in this case the cancer drug), and sending it off to its destination (in this case the cancer cell).

Source: http://www.healthnoise.com/articles/getting-cancer-cells-to-swallow-poison
MIT; http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/61142

A new form of graphene created by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin could prevent laptops and other electronics from overheating, ultimately, overcoming one of the largest hurdles to building smaller and more powerful electronic devices. The research team, which includes colleagues at The University of Texas at Dallas, the University of California-Riverside and Xiamen University in China, published its findings online today in the Advance Online Publication of Nature Materials. The study will also appear in the print journal of Nature Materials. Led by Professor Rodney S. Ruoff in the Cockrell School's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Materials Science and Engineering Program, the research demonstrates for the first time that a type of graphene created by the University of Texas researchers is 60 percent more effective at managing and transferring heat than normal graphene.

"This demonstration brings graphene a step closer to being used as a conductor for managing heat in a variety of devices. The potential of this material, and its promise for the electronic industry, is very exciting," said Ruoff, a physical chemist and Cockrell Regents Family Chair, who has pioneered research on graphene-based materials for more than 12 years.

Source: http://www.me.utexas.edu/directory/faculty/ruoff/rodney/

A scientific  team is creating a synapse using carbon nanotubes. Engineering researchers of  the University of Southern California have made a significant breakthrough in the use of nanotechnologies for the construction of a synthetic brain. They have built a carbon nanotube synapse circuit whose behavior in tests reproduces the function of a neuron, the building block of the brain. (Physorg April 21.2011).
 

Meanwhile a nanocomputer research team at Harvard University  have succeeded a major milestone towards the first nancocomputer, which if  connected to medical research can produce an huge progress for humanity. predicting the feasibility of artificial brains in the future. The researchers from USC focus on biomimetic neural models and electronic circuits that implement those models.  Complexities in modeling biological neural tissue are discussed.  Estimates are given for the size of artificial neural systems based on CMOS technology in 2021, without considering interconnections. Some solutions to the problem of interconnecting neurons are proposed.

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-04-functioning-synapse-carbon-nanotubes.htm

Researchers at the Pennsylvania State University have now introduced a new bubble-free, high efficient nanomotor system that involves the operation of a miniaturized copper-platinum nanobattery. Their work has been published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS) ("Autonomous Nanomotor Based on Copper–Platinum Segmented Nanobattery"). In this paper, first-authored by Ran Liu, a Ph.D. researcher in Ayusman Sen's group, they demonstrate that this motor system is significantly more efficient than the previously described bimetallic systems, such as platinum-gold segmented nanorod in hydrogen peroxide.

 Click on the picture to see the astonishing video!

The nanomotor described by Liu and Sen is based on self-propelling of template-synthesized copper-platinum bimetallic nanowires in either bromine or iodine diluted solutions. The motion is due to self-electrophoresis induced by the redox reaction occurring at the two electrodes of the copper-platinum nanobattery.

Scientists in Duke University have managed to create a reusable DNA chip from which DNA building blocks may be photocopied and used to create unique nanoscale structures.  Ishtiaq Saaem, a biomedical engineering researcher at Duke, commented: “We found we had an “immortal” DNA chip on our hands. Essentially, we were able to do the biological copying process to release material off the chip tens of times". "The process seems to work even using a chip that we made, used, stored in -20C for a while, and brought out and used again". “I would not be surprised if this methodology is used to fabricate the next generation of microprocessors that can push Moore’s law even further.”

Duke University researchers have used an inkjet printer head to place droplets of chemicals on the plastic chip, slowly building a DNA strand of various length and composition. The researchers were surprised, subsequently discovered the chip could be reused.
http://www.duke.edu/

Berkeley Lab chemist Jay Groves and his team successfully tested  hybrid membranes on a line of breast cancer cells known as MDA-MB-231 that is highly invasive. The team demonstrated that in the absence of cell adhesion molecules, the membrane remained essentially free of the cancer cells, but when both the gold nanoparticles and the lipid were functionalized with molecules that promote cell adhesion, the cancer cells were found all over the surface. Gold nanoparticle membranes are used to study both cancer metastasis and T cell immunology.

Biology is a game of nanometers, where spatial differences of only a few nanometers can determine the fate of a cell – whether it lives or dies, remains normal or turns cancerous. Groves  and his group have used supported membranes to demonstrate that living cells not only interact with their environment through chemical signals but also through physical force.
Source: Berkeley Lab’s Physical Biosciences Division and the University of California (UC) Berkeley’s Chemistry Department 

A protein that plays a major role in tumour spread at nanoscale could pave the way to new cancer treatments, research suggests. In laboratory tests, scientists showed that blocking the protein, periostin, prevented the formation of secondary cancers. Rather than focusing on cancer cells themselves, the researchers looked at the environment around tumours.They found several conditions necessary for "metastatic" – or spreading – cancer to propagate.

"In particular, we were able to isolate a protein, periostin, in the niches where metastases develop," said study leader Dr Joerg Huelsken, from the Swiss Centre for Experimental Cancer Research in Lausanne. "Without this protein, the cancer stem cell cannot initiate metastasis; instead, it disappears or remains dormant."

Source: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature10694.html

One of the problems affecting the human nervous system is dopamine deficiency. But testing of dopamine concentration is costly and requires sophisticated equipment not available in a doctor's office. Enter a team of Polish scientists who developed a method enabling the detection of dopamine in solutions both easily and cheaply, even in the presence of interferences. The study is an outcome of the NOBLESSE ('Nanotechnology, biomaterials and alternative energy source for the European Research Area (ERA)) and is  published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

Scientists at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS) in Warsaw coated new electrodes with carbon nanoparticles deposited on silicate submicroparticles to get the targeted result. They applied the electrodes so as to determine dopamine concentration in solutions in the presence of uric and ascorbic acids, and paracetamol, substances that get in the way of dopamine analysis.

This latest development to detect dopamine could clear the path for securing fast and inexpensive medical tests that doctors can use even in their offices. This information will help physicians determine the likelihood of a patient suffering from popular nervous system disorders including Parkinson's disease.

Source; http://ec.europa.eu/research/infocentre/article_en.cfm?id=/research/headlines/news/article_11_11_28_en.html&item=Infocentre&artid=23333

Using clever but elegant design, University at Buffalo chemists have synthesized tiny, molecular cages that can be used to capture and purify nanomaterials. Sculpted from a special kind of molecule called a "bottle-brush molecule," the traps consist of tiny, organic tubes whose interior walls carry a negative charge. This feature enables the tubes to selectively encapsulate only positively charged particles.

A transmission electron microscopy image of the organic nanotube traps, with color added through digital enhancement.

In addition, because UB scientists construct the tubes from scratch, they can create traps of different sizes that snare molecular prey of different sizes. The level of fine tuning possible is remarkable: In the Journal of the American Chemical Society, the researchers report that they were able to craft nanotubes that captured particles 2.8 nanometers in diameter, while leaving particles just 1.5 nanometers larger untouched.

Source: http://www.buffalo.edu/news/13057
Contact;: Charlotte Hsu – chsu22@buffalo.edu - tel; 716-645-4655

In the next 15 years, the nanotechnology  industry will be doing business in trillions". said  Prof CNR Rao, chairman of the scientific advisory council of  the fourth edition of Bangalore Nano in India.  .Customers can buy  already indian products in the chemical and cosmetic industry that use this technology. "But it is going be big in the health industry. It will be used in procedures like tissue engineering," he added.

At a press conference Prof Rao added , "The other forums of nano-technology focus mainly on the science behind it, but this event brings in the industry as well,". The scientist concluded: "India cannot afford to miss the nano-technology bus.".
The 4th edition of Bengalore Nano is an initiative by the state government's department of science and technology under the guidance of Vision Group on nano-technology

Source: http://www.bangalorenano.in/nano_2011/index.php

A team of scientists, led by Guillaume Gervais from McGill’s Physics Department and Mike Lilly from Sandia National Laboratories, has engineered one of the world's smallest electronic circuits. It is formed by two wires separated by only about 150 atoms or 15 nanometers (nm).

This discovery, published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, could have a significant effect on the speed and power of the ever smaller integrated circuits of the future in everything from smartphones to desktop computers, televisions and GPS systems.

Source: http://www.mcgill.ca/newsroom/news/item/?item_id=212756

In early 2011, the The Laboratory of Nanoscale Electronics and Structuresab (Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne) in Switzerland, unveiled the potential of molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂), a relatively abundant, naturally occurring mineral. Its structure and semi-conducting properties make it an ideal material for use in transistors. It can thus compete directly with silicon, the most highly used component in electronics, and on several points it also rivals graphene.

"The main advantage of MoS₂ is that it allows us to reduce the size of transistors, and thus to further miniaturize them," explains Andreas Kis, LANES director, who recently published two articles on the subject in the scientific journal ACS Nano. It has not been possible up to this point to make layers of silicon less than two nanometers thick, because of the risk of initiating a chemical reaction that would oxidize the surface and compromise its electronic properties. Molybdenite, on the other hand, can be worked in layers only three atoms thick, making it possible to build chips that are at least three times smaller. At this scale, the material is still very stable and conduction is easy to control.
Source; http://pubs.acs.org/action/doSearch?action=search&searchText=molybdenum+disulfide+&qsSearchArea=searchText&type=within&publication=40025957

Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have invented a new type of electronic switch that performs electronic logic functions within a single molecule. The incorporation of such single-molecule elements could enable smaller, , faster and more  energy-efficient electronics.

"This new switch is superior to existing single-molecule concepts," said Hrvoje Petek, principal investigator and professor of physics and chemistry in the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences and codirector of the Petersen Institute for NanoScience and Engineering (PINSE) at Pitt. "We are learning how to reduce electronic circuit elements to single molecules for a new generation of enhanced and more sustainable technologies."

The research findings, supported by a $1 million grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation, were published online in the Nov. 14 issue of Nano Letters.
Source: http://www.news.pitt.edu/molecularswitch

Researchers  from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) have reported the first solar cell that produces a photocurrent that has an external quantum efficiency greater than 100 percent when photoexcited with photons from the high energy region of the solar spectrum. The external quantum efficiency reached a peak value of 114 percent.

The newly reported work marks a promising step toward developing Next Generation Solar Cells for both solar  and solar fuels that will be competitive with, or perhaps less costly than, energy from fossil or nuclear fuels

Source: http://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2011/1667.html
A paper on the breakthrough appears in the Dec. 16 issue of Science Magazine. 

The tiny hairs on the abdomen of a cricket have inspired researchers at the University of Twente in Nederlands, to make a new type of sensor which is ultra sensitive to air flows. These synthetic cricket hairs can now also be tuned very precisely for a certain range of frequencies: the hairs are 10 times more sensitive in this range.

These hairs enable the cricket to feel/hear the approach of its enemies and estimate their distance and direction unerringly. These characteristics can be simulated by making a hair that is suspended in a flexible microsystem. The hair is made of polymer SU8, is 0.9 millimetre in length and is thicker at the base than at the top. The smallest movements are registered by the flexibly-suspended plate to which the hair is attached; the electrical capacity changes as a result and gives a measure for the movement. Potential applications include direction sensors used by robots and the study of very specific air flows. In the longer term, the synthetic hairs could also be used in hearing aids. The hairs can be made extra sensitive to certain frequencies in all these applications.
The researchers of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology are presenting these new results in the scientific journal Applied Physics Letters..
Source: http://www.utwente.nl/organization/stories/synthetic-cricket-pricks-up-its-ears

Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed a promising new inexpensive technique for fabricating large-scale flexible and stretchable backplanes using semiconductor-enriched carbon nanotube solutions that yield networks of thin film transistors with superb electrical properties, including a charge carrier mobility that is dramatically higher than that of organic counterparts.
To demonstrate the utility of their carbon nanotube backplanes, the researchers constructed an artificial electronic skin (e-skin) capable of detecting and responding to touch. mong the applications that have been envisioned are electronic pads that could be folded away like paper, coatings that could monitor surfaces for cracks and other structural failures, medical bandages that could treat infections and food packaging that could detect spoilage. From solar cells to pacemakers to clothing, the list of smart applications for so-called “plastic electronics” is both flexible and stretchable. First, however, suitable backplanes must be mass-produced in a cost-effective way.

Optical image of flexible and stretchable thin film transistor array covering a baseball shows the mechanical robustness of this backplane material for future plastic electronic devices.

Source: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/feature-stories/2011/12/13/flex-and-stretch-electronics/

Imec, Polyera and international chemical group Solvay have achieved a new world-record efficiency of 8.3% for polymer-based single junction organic solar cells in an inverted device stack. These excellent performance results represent a crucial step towards successful commercialization of organic photovoltaic cells.

Solar power is gradually becoming cost-competitive with traditional mainstream energy sources such as coal, oil, and nuclear. Continued reduction of manufacturing and installation costs of solar panels will further drive this cost-competitiveness. Organic solar cells are holding the promise of addressing these issues, due to their potential to be manufactured on large-areas at high-throughput, and on lightweight, flexible substrates (like plastic or textiles), significantly reducing transportation and installation costs. This, along with optical translucency, gives organic solar cells the potential to be cheaply integrated into everything from clothing to building facades and windows.

Source: http://www2.imec.be/be_en/press/imec-news/imecpolyerasolvayopv.html
 

CelluForce announces  the start of operations at the first manufacturing plant for NanoCrystalline Cellulose (NCC) in the world..Recyclable and renewable, NCC is an advanced material derived from wood fibre.It  improves strength, durability and toughness, and can reduce damage caused by wear, abrasion and light. This nanomaterial can also be incorporated into systems to make structures that are light reflective (tunable from ultraviolet to infrared), impermeable to gas and stable over time. The remarkable properties of this advanced material derived from wood fibre will lead to commercial applications largely exceeding those of traditional wood fibre products.

 A high-value nanomaterial, NCC is capable of transforming the performance of existing products and creating new unique and improved products for numerous industrial sectors.

Source: http://celluforce.com/en/medias_press_releases.php

Researchers from Bristol University in Great Britain, who have been developing quantum photonic chips for the past six years, are now working on scaling up the complexity of this device, and see this technology as the building block for the quantum computers of the future.“In order to build a quantum computer, we not only need to be able to control complex phenomena such as entanglement and mixture, but we need to be able to do this on a chip, in much the same way as the modern computers we have today,” says Professor Jeremy O'Brien, Director of the Centre for Quantum Photonics. ”Our device enables this and we believe it is a major step forward towards optical quantum computing.”

“It isn’t ideal if your quantum computer can only perform a single specific task”, explains Peter Shadbolt, lead author of the study, which is published in the journal Nature Photonics.  “We would prefer to have a reconfigurable device which can perform a broad variety of tasks, much like our desktop PCs today – this reconfigurable ability is what we have now demonstrated. This device is approximately ten times more complex than previous experiments using this technology.”
Source: http://www.bris.ac.uk/news/2011/8109.html

Researchers from the  Weizmann Institute in Rehovot, Israel, produced a  synthetic vaccine based on nanotechnology witch holds out the promise of halting autoimmune diseases such as Crohn's and rheumatoid arthritis. Early research has shown that the molecular principle behind the approach works, at least in mice. Scientists are excited by the findings, which hold out the prospect of new treatments for a broad range of conditions including the spread of cancer. However, much more work is needed before experts can be sure the therapy is safe for humans – today it works with mice -.
The vaccine tricks the immune system into producing antibodies that target an enzyme at the heart of autoimmune diseases. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) cut through structural materials such as collagen to assist cellular mobilisation and wound healing. When some members of the enzyme family, especially the enzyme MMP9, get out of control they can promote autoimmune disease and the spread of cancer around the body.

Professor Irit Sagi, from the Weizmann Institute said: "We are excited not only by the potential of this method to treat Crohn's, but by the potential of using this approach to explore novel treatments for many other diseases."

The research is published in the journal 'Nature Medicine'.
Source: http://www.weizmann.ac.il/Biological_Regulation/IritSagi//home.html

A Leuven, Belgium-based R&D lab for nanoelectronics has come up with a process that might bring holographic to everyday life. Scientists at Imec believe, as do other researchers, that holographic images are the answer toward resolving the eye strain and headaches that go along with present-day 3-D viewing. Their work involves creating moving pixels. They are constructing holographic displays by shining lasers on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) platforms that can move up and down like small, reflective pistons. “Holographic visualization promises to offer a natural 3-D experience for multiple viewers, without the undesirable side-effects of current 3D stereoscopic visualization (uncomfortable glasses, strained eyes, fatiguing experience),” the company states.

Click on the image to see the video

In their nanoscale system, they work with chips made by growing a layer of silicon oxide on to silicon wafer. They etch square patches of the silicon oxide. The result is a checkerboard-like pattern where etched-away pixels are nanometers lower than their neighbors. A reflective aluminum coating tops the chip. When laser light shines on the chip, it bounces off of the boundary between adjacent pixels at an angle. Diffracted light interferes constructively and destructively to create a 3-D picture where small mirrored platforms are moving up and down, many times a second, to create a moving projection. The process can also be described as the pixels closer to the light interfering with it one way and those further off, in another. The small distances between them generate the image that the eye sees. Imec hopes to construct the first, proof-of-concept moving structures by mid-2012.” .
Source: http://www2.imec.be/be_en/research/imaging-systems/holographic-displays.html

Many of the current experimental "invisibility cloaks" are based around the same idea - light coming from behind an object is curved around it and then continues on forward to a viewer. That person is in turn only able to see what's behind the object, and not the object itself. Scientists from Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) have applied that same principle to sound waves, and created what could perhaps be described as a "silence cloak." For the experiments, Dr. Nicolas Stenger, from KIT,  constructed a relatively small, millimeter-thin plate, made of both soft and hard microstructured polymers. Different rings of material within the plate resonated at different frequencies, over a range of 100 Hertz.

When viewed from above, it was observed that sound wave vibrations were guided around a central circular area in the plate, unable to either enter or leave that region. "Contrary to other known noise protection measures, the sound waves are neither absorbed nor reflected," said Stenger's colleague, Prof. Martin Wegener. "It is as if nothing was there."

Source; http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v107/i17/e173901

Researchers at Harvard University, United States, have announced that they have taken a big step toward being able to sequence anybody’s genome for less than US$1,000. One of the candidate technologies for achieving this goal is “nanopore sequencing,” in which an electric field pulls ions in the water and strands of DNA through a nanopore in a solid-state membrane. Each of the four nucleic acids in DNA – G, T, C and A – can be identified by their distinct effect on the current. The current, however, is very small, and the DNA passes through the nanopore at a rapid clip, making it difficult to distinguish the signal in so short a time.

One approach has been to try to slow the speed at witch the DNA moves through the nanopore. Harvard researchers instead decided to try and boost the signal. Their device consists of a chip with a transistor that amplifies the change in current. Current nanopore systems measure signals from tens of picoamps to a few nanoamps. Now, says Ping Xie, a postdoctoral researcher, “…we can measure tens of nanoamps to hundreds of nanoamps.” 
Source; http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/01/reading-life%E2%80%99s-building-blocks/

Scientists at the University of Queensland, Australia, have found that mesoporous silica nanoparticles are able to store and deliver biocides in a controlled manner over time. The discovery could help the timber industry control termites. Termites cause  tens of billions dollars  in damage each year around the world, and are considered to be a significant threat to the timber industry throughout the tropics and subtropics. Conventional methods of eradicating the pests use agrochemical biocides that cause environmental damage via bioaccumulation.

The new method uses the pore structure of the mesoporous silica nanoparticles to adsorb biocides, which are then released in a controlled manner. The slow release means the termites will feed on and transfer the substance to other termites, resulting in eventual colony destruction. The team, said Zhang Qiao, who is heading up the research, is investigating how to further control the release of the biocide, saying the nanoparticles need to be coated with other chemicals in order to effectively deliver their cargo. They are investigating a biodegradable polymer coating.

Source: http://nanomac.uq.edu.au/Qiao.html

 

“Solar photovoltaics still remains one of the fastest growing industries in the world. To enable more efficient  utilization of this free, clean energy, the efficiencies of the solar cells have to increase and their manufacturing costs decrease.  ROD-SOL’s silicon nanorod cell concept shows promising potential to this, and we at Picosun have been especially satisfied of the ALD’s central role in realizing this novel, innovative, high efficiency solar electricity converter”, states Picosun’s Managing Director Juhana Kostamo.

Source: http://www.picosun.com/pdf/Picosun_Press_Release_RODSOL_Eng_FINAL_31st_Dec_2011.pdf

Microsoft and the University of Washington are in the final stages of development for a new augmented reality project that may change the way people see the world. Early last year, the duo announced that they were working on an augmented reality contact lens. The lens could be used to enhance human vision like normal contact lenses, but it could also augment a person’s vision with digital information. Microsoft claims that the project will show just how practical augmented reality really is. 

Augmented reality is commonly used in the marketing and gaming fields. The technology has, thus far, been considered little more than a novelty. Most mobile devices equipped with AR browsers are used to find directions to certain locations or to find deals at local retail stores. Microsoft says that their AR lens will be much more practical, as it will give wearers tools that are not found in mobile devices.
The lens is equipped with facial recognition technology, which allows users to find information on a specific person, such as name and age. The lens will also be able to interface with Windows platforms and other mobile devices, allowing users to access information stored in computers in, literally, the blink of an eye.

The project is in its final stages. The lens has been tested on rabbits and is expected to move to human testing within the next few months.

Source: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/

Let's remind that APPLE has last year produced already a first prototype of Nanocomputer iLens : http://www.nanocomputer.com/?page_id=563

Picture a world where your jeans or coat can generate enough energy to charge the battery on your mobile phone or a future where the curtains in your living room help power your lamps. Well it could be closer than you think.” Scientists from th Center  for  nanotechnology and smart materials – CENTI -, located in Portugal,  are working on the development of photovoltaic textiles based on novel fibers and  their project DEPHOTEX has been selected  by the European Commission  among 450 projects and was one of the 50 projects on display in the exhibition "Innovation convention" held in last december. The goal of the project is to research and develop textile solar cells in order to get flexible photovoltaic textiles based on novel fibres allowing taking benefit from the solar radiation so as to turn it into energy. Photovoltaic solar energy is being widely studied as one of the sources of renewable energy with major application potential, being considered a real alternative to fossil fuels. Since the development of first photovoltaic cells, solar energy is being an object of continuous research focused on improving the energy efficiency as well as the structure of photovoltaic cells.

Source; http://www.centi.pt/

Researchers from the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics –  MANA- have developed the world's highest performance thin-film capacitors using a new high-permittivity (high-k) dielectric sheet with molecular-level thickness (~1 nm). This technology may revolutionize the next-generation electronics. 

The announcement of this breakthrough comes from a research group led by MANA Scientist Dr. Minoru Osada and Principal Investigator Dr. Takayoshi Sasaki of the International Center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) at the National Institute for Material Science (NIMS) in Japan. Good insulating, high-k nanofilms are expected to be key to future applications as predicted by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS). 

Source: http://www.nims.go.jp/mana/

As a supramolecular chemist, Hanadi Sleiman found herself strongly drawn to manmade DNA structures. 'We think of DNA as the most programmable structure there is. 'What is really beautiful about DNA structures is the fact that you can control every single aspect of them,' she exclaims. I thought – if it is – let me try to incorporate it into regular supramolecular structures,' says the professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada.

Sleiman is one of an increasing number of chemists who have turned to DNA nanotechnology. Some pin their hopes on using DNA in nanoelectronics or for drug delivery, while others are excited about its potential as an analytical tool.

Source: http://aoc.mcgill.ca/news/channels/2010/march/3/dna-nanotechnology-breakthrough-offers-promising-applications-medicine