NanoComputer

A metal cube the size of a toaster, created at the University of Alberta (U of A) in Canada, is capable of performing the same genetic tests as most fully equipped modern laboratories—and in a fraction of the time.

 Plastic chip that can perform 20 genetic tests from a single drop of blood: a kind of a lab-on-a-chip

At its core is a small plastic chip developed with nanotechnology that holds the key to determining whether a patient is resistant to cancer drugs or has viruses like malaria. The chip can also pinpoint infectious diseases in a herd of cattle.

Source: http://www.news.ualberta.ca/article.aspx?id=0EC281968D4C4F15A76D0E6D088C4F55

Cell phones last a few days on a single battery; laptop computers, two to three hours. If you could have a pocket-sized personal computer with a cell-phone sized battery, how long do you think it would last? Just long enough to check your e-mail, or play a game of solitaire? It’s a sad but unavoidable fact that the more complicated an electronic device gets, the less efficient it is. Researchers Kenneth Lux and Karien Rodriguez, at the University of WisconsIn, came up with an exciting new approach to the problem. Their method not only improves the performance of nano-scale fuel cells, but completely sidesteps the need for industrial-strength technology.

“Even the best electrocatalysts, on a flat surface, give only hundreds of microamps per square centimeter. What you really want is … to increase the surface area by orders of magnitude.” Lux explains to PhysOrg.com, “To do this you need a three-dimensional structure.” To compress more power into smaller volumes, researchers have begun to build fuel cells on the fuzzy frontier of nanotechnology. Silicon etching, evaporation, and other processes borrowed from chip manufacturers have been used to create tightly packed channel arrays to guide the flow of fuel through the cell.

Fuel cells come with an energy capacity at least ten times greater than that of conventional batteries. Where a lithium-ion battery can provide 300 Watt-hours per liter, the methanol in a fuel cell has a theoretical capacity of up to 4800 Watt-hours per liter! Imagine your laptop running for a full day without needing to recharge, and you can see why industry leaders such as Toshiba, IBM, and NEC have been pouring funds into fuel cell research.If fuel-cell technology can be perfected, we might be looking at a future of cheap, disposable battery packs for our favorite electronic gadgets.

Source: http://phys.org/news11654.html

Nanotechnologies could be game changers in how we diagnose, monitor and treat cancer, according to Mark Davis, Professor of Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, and a member of the Experimental Therapeutics Program of the Comprehensive Cancer Center at the City of Hope. Focusing on nanoparticles, Davis said, "We're trying to create these nanoscale particles for solid tumors [and] there really is, in my opinion, a very high potential to create new types of therapies."

Davis elaborated, saying, "What's really exciting to me is the patient evidence that reveal nanoparticles are actually going into tumor cells and releasing their payloads…

According to Michael Phelps, Norton Simon Professor, and Chair of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology at the University of California Los Angeles, another promising technology is PET molecular imaging probes, which can rapidly search for cancer throughout all tissues of the body, as well as characterize each cancer lesion it detects within an individual patient. "All cancer treatments are in need of better molecular diagnostics… to better characterize the biology of cancer," said Phelps. Anna Barkerf, former Deputy Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and current Director of Arizona State University's Transformative Healthcare Networks, she said, "The nanotechnologies that are currently in use in the cancer community are actually making cancer therapies safer. They are uniformly increasing the efficiency, while reducing the toxicity for patients."

Source: http://www.kavlifoundation.org/science-spotlights/nanoscience-fighting-cancer-nanotechnology