From the category archives:

Nanotechnology

Across the blood-brain barrier with exosomes

March 22, 2011

New work with exosomes promises wide-ranging advances in medicine, courtesy of an emerging biomolecular nanotechnology.
As pharmaceutical chemists know, the blood-brain barrier blocks delivery of many molecules that do wonderful things if injected directly into the brain, but injecting the brain isn’t quite as convenient as injecting a vein.
Exosomes are lipid vesicles manufactured by cells for [...]

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Tsunami disasters
and the cost of making things

March 11, 2011

When I wake up to news of a coast smashed by a tsunami, I see yet another sign of our relative material poverty, a sign that our civilization hasn’t yet mastered the art of making things.
Japan, by modern standards, is rich, yet costs deterred the construction of deployable barriers able to resist fast-rising sea*. If [...]

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3D atomic imaging of nanoparticles
— a new technique

February 24, 2011

From the abstract:
Although atomic-resolution electron microscopy has been feasible for nearly four decades, neither electron tomography nor any other experimental technique has yet demonstrated atomic resolution in three dimensions. Here we report the 3D reconstruction of a complex crystalline nanoparticle at atomic resolution. To achieve this, we combined aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, statistical parameter [...]

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Atomic Layer Deposition
for Atomically-Precise Crystal Fabrication (2)

February 16, 2011

The American Vacuum Society writes to announce ALD 2011,
the 11th International Conference on Atomic Layer Deposition:
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a fast-moving frontier, profoundly impacting diverse applications and gaining momentum for industrialization and manufacturing, while leaving plenty of room for new science and innovation….
ALD is receiving attention for its potential applications from advanced electronics, [...]

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Good and popular

January 20, 2011

  I’ll get back to posting more regularly, but meanwhile, here are a few of the most popular posts to date:

How to Learn About Everything
…the title above isn’t “how to learn everything”, but “how to learn about everything”. The distinction I have in mind is between knowing the inside of a topic in deep detail [...]

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New project launched:
Atomic Scale and Single Molecule
Logic Gate Technologies

November 25, 2010

The Atomic Scale and Single Molecule Logic Gate Technologies project is a Singapore/EU effort that aims to build atomically precise digital devices and circuits by direct surface manipulation at cryogenic temperatures.
According to the project leader, Prof Christian Joachim, “The UHV interconnection machine at IMRE [in Singapore] is the only one in the entire project that [...]

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Nanomedicine by nanoparticle:
Toward killing cancer,
tweaking cell function,
and inserting Boolean logic

October 24, 2010

Compared to small molecules, nanoparticles offer more physical scope for functional engineering, and according to a report in Science, more than 50 companies are pressing forward to exploit this for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Nearly a dozen nanoparticle-based medicines are reportedly in clinical trials, and lab research suggests a road to programmable control of cellular [...]

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Electron cryomicroscopy
reaches landmark molecular resolution

October 17, 2010

Electron microscopes can image biological macromolecules in cryogenic ice, but it shows them as low-contrast features in a grainy image (see below). Using enough electrons to reduce the graininess would first destroy the specimen.
The trick to getting enough information without frying the molecules is to image many specimens that are known to be identical, and [...]

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The 2010 Nobel Prize
for Graphene Nanotechnology

October 5, 2010

Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have just won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”, and their work has opened a broad frontier in nanotechnology.
Graphene is best known for its remarkable electronic properties, which make it both a wonderland for physicists and a contender for future transistors with [...]

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Evolutionary refinement of engineered molecules

October 5, 2010

Blind variation and focused selection have made the biosphere, and they’re being used in the lab to make functional biomolecular components. The laboratory methods often go under the names of “directed evolution” and (in single-round versions) “high-throughput screening”, and they hold promise as partners for rational design in macromolecular systems engineering.
As background, here are [...]

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Stronger than carbon nanotubes:
Polyynes and the prospects for carbyne

September 29, 2010

Carbon nanotubes have a reputation for being strongest possible fibers, but polyyne chains are stronger, as measured by the critical strength/density ratio: Polyyne carbon-carbon bonds are stronger than the bonds in graphene and nanotubes, and the bonds are all are aligned with the axis of the fiber, the optimal geometry for carrying tensile stress. A [...]

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Out of the memory-hole:
A historian speaks out on nanotechnology

September 24, 2010

A recent retrospective on the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative (Nature, 1 Sept 2010) repeats the story that strong excitement about nanotechnology “began at the birth of the NNI [established in 2000] and peaked in the middle of the decade”.
This paints a strange and false picture. Excitement launched the bureaucracy, not vice versa, and it [...]

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