Solar Paint Your House With Nanoparticles
This paste of cadmium sulfide-coated titanium dioxide nanoparticles could turn large surfaces into solar cells. (Credit: ACS Nano)
Via ScienceDaily:
Imagine if the next coat of paint you put on the outside of your home generates electricity from light — electricity that can be used to power the appliances and equipment on the inside. A team of researchers at the University of Notre Dame has made a major advance toward this vision by creating an inexpensive “solar paint” that uses semiconducting nanoparticles to produce energy.
“We want to do something transformative, to move beyond current silicon-based solar technology,” says Prashant Kamat, John A. Zahm Professor of Science in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an investigator in Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and Technology (NDnano), who leads the research.
“By incorporating power-producing nanoparticles, called quantum dots, into a spreadable compound, we’ve made a one-coat solar paint that can be applied to any conductive surface without…
Technologists Will Be The Next Drug Dealers
DJ Spooky. Photo: Eddie Codel (Ekai) (CC)
Olivia Solon explains at Wired UK:
Technologists will become the next drug dealers, administering narcotics through brain stimulation, according to Rohit Talwar, the founder of Fast Future Research speaking at Intelligence Squared’s If conference.
Talwar was charged by the government to investigate the drugs landscape over the next 20 years, exploring scenarios going beyond the traditional model of gangs producing and shipping drugs around the world.
He described how the world of genomic sequencing and services such as 23 and Me open up possibilities for tailoring drugs to the individual, delivering effects based on your physiology — which could apply just as effectively to narcotics as it could medicines.
He cited research from the University of California, Berkeley where neuroscientists were able to replicate images people were seeing based on the brain patterns of activity. When combined with transcranial magnetic stimulation — which has been used to inhibit brain functions such as the ability to…
Anti-Nanotechnology Terrorist Sect Strikes In Mexico
Extremists in Mexico are trying to save humanity from our own technology before it’s too late through mail-bomb attacks against researchers — some people just really do not like messing around with particles at the atomic level. Via Newser:
A radical group that opposes nanotechnology has has claimed responsibility for at least two bombing attacks on researchers in Mexico and it praises the “Unabomber,” whose mail-bombs killed three people and injured 23 in the United States.
A manifesto posted Tuesday on a radical website mentions at least five other Mexican researchers whose work it opposes, and lauded Theodore Kaczynski, who is serving a life sentence for bombs that targeted university professors and airline executives. It was issued in the name of a group whose title could be translated as “Individuals Tending Toward the Savage.”
Mexico State prosecutors’ spokesman Sonia Davila said authorities are investigating the authenticity of the manifesto, but said its description…
U.S. Developing Hummingbird Drones
Nano Air Vehicle developed by AeroVironment
Next time a cute little bird hovers outside your window, it might be spying on you for the U.S. Government. Julie Watson reports on some quite realistic working prototypes currently being tested, for AP:
You’ll never look at hummingbirds the same again.
The Pentagon has poured millions of dollars into the development of tiny drones inspired by biology, each equipped with video and audio equipment that can record sights and sounds.
They could be used to spy, but also to locate people inside earthquake-crumpled buildings and detect hazardous chemical leaks.
The smaller, the better.
Besides the hummingbird, engineers in the growing unmanned aircraft industry are working on drones that look like insects and the helicopter-like maple leaf seed.
Researchers are even exploring ways to implant surveillance and other equipment into an insect as it is undergoing metamorphosis. They want to be able to control the creature.
The devices could end up being…
The Real Willy Wonka: Three-Course Meal in a Single Stick of Chewing Gum
By Niall Firth for the Daily Mail:
It didn’t work out that well for poor Violet Beauregarde in Willy Wonka’s factory.
But now researchers say they may have cracked the secret behind creating a sweet that replicates three meals in a single stick of chewing gum.
Scientists at the Institute of Food Research (IFR) say the latest technology could be used to turn Willy Wonka’s eccentric invention into reality – but without the unpleasant side effects.
Food scientist Dave Hart believes that recent advances in nanotechnology, which deals with structures just millionths of a millimetre in size, could capture and release flavours in a precisely controlled way…
[continues in the Daily Mail]
Jellyfish ‘Smoothie’ Could Have Solar Solutions
Barry Neild at CNN reports:
Putting thousands of jellyfish in a blender to make a smoothie sounds like the start of bad joke. In fact, it’s one way to source ingredients for a new generation of solar power solutions that could aid medical science and offer cheap energy.
Scientists say by liquidizing the humble Aequorea victoria — a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish commonly found off the western coast of North America — they can use the green fluorescent protein (GFP) it contains to create miniature fuel cells.
These, say their creators, could be used to power microscopic “nanodevices” that could operate independently inside the human body, helping reverse blindness or fight tumors.
Nanotechnology — the manipulation of matter at an atomic scale (one nanometer is equivalent to one billionth of a meter) — is seen by many as the future of medicine, but the science of powering nano-machinery is still in its infancy.
[continues at CNN]
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MIT Unveils Nanotech/Robot Swarm To Skim Ocean Oil
Saturday MIT reveals a swarm of autonomous floating robots that can digest an oil spill. The 16-foot robots drag a nanowire mesh that acts like a conveyor belt to soak up surface oil “like paper towels soak up water,” absorbing 20 times its weight and then harmlessly “digesting” the oil by burning it off.
Building Up The Immune System — In Plastic
Ira Flatow reports on NPR’s Science Friday Podcast:
Researchers have made plastic nanoparticles that can partially mimic the behavior of natural antibodies in the bloodstream of a living animal. Writing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, they describe their experiment, in which they treated lab mice with synthetic polymer ‘antibodies’ to the compound melittin, the main toxin in bee venom. Antibody-treated mice had higher rates of survival than non-treated mice when injected with the melittin toxin.
Image, Above Right: Plastic antibodies, such as this cluster of particles viewed under a powerful microscope, may fight a wide range of human diseases, including viral infections and allergies. Credit: Kenneth Shea.
Tracking The ‘Evolution’ Of Nanoparticles As They Decontaminate Groundwater
Kurt Pfitzer reports that engineers are usimg advanced imaging techniques to examine bimetallic materials that have remediated more than 50 toxic waste sites, for PhysOrg.com:
Iron nanoparticles 1,000 times thinner than a human hair have demonstrated an unprecedented ability to clean contaminated groundwater since they were invented 10 years ago at Lehigh.
The palladium-coated particles have remediated more than 50 toxic waste sites in the U.S. and other countries in one-tenth the time, and at a much greater economy of scale, than traditional “pump and treat” methods.
Now, thanks to Lehigh’s unrivaled electron microscopy and spectroscopy facilities, researchers have gained unmatched insights that could improve the efficiency and extend the applications
of the powerful nanoparticles.The researchers used scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) and X-ray energy dispersive spectroscopy (XEDS) to capture, for the first time, the evolution in the nanostructure of the bimetallic particles as they remove contaminants in water.
The advanced imaging instruments at Lehigh…
Food Industry Too Secretive Over Nanoparticles
By David Gutierrez for Natural News:
The food industry is being too secretive about the extent to which it has adopted nanotechnology, according to a report by the United Kingdom’s House of Lords Science and Technology Committee.
The industry is “very reluctant to put its head above the parapet and be open about research on nanotechnology,” said study chairperson Lord John Krebs.
“They got their fingers burnt over the use of GM crops and so they want to keep a low profile on this issue. We believe that they should adopt exactly the opposite approach. If you want to build confidence you should be open rather than secretive.”
Nanotechnology refers to the practice of manipulating particles on the scale of one-billionth of a meter. Particles of this size behave in a fundamentally different fashion than they do on the more familiar scale, producing a wide variety of novel applications. Because nanoparticles are not currently…
Has a Technological Singularity Already Started?
“It’s not comfortably decades down the road. It’s right now, right here, in our faces, all we have to do is look around to see it.”
A science writer argues we’re rapidly approaching a day when “we can customize the human body as easily as we can customize our car… an era where the genetic lottery of our inherited DNA will no longer dictate who we chose to be.” There’s already stem cell breast augmentation, making ovaries into testes, 3-D tissue printers and “tissue Legos”, and “then add in who knows how many other recent stem cell breakthroughs have happened in the last year and a half…”
He sees a big picture where “advancing computer science mixed with advancing biotech combine to create a potential future in which trolls and elves could walk down the street side by side with humans.”
“Here’s to hoping I’ll see you on the other side.”
…
DNA ‘Spiderbot’ Is On The Prowl
Via AFP:
Scientists on Wednesday announced they had created a molecular robot made out of DNA that walks like a spider along a track made out of the chemical code for life.
The achievement, reported in the British journal Nature, is a further step in nanoscale experiments that, one day, may lead to robot armies to clean arteries and fix damaged tissues.
The robot is just four nanometres — four billionths of a metre — in diameter.
Milan Stojanovic of New York’s Columbia University, who led the venture, likens the nanobot to “a four-legged spider.”
The beast moves along a track comprising stitched-together strands of DNA that is essentially a pre-programmed course, in the same way that industrial robots move along an assembly line.
The track exploits one of the basic characteristics of DNA. A double-helix molecule, DNA comprises four chemicals which pair in rungs.
By “unzipping” the DNA, one is left with one side of the…
Space Colonies And Robots For Everyone
Josh Hall, the chief scientist at Nanorex (and a science author) predicts nanotech could grow “as rapidly as the Internet and cell phone use has over the past couple of decades.” And then he makes some remarkable predictions…
- Robots with human mental capabilities and virtually any physical capabilities…would rapidly become affordable for everyone.
- Nanofactories, powerful enough “to kick the entire physical economy over into a Moore’s Law-like growth mode, eradicating hunger and poverty in a decade or two.”
- Ocean and space colonization, since nanotech could provide “The modifications to the standard human body necessary to thrive in space.”
He concludes that all of these “require more scientific knowledge than we have now, but not more than the current rate of scientific progress human scientists are likely to produce in the next few decades,” predicting nanotech could grow “as rapidly as the Internet and cell phone use has over the past couple of decades.”…
Scientists Show Off Real Invisibility Cloak
Although the invisibility cloak can be created on a small scale, it would be impossible to recreate a larger version with the knowledge we have today. Image: Science/AAAS
We’ve reported on real-world invisibility cloaks before, but according to Discovery News such a thing actually exists now, albeit on a very small scale:
European researchers have taken the world a step closer to fictional wizard Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak after they made an object disappear, a study published Thursday in the journal Science showed.
Scientists from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany and Imperial College London used their cloak, made using photonic crystals with a structure resembling piles of wood, to conceal a small bump on a gold surface, they wrote in Science.
“It’s kind of like hiding a small object underneath a carpet — except this time the carpet also disappears,” they said.
invisible soldier“We put an object under a microscopic structure, a little like a reflective…
Scientists Discover New Way to Generate Electricity
This animation of a rotating carbon nanotube shows its 3D structure. By Schwarzm, made with C4D/Cartoonrenderer, GNU FDL
By Michelle Bryner for TechNewsDaily.com:
Researchers have found a way to produce large amounts of electricity from tiny cylinders made from carbon atoms.
The achievement could replace decades-old methods of generating electricity, such as combustion engines and turbines, the researchers say.
In the future, coated carbon nanotubes crafted from individual atoms could power everything from cell phones to hybrid-electric vehicles. The team envisions such nanotube-based power being available to consumers in the next five years.
Carbon nanotubes are thin sheets of carbon rolled up into teensy tubes each with a diameter about 30,000 times smaller than a strand of hair.
When carbon — one of the most abundant elements on Earth — is rolled up into tubes, it exhibits some extraordinary properties such as high heat conduction, which the team exploited in the new study….
[continues at TechNewsDaily.com]
…
Under the Weather? Just Swallow A Doctor
Steve Connor writes in the Independent:
The day when patients can “swallow their doctor” has come a step closer with the development of a submicroscopic nanoparticle that acts as an intelligent pill to deliver drugs when and where they are needed in the body.
Each nanoparticle is built to target a specific part of the body and to release their drugs in a controlled manner over a given period of time. They are so small that millions of them could be injected into the bloodstream without harming healthy tissues.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge have designed the first nanoparticles designed to target the walls of the arteries around the heart. They bind specifically to the proteins that only stick out from the inner lining of the these blood vessels when they are damaged.
Once the nanoparticles take up position in the diseased arteries they are programmed to release small…
World’s Smallest Robot Can Move Atoms!
Prof. Nadrian "Ned" C. Seeman
A New York professor just built the world’s smallest robot The nano-scopic device is just 150 x 50 x 8 nanometers in size – and over a million of them could fit inside a single red blood cell!
The tiny nanorobotic device has the ability to place specific atoms and molecules wherever scientists want them to. And it can even build nanoscale structures and machines – including a nano-sized walking biped!
Researchers Create Subatomic Digital Switch
Researchers at Berkeley’s NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center have successfully used plasmons, a subatomic particle, to create a digital switch. “I’m personally optimistic we’ll see chips like this in ten to twenty years,” says Dr. Thomas Zentgraf, who also notes that light photons don’t collide with each other and “they don’t react with other materials” — so they’ll dissipate less heat and allow much smaller chips and devices. “You can’t move electrons any faster, but photons are constantly going at the speed of light,” says the researcher.
As this article suggests Moore’s law now “starts to look more like a temporary statute,” and light “also has the advantage of being the fastest thing in the universe.”
Nanotech Breakthrough: Nanotube Woven Into Commercially-Viable Yarn
Here’s a cool photograph of “the first macroscopic, commercially usable boron nitride nanotubes”, spun into a piece of BNNT “yarn”.
Visible to the naked eye, these nanotubes are now long enough to be woven into fibers, “and thus capable of being used for a vast number of commercial applications.” While it’s small in size, it’s being hailed as a significant sign of “the coming of the one technology that can definitively (in theory) bring about abundance…within a decade or less from the time when we get a complete grasp on its use as a production technology.”
