nanoscale

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine discovered that the activity of a specific family of nanometer-sized molecular motors called myosin-I is regulated by force. The motor puts tension on cellular springs that allow vibrations to be detected within the body. This finely tuned regulation has important implications for understanding a wide variety […]

Whoever penned the old adage "a watched pot never boils" surely never tried to heat up water in a pot lined with copper nanorods.
A new study from researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows that by adding an invisible layer of the nanomaterials to the bottom of a metal vessel, an order of magnitude less energy […]

Nanotechnology researchers at UC Davis have shown that they can use a red blood cell to calibrate a sensitive instrument — an atomic force microscope.
“It turns around the rules of nanotechnology, by using biology to calibrate an instrument,” said Volkmar Heinrich, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at UC Davis and co-author of […]

Paul Morrow, who will graduate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute on May 17, has come a long way from his days as an elementary school student, pulling apart his mother’s cassette player. The talented young physicist has developed two innovations that could vastly improve magnetic data storage and sense extremely low level magnetic fields in everything […]

New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the market at the rate of 3-4 per week, a finding based on the latest update to the nanotechnology consumer product inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN).
One of the new items among the more than 600 products now in the inventory is Swissdent Nanowhitening Toothpaste […]

Researchers have used the world’s thinnest material to create the world’s smallest transistor, one atom thick and ten atoms wide.
Reporting their peer-reviewed findings in the latest issue of the journal Science, Dr Kostya Novoselov and Professor Andre Geim from The School of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester show that graphene can be […]

Nanotechnology could improve the life of the lithium batteries used in portable devices, including laptop computers, mp3 players, and mobile phones. Research to be published in the Inderscience publication — International Journal of Nanomanufacturing — demonstrates that carbon nanotubes can prevent such batteries from losing their charge capacity over time.
Researchers at the Shenyang National Laboratory […]

University of Missouri scientist Kattesh Katti recently discovered how to make gold nanoparticles using gold salts, soybeans and water. Katti’s research has garnered attention worldwide and the environmentally-friendly discovery could have major applications in several disciplines.
Gold nanoparticles are tiny pieces of gold, so small they cannot be seen by the naked eye. Researchers believe gold […]

Is nanotechnology morally acceptable?
For a significant percentage of Americans, the answer is no, according to a recent survey of Americans’ attitudes about the science of the very small.
Addressing scientists at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of life sciences communication, presented new […]

Two engineers at the University of California, Riverside are part of a binational team that has found semiconducting nanotubes produced by living bacteria - a discovery that could help in the creation of a new generation of nanoelectronic devices.
The research team believes this is the first time nanotubes have been shown to be produced by […]

Computers and electronic devices of the future will utilise technologies not currently available. An example of such a technology is the use of carbon nanotubes as interconnects for computer chips. This is now a step closer to reality with some new work from nanotechnology researchers within the Materials Ireland Polymer Research Centre at Trinity College […]