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Will the wonders of carbon nanotubes never cease? Engineers have now used everyone's favorite cylindrical übermolecules to create artificial muscles that can contract and twist, in a manner not unlike like the muscles found in elephant trunks and squid tentacles. The upshot? Researchers say these tiny little motors could soon be used to propel microscopic nanobots throughout your bloodstream. More »
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Arthur C. Clarke famously said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I always keep this quote in my mind when reading science fiction and try to spot where things become indistinguishable from magic. They always do. One of the most popular ways in modern sci-fi to get away with magic is to invoke nanotechnology. It seems that if you just wave your hands and say "nanobots" you can get away with anything! More »
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MRSA bacteria is a virulent bacteria that breeds in hospitals, killing patients who are recovering from surgery or other ailments. But now we can create MRSA-free hospitals, by painting them with a special substance that kills MRSA without antibiotics. More »
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When nanotech and lasers team up, is there anything they can't do? Apparently not. New research shows a combined nanotube/laser treatment zaps kidney tumors in 80 percent of mice. Nanotech is teaming up with viruses to kill ovarian tumors, too. More »
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The world needs new ways of murdering cancer cells, and scientists at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have delivered. Their weapon? The much-hyped carbon nanotube, which apart from being electrically conductive, able to be woven into stronger-than-steel fabrics, and just all-around awesome, also happens to useful as an anti-cancer smart missile. By attaching the tubes to an antibody that searches out cancers and binds to it, nanotech expert Pavitra Chakravarty and her colleagues found a way to deliver nanotubes to the cancer. Just about the only thing the tubes appear incapable of is carrying a warhead, though, so researchers fired near-infrared light at the tubes, heating them up until they cooked the cancer into oblivion. More »
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The Scoville Units you see on the side of chili sauce bottles are measured subjectively by taste testers, who determine how hot a given hot sauce really is. But now a new nanotechnology will allow food scientists to quickly and cheaply measure the exact amount of capsaicinoids — the active component in chili peppers — in each spicy sample. Science gives us many wondrous things, but you probably never thought it would help prevent you from making bland chili. More »
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A radio made out of carbon nano-tubes could get better reception, than the current bulky silicon-based models. Researchers led by John Rogers at University of Illinois solved the amplification problems that had stymied previous nano-radios by making their radio on a quartz wafer the size of a grain of sand. The other big breakthrough: a method for making carbon nanotubes in perfectly aligned rows. The radio, which picked up a local traffic report, is just a proof of concept. The ultimate goal is a new breed of much faster semiconductor, thanks to the electrical properties of such tiny strands. [The Age] More »
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Carbon nano-tubes aren't just gorgeous, they might also save your brain one day. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is teaming up with a cancer center, City Of Hope, to develop a new minimally invasive type of brain surgery using carbon nanotubes. Researchers hope that these sharp-tipped tubes, 50,000 times narrower than a human hair, can deliver cancer-fighting agents directly to the brain. Tests in mice found the nanotubes were non-toxic and could deliver actual genetic information to the brain. Here's an image of the first "nanoknife," developed by NIST and University of Colorado in 2006. [ScienceDaily] More »
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Microchip construction has gone biological. UC Riverside announced last week that some of its researchers had discovered that the metal-corroding bacteria Shewanella extrude semi-conducting nanotubes that can be used for microchips or other tiny electronics devices. Here you can see a nest of Shewanella and tubes. (Nanotubes are semi-conductive, microscopic metal tubes, often considered the future of micro-electronics.) Will we start seeing biology branches at chip fabs? More »
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