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Nanotech

nanotech

Nanotech Precisely Measures Spiciness So Your Tongue Doesn't Have To

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 »

materials science art

A Natural Landscape in Microns

It looks like an alien city on the edge of a canal. But this is actually just a few microns across — it's a scanning electron microscope image by Fatih Buyukserin. What you're seeing are polymers stuck to a silicon mold full of beehive-like cells. This nano-city even has its own flowers made of wire. More »

Nanogauze Uses Ancient Tech to Staunch Blood One of the main reasons why people with deep wounds die is blood loss. But now a company is marketing an amazing new form of gauze, made with nanotech, that can induce fast blood-clotting in a wound to stop bleeding and save lives. The truly weird part? The nanotech involved is actually an ancient technology: kaolin clay, integrated into the gauze. Wired's Aaron Rowe explains that the clay is rich in aluminosilicate nanoparticles, which cause human blood to clot. This is one form of nano medicine that has gone through nature's own trial trials already. Humans have been working with this kind of clay for thousands of years. [Wired]

nanotech

All the Nanotech You Can Eat

Right now you can buy over 600 consumer products that contain some kind of nanomaterial or nanotechnology, and it turns out that a lot of them are edible. The Emerging Nanotechnology Project has compiled a comprehensive list of consumer items that companies are billing as "nanotech," grouping them into categories like "health" (which includes food) and "electronics." Here you can see their chart showing the breakdown of which products you can buy that contain something that can be called "nano." The E-Nano site also lets you search the products for all kinds of keywords. Needless to say, you can find some pretty bizarre shit if you search under "food." More »

g.i. joe

Power-Armor Vs. Nano-Tech Super Soldiers, In G.I. Joe

Starship Troopers 3 may finally show us a glimpse of the powered armor Heinlein talks about in the novel — but we'll get our real power armor fix from the G.I. Joe movie, coming in 2009. I haven't been sure whether Joe really counted as science fiction, but a new script review gives plenty of reasons to accept it as belonging to the genre, including armor with invisibility powers, miraculous nano-technology, and super-soldiers created by a mad scientist. The costumes may look a bit Batman And Robin-esque (power-armor-breasts!) but the storyline sounds awesomely pulpy enough for ten sawmills. Spoilers, and a gallery, below. More »

mad nano-engineering

A Gonorrhea-Based Molecular Machine

Gonorrhea, a bacteria that's transmitted via sexual intercourse and causes painful swelling, may turn out to be the perfect molecular machine. A group of researchers at Columbia University have announced findings proving that the bacteria can use its pili, long filaments that act like limbs, to pull with a force equivalent to 100,000 times its weight, and hold it for hours. Here you can see a video of a gonorrhea bacterium pulling on tiny, flexible columns around it (the pili, which you can't see, can stretch up to ten times the length of the bacterium, and you can see several columns moving rather far away from the bacteria). I've added some music by Honest Bob and the Factory-to-Dealer Incentives that might express what the bacteria is secretly thinking. More »

nanotech

Nanoparticles Causing Heart Attacks, Kidney Stones?

And you thought the nanotoxic gym socks were bad. Researchers from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine have found nanoparticles in kidney stones, gall stones, and in the hardened arteries which can lead to heart attacks. All of these conditions are caused by calcium build up, and researchers believe nanoparticles may be the seeds that set the calcium deposits growing. More »

nanotech

Nanoparticle Gym Socks Poison Wildlife

Your socks are creating an insidious form of nanotech pollution. Sure, nanotechnology holds great promise for everything from treating cancer to making cloaking devices a reality. But critics have argued for a while it poses huge risks to the environment, and now engineers from Arizona State University are reporting that silver nanoparticles are almost certainly finding their way into local waterways courtesy of our washing machines. The source? Socks impregnated with the silver bits, which are known for their anti-microbial and anti-odor properties. More »

nanotech

Nanopaper Can Identify Deadly Bacteria in the Water

Worried about the bacteria in your water? Just dip a test-strip coated with a special mix of nanoparticles into your glass, and watch the result. If the strip changes color, don't drink. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Massachusetts have devised a way to instantly identify several species of bacteria using a blend of charged polymers and gold dust. The implications are fairly staggering for medicine, but also for national security. More »

sci fashion

Nanowire Power Shirt Generates Electricity While You Wear It

Now you can power your cell phone just by wearing a special shirt made of two tiny layers of nanowires that rub against each other as you move. These super-conductive wires are "piezoelectric," generating energy through pressure and movement. The result is a shirt that generates more electricity the more you move around. A few weeks ago, a research team at Georgia Tech announced the first generation power shirt (you can see the two layers of nano wires above), speculating that it could someday power small electronic devices like iPods or mobiles. More »

nanotech

A View Of Tumors, From The Inside Out

This image looks like an explosion in space, but it's actually gold nanorods bonding with a cancer cell. This type of gold nanoparticle could help researchers to watch a tumor grow in real time, within a few years, according to a new study. Researchers at Stanford implanted nanoparticles into living mice and were able to image their tumors in 1,000 times more detail than you could with current imaging techniques. And the technique, using Raman spectroscopy, will allow doctors to measure 10, 20 or even 30 molecular targets simultaneously, instead of just one or two. Researchers say it'll revolutionize cancer diagnosis and treatment within a decade. Image from Cancer.gov. [Science Daily]

nanotech

NASA Wants To Slice Your Brain With Nanoknife

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]

nanotech

Get Your Cheap Nanotubes Right Here!

Want some of those cool carbon nanotubes we showed you earlier? Get some dirt cheap at Cheap Tubes Inc., a site that specializes in selling CNTs at bargain basement prices. They're practically giving them away! More »

nanotech

Nanotubes Make Synthetic Skin Feel Your Pain

Carbon nanotubes can conduct sensations through artificial skin back to the brain, making prosthetic limbs feel like the real thing. A nanotube like this one, delicately balanced on top of gold filaments, is threaded through a rubbery polymer. This nanotube-infused polymer generates electricity in response to pressure or force, creating signals that can be routed to your brain. That's why this synthetic skin can "feel." Researchers want to build a prosthetic limb out of this stuff by 2010. Click through for more images of carbon nanotubes, the artificial nervous systems of tomorrow. More »

science art

When Nano-Wires Explode

This image of "Nano-Explosions" won first prize in this year's "Science As Art" competition. Fanny Beron from the École Polytechnique de Montréal used an electron scanning micrograph to record the explosion that happened when a CoFeB magnetic array was overloaded. The chaotic blasts are a "reminder that nanoscale research can have unpredicted consequences at a high level." Beron has also been a star soccer goalie. [NanoWerk]

invisibility

One Step Closer to a True Cloaking Device

Last year, a team at Duke announced a beta cloaking material whose special nano-properties make it "invisible" to microwaves. Today, however, researchers in Stuttgart have got something even better — a "metamaterial" that can cloak objects in the visible light spectrum. Made of gold nano-mesh, the material has a negative refraction index for visible light — that means it doesn't reflect light, and could give the illusion of blending into the background. I can't wait for my metamaterial full body suit for doing futuristic spy shit. Towards Cloaking Visible Light [Science Daily]

nanotech

March of the Spermbots

Spunk-seeking nanotechnology experts at Cornell say that sperm would make the perfect nanobots of the future. Robot sperm (pictured here in an artist's rendering) would deliver new DNA or other molecules to your body by scooting through your bloodstream using a tail powered by its own energy source. Find out why sperm are self-contained power-houses after the jump. More »

bionic woman

The 50 Million Dollar Dame. Episode 3.


If I was a high-paid Hollywood writer, this is what my version of the Bionic Woman would look like. Upon realizing that her boyfriend has not only been keeping a dossier on her but apparently waiting to pounce upon her first near fatal mishap to implant her with $50 million of his employer's goods, Jamie Sommers tells Will and his boss Jonas they can stick it in their bionic ear. Then she and Sarah Corvus declare a truce. They meet for cocktails and decide to form their own alliance. The rest of the series would turn upon their feats of daring as they fight crime, the military-industrial complex, the Berkut Group, and men who underestimate or are afraid of true female power.
More »