And, we just started. Just wait — in the next 6 to 8 months; I will some amazing news to share on QBS and BMI. smile
An explosion of nanotechnology research and development is occurring as newly identified forms of carbon, including graphene, carbon nanotubes and nano-diamonds, pave the way for new products and industries.
This article is sponsored by Flinders University.
DNA, the stuff of life, may very well also pack quite the jolt for engineers trying to advance the development of tiny, low-cost electronic devices.
Much like flipping your light switch at home — –only on a scale 1,000 times smaller than a human hair — –an ASU-led team has now developed the first controllable DNA switch to regulate the flow of electricity within a single, atomic-sized molecule. The new study, led by ASU Biodesign Institute researcher Nongjian Tao, was published in the advanced online journal Nature Communications ( DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14471).
“It has been established that charge transport is possible in DNA, but for a useful device, one wants to be able to turn the charge transport on and off. We achieved this goal by chemically modifying DNA,” said Tao, who directs the Biodesign Center for Bioelectronics and Biosensors and is a professor in the Fulton Schools of Engineering.
Continue reading “Switched-on DNA spark nano-electronic applications” »
Very cool.
A research group from Bar-Ilan University, in collaboration with French colleagues at CNRS Grenoble, has developed a unique experiment to detect quantum events in ultra-thin films. This novel research, to be published in the scientific journal Nature Communications, enhances the understanding of basic phenomena that occur in nano-sized systems close to absolute zero temperature.
Transitions, Phases and Critical Points
Continue reading “Scientists create a nano-trampoline to probe quantum behavior” »
Luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), which are flat panes of mostly transparent material that take sunlight (both diffuse and directed) and concentrate it at the panes’ edges, can be used as “photovoltaic windows,” which, as the name makes clear, collect solar energy while serving as ordinary windows. Now, researchers at the Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca and Glass to Power Srl (both of Milano, Italy) and the University of Minnesota (Minneapolis, MN) are lowering the potential cost of such windows by using silicon nanoparticles as the fluorescent absorber/emitter in the LSC windows.
Optical nano-antennas are ideal to enhance light-matter interactions at the nanometer scale. Yet in most designs, the region of maximum field localization and enhancement, the “hotspot”, is not readily accessible since it is buried into the nanostructure.
In a recent collaboration between EPFL in Lausanne, Fresnel Institute in Marseille and ICFO groups led by ICREA Professors at ICFO Maria Garcia-Parajo and Niek van Hulst, researchers present a new nanofabrication technique that applies planarization, etch back and template stripping to expose the excitation hotspot at the surface.
The large flat surface arrays of in-plane nano-antennas feature gaps as small as 10 nm with sharp edges, excellent reproducibility and full surface accessibility of the hotspot confined region. The novel fabrication approach drastically improves the optical performance of plasmonic nano-antennas to yield giant fluorescence enhancement factors, together with nanoscale detection volumes in the 20 zepto-liter range.
Not too shock by this given other transplant patient’s stories of memories, etc.
There are a lot of outrageous claims being made within the halls of neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Whether exaggerations, wishful thinking, the dreams of the egocentric and megalomaniacal to be immortal, or just drumming up funding for a never-ending round of “scientific investigation,” the year 2045 seems to always be cited as a target date.
Continue reading “Company Claims Brain Transplants Could Bring Back the Dead by 2045” »
Science mimicking nature’s dew in a lab. Important btw in how we looking at H2O harvesting and improving how we advance green energy; however, I see usage of this research in other emerging technologies as well.
Understanding how droplet condensation happens plays an essential role for our fundamental insights of wetting behaviors in nature and numerous applications. Since there is a lack of study of the initial formation and growing processes of condensed droplets down to nano-/submicroscale, relevant underlying mechanisms remain to be explored. We report an in situ observation of vapor condensation on nano-/microtextured superhydrophobic surfaces using optical microscopy. An interesting picture of the vapor condensation, from the initial appearance of individual small droplets (≤1 μm) to a Cassie-Baxter wetting state (30 μm), are exhibited. It is found that individual droplets preferentially nucleate at the top and the edge of single micropillars with very high apparent contact angles on the nanotextures. Scenarios of two distinguished growing modes are reported statistically and the underlying mechanisms are discussed in the view of thermodynamics. We particularly reveal that the formation of the Cassie-Baxter wetting state is a result of a continuous coalescence of individual small droplets, in which the nanotexture-enhanced superhydrophobicity plays a crucial role. We envision that these fundamental findings can deepen our understanding of the nucleation and development of condensed droplets in nanoscale, so as to optimize design strategies of superhydrophobic materials for a broad range of water-harvesting and heat-transfer systems.
Now, a discussion on Highly sensitive Plasmonic Nano-antenna arrays.
Plasmonic photoconductive antennas have great promise for increasing responsivity and detection sensitivity of conventional photoconductive detectors in time-domain terahertz imaging and spectroscopy systems. However, operation bandwidth of previously demonstrated plasmonic photoconductive antennas has been limited by bandwidth constraints of their antennas and photoconductor parasitics. Here, we present a powerful technique for realizing broadband terahertz detectors through large-area plasmonic photoconductive nano-antenna arrays. A key novelty that makes the presented terahertz detector superior to the state-of-the art is a specific large-area device geometry that offers a strong interaction between the incident terahertz beam and optical pump at the nanoscale, while maintaining a broad operation bandwidth. The large device active area allows robust operation against optical and terahertz beam misalignments. We demonstrate broadband terahertz detection with signal-to-noise ratio levels as high as 107 dB.
Nice.
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Determining the exact configuration of proteins and other complex biological molecules is an important step toward understanding their functions, including how they bind with receptors in the body. But such imaging is difficult to do. It usually requires the molecules to be crystallized first so that X-ray diffraction techniques can be applied — and not all such molecules can be crystallized.
Now, a new method developed by researchers at MIT could lead to a way of producing high-resolution images of individual biomolecules without requiring crystallization, and it could even allow zoomed-in imaging of specific sites within the molecules. The technique could also be applied to imaging other kinds of materials, including two-dimensional materials and nanoparticles.
The findings are reported this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, in a paper by Paola Cappellaro, the Esther and Harold E. Edgerton Associate Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, and others at MIT and at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
