Nano carbon tubes, in many shapes and sizes.

The image above is a composite of many images of carbon nanotubes grown on silicon wafers or in cavities etched in the wafers. Each structure is made up of thousands of nanotubes or more. The catalyst that starts off the nanotubes’ growth is visible under some of them as a dark, shadowlike spot. Structures that appear withered were dipped in liquid after they grew; as the liquid evaporated, the nanotubes shriveled.

Link and photo via nextnature.net.

- photo via nationalgeographic.com

It’s no mystery to scientists that bees have been disappearing and or dying off in record numbers. Besides contributing billions of dollars to the US economy, they play an important role in the pollination of crops. That apple you are eating? Not possible with out a little help from the honey bee.

Tracking their movement has come one step closer:

In the bee-tracking project, Wikelski and his colleagues are using transmitters the size of three or four grains of rice, powered by a tiny hearing-aid battery and with a crystal-controlled oscillator and an antenna measuring up to an inch and a half.

The transmitters, at a featherweight 0.006 ounces (170 milligrams), are small and light enough to attach to the backs of bees from two relatively hefty species, weighing .02 ounces (600 milligrams), with just a bit of eyelash glue and superglue.

Even loaded up with these backpacks, nearly a third of their body weight, “they fly beautifully,” says Wikelski.

The transmitters allow the scientists to track the insects as long as the bees remain within a few miles of their receiver. So far Wikelski and his team have fitted tags on orchid bees at Panama’s Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and conducted successful indoor tests in a New Jersey lab with North America’s biggest bee species, the carpenter bee.

These early tests are proof of concept. Most bees are much smaller than orchid and carpenter bees. In fact, many wild bee species are the size of just a pine nut.

The tags are tiny, but need to be smaller still for honey bees. Although they have tiny robots, having a camera on a bee would make for excellent surveillance. They would just have to avoid being swatted.

Link and photo via nationalgeographic.com.

- photo via medgadget.com

A flexible tiny pump that generates electricity could power future implantable medical devices. Georgia Tech researchers used zinc oxide wires that scratch against an electrode to generate a current, clearly showing potential for use within the constantly moving body.

As the article states, a larger size was chosen for ease of production, but this application can be scaled down for nano applications.

- photo via medgadget.com

Link and photos via medgadget.com.

From newscientist.com, comes video of a new material that is extremely omniphobic, causing even oil to bead up on its toadstool surface like water. The commercial applications are massive, but they are tempered with the ability of the material to survive the rigors of daily work.

- photos via mit.edu

MIT engineers have outfitted B-lymphocytes and T-cells with “backpacks” that could one day allow for direct delivery of drugs to cancer sites or assist in the rebuilding of damaged tissue. The cells can be directed using a magnetic field and the tiny patch doesn’t interfere in the cells normal activities.

Link, photos and video via MIT.

Made of pieces of engineered RNA, which was assembled inside a yeast cell:

A newly developed bio-computer allows scientists to “program” molecules to carry out “commands” inside cells.

Such devices could one day allow humans to manipulate biological systems directly, said the California Institute of Technology’s Christina Smolke, who co-authored the study, which will be published tomorrow in the journal Science.

Bio-computers might eventually serve as brains for producing biofuels from cells, for example, or to control “smart drugs” that medicate only under certain conditions.

From nationalgeographic.com.

New nanotechnology paints for walls, ceilings, and surfaces could be used to kill hospital superbugs when fluorescent lights are switched on, scientists heard at the Society for General Microbiology’s Autumn meeting being held this week at Trinity College, Dublin.

Scientists have discovered that extremely small, nanoparticle-sized forms of titanium dioxide can kill bacteria and destroy dirt when they absorb ultraviolet light (UV) energy from the sun. They produce active molecules which clean up the painted surfaces.

The researchers looked at the survival of the food poisoning bacterium Escherichia coli on different formulations of paints containing the titanium nanoparticles under different types and intensities of lights. “We found that paints containing titanium dioxide are more successful at killing bacteria if the concentration of the nanoparticles is stronger than in normal paint. Our best results showed that all the E. coli were killed under ordinary fluorescent lights,” said Lucia Caballero.

Link via sciencedaily.com.

- photo via sciencedaily.com

The nanobialys are an important addition to the stock of diagnostic and disease-fighting nanoparticles developed by researchers in the Consortium for Translational Research in Advanced Imaging and Nanomedicine (C-TRAIN) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. C-TRAIN’s “smart” nanoparticles can deliver drugs and imaging agents directly to the site of tumors and plaques.

The nanobialys weren’t cooked up for their appealing shape — that’s a natural result of the manufacturing process. The particles answered a need for an alternative to the research group’s gadolinium-containing nanoparticles, which were created for their high visibility in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans.

Gadolinium is a common contrast agent for MRI scans, but recent studies have shown that it can be harmful to some patients with severe kidney disease.

Link and image via sciencedaily.com.

The age-old fantasy of rendering objects invisible took a sharp step toward reality Sunday when scientists said they had created a material that can bend visible light in three dimensions.

For now the vanishing act takes place on a nanoscale, measured in billionths of a meter.

But there is no fundamental reason why the same principles cannot be scaled up one day to make invisibility cloaks big enough to hide a person, a tank or even a tanker, the scientists say.

The groundbreaking experiments, led by Xiang Zhang at the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, were reported simultaneously in the British journal Nature and the U.S. journal Science.

From Discovery.com

Imagine an edible optical sensor that could be placed in produce bags to detect harmful levels of bacteria and consumed right along with the veggies. Or an implantable device that would monitor glucose in your blood for a year, then dissolve.

Scientists at Tufts University’s School of Engineering have demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to design such “living” optical elements that could enable an entirely new class of sensors. These sensors would combine sophisticated nanoscale optics with biological readout functions, be biocompatible and biodegradable, and be manufactured and stored at room temperatures without use of toxic chemicals. The Tufts team used fibers from silkworms to develop the platform devices.

“Sophisticated optical devices that are mechanically robust yet fully biodegradable, biocompatible and implantable don’t exist today,” said principal investigator Fiorenzo Omenetto, associate professor of biomedical engineering and associate professor of physics. “Such systems would greatly expand the use of current optical technologies in areas like human and livestock health, environmental monitoring and food quality.”

“For example, at a low cost, we could potentially put a bioactive silk film in every bag of spinach, and it could give the consumer a readout of whether or not E. coli bacteria were in the bag—before the food was consumed,” explained David Kaplan, professor and chair of the biomedical engineering department.

Link via sciencedaily.com.

Pollen and grit are the components of a new coating for gun cartridges that UK researchers hope will help to identify criminals that use firearms.

Under their scheme, batches of cartridges would be labelled with unique “nanotags”, invisible to naked eye, designed to attach themselves to hands, gloves and clothing of anyone that handles a cartridge. Some of the tags would remain on the spent cartridge casing.

The tags could perform a similar, but more authoritative role to the specks of unintended explosives residue sometimes used to tie people to guns or crimes.

The nanotags are made from pollen, and a mix of grains of crystal oxides such as zirconia, silica and titanium oxide. Using varying combinations of crystal and pollen grains, it is possible to make large numbers of unique tags.

“The most challenging part of the project was nanoengineering a coating robust enough to withstand the [high temperatures of] firing and that would still release the tags when touched,” he added.

Sermon says that the tags are designed to be compatible with current cartridge manufacturing processes and could be implemented within 12 months of companies or government supporting their introduction.

In addition to the tags, the researchers are working on a way to have gun cartridges retain skin cells from anyone that handle them, for later DNA-based forensic analysis. Micro-scale grit can effectively trap cells and protect DNA from the heat of firing. Today, cartridges are smooth and rarely retain DNA or fingerprints.

The team is also looking to apply that technique to knives so they retain DNA more reliably.

Link via newscientist.com.

Next Big Future has a nice roundup of current DARPA supersoldier projects.  Some of my favourites are:

A major focus is on helping the soldier’s body to better deal with trauma and damage. One such is the “pain vaccines” coming out of a program at Rinat Neuroscience [Pfizer acquired Rinat Neuroscience in 2006]. Researchers are hopeful these “will block the sense of pain for almost a month,” describes DARPA’s Michael Goldblatt.

The substance does is block intense pain in less than 10 seconds. Its effects last for 30 days. It doesn’t stifle your reactions. If you touch a hot stove, you still have the initial shock; your hand will still automatically jerk away. But after that, the torment is gone. The product works on the inflammatory response that is responsible for the majority of subacute pain. If you get shot, you feel the bullet, but after that, the inflammation and swelling that trigger agony are substantially reduced.

And…

The plan is for new body armor that, instead of Kevlar, is filled with nano-materials that are connected to a computer. [Computer controlled liquid armor] It would normally be as flexible as regular uniform made of fabric. But, like how a crash-bag works inside a car, it would activate whenever the system detects a bullet strike and turn as hard as steel in an instant.

Gloves could turn into real-life brass knuckles.

The fabric could even be woven in with “nanomuscle fibers” that simulate real muscles, giving soldiers more an estimated “25 to 35 percent better lifting capability.” So myostatin strength boost to get to olympic athlete strength levels and then 25-35% boost from a soft suit. Use better exoskeletons for more strength enhancement.

From deflecting bullets to powers of invisibility, as military analyst Max Boot writes, such a suit truly “would give ordinary mortals many of the attributes of comic book superheroes.

Head back to Next Big Future for a lot more links and current military enhancement projects.

From New Scientist Tech:

Alberto Bianco and Hélène Dumortier at the CNRS Institute in Strasbourg, France, in collaboration with Maurizio Prato at the University of Trieste, Italy, gave carbon nanohorns to mouse white blood cells in a Petri dish. The macrophage cells’ job is to swallow foreign particles.

After 24 hours, most of the macrophages had swallowed some nanohorns. But they had also begun to release reactive oxygen compounds and other small molecules that signal to other parts of the immune system to become more active.

The researchers think they could tune that cellular distress call to a particular disease or cancer, by filling the interior of nanohorns with particular antigens, like ice cream filling a cone.

“The nanohorns would deliver the antigen to the macrophages while also triggering a cascade of pro-inflammatory effects,” Dumortier says. “This process should initiate an antigen-specific immune response.”

- image via sciencedaily.com, courtesy of the American Chemical Society

Move over, Rumplestiltskin. Researchers in China report the first successful “electrospinning” of a type of plastic widely used in automobiles and electronics. The high-tech process, which uses an electric charge to turn polymers into thin fibers in the presence of electricity, produced plastic mats that can stretch 10 times more without breaking than the original material and could lead to new uses for the plastic, they say.

Link via sciencedaily.com

Human cells could have their metabolisms upgraded without altering their genes by inserting tiny plastic packages of enzymes, Swiss researchers have shown. They hope the technique could allow advanced cancer therapies, or even upgrade a person’s metabolism.

The cells of multi-cellular organisms and some advanced single-celled organisms have internal compartments called organelles to carry out specialised metabolic functions. Researchers at University of Basel, Switzerland, used artificial polymer organelles to upgrade live human cells in a lab dish.

Meier and colleagues coated their polymer vesicles in a chemical that encouraged human white blood cells called macrophages to engulf them. The small capsules contained enzymes, just like natural organelles. The enzymes chosen produced fluorescent chemicals, signalling they were working without problems inside their new host.

The artificial organelle’s membrane can be chemically tuned to control which chemicals can pass through it and regulate the reactions inside, according to Wolfgang Meier, one of the researchers. “We call it a ‘nanoreactor’,” he says

Link via newscientist.com

- photo from io9.com

The first artificial virus was created in 2003 — to cure people, not kill them. A virus can deliver cures to cells just as easily as it delivers death. The problem with artificial viruses is that no one has been able to make them the proper shape to serve as a therapeutic delivery system. But now, Korean scientists have created a virus that could deliver a remedy directly to a patient’s cells with far greater efficiency than past attempts. The key lies in those Lovecraftian tentacles extending from the virus.

The Korean researchers used nanotechnology to build the shape of the virus, then added self-assembling molecules. The result: an artificial virus with the filament shapes seen in the image. Such a shape will allow it to last longer inside a person’s body.

Why is this important? Medication delivered directly to cells with an artificial virus is like using a professional assassin to take out your target. By comparison, conventional medication techniques are more like running around a city firing a shotgun in random directions. The other major bonus? That thing totally looks like some kind of microscopic spawn of Cthulhu.

Link via io9.com

Excellent.

- Picture via medgadget.com

This NASA developed nanotechnology-based biosensor, designed to detect trace amounts of specific bacteria, viruses and parasites, has now been tested and licensed for commercialization by biosensor technology company Early Warning Inc., from Troy, N.Y.

From a NASA statement:

This biosensor will be used to help prevent the spread of potentially deadly biohazards in water, food and other contaminated sources.

NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in California licensed the biosensor technology to Early Warning Inc., Troy, N.Y. Under a Reimbursable Space Act Agreement, NASA and Early Warning jointly will develop biosensor enhancements. Initially, the biosensor will be configured to detect the presence of common and rare strains of microorganisms associated with water-borne illnesses and fatalities.

“The biosensor makes use of ultra-sensitive carbon nanotubes which can detect biohazards at very low levels,” explained Meyya Meyyappan, chief scientist for exploration technology and former director of the Center for Nanotechnology at Ames. “When biohazards are present, the biosensor generates an electrical signal, which is used to determine the presence and concentration levels of specific micro-organisms in the sample. Because of their tiny size, millions of nanotubes can fit on a single biosensor chip.”

Early Warning company officials say food and beverage companies, water agencies, industrial plants, hospitals and airlines could use the biosensor to prevent outbreaks of illnesses caused by pathogens - without needing a laboratory or technicians.

“Biohazard outbreaks from pathogens and infectious diseases occur every day in the U.S. and throughout the world,” said Neil Gordon, president of Early Warning. “The key to preventing major outbreaks is frequent and comprehensive testing for each suspected pathogen, as most occurrences of pathogens are not detected until after people get sick or die. Biohazards can enter the water supply and food chain from a number of sources which are very difficult to uncover.”

Early Warning expects to launch its water-testing products in late 2008.

Link via medgadget.com

Interesting this breaks, when the news hits of possible asbestos-like pathogenicity associated with mice and nano carbon tubes.

Rockin’ lofi SF movie in seven-parts Infest Wisely is now available on DVD.

Here’s your daily irony of 21C media distribution:

“It’s kind of funny — it’s costing twice as much to press the
DVD as it did to shoot the movie,” Munroe pointed out, going on to
explain that sponsored screenings allowed them to raise the funds
required. “But as a physical object it gets out into the world in a
completely different way, and to different people.”

And it’s always nice to hold a physical copy of something.

See Also:

• Infest Wisely - an online nanotech movie in seven parts

Creacrete is a concrete based material which is highly dense making it possible to create filigree and thin-walled objects out of concrete. Unlike usual ceramics, Alexa uses the novel aesthetics of Creacrete for the design of tableware. Special processing makes it possible to achieve this glossy surface which is new to concrete. A nano-scale coating makes the cups and plates hydrophobic and food safe.

Link via core77.com

Tableware should be durable.

Just as we have come to expect, scientists have developed better technology enabling smaller, more powerful and lower power consuming devices in the future.

Put simply it means:

The capacity of MP3 players could increase 100 times from present levels.

But the IBM team say racetrack memory is still seven to eight years away from commercial use.

Here’s their cheesy explanation video:

Now, as I have said before, the day technology stops getting cheaper, smaller and more powerful there will be probably be riots.

But, this is especially good news for the creation of more functional and more unobtrusive wearable and implant technology.

Yay for Science!