Lifeboat Foundation

These fundamental units of the brain and nervous system – composed of the cell body, the dendrites and the axon (a long, thin extension responsible for communicating with other cells) – receive sensory input from the external world, send motor commands to our muscles and for transform and relay the electrical signals at every step in between.

“Our novel method of creating ‘mini-brains’ opens the door to finding solutions for various neurological impairments”

Prof. Orit Shefi and doctoral student Reut Plen from the Kofkin Faculty of Engineering at Bar-Ilan University (BIU) have developed a novel technique to overcome this challenge using nanotechnology and magnetic manipulations – one of the most innovative approaches to creating neural networks. Their research was recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Functional Materials under the title “Bioengineering 3D Neural Networks Using Magnetic Manipulations.”

While it may seem common knowledge that smoking is bad for your lungs, if and how ultrafine particles present in cigarette smoke impact the development and progression of lung cancer remains unclear. Working with animal models, researchers at Baylor College of Medicine sought to find how airborne ultrafine particles in smoke can change a host’s defense against lung cancer.

In a study published in the current edition of Science Advances, Dr. Cheng-Yen Chang, a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Farrah Kheradmand’s lab in the Department of Medicine – Pulmonary at Baylor, and their team discovered that exposure to ultrafine particles alters the function of immune cells in the lungs, disabling their natural defense mechanism against tumors. They found that ultrafine particles change the cell’s primary energy source, creating new byproducts in the lungs. Accumulation of the new byproducts can decrease the host’s immune defense, allowing tumors to escape detection.

These particles are not just found in cigarette smoke; environmental and other natural fires also incompletely combust organic matter that generates ultrafine particles. Kheradmand and colleagues at Rice University had previously found that immune cells in the lungs of heavy smokers contain particles that they identified as nano-sized elemental carbon black.

Ray Kurzweil is an author, computer scientist, inventor, futurist and a director of engineering at Google. Kurzweil is a public advocate for the futurist and transhumanist movements, and gives public talks to share his optimistic outlook on life extension technologies and the future of nanotechnology, robotics, and biotechnology.

Recorded 2013

Year 2012 face_with_colon_three

Gizmo doesn’t violate relativity, but it could find uses in optical circuitry.

The field of epidermal electronics, or e-tattoos, covers a wide range of flexible and stretchable monitoring gadgets that are wearable directly on the skin. We have covered this area in multiple Nanowerk Spotlights, for instance stick-on epidermal electronics tattoo to measure UV exposure or tattoo-type biosensors based on graphene; and we also have posted a primer on electronic skin.

Taking the concept of e-tattoos a step further, integrating them with triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs), for instance for health monitoring, could lead to next generation wearable nanogenerators and Internet-of-things devices worn directly on and powered by the skin.

In work reported in Advanced Functional Materials (“Triboelectric Nanogenerator Tattoos Enabled by Epidermal Electronic Technologies”), researchers report a tattoo-like TENG (TL-TENG) design with a thickness of tens of micrometers, that can interface with skin without additional adhesive layers, and be used for energy harvesting from daily activities.

Year 2019 😁

Semiconducting carbon nanotubes (CNTs) printed into thin films offer high electrical performance, significant mechanical stability, and compatibility with low-temperature processing. Yet, the implementation of low-temperature printed devices, such as CNT thin-film transistors (CNT-TFTs), has been hindered by relatively high process temperature requirements imposed by other device layers—dielectrics and contacts. In this work, we overcome temperature constraints and demonstrate 1D–2D thin-film transistors (1D–2D TFTs) in a low-temperature (maximum exposure ≤80 °C) full print-in-place process (i.e., no substrate removal from printer throughout the entire process) using an aerosol jet printer. Semiconducting 1D CNT channels are used with a 2D hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) gate dielectric and traces of silver nanowires as the conductive electrodes, all deposited using the same printer.

Conventional light sources for fiber-optic telecommunications emit many photons at the same time. Photons are particles of light that move as waves. In today €™s telecommunication networks, information is transmitted by modulating the properties of light waves traveling in optical fibers, similar to how radio waves are modulated in AM and FM channels.

In quantum communication, however, information is encoded in the phase of a single photon – the photon €™s position in the wave in which it travels. This makes it possible to connect quantum sensors in a network spanning great distances and to connect quantum computers together.

Researchers recently produced single-photon sources with operating wavelengths compatible with existing fiber communication networks. They did so by placing molybdenum ditelluride semiconductor layers just atoms thick on top of an array of nano-size pillars (Nature Communications, “Site-Controlled Telecom-Wavelength Single-Photon Emitters in Atomically-thin MoTe 2 ”).

Scientists at Scripps Research have reported success in initial tests of a new, nanotech-based strategy against autoimmune diseases.

The scientists, who reported their results in ACS Nano, engineered cell-like “nanoparticles” that target only the immune cells driving an autoimmune reaction, leaving the rest of the immune system intact and healthy. The nanoparticles greatly delayed, and in some animals even prevented, severe disease in a mouse model of arthritis.

“The potential advantage of this approach is that it would enable safe, long-term treatment for autoimmune diseases where the immune system attacks its own tissues or organs—using a method that won’t cause broad immune suppression, as current treatments do,” says study senior author James Paulson, Ph.D., Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Chair of Chemistry in the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research.

The solution to our carbon problem is floating in the oceans.

Phytoplankton are microscopic organisms (can be bacteria, algae, or plants) that perform photosynthesis in oceans and eliminate excess carbon dioxide from Earth’s atmosphere. They sequester about 40 percent of the total carbon produced every year globally and, therefore, also play a major role in mitigating global warming.

Continue reading “Engineered nanoparticles can help phytoplankton kidnap the excess CO2 on Earth” »