Lifeboat Foundation

A new way to make arrays of nanofibers that gets its inspiration from polar bear fur, lotus leaves, and gecko feet could lead to coatings that are sticky, repellant, insulating, or light emitting.

“This is so removed from anything I’ve ever seen that I would have thought it was impossible,” says Joerg Lahann, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Michigan and senior author of the paper, which appears in Science.

Polar bear hairs are structured to let light in while keeping heat from escaping. Water-repelling lotus leaves are coated with arrays of microscopic waxy tubules. And the nanoscale hairs on the bottoms of gravity-defying gecko feet get so close to other surfaces that atomic forces of attraction come into play.

A ground-breaking study has shown it takes a matter of hours for billions of minute plastic nanoparticles to become embedded throughout the major organs of a marine organism.

The research, led by the University of Plymouth, examined the uptake of nanoparticles by a commercially important mollusc, the great scallop (Pecten maximus).

After six hours exposure in the laboratory, billions of particles measuring 250nm (around 0.00025mm) had accumulated within the scallop’s intestines.

Continue reading “Billions of nanoplastics accumulate in marine organisms within six hours” »

There have been some who have complained about the seeming lack of acceleration or slower than some have expected development of societal technology.

Richard Jones talks about lack of specific progress to diamondoid molecular nanotechnology or the appearance that we might not be on track to a technological singularity.

Continue reading “Breaking Through to Next Levels of Technology” »

When you shine a beam of light on your hand, you don’t feel much, except for a little bit of heat generated by the beam. When you shine that same light into a world that is measured on the nano- or micro scale, the light becomes a powerful manipulating tool that you can use to move objects around – trapped securely in the light.

In animal models, the nanobots caused damage to the tissue of the tumor within 24 hours of treatment.

Scientists in Fife are investigating if tiny lasers could be used to better understand diseases such as cancer.

Using nano-technology, the St Andrews University experts created lasers small enough to fit inside live cells which can then be tracked.

With a diameter of a thousandth of a millimetre, the lasers can be inserted into neurons or immune cells.

Cancer will become easier to detect and diagnose early using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) thanks to A*STAR researchers who have engineered biocompatible iron oxide nanoparticle contrast agents¹.

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology produced subnano-sized metallic particles that are as much as 50 times more effective than well-known Au-Pd bimetallic nanocatalysts.

Whether they’re in airplane wings, bridges or other critical structures, cracks can cause catastrophic failure before they’re large enough to be noticed by the human eye. A strain-sensing “skin” applied to such objects could help, though, by lighting up when exposed to laser light.