Lifeboat Foundation

The animal brain consists of tens of billions of neurons or nerve cells that perform complex tasks like processing emotions, learning, and making judgments by communicating with each other via neurotransmitters. These small signaling molecules diffuse—move from high to low concentration regions—between neurons, acting as chemical messengers.

Scientists believe that this diffusive motion might be at the heart of the brain’s superior function. Therefore, they have aimed to understand the role of specific neurotransmitters by detecting their release in the brain using amperometric and microdialysis methods. However, these methods provide insufficient information, necessitating better sensing techniques.

To this end, scientists developed an optical imaging method wherein protein probes change their fluorescence intensity upon detecting a specific neurotransmitter. Recently, a group of researchers from Shibaura Institute of Technology in Japan led by Professor Yasuo Yoshimi has taken this idea forward. They have successfully synthesized fluorescent molecularly imprinted polymeric nanoparticles (fMIP-NPs) that serve as probes to detect specific neurotransmitters–serotonin, dopamine, and acetylcholine.

Ray Kurzweil — The Singularity IS NEAR — part 2! We’ll Reach IMMORTALITY by 2030
Get ready for an exciting journey into the future with Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity IS NEAR — Part 2! Join us as we explore the awe-inspiring possibilities of what could be achieved before 2030, including the potential for humans to reach immortality. We’ll dive into the incredible technology that could help us reach this singularity and uncover what the implications of achieving immortality could be. Don’t miss out on this fascinating insight into the future of mankind!
In his book “The Singularity Is Near”, futurist and inventor Ray Kurzweil argues that we are rapidly approaching a point in time known as the singularity. This refers to the moment when artificial intelligence and other technologies will become so advanced that they surpass human intelligence and change the course of human evolution forever.

Kurzweil predicts that by 2030, we will reach a crucial milestone in our technological progress: immortality. He bases this prediction on his observation of exponential growth in various fields such as genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics, which he believes will culminate in the creation of what he calls “nanobots”.

Continue reading “Ray Kurzweil says We’ll Reach IMMORTALITY by 2030 | The Singularity IS NEAR” »

In the latest advance in nano-and micro-architected materials, engineers at Caltech have developed a new material made from numerous interconnected microscale knots.

The knots make the material far tougher than identically structured but unknotted materials: they absorb more energy and are able to deform more while still being able to return to their original shape undamaged. These new knotted materials may find applications in biomedicine as well as in aerospace applications due to their durability, possible biocompatibility, and extreme deformability.

Continue reading “Knots smaller than human hair make materials unusually tough” »

Alloys that can return to their original structure after being deformed have a so-called shape memory. This phenomenon and the resulting forces are used in many mechanical actuating systems, for example in generators or hydraulic pumps. However, it has not been possible to use this shape-memory effect at a small nanoscale. Objects made of shape-memory alloy can only change back to their original shape if they are larger than around 50 nanometers.

Researchers led by Salvador Pané, Professor of Materials of Robotics at ETH Zurich, and Xiang-Zhong Chen, a senior scientist in his group, were able to circumvent this limitation using ceramic materials. In a study published in the journal Nature Communications, they demonstrate the shape-memory effect on a layer that is about twenty nanometers thick and made of materials called ferroic oxides. This achievement now makes it possible to apply the shape-memory effect to tiny nanoscale machines.

At first glance, ferroic oxides do not appear to be very suitable for the shape-memory effect: They are brittle in bulk scale, and in order to produce very thin layers of them, they usually have to be fixed onto a substrate, which makes them inflexible. In order to still be able to induce the shape-memory effect, the researchers used two different oxides, barium titanate and cobalt ferrite, of which they temporarily applied thin layers onto a magnesium oxide substrate. The lattice parameters of the two oxides differ significantly from each other. After the researchers had detached the two-layered strip from the supporting substrate, the tension between the two oxides generated a spiral-shaped twisted structure.

How does the brain retrieve memories, articulate words, and focus attention? Recent advances have provided a newfound ability to decipher, sharpen, and adjust electrical signals relevant to speech, attention, memory and emotion. Join Brian Greene and leading neuroscientists György Buzsáki, Edward Chang, Michael Halassa, Michael Kahana and Helen Mayberg for a thrilling exploration of how we’re learning to read and manipulate the mind.

The Kavli Prize recognizes scientists for their seminal advances in astrophysics, nanoscience, and neuroscience — topics covered in the series “The Big, the Small, and the Complex.” This series is sponsored by The Kavli Foundation and The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

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The ultimate miniature electronic device may be one that manipulates individual electrons with subnanometer and subfemtosecond precision. The past few decades have seen immense progress in the control of ultrafast electronic processes, including in the context of vacuum nanoelectronics, where electrons travel from a nanoscale emitter to a target electrode through a vacuum. Now Hirofumi Yanagisawa at the Japan Science and Technology Agency and colleagues have taken an important step toward optimal spatial control by using the orbitals of a single molecule to shape its electron emission (Fig. 1) [1]. The approach offers the prospect of building highly controllable electron emitters, but also of furthering our understanding of the role of molecular orbitals in the electronic structure of solids.

Fundamental to achieving extreme control over electron emission is defining the spot from which electrons are ejected from the emitter. One approach is to physically shape the material of the emitter into the desired spot pattern. Doing that at the subnanometer scale would entail significant material-and fabrication-related challenges, however. Instead, Yanagisawa and colleagues have demonstrated the clever idea of using the inherent electronic structure of a molecule to route the electrons for emission. In essence, the molecular orbitals are used as a spatial filter to control the emission pattern.

The team’s work grows out of two broad areas of investigation that have progressed significantly over the past few decades. One of these involves the study of femto-and attosecond electron dynamics and the creation of ultrafast electron sources, exemplified by the 2006 demonstration of tight spatial control over femtosecond electron pulses through emission from a nanoscale metallic tip [2– 8]. The second is the study of electron emission patterns originating from molecular structures and nanostructures. Examples include patterns corresponding to the tip structures of nanotubes and nanowires, which change as the tip evolves during nanotube growth [9– 11]. It is by combining the techniques of ultrafast emission and emission microscopy that Yanagisawa and colleagues have demonstrated that the emission patterns can be directly linked to specific molecular orbitals.

Nanotechnology is a field of science and engineering that focuses on the design and manufacture of extremely small devices and structures.

High-performance, realistic computer simulations are crucially important for science and engineering, even allowing scientists to predict how individual molecules will behave.

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X-ray diffraction has been used for more than a hundred years to understand the structure of crystals or proteins—for instance, in 1952 the well-known double helix structure of the DNA that carries genetic information was discovered in this way. In this technique, the object under investigation is bombarded with short-wavelength X-ray beams. The diffracted beams then interfere and thus create characteristic diffraction patterns from which one can gain information about the shape of the object.

For several years now it has been possible to study even single nanoparticles in this way, using very short and extremely intense X-ray pulses. However, this typically only yields a two-dimensional image of the particle. A team of researchers led by ETH professor Daniela Rupp, together with colleagues at the universities of Rostock and Freiburg, the TU Berlin and DESY in Hamburg, have now found a way to also calculate the three-dimensional structure from a single diffraction pattern, so that one can “look” at the particle from all directions. In the future it should even be possible to make 3D-movies of the dynamics of nanostructures in this way. The results of this research have recently been published in the scientific journal Science Advances.

Daniela Rupp has been assistant professor at ETH Zurich since 2019, where she leads the research group “Nanostructures and ultra-fast X-ray science.” Together with her team she tries to better understand the interaction between very intense X-ray pulses and matter. As a model system they use nanoparticles, which they also investigate at the Paul Scherrer Institute. “For the future there are great opportunities at the new Maloja instrument, on which we were the first user group to make measurements at the beginning of last year. Right now our team there is activating the attosecond mode, with which we can even observe the dynamics of electrons,” says Rupp.