Month: March 2020

Our day-to-day lives can be seen as a series of complex motor sequences: morning routines, work or school tasks, actions we take around mealtimes, the rituals and habits woven through our evenings and weekends. They seem almost automatic, with little conscious thought behind them. In reality, however, they are the result of the myriad decisions

HOUSTON – (March 5, 2020) – Molecule-sized drills do the damage they are designed to do. That’s bad news for disease. Scientists at Rice University, Biola University and the Texas A&M Health Science Center have further validation that their molecular motors, light-activated rotors that spin up to 3 million times per second, can target diseased

IMAGE: An image of two colorful parrots was created by mixing red, blue and green structural colors. view more  Credit: Adapted from ACS Nano 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.9b07523 By blending paints in their palette, artists can create a broad spectrum of colors with subtly different hues. However, scientists who wish to create a similar range of structural

IMAGE: Researchers in Taiwan, China and at Rice University made wafer-sized, two-dimensional sheets of hexagonal boron nitride, as reported in Nature. The material may be removed from its copper substrate and… view more  Credit: TSMC/Rice University HOUSTON – (March 4, 2020) – Step by step, scientists are figuring out new ways to extend Moore’s Law. The

IMAGE: An optical image of the graphene device on a silicon dioxide/silicon chip. Shining metal wires are connected to gold electrodes for electrical measurement. view more  Credit: Guorui Chen/Berkeley Lab Ever since graphene’s discovery in 2004, scientists have looked for ways to put this talented, atomically thin 2D material to work. Thinner than a single strand

IMAGE: People enjoy using smartphones and touch screens to send messages, and high resolution screen displays to view images and watch videos but they might forget this technology comes from years… view more  Credit: Luco Bravo Unsplash Modern society is working closer to the nanoscale than it realises. Breakthroughs and advances in developing and manipulating nanostructures

IMAGE: For the first time, a micromotor (shown above) was powered by “engines ” that respond to three different stimuli: catalytic (bubbles), light and magnetic. Scale bar, 10 μm. view more  Credit: Adapted from Chemistry of Materials 2020, DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.9b04873 Someday, microscopic robots could perform useful functions, such as diagnostic testing in lab-on-a-chip sensors, micropatterning surfaces

DNA in a cell can normally be compared to spaghetti on one’s plate: a large tangle of strands. To be able to divide DNA neatly between the two daughter cells during cell division, the cell organises this tangle into tightly packed chromosomes. A protein complex called condensin has been known to play a key role

IMAGE: a. Scanning electron microscopic image of a tilted sample. b. Rabi oscillations between non-neighbouring coupled mechanical resonators. c. Ramsey interferences between non-neighbouring coupled mechanical resonators. view more  Credit: Prof. GUO Guo-Ping, SONG Xiang-Xiang, DENG Guang-Wei,TIAN Lin The CAS Key Laboratory of Quantum Information makes a significant progress in nanomechanical resonators. A group led by Prof.

IMAGE: Researchers at the University of Bristol have come up with a new type of nanoelectromechanical relay to enable reliable high-temperature, non-volatile memory. view more  Credit: Dr Dinesh Pamunuwa Researchers at the University of Bristol have come up with a new type of nanoelectromechanical relay to enable reliable high-temperature, non-volatile memory. The work, which is reported

IMAGE: Scientists are using supercomputers to help understand the relatively rare event of salts in water (blue) passing through atomically-thin nanoporous membranes. A traversing chloride ion (peach) induces charge anisotropy at… view more  Credit: Malmir et al. For a long time, nothing. Then all of a sudden, something. Wonderful things in nature can burst on the

Scientists have made a breakthrough in the search for a new, sustainable permanent magnet. Most permanent magnets are made from alloys of rare earth metals – but the mining and processing of these materials produces toxic by-products, leading to ecological challenges around rare-earth mines and refineries. At the same time, demand for permanent magnets is

IMAGE: ixteen strands of DNA, stacked four-by-four, form the beam-shaped chassis of the DNA motor (in gray). Bits of DNA (in green) protrude from the chassis like little feet. The motor… view more  Credit: Stephanie Jones, bio-illustrations.com Through a technique known as DNA origami, scientists have created the fastest, most persistent DNA nano motor yet. Angewandte

IMAGE: Ivan Lyatun and Polina Medvedskaya view more  Credit: Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University After the synchrotrons of the fourth generation were invented (these are particle accelerators, which are, in fact, giant research facilities), there was an urgent need for a fundamentally new optics that could withstand high temperatures and radiation loads created by a powerful

IMAGE: Digging deeper into the intricacies of these networks in an effort to develop more efficient Quantum Algorithms view more  Credit: Tokyo University of Science Our world has no dearth of complex networks–from cellular networks in biology to intricate web networks in technology. These networks also form the basis of various applications in virtually all fields

IMAGE: A schematic representation of the presented nanocomposite: Mn12-stearate single-molecule magnets separated onto the surface of spherical silica (Source: IFJ PAN) view more  Credit: Source: IFJ PAN Following the latest research in the field of obtaining single-molecule magnets (SMMs), scientists have taken another step on the way toward obtaining super-dense magnetic memories and molecular neural networks,