SciFi Insight

Monash University researchers have gained insights into how nanoparticles could develop a biosensor to prevent deadly diseases contracted on medical equipment, such as catheters. Candida albicans can become a serious problem for people who are seriously ill or immune-suppressed. Researchers at Monash University have gained insights into how nanoparticles could be used to identify the

IMAGE: Mosquitoes can carry a variety of infectious diseases that until now were difficult and expensive to diagnose. view more  Credit: Nick Holonyak Mico and Nanotechnology Lab Infectious diseases such as Zika and Dengue remain a top contributor to death and disability across the globe, according to the World Health Organization. Diagnosing and treating these diseases,

The future impacts of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) on the lives of human beings will be one of the hot topics at a symposium on in Brisbane and supported by QUT next week. Humanising the Future is a public event being staged by the Australian Academy of the Humanities in South Brisbane on 13-15

IMAGE: Cover for Handbook on Timoshenko-Ehrenfest Beam and Uflyand-Mindlin Plate Theories view more  Credit: World Scientific Beams and plates are indispensable, and are often occurring elements of every civil, mechanical, and aerospace structure. Classical Bernoulli-Euler beam and Kirchhoff-Love plate theories are applicable for slender beams and thin plates, respectively. For stocky structures one has to take

The ability to transform sunlight into energy is one of Nature’s more remarkable feats. Scientists understand the basic process of photosynthesis, but many crucial details remain elusive, occurring at dimensions and fleeting time scales long deemed too minuscule to probe. Now, that is changing. In a new study, led by Petra Fromme and Nadia Zatsepin

IMAGE: Schematic images of the device structure. view more  Credit: KAIST KAIST researchers have reported the detection of a picosecond electron motion in a silicon transistor. This study has presented a new protocol for measuring ultrafast electronic dynamics in an effective time-resolved fashion of picosecond resolution. The detection was made in collaboration with Nippon Telegraph and

IMAGE: Schematic illustration of probe adsorption influenced by an attractive interaction within the corona view more  Credit: SMART The Molecular Probe Adsorption (MPA) method is substantially faster and cheaper than existing chemical methods and does not damage the nanoparticle being studied It can also be used to ‘characterise’ nanoparticles with any geometric shape as a universal

ATLANTA-Georgia State University chemistry researchers have unlocked one of the mysteries of catalytic reactions on a microscopic scale, allowing for the design of more efficient industrial processes. Catalysts — which speed up chemical reactions in everything from the digestion of food to combustion engines in vehicles — are essential in turning raw materials into useful

University of Rochester researchers, inspired by diving bell spiders and rafts of fire ants, have created a metallic structure that is so water repellant, it refuses to sink – no matter how often it is forced into water or how much it is damaged or punctured. Could this lead to: All of the above, says

IMAGE: A 2D prism view more  Credit: Harvard SEAS In 1884, a schoolmaster and theologian named Edwin Abbott wrote a novella called Flatland, which tells the story of a world populated by sentient two-dimensional shapes. While intended as a satire of rigid Victorian social norms, Flatland has long fascinated mathematicians and physicists and served as the

Swarms of nanoparticles which are 15,000 times smaller than a pinhead may be able to deliver vital drugs to the brain, offering new hope to patients in the early stages of a stroke. The research, carried out at The University of Manchester, shows that tiny vesicles called liposomes, just 100 nanometres in diameter can translocate

There are currently no effective treatments for prion diseases, a family of fatal neurodegenerative conditions caused by accumulations of misfolded copies of a naturally occurring protein. But now, there is finally an effective way to test for them. As reported in the journal PLOS ONE, a team of scientists who have been working on prion

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI and ETH Zurich have developed a micromachine that can perform different actions. First nanomagnets in the components of the microrobots are magnetically programmed and then the various movements are controlled by magnetic fields. Such machines, which are only a few tens of micrometres across, could be used, for