New material Nanobuds are buckyballs fused to Nanotubes

(left) Two transmission electron microscope images of a single-walled carbon nanotube with fullerenes attached to its surface (right) A fullerene/SWNT hybrid structure – a NanoBud. Credit: Esko Kauppinen, et al. Researchers have created a hybrid carbon nanomaterial that merges single-walled carbon nanotubes and spherical carbon-atom cages called fullerenes. The new structures, dubbed NanoBuds because they …

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Cold Fusion continues to gain Grudging Respect

Cold Fusion continues to claw its way to respectability American Chemical society is holding a symposium at their national meeting in Chicago, Illinois, on ‘low-energy nuclear reactions’, the official name for cold fusion. Vocal cold-fusion critic Robert Park at the University of Maryland. “If anything is going on, it’s not fusion.” That cold-fusion critics such …

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Medical progress summary

Japanese scientists have developed an oral vaccine for Alzheimer’s disease that has proven effective and safe in mice. “We hope the Phase I trials go well,” Tabira said. “Animals are able to recover their functions after developing symptoms, but humans are less able to do so. It may be that this only works in the …

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Progress in Nanotube Transistors

High-current transistors made from perfectly aligned carbon nanotubes show promise for use in flexible and high-speed nanoelectronics. Tube transistors: Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign have developed a technique to grow thousands of carbon nanotubes (shown in blue and white in this colorized scanning electron micrograph). The researchers deposit electrodes (shown in …

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Light activated nanoscale scissors from Japan

Researchers in Japan have developed a pair of molecular-scale scissors that open and close in response to light. The tiny scissors are the first example of a molecular machine capable of mechanically manipulating molecules by using light, the scientists say.The scissors measure just three nanometers in length, small enough to deliver drugs into cells or …

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Wealthy consumption, airplanes and the environment

Future pundit brought up a concern about high consumption by a lot of rich people in the future causing environmental problems I examine more of the statistics around the current situation. Previously I looked at what the projected wealth situation might look like. Work is being done to reduce the environmental impact of planes. Molecular …

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Far infrared can be used wireless thousands of times faster

NEw research shows high-frequency terahertz signals can be switched on and off to carry data in the digital code of ones and zeroes, and that it someday may be possible to build superfast switches to carry terahertz data at terahertz speeds. That is 1,000 times faster than gigahertz fiber optic lines that carry data as …

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Projecting future wealth

2006 2005 2004 Wealth Amount 5 3 2 US$30B+ Forbes list (which mainly catches owners 67 49 32 US$10B+ of public assets, can underestimate some 167 124 102 US$5B+ like CTO of Cisco, who may be billionaire 946 793 691 US$1B+ from cisco stock + large startup positions) 10000 8200 7500 US$160M+ (my own estimate) …

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Scientists Create First Non-Carbon Material with Near-Diamond Hardness

The material is a boron nitride “nanocomposite.” This means that, rather than consisting of one large continuous crystal, it is made of crystalline boron-nitride grains that are each a few to several nanometers in size. Although research groups have previously reported boron carbonitride materials, claimed to be the second and third hardest materials after diamond, …

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