White blood cells from a strain of cancer-resistant mice cured advanced cancers in ordinary laboratory mice, researchers at Wake Forest University School of Medicine reported “Even highly aggressive forms of malignancy with extremely large tumors were eradicated,” Zheng Cui, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues reported in this week’s on-line edition of Proceedings of the National Academy …
Northwestern University researchers have developed a process that promises to lead to the creation of a new class of composite materials — “graphene-based materials.” The method uses graphite to produce individual graphene-based sheets with exceptional physical, chemical and barrier properties that could be mixed into materials such as polymers, glasses and ceramics. The Northwestern team’s …
The amount of force applied while mixing carbon nanotube suspensions influences the way the tiny cylinders ultimately disperse and orient themselves. In turn, the final arrangement of the nanotubes largely dictates the properties of the resultant materials. In an elegantly simple result, NIST researchers Erik Hobbie and Dan Fry found that networks of carbon nanotubes …
More advances in self assembly of nanoparticles and making more robust end products. One of the newest types of nanoparticle self-assembly – developed by scientists K. Prabhakaran and team from institutions in the U.S., Japan and Germany – is called “chemical lithography.” The process, the scientists demonstrate, can effectively form periodic arrays of very stable …
Like nanoshells, nanoeggs are about 20 times smaller than a red blood cell, and they can be tuned to focus light on small regions of space. But each nanoegg interacts with more light – about five times the number of wavelengths – than their nanoshell cousins, and their asymmetric structure also allows them to focus …
Semiconductor LEDs are used increasingly in displays and many other applications, in part because they can efficiently produce light across a broad spectrum, from near-infrared to the ultraviolet. However, they typically emit only about two percent of the light in the desired direction: perpendicular to the diode surface. Far more light skims uselessly below the …
There are several topics which are often analyzed in isolation in regards to projected advanced technology. AI, accelerating technology, and abundance from technology and resources from space. There are various papers that talk about achieving abundance from advanced technology like molecular nanotechology. There is the analysis by Ray Kurzweil that technology is providing accelerating returns …
the universal quantum computer or universal quantum Turing machine (UQTM) is a theoretical machine that combines both Church-Turing and quantum principles. A UQTM quantum computer would be able to do everything that our current computers can do and in addition the funky quantum capabilities. The number of classical states encoded in a quantum register grows …
A team led by electrical and computer engineer Zhenqiang (Jack) Ma and materials scientist Max Lagally have developed a process to remove a single-crystal film of semiconductor from the substrate on which it is built. This thin layer (only a couple of hundred nanometers thick) can be transferred to glass, plastic or other flexible materials, …
A new way to reduce friction at the nanoscale could enable the commercialization of nano mechanical devices, including ones for data storage 10 to 100 times denser than current memory. Now physicists at the University of Basel in Switzerland have developed a dry “lubrication” method that uses tiny vibrations to keep parts from wearing out. …
Sandia is looking to prove secure energy microgrids next year at a military base. Energy systems with high levels of energy surety must be safe — safely supplying energy to end users; secure — using diversified energy sources; reliable — maintaining power when and where needed; sustainable — being able to be maintained indefinitely (“indefinite” …