An August 5, 2019 news item on Nanowerk announces a new technology for detecting killer bacteria (Note: A link has been removed), A combination of off-the-shelf quantum dots and a smartphone camera soon could allow doctors to identify antibiotic-resistant bacteria in just 40 minutes, potentially saving patient lives. Staphylococcus aureus (golden staph), is a common form of bacterium that causes serious and sometimes fatal conditions such as pneumonia and heart valve infections. Of particular concern…

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If I understand this research rightly, they are creating a film made of carbon nanotubes that can stimulate the growth of nerve cells (neurons) thus creating a ‘living/nonliving’ hybrid or as they call it in the press release a ‘biosynthetic hybrid’. An August 2, 2019 news item on Nanowerk introduces the research (Note 1: There seem to be some translation issues; Note 2: Links have been removed), Carbon nanotubes able to take on the desired…

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An August 2, 2019 news item on ScienceDaily features some new work on wearable technology that was a bit of a surprise to me, Wearable human-machine interfaces — devices that can collect and store important health information about the wearer, among other uses — have benefited from advances in electronics, materials and mechanical designs. But current models still can be bulky and uncomfortable, and they can’t always handle multiple functions at one time.Researchers reported Friday,…

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176 people died on the Ukraine International Airlines Flight PS752 bound for Kyiv when it was shot down in what now appears to have been a tragic mistake. 138 of those people were scheduled to take connecting flights to Canada. I extend my profound sympathies to these and all the families that must endure this loss. National Post’s January 11, 2020 In Memoriam tribute (in the print edition) provides a glimpse of the impact this…

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A new treatment for wood could make renewable salt-separating membranes. Courtesy: University of Maryland An August 6, 2019 article by Adele Peters for Fast Company describes a ‘wooden’approach to water desalinization (also known as desalination), …“We are trying to develop a new type of membrane material that is nature-based,” says Z. Jason Ren, an engineering professor at Princeton University and one of the coauthors of a new paper in Science Advances about that material, which…

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The gold sheets in question are effectively 2D. I’m surprised they haven’t named them ‘goldene’ as everything else that’s 2D seems to have an ‘ene’ suffix (e.g. graphene, germanene, tellurene). Of course, these gold sheets are not composed of single atoms but of two according to an August 6, 2019 news item on Nanowerk, Scientists at the University of Leeds [UK] have created a new form of gold which is just two atoms thick –…

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Scientists at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) and the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) have developed what could be a more sustainable way to produce electricity. From a July 31, 2019 news item on Nanowerk, Scientists from Northwestern University and Caltech have produced electricity by simply flowing water over extremely thin layers of inexpensive metals, including iron, that have oxidized. These films represent an entirely new way of generating electricity and could be used to develop…

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Despite all the promise that nanocellulose offers, scientists don’t seem to have found significant applications for the material . In the software industry, they used to call it ‘a killer app’, i.e., an application everyone would start using (e.g. Facebook or Google) thereby making much money for its developer(s).. This July 31, 2019 news item on phys.org describes research that may help scientists develop a nanocellulose ‘killer app’, High-performance biomass-based nanocomposites are emerging as promising…

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A July 30, 2019 news item on Nanowerk announces some neuroscience research (they used animal models) that could prove helpful with neurodegenerative diseases, Working with mouse and human tissue, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers report new evidence that a protein pumped out of some — but not all — populations of “helper” cells in the brain, called astrocytes, plays a specific role in directing the formation of connections among neurons needed for learning and forming new…

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Martin Thuo and his research group have developed heat-free technology that can print conductive, metallic lines and traces on just about anything, including a rose petal. Photo courtesy of Martin Thuo. I’m not sure how I feel about an electrified rose but it is strangely fascinating. Here’s more from a July 29, 2019 news item on Nanowerk, Martin Thuo of Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratory clicked through the photo gallery for one of…

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