While not science’s sleekest machine, this microscope was able to capture M.R.I. scans of single atoms. Credit: IBM Research Such a messy looking thing—it makes me feel better about my housekeeping. In any event, it’s fascinating to think this scanning tunneling microscope as seen in the above can actually act as an MRI device and create an image of a single atom. There’s a wonderful article in the New York Times about the work but…

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Light-harvesting devices—I like that better than solar cells or the like but I think that the term serves as a category rather than a name/label for a specific device. Enough musing. A December 17, 2018 news item on Nanowerk describes the latest about graphene and light-harvesting devices (Note: A link has been removed, An international research team, co-led by a physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has discovered a new mechanism for ultra-efficient charge…

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Down the memristor rabbit hole one more time.* I started out with news about two new papers and inadvertently found two more. In a bid to keep this posting to a manageable size, I’m stopping at four. UK In a June 19, 2019 Nanowerk Spotlight article, Dr. Neil Kemp discusses memristors and some of his latest work (Note: A link has been removed), Memristor (or memory resistors) devices are non-volatile electronic memory devices that were…

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Jello [uploaded from https://www.organicauthority.com/eco-chic-table/new-jell-o-mold-jiggle-chic-holidays] I’m quite intrigued by this ‘jell-o’ story. It’s hard to believe a childhood dessert might prove to have an application as a catalyst for producing hydrogen fuel. From a December 14, 2018 news item on Nanowerk, A cheap and effective new catalyst developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can generate hydrogen fuel from water just as efficiently as platinum, currently the best — but also most expensive —…

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it’s not quite the bumper crop of science events that took place in May 2019, which may be a good thing if you’re eager to attend everything. First, here are the events and then, the exhibition. Nerd Nite at the Movies On July 10, 2019, a new series is being launched at the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF) Centre. Here’s the description from the Nerd Nite Vancouver SciFact vs SciFi: Nerd Nite Goes to the…

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I mage: The common liver fluke which can cause fascioliasis. Credit: Wikimedia creative commons Courtesy: Leeds University It looks like a pair of lips to me but, according to a December 12, 2018 news item on Nanowerk, this liver fluke heralds a flatworm infection is a serious health problem, An international team, led by Professor Francisco Goycoolea from the University of Leeds [UK] and Dr Claudio Salomon from the Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, and…

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Culturally sensitive robots for elder care! It’s about time. The European Union has funded the Culture Aware Robots and Environmental Sensor Systems for Elderly Support (CARESSES) project being coordinated in Italy. A December 13, 2018 news item on phys.org describes the project, Researchers have developed revolutionary new robots that adapt to the culture and customs of the elderly people they assist.Population ageing has implications for many sectors of society, one of which is the increased…

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The sound quality the physicists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have achieved is quite good compared to carbon nanotube radio. If you’re curious, the audio file is embedded in both the American Institute of Physics (AIP) June 18, 2019 news release (and in the copy on EurekAlert), It sounds like an old-school vinyl record, but the distinctive crackle in the music streamed into Chris Holloway’s laboratory is atomic in origin.…

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This work comes from Catalonia, Spain by way of a collaboration between Chinese, German, and, of course, Spanish scientists. From a December 12, 2018 Universitat Rovira i Virgili press release (also on EurekAlert), Increasing awareness of bioeffects and toxicity of nanomaterials interacting with cells puts in focus the mechanisms by which nanomaterials can cross lipid membranes. Apart from well-discussed energy-dependent endocytosis for large objects and passive diffusion through membranes by solute molecules, there can exist…

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I keep an eye on how nanocellulose is being used in various applications and I’m not sure that this cellulose biosensor quite fits the bill as nanocellulose, nonetheless, it’s interesting and that’s enough for me. From a December 12, 2018 Sechenov University (Russia) press release on EurekAlert, I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University teamed up together with Irish colleagues to develop a new imaging approach for tissue engineering. The team produced so-called ‘hybrid biosensor’…

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