Caption: The nano-gap transistors operating in air. As gaps become smaller than the mean-free path of electrons in air, there is ballistic electron transport. Credit: RMIT University A November 19, 2018 news item on Nanowerk describes the ‘airy’ work ( Note: A link has been removed), Researchers at RMIT University [Ausralia] have engineered a new type of transistor, the building block for all electronics. Instead of sending electrical currents through silicon, these transistors send electrons…

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The Society of Italian Researchers and Professionals in Western Canada (ARPICO) is hosting the intriguing ‘Whispering in the Dark …’ talk about underground science being held prior to the organization’s annual general meeting. From a May 21, 2019 ARPICO announcement (received via email), … on June 12th, 2019 at the Italian Cultural Centre. ARPICO is proud to host Dr. Silvia Scorza, who will be presenting on the topic of underground science (literally underground) at SNOLAB,…

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Rice University bioengineers use a magnetic field to activate nanoparticle-attached baculoviruses in a tissue. The viruses, which normally infect alfalfa looper moths, are modified to deliver gene-editing DNA code only to cells that are targeted with magnetic field-induced local transduction. Courtesy of the Laboratory of Biomolecular Engineering and Nanomedicine Kudos to whomever put that diagram together! That’s a lot of well conveyed information. Now for the details about how this technology might save lives. From…

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There’s a new program at the University of Stuttgart (Germany) and their call for projects was recently announced. First, here’s a description of the program in a May 30, 2019 news item on Nanowerk, Today’s societies critically depend on electronic systems. Past spectacular cyber-attacks have clearly demonstrated the vulnerability of existing systems and the need to prevent such attacks in the future. The majority of available cyber-defenses concentrate on protecting the software part of electronic…

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Garbage has been dominating Canadian news headlines for a few weeks now. First, it was Canadian garbage in the Philippines and now it’s Canadian garbage in Malaysia. Interestingly, we’re also having problems with China, since December 2018, when we detained a top executive from Huawe, a China-based international telecommunicatons company, in accordance with an official request from the US government and, in accordance, with what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau calls the ‘rule of law’. All…

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Within one day of each other in October 2018, two different teams working on memristors with applications to neuroprosthetics and neuromorphic computing (brainlike computing) announced their results. Russian team An October 15, 2018 (?) Lobachevsky University press release (also published on October 15, 2018 on EurekAlert) describes a new approach to memristors, Biological neurons are coupled unidirectionally through a special junction called a synapse. An electrical signal is transmitted along a neuron after some biochemical…

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This bacterium (bacteria being the plural) loves gold, which is lucky for anyone trying to develop artificial photosynthesis.From an October 9, 2018 news item on ScienceDaily, A bacterium named Moorella thermoacetica won’t work for free. But UC Berkeley [University of California at Berkeley] researchers have figured out it has an appetite for gold. And in exchange for this special treat, the bacterium has revealed a more efficient path to producing solar fuels through artificial photosynthesis.…

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This is the second frugal science item* I’m publishing today (May 29, 2019) which means that I’ve gone from complete ignorance on the topic to collecting news items about it. Manu Prakash, the developer behind a usable paper microscope than can be folded and kept in your pocket, is going to be giving a talk locally according to a May 28, 2019 announcement (received via email) from Simon Fraser University’s (SFU) Faculty of Science, On June…

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Michael Berger’s October 9, 2018 Nanowerk Spotlight article about graphene brings to light a problem, which in hindsight seems obvious, fake graphene (Note: Links have been removed), Peter Bøggild over at DTU [Technical University of Denmark] just published an interesting opinion piece in Nature titled “The war on fake graphene”. The piece refers to a paper published in Advanced Materials (“The Worldwide Graphene Flake Production”) that studied graphene purchased from 60 producers around the world.…

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Physicists name and codify new field in nanotechnology: ‘electron quantum metamaterials’ UC Riverside’s Nathaniel Gabor and colleague formulate a vision for the field in a perspective article Courtesy: University of California at Riverside Bravo to whomever put the image of a field together together with a subhead that includes the phrases ‘vision for a field’ and ‘perspective article’. It’s even better if you go to the November 5, 2018 University of California at Riverside (UCR)…

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