Nano Tech News

Researchers and material scientists have been fascinated by spider silks for a long time – ultra-strong and extensible self-assembling biopolymers that outperform the mechanical characteristics of many synthetic materials, including steel. Atomistic studies have contributed to a better understanding of the source of the strength and toughness of this amazing biological material.

Now, researchers have come up with another set of very surprising findings: The highly periodical structure of spider silk can sustain super fast thermal transport that surpasses those of most organic and inorganic materials.

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IBM’s Battery 500 project, led by scientists at IBM Research – Almaden in California, is an interdisciplinary consortium to develop a lithium–air battery that aims to increase the range of electrovehicles to 500 miles (approximately 800 km).

This is more than five times the range of today’s batteries, which average some 150 km per charge. If the project is successful, battery-powered vehicles could finally become a practical reality and thus overcome the main obstacle to becoming generally accepted and widespread: In a recent survey conducted by IBM, 64% of consumers said that the limited range was their strongest objection to driving electrovehicles.

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Never get stranded with a dead cell phone again. A promising new technology called Power Felt, a thermoelectric device that converts body heat into an electrical current, soon could create enough juice to make another call simply by touching it.

Developed by researchers in the Center for Nanotechnology and Molecular Materials at Wake Forest University, Power Felt is composed of tiny carbon nanotubes locked up in flexible plastic fibers and made to feel like fabric. The technology uses temperature differences — room temperature versus body temperature, for instance — to create a charge.

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For years, biologists have been amazed by the power of gecko feet, which let these 5-ounce lizards produce an adhesive force roughly equivalent to carrying nine pounds up a wall without slipping. Now, a team of polymer scientists and a biologist at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have discovered exactly how the gecko does it, leading them to invent “Geckskin,” a device that can hold 700 pounds on a smooth wall.

Doctoral candidate Michael Bartlett in Alfred Crosby’s polymer science and engineering lab at UMass Amherst is the lead author of their article describing the discovery in the current online issue of Advanced Materials (“Looking Beyond Fibrillar Features to Scale Gecko-Like Adhesion“). The group includes biologist Duncan Irschick, a functional morphologist who has studied the gecko’s climbing and clinging abilities for over 20 years. Geckos are equally at home on vertical, slanted, even backward-tilting surfaces.

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Researchers at Polytechnique Montréal have succeeded in changing the genetic material of cancer cells using a brand-new transfection method. This major breakthrough in nanosurgery opens the door to new medical applications, among others for the treatment of cancers.

A light scalpel to treat cancerous cells
The unique method developed by Professor Michel Meunier and his team uses a femtosecond laser (a laser with ultra-short pulses) along with gold nanoparticles. Deposited on the cells, these nanoparticles concentrate the laser’s energy and make it possible to perform nanometric-scale surgery in an extremely precise and non-invasive fashion. The technique allows to change the expression of genes in the cancer cells and could be used to slow their migration and prevent the formation of metastases.

Read the full article HERE