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Category: nanotechnology – Page 138

A research team led by Rice University neuroengineers has created wireless technology to remotely activate specific brain circuits in fruit flies in under one second.

The team – an assemblage of experts in genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and electrical engineering – used magnetic signals to activate targeted neurons that controlled the body position of freely moving fruit flies in an enclosure.

The researchers first created genetically modified flies bred to express a special heat-sensitive ion channel in neurons that cause flies to partially spread their wings, a common mating gesture. They then injected magnetic nanoparticles that could be heated with an applied magnetic field.

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Why we need AI to compete against each other. Does a Great Filter Stop all Alien Civilizations at some point? Are we Doomed if We Find Life in Our Solar System?

David Brin is a scientist, speaker, technical consultant and world-known author. His novels have been New York Times Bestsellers, winning multiple Hugo, Nebula and other awards.
A 1998 movie, directed by Kevin Costner, was loosely based on his book The Postman.
His Ph.D in Physics from UCSD — followed a masters in optics and an undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Caltech. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the California Space Institute and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Brin serves on advisory committees dealing with subjects as diverse as national defense and homeland security, astronomy and space exploration, SETI and nanotechnology, future/prediction and philanthropy. He has served since 2010 on the council of external advisers for NASA’s Innovative and Advanced Concepts group (NIAC), which supports the most inventive and potentially ground-breaking new endeavors.

https://www.davidbrin.com/books.html.
https://twitter.com/DavidBrin.
https://www.newsweek.com/soon-humanity-wont-alone-universe-opinion-1717446

Youtube Membership: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz3qvETKooktNgCvvheuQDw/join.

Continue reading “A.I. Wars, The Fermi Paradox and Great Filters with David Brin” | >

Antoine Galand, Director of Technology, GraphWear

Nanotechnology was once the stuff of science fiction, but today the concept of creating devices and machines that are several thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair is a well-established fact. The rise of nanotechnology has already transformed industries ranging from consumer electronics to textile manufacturing and cosmetics by unlocking new materials and processes at the nanoscale. The device you’re reading this on, for example, is only possible because of techniques adopted in the semiconductor industry that enable us to pattern silicon and metals to create the microscopic circuits and switches that are at the heart of modern computers.

One of the most promising applications of our newfound ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules is in healthcare, where the ability of doctors to treat disease has been hamstrung by relatively blunt “macro” solutions. The human body is a remarkably complex system where, fundamentally, nanoscale processes occurring inside cells are what determine whether we are sick or healthy. If we’re ever going to cure diseases like diabetes, cancer or Alzheimer’s, we need technologies that work at their scale. Although medical nanotechnologies are relatively new, they’re already impacting the way we diagnose, treat and prevent a broad range of diseases.

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Studies of dense carbon materials formed by bolide impacts or produced by laboratory compression provide key information on the high-pressure behavior of carbon and for identifying and designing unique structures for technological applications. However, a major obstacle to studying and designing these materials is an incomplete understanding of their fundamental structures. Here, we report the remarkable structural diversity of cubic/hexagonally (c/h) stacked diamond and their association with diamond-graphite nanocomposites containing sp3-/sp2-bonding patterns, i.e., diaphites, from hard carbon materials formed by shock impact of graphite in the Canyon Diablo iron meteorite. We show evidence for a range of intergrowth types and nanostructures containing unusually short (0.31 nm) graphene spacings and demonstrate that previously neglected or misinterpreted Raman bands can be associated with diaphite structures. Our study provides a structural understanding of the material known as lonsdaleite, previously described as hexagonal diamond, and extends this understanding to other natural and synthetic ultrahard carbon phases. The unique three-dimensional carbon architectures encountered in shock-formed samples can place constraints on the pressure–temperature conditions experienced during an impact and provide exceptional opportunities to engineer the properties of carbon nanocomposite materials and phase assemblages.

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The Dubai facility has the capacity to produce over two million pounds of leafy greens annually, and will grow lettuces, arugula, mixed salad greens, and spinach.

ECO stands for Emirates Crop One; the vertical farm is a joint venture between Crop One Holdings (a Massachusetts-based vertical farming company) and Emirates Flight Catering (the catering business that serves Emirates Airlines). Greens from the vertical farm will be served onboard Emirates flights, and will also be sold in grocery stores in the UAE. Since they’re grown in a sterile environment without pesticides, herbicides, or chemicals, the greens come ready-to-eat and don’t need to be washed.

The UAE is in many ways an ideal location for vertical farming, if not a place where the technology may soon become essential. It gets an abundance of sunlight but doesn’t have much water to speak of (it was, fittingly, the field testing site for a nanoparticle technology that helps sandy soil retain water and nutrients); that means vertical farms could use energy from solar panels to grow food indoors using 95 percent less water than traditional agriculture.

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Researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have developed the world’s first electric nanomotors made of DNA. The self-assembling structures can be activated by an electric charge to spin a ratcheting rotor arm.

The tiny motor was made using a technique called DNA origami. Like its namesake papercraft, the method involves intricately folding strands of DNA into three-dimensional shapes, with past examples including virus traps, immune-evading drug delivery systems, and even microscopic Van Gogh replicas. These structures are made by carefully selecting DNA sequences that will fold and attach to each other in certain ways, so researchers can add specific strands to a solution and let the DNA objects assemble themselves.

For the new study, the team used this process to make a molecular motor out of DNA for the first time. The motor consists of a rotor arm measuring up to 500 nanometers (nm) long, which is mounted on a base about 40 nm high that’s fixed to a glass plate. Wrapped around the tip of the base, just below the rotor, is a platform with several ratcheting obstacles built into its surface, which controls the direction that the rotor can spin.

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In what’s being hailed as an important first for chemistry, an international team of scientists has developed a new technology that can selectively rearrange atomic bonds within a single molecule. The breakthrough allows for an unprecedented level of control over chemical bonds within these structures, and could open up some exciting possibilities in what’s known as molecular machinery.

Molecules are made up of clusters of atoms, and are the product of the nature and arrangement of those atoms within. Where oxygen molecules we breathe feature the same repeating type of atom, sugar molecules are made of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen.

Scientists have been pursuing something called “selective chemistry” for some time, with the objective of forming exactly the type of chemical bonds between atoms that they want. Doing so could lead to the creation of complex molecules and devices that can be designed for specific tasks.

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