Lifeboat Foundation

In “Avengers: Endgame,” Tony Stark warned Scott Lang that sending him into the quantum realm and bringing him back would be a “billion-to-one cosmic fluke.”

In reality, shrinking a light beam to a nanometer-sized point to spy on quantum-scale light-matter interactions and retrieving the information is not any easier. Now, engineers at the University of California, Riverside, have developed a new technology to tunnel light into the quantum realm at an unprecedented efficiency.

In a Nature Photonics paper, a team led by Ruoxue Yan, an assistant professor of chemical and environmental engineering, and Ming Liu, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, describe the world’s first portable, inexpensive, optical nanoscopy tool that integrates a glass optical fiber with a silver nanowire condenser. The device is a high-efficiency round-trip light tunnel that squeezes visible light to the very tip of the condenser to interact with molecules locally and send back information that can decipher and visualize the elusive nanoworld.

Continue reading “Fiber-optic probe can see molecular bonds” »

Dielectric laser accelerators (DLAs) provide a compact and cost-effective solution to this problem by driving accelerator nanostructures with visible or near-infrared (NIR) pulsed lasers, resulting in a 10,000 times reduction of scale. Current implementations of DLAs rely on free-space lasers directly incident on the accelerating structures, limiting the scalability and integrability of this technology. Researchers present the first experimental demonstration of a waveguide-integrated DLA, designed using a photonic inverse design approach. These on-chip devices accelerate sub-relativistic electrons of initial energy 83.4 keV by 1.21 keV over 30 µm, providing peak acceleration gradients of 40.3 MeV/m. This progress represents a significant step towards a completely integrated MeV-scale dielectric laser accelerator.

Dielectric laser accelerators have emerged as a promising alternative to conventional RF accelerators due to the large damage threshold of dielectric materials the commercial availability of powerful NIR femtosecond pulsed lasers, and the low-cost high-yield nanofabrication processes which produce them. Together, these advantages allow DLAs to make an impact in the development of applications such as tabletop free-electron-lasers, targeted cancer therapies, and compact imaging sources.

They have designed and experimentally verified the first waveguide-integrated DLA structure. The design of this structure was made possible through the use of photonics inverse design methodologies developed by the team members. The fabricated and experimentally demonstrated devices accelerate electrons of an initial energy of 83.4 keV by a maximum energy gain of 1.21 keV over 30 µm, demonstrating acceleration gradients of 40.3 MeV/m. In this integrated form, these devices can be cascaded to reach MeV-scale energies, capitalizing on the inherent scalability of photonic circuits. Future work will focus on multi-stage demonstrations, as well as exploring new design and material solutions to obtain larger gradients.

Continue reading “Laser-driven Particle Accelerator Made Ten Thousand Times Smaller” »

Martin Tajmar has a SpaceDrive project and plans to create an instrument so sensitive and immune to interference that it would put an end to the debate once and for all. Tajmar believes that studying the EmDrive and similar propellantless propulsion systems will requir nano-newton instrument resolution.

He is making a new to torsion balance. It is a pendulum-type balance that measures the amount of torque applied to the axis of the pendulum. Tajmar’s team used a laser interferometer to measure the physical displacement of the balance scales. The new torsion scale has a nano-newton resolution and supports thrusters weighing several pounds, making it the most sensitive thrust balance in existence.

The SpaceDrive Project-Thrust Balance Development and New Measurements of the Mach-Effect and EMDrive Thrusters.

Continue reading “A Thousand Times Better Instrument Will Investigate Emdrive and Mach Propulsion” »

Chemical engineers at UCLA have been demonstrating what they argue is scientific evidence that bunches of synthetically grown nanowires exhibit behaviors similar to that of memory in a living brain. Whether you believe their claim depends on what you think memory actually is.

Summary: Extracting nanosized exosomes from bone marrow stem cells and injecting them into mice, researchers reverse symptoms of multiple sclerosis. Source: UC IrvineA nanotechnology treatment.

By Sam Wong

Carbon nanotubes have turned up in the lungs of children living in Paris – the first time they have been detected in humans.

Incredibly strong, light and conductive, nanotubes have shown great potential in areas such as computing, clothing and healthcare technology. Nevertheless, there has been some concern over their use after mouse studies showed that injected nanotubes can cause immune reactions similar to those produced by asbestos.

Continue reading “Carbon nanotubes found in children’s lungs for the first time” »

A nanotechnology treatment derived from bone marrow stem cells has reversed multiple sclerosis symptoms in mice and could eventually be used to help humans, according to a new study led by University of California, Irvine researchers.

The way information travels inside the cells of our bodies is not unlike the wiring inside a computer chip, according to a new study that has unveiled the intricate workings of a network of calcium ions as intracellular messengers.

According to researchers from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, this “cell-wide web” uses a microscopic network of guides to transmit information across nanoscale distances and carry activities and instructions for the cells to perform — such as relaxing or contracting muscles, for example.

Calcium ions (Ca²⁺) are a fundamental part of the messaging system of our cells, and their signals are crucial for a wide variety of jobs, including cell growth, death, and movement. Now researchers have taken an unprecedented close look at just how calcium ions shuttle messages within the cell.

Continue reading “For The First Time Ever, Scientists Observe The Complex Messaging System of Cells” »

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is one of fewer than 100 black female physicists in the country, and the recent winner of $1.1 million grant to further develop a technology she’s pioneered that uses laser-activated nanoparticles to treat cancer.

Green, who lost her parents young, was raised by her aunt and uncle. While still at school, her aunt died from cancer, and three months later her uncle was diagnosed with cancer, too. Green went on to earn her degree in physics at Alabama A&M University, being crowned Homecoming Queen while she was at it, before going on full scholarship to University of Alabama in Birmingham to earn her Masters and Ph.D. There Green would become the first to work out how to deliver nanoparticles into cancer cells exclusively, so that a laser could be used to remove them, and then successfully carry out her treatment on living animals.

As she takes on her growing responsibilities, Green still makes time to speak at schools, Boys & Girls Clubs and other youth events. “Young black girls don’t see those role models (scientists) as often as they see Beyonce or Nicki Minaj,” says Green. “It’s important to know that our brains are capable of more.”

Continue reading “Black female physicist pioneers technology that kills cancer cells with lasers” »