New research inspired by ice giants like Neptune and Uranus shows lasers can transform a common plastic into tiny diamonds.
Category: nanotechnology – Page 208
Dr. Ralph Merkle — Nanotechnology & Cryonics — Preserving Ourselves for the Future
Ralph C. Merkle is a computer scientist. He is one of the inventors of public key cryptography, the inventor of cryptographic hashing, and more recently a researcher and speaker of cryonics.
Videos in the talk: David Eagleman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5tZtYns6kE molecular nanotechnology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqyZ9bFl_qg.
Filmed 2017/04/30
Differentiating right- and left-handed particles using the force exerted
Researchers investigated the polarization-dependence of the force exerted by circularly polarized light (CPL) by performing optical trapping of chiral nanoparticles. They found that left-and right-handed CPL exerted different strengths of the optical gradient force on the nanoparticles, and the D-and L-form particles are subject to different gradient force by CPL. The present results suggest that separation of materials according to their handedness of chirality can be realized by the optical force.
Chirality is the property that the structure is not superimposable on its mirrored image. Chiral materials exhibit the characteristic feature that they respond differently to left-and right-circularly polarized light. When matter is irradiated with strong laser light, optical force is exerted on it. It has been expected theoretically that the optical force exerted on chiral materials by left-and right-circularly polarized light would also be different.
The research group at Institute for Molecular Science and three other universities used an experimental technique of optical trapping to observe the circular-polarization dependent optical gradient force exerted on chiral gold nanoparticles. Chiral gold nanoparticles have either D-form (right-handed) or L-form (left-handed) structure, and the experiment was performed using both.
Carbon nanotubes boost efficiency in “nanobionic” bacterial solar cells
Engineers at EPFL have found a way to insert carbon nanotubes into photosynthetic bacteria, which greatly improves their electrical output. They even pass these nanotubes down to their offspring when they divide, through what the team calls “inherited nanobionics.”
Solar cells are the leading source of renewable energy, but their production has a large environmental footprint. As with many things, we can take cues from nature about how to improve our own devices, and in this case photosynthetic bacteria, which get their energy from sunlight, could be used in microbial fuel cells.
In the new study, the EPFL team gave these bacteria a boost by inserting carbon nanotubes – tiny rolled-up sheets of graphene, a material that’s famously conductive. The nanotube-loaded bugs were able to produce up to 15 times more electricity than their non-edited counterparts from the same amount of sunlight.
Scientists discover bacteria that can use light to ‘breathe’ electricity
Researcher are now looking to make the most of this new discovery.
Did you know that bacteria in the natural world breathe by exhaling excess electrons, causing an intrinsic electrical grid? In a new study, Yale University researchers discovered that light could supercharge this electronic activity within biofilm bacteria, yielding an up to a 100-fold increase in electrical conductivity, according to a press release published by the institution earlier this month.
Yale researchers have found that bacteria buried underground have developed a way to respire by “breathing minerals” through tiny protein filaments called nanowires. This process can be amplified by light producing electricity.
Ray Kurzweil: Singularity, Superintelligence, and Immortality | Lex Fridman Podcast #321
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Scientists are using AI to dream up revolutionary new proteins
In June, South Korean regulators authorized the first-ever medicine, a COVID vaccine, to be made from a novel protein designed by humans. The vaccine is based on a spherical protein ‘nanoparticle’ that was created by researchers nearly a decade ago, through a labour-intensive trial-and error-process1.
Now, thanks to gargantuan advances in artificial intelligence (AI), a team led by David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington (UW) in Seattle, reports in Science2,3 that it can design such molecules in seconds instead of months.
Physicists generate new nanoscale spin waves
Strong alternating magnetic fields can be used to generate a new type of spin wave that was previously just theoretically predicted. This was achieved for the first time by a team of physicists from Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU). They report on their work in Nature Communications and provide the first microscopic images of these spin waves.
The basic idea of spintronics is to use a special property of electrons—spin—for various electronic applications such as data and information technology. The spin is the intrinsic angular momentum of electrons that produces a magnetic moment. Coupling these magnetic moments creates the magnetism that could ultimately be used in information processing. When these coupled magnetic moments are locally excited by a magnetic field pulse, this dynamic can spread like waves throughout the material. These are referred to as spin waves or magnons.
A special type of those waves is at the heart of the work of the physicists from Halle. Normally, the non-linear excitation of magnons produces integers of the output frequency—1,000 megahertz becomes 2,000 or 3,000, for example.
Intriguing material property found in complex nanostructures could dissipate energy
Researchers from The University of Texas at Austin and North Carolina State University have discovered, for the first time, a unique property in complex nanostructures that has thus far only been found in simple nanostructures. Additionally, they have unraveled the internal mechanics of the materials that makes this property possible.
In a new paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found these properties in oxide-based “nanolattices,” which are tiny, hollow materials, similar in structure to things like sea sponges.
“This has been seen before in simple nanostructures, like a nanowire, which is about 1,000 times thinner than a hair,” said Yong Zhu, a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at NC State, and one of the lead authors on the paper. “But this is the first time we’ve seen it in a 3D nanostructure.”