Nanotech, Chem and Materials
Palin takes on basic science research as an example of government waste.
Join the Science Blog crew this Friday, October 24 at noon in Los Angeles to discuss Obama, McCain and the sciences, courtesy of Farmlab.
Russian scientists developed a unique technology for growing profiled sapphire crystals. Profiled crystal has predetermined properties – size and shape, for instance. Such crystals have great value for medicine and oncology, in particular, since sapphire capillaries and light guides will make laser therapy and diagnostics less traumatic and painful than in case of quartz and polymer light guides.
From pacemakers constructed of materials that so closely mimic human tissues that a patient's body can't discern the difference to devices that bypass injured spinal cords to restore movement to paralyzed limbs, the possibilities presented by organic electronics read like something from a science fiction novel.
In an unprecedented feat, Liming Dai, at the University of Dayton, and colleagues report in the October 10th issue of Science successful construction of a gecko-inspired adhesive that is ten times stronger than a gecko, at about 100 newtons per square centimeter.
In case anyone was wondering, I am far from alone in my call for a new science policy in the coming administration. It is the topic of the editorial in a recent issue of Science Magazine America's premier scientific journal.
The newest volume of Environmental Research has a special section focusing in the biological and ecological impacts of plastics... and the results aren't pretty.
Research at Purdue University suggests synthetic carbon molecules called fullerenes, or buckyballs, have a high potential of being accumulated in animal tissue, but the molecules also appear to break down in sunlight, perhaps reducing their possible environmental dangers.
Nanotechnology could be the answer to ensuring a safe supply of drinking water for regions of the world stricken by periodic drought or where water contamination is rife. Writing in the International Journal of Nuclear Desalination, researchers in India explain how carbon nanotubes could replace conventional materials in water-purification systems.
A think-tank of Russian physicists currently develops production conditions for a new composite material with diamond matrix and prepares to investigate its properties. Said material is a result of baking of nanodiamonds with cobalt under conditions of high pressure and high temperature.
RMIT University’s Phred Petersen won the 2008 New Scientist Eureka Prize for Scientific Photography for photographing a toy rocket with a Schlieren lens.
Engineers at Georgia Tech have used skin cells to create artificial bones that mimic the ability of natural bone to blend into other tissues such as tendons or ligaments.
Stained glass windows that are painted with gold purify the air when they are lit up by sunlight, a team of Queensland University of Technology experts have discovered.
Engineers have created a tiny motorized positioning device that has twice the dexterity of similar devices being developed for applications that include biological sensors and more compact, powerful computer hard drives.
An experiment has realized spin torque switching of a nanomagnet as fast as the fundamental speed limit allows.
