PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A pipefitter knows how to make an exact cut on a metal rod. But it’s far harder to imagine getting a precise cut on a carbon nanotube, with a diameter 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair.
In a pape…
DURHAM, N.C. — The ability to tell the difference between crystals that formed naturally and those formed by human activity can be important to archaeologists in the field. This can be a crucial bit of information in determining the ancient a…
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Human pluripotent stem cells, which can become any other kind of body cell, hold great potential to treat a wide range of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. However, scient…
Marine recon may soon get some new wheels: a vehicle with a hybrid electric and diesel drive. Fast, quiet, and with excellent off-road performance, the Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Targeting Vehicle (RST-V)?less formally called the Shadow?last month successfully completed a 1000 mile test of its performance and reliability. It successfully sustained highway speeds over its extended drive through mountain passes, rain, snow, and rough construction zones.
Building upon this summer’s groundbreaking finding that carbon nanotubes are fluorescent, chemists at Rice University have precisely identified the optical signatures of 33 “species” of nanotubes, establishing a new methodology for assaying nanotubes that is simpler and faster than existing methods. In research published this week by Science magazine, a spectroscopy research team led by Rice Chemistry Professor R. Bruce Weisman detailed the wavelengths of light that are absorbed and emitted by each type of light-emitting nanotube. The findings hold great promise for chemists, physicists and materials scientists studying nanotubes, because it otherwise takes many hours of tedious testing for researchers to assay a single sample of nanotubes, and optical tests could be much faster and simpler.