Engineers Explore Environmental Concerns of Nanotechnology
Peter Vikesland and Linsey Marr, both associate professors of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, are members of the national Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT) at Virginia Tech. They are exploring the impact of nanotechnology research on the environment. (Virginia Tech Photo)
As researchers around the world hasten to employ nanotechnology to improve production methods for applications that range from manufacturing materials to creating new pharmaceutical drugs, a separate but equally compelling challenge exists.
History has shown that previous industrial revolutions, such as those involving asbestos and chloroflurocarbons, have had some serious environmental impacts. Might nanotechnology also pose a risk?
Linsey Marr and Peter Vikesland, faculty members in the Via Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Virginia Tech, are part of the national Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 2008. Along with Michael Hochella, University Distinguished Professor of Geosciences, they represent Virginia Tech’s efforts in a nine-member consortium awarded $14 million over five years, starting in 2008. Virginia Tech’s portion is $1.75 million.
CEINT is dedicated to elucidating the relationship between a vast array of nanomaterials — from natural, to manufactured, to those produced incidentally by human activities — and their potential environmental exposure, biological effects, and ecological consequences. It will focus on the fate and transport of natural and manufactured nanomaterials in ecosystems. (more…)
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‘Nanodragster’ Races Toward the Future of Molecular Machines
The new "nanodragster" (left) may lead to molecular machines for manufacturing computer circuits and other electronic components. (American Chemical Society)
Scientists in Texas are reporting the development of a “nanodragster” that may speed the course toward development of a new generation of futuristic molecular machines. The vehicle — only 1/50,000th the width of a human hair — resembles a hot-rod in shape and can outperform previous nano-sized vehicles. Their report is in ACS’ Organic Letters, a bi-weekly journal.
James Tour, Kevin Kelly and colleagues note that the ability to control the motion of small molecules is essential for building much-anticipated molecular machines. Some of these machines may find use in manufacturing computer circuits and other electronic components in the future. Scientists have already made strides by designing nano-sized vehicles, including a “nanocar” with wheels made of buckyballs — spheres of carbon containing 60 atoms apiece. The car can scoot around a gold surface when exposed to heat or an electric field gradient. But control of its movement is limited. These drawbacks prevent its widespread use. But the most limiting factor is the nanoscopic resolution tools available for studying their range of motions and capabilities. (more…)
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Nanoparticle Protects Oil in Foods from Oxidation, Spoilage
by Brian Wallheimer
Using a nanoparticle from corn, a Purdue University scientist has found a way to lengthen the shelf life of many food products and sustain their health benefits.
Yuan Yao, an assistant professor of food science, has successfully modified the phytoglycogen nanoparticle, a starchlike substance that makes up nearly 30 percent of the dry mass of some sweet corn. The modification allows the nanoparticle to attach to oils and emulsify them while also acting as a barrier to oxidation, which causes food to become rancid. His findings were published in the early online version of the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry.
Oxidation destabilizes oil droplets in emulsified food, degrading and changing the chemical structure of the oil and causing it to go bad. This oxidation happens in a wide range of products, shortening their shelf lives.
“This can be widely used in the food industry, cosmetics and nutritional supplements, any system in which the oxidation of lipids is a concern,” Yao said. “The shelf life of a product can be low and the quality of the food can become bad because of the oxidation of the lipids.”
In fish oils, for example, the lipid oxidation degrades Omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential in infant development and are thought to help with chronic inflammatory and heart diseases in adults. (more…)
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A Window that Washes Itself?
Nanosized "forest of peptides" can be used as the basis for self-cleaning windows and more efficient batteries.
TAU’s nanosized “forest of peptides” can be used as the basis for self-cleaning windows and more efficient batteries
A coating on windows or solar panels that repels grime and dirt? Expanded battery storage capacities for the next electric car? New Tel Aviv University research, just published in Nature Nanotechnology, details a breakthrough in assembling peptides at the nano-scale level that could make these futuristic visions come true in just a few years.
Operating in the range of 100 nanometers (roughly one-billionth of a meter) and even smaller, graduate student Lihi Adler-Abramovich and a team working under Prof. Ehud Gazit in TAU’s Department of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology have found a novel way to control the atoms and molecules of peptides so that they “grow” to resemble small forests of grass. These “peptide forests” repel dust and water — a perfect self-cleaning coating for windows or solar panels which, when dirty, become far less efficient.
“This is beautiful and protean research,” says Adler-Abramovich, a Ph.D. candidate. “It began as an attempt to find a new cure for Alzheimer’s disease. To our surprise, it also had implications for electric cars, solar energy and construction.” (more…)
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The Future of Energy: An Emerging Science by Dr. Thomas Valone
A new 220 page softcover book discusses the latest emerging energy technologies and mankind’s history of energy and its future trends. Includes an examination of the sociopolitical aspects of man’s use of energy.
In a world of uncertainty about the future, The Future of Energy: An Emerging Science by Thomas Valone offers “…hope for solving the world’s looming energy shortage,” according to Science magazine, since it considers things we have barely imagined in search of new carbon-free technologies.
Containing a myriad of new energy technologies assembled into archetypal categories, a sociological perspective emerges along with the science. Well funded, emerging energy sources such as dense plasma focus fusion, powdered metal-burning engines, wireless transmission of electricity, space-based solar power, piezoelectric highway electricity generators and zero point energy are given simple and short summaries.
Recent Conferences on Future Energy sponsored by the author’s institute, offering the best examples of emerging future energy sources, are also listed and described.
“[I]t would be foolhardy not to assess a broad spectrum of advanced energy sources, converters, and enabling technologies.” - Martin Hoffert, et al., Science, Vol. 300, 25 April 2003, p. 581 (more…)
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Nanowires Key to Future Transistors, Electronics
By Emil Venere
Researchers are closer to using tiny devices called semiconducting nanowires to create a new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips. The researchers have grown the nanowires with sharply defined layers of silicon and germanium, offering better transistor performance. As depicted in this illustration, tiny particles of a gold-aluminum alloy were alternately heated and cooled inside a vacuum chamber, and then silicon and germanium gases were alternately introduced. As the gold-aluminum bead absorbed the gases, it became "supersaturated" with silicon and germanium, causing them to precipitate and form wires. (Purdue University, Birck Nanotechnology Center/Seyet LLC)
A new generation of ultrasmall transistors and more powerful computer chips using tiny structures called semiconducting nanowires are closer to reality after a key discovery by researchers at IBM, Purdue University and the University of California at Los Angeles.
The researchers have learned how to create nanowires with layers of different materials that are sharply defined at the atomic level, which is a critical requirement for making efficient transistors out of the structures.
“Having sharply defined layers of materials enables you to improve and control the flow of electrons and to switch this flow on and off,” said Eric Stach, an associate professor of materials engineering at Purdue.
Electronic devices are often made of “heterostructures,” meaning they contain sharply defined layers of different semiconducting materials, such as silicon and germanium. Until now, however, researchers have been unable to produce nanowires with sharply defined silicon and germanium layers. Instead, this transition from one layer to the next has been too gradual for the devices to perform optimally as transistors.
The new findings point to a method for creating nanowire transistors.
The findings are detailed in a research paper appearing Friday (Nov. 27) in the journal Science. The paper was written by Purdue postdoctoral researcher Cheng-Yen Wen, Stach, IBM materials scientists Frances Ross, Jerry Tersoff and Mark Reuter at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y, and Suneel Kodambaka, an assistant professor at UCLA’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
Whereas conventional transistors are made on flat, horizontal pieces of silicon, the silicon nanowires are “grown” vertically. Because of this vertical structure, they have a smaller footprint, which could make it possible to fit more transistors on an integrated circuit, or chip, Stach said. (more…)
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Defects in Carbon Nanotubes Could Lead to Improved Charge and Energy Storage Systems
Mark Hoefer (left), a UCSD materials science grad student, and mechanical engineering professor Prabhakar Bandaru have discovered that defects in carbon nanotubes could lead to supercapacitors that could possibly be used for portable electronic devices such as cell phones.
Most people would like to be able to charge their cell phones and other personal electronics quickly and not too often. A recent discovery made by UC San Diego engineers could lead to carbon nanotube-based supercapacitors that could do just this. In recent research, published in Applied Physics Letters, Prabhakar Bandaru, a professor in the UCSD Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, along with graduate student Mark Hoefer, have found that artificially introduced defects in nanotubes can aid the development of supercapacitors.
“While batteries have large storage capacity, they take a long time to charge; while electrostatic capacitors can charge quickly but typically have limited capacity. However, supercapacitors/electrochemical capacitors incorporate the advantages of both,” Bandaru said.
Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been generally hailed as one of the wonder materials of the 21st century and have been widely recognized as ushering in the nanotechnology revolution. They are cylindrical structures, with diameters of 1 to 100 nanometers, that have been suggested to have outstanding structural, chemical, and electrical, characteristics based on their atomically perfect structures with a large surface area-to-volume ratio. However, defects are inevitable in such a practical structure, an aspect that was first investigated by UCSD engineering graduate student Jeff Nichols and then substantially extended by Hoefer in Bandaru’s lab. (more…)
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Nanoparticles Used in Common Household Items Caused Genetic Damage in Mice
Robert Schiestl. (UCLA)
Titanium dioxide (TiO2) nanoparticles, found in everything from cosmetics to sunscreen to paint to vitamins, caused systemic genetic damage in mice, according to a comprehensive study conducted by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The TiO2 nanoparticles induced single- and double-strand DNA breaks and also caused chromosomal damage as well as inflammation, all of which increase the risk for cancer. The UCLA study is the first to show that the nanoparticles had such an effect, said Robert Schiestl, a professor of pathology, radiation oncology and environmental health sciences, a Jonsson Cancer Center scientist and the study’s senior author.
Once in the system, the TiO2 nanoparticles accumulate in different organs because the body has no way to eliminate them. And because they are so small, they can go everywhere in the body, even through cells, and may interfere with sub-cellular mechanisms. (more…)
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Nanotech in Space: Experiment To Weather the Trials of Orbit
Novel nanomaterials developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are scheduled to blast off into orbit on November 16 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis. The project, funded by the U.S. Air Force Multi University Research Initiative (MURI), seeks to test the performance of the new nanocomposites in orbit. The materials will be mounted to the International Space Station’s outer hull and exposed to the rigors of space. (Rensselaer/University of Florida)
Novel nanomaterials developed at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute are scheduled to blast off into orbit on November 16 aboard Space Shuttle Atlantis.
The project, funded by the U.S. Air Force Multi University Research Initiative (MURI), seeks to test the performance of the new nanocomposites in orbit. Space Shuttle Atlantis will carry the samples to the International Space Station (ISS). The materials will then be mounted to the station’s outer hull in a Passive Experiment Carrier (PEC), and exposed to the rigors of space.
Rensselaer professors Linda Schadler, of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Thierry Blanchet, of the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace, and Nuclear Engineering, worked with a team of researchers from the University of Florida to develop two different types of experimental nanomaterials. The MURI project and the University of Florida research team are led by Rensselaer alumnus W. Greg. Sawyer ’99, who earned his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees from Rensselaer and is now the N. C. Ebaugh Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida. Blanchet was Sawyer’s doctoral adviser. (more…)
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Nanotechnology Offers Less Costly Water Desalination Process
Olgica Bakajin, part of the Livermore team who created membranes made of carbon nanotubes.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has exclusively licensed to Porifera Inc. of Hayward a carbon nanotube technology that can be used to desalinate water and can be applied to other liquid based separations.
Carbon nanotubes — special molecules made of carbon atoms in a unique arrangement -allow liquids and gases to rapidly flow through, while the tiny pore size can block larger molecules, offering a cheaper way to remove salt from water.
“The technology is very exciting,” said Olgica Bakajin, who serves as chief technology officer of Porifera. “It’s at the right place to take it to the marketplace.”
Bakajin formerly worked at LLNL where she was recruited in 2000 as a Lawrence Fellow and then moved on to become chief scientist on the carbon nanotube project along with LLNL chemist Aleksandr Noy, another former Lawrence Fellow. The license was awarded through LLNL’s Industrial Partnership Office. (more…)
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Pushing Light Beyond Its Known Limits
A researcher is testing an optical fiber system in the Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing, University of Adelaide. (Photo by Jennie Groom)
Scientists at the University of Adelaide have made a breakthrough that could change the world’s thinking on what light is capable of.
The researchers in the University’s new Institute for Photonics & Advanced Sensing (IPAS) have discovered that light within optical fibers can be squeezed into much tighter spaces than was previously believed possible.
Optical fibers usually act like pipes for light, with the light bouncing around inside the pipe. As you shrink down the size of the fiber, the light becomes more and more confined too, until you reach the ultimate limit – the point beyond which light cannot be squeezed any smaller.
This ultimate point occurs when the strand of glass is just a few hundred nanometers in diameter, about one thousandth of the size of a human hair. If you go smaller than this, light begins to spread out again. (more…)
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Scientists Trap Light and Sound Vibrations Together in Nanocrystal
(At top) This is a scanning electron micrograph of the optomechanical crystal. (At bottom) This is a closer view of the device's nanobeam. (M. Eichenfield, et. al., Nature, Advanced Online Publication)
Optomechanical crystals could be used in information processing, as supersensitive biosensors, and more.
Researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have created a nanoscale crystal device that, for the first time, allows scientists to confine both light and sound vibrations in the same tiny space.
“This is a whole new concept,” notes Oskar Painter, associate professor of applied physics at Caltech. Painter is the principal investigator on the paper describing the work, which was published this week in the online edition of the journal Nature. “People have known how to manipulate light, and they’ve known how to manipulate sound. But they hadn’t realized that we can manipulate both at the same time, and that the waves will interact very strongly within this single structure.”
Indeed, Painter points out, the interactions between sound and light in this device—dubbed an optomechanical crystal—can result in mechanical vibrations with frequencies as high as tens of gigahertz, or 10 billion cycles per second. Being able to achieve such frequencies, he explains, gives these devices the ability to send large amounts of information, and opens up a wide array of potential applications—everything from lightwave communication systems to biosensors capable of detecting (or weighing) a single macromolecule. It could also, Painter says, be used as a research tool by scientists studying nanomechanics. “These structures would give a mass sensitivity that would rival conventional nanoelectromechanical systems because light in these structures is more sensitive to motion than a conventional electrical system is.” (more…)
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Study Shows How Carbon Nanotubes Can Affect Lining of the Lungs
Carbon nanotubes are being considered for use in everything from sports equipment to medical applications, but a great deal remains unknown about whether these materials cause respiratory or other health problems. Now a collaborative study from North Carolina State University, The Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences, and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences shows that inhaling these nanotubes can affect the outer lining of the lung, though the effects of long-term exposure remain unclear.
Using mice in an animal model study, the researchers set out to determine what happens when multi-walled carbon nanotubes are inhaled. Specifically, researchers wanted to determine whether the nanotubes would be able to reach the pleura, which is the tissue that lines the outside of the lungs and is affected by exposure to certain types of asbestos fibers which cause the cancer mesothelioma. The researchers used inhalation exposure and found that inhaled nanotubes do reach the pleura and cause health effects. (more…)
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Solving Hydrogen Storage Limit to Power Green Cars
Hydrogen fuel, because its only byproduct is steam, should be the ultimate in green alternatives to fossil fuels, but it hasn’t delivered on its promise yet because of one enormous stumbling block, storage. Now a team of chemical engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a computational model that shows that carbon nanotubes may offer a surprising solution. Results are presented in the current online issue of the journal, Applied Physics Letters.
“If this works as we expect, it’s perhaps no longer science fiction to hope for a briefcase-sized hydrogen battery to run a bus or car,” says UMass Amherst chemical engineering professor Dimitrios Maroudas. “Hydrogen storage has been a huge problem in the energy field for the past 10 years because no one has been able to demonstrate a truly viable storage medium. We’ve shown that it’s possible to achieve hydrogen storage capacity up to 8 percent by weight using carbon nanotubes. This is an outstanding level, higher by 1 percent than the 2010 United States Department of Energy target for on-board hydrogen storage systems,” Maroudas adds. “The method we propose may lead to breaking the bottleneck.” (more…)
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Nanotechnology: Developing Material That Could Boost Data Storage, Save Energy
Dr. Jagdish “Jay” Narayan
North Carolina State University engineers have created a new material that would allow a fingernail-size computer chip to store the equivalent of 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, far exceeding the storage capacities of today’s computer memory systems.
Led by Dr. Jagdish “Jay” Narayan, John C.C. Fan Family Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at NC State, the engineers made their breakthrough using the process of selective doping, in which an impurity is added to a material that changes its properties. The process also shows promise for boosting vehicles’ fuel economy and reducing heat produced by semiconductors, a potentially important development for more efficient energy production.
Working at the nanometer level — a pinhead has a diameter of 1 million nanometers — the engineers added metal nickel to magnesium oxide, a ceramic. The resulting material contained clusters of nickel atoms no bigger than 10 square nanometers, a 90 percent size reduction compared to today’s techniques and an advancement that could boost computer storage capacity. (more…)
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More Research Needed for Nanotech Protection
The Center for Functional Nanomaterials (CFN) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The overarching scientific theme of the CFN is the development and understanding of nanoscale materials that address the Nations’ challenges in energy security.
Writing in a forthcoming issue of the International Journal of Nanotechnology, Canadian engineers suggest that research is needed into the risks associated with the growing field of nanotechnology manufacture so that appropriate protective equipment can be developed urgently.
Patricia Dolez of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, at the École de technologie supérieure, in Montréal and colleagues point out that skin is not an impervious membrane. This is the reason that protective clothing and gloves, in addition to respirators, are often an essential and common sight in the chemical industry. However, they wonder if standard protection against chemical risks is enough for workers who are handling nanomaterials. (more…)
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Step Forward for Nanotechnology: Controlled Movement of Molecules
In a step forward for nanotechnology, scientists are reporting an advance that allows the controlled movement of individual molecules without help from outside forces. Shown is a model of the atomic structure of a silicon nanocrystal. (National Science Foundation)
Scientists in the United Kingdom are reporting an advance toward overcoming one of the key challenges in nanotechnology: Getting molecules to move quickly in a desired direction without help from outside forces. Their achievement has broad implications, the scientists say, raising the possibility of coaxing cells to move and grow in specific directions to treat diseases. It also could speed development of some long-awaited nanotech innovations. They include self-healing structures that naturally repair tears in their surface and devices that deliver medication to diseased while sparing healthy tissue. The study is scheduled for the October issue of ACS Nano, a monthly journal.
Mark Geoghegan and colleagues note long-standing efforts to produce directed, controlled movement of individual molecules in the nano world, where objects are about 1/50,000ththe width of a human hair. The main solutions so far have involved use of expensive, complex machines to move the molecules and they have been only partially successful, the scientists say. (more…)
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Nanotechnology and Synthetic Biology: What Does the American Public Think?
JBEI researchers are using the tools of synthetic biology to engineer new microbes as an alternative to yeast that can quickly and efficiently forment complex sugars ito advanced biofuels. (Lawrence Berkeley Nat'l Lab - Roy Kaltschmidt, photographer)
Nanotechnology and synthetic biology continue to develop as two of the most exciting areas of scientific discovery, but research has shown that the public is almost completely unaware of the science and its applications. A groundbreaking poll of 1,001 American adults conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates and the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) found that 90 percent of Americans think the public should be better informed about the development of cutting-edge technologies.
“Historically, government and industry have done a poor job of informing and engaging the public about scientific developments that could have transformative impacts on society,” said David Rejeski, director of PEN. “The poll showed that better communication is needed and could be beneficial in securing the promise of our investments in science.”
The poll, which was conducted by the same firm that produces the well-known NBC News/Wall Street Journal polls, revealed that the proportion of adults who say they have heard a lot or some about synthetic biology more than doubled in the past year (from 9 percent to 22 percent). Awareness of nanotechnology (30 percent have heard a lot or some) increased slightly since last year, putting it back at the same level measured in 2006. A report which summarizes the findings of the poll can be found at http://www.nanotechproject.org/news/archive/hart4/. (more…)
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Microchip Can Detect Type and Severity of Cancer
Ted Sargent one of the lead investigators and U of T's Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology.
University of Toronto researchers have used nanomaterials to develop a microchip sensitive enough to quickly determine the type and severity of a patient’s cancer so that the disease can be detected earlier for more effective treatment.
Their groundbreaking work, reported Sept. 27 in Nature Nanotechnology heralds an era when sophisticated molecular diagnostics will become commonplace.
“This remarkable innovation is an indication that the age of nanomedicine is dawning,” says Professor David Naylor, president of the University of Toronto and a professor of medicine. “Thanks to the breadth of expertise here at U of T, cross-disciplinary collaborations of this nature make such landmark advances possible.” (more…)
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Study: Public Must Be Involved in Nanotech Policy Debate
Professor Richard Jones FRS
Decision-making on science – especially emerging technologies such as nanotechnology – must become more democratic, a new report on science policy released today argues. The group of leading European academics behind the ‘Reconfiguring Responsibility’ report argue forcefully that current governance activities are limiting public debate and may repeat mistakes made in managing GM.
The DEEPEN report comes in the wake of a move within UK and European science policy-making to govern ‘upstream’ in a technology’s development, before its impacts become irreversible, and to involve the public in decision-making. Analysing this move in the context of nanotechnology, the ‘Reconfiguring Responsibility’ report argues that these developments do not go nearly far enough. According to Professor Phil Macnaghten - who is based at Durham University and who has led the EU-funded project involving researchers from the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal - while talk of ‘responsible development’ is a step in the right direction, it often hides outdated assumptions: “Technologies are being driven forward with insufficient reflection on why they are being developed and on what this is likely to mean for future society. The public is keen to be involved in deliberating the often far-reaching questions that science is addressing, and policymakers need to find new ways to ensure that public views are heard, treated with respect and used to inform science policy.” (more…)
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Risks and Public Attitudes to New Technology
New technologies may change our lives for the better, but sometimes they have risks. Communicating those benefits and risks to the public, and developing regulations to deal with them, can be difficult — particularly if there’s already public opposition to the technology.
A new study that provides an overview of research on public perceptions of nanotechnology — technology on a very, very small scale — challenges some current ideas of how people view the risks and benefits of new technology. The work has implications for how policymakers talk about and regulate new technologies.
Public views on nanotechnology, which could revolutionize medicine, electronics and energy technology, but has possible health and environmental risks, are overwhelmingly favorable, the study found. However many people hadn’t heard of nanotechnology, and nearly half those surveyed in North America, Europe and Japan weren’t sure what they thought of it. It’s reassuring that those people haven’t made hasty judgments, the authors say, but that means that bungled attempts to educate the public about nanotechnology, or to regulate it, could turn public opinion against this promising technology. (more…)
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Size Isn’t the Only Thing That Matters for Nano Data Storage
On the top is a shadowgraph visualization of rising and falling plumes in a turbulent fluid. On the bottom are small liquid-crystal spheres show the temperature and velocity in a fluid simultaneously. (Credit: Top image: X. D. Shang, X. L. Qiu, P. Tong, and K.-Q. Xia, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 074501 (2003); Bottom image Y. B. Du and P. Tong, J. Fluid Mech. 407, 57 (2000).)
Molecules of hydrogen are difficult to steer with electric fields because of the symmetrical way that charges are distributed within them. But now researchers at ETH Zurich have found a clever technique to get a grip on the molecules. Their findings are reported in Physical Review Letters and highlighted in the September 14 issue of Physics (http://physics.aps.org).
Electric fields can easily manipulate electrically asymmetric molecules like water, but electric forces can’t overcome thermal motions for highly symmetric molecules like H2. In the 1980s, researchers in search of a way to manipulate non-polar molecules proposed a trick: excite one of H2’s two electrons into a high orbit, disrupting the molecule’s symmetry. The far-flung electron feels the pull of the electric field and drags the rest of the molecule along, rendering H2 as manageable as a puppet on a string.
Now Stephen Hogan, Christian Seiler, and Frederic Merkt at ETH Zurich have made this idea reality by overcoming a key problem: an electron in an excited orbit usually reverts to its ground state long before researchers can take advantage of the molecule’s maneuverability. (more…)
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Nanoparticles May Have Negative Effects on the Environment and Human Health
Mark Wiesner from Duke University. (Duke University Photography)
The same properties of nanoparticles that make them so appealing to manufacturers may also have negative effects on the environment and human health.
However, little is known which particles may be harmful. Part of the problem is determining exactly what a nanoparticle is.
A new analysis by an international team of researchers from the Center for the Environmental Implications of NanoTechnology (CEINT), based at Duke University, argues for a new look at the way nanoparticles are selected when studying the potential impacts on human health and the environment. They have found that while many small particles are considered to be “nano,” these materials often do not meet full definition of having special properties that make them different from conventional materials. (more…)
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Carbon Nanotubes Could Make Efficient Solar Cells
by Anne Ju, Cornell Chronicle
Paul McEuen, Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics (Courtesy Cornell University)
Using a carbon nanotube instead of traditional silicon, Cornell researchers have created the basic elements of a solar cell that hopefully will lead to much more efficient ways of converting light to electricity than now used in calculators and on rooftops.
The researchers fabricated, tested and measured a simple solar cell called a photodiode, formed from an individual carbon nanotube. Reported online Sept. 11 in the journal Science, the researchers — led by Paul McEuen, the Goldwin Smith Professor of Physics, and Jiwoong Park, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology — describe how their device converts light to electricity in an extremely efficient process that multiplies the amount of electrical current that flows. This process could prove important for next-generation high efficiency solar cells, the researchers say. (more…)
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