Carbon Nanotube Muscles

Scientists at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed a new artificial muscle made of carbon nanotubes. Carbon nanotubes can withstand extremely low and high temperatures that would cause other artificial muscle systems to freeze or decompose. This new artificial muscle can withstand temperatures from -196 degrees Celsius to 1538 degrees Celsius. The carbon nanotube muscles won't be used for prosthetics, but possibly for use in hostile environments, such as space, where the muscles can be used to move joints and arms for robots.


The muscle is composed of aerogel sheets, which means most of the volume in the sheet is air and vacuum. The sheet is composed of aligned carbon nanotubes and in terms of density, is stronger than the strongest steel plate.



Sources: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=cnt-artificial-muscle

LEED

When I was searching for Emory’s initiatives to go green on campus, I began to search for how Emory’s buildings are green. Well, some of Emory’s buildings follow the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Designs or LEED requirements of the Green Building Rating System within the United States Green Building Council, such as the business school building. Below is a clip of Robert Watson (father of the green building movement) talking about the importance of going Green, and what needs to be done in terms of behavior. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDqju1hgKNk
More on LEED Certified Building: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqgnqhk0TdU
One can get better air quality, obtain energy savings, and sustainable resources are used to build the home. Energy Star homes are 70% to 80% more efficient energy wise, but LEED uses sustainable resources in order to build the homes.

Donuts...a New Field in Nanotechnology...

So for my last blog I decided to go light. I really enjoyed nanotechnology and wished we have looked at its effects on health and biomedical engineering. While looking for something I stumbled across this article. Scientists in the Netherlands use these new techniques with nanotechnology in interdisciplinary work with food. This article describes a panel of scientists looking on how to make nanotechnology in food seem more acceptable to the public. One of the scientists, states that it easier for people to accept nanotechnology in the medical field, but in food is seen as unneccessary or unneeded. People hear nanoparticles and think they will have a negative impact their health. In actually scientists in the Netherlands have been using nanoparticles, which decompose in digestion, to deliver essential vitamins and nutrients to specific locations in the body. Nanodevices could also be used to detect present risks in food packaging, leading to safer food conditions over time. I though this was very interesting and will be the first onboard if they find a way to make donuts healthy through the use of nanoparticles.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/02/090214162746.htm

PhD student’s discovery may speed up recovery time

A University of Manchester student has found a way of spinning biodegradable nanofibers into a 'fabric' that could be used in the body as an artificial tendon. Lucy Bosworth, from the University's School of Materials, developed an artificial tendon that can be surgically grafted onto the site of an injury, where it encourages growth and repair, before safely degrading. Researchers believe that this discovery would dramatically decrease the healing time for a tendon, which currently can last up to eight weeks.

Currently patients can either have a tendon from another part of the body surgically grafted onto the injury site or they can rest the area for a significant period of time. Grafting a tendon from another part of the body creates a second site in the body that needs to heal. Lucy says that using the artificial tendon would take away the need to operate on a second site in the body, which speeds up the recovery time.

Lucy creates the artificial tendons with a bio-polymer, which is a degradable polymer than can be used inside the body. Lucy has developed a method of adapting the polymer fibers to a structure that's similar to tendon tissue and mimics natural tissue. She is starting the pre-clinical stage of her artificial tendon research, and she believes they could be used in hospitals in less than three years.

http://www.physorg.com/news159553333.html

The Diamond Synchrotron

A synchrotron is a cyclic particle accelerator that uses an electric field to accelerate the particles to high speed and a magnetic field to turn the particles so they circulate. One particular synchrotron, called the Diamond Synchrotron, located in the UK is so powerful that it can produce light 10 billion times brighter than the sun.

How is such an intensity reached? the particle accelerator shoots electrons down a straight tube to a circular chamber where they gain energy and speed close to the speed of light. Some of these electrons travel through beam lines, where light passes through. The Diamond Synchrotron is capable of producing light from the entire spectrum.

With light this bright, ancient texts that are damaged so much that they can't be read can possibly be read without even having to flip through the pages. Scientist as already successfully done this with texts that were written with iron gall ink. These texts are readable thanks to the powerful X-rays the synchrotron emits. These X-rays can produce a 3D image of the text so it can be read. Some ancient text are written on animal skin composed of collagen. Over time this collagen decomposes into gelatin and results in a loss of the text. The synchrotron can be used to determine how much collagen has decomposed into gelatin.

did I mention that the Diamond Synchrotron is as big as 5 soccer fields?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/synchrotron.htm

Space Organics

A report came out today that was published on multiple news sites discussing a new chemical find in space.

Scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy have detected—ethyl formate and n-propyl cyanide— the two most complex organic molecules ever found in interstellar space. This discovery was made in an area of space called Sagittarius B2 in our galaxy. Other organic chemicals have been found previously such as alcohols (mostly methanol), aldehydes, and acids, but these are the most complex to date.

The articles site two theories of how these compounds can be created: an atom by atom assembly through collisions in the gaseous particles, or reactions on small grains of dust suspended in the gas. The current computational models suggest that these compounds are formed in sections from pre-existing molecules on the dust grains. In this way larger and more complex molecules can be built up in sections over time. What is striking is that there seems to be no limit to the size of the products that are created in this way, so as one can imagine…its only a matter of time till we are seeing some of the complex building blocks of life such as amino acids.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090421080506.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8009014.stm

Virus-built Batteries

Earlier this month, researchers at MIT successfully engineered viruses to build lithium-ion batteries. One of the genetically engineered viruses creates an anode by coating itself with cobalt oxide and gold and self-assembling to form a nanowire. The cathode is made up of a virus that coats itself with iron phosphate and then grabs carbon nanotubes to create a highly conductive network. This network creates a very fast electrode, as electrons can travel quickly along the carbon nanotubes. More importantly, the carbon nanotubes increase the conductivity of the cathode without adding a lot of weight. This advancement allows for the production of small, conformable batteries that will be both flexible and lightweight. Current “virus-built” batteries do not have as many charge cycles as lithium-ion batteries, but researchers expect each cycle to last much longer. Future research by the group at MIT will focus on using higher voltage materials, now that virus-built batteries can be successfully wired on the nanoscale.

Science Daily

MIT News

The World's Most Accurate Clock

Here is an interesting article on a new development in the world of nanotechnology:

A new atomic clock has been developed that is more than twice as accurate as the clocks that are currently used to regulate international time zones and satellite systems. Like other atomic clocks made previously to this one, it keeps track of time based on the vibration of atoms. But what makes this clock more consistent in producing a pendulum effect of atoms is the laser beam it uses to freeze atoms at approximately -273 degrees celsius (absolute zero). This is the temperature at which all matter stops resonating. By using this laser beam, researchers can make electrons swing back and forth between the orbits they occupy around the nucleus. This is what forms the pendulum in the atomic clock. And even though this clock only increases accuracy by a small fraction of a second, it has a great potential in areas focused on the determination of great distances, such as measuring the distance to distant galaxies in space.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5164808/Worlds-most-accurate-clock-unveiled.html

Carbon Coated Nanoparticles

In May of 2008, German researchers used heat as a method to try and kill cancerous cells in animals. Using a metallic iron in nanoparticles would allow for more heat (higher temperatures) to be used in this method. The coating of carbon comes in to play so as to prevent the iron from rusting.

Researchers have tested this method with normal cells to see the effects. They used Human PC-3 prostate cells and a non-malignant fibroblast cell. They incubated the cells with the carbon coated nanoparticle magnets, and no signs of cytotoxicity were found. This new method could help destroy cancerous cells without invasive surgery or chemotherapy, which can take a heavy toll on the human body.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080515072753.htm

Cyclic Organic Nanostructures

Chemists from Caltech and University of California, Berkeley recently reported a direct, Ru-based catalytic procedure for synthesizing organic nanorings. Traditional methods for producing cyclic polymers involved connecting the reactive ends of a linear polymer. This presents problems because dimers and trimers are often formed instead of rings.

The new method is a ring-expansion metathesis polymerization, catalyzed by Ru-carbene catalysts to produce toroidal structures from dendrimers. The rings are produced in reasonable quantities and were studied with atomic force microscopy. The outside diameters range from 35 to 40 nm and the inner diameters from 5 to 7 nm.

According to C. Grant Wilson of the University of Texas, the rings reveal "the ability of chemists to control not only the sequence connectivity of atoms in molecules, but the way in which the resulting molecules form themselves into three-dimensional shapes."


Sources:
C&EN http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/87/i16/html/8716notw7.html
JACS http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja901658c

To follow up on art forgeries I found an interesting article about a new computer program that can identify the artworks of different artists. The Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Haifa has developed a new mathematical program that will enable computers to know if the artwork is an original one from a famous artist or if it is of another less well known artist.

After the program turned the drawings of nature, people, flowers and other scenes to a series of mathematical symbols, sines and cosines, the computer was able to learn to identify the artists. Once the computer learns some of the works of each artist, then the program allows the computer to master the individual style of each artist and identify the artist when looking at other works, artworks the computer has never seen.

Professor Daniel Keren who developed the program explains that the program is able to recognize the works of a particular artist even if they portray different scenes. As soon as the computer learns a specific part of a painting, it will recognize other paintings even if they don’t depict the same scene. One example mentioned was paintings from Dali. If the computer recognizes the clock drawings of Dali, it will recognize other paintings from Dali, even without the clocks and so on for other artists as well.

As of right now the program is new and there are still things it cannot do, but it is certainly a step forward in the field of computer vision. This program can be helpful for those who do not know much about art and want to know if an art piece is an original piece or not.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071105091915.htm

Synthesis of Isoxazolo Pyridines by Microwave Assisted Multi-Component Reactions in Water

In our green chemistry section, we learned that one way green chemists make mechanisms greener is by using less toxic solvents. In this study, researchers discovered that water is a better solvent for the production and isolation of isoxazolo pyridines, important biochemical components in the pharmaceutical industry. Isoxazolo pyridines are used in the production of analgeis, anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial, HIV, and cancer drugs. The reaction was completed without the use of any additional reagents or catalysts.

The reaction was tested in many different solvents, including ethylene glycol, ethanol, acetic acid, and water. Using water as a solvent resulted in the highest percent yield.

entry	solventa	T (°C)	time (min)	yieldb (%)
1	ethyleneglycol	90	10	43
2	ethanol	90	11	54
3	HOAc	90	10	57
4	H2O	90	10	65
5	H2O	100	9	81
6	H2O	110	7	89
7	H2O	120	6	91
8	H2O	130	6	88

Furthermore, the researchers found that when they increased temperature, the yield also increased. However, temperatures higher than 130 °C did not result in an improvement.

The researchers conclude that their new mechanism is simpler than previous mechanisms and is healthier for the environment because it uses water as the solvent, which also reduces waste production.

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/stoken/campaign/acs/full/10.1021/cc800212v

Nano Heat

An aspect of nano-tech that we havent covered as much is nano-mechanical and nano-mechanoelectrical(Piezo-electric technology). Nano scale mechanical devices are slowly becoming more prominent in devices, including nano-scale processors. One of the main problems with these devices is the same problem normal large-scale devices; heat. This heat prevents the implementation of these devices in several applications. Unfortunately the traditional methods of dissipating heat, fluid cooling and heat sinks are not feasable at this scale. In order to dissipate heat researches at MIT have been evaluating and have demonstrated the possibility of using linked carbon nano tubes as a nano-scale heat sinks.

Nano Lett. doi:10.1021/nl900399b

Chameleon clothes?

Scientists have observed the capabilities of fish to change their coloring. One group, led by George Bachand, has developed a simpler method. The method entails a change in color is due to the compactness or dispersion of quantum dots on microtubules which are cylindrical protein filaments. When these microtubules collide, they can twist together which forms small stable rings. These rings in turn can dissemble and thus cause either tightly packed or dispersed quantum dots. These dots of cadmium selenide reflect different light frequencies. This mimicking of color change in fish has large future real-world applications.


http://www.physorg.com/news159198454.html

Coffee vs. Nano-Tex Fabric

Here is a really cool video about nano-tex fabric.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD8sFVf626g

If you want to know more about Nano-Tex visit:

http://www.nano-tex.com/faqs/faqs.html#1

"green" quantum dots

NN-Labs has created new and environmentally friendly quantum dots. They are indium phosphide-based quantum dots, and they are a high-performance alternative to cadmium selenide-based (CdSe) quantum dots. They are also free of heavy metals. CdSe-based quantum dots, the more common type of quantum dot luminescent materials, “are known to be highly toxic and environmentally hazardous but are still used widely because of the absence, until now, of alternative materials, the company said in a news release.”

The InP quantum dots eliminate the need for cadmium, which is a “Level A toxic element with zero use tolerance for purpose-built commercial applications”. The quantum dots are can be viewed via absorption and fluorescence spectroscopy, and they have similar color ranges of CdSe quantum dots.NN-Labs are currently offering InP/ZnS core-shell quantum dots in kits of five emission colors: green (530nm), yellow (570nm), orange (600nm), red (630nm), and deep red (650nm).

http://www.smalltimes.com/display_article/359030/109/ARTCL/none/none/1/NN-Labs-intros-%27environmentally-friendly%27-quantum-dots/