Showing Spotlights 273 - 280 of 2785 in category All (newest first):
Inspired by living biological systems, which can sense, process information, and actuate in response to changing environmental conditions, researchers are exploring engineered living hydrogels. The convergence of engineering, biology, and materials science over the past 20 years is providing unprecedented opportunities to integrate living cells into these hydrogels. This integration yields engineered living hydrogels with the capabilities of self-replication, self-regulation, and environmental responsiveness.
Jul 11th, 2022
Spontaneous charging of interfaces between water and hydrophobic media is a mysterious feature whose nature and origin - despite many efforts to explain them - are still not fully understood. Many spectroscopic results and interpretations along with computational work are not consistent with one another and a consensus on the nature and origin of interfacial charging has not been reached. A clear understanding of this puzzling phenomenon needs a variety of approaches from diverse perspectives, which, hopefully will all add up and be pieced together towards a complete description of the full picture.
Jul 7th, 2022
The success of mRNA technology in the development of a COVID-19 vaccine has become a groundbreaking development in the fight against cancer, as well as in the development of new vaccines against many other infectious diseases, including HIV. Future nanotechnology-based mRNA vaccines could allow the delivery of multiple antigen-targeted vaccines in one vaccine lipid nanoparticle to protect against multiple diseases, thereby reducing the number of vaccines needed to prevent common vaccine-preventable diseases.
Jul 5th, 2022
The controlled rotation of micro- and nanoscale objects plays a crucial role in sensing, imaging, biomedicine, and manufacturing. What makes light-driven micro- and nanorotors so promising for many applications is their non-contact, fuel-free operation. It has remained challenging for simple and low-power optics to achieve light-driven rotation of a wide range of objects, including optically symmetric synthetic particles and biological cells. A novel platform elegantly addresses this issue by achieving the rotation of various particles and live cells using an arbitrary low-power laser beam.
Jul 4th, 2022
By irradiating a pure tellurium target in deionized water, researchers formed 'naked' tellurium dioxide nanoparticles with a spherical morphology and a size of around 70 nm. The surface of those nanoparticles is totally clean (hence 'naked'), meaning that it does not contain any residues from chemical reactions. This surface cleanliness makes them ideal to interact with biological pathogens and it takes less than 10 ppm to eradicate deadly pathogens like multi-drug resistant E. coli and Methicillin-resistant S. aureus.
Jul 1st, 2022
With a growing sustainability movement around the globe, the concept of urban farming has gained huge popularity for the development of sustainable communities. Urban farming practices don't necessarily use the same practices as conventional farming; this is especially true for the more high-tech approaches taken in vertical farming and warehouse farming. There is an opportunity and a requirement for smart technologies and the use of novel materials in urban farming, which can contribute to building a higher productivity and more sustainable urban farms.
Jun 28th, 2022
Researchers have developed a sprayable on-site sensing tool. The main application area for this sensor spray is the detection of specific analytes in an environment where sample collection is a difficult task either due to the target chemicals themselves or the area where the samples are located. A nebulization method allows for nanofibers to be sprayed onto any surface, while the accompanying phone-based application allows for direct on-site detection.
Jun 27th, 2022
The goal of the electronics industry has always been to build durable devices with stable performance that last a very long time. Self-destructing, transient electronics however, are designed with the exact opposite goal: to dissolve harmlessly into their surroundings after functioning for a predetermined amount of time. Researchers now demonstrate novel biodegradable, recyclable, conductive, flexible, and printable materials that can be applied across many electronic devices to serve as a cornerstone for the development of ecofriendly and recyclable electronics.
Jun 22nd, 2022
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