#Nanolock Signs Agreement to License Patents and Related Anti-Biofilm Nanoparticles to Reduce Antimicrobial Resistance Nanolock,
a start-up company, has developed a proprietary nano-polymer additive that protects against any microbial infection
which transforms regular implantable and non-implantable devices to biofilm-resistant platforms. These anti-biofilm properties reduce
or eliminate device or implant-associated infection, improve clinical outcomes and increase device longevity. The nano-polymer additive's unique features are that they are activated only upon contact,
and do not leak or dissolve into the surrounding environment. This makes it completely safe to patients and most importantly
the device's anti-biofilm properties are preserved indefinitely. Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is considered to be the most urgent and important challenge of all medical fields.
Dr. K. Fukuda, WHO's (World health organization) Assistant Director-General for Health Security stated that "Unless we take significant actions to improve efforts to prevent infections. the implications will be devastating."
"1 NIH (National institutes of health) estimates that"Infectious diseases are the second cause of death worldwide, more than13 millions deaths per year (mostly due to bacteria.
More than 60%of microbial infections proceed with involvement of biofilms.""Prof. Ervin Weiss inventor and one of the developers of the nano-polymer additive technology adds,
"The nano-polymer additive has a broad spectrum of antibacterial effect. It kills Gram positive and Gram negative bacteria,
as well as Candida species believe that the nano-polymer additive, which is free of toxins and heavy metals, will revolutionize medical device industry. s
#Novel Method Utilizes Nanoparticles and UV LIGHT to Isolate, Extract Contaminants In a new paper published this week in Nature Communications,
researchers from MIT and the Federal University of Goiás in Brazil demonstrate a novel method for using nanoparticles
and ultraviolet (UV LIGHT to quickly isolate and extract a variety of contaminants from soil and water.
Ferdinand Brandl and Nicolas Bertrand, the two lead authors, are former postdocs in the laboratory of Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT Koch Institute
for Integrative Cancer Research. Eliana Martins Lima, of the Federal University of Goiás, is the other co-author.
Both Brandl and Bertrand are trained as pharmacists, and describe their discovery as a happy accident:
They initially sought to develop nanoparticles that could be used to deliver drugs to cancer cells. Brandl had synthesized previously polymers that could be cleaved apart by exposure to UV LIGHT.
But he and Bertrand came to question their suitability for drug delivery, since UV LIGHT can be damaging to tissue and cells,
and doesn penetrate through the skin. When they learned that UV LIGHT was used to disinfect water in certain treatment plants,
they began to ask a different question. e thought if they are already using UV LIGHT,
maybe they could use our particles as well, Brandl says. hen we came up with the idea to use our particles to remove toxic chemicals, pollutants,
or hormones from water, because we saw that the particles aggregate once you irradiate them with UV LIGHT. trap for ater-fearingpollutionthe researchers synthesized polymers from polyethylene glycol,
a widely used compound found in laxatives, toothpaste, and eye drops and approved by the Food and Drug Administration as a food additive,
and polylactic acid, a biodegradable plastic used in compostable cups and glassware. Nanoparticles made from these polymers have a hydrophobic core and a hydrophilic shell.
Due to molecular-scale forces in a solution hydrophobic pollutant molecules move toward the hydrophobic nanoparticles,
and adsorb onto their surface, where they effectively become rapped. This same phenomenon is at work
when spaghetti sauce stains the surface of plastic containers, turning them red: In that case, both the plastic and the oil-based sauce are hydrophobic
and interact together. If left alone, these nanomaterials would remain suspended and dispersed evenly in water.
But when exposed to UV LIGHT, the stabilizing outer shell of the particles is shed, and now nrichedby the pollutants they form larger aggregates that can then be removed through filtration, sedimentation,
or other methods. The researchers used the method to extract phthalates, hormone-disrupting chemicals used to soften plastics, from wastewater;
BPA, another endocrine-disrupting synthetic compound widely used in plastic bottles and other resinous consumer goods, from thermal printing paper samples;
and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, carcinogenic compounds formed from incomplete combustion of fuels, from contaminated soil. The process is irreversible
and the polymers are biodegradable, minimizing the risks of leaving toxic secondary products to persist in,
say, a body of water. nce they switch to this macro situation where theye big clumps, Bertrand says,
ou won be able to bring them back to the nano state again. he fundamental breakthrough,
according to the researchers, was confirming that small molecules do indeed adsorb passively onto the surface of nanoparticles. o the best of our knowledge,
it is the first time that the interactions of small molecules with preformed nanoparticles can be measured directly,
from environmental remediation to medical analysis. The polymers are synthesized at room temperature, and don need to be prepared specially to target specific compounds;
and molecules. he interactions we exploit to remove the pollutants are nonspecific, Brandl says. e can remove hormones, BPA,
and pesticides that are all present in the same sample, and we can do this in one step. nd the nanoparticleshigh surface-area-to-volume ratio means that only a small amount is needed to remove a relatively large quantity of pollutants.
The technique could thus offer potential for the cost-effective cleanup of contaminated water and soil on a wider scale. rom the applied perspective,
we showed in a system that the adsorption of small molecules on the surface of the nanoparticles can be used for extraction of any kind,
Bertrand says. t opens the door for many other applications down the line. his approach could possibly be developed further,
banned for use as a pesticide in the U s . since 1972 but still widely used in other parts of the world,
as another example of a persistent pollutant that could potentially be remediated using these nanomaterials. nd for analytical applications where you don need as much volume to purify or concentrate,
offering the example of a cheap testing kit for urine analysis of medical patients. The study also suggests the broader potential for adapting nanoscale drug-delivery techniques developed for use in environmental remediation. hat we can apply some of the highly sophisticated,
high-precision tools developed for the pharmaceutical industry, and now look at the use of these technologies in broader terms,
says Frank Gu, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the University of Waterloo in Canada, and an expert in nanoengineering for health care and medical applications. hen you think about field deployment,
that far down the road, but this paper offers a really exciting opportunity to crack a problem that is persistently present,
who was involved not in the research. f you take the normal conventional civil engineering or chemical engineering approach to treating it, it just won touch it.
#Coral-Like Nanoplates Help Remove Toxic Heavy metals from Water A new material that mimics coral could help remove toxic heavy metals like mercury from the ocean,
The researchers, from Anhui Jianzhu University in China, say their new material could provide inspiration for other approaches to removing pollutants.
Toxic heavy metal ions like mercury, lead and arsenic are released into the water through human activity, including manufacturing and industrial processes.
One major source of toxic metal contamination is the ocean. When mercury pollutes the water
The mercury builds up in the food chain, ultimately resulting in toxic fish. According to THE WHO, between 1. 5 and 17 in every thousand children living in selected subsistence fishing populations showed cognitive impacts caused by the consumption of fish containing mercury.
Heavy metals are also toxic to corals: even at low concentrations, small amounts of heavy metal pollution can kill corals.
This heightened toxicity is due to coral being very efficient at collecting, or adsorbing, heavy metals. The researchers behind the new study have taken inspiration from this
and developed a device that mimics the way coral adsorbs heavy metals. Dr. Xianbiao Wang and colleagues have made coral-like nanoplates using aluminium oxide,
with the aim of adsorbing mercury from water. Aluminium oxide has previously been used to remove pollutants,
but the structure of the material has not been optimal, so they have not performed very well.
The new nanoplates curl themselves up into a coral-like structure which behaves in a similar way to real coral,
making the material more effective.""Adsorption is an easy way to remove pollutants from water,
so developing new products that can do this is a big challenge in environmental remediation, "said Dr. Xianbiao Wang, one of the authors of the study from Anhui Jianzhu University in China."
"The chemical and physical structure of such products is very important, it is interesting to design
and fabricate adsorbents with different structures to see how they behave. In particular, materials that mimic biological adsorbents like coral have potentially huge applications."
"The researchers tested the coral-like nanoplates on removing mercury from water. They found that the coral-like structure removed around 2. 5 times more mercury from water than the traditional aluminium oxide nanoparticles."
"We are excited very about the results, which provide a good example for the production of coral-like adsorbents,
"We hope our work provides inspiration for more research into the development of materials that mimic biological organisms
#Nano Cages Provide New Approach for Structuring Catalysts University of Wisconsin-Madison engineers have developed a new approach to structuring the catalysts used in essential reactions in the chemical and energy fields.
The advance offers a pathway for industries to wean themselves off of platinum, one of the scarcest metals in the earth's crust.
In an effort to reduce the catalysis world's dependence on this highly reactive and versatile--but also quite expensive--metal,
UW-Madison chemical engineering Professor Manos Mavrikakis and his collaborators have turned to the nanoscale structure of particles,
to low temperature fuel cells. Materials researchers at the Georgia Institute of technology initially came across the nano cage as a potentially powerful approach,
with the ultimate goal of replacing platinum and palladium with more affordable metals.""This demonstrates a completely new concept about how you can make materials that would utilize a minimal amount of precious metals,
"Mavrikakis says.""Platinum is likely the most widely used catalyst in the chemical industry, which means that using less of it helps make that industry more sustainable."
researchers start with a nanoscale cube or octahedron of less expensive palladium, then deposit a few layers of platinum atoms on top of it.
interacting with more platinum atoms in the chemical reaction than would be the case on a flat sheet of platinum or traditional, nonhollowed nanoparticles."
a graduate student in Mavrikakis'lab."We're also able to use more of the platinum atoms than we were before--at best,
it would be possible to reuse palladium atoms after etching agents remove them from the nanoparticle.
"Instead of having maybe not-so-well-defined nanoparticles, you can have these well-defined facets, "Herron says.
and to be stable in the reactive environment. If it's too thin--for example, two atomic layers--the cage collapses.
Mavrikakis sees the nano cage structure has opened up a whole new avenue of investigation in synthesizing new catalysts."
whose work was supported by the U s. Department of energy and UW-Madison's College of Engineering.""If your goal is to construct platinum nano cages,
and researchers at Georgia Tech--led by professor Younan Xia--Oak ridge National Laboratory, Arizona State university and Xiamen University in China a
#New Revolutionary One-step, High-Yield Graphene Generation Process Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and University of Western australia researchers have developed a new process to develop few-layer
Graphene is a thin atomic layer of graphite (used in pencils) with numerous properties that could be valuable in a variety of applications,
including medicine, electronics and energy. Discovered only 11 years ago, graphene is one of the strongest materials in the world,
However, current methods for production currently require toxic chemicals and lengthy and cumbersome processes that result in low yield that is not scalable for commercial applications.
H. T. Chua group at the University of Western australia (UWA, Perth. Their ultra-bright lamp-ablation method surmounts the shortcomings
Daniel Feuermann and Jeffrey Gordon) that reconstitutes the immense brightness within the plasma of high-power xenon discharge lamps at a remote reactor,
inexpensive graphite is irradiated. The process is relatively faster, safer and green devoid of any toxic substances (just graphite plus concentrated light.
Following this proof of concept, the BGU-UWA team is now planning an experimental program to scale up this initial success toward markedly improving the volume and rate at
#Novel Fabrication Technique Helps Produce Ultra-Thin Hollow Platinum Nanocages for Fuel cells Researchers from Georgia Tech, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Oak ridge National Laboratory,
Arizona State university and Xiamen University in China have developed a new fabrication method that minimizes the need for expensive metal to induce catalytic activity in fuel cell applications.
The new method allows the production of hollow platinum nanocages with ultra-thin walls. These atomic-scale layers of platinum are produced through a solution-based approach
porous structures that induce catalytic activity within and outside the nanocages. The layers are grown on templates of palladium nanocrystal templates.
The palladium is etched off leaving behind nanocages with a diameter of approximately 20 nm,
and between three and six atom-thin platinum layers. When these nanocage structures are used in fuel cell electrodes,
platinum's utilization efficiency can be increased by a factor of seven, which could affect the economic viability of the fuel cells. e can get the catalytic activity we need by using only a small fraction of the platinum that had been required before,
said Younan Xia, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
Xia also holds joint faculty appointments in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering at Georgia Tech. e have made hollow nanocages of platinum with walls as thin as a few atomic layers
because we don want to waste any material in the bulk that does not contribute to the catalytic activity.
Platinum as a catalyst holds significant importance in different industrial and consumer applications. However, due to its high cost, the use of low-temperature fuel cells in automobile and home applications has been limited.
The chemical reactions involved in the catalytic applications are supported by the platinum surface layers, which have enabled the researchers to produce new structures that increase the platinum's exposure to reactants.
The amount of precious metal that does not support the reaction is reduced through the hollowing out process.
This process also enables the use of larger nanocrystals that are less likely to be harmed by sintering-an aggregation process in
which the catalyst surface area is reduced. e can control the process so well that we have layer-by-layer deposition,
who is also a Georgia Research Alliance eminent scholar. e can also control the arrangement of atoms on the surface
so their catalytic activity can be engineered to fit different types of reactions. He further stated that hollow platinum structures have been produced previously,
but their walls were not as thin as these. Earlier examples had wall thicknesses of approximately 5 nm.
This new method is capable of producing shell walls with a thickness of less than 1 nm.
As both the inner and outer layers of the porous nanocages play a vital role in catalytic activity,
it is possible for the new structures to use a maximum of two-thirds of the platinum atoms in an ultra-thin three-layer shell.
With the use of palladium nanocrystals as templates, the nanocages can be formed in either cubic or octahedral shapes.
The surface structure is controlled by the shape of the nanocages, which further leads to modifications in the catalytic activity.
The research is focused mainly on reducing the expense of cathodes used in fuel cells that power homes and automobiles.
The oxygen-reduction reaction occurring at the cathode in the fuel cell requires platinum in substantial quantities.
The hollow shells could result in economically beneficial automotive and home fuel cells by minimizing the amount of platinum by up to a factor of seven.
Upon evaluating the durability of the platinum nanocages for oxygen-reduction reaction, the researchers observed that there is a fall in the catalytic activity by slightly more than one-third after 10,000 operating cycles.
Previous work carried out in increasing surface area was based on tiny platinum nanoparticles 2 or 3 nm in diameter.
These particles showed a tendency to clump together via the sintering process, thereby minimizing the surface area. y using hollow structures,
we can use much larger particle sizes about 20 nanometers and we really don lose any surface area
because we can use both the inside and outside of the structure, and the shells are only a few atomic layers thick,
Other applications, including catalytic converters in automobiles, employ significant quantities of platinum. The application of new hollow shells in automobile catalytic converters is limited as these converters function at temperatures that cannot be tolerated by the shells.
However, the platinum nanocages could be used in other industrial processes such as hydrogenation. Besides carrying out experimental work at Georgia Tech,
researchers at Arizona State university and Oak ridge National Laboratory mapped the nanocage structures using their specialized microscopy facilities.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison designed the system such that the etching of palladium from the core could be understood,
and the platinum shell could be preserved. Xia said that although several works have been carried out to explore platinum alternatives,
none of the alternatives has yielded the equivalent amount of catalytic activity in an equally small mass until now. f you took all of the platinum that we have available today
and made a cube, it would only be seven meters on each side, he added. hat all the platinum we have now,
The co-authors of the paper include Professor Manos Mavrikakis and researchers Luke Roling and Jeffrey Herron from the University of Wisconsin-Madison
Miaofang Chi from Oak ridge National Laboratory, Professor Jingyue Liu from Arizona State university, Professor Zhaoxiong Xie from Xiamen University,
Rapid and Inexpensive Modulator for Future Data Tansmission In February 1880 in his laboratory in Washington the American inventor Alexander graham bell developed a device
which he himself called his greatest achievement, greater even than the telephone: the"photophone"."Bell's idea to transmit spoken words over large distances using light was the forerunner of a technology without
which the modern internet would be unthinkable. Today, huge amounts of data are sent incredibly fast through fibre optic-cables cables as light pulses.
For that purpose they first have to be converted from electrical signals, which are used by computers and telephones, into optical signals.
In Bell's days it was a simple, very thin mirror that turned sound waves into modulated light.
especially when compared with electronic devices that can be as small as a few micrometers. In a seminal paper in the scientific journal"Nature Photonics",Juerg Leuthold, professor of photonics and communications at ETH Zurich,
and his colleagues now present a novel modulator that is a hundred times smaller and that can, therefore, be integrated easily into electronic circuits.
Moreover, the new modulator is considerably cheaper and faster than common models, and it uses far less energy.
The plasmon-trickfor this sleight of hand the researchers led by Leuthold and his doctoral student Christian Haffner who contributed to the development of the modulator, use a technical trick.
In order to build the smallest possible modulator they first need to focus a light beam whose intensity they want to modulate into a very small volume.
Modern telecommunications use laser light with a wavelength of one and a half micrometers, which accordingly is the lower limit for the size of a modulator.
the light is turned first into so-called surface-plasmon-polaritons. Plasmon-polaritons are a combination of electromagnetic fields
and electrons that propagate along a surface of a metal strip. At the end of the strip they are converted back to light once again.
The advantage of this detour is that plasmon-polaritons can be confined in a much smaller space than the light they originated from.
Refractive index changed from the outsidein order to control the power of the light that exits the device,
and thus to create the pulses necessary for data transfer, the researchers use the working principle of an interferometer.
A change in phase can result from a difference in the refractive index, which determines the speed of the waves.
whose refractive index can be changed from the outside, the relative phase of the two waves can be controlled
but rather plasmon-polaritons that are sent through an interferometer that is only half a micrometer wide.
By applying a voltage the refractive index and hence the velocity of the plasmons in one arm of the interferometer can be varied,
which in turn changes their amplitude of oscillation at the exit. After that, the plasmons are reconverted into light,
which is fed into a fibre optic cable for further transmission. Faster communication with less energythe modulator built by Leuthold
consisting of a gold layer on glass that is only 150 nanometers thick and an organic material
whose refractive index changes when an electric voltage is applied and that thus modulates the plasmons inside the interferometer.
As such a modulator is much smaller than conventional devices it consumes very little energy-only a few thousandth of Watts at a data transmission rate of 70 Gigabits per second.
This corresponds to merely a hundredth of the consumption of commercial models. In that sense it contributes to the protection of the environment
given that the amount of energy used worldwide for data transmission is considerable-after all, there are modulators in every single fibre optic line.
Every year increasing amounts of data need to be transmitted at ever higher speed, which leads to an increasing energy consumption.
A hundredfold energy saving would, therefore, be more than welcome.""Our modulator provides more communication with less energy,
"as the ETH professor puts it in a nutshell. At present the reliability of the modulator is being tested in long term trials,
which is a crucial step towards making it fit for commercial use e
#New Tool Generates Images of Brain Inside at Nanoscale Resolution A new imaging tool developed by Boston scientists could do for the brain
what the telescope did for space exploration. In the first demonstration of how the technology works, published July 30 in the journal Cell, the researchers look inside the brain of an adult mouse at a scale previously unachievable, generating images at a nanoscale resolution.
The inventors'long-term goal is to make the resource available to the scientific community in the form of a national brain observatory."
"I'm a strong believer in bottom up-science, which is a way of saying that I would prefer to generate a hypothesis from the data
and test it,"says senior study author Jeff Lichtman, of Harvard university.""For people who are imagers,
being able to see all of these details is wonderful and we're getting an opportunity to peer into something that has remained somewhat intractable for so long.
It's about time we did this, and it is what people should be doing about things we don't understand."
"The researchers have begun the process of mining their imaging data by looking first at an area of the brain that receives sensory information from mouse whiskers,
"says study first author Narayanan"Bobby"Kasthuri, of the Boston University School of medicine.""We had this clean idea of how there's a really nice order to how neurons connect with each other,
and someone with schizophrenia would be a leap in our understanding of how our brains shape who we are (or vice versa).
The cost and data storage demands for this type of research are still high, but the researchers expect expenses to drop over time (as has been the case with genome sequencing).
To facilitate data sharing, the scientists are now partnering with Argonne National Laboratory with the hopes of creating a national brain laboratory that neuroscientists around the world can access within the next few years."
"It's bittersweet that there are many scientists who think this is a total waste of time as well as a big investment in money
and effort that could be spent better answering questions that are more proximal, "Lichtman says.""As long as data is showing you things that are unexpected,
then you're definitely doing the right thing. And we are certainly far from being out of the surprise element.
when we look at this data that we don't see something that we've never seen before
#Data Translation's ARM-Based Dynamic Signal Analyzer Module for Noise and Vibration Measurement To assist OEM users complete source code is provided that can be modified
Vibration testing has increased dramatically driven by the strong sales of consumer products such as cell phones tablets performance cameras
With the embedded Beaglebone Black industrialized ARM processor real-time processing and analysis for vibration testing is simplified greatly.
The highly accurate front-end design of the DT7837 allows simultaneous measurement of four 24-bit IEPE sensor inputs at a sampling rate of 102.4 ks/s. The module is ideal for precision measurements
with microphones accelerometers and other transducers that have a large dynamic range. Common applications include audio acoustic and vibration testing.
Additionally the DT7837 is equipped fully to do many vibration tasks by including a 24-bit stimulus output tachometer general-purpose Digital I/O external trigger functions and counter/timers.
These functions are supported by a complete set of well-documented APIS that enable development of an embedded application using the AD DA counter timers tachometer and other onboard
I/O. The ARM block processor is the TI AM335X ARM Cortex-A8 including BBB functions FPGA memory and support peripherals as well as interfaces for a USB host and client Ethernet
The module is ideal running open-source Linux using the TI AM335X SDK Essentials Version 7. 0. The DT7837 runs Linux 3. 12 with customer loadable kernel
modules LKM to expose the onboard hardware to Linux user space applications via virtual file interfaces s
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