that uses gold nanoparticles and paper has been devised by researchers from the A*STAR Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology("Trapping cells in paper for white blood cell count").
"The simple, low-cost and compact nature of this method makes it particularly attractive for point-of-care applications in settings that lack sophisticated medical resources.
Too many white blood cells may indicate a bacterial infection, tissue damage or inflammatory diseases such as arthritis or allergies,
whereas too few could denote a viral infection or bone marrow deficiency. Furthermore, white blood cell count can be used to predict a person risk of developing conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.
Currently, white blood cell counts are performed at large central laboratories equipped with large and expensive analysis systems that are operated by experienced medical technicians.
But many parts of the world lack such facilitates or expertise. To address this problem, Yi Zhang, Jianhao Bai,
Hong Wu and Jackie Y. Ying from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology in Singapore have developed a compact,
paper-based platform that can be used to count white blood cells. n rural areas where clinical laboratories are inaccessible,
The technique employs gold nanoparticles coated with an antibody that interacts with white blood cells. The antibody causes the nanoparticles to attach themselves to white blood cells in a blood sample,
which can be obtained by simply pricking a finger. The blood sample is filtered passively through a small test paper.
A dark spot then forms on the paper surface due to the gold nanoparticles on the white blood cells.
such as sickle-cell detection and platelet count, explains Ying. e are also planning to measure different types of white blood cells by introducing gold nanoparticles coated with different antibodies. a
#For faster, larger graphene add a liquid layer (Nanowerk News) Millimetre-sized crystals of high-quality graphene can be made in minutes instead of hours using a new scalable technique,
In just 15 minutes the method can produce large graphene crystals around 2-3 millimetres in size that it would take up to 19 hours to produce using current chemical vapour deposition (CVD) techniques in
University of Oxford) Graphene promises to be a'wonder material'for building new technologies because of its combination of strength, flexibility, electrical properties,
The researchers took a thin film of silica deposited on a platinum foil which, when heated, reacts to create a layer of platinum silicide.
or silica creating a thin liquid layer that smooths out nanoscale'valleys'in the platinum
"Also read our Nanowerk Spotlight article on this work:""Innovative substrate engineering for high quality 2d nanomaterials")'Not only can we make millimetre-sized graphene flakes in minutes
but this graphene is of a comparable quality to anything other methods are able to produce,
'said Professor Nicole Grobert of Oxford university's Department of Materials, who led the research.''Because it is allowed to grow naturally in single graphene crystals there are none of the grain boundaries that can adversely affect the mechanical and electrical properties of the material.'
'Co-author Vitaliy Babenko, a DPHIL student at Oxford university's Department of Materials, said:''Using widely-available polycrystalline metals in this way can open up many possibilities for cost-reduction
and larger-scale graphene production for applications where very high quality graphene is needed.''Size-wise the new approach compares favourably with the common'Scotch tape method,'in
which a piece of tape is used to peel graphene fragments off a chunk of graphite,
which produces flakes of around 10 microns (0. 01 millimetres). Using CVD with just platinum creates flakes of around 80 microns (0. 08mm.
But with the liquid layer of platinum silicide the researchers show that graphene crystals of 2-3 millimetres can be produced in minutes.
'said Professor Grobert.''Of course a great deal more work is required before we get graphene technology, but we're now on the cusp of seeing this material make the leap from the laboratory to a manufacturing setting,
and we're keen to work with industrial partners to make this happen.''The researchers say that, in theory,
it would be possible to further develop and scale up this technique to produce flakes of graphene in large wafer-sized sheets.
This invention adds to the growing patent portfolio of nanomaterials and their production technologies from Professor Nicole Grobert's Nanomaterials By design Group.
Under a commercialisation programme devised by Isis Innovation, the technology commercialisation company of the University of Oxford,
Professor Grobert also plans to manufacture and sell her range of specialty nanomaterials as part of a new business venture e
#Scientists hijack light-loving bacteria to make high-value products (Nanowerk News) Scientists have directed a common bacterium to produce more of a valuable fatty acid, lauric acid,
The work opens the door for scientists to manipulate such organisms to produce compounds useful as fuels or medicines."
but also commodities such as pharmaceuticals,"said microbiologist Alex Beliaev, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, who led the study,
which was published in Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology("Lauric acid production in a glycogen-less strain of Synechococcus sp.
PCC 7002, a type of cyanobacteriaorganisms that make building blocks for new cells out of air, water, and sunlight.
cyanobacteria suck in huge amounts of carbon dioxide from the environment and convert it into other materials, such as biomass.
Thus, they play a critical role in Earth's climate. Scientists the world over currently are developing ways to take advantage of these natural processes to create new forms of energy.
The goal of this research was to find ways to change the organism's metabolism
or glucose, using synthetic biology and metabolic engineering tools to redirect the path of carbon in the cell.
and adapts well to different environments, it's under particular scrutiny for its potential to make biofuels and other high-value products."
Such biological adjustments can mean the difference between another run-of-the-mill, ocean-dwelling bacterium and an organism useful for creating products used by people every day.
The engineered bacterium not only accumulated this fatty acid but it also excreted it from the cell.
reverse engineering approach may work, where you push an organism in a specific direction and see its reaction."
including terpenoids-precursors to a range of commercial chemicals-and bioproducts, such as rubber, detergents, and polymers."
"This is a proof-of-concept study that shows we have the knowledge and tools to change carbon to something more valuable,
#Novel method creates nanowires with new useful properties (Nanowerk News) Harvard scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind method of creating a class of nanowires that one day could have applications in areas ranging from consumer electronics to solar panels.
graduate students working in the lab of Charles Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, takes advantage of two long-understood principles.
One is Plateau-Rayleigh instability, an aspect of fluid dynamics that describes why a thin stream of water breaks up into smaller droplets.
The technique is described in a paper recently published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology("Plateaurayleigh crystal growth of periodic shells on one-dimensional substrates"A new,
graduate students working in the lab of Charles Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry, could have applications in areas ranging from consumer electronics to solar panels.
This is really a fundamental Discovery day said. Were still in the early stages, but we think there is a lot of room for discovery, both of fundamental properties of these structures as well as applications.
First described in 1870, Plateau-Rayleigh instability is associated normally with liquids, but researchers for years have recognized a similar phenomenon in nanowires.
When heated to extreme temperatures the wires transform from solid into a series of periodically spaced droplets.
Day and Mankin heated traditionally grown nanowires to just below that transformation point in a vacuum chamber,
when nanowires break down at high temperatures. Unlike with the droplets, though, the process can be controlled tightly.
Along with duplicating the process in nanowires between 20 and 100 nanometers in diameter, researchers demonstrated the process using several combinations of materials,
In addition to being able to tune the distance between the lobes on nanowires, Mankin said tests showed they were also able to tune the cross-section of the wires.
They act almost like optical antennas, and funnel the light into them. Previous research has shown that different diameter wires absorb different wavelengths of light.
As you shrink the spacing down to distances smaller than about 400 nanometers, it creates
What that means is that you could absorb the same amount of infrared light with these nanowires as you could with traditional silicon materials that are 100 times thicker.
if you wanted to use nanowires for photo-detection of green and blue light, youd need two wires,
#Sticky-flare nanotechnology exposes RNA misregulation in living cells (Nanowerk News) RNA is a fundamental ingredient in all known forms of life
such as mental disability, autism and cancer. A new technology--called"Sticky-flares"--developed by nanomedicine experts at Northwestern University offers the first real-time method to track
and observe the dynamics of RNA distribution as it is transported inside living cells. Sticky-flares have the potential to help scientists understand the complexities of RNA better than any analytical technique to date
and observe and study the biological and medical significance of RNA misregulation. Details will be published the week of July 20 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences("Quantification
"said Chad A. Mirkin, a nanomedicine expert and corresponding author of the study.""We hope that many more researchers will be able to use this platform to increase our understanding of RNA function inside cells."
"Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering.
Sticky-flares are tiny spherical nucleic acid gold nanoparticle conjugates that can enter living cells and target and transfer a fluorescent reporter or"tracking device"to RNA transcripts.
-actin mrna in mouse embryonic fibroblasts. Sticky-flares are built upon another technology from Mirkin's group called Nanoflares,
which was the first genetic-based approach that is able to detect live circulating tumor cells out of the complex matrix that is human blood.
Nanoflares have been very useful for researchers that operate in the arena of quantifying gene expression. Aurasense, Inc.,a biotechnology company that licensed the Nanoflare technology from Northwestern University,
and EMD-Millipore, another biotech company, have commercialized Nanoflares. There are now more than 1, 700 commercial forms of Nanoflares sold under the Smartflare?
name in more than 230 countries. The Sticky-flare is designed to address limitations of Smartflares? most notably their inability to track RNA location and enter the nucleus. The Northwestern team believes Sticky-flares are poised to become a valuable tool for researchers who desire to understand the function of RNA in live cells s
#An easy, scalable and direct method for synthesizing graphene in silicon microelectronics (Nanowerk News) In the last decade,
The one-atom-thick carbon sheets could revolutionize the way electronic devices are manufactured and lead to faster transistors, cheaper solar cells, new types of sensors and more efficient bioelectric sensory devices.
As a potential contact electrode and interconnection material, wafer-scale graphene could be an essential component in microelectronic circuits,
but most graphene fabrication methods are not compatible with silicon microelectronics, thus blocking graphene's leap from potential wonder material to actual profit-maker.
Now researchers from Korea University in Seoul, have developed an easy and microelectronics-compatible method to grow graphene
and have synthesized successfully wafer-scale (four inches in diameter), high-quality, multi-layer graphene on silicon substrates.
The method is based on an ion implantation technique, a process in which ions are accelerated under an electrical field and smashed into a semiconductor.
The impacting ions change the physical, chemical or electrical properties of the semiconductor. In a paper published this week in the journal Applied Physics Letters("Wafer-scale synthesis of multi-layer graphene by high-temperature carbon ion implantation"),from AIP Publishing
the researchers describe their work, which takes graphene a step closer to commercial applications in silicon microelectronics.
Wafer-scale (4 inch in diameter) synthesis of multi-layer graphene using high-temperature carbon ion implantation on nickel/Sio2/silicon.
Image: J. Kim/Korea University, Korea)" For integrating graphene into advanced silicon microelectronics, large-area graphene free of wrinkles, tears and residues must be deposited on silicon wafers at low temperatures,
which cannot be achieved with conventional graphene synthesis techniques as they often require high temperatures, "said Jihyun Kim, the team leader and a professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological engineering at Korea University."
"Our work shows that the carbon ion implantation technique has great potential for the direct synthesis of wafer-scale graphene for integrated circuit technologies."
"Discovered just over a decade ago, graphene is considered now the thinnest, lightest and strongest material in the world.
Graphene is completely flexible and transparent while being inexpensive and nontoxic, and it can conduct electricity as well as copper,
carrying electrons with almost no resistance even at room temperature, a property known as ballistic transport. Graphene's unique optical, mechanical and electrical properties have lead to the one-atom-thick form of carbon being heralded as the next generation material for faster, smaller, cheaper and less power-hungry electronics."
"In silicon microelectronics, graphene is a potential contact electrode and an interconnection material linking semiconductor devices to form the desired electrical circuits,
"said Kim.""This renders high processing temperature undesirable, as temperature-induced damage, strains, metal spiking
and unintentional diffusion of dopants may occur.""Thus, although the conventional graphene fabrication method of chemical vapor deposition is used widely for the large-area synthesis of graphene on copper and nickel films,
the method is suited not for silicon microelectronics, as chemical vapor deposition would require a high growth temperature above 1,
000 degrees Celsius and a subsequent transfer process of the graphene from the metallic film to the silicon."
"Thus, we are motivated to develop a transfer-free method to directly synthesize high quality, multilayer graphene in silicon microelectronics."
a microelectronics-compatible technique normally used to introduce impurities into semiconductors. In the process, carbon ions were accelerated under an electrical field
The process is followed then by high temperature activation annealing (about 600 to 900 degrees Celsius) to form a honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms, a typical microscopic structure of graphene.
#Degrading BPA with visible light and a new hybrid nanoparticle photocatalyst Over the course of the last half century, BPA has gone from miracle to menace.
when scientists discovered that it could be used to make polycarbonate plastic--a hard, durable, and transparent material perfect for everything from water bottles to medical devices.
But recently, that soaring success has soured: a growing body of evidence suggests that even low doses of BPA might be harmful to human and environmental health.
a substance that can derail the body's hormone balance and potentially cause cancer or birth defects.
The photocatalytic nanomaterial can be used to treat water using visible light. How the New Catalyst Works Their new material breaks down BPA through photocatalytic oxidation, a process in
which light activates an oxidizing chemical reaction. When light strikes a photocatalyst like titanium dioxide (Tio2) nanoparticles
the jolt of energy can kick one of its electrons up to an excited state and create a charge distribution imbalance.
At the higher energy electron band, there's now an excess of negative charge due to the addition of an electron.
pure Tio2 has a large bandgap--that is, it takes a great deal of energy to excite electrons from one level to another--and only displays photocatalytic properties under ultraviolet light.
Plus, the excited electron tends to quickly fall back down and recombine with the hole, giving the catalyst little time in its excited state to induce a reaction.
In order to turn Tio2 nanoparticles into a better photocatalyst, the researchers made several modifications. First, they added silver to the surface of the nanoparticles,
a common technique to enhance the charge separation. When light strikes Tio2 and excites one of its electrons
the silver will pull that electron away so that it can't fall back down into the hole.
"The inclusion of a noble metal like silver in the ultraviolet-responsive Tio2 has extended significantly the spectrum towards the visible light through localized surface plasmon resonance effects,
a researcher from University of Malaya who lead the project. Then, they wrapped the Ag/Tio2 nanoparticles in sheets of reduced graphene oxide (RGO), a thin layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.
Like the silver, the addition of RGO helped the hole to persist by accepting excited electrons from Tio2.
It also reduced the nanoparticles'bandgap, decreasing the amount of energy necessary to activate the photocatalyst.
When the researchers mixed the hybrid nanoparticles with BPA solution under an artificial visible light source
they found that BPA oxidized and broke down much more effectively than it did without the catalyst present.
Furthermore, the RGO-Ag-Tio2 nanoparticles outperformed those where RGO or Ag alone were added to the Tio2,
suggesting that both modifications played a role in the enhanced catalytic activity under visible light. Eventually, the team hopes to use their findings to help break down BPA and other contaminants in water supplies."
"We strongly feel the developed nano-photocatalyst could be one of the nanomaterials that can sustainably address said problem,
#New study shows how nanoparticles can clean up environmental pollutants Many human-made pollutants in the environment resist degradation through natural processes,
Removing these toxic materials which include pesticides and endocrine disruptors such as bisphenol A (BPA) with existing methods is often expensive and time-consuming.
In a new paper published this week in Nature Communications("Nanoparticles with photoinduced precipitation for the extraction of pollutants from water and soil),
"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.
Nanoparticles that lose their stability upon irradiation with light have been designed to extract endocrine disruptors, pesticides,
The system exploits the large surface-to-volume ratio of nanoparticles, while the photoinduced precipitation ensures nanomaterials are released not in the environment.
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,
Brandl says. hen we came up with the idea to use our particles to remove toxic chemicals, pollutants,
A trap for ater-fearingpollution The researchers synthesized polymers from polyethylene glycol, a widely used compound found in laxatives, toothpaste,
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,
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,
and now nrichedby the pollutants they form larger aggregates that can then be removed through filtration, sedimentation,
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,
The 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.
And the nanoparticleshigh surface-area-to-volume ratio means that only a small amount is needed to remove a relatively large quantity of pollutants.
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,
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.
#New material forges the way for'stem cell factories 'If you experience a major heart attack the damage could cost you around five billion heart cells.
Future stem cell treatments will require this number and more to ensure those cells are replaced
Experts at The University of Nottingham have discovered the first fully synthetic substrate with potential to grow billions of stem cells.
The research, published in the academic journal Advanced Materials("Discovery of a Novel Polymer for Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Expansion and Multilineage Differentiation"),could forge the way for the creation of'stem cell
factories'-the mass production of human embryonic (pluripotent) stem cells. The £2. 3m research project
iscovery of a Novel Polymer for Human Pluripotent Stem Cell Expansion and Multilineage Differentiation was led by Morgan Alexander,
Professor of Biomedical Surfaces in the School of Pharmacy and Chris Denning, Professor of Stem Cell biology in the School of medicine and funded by the Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council (EPSRC).
Professor Alexander, Director of the Interface and Surface Analysis Centre, and his team have been searching for polymers on
which human pluripotent stem cells can be grown and differentiated in vast numbers billions at a time. Professor Alexander said:
he possibilities for regenerative medicine are still being researched in the form of clinical trials. What we are doing here is paving the way for the manufacture of stem cells in large numbers
when those therapies are proved to be safe and effective. Billions of stem cells are needed as trials move into second phase Using a high throughput materials discovery approach the research team has found this man-made material,
free from possible contamination and batch variability. Professor Denning, whose field is in cardiac stem cell research,
said: he field of regenerative medicine has snowballed in the last five years and over the coming five years a lot more patients will be receiving stem cell treatments.
Clinical trials are still in the very early stages. However, with this kind of product, if we can get it commercialised
#A'nanomachine'for surgery with no incision (Nanowerk News) A surgical operation has long been considered one of the first options in cancer treatment;
extended hospitalization, sometimes for as long as one month; and the economic costs. Against such a background, recently neutron capture therapy (1) has been drawing attention.
By irradiating the affected area with a pinpoint light beam, ultrasonic waves, and thermal neutrons, which can be administered safely to living organisms,
This therapy has a lower burden on patients. However, the technological development to deliver the neutron sensitizer molecules to cancer cells has been a great challenge.
A research team led by Professor Kazunori Kataoka, Department of Bioengineering, School of engineering, The University of Tokyo (concurrently serving as the Director of the Innovation Center of Nanomedicine,
Kawasaki Institute of Industry Promotion), and Professor Nobuhiro Nishiyama, Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of technology, has developed successfully a nano crystal aggregate (nanomachine) technology to deliver a gadolinium complex (Gd-DTPA
or magnevist) broadly used as an MRI contrast agent to the affected area("Hybrid Calcium phosphate-Polymeric Micelles Incorporating Gadolinium Chelates for Imaging-Guided Gadolinium Neutron capture Tumor Therapy").
"More specifically, it is a drug delivery system (DDS) whereby a nano-level contrast agent (Gd)- DTPA is prepared,
and introduced into the interior of calcium phosphate, a bone constituent, and is delivered to cancer tissues.
The research team has clarified that selective accumulation of the developed nanomachine in a cancer tumor enables contrast imaging of a solid cancer.
Moreover, when the Team applied the nanomachine to cancer neutron capture therapy, they confirmed a remarkable curative effect.
This nanomachine therapy enables an imaging-guided thermal neutron irradiation treatment; thus it can be expected to lead to a reliable cancer treatment with no missed cancer cells.
The realization of surgery with no incision (chemical surgery) by nanomachine allows us to anticipate outpatient treatment with no need of hospitalization n
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