a quantum reaction occurs that results in the production of electrons. But because of all those nano-ridges, the electrons tend to recombine with the photovoltaic surface of the black silicon,
rather than flowing through the cell as electricity-a problem that's created a limit to how efficient the cells could become.
which encourages the electrons to keep moving. Publishing in Nature Nanotechnology, the researchers report that their resulting cells are the most efficient black silicon solar cells to date, capable of turning 22.1 percent of available light into electricity."
They found that by substituting a benzyl molecule into the antibiotic it could more easily bind to the cell ribosomes to fight a range of bacterial infections. his study demonstrates how classic antibiotics derived from natural products can be redesigned to create semisynthetic compounds to overcome drug resistance, one of the team,
"Meanwhile, T-VEC has also been modified to produce a molecule called GM-CSF, which serves as a red flag waved at the immune system,"Rachel Feltman reports for The Washington post."
The molecules in the material are then stabilised, so that it does not collapse.""The result is a material that is both strong,
Wee already able to send data in the form of photons at incredible speeds through the optical fibres that make up our Internet,
so it can be converted into electrons and pushed through wires around our devices. This process isn't just slow
By designing very precise segments of silicon and pairing them together-according to the instructions of the algorithm-the team are able to create switches or conduits that control the flow of photons,
just like wires currently do with electrons.""Our structures look like Swiss cheese but they work better than anything we've seen before,
and this is what scientists have managed now to recreate by carefully tuning the spacing of individual atoms on a surface.
The most direct application of this research is the creation of longer-lasting nanomachines made out of single molecules,
because they have so few atoms to lose. But if scientists could one day work out how to control superlubricity on a larger scale,
and an ion crystal made up of charged atoms held in place using specific voltages and something known as the Coulomb force.
and pull the ion crystal across the lattice, and also adjust the spacing of its atoms.
What they found was that, when the atoms in the ion crystal were spaced out at the same distance as the peaks and troughs of the optical lattice,
they had the most friction, like interlocking Lego bricks getting stuck together and then ripped apart,
But when the team changed the spacing of the ion crystal so that the atoms weren matched up with the optical lattice,
the friction almost entirely disappeared. hat we can do is adjust at will the distance between the atoms to either be matched to the optical lattice for maximum friction,
or mismatched for no friction, said Vuletic. The research has been published in Science. This knowledge could help them to engineer nanomachines that aren worn constantly down by friction,
#Engineers have created a computer that operates on water droplets Researchers in the US have built a fully functioning computer that runs like clockwork-but instead of electrons,
which goes by the un-catchy name of W033291 works by enabling a natural molecule in the body known as prostaglandin E2, or PGE2.
Most impressively, the team tested out the drug on mice that had received lethal doses of radiation before being given a partial bone marrow transplant.
The innovation here isn't so much the material used in the batteries-it's the same lithium-ion compound that makes up the smartphone batteries of today-but the way in
"However, our findings suggest that small molecules aimed at modulating, but not blocking, the Wnt pathway might achieve similar effects to Apc reactivation.
#Material with superfast electrons displays mind-blowing magnetoresistance Researchers have found a material that could be used to build smaller and fast electronics in the future.
The material has such incredible magnetoresistance because of another interesting property-its electrons are superfast, with a top speed of around 300 km/s. In a magnetic field,
which causes an increasing percentage of electrons to flow in the'wrong'direction as the magnetic field becomes stronger."
"The faster the electrons in the material move, the greater the Lorentz force and thus the effect of a magnetic field,"explains Binghai Yan, one of the lead researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Physics of Solids
which make some of its electrons act as if they have no mass and allows them to zoom around at such incredible speeds.
The resulting particles are less than 8 nanometres thick (a human hair is around 80,000-100,000 nanometres)
"These tiny particles are camouflaged kind of, I would say, "explains bioengineering professor, Dipanjan Pan, who worked on the study alongside his colleague Rohit Bhargava.
you can pretty much make these particles at home, "says Pan in a press release.""You just mix them together
so you can do multidrug therapy with the same particles.""H/T: Techrada d
#This new insulin patch could soon replace injections for diabetics A new'smart patch'lined with painless microneedles full of insulin has been developed by researchers in the US in an effort to do away with the uncomfortable injections that have become a part of life for the millions
These materials, hyaluronic acid and 2-nitroimidazole, were combined to make a new type of molecule, one end
When great numbers of these molecules are mixed together, they automatically assemble into a vesicle structure,
and the resulting lack of oxygen turned the hydrophobic 2-nitroimidazole molecules hydrophilic, which destroyed the structure of the vesticles
created using a special silicon-germanium mixture instead of pure silicon. Today's smallest transistors are 14nm in size
As well as replacing silicon with a silicon-germanium alloy, the technique also uses Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) lithography to etch the microscopic patterns required into each chip.
virus-sized particle called an exosome, which is released by the body cells into all kinds of bodily fluids,
#The LHC has discovered a brand new class of particles Just months after switching the Large hadron collider (LHC) back on at record-breaking energy levels,
researchers at CERN in Switzerland have reported the discovery of a whole new class of subatomic particles, called pentaquarks.
Not only has solved it a 50-year mystery surrounding the elusive particle, but it's providing new insight into the ways in
Quarks are the building blocks that make up composite subatomic particles, and these particles are classified depending on how many quarks they're comprised of.
For example both protons and neutrons are made up of three quarks, and are classed as baryons. But this is the first time researchers have shown that a five-quark arrangement
-or pentaquark-exists.""The pentaquark is not just any new particle, "CERN spokesperson Guy Wilkinson told the press."
"It represents a way to aggregate quarks, namely the fundamental constituents of ordinary protons and neutrons,
in a pattern that has never been observed before in over 50 years of experimental searches."
"Scientists have been looking for pentaquarks since 1964, when American physicist Murray Gell-Mann first proposed the quark model.
Although his work was on baryons, the model allowed the existence of other quark composite states,
such as a hypothetical pentaquark, which would be comprised of four quarks and an antiquark. But no one has been able to find evidence of such a state existing until now, thanks to the powerful LHCB experiment.
Physicists noticed the pentaquarks while examining the decay of a baryon known as Lamda b into three other known particles.
For the first time they also observed a transition state, in which they identified two never-before-seen particles:
Pc (4450)+ and Pc (4380+.+After studying the mass of these particles, the team concluded that they could only be explained by being in pentquark states."
"More precisely, the states must be formed of two up quarks, one down quark, one charm quark, and one anti-charm quark,"said LHCB physicist Tomasz Skwarnicki.
They were able to finally confirm this, thanks to the huge amount of data provided by the LHCB."
"It as if the previous searches were looking for silhouettes in the dark, whereas LHCB conducted the search with the lights on,
and from all angles,"the CERN release explains. The results have been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters,
and are published online in arxiv, and the team is now studying the new pentaquarks further to try to work out exactly how the five quarks are bound together.
Working this out will help physicists understand more about the structure of all particles, as well as provide insight into how quarks interact."
"Studying the pentaquarks properties may allow us to understand better how ordinary matter, the protons and neutrons from which wee all made,
is constituted,"said Wilkinson s
#Scientists figure out how to make solar cells produce fuel AND electricity A new type of solar cell can convert liquid water into clean hydrogen fuel 10 times more effectively than any other technology,
and uses 10,000 times less precious material in the process. Invented by researchers in The netherlands,
the secret to these new prototype solar cells are gallium phosphide nanowires, which can split water into its hydrogen
and oxygen components far more cheaply and efficiently than the batteries and semiconductor materials that have been used in the past.
plaques in the brain when the molecule APP is abnormally cut by the enzyme BACE1 producing A?.
and closer to lysosomes--subcellular structures that degrade unneeded molecules. When they examined the mice that lacked Gnt-III they indeed found lower amounts of BACE1.
The Rice lab of chemist James Tour discovered last year that firing a laser at an inexpensive polymer burned off other elements and left a film of porous graphene, the much-studied atom-thick
But the graphene retains its ability to move electrons quickly and gives it the quick charge
making it possible to deliver molecules during this pivotal time in a cell's life.
"The ability to deliver molecules into adherent cells without disrupting differentiation is needed for biotechnology researchers to advance both fundamental knowledge and the state-of-the-art in stem cell research,
or larger than those used in today's lithium-ion batteries. Today's batteries provide a reliable power supply for our smartphones electric cars
In crystalline form vanadium pentoxide can take three positively charged lithium ions--three times more than materials presently used in cathodes such as lithium iron phosphate.
However crystalline vanadium pentoxide cannot release all of the inserted Li-ions and only allows a few stable charge/discharge cycles.
This is because once the lithium ions penetrate the crystalline lattice during the loading process the lattice expands.
As a result an electrode particle swells as a whole i e. it increases in volume only to shrink again once the charges leave the particle.
This process may lead to instabilities in the electrode material in terms of structural changes and contact losses.
In glass a so-called amorphous material atoms do not arrange themselves in a regular lattice as they do
Instead the atoms exist in a state of wild disarray. To produce the cathode material Afyon
This increases conductivity while at the same time protecting the electrode particles. However it does not impede electrons
and lithium ions as they are transported through the electrodes. Afyon used this vanadate-borate glass powder for the battery cathodes
which he then placed in prototypes for coin cell batteries to undergo numerous charge/discharge cycles.
This would be enough energy to power a mobile phone between 1. 5 and two times longer than today's lithium-ion batteries Afyon estimates.
The measurement approach is called sequential two-photon laser induced fluorescence (2p-LIF) and uses two different laser beams to excite mercury atoms
and monitor blue shifted atomic fluorescence. UM Rosenstiel School Professor of Atmospheric Sciences Anthony Hynes and colleagues tested the new mobile instrument
where the mercury atom is combined with another element or elements and becomes more efficiently deposited in the environment."
titled"Deployment of a sequential two-photon laser-induced fluorescence sensor for the detection of gaseous elemental mercury at ambient levels:
"The atoms sit in a perfectly ordered lattice in the nanowire crystal, not only in the semiconductor and the metal,
The current study revealed that amlexanox exerts its effects through a specialized type of fat cell by increasing the level of a second messenger molecule called camp.
Packing single-photon detectors on an optical chip is crucial for quantum-computational circuits Single-photon detectors are notoriously temperamental:
In experiments the researchers found that their detectors were up to 100 times more likely to accurately register the arrival of a single photon than those found in earlier arrays.
According to quantum mechanics tiny physical particles are counterintuitively able to inhabit mutually exclusive states at the same time. A computational element made from such a particle--known as a quantum bit
or qubit--could thus represent zero and one simultaneously. If multiple qubits are entangled meaning that their quantum states depend on each other then a single quantum computation is in some sense like performing many computations in parallel.
With most particles entanglement is difficult to maintain but it's relatively easy with photons.
For that reason optical systems are a promising approach to quantum computation. But any quantum computer--say one whose qubits are trapped laser ions
or nitrogen atoms embedded in diamond--would still benefit from using entangled photons to move quantum information around.
Because ultimately one will want to make such optical processors with maybe tens or hundreds of photonic qubits it becomes unwieldy to do this using traditional optical components says Dirk Englund the Jamieson Career development Assistant professor in Electrical engineering and Computer science at MIT and corresponding author on the new paper.
which they deposit the superconductor niobium nitride in a pattern useful for photon detection. At both ends of the resulting detector they deposit gold electrodes.
and attach it to the optical Chip in previous arrays the detectors registered only 0. 2 percent of the single photons directed at them.
Quantum information promises unbreakable encryption because quantum particles such as photons of light can be created in a way that intrinsically links them.
Interactions with either of these entangled particles affect the other no matter how far they are separated.
The team of physicists at ANU and the University of Otago stored quantum information in atoms of the rare earth element europium embedded in a crystal.
After writing a quantum state onto the nuclear spin of the europium using laser light the team subjected the crystal to a combination of a fixed and oscillating magnetic fields to preserve the fragile quantum information.
The two fields isolate the europium spins and prevent the quantum information leaking away said Dr Jevon Longdell of the University of Otago.
The ANU group is excited also about the fundamental tests of quantum mechanics that a quantum optical hard drive will enable.
Maybe in this new regime our theory of quantum mechanics breaks s
#Preventing transformer explosions Transformer failures have cost human lives when things have gone seriously wrong says Hkon Nordhagen a materials specialist at SINTEF in Trondheim Norway the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia.
since the molecules used to make Graphexeter (that is Fecl3) simply melt in air at room temperature.
At just one atom thick graphene is the thinnest substance capable of conducting electricity. It is very flexible
In 2012 the teams of Dr Craciun and Profesor Russo from the University of Exeter's Centre for Graphene science discovered that sandwiched molecules of ferric chloride between two graphene layers make a whole new system that is the best known transparent
The X-ray diffraction patterns collected there were used to create an electron density map, a 3-D, atomic-level resolution of the molecule's shape.
and Gregory Robbins members of the Desimone and Ting labs reveals that a particle's surface charge plays a key role in eliciting immune responses in the lung.
Using the Particle Replication in Nonwetting Templates (PRINT) technology invented in the Desimone lab Fromen
and Robbins were able to specifically modify the surface charge of protein-loaded particles while avoiding disruption of other particle features demonstrating PRINT's unique ability to modify particle attributes independently from one another.
When delivered through the lung particles with a positive surface charge were shown to induce antibody responses both locally in the lung and systemically in the body.
In contrast negatively charged particles of the same composition led to weaker and in some cases undetectable immune responses suggesting that particle charge is an important consideration for pulmonary vaccination.
The findings published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences also have broad public health implications for improving the accessibility of vaccines.
and suicide but the molecule's role in the developing brain was mostly unknown until now.
Ruth Tuttle Freeman Research Professor of radiation oncology and radiology and co-director of the Center for Molecular Imaging at the University of Michigan Medical school. ub1 is well-known for its role in cell division.
AMPS are used molecules by the innate immune response to directly kill invasive bacteria viruses fungi and other pathogens.
#DNA nanoswitches reveal how life's molecules connect Now a new approach developed by researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering Boston Children's Hospital
and report how molecules behave enabling biological measurements to be made by almost anyone using only common and inexpensive laboratory reagents.
which molecules of interest can be attached strategically at various locations along the strand. Interactions between these molecules like the successful binding of a drug compound with its intended target such as a protein receptor on a cancer cell cause the shape of the DNA strand to change from an open and linear shape to a closed loop.
Wong and his team can easily separate and measure the ratio of open DNA nanoswitches vs. their closed counterparts through gel electrophoresis a simple lab procedure already in use in most laboratories that uses electrical currents to push DNA strands
Magnetic fields are also sources of interference in many applications such as cold atom microsystems. These constraints have deterred availability of Faraday effect isolators for on-chip optical systems till date.
usually ring-shaped molecules are present in bacteria, thus enabling them to form synthetic organelles. The approach opens up new possibilities for the study of biomedical processes as well as for applications in biotechnology, chemistry, and pharmacy."
and destroys cells in charge of receiving photons and transferring light signals to the brain for decoding.
The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE is a single layer of cells that accomplishes multiple functions such as providing survival molecules that prevent photoreceptors from dying.
which will be available commercially later this year so the Feinstein Institute can start investigating how to engineer other kinds of tissue like bone or 3d print custom-made shields for cancer and radiation treatment.
The innovation is advanced an barrier between the electrodes in a lithium-ion battery. Made with nanofibers extracted from Kevlar, the tough material in bulletproof vests,
"Lithium-ion batteries work by shuttling lithium ions from one electrode to the other. This creates a charge imbalance,
and since electrons can't go through the membrane between the electrodes, they go through a circuit
the lithium atoms can build themselves into fernlike structures, called dendrites, which eventually poke through the membrane.
the electrons have a path within the battery, shorting out the circuit. This is how the battery fires on the Boeing 787 are thought to have started."
They are large enough to let individual lithium ions pass, but small enough to block the 20-to-50-nanometer tips of the fern-structures.
This method keeps the chainlike molecules in the plastic stretched out, which is important for good lithium-ion conductivity between the electrodes,
Tung said.""The special feature of this material is we can make it very thin, so we can get more energy into the same battery cell size,
they are currently looking for ways to improve the flow of loose lithium ions so that batteries can charge
The study,"A dendrite-suppressing solid ion conductor from aramid nanofibers, "will appear online Jan 27 in Nature Communications.
By demonstrating a new way to change the amount of electrons that reside in a given region within a piece of graphene they have a proof-of-principle in making the fundamental building blocks of semiconductor devices using the 2-D material.
because its charge-carrier density the number of free electrons it contains can be increased easily
To resolve that imbalance you could have other ions come in and bond or have the oxide lose
or gain electrons to cancel out those charges but we've come up with a third way.
Now if the oxide surface says'I wish I had more negative charge'instead of the oxide gathering ions from the environment
or gaining electrons the graphene says'I can hold the electrons for you and they'll be right nearby.'
and the possibility of waveguiding lensing and periodically manipulating electrons confined in an atomically thin material.
or by binding ions from the aqueous solution the researchers were able to show the relationship between the polarization of the oxide
but that's the direction we want to take it Rappe said There are some oxides that can be repolarized on the timescale of nanoseconds
and channels with the ability to accommodate ethanol molecules but to shun hydrogen bonding with water molecules.
One of these zeolites which was synthesized and tested in University of Minnesota chemical engineering and materials science professor Michael Tsapatsis'lab was found to be so effective that it could change the ethanol/water separation process from a multi-step distillation process to a single-step adsorptive process.
They identified zeolite frameworks that could improve the dewaxing process of transforming linear long-chain into slightly branched hydrocarbon molecules called alkanes
"As they eat, the bacteria produce electrons and protons. The voltage that arises between these particles generates energy that we can exploit.
Since the waste in the wastewater (organic material) is consumed and thus removed, the water itself becomes purified,
but which could also transfer electrons to a metal electrode, "he says. The idea behind this water purification approach was born many years ago
and efficacy of the imaging device largely because of the high detection rates achieved through low radiation exposure.
and shows that studies can be performed safely with low radiation exposure to the patient says Dr. O'connor. This means MBI is safe and effective as a supplemental screening tool.
these core/shell particles self-assemble into a thin film upon water removal. The whole procedure takes less then 24 hours.
The smart Empa membrane contains special dye molecules, known as spiropyrans. If UV LIGHT is beamed onto these spiropyran molecules,
they alter their chemical structure and become charged (polar). When irradiated with visible light, they revert to their original, neutral structure.
and glucose molecules diffuse relatively easily through the membrane from the skin. If irradiated with visible light,
considerably fewer glucose molecules pass through the membrane. The measurement involves sticking the measuring head, which is around three centimeters in size,
some glucose molecules diffuse through the membrane from the skin. On the other side of the membrane, the glucose is mixed with a fluid
#Connection between childhood adversity psychiatric disorders seen at cellular level Mitochondria convert molecules from food into energy that can be used by cells
As detailed in Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, they validated the instrument--a laser ablation resonance ionization mass spectrometer--by dating a rock from Mars:
and began working on a screen for molecules that tweak cell shape. Most drug screens look for an effect on a specific biochemical pathway that has been linked to disease;
After treating the cells with a molecule Robinson's team looked for out-of-the-ordinary numbers of cells with two or more nuclei.
Since Dictyostelium normally have two nuclei only when they are in the process of dividing into two daughter cells a high proportion of cells with more than one nucleus would indicate that the molecule had thrown a wrench in the process of cell division likely by tweaking the mechanics of the cell skeleton.
A screen of thousands of molecules turned up 25 with the effect the team was looking for Further studies revealed that one of them 4-HAP affected myosin II a building block of the cell skeleton.
present findings in an intuitive manner and avoid the use of ionizing radiation or a specialized imaging environment, such as MRI machines.
because they hit other--and possibly stronger--signal molecules from the cancer cells. The demand for therapeutic antibodies for cancer treatment is steadily increasing.
As the water bounces off the super-hydrophobic surfaces it also collects dust particles and takes them along for the ride.
Roughly half of the dust particles were removed with just three drops of water. It took only a dozen drops to leave the surface spotless.
The advantage of the porous polymers is fast absorption of molecules. Porous polymers with micropores of less than 2 nanometers like a zeolite have a large surface area.
They are used as a means to store hydrogen-based molecules or as a catalytic support that can be used as a surface to convert a material into a desired form.
However because the size of the pores in its path was too small for the molecules it took a long time to spread into the pores
so that the molecule can spread throughout the organ. A technology that can create not only micropores
The research team verified the effect of hierarchically-porous structures on absorption of molecules by confirming that the porous polymer had faster absorption speeds than a polymer consisting only of micropores.
which fast diffusion of molecules is essential or for molecule collection. The research was sponsored by National Research Foundation of Korea and published online in the Journal of the American Chemical Society y
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