The SUP was confirmed also to contain the computationally designed structural features through examination of the protein crystal structure.
and Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2009cb918500) and the National Natural science Foundation of China (21173013,11021463) to L. L. This research used the Advanced Photon Source for protein crystallography data collection
However, the resulting composite interface is prone to collapse under external pressure. Nanometer-size textures should facilitate more resilient coatings owing to geometry and confinement effects at the nanoscale.
The standard approach to squeezing light involves firing an intense laser beam at a material, usually a nonlinear crystal,
"And it can stick tightly to stainless steel, even when the surgical instrument is cleaned.""As a result, he said,
The prototype consists of copper wires insulated with PVC tubes. On one end, the copper wires are hooked up to an external analyzer and on the other end,
in order to detect the presence of hemozoin crystals, Coté notes. Hemozoin crystals are the byproduct of the malaria parasite
and they occur in the blood of an infected host. As polarized light bounces off of these crystals,
they appear as tiny bright dots when observed through the phone's camera lens--enabling an instant,
and manufacturing the tiny metal connections that go into flexible electronics. The metal has to undergo severe stretching
and bending while continuing to conduct electricity. Manufacturers have used so far tiny metal springs that can stretch
a fairly inexpensive metal compared to gold, and periodically bonded it to a plastic layer commonly used in electronics,
it was actually the plastic layer that failed, not the metal.""This is a quantum improvement in stretchable electronics
the researchers also want to better understand the metal's behavior.""A metal film doubling its size
"We have proposed a model for the stretchy metal but much work is needed to validate it.
Although superconductivity has already been observed in intercalated bulk graphite--three-dimensional crystals layered with alkali metal atoms,
Graphene, roughly 200 times stronger than steel by weight, is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.
and composites industries. The researchers, which include colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research through the joint Max-Planck-UBC Centre for Quantum Materials,
Although superconductivity has already been observed in intercalated bulk graphite--three-dimensional crystals layered with alkali metal atoms,
Graphene, roughly 200 times stronger than steel by weight, is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb pattern.
and composites industries. The researchers, which include colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research through the joint Max-Planck-UBC Centre for Quantum Materials,
the plastic pulled apart into a basic mesh. The interconnected strips of Kapton tilt in proportion to how much the mesh is stretched, to an accuracy of about one degree.
however, the ion beam destroys the crystal structure of the gallium arsenide and thus its semiconducting properties. Dr. Facsko's group at the HZDR's Ion beam Center therefore uses the opportunity to heat the sample during ion bombardment.
but also knock individual atoms entirely out of the crystal structure. Since the volatile arsenic does not remain bound on the surface,
because they contain iridium, a silvery-white transition metal. New transition metal complexes do not easily breakdown,
which is important for delivery of antibiotics to where they are needed to fight infections in the body.
"So far our findings show that these compounds are safer than other compounds made from transition metals,
A spin wave is caused by a perturbation of the local magnetisation direction in a magnetic material.
the antenna is made from two metal plates placed in parallel to form a waveguide. One of the plates has a small slit in it.
and photoluminescence to optically probe the molecular structure of the phthalocyanine crystals.""Marrying these two techniques together is new;
and the boundaries in the crystals influence the movement of excitons. It's these boundaries that form a"barrier for exciton diffusion,
the team worked in the lab of UVM physics and materials science professor Randy Headrick to successfully form films with jumbo-sized crystal grains and"small angle boundaries."
#Tiny silica particles could be used to repair damaged teeth, research shows Researchers at the University of Birmingham have shown how the development of coated silica nanoparticles could be used in restorative treatment of sensitive teeth
and preventing the onset of tooth decay. The study, published in the Journal of Dentistry, shows how sub-micron silica particles can be prepared to deliver important compounds into damaged teeth through tubules in the dentine.
The tiny particles can be bound to compounds ranging from calcium tooth building materials to antimicrobials that prevent infection.
When your outer enamel is breached, the exposure of these tubules is really noticeable. If you drink something cold,
"The aim of restorative agents is to increase the mineral content of both the enamel and dentine,
However, the Birmingham team turned to sub-micron silica particles that had been prepared with a surface coating to reduce the chance of aggregation.
"These silica particles are available in a range of sizes, from nanometre to sub-micron,
including brain tissue from surgical steel. Cleaning instruments between patients is critical to avoid transmission of agents leading to conditions such as Creutzfeldt-jakob disease.
and 3d printing techniques to create a custom silicone guide implanted with biochemical cues to help nerve regeneration.
#Silicone vaginal rings deliver antiviral drugs, protect women against HIV Researchers at University Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne,
France have succeeded in developing a vaginal silicone ring that delivers molecules that act on both HIV and herpes virus.
despite the fact that silicone is a hydrophobic compound, "said Meriam Memmi, author of the study and Phd candidate at University Jean Monnet of Saint-Etienne, France.
This was possible due to the addition of a hydrophilic compound to the silicone, which allowed the drugs to be released from their reservoirs.
These preliminary results demonstrate the ability of silicone rings to continuously deliver hydrophilic antiviral drugs for a long period of time at a concentration that would be effective for neutralizing the viruses present in semen.
"The aim of our study was to develop a vaginal silicone ring that was nontoxic to the health of users
Bruno Pozzetto and of chemists from the Polymer Materials Engineering Laboratory under the supervision of Pr.
Christian Carrot, with the help of Mr. Blaise Figuereo, a silicone engineer who designed the apparatus used to create the reservoir rings s
They showed that silicone elastomers can be printed seamlessly into gradient architectures composed of soft and rigid regions.
For more than 100 years, researchers have inferred how atoms are arranged in three-dimensional space using a technique called X-ray crystallography,
which involves measuring how light waves scatter off of a crystal. However, X-ray crystallography only yields information about the average positions of many billions of atoms in the crystal
and not about individual atoms'precise coordinates.""It's like taking an average of people On earth,
"Because X-ray crystallography doesn't reveal the structure of a material on a per-atom basis,
The work, published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, pairs gold nanomesh with a stretchable substrate made with polydimethylsiloxane, or PDMS.
and fatigue has been a deadly disease for metals, "the researchers wrote.""We weaken the constraint of the substrate by making the interface between the Au (gold) nanomesh and PDMS slippery,
patterned silica material laid on top of a traditional solar cell. The material is transparent to the visible sunlight that powers solar cells,
#A different type of 2-D semiconductor To the growing list of two-dimensional semiconductors, such as graphene, boron nitride,
or bulk crystals for photovoltaic devices that have reached a 20-percent power conversion efficiency. Separating these hybrid materials into individual
we were able to grow uniform square-shaped 2d crystals on a flat substrate with high yield
and composition of individual 2d crystals using a variety of techniques and found they have shifted a slightly band-edge emission that could be attributed to structural relaxation.
which is shifted red slightly as compared to bulk crystals. This suggests that color-tuning could be achieved in these 2d hybrid perovskites by changing sheet thickness as well as composition via the synthesis of related materials."
"The well-defined geometry of these square-shaped 2d crystals is the mark of high quality crystallinity,
polymer coated nickel-titanium (nitinol) alloy stent frame specially designed to prevent leakage. To implant the device,
The researchers then isolated individual pores by placing each graphene sheet over a layer of silicon nitride that had been punctured by an ion beam
and then through the larger silicon nitride hole. The group measured flows of five different salt ions through several graphene sheet setups by applying a voltage and measuring the current flowing through the pores.
This degeneration is caused by the destruction of the cones and cells in the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE),
#Simple detection of magnetic skyrmions Stable whirls in magnetic materials were predicted over 25 years ago, but the experimental realization was achieved only recently.
when a nonmagnetic metal is used in such a measurement'In our experiment we can move a metallic tip over a surface with atomic-scale precision,
Through the use of this new ink, more versatile devices on paper or plastic can be made at a rate of 300 per minute, at a very low cost.
"The metamaterial consists of silicon pillar arrays embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film.
and makes it into a crystal, like an ice cube does to water. Next, the crystal drug is placed into a fat and protein coat, similar to
#Powerful plastic microscope brings better diagnostic care for world's rural poor You can learn a lot about the state of someone's immune system just by examining their blood under the microscope.
a research team from Rice university has developed recently a plastic, miniature digital fluorescence microscope that can quantify white blood cell levels in patients located in rural parts of the world that are removed far from the modern laboratory."
which consisted of one polystyrene lens and two polymethyl methacrylate aspheric lenses, the researchers used a single-point diamond turning lathe.
reflectors, and USB detectors, combined with the all-plastic housing and lenses will allow for future versions of the prototype to be mass-produced d
At that point, a reflective metal layer is on the bottom.""In this structure--unlike other photodetectors--light absorption in an ultrathin silicon layer can be much more efficient
and boron nitride, comprises a few layers of carrier-moving channels, each of which can be controlled by the magnetic field.
We found that a bilayer structure of graphene and boron nitride displays an extremely large response with magnetic fields.
"The study was funded co by Capillary Film Technology Ltd--a UK SME developing low-cost microfluidic fluoropolymer film for life sciences and clinical diagnostics.
#Researchers develop 3-D printing method for creating patient-specific medical devices A team of researchers at Northeastern University has developed an innovative 3-D printing technology that uses magnetic fields to shape composite materials
--mixes of plastics and ceramics--into patient-specific products. The biomedical devices they are developing will be both stronger and lighter than current models and,
"Others have used composite materials in 3-D printing, says Joshua Martin, the doctoral candidate who helped design
This is the strategy taken by many natural composites from bones to trees. Consider the structure of human bone.
"Another of our goals is to use calcium phosphate fibers and biocompatible plastics to design surgical implants."
They then apply ultralow magnetic fields to individual sections of the composite material--the ceramic fibers immersed in liquid plastic--to align the fibers according to the exacting specifications dictated by the product they are printing."
layer by layer, using a computer-controlled laser beam that hardens the plastic. Each six-by-six inch layer takes a mere minute to complete."
in addition to combining it with a hydrophilic plasma polymer coating, which attracts moisture, "says Dr. Ingo Grunwald,
Researchers have integrated silver nanoparticles into the thin plasma polymer coating, which is up to just 100 nanometers thick.
with two plasma polymer layers surrounding a center layer of silver. Within this structure a biocide reservoir is formed
This allows the silver ions to penetrate the outermost plasma polymer layer over a set period of time deemed necessary to properly integrate the implant.
The test samples were coated using a plasma polymerization facility at the IFAM in Bremen. Researchers confirmed the mechanical stability
A demonstration unit of the plasma polymer coating is currently available. Researchers will be presenting a dental implant featuring the Dentaplas coating at the MEDICA trade fair in Düsseldorf from November 16-19 at the joint Fraunhofer booth t
The pressure sensors are made of a carbon nanotube-elastomer composite shaped into tiny pyramidal structures that are coated onto a surface.
The core of the project involves recycling local plastic into versatile locksduring volunteer workshops which are used then to build objects such as benches, planters and stages for use within the community.
23 local businesses, nearly 2000kg of plastic collected and the potential to build over 800 blocks.
if it were made of fiber-reinforced plastic rather than aluminum without added costs. Such injection-molded parts are even suitable for mass production.
In the future, car manufacturers will be able to achieve further weight savings by designing cylinder blocks in which certain parts are made of fiber-reinforced plastics.
which forms part of the Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology ICT, in collaboration with SBHPP, the high-performance plastics business unit of Sumitomo Bakelite Co. Ltd.,
Japan, demonstrates this principle. e used a fiber-reinforced composite material to build a cylinder casing for a one-cylinder research engine, reports Dr. Lars-Fredrik Berg,
That plastics possessed these qualities was recognized back in the 1980s but at that time it was only possible to produce this types of parts in a small volume
The researchers also modified the geometry of these parts to ensure that the plastic is exposed to as little heat as possible.
and not have a higher thermal expansion coefficient than the metal otherwise the inserts would separate from the substrate.
Berg team uses a glass-fiber-reinforced phenolic composite developed by SBHPP, which fulfills all of these requirements
A lighter-weight but more expensive alternative is to use a carbon-fiber-reinforced composite the choice depends on
The researchers produce these components from granulated thermoset plastics using an injection molding process. The melted composite material
in which the glass fibers are mixed already with the resin, hardens in the mold into which it was injected.
The scientists intend to take their research further by developing a multi-cylinder plastics-based engine,
metal wires are limited in terms of speed due to the resistance in the metal itself. Fiber optics use light to move information about 10
or gaps in metals. The team, which included researchers from Rutgers, the University of Colorado at Colorado springs,
including biodegradable plastics, pharmaceutical drugs and even liquid fuels. Scientists with the U s. Department of energy (DOE) Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley have created a hybrid system of semiconducting nanowires and bacteria that mimics
and 52-percent for the renewable and biodegradable plastic PHB. Improved performances are anticipated with further refinements of the technology. e are currently working on our second generation system
multicomponent alloys that are constructed at the nano scale within a limited number of alloy systems.
In the new paper, Schroers demonstrates a method for applying metallic glass nanostructures to a broad range of glass-forming alloys.
and composition of alloys at the nanoscale. ontrolling size and reaching the smallest 10 nanometer dimensions 1/10,
and realize all this in a very wide range of alloys. Expanding the chemistries of metallic glass also expands the possible uses for the materials,
and then layered on top with a sheet of gold metal. Because graphene sticks better to gold than to copper,
which we can place single-layer graphene between two metals and ensure that it contains no rips,
Once the gold/graphene composite is separated from the copper substrate, the newly exposed side of the graphene layer is sandwiched with another gold sheet to produce the gold:
Except it not glass, it a special ceramic called spinel {spin-ELL} that the U s. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been researching over the last 10 years. pinel is actually a mineral,
if I have all these crystals packed together, the crack gets deflected at the hard crystals:
you dissipate the crack energy. A manufacturing process that transferable and scalable When scientists first started trying to make glass-like spinel,
they were using a crucible instead of a press. big problem with growing crystals is that you have to melt the starting powder at very high temperatures,
and so if youe trying to make very high quality crystals, you end up with a huge amount of defects.
A ullet-proofwindow today, for example, has layers of plastic and glass perhaps five inches thick. f you replaced that with spinel,
It a lot like attaching a drop of solder on the string of a guitar it changes its vibration frequency
A common way to decipher molecular structures is to use x-ray crystallography. This complicated method involves purifying and crystallising the molecules
in order to achieve composite materials with enhanced mechanical properties for engineering body parts. Professor Hutmacher said hydrogels were favoured
Professor Hutmacher said the team had introduced organised high-porosity microfiber networks that are printed using a new technique called elt electrospinning writing e found that the stiffness of the gel/scaffold composites increased synergistically up to 54 times,
and lattice vibrations in a crystal of lithium niobate and to observe how a laser focused onto a glass plate creates a hot, rapidly expanding plume of plasma.
Palacci and colleagues wrapped pale polymer around tiny cubes of hematite, a dark mineral of iron and oxygen that protrudes from the spherical beads as a reddish dot.
The polymer beads surf forward on those flows in the direction of their hematite protrusions.
40 very fine, dielectric elastomer sensors measure compression load and distribution for diabetes patients taking over the job usually performed by the nerves in their feet. xisting systems on the market measure the pressure distribution
Electronics transmit data to your smartphone The sensors are made from a soft and very stretchy elastomer silicone film that is easy to integrate into textiles.
This film is coated on both sides with highly flexible electrodes of graphite or carbon black. When the film deforms as a result of compression or stretching,
For example, after the implantation of an artificial ureter, urease crystals often start to grow inside
the team developed a simple method to densely coat the nanoparticles with a nonsticky polymer called PEG,
In past research, Salahuddin and his colleagues found that directing electrical current through the rare metal tantalum creates polarity in magnets without an external magnetic field.
and porcelain, but their potential to create new materials remains largely untapped. Notably, DNA-coated colloids offer particular promise
plastics and fuel products. he basic idea is that we want to accelerate evolution to make awesome amounts of valuable chemicals,
but also respond to valuable products such as renewable plastics or costly pharmaceuticals and give microbes a voice to report on their own efficiency in making these products. e can communicate with cells much more effectively,
Scientists curve nanoparticle sheets into complex forms Scientists have been making nanoparticles for more than two decades in two-dimensional sheets, three-dimensional crystals and random clusters.
The sensor housing, made of a biocompatible plastic, is small enough to fit into the tip of a biopsy needle.
such as extraordinary strength (it is about 200 times stronger than steel by weight), almost transparent nature and conductivity of heat and electricity with great efficiency.
when they were exploring dramatically slowing the growth rate of the graphene crystals by decreasing the amount of methane in the chemical vapour deposition chamber.
explains Abhijeet Chaudhari, a DPHIL student in the Multifunctional Materials & Composites (MMC) Laboratory at Oxford university Department of Engineering science,
An X-ray diffraction technique confirmed that these were nanoparticles of KUST-1 a copper-based Metal-Organic Framework (MOF) notable for its very large surface area (exceeding 2000 square-metres in each gram.
biocompatible polymer film made out of polyvinylidene fluoride, or PVDF. To improve the material energy harvesting ability, they added DNA,
Fabrication and design Wang team created a screen-printed sensor using silver, Prussian blue ink and uricase,
The second step is a layer of uricase trapped in polymers, which reacts selectively with uric acid.
which is detected by the Prussian blue ink. That information is transmitted then to an electronic board as electrical signals via metallic strips that are part of the sensor.
The standard approach to squeezing light involves firing an intense laser beam at a material, usually a nonlinear crystal,
The same design principle can be extended easily to other materials beyond silicon, such as metals glass ceramics and plastics.
The authors believe this work will open the search for a new, unified model of wetting physics that explains wetting phenomena on rough surfaces e
#acterial Litmus Testprovides Inexpensive Measurement of Micronutrients A bacterium engineered to produce different pigments in response to varying levels of a micronutrient in blood samples could give health officials an inexpensive way to detect nutritional
and the researchers have tuned it to trigger the production of purple, red and orange pigments.
Genetic machinery for the production of those pigments was taken from other biological sources and introduced into the E coli.
and pigment-producing genetic machinery can be introduced. ltimately, we hope to be able to test for a whole suite of nutrients in a reasonably short period of time
As part of their research, Styczynski and graduate research assistants Daniel Watstein and Monica Mcnerney engineered pigment producing machinery into the E coli.
Genes for producing the pigments were placed onto a plasmid and introduced into the bacterium. The researchers used two zinc-sensing proteins within the E coli
which those proteins could turn the pigment producing genes on and off. This approach made the zinc-sensing proteins responsive to levels of zinc close to that expected to be found in blood plasma,
while producing pigment quickly enough to be visible to the naked eye. And because the orange and red pigments are generated in the same metabolic pathway,
the researchers needed to establish ways to produce only one or the other at a time a challenge that their work shows can be addressed feasibly,
#New method for modifying natural polymers could help bring lifesaving medications to market In drug-delivery research,
a natural polymer often used for drug delivery. According to Kevin Edgar, a professor of sustainable biomaterials and Meng doctoral adviser, the new method an get drugs to market,
Suspending the drug in a polymer matrix can help. Polymers are long chains of repeating units.
Many familiar materials are polymers including proteins, DNA, and cellulose, a sugar-based polymer which gives plant cell walls their structure.
Dispersing a drug in a polymer matrix protects it and suppresses the formation of insoluble crystals.
The polymer eventually swells and releases the drug, allowing it to be absorbed into the bloodstream.
Because medications have broadly diverse chemical structures, properties, and dosing and delivery requirements, finding the right polymer matrix to work well with most drugs involves making
and testing many different options. Meng chemistry offers a new way to make a wide variety of polymer matrices using cellulose as a starting material.
Cellulose is an attractive material for drug delivery because it nontoxic breaks down into components that are already present in the body,
is water-permeable, and can survive the stomach acidic environment. Unlike many synthetic polymers, which are made often from petrochemicals,
cellulose is derived from wood, a renewable resource supporting the mission of the College of Natural resources
and Environment to advance the science of sustainability. When Meng first took on the project,
renewable starting material to develop a wide variety of polymers specifically tuned to carry many different pharmaceutical targets.
The spectrum of different polymers available is like arvesting apples this year, peaches next year,
In this case, the antenna is made from two metal plates placed in parallel to form a waveguide.
Finally, physical vapor deposition is used to deposit optically-transparent thin layers of calcium then aluminum metals atop the nanotube forest.
So the ideal structure uses the antenna as one of the metals in the diode
The researchers used a combination of X-ray crystallography techniques and in-vitro analysis to study the bacteria.
Jost performed crystallography to establish the shapes of the structures, while the Spanish researchers, Drennan notes, id all of the control experiments to show that we were really thinking about this right,
The skeletal onesare 3-D-printed hard plastic and incorporate eight sensors for detecting force.
and even polymer fibers stretch typically only 20-25 percent, Park noted. That is a limiting factor in a device such as a hand
as the silicone is stretched, cracks develop in the reflective layer, allowing light to escape. By measuring the loss of light,
#Scientists grow organic semiconductor crystals vertically for first time Our smartphones, tablets, computers and biosensors all have improved because of the rapidly increasing efficiency of semiconductors.
a building block of a conductive polymer called tetraaniline. The scientists showed for the first time that tetraaniline crystals could be grown vertically.
The advance could eventually lead to vastly improved technology for capturing solar energy. In fact, it could literally reshape solar cells.
The UCLA team grew the tetraaniline crystals vertically from a substrate so the crystals stood up like spikes instead of lying flat as they do produced
when using current techniques. They produced the crystals in a solution using a substrate made of graphene,
a nanomaterial consisting of graphite that is extremely thin measuring the thickness of a single atom.
Scientists had grown previously crystals vertically in inorganic semiconducting materials, including silicon, but doing it in organic materials has been more difficult.
which are determined by the orientation of very small crystals it contains. Devices such as solar cells and photosensors work better
if the crystals grow vertically because vertical crystals can be packed more densely in the semiconductor,
making it more powerful and more efficient at controlling electrical current. hese crystals are analogous to organizing a table covered with scattered pencils into a pencil cup,
said Yue essicawang, a former UCLA doctoral student who now is a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford university
Once Kaner and his colleagues found they could guide the tetraaniline solution to grow vertical crystals,
vertically aligned crystals for a variety of organic semiconductors using the same graphene substrate. he key was deciphering the interactions between organic semiconductors and graphene in various solvent environments,
growing vertical organic crystals became simple. Kaner said the researchers also discovered another advantage of the graphene substrate. his technique enables us to pattern crystals wherever we want,
he said. ou could make electronic devices from these semiconductor crystals and grow them precisely in intricate patterns required for the device you want, such as thin-film transistors or light-emitting diodes. a
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