Optics & Photonics is known as the premier show in North America for the latest advancements in optical engineering and applications, nanotechnology, sustainable energy, organic photonics, and astronomical instrumentation. In San Diego next week, PI’s booth will feature the latest state-of-the-art precision motion technologies and interactive displays of nanopositioning components, with [...]
In a quest to make more realistic, safer, and personalizable tissue replacement implants, bacterial cellulose nanofibers are being looked on as a viable material. They are naturally biocompatible, biodegradable, withstand heat well, and have physical properties similar to many of our tissues, when composed into larger objects. Bacterial cellulose nanofibers are produced by aerobic [...]
Researchers have developed a process for creating ultrathin, self-assembling sheets of synthetic materials that can function like designer flypaper in selectively binding with viruses, bacteria, and other pathogens. In this way the new platform, developed by a team led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), could [...]
Studies have shown that the wings of dragonflies and cicadas prevent bacterial growth due to their natural structure. The surfaces of their wings are covered in nanopillars making them look like a bed of nails. When bacteria come into contact with these surfaces, their cell membranes get ripped apart immediately and they are killed. [...]
A group of researchers headed by the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory has discovered an innovative method to find out the local temperature of a material from an area with a width of just one-billionth of 1 m, or roughly 100,000 times thinner than a strand of human hair. This finding has [...]
Tiny floating robots could be useful in all kinds of ways, for example, to probe the human gut for disease or to search the environment for pollutants. In a step toward such devices, researchers describe a new marriage of materials, combining ultrathin 2-D electronics with miniature particles to create microscopic machines. The researchers will [...]
It started like any other day. Dr. Hao Yin walked into the lab at MIT, ready to check on his transgenic mice. He had no idea he was about to make history. Yin’s mice harbored a single mutated gene that gave them a terrible liver disease. Left untreated, the deteriorating liver fails to process [...]
An international research team discovered a new type of curved light beams, dubbed a "photonic hook". Photonic hooks are unique, as their radius of curvature is two times smaller than their wavelength. This is the smallest curvature radius of electromagnetic waves ever recorded. Photonic hook can improve the resolution of optical systems and [...]
A promising discovery for advanced cancer therapy reveals that the efficiency of drug delivery in DNA nanostructures depends on their shapes, say researchers at Missouri University of Science and Technology and the University of Kansas. “For the first time, a time-lapse live cell imaging system was used to observe the absorption and controlled release of [...]
MIT bioengineers have developed a new microfluidic platform technology that could be used to evaluate new drugs and detect possible side effects before the drugs are tested in humans. The microfluidic platform can connect 3D tissues from up to 10 organs. Replacing animal testing, it can accurately replicate human-organ interactions for weeks at a time [...]
