From a post by Mike Wall, Space.com Senior Writer: The world is still vulnerable to a potentially catastrophic asteroid strike, according to President Barack Obama's chief science adviser. NASA has made substantial progress in finding the asteroids that pose the biggest threat to Earth, but there's still a lot of work to do, said John [...]
From phys.org: Nanoparticles offer a promising way to deliver cancer drugs in a targeted fashion, helping to kill tumors while sparing healthy tissue. However, most nanoparticles that have been developed so far are limited to carrying only one or two drugs. MIT chemists have now shown that they can package three or more drugs into [...]
From AFP and staff writers News Corp Australia Network: THE Gaia space probe, launched in 2013, has mapped more than a billion stars in the Milky Way, vastly expanding the inventory of known stars in our galaxy, the European Space Agency has revealed. Released to eagerly waiting astronomers around the world, the initial [...]
From phys.org: With one in two Australian children reported to have tooth decay in their permanent teeth by age 12, researchers from the University of Sydney believe they have identified some nanoscale elements that govern the behaviour of our teeth. Material and structures engineers worked with dentists and bioengineers to map the exact composition and [...]
From phys.org: Changes in the genetic make-up of tissue samples can be detected quickly and easily using a new method based on nanotechnology. This report researchers from the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, the University of Basel and the University Hospital Basel in first clinical tests with genetic mutations in patients with malignant melanoma. The journal Nano [...]
From a post by Jacob Brogan at slate.com: Who are the lead researchers? What are the big debates? And what’s “gray goo” got to do with it? Read more Image Credit: Alias Studio Sydney Recent News
From kurzweilai.net: Google* is developing a quantum computer that it believes will outperform the world’s top supercomputers, according to an August 31 New Scientist article and sourced to researchers contacted by the magazine. Google’s ambitious goal is to achieve “quantum supremacy”— which would be achieved when “quantum devices without error correction can perform a well-defined [...]
From nanowerk news: Scientists at The Australian National University (ANU) have developed a new spray-on material with a remarkable ability to repel water (ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, "Ultra-Durable and Transparent Self-Cleaning Surfaces by Large-Scale Self-Assembly of Hierarchical Interpenetrated Polymer Networks").The new protective coating could eventually be used to waterproof mobile phones, prevent ice [...]
From nanowerk news: DNA, our genetic material, normally has the structure of a twisted rope ladder. Experts call this structure a double helix. Among other things, it is stabilized by stacking forces between base pairs. Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have succeeded at measuring these forces for the very first time on [...]
From cbc news: NASA's first asteroid-sampling spacecraft, equipped with sophisticated Canadian mapping technology, took off Thursday night to cheering crowds gathered to witness the start of its seven-year quest. Read about the OSIRIS-REx mission in detail here. A United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket lifted off at 7:05 p.m. ET from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Perched on top of the 19-story rocket [...]
