May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researcher Laura Rossi and her group at TU Delft have found a new way to build synthetic materials out of tiny glass particles – so-called colloids. Together with their colleagues from Queen’s University and the University of Amsterdam, they showed that they can simply use...
A sunlight-driven ‘self-healing’ anti-corrosion coating
May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Metal materials directly exposed to air, water or other corrosive media are prone to damaged due to various physical and chemical changes, causing huge resource waste and environmental problem. A protective layer can effectively slow down the corrosion of the matrix material by isolating the...
Biosynthesis of cyanobacterin opens up new class of natural compounds for applications in medicine and agriculture
May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) The fact that Nature is an excellent chemist is demonstrated by the abundance of molecules, so-called natural products, which it produces biosynthetically. These natural products are also of central importance to us humans. They are used in many ways in our everyday lives, especially as...
Why haven’t we discovered co-orbital exoplanets? Could tides offer a possible answer?
May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) In our solar system, there are several thousand examples of co-orbital objects: bodies that share the same orbit around the Sun or a planet. The Trojan asteroids are such an example. We have not yet observed any similar co-orbitals in extrasolar systems, despite discovering more...
Agriculture smart tech opens possibility of food cyber attacks
May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Wide-ranging use of smart technologies is raising global agricultural production but international researchers warn this digital-age phenomenon could reap a crop of another kind – cybersecurity attacks. Complex IT and math modelling at King Abdulaziz University in Saudi Arabia, Aix-Marseille University, France and Flinders University...
Carbon nanotube sensors enable precise measurement of dopamine
May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Dopamine is an important signalling molecule for nerve cells. Its concentration could not be precisely determined with both high spatial or temporal resolution until now. A new method has now made this possible: A research team from Bochum, Göttingen and Duisburg used modified carbon nanotubes...
Supermassive black holes inside of dying galaxies detected in early universe
May 27, 2022 (Nanowerk News) An international team of astronomers used a database combining observations from the best telescopes in the world to detect the signal from the active supermassive black holes of dying galaxies in the early Universe (Astrophysical Journal, "COSMOS2020: Ubiquitous AGN Activity of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at...
Tiny robotic crab is smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot (w/video)
May 26, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Northwestern University engineers have developed the smallest-ever remote-controlled walking robot — and it comes in the form of a tiny, adorable peekytoe crab. Just a half-millimeter wide, the tiny crabs can bend, twist, crawl, walk, turn and even jump. The researchers also developed millimeter-sized robots...
Discovery offers starting point for better gene-editing tools
May 26, 2022 (Nanowerk News) CRISPR has ushered in the era of genomic medicine. A line of powerful tools has been developed from the popular CRISPR-Cas9 to cure genetic diseases. However, there is a last-mile problem – these tools need to be effectively delivered into every cell of the patient,...
A synthetic antibiotic may help turn the tide against drug-resistant pathogens
May 26, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A new antibiotic, synthesized at The Rockefeller University and derived from computer models of bacterial gene products, appears to neutralize even drug-resistant bacteria. The compound, named cilagicin, works well in mice and employs a novel mechanism to attack MRSA, C. diff, and several other deadly...