Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Researchers from PD Dr. Gregor Hagelueken's group at the Institute of Structural Biology of the UKB used PELDOR spectroscopy to study the movement of substrate-binding proteins (Nature Communications, "Cross-validation of distance measurements in proteins by PELDOR/DEER and single-molecule FRET"). These proteins grab their substrate and...
Turning fish waste into quality carbon nanomaterials
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Thanks to their low toxicity, chemical stability, and remarkable electrical and optical properties, carbon-based nanomaterials are finding more and more applications across electronics, energy conversion and storage, catalysis, and biomedicine. Carbon nano-onions (CNOs) are certainly no exception. First reported in 1980, CNOs are nanostructures composed...
Engineers repurpose 19th-century photography technique to make stretchy, color-changing films
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Imagine stretching a piece of film to reveal a hidden message. Or checking an arm band’s color to gauge muscle mass. Or sporting a swimsuit that changes hue as you do laps. Such chameleon-like, color-shifting materials could be on the horizon, thanks to a photographic...
Researchers develop miniature lens for trapping single atoms
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Atoms are notoriously difficult to control. They zigzag like fireflies, tunnel out of the strongest containers and jitter even at temperatures near absolute zero. Nonetheless, scientists need to trap and manipulate single atoms in order for quantum devices, such as atomic clocks or quantum computers,...
Scientists reveal distribution of dark matter around galaxies 12 billion years ago
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A collaboration led by scientists at Nagoya University in Japan has investigated the nature of dark matter surrounding galaxies seen as they were 12 billion years ago, billions of years further back in time than ever before. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters ("First...
Novel 3D printing process is faster and more precise than conventional methods
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Rutgers engineers have created a way to 3D print large and complex parts at a fraction of the cost of current methods. They detail their work in the journal Additive Manufacturing ("Scalable, flexible and resilient parallelization of fused filament fabrication: Breaking endemic tradeoffs in material...
New method to promote biofilm formation and increase efficiency of biocatalysis
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) Birmingham scientists have revealed a new method to increase efficiency in biocatalysis, in a paper published in Materials Horizons ("Polymer-Induced Biofilms for Enhanced Biocatalysis"). Biocatalysis uses enzymes, cells or microbes to catalyse chemical reactions, and is used in settings such as the food and chemical...
Super-Earth skimming habitable zone of red dwarf
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A super-Earth planet has been found near the habitable zone of a red dwarf star only 37 light-years from the Earth (Astronomical Society of Japan, "A super-Earth orbiting near the inner edge of the habitable zone around the M4.5 dwarf Ross 508"). This is the first...
Robotic graphene foam sensors could help transform prosthetics
Aug 01, 2022 (Nanowerk News) A pioneering project to develop advanced sensors for use in robotic systems, could transform prosthetics and robotic limbs (Key Engineering Materials, "Ultra-Thin Graphene Foam Based Flexible Piezoresistive Pressure Sensors for Robotics"). The research project – led by University of the West of Scotland (UWS), Integrated...