Feb 14, 2024 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Honeycomb structures have long tantalized engineers with high strength-to-weight ratios perfect for aircraft and satellites. But pristine configurations lack integrated responsiveness to temperature fluctuations, impacts or ice accumulation that cause catastrophic in-flight failures. While previous research explored smart coatings or additive manufacturing, these struggled to...
Nanomedicine paves the way for new treatments for spinal cord injury
Feb 14, 2024 (Nanowerk News) In a study published in Advanced Materials ("Synergistic Pharmacological Therapy to Modulate Glial Cells in Spinal Cord Injury"), researchers Pietro Veglianese, Valeria Veneruso and Emilia Petillo from Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri IRCCS in collaboration with Filippo Rossi of the Politecnico di Milano have...
Treating liver cancer with microrobots
Feb 14, 2024 (Nanowerk News) The idea of injecting microscopic robots into the bloodstream to heal the human body is not new. It's also not science fiction. Guided by an external magnetic field, miniature biocompatible robots, made of magnetizable iron oxide nanoparticles, can theoretically provide medical treatment in a very...
Scientists use AI to identify new MOF materials for carbon capture
Feb 14, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Generative AI techniques, machine learning and simulations give researchers new opportunities to identify environmentally friendly metal-organic framework materials. Carbon capture is a critical technology in reducing greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities. But a suitable material for effective carbon capture at...
Overcoming the traditional resolution limit for the fast co-tracking of molecules
Feb 14, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Processes within our bodies are characterized by the interplay of various biomolecules such as proteins and DNA. These processes occur on a scale often within a range of just a few nanometers. Consequently, they cannot be observed with fluorescence microscopy, which has a resolution limit...
New nanosensors make diagnostic procedures more sensitive
Feb 13, 2024 (Nanowerk News) The Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS and Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, have developed a process that enables a new form of signal amplification for diagnostic tests. Through the advanced use of luminescent single walled carbon nanotubes in bioanalytics, test procedures can be...
Low-cost microbe can speed biological discovery
Feb 13, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Cornell University researchers have created a new version of a microbe to compete economically with E. coli – a bacteria commonly used as a research tool due to its ability to synthesize proteins – to conduct low-cost and scalable synthetic biological experiments. As an inexpensive...
Gold nanoparticles found to reverse brain deficits in multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s
Feb 13, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Results from phase two clinical trials at UT Southwestern Medical Center showed that a suspension of gold nanocrystals taken daily by patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) and Parkinson’s disease (PD) significantly reversed deficits of metabolites linked to energy activity in the brain and resulted in...
How ancient sea creatures can inform soft robotics
Feb 13, 2024 (Nanowerk News) Soft robotics is the study of creating robots from soft materials, which has the advantage of flexibility and safety in human interactions. These robots are well-suited for applications ranging from medical devices to enhancing efficiency in various tasks. Additionally, using different forms of robotic movement...
Researchers discover how functional nucleic acid nanoparticles can effectively deceive the immune system
Feb 13, 2024 (Nanowerk Spotlight) Since the discovery of the DNA double helix in 1953, researchers dreamed of leveraging nucleic acids for revolutionary biomedical applications benefiting human health. Early visionaries imagined engineering DNA and RNA as biosensors to detect toxins, vectors to enable gene therapies, and drug-loaded nanoparticles to precisely...