Global News:

Nanoparticles Provide Detailed View Inside Living Animals
National Cancer Institute April 19th, 2008 Using nanoparticles designed specifically to produce a bright Raman spectroscopic signal, a team of investigators at the Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence Focused on Therapy Response (Stanford CCNE) has shown that it can produce whole-body images in small animals that can reveal the location of tumors and track how these nanoparticles traffic through the body. This work, the first to use surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) to provide whole-body images in a living animal, was reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

Orfescu's NanoArt - Digital Mural
Cris Orfescu April 22nd, 2008 Commuters coming to Boston on the Massachusetts Turnpike now have a new landmark: a large LED digital mural outside WGBH's new studio complex in Brighton. Every day, from 6:30 a.m. to 7:00 p.m., the digital mural features a new image or series of images drawn largely from that day's TV or radio programming on WGBH or from other sources of content that reflect WGBH's mission. Embedded in the building's exterior wall, the approximately 30-foot-by-45-foot display of light-emitting diode (LED) panels is visible to eastbound MassPike travelers from approximately a mile and a half away.

Materials scientists in Stuttgart control the crystallization temperature of silicon
Max Planck Society April 23rd, 2008 An organizer for structuring silicon

UT Dallas, Brazilian Researchers Discover Remarkable New Properties for Nanotube Sheets
University of Texas at Dallas April 24th, 2008 Strange, Useful Properties Obtained by Nanoscale Self Assembly are Reported in the April 25 Issue of Prestigious Scientific Journal

The wonders of mechanical self-replication
bcheights.com April 25th, 2008 Most consumer products have a complex history, developing from raw materials to their current state. The stages of manufacturing are often overlooked by the end user, but they invariably involve either particular equipment or a skilled craftsman; in most automated processes, machines are the preferred method. Throughout the assembly line, each of these machines is highly specialized to perform one or two tasks: While one device might rivet two plates together, it cannot weld, glue, or cut as well. If the manufacturing process calls for such operations, they will have to be performed by another machine. As if it weren't complex enough already, consider the equipment necessary to manufacture these manufacturing machines. The concept quickly develops into a tangled web of raw materials, generalized manufacturing techniques, and specialized assembly line equipment. There is a way to simplify it all, though. The technique seems bizarre to seasoned industrialists, but is strangely familiar to all biological organisms: self-assembly. Researchers have long toyed with proof-of-concept experiments utilizing baseball-size or larger robotic sub-units to arrange themselves into a functioning "organism," but one team of scientists at Purdue University has finally achieved the same feat at the molecular level. "Autopoiesis" is a term derived from Greek words, which means "self-creation." It can be applied to evolution to describe the process undergone by inorganic molecules to form the building blocks of life. Biologically, it can be used to describe the eukaryotic cell, which produces more of itself through mitosis or meiosis. These are natural occurrences familiar to most of us on at least some level. Alternatively, self-replicating machines pioneered by scientists like John von Neumann can theoretically self-replicate, drawing from local resources to build more machines. These machines have been called clanking replicators, von Neumann machines, and universal constructors. Much of the premise of nanotechnology is based around self-replicating machines. The converse of autopoiesis is allopoiesis; current manufacturing techniques are allopoietic.

SOURCE: NANOTECHWEB.ORG NEWSWIRE

TECHNOLOGY UPDATE

'Buckypaper' stretches in a strange way

Material's response to stretching tuned by mixing different carbon nanotubes

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/33916

Nanoparticles extruded into spun fibre

Hybrid dispersion technique set to improve scaffolds for tissue engineering

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/33877

IBM develops tiniest nanophotonic switch Device could be used to route optical data in future computer chips

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/33885

Biomagnetics speed breast-cancer testing A nanotechnology-based tissue-analysis system could ease pathologists'

workload

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/33863

CNTs improve corrosion resistance of magnesium alloys New nanotube composites could replace aluminium alloys and engineering plastics

http://nanotechweb.org/cws/article/tech/33849

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