Science | WPN World People News

Biomedical engineering researchers have developed a technique for creating microscopic "depots" for trapping drugs inside cancer tumors. In an animal model, these drug depots were 10 times more effective at shrinking tumors than the use of the same drugs without the depots.

In November 2015, Brazil experienced an unparalleled environmental disaster. When two dams broke at an iron ore mine, a poisonous cocktail of heavy metals was sent pouring into the Rio Doce, reaching the Atlantic some days later. The consequences were devastating for nature and humans alike: countless fish, birds and animals died, and a quarter of a million people were left without drinking water.The contaminated water (colored water in vials) is drawn through the hybrid membrane by negative pressure; the heavy metal ions (red spheres) bind to the protein fibers in the process. The filtered water is of drinking quality.

The pressure sensors wrap around and conform to the shape of the fingers while still accurately measuring pressure distribution.

There are many different ways to make nanomaterials but weaving, the oldest and most enduring method of making fabrics, has not been one of them – until now. An international collaboration led by scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the University of California (UC) Berkeley, has woven the first three-dimensional covalent organic frameworks (COFs) from helical organic threads. The woven COFs display significant advantages in structural flexibility, resiliency and reversibility over previous COFs – materials that are highly prized for their potential to capture and store carbon dioxide then convert it into valuable chemical products.

The new model simulates light-harvesting across several hundred nanometers of a thylakoid membrane, which is the membrane within a chloroplast that harbors photosystem II (PSII), a complex of antennae made up of mostly of chlorophyll-containing proteins. The antennae in PSII gain "excitation" energy when they absorb sunlight and, through quantum mechanical effects, almost instantaneously transport this extra energy to reaction centers for conversion into chemical energy. Previous models of PSII simulated energy transport within a single antenna protein.

We sometimes take our five senses for granted, especially our vision. As our most utilized sense, vision gives us accurate information about our environment, where we are within it, and how it changes as we move. Most don’t give this sense a second thought, until our vision is degraded.

The Telecommunications Engineer Aitor Urrutia-Azcona has designed some humidity sensors with anti-bacterial properties that combat the proliferation of micro-organisms in environments where the humidity level is very high, such as hospitals and industrial premises for foodstuffs or pharmaceutical products. These devices combining nanotechnology and fibre optics are part of his PhD thesis read at the Public University of Navarre (NUP/UPNA).

Novel photo-bioelectrochemical cells point to a new method to photonically drive biocatalytic fuel cells while generating electrical power from solar energy.

Visualization of the structure of the created quantum knot. Each colorful band represents a set of nearby directions of the quantum field that is knotted. Note that each band is twisted and linked with the others once. Untying the knot requires the bands to separate, which is not possible without breaking them.