Science

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Stretchy hydrogel 'Band-Aid' senses, lights up, delivers medicine: Water-based 'Band-Aid' senses temperature, lights up, and delivers medicine to the skin

MIT engineers have designed what may be the Band-Aid of the future: a sticky, stretchy, gel-like material that can incorporate temperature sensors, LED lights, and other electronics, as well as tiny, drug-delivering reservoirs and channels. The "smart wound dressing" releases medicine in response to changes in skin temperature and can be designed to light up if, say, medicine is running low.

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A new stretchy hydrogel can be embedded with various electronics. Here, a sheet of hydrogel is bonded to a matrix of polymer islands (red) that can encapsulate electronic components such as semiconductor chips, LED lights, and temperature sensors.

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New approaches for hybrid solar cells: Nanostructured germanium for portable photovoltaics and battery electrodes

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Filled with suitable organic polymers the highly porous germanium nanofilm becomes a hybrid solar cell. Because the germanium nanostructure forms an inverse opal-structure, the material shimmers like opal.

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Seeing viruses in a new light: New method for observing viruses may shed light on how to stop them

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Optical fiber with a nano-scale channel

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Cost-Effective Method Measures Industrial Water, Wastewater Pollutants Quickly, Accurately

Cost-Effective Method Measures Industrial Water, Wastewater Pollutants Quickly, Accurately

The application of the sensor decreases the cost to detect toxic materials, including arsenic in test samples. In addition, the sensor analyzes the characteristics of chemicals faster than the conventional methods.

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Guided ultrasound plus nanoparticle chemotherapy cures tumors in mice

Thermal ablation with magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound surgery (MRgFUS) is a noninvasive technique for treating fibroids and cancer. New research from UC Davis shows that combining the technique with chemotherapy can allow complete destruction of tumors in mice.

MRgFUS combines an ultrasound beam that heats and destroys tissue with a magnetic resonance imaging to guide the beam and monitor the effects of treatment. The effectiveness of the treatment can be limited by the need to spare normal tissue or critical structures on the tumor margins, as well as the need to eliminate micrometastases.

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Tiny Amounts of Lysozyme Measurable by Using Nanobiosensors

Iranian researchers designed a biosensor with low detection limit that can accurately measure a type of protein in real samples.

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Measuring nanoscale features with fractions of light: Shows promise for next-gen semiconductor production

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers are seeing the light, but in an altogether different way. And how they are doing it just might be the semiconductor industry's ticket for extending its use of optical microscopes to measure computer chip features that are approaching 10 nanometers, tiny fractions of the wavelength of light.

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Drawing illustrates how tiny changes in wavy images scattered from lines in a grid-like array can be reconstructed when paired with advanced optical and computational techniques. Lines are 15 nanometers wide, 30 times smaller than the wavelength used to “see” them. The pattern depicts estimated uncertainties in the experimental data. Coloring corresponds to the magnitude of the variance for specific data points.

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IU chemists craft molecule that self-assembles into flower-shaped crystalline patterns:'Tricarb' research laid foundation for university's new $1.2 million materials science grant from National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation has awarded $1.2 million to three research groups at Indiana University to advance research on self-assembling molecules and computer-aided design software required to create the next generation of solar cells, circuits, sensors and other technology.

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The ring-shaped macromolecule tricarbazolo triazolophane, or "tricarb," self-assembles into highly organized, multilayered patterns.

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UTA researcher to build internal nanotechnology device to simplify blood sugar testing: Medical technologies

What if a diabetic never had to prick a finger to monitor his or her blood-glucose levels, and instead could rely on an internal, nanoscale device to analyze blood continuously and transmit readings to a hand-held scanner?

That's the life-transforming medical technology that Kyungsuk Yum, an assistant professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, is developing with support from a $100,000 Texas Medical Research Collaborative grant.

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Researchers from Deakin and Drexel develop super-absorbent material to soak up oil spills

In hopes of limiting the disastrous environmental effects of massive oil spills, materials scientists from Drexel University and Deakin University, in Australia, have teamed up to manufacture and test a new material, called a boron nitride nanosheet, that can absorb up to 33 times its weight in oils and organic solvents--a trait that could make it an important technology for quickly mitigating these costly accidents.

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This is a boron nitride nanosheet next to spike of a plant.