Science

Tags:

Asylum Research Introduces blueDrive™ Photothermal Excitation For Atomic Force Microscopy Imaging and Nanomechanics

Asylum Research, an Oxford Instruments company, announces blueDrive photothermal excitation, an option available exclusively for Asylum's Cypher™ Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs). blueDrive makes tapping mode imaging remarkably simple, incredibly stable, and strikingly accurate. blueDrive replaces the conventional piezoacoustic excitation mechanism, instead using a blue laser to directly excite the AFM cantilever photothermally. This results in an ideal cantilever drive response in both air and liquids, which provides significant performance and ease of use benefits for tapping mode imaging.

48487.jpg
blueDrive photothermal excitation produces ideal drive responses in both air and liquid. Here, the response of a small, high-frequency cantilever was measured using blueDrive. In both air and liquid, the blueDrive response almost perfectly matches the expected simple harmonic oscillator response.

Tags:

Build-A-Nanoparticle

Nanoparticles, which range from 1-100 nanometers in size, are roughly the same size as biomolecules such as proteins, antibodies, and membrane receptors. Because of this size similarity, nanoparticles can mimic biomolecules and therefore have a huge potential for application in the biomedical field.

48488.jpg
An engineered Silicon-Silver nanoparticle of ~10 nanometers in size.

Tags:

India Launches Mars Mission

India has launched a space probe to Mars, seeking to become one of only a few nations to reach the Red Planet.

Tags:

Nanocomposites Help Researchers to Take Samples from Pollutants Released in Air

Iranian researchers from Hamedan University of Medical Sciences in association with their colleagues from Lorestan University succeeded in the production of a needle trap device for micro-extraction sampling of pollutants emitted in air by using silicate nanocomposite adsorbents and single-walled and multi-walled carbon nanotubes as well as graphene nano-sheets.

48452_0.jpg

Tags:

Synaptic transistor learns while it computes: First of its kind, brain-inspired device looks toward highly efficient and fast parallel computing

It doesn't take a Watson to realize that even the world's best supercomputers are staggeringly inefficient and energy-intensive machines.

48450.jpg
Several prototypes of the synaptic transistor are visible on this silicon chip.

Tags:

Hubble's New Shot of Proxima Centauri, Our Nearest Neighbor

hs-2013-43-a-small_web.jpg

Tags:

New hydrogel from IBN and INM improves delivery of anti-cancer drug

The Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) and IBM Research (IBM) have developed a new non-toxic hydrogel that is capable of shrinking breast cancer tumors more rapidly than existing therapies. As described in their publication in Advanced Functional Materials1, the Vitamin E-incorporated hydrogel can be easily injected under the skin without causing any inflammatory response, and releases anti-cancer drugs in a sustained manner over several weeks. This reduces the need for frequent drug administration, paving the way for the tumors to be eradicated in fewer treatments.

48446.jpg
Herceptin was loaded into Vitamin E gel by convenient mixing. The Herceptin-loaded hydrogel was tested in mice bearing breast cancer. Herceptin was preferably accumulated in the tumor tissues as compared to the healthy animal organs.

Tags:

Something Flare-y This Way Comes: The mini-Halloween Storms of 2013

red.jpg
Blood-red auroras over Maryland on Halloween 2003.

Tags:

Galaxy Growth Examined Like Rings of a Tree

pia17554-640_0.jpg
New evidence from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and Galaxy Evolution Explorer (GALEX) missions provide support for the "inside-out" theory of galaxy evolution, which holds that star formation starts at the core of the galaxy and spreads outward.

Tags:

Columbia Engineers Develop New Device Architecture for 2D Materials, Making Electrical Contact from the 1D Edge: New Approach Produces Cleanest Graphene Yet, with Previously Unrealized Performance

Columbia Engineering researchers have experimentally demonstrated for the first time that it is possible to electrically contact an atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) material only along its one-dimensional (1D) edge, rather than contacting it from the top, which has been the conventional approach. With this new contact architecture, they have developed a new assembly technique for layered materials that prevents contamination at the interfaces, and, using graphene as the model 2D material, show that these two methods in combination result in the cleanest graphene yet realized.

48437.jpg