After almost 12 months of waiting, ANEC welcomes the adoption of a regulatory definition of nanomaterials by the European Commission, albeit with mixed feelings.

In order to enhance the utilization of nanomaterial in biological systems, it is very important to understand the influence they impart on cellular health and function. Nanomaterials present a research challenge as very little is known about how they behave in relation to micro-organisms, particularly at the cellular and molecular levels. Most of the nanomaterials reported earlier have demonstrated to be efficient antimicrobial agents against virus, bacteria or fungus. There are scarce research reports on the growth-promoting role of nanomaterials especially with respect to microbes. Recent findings, however, have challenged this concept of antimicrobial activity of nanoparticles.

Rice University lab discovers tiny gold bars have strong plasmonic properties.

Researchers from the CNST and Arizona State University have demonstrated that the overall catalytic activity of nickel particles for the formation of carbon nanostructures is improved by the addition of a small amount of gold.

In this progress report, the properties of graphene that make it so attractive as a material for electronics is introduced to the reader. The focus then centers on current synthesis strategies for graphene and their weaknesses in terms of electronics applications are highlighted.

The existence of nanoscale clusters are shown to directly correlate with local recombination activity within the cell, regulating the overall performance of the energy conversion device.

Federal Agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI) are hosting a webinar to announce the release of the 2011 NNI Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) Research Strategy and to the discuss the development of this document and its key focus areas.

Die Bundesregierung beantwortet eine Anfrage zum Thema Chemikalienpolitik auf nationaler und europaeischer Ebene.

The possibility of a doctor using tiny robots in your body to diagnose and treat medical conditions is now one step closer to becoming reality thanks to research led by a team from the University of Wollongong.

Researchers at Northwestern University have developed a new form of graphene that does not stack. The new material - inspired by a trash can full of crumpled-up papers - is made by crumpling the graphene sheets into balls.

CEO Nimrod Litvak: Fulcrum is the first company in the world to harness proteins and nanoparticles for use in composite materials.

Fluctuations are fundamental to many physical phenomena in our everyday life, such as the phase transitions from a liquid into a gas or from a solid into a liquid. But even at absolute zero temperature, where all motion in the classical world is frozen out, special quantum mechanical fluctuations prevail that can drive the transition between two quantum phases. Researchers have now succeeded in directly observing such quantum fluctuations.

Together with colleagues from Korea, Dr. Frederik Wolff-Fabris from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has now developed and analyzed a material which possesses physical properties similar to graphene.

An international team of researchers has invented new artificial muscles strong enough to rotate objects a thousand times their own weight, but with the same flexibility of an elephant's trunk or octopus limbs.

The event, held on September 29-30 in Stockholm, was quite timely in view of the forthcoming calls for European projects, in particular the 7th EU Framework Programme in the fields of Health and Nanotechnology, with deadlines for proposal submission in November-December 2011.

NICNAS, the National Industrial Chemicals Notification and Assessment Scheme of the Australian Government regulator of industrial chemicals, commissioned a review and analysis available literature from 2007-2009 on six industrial nanomaterials, chosen as they were considered to already be in, or close to, commercial use in Australia.

Researchers of the Opto-electronic Materials section of the TU Delft and Toyota Europe have demonstrated that several mobile electrons can be produced by the absorption of a single light particle in films of coupled quantum dots. These multiple electrons can be harvested in solar cells with increased efficiency.

Forscher vom INM - Leibniz-Institut fuer Neue Materialien haben Gleitlacke aus Nanokompositen entwickelt, die als Trockenschmierstoffe zum Einsatz kommen.

A research group led by ETH Zurich has now, for the first time, visualized the motion of electrons during a chemical reaction. The new findings in the experiment are of fundamental importance for photochemistry and could also assist the design of more efficient solar cells.

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