Monthly Archives: March 2017

Team makes high-quality graphene with soybeans

A breakthrough by CSIRO-led scientists has made the world's strongest material more commercially viable, thanks to the humble soybean.

Engineering researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have designed ultra-flexible, nanoelectronic thread (NET) brain probes that can achieve more reliable long-term neural recording than existing probes and don't ...

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have created an atomic force microscope on a chip, dramatically shrinking the sizeand, hopefully, the price tagof a high-tech device commonly used to characterize material ...

Lithium-ion batteries have become essential in everyday technology. But these power sources can explode under certain circumstances and are not ideal for grid-scale energy storage. Sodium-ion batteries are potentially a safer ...

Determining the exact configuration of proteins and other complex biological molecules is an important step toward understanding their functions, including how they bind with receptors in the body. But such imaging is difficult ...

Pioneering research published in Nature by Professor Feng Ding's team from the Center for Multidimensional Carbon Materials, within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS), in collaboration with Professor Jin Zhang's team, ...

Five years of hard work and a little "cosmic luck" led Rice University researchers to a new method to obtain structural details on molecules in biomembranes.

Viruses are extremely efficient at targeting and delivering cargo to cells. In the journal ACS Nano, researchers report they have harnessed this well-honed abilityminus the part that makes us sickto develop virus-like ...

A chunk of conductive graphene foam reinforced by carbon nanotubes can support more than 3,000 times its own weight and easily bounce back to its original height, according to Rice University scientists.

A new, specially coated iron oxide nanoparticle developed by a team at MIT and elsewhere could provide an alternative to conventional gadolinium-based contrast agents used for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) procedures. ...

(Phys.org)A team of researchers with IBM Research in Switzerland and the University of Warwick in the U.K. has successfully created a triangulene molecule by manipulating a precursor molecule physically using a scanning ...

Quantum mechanics, the physics that governs nature at the atomic and subatomic scale, contains a host of new physical phenomena to explore quantum states at the nanoscale. Though tricky, there are ways to exploit these inherently ...

A tiny, transparent device that can fit into a contact lens has a bright future, potentially helping a range of scientific endeavors from biomedicine to geology.

Tiny carbon dots have, for the first time, been applied to intracellular imaging and tracking of drug delivery involving various optical and vibrational spectroscopic-based techniques such as fluorescence, Raman, and hyperspectral ...

Imagine patterning and visualizing silicon at the atomic level, something which, if done successfully, will revolutionize the quantum and classical computing industry. A team of scientists in Edmonton, Canada has done just ...

An organic-inorganic hybrid material may be the future for more efficient technologies that can generate electricity from either light or heat or devices that emit light from electricity.

Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), which is ubiquitously used as a solid lubricant, has recently been shown to have a two-dimensional (2D) form that is similar to graphene. But, when thinned down to less than a nanometer thick, ...

For the first time, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and collaborators have captured a movie of how large populations of carbon nanotubes grow and align themselves.

SpaceX, the upstart company, and NASA, the government agency, both have plans to venture to Mars and orbit the moon. But that doesn't mean they've launched a new space race.

The International Potato Center (CIP) launched a series of experiments to discover if potatoes can grow under Mars atmospheric conditions and thereby prove they are also able to grow in extreme climates on Earth. This Phase ...

An international team of researchers has developed a computer model that makes predictions regarding four major stressors to the world's oceans over the next several decades. In their paper published in the journal Nature ...

The bright central area of Ceres' Occator Crater, known as Cerealia Facula, is approximately 30 million years younger than the crater in which it lies, according to a new study in the Astronomical Journal. Scientists used ...

Time crystals may sound like something from science fiction, having more to do with time travel or Dr. Who. These strange materialsin which atoms and molecules are arranged across space and timeare in fact quite real, ...

An international team of researchers has developed a proof of concept for a working hand-held chemical scanner. In their paper published in the journal Nano Letters, the team describes their ideas and their belief that they ...

Ancient DNA found in the dental plaque of Neandertals - our nearest extinct relative - has provided remarkable new insights into their behaviour, diet and evolutionary history, including their use of plant-based medicine ...

Although many people have argued that rising carbon dioxide levels would benefit crop production, a recent model of the effects of increased CO2 shows that it's not that simple and that elevated levels could have a much less ...

An international team of scientists led by Liang-shi Li at Indiana University has achieved a new milestone in the quest to recycle carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere into carbon-neutral fuels and others materials.

An ancient fish species with unusual scales and teeth from the Kuanti Formation in southern China may have evolved prior to the "Age of Fish", according to a study published March 8, 2017 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE ...

A geographer from the University of Sussex who is researching a huge crater in Siberia, which is expanding at a rapid rate, believes the huge hole in the ground will help scientists to map the history of the Earth's climate.

A huge mass of glowing stardust in a galaxy seen shortly after the Universe's formation has been detected by a UCL-led team of astronomers, providing new insights into the birth and explosive deaths of the very first stars.

DNA in hair samples collected from Aboriginal people across Australia in the early to mid-1900s has revealed that populations have been continuously present in the same regions for up to 50,000 years - soon after the peopling ...

A team of astronomers has doubled the number of known young, compact radio galaxiesgalaxies powered by newly energized black holes. The improved tally will help astronomers understand the relationship between the size ...

Physicists at the University of Iowa have proposed a new technique to detect and measure materials that give off weak magnetic signals or have no magnetic field at all. Their solution would use a noninvasive probe to induce ...

A new study involving biologists from Monash University Australia has found that despite their very different ancestors, dolphins and crocodiles evolved similarly-shaped skulls to feed on similar prey.

University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science scientist Mark Donelan and his Norwegian Meteorological Institute colleague captured new information about extreme waves, as one of the steepest ever ...

EPFL scientists have carried out a genomic and evolutionary study of a large and enigmatic family of human proteins, to demonstrate that it is responsible for harnessing the millions of transposable elements in the human ...

Nearly 5,000 years ago, long before the vast east-west trade routes of the Great Silk Road were traversed by Marco Polo, the foundations for these trans-Asian interaction networks were being carved by nomads moving herds ...

Biomedical engineering researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed inexpensive paper pumps that use capillary action to power portable microfluidic devices, ...

March 8, 2017 - Chemists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) have devised a versatile molecule-building tool for creating new drugs and other chemical products.

An international research team has discovered a biochemical pathway that is responsible for the development of moss cuticles. These waxy coverings of epidermal cells are the outer layer of plants and protect them from water ...

Europium silicide has for some time attracted the attention of scientists. Recognized as being promising for electronics and spintronics, this material has recently been submitted by a team of physicists from Poland, Germany ...

Polymer nanocomposites mix particles billionths of a meter (nanometers, nm) in diameter with polymers, which are long molecular chains. Often used to make injection-molded products, they are common in automobiles, fire retardants, ...

A new study by G. William Arends Professor of Microbiology at the University of Illinois Bill Metcalf with postdoctoral Fellow Dipti Nayak has documented the use of CRISPR-Cas9 mediated genome editing in the third domain ...

University of Otago physicists have found a way to control individual atoms, making them appear wherever they want them to.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists and collaborators at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) for the first time have taken 3-D snapshots of operating high explosive detonators.

Ichthyosaurs, which are similar-shaped to dolphins and sharks, but are reptiles, swam the seas for millions of years during the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. They were the first, large extinct reptiles brought ...

About 375 million years ago, certain fishes had developed powerfully strong paired fins that were capable of transporting them out of the water and onto land.

Proteins, those basic components of cells and tissues, carry out many biological functions by working with partners in networks. The dynamic nature of these networks - where proteins interact with different partners at different ...

Read the rest here:

Nanotech News - phys.org

Steven Lenhert, associate professor of biological science

Nanotechnology has become a growing part of medical research in recent years, with scientists feverishly working to see if tiny particles could revolutionize the world of drug delivery.

But many questions remain about how to effectively transport those particles and associated drugs to cells.

In an article published today in Scientific Reports, FSU Associate Professor of Biological Science Steven Lenhert takes a step forward in the understanding of nanoparticles and how they can best be used to deliver drugs.

After conducting a series of experiments, Lenhert and his colleagues found that it may be possible to boost the efficacy of medicine entering target cells via a nanoparticle.

We can enhance how cells take them up and make more drugs more potent, Lenhert said.

Initially, Lenhert and his colleagues from the University of Toronto and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology wanted to see what happened when they encapsulated silicon nanoparticles in liposomes or small spherical sacs of molecules and delivered them to HeLa cells, a standard cancer cell model.

The initial goal was to test the toxicity of silicon-based nanoparticles and get a better understanding of its biological activity.

Silicon is a non-toxic substance and has well-known optical properties that allow their nanostructures to appear fluorescent under an infrared camera, where tissue would be nearly transparent. Scientists believe it has enormous potential as a delivery agent for drugs as well as in medical imaging.

But there are still questions about how silicon behaves at such a small size.

Nanoparticles change properties as they get smaller, so scientists want to understand the biological activity, Lenhert said. For example, how does shape and size affect toxicity?

Scientists found that 10 out of 18 types of the particles, ranging from 1.5 nanometers to 6 nanometers, were significantly more toxic than crude mixtures of the material.

At first, scientists believed this could be a setback, but they then discovered the reason for the toxicity levels. The more toxic fragments also had enhanced cellular uptake.

That information is more valuable long term, Lenhert said, because it means they could potentially alter nanoparticles to enhance the potency of a given therapeutic.

The work also paves the way for researchers to screen libraries of nanoparticles to see how cells react.

This is an essential step toward the discovery of novel nanotechnology based therapeutics, Lenhert said. Theres big potential here for new therapeutics, but we need to be able to test everything first.

Other researchers contributing to the work are Aubrey Kusi-Appiah, Lida Ghazanfari and Plengchart Prommapan from Florida State University; Melanie Mastronardi, Chenxi Qian, Ken Chen and Geoffrey Ozin from the University of Toronto; and Christian Kubel from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany.

This work was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Interested in learning more? Read about this work in Lenherts own words.

Originally posted here:

FSU researchers take big step forward in nanotech-based drugs - Florida State News