EurekAlert! InContext Modules

Public Release: 23-Jan-2012

Nature Materials
Nature Materials study: Graphene 'invisible' to water
Graphene is the thinnest material known to science. The nanomaterial is so thin, in fact, water often doesn't even know it's there. A new study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute shows how the extreme thinness of graphene enables near-perfect wetting transparency. The findings could help inform a new generation of graphene-based flexible electronic devices. Additionally, the research suggests a new type of heat pipe that uses graphene-coated copper to cool computer chips.

Advanced Energy Consortium, National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research

Public Release: 23-Jan-2012
Professor Charles Lieber receives Israel's Wolf Prize
Charles Lieber, the Mark Hyman Jr. Professor of Chemistry at Harvard, was recently awarded Israel's prestigious Wolf Prize.

Public Release: 23-Jan-2012

Nano Letters
Biochip measures glucose in saliva, not blood
Engineers at Brown University have designed a biological device that can measure glucose concentrations in human saliva. The technique could eliminate the need for diabetics to draw blood to check their glucose levels. The biochip uses plasmonic interferometers and could be used to measure a range of biological and environmental substances. Results are published in Nano Letters.

National Science Foundation, Brown University

Public Release: 22-Jan-2012

Physical Review Letters
A new class of electron interactions in quantum systems
Physicists at the University of New South Wales have observed a new kind of interaction that can arise between electrons in a single-atom silicon transistor, offering a more complete understanding of the mechanisms that govern electron conduction in nano-structures at the atomic scale.

Public Release: 22-Jan-2012

Nature Physics
Cooling semiconductor by laser light
Researchers at the Niels Bohr Institute have combined two worlds – quantum physics and nano physics, and this has led to the discovery of a new method for laser cooling semiconductor membranes. Semiconductors are vital components in many electronics, and the efficient cooling of components is important for future quantum computers and ultrasensitive sensors. The new cooling method works quite paradoxically by heating the material! Using lasers, researchers cooled membrane fluctuations to minus 269 degrees C.

Public Release: 22-Jan-2012

Nature Nanotechnology
DNA motor programmed to navigate a network of tracks
A team of researchers at Kyoto University and the University of Oxford have successfully used DNA building blocks to construct a motor capable of navigating a programmable network of tracks with multiple switches.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, Clarendon Fund, Oxford–Australia Scholarship Fund, JST CREST, MEXT

Public Release: 20-Jan-2012

Nano Letters
In solar cells, tweaking the tiniest of parts yields big jump in efficiency
By tweaking the smallest of parts, a trio of University at Buffalo engineers is hoping to dramatically increase the amount of sunlight that solar cells convert into electricity.

Public Release: 20-Jan-2012

Nature Photonics
T-rays technology could help develop Star Trek-style hand-held medical scanners
Scientists have developed a new way to create Terahertz waves (T-rays) that may one day lead to biomedical detective devices similar to the 'tricorder' scanner used in Star Trek

EPSRC, Leverhulme Trust

Public Release: 19-Jan-2012

Angewandte Chemie
UC Davis researchers refine nanoparticles for more accurate delivery of cancer drugs
A new class of nanoparticles, synthesized by a UC Davis research team to prevent premature drug release, holds promise for greater accuracy and effectiveness in delivering cancer drugs to tumors.

National Institutes of Health, US Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program

Public Release: 19-Jan-2012

Science
UCI team discovers how protein in teardrops annihilates harmful bacteria
A disease-fighting protein in our teardrops has been tethered to a tiny transistor, enabling UC Irvine scientists to discover exactly how it destroys dangerous bacteria. The research could prove critical to long-term work aimed at diagnosing cancers and other illnesses in their very early stages.

NIH/National Cancer Institute, National Science Foundation

Public Release: 18-Jan-2012
German innovation award for Celitement
Environmentally compatible cement developed by KIT wins in the category of Product and Service Innovations.

Public Release: 17-Jan-2012
Researchers study how chemicals in drugs and around us impact stem cells
The grant will allow them to study the impacts of known chemical compounds on adult stem cells, providing the most substantive information to date on how many of the chemicals used every day around the world impact stem cells. The work also will seek to develop a new predictive safety screening tool that manufacturers can use to test the toxicity of new chemical compounds on stem cells. The test will be done without the use of animals and at speeds far faster than current tests.

National Institutes of Health

Public Release: 17-Jan-2012

Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems (JMEMS)
New microtweezers may build tiny 'MEMS' structures
Researchers have created new "microtweezers" capable of manipulating objects to build tiny structures, print coatings to make advanced sensors, and grab and position live stem cell spheres for research.

Public Release: 13-Jan-2012

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Energy-saving chaperon Hsp90
A special group of proteins, the so-called chaperons, helps other proteins to obtain their correct conformation. Until now scientists supposed that hydrolyzing ATP provides the energy for the large conformational changes of chaperon Hsp90. Now a research team from the Nanosystems Initiative Munich could prove that Hsp90 utilizes thermal fluctuations as the driving force for its conformational changes. The renowned journal PNAS reports on their findings.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Elite Network of Bavaria

Public Release: 12-Jan-2012
ARVO launches new journal on translational research
The Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology (ARVO) launched its third journal, Translational Vision Science & Technology (TVST), with an open call for manuscript submissions this month. TVST is an online only, peer-reviewed journal emphasizing multidisciplinary research that bridges the gap between basic research and clinical care.