Scientific American Topic - Nanotechnology

Ohm Run: One-Atom-Tall Wires Could Extend Life of Moore's Law

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:05:00 EST

There may be a bit more room at the bottom, after all.

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Gingrich Tops Scientific American 's Geek Guide to the 2012 GOP Candidates

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 05:00:00 EST

The contenders for the Republican nomination in the 2012 U.S. presidential election may appear to be a fairly uniform group of middle-aged white conservatives, but when it comes to issues of science, technology and overall geek cred, none of these candidates is cut from the same cloth. In fact, Newt Gingrich nudges out Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in Scientific American 's overall ranking, based on the former Congressman's engagement in issues related to energy, the Internet and military weapons, combined with his mastery of top online tools such as Twitter and a healthy appetite for science nonfiction.

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Speaking Out on the "Quiet Crisis" (preview)

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 08:00:00 EST

When Shirley Ann Jackson was in elementary school in the 1950s, she would prowl her family’s backyard, collecting bumblebees, yellow jackets and wasps. She would bottle them in mayonnaise jars and test which flowers they liked best and which species were the most aggressive. She dutifully recorded her observations in a notebook, discovering, for instance, that she could alter their daily rhythms by putting them under the dark porch in the middle of the day. The most important lesson she took away from these experiments was not about science but compassion. “Don’t imprison any living thing for very long,” she says in a mellow drawl that belies her reputation as a lightning-fast thinker and influential physicist. “I have never been a fan of dead insect collections.”

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World-Changing Ideas (preview)

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 11:30:00 EST

Revolutions often spring from the simplest of ideas. When a young inventor named Steve Jobs wanted to provide computing power to “people who have no computer experience and don’t particularly care to gain any,” he ushered us from the cumbersome technology of mainframes and command-line prompts to the breezy advances of the Macintosh and iPhone. His idea helped to forever change our relationship with technology.

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Taut-Tech: Smaller, Softer Artificial Muscles to Help Bring Power to Toys and Cell Phones

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 15:00:00 EST

Artificial muscles already help human eyes blink , robotic fish swim and mechanical arms in space replace solar panels. Now a new, potentially wearable type of artificial muscle is expected to do all of those things while being lighter, smaller, softer and cheaper. [More]

Elephant Illustrates Important Point

Mon, 07 Nov 2011 09:00:00 EST

The tweet, posted on September 1, 2011, by @qikipedia, read in its entirety: “It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of cling film.” Some detective work revealed that the statement originated with mechanical engineering professor James Hone of Columbia University, who said in 2008, “Our research establishes graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel. It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap.”

The professor’s contention raises numerous questions, the first one being “What is graphene?” Microsoft Word doesn’t know--it keeps giving graphene the red squiggly underline, which means, “Surely you mean grapheme.” (I surely don’t, despite the fact that I’m littering this page with graphemes.)

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Tiny Toilers: Precision-Controlled Microbots Show They Could Take On Industrial-Scale Jobs [Video]

Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:40:00 EST

A pioneering research institute that introduced the computer world to the mouse , hypertext and networks is now setting its sights a bit lower. A team of engineers at SRI International , a nonprofit contract research and development lab in Menlo Park, Calif., has harnessed simple, magnetically levitated microbots to build structures and perform other sophisticated tasks at small size scales. [More]

10 Unsolved Mysteries in Chemistry (preview)

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 07:05:00 EST

1 How Did Life Begin? The moment when the first living beings arose from inanimate matter almost four billion years ago is still shrouded in mystery. How did relatively simple molecules in the primordial broth give rise to more and more complex compounds? And how did some of those compounds begin to process energy and replicate (two of the defining characteristics of life)? At the molecular level, all of those steps are, of course, chemical reactions, which makes the question of how life began one of chemistry.

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Sound Sends Electron to Specific Location

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 05:00:08 EST

The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line, but try telling that to electrons: when current flows down a wire, these particles zig and zag, moving indirectly from one end to the other. But now researchers have sped single electrons straight to their destinations using sound. The work is in the journal Nature. [Rob McNeil et al., " On-demand single-electron transfer between distant quantum dots "]

An electron’s quantum state carries information, making it important for a viable quantum computer. As the particle staggers down a wire, however, its state loses coherence--the electron “forgets” the information it carried. [More]

Carbon Nanotubes Impale Compulsive Cells

Tue, 20 Sep 2011 13:55:08 EST

Asbestos increases the risk for certain cancers. The fibers are thought to do so by skewering cells, setting off chemical reactions that lead to inflammation, DNA damage and cell death. Some studies have suggested carbon nanotubes might have similar effects--because they're long and spiky, like asbestos. But why would a cell draw in a nanotube, essentially impaling itself on a microscopic lance? [More]

Electrified Bacterial Filaments Remove Uranium from Groundwater

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 18:10:00 EST

From Nature magazine.

Hair-like filaments called pili enable some bacteria to remove uranium from contaminated groundwater. The discovery, published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , could aid in the development of radioactivity clean-up technologies. [More]

Buckyball Traps Single Water Molecule

Thu, 04 Aug 2011 17:44:08 EST

The carbon molecule known as a buckyball, a member of the fullerene family, can act as a cage for a variety of other chemicals. And now researchers have used one to trap a single molecule of water. The work appears in the journal Science . [Kei Kurotobi and Yasujiro Murata, "A Single Molecule of Water Encapsulated in Fullerene C60 "]

Placing a molecule that's essential to life within a spherically symmetrical one could let researchers learn more about each. [More]

A Future with Science

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:15:00 EST

Two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, modernization is the watchword in Russia--with science as a vital means to that end.* During the spring meeting of the 14 international editions of Scientific American , we gathered in Moscow, and our hosts introduced us to many of the surrounding issues.

Scientific American has had a long history in this country, where it has been available in translation for 28 years. The edition’s head, Sergei Kapitza, is a beloved researcher, science popularizer and TV personality--the Carl Sagan of Russia. When the Soviet system unraveled, however, science took a backseat to other domestic matters. Researchers lost funding and social status, crippling the former science powerhouse. Up to 35,000 scientists emigrated--a loss that the government is now trying to rectify with targeted programs.

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Nanoparticles Enlisted to Impede Alzheimer's-Inducing Brain Plaque

Fri, 20 May 2011 06:00:00 EST

Nanoparticles have been investigated in recent years as tools for defending the brain against neurotoxic proteins that may contribute to the onset of several different neurodegenerative disorders including Alzheimer's disease . Such proteins, in particular amyloid-beta peptides, are thought to play a role depositing fibrous plaques on the brain that damage synapses (the contact points between neurons) and lead to a decline in cognitive capabilities . [More]

More Information on Quantum Entanglement

Wed, 18 May 2011 07:30:00 EST

» Giant page of links to all sorts of quantum experiments

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7 Radical Energy Solutions (preview)

Mon, 16 May 2011 06:02:00 EST

Many people are working to harness renewable energy sources more effectively and to enhance energy efficiency. All good. Most of the efforts will probably result in welcomed but incremental improvements, however. Radical innovations are needed to drastically change the energy game.

For years scientists and engineers have touted some fantastic schemes: satellites that beam solar power to receivers on land; wind machines that hover in the atmosphere, generating electricity. Down on earth, however, researchers have recently received substantial government or private funding for a remarkable variety of long-shot technologies in a few key areas. The projects we profile here are leading examples of the payoffs that are possible--if, of course, the inventors manage to overcome daunting hurdles to bringing practical, mass-produced and affordable technologies to fruition. [More]

Bursting MRSA's Bubble: Using Nanotech to Fight Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:00:00 EST

Antibiotics have proved to be a valuable weapon in the fight against infection, but their popularity has also become their undoing. Although the drugs cripple harmful microbes from within, bacteria that survive such sabotage tend to develop resistance that makes them even more dangerous . To counter this, a team of researchers led by IBM Research–Almaden in San Jose, Calif., and Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology are developing a technique that enlists polymer-based nanoparticles to supplement antibiotics by destroying bacteria protective membranes, ensuring that their morphing days are through. Just as important, upon completing their mission these nanoassassins would biodegrade harmlessly within the body. [More]

Nanotubes Shrink Tests for Material Integrity

Mon, 28 Mar 2011 11:32:08 EST

Airplane manufacturers have been changing over from aluminum to advanced composite materials. These lighter, stronger composites are made of fibers of carbon or glass embedded in a second material, often plastic.

One advantage is that composite-based planes use significantly less fuel. But there’s an important disadvantage. When aluminum is hit, you can see a dent. Composites, though, spring back to the original shape, which could hide internal damage.

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SunShot: Lowering the Price of Electricity from the Sun

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:01:00 EST

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.--Silicon translates sunshine into electricity--and Earth receives enough sunshine in a daylight hour to supply all of humanity's energy needs for a year. But despite being as common as sand, photovoltaic panels made from silicon--or any of a host of other semiconducting materials --are not cheap, especially when compared with the cost of electricity produced by burning coal or natural gas. The U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) aims to change that by bringing down the cost of solar electricity via a new program dubbed " SunShot ," an homage to President John Kennedy's "moon shot" pledge in 1961. [More]

The Immortal Ambitions of Ray Kurzweil: A Review of Transcendent Man

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 06:00:00 EST

Against a swirling montage of cosmic birth and destruction, and newsreel-style stills from his personal history, the celebrated inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil sits in silhouette, contemplating death. He broods over mortality's toll in waste and pain, and the hopelessness and loss that people must experience in their last moments of life. "It's such a profoundly sad, lonely feeling that I really can't bear it," he admits.

Then, cheerfully, he adds, "So I go back to thinking about how I'm not going to die."

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