Blog
Microwaving Mars and the Moon
Research conducted by material scientists may lead to the ability to extract water from the Moon and possibly Mars by shooting microwave beams into their surface, according to Bill Kaukler, Associate Research Professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. The Phoenix Mars lander scratched just two inches...
Blog
Healing Nanoparticles
Purdue University researchers have developed a method of using nanoparticles to help treat injured brain and spinal cord cells. A team led by Richard Borgens of the School of Veterinary Medicine's Center for Paralysis Research and Welden School of Biomedical Engineering coated silica nanoparticles with a polymer to target...
Blog
Chemical Weapon Detecting Compound
A light-transmitting compound called (A)ZrPSe 6, where A can be potassium, rubidium, or cesium, has a difficult chemical structure that does not crystallize well. Scientists from the Argonne National Laboratory and Northwestern University were able to determine the structure of the compound using the uniquely...
Blog
Software Predicts Fungal Genes
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a computer program that trains itself to predict genes in the DNA sequences of fungi. Understanding the recently sequenced fungal genomes can help in developing and producing critical pharmaceuticals. Gene prediction can also help to identify...
Blog
Nano 50 Awards at the NNEC
The sixth annual National Nanoengineering Conference returns to Boston this year on November 12-13 at the Boston Colonnade Hotel, featuring the fourth annual Nano 50 Awards, recognizing top 50 technologies, innovators, and products that have significantly impacted the development of nanotechnology.
This year's...
Blog
Protein Detector
Scientists from Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research and the British Columbia Cancer Agency have demonstrated a new instrument that makes it possible to detect and quantify multiple different clinically important proteins in a single tumor sample using conventional staining. Currently, pathologists usually need a separate...
Blog
Insulin-Producing Cells
Researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have transformed cells from human skin into cells that produce insulin, the hormone used to treat diabetes. The breakthrough may one day lead to new treatments for the millions of people affected by the disease, researchers say.
The...
Blog
Bluetooth Aids the Blind
A Bluetooth system developed at the University of Michigan tells blind or sighted pedestrians about points of interest along their path as they pass them. Called Talking Points, the system is the first known to use Bluetooth, allowing people to operate it entirely with voice commands, and incorporate community-generated...
Blog
Organic Photovoltaics
Scientists at South Dakota State University (SDSU) are working with new materials they say can be used to make devices to convert sunlight to electricity cheaper and more efficiently. Assistant professor Qiquan Qiao in SDSU's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science said so-called organic photovoltaics, or...
Blog
Quantum Computing
Researchers at the University of Michigan, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the University of California at San Diego recently demonstrated the fastest quantum computer bit that exploits the main advantage of the qubit over the conventional bit. The scientists used lasers to create an initialized quantum state of this...
Blog
Current Attractions
Each month, NTB highlights tech briefs related to a particular area of technology in a special section called Technology Focus. Here are some of the technologies featured in the September issue focus on Nano Materials & Manufacturing.
Blog: Medical
Breast Cancer Detection
Scientists from Finland, Germany, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) have developed a new X-ray technique for the early detection of breast cancer. Current X-ray mammography fails to identify about 10 to 20% of palpable breast cancers because glandular tissues can mask cancer lesions. Better results...
Blog
Cutting Solar Cell Costs
University of Utah engineers devised a new way to slice thin wafers of the chemical element germanium for use in the most efficient type of solar power cells. The new method should lower the cost of such cells by reducing the waste and breakage of the brittle semiconductor. Primarily used on NASA, military, and...
Blog
High-Temp Magnetic Sensors
University of Chicago scientists have discovered how to make magnetic sensors capable of operating at the high temperatures required for engines in future cars and aircraft. The key involves slightly diluting samples of a well-known semiconductor material, called indium antimonide, which is valued for its...
Blog
Gold Power
Gold's ability to catalyze the conversion of toxic carbon monoxide (CO) into more benign carbon dioxide (CO2) at room temperature lay hidden until the 1980s. Since the discovery, scientists have sought to determine exactly how gold nanoparticles function as catalysts. Now researchers from Lehigh University, Cardiff University, and the...
Blog: Imaging
X-Ray Eyes
The advantage of using two eyes to see the world around us has long been associated with our capacity to see in 3-D. Now, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute scientist Mark Changizi has uncovered an eye-opening advantage to binocular vision: our ability to see through things. An assistant professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer,...
Blog
Semiconductors For Printing
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology
(NIST) and Seoul National University (SNU) have learned how to tweak a new class of polymer-based semiconductors that could enable the design of practical,
large-scale manufacturing techniques for a wide range of printable, flexible...
Blog: Energy
Less Corny Ethanol
A yeast geneticist on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is close to developing mutant yeast for ethanol production that would reduce or eliminate the need to use corn to make the alternative fuel. When corn is used to make ethanol, corn kernels are ground to produce starch and the starch...
Blog: Aerospace
Hubble Solves Mystery
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has found an answer to a long-standing puzzle by resolving giant but delicate filaments shaped by a strong magnetic field around the active galaxy NGC 1275. One of the closest giant elliptical galaxies, NGC 1275 hosts a supermassive black hole. Energetic activity of gas swirling near the black...
Blog
Artificial Bones
Engineers at Georgia Tech have used skin cells to create artificial bones that mimic the ability of natural bone to blend into other tissues, such as tendons or ligaments. The artificial bones display a gradual change from bone to softer tissue rather than the sudden shift of previously developed artificial tissue, allowing them...
Blog
MIT At NNEC
Register today for NASA Tech Briefs' National Nano Engineering Conference (NNEC), the premier event focused on current and future developments in engineering innovations at the nanoscale, as well as the commercialization of nanotechnology. The event returns to Boston this year on November 12-13 at the Boston Colonnade Hotel,...
Blog
Making Drugs From Dead Cells
Costly drugs to treat conditions such as cancer and arthritis could be manufactured more cheaply with a new technique developed by scientists at the University of Edinburgh that uses cell cultures removed from dead cells. Up to now, these medicines have been expensive to make due to the time-consuming,...
Blog: Software
Sign Language Software
A group at the University of Washington has developed software that enables deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans to use sign language over a mobile phone. This is the first time two-way real-time video communication has been demonstrated over cell phones in the U.S. Communication rates on U.S. cellular networks allow about...
Blog
NNEC
NASA Tech Briefs' National Nano Engineering Conference (NNEC) is the premier event focused on current and future developments in engineering innovations at the nanoscale, as well as the commercialization of nanotechnology. The event returns to Boston this year on November 12-13 at the Boston Colonnade Hotel, featuring the fourth annual Nano...
Blog
Nanoparticles Speed Light
Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania have theorized a way to increase the speed of pulses of light that bound across chains of tiny metal particles to well past the speed of light by altering the particle shape. Under the theory, nanosized metal chains would serve as building blocks for high-frequency...
Blog
Polymer Electric Storage
The proliferation of solar, wind, and tidal electric generation, and the emergence of hybrid electric automobiles demands flexible and reliable methods of high-capacity electrical storage. A team of Penn State materials scientists is developing ferroelectric polymer-based capacitors that can deliver power more rapidly,...
Blog
Quantum Dots
Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), a collaborative center of the University of Maryland and NIST, have reported a new way to fine-tune the light coming from quantum dots, by manipulating them with pairs of lasers. The accomplishment could accelerate...
Blog
Telltale Fish Embryos
Purdue University researchers have harnessed the sensitivity of days-old fish embryos to create a fiber optic-based tool to detect a range of harmful chemicals. By measuring rates of oxygen use in developing fish, the technology could reveal the presence of minute levels of toxic substances. It could thus warn of...
Blog
Pinhole Camera
The pinhole camera has inspired a lens-less, three-dimensional imaging technology that produces some of the brightest, sharpest X-ray holograms of microscopic objects to date. The technology was developed by scientists at the Advanced Light Source of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and...
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Webcasts
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