Lifeboat Foundation

NIST researchers have explored in unprecedented detail a new breed of catalysts that allow some chemical reactions, which normally require high heat, to proceed at room temperature. The energy-saving catalysts use sunlight or another light source to excite localized surface plasmons (LSPs)—oscillations of groups of electrons on the surface of certain metal nanoparticles, such as gold, silver and aluminum. The energy derived from the LSP oscillations drives chemical reactions among molecules that adhere to the nanoparticles.

Scientists had previously shown that molecular hydrogen can be split into its individual atoms by the energy generated by the LSP oscillations. The NIST team has now discovered a second LSP-mediated reaction that proceeds at room temperature. In this reaction, LSPs excited in gold nanoparticles transform two molecules of carbon monoxide into carbon and carbon dioxide. The reaction, which ordinarily requires a minimum temperature of 400 degrees C., plays an important role in converting carbon monoxide into widely used carbon-based materials such as carbon nanotubes and graphite.

Probing the nanoparticles with an electron beam and combining the data with simulations, the NIST researchers pinpointed the sites on the gold nanoparticles where the reactions occurred. They also measured the intensity of the LSPs and mapped how the energy associated with the oscillations varied from place to place inside the nanoparticles. The measurements are key steps in understanding the role of LSPs for initiating reactions at room temperature, mitigating the need to heat the samples.

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The optical laser has grown to a $10 billion global technology market since it was invented in 1960, and has led to Nobel prizes for Art Ashkin for developing optical tweezing and Gerard Mourou and Donna Strickland for work with pulsed lasers. Now a Rochester Institute of Technology researcher has teamed up with experts at the University of Rochester to create a different kind of laser—a laser for sound, using the optical tweezer technique invented by Ashkin.

In the newest issue of Nature Photonics, the researchers propose and demonstrate a phonon laser using an optically levitated nanoparticle. A phonon is a quantum of energy associated with a sound wave and optical tweezers test the limits of quantum effects in isolation and eliminates physical disturbances from the surrounding environment. The researchers studied the mechanical vibrations of the nanoparticle, which is levitated against gravity by the force of radiation at the focus of an optical laser beam.

“Measuring the position of the nanoparticle by detecting the light it scatters, and feeding that information back into the tweezer beam allows us to create a laser-like situation,” said Mishkat Bhattacharya, associate professor of physics at RIT and a theoretical quantum optics researcher. “The mechanical vibrations become intense and fall into perfect sync, just like the electromagnetic waves emerging from an optical laser.”

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Humanity could be on the verge of an unprecedented merging of human biology with advanced technology, fusing our thoughts and knowledge directly with the cloud in real-time – and this incredible turning point may be just decades away, scientists say.

In a new research paper exploring what they call the ‘human brain/cloud interface’, scientists explain the technological underpinnings of what such a future system might be, and also address the barriers we’ll need to address before this sci-fi dream becomes reality.

At its core, the brain/cloud interface (B/CI) is likely to be made possible by imminent advances in the field of nanorobotics, proposes the team led by senior author and nanotechnology researcher Robert Freitas Jr from the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing in California.

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Biophysicists from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich have used a new variant of super-resolution microscopy to visualize all the strands of a DNA-based nanostructure for the first time. The method promises to optimize the design of such structures for specific applications.

The term ‘DNA origami’ refers to a method for the design and self-assembly of complex molecular structures with nanometer precision. The technique exploits the base-pairing interactions between single-stranded DNA molecules of known sequence to generate intricate three-dimensional nanostructures with predefined shapes in arbitrarily large numbers. The method has great potential for a wide range of applications in basic biological and biophysical research. Thus researchers are already using DNA origami to develop functional nanomachines. In this context, the ability to characterize the quality of the assembly process is vital. Now a team led by Ralf Jungmann, Professor of Experimental Physics at LMU Munich and Head of the Molecular Imaging and Bionanotechnology lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry (Martinsried), reports an important advance in this regard.

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A team has proposed using nanobots to create the ‘internet of thoughts’, where instant knowledge could be downloaded just by thinking it.

An international team of scientists led by members of UC Berkeley and the US Institute for Molecular Manufacturing predicts that exponential progress in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, artificial intelligence (AI) and computation will lead this century to the development of a human ‘brain-cloud interface’ (B-CI).

Writing in Frontiers in Neuroscience, the team said that a B-CI would connect neurons and synapses in the brain to vast cloud computing networks in real time.

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A field 400 times as strong as an MRI should reveal new physics of nanoscale materials.

The periodic table of chemical elements turns 150 this year. The anniversary is a chance to shine a light on particular elements – some of which seem ubiquitous but which ordinary people beyond the world of chemistry probably don’t know much about.

One of these is gold, which was the subject of my postgraduate degrees in chemistry, and which I have been studying for almost 30 years. In chemistry, gold can be considered a late starter when compared to most other metals. It was always considered to be chemically “inert” – but in recent decades it has flourished and a variety of interesting applications have emerged.

Scientists say our brains will connect to computers within decades to form an ‘internet of thoughts’ that will provide instant access to information…

Forward-leaning scientists and researchers say advancements in society’s computers and biotechnology will go straight to our heads — literally.

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Imagine a future technology that would provide instant access to the world’s knowledge and artificial intelligence, simply by thinking about a specific topic or question. Communications, education, work, and the world as we know it would be transformed.

Writing in Frontiers in Neuroscience, an international collaboration led by researchers at UC Berkeley and the US Institute for Molecular Manufacturing predicts that exponential progress in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, AI, and computation will lead this century to the development of a “Human Brain/Cloud Interface” (B/CI), that connects brain cells to vast cloud-computing networks in real time.