'Rapid response to Ebola' grant

Health care workers must diagnose and isolate Ebola victims at an early stage to have a chance to save them and prevent the virus from spreading. But the most sensitive and quickest diagnostic test produces a small percentage of false negative results that undermine efforts to control the deadly agent. A $100,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant has been awarded to develop a method to reduce the risk of the virus going undetected.

Engineer receives NSF CAREER award for nanotechnology research, educational outreach

A prestigious award will support a Kansas State University engineer's research on nanosheets and will help organize educational activities for high school students and teachers.

Nanoscale lubrication of ionic surfaces

Friction impacts motion, hence the need to control friction forces. Currently, this is accomplished by mechanistic means or lubrication, but experiments conducted by researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have uncovered a way of controlling friction on ionic surfaces at the nanoscale using electrical stimulation and ambient water vapor.

Stomach acid-powered micromotors get their first test in a living animal (w/video)

Scientists have shown that a micromotor fueled by stomach acid can take a bubble-powered ride inside a mouse. These tiny motors, each about one-fifth the width of a human hair, may someday offer a safer and more efficient way to deliver drugs or diagnose tumors.

New pathway to valleytronics

A potential avenue to quantum computing currently generating quite the buzz in the high-tech industry is 'valleytronics', in which information is coded based on the wavelike motion of electrons moving through certain two-dimensional (2D) semiconductors. Now, a promising new pathway to valleytronic technology has been uncovered.

The laser pulse that gets shorter all by itself

Ultrashort laser pulses have become an indispensable tool for atomic and molecular research; a new technology makes creating short infrared pulses easy and cheap.

Carbon nanoballs can greatly contribute to sustainable energy supply

Researchers have discovered that the insulation plastic used in high-voltage cables can withstand a 26 per cent higher voltage if nanometer-sized carbon balls are added. This could result in enormous efficiency gains in the power grids of the future, which are needed to achieve a sustainable energy system.

'Bulletproof' battery: Kevlar membrane for safer, thinner lithium rechargeables

New battery technology should be able to prevent the kind of fires that grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliners in 2013. The innovation is an advanced barrier between the electrodes in a lithium-ion battery.

Peptide nanoparticle delivery of oligonucleotide drugs into cells

Therapeutic oligonucleotide analogs represent a new and promising family of drugs that act on nucleic acid targets such as RNA or DNA; however, their effectiveness has been limited due to difficulty crossing the cell membrane. A new delivery approach based on cell-penetrating peptide nanoparticles can efficiently transport charge-neutral oligonucleotide analogs into cells.