California court revokes US EPA approval of nanosilver product

A federal appeals court in California has revoked the Environmental Protection Agency's conditional approval of a nanosilver product used in a wide range of consumer products.

Using sunlight to the max with MXenes

Researchers have found compounds of transition metals and carbon, known as a MXenes, that can efficiently evaporate water using power supplied by the sun.

Synthetic nano-bio architecture for nanocatalytic photon-to-hydrogen conversion

Researchers demonstrate that a minimalistic cell-free strategy for production of artificial transmembrane protein complexes can be employed as a chassis for the construction of functional bionanoarchitectures capable of catalyzing photon-energy-to-hydrogen transformation.

New prospects for universal memory - high speed of RAM and the capacity of flash

Researchers have found a way to control oxygen concentration in tantalum oxide films produced by atomic layer deposition. These thin films could be the basis for creating new forms of nonvolatile memory.

How close are we to a real Star Trek-style medical tricorder? (w/video)

Two teams were recently awarded the Qualcomm Tricorder X Prize for developing handheld devices that can diagnose a range of diseases and check a patient's vital signs without invasive tests - inspired by Star Trek's medical 'tricorder' device.

Researchers send DNA on sequential, and consequential, building mission

A team of scientists has developed a method to create structures whose building blocks are a millionth of a meter in size by encoding DNA with assembly instructions.

Bacteria free themselves with nano-spearguns

Many bacteria are armed with nano-spearguns, which they use to combat unwelcome competitors or knockout host cells.