Much research has been carried out in recent years involving carbon nanotubes use in fighting cancer. The use has been through hyperthermia in which the carbon nanotubes are heated to between 41-45°C. This technique is demonstarted to literally ‘burn away’ cancer cells. The current problem with this technique is that the MWCNTs are good at [...]
Recently there has been much interest in creating increadibly thin nano films that could be used instead of stitches during surgery. The hope would be to reduce the invasive nature of operations and overall operation times by negating the need for stitches. Researchers at the University of Waseda in Tokyo have developed such a nano-sealant film from PLLA [...]
A group at the University of Leicester have developed a new method of both diagnosing and treating prostate cancer early. The technique uses ‘high-performance magnetic nanoparticles’ as probes that can be detected by MRI and can destroy the cancerous cells by hypothermia. This killing by hypothermia allows a much earlier killing of the canerous cells. [...]
At the University of North Carolina there has been a nanotechnology breakthrough in X-ray imaging. The breakthrough has come from carbon nanotubes being used to create a novel multi-beam source of X-rays. The carbon naotubes can be used as tiny electron guns, which dont have to heat up to create the X-rays. This means [...]
Much like the nanobits offering found in Australia the Nanobionet Nano-schoolbox offers 14 experiments for school age children. The kit is created to inspire and teach school age children some of the fundamentals of nanotechnology. It answers many questions for children such as can we create burn proof paper? Or how do we meake furniture [...]
A bee sting is known to pump poison into a victim, this has been harnessed by researchers at Washington Univerity School of Medicine. The work centres around attaching a major component of be stings to nano-spheres, nicknamed ‘nanobees’ and targeting them to tumours. The effectivness of the technique was shown in a mouse model. The [...]
Today I had the pleasure of learning the ropes for freezing fibres! This doesnt maybe sound like the most exciting thing…unless you get to do it with liquid nitrogen! All of this said the freezing process used liquid nitrogen to cool Isopentane to liquid nitrogen temperatures to freeze fibres in. So I wasn’t just adhoc [...]
A thought provoking video highlighting the current thoughts for the role of nanotechnology in medicine. Right or Wrong? Certainly an area of interest for many. Although the end of medicine seems like a far shot, what is certain is that the use of nanotechnology has great potential for extending our lifespan and revolutionising the way [...]
A research team lead by Dr. Hossam Halck at the Israel Institute of Technology have developed standard microprocessor manufacturing techniques to create sensing devices out of single walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). These SWCNTs are coated with one of ten different non-polymeric, insulating organic materials. Each device reacts in a particular way when exposed to human [...]
Researchers at UCLA have devised a microfluidic device that can carry out up to 1,024 reactions at the same time. It is thought that this would benefit identification of new drug candidates by vastly accelerating the process of selection. Previously these chip devices have only been able to carry out a few reactions known as [...]
