Power up while you boggie

It takes energy to move.  Move to the kitchen, to school, to the couch.  And there is a lot of energy that can be captured from these movements.  Maybe you have a pair of those sneakers with the lights?  They capture the energy from walking and uses it to power a few tiny light bulbs.  Now scientists are trying to take it to the next level by developing more sophisticated nanodevices and make them cheaper.  They use these things called piezoelectric crystals.  Piezoelectric things have been around since the mid-18th century but these new ones are printed and they can be printed onto flexible materials that are also biocompatible.  So maybe you don't want them stitched to the bottom of your feet but perhaps they can be stuck onto a lot of different things making energy for all sorts of devices. No more need to change the battery unless you become a couch potato.
http://tinyurl.com/ygbr3g3
read about the original science http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nl903377u

Lab on a stamp

Lab on a chip, how common. How about lab on a stamp. Scientists at Harvard are experimenting with paper as a material for making tiny sensors. Paper is cheap and it turns out it can do a lot of things like separating different molecules. You've probably done some experiments looking at the way colors separate using paper like the one used to make coffee filters. Now add in some inks that are hydrophobic and can be used to direct liquids to different parts of the paper sensor and you are going a long way to make sensors that can test for different diseases. These cheap sensors will have a lot of use in developing countries.http://tiny.cc/w20oj

Nanooze the exhibit opens at EPCOT, Walt Disney World

So it started as a web site, next a magazine and now an exhibit. On February 22, 'Take a Nanooze Break' opened at EPCOT Walt Disney World in Florida. The interactive exhibit has a number of opportunities for guests to explore the nanoworld and get a feel for things that are too small to see.  The exhibit is on long term display located in Innoventions where new science and technology is showcased.  You can sit and listen to stories about nanotechnology, play with a simple to use hand-held microscope, take molecules for a spin and zoom into the nanometer scale structure of a number of different common objects.

Tiny layer of glass

Nanotechnology is all about making things small----and thin. So sometimes the magic is not making it tiny but making it incredibly thin, only a few atoms or molecules thick. The big thing about making thin things is making sure that even though it is thin, it is uniform, meaning no holes. And that is hard. Imagine spreading peanut butter just a few molecules thick? Tough. Now scientists have figured out how to make layers of glass only a few molecules thick. Glass is made of silicon dioxide and is pretty impermeable. A layer 15 to 30 molecules thick (about 1/500 the width of a hair) prevents bacteria from penetrating and so you could make a bacteria proof coating. It is also impermeable to water meaning it doesn't stain.  What is neat is that glass at that thickness is transparent (well that is not surprising) but it is also flexible! Meaning you could coat lots of different things. Maybe you wouldn't want to eat it but it is might be useful for stain resistance or to make things really slick like the front end of a high speed train. http://tiny.cc/0uhtC

Plants do it already

Plants are able to generate energy using photosynthesis. It is kind of the same general idea as what solar cells do except instead of generating electricity, plants generate chemical energy and store it for later use. Scientists have taken tobacco and by genetic engineering started to assemble the pieces that would be needed to make plants into solar energy generators.  Still a long way away from their ultimate goal, the idea of using plants is neat and could be a more ecofriendly way of producing solar power.  Some time you might be able to plant your own solar cells and power that iPod.
for more see
http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2010/01/tobacco-plants-used-to-grow-cheap-solar-cells/

Your brain as a mold.

You see them all the time. On bread left around for a while, between your toes. Molds. Dumb fuzzy things. Well not really. Scientists in Japan have taken tiny bits of food and made a map that was just like Japan. Then they took a blob of mold and put it in one place and watched the mold grow. It grew out looking for the food and creating a network that looked kind of like a communications or a transportation network. All without a central brain.  Want to read all about it http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;327/5964/419

Tis the season

Sometimes nanotechnology is used for good, sometimes just for silly.  Scientists in England have created the world's smallest snowman.  It follows along with the smallest book, musical instrument and even US flag.  The world's smallest snowman was made by sticking two beads together using a little bit of platinum which is used a lot in nanotechnology to bond other metals together.   Then they carved a pair of eyes and a mouth using an ion beam which is usually used to etch nanometer-sized holes and trenches into metals.  They put this snowman on a tiny cantilever that used to image very small objects.
There is a neat video shows you how big (or small) this little snowman really is.

A lot of people wonder how scientists can find the time to do stuff like making the world's smallest snowman.  Lots of times it is to demonstrate a new technology and why not make something that lots of folks might recognize.  It makes science a bit more human and it also makes the scientists a bit more human.  See scientists also have a sense of humor and making a little snowman at this time of the year is kind of funny.

Happy holidays.

No more dirty windows

Nanotechnology can potentially cure disease or lift a person into space, but on to more important stuff.  Clean windows.  Scientists from Israel have been working on a coating that is self-cleaning.  Using peptides which are short pieces of protein, coatings could be made on a whole bunch of different kinds of things.  So what makes this stuff so neat?  By carefully designing the peptides, scientists could make them very hydrophobic, meaning that they don't like water.  If you can keep the water off the surface you can also keep the dirt.  So when it rains everything comes washing off and what is left is nice and clean.  Same kind of peptide coating is also useful for solar cells and even rechargeable batteries.