nano

In the macro world, the construction shapes available to us are numerous, and the tools to build them are straightforward. But nanoarchitecture has always been much more limited -- first to two dimensions, then to only certain kinds of three-dimensional shapes. This week, scientists have broadened the possibilities for nano-building, programming DNA to bend itself into complicated custom curves. The researchers revealed their creations in the current issue of Science: a group of tight little gears, tubes, and a wireframe ball.

[ Read Full Story ]

In the recent Robocup 2009 games, in which robots compete for prizes and glory, entrants from many nations held their own. In categories including small, medium, humanoid, 2-D simulation, and 3-D simulation, teams from the U.S., China, Germany, Iran, and quite a few other robot-producing countries played and won.

However, on the smallest playing field of all, there was one clear winner.

[ Read Full Story ]

Tapping geothermal sources for power has proven a tricky proposition, because of costs and hazards associated with deep drilling. But researchers may have stumbled on a way to boost the power-producing potential of low-temperature hot springs close to the Earth's surface, using nanotechnology.

[ Read Full Story ]

Will US car buyers adopt a car the size of a laundromat dryer, that costs as much as a sofa? Ratan Tata, chairman of India's Tata Motors, hopes they will. Automotive News reports that Tata is floating plans to bring a version of the $2,500 Nano minicar to the US within three years.

Chairman Tata made such remarks this week at a Cornell University forum in New York City. Deliveries of the Nano to buyers in India, where only one in one thousand people own a car, are scheduled to begin in India next month.

[ Read Full Story ]

There´s nothing tiny about the international controversy brewing over the safety of nanomaterials. In April, a German company recalled a tile sealant called Magic Nano after dozens of consumers suffered breathing problems while using it. Never mind that the product contained particles too large to actually count as nanomaterials (which must be smaller than a billionth of a meter)-the scare was on, and European confidence in products labeled â€nano†had already sunk.

[ Read Full Story ]

Launch the slideshow to see how titanium oxide reacts with light to zap dirt at the molecular level

Not so long ago, chemical engineers discovered how to use titanium dioxide to keep buildings free of discoloring pollution.

[ Read Full Story ]

A baseball zooms through clouds, straight through a wall and into the waiting hand of actor Adam Smith, who is tricked out like a magician, complete with wand, tuxedo and top hat. â€How do you do it?†Smith asks conspiratorially. â€You just need a small enough ball, of course.†But Smith isn´t really explaining a magic trick. He´s talking nanotech, in the new short film When Things Get Small.

[ Read Full Story ]

The most prolific car manufacturer on the planet resides in a Rice University laboratory in Houston, where chemist James Tour and his colleagues have built one trillion trillion nanoscopic cars. The tiny four-wheeled vehicles are only four billionths of a meter wide-25,000 of them parked side by side would be about as thick as a piece of paper. Not just another nano-gimmick, Tour´s cars could one day carve tiny channels in silicon, creating more-powerful computer chips.

[ Read Full Story ]