Steve Boggan has written an excellent article today in the Guardian on nanotechnology and its implications in the industrial food market. The first five paragraphs are as good a primer on nanotech as you’re likely to find—send this one to your mom if she has any questions. The rest of the article is a closer look at its future in our food supply, particularly in light of consumers’ recent widespread distaste for genetically modified goods. The bottom line: the industry is outwardly hopeful about the technology’s promise, but inwardly cautious about the public response. Oh, and we have no idea what it’ll do to us when we eat it.

[ Read Full Story ]

A new low-cost, nanotech-based approach to power generation developed by researchers at Boston College and MIT could lead to cleaner-running semiconductors, air conditioners, car exhausts and more. The technique, published online yesterday in Science, uses the nanostructures to dramatically increase thermal efficiency.

[ Read Full Story ]

Granted, it will be far too small for her to show off to her friends, but if your potential fiancée has a love of science, she just might accept this bauble over something flashier. It’s the world’s smallest diamond ring, created by a group of Australian physicists. The ring measures just 5 microns wide and 300 nanometers thick. And no, it’s not really for advertising your engagement. The ring is actually part of a device used to produce and detect single photons.

[ Read Full Story ]

Remember Innerspace? Dennis Quaid and his submarine-like ship are shrunk to the size of a cell and accidentally injected into the hapless Martin Short. Quaid navigates the hazards of Short’s bodily functions in order to plot his escape. Twenty years on, there's something rather quaint about it. A vessel the size of a cell? With a pilot inside? Compared to today’s innovations in nanotechnology, it's akin to using a tractor trailer to find your way through a corn maze.

[ 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 “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. “How do you do it?” Smith asks conspiratorially. “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 ]