Volume 12 Issue 5, May 2017

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are involved in policy discussions surrounding the societal implications of emerging technologies. But what practices and strategies undertaken by these organizations are most influential in anticipating the longer-term societal implications of nanotechnology?

The Wiedemann–Franz law linking electrical and thermal conductance has now been verified experimentally in atomic junctions.

Length- and chirality-matching between polycarbamate templates and polyamide hosts provide a means of translating structural information from one molecule to another.

A combination of standard fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry offers a practical new approach to study encounter rates and preferences during various live cell membrane signalling events.

Wrapping polymeric sponges in graphene nanoribbons provides an efficient way to separate and absorb heavy crude oil spilled in water.

This Review charts how chiral information can be relayed across length scales in nanomaterials and beyond.

The dipole–dipole magnetic interaction between individual atoms on MgO surfaces is quantified by performing electron spin resonance by means of a scanning tunnelling microscope, opening new paths towards structural imaging with sub-nm resolution.

A superconducting quantum interferometer is exploited to fully control the direction of the coherent component of the electronic heat current flowing through a temperature-biased Josephson junction.

Heat transport measurements in single-atom junctions verify the proportionality between thermal and electrical conductance.

High-speed absorption of vicious crude oil spill into oil sorbent was realized by introducing the Joule heating effect of graphene to the interface between the skeleton surfaces of sorbent and oil.

Ruthenium nanoparticles homogeneously dispersed in a nitrogenated, two-dimensional carbon matrix show high turnover frequency and small overpotential for hydrogen evolution reaction both in acidic and alkaline media.

Multiple urethane groups in the same rod-like structure template the assembly of aromatic helices to form artificial folded architectures as large as 20 kDa with atomic precision.

A DNA probe that translocates from one anchor site to another by toehold-mediated DNA strand displacement is used to monitor transient molecular encounter events on live cell membranes.

Nanoscale intracellular electrodes and CMOS integrated circuit technology are combined to realize a new intracellular and network-level all-electrical electrophysiological imager.

Perforin monomers self-assemble into pre-pores that first insert into the membrane and then recruit additional subunits to grow in size.

A combination of mechanical constraints and directed assembly of silk-fibroin leads to the generation of engineered hierarchical structures with control over multiple length scales from the macro, to the micro and nanoscales.

The high output voltage of triboelectric nanogenerators enables well-controlled ion pulses for nanoelectrospray molecular mass spectrometry and surface modification.

The electrical charge of biological macromolecules is measured with single-charge precision.

Julien Bobroff describes new ways to popularize fundamental and applied condensed-matter physics.