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Last month a government department in the UK issued a press release that asked “Can nanoscience help in the fight against climate change?” The answer is a cautious yes.
Addressing the ethical, legal and social implications of nanotechnology will help to reverse the fragmentation of academic fields into multiple subdisciplines, end the artificial separation between pure and applied research, and bridge the gap between science and the society it serves, as well as helping to avoid a possible public backlash.
Nanotechnology could have an enormous impact on medicine but, says Michael Helmus, the regulations that govern new drugs and medical devices need to be updated before nanomedicine can be commercialized.
A low-cost processing technique that is widely used to make polymer films is also capable of producing large-area films of aligned nanowires and nanotubes
Single-walled carbon nanotubes with a helical twist have been separated into samples enriched in either the left- or right-handed forms. Many exciting experiments await these sorted nanotubes, but first we need to decide what to call them.
The performance of biosensors that rely on tiny vibrating cantilevers suffers when they are operated in a liquid. The solution is to place the liquid inside the cantilever.
When droplets of water containing metal particles are deposited on a hot surface, they are supported by a thin layer of vapour that lets them slide, essentially friction free. The metal trails the droplets leave in their wake could be useful for making nanowires.
