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Archive for December, 2012

$100,000 grants for 20 entrepreneurs under 20 years to develop their dreams

Posted by Jim Lewis on December 20th, 2012

Apply by December 31 for one of 20 $100,000 grants offered by the Thiel Foundation to those under 20 to develop their entrepreneurial dreams.

Testing and improving scaffolded DNA origami for molecular nanotechnology

Posted by Jim Lewis on December 19th, 2012

In two different sets of experiments a German research group has shown that scaffolded DNA origami can be used to assemble complex structures with precise sub-nanometer positional control, and that constant temperature reaction can greatly increase yields and decrease production times.

Two types of artificial muscle from nanotechnology

Posted by Jim Lewis on December 13th, 2012

One research group working with rotaxanes and another group working with carbon nanotubes have provided two very different solutions to the problem of producing motion via artificial muscles at different scales from the nano to the macro.

Optimal bond loads in designing molecular machines

Posted by Jim Lewis on December 11th, 2012

A study of a biological molecular machine has shown that the machine functions most effectively when it uses chemical bonds just barely strong enough to survive the power stroke of the machine.

Arbitrarily complex 3D DNA nanostructures built from DNA bricks

Posted by Jim Lewis on December 6th, 2012

A set of 32-nucleotide single strand DNA bricks was designed so that each can interact independently with four other DNA bricks so that sets of hundreds of bricks can self-assemble into arbitrarily complex 25-nm 3D shapes, each comprising 1000 8-base pair volume elements.

New strides in understanding mechanochemical reactions

Posted by Stephanie C on December 2nd, 2012

New time-resolved, high-energy Xray studies of mechanochemical (ball milling) reactions take another step toward reducing the gap between current and future machine-phase chemistry.