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These "Ants" Use Ultrablack to Warn Predators — and Stay Cool

Velvet ants, actually flightless wasps, boast an ultrablack exoskeleton thanks to dense nanostructures.

The World’s Thinnest Pasta Is Here — But It’s Not for Eating

Nanopasta might not make it to your dinner plate, but its ultrathin structure could revolutionize wound care.

This is probably the best way to spot bacteria in a fluid

AI-assisted Raman spectroscopy is great at identifying bacteria and it's way better than just regular Raman spectroscopy.

Researchers create DNA pottery that could one day deliver drugs inside your body

These aren't your average pots and bowls.

These self-healing robot fish can gobble up the microplastics from our seas

Maybe not man but robots can save the world from plastic.

Scientists develop a nanosensor that can detect harmful pesticides on fruits within five minutes

We are one step closer to having a pesticide free diet.

Finding the source of pneumonia infection becomes easy with this new nanosensor technology

Patients with viral pneumonia are often given treatment for bacterial pneumonia, and this is not good.

The swarm is near: get ready for the flying microbots

Scientists have developed minute artificial muscles to power Lilliputian drones.

Scientists use nano-ink to 3D print color-changing cup

Talk about a surprising change!

Meet the world's smallest snowman

Isn't he adorable?

Researchers develop nanospears that can transport DNA to cells with pinpoint accuracy

This new technique is less harmful to the cells and more efficient than other non-viral DNA transfer techniques.

Scientists turn DNA into virtually any 3D shape imaginable

The fist DNA benders!

How butterflies have such a beautiful colour

They use the most advanced nanotechnology.

Largest database of crystal surfaces and shapes can help researchers design better materials

Crystal lovers rejoice - researchers have created the largest database of elemental crystal surfaces and shapes to date.

Self-healing textiles means you don't have to throw away your torn jeans -- just add water

The self-healing fabrics could break down lethal toxins before they reach the skin.

Remote-controlled microrobots could be the future of medicine

Tiny robots might soon replace invasive surgery.

Nano-probes sniff out cancer using their nucleic acids

In the new technique, nanotechnology is used to determine whether a specific target nucleic acid sequence exists within a mixture, and to quantify it if it does through a simple electronic signature.

The Hagfish produces a 12 nanometer wide, 15 centimeter long thread it clamps into a single cell

When it feels threatened, the hagfish produces a slime which is only 12 nanometers wide, but 15 centimeters long – 10,000,000 times longer than it is wide. It’s not clear exactly what this slime is made of (likely a sugar modification), but its purpose is to make the hagfish slippery and possibly clog the gills of a predator. […]

Watching Nanoscale Fluids Flow

Nanofluids, fluids containing nanometer-sized particles, show immense potential for future engineering. Even water flowing through nanotubes flows much faster than traditional mechanics says it should be possible. Now, researchers have found a way to directly image nanofluids. Researchers at Caltech have applied a new imaging technique called four-dimensional (4D) electron microscopy to the nanofluid dynamics problem. The technique […]

Nanoparticles make turkey eggs microbe-resistant

Australian brush turkeys incubate their eggs in places most animals would stay clear of: moist piles of rotting vegetation. There are some advantages to this approach, most notably that the heat released by the microbes keeps the eggs warm but those same microbes can also get through eggshells and kill the embryos. However, even though the risks […]

DNA nanobots deliver drugs in living cockroaches - it's a computer, inside a cockroach

The future is here. Nano-sized entities made of DNA that are able to perform the same kind of logic operations as a silicon-based computer have been introduced into a living animal. It’s every Science Fiction fan’s dream come true. The tiny DNA computers are called origami robots, because they work by folding and unfolding strands of DNA; […]

Microbots no larger than a human cell set to carry more payload drugs

Researchers at the Chinese University of Hong Kong have developed a new type of microbots approximately the size of a human cell that can carry more targeted drugs than other such options. These can be guided wirelessly through magnetic field manipulation. The Chinese designed microbots as well as other micro or nano-scale alternatives  are meant to […]

Creating the smallest Mona Lisa - just 30 microns across

Mona Lisa is probably the most well known picture in the world – it’s been painted thousands of times, inspired countless artists, and her enigmatic smile still puzzles researchers and artists alike; but never before has it been painted on such a small canvas. Demonstrating a very potent nanotechnique, researchers have made a miniature Mona Lisa […]

Creating glasses that don't fog up

Creating glasses that don’t fog or freeze up could not only bring a world of comfort to millions of people, but it could also have a myriad of applications in cameras, microscopes, mirrors and refrigerated displays – to name just a few. While there have been many advancements in this field, so far, the main problem […]

Cicada wing destroys bacteria solely through its physical structure

The veined wing of the clanger cicada kills bacteria is able to destroy bacteria by its structure alone – one of the first structures ever found that can do this. The clanger cicada is an insects that looks like something between a fly and a locust; its wings are covered with a vast hexagonal array […]

Stealth nanoparticles sneak past immune system’s defences

Most of the time, when you’re sick, you want to deliver drugs and imaging agents to diseased cells or tumours where they’re needed most – that’s a problem researchers have solved quite a while ago, we can get particles pretty much wherever we want to. The thing is, most of the time, these agents are […]

New nanotechnology will enable earlier cancer diagnosis

Finding ways to diagnose cancer earlier could potentially save millions of lives, improving the chances of survival for many patients. This is why researchers have developed nanoparticles which amplify tumor signals, making them much easier to detect. Nanotech to the rescue The new technology was developed by researchers from MIT and it makes biomarker detection […]

The most sensitive scale in the world can measure to the yoctogram (proton's mass)

While on the macro-scale conventional scales make us of gravity to measure mass, on the microscale there are a myriad of factors that interfere with measurements. Scientists at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona have successfully created a scale made out of a single carbon nanotube which can accurately measure the smallest unit of mass, a yoctogram (one […]

Nanorobots made out of DNA seek and kill cancer cells

In what can only be hailed as a breakthrough in the “smart drugs” field, scientists at Harvard University have successfully managed to create nanorobots made out of strands of DNA, folded together by the DNA origami method. These act like drug-carrying recipients, which specifically target various types of cells and deliver complex molecular instructions – […]

Scientists cool semiconductor with laser light

By harnessing the science of both quantum and nano physics, scientists at the Niels Bohr Institute have come up with an innovative new way of cooling semiconductor membranes by using laser light. Through this new technique, the researchers were able to cool the tiny, thin membrane from room temperature to -269 degrees Celsius. Paradoxically, the […]

Graphene foam detects explosives, emissions better than today's gas sensors

Remember this name: graphene. This wonder material is certainly on a lot of scientists’ lips these days, but in a few years from now, it will be on the lips of more and more people, as its fantastic properties will begin to be put to practical use. Graphene is a planar sheet of Carbon, just […]

Nanotech powered by your breath

At the nano scale, even the slightest of motions can be harnessed and transformed into useful work. Material science researchers  at the University of Wisconsin, for instance, have developed a very thin plastic belt capable of vibrating from low velocity fluid flow, such as one’s breath. Made out of  polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF), the microbelt not only […]

Future devices will rewire themselves thanks to nanomaterial tech

Scientists at Northwestern University have developed a new nanomaterial of exciting properties, which will allow for the computer of the future to rewrite and rewire its circuitry, and in the process become an entirely different device.  Thus, a single device could rewire itself to become resistor, a rectifier, a diode or a transistor simply based on signals. […]

Scientists devise invisibility cloak [VIDEO]

You’ve seen James Bond’s vanishing Aston Martin or Frodo’s Elven cloak, and probably always wished for your own means of becoming totally invisible. The are a lot of perks to such a technology (who here remembers Invisible Man movies?), and scientists from University of Dallas in Texas  have managed to devise an invisibility cloak inspired by […]

The world's smallest "wedding rings" are made from DNA

DNA nanotechnology is one of the most exciting branches of nanotechnologies, especially because it uses the ability of natural DNA strains to self assembly. Prof. Alexander Heckel and his doctoral student Thorsten Schmidt of Goethe University set out with exactly that thought in mind when they created two DNA rings with the size of only […]

IBM nanoparticle destroys drug resistant bacteria

I had no idea IBM was doing this kind of thing too, but I recently found out that they developed a technology that could revolutionize the treatment of drug resistant bacteria. A whole team of engineers and researchers headed by Dr. James Hedrick at IBM Inc. has worked on this technology, which relies on a […]

The smallest computer in the world - the milimiter-scale computing era!

In a paper presented at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco, researchers from Michigan University unveiled one of the most exiting electronic-based prototype I’ve been grated to see in a very long time. Pictured above is an implantable eye pressure monitor which can be used to watch for signs of glaucoma in […]

The 'No small matter' giveaway

Hello! I’ve been running ZME Science for more than 2 years now, and the support you’ve shown has been increasingly amazing! However, much to my shame, I’ve rarely thanked you like you deserve it. I rarely have time to write as much as I want, I make grammar mistakes (non English speaker, btw), and I […]

"No small matter: Science on the nanoscale" review

Nanotechnology is perhaps the field with the most spectacular development over the past years, but it can be really hard to understand what’s going on at that scale, mostly because we can’t see it (doh!), but also because the laws that apply there are slightly different. No small matter:  Science on the nanoscale is the […]

Immortality - just 20 years away

Raymond Kurzweil is one of the most prolific inventors and futurists; he’s the one who developed text to speech synthesis and a synthesizer that develops and even creates poetry, among others. He has also predicted new technologies that would appear and some directions that our society would take, and he got it right. Now, the […]

Meet the nanobamas

Meet the world’s tiniest portraits of an elected president ever; meet the nanobamas. Each ‘Obama’ is made up of about 150 million tiny carbon nanotubes, which is about how many Americans voted in this year’s presidential election. An assistant professor professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan, John Hart, along […]

'Holy Grail' Of Nanoscience achieved ?!

Researchers at at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have achieved something that many people call the Holy Grail of Nanoscience; this in fact reffers to the fact that they have used for the first time DNA to guide the creation of three-dimensional, ordered, crystalline structures of nanoparticles (particles with dimensions measured in […]

New way of storing gas - the nanotech way

There are already numerous ways of storing gas but this is in fact a new concept, very different from those existing today and it’s not an improvement, but rather a novel method. A team of University of Calgary researchers developed this process of catching gas from the environment and holding it indefinitely in molecular-sized which […]

Novel Nanostructure Response Opens Possibilities For Electrical Devices

Nanotech could be applied in just about everything. With time scientists find out ways to apply it to various fields; building small, efficient electronics could be very useful in further use of nanotechnology. A University of Arkansas physicist and her colleagues have examined the response of the nanostructures polarization to electric fields which is known […]

Biodegradable Nanoballs To Deliver Drugs Directly To Cancer Cells

Nanotech is a very young science. It reffers to a field of applied science and technology whose unifying theme is the control of matter on the atomic and molecular scale, normally 1 to 100 nanometers, and the fabrication of devices within that size range. A meter is 1 000 000 000 times bigger than a […]