Tag Archives: nanotechnology

Inhabitat: NASA announces chemical-sniffing phone

Via Inhabitat: NASA Unveils Chemical-Sniffing Device for the iPhone:

Chemical-sniffing ipod - image via Inhabitat

Chemical-sniffing ipod - image via Inhabitat

NASA’s cheap, low-power device senses chemicals with help from a “sample jet” and a silicon-based sensing chip that has 16 nanosensors. Once detection data is confirmed, the phone can send it on to any other device — or the government — via Wi-Fi.

There are a number of uses for the chemical sensor: it could provide early information on a chemical attack, confirm suspicions of methane emissions from local factories, or just give  users information about the chemicals present in their everyday environments.

The chemical sniffer isn’t NASA’s first foray into iPhone apps. The agency recently debuted an app that aggregates and sends recent information, pictures, and video from NASA to the user’s phone. Here’s hoping NASA continues to deliver educational and useful apps to our cell phones!

+ NASA

Via Popular Science




World Renewable Energy Congress in Glasgow

The World Renewable Energy Congress is meeting this week in Glasgow, Scotland. Conference details here for any

World Renewable Energy Congress

interested in last-minute attendance. NanoTechWire reports that Professor Darren Bagnall and his Nano Group at the University of Southampton will be announcing progress in applying nanotechnology to the production of solar panels.

Professor Bagnall and his Nano Group at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) have conducted extensive research into how nanotechnologies can contribute to the creation of solar cells which can be manufactured on cheap flexible substrates rather than expensive silicon wafers by using nanoscale features that trap light.

Speaking in the conference session on Photovoltaic Technology on Tuesday 22 July, Professor Bagnall will deliver a presentation entitled: Biomimetics and plasmonics: capturing all of the light. He will describe how his group has investigated biomimetic optical structures, which copy the nano structures seen in nature so that they can develop solar cells which allow efficient light-trapping. One type of structure is based on an anti-reflective technique exploited by moth eyes. Others are based on metallic nanoparticles that form plasmonic structures. Continue reading →

Bioengineered E. Coli – Smells like Bananas

Bioengineers at MIT have modified e. coli bacteria in two ways: rather than smell like human fecal matter, their E. coli cultures smell like mint when they’re growing, and banana when they are mature.

If they can do that, can should be able to devise metabolic pathways that breaks down plastics into carbon dioxide, which then can be metabolized, which will render plastic biodegradable.  However, to mitigate the global warming effects of the carbon dioxide, they also need to figure out ways to sequester the carbon.