News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

Date Published
(Funded in part by the National Science Foundation)

An international team of researchers has designed a highly sensitive nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide sensor that can be implanted in the body. All of the components are biodegradable in water or in bodily fluids but remain functional enough to capture the information on the gas levels. The researchers made the device’s conductors out of magnesium and used nanoscale silicon for the functional materials.

(Funded in part by the National Science Foundation)

An international team of researchers has designed a highly sensitive nitric oxide and nitrogen dioxide sensor that can be implanted in the body. All of the components are biodegradable in water or in bodily fluids but remain functional enough to capture the information on the gas levels. The researchers made the device’s conductors out of magnesium and used nanoscale silicon for the functional materials.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy)

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed a platform for making 3-D superconducting nano-architectures with a prescribed organization. This platform is based on the self-assembly of DNA into desired 3-D shapes so that the DNA can serve as a scaffold for building 3-D architectures that can be fully “converted” into inorganic materials, such as superconductors.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Department of Energy)

Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia University, and Bar-Ilan University in Israel have developed a platform for making 3-D superconducting nano-architectures with a prescribed organization. This platform is based on the self-assembly of DNA into desired 3-D shapes so that the DNA can serve as a scaffold for building 3-D architectures that can be fully “converted” into inorganic materials, such as superconductors.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

Researchers from the University of Michigan have reported a new synthetic protein nanoparticle capable of slipping past the nearly impermeable blood-brain barrier that could deliver cancer-killing drugs directly to malignant brain tumors. The discovery, demonstrated in mice, could enable new clinical therapies for treating glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer in adults.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

Researchers from the University of Michigan have reported a new synthetic protein nanoparticle capable of slipping past the nearly impermeable blood-brain barrier that could deliver cancer-killing drugs directly to malignant brain tumors. The discovery, demonstrated in mice, could enable new clinical therapies for treating glioblastoma, the most common and aggressive form of brain cancer in adults.

(Funded by the National Institutes of Health)

Researchers at the University of Maryland School of Medicine have developed a new nanoparticle drug formulation that targets a specific receptor on cancer cells and appears to be more effective than a standard nanoparticle therapy currently on the market to treat metastatic breast cancer. The study found that the new nanoparticles bypass healthy cells and tissues and bind to tumor cells, dispersing evenly throughout the tumor while releasing the chemotherapy drug paclitaxel.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at Rice University have developed a new cost-effective technology for desalinating industrial-strength brine by using a thin coating of the 2D nanomaterial hexagonal boron nitride. Boron nitride’s combination of chemical resistance and thermal conductivity facilitated a system that produced a flux of more than 42 kilograms of water per square meter of membrane per hour — more than 10 times greater than ambient solar membrane distillation technologies — at an energy efficiency much higher than existing membrane distillation technologies.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at Rice University have developed a new cost-effective technology for desalinating industrial-strength brine by using a thin coating of the 2D nanomaterial hexagonal boron nitride. Boron nitride’s combination of chemical resistance and thermal conductivity facilitated a system that produced a flux of more than 42 kilograms of water per square meter of membrane per hour — more than 10 times greater than ambient solar membrane distillation technologies — at an energy efficiency much higher than existing membrane distillation technologies.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense)

Researchers at the University of Washington have designed the first end-to-end molecular tagging system that enables rapid, on-demand encoding and decoding at scale. Instead of radio waves or printed lines, the tagging scheme relies on a set of distinct DNA strands called molecular bits, or “molbits” for short, that incorporate highly separable nanopore signals to ease later readout. The molbits are extremely tiny, making them ideal for tracking small items or flexible surfaces that aren’t suited to conventional tagging methods.