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

Date Published
(Funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the US Army Research Office, and the National Science Foundation)

Scientists have presented a general framework for incorporating and correcting for nonclassical electromagnetic phenomena in nanoscale systems. The framework extends the validity of the macroscopic electromagnetism into the nanoscale regime, bridging the scale gap.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have shown that heat energy can leap across a few hundred nanometers of a complete vacuum, thanks to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called the Casimir interaction. This interaction could have profound implications for the design of computer chips and nanoscale electronic components, where heat dissipation is key.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley have shown that heat energy can leap across a few hundred nanometers of a complete vacuum, thanks to a quantum mechanical phenomenon called the Casimir interaction. This interaction could have profound implications for the design of computer chips and nanoscale electronic components, where heat dissipation is key.

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

An international team co-led by an Oregon State University chemistry researcher has uncovered a better way to scrub carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions, which could be a key to mitigating global climate change. The researchers used data mining to deal with the water portion of smokestack gases, which greatly complicates removing the carbon dioxide. The data mining involved hundreds of thousands of nanomaterials known as metal organic frameworks, which can intercept carbon dioxide molecules as the flue gases make their way out of the smokestack.

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

An international team co-led by an Oregon State University chemistry researcher has uncovered a better way to scrub carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions, which could be a key to mitigating global climate change. The researchers used data mining to deal with the water portion of smokestack gases, which greatly complicates removing the carbon dioxide. The data mining involved hundreds of thousands of nanomaterials known as metal organic frameworks, which can intercept carbon dioxide molecules as the flue gases make their way out of the smokestack.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health)

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that they have created a tiny, nano-size container that can slip inside cells and deliver protein-based medicines and gene therapies of any size — even hefty ones attached to a gene-editing tool called CRISPR. If their creation — constructed of a biodegradable polymer — passes more laboratory testing, it could offer a way to efficiently ferry larger medical compounds into specifically selected target cells.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health)

Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine report that they have created a tiny, nano-size container that can slip inside cells and deliver protein-based medicines and gene therapies of any size — even hefty ones attached to a gene-editing tool called CRISPR. If their creation — constructed of a biodegradable polymer — passes more laboratory testing, it could offer a way to efficiently ferry larger medical compounds into specifically selected target cells.

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

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have adapted a cryogenic electron microscope to visualize a soft material's atomic structure while keeping it intact. The researchers made nanosheets in solution from short protein-like molecules, called peptoids, that could advance a number of applications, such as synthetic, disease-specific antibodies and self-repairing membranes or tissue.

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

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have adapted a cryogenic electron microscope to visualize a soft material's atomic structure while keeping it intact. The researchers made nanosheets in solution from short protein-like molecules, called peptoids, that could advance a number of applications, such as synthetic, disease-specific antibodies and self-repairing membranes or tissue.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation)

Researchers at the University of Delaware have shown for the first time that the old carbon found on the seafloor can be directly linked to submicron graphite particles emanating from hydrothermal vents. To conduct their study, the researchers used samples of nanoparticles from five different hydrothermal vent sites collected during a research expedition to the East Pacific Rise vent field in the Pacific Ocean. Then the researchers analyzed the samples under scanning and transmission microscopes at the National Center for Earth and Environmental Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NanoEarth) at Virginia Tech.