Tag Archives: maskwriting

HIV testing, nano gold, and Uganda; not so obsolete?; new nanotube manufacturing technique from McGill University

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There’s a portable blood-testing machine, designed by US-based PointCare, which can give a print-out detailing a patient’s immune status in 10 minutes. The machine was designed for use in third-world or developing world clinics such as the one in Uganda which is described in this BBC story.

One of the problems doctors and medical staff had with equipment for testing HIV patients’ immune system was that the chemicals used as reagents in the testing process were too easily perishable in the high heat common in a lot of countries. PointCare soved the problem this way (from the BBC article):

Dr Hansen [from PointCare] invented a test that uses chemical reagent that can be freeze-dried and stored in temperatures of over 40C.

CD4 screening tests use antibodies – molecular tags that recognise and latch onto a chemical marker on the surface of the cell. By attaching to the cells, they act as flags distinguishing CD4 cells from other white blood cells.

But these antibodies need to be “labelled”, so they can be detected by a machine.

Traditionally, antibodies are labelled using fluorescent markers, but these fluorescent chemicals perish if they are not kept refrigerated. So they’re useless for a medical team operating from a temporary clinic in the heat of an African summer.

Dr Hansen developed a new label. “We use colloidal gold,” explains Dr Krauledat [community physician]. “It’s true nanotechnology – extremely tiny gold particles attached to the anti-CD4 antibody.”

Do go and read the full story because there’s more to it than I’ve included. Meanwhile I had another look at those lithography stories (SFU’s new maskwriting facilities and RAPID) that I was posting about last week. While the new RAPID technique may make the use of ultra-violet light obsolete, they still haven’t approached the nanoscale. The measurement mentioned is “… 2500 times smaller than a human hair” [more here]. The measurement usually mentioned when discussing the nanoscale  is between 1/100,000 ro 1/60,000 (nobody seems to agree on the exact measurement, you can check here) of the width of a human hair equals 1 nanometre.  Weirdly, the Simon Fraser University (SFU) release notes that the new facilities will be able to create structures “… under 20 nanometres about 10,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair” [more here]. If I’m doing the math correctly, wouldn’t that be between 1/50,0000 and 1/30,000 of the human hair? I know it’s a little fussy but once a technical writer, always a technical writer and that kind of detail can make a big difference.

Researchers led by Dr. Hanadi Sleiman and Dr. Gonzalo Cosa at McGill University (Montreal, Canada) have developed a new way to manufacture nanotubes using DNA, in short they are DNA nanotubes. The longer story is here and the shorter story is here.

Maskwriting facilities at 4D Labs and some bottom-up engineering news

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Following up on yesterday’s news from Simon Fraser University (SFU), I gather that maskwriting has to do with fabricating nanoscale materials and the facility they will be building for their 4D Labs will allow them to create nanoscale structures that measure less than 20 nanometres.

“This capability will eventually be as key to nanoscale materials fabrication as the photocopier is to information dissemination,” explains [Byron] Gates, 4D LABS’ director of nanofabrication. “With our new maskwriting facility, we’ll be able to fabricate the next generation of technologies, particularly in the fields of alternative energy and biomedical engineering.”

Local companies will not have send off to Alberta to get this work done and it will give 4D Labs some revenue.  Given that universities are under pressure these days to develop new revenue streams, this has to be good news.

Meanwhile, scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have recently published a paper describing their work on bottom-up engineering of DNA ‘seeds’. The two main approaches to engineering in nanotechnology (and this is simplified) are top-down and bottom-up. Traditional enginerring has been top-down; we make things smaller and smaller. The bottom-up approach means taking your cue from biological processes (or nature) and encouraging objects to build themselves or to ‘grow’. There’s more here.

The Project for Emergining Nanotechnologies’ June 17, 2009 event (mentioned in yesterday’s posting) has been rescheduled to Fall 2009.


Fish camouflage, Australian webinar for nano business, medical nanobots in your bloodstream and Simon Fraser U has nano news

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First off, the American Chemical Society (ACS) has declared ‘The Nano Song‘ a winner (in the People’s Choice and Critic’s Choice categories)  in their ACS Nanotation web community video contest ‘What is Nano?’.  If you haven’t seen the video yet, you can go here (scroll down).

Researchers at Sandia Labs are working to develop materials that change colour in the same that some fish can. Here’s how it works with the fish (from Nanowerk News here):

Certain fish species blend with their environment by changing color like chameleons. Their tiny motor proteins carry skin pigment crystals in their “tails” as they walk with their “feet” along the microtubule skeletons of cells to rearrange the animal’s color display.

The fish change colour as the environment around them changes. The researchers led by George Bachand are trying to enable synthetic or hybrid materials to do the same thing. Applications could be for military and/or fashion.

If you’re interested in the business end of nano, then there’s a webinar courtesy of the Australian Office of Nanotechnology coming up on April 29, 2009. NanoVentures Australia CEO, Peter Binks, will be talking about nanotechnology’s impact on global markets and industries. For more info. about the event, check here and to sign up for the event, go here.

Researchers at Pennsylvania State University (US) are honing in on a way to get hordes of microrobots (or nanobots) that have been introduced into the bloodstream to flock or swarm together so they can repair organs or deliver drugs to a specific target. I gather the problem has been  getting the machines to work together and the proposed solution is to use UV light. More details here.

Finally, some latebreaking news from Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada). The university’s nano research facility, 4D Labs, has won funding (roughly $884, 000) from the federal government’s Western Economic Diversification agency to build a maskwritiing facility.  More about this tomorrow.