Sentient Developments: nanotechnology

Showing posts with label nanotechnology. Show all posts

October 27, 2010

Improving drug delivery with nanotechnology

About 99% of medicinal molecules don't reach their targets and subsequently stay in the body of patients. Some of these molecules can be very toxic—particularly in the case of those designed to target cancers. Consequently, research is being undertaken to find more effective ways of safely transporting and delivering drugs. This is where medical nanotechnology may be able to help.

Researchers are hoping to create a device which can carry a drug payload to its target, be monitored throughout its journey, and deliver—and all without being attacked and destroyed by the body's natural defences. This calls for a rather complex system and, among other things, possesses stealth design characteristics. Such a schema is described in this video:

August 17, 2010

Nanoscale DNA sequencing to spur revolution in personal health care

Researchers at the University of Washington have devised a method that works at a very small scale to sequence DNA quickly and relatively inexpensively. The process could eventually open the door for more effective individualized medicine. It's hoped that the method will, among other things, provide blueprints of genetic predispositions for specific conditions and diseases such as cancer, diabetes or addiction.

"The hope is that in 10 years people will have all their DNA sequenced, and this will lead to personalized, predictive medicine," said Jens Gundlach, a UW physics professor and lead author of a paper describing the breakthrough.

The technique creates a DNA reader that combines biology and nanotechnology using a nanopore taken from Mycobacterium smegmatis porin A. The nanopore has an opening 1 billionth of a meter in size, just large enough to measure a single strand of DNA as it passes through.

The research team placed the pore in a membrane surrounded by potassium-chloride solution and a small voltage was applied to create an ion current flowing through the nanopore. The current's electrical signature changed depending on the nucleotides traveling through the nanopore. Each of the nucleotides that are the essence of DNA (namely cytosine, guanine, adenine and thymine) produced a distinctive signature.

The delay is measured in thousandths of a second, which is long enough to read the electrical signals from the target nucleotides. "We can practically read the DNA sequence from an oscilloscope trace," said Gundlach.

The work was funded by the US National Institutes of Health and its National Human Genome Research Institute as part of a program to create technology to sequence a human genome for $1,000 or less. That program began in 2004, when it cost on the order of $10 million to sequence a human-sized genome. The new research is a major step toward achieving DNA sequencing at a cost of $1,000 or less.

Ultimately, it is hoped that these experiments will outline a novel and fundamentally very simple sequencing technology that can now be expanded into a mechanized process.

November 26, 2009

I am my own grandpa (or grandma)?

Linda MacDonald Glenn is guest blogging this month.

Can nanotechnology be sustainable? At the site, Forumforthefuture.org, under the section Green Futures, Peter Madden argues that nanotechnology can contribute to sustainability. But the article doesn't sit well with me -- why? Not because I'm a technophobe -- I love technology (except when it doesn't work, then I hate it).

It bugs me because I can't tell what he means by sustainability.

Who or what is being sustained? Humanity? Our Environment? The Earth? The Nanobots? Self-sustaining technology?

And who controls or decides what be will be sustained?

Don't get me wrong -- I do think there is such a thing as Green Nanotechnology; in fact Springer has just started a Journal of Green Nanotechnology.

I just don't like to see sustainability used as a feel-good buzzword.

Several key principles have emerged to guide sustainability efforts, including intergenerational equity, integrating environmental, social and economic sectors when developing sustainability policies, and preventing irreversible long-term damage to ecosystems and human health.

The article does have one good point, though: In the end, it is how we decide to apply nanotechnology that will determine its true sustainability impact.

You can check out Linda's original blog at the Women's Bioethics Blogspot.

July 22, 2009

Fighting cancer with nanotechnology [video]

Award-winning video featuring an overview of leading-edge cancer nanotechnology research at University of California, San Diego's Moore Cancer Center. The NanoTumor Center is funded by NCI Alliance for Nanotechnology and the video is produced by NanoTecNexus in collaboration with Mindeliver Media.

June 21, 2009

Yesterday's tomorrow: "Nanotechnology - Age of Convergence"

I'm skirting the line with the 'reto-futurism' here, but this video, which was posted on YouTube in 2006, feels like it's much older (early to mid 90's? -- if you know, please let me know). The video itself is actually pretty cool -- I love the music and cheesy sound effects.

March 1, 2009

The nano song

This is deliciously geeky. I can't believe they actually made a carbon nanotube puppet.

Via Posthuman Blues.

April 19, 2008

Fake PS9 ad actually presupposes nano neural nets

A nano neural net is a hypothesized technique for creating a fully immersive virtual reality experience in which nanobots suffuse the brain and circumvent incoming sensory data by halting it and replacing it with new streams of synthetic sensory stimuli.