AEROSOLS FOR GOOD. You may have sworn off aerosol sprays in the &#8217;90s when everyone was talking about the <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/04/130416-ozone-layer-aerosol-environment-science-montreal-protocol/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">hole in the ozone layer</a>, but a team of researchers from MIT has found a use for aerosols that could be good for both the environment and our health. This spray contains nanobots, tiny sensors with the potential to do everything, from detecting dangerous leaks in pipelines, to diagnosing health issues. They published their <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41565-018-0194-z" target="_blank" rel="noopener">research</a> in Nature Nanotechnology on Monday.
NANO-SCALE SENSORS. Each sensor in the aerosol spray contains two parts. The first is a colloid, an extremely tiny insoluble particle or molecule. Colloids are so small, in fact, they can remain suspended in a liquid or the air indefinitely — the force of particles colliding around them is stronger than the force of gravity attempting to pull them down.
The second part of the sensor is a complex circuit containing a chemical detector built from a two-dimensional material, such as graphene. When this detector encounters a certain chemical in its environment, its ability to conduct electricity improves. The circuit also contains a photodiode, a device that can convert ambient light into electric current. This provides all the electricity needed to power the circuit&#8217;s data collection and memory.
The researchers grafted their circuits onto colloids, thereby giving them the colloid&#8217;s ability to travel in unique environments. Once combined, the researchers aerosolized the nanobots (converted them into a sprayable form). This delivery method wouldn&#8217;t be possible without the addition of the colloid. “[The circuits] can’t exist without a substrate,” said the study&#8217;s lead author Michael Strano in <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2018/cell-sized-robots-sense-their-environment-0723" target="_blank" rel="noopener">a news release</a>. “We need to graft them to the particles to give them mechanical rigidity and to make them large enough to get entrained in the flow.”
TWO TYPES OF PIPELINES. The MIT team sees a number of potential diagnostic uses for their sprayable, microscopic sensors, demonstrating a couple in their study. As one example, they designed their sensors to detect the toxic chemical ammonia, then tested its ability within a sealed section of pipe. They sprayed the sensors into one side of a pipe, then gathered them at the other end using a piece of cheesecloth. When they examined the sensors, they could tell they&#8217;d come in contact with ammonia based on the information stored in the sensors&#8217; memory.
In the real-world, this could save inspectors from having to manually look at an entire length of pipe from the outside. Instead, they could simply let the aerosol travel the length of the pipeline, then look for any data in its memory that might signal a problem, such as an encounter with an outside chemical that should not be in the pipeline.
As the MIT team noted in the news release, eventually, this same technology could help <a href="https://futurism.com/kurzweil-by-2030-nanobots-will-flow-throughout-our-bodies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">diagnose problems</a> in the human body, for example, by traveling along our digestive tract, gathering data, and relaying it to medical experts. “We see this paper as the introduction of a new field [in robotics],&#8221; said Strano.
READ MORE: <a href="http://news.mit.edu/2018/cell-sized-robots-sense-their-environment-0723" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cell-Sized Robots Can Sense Their Environment</a> [MIT News]
More on nanobots: <a href="https://futurism.com/kurzweil-by-2030-nanobots-will-flow-throughout-our-bodies/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Kurzweil: By 2030, Nanobots Will Flow Throughout Our Bodies</a>

These bots could one day travel through your body.

MIT researchers create an aerosol spray loaded with nanobots

Robots & Machines

MIT researchers have created nanobots that can travel via an aerosol spray, potentially opening up a new field in robotics.

MIT Researchers Create an Aerosol Spray Loaded With Nanobots

We could be witnessing the birth of a new field in robotics.

<h2>Brain-on-a-Chip</h2>
Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have devised a new use for &#8220;brain-on-a-chip&#8221; technology: testing the effects of biological and chemical agents on the brain over time. Their <a href="http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?type=printable&amp;id=10.1371/journal.pone.0188146" target="_blank" rel="noopener">research was published in PLOS</a> in November 2017. This work is part of an ever-growing body of research dedicated to developing &#8220;brain-on-a-chip&#8221; technology in hopes that one day, it may eliminate the need for animal testing.
The so-called brain-on-a-chip is essentially a wafer of semiconductors to which researchers affix a network of nanowires. When brain cells are introduced onto the chip, they can use the nanowire as scaffolding to build functional neuronal circuits that mimic the interconnectivity of neurons in the brain. Once the lattice is constructed, researchers can not only observe the connectivity as-is but study the impact of disease and trauma.
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In January 2017, researchers at Harvard’s John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) <a href="https://futurism.com/scientists-have-made-a-new-brain-on-a-chip/">first made headlines</a> with such a &#8220;brain-on-a-chip&#8221; device. This chip allowed them to identify the differences between neurons depending on where in the brain they originate from, as well as how those different neurons connect with one another, specifically providing insight into the neurological basis of schizophrenia. Researchers at the Australian National University later <a href="https://futurism.com/researchers-just-created-a-revolutionary-brain-on-a-chip/">refined the nanowire scaffolding technique</a>, developing the first-ever working neuronal circuits.
The latest in brain-on-a-chip applications from LLNL found that the technology can be used to study the impact of long-term exposure to biological and chemical agents on the brain. The team was primarily interested in the kinds of chemical exposures that might be experienced by those in the military — a demographic of patients that are already of interest to neurological study, on account of the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder.
<h2>Brain Chemicals</h2>
In their study, the researchers at LLNL were focused on using their &#8220;brain-on-a-chip&#8221; to study how brain cells are affected by exposure to a number of chemical agents, and how those agents change the brain over time. The hope is that through a deeper understanding of the mechanisms at play, antidotes, treatments, or preventative efforts could be developed and deployed to troops to help protect them.
The &#8220;brain-on-a-chip&#8221; device used by the team at LLNL was designed to have custom-built inserts that give them the ability to model different regions of the brain, swapping them in and out to study their interconnectivity as needed. It also lets the researchers shift easily from the “macro world to the micro world,” since they can place multiple cell types in much smaller areas than has ever been possible before.
<figure id="attachment_118811" style="width: 5599px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img class="wp-image-118811 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2018/01/brainonachip1.jpg" alt="Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research engineer Dave Soscia examines the brain-on-a chip device under a microscope. " width="5599" height="3200" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory research engineer Dave Soscia examines the “brain-on-a chip” device under a microscope. Image Credit: Randy Wong/LLNL</figcaption></figure>
From there, the team was able to monitor the bursts that occur between brain cells when they communicate — called &#8220;action potential patterns&#8221; — as well as give them an idea of how that communication changed over time, particularly if the brain were exposed to something that could change those patterns, like a chemical agent.
“Obviously at a high dose, we know exposure is going to be detrimental, but think about the warfighter who is exposed to a low level of chemical for a long time,&#8221; iCHIP principal investigator Elizabeth Wheeler explained <a href="https://www.llnl.gov/news/brain-chip-tests-effects-biological-and-chemical-agents-develop-countermeasures">in an LLNL press release</a>. &#8220;Using this device in the future, we might be able to predict how that brain is going to be affected. If we understand how it’s affected, then we can develop a countermeasure to protect the warfighter.”
<h2>No More Lab Rats?</h2>
“While we’re not close to the point where we can fully recapitulate a brain outside of the body, this is an important step in terms of increasing complexity of these devices and moving in the right direction,” said co-lead author and LLNL research engineer Dave Soscia in the team&#8217;s press release. “The idea is that eventually, the community gets to a point where people are confident enough in the devices that the effects they see from putting chemicals or pharmaceutical drugs into the platform environment are similar to the results we would see in the human body.”
“You could mimic someone getting a brief exposure on a battlefield and then look at the neurons over six months and see what happens,” Kris Kulp, LLNL biologist, further explained. “Maybe they recover from that initial exposure, but six months from now they still have some kind of detriment. This is the only kind of system that would allow for that kind of experimentation on human cells.”
The next step in development will be for the team to connect with computer scientists, statisticians and others who can help them analyze and fully model the data that this extraordinary device has provided.

The device can show how communication changes over time when exposed to chemicals over the long term.

"Brain-on-a-chip" devices are changing how we study the brain

Health & Medicine

Researchers developed a brain-on-a-chip device that can show how the brain reacts to chemical exposure over the long term.

“Brain-on-a-Chip” Devices Are Changing How We Study the Brain

The devices could one day eliminate the need for animal — and even human — test subjects. 

<h2>The Better to See Through With 
</h2>
Previously, imaging technology that relied on terahertz waves was limited to a clunky setup of tabletop devices, lasers, and mirrors. Now, thanks to the work of researchers from Princeton University, the size of this equipment has dramatically decreased, changing from a massive setup to a pair of microchips that fit on the tips of your fingers.
Terahertz waves are electromagnetic pulses that last one millionth of one millionth of a second, and they can pass through most nonconductive materials, like fabric or cardboard. They also have less energy than X-rays, which means that they don&#8217;t damage human tissue or DNA. Widespread use of this type of wave has been limited only by the bulk setup of the technology.
&#8220;The system is realized in the same silicon chip technology that powers all modern electronic devices from smartphones to tablets, and therefore costs only a few dollars to make on a large scale,&#8221; <a href="https://m.phys.org/news/2017-02-future-terahertz-chips.html">said lead researcher Kaushik Sengupta</a>, whose work was published in two articles that appear in the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits. One article covers <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7559701/?reload=true">a microchip that generates terahertz waves</a>, while the other one is about <a href="http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7782771/">a chip that can capture and read those waves</a>.
<figure style="width: 600px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/02/waveofthefut-1200x1054.jpg" alt="Image credits: Frank Wojciechowski for the Office of Engineering Communications" width="600" height="380" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Image credit: Frank Wojciechowski for the Office of Engineering Communications</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Smaller is Key</h2>
To miniaturize the devices involved in transmitting and reading terahertz waves, the research team analyzed how an antenna functions. Terahertz waves interact with metal structures inside a chip, creating a complex distribution of electromagnetic fields unique to the incident signal. The researchers saw that these patterns could be read as a form of signature to identify the waves, which could be done by tiny devices inside a chip.
<figure id="attachment_70913" style="width: 300px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/a-brief-history-of-technology/"><img class="size-medium wp-image-70913" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/02/A_Brief_History_of_Technology-300x201.png" alt="CLICK TO VIEW FULL INFOGRAPHIC" width="300" height="201" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text"><a href="https://futurism.com/images/a-brief-history-of-technology/">CLICK TO VIEW FULL INFOGRAPHIC</a></figcaption></figure>
&#8220;Instead of directly reading the waves, we are interpreting the patterns created by the waves,&#8221; Sengupta said. &#8220;It is somewhat like looking for a pattern of raindrops by the ripples they make in a pond.&#8221;
Brown University engineering professor <a href="https://m.phys.org/news/2017-02-future-terahertz-chips.html">Daniel Mittleman said</a> that this development is &#8220;a very innovative piece of work, and it potentially has a lot of impact.&#8221; Indeed, the applications of such a technology are promising. It could greatly improve medical imaging devices, even lowering their costs, and play a key role in future medical imaging technology and specialized treatments. Still, a great deal of work still needs to be done before this technology could be developed further or be made available for public use.

Hard Science

Current x-ray technology exposes patients to harmful radiation and is extremely costly, advances in imaging technology like this could improve imaging

Scientists Have Miniaturized Imaging Tech

Your next X-ray could be cheaper and better thanks to these tiny chips.

<h2>Deep Fried High-Tech</h2>
Researchers have found a way to turn cheap, everyday cooking oil into the wonder material graphene &#8211; a technique that could greatly reduce the cost of making the <a href="http://www.sciencealert.com/graphene-s-more-incredible-than-we-thought-can-handle-1-000-times-more-current-than-regular-material">much-touted nanomaterial.</a>
Graphene is a single sheet of carbon atoms with incredible properties &#8211; it&#8217;s 200 times stronger than steel, harder than diamond, and incredibly flexible. Under certain conditions, it can even be <a href="http://www.sciencealert.com/graphene-s-superconductive-power-has-finally-been-unlocked-and-it-s-crazier-than-we-expected">turned into a superconductor</a> that carries electricity with zero resistance.
That means the material has the potential to make better electronics, more effective solar cells, and could even be used in medicine.
Last year, a study suggested that graphene could help mobile phone batteries last <a href="http://www.zdnet.com/article/graphene-breakthrough-hints-at-smartphone-batteries-that-could-last-25-percent-longer/">25 percent longer</a>, and the material has the potential to <a href="http://www.sciencealert.com/graphene-could-be-used-to-filter-fuel-out-of-thin-air">filter fuel out of thin air.</a>
But these applications have been limited by the fact that graphene usually has to be made in a vacuum at intense heat using purified ingredients, which makes it expensive to produce.
Until we can find a cost-effective way to mass produce the over-achieving material, it&#8217;s pretty much limited to labs.
But scientists in Australia have now managed to create graphene in normal air conditions, using cheap soybean cooking oil.
&#8220;This ambient-air process for graphene fabrication is fast, simple, safe, potentially scalable, and integration-friendly,&#8221; <a href="http://csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2017/CSIRO-makes-high-quality-graphene-with-soybeans">said one of the researchers, Zhao Jun Han</a> from Australia&#8217;s CSIRO.
&#8220;Our unique technology is expected to reduce the cost of graphene production and improve the uptake in new applications.&#8221;
The team has called the new technique &#8216;GraphAir&#8217; technology, and it involves heating soybean oil in a tube furnace for about 30 minutes, causing it to decompose into carbon building blocks.
This carbon is then rapidly cooled on a foil made of nickel, where it diffuses into a thin rectangle of graphene that&#8217;s just 1 nanometre thick (about 80,000 times thinner than a human hair).
Not only is this technique cheaper and easier than other methods, it&#8217;s also a lot quicker &#8211; to create graphene in a vacuum takes several hours.
<figure id="attachment_70016" style="width: 624px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img class="wp-image-70016 size-full" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2017/02/93882896_img_0991.jpg" alt="CSIRO" width="624" height="415" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Photo credit: CSIRO</figcaption></figure>
<h2>More Cheap Options</h2>
Zhao <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-31/scientists-cook-up-super-strong-graphene-out-of-soybean-oil/8223686">told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC)</a> that the technique could reduce the cost of making graphene 10-fold.
Not only that, but it offers a more sustainable option for recycling waste cooking oil.
&#8220;We can now recycle waste oils that would have otherwise been discarded and transform them into something useful,&#8221; <a href="http://csiro.au/en/News/News-releases/2017/CSIRO-makes-high-quality-graphene-with-soybeans">said one of the team, Dong Han Seo.</a>
The question now is whether this new technique can be scaled up &#8211; finding a cheaper way to make graphene is awesome, but the graphene film <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-31/scientists-cook-up-super-strong-graphene-out-of-soybean-oil/8223686">produced so far</a> was only 5 cm (1.9 inches) by 2 cm (0.8 inches) in size.
The team says that the largest film they can make using the technique right now is around the size of a <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-31/scientists-cook-up-super-strong-graphene-out-of-soybean-oil/8223686">credit card</a>.
To really make graphene fit for commercial use, researchers will need to produce films that are a whole lot larger than that.
&#8220;The potential&#8217;s enormous,&#8221; David Officer, a graphene expert from the University of Wollongong in Australia, who wasn&#8217;t involved in the study, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-31/scientists-cook-up-super-strong-graphene-out-of-soybean-oil/8223686">told the ABC.</a>
&#8220;[But] the question will be whether you can economically scale a method like this, where they&#8217;ve sealed it inside a furnace tube, to create and handle metre-sized films.&#8221;
The team is now looking for commercial partners to pursue this goal.
But they&#8217;re not the only researchers working on it &#8211; last week, a team from <a href="http://www.k-state.edu/media/newsreleases/2017-01/graphenepatent12517.html">Kansas State University patented a simple technique</a> that creates graphene using only hydrocarbon gas, oxygen, and a spark plug. No vacuum required.
Time will tell if they can use it to effectively make large films of graphene in one go, but it&#8217;s nice to know that researchers around the world are working on finding a way to take this incredible material out of the lab and into our lives.
The research has been <a href="http://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14217">published in Nature Communications.</a>

Researchers have discovered a way to make soybean oil into the super-strong material graphene. The material has a wide variety of potential uses and can revolutionize electronics.
The material could be used to make cell phone batteries last 25 percent longer, make more effective solar cells, and even filter fuel out of air.

Scientists Have Turned Cooking Oil Into a Material 200 Times Stronger Than Steel

A cheaper way to make graphene.

<h2>Manipulating Matter</h2>
<a href="https://futurism.com/understanding-nanotechnology-astrochemistry/">The dream of nanotechnology</a> is to harness it to control the material world at its most fundamental level—to manipulate matter at the molecular and atomic scale.
It’s a dream that is held by scientists in many fields—medicine, materials research, electronics, computing, and others too numerous to list. The struggle has been in how to actually achieve such a precision control of matter. Sadly, the quantum effects at this level often defeat any such attempts, and have proven difficult to surmount.
<figure id="attachment_34124" style="width: 225px" class="wp-caption alignright"><a href="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/04/atom-stuff.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-34124" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/04/atom-stuff.jpg" alt="Representation of the protein-mediated, buckyball-laced &quot;crystal&quot; formed in the experiment. Credit: Nature Communications" width="225" height="210" /></a><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Representation of the protein-mediated, buckyball-laced &#8220;crystal.&#8221; Credit: Nature Communications</figcaption></figure>
But now, researchers are beginning to figure out that what they’ve been doing is akin to trying to reinvent the wheel—sophisticated nanoscale machinery already exists in the form of the molecular equipment of life, which has been manipulating molecules and atoms for some four billion years.
<a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160426/ncomms11429/full/ncomms11429.html">In a study published in the journal </a><a href="http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160426/ncomms11429/full/ncomms11429.html">Nature Communications</a>, a team of scientists from <a href="http://dartmouth.edu">Dartmouth College</a> has created an artificial protein that can precisely organize the formation of 60-carbon-atom buckminster fullerenes—aka “buckyballs”—into their sphere-like formation.
“If we learn to do this more generally—the programmable self-assembly of precisely organized molecular building blocks—this will lead to a range of new materials towards a host of applications, from medicine to energy,” <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-04-artificial-protein-buckyballs.html">predicts lead researcher Gevorg Grigoryan</a>, assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth.
<h2>Protein-Mediated Self Assembly</h2>
The goal of the research was to find a way to cheaply, quickly, and efficiently manufacture nanoscale materials—a notoriously difficult thing to achieve. They wanted to easily create buckyballs, the applications for which are practically legion. Their novel properties, such as high heat resistance and electrical superconductivity, make them ideal for nanotechnology; there’s just that small difficulty of finding a way to assemble them.
Proteins are a kind of “smart” molecule—no mere inert atomic congeries, they are a fundamental substrate of life, encoded for by genes, and capable of self-organization and manipulating and shuttling molecules. Perfect for nanoscale assemblage, and the team showed that the proteins were able to interface with and assemble buckyballs into the desired shape.
“Learning to engineer self-assembly would enable the precise organization of molecules by design to create matter with tailored properties,” Grigoryan observes, his &#8216;mad scientist&#8217; excitement almost palpable.
And he is, of course, right—the implications are tremendous. Using something so plentiful and easily manufactured as proteins, the very stuff of life, nano-engineers may finally be able to set about the task of “programming” matter—creating bespoke materials and designer objects with novel properties at the molecular and atomic scale.

Researchers have used an artificial protein to assemble a buckyball molecule—opening the door to new methods of nano-engineering.

New Artificial Protein Makes it Possible to Manipulate Matter

A protein is capable of assembling “buckyballs”—60 carbon atom spheroidal molecules.

<h2>Elusive Carbyne</h2>
Elemental carbon is extremely versatile, and scientists have long been able to create new carbon allotropes that make for super durable and multi-functioning materials—such as <a href="https://futurism.com/physicists-discover-graphene-slides-across-gold-almost-perfect-frictionless-movement/">everyone&#8217;s favorite material, graphene</a>.
The &#8220;carbon family&#8221; is one very resourceful family. But even with all these developments, carbyne remained elusive. In fact, it is the only form of carbon that has not been synthesized, even though researchers have been studying its properties for over 50 years.
The reason for this is that carbyne is extremely unstable. This one-dimensional carbon chain was first discovered in 1885 by Adolf von Baeyer, who even stated that carbyne would remain elusive, as its high reactivity would <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-04-proof-stable-ultra-long-1d-carbon.html" target="_blank">always lead to its immediate destruction</a>.
<h2>So What Do We Do?</h2>
Carbyne&#8217;s mechanical properties are theorized to exceed all known materials. It&#8217;s assumed to be 2x stiffer than graphene, 40x stiffer than diamond, and have greater tensile strength than any other carbon material. With these kinds of properties, no wonder we&#8217;ve been trying to find ways to stabilize it.
And now, an international team of researchers have now found a way to mass produce carbyne.
The team took two layers of graphene, pressed them together, and rolled them into thin, double-walled carbon nanotubes. The tubes were then wrapped around the atoms. These nanotubes protect the carbyne chains from meeting imminent doom. Their research is published in the journal <a href="http://www.nature.com/nmat/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nmat4617.html" target="_blank">Nature Materials</a>. 
<figure style="width: 1385px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img style="width: 800px;" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/04/unravelingat.png" alt="" width="1385" height="1385" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">SOURCE: Lei Shi/Faculty of Physics, University of Vienna</figcaption></figure>
Before their discovery, the record-holding number of carbon atoms in one continuous chain was 100. Now, the record has been broken with an astounding 6,400 atoms utilizing this novel method &#8211; and the chain continues to be stable.
Also, carbyne&#8217;s electrical properties increase with its chain length. This means that researchers will be able to experiment with the material more effectively with success from the nanotubes. There is a huge wealth of possible applications using carbyne, and we&#8217;re excited to see what kinds of devices will arise with the delivery of this &#8220;miracle&#8221; material.

Scientists have managed to develop a novel method to grow stable, ultra-long 1D carbon chains of a material that is twice as strong as carbon nanotubes and far stronger than diamonds.

First Direct Proof of Stable Carbyne, The World’s Strongest Material

It's 40 times stronger than diamond, and it may be our next "miracle" material?

<h2>Pooch Patrol </h2>
As of April 6, 2016, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/compulsory-dog-microchipping-comes-into-effect" target="_blank">UK law</a> requires all dogs eight weeks or older to have microchip implants. 
If a pooch is caught without the microchip implant, the owner will be given 21 days to comply with the new regulations. In cases where the dog owner is negligent, he or she will be made to pay a fine. In such cases, the authorities could also take the dog away from the owner, have it implanted with the microchip, and then compel the owner to pay for the procedure anyway. 
<figure style="width: 620px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img style="width: 620px; float: none;" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/04/143950785649m8m.jpg" alt="" width="620" height="412" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">MorgueFile</figcaption></figure>
In a <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-35972480" target="_blank">BBC report</a>, Simon Blackburn of the Local Government Association, said that microchips will address &#8220;reckless&#8221; ownership, as well as save taxpayers&#8217; cash that would otherwise be used to look after strays. Moreover, the microchips will make it easier and quicker to return dogs to their owners in case they are stolen or lost. 
<h2>Chip Tricks</h2>
The microchip that the UK government wants implanted into dogs is about the size of a single grain of rice. <a href="https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/help-advice/microchipping/microchipping-faq-page" target="_blank">Dogs Trust</a> — the country&#8217;s largest dog welfare charity — explained, &#8220;with the use of a specially designed implanting device, the microchip is injected through a sterile needle under the dog’s skin, right between the shoulder blades.&#8221; The procedure causes a mild discomfort similar to what is felt during a standard vaccination. 
The chip is assigned a unique number that can be read by a scanner. The number corresponds to the dog owner&#8217;s contact details. All this information is logged on a central database. If the dog ever goes missing, all the authorities have to do is use the scanner to find out who the dog&#8217;s owner is and how to get in touch with him or her. 
Currently, it&#8217;s estimated that more than <a href="http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/05/dog-microchipping-mandatory/?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000589" target="_blank">1.45 million</a> dogs still need to be implanted with microchips. In any case, when dogs are out in public, they&#8217;re still required to wear a collar with a tag that states the name and address of the owner. The microchip, though, serves as the fail-safe feature.

Future Society

As of April 6, 2016, UK law requires all dogs that are eight weeks old or older to have microchip implants. Microchips will address "reckless" ownership, as well as save taxpayers' cash that would otherwise be used to look after strays. 

New Law Requires all Dogs in the UK to be Microchipped

Here's what you need to know about the new law.

<a href="https://futurism.com/goodbye-dialysis-nanotechnology-used-to-make-artificial-kidney/" target="_blank">Developments in nanotechnology in recent years</a> have largely paved the way for how we treat human diseases. Minute devices only measuring a mere 1 to 100 micrometers in length have allowed us to view and target individual cells for treatment.
But even with the ability to directly deliver drugs to cells, we have not been able to observe cell to cell interactions in a micro-fluid environment. Being able to view a micro-fluid environment that mimics blood flow would help scientists to discover how cells react to disease conditions &#8211; as well as how they might react to specialized treatment.
Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and LeHigh University discovered a technique to do just that. Their research is targeted towards blood vessel inflammation that leads to heart disease, <a href="https://www.heart.org/HEARTORG/General/Heart-and-Stroke-Association-Statistics_UCM_319064_SubHomePage.jsp" target="_blank">causing more than 17.3 million deaths</a> per year worldwide.
Their work is published in <a href="http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/bmf/10/1/10.1063/1.4936672" target="_blank">Biomicrofluidics</a>.
Understanding ICAM-1
This type of inflammation occurs from dysfunctional cells (specifically, endothelial cells) after they come into contact with a molecule known as the intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1). ICAM-1 clings to the surface of the cells, which is what leads to the inflammation. Being able to directly observe the damaged endothelial cells in this micro-fluid environment will allow researchers to develop treatment much more effectively.
<img class="alignnone wp-image-29493 size-large" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/bridge-endothelial-1200x751.jpeg" alt="bridge endothelial" width="1200" height="751" />
Source: Yaling Liu
Observing these conditions from inside the human body is not possible, and using a static cell culture (such as a Petri dish) does not mimic this environment.
So the team turned to ICAM-1 antibody-coated nanoparticles as imaging probes in order to assess the cell&#8217;s condition. &#8220;We were able to mimic and observe the dynamic transfer process &#8211; that moment when [ICAM-1] antibody-coated nanoparticles binds to the cell, signaling inflammation upregulation by endothelial cells &#8211; on a chip,&#8221; explained <a href="http://phys.org/news/2016-03-mimicking-blood-vessel-bridge-medicine.html" target="_blank">Yaling Liu</a>, Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics, Bioengineering at Lehigh, and co-author on the study.
This method, he adds, costs less than other techniques, is generally safer, and stimulates similar conditions in the human body.
Improving Medicine
The benefits are numerous. The team&#8217;s ingenuity could pave the way towards a new strategy in determining drug safety and effectiveness. Because both healthy and diseased cells exist on the chip at the same time, the localized area can be used to test the effectiveness of drugs.
If successful, it would reduce the need for <a href="https://aspe.hhs.gov/report/examination-clinical-trial-costs-and-barriers-drug-development" target="_blank">human clinical trials</a>, which end up costing between $50 and $115 million per drug tested.
This number increases depending on the anatomical region associated. Pharmaceutical companies could get a glimpse into drug efficacy before opting for clinical trials. It would also allow for a greater release of FDA-approved drugs, as clinical trials slow this process. Culturing patient&#8217;s cells directly to the chip may also lead to patient-specific therapy.
As their research widens beyond blood vessel inflammation, Liu and his team hope to pioneer a new age of improved medicine.

Drug testing costs between $50 and $115 million per drug tested. This new method may be able to dramatically reduce those costs. 

We Can Now Target Diseases by Mimicking Blood Vessels

This could usher in a new age of patient-specific treatments.

<h3>Nature-inspired</h3>
Nanotubes are an important part of the next generation of technology. Hollow tubes that have diameters of only a few billionths of a meter, nanotubes have been used to make and improve everything from <a href="https://futurism.com/artificial-retina-created-based-semiconductor-nanorods-carbon-nanotubes/">artificial retinas</a> to <a href="https://futurism.com/ibm-claims-computing-breakthrough-using-carbon-nanotubes/">transistors</a>.
But since they are small, you have to make a ton of them. We&#8217;re talking millions. And making millions of nanotubes with the exact same diameter presents a very real challenge. Until now.
Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy&#8217;s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have <a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/03/23/1517169113.full">recently announced that they have discovered</a> a family of nature-inspired polymers that, when placed in water, spontaneously assemble into hollow crystalline nanotubes. What&#8217;s more, the diameters can be tuned, producing nanotubes five to ten nanometers in diameter. This depends on the length of the polymer chain used.
Notably, these new structures could be used in order to deliver cancer-fighting drugs inside cells or to desalinate seawater.
<h3>New Design Principle</h3>
The breakthrough by the scientists reflects not only the discovery of the polymers, but also the new design principles on how these things were formed.
The study focused on a particular type of polymer, peptoids. Specifically, the diblock copolypeptoid. This peptoid is made up of two peptoid blocks, one hydrophobic and one that&#8217;s hydrophilic. When they meet in water, they crystallize and form rings.
Close inspection of the tubes, with the help of the Cryo-electron microscopy imaging, showed that the structure of the nanotube is composed of these rings stacked together, forming a striped pattern.
<figure style="width: 440px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img style="width: 440px;" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/F1.medium.gif" alt="" width="440" height="265" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Credit:<a href="http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/03/23/1517169113.full"> PNAS</a></figcaption></figure>
The peptoids arrange themselves in a brick-like pattern, with hydrophobic blocks lining up with other hydrophobic blocks, and the same for hydrophilic blocks. The two peptoid blocks are chemically distinct, yet almost exactly the same size, which allows the chains to pack together in a very regular way. This allows the nanotubes to assemble themselves without the usual nano-construction aids, such as electrostatic interactions or hydrogen bond networks.
&#8220;&#8230;[I]f you can control the diameter of nanotubes, and the chemical groups exposed in their interior, then you can control what goes through—which could lead to new filtration and desalination technologies, to name a few examples,&#8221;<a href="http://m.phys.org/news/2016-03-scientists-principle-nanostructures.html">says Ron Zuckermann</a>, who directs the Biological Nanostructures Facility, where much of the research was conducted.

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have discovered a family of nature-inspired polymers that, when placed in water, spontaneously assemble into hollow crystalline nanotubes. 

Scientists Discovered How to Make Nanotubes That Assemble Themselves

Nature is helping us make nanotubes that self-assemble into uniform structures. 

<h2>Something Doesn’t Smell Right</h2>
Scientists at the <a href="www.kaist.edu/html/en/index.html">Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology</a> (KAIST) are developing biosensors that can sniff out certain molecular signatures, a useful tool for medical diagnosis. <a href="advnano.kaist.ac.kr/new/sp_02/sp2_01.php">Professor Il-Doo Kim</a>, of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at KAIST, has led the research, which may enable such technology to work with smartphones, smartwatches, and other commonly available devices.
The idea is to use small semiconductors made of metal oxide nanofibers as sensor arrays; these devices are designed for maximum “gas adsorption,” which allows them to analyze “volatile organic compounds” (VOCs) exhaled in human breath. Detecting these chemical signatures will mean early diagnosis of certain diseases, a potentially life-saving advantage.
The sensor arrays register, for instance, the presence in VOCs of acetone, H2S, ammonia, and toluene, which would indicate the presence of diabetes, halitosis, kidney malfunction, and lung cancer.
Honestly, anyone whose breath smells like acetone, hydrogen sulfide, or ammonia should already be sending up some red flags; but the point is, the ultrasenstitive technology can detect even trace biomarkers.
And by analyzing gases that originate at the blood-lung tissue barrier, the technology provides an important window onto the health of a patient, and can be extended to sense a wide variety of diseases.
<figure style="width: 700px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img style="width: 700px;" src="https://wp-assets.futurism.com/2016/03/160316_catalyst_eng_art3.jpg" alt="" width="700" height="322" /><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Examples of the different configurations of the breath-analyzing sensor array, including: smartphone, patch, and watch.  Credit: KAIST</figcaption></figure>
<h2>Take It Wherever you Go</h2>
The technology is inexpensive and can be readily integrated with existing “smart” devices. That’s a nice feature, because it means real-time diagnosis for patients—no need for a lengthy, nail-biting wait. And aside from merely assuaging a patient’s anxiety, it also means rapid field diagnoses, which could be crucial to identifying and mobilizing against disease epidemics and outbreaks.
“<a href="futurism.com/google-x-wants-use-magnetic-nanoparticles-wearable-sensors-detect-diseases/">The sensor technology</a> is compatible with various types of smartphones, wearable electronic gadgets, and medical devices,” Professor Kim points out, adding that it also has applications for non-medical uses.
For example, it can be used to detect hazardous chemicals, or excessive concentrations of potentially lethal gases, whether in factories or homes.

Soon, your smartphone may be able to smell your breath and tell you if you have a disease.

/Nanotech

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