-
Aluminum: a safe, economical, high energy density material for energy storage, transport and splitting water to make hydrogen on demand
30 Mar 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Jerry M. Woodall
In 1968, a team lead by the author discovered that liquid gallium saturated with aluminum at room temperature would split water into hydrogen gas, alumina and heat. More recently his current team has discovered that bulk, solid Al rich alloys will also split water in the same manner. Since 1) the...
-
"Who Owns Truth?" - Biomedical Research in a Health Policy Context
30 Mar 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Samuel A. Richmond
This presentation examines a claim made by PhRMA on behalf of pharmaceutical manufacturing companies of America, and the response of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) questioning drug company publication policies and practices. Also considered are changes in law...
-
Energy and Nanoscience A More Perfect Union
29 Mar 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Mark Ratner
Huge problems of energy and sustainability confront the science/engineering community, mankind, and our planet. The energy problem comes in many dimensions, including supply, demand, conservation, transportation, and storage. This overview will stress the nature of these problems, and offer a few...
-
The Multicore Era: Crisis or (and?) Opportunity?
27 Mar 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Mithuna Thottethodi
This talk will provide a brief overview of how we got to the multicore era, the implications and challenges for hardware/software developers and users, and some informed speculation on where the trends may be headed.
-
Research Directions for the Semiconductor Industry in 2009
13 Mar 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Steven James Hillenius
The Semiconductor industry has achieved extraordinary growth in productivity over the last 50 or more years through investment in basic research. The industry has depended on this basic research to find the breakthrough materials, structures, designs and architectures to enable the development of...
-
DragonflyTV Nano – Using the Power of Television to Introduce Middle School Children to Nanotechnology
15 Jan 2009 | | Contributor(s):: Richard Hudson, Joan Freese, Angie Prindle, Lisa Regalla
DragonflyTV is a PBS science series for children, broadcast nationwide and on the internet. DragonflyTV models authentic science inquiry through its unique approach: In each episode, ordinary kids conduct their own inquiry-based investigations, modeling the inquiry process and communicating the...
-
Basic Rules of Protein Folding
31 Dec 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Seth Lichter
How are proteins made? Inside cells, messenger RNA first instructs the ribosomes as to the order which amino acids should be joined together. Linked together and released from the ribosome, the protein is not functional. It now needs to fold into a precise three-dimensional shape. There are no...
-
Gas Damping of Microcantilevers at Low Ambient Pressures
03 Nov 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Rahul Anil Bidkar
This seminar will present a theoretical model for predicting the gas damping of long, rectangular silicon microcantilevers, which are oscillating in an unbounded gaseous medium with the ambient pressures varying over 5 orders of magnitude (1000 > Kn > 0.03). The work is the result of a...
-
Sustainability: Less Talk - More Engineering
27 Oct 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Larry L. Baxter
In the last five years, sustainability and energy issues in general rose from obscurity to dominance in both the popular and technical press. In the process, the definitions, goals, and pathways seem to becoming more confused rather than more focused. This presentation discusses sustainability...
-
Affordable Clean Energy: Challenges and Opportunities
20 Oct 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Hukam C. Mongia
The technical presentation is built around the August 9th 2008 ABC News/Planet Green/Stanford Poll on Environment/Energy in which the majority of the people polled expressed support for the following ideas: increase fuel efficiency standards, allowing drilling offshore, people and businesses are...
-
The Opposite of Human Enhancement: Nanotechnology and the Blind Chicken Problem
20 Oct 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Paul B. Thompson
-
From density functional theory to defect level in silicon: Does the “band gap problem” matter?
01 Oct 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Peter A. Schultz
Modeling the electrical effects of radiation damage in semiconductor devices requires a detailed description of the properties of point defects generated during and subsequent to irradiation. Such modeling requires physical parameters, such as defect electronic levels, to describe carrier...
-
Quantum and Thermal Effects in Nanoscale Devices
18 Sep 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Dragica Vasileska
To investigate lattice heating within a Monte Carlo device simulation framework, we simultaneously solve the Boltzmann transport equation for the electrons, the 2D Poisson equation to get the self-consistent fields and the hydrodynamic equations for acoustic and optical phonons. The phonon...
-
Hydration Dynamics in an Amphiphilic Nanostructure under Controlled Hydration Conditions
16 Sep 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Amitabha Chattopadhyay
Amphiphilic surfactants self assemble to form reverse (or inverted) micelles in non-polar solvents in which the polar head groups of the surfactant monomers cluster to form a micellar core directed toward the center of the assembly and the hydrophobic tails extend outward into the bulk organic...
-
Cataract, Myopathy and Keratitis: Possible use of Nanoparticles
16 Sep 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Ch. Mohan Rao
Small heat shock proteins are critical for several cellular functions. Failure of heat shock proteins, thus, can cause compromised cellular activity leading to disease. Fungal Keratitis is an eye dieses that can be treated with anti fungal drugs. Availability of the drug at the site of action is...
-
Nanomaterials for Bone & Neural Tissue Engineering
11 Sep 2008 | | Contributor(s):: S. Swaminathan
Tissue engineering is defined as “the application of biological, chemical and engineering principles towards the repair, restoration or regeneration of tissues using scaffolds, cells, factors alone or in combination.” The goal lis to design and develop biodegradable, biocompatible polymer-ceramic...
-
So What do Biologist, Biotechnologists & Pharmaceutical Scientist Want With an AFM/SPM Anyway?
11 Sep 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Kunal Bose
-
Self-assembled Monolayer Based Biosensors for Healthcare
06 Aug 2008 | | Contributor(s):: B. D. Malhotra
There is increased demand both in developed and the developing countries for ready availability of biosensors [1-5]. In this context, self-assembled monolayer (Scheme I) based biosensors have recently attracted much interest due to their applications in health care, environmemtal, pharmaceuticals...
-
Nanomaterials in Biosensing Using Ion Selective Field Effect Transistors and Metal Particles
30 Jul 2008 | | Contributor(s):: Nalam Madhusudhana Rao
The multifunctionality, multilayerable architechture and size of nanomaterials offer tremendous opportunities in developing sensing platforms. Ion Selective Field Effect Transistors (ISFET) are solid state and robust pH/ion sensing devices with excellent “voltage vs. ion concentration”...
-
Nanocomposite-Modified Electrodes for Sensing Biological Analytes
30 Jul 2008 | | Contributor(s):: V. Yegnaraman
Electrochemical sensing of analytes is mostly enabled by transducers based on potentiometry and amperometry. In this, design of sensing (working) electrode is of utmost importance since it only decides the sensitivity and selectivity features of the sensor. Chemical modification of the electrode...