Friday, December 09, 2011

High school senior kills cancer with nanotech, still can't legally drink -- Engadget

High school senior kills cancer with nanotech, still can't legally drink -- Engadget

17-year old medical prodigy Angela Zhang from Cupertino was just awarded the Siemens Foundation grand prize -- a $100,000 payday -- for her work "Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells." It's certainly a mouthful, but this nanotech is what one fellow researcher's calling the "Swiss Army knife of cancer treatment," as her gold and iron-oxide nanoparticle does double duty delivering the drug salinomycin to a tumor site, in addition to aiding MRI and photoacoustic imaging.

BBC News - China and Bill Gates discuss nuclear reactor plan

BBC News - China and Bill Gates discuss nuclear reactor plan

China is set to start work on a novel design for a nuclear reactor with the help of a firm founded by Bill Gates.

Terrapower is working on a design for what is known as a travelling wave reactor. This uses depleted uranium as its power source and is believed to produce less nuclear waste than other designs.

Terrapower is working on a design for what is known as a travelling wave reactor. This uses depleted uranium as its power source and is believed to produce less nuclear waste than other designs.

BBC News - Nanoparticle hollowing method promises medical advances


BBC News - Nanoparticle hollowing method promises medical advances
A process to "carve" highly complicated shapes into nanoparticles has been unveiled by a team of researchers. The researchers added that the technique could also aid drug delivery. "It's a wonderful molecular suitcase," said Prof Puntes.

The research was carried out by the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Bellaterra, Spain and is published in an issue of Science.

However, the professor acknowledged that at this early stage he could only guess at the eventual uses such nanomaterials would have.

"When people first invented plastic they didn't know what to do with it, we knew electricity was around for over a thousand years before we learned how to do something useful with it," Prof Puntes said.

"This creates different materials so they will probably have lots of different properties."