World leading research from the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) aims to develop flexible, large area, cost-effective, reel-to-reel printable plastic solar cells.
CSIRO Executive Dr Steve Morton said the technology for the solar cells was the result of work by CSIRO researchers on advanced polymers.
Seth Coe-Sullivan flicks the switches on two desk lamps, and even from across the conference room, it’s immediately obvious which light the chief technology officer of QD Vision is there to brag about. The light coming from the lamp on the left is a harsh bluish white. The lamp on the right casts a warmer, more yellow glow. Coe-Sullivan holds a hand under each lamp. The hand under the bluish light looks pale and sickly; the other looks darker and healthier. The harsher light lacks wavelengths in the red end of the spectrum, so there’s no light to illuminate the reddish tinge that blood provides to human skin.
QD Vision, based in Watertown, MA, is promoting a new LED-based lamp that it made with Nexxus Lighting of Charlotte, NC. Nexxus makes a lamp designed to screw into standard sockets used in recessed ceiling lighting. It consists of an array of white-light LEDs encircled by fins that remove excess heat. QD Vision adds an optic–a plastic cover with a special coating that snaps into place over the LEDs.
For decades scientists have known that people with Down syndrome, who have an extra copy of chromosome 21, get certain types of cancer at dramatically lower rates than normal. Now, partly by using stem cells derived from the skin of an individual with Down syndrome, researchers at Children’s Hospital Boston have pinpointed the gene that appears to underlie the cancer-protective effect.
The researchers say the results of their study, which were published today in Nature, may point to a promising new target for future cancer treatments. And according to stem-cell biologists, the work also highlights a growing trend in the field: harnessing disease-specific stem cells not as therapies but rather as models for understanding particular genetic disorders.
What if checking for cancer was as easy as a pregnancy test?
Soon, it will be. Catching cancer early is the most crucial step to providing effective and proactive treatment against it. But most folks won’t undergo expensive and inconvenient testing until symptoms start to surface, and by then it could be too late. New advances in nanotechnology could change that, bringing an over-the-counter prostate cancer test kit to your pharmacy in the next few years.
Researchers have created a new type of invisibility cloak that is simpler than previous designs and works for all colors of the visible spectrum, making it possible to cloak larger objects than before and possibly leading to practical applications in “transformation optics.”
Whereas previous cloaking designs have used exotic “metamaterials,” which require complex nanofabrication, the new design is a far simpler device based on a “tapered optical waveguide,” said Vladimir Shalaev, Purdue University’s Robert and Anne Burnett Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
