MIT’s progress in making synthetic spider silk

From this report [via slashdot]:
“If you look closely at the structure of spider silk, it is filled with a lot of very small crystals,” said Gareth McKinley, a professor of mechanical engineering and part of the group that devised the new method of producing the material.

“It’s highly reinforced.”

The secret of spider silk’s combined strength and [...]

Nano-knives and superplastic nanotubes

First, the nano-knife (via slashdot):

A prototype microtome knife for cutting ~100 nm thick slices of frozen-hydrated biological samples has been constructed using multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT). A piezoelectric-based 3-D manipulator was used inside a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to select and position individual MWCNTs, which were subsequently welded in place using [...]

Nanotech research in India

[Even] with the NSTI [the Nano Science and Technology Initiative] in place, the level of funding has been sub-critical as compared to China with which India inevitably tends to be compared. In 2002, for example, compared to China’s $200 million, India spent a mere Rs.15 crores. Over the four and a half years of [...]

Nanosilver

Apparently, silver (particularly in the form of silver nitrate) was used as a disinfectant before the advent of antibiotics. Today’s NYTimes has an article about the return of silver — this time, in the nanometric, elemental form — to its well known medical use. It adds that this link between silver and its disinfectant properties [...]

Hype in science?

Let me give start with an example: I saw in nanotech wire this report. The headline screams:
Princeton’s Group Nanotechnology discovery by could have radical implications
Let’s look at the underlying paper that has led to this screaming headline: It is this paper (pdf),that was recently published in the journal Physical Review Letters (22, 228301, November 25, [...]