Previous Page
The most common form of strokes are caused by a sudden reduction in blood flow to the brain (ischemia) that leads to an inadequate supply of oxygen and nutrients. These so-called ischemic strokes are one of the leading causes of death and disability in industrialized nations. If they are not immediately remedied by medical intervention, areas of the brain may die off. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, Korean researchers have now proposed a new approach for supplemental treatment: Ceria nanoparticles could trap the reactive oxygen compounds that result from ischemia and cause cells to die.
Chi Kyung Kim et al.: Ceria Nanoparticles that can Protect against Ischemic Stroke, In: Angewandte Chemie International Edition Early View, September 12, 2012, DOI: 10.1002/anie.201203780: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.201203780
University of Central Florida (US) assistant professor has developed a new material using nanotechnology, which could help keep pilots and sensitive equipment safe from destructive lasers. UCF Assistant Professor Jayan Thomas, in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Rongchao Jin chronicle their work in journal Nano Letters. Thomas is working with gold nanoparticles and studying their properties when they are shrunk into a small size regime called nanoclusters.
“Nanoclusters occupy the intriguing quantum size regime between atoms and nanocrystals, and the synthesis of ultra-small, atomically precise metal nanoclusters is a challenging task,” Thomas said.
Thomas and his team found that nanoclusters developed by adding atoms in a sequential manner could provide interesting optical properties. It turns out that the gold nanoclusters exhibit qualities that may make them suitable for creating surfaces that would diffuse laser beams of high energy. They appear to be much more effective than gold nanocrystal.
Reji Philip, Panit Chantharasupawong, Huifeng Qian, Rongchao Jin, and Jayan Thomas: Evolution of Nonlinear Optical Properties: From Gold Atomic Clusters to Plasmonic Nanocrystals, In: Nano Letters ASAP, July 30, 2012, DOI: 10.1021/nl301988v: http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl301988v
Researcher at Pennsylvania State University, USA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, BASF SE, Germany, Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light, Germany, propose a mechanism based on optical trapping of a protein at the site of plasmonic field enhancements for achieving ultra sensitive detection in only microliter-scale sample volumes, and in real-time.
Miguel A. Santiago-Cordoba, Murat Cetinkaya, Svetlana V. Boriskina, Frank Vollmer, Melik C. Demirel: Ultrasensitive detection of a protein by optical trapping in a photonic-plasmonic microcavity, In: Journal of Biophotonics Special Issue: Lab-on-a-Chip Based Diagnostics, Volume 5, Issue 8-9, August 2012, Pages 629-638, DOI:10.1002/jbio.201200040: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jbio.201200040