Mimicking the agile gecko, with its uncanny ability to run up walls and across ceilings, has long been a goal of materials scientists. Researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Akron have taken one sticky step in the right direction, creating synthetic 'gecko tape' with four times the sticking power of the real thing.

In a paper published in the June 18 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe a process for making polymer surfaces covered with carbon nanotube hairs. The nanotubes imitate the thousands of microscopic hairs on a gecko's footpad, which form weak bonds with whatever surface the creature touches, allowing it to 'unstick' itself simply by shifting its foot.

For the first time, th...

Researchers at Yokohama National University in Japan have built a highly efficient room- temperature nanometer-scale laser that produces stable, continuous streams of near-infrared laser light. The overall device has a width of several microns, while the part of the device that actually produces laser light has dimensions at the nanometer scale in all directions.

The laser uses only a microwatt of power, one of the smallest operating powers ever achieved. This nanolaser design sho...

D-Wave Systems, the self-proclaimed "first and only provider of
quantum computing systems designed to run commercial applications"
will be demonstrating an end-to-end quantum computing system powered
by a 16-qubit superconducting adiabatic quantum computer processor.

The so-called Orion system is a hardware accelerator designed to be
used in concert with a conventional front end for any application that
requires the solution of an NP-complete problem. In other words, the
customer might ...

Researchers at Rice University and pediatric specialists at Baylor College of Medicine have discovered a new way to use fullerene-based nanoparticles as passkeys that allows drugs to enter cancer cells. The research appears in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry.

All living cells defend themselves by walling off the outside world. Cell walls, or membranes, form a protective cocoon around the cell's inner machinery and its DNA blueprints. "Drugs are ...

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a technique to study how unicellular micro-algae, known as diatoms, create their complex cell walls. Researchers hope to learn how diatoms assemble these nanometer-patterned, intricate micro-
architectures to find better methods for creating nanomaterials in the laboratory.

"Diatoms are nature's most gifted nanotechnologists," said Nils Kröger, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemistry and Bioc...