Like a team of laboratory gearheads, Arizona State University (A.S.U.) researchers have found a way to soup up microscopic "nanomachines" that may someday be used to deliver lifesaving medications or test the quality of drinking water in remote regions of the world. In place of turbochargers and high-octane gas, the scientists ...

Nanotechwire.com reports on clever work at UCSD on detecting cancer using today’s early nanotechnology-based particles: There is a growing recognition among cancer researchers that the most accurate methods for detecting early-stage cancer will require the development of sensitive assays that can identify simultaneously multiple biomarkers ...

Here at Foresight we have members with paraplegia and at least one with quadraplegia — it would be great if nanotechnology could help. Advanced nanotech should have cell repair abilities, but what can be done sooner? Medical News Today reports on promising current research: The ability to regenerate nerve cells in the body could [...]

Lung cancer is a terrible disease, and anyone can get it. It’s hard to detect. Now a grad student is making progress at building a detector, reports Azonano.com: “With this technology, a future scenario might be that you go to the doctor every year for an annual checkup; he draws about 10 cc’s of [...]

Here’s a cheery note to end our week on: There’s been lots of coverage of recent work by Northwestern’s Prof. Samuel Stupp’s work using today’s nanotechnology materials to tackle paralysis. An excerpt from NanoTechWire.com: In a dramatic demonstration of what nanotechnology might achieve in regenerative medicine, ...

The folks over at the Wilson Center’s Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies have been busy, as summarized on their NanoFrontiers page. First we have a report (2 MB pdf) from their NanoFrontiers Workshop, written up by Karen Schmidt. A couple of excerpts: It seems that the sky is the limit on what might one day be [...]

For many years we’ve been asked, “How will molecular machines be controlled inside the body?” In a nanotechnology advance that is getting wide attention, University of Tokyo researchers have found a way to build molecular-scale scissors — only 3 nanometers long — and control them with light. As explained at ...

Small Times reports that nanotechnology medical applications are expected to climb immensely: U.S. demand for nanotechnology medical products will increase over 17 percent per year to $53 billion in 2011, says The Freedonia Group, Inc., a Cleveland-based industry research firm. Afterwards, the increasing flow of new nanomedicines, ...

A Yale researcher has won the $25,000 Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences for his discovery of natural molecular machine that guides some proteins to fold properly in the warm, crowded environment inside cells: They learned that a large double donut-shaped machine is responsible. They analyzed how that machine uses the energy of ATP and a ...

The busy Project for Emerging Nanotechnologies over at the Wilson Center is having another meeting-plus-webcast, this time on February 27, noon Eastern time, on the topic of “Using Nanotechnology to Improve Health Care in Developing Countries”: What if doctors in Kenya could equip cells of the retina with photoswitches that can be ...