Can measure Tuberculosis and Other bacterial infections accurately using a portable device?

Tuberculosis (TB) and other important infectious bacteria can be diagnosed  by a handheld diagnostic device. 

Tuberculosis Bacteria

The scientist explain portable devices that combine microfluidic technology with nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) to not only diagnose these important infections but also determine the presence of antibiotic resistant bacterial strains. Further said that "Rapidly identifying the pathogen responsible for an infection and testing for the presence of resistance are critical not only for diagnosis but also for deciding which antibiotics to give a patient." 

Above described methods allow them to do this in two to three hours, a immense improvement over standard culturing practice, which can get as much as two weeks to provide a diagnosis.

The system described in above detects DNA from the tuberculosis bacteria in small sputum samples. After DNA is extracted from the sample and detects any TB bacterial DNA present in the sample.

The device was sensitive enough to detect as few as one or two bacteria in a 10 ml blood sample and to accurately estimate bacterial load. Testing the system on blood samples from patients with known infections accurately identified the particular bacterial species in less than two hours and also detected two species that had not been identified with standard culture techniques.

Biomass enrgy use as a fuel?

Scientist have mooved to a big step to use biomass energy as fuel that is one of the more promising guide to energy independence leads away from crude oil and into the forests and fields.

scientists have been reasearching efficient means to convert non food based biomass into fuels and chemical feedstocks,  reducing fossil fuel dependence and reducing greenhouse gas, CO2 emissions. To that end, an article was published in the scientific journal Nature Chemistry that could offer a big step on the path to renewable energy.

The aricle "The hydrodeoxygenation of bioderived furans into alkanes," guides how to take starting materials that are derived from glucose or cellulose, a carbohydrate in woody biomass and the most common organic compound on Earth, and mix them with
other bio derived building blocks to have new molecules that have between eight and fifteen carbons in the backbone.

The scintist then convert these molecules into hydrocarbons (HCs) which are similar to those found in petrol and diesel, giving an opportunity to have an independance in fuel or to synthesize industrial chemicals such as polymers, pharmaceuticals and pesticides from biomass.

This new approach, an alternative route to convert glucose molecules to HCs that uses much less energy and has a very high degree of conversion to provide pure products. This simple synthesis allows researchers to generate a range of alkanes from
a variety of biomass derived molecules. The sientist are looking to improve catalyst recyclability and scale up methods.

Invention of 2D thiophene nanosheet with 3.5nm thickness!

Recently a team of sientisst have researched and developed a new 2D supramolecular thiophene nanosheet with 3.5nm of thickness.

So far graphene have played major role in electronic materials with 2D sheet structure but in the case of graphene chemical functionalization and size control are difficult and impossible. in this case, a promising material, thiophene polymers, have been actively rolled  as electronic materials.

Field effect transistors (FET), organic electroluminescece, organic solar cells  and other electrical materials are the example of thiophene applications but, for the manufacturing of thiophene thin film requires much enrgy and epensive quipment are the problem faced.

Thiophene nanosheet with high crystallinity is required in sol gel fabrication method in the polymer solution

Researchers have discovered that an alternating copolymer, in which a thiophene compounds and flexible ethylene glycol chain are alternately connected, is folded in some organic solvents in such a way that the thiophene units are stacked each other, and the folded copolymers self assemble into a 2D sheet structure.

They said that the length of the polymer used in this work is
approximately 80nm, the thickness of the sheet is only 3.5nm due to the folded conformation of the copolymer.

Further the researchers expained that The arrangement of the thiophene units in the nanosheet was same to as that manufactured by vacuum vapor deposition (CVD) of low molecular weight thiophene compounds. Therefore, their thiophene nanosheets are
feasible to the application of organic electronics devices.

The lateral size of the nanosheet was manageble by tuning the concentration of the polymer solution. The chemical modification of the nanosheet surface was also possible by appling the other functional unit at the terminals of the copolymer.

For instance, a simple and a low cost method is that it is possible to build single layer by vaccum deposition.

Source: Internet

Aiding to Ease of Sliding Steel Surface

Scientist have recently changed one atom thick graphine layer material to make a big difference instead of having oil based lubricants on sliding steel surface to reduce the friction in between those.The wear rate and the coefficient of friction (COF) of steel can be reduced drastically by garaphene, and it is due to the low shear and higly protective character of graphene. oxidatine of steel surface is also prevented by gaphene when present at sliding interface.

Many moving ball bearings, mechanical machines,varing from table fans to giant wind turbines are used graphen for their smoothness to perform reducing energy and materials losses in these moving mechanical systems is due to the friction and wear remains is the one of the greatest engineering challenges of our time.

Molybdenum disulfide or boric acid, which are environmentaly unfriendly additives, are currently used to reduce friction and wear.
though the oil based lubricants are producing additional waste and need to be frquently reapplied. Due to finite thickness, the cost of solid lubricant coating is very high and they do not last long  the reduced loss of energy to friction granted by new materials  would yield a potential energy savings of 2.46 billion kwhs per year, equivalent to 420,000 barrels of oil.

scientist said that applying or reapplying the graphene coating does not require any additional processing steps other than just sprinkling a small amount of solution on the surface of interest, cost effective, environmentally friendly and making this process simple.

Scientist are interesting to see how a one atom thick material affects the properties at a larger scale andbelieve that graphene has potential as a solid lubricant in the automotive industry and, once fully developed, it could have positive impacts on many mechanical applications that could lead to a tremendous savings of energy.

Source: nature

Can sientists can controll chirality in carbon nanotubes

Synthesising a single walled carbon nanotubes(SWNTs) with cotrolled chiralities is the challenge in the field of carbon nanotube research.

Single walled c-nanotube

Sientists have now abled to control chirality in c-nanotues using the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) synthesis after discovering of SWNTs 20 years ago.

 A pair of integers, chiral indices (n,m) is used to descirbe the c-nanotubes structure. so called chirality can explain the optical and electronic properties of c-nanotubes and then discribe its practical applications.

Sustantial research has been made to find synthesis methods and has been hindered by lack of practical methods to have the metal nanoparticle catalystd and its characteristic dynamics during tube groth.

The developed new catalyst has employed for selective growth of SWNTs in the conventional CVD reactor and the researchers have demonstrated preferential growth of semiconducting SWNTs (～90%) with an exceptionally high population of (6,5) tubes (53%) at 500 °C. Furthermore, they also showed a shift of the chiral preference from (6,5) tubes at 500 °C to (7, 6) and (9, 4) nanotubes at 400 °C.

These findings have opened new perspectives both for structural control of SWNTs and for elucidating their growth mechanisms, thus are important for the fundamental understanding of science behind nanotube growth.