Quantum in Biological News

Covering the bases: Quantum effect may hold promise for low-cost DNA sequencing, sensor applications

A ghostly property of matter, called quantum tunneling, may aid the quest for accurate, low-cost genomic sequencing, according to a new paper in Nature Nanotechnology Letters by Stuart Lindsay and his collaborators at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State University. Tunneling implies that a ...

Rice eyes risks of quantum dots

Quantum dots have the potential to bring many good things into the world: efficient solar power, targeted gene and drug delivery, solid-state lighting and advances in biomedical imaging among them. But they may pose hazards as well. A team of Rice researchers has been working to discover th...

New technique is quantum leap forward in understanding proteins

In this ongoing quest, a group of Scripps Research Institute scientists, along with colleagues from the University of California, San Diego, (UCSD) have borrowed from physics to deliver one of those research raritiesan unmitigated success. The group has devised a computational method that, with re...

'Strained' quantum dots show new optical properties

Quantum dots, tiny luminescent particles made of semiconductors, hold promise for detecting and treating cancer earlier. However, if doctors were to use them in humans, quantum dots could have limitations related to their size and possible toxicity. Scientists at Emory University and the Georgi...

Study shows quantum dots can penetrate skin through minor abrasions

Researchers at North Carolina State University have found that quantum dot nanoparticles can penetrate the skin if there is an abrasion, providing insight into potential workplace concerns for healthcare workers or individuals involved in the manufacturing of quantum dots or doing research on pote...

Europe gets together to harness quantum physics

The long cherished goal of applying the strange properties of quantum mechanics to the macroscopic world we inhabit has been brought closer by a series of recent developments. The exciting progress was made in the important field of quantum optics and discussed recently at a high level conference ...

A gentle touch for better control, a quantum mechanical con, and milestone PRL papers

The Particle Whisperers G. Volpe, S. Perrone, J. M. Rubi, and D. Petrov Physical Review E (forthcoming) As many parents know, it's often easier to keep your kids under control by exerting less authority rather than more. A child who fidgets uncontrollably in a confining booster seat, for ...

Is hybridoma production about to take a quantum leap forward?

Biopharmaceutical companies have started to evaluate the use of fully human monoclonal antibodies as a complementary or primary therapeutic agent against a variety of diseases. The most obvious advantage would be to bypass the interference from the patient's immune system that typically characteri...

JILA solves problem of quantum dot 'blinking'

Quantum dotstiny, intense, tunable sources of colorful lightare illuminating new opportunities in biomedical research, cryptography and other fields. But these semiconductor nanocrystals also have a secret problem, a kind of nervous tic. They mysteriously tend to blink on and off like Christmas tr...

NIBIB invests in quantum research

The National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced the award of more than $12 million in grants to support research and development of potentially high-impact, innovative technologies to advance health care. ...

Researchers set new record for brightness of quantum dots

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- By placing quantum dots on a specially designed photonic crystal, researchers at the University of Illinois have demonstrated enhanced fluorescence intensity by a factor of up to 108. Potential applications include high-brightness light-emitting diodes, optical switches and pers...

Protein enables discovery of quantum effect in photosynthesis

When it comes to studying energy transfer in photosynthesis, it's good to think "outside the bun." That's what Robert Blankenship, Ph.D., professor of biology and chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, did when he contributed a protein to a study performed by his ...

First Quantum Grant to fund stem cell repair of damage from stroke

The National Institutes of Health has named researchers at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and Rice University in Houston as the first and only recipients of the inaugural Quantum Grant for their international research initiative to regenerate damaged brain cells and blood vessels for the treatmen...

Connect the Quantum Dots

A new study, published today in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has significant implications for the design of disease markers and the development of chemoreceptors used in human biomedical research. The groundbreaking study, entitled, "A Mechanism to Signal...

New nanosensor uses quantum dots to detect DNA

Using tiny semiconductor crystals, biological probes and a laser, Johns Hopkins University engineers have developed a new method of finding specific sequences of DNA by making them light up beneath a microscope. The researchers, who say the technique will have important uses in medical research,...

Method slashes quantum dot costs by 80 percent

Rice scientists replace pricey solvents with cheap processing fluidsIn an important advance toward the large-scale manufacture of fluorescent quantum dots, scientists at Rice University have developed a new method of replacing the pricey solvents used in quantum dot synthesis with cheaper oils that...

All-in-1 nanoparticle: A Swiss Army knife for nanomedicine

...d in energy research, for example in solar cells. quantum dots are fluorescent balls of semiconductor materi... 1-millionth of a centimeter). At this tiny scale, quantum dots' unique optical properties cause them to emit... therapies to cook nearby cells. But combine a quantum dot and a gold nanoparticle, and the effects disap...

Toxic molecule may help birds 'see' north and south

...er he and his colleagues discovered that magnetic fields can influence chemical reactions if the reactions occur quickly enough to be governed by pure quantum mechanics. "Prior to our work, it was thought that this was impossible because magnetic fields interact so weakly with molecules," he said. Such...

Major breakthrough in early detection and prevention of AMD

...by attaching anti-CCR3 antibodies to tiny semiconductor nanocrystals called "quantum dots" and injecting these into the mice. The antibodies cause the quantum dots to attach to CCR3 on the surface of the abnormal blood vessels, making them visible with conventional ocular angiography techniques, even before ...

Triage technology with a Star Trek twist

...uite as a sophisticated as StarTrek's tricorder , which was able to comprehensively diagnose obscure diseases. The standoff patient triage tool is a quantum leap forward for medical response, but science fiction remains on the big screen for the moment. The goal is to develop a handheld unit about the siz...

Healing wounds with lasers, vehicles that drive themselves, other cutting-edge optics

...ference on Lasers and Electro-Optics/International quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/IQEC) May 31 to June ...rom Bell's Inequalities to Entangled Qubits: A New quantum Age?" on Wednesday, June 3, about Bell's Theorem and the new field of quantum information, where one uses entanglement between q...

Nobel Laureate underscores importance of investment in basic research

...re awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics. His work has yielded many relevant naval applications, in particular precision timekeeping, navigation and quantum information, including unbreakable encryption. "Dr. Phillips and his colleagues were the first to clearly slow down atomic motion with light, and ...

MIT reels in RNA surprise with microbial ocean catch

...y their protein expression accordingly. But that sensitivity creates a quandary for the scientists who study them. Sort of like the observer effect in quantum physics, by entering the environment or removing the microbes from it, the observer causes the microbes to change their protein expression. That same ...

Nanoneedle is small in size, but huge in applications

...y deliver, detect and track individual fluorescent quantum dots in a cell's cytoplasm and nucleus. The quantum dots can be used for studying molecular mechanics ...Combined with molecular targeting strategies using quantum dots and magnetic nanoparticles as molecular probe...

Singapore scientists synthesize gold to shed light on cells' inner workings

...oscale imaging technologies such as semiconducting quantum dots, which are usually at least 3 nanometers in s...n the breadth of a human hair (~105 nm). Unlike quantum dots, the gold nanoclusters are suitable for use w...compatible than the existing inorganic fluorescent quantum dot tags. The red fluorescence of the nanoclusters...

UConn chemists find secret to increasing luminescence efficiency of carbon nanotubes

...of one percent, which is extremely low compared to other materials, such as quantum dots and quantum rods. By tightly wrapping a chemical 'sleeve' around a single-walled car...

American Institute of Physics announces awards for best science writing

...he world of physics was undergoing a great transition. By the time of the 1932 meeting, Bohr and others had pieced together the revolutionary ideas of quantum mechanics into a single interpretation that was displacing old certainties and ways of thinking. And the clouds of further revolutions in physics were...

Case Western Reserve researchers looking at light-induced toxins in air and water

...xpects that by using sophisticated laser techniques with less than a trillionth of a second time resolution, in combination with computations based on quantum mechanical theories, a better understanding of the fundamental processes controlling the light-induced transformation of these pollutants can be obtai...

Tiny details in three dimensions

...ing structures and properties, is no longer necessary. Resolution of five to seven nm allows tiniest structures to be viewed. "The new technology is a quantum leap for research, comparable with the step from simple x-ray images to three-dimensional computer tomography in clinical diagnostics," stated Dr. Fri...

Plugging in molecular wires

...ed should release one electron. Whereas modern solar cells are far from achieving high efficiency, natural photosynthetic systems achieve nearly 100 % quantum yield. To improve the efficiency of synthetic systems, experiments were attempted in which biological light-capturing units were deposited onto electr...

American Chemical Society's Weekly PressPac -- Jan. 28, 2009

...il: sstrand@u.washington.edu ARTICLE #4 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE quantum dots may be toxic to cells, environment under certain conditions Environmental Science & Technology Researchers in Texas are reporting that quantum dots (QDs) a product of the revolution in nanotechnology increasingly used...

Cutting salt isn't the only way to reduce blood pressure

...precise measure of sodium intake than urine samples. In addition, many have been cross-sectional rather than follow-up studies. The new study "is a quantum leap in the quality of the data compared to what we have had before," Whelton said. Whelton was a member of a recent Institute of Medicine panel th...

First Science from the Compact Light Source: A miniature synchrotron for your home lab

...ratorybut it has also promised to have a broad impact across the spectrum of x-ray science. Today, at the 39th Winter Colloquium on the Physics of quantum Electronics, Ronald Ruth, Ph.D., president of Lyncean Technologies, announced that the CLS has started delivering on this promise by achieving three k...

Princeton researchers discover new type of laser

...enomenon was discovered in a type of device called quantum cascade laser, in which an electric current flowin...ces a laser beam. Gmachl's group discovered that a quantum cascade laser they had built generated a second be...ic lamps. According to the field of physics called quantum electrodynamics, light is made up of particles cal...

From sheet metal elements to host cells: DFG launches 10 new collaborative research centers

...lanned work on the so-called Willmore Functional may prove to be particularly important in this respect. In terms of applications, topics ranging from quantum dynamics to the mathematical principles of solid-state physics will be tackled. The main objective is to study geometrical partial differential equati...

Dancing atoms now understood

...nfinitely slowly with the system's trajectory locked to the controlling force's trajectory," said Grandinetti. Both NMR and MRI exploit a peculiar quantum mechanical property of subatomic particles called "spin". The nuclei of many atoms, most notably hydrogen, spin like tiny tops and possess a magnetic ...

Moving new technologies from the lab to the marketplace

...se to power devices like pacemakers and glucose biosensors for diabetics. The device uses highly conductive nanomaterials -- carbon nanotubes and gold quantum dots -- to guide the electrons. Treena Livingston Arinzeh, associate professor of biomedical engineering, and Michael Jaffe, research professor of...

New discovery may enhance MRI scans, lead to portable MRI machines

... obtain signals from objects located outside of a magnet. Scientists, he adds, could also use superadiabaticity to exert better control over atoms for quantum computing, and to make more precise structural studies of complex biological molecules. ...

NIST awards $24M in grants for new research facilities

...utfitting of a Center for Integrated Precision and quantum Measurement, part of a larger project to construct...PROPOSALS Center for Integrated Precision and quantum Measurement (CIPQM) University of California a...extremely rapid transient events at the nanoscale; quantum nanomechanics, an emerging discipline focused on t...

National and international doctoral training

...3,000 euros annually. They involve such topics as novel connections between quantum and gravitational field theories, new ideas for the bionic implementation o...eriments. From a theoretical point of view, a broad spectrum of research on quantum field theory is also being studied, while at the same time building a bridg...