Tech

The engineering world just became even more colorful.

Northwestern University researchers have created a new technique that can transform silver into any color of the rainbow. Their simple method is a fast, low-cost alternative to color filters currently used in electronic displays and monitors.

Photograph of colorful images fabricated using focused ion beam technique for patterning on the thin films with oxide thickness variation. Credit:Northwestern

A team of scientists has created a "conjugate" molecule -- one stitched together from two separate molecules -- that seeks out and blocks prostate cancer growth in lab animals.

The molecule NMI combines a near-infrared dye that targets cancer cells and a MAO-A inhibitor often used in antidepressants but recently shown to be effective at reducing or even eliminating prostate tumor growth in mice.

Extreme mechano-sensitive neurons of tactile-foraging ducks fit the bill for touch research.

When we reach out to touch something, our nervous system converts the mechanical input from our fingers contacting an object into an electrical signal in the brain. The process, known as mechanosensation, is one of our fundamental physiological processes, on par with sight and smell. But how it works on a cellular level remains poorly understood, holding back development of effective treatments for mechanosensory disorders like chronic pain.

Scientists at Rigshopitalet, Herlev Hospital and the University of Copenhagen identify a new biomarker that can predict the risk of developing dementia by way of a simple blood test. In the long term, this could mean better prevention and thus at least postponement of the illness and at best evading the development all together. The study was recently published in an internationally acclaimed journal, the Annals of Neurology.

For patients with type 1 diabetes (T1D), the burden of constantly monitoring their blood sugar and judging when and how much insulin to self-inject, is bad enough. Even worse, a miscalculation or lapse in regimen can cause blood sugar levels to rise too high (hyperglycemia), potentially leading to heart disease, blindness and other long-term complications, or to plummet too low (hypoglycemia), which in the worst cases can result in coma or even death.

Organic solar cells are based on chemistry before Whole Foods shopper hijacked the definition of organic - organic chemistry. But they are actually plastic and use polymers instead silicon to convert energy from sunlight into electricity. The use of plastic as a basic material reduces the cost and weight of these solar cells, and makes them flexible. But their efficiency still remains below that of commercial silicon solar cells.