webinar: Lux Research Nanomaterials State of the Market:Nanomaterials on the Lux Innovation Grid

Lux Research is hosting this webinar on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM EST for which I’ve registered. Their invitation-only executive summit is slated for Cambridge, Massachusetts in April.

new underground solar panels: Cheap, 3D and 6x More Efficient

This research from the Georgia Institute of Technology changes things:

Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology have created the world’s first 3-D photovoltaic solar system that actually works underground.

Using optical fibers common to the telecommunications industry, researchers seeded them with zinc oxide nanostructures–much like the white stuff found on a lifeguard nose. Those nanostructures were then coated with a dye-sensitized material that converts light into electricity. The electricity is then captured using a liquid electrolyte surrounding the nanostructures.

So only the very tip of the cable needs to be exposed to actual sunlight.

This technology could really displace many panel-based solar systems and is a formidable accomplishment for the southeastern engineering school, away from nanotechnology and sustainability academic enclaves like MIT or the west coast:

This 3-D system can be easily concealed, leaving rooftops panel-free. It gives architects and designers new options for incorporating PVs into buildings. For each cable is only 3-times the width of a human hair.

“This will really provide some new options for photovoltaic systems,” Dr Zhong Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology said. “We could eliminate the aesthetic issues of PV arrays on building.”

nanotechnology sensor can “smell” lung cancer in exhaled breath

Cancer has a smell—at least, non-small-cell carcinoma lung cancer does, and it’s one which recent nanotechnological research has rendered identifiable using the now standard research fare gold nanoparticles and in part the simple techniques of gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. The good news concerns how these smells, termed “volatile organic compounds” (VOCs), can be relatively inexpensively and noninvasively detected at a primary cancer stage, marking a potentially new and more widely accessible diagnostic opportunity.

“A multidisciplinary research team at Technion – Israel Institute of Technology have now demonstrated a highly sensitive, stable, relatively inexpensive, and fast-response nine-sensor array that consists of gold nanoparticles functionalized with different organic groups that respond to various VOCs that are relevant to lung cancer.”

I expect that small-cell carcinoma—-a more aggressive lung cancer—will be found to be similarly detectable, as has chronic kidney disease (CKD) by the same research group. According to the World Health Organization, lung cancer is the leading cancer-related cause of death accounting for 7.4 million deaths globally in 2004, with significant increases in mortality anticipated:

“The number of global cancer deaths is projected to increase 45% from 2007 to 2030 (from 7.9 million to 11.5 million deaths), influenced in part by an increasing and aging global population.” —World Health Organization