Researchers have been able to see how heart failure affects the surface of an individual heart muscle cell in minute detail, using a new nanoscale scanning technique developed at Imperial College London.

About two weeks ago I saw an announcement for the Materials Visualization Competition (MVC10) put on by the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Materials Research Institute at Penn State. MVC10 is a scientific visual and artistic competition started to highlight the quality of research in materials at Penn State. See the entire gallery.

In semiconductor production there is whats called doping. Unlike doping in the Olympics, this doping is the process of intentionally introducing impurities into an extremely pure (also referred to as intrinsic) semiconductor to change its electrical properties. There are n-type (negative) and p-type (positive) doping processes that are employed in the semiconductor and electronics industries.

Biomedical engineers from Boston University have developed a new sequencing technique that eliminates the time-consuming, and often error-prone step of DNA amplification - which will make future genome sequencing both faster and less expensive than any current technologies.

Some videos, photos and history on ferrofluids. The company history of Ferrotec, which used to be Ferrofluidics Corp. states "Magnetic fluids, or ferrofluids, were developed in the 1960's through the sponsorship of NASA, to address the unique requirements of moving liquid fuel in a gravity-free outerspace environment.

Researchers from Stanford University have discovered a relatively simple process for quickly producing lightweight, flexible batteries and super-capacitors out of everyday paper.

By cooling the atoms down to near-zero temperatures, Harvard researchers have created a system capable of detecting individual atoms. As described in their recent submission to Nature, the team of researchers led by Markus Greiner cooled rubidium down to approximately 5 billionth of one Kelvin.

In an article released today, MIT researchers have found that carbon nanotubes, formed into tiny springs have the potential to store as much energy pound for pound as modern lithium ion batteries. We have summarized the article below but encourage you to read the full text (see link below).

Japanese researcher Motoichi Ohtsu, a pioneer in the field of nanophotonics, will be the 2009 recipient of the Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics. His work in near-field optics - the pursuit of imaging at magnifications beyond those allowed by the diffraction limit of conventional microscopes - has made significant contributions to our understanding of light at the nanometer scale.

UC Berkely researchers have developed a "NanoPen" that they say overcomes one of the top challenges in nanotechnology manufacturing - producing nano-scale components quickly, cheaply and efficiently.