Archive for June, 2009
-
June 30th, 2009
Nanostellar at GOLD 2009
For me, one of the highlights of the technical programme at GOLD 2009 is likely to be the talk by the team from Nanostellar. The presentation, on Tuesday 28th July, will describe the commercialisation of NS GOLD, Nanostellar’s gold-containing diesel autocat. Having been involved with the company since the announcement of World Gold Council’s strategic partnership with Nanostellar in December 2007, I know what an interesting story they have to tell.If you aren’t yet regsitered for GOLD 2009, there is still time left…….
-
June 29th, 2009
RF heating for cancer treatment
A recent update on the gold-based RF heating method for cancer treatment developed by John Kanzius can be found here on the National Cancer Institute Bulletin.
-
June 26th, 2009
Chad Mirkin wins Lemelson-MIT award
Chad Mirkin, from Northwestern University, who is well known for developing gold nanoparticle-based medical diagnostic assays, has won the $500,000 Lemelson-MIT prize. Chad Mirkin spun the one of this technologies out into the company Nanosphere Inc. He also recently founded Aurasense, a company that commercializes his work with gold nanoparticles for cancer and heart disease treatments.
In March, MIT graduate student Geoffrey von Maltzahn co-founded a startup, Resonance Therapeutics, based on gold-related technologies that earned him the $30,000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Inventions.
-
June 25th, 2009
Supporting the gold team
Will gold retain the cup at the forthcoming RoboCup?
Since 1997, RoboCup has been leading the way in research about robotics and artificial intelligence. In 2007, the US standard’s body NIST conducted a nano-football competition and demonstration in conjunction with RoboCup. NIST’s goal in coordinating a competition between the world’s smallest robots was to show the feasibility and accessibility of technologies for fabricating MicroElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS) devices.
The devices were operated by remote control under an optical microscope and moved in response to changing magnetic fields or electrical signals transmitted across the microchip arena. They were considered “nanoscale” because their masses range from a few nanograms to a few hundred nanograms. The winner of the 2007 event was ETH Zurich whose ‘robot’ consisted of two small pieces of soft magnetic separated by a gold spring and base frame.
magnetic materials on the gold base
In a few weeks it will be the 2009 event - will a gold ‘player’ lift the cup again?!
-
June 24th, 2009
MRS Bulletin article
The new issue of MRS Bulletin from the Materials Research Society contains a comprehensive review of gold nanoshell applications in cancer therapies and diagnostics.
-
June 23rd, 2009
Growth in gold publications
Excellent graph here on the Nanocolours blog, showing the rapid growth in biomedical publications mentioning ‘gold nanoparticles’ in the title or abstract……….I’ve seen similar graphs showing the growth in ‘gold catalysis’ over the last 15 years.
-
June 22nd, 2009
Gold Nanoparticles for Visual Detection of Melamine in Milk
In 2008, many thousands of Chinese infants were taken seriously ill as a result of drinking milk contaminated with melamine (see here for example).
This research, just published in JACS, reveals that gold nanoparticles can be used for very reliable detection of melamine. The color change can be easily seen by the naked eye and the method enables on-site and real-time detection of melamine in milk and infant formula even at a concentration as low as 2.5 ppb (without the use of any advanced instruments).
Looks like a promising technology to prevent this tragedy occuring again…..
-
June 19th, 2009
Winner ‘Gold Catalysis’ Book
With accompanying drum roll……“The winner of the prize draw from the 21st NAM exhibition and recipient of a copy of the book ‘Catalysis by Gold’ is……..Laura Barrio from Brookhaven National Laboratory.”
Congratulations to Laura. For those of you interested in purchasing the book you can do so here……..
-
June 18th, 2009
London’s Science Museum and Gold
Whilst I’d love to be reporting a major new exhibition on the wonders of gold science at the Science Museum, alas this post isn’t able to unveil such a development.
However, it does look like gold is going to be a major feature of the Science Museum in the next few years. How? Well, the museum has just announced plans for a major £100 million refit to mark its centenary. The plans include “a gold-plated roof-top cosmology gallery called SkySpace” to quote this story here.
What isn’t categorcally stated is the use of gold leaf for this project, as opposed to the use of imitation gold-coloured paintwork. Experience tells us that the longevity of gold leaf in architectural applications is outstanding, so I do hope they are going to be using gold leaf. Please let us know if you know anymore on these plans……
-
June 17th, 2009
Over 300 already registered for GOLD 2009!
Join us in the beautiful city of Heidelberg!
The provisional conference programme for GOLD 2009 is now online at www.gold2009.org
Over 300 people have already registered for the event – that’s more than the number who attended the last conference in this series, GOLD 2006, Limerick, Ireland. We are all set for the biggest and best gold conference yet…!
Register now on the conference website to join us in Heidelberg.
Richard Holliday
Recent comments: