"In a sweeping critique made public Wednesday, an expert panel of the National Research Council said the federal government was not doing enough to identify potential health and environmental risks from engineered nanomaterials. It called for a sweeping new effort, involving key players in and out of government, to assess them. Nanomaterials are engineered on the scale of a billionth of a meter, perhaps 1/10,000 the width of a human hair. They are turning up in a range of items including consumer products like to..."

"U.S. researchers said on Tuesday they have made the darkest material on Earth, a substance so black it absorbs more than 99.9 percent of light. Made from tiny tubes of carbon standing on end, this material is almost 30 times darker than a carbon substance used by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology as the current benchmark of blackness. And the material is close to the long-sought ideal black, which could absorb all colors of light and reflect none. "All the light that goes in is basi..."

"Using different experimental techniques, two separate and independent research groups in collaboration with a team from the Center for Computational Materials Science (CCMS) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, have unveiled the size-dependent evolution of structural and electronic structural motifs of gold nanoclusters ranging in size from 11 to 24 atoms. The experiments, in conjunction with the theoretical analysis performed by the Georgia Tech team, show near perfect agreement pertaining to the cluster struct..."

"A miniscule but super-sensitive sensor can help solve the mysteries of outer space. Cosmic radiation, which contains the terahertz frequencies that the sensors detect, offers astronomers important new information about the birth of star systems and planets. Merlijn Hajenius developed these sensors for Delft University of Technology's Kavli Institute of Nanoscience, in close cooperation with the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research...."

"A team from the University of Tokyo are developing inductive power transfer methods that will allow charging of mobile devices without the hassle of wires. Although such systems are already close to commercial roll-out, for example from UK-based Splashpower, the Japanese technology would seem to promise very thin and flexible charging mats that could be integrated into everyday materials...."

"Picture a spider web coated with sugar. But instead of luring in unsuspecting creatures, this spider web pulls in deadly anthrax spores, rendering them harmless. Clemson University chemist Ya-Ping Sun and his research team have developed such a countermeasure strategy to weaponized anthrax, a biological agent used by a terrorist or terrorists that killed five Americans in 2001. The Clemson team’s findings are published online in the “Journal of the American Chemical Society.” ..."

"Using parts of living cells in a smart nanotechnology-based system, researchers in Switzerland have demonstrated a "nanocarrier" that can target specific types of cells and light up in response to conditions in their immediate environment...."