a blog by the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology
You walk past a body products store on a weekend shopping trip and are immediately overtaken by fragrance, your nose saturated with floral, sugary and tropical scents. Intrigued by the promise of a candle sale, you venture in, perusing the soaps, mists, and candles. About ten free samples later, you find some products labeled ‘aromatherapy’ …
Continue reading "Combining the Old With the New: using nanotechnology to enhance ancient medicines"
When you hear “copper,” is the first thing that comes to your mind “medicine”? Probably not. You likely think of pennies (which are actually composed of mostly zinc here in the US), or maybe you think of wiring and conductors for electronics. But, believe it or not, copper has had a long history of medicinal …
Continue reading "The Copper Touch"
When you think of futuristic clothing, you probably imagine lots of metallics, holographic accents, and textures. In fact, the sci-fi imagery that springs to mind is coming back into fashion, as evidenced by some recent runway trends (Figure 1). While we can’t say for certain what the fashion of the future will look like, many of …
Continue reading "Nano-textiles: The Fabric of the Future"
Animals evolve strong defenses against predators. Predators evolve to better kill and catch their prey. Plants evolve defenses against insects. Insects evolve defenses against plants. We evolve defenses against bacteria. Bacteria evolve strategies against us. And they are better at it than we are. These rapidly reproducing organisms adapt to pharmaceuticals almost as fast as …
Continue reading "Graphene Oxide: A new tool in the war against bacteria"
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration recently announced a ban on using the antibacterial agent triclosan (and 18 other substances) in soaps, and then last week the issue of antibacterial resistance was discussed at the UN General Assembly. In this episode of the Sustainable Nano podcast, we talk with scientist Eric Melby about different types of antibacterial chemicals and why we should care about triclosan in the environment.
In case you hadn’t noticed, today is February 29! That means this is a leap year. Occurring once every four years, leap years have 366 days rather than the usual 365, with the additional day occurring on February 29th. The name “leap year” originates from the fact that while a fixed date in the calendar …
Continue reading "From Leap Year to Frogs to Nanotechnology"
A few weeks ago I stumbled across an article about THINX, a new company that is innovating women’s underwear. They are using existing technologies to improve women’s underwear; specifically a special “silver treatment” for its anti-microbial properties. I was very excited about this because I have read about the antibacterial properties of silver, especially silver …
Continue reading "How Perceived Fears May Influence Companies’ Labeling of Nanoparticles"
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