nanotechnology

A startup based in Cambridge, MA, says that it plans to soon begin clinical trials of a nanostructured material that stops bleeding almost instantly. A startup called Arch Therapeutics has licensed the technology from MIT and is developing manufacturing processes for making it in large amounts.

The building blocks of life just got a little weirder. Natural DNA strands are also a favorite construction tool for nano-engineers because of its tendency for individual strands to automatically bind to one another, snapping into a range of useful shapes, like the famous double helix design. Now scientists at Arizona State University have taken things to the next level and created GNA.

New nanotechnology consumer products are coming on the U.S. market at the rate of 3-4 per week, according to the latest update to the nanotechnology consumer product inventory maintained by the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN).

Engineers have created the first "active matrix" display using a new class of transparent transistors and circuits, a step toward realizing applications such as e-paper, flexible color monitors and "heads-up" displays in car windshields.

This year, as every year, we present our list of the 10 technologies we find most exciting—and most likely to alter industries, fields of research, and even the way we live. The list comprises projects in a broad range of fields.

Systems that directly connect silicon circuits with brains are under intensive development all over the world, and are nearing commercial application in many areas, according to a study just placed online. Neurobiologist Theodore W. Berger of the University of Southern California chaired the eight-member committee which compiled the "International Assessment of Research and Development in Brain-Computer Interfaces," published in October by the World Technology Evaluation Center, Inc., of Baltimore MD