March 11, 2007

2 Min Read
Also Making News

Originally Published MPMN March 2007

EMERGING AND NANOTECHNOLOGIES

Also Making News

Shana Leonard

Based on its proprietary Occlusion Spectroscopy technology, OrSense Ltd. (Nes Ziona, Israel; www.orsense.com) has introduced a noninvasive blood glucose–monitoring system. Enabling the continuous noninvasive measurement of blood glucose, hemoglobin, hematocrit, oximetry, and pulse rates with high sensitivity, the NBM-200 is slated for regulatory approval submission this year and for commercial availability in 2008, according to the firm. It received the Frost & Sullivan 2006 Technology Innovation Award for the monitoring system.

Researchers have developed artificial muscles that exert 100 times the force, per area, of natural muscle. Ray Baughman, director of the Nanotech Institute at the University of Texas at Dallas (Richardson, TX; www.utdallas.edu), along with John Madden at the University of British Columbia (Vancouver, BC, Canada; www.ubc.ca), created actuators out of carbon nanotube yarns. Still in development, the artificial muscles may have applications in prosthetic limbs, robots, and microscale machines.

Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne, IL; www.anl.gov) has collaborated with Xradia (Concord, CA; www.xradia.com) to produce a new x-ray microscope technique that enables the observation of interactions and reactions occurring at the nanoscale. The technique, which combines x-ray reflections with high-resolution x-ray microscopy, could provide scientists with a better understanding of what happens at the molecular level and could lead to better treatment.

Collaboration between scientists from Harvard University (Cambridge, MA; www.harvard.edu), MIT (Cambridge, MA; www.mit.edu), and Seoul National University (Seoul, South Korea; www.snu.ac.kr) yielded the creation of a wrinkled “skin” on polymers using a focused ion beam. The patterned polymers can be used for biosensors and microfluidic devices.

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