Nanotechnology gold rush with cancer-seeking peptides

Researchers from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island have demonstrated a promising new way to increase the effectiveness of radiation in killing cancer cells. The approach involves gold nanoparticles tethered to acid-seeking compounds called pHLIPs. The pHLIPs (pH low-insertion peptides) home in on high acidity of malignant cells, delivering...

read more "Nanotechnology gold rush with cancer-seeking peptides"

On the road to spin-orbitronics

Few among us may know what magnetic domains are but we make use of them daily when we email files, post images, or download music or video to our personal devices. Now a team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has found a new way of manipulating the walls that define these magnetic...

read more "On the road to spin-orbitronics"

Quantization of surface Dirac states could lead to exotic applications

Researchers from the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan have uncovered the first evidence of an unusual quantum phenomenon--the integer quantum Hall effect--in a new type of film, called a 3D topological insulator. In doing this, they demonstrated that "surface Dirac states"--a particular form of massless electrons--are quantized in...

read more "Quantization of surface Dirac states could lead to exotic applications"