Scientists at the US Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory have developed a screening method to examine how newly made nanoparticles interact with human cells following exposure for various times and doses. This has led to the visualisation of how human cells interact with some specific types of carbon nanoparticles. The method is described in a review article on carbon nanoparticle toxicity in a special section of the 23 August 2006, issue of the Journal of Physics: Condensed Matter (doi: 10.1088/0953-8984/18/33/S34) devoted to developments in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Scientists from the research centre Forschungszentrum Rossendorf in Dresden use the survival mechanism of special bacteria to produce solid nanoclusters out of palladium. Thus, bacteria-based nanoclusters seem to be ideally suited for building new nano-catalysts.

UC Riverside researchers have discovered a new way in which nature creates complex patterns: the assembly of molecules with no guidance from an outside source. Potential applications of the finding are paints, lubricants, medical implants and processes where surface-patterning at the scale of molecules is desired. Spreading anthraquinone, a common and inexpensive chemical, on to a flat copper surface, Greg Pawin, a chemistry graduate student working in the laboratory of Ludwig Bartels, associate professor of chemistry, observed the spontaneous formation of a two-dimensional honeycomb network comprised of anthraquinone molecules.

Scientists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used a beam of electrons to move a single atom in a small molecule back and forth between two positions on a crystal surface, a significant step toward learning how to build an “atomic switch” that turns electrical signals on and off in nanoscale devices.