Administering needle-based procedures in anesthesiology, such as epidurals, is a complex and delicate procedure and the current training methods for doctors are costly and fall short in preparing them for every patient and situation they will face. A new provisional patent from the Penn State College of Engineering plans to change that.

A biomimetic nanosystem can deliver therapeutic proteins to selectively target cancerous tumours, according to a team of Penn State researchers. Using a protein toxin called gelonin from a plant found in the Himalayan mountains, the researchers caged the proteins in self-assembled metal-organic framework (MOF) nanoparticles to protect them from the body’s immune system.

Creating enough nanovesicles to inexpensively serve as a drug delivery system may be as simple as putting the cells through a sieve, according to an international team of researchers who used mouse autologous — their own — immune cells to create large amounts of fillable nanovesicles to deliver drugs to tumours in mice. Nanovesicles are tiny sacs released by cells that carry chemical messages between cells. These nanovesicle...

A new understanding of why synthetic 2D materials often perform orders of magnitude worse than predicted was reached by teams of researchers led by Penn State. They searched for ways to improve these materials' performance in future electronics, photonics, and memory storage applications. Two-dimensional materials are films only an atom or two thick.

New model connects the origins of very high-energy neutrinos, ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, and high-energy gamma rays with black-hole jets embedded in their environments. One of the biggest mysteries in astroparticle physics has been the origins of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays, very high-energy neutrinos, and high-energy gamma rays. Now, a new theoretical model reveals that they all could be shot out into space after cosmic rays are ac...

  Virtual reality technology may help journalists pull an audience into their stories, but they should avoid being too flashy, or their credibility could suffer, according to a team of researchers.

In London's St. Paul's Cathedral, a whisper can be heard far across the circular whispering gallery as the sound curves around the walls. Now, an optical whispering gallery mode resonator developed by Penn State electrical engineers can spin light around the circumference of a tiny sphere millions of times, creating an ultrasensitive microchip-based sensor for multiple applications.

An artificial system using a DNA-laced hydrogel can receive a chemical signal and release the appropriate protein, according to Penn State researchers. Further stimulation by the chemical signal continues to trigger a response. A hydrogel is a network of polymer chains that attract water and can be used to simulate biological tissue. Many systems in cells and in the human body are set up with a signal and response pathway.

  Piezoelectric materials are used for applications ranging from the spark igniter in barbeque grills to the transducers needed by medical ultrasound imaging. Thin-film piezoelectrics, with dimensions on the scale of micrometers or smaller, offer potential for new applications where smaller dimensions or a lower voltage operation are required.

An international team of researchers, including scientists from Shinshu University (Japan) and the director of Penn State's ATOMIC Center, has developed a graphene-based coating for desalination membranes that is more robust and scalable than current nanofiltration membrane technologies. The result could be a sturdy and practical membrane for clean water solutions as well as protein separation, wastewater treatment and pharmaceutical and food ind...

  Plant-based sensors that measure the thickness and electrical capacitance of leaves show great promise for telling farmers when to activate their irrigation systems, preventing both water waste and parched plants, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Penn State researchers have created a new hybrid technology that produces unprecedented amounts of electrical power where seawater and freshwater combine at the coast. "The goal of this technology is to generate electricity from where the rivers meet the ocean," said Christopher Gorski, assistant professor in environmental engineering at Penn State. "It's based on the difference in the salt concentrations between the two water sources."

  In a significant breakthrough, materials scientists at Pennsylvania State University have synthesized two-dimensional gallium nitride for the first time ever using a graphene encapsulation said to give the structure 'superb electronic properties and strength to the resulting flat gallium nitride'.

Data centres are the central point of many, if not most, information systems today, but the masses of wires interconnecting the servers and piled high on racks begins to resemble last year's tangled Christmas-tree lights disaster. Now a team of engineers is proposing to eliminate most of the wires and substitute infrared free-space optics for communications.

In two studies, international teams of astronomers suggest that recent images from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory of two pulsars—Geminga and B0355+54—may help shine a light on the distinctive emission signatures of pulsars, as well as their often perplexing geometry. Pulsars are a type of neutron star that are born in supernova explosions when massive stars collapse.

A major technological advance in the field of high-speed beam-scanning devices has increased the speed of 2D and 3D printing by up to 1000 times, according to researchers in Penn State's College of Engineering. Using a space-charge-controlled KTN beam deflector - a kind of crystal made of potassium tantalate and potassium niobate - with a large electro-optic effect, researchers have found that scanning at a much higher speed is possible.

  An electric current will not only heat a hybrid metamaterial, but will also trigger it to change state and fade into the background like a chameleon in what may be the proof-of-concept of the first controllable metamaterial device, or metadevice, according to a team of engineers.

Inexpensive method for detecting salt concentrations in sweat or other bodily fluids has been developed by Penn State biomaterials scientists. The fluorescent sensor, derived from citric acid molecules, is highly sensitive and highly selective for chloride, the key diagnostic marker in cystic fibrosis. "Salt concentrations can be important for many health-related conditions," said Jian Yang, professor of biomedical engineering.

A newly discovered method for making 2D materials could lead to extraordinary properties, particularly in a class of materials called nitrides, say the Penn State materials scientists who discovered the process. This first-ever growth of 2D gallium nitride using graphene encapsulation could lead to applications in deep ultraviolet lasers, next-gen electronics and sensors.

Researchers at Penn State and the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory are pushing the limits of electron microscopy into the tens of picometre scale, a fraction of the size of a hydrogen atom. The ability to see at this subatomic level is crucial for designing new materials with unprecedented properties, such as materials that transition from metals to semiconductors or that exhibit superconductivity.