Newsletter: November 2016

→ Deadline approaching: Explore Science: Earth & Space toolkit applications due November 4th

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→ Nano News 

Makers of world's smallest machines awarded Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Three scientists and colleagues have been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry based on their pioneering research in the development of nanomachines, the world's smallest tiny moving machines about one-thousandth the width of a strand of human hair. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said in their award announcement that "in terms of development, the molecular motor is at the same stage as the electric motor was in the 1830s, when scientists displayed various spinning cranks and wheels, unaware that they would lead to electric trains, washing machines, fans and food processors." One day this technology may allow doctors to inject nanorobots into your bloodstream that are able to search for cancer cells or deliver drugs more efficiently, or lead to the creation of "smart materials" that change properties based on external signals [read more about the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the development of nanomachines].

• See NISE Net-related activities and programs: Robots and People (NanoDays 2014), Is That Robot Real? children's book and poster, and Nanomedicine in Healthcare forum

Tobacco plants engineered to manufacture malaria drug
Malaria infects more than 200 million people a year and kills more than 400,000, mostly in Africa and Southeast Asia, according to the World Health Organization. Artemisinin, a plant-derived compound that is a proven drug treatment against malaria, is often times not accessible to the people who need it, in part because of the challenges of growing the plant in malaria-stricken areas and the drug's high cost due the extraction process. Advances in synthetic biology have made it possible to produce artemisinin in yeast, but the manufacturing processes is difficult to scale up. Researchers have been able to produce it in tobacco but with low yields and also recognizing the difficulty of convincing people to eat tobacco plants. Next steps are to genetically engineer lettuce plants for producing artemisinin, which can in turn be turned into capsules for malaria treatment in a more cost-effective way [read more about engineering plants to produce life-saving drugs].

• See Building with Biology-related hands-on activities and forum: Kit of Parts, See DNA, VirEx Delivery, and Should We Edit the Genome? When, Why, and How Much? forum

Have we found all the elements?
This newest Reactions video created by the American Chemical Society discusses how elements have previously been discovered, the four elements that have recently been added to the periodic table this year, and the challenges of identifying new elements [watch this short Reactions video, Have we found all the elements?].