Iran has presented the nanotechnology document to ISO.

An official said on Sunday Iran’s 10-year nanotechnology document has been compiled. Mohsen Jahanshahi, a member of nanotechnology working group, also told Mehr News Agency that following the implementation of the document’s plans Iran will be among top 15 countries in the field of nanotechnology in the next 10 years.
He noted that the country has presented the document to the International Standardization Organization (ISO).
The official stated that Iran has easily outshone Turkey in nanotechnology, but it lags behind Turkey in other scientific fields.
Jahanshahi also said development of nanotechnology will promote the quality of life.

Researchers at the University of Rochester have developed a shape-memory rubber that may enable applications as diverse as biomedical implants, conformal face-masks, self-sealing sutures, and smart labels.
The material, described in the journal Advanced Materials, forms a new class of shape-memory polymers, which are materials that can be stretched to a new shape and will stay in that form until heated, at which time they revert to their initial shape, ScienceDaily said.
Unlike conventional shape-memory polymers, however, the new material is transparent, rubbery, and most importantly, engineers will be able to control the speed at which it returns to its original shape.
Other shape memory polymers use crystallization to hold a temporary shape, which often makes them opaque, hard, and brittle in their frozen states, and this can limit their use.
“At higher temperatures the material stretches like a rubber band, but, at lower temperatures, it stiffens up,“ says Mitchell Anthamatten, assistant professor of chemical engineering and inventor of the material.
“This property can be used to temporarily hold the material in a deformed shape; and its original shape can be recalled by heating.
Imagine an optical lens that can be triggered to change shape, a face-mask that can fit any user, or a biomedical implant that changes shape slow enough for a surgical procedure.“
The new rubber functions differently than conventional shape-memory materials by using “sticker groups“--hydrogen bonding groups that form temporary bonds. These sticker groups break and reform constantly.
It’s akin to tearing a net apart only to find that new knots have formed between different strands. When the material is stretched, new bonds form that hold the material, temporarily, in its deformed shape.
Creating the rubber with different amounts of sticker groups controls the rate at which the rubber returns to its original shape.
With this control, Anthamatten envisions applications that today’s shape-memory polymers simply can’t fulfill.
“The pressure at which you hold together a sutured wound determines a lot about how it will heal,“ says Anthamatten. “This polymer could be made into a thread that responds precisely to body temperature, tightening the sutures to the perfect pressure.“
Anthamatten is currently investigating how dyes diffuse through his networks. “We expect the rate of dye diffusion to increase with temperatures,“ says Anthamatten.
This property may enable “smart“ labels that account for time and temperature and can inform customers when products are about to expire.

The photoacoustic device captures high-resolution 3D images of blood vessels.

An ultrasound scanner that provides more detailed 3D images of the deformed blood vessels within a tumor could help doctors determine the boundary between cancerous and healthy tissue during surgery.
The scanner uses a novel form of non-invasive imaging called photoacoustic tomography. This uses laser light to “twang“ cells so they emit an ultrasound wave, which is then detected and used to form a 3D image, NewScientist.com reported.
Existing ultrasound scanners capture images by aiming high-frequency sound waves at the body. These waves reflect whenever the density of tissue changes, for example at the boundary between muscle and bone. The resulting “echoes“ are then used to create a picture.
Such scanners are good at capturing images of high-contrast subjects like antenatal scans, but produce only low-contrast images of the inside of a tumor, because the density of blood vessels is similar to that of the surrounding tissue.
Paul Beard and colleagues at University College London, UK, have now developed a high-resolution photoacoustic tomography scanner that offers a solution.
This shoots very short pulses of non-harmful near-infrared laser light at a tumor. As the light is absorbed by tissue, the cells heat up and expand very slightly, creating an ultrasound wave that can then be detected by a sensor.
The intensity of the ultrasound wave depends on how well the tissue absorbs the near-infrared radiation, which produces high-contrast images of blood vessels because haemoglobin is very absorbent at these wavelengths.
“It’s very scalable,“ Beard told New Scientist. “Our scanner is best suited to providing high-resolutions images at a short range, but the technique could be used to image tumors a few centimeters into the breast.“
In order to convert the reflected ultrasound into a high-resolution 3D image the team had to create a new ultrasound sensor as well.
This consists of a thin layer of a polymer sandwiched between two reflective layers. The outer layers only reflect certain wavelengths of light and the laser light used to penetrate a patient’s tissue shines straight through all three layers. The acoustic signal generated using the infrared is then picked up by the polymer layer.

Some people are destined to die relatively young no matter how healthy their diet and lifestyle.
Longevity does depend on more than lifestyle and it seems that while some people are more likely to enjoy old age, others are programmed to live a relatively short life, no matter how fit they are and how slavishly they follow the latest health fad, whether drinking pomegranate juice or eating oily fish, according to Telegraph.co.uk.
Genetic variation for ageing rates has been a central tenet in evolutionary theory and this explains why animals--and humans--show their age as they grow older.
But evidence for how genetic differences influence ageing had largely been lacking in natural populations until now, with a study published in Current Biology by an team from Edinburgh and Cambridge Universities, with Imperial College London.
“We’ve found that individuals differ in their rates of aging, or senescence, and that these differences are (at least in part) caused by genetic effects so they will be inherited,“ said Alastair Wilson.
“While the genetic effects we found are completely consistent with existing theory, scientists hadn’t previously managed to test this theory properly except in controlled laboratory experiments.“
“We’ve also done this work on long-lived mammals,“ he added. “For someone interested in the evolution of aging and senescence in humans, these are going to be more relevant organisms than fruit flies.“
The researchers examined wild Soay sheep and red deer living on two Scottish islands. Individually marked animals are followed throughout their lives from birth until death, providing a wealth of data for such research.
In both the red deer and sheep they found evidence for age-specific genetic effects on ’fitness’--a measure combining the animals’ probability of survival and reproduction.
This new study, said Wilson, provides the first evidence for how genetic variations add up to influence the rate of ageing in a wild population.
The study was done with Prof Tim Clutton-Brock, Daniel Nussey and Alison Morris, University of Cambridge, and Prof Josephine Pemberton, Loeske Kruuk and Jill Pilkington, University of Edinburgh, and Fanie Pelletier, Imperial College, London.

Transistors flip on and off inside a chip to generate the ones and zeros that store and process information inside a computer.

Sixty years after transistors were invented and nearly five decades since they were first integrated into silicon chips, the tiny on-off switches dubbed the “nerve cells“ of the information age are starting to show their age.
The devices--whose miniaturization over time set in motion the race for faster, smaller and cheaper electronics--have been shrunk so much that the day is approaching when it will be physically impossible to make them even tinier, according to AP.
Once chip makers can’t squeeze any more into the same-sized slice of silicon, the dramatic performance gains and cost reductions in computing over the years could suddenly slow. And the engine that’s driven the digital revolution--and modern economy--could grind to a halt.
Even Gordon Moore, the Intel Corp. co-founder who famously predicted in 1965 that the number of transistors on a chip should double every two years, sees that the end is fast approaching--an outcome the chip industry is scrambling to avoid.
“I can see (it lasting) another decade or so,“ he said of the axiom now known as Moore’s Law. “Beyond that, things look tough. But that’s been the case many times in the past.“
Preparing for the day they can’t add more transistors, chip companies are pouring billions of dollars into plotting new ways to use the existing transistors, instructing them to behave in different and more powerful ways.
Intel, the world’s largest semiconductor company, predicts that a number of “highly speculative“ alternative technologies, such as quantum computing, optical switches and other methods, will be needed to continue Moore’s Law beyond 2020.
“Things are changing much faster now, in this current period, than they did for many decades,“ said Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner.
“The pace of change is accelerating because we’re approaching a number of different physical limits at the same time. We’re really working overtime to make sure we can continue to follow Moore’s Law.“
Transistors work something like light switches, flipping on and off inside a chip to generate the ones and zeros that store and process information inside a computer.
The transistor was invented by scientists William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain to amplify voices in telephones for a Bell Labs project, an effort for which they later shared the Nobel Prize in physics.
Transistors’ ever-decreasing size and low power consumption made them an ideal candidate to replace the bulky vacuum tubes then used to amplify electrical signals and switch electrical currents. AT&T saw them as a replacement for clattering telephone switches.