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 Helmholtz Center for Environmental Emission-free driving, clean water, great progress in the fight against cancer and HIV - the wonders of technology solves all our problems? The driver provides gas, the car accelerates, but from the exhaust stream is not the usual exhaust plumes, but only hot air. This is because of the unusual fuel instead of diesel or gasoline engines ignite in tiny metal particles, called nanoparticles of iron, aluminum or boron The combustion are oxides of a particle completely recovered. For this drive should be standard engines hardly modified. In central chemical plants can be the oxide using hydrogen back into pure metal lead again in the fuel tanks can be filled. "So that we could finally cars emission-free and travel resources. If the hydrogen be produced using solar energy, then the road is finally sustained, "says the chemical engineer Athanasios Konstandopoulos CPERI by the Research Institute in Thessaloniki, Greece. The specific energy content of boron is so high that a vehicle with a tank three times as much as can drive with gasoline. The futuristic concept Konstandopoulos developed for the project "Cometnano" of the EU, at the six institutes are involved. It is one of many research projects that nanotechnology will drive forward. From this still relatively young discipline, promising scientists and politicians no less than a new industrial revolution. The EU wants to do is march. "Europe has the goal of a competitive knowledge economy to be. Nanotechnology offers good possibilities to do, because it uses the European society and economy, and promotes sustainability, "said the EU's Director General for Research Jose Manuel Silva Rodriguez, on the" Euronanoforum 2009 "in Prague. In early June, held conference scientists presented the 800 participants with the latest developments, as well as new nano-products. Under its research program, the EU is 1.4 billion euros for the promotion of nanotechnology ready for them until 2013, a growth of 13 percent. So far, EU-wide 550 nanoscience projects. In Germany the Federal Ministry of Research, the "Nano-Initiative Action Plan 2010" in which she called lead - about the development of ultra nanomaterials for the automotive industry - with millions anschiebt amounts. The Greek word "nanos" means dwarf. A nanometer - one billionth of a meter - will behave to a meter like a balloon on the globe. Nanoparticles are 0.2 to about 100 nanometers (nm) in size. After a list of the "Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies' leads - the U.S. organization retains the development of technology in the eye and warns of potential risks - there are already over 800 products which contain nanoparticles. They offer of 477 companies in 21 countries. Beginning of 2008 there were 500 products. The figures show that the new technology of ordinary people largely unnoticed in more and more areas of life vordringt. They improved materials and surfaces, enables the development of novel Nanoelectronic devices, improved manufacturing processes, the chemical production of clean and helps to neutralize environmental pollutants. In medicine it is new therapies and diagnostic procedures in prospect. Transport in the body How can nanoparticles as ferries for drugs in the human bloodstream serve. A new strategy for the treatment of cancer and cardiovascular diseases in the context of the "Sonodrugs Project" developed by the physicist Hans Hofstraat by the Dutch technology company Philips heads. It is based on small beads from 100 to 200 nm in diameter, which are loaded with drugs. Because of their small size, they are also with the blood through the fine capillaries in the body. To want the cancer therapy researcher Sonodrugs heat-sensitive material from fat globules (so-called phospholipids) to use, in addition to the active substances such as gadolinium contrast also included. Your way in the body can be with a Kernspintomografen pursue. On location of the tumor arrived, they are focused ultrasound waves bombarded. This heat them in the short term a few degrees above body temperature, which is enough to melt their skin and cell poisons dividends. The release at the destination should increase the therapeutic effect, on the other hand, minimize side effects. For the treatment of cardiovascular diseases gas filled micro-bubbles. They engage with ultrasonic detectors to detect. Also they are into cross-fire radiation focused ultrasound, with them and burst their medicines freight commodity. |
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