(Funded by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Defense)
Using a ventilator-on-a-chip developed at The Ohio State University, researchers have found that shear stress from the collapse and reopening of the air sacs is the most harmful type of damage. This miniature organ-on-a-chip model simulates lung injury during mechanical ventilation, said Samir Ghadiali, one of the scientists involved in this study. The ventilator-on-a chip’s measurement of real-time changes to cells was enabled by an innovative approach: growing human lung cells on a synthetic nanofiber membrane mimicking the complex lung matrix. This ventilator-on-a-chip is closer to the authentic ventilated lung microenvironment than any similar lung chip systems to date, the researchers said.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Defense)
A key step toward reusing carbon dioxide to make sustainable fuels is chaining carbon atoms together, and an artificial photosynthesis system developed at the University of Michigan can bind two of them into hydrocarbons. The system produces ethylene – a hydrocarbon typically used in plastics – with efficiency, yield, and longevity above other artificial photosynthesis systems. The device absorbs light through two kinds of semiconductors: a forest of gallium nitride nanowires, each just 50 nanometers wide, and the silicon base on which they were grown. The reaction transforming water and carbon dioxide into ethylene takes place on copper clusters that dot the nanowires.

(Funded by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the National Science Foundation)
Researchers at the University of Minnesota and the University of Arizona have provided new insights into how next-generation electronics break down or degrade over time. Using a sophisticated electron microscope, the researchers looked at the nanopillars within magnetic tunnel junctions – the building blocks for the non-volatile memory in smart watches and in-memory computing. The researchers ran a current through the device to see how it operates. As they increased the current, they were able to observe how the device degrades and eventually dies in real time. “What was unusual with this discovery is that we observed this burn out at a much lower temperature than what previous research thought was possible,” said Andre Mkhoyan, one of the scientists involved in this research.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Department of Defense)
Researchers at Stanford University have developed a new way to see organs within a body by rendering overlying tissues transparent to visible light. The counterintuitive process – a topical application of a common food dye – was reversible in tests with animal subjects and may ultimately apply to a wide range of medical diagnostics, from locating injuries to monitoring digestive disorders to identifying cancers. To conduct their research, the scientists used a tool called an ellipsometer at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities – open access facilities that are part of the National Science Foundation-funded National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI). “Open access to such instrumentation is foundational for making groundbreaking discoveries, as those instruments can be deployed in new ways to generate fundamental insights about scientific phenomena,” said NSF Program Officer Richard Nash, who oversees the NSF NNCI.

(Funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Defense)
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a new filtration material that might provide a nature-based solution to water contaminated by “forever chemicals,” or per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). The filtration material, based on natural silk and cellulose, can remove a variety of these persistent chemicals, as well as heavy metals. The researchers devised a way of processing silk proteins into uniform nanoscale crystals, or “nanofibrils.” Then, they integrated cellulose into the silk-based fibrils, which formed a thin membrane that was highly effective at removing PFAS in lab tests.