(Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
Researchers from the University of Connecticut will grow rod-shaped nanoparticles, called Janus base nanotubes, on the International Space Station. These nanotubes will carry interleukin-12, a protein produced naturally by the human body to stimulate the development of helper T-cells, immune cells known for killing pathogens and cancer cells. With cross sections of just 20 nanometers, the nanotubes can slip into the cracks and attack solid tumors from the inside and then release interleukin-12 inside a tumor. Manufacturing these nanotubes in space has many advantages. “Since our nanotubes are self-assembled, there is a lot of similarity to crystallization,” says Yupeng Chen, one of the researchers involved in this study. “Without gravity, there’s no sedimentation, the molecules can rotate and assemble freely, and make better structures.”

(Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
During a NASA microgravity flight, researchers from Iowa State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have tested how a printer would work in the zero gravity of space. The ink used in this printer featured silver nanoparticles made with biobased polymers. The printer uses a 3D printing process that jets ink under an electric field, which could eliminate the need for gravity to help deposit ink. If the technology used in this printer works in zero gravity, astronauts could use such a printer to make electric circuits for spacecraft or equipment repairs or to manufacture high-value electronic components.

(Funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
Scientists from Penn State and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Space Flight Center have developed an electronic tongue that can identify differences in similar liquids, such as milk with varying water content; different soda types and coffee blends; and signs of spoilage in fruit juices. The researchers also found that results were more accurate when artificial intelligence (AI) used its own assessment parameters to interpret the data generated by the electronic tongue. The tongue contains a graphene-based ion-sensitive field-effect transistor – a conductive device that can detect chemical ions – that is linked to an artificial neural network trained on various datasets.

(Funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
For the first time, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Dartmouth College, Penn State, the University of California, Merced, and Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium have demonstrated an approach that combines high-throughput computation and atomic-scale fabrication to engineer high-performance quantum defects. The researchers developed state-of-the-art, high-throughput computational methods to screen and accurately predict the properties of more than 750 defects in a two-dimensional material called tungsten disulfide. Then, working at the Molecular Foundry, a user facility at Berkeley Lab, the researchers developed and applied a technique that enables the creation of vacancies in tungsten disulfide and the insertion of cobalt atoms into these vacancies.