IMNano

Delve into the fascinating journey of Marina, exploring her experiences, challenges, and triumphs on her way to becoming a Professor in Mechanical Engineering at York University, Canada. She does many projects in water and air purification as well as energy and her lab is growing!

Contact Prof Marina here :

Marina Freire-Gormaly, PhD, EIT, LEED GA
Assistant Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
York University
marina.freire-gormaly@lassonde.yorku.ca

Menstrual blood is usually discarded but it actually contains a plethora of biomolecules that can tell us information about your health! CELLECT, a start-up founded by CT Murphy from the University of Waterloo, aims to use menstrual blood and nanotechnology solutions to diagnose HPV and cervical cancer. Tune in to this episode to learn more!

About CT Murphy:

Super amazing chemistry

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The Nobel Prize winning scientists, Frances Arnold, has done it again! Her team have use directed evolution to engineer enzymes that can break down the strong carbon-silicon bonds found in many products we use everyday!

Time for a nanolife interview with the one and only Dr Thomas Mortelmans who delves deep into his medical biosensor and how he came out his various inventions!

Check out his main biosensor work that we talk about here:

ACS Appl. Nano Mater. 2022, 5, 1, 517–526

In this lit update we talk about a carbon nanotube sensor discovery that shows the current in a carbon nanotube device can pass parallel or perpendicular to the tubes and the results will be different!

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Let's review what we have accomplished, some of the missed research we didn't get to cover, and our favorite research in 2023!

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Lit-Update Meet the Expert! where we get to dig deep into papers with the scientist themselves!

Have you ever wondered how changes to your normal schedule affects your health? Tune in to learn more about circadian disruption and health from Stéphanie Abo based on her paper "Can the Clocks Tick Together Despite the Noise? Stochastic Simulations and Analysis" published in SIAM Journal on Applied Dynamical Systems.

Stéphanie is a PhD Candidate in mathematical and computational biology at the University of Waterloo. Her academic research primarily explores the interaction between the circadian clock and metabolism in healthy and disease states (e.g., diabetes, bacterial infections). I use both data-driven and mechanistic modelling technique (PDEs, ODEs, stochastic DEs, kinetic theory and mean-field limits, agent-based modelling, and statistical methods).

Failed experiments are usually hidden in our notebooks and computer, not shared in the literature, but they're important for the scientific process! In this podcast, we'll discuss how it's also important for machine learning assisted chemical experiments.

In this lit update we discuss some super cool new research that uses aerosol jet printing to apply a solution of COF/carbon nanotubes to make nanocomposites. Tune in the for breakdown!

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Strong heat-activated artificial muscle to move artificial hands and robotic worms?! Tune in to learn more how scientists from Korea and France used graphene and liquid crystal elastomer to develop this human-muscle inspired technology!

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Biotechnology startup research vs. quality control, how are the two different? Which one is more suitable for you? How do you get started in both? Tune in to learn more from Darren!

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Lit-Update Meet the Expert! where we get to dig deep into papers with the scientist themselves!

Our first special guest is Brittany Smith, a PhD Candidate from Duke University, engineer, and marine life expert who is working towards developing technology to benefit marine life and the environment. She will be discussing her latest paper "All-Carbon Thin-Film Transistors Using Water-Only Printing" published in Nano Letters!

Plastics plastics plastics...when they break down into nanoplastics in the ocean, can they transport cancerous polycyclic hydrocarbons to our body?

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Erik B. Schiferle, Wenxu Ge, and Björn M. ReinhardACS Nano 2023 17 (6), 5773-5784DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c12224

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We are talking about the weird and wonderful water today and it's amazing new property involving water vapours at ice cold temperatures!!

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Mimicking nanopore transport using nanopore quartz tube to understand protein-protein interactions!

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It's like three nanotech things all in one! Fascinating research geared towards nano cancer therapeutics

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Amazing work where imine condensation reactions lead up to building molecular nanotube enantiomers using something known as Covalent Organic Pillars COP!

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We previous learned about how nanotech can help advance AI. Now, let's learn about how AI helps scientists to discover new morphologies of directed self-assembled copolymers!

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In this lit update we don't really talk about the paper in detail but we had a lot of fun discussing on how relevant or not nanotech is to the ai and language model space. Check it out!

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First episode of 2023! Let's start with reflecting on the funny mistakes we made in our early years and what we would like to improve on!

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Last episode of 2022! We have come a long way since we first started and accomplished quite a bit this year. Tune in to the recap of 2022, what we wished we could have covered, and what we have coming up in 2023!

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Incoming lit update! Check out new research that shows nanocages made from DNA are able to capture a wide range of viruses!

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Atoms, they're everywhere! They're the building blocks of everything but you can't see them with your naked eye, now you can! 

Have you heard of CRISPR, the ground breaking gene editing technology? The one that got Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2020? This technology was repurposed by researchers from Fudan University to detect cell free DNA! Tune in to learn more!

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Breast and ovarian cancer are some of the most common cancer for females worldwide. As cancer treatment technology continue to advance, scientists in Israel learned that the physiological processes during the different menstruation phases can affect the efficiency of breast and ovarian cancer treatment! 

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Poley, M.; Mora-Raimundo, P.; Shammai, Y.; Kaduri, M.; Koren, L.; Adir, O.; Shklover, J.; Shainsky-Roitman, J.; Ramishetti, S.; Man, F.; de Rosales, Rafael T. M.; Zinger, A.; Peer, D.; Ben-Aharon, I.; Schroeder, A. Nanoparticles Accumulate in the Female Reproductive System during Ovulation Affecting Cancer Treatment and Fertility. ACS Nano 2022, 16, 5246-5257.

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Today we will be talking about safety in nanoscience and technology labs!!! 

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We conclude the end of Season 1 with a special interview episode with soon-to-be Dr. Simone Pengue, who is pursuing his PhD in biophysics and an avid science communicator. This passion led him to be the Grand Prize winner of the Prix Media Newcomer 2021 for the FORGOTTEN DATA: the Leftovers of Science documentary. He will share his experiences as a science journalist while being a PhD candidate at the University of Basel as well as decoding scientific phenomenon in literary arts. 

Below are the links to some of his work!

Today we will be discussing superhydrophobics coatings using nanofluids, and what is special about this research is that that is comes from easily accessible materials such as silica!

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Many researchers now are working on miniaturizing and simplifying laboratory processes so that they can be easily used in places such as bed-side hospitals, pharmacies, and ambulances. In this lit update, researchers from UC Davis developed a sensitive nanofiber based immunoassay patch! Tune in to learn more!

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Cunyi Zhao, Bofeng Pan, Minyuan Wang, Yang Si, Ameer Y Taha, Gangyu Liu, Tingrui Pan, and Gang Sun. ACS Sensors 2022 7 (5), 1458-1466. DOI: 10.1021/acssensors.2c00208

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In today's lit update, we are discussing the recently discovered "Ferroelectric Nematic Liquid Crystals" and in this work, the researchers have uncovered ways for types of these chiral liquid crystals to change colors with the use of an electric field! Neat! 

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Did you know that cooking with oil lead to thin oil film deposits on indoor surfaces? These oily deposits can attract water, which can cause bacterial growth and chemical reactions! Tune in to learn what scientists from University of San Diego and University of Texas learned about how the chemical composition of the oil deposits affect how water films form on glass!

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Victor W. Or, Michael R. Alves, Michael Wade, Sarah Schwab, Richard L. Corsi, and Vicki H. Grassian Environmental Science & Technology 2022 56 (3), 1594-1604 DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c06260

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Excessive bleeding during surgery or trauma must be stopped immediately before it becomes deadly. In this lit update, scientists from Nankai University developed a chitosan, derived from shrimp shells, microchannelled sponge-like hemostats using 3D printing that can stop bleeding within 2 minutes!

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In today's awesome lit update, we talk about lithium-air-breathing batteries! (LABs!) Wait, what?!

Now these lithium air-breathing batteries, often known as LABs or LOBs as in Lithium-Oxygen Batteries don’t actually have lungs! Their operation is based on the metal-air interface to function.

Teaser for our upcoming episode discussing new research on lithium - air batteries!

We constantly hear that personalized medicine is the medicine of the future but when will this become a reality? Researchers in this field are constantly making progress and one of the most recent developments is from researchers in Israel and China who made wearable microneedle sensors for continuous sodium monitoring! 

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Zheng, Y. et al. A Wearable Microneedle-Based Extended Gate Transistor for Real-Time Detection of Sodium in Interstitial Fluids. Advanced Materials 34, 2108607 (2022).

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