New Jersey-based InMat LLC has been selected by the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center in Natick, Mass., (aka Natick Labs) to develop improved chemical protective gloves. The research effort titled "Improved Chemical Protective Gloves Using Eastomeric Nanocomposites" will begin immediately with Tom Tassinari from Natick Labs providing technical oversight. InMat's elastomeric nanocomposite coatings are completely aqueous, non-hazardous coatings with no volatile organics (VOCs). "We are confident that we will develop gloves that provide not only the required chemical protection, but also improved petroleum oil and flame resistance," said Harris Goldberg, Ph.D., president and co-founder of InMat. The company's patented coating technology is currently being used by Wilson Sporting Goods in its Double Core tennis balls, which hold their air pressure at least twice as other pressurized balls...

Scientists at the Center for Nanoscale Science and Engineering at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) reported in the May 24 issue of the journal Science a new bistable material with possible applications in the electronics industry as well as the computer storage industry. The material, which does not yet have a popular name, simultaneously exhibits bistability in three physical channels: optical, electrical and magnetic. When the material switches between states, it switches the conductivity, the amount of light transmitted and the magnetism. According to Robert Haddon, professor of organic materials chemistry and engineering at UCR, the material has the potential to be used as the basis for new types of electronic devices, where multiple physical channels are utilized for writing, reading and transferring information...

Pittsburgh, Penn.-based Bioplex Corp. has secured an exclusive license from Indiana University for technology to synthesize optically encoded microbeads and nanobeads for human health applications, including drug discovery and clinical diagnostics. The technology, invented by Prof. Shuming Nie and colleagues, involves a method of embedding semiconductor nanocrystals in polymer beads with diameters of between 0.1 to 10 micrometers. Varying colors and concentrations of nanocrystals provide each bead with a sharp optical signature with high detection accuracy. Each bead may be conjugated to an antibody or nucleic acid probe to assay a large variety of biomolecules within a single solution. The current proof of concept suggests the ability to conduct 10,000 to 40,000 assays simultaneously, with a theoretical limit of 10 billion assays...

Do you have a nanotech nugget you'd like us to consider for the round-up? Send it to the editor, Michael Pastore at mpastore@internet.com.