A search for quantum computers led to a medical aplication. One day we may get MRI-like devices that can probe individual drug molecules and living cells.
K.S.Parthasarathy
Public release date: 22-Sep-2009
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Contact: Chad Boutin
boutin@nist.gov
301-975-4261
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
Diamonds may be the ultimate MRI probe, say Quantum physicists
Diamonds, it has long been said, are a girl's best friend. But a research team including a physicist from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has recently found* that the gems might turn out to be a patient's best friend as well.
The team's work has the long-term goal of developing quantum computers, but it has borne fruit that may have more immediate application in medical science. Their finding that a candidate "quantum bit" has great sensitivity to magnetic fields hints that MRI-like devices that can probe individual drug molecules and living cells may be possible.
The candidate system, formed from a nitrogen atom lodged within a diamond crystal, is promising not only because it can sense atomic-scale variations in magnetism, but also because it functions at room temperature. Most other such devices used either in quantum computation or for magnetic sensing must be cooled to nearly absolute zero to operate, making it difficult to place them near live tissue. However, using the nitrogen as a sensor or switch could sidestep that limitation.
Diamond, which is formed of pure carbon, occasionally has minute imperfections within its crystalline lattice. A common impurity is a "nitrogen vacancy", in which two carbon atoms are replaced by a single atom of nitrogen, leaving the other carbon atom's space vacant. Nitrogen vacancies are in part responsible for diamond's famed luster, for they are actually fluorescent: when green light strikes them, the nitrogen atom's two excitable unpaired electrons glow a brilliant red.
The team can use slight variations in this fluorescence to determine the magnetic spin of a single electron in the nitrogen. Spin is a quantum property that has a value of either "up" or "down," and therefore could represent one or zero in binary computation. The team's recent achievement was to transfer this quantum information repeatedly between the nitrogen electron and the nuclei of adjacent carbon atoms, forming a small circuit capable of logic operations. Reading a quantum bit's spin information—a fundamental task for a quantum computer—has been a daunting challenge, but the team demonstrated that by transferring the information back and forth between the electron and the nuclei, the information could be amplified, making it much easier to read.
Still, NIST theoretical physicist Jacob Taylor said the findings are "evolutionary, not revolutionary" for the quantum computing field and that the medical world may reap practical benefits from the discovery long before a working quantum computer is built. He envisions diamond-tipped sensors performing magnetic resonance tests on individual cells within the body, or on single molecules drug companies want to investigate—a sort of MRI scanner for the microscopic. "That's commonly thought not to be possible because in both of these cases the magnetic fields are so small," Taylor says. "But this technique has very low toxicity and can be done at room temperature. It could potentially look inside a single cell and allow us to visualize what's happening in different spots."
The Harvard University-based team also includes scientists from the Joint Quantum Institute (a partnership of NIST and the University of Maryland), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Texas A&M University.
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* L. Jiang, J.S. Hodges, J.R. Maze, P. Maurer, J.M. Taylor, D.G. Cory, P.R. Hemmer, R.L. Walsworth, A. Yacoby, A.S. Zibrov and M.D. Lukin. Repetitive readout of a single electronic spin via quantum logic with nuclear spin ancillae. Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1176496, published online Sept. 10, 2009.
See http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2009_0922.htm#diamonds for illustration to accompany story.
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Showing posts with label NIST. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NIST. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Friday, June 13, 2008
crude 'oil' from pig manure
Chemists at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)have developed a method to make crude oil from pig manure!Not surprising any more as the price of petrol is currently $4 gallon in USA. Pigsty owners will be delighted to supply the "raw material" without any hindrance!The trouble is that "Whatever the pigs eat, from dirt to nutritional supplements, ends up in the oil". Scientists concede.
NIST researchers found that pig manure crude contains at least "83 major compounds, including many components that would need to be removed, such as about 15 percent water by volume, sulfur that otherwise could end up as pollution in vehicle exhaust, and lots of char waste containing heavy metals, including iron, zinc, silver, cobalt, chromium, lanthanum, scandium, tungsten and minute amounts of gold and hafnium".
May be the farmers must subsidize the process to make usable crude from pig manure!
K.S.Parthasarathy
Public release date: 12-Jun-2008
Contact: Laura Ost
laura.ost@nist.gov
303-497-4880
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
NIST chemists get scoop on crude 'oil' from pig manure
To watch NIST chemist Tom Bruno talk about his research on crude oil made from pig manure, go to http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude
Click here for more information.
After a close examination of crude oil made from pig manure, chemists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are certain about a number of things.
Most obviously, "This stuff smells worse than manure," says NIST chemist Tom Bruno.
But a job's a job, so the NIST team has developed the first detailed chemical analysis revealing what processing is needed to transform pig manure crude oil into fuel for vehicles or heating. Mass production of this type of biofuel could help consume a waste product overflowing at U.S. farms, and possibly enable cutbacks in the nation's petroleum use and imports. But, according to a new NIST paper,* pig manure crude will require a lot of refining.
The ersatz oil used in the NIST analyses was provided by engineer Yuanhui Zhang of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Zhang developed a system using heat and pressure to transform organic compounds such as manure into oil.
As described in the new paper, Bruno and colleagues determined that the pig manure crude contains at least 83 major compounds, including many components that would need to be removed, such as about 15 percent water by volume, sulfur that otherwise could end up as pollution in vehicle exhaust, and lots of char waste containing heavy metals, including iron, zinc, silver, cobalt, chromium, lanthanum, scandium, tungsten and minute amounts of gold and hafnium. Whatever the pigs eat, from dirt to nutritional supplements, ends up in the oil.
While the thick black liquid may look like its petroleum-based counterparts, the NIST study shows that looks can be deceiving. "The fact that pig manure crude oil contains a lot of water is unfavorable. They would need to get the water out," Bruno says.
The measurements were made with a new NIST test method and apparatus, the advanced distillation curve, which provides highly detailed and accurate data on the makeup and performance of complex fluids. A distillation curve charts the percentage of the total mixture that evaporates as a sample is slowly heated. Because the different components of a complex mixture typically have different boiling points, a distillation curve gives a good measure of the relative amount of each component in the mixture. NIST chemists enhanced the traditional technique by improving precision and control of temperature measurements and adding the capability to analyze the chemical composition of each boiling fraction using a variety of advanced methods.
NIST researchers analyzed the graphite-like char remaining after the distillation by bombarding it with neutrons, a non-destructive way of identifying the types and amounts of elements present. Two complementary neutron methods detected the heavy metals listed above.
Bruno and colleagues currently spend much of their time analyzing military jet fuels and are not planning a major foray into pig manure. But Bruno concedes that the effort may have a payoff. "Who knows, it might help decrease the nuisance of manure piles."
###
For more on the process of making pig waste crude, see "Converting Manure to Oil: U of I Lays Groundwork for One-of-a-Kind Pilot Plant". http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news3557.html
To view a video clip of Tom Bruno describing the work, please go to: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude
* L.S. Ott, B.L. Smith and T.J. Bruno. Advanced distillation curve measurement: Application to a bio-derived crude oil prepared from swine manure. Fuel (2008), doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2008.04.038.
NIST researchers found that pig manure crude contains at least "83 major compounds, including many components that would need to be removed, such as about 15 percent water by volume, sulfur that otherwise could end up as pollution in vehicle exhaust, and lots of char waste containing heavy metals, including iron, zinc, silver, cobalt, chromium, lanthanum, scandium, tungsten and minute amounts of gold and hafnium".
May be the farmers must subsidize the process to make usable crude from pig manure!
K.S.Parthasarathy
Public release date: 12-Jun-2008
Contact: Laura Ost
laura.ost@nist.gov
303-497-4880
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
NIST chemists get scoop on crude 'oil' from pig manure
To watch NIST chemist Tom Bruno talk about his research on crude oil made from pig manure, go to http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude
Click here for more information.
After a close examination of crude oil made from pig manure, chemists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are certain about a number of things.
Most obviously, "This stuff smells worse than manure," says NIST chemist Tom Bruno.
But a job's a job, so the NIST team has developed the first detailed chemical analysis revealing what processing is needed to transform pig manure crude oil into fuel for vehicles or heating. Mass production of this type of biofuel could help consume a waste product overflowing at U.S. farms, and possibly enable cutbacks in the nation's petroleum use and imports. But, according to a new NIST paper,* pig manure crude will require a lot of refining.
The ersatz oil used in the NIST analyses was provided by engineer Yuanhui Zhang of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Zhang developed a system using heat and pressure to transform organic compounds such as manure into oil.
As described in the new paper, Bruno and colleagues determined that the pig manure crude contains at least 83 major compounds, including many components that would need to be removed, such as about 15 percent water by volume, sulfur that otherwise could end up as pollution in vehicle exhaust, and lots of char waste containing heavy metals, including iron, zinc, silver, cobalt, chromium, lanthanum, scandium, tungsten and minute amounts of gold and hafnium. Whatever the pigs eat, from dirt to nutritional supplements, ends up in the oil.
While the thick black liquid may look like its petroleum-based counterparts, the NIST study shows that looks can be deceiving. "The fact that pig manure crude oil contains a lot of water is unfavorable. They would need to get the water out," Bruno says.
The measurements were made with a new NIST test method and apparatus, the advanced distillation curve, which provides highly detailed and accurate data on the makeup and performance of complex fluids. A distillation curve charts the percentage of the total mixture that evaporates as a sample is slowly heated. Because the different components of a complex mixture typically have different boiling points, a distillation curve gives a good measure of the relative amount of each component in the mixture. NIST chemists enhanced the traditional technique by improving precision and control of temperature measurements and adding the capability to analyze the chemical composition of each boiling fraction using a variety of advanced methods.
NIST researchers analyzed the graphite-like char remaining after the distillation by bombarding it with neutrons, a non-destructive way of identifying the types and amounts of elements present. Two complementary neutron methods detected the heavy metals listed above.
Bruno and colleagues currently spend much of their time analyzing military jet fuels and are not planning a major foray into pig manure. But Bruno concedes that the effort may have a payoff. "Who knows, it might help decrease the nuisance of manure piles."
###
For more on the process of making pig waste crude, see "Converting Manure to Oil: U of I Lays Groundwork for One-of-a-Kind Pilot Plant". http://www.aces.uiuc.edu/news/stories/news3557.html
To view a video clip of Tom Bruno describing the work, please go to: http://www.nist.gov/public_affairs/techbeat/tb2008_0610.htm#crude
* L.S. Ott, B.L. Smith and T.J. Bruno. Advanced distillation curve measurement: Application to a bio-derived crude oil prepared from swine manure. Fuel (2008), doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2008.04.038.
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