Real nanobots !!!! (???)

With fancy chemicals being developed for new medicines, a question remains: how can we deliver the most bang for the buck? It would be ideal to have a microscale delivery truck, capable of delivering the drug to the precise location needed. This would also eliminate many side effects experienced through a general delivery of the drug.

 Catalytic nanoswimmers are being researched as potential cargo vehicles. They are tiny spheres, with one half coated with a reactive material. This side reacts with chemicals in the environment, and the energy of reaction is transmitted into motion forward. Attach a blob of drug to them, and they can move medicine. But questions remain about how to get them to go a specific direction, without having to babysit them. Can we make these trucks driverless?

Adhesion, Geckos, and Technology

One of our earlier experiences with science comes in kindergarten. The teacher brings out the Elmer's glue and we put macaroni on construction paper. The white viscous stuff acts to permanently bond the paper and pasta. As children we're ignorant of the science beneath this and view glue as magic stuff. But if we could zoom in to resolve the detail, we’d see the long squiggly polymer molecules in the glue are grabbing onto the fibers in the paper as well as the starch fibers in the macaroni. The glue acts as an adhesive.