New research from Professor Guillermo Ameer’s team shows how a shape change of a cell’s nucleus can trigger regenerative signals and improve implant performance.

Infrastructure is the stuff that makes life possible. But it's an eyesore. As early as the 1910s, Pittsburghers sought ways to hide it.

While depositing ferrihydrite nanoparticles inside the wood cell wall resulted in enhanced stiffness and hardness of the functionalized secondary cell wall, the overall behavior of the wood remained ...

Researchers wanted to determine if adding extremely hard minerals at the nanoscale could make the walls of wood cells stronger – without making the wood heavy, expensive or bad for the environment.

Increased durability of wood This cost-effective and safe method using nanocrystalline iron oxyhydroxide successfully strengthened the tiny cell walls within the wood.

“By looking at wood at different levels – from the microscopic structures inside the cell walls all the way up to the full piece of wood – we were able to learn more about how to chemically improve ...

These methods allowed them to map exactly how the treatment affected different components of the wood’s cellular structure. Most importantly, the minerals penetrated deep into the wood’s secondary ...

A simple, cost-effective chemical method using a safe mineral called nanocrystalline iron oxyhydroxide can strengthen the tiny cell walls within wood while adding only a small amount of extra weight.

"By looking at wood at different levels -- from the microscopic structures inside the cell walls all the way up to the full piece of wood -- we were able to learn more about how to chemically ...

Study: Lightweight, Strong, Hydrostable, Bendable, Rolled-Up, and Biodegradable Straws Enabled by Nano- and Microarchitecture Tuning of the Wood Cell Wall and Molecular Welding Strategy. Image Credit: ...