Artist Willard Wigan creates ultraprecision. This is precision work done by people and seems seems to have surpassed even machinery in the kind of details this guy is able to create. Does anyone want a statue of liberty sculpture that can fit in the ear of a needle?

Italian researcher Alessandra Luchini wins the first edition of "The Prize Award” with a paper of a system to identify those molecules that signal the presence of a tumor (tumor markers) that are beyond the traditional methods of investigation. To do this requires making a hydrogel containing certain microscopic nano-spheres that once inserted in the samples of blood taken for analysis diagnostic trap some markers and protect them from deterioration. "These nano-spheres, made of the same plastic as hydrated soft contact lenses are equipped with special molecules that, once in the blood, snap-specific tumor markers and incorporate them. In this way, they protect them from enzymes that would otherwise deteriorate them. Usually blood tests fail to identify precisely because these markers are destroyed prematurely, " says researcher Alessandra Luchini. "The beauty of this system," says the researcher, "is that it does not need very sophisticated tools, which is simple and economical: with one hundred U.S. dollars we can make nano-spheres for more than two hundred patients." The new method is not going to replace the standard, but acts at a stage prior to analysis by providing a better quality.

Small robots that walk on water like insects? The kitchen table, the walls of a room or the arms of an armchair that are self-cleaning? Two phenomena that Xiao Cheng Zeng, a professor of chemistry at University of Nebraska in Lincoln (USA), considers possible in the near future, and based on the same characteristic: super hidrofobia. Thanks to the computational performance of the super computer of the Riken Institute in Japan, the researcher is able to reproduce the conditions that give the area the property is to "roll" away the drops of water. In nature this phenomenon is observed on the bristles of caterpillars or on lotus flowers, and allows insects that often are seen on ponds slip skate on water. As the authors of the study reported the caterpillars or insects skaters get the super hydrophobia surface through a "two-tier" surface which means a waxy base on which there are microscopic structures like hair, often covered in turn by smaller "hair". These gradients decrease the surface area in contact with the drop of water. The result is that the drop rolls instead of sliding, as it would be a hydrophobic surface.

A new instrument to simultaneously measure the magnetic field and the atomic structure of matter at the nanoscale has been developed. The applications of this are future generations of high-density memories Snapshots of the weakest and microscopic magnetic fields generated by just a few molecules of a nanometer (billionth of a meter). The researchers have obtained the S3 Center of the National Institute for the Physics of Matter (INFM-CNR) of Modena and the University of Modena . This is a scanning microscope combined with a new highly sensitive magnetic sensor. The microscope scans close with his point - made up of a few atoms - the area of the test and how it relates to the roughness with a resolution of several nanometers. Beside the point, the sensor records the magnetic field intensity, but with high detail ( millionth of a meter). In this way the researchers were able to get together for the first time, images of atomic structure and magnetic properties of a thin layer of nano-magnet on a support of silicon. "The microscope allows us to measure directly the properties of nano-molecular magnets on the surface, even at temperatures close to absolute zero, to minus 270 degrees," says Marco. "Above all," says the researcher, "it helps us to understand the magnetism on the molecular scale."

Particles in a confined microscopic space, move in a coordinated manner and can be manipulated and observed with a precision never achieved. A nano-trap can be imagined as a tube the size of a billionth of a meter in which electrons are closed to study their behavior. Thus, scientists from the centers of the Italian Institute for physics of matter of Cnr "S3", Modena and "Nest" of Pisa in collaboration with Columbia University in New York, were able to observe with great precision the behavior of a quartet of electrons confined in one of these structures. Result: the particles move in a coordinated manner and with precise frequencies and can be manipulated. The study was published in Nature Phisics. As it is known, the physics of the matter the size of an atom or less follows different laws than those of classical physics. According to these principles, which fall in quantum physics, the behavior of particles such as electrons can not be described as we are used to (for larger bjects),but it is outlined mainly in terms of probabilistic forecasts. The technique developed by Cnr made it possible to determine the frequency of vibrations of particles through the use of a beam of laser light. The electrons in a nano-trap can only move in a coordinated manner and in accordance with the laws of quantum mechanics, vibrate at frequencies well defined that, thanks to this method, was possible to measure with unprecedented precision.

Filming particles is now possible. It was done for the first time by a group of Swedish researchers using extremely short pulses of light Getting images of electrons that do not appear to "move" has been impossible because of the speed of these microscopic particles. But a group of researchers in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Lund (Sweden) now has found a way to shoot the movement of an electron using an innovative technique that provides for the use of flash light of extremely short duration.