NANOCOMPUTER

Soldiers To Control Machines With Their Minds

May 24, 2019 Uncategorized

The Department of Defense’s research and development wing, DARPA, is working on technology to read and write to the human brain. The focus isn’t on mind control but rather machine control, allowing the human brain to directly send instructions to machines. The goal of the process is to streamline thought control of machines to the point where humans could control them with a simple helmet or head-mounted device, making operating such systems easier.

The brain makes physical events happen by turning thoughts into action, sending instructions through the nervous system to organs, limbs, and other parts of the body. It effortlessly sends out a constant stream of commands to do everything from drive a car to make breakfast. To operate today’s machines, humans being need a middleman of sorts, a physical control system manipulated by hands, fingers, and feet.

What if human beings could cut out the middleman, operating a machine simply by thinking at it? So DARPA is funding the (Next Generation Nonsurgical Neurotechnology (N3) initiative. N3’s goal is to create a control system for machines—including weapons—that can directly interact with the human brain. According to IEEE Spectrum, DARPA is experimenting with “magnetic fields, electric fields, acoustic fields (ultrasound) and light” as a means of controlling machines.

The implications of such a technology are huge. Instead of designing complicated controls and control systems for every machine or weapon devised, engineers could instead just create a thought-operated control system. Wearable technology becomes easier to operate as it doesn’t require a separate control system. This could also apply to notifications and data: as IEEE Spectrum points out, network administrators could feel intrusions into computer networks. DAPRA is, of course, an arm of the Pentagon, and a neurotechnological interface would almost certainly find its way into weapons.

DARPA has awarded development contracts to six groups for amounts of up to $19.48 million each. Each group has one year to prove their ability to read and write to brain tissue with an 18-month animal testing period to follow.

Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/

Timber Cities And Algorithmically Designed Structures

May 23, 2019 Uncategorized

Design Computation Lab is a new research laboratory at The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London (UCL) developing design methods for the utilization of computational technologies in architectural design, fabrication and assembly. Design Computation Lab has cross-faculty partnerships in the The Institute for Digital Innovation in the Built Environment, UCL and The School of Construction + Project Management, UCL.

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In a recent installation, Real Virtuality, Gilles Retsin Architecture and the Design Computation Lab proved that timber could indeed become the material of the 21st century by using augmented reality to fabricate algorithmically designed structures with LEGO-like timber blocks.

Construction relies heavily on cement, the production of which is responsible for approximately 8 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Architect Gilles Retsin suggests that we should look into timber for an alternative.
Sustainable cities can’t rely on concrete. Let’s try algorithmically designed timber buildings.

Source: https://designcomputationlab.org/
AND
https://mashable.com/

World’s First Transatlantic Crossing Without A Crew

May 22, 2019 Uncategorized

Final preparations are underway for a 12-meter-long ship to set sail from Canada and attempt the world’s first transatlantic crossing without a crew. The USV Maxlimer, an unmanned surface vessel, is bound for the south coast of England and will conduct deep sea surveys on the way, guided by a skipper in a control station in Britain. The voyage is expected to take about 35 days.

The ship was built by Sea-Kit International, which develops vessels for the maritime and research industries, for the Shell Ocean Discovery XPRIZE, a competition to autonomously survey the sea bed. It can launch and recover autonomous underwater vehicles but has the potential to operate in different roles with different cargo. “(It is) almost like a utility pick-up vehicle of the sea, it’s robust, it’s adaptable, it’s got a huge range,” said SEA-KIT International Managing Director Ben Simpson.

The vessel is operated by a hand-held remote control when in harbor and when at sea it can stream live data to the controller via multiple satellite links.

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“What is now available through technology is very, very similar to what you have on the bridge of a ship and in many ways, I would argue, even more comprehensive,” said James Fanshawe, a director of SEA-KIT. “The controller here in this station can actually see all the way round on the horizon near real-time and in many ships it’s quite difficult to actually even see what’s behind you from the bridge of that ship,” explained Fanshawe.

The company said it sees a future for unmanned vessels as they can remove humans from harm’s way. The team said ships that do not need to accommodate people also have significant economic and environmental benefits. “You don’t need a bridge, you don’t need a galley, you don’t need water supplies, you don’t need air conditioning and suddenly the size of that vessel becomes a fraction of the size of vessels currently being used offshore,” Simpson said. The combination of size and hybrid diesel-electric propulsion cuts fuel use by around 95 percent, the company said.

Source: http://www.reuters.com

Plant Viruses Used to Ward Off Pests

May 21, 2019 Uncategorized

Imagine a technology that could target pesticides to treat specific spots deep within the soil, making them more effective at controlling infestations while limiting their toxicity to the environment.

Researchers at the University of California San Diego and Case Western Reserve University have taken a step toward that goal. They discovered that a biological nanoparticle—a plant virus—is capable of delivering pesticide molecules deeper below the ground, to places that are normally beyond their reach.

The work could help farmers better manage difficult pests, like parasitic nematodes that wreak havoc on plant roots deep in the soil, with less pesticide. The work is published May 20 in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

“It sounds counterintuitive that we can use a plant virus to treat plant health,” said Nicole Steinmetz, a professor of nanoengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and senior author of the study. “This is an emerging field of research in nanotechnology showing that we can use plant viruses as pesticide delivery systems. It’s similar to how we’re using nanoparticles in medicine to target drugs towards sites of disease and reduce their side effects in patients.”

Pesticides are very sticky molecules when applied in the field, Steinmetz explained. They bind strongly to organic matter in the soil, making it difficult to get enough to penetrate deep down into the root level where pests like nematodes reside and cause damage. To compensate, farmers end up applying large amounts of pesticides, which cause harmful residues to build up in the soil and leach into groundwater.

Steinmetz and her team are working to address this problem. In a new study, they discovered that a particular plant virus, Tobacco mild green mosaic virus, can transport small amounts of pesticide deep through the soil with ease.

Source: https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/

How To Make Cells Immune To HIV

May 20, 2019 Uncategorized

Some viruses, no matter how hard we try, remain resistant to vaccines. Now, researchers are using a different method, gene editing, as a way to make cells immune to mankind’s most difficult viruses. Led by Dr. Justin Taylor, a team at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center has targeted four infections for which there’s no protective vaccine: HIV, influenza, the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

The researchers used CRISPR/Cas9 technology to modify B cells, a class of white blood cells that produce antibodies to protect us from diseases. By coding the cells with genes that create specific antibodies, the team was able to make them immune without the use of a vaccine.

The researchers tested the method in both human cells in a test tube and in living mice. On average, about 30 percent of the cells produced the desired antibody. Taylor said that the mice remained protected for 83 days following the procedure, an important benchmark given that patients who receive stem cell transplants can have weakened immune systems for three to six months. To be clear, Taylor doesn’t have anything against traditional vaccination. “Vaccines are great,” he said. “I wish we had more of them.”

Instead, Taylor thinks the gene editing method could work one day for diseases where we don’t have a vaccine. It may help patients who are immuno-compromised, meaning their bodies can no longer fight infections, as well as older patients whose bodies aren’t as receptive to vaccines. Gene-edited immunity might also be used to protect people faster than can be done with traditional vaccines, which could be useful during unexpected outbreaks.

Taylor’s team included Fred Hutch researchers and co-authors Howell Moffett, Carson Harms, Kristin Fitzpatrick, Marti Tooley and Jim Boonyaratanakornkit. The results will be published in the journal Science Immunology.

Source: https://www.fredhutch.org/
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https://www.geekwire.com/

How To Offer Commercially Attractive Carbon-Capturing

May 17, 2019 Uncategorized

Chemical engineers from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL ) in Switzerland have designed an easy method to achieve commercially attractive carbon-capturing with metal-organic frameworks. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are versatile compounds hosting nano-sized pores in their crystal structure. Because of their nanopores, MOFs are now used in a wide range of applications, including separating petrochemicals, mimicking DNA, and removing heavy metals, fluoride anions, hydrogen, and even gold from water. Gas separation in particular is of great interest to a number of industries, such as biogas production, enriching air in metal working, purifying natural gas, and recovering hydrogen from ammonia plants and oil refineries.

“The flexible ‘lattice’ structure of metal-organic frameworks soaks up gas molecules that are even larger than its pore window making it difficult to carry out efficient membrane-based separation,” says Kumar Varoon Agrawal, who holds the GAZNAT Chair for Advanced Separations at EPFL Valais Wallis.

Now, scientists from Agrawal’s lab have greatly improved the gas separation by making the MOF lattice structure rigid. They did this by using a novel “post-synthetic rapid heat treatment” method, which basically involved baking a popular MOF called ZIF-8 (zeolitic imidazolate framework 8) at 360°C for a few seconds. The method drastically improved ZIF-8’s gas-separation performance – specifically in ‘carbon capture’, a process that captures carbon dioxide emissions produced from the use of fossil fuels, preventing it from entering the atmosphere. “For the first time, we have achieved commercially attractive dioxide sieving performance a MOF membrane,” says Agrawal.

Source: https://actu.epfl.ch/

The Rise Of The Electric Driverless Truck

May 16, 2019 Uncategorized

Today, DB Schenker and Einride launched the installation for the first commercial use of a T-pod, at a DB Schenker facility in Jönköping, central Sweden. The T-pod will travel continuously to and from a warehouse, paving the way for a sustainable transition of road freight transportation. The T-Pod Self-Driving Truck can carry up to 15 standard pallets or 20 tons of goods in just a 23-foot body thanks to the removal of the cab. On the highway, the all-electric truck drives itself, while a driver can take control remotely for urban driving. It has a range of 124 miles, and the company says it will be testing a prototype later this year while also building out a network of charging stations.

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“Heavy road transport is responsible for a substantial part of global CO₂ emissions. By substituting electricity for diesel, we reduce CO₂ emissions by 90 percent. We are happy and grateful that DB Schenker has chosen to be part of this revolution, disrupting a huge global market” says Robert Falck, CEO, and founder of Einride.

“We at Schenker are working at full speed on sustainable and innovative logistics. Autonomous driving will become increasingly important for this. Together with Einride, we want to bring the first autonomous, fully electric truck onto public roads in the near future and thus set new standards for tomorrow’s logistics” explains Jochen Thewes, CEO of DB Schenker.

Source: https://www.einride.tech/

How To Boost Batteries Conductivity And Improve Safety

May 15, 2019 Uncategorized

Building a better lithium-ion battery involves addressing a myriad of factors simultaneously, from keeping the battery’s cathode electrically and ionically conductive to making sure that the battery stays safe after many cycles.

In a new discovery, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have developed a new cathode coating by using an oxidative chemical vapor deposition technique that can help solve these and several other potential issues with lithium-ion batteries all in one stroke.

“The coating we’ve discovered really hits five or six birds with one stone.” Khalil Amine, Argonne distinguished fellow and battery scientist. In the research, Amine and his fellow researchers took particles of Argonne’s pioneering nickel-manganese-cobalt (NMC) cathode material and encapsulated them with a sulfur-containing polymer called PEDOT. This polymer provides the cathode a layer of protection from the battery’s electrolyte as the battery charges and discharges.

Unlike conventional coatings, which only protect the exterior surface of the micron-sized cathode particles and leave the interior vulnerable to cracking, the PEDOT coating had the ability to penetrate to the cathode particle’s interior, adding an additional layer of shielding. In addition, although PEDOT prevents the chemical interaction between the battery and the electrolyte, it does allow for the necessary transport of lithium ions and electrons that the battery requires in order to function.

“This coating is essentially friendly to all of the processes and chemistry that makes the battery work and unfriendly to all of the potential reactions that would cause the battery to degrade or malfunction,” said Argonne chemist Guiliang Xu, the first author of the research.

Source: https://www.anl.gov/

Pixels A Million Times Smaller

May 14, 2019 Uncategorized

The smallest pixels yet created – a million times smaller than those in smartphones, made by trapping particles of light under tiny rocks of gold – could be used for new types of large-scale flexible displays, big enough to cover entire buildings. The colour pixels, developed by a team of scientists led by the University of Cambridge, are compatible with roll-to-roll fabrication on flexible plastic films, dramatically reducing their production cost.
It has been a long-held dream to mimic the colour-changing skin of octopus or squid, allowing people or objects to disappear into the natural background, but making large-area flexible display screens is still prohibitively expensive because they are constructed from highly precise multiple layers. At the centre of the pixels developed by the Cambridge scientists is a tiny particle of gold a few billionths of a metre across. The grain sits on top of a reflective surface, trapping light in the gap in between. Surrounding each grain is a thin sticky coating which changes chemically when electrically switched, causing the pixel to change colour across the spectrum.

The team of scientists, from different disciplines including physics, chemistry and manufacturing, made the pixels by coating vats of golden grains with an active polymer called polyaniline and then spraying them onto flexible mirror-coated plastic, to dramatically drive down production cost. The pixels are the smallest yet created, a million times smaller than typical smartphone pixels. They can be seen in bright sunlight and because they do not need constant power to keep their set colour, have an energy performance that makes large areas feasible and sustainable. “We started by washing them over aluminized food packets, but then found aerosol spraying is faster,” said co-lead author Hyeon-Ho Jeong from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory.

“These are not the normal tools of nanotechnology, but this sort of radical approach is needed to make sustainable technologies feasible,” said Professor Jeremy J Baumberg of the NanoPhotonics Centre at Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, who led the research. “The strange physics of light on the nanoscale allows it to be switched, even if less than a tenth of the film is coated with our active pixels. That’s because the apparent size of each pixel for light is many times larger than their physical area when using these resonant gold architectures.”

The pixels could enable a host of new application possibilities such as building-sized display screens, architecture which can switch off solar heat load, active camouflage clothing and coatings, as well as tiny indicators for coming internet-of-things devices.

The results are reported in the journal Science Advances.

Source: https://www.cam.ac.uk/

Blocking Protein Curbs Memory Loss

May 13, 2019 Uncategorized

Impeding VCAM1, a protein that tethers circulating immune cells to blood vessel walls, enabled old mice to perform as well on memory and learning tests as young mice, a Stanford study found. Mice aren’t people, but like us they become forgetful in old age. In a study published online May 13 in Nature Medicine, old mice suffered far fewer senior moments during a battery of memory tests when Stanford University School of Medicine investigators disabled a single molecule dotting the mice’s cerebral blood vessels. For example, they breezed through a maze with an ease characteristic of young adult mice.

The molecule appears on the surfaces of a small percentage of endothelial cells, the main building blocks of blood vessels throughout the body. Blocking this molecule’s capacity to do its main job — it selectively latches onto immune cells circulating in the bloodstream — not only improved old mice’s cognitive performance but countered two physiological hallmarks of the aging brain: It restored to a more youthful level the ability of the old mice’s brains to create new nerve cells, and it subdued the inflammatory mood of the brain’s resident immune cells, called microglia.

Scientists have shown that old mice’s blood is bad for young mice’s brains. There’s a strong suspicion in the scientific community that something in older people’s blood similarly induces declines in brain physiology and cognitive skills. Just what that something is remains to be revealed. But, the new study suggests, there might be a practical way to block its path where the rubber meets the road: at the blood-brain barrier, which tightly regulates the passage of most cells and substances through the walls of blood vessels that pervade the human brain.

“We may have found an important mechanism through which the blood communicates deleterious signals to the brain,” said the study’s senior author, Tony Wyss-Coray, PhD, professor of neurology and neurological sciences, co-director of the Stanford Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center and a senior research career scientist at the Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Health Care System. The lead author of the study is Hanadie Yousef, PhD, a former postdoctoral scholar in the Wyss-Coray lab. The intervention’s success points to possible treatments that could someday slow, stop or perhaps even reverse that decline. Targeting a protein on blood-vessel walls may be easier than trying to get into the brain itself. “We can now try to treat brain degeneration using drugs that typically aren’t very good at getting through the blood-brain barrier — but, in this case, would no longer need to,” Yousef said.

Source: http://med.stanford.edu/

AI Spacefactory Wins Mars 3D Printed Habitat Challenge

May 10, 2019 Uncategorized

The new york-based ‘multi-planetary’ design agency, AI Spacefactory, gives us a closer look of what life on Mars might actually be like as they receive 1st place in the finale of NASA‘s 3D printed habitat challenge. After , the final phase saw structures built head to head over a duration of 30 hours and 3 days. the winning 15-foot tall prototype, called ‘MARSHA’, prevailed due to its level of autonomy and material performance, seeing the team scoop the prize of $500,000.
In addition to being built with nearly no human assistance, AI spacefactory was also awarded the top place for MARSHA’s innovative biopolymer basalt composite – a biodegradable and recyclable material derived from natural materials found on Mars. After withstanding NASA’s pressure, smoke, and impact testing, this material was found to be stronger and more durable than its concrete competitors.

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‘it’s light, and it’s strong, like an airplane. that’s going to be very important for these types of habitats,’ comments Lex Akers, dean of the caterpillar college of engineering and technology at Bradley university.

AI spacefactory autonomously constructed their prototype Mars entire in-situ, lifting an industrial robot 13-feet into the air on a forklift to 3D print the vertical, egg-shape habitat After spending 2 years developing construction technologies for Mars, AI spacefactory plans to bring its space-driven technologies back to earth this year. demonstrating the sustainable nature of their biopolymer composite, they will recycle the materials from MARSHA and re-use them to 3d print TERA – the first-ever space-tech eco habitat on earth.

‘We developed these technologies for space, but they have the potential to transform the way we build on earth,’ said David Malott, CEO and founder of AI spacefactory. ‘By using natural, biodegradable materials grown from crops, we could eliminate the building industry’s massive waste of unrecyclable concrete and restore our planet.’

Source: https://www.aispacefactory.com/

Transparent and Flexible Battery for Power Generation and Storage at Once

May 9, 2019 Uncategorized

DGIST research group in South Korea developed single-layer graphene based multifunctional transparent devices Various use of electronics and skin-attachable devices are expected with the development of transparent battery that can both generate and store power.The scientists in the Smart Textile Research Group developed film-type graphene based multifunctional transparent energy devices.

The team actively used ‘single-layered graphene film’ as electrodes in order to develop transparent devices. Due to its excellent electrical conductivity and light and thin characteristics, single-layered graphene film is perfect for electronics that require batteries. By using high-molecule nano-mat that contains semisolid electrolyte, the research team succeeded in increasing transparency (maximum of 77.4%) to see landscape and letters clearly.

Furthermore, the researchers designed structure for electronic devices to be self-charging and storing by inserting energy storage panel inside the upper layer of power devices and energy conversion panel inside the lower panel. They even succeeded in manufacturing electronics with touch-sensing systems by adding a touch sensor right below the energy storage panel of the upper layer.

“We decided to start this research because we were amazed by transparent smartphones appearing in movies. While there are still long ways to go for commercialization due to high production costs, we will do our best to advance this technology further as we made this success in the transparent energy storage field that has not had any visible research performances”, explains Changsoon Choi from the Smart Textile Research Group, and co-author of the paper published on the online edition of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.

The findings were also conducted as a joint research with various organisations such as Yonsei University, Hanyang University, and the Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH).

Source: https://www.dgist.ac.kr/

How To Collect And Harvest More Solar Energy

May 8, 2019 Uncategorized

In an article published in the SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics (JNP), researchers from a collaboration of three labs in Mexico demonstrate aninnovative nanodevice for harvesting solar energy. The paper,“Thermoelectric efficiency optimization of nanoantennas for solar energy harvesting,“reports that evolutive dipole nanoantennas (EDNs) generate a thermoelectric voltage three times larger than the classic dipole nanoantenna (CDN).

Capturing visible and infrared radiation using nanodevices is anessential aspect of collecting solar energy: solar cells and solar panels are common devices that utilize nanoantennas, which link electromagnetic radiation to specific optical fields. The EDNcan be useful in many areas where high thermoelectric efficiency is needed from energy harvesting to applications across the aerospace industry.

“The paper reports on a novel design and demonstration of a nanoantenna for efficient thermoelectric energy harvesting,” says Professor Ibrahim Abdulhalim, JNP Associate Editor, SPIE Fellow and a professor in the Electrooptics and Photonics Engineering Department at Ben-Gurion Universityof the Negev. “They demonstrated thermoelectric voltage three times larger than a classical antenna. This type of antenna can be useful in many fields from harvesting of energy from waste heat, in sensing and solar thermal energy harvesting.”

The nanoantennas are bimetallic, using nickel and platinum, and were fabricated using e-beam lithography. The nanoantenna design wasoptimized using simulations to determine the distance between the elements. In comparing their thermoelectric voltage to the classic dipole nanoantenna, the EDNs were 1.3 times more efficient. The characterization was done using a solar simulator analyzing the I-V curves. The results indicate that EDN arrays would be good candidates for the harvesting of waste heat energy.

Source: http://spie.org/

Early-Stage Detection Of Alzheimer’s In The Blood

May 7, 2019 Uncategorized

Two major studies with promising antibodies have recently failed – possibly because they have been administered too late. A new very early-detection test gives rise to hope. Using current techniques, Alzheimer’s disease, the most frequent cause of dementia, can only be detected once the typical plaques have formed in the brain. At this point, therapy seems no longer possible. However, the first changes caused by Alzheimer’s take place on the protein level up to 20 years sooner. A two-tier method developed at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) can help detect the disease at a much earlier stage. The researchers from Bochum published their report in the March 2019 edition of the journal “Alzheimer’s and Dementia: Diagnosis, Assessment and Disease Monitoring”.

“This has paved the way for early-stage therapy approaches, where the as yet inefficient drugs on which we had pinned our hopes may prove effective,” says Professor Klaus Gerwert from the Department of Biophysics at RUB.

In Alzheimer’s patients, the amyloid beta protein folds incorrectly due to pathological changes long before the first symptoms occur. A team of researchers headed by Klaus Gerwert successfully diagnosed this misfolding using a simple blood test; as a result, the disease can be detected approximately eight years before the first clinical symptoms occur. The test wasn’t suitable for clinical applications however: it did detect 71 per cent of Alzheimer’s cases in symptomless stages, but at the same time provided false positive diagnoses for nine per cent of the study participants. In order to increase the number of correctly identified Alzheimer’s cases and to reduce the number of false positive diagnoses, the researchers poured a lot of time and effort into optimising the test.

As a result, they have now introduced the two-tier diagnostic method. To this end, they use the original blood test to identify high-risk individuals. Subsequently, they add a dementia-specific biomarker, namely tau protein, to run further tests with those test participants whose Alzheimer’s diagnosis was positive in the first step. If both biomarkers show a positive result, there is a high likelihood of Alzheimer’s disease. “Through the combination of both analyses, 87 of 100 Alzheimer’s patients were correctly identified in our study,” summarises Klaus Gerwert. “And we reduced the number of false positive diagnoses in healthy subjects to 3 of 100. The second analysis is carried out in cerebrospinal fluid that is extracted from the spinal cord.

“Now, new clinical studies with test participants in very early stages of the disease can be launched,” points out Gerwert. He is hoping that the existing therapeutic antibodies will still have an effect. “Recently, two major promising studies have failed, especially Crenezumab and Aducanumab – not least because it had probably already been too late by the time therapy was taken up. The new test opens up a new therapy window.”

Source: https://news.rub.de/

Exoskeletons Assist Individuals With Spinal Cord Injury

May 6, 2019 Uncategorized

(from Inverse.com) Green Lantern’s ring, Wonder Woman’s bracelets, Captain America’s shield, and, of course, Batman’s batsuit: 30 years later, as National Superhero Day approaches, I’d be designing components of my own supersuits.

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I didn’t really notice this until a few months ago. On that day, my childhood dreams were at once destroyed and fulfilled. Standing in a line, I noticed that everyone was focused on their smartphones’ screens. Suddenly it hit me: I already had Sword of Omens superpowers. With my smartphone, I can see video of faraway events and text my friends to meet up. Billions of people now have what used to be considered superpowers.

But what about the physical superpowers? I wanted those, too — like superhuman endurance or strength. Those may not be too far behind. I’m working on them in Vanderbilt’s Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology. Humanity has begun to enter the age of wearable exoskeletons and exosuits thatoffer support and strength to people’s bodies. Over the past five years, wearable exoskeletons that assist and aid movement have begun to shift out of research labs and into public use. They’re still early versions, and the science is still emerging, but they include the first of several FDA-approved exoskeletons to assist individuals with spinal cord injury or after stroke, as well as exoskeletons to help keep workers safe and reduce the fatigue of physically demanding jobs.

Source: https://engineering.vanderbilt.edu/
AND
https://www.inverse.com/

How To Create See-through Human Organs

May 3, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers in Germany have created transparent human organs using a new technology that could pave the way to print three-dimensional body parts such as kidneys for transplants. The organ is then scanned by lasers in a microscope that allows researchers to capture the entire structure, including the blood vessels and every single cell in its specific location. Using this blueprint, researchers print out the scaffold of the organ. They then load the 3D printer with stem cells which act as “ink” and are injected into the correct position making the organ functional.

The team led by Ali Erturk at Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich have developed a technique that uses a solvent to make organs such as the brain and kidneys transparent. While 3D printing is already used widely to produce spare parts for industry, Erturk said the development marks a step forward for 3D printing in the medical field. Until now 3D-printed organs lacked detailed cellular structures because they were based on images from computer tomography or MRI machines, he said.

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3D transparent mouse

“We can see where every single cell is located in transparent human organs. And then we can actually replicate exactly the same, using 3D bioprinting technology to make a real functional organ,” he said. “Therefore, I believe we are much closer to a real human organ for the first time now.”

Erturk’s team plan to start by creating a bioprinted pancreas over the next 2-3 years and also hope to develop a kidney within 5-6 years. The researchers will first test to see whether animals can survive with the bioprinted organs and could start clinical trials within 5-10 years, he said.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

AI Detects Alzheimer’s Six Years In Advance

May 2, 2019 Uncategorized

Using a common type of brain scan, researchers programmed a machine-learning algorithm to diagnose early-stage Alzheimer’s disease about six years before a clinical diagnosis is made – potentially giving doctors a chance to intervene with treatment. No cure exists for Alzheimer’s disease, but promising drugs have emerged in recent years that can help stem the condition’s progression. However, these treatments must be administered early in the course of the disease in order to do any good. This race against the clock has inspired scientists to search for ways to diagnose the condition earlier.

A PET scan of the brain of a person with Alzheimer’s disease

“One of the difficulties with Alzheimer’s disease is that by the time all the clinical symptoms manifest and we can make a definitive diagnosis, too many neurons have died, making it essentially irreversible,” says Jae Ho Sohn, MD, MS, a resident in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UC San Francisco.

Positron emission tomography (PET) scans, which measure the levels of specific molecules, like glucose, in the brain, have been investigated as one tool to help diagnose Alzheimer’s disease before the symptoms become severe. Glucose is the primary source of fuel for brain cells, and the more active a cell is, the more glucose it uses. As brain cells become diseased and die, they use less and, eventually, no glucose.

Other types of PET scans look for proteins specifically related to Alzheimer’s disease, but glucose PET scans are much more common and cheaper, especially in smaller health care facilities and developing countries, because they’re also used for cancer staging.

Radiologists have used these scans to try to detect Alzheimer’s by looking for reduced glucose levels across the brain, especially in the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain. However, because the disease is a slow progressive disorder, the changes in glucose are very subtle and so difficult to spot with the naked eye. To solve this problem, Sohn applied a machine learning algorithm to PET scans to help diagnose early-stage Alzheimer’s disease more reliably.

“This is an ideal application of deep learning because it is particularly strong at finding very subtle but diffuse processes. Human radiologists are really strong at identifying tiny focal finding like a brain tumor, but we struggle at detecting more slow, global changes,” says Sohn. “Given the strength of deep learning in this type of application, especially compared to humans, it seemed like a natural application.”

To train the algorithm, Sohn fed it images from the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), a massive public dataset of PET scans from patients who were eventually diagnosed with either Alzheimer’s disease, mild cognitive impairment or no disorder. Eventually, the algorithm began to learn on its own which features are important for predicting the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease and which are not.

Once the algorithm was trained on 1,921 scans, the scientists tested it on two novel datasets to evaluate its performance. The first were 188 images that came from the same ADNI database but had not been presented to the algorithm yet. The second was an entirely novel set of scans from 40 patients who had presented to the UCSF Memory and Aging Center with possible cognitive impairment.

The algorithm performed with flying colors. It correctly identified 92 percent of patients who developed Alzheimer’s disease in the first test set and 98 percent in the second test set. What’s more, it made these correct predictions on average 75.8 months – a little more than six years – before the patient received their final diagnosis.

Source: https://www.ucsf.edu/

Hypothalamic Stem Cells May Reverse The Human Ageing Process

May 1, 2019 Uncategorized

A study published in the Nature Journal by Dongsheng Cai, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, talks about how stem cells, that determines how fast aging occurs in the body, can help reverse the human ageing process. Stem cells reside in Hypothalamus, a pea-sized part of the brain that contains a bundle of neurons. It is responsible for a wide array of growth, development, digestion, reproduction, and metabolism related processes in the body. As the human body starts to age, these neural stem cells in the body begins to deteriorate and accelerates the human ageing process. So, if you stop these stem cells from wearing away, you can possibly stop the human body from ageing.

The lab tests were conducted on mice, where it was observed that as the mice grew 10 months or older, the stem cells begin to deplete (earlier than the usual time for stem cells to deteriorate in mice). By the time, these mice turn two years and older, the stem cells start to disappear, causing death. However, to prove their hypothesis that stem cells deterioration truly accelerates the ageing process, scientists ‘artificially disrupted’ the stem cells in middle-aged mice, and observed that it significantly grew their rate of ageing.

Once the hypothesis that stem cells depletion leads to accelerated ageing was proved, scientists further injected the hypothalamic stem cells into the brains of older and middle-aged mice, where a sudden decrease in their ageing process was observed. This happens because the hypothalamic stem cells release molecules called microRNAs (miRNAs) which play an important role in regulation of gene expression. These miRNAs (which are bundled inside tiny particles called exosomes) released by the stem cells were then further injected into the cerebrospinal fluid of mice.

After this experiment, the ageing process significantly slowed down, in terms of tissue analysis and behavioral analysis where different changes in animals’ muscle endurance, coordination, social behavior and cognitive ability also showed signs of anti-ageing. Scientists are now looking into exploring the study further and analyze other factors related to microRNAs that might be responsible for the anti-ageing miracle!

Source: https://www.nature.com/
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https://in.mashable.com/

DNA Folds Into A Smart Nanocapsule For Drug Delivery

April 30, 2019 Uncategorized

AI Closer To The Efficiency Of The Brain

April 29, 2019 Uncategorized

Computers and artificial intelligence continue to usher in major changes in the way people shop. It is relatively easy to train a robot’s brain to create a shopping list, but what about ensuring that the robotic shopper can easily tell the difference between the thousands of products in the store?

Purdue University researchers and experts in brain-inspired computing think part of the answer may be found in magnets. The researchers have developed a process to use magnetics with brain-like networks to program and teach devices such as personal robots, self-driving cars and drones to better generalize about different objects.

“Our stochastic neural networks try to mimic certain activities of the human brain and compute through a connection of neurons and synapses,” said Kaushik Roy, Purdue’s Edward G. Tiedemann Jr. Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “This allows the computer brain to not only store information but also to generalize well about objects and then make inferences to perform better at distinguishing between objects.”

The stochastic switching behavior is representative of a sigmoid switching behavior of a neuron. Such magnetic tunnel junctions can be also used to store synaptic weights. Roy presented the technology during the annual German Physical Sciences Conference earlier this month in Germany. The work also appeared in the Frontiers in Neuroscience.

The switching dynamics of a nano-magnet are similar to the electrical dynamics of neurons. Magnetic tunnel junction devices show switching behavior, which is stochastic in nature. The Purdue group proposed a new stochastic training algorithm for synapses using spike timing dependent plasticity (STDP), termed Stochastic-STDP, which has been experimentally observed in the rat’s hippocampus. The inherent stochastic behavior of the magnet was used to switch the magnetization states stochastically based on the proposed algorithm for learning different object representations. “The big advantage with the magnet technology we have developed is that it is very energy-efficient,” said Roy, who leads Purdue’s Center for Brain-inspired Computing Enabling Autonomous Intelligence. “We have created a simpler network that represents the neurons and synapses while compressing the amount of memory and energy needed to perform functions similar to brain computations.”

Source: https://www.purdue.edu/

Nanomachines To Deliver Cancer Drugs to Hard-to-reach Areas

April 26, 2019 Uncategorized

In a recent study in mice, researchers found a way to deliver specific drugs to parts of the body that are exceptionally difficult to access. Their Y-shaped block catiomer (YBC) binds with certain therapeutic materials forming a package 18 nanometers wide. The package is less than one-fifth the size of those produced in previous studies, so can pass through much smaller gaps. This allows YBCs to slip through tight barriers in cancers of the brain or pancreas.

The fight against cancer is fought on many fronts. One promising field is gene therapy, which targets genetic causes of diseases to reduce their effect. The idea is to inject a nucleic acid-based drug into the bloodstream — typically small interfering RNA (siRNA) — which binds to a specific problem-causing gene and deactivates it. However, siRNA is very fragile and needs to be protected within a nanoparticle or it breaks down before reaching its target.

“siRNA can switch off specific gene expressions that may cause harm. They are the next generation of biopharmaceuticals that could treat various intractable diseases, including cancer,” explained Associate Professor Kanjiro Miyata of the University of Tokyo, who jointly supervised the study. “However, siRNA is easily eliminated from the body by enzymatic degradation or excretion. Clearly a new delivery method was called for.”

Presently, nanoparticles are about 100 nanometers wide, one-thousandth the thickness of paper. This is small enough to grant them access to the liver through the leaky blood vessel wall. However some cancers are harder to reach. Pancreatic cancer is surrounded by fibrous tissues and cancers in the brain by tightly connected vascular cells. In both cases the gaps available are much smaller than 100 nanometers. Miyata and colleagues created an siRNA carrier small enough to slip through these gaps in the tissues.

“We used polymers to fabricate a small and stable nanomachine for the delivery of siRNA drugs to cancer tissues with a tight access barrier,” said Miyata. “The shape and length of component polymers is precisely adjusted to bind to specific siRNAs, so it is configurable.”

Source: https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/

How To Create Speech From Brain Signals

April 25, 2019 Uncategorized

“In my head, I churn over every sentence ten times, delete a word, add an adjective, and learn my text by heart, paragraph by paragraph,” wrote Jean-Dominique Bauby in his memoir, “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.” In the book, Mr. Bauby, a journalist and editor, recalled his life before and after a paralyzing stroke that left him virtually unable to move a muscle; he tapped out the book letter by letter, by blinking an eyelid.

Thousands of people are reduced to similarly painstaking means of communication as a result of injuries suffered in accidents or combat, of strokes, or of neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., that disable the ability to speak.

Now, scientists are reporting that they have developed a virtual prosthetic voice, a system that decodes the brain’s vocal intentions and translates them into mostly understandable speech, with no need to move a muscle, even those in the mouth. (The physicist and author Stephen Hawking used a muscle in his cheek to type keyboardcharacters, which a computer synthesized into speech.)

“It’s formidable work, and it moves us up another level toward restoring speech” by decoding brain signals, said Dr. Anthony Ritaccio, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who was not a member of the research group.

The new system, described on Wednesday in the journal Nature,deciphers the brain’s motor commands guiding vocal movement during speech — the tap of the tongue, the narrowing of the lips — and generates intelligible sentences that approximate a speaker’s natural cadence. Experts said the new work represented a “proof of principle,” a preview of what may be possible after further experimentation and refinement. The system was tested on people who speak normally; it has not been tested in people whose neurological conditions or injuries, such as common strokes, could make the decoding difficult or impossible. For the new trial, scientists at the University of California, San Francisco, and U.C. Berkeley recruited five people who were in the hospital being evaluated for epilepsy surgery.

Many people with epilepsy do poorly on medication and opt to undergo brain surgery. Before operating, doctors must first locate the “hot spot” in each person’s brain where the seizures originate; this is done with electrodes that are placed in the brain, or on its surface, and listen for telltale electrical storms. Pinpointing this location can take weeks. In the interim, patients go through their days with electrodes implanted in or near brain regions that are involved in movement and auditory signaling. These patients often consent to additional experiments that piggyback on those implants.

Five such patients at U.C.S.F. agreed to test the virtual voice generator. Each had been implanted with one or two electrode arrays: stamp-size pads, containing hundreds of tiny electrodes, that were placed on the surface of the brain. As each participant recited hundreds of sentences, the electrodes recorded the firing patterns of neurons in the motor cortex. The researchers associated those patterns with the subtle movements of the patient’s lips, tongue, larynx and jaw that occur during natural speech. The team then translated those movements into spoken sentences.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/

Robots Sort Recycling, Detect If An Object Is Paper, Metal Or Plastic.

April 24, 2019 Uncategorized

Every year trash companies sift through an estimated 68 million tons of recycling, which is the weight equivalent of more than 30 million cars. A key step in the process happens on fast-moving conveyor belts, where workers have to sort items into categories like paper, plastic and glass. Such jobs are dull, dirty, and often unsafe, especially in facilities where workers also have to remove normal trash from the mix. With that in mind, a team led by researchers at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) has developed a robotic system that can detect if an object is paper, metal, or plastic.

The team’s “RoCycle” system includes a soft Teflon hand that uses tactile sensors on its fingertips to detect an object’s size and stiffness. Compatible with any robotic arm, RoCycle was found to be 85 percent accurate at detecting materials when stationary, and 63 percent accurate on an actual simulated conveyer belt. (Its most common error was identifying paper-covered metal tins as paper, which the team says would be improved by adding more sensors along the contact surface.)

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“Our robot’s sensorized skin provides haptic feedback that allows it to differentiate between a wide range of objects, from the rigid to the squishy,” says MIT Professor Daniela Rus, senior author on a related paper that will be presented in April at the IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics (RoboSoft) in Seoul, South Korea. “Computer vision alone will not be able to solve the problem of giving machines human-like perception, so being able to use tactile input is of vital importance.”

A collaboration with Yale University, RoCycle directly demonstrates the limits of sight-based sorting: It can reliably distinguish between two visually similar Starbucks cups, one made of paper and one made of plastic, that would give vision systems trouble.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/

Long-lasting Lithium Batteries

April 23, 2019 Uncategorized

The grand challenge to improve energy storage and increase battery life, while ensuring safe operation, is becoming evermore critical as we become increasingly reliant on this energy source for everything from portable devices to electric vehicles. A Columbia Engineering team led by Yuan Yang, assistant professor of materials science and engineering, announced today that they have developed a new method for safely prolonging battery life by inserting a nano-coating of boron nitride (BN) to stabilize solid electrolytes in lithium metal batteries.

While conventional lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries are currently widely used in daily life, they have low energy density, resulting in shorter battery life, and, because of the highly flammable liquid electrolyte inside them, they can short out and even catch fire. Energy density could be improved by using lithium metal to replace the graphite anode used in Li-ion batteries: lithium metal’s theoretical capacity for the amount of charge it can deliver is almost 10 times higher than that of graphite. But during lithium plating, dendrites often form and, if they penetrate the membrane separator in the middle of the battery, they can create short-circuits, raising concerns about battery safety.

“We decided to focus on solid, ceramic electrolytes. They show great promise in improving both safety and energy density, as compared with conventional, flammable electrolytes in Li-ion batteries,” says Yang. “We are particularly interested in rechargeable solid-state lithium batteries because they are promising candidates for next-generation energy storage.” “Lithium metal is indispensable for enhancing energy density and so it’s critical that we be able to use it as the anode for solid electrolytes,” says Qian Cheng, the paper’s lead author and a postdoctoral research scientist in the department of applied physics and applied mathematics who works in Yang’s group. “To adapt these unstable solid electrolytes for real-life applications, we needed to develop a chemically and mechanically stable interface to protect these solid electrolytes against the lithium anode. It is essential that the interface not only be highly electronically insulating, but also ionically conducting in order to transport lithium ions. Plus, this interface has to be super-thin to avoid lowering the energy density of batteries.”

Th findings are outlined in a new study published by Joule.

Source: https://engineering.columbia.edu/

Quantum Computer Can See 16 Different Futures Simultaneously

April 22, 2019 Uncategorized

When Mile Gu boots up his new computer, he can see the future. At least, 16 possible versions of it — all at the same time. Gu, an assistant professor of physics at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, works in quantum computing. This branch of science uses the weird laws that govern the universe’s smallest particles to help computers calculate more efficiently.

Tiny particles of light can travel in a superposition of many different states at the same time. Researchers used this quantum quirk to design a prototype computer that can predict 16 different futures at once.

Unlike classical computers, which store information as bits (binary digits of either 0 or 1), quantum computers code information into quantum bits, or qubits. These subatomic particles, thanks to the weird laws of quantum mechanics, can exist in a superposition of two different states at the same time.

Just as Schrödinger‘s hypothetical cat was simultaneously dead and alive until someone opened the box, a qubit in a superposition can equal both 0 and 1 until it’s measured. Storing multiple different outcomes into a single qubit could save a ton of memory compared to traditional computers, especially when it comes to making complicated predictions.

In a study published April 9 in the journal Nature Communications, Gu and his colleagues demonstrated this idea using a new quantum simulator that can predict the outcomes of 16 different futures (the equivalent of, say, flipping a coin four times in a row) in a quantum superposition. These possible futures were encoded in a single photon (a quantum particle of light) which moved down multiple paths simultaneously while passing through several sensors. Then, the researchers went one step further, firing two photons side-by-side and tracking how each photon’s potential futures diverged under slightly different conditions.

“It’s sort of like Doctor Strange in the ‘Avengers: Infinity War‘” movie, Gu told Live Science. Before a climactic battle in that film, the clairvoyant doctor looks forward in time to see 14 million different futures, hoping to find the one where the heroes defeat the big baddie. “He does a combined computation of all these possibilities to say, ‘OK, if I changed my decision in this small way, how much will the future change?’ This is the direction our simulation is moving forwards to.”

Source: https://www.livescience.com/

Memory In Older Adults Restored To Young Adult Level

April 19, 2019 Uncategorized

Stimulating a precise location of the brain’s memory center with electromagnetic pulses improved the memory of older adults with age-related memory loss to the level of young adults, reports a new Northwestern Medicine study. The study, published in the journal Neurology, used Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) to target the hippocampus — the brain region that atrophies as people grow older, which is responsible for memory decline.

“Older people’s memory got better up to the level that we could no longer tell them apart from younger people,” said lead investigator Joel Voss, PhD, associate professor in the Ken and Ruth Davee Department of Neurology. “They got substantially better.” “It’s the part of the brain that links two unrelated things together into a memory, like the place you left your keys or your new neighbor’s name,” said Voss, also an associate professor of Medical Social Sciences and of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. “Older adults often complain about having trouble with this.” This type of memory worsens as we age. Nearly all people experience a decline in their memory ability as they age.

The new study of 16 people — ages 64 to 80 with normal age-related memory problems — shows it’s possible to alter memory ability in older adults using this type of brain stimulation, Voss said. “There is no previous evidence that the specific memory impairments and brain dysfunction seen in older adults can be rescued using brain stimulation or any other method.”

Voss’ team located the hippocampus — which is smaller in older adults — individually for each participant with an fMRI. An fMRI (functional MRI) measures how active a part of the brain is at a given time Then, they located an area of the parietal lobe that communicates with the hippocampus for stimulation delivery. This spot was behind and slightly above a person’s left ear, but everyone had a slightly different spot. It isn’t possible to directly stimulate the hippocampus with TMS, which is noninvasive, because it’s too deep in the brain for the magnetic fields to penetrate. So, Voss and colleagues identified a superficial brain region close to the surface of the skull with high connectivity to the hippocampus.

“We stimulated where brain activity is synchronized to the hippocampus, suggesting that these regions talk to each other,” said first author Aneesha Nilakantan, a neuroscience graduate student working in Voss’ lab. At baseline, younger and older adults were given memory tasks in which they learned arbitrary relations between paired things, such as this object goes on this spot on the computer screen. Younger adults score about 55 percent correct and older adults less than 40 percent correct. The research team then applied high-frequency repetitive magnetic stimulation to the spot for five consecutive days for 20 minutes a d

Then, 24 hours after the final stimulation, the subjects were given a new memory test in which they had to learn new arbitrary relations between paired things. After the brain stimulation, older adults scored at the level of young adults on the memory tasks.

Source: https://news.feinberg.northwestern.edu/

Internet Of Thoughts

April 18, 2019 Uncategorized

Imagine a future technology that would provide instant access to the world’s knowledge and artificial intelligence, simply by thinking about a specific topic or question. Communications, education, work, and the world as we know it would be transformed. Writing in Frontiers in Neuroscience, an international collaboration led by researchers at UC Berkeley and the US Institute for Molecular Manufacturing predicts that exponential progress in nanotechnology, nanomedicine, AI, and computation will lead this century to the development of a “Human Brain/Cloud Interface” (B/CI), that connects neurons and synapses in the brain to vast cloud-computing networks in real time.

The B/CI concept was initially proposed by futurist-author-inventor Ray Kurzweil, who suggested that neural nanorobots – brainchild of Robert Freitas, Jr., senior author of the research – could be used to connect the neocortex of the human brain to a “synthetic neocortex” in . Our wrinkled neocortex is the newest, smartest, ‘conscious’ part of the brain. Freitas’ proposed neural nanorobots would provide direct, real-time monitoring and control of signals to and from brain cells.

“These devices would navigate the human vasculature, cross the blood-brain barrier, and precisely autoposition themselves among, or even within brain cells,” explains Freitas. “They would then wirelessly transmit encoded information to and from a cloud-based supercomputer network for real-time brain-state monitoring and data extraction.”

This cortex in the cloud would allow “Matrix“-style downloading of information to the brain, the group claims. “A human B/CI system mediated by neuralnanorobotics could empower individuals with instantaneous access to all cumulative human knowledge available in the cloud, while significantly improving human learning capacities and intelligence,” says lead author Dr. Nuno Martins.

B/CI technology might also allow us to create a future “global superbrain” that would connect networks of individual human brains and AIs to enable collective thought. “While not yet particularly sophisticated, an experimental human ‘BrainNet’ system has already been tested, enabling thought-driven information exchange via the cloud between individual brains,” explains Martins. “It used electrical signals recorded through the skull of ‘senders’ and magnetic stimulation through the skull of ‘receivers,’ allowing for performing cooperative tasks. “With the advance of neuralnanorobotics, we envisage the future creation of ‘superbrains’ that can harness the thoughts and thinking power of any number of humans and machines in real time. This shared cognition could revolutionize democracy, enhance empathy, and ultimately unite culturally diverse groups into a truly global society.”

According to the group’s estimates, even existing supercomputers have processing speeds capable of handling the necessary volumes of neural data for B/CI – and they’re getting faster, fast. Rather, transferring neural data to and from supercomputers in the cloud is likely to be the ultimate bottleneck in B/CI development. “This challenge includes not only finding the bandwidth for global data transmission,” cautions Martins, “but also, how to enable data exchange with neurons via tiny devices embedded deep in the brain.”

One solution proposed by the authors is the use of ‘magnetoelectric nanoparticles‘ to effectively amplify communication between neurons and the cloud. “These nanoparticles have been used already in living mice to couple external magnetic fields to neuronal electric fields – that is, to detect and locally amplify these magnetic signals and so allow them to alter the electrical activity of neurons,” explains Martins. “This could work in reverse, too: electrical signals produced by neurons and nanorobots could be amplified via magnetoelectric nanoparticles, to allow their detection outside of the skull.” Getting these nanoparticles – and nanorobots – safely into the brain via the circulation, would be perhaps the greatest challenge of all in B/CI.

“A detailed analysis of the biodistribution and biocompatibility of nanoparticles is required before they can be considered for human development. Nevertheless, with these and other promising technologies for B/CI developing at an ever-increasing rate, an ‘internet of thoughts’ could become a reality before the turn of the century,” Martins concludes.

Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/

First 3D Printed Heart

April 17, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers at Tel Aviv University have managed to 3D print a heart using a patient’s cells and biological materials — a first. Scientists have previously built synthetic hearts and bio-engineered tissues using a patient’s cells. But the latest feat is the first time scientists have created a complex organ with biological materials.

“This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers,” lead researcher Tal Dvir, a material scientist and professor of molecular cell biology at TAU, said in a news release.

The proof-of-concept feat could pave the way for a new type of organ transplant. For patients with late stage heart failure, a heart transplant is the only solution. But there is a lack of heart donors.

“This heart is made from human cells and patient-specific biological materials. In our process these materials serve as the bioinks, substances made of sugars and proteins that can be used for 3D printing of complex tissue models,” Dvir said. “Our results demonstrate the potential of our approach for engineering personalized tissue and organ replacement in the future.”

The heart scientists printed couldn’t be used in a human transplant operation. Though completely vascularized, it’s too small at about the size of a rabbit heart. “But larger human hearts require the same technology.” Dvir said.

Researchers detailed their breakthrough this week in the journal Advanced Science.

Source: https://www.upi.com/

How To Create Electricity From Snowfall

April 16, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers from University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and colleagues have designed a new device that creates electricity from falling snow. The first of its kind, this device is inexpensive, small, thin and flexible like a sheet of plastic.

“The device can work in remote areas because it provides its own power and does not need batteries,” said senior author Richard Kaner, who holds UCLA’s Dr. Myung Ki Hong Endowed Chair in Materials Innovation. “It’s a very clever device — a weather station that can tell you how much snow is falling, the direction the snow is falling, and the direction and speed of the wind.”

The researchers call it a snow-based triboelectric nanogenerator, or snow TENG. A triboelectric nanogenerator, which generates charge through static electricity, produces energy from the exchange of electrons.

“Static electricity occurs from the interaction of one material that captures electrons and another that gives up electrons,” said Kaner, who is also a distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and of materials science and engineering, and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA. “You separate the charges and create electricity out of essentially nothing.”

Snow is positively charged and gives up electrons. Silicone — a synthetic rubber-like material that is composed of silicon atoms and oxygen atoms, combined with carbon, hydrogen and other elements — is negatively charged. When falling snow contacts the surface of silicone, that produces a charge that the device captures, creating electricity.

“Snow is already charged, so we thought, why not bring another material with the opposite charge and extract the charge to create electricity?” said co-author Maher El-Kady, a UCLA assistant researcher of chemistry and biochemistry.

“While snow likes to give up electrons, the performance of the device depends on the efficiency of the other material at extracting these electrons,” he added. “After testing a large number of materials including aluminum foils and Teflon, we found that silicone produces more charge than any other material.”

Findings about the device are published in the journal Nano Energy.

Source: https://newsroom.ucla.edu/

Paris orders 800 new electric buses to fight smog

April 15, 2019 Uncategorized

Paris’ public transport operator has ordered up to 800 electric buses to take to the streets of the French capital to replace diesel versions and fight smog in the build up to the 2024 Olympics.

Three French engineering firms — Heuliez Bus, Bollore and Alstom — won the tender to supply the buses in deals worth up to 400 million euros ($450 million), the transport operator RATP said. RATP will buy an equal number of buses from each supplier, it added, describing the tender as the biggest such bus purchase in Europe. It will begin by buying 150 buses, with the first deliveries expected between the end of 2020 and 2022, it added.

Local authorities in Paris want the French capital to have 100-percent clean buses by 2025 by using both electricity and biofuels.

“This is a major step for the RATP and a symbol of its ambition to be a key player in the energy transition in the public transport sector,” said RATP chief executive Catherine Guillouard.

“To put them into service, the company is mobilised to meet an industrial challenge within a very short tight deadline,” she added.

Paris already has one line — number 341 — fully operational with electric buses, but it will be a major task to transform its full fleet of just under 4,700 buses. RATP currently has some 950 hybrid-powered buses, 140 bio-fuel buses and 83 electric buses in its fleet.

The use of electric buses is growing all over the world, with China the leader in employing the technology as it seeks to relieve pollution in clogged cities. But they are becoming an increasingly familiar sight in European cities, in particular in Dutch cities Amsterdam and Rotterdam. Paris’ Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo has made tackling smog a priority and is planning stricter rules aimed at phasing out diesel cars by 2024, and is also weighing the idea of making public transport free.

Source: https://www.france24.com/

5G Connected Cows

April 12, 2019 Uncategorized

They may look like regular cows, but a herd of Friesian dairy cattle at a British farm are internet pioneers and they are enjoying the benefits of 5G connectivity before you. 5G promises super-fast connections, which evangelists say will transform the way we live our lives, enabling everything from self-driving cars to augmented-reality glasses and downloading a feature-length film to your phone in seconds.

While it is being used in pockets of pilot studies around the world, the first near-nationwide coverage is not expected in countries such as China, Japan or the United States until 2023, according to industry analysts. For the cows, among the 5G-connected gadgets they are wearing is a collar that controls a robotic milking system. When the cow feels ready to be milked it will approach machine gates that will automatically open. The device recognizes the individual to precisely latch on to its teats for milking, while the cow munches on a food reward.

At the government-funded Agricultural Engineering Precision Innovation Centre (Agri-EPI Centre) in Shepton Mallet, in southwest England, around 50 of the 180-strong herd is fitted with the 5G smart collars and health-monitoring ear tags. The gadgets do not harm the cows and the monitoring allows handlers to see any signs of distress.

“We are testing the ability of 5G to transmit the data from our sensors much quicker, and not via the farm’s PC and a slow broadband internet connection,” said Duncan Forbes, Project Manager at the Agri-Epi Centre. “And the significance of that is it means that this sort of technology could be taken up … not just on farms but on rural communities right across the country.”

The working dairy, set up by Agri-EPI with the support of Britain’s innovation agency, uses a range of technology; including automated brushes that rotate when the cow rubs up against them, sensor-operated curtains that open depending on the weather, and a smart feeding system that automatically delivers food in the barn via ceiling-mounted rails.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Verizon Turns On its 5G Networks In Chicago And Minneapolis

April 11, 2019 Uncategorized

The world may not have seemed to have changed much between today and yesterday, but rest assured that something earth-shattering has occurred in the world of mobile tech. Verizon has officially flipped the switch and turned on 5G network access in Chicago and Minneapolis a full week ahead of schedule.

Verizon’s 5G network was due to come to life on April 11, alongside the launch of Motorola’s 5G Moto Mod for the Moto Z3. However, for an unknown reason, Verizon has decided to start the 5G revolution a week early, turning on 5G access in selected parts of Chicago and Minneapolis. Verizon has also pushed the release of the 5G Moto Mod forward to match, so users with a Moto Z3 with the mod will be able to access it immediately.

It’s an impressive technical feat. When customers are actually able to access the network, they’ll be rewarded with incredibly fast download speeds from their new mobile connection. According to Verizon, 450 Mbps can be expected as a typical download speed, while peak speeds could rise to as high as 1 Gbps, with latency as low as 30 milliseconds. That’s astoundingly fast, and rivals most, if not all, home internet connections.

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to roam far from the hot spots to use it, as the range is currently extremely limited. In Chicago, you can expect to find 5G signal in the West Loop and South Loop, around landmarks like Union Station, Willis Tower, The Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, and the Chicago Theatre. Unsurprisingly, you’ll also find signal in Verizon stores in The Magnificent Mile and throughout The Gold Coast, Old Town, and River North.

Minneapolis is similarly limited. You’ll find 5G signal in the Downtown area, including Downtown West and Downtown East, as well as inside and around U.S. Bank Stadium. It will also be available around landmarks like the Minneapolis Convention Center, the Minneapolis Central Library, the Mill City Museum, Target Center and First Avenue venues, The Commons, areas of Elliot Park, and in the Verizon store in the Mall of America.

Source: https://www.digitaltrends.com/

Premature Aging, Obesity, Brain Disorders: 3 FrontRunners In The CRISP-R Therapy Race

April 10, 2019 Uncategorized

CRISPR is the ultimate child star in the biomedical universe. Just six years old, the gene editing prodigy is now the subject of multiple clinical trials that aim to push the lab tech into the real world. In 2017, a 44-year-old man received the first-ever dose of gene therapy—in the form of zinc-finger nucleases—that targeted a deficient gene in his liver. This type of gene therapy, called “in vivo” in scientist-speak, is markedly different than the most common type these days.

So far, the only gene therapies on the market are CAR-Ts: a procedure targeting blood cancer that extracts a person’s immune cells, genetically edits them within the lab to boost their cancer-killing power, and then infuses them back into the body.

In vivo gene therapy is far more intimate: rather than extracting a person’s cells, a gene editing mix is directly injected into a person, with the hope of performing molecular surgery with a single shot. CRISPR is now making that possibility very real. With dozens of efforts in the making, from premature aging to obesity and developmental brain disorders, here are the frontrunners beyond CRISPR-based cancer therapy to watch out for.

Source: https://singularityhub.com/

3D Printed Metamaterials With Super Optical Properties

April 9, 2019 Uncategorized

A team of engineers at Tufts University has developed a series of 3D printed metamaterials with unique microwave or optical properties that go beyond what is possible using conventional optical or electronic materials. The fabrication methods developed by the researchers demonstrate the potential, both present and future, of 3D printing to expand the range of geometric designs and material composites that lead to devices with novel optical properties. In one case, the researchers drew inspiration from the compound eye of a moth to create a hemispherical device that can absorb electromagnetic signals from any direction at selected wavelengths.

The geometry of a moth’s eye provides inspiration for a 3D printed antenna that absorbs specific microwave frequencies from any direction

Metamaterials extend the capabilities of conventional materials in devices by making use of geometric features arranged in repeating patterns at scales smaller than the wavelengths of energy being detected or influenced. New developments in 3D printing technology are making it possible to create many more shapes and patterns of metamaterials, and at ever smaller scales. In the study, researchers at the Nano Lab at Tufts describe a hybrid fabrication approach using 3D printing, metal coating and etching to create metamaterials with complex geometries and novel functionalities for wavelengths in the microwave range. For example, they created an array of tiny mushroom shaped structures, each holding a small patterned metal resonator at the top of a stalk. This particular arrangement permits microwaves of specific frequencies to be absorbed, depending on the chosen geometry of the “mushrooms” and their spacing. Use of such metamaterials could be valuable in applications such as sensors in medical diagnosis and as antennas in telecommunications or detectors in imaging applications.

The research has been published in the journal Microsystems & Nanoengineering (Springer Nature).

Source: https://now.tufts.edu/

How The Army Uses Microsoft’s HoloLens On The Battlefield

April 8, 2019 Uncategorized

Microsoft is building the military’s IVAS headset, which is based on HoloLens 2. How is useful IVAS on the battlefield? Microsoft’s technology will be used to better train soldiers and make them more effective in the real world. Soon, The Army recently showed how it will use specially modified Microsoft HoloLens 2 headsets. They’re part of a $480 million defense contract won by the company. The military wouldn’t say how much its version costs, but the consumer one costs $3,500.

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The headset is impressive — better than any augmented reality experience, including Magic Leap, which also tried to win the Army contract. The project is also a showcase for the Army’s plans to work more closely with America’s tech companies to speed innovation in military. The military calls its special version of the HoloLens 2 “IVAS,” which stands for Integrated Visual Augmentation System. It’s an augmented-reality headset, which means it places digital objects, such as maps or video displays, on top of the real world in front of you. Several companies are betting big on AR as the future of computing, since it will allow us to do much of what we can on a computer but while looking through glasses instead of down at a phone or at a computer screen. Apple, Google and Magic Leap are all building AR-capable software and hardware.

Put the headset on and pulled it down so that your eyes are peering through a glass visor. That visor is capable of displaying 3D images, information, my location and more. IVAS isn’t nearly finished.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/

Artificial Intelligence Revolutionizes Farming

April 5, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers at MIT have used AI to improve the flavor of basil. It’s part of a trend that is seeing artificial intelligence revolutionize farming.
What makes basil so good? In some cases, it’s AI. Machine learning has been used to create basil plants that are extra-delicious. While we sadly cannot report firsthand on the herb’s taste, the effort reflects a broader trend that involves using data science and machine learning to improve agriculture.

The researchers behind the AI-optimized basil used machine learning to determine the growing conditions that would maximize the concentration of the volatile compounds responsible for basil’s flavor. The basil was grown in hydroponic units within modified shipping containers in Middleton, Massachusetts. Temperature, light, humidity, and other environmental factors inside the containers could be controlled automatically. The researchers tested the taste of the plants by looking for certain compounds using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry. And they fed the resulting data into machine-learning algorithms developed at MIT and a company called Cognizant.

The research showed, counterintuitively, that exposing plants to light 24 hours a day generated the best taste. The research group plans to study how the technology might improve the disease-fighting capabilities of plants as well as how different flora may respond to the effects of climate change.

“We’re really interested in building networked tools that can take a plant’s experience, its phenotype, the set of stresses it encounters, and its genetics, and digitize that to allow us to understand the plant-environment interaction,” said Caleb Harper, head of the MIT Media Lab’s OpenAg group, in a press release. His lab worked with colleagues from the University of Texas at Austin on the paper.

The idea of using machine learning to optimize plant yield and properties is rapidly taking off in agriculture. Last year, Wageningen University in the Netherlands organized an “Autonomous Greenhouse” contest, in which different teams competed to develop algorithms that increased the yield of cucumber plants while minimizing the resources required. They worked with greenhouses where a variety of factors are controlled by computer systems.

The study has appeared in the journal PLOS One.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/

Nanobiochip Detects Minute Levels Of Disease

April 4, 2019 Uncategorized

The difficulty in spotting minute amounts of disease circulating in the bloodstream has proven a stumbling block in the detection and treatment of cancers that advance stealthily with few symptoms. With a novel electrochemical biosensing device that identifies the tiniest signals these biomarkers emit, a pair of NJIT inventors are hoping to bridge this gap. Their work in disease detection is an illustration of the power of electrical sensing – and the growing role of engineers – in medical research.

“Ideally, there would be a simple, inexpensive test – performed at a regular patient visit in the absence of specific symptoms – to screen for some of the more silent, deadly cancers,” says Bharath Babu Nunna, a recent Ph.D. graduate who worked with Eon Soo Lee, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, to develop a nanotechnology-enhanced biochip to detect cancers, malaria and viral diseases such as pneumonia early in their progression with a pin prick blood test.

Their device includes a microfluidic channel through which a tiny amount of drawn blood flows past a sensing platform coated with biological agents that bind with targeted biomarkers of disease in body fluids such as blood, tears and urine – thereby triggering an electrical nanocircuit that signals their presence. In research recently published in Nano Covergence, Nunna and his co-authors demonstrated the use of gold nanoparticles to enhance the sensor signal response of their device in cancer detection, among other findings.

One of the device’s core innovations is the ability to separate blood plasma from whole blood in its microfluidic channels. Blood plasma carries the disease biomarkers and it is therefore necessary to separate it to enhance the “signal to noise ratio” in order to achieve a highly accurate test. The standalone device analyzes a blood sample within two minutes with no need for external equipment.

“Our approach detects targeted disease biomolecules at the femto scale concentration, which is smaller than nano and even pico scale, and is akin to searching for a planet in a galaxy cluster. Current sensing technology is limited to concentrations a thousand times larger. Using a nanoscale platform allows us to identify these lower levels of disease,” Nunna says, adding, “And by separating the plasma from the blood, we are able to concentrate the disease biomarkers.”

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/

Simple Blood Test Will Diagnose Alzheimer’s Next Year

April 3, 2019 Uncategorized

(from Bill Gates blog) How do you stop Alzheimer’s disease without a simple way to diagnose it? It’s a real chicken and egg problem, as I wrote last year on TGN. Discovering a treatment for Alzheimer’s requires lots of clinical trials for new drugs—but it’s difficult to enroll participants without a way to identify people who have the disease early enough for potential treatments to work.

Right now, the best way to diagnose the disease is through a spinal tap or a brain scan. The problem is that the former is invasive and the latter is expensive. Plus, many patients don’t get these tests until they start showing signs of cognitive decline, which means the disease may already be pretty advanced. It’s hard to overstate how important finding a reliable, affordable, and easy-to-use diagnostic is for stopping Alzheimer’s.

The good news is that we’re finally within reach of that goal thanks to significant breakthroughs over the last couple years. Scientists are pushing forward with new diagnostics that range from simple blood tests to voice analysis straight out of a sci-fi novel. We’re close to reaching the point where we can push past the chicken and egg problem.

That’s why I announced last summer that I was investing in a new fund with the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation called Diagnostics Accelerator, which aims to accelerate the progress already underway. I am grateful to be joined in this effort by my friends Jeff and MacKenzie Bezos. They have been tremendous partners who are deeply committed to finding an end to this disease. We’ll continue to work together on finding a new way to diagnose Alzheimer’s, as well as on other efforts, over the coming months. In the meantime, the fund is getting ready to announce the first round of awards.

It wasn’t that long ago that we had no way to test for Alzheimer’s beyond cognitive assessments. The first breakthrough came in the late 1990s and early 2000s, when brain imaging (like a PET scan or MRI) allowed us to see biological changes in the brain of someone with the disease.

Then came the spinal tap in 2006. A team of Swedish scientists—Oskar Hansson, Henrik Zetterberg, and Kaj Blennow—demonstrated that you could predict which patients would develop Alzheimer’s disease by looking at cerebrospinal fluid (the fluid found in the brain and spinal cord). Their discovery gave researchers a more accessible tool to make smarter decisions about who should be in a clinical trial. It wasn’t perfect, though—just ask anyone who’s ever had a spinal tap whether they’re eager to undergo the procedure again.

What does the ideal Alzheimer’s diagnostic look like? It needs to be cheap and easy to administer. It should tell us not only whether you have Alzheimer’s, but how far advanced the disease is. (Your cholesterol test doesn’t just tell you that you have cholesterol, after all—it lets you know how much you have and whether it could be a problem.) Above all, it should be as simple and painless as any of the other routine tests you get during your annual physical. In other words, a blood test would fit the bill.

Enter Randy Bateman, a professor and researcher at Washington University in St. Louis. His team was one of the first to identify changes in the blood of Alzheimer’s patients that remained consistent over many tests. Since he published his research in the summer of 2017, other researchers have released similar findings, and a lot of people are working to perfect the diagnostic (including the Swedish team that discovered the spinal tap test).

There’s a good chance a blood test will start being used to recruit patients into Alzheimer’s drug trials within the next year or two. That’s super exciting, because it means that labs will be able to recruit more patients more quickly, and scientists will be able to figure out whether a drug works in less time. It also means that you’ll one day be able to easily get tested during a routine doctor’s visit.

But what if we could find an even less invasive way to diagnose Alzheimer’s? What if we could use digital technology, not medicine, to identify individuals years before they start to develop mental decline?

Source: https://www.gatesnotes.com/

Cleaning Up Oil Using Magnets

April 2, 2019 Uncategorized

In future, it could be possible to remove oil spills on the surface of the ocean by using magnets. An interdisciplinary group of researchers at the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in Germany, led by Prof. Dr. Marcus Halik has developed functionalised iron oxide particles that can attract any types of hydrocarbons. The magnetic particles and their shells can then be removed from the water relatively simply and in an environmentally-friendly manner and can even be reused after being cleaned.

The researchers have now published their study in the journal Advanced Functional Materials. In the study, they describe how functionalised iron oxide particles can be modified with a self-assembled monolayer so that they only adsorb hydrocarbons. This group of chemical substances includes light compounds such as alkanes and aromates but also crude oil, petrol and diesel. Such hydrocarbon molecules surround the very fine particles as if they are being sucked in and reach a volume that can grow to 14 times the size of the core of the particle.

Diagram of the process developed by materials scientists at FAU

A video on the researchers’ website shows how iron oxide powder is applied to liquid oil and the instant transformation into a substance that can be removed by a magnet. Iron oxide is a magnetic substance by nature.

In addition to the multiple reusability of the source material, the large surface to volume ratio provided by nanoparticles and the favourable ratio to the quantity of the hydrocarbons to be adsorbed all contribute to the very high efficiency of the process. In addition, it allows water to be completely cleaned of oil and oil products. Conventional methods, on the other hand, create dispersions or mixtures of substances that enable the hydrocarbons to be more easily digested by bacteria, but remain in the seawater until this process is complete.

Source: https://eam.fau.de/

First Woman To Win Mathematics’ Prestigious Abel Prize

April 1, 2019 Uncategorized

This year, another glass ceiling broke when Karen Uhlenbeck became the first woman to win mathematics‘ prestigious Abel Prize. Her achievement no doubt inspired legions of young girls already passionate about STEM—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—and served as a salute to the woman mathematicians who came before.

One such woman is NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who once said of her love of math, “I counted everything. I counted the steps to the road, the steps up to church, the number of dishes and silverware I washed … anything that could be counted, I did.”

Here, for National Women’s History Month, we honor some coding pioneers whose careful calculations led to many of the world’s greatest technological advances, from programming the first computers to successfully putting humans on the moon.

Source: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/

How To Kill Deadly Hospital Bacteria

March 29, 2019 Uncategorized

Scientists at Aston University (UK) have discovered a technique similar to medieval stained glass-making that can completely eradicate the deadliest hospital infections within hours.

Using a so-called bioactive phosphate glass containing small amounts of the metallic element cobalt, the researchers were able to achieve a “complete kill” of the deadly bacterial infections E.coli and Candida albicans (a fungal infection associated with surgery), as well as a near-complete kill of Staphylococcus aureus (the drug-resistant form of which is MRSA).

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Lead researcher, Dr Richard Martin of Aston University in Birmingham, said the findings had significant implications, offering the possibility of cheap, antimicrobial implants and coatings to combat the most common sources of infections associated with medical care. Avoiding the need for antibiotics, it is also thought the bioactive glass could be effective against drug-resistant ‘superbugs’, helping to tackle the growing problem of antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

According to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), over four million people in Europe get a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) every year, and around 37,000 die as a direct result of the infection. In its most recent survey of hospital patients, Public Health England found that 6.4% had a healthcare-associated infection.

In the study, published in the journal ACS Biomaterials, the researchers used a centuries-old technique to make glass laced with trace amounts of cobalt in a furnace heated to over 1,000°C, before rapid cooling to prevent crystallisation. These were then ground down into a fine powder and put into contact with bacteria in petri dishes. The glasses contained varying concentrations of cobalt, providing a controlled release of antimicrobial ions as they dissolved. At the highest concentration, the glass completely eradicated E.coli within just six hours, with a “complete kill” also observed for C.albicans within 24 hours. S.aureus levels were reduced by 99% after 24 hours.

Source: https://www2.aston.ac.uk/

How To Detect Genetic Mutations In Minutes

March 28, 2019 Uncategorized

A team of engineers at the UC Berkeley and the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of The Claremont Colleges combined CRISPR with electronic transistors made from graphene to create a new hand-held device that can detect specific genetic mutations in a matter of minutes.

The device, dubbed CRISPR-Chip, could be used to rapidly diagnose genetic diseases or to evaluate the accuracy of gene-editing techniques. The team used the device to identify genetic mutations in DNA samples from Duchenne muscular dystrophy patients.

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“We have developed the first transistor that uses CRISPR to search your genome for potential mutations,” said Kiana Aran, an assistant professor at KGI who conceived of the technology while a postdoctoral scholar in UC Berkeley bioengineering professor Irina Conboy’s lab. “You just put your purified DNA sample on the chip, allow CRISPR to do the search and the graphene transistor reports the result of this search in minutes.”

Aran, who developed this technology and brought it to fruition at KGI, is the senior author of a paper describing the device that appears online March 25 in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

Doctors and geneticists can now sequence DNA to pinpoint genetic mutations underlying a host of traits and conditions, and companies like 23andMe and AncestryDNA even make these tests available to curious consumers.

Source: https://news.berkeley.edu/

How To Arrange Nanoparticules With a Vinaigrette

March 27, 2019 Uncategorized

Materials scientists at Duke University have theorized a new “oil-and-vinegar” approach to engineering self-assembling materials of unusual architectures made out of spherical nanoparticles. The resulting structures could prove useful to applications in optics, plasmonics, electronics and multi-stage chemical catalysis. Left to their own tendencies, a system of suspended spherical nanoparticles designed to clump together will try to maximize their points of contact by packing themselves as tightly as possible. This results in the formation of either random clusters or a three-dimensional, crystalline structure.

But materials scientists often want to build more open structures of lower dimensions, such as strings or sheets, to take advantage of certain phenomena that can occur in the spaces between different types of particles. In the new study, Gaurav Arya, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Duke, proposes a method that takes advantage of the layers formed by liquids that, like a bottle of vinaigrette left on the shelf for too long, refuse to mix together.

When spherical nanoparticles are placed into such a system, they tend to form a single layer at the interface of the opposing liquids. But they don’t have to stay there. By attaching “oil” or “vinegar” molecules to the particles’ surfaces, researchers can make them float more on one side of the dividing line than the other.

“The particles want to maximize their number of contacts and form bulk-like structures, but at the same time, the interface of the different liquids is trying to force them into two layers,” said Arya. “So you have a competition of forces, and you can use that to form different kinds of unique and interesting structures.”

Arya’s idea is to precisely control the amount that each spherical nanoparticle is repelled by one liquid or the other. And according to his calculations, by altering this property along with others such as the nanoparticles’ composition and size, materials scientists can make all sorts of interesting shapes, from spindly molecule-like structures to zig-zag structures where only two nanoparticles touch at a time. One could even imagine several different layers working together to arrange a system of nanoparticles.

In the proof-of-concept paper, the nanoparticles could be made out of anything. Gold or semiconductors could be useful for plasmonic and electrical devices, while other metallic elements could catalyze various chemical reactions. The opposing substrates that form the interface, meanwhile, are modeled after various types of polymers that could also be used in such applications.

The novel approach appeared online on March 25 in the journal ACS Nano.

Source: https://pratt.duke.edu/

How To Create Electricity From Heat

March 26, 2019 Uncategorized

A University of Maryland-led team of researchers has created a heat-to-electricity device that runs on ions and which could someday harness the body’s heat to provide energy.

Led by UMD researchers Liangbing Hu, Robert Briber and Tian Li of the department of materials science, and Siddhartha Das of mechanical engineering, the team transformed a piece of wood into a flexible membrane that generates energy from the same type of electric current (ions) that the human body runs on. This energy is generated using charged channel walls and other unique properties of the wood’s natural nanostructures. With this new wood-based technology, they can use a small temperature differential to efficiently generate ionic voltage, as demonstrated in a paper published in the journal Nature Materials.

If you’ve ever been outside during a lightning storm, you’ve seen that generating charge between two very different temperatures is easy. But for small temperature differences, it is more difficult. However, the team says they have succesfully tackled this challenge. Hu said they now have “demonstrated their proof-of-concept device, to harvest low-grade heat using nanoionic behavior of processed wood nanostructures”.

Trees grow channels that move water between the roots and the leaves. These are made up of fractally-smaller channels, and at the level of a single cell, channels just nanometers or less across. The team has harnessed these channels to regulate ions.

The researchers used basswood, which is a fast-growing tree with low environmental impact. They treated the wood and removed two components – lignin, that makes the wood brown and adds strength, and hemicellulose, which winds around the layers of cells binding them together. This gives the remaining cellulose its signature flexibility. This process also converts the structure of the cellulose from type I to type II which is a key to enhancing ion conductivity.

A membrane, made of a thin slice of wood, was bordered by platinum electrodes, with sodium-based electrolyte infiltrated into the cellulose. The regulate the ion flow inside the tiny channels and generate electrical signal. “The charged channel walls can establish an electrical field that appears on the nanofibers and thus help effectively regulate ion movement under a thermal gradient,” said Tian Li, first author of the paper.

Source: https://www.umdrightnow.umd.edu/

How To Produce Entire Homes With A 3D Printer

March 25, 2019 Uncategorized

If you’re looking for a 3D printer that can fit comfortably on the side of your desk and bust out small home-printed objects, then Danish company Cobod International’s new 3D printer definitely isn’t for you. Roughly the size of a small barn, the BOD2 is the world’s largest 3D printer designed for construction purposes. It is capable of printing entire buildings up to 40 feet wide, 90 feet long and 30 feet tall. In other words, if you’re only looking to print out a DIY fidget spinner, you’re going to want to search elsewhere.

“Our second-generation 3D construction printer, BOD2, is special in the way that it has a modular frame which gives the opportunity for our customers to choose the size of printer that fits their specific purpose,” said Asger Dath, communications manager for Cobod, “Furthermore, it is currently the fastest-printing construction printer on the market. With the tangential controlled print head, together with our customizable nozzle system, our customers are able to print different wall surfaces, especially very smooth wall surfaces.”

The printer functions in a very similar way to a standard FDM (fused filament fabrication) printer. It is fed with concrete, which is then extruded using a motor in the print head. This concrete material is fed into the printer as a dry mix, prior to being mixed by a pump and then traveling through a tube to the print head to be expelled.

“We decided to develop the BOD2 after we found a great interest from the construction industry after we 3D printed the first building in Europe,” Dath said. “The many requests we got had all different purposes and therefore the sizes differed a great deal. [This] led to the idea of developing a modular construction printer that could meet the needs of all the requested sizes, instead of developing a printer in one or two sizes.”

The BOD2 printer was recently purchased by the construction company Elite for Construction & Development Co., with the express purpose of creating 3D printed private homes in Saudi Arabia. This is going to be a big job. In all, Saudi Arabia aims to build 1.5 million private houses over the next decade. While not all of those will necessarily be 3D printed, a tool such as this could certainly help save on both time and money.

Source: https://cobod.com/
AND
https://www.digitaltrends.com/

How To Levitate Objects With Light

March 22, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers at Caltech have designed a way to levitate and propel objects using only light, by creating specific nanoscale patterning on the objects’ surfaces. Though still theoretical, the work is a step toward developing a spacecraft that could reach the nearest planet outside of our solar system in 20 years, powered and accelerated only by light. The research was done in the laboratory of Harry Atwater, Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science in Caltech’s Division of Engineering and Applied Science.

Decades ago, the development of so-called optical tweezers enabled scientists to move and manipulate tiny objects, like nanoparticles, using the radiative pressure from a sharply focused beam of laser light. This work formed the basis for the 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics. However, optical tweezers are only able to manipulate very small objects and only at very short distances. Ognjen Ilic, postdoctoral scholar and the study’s first author, gives an analogy: “One can levitate a ping pong ball using a steady stream of air from a hair dryer. But it wouldn’t work if the ping pong ball were too big, or if it were too far away from the hair dryer, and so on.”

With this new research, objects of many different shapes and sizes—from micrometers to meters—could be manipulated with a light beam. The key is to create specific nanoscale patterns on an object’s surface. This patterning interacts with light in such a way that the object can right itself when perturbed, creating a restoring torque to keep it in the light beam. Thus, rather than requiring highly focused laser beams, the objects’ patterning is designed to “encode” their own stability. The light source can also be millions of miles away.

“We have come up with a method that could levitate macroscopic objects,” says Atwater, who is also the director of the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. “There is an audaciously interesting application to use this technique as a means for propulsion of a new generation of spacecraft. We’re a long way from actually doing that, but we are in the process of testing out the principles.”

In theory, this spacecraft could be patterned with nanoscale structures and accelerated by an Earth-based laser light. Without needing to carry fuel, the spacecraft could reach very high, even relativistic speeds and possibly travel to other stars.

Atwater also envisions that the technology could be used here on Earth to enable rapid manufacturing of ever-smaller objects, like circuit boards.

A paper describing the research appears online in the journal Nature Photonics.

Source: https://www.caltech.edu/

Molecular Nanocomputers

March 21, 2019 Uncategorized

Computer scientists at Caltech have designed DNA molecules that can carry out reprogrammable computations, for the first time creating so-called algorithmic self-assembly in which the same “hardware” can be configured to run different “software.”

A team headed by Caltech‘s Erik Winfree (PhD ’98), professor of computer science, computation and neural systems, and bioengineering, showed how the DNA computations could execute six-bit algorithms that perform simple tasks. The system is analogous to a computer, but instead of using transistors and diodes, it uses molecules to represent a six-bit binary number (for example, 011001) as input, during computation, and as output. One such algorithm determines whether the number of 1-bits in the input is odd or even, (the example above would be odd, since it has three 1-bits); while another determines whether the input is a palindrome; and yet another generates random numbers.

“Think of them as nano apps,” says Damien Woods, professor of computer science at Maynooth University near Dublin, Ireland, and one of two lead authors of the study. “The ability to run any type of software program without having to change the hardware is what allowed computers to become so useful. We are implementing that idea in molecules, essentially embedding an algorithm within chemistry to control chemical processes.”

The system works by self-assembly: small, specially designed DNA strands stick together to build a logic circuit while simultaneously executing the circuit algorithm. Starting with the original six bits that represent the input, the system adds row after row of molecules—progressively running the algorithm. Modern digital electronic computers use electricity flowing through circuits to manipulate information; here, the rows of DNA strands sticking together perform the computation. The end result is a test tube filled with billions of completed algorithms, each one resembling a knitted scarf of DNA, representing a readout of the computation. The pattern on each “scarf” gives you the solution to the algorithm that you were running. The system can be reprogrammed to run a different algorithm by simply selecting a different subset of strands from the roughly 700 that constitute the system.

“We were surprised by the versatility of programs we were able to design, despite being limited to six-bit inputs,” says David Doty, fellow lead author and assistant professor of computer science at the University of California, Davis. “When we began experiments, we had only designed three programs. But once we started using the system, we realized just how much potential it has. It was the same excitement we felt the first time we programmed a computer, and we became intensely curious about what else these strands could do. By the end, we had designed and run a total of 21 circuits.”

The findings have been reported in the journal Nature.

Source: https://www.caltech.edu/

Cost-Effective Method for Hydrogen Fuel Production

March 20, 2019 Uncategorized

Nanoparticles composed of nickel and iron have been found to be more effective and efficient than other, more costly materials when used as catalysts in the production of hydrogen fuel through water electrolysis. The discovery was made by University of Arkansas researchers Jingyi Chen, associate professor of physical chemistry, and Lauren Greenlee, assistant professor of chemical engineering, as well as colleagues from Brookhaven National Lab and Argonne National Lab. The researchers demonstrated that using nanocatalysts composed of nickel and iron increases the efficiency of water electrolysis, the process of breaking water atoms apart to produce hydrogen and oxygen and combining them with electrons to create hydrogen gas.

Chen and her colleagues discovered that when nanoparticles composed of an iron and nickel shell around a nickel core are applied to the process, they interact with the hydrogen and oxygen atoms to weaken the bonds, increasing the efficiency of the reaction by allowing the generation of oxygen more easily. Nickel and iron are also less expensive than other catalysts, which are made from scarce materials.

This marks a step toward making water electrolysis a more practical and affordable method for producing hydrogen fuel. Current methods of water electrolysis are too energy-intensive to be effective.

Chen, Greenlee and their colleagues recently published their results in the journal Nanoscale.

Source: https://news.uark.edu/

Rotating Black Holes Might Serve As Portals For Hyperspace Travel

March 19, 2019 Uncategorized

Black holes skirt the line between science fiction and science fact. On the one hand, scientists have seen real black holes in action, consuming unsuspecting stars that pass too close. But where reality ends and fiction takes over is at the edge of a black hole — a place called the event horizon, where no spacecraft has ever gone.

So, whatever happens beyond that boundary, inside of a black hole, is anyone’s guess. Scientists agree that if you travel far enough into a black hole, gravity will eventually become so strong that it kills anything in its path. But sci-fi films are more optimistic, depicting black holes as portals through space and time or gateways to other dimensions. And it turns out, some scientists now think the sci-fi buffs may be onto something. Black holes might be suitable for hyperspace travel, after all; it just takes the right kind of black hole. At the center of every black hole is a point of infinite density, called a singularity. It’s what gives black holes their strong gravitational pull. And for decades, scientists thought singularities were all the same, so anything that passed the event horizon would be destroyed the same way: by being stretched and pulled like an infinitely long piece of spaghetti.

But that all changed in the early 1990s when different research teams in Canada and the US discovered a second singularity called a “mass inflation singularity.” It still has a strong gravitational pull, but it would only stretch you by a finite amount, and potentially NOT kill you in the process, meaning, you might survive the trip through a black hole. More specifically, through a large, rotating black hole, which is where these types of singularities exist.

Now, astronomers obviously can’t travel through a black hole yet to test this theory. In fact, the best place to test this is at the supermassive black hole in the center of our home galaxy, the Milky Way, which is 27,000 light years away. Not conveniently close to the least.

Therefore, scientists instead run computer simulations to see what would happen if we did manage to reach an isolated, rotating black hole, and now, for the first time, a team of scientists at UMass Dartmouth and Georgia Gwinnett College has done exactly that.

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“You would feel a slight increase in temperature, but it would not be a dramatic increase. It’s just that you don’t have enough time to respond to the very strong forces. It would just go through you too quickly,” said Lior Burko from Georgia Gwinnett College. He added that passing through a weak singularity is like quickly running your finger through a candle flame that’s 1,000 degrees Celsius. If you hold your finger in the flame long enough, you’ll get burned, but pass your finger through quickly, and you’ll barely feel a thing. Similarly, if you pass through a weak singularity with the right speed and momentum, and at the right time, you may not feel much at all.

As for what happens once you get through to the other side, no one really knows, but Burko has his own ideas. He says one possibility is that we’d arrive at some other remote part of our galaxy, potentially light years away from any planets or stars, but a second, and perhaps more intriguing, possibility is that we’d arrive in a different galaxy altogether. That’s if you even make it that far. Scientists say more research is needed before we’re anywhere close to successfully traveling through a black hole. But when we are ready, one of the safest passageways might be the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy called Sagittarius A*, and it might just be our ticket out of the Milky Way.

Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/
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https://www.ggc.edu/

Cancer’s ‘Internal Wiring’ Predicts Relapse Risk

March 18, 2019 Uncategorized

The “internal wiring” of breast cancer can predict which women are more likely to survive or relapse, say researchers. The study shows that breast cancer is 11 separate diseases that each has a different risk of coming back. The hope is that the findings, in the journal Nature, could identify people needing closer monitoring and reassure others at low risk of recurrence.

Cancer Research UK said that the work was “incredibly encouraging” but was not yet ready for widespread use. The scientists, at the University of Cambridge and Stanford University, looked in incredible detail at nearly 2,000 women’s breast cancers. They went far beyond considering all breast cancers as a single disease and beyond modern medicine’s way of classifying the tumours.

Doctors currently classify breast cancers based on whether they respond to the hormone oestrogen or targeted therapies like Herceptin. The research team analysed the genetic mutations inside the tumour to create a new way of classifying them.

By following women for 20 years, they are now able to show which types of breast cancer are more likely to come back. “This is really biology-driven, it’s the molecular wiring of your tumour, said Prof Carlos Caldas. “Once and for all we need to stop talking about breast cancer as one disease, it’s a constellation of 11 diseases. “This is a very significant step to more precision-type medicine.”

Source: https://www.bbc.com/

How To Reverse Vascular Disease In Kidney Failure

March 15, 2019 Uncategorized

By loading a chelation drug into a nano-sized homing device, researchers at Clemson University have reversed in an animal model the deadliest effects of chronic kidney disease, which kills more people in the United States each year than breast or prostate cancer. When kidneys stop working properly, calcium builds up in artery tissue, leading to heart disease. Although nearly half a million Americans receive kidney dialysis, heart disease is the leading cause of death for people with chronic kidney disease.

Human kidney cross section on scientific background

“The findings are very exciting scientifically, but also for the thousands of patients who could potentially benefit from this technology one day,” said Naren Vyavahare, professor of bioengineering at Clemson and the principal investigator of the research.

Chelation, a method of removing metals such as iron and lead from the body, has been used experimentally for some people with heart disease. The therapy is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but the National Institutes of Health has sponsored two large-scale, multi-center studies using ethylene diamine tetra-acetic acid, or EDTA, as chelation therapy for people with heart disease.

In clinical studies, EDTA is included in an infusion that circulates through the body; it’s systemic and non-specific. This method of chelation has shown good results in improving heart function, especially in diabetic patients, Vyavahare said. But EDTA infusion therapy is arduous (it requires 40 infusions over a period of a year), and it can cause side effects, including a depletion of calcium from the blood and from bone.

Now, in a paper published in Scientific Reports, a Nature publication, Vyavahare’s team describes how they developed an animal model that mimics a human’s chronic kidney disease. Animals were treated either with EDTA infusions, like in the NIH human trials, or with EDTA enclosed in a nanoparticle coupled with an antibody that seeks out damaged elastin. In animals that received the targeted therapy, calcium buildup was destroyed, without causing side effects, better than with EDTA infusions alone. Moreover, the calcification did not come back up to four weeks after the last injection, even though other signs of chronic kidney disease were present.

Source: http://newsstand.clemson.edu/

Nanorobots Probe Into Cells

March 14, 2019 Uncategorized

U of T Engineering researchers have built a set of magnetic ‘tweezers’ that can position a nano-scale bead inside a human cell in three dimensions with unprecedented precision. The nano-bot has already been used to study the properties of cancer cells, and could point the way toward enhanced diagnosis and treatment.

Professor Yu Sun (MIE, IBBME, ECE) and his team have been building robots that can manipulate individual cells for two decades. Their creations have the ability to manipulate and measure single cells — useful in procedures such as in vitro fertilization and personalized medicine. Their latest study, published today in Science Robotics, takes the technology one step further.

The magnetic bead introduced into the cell and controlled to be navigated onto the nuclear envelope.

“So far, our robot has been exploring outside a building, touching the brick wall, and trying to figure out what’s going on inside,” says Sun. “We wanted to deploy a robot in the building and probe all the rooms and structures.” The team has created robotic systems that can manipulate sub-cellular structures inside electron microscopes, but that requires freeze-drying the cells and cutting them into tiny slices. To probe live cells, other teams have used techniques such as lasers or acoustics.

“Optical tweezers — using lasers to probe cells — is a popular approach,” says Xian Wang (MIE), the PhD candidate who conducted the research. The technology was honoured with 2018 Nobel Prize in Physics, but Wang says the force that it can generate is not large enough for mechanical manipulation and measurement he wanted to do. “You can try to increase the power to generate higher force, but you run the risk of damaging the sub-cellular components you’re trying to measure,” says Wang.

The system Wang designed uses six magnetic coils placed in different planes around a microscope coverslip seeded with live cancer cells. A magnetic iron bead about 700 nanometres in diameter — about 100 times smaller than the thickness of a human hair — is placed on the coverslip, where the cancer cells easily take it up inside their membranes. Once the bead is inside, Wang controls its position using real-time feedback from confocal microscopy imaging. He uses a computer-controlled algorithm to vary the electrical current through each of the coils, shaping the magnetic field in three dimensions and coaxing the bead into any desired position within the cell.

“We can control the position to within a couple of hundred nanometers down the Brownian motion limit,” says Wang. “We can exert forces an order of magnitude higher than would be possible with lasers.”

In collaboration with Dr. Helen McNeil and Yonit Tsatskis at Mount Sinai Hospital and Dr. Sevan Hopyan at The Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids), the team used their robotic system to study early-stage and later-stage bladder cancer cells. Previous studies on cell nuclei required their extraction of from cells. Wang and Sun measured cell nuclei in intact cells without the need to break apart the cell membrane or cytoskeleton. They were able to show that the nucleus is not equally stiff in all directions. “It’s a bit like a football in shape — mechanically, it’s stiffer along one axis than the other,” says Sun. “We wouldn’t have known that without this new technique.”

They were also able to measure exactly how much stiffer the nucleus got when prodded repeatedly, and determine which cell protein or proteins may play a role in controlling this response. This knowledge could point the way toward new methods of diagnosing cancer. “We know that in the later-stage cells, the stiffening response is not as strong,” says Wang. “In situations where early-stage cancer cells and later-stage cells don’t look very different morphologically, this provides another way of telling them apart.”

According to Sun, the research could go even further. “You could imagine bringing in whole swarms of these nano-bots, and using them to either starve a tumour by blocking the blood vessels into the tumor, or destroy it directly via mechanical ablation,” says Sun. “This would offer a way to treat cancers that are resistant to chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.”

Source: https://news.engineering.utoronto.ca/

Conflicting Realities

March 13, 2019 Uncategorized

Physicists have long suspected that quantum mechanics allows two observers to experience different, conflicting realities. Now they’ve performed the first experiment that proves it. Back in 1961, the Nobel Prize–winning physicist Eugene Wigner outlined a thought experiment that demonstrated one of the lesser-known paradoxes of quantum mechanics. The experiment shows how the strange nature of the universe allows two observers—say, Wigner and Wigner’s friend—to experience different realities.

Since then, physicists have used the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment to explore the nature of measurement and to argue over whether objective facts can exist. That’s important because scientists carry out experiments to establish objective facts. But if they experience different realities, the argument goes, how can they agree on what these facts might be?
That’s provided some entertaining fodder for after-dinner conversation, but Wigner’s thought experiment has never been more than that—just a thought experiment. Last year, however, physicists noticed that recent advances in quantum technologies have made it possible to reproduce the Wigner’s Friend test in a real experiment. In other words, it ought to be possible to create different realities and compare them in the lab to find out whether they can be reconciled.

And today, Massimiliano Proietti at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh and a few colleagues say they have performed this experiment for the first time: they have created different realities and compared them. Their conclusion is that Wigner was correct—these realities can be made irreconcilable so that it is impossible to agree on objective facts about an experiment.Wigner’s original thought experiment is straightforward in principle. It begins with a single polarized photon that, when measured, can have either a horizontal polarization or a vertical polarization. But before the measurement, according to the laws of quantum mechanics, the photon exists in both polarization states at the same time—a so-called superposition.

Wigner imagined a friend in a different lab measuring the state of this photon and storing the result, while Wigner observed from afar. Wigner has no information about his friend’s measurement and so is forced to assume that the photon and the measurement of it are in a superposition of all possible outcomes of the experiment.

But this is in stark contrast to the point of view of the friend, who has indeed measured the photon’s polarization and recorded it. The friend can even call Wigner and say the measurement has been done (provided the outcome is not revealed). So the two realities are at odds with each other. “This calls into question the objective status of the facts established by the two observers,” say Proietti and co. That’s the theory, but last year Caslav Brukner, at the University of Vienna in Austria, came up with a way to re-create the Wigner’s Friend experiment in the lab by means of techniques involving the entanglement of many particles at the same time.

The breakthrough that Proietti and co have made is to carry this out. “In a state-of-the-art 6-photon experiment, we realize this extended Wigner’s friend scenario,” they say. They use these six entangled photons to create two alternate realities—one representing Wigner and one representing Wigner’s friend. Wigner’s friend measures the polarization of a photon and stores the result. Wigner then performs an interference measurement to determine if the measurement and the photon are in a superposition.

The experiment produces an unambiguous result. It turns out that both realities can coexist even though they produce irreconcilable outcomes, just as Wigner predicted. That raises some fascinating questions that are forcing physicists to reconsider the nature of reality.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/

3D printing becoming a surgical game changer

March 12, 2019 Uncategorized

Imagine 1,000 puzzle pieces without any picture of what it’s ultimately supposed to look like. With few, if any, reference points, the challenge of fitting them together would be daunting. That’s what surgeons often confront when a patient suffering from a traumatic injury or condition has a portion of their body that is dramatically damaged or changed. The “puzzle” can be exponentially harder when the injuries involve a person’s face or skull – areas of the human anatomy that are complex, difficult to surgically navigate, and often require both functional and near-perfect cosmetic repair.

Now, thanks to high-tech equipment that is sometimes not much bigger than a home printer, UC Davis Health physicians are enhancing their capabilities and mapping out surgeries in ways that benefit patients and surgical outcomes.

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“3D printing, which for us means manufacturing that’s accurate, affordable and on-site, can be a game changer in health care,” said David Lubarsky, vice chancellor for Human Health Sciences and CEO of UC Davis Health, who is very encouraged by the university’s newest technology initiatives and promising results.

The new device is a specialized but fairly affordable printer that produces three-dimensional models of an individual’s skull or body part. The 3D models enable a surgeon to visualize, practice and then perform the reconstructive surgery while saving time and increasing precision.

“Facial reconstructive surgery involves intricate anatomy within an extremely narrow operative field in which to maneuver our instruments,” said E. Bradley Strong, a professor of otolaryngology who specializes in facial reconstructive surgery. “Being able to print out a high-resolution 3D model of the injury, allows us to do detailed preoperative planning and preparation that is more efficient and accurate. We can also use these patient specific models in the operating room to improve the accuracy of implant placement.”

The 3D printer used by Strong and his colleagues for the past year is about the size of a mini-refrigerator and costs approximately $4,000. It uses the imaging data from a patient’s computed tomography (CT) scans to provide the modeling output information. Like an inkjet printer, the 3D version spits out layer upon layer of material over a period of hours, sometimes taking nearly a day to complete, depending on the complexity of the model. The finished replica can save time during surgery, which means less time on the operating table for a patient and potentially a better outcome.

By creating a 3D model prior to surgery, Strong is able to bend and customize generic surgical plates into patient-specific shapes that fit perfectly for each individual patient.

Source: https://health.ucdavis.edu/

How To Turn Data Into Ultrasonic Sound Waves

March 11, 2019 Uncategorized

The ultrasonic communication technology company Sonarax in Israel, unveils a new standard in machine-to-machine (m2m) connectivity allowing devices to communicate with one another using sound waves. The protocol is the largest global infrastructure install base and operates on any device that has a built-in speaker or microphone. Sonarax provides a highly reliable alternative for m2m connectivity and it works even when the internet, GPS, and cellular networks are unavailable.

The protocol performs pairing between devices and transfer of data on both encrypted and open channels using sound waves. It provides significantly easier and faster deployments of m2m applications such as sonic QR codes, mobile payments, and ID authentication.

Sonarax‘s protocol requires no special hardware and is easy to deploy and use. This protocol can be integrated with any application across various operating systems, including Windows, Android, and iOS, and is already embedded in leading sonic processors. Sonarax utilizes frequencies beyond the threshold of human hearing and can be intertwined with any audio channel carried by media, including, TV, and others to introduce additional communication data, such as advertising information and more.

Sonarax’s ultrasonic technology was designed to provide initial solutions in three main important areas:

Ultrasonic Payments: Facilitating secure pairing for mobile payments and contactless ATM interaction – already in pilot with major global banks and financial institutions.
Ultrasonic Authentication: Providing a seamless and secure identification solution – a fully developed and off-the-shelf SDK that can be easily integrated and used by any third party application
Ultrasonic Indoor Positioning: Allowing indoor positioning in buildings such as shopping malls and hospitals where GPS stops working. Sonarax is working to implement its technology for novel indoor navigation functionality to be launched at a later date.

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“We’re utilizing the existing element of sound to modernize machine-to-machine connectivity so that it enhances payment authentication and for the first time can also be used for indoor positioning,” explains Benny Saban, CEO of Sonarax. “Sound cannot fail or be compromised and we’re excited to finally reveal our product at MWC and get consumers onboard to the next generation of device communication.”

Source: https://www.sonarax.com/

Tiny 4-Inch Wafer Holds One Million NanoRobots

March 8, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers have harnessed the latest nanofabrication techniques to create bug-shaped robots that are wirelessly powered, able to walk, able to survive harsh environments and tiny enough to be injected through an ordinary hypodermic needle.

“When I was a kid, I remember looking in a microscope, and seeing all this crazy stuff going on. Now we’re building stuff that’s active at that size. We don’t just have to watch this world. You can actually play in it,” said Marc Miskin, who developed the nanofabrication techniques with his colleagues professors Itai Cohen and Paul McEuen and researcher Alejandro Cortese at Cornell University while Miskin was a postdoc in the laboratory for atomic and solid state physics there. In January, he became an assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at the University of Pennsylvania.

Miskin will present his microscopic robot research on this week at the American Physical Society March Meeting in Boston. He will also participate in a press conference describing the work. Information for logging on to watch and ask questions remotely is included at the end of this news release.

Over the course of the past several years, Miskin and research colleagues developed a multistep nanofabrication technique that turns a 4-inch specialized silicon wafer into a million microscopic robots in just weeks. Each 70 micron long (about the width of a very thin human hair), the robots’ bodies are formed from a superthin rectangular skeleton of glass topped with a thin layer of silicon into which the researchers etch its electronics control components and either two or four silicon solar cells — the rudimentary equivalent of a brain and organs.

Robots are built massively in parallel using nanofabrication technology: each wafer holds 1 million machines

“The really high-level explanation of how we make them is we’re taking technology developed by the semiconductor industry and using it to make tiny robots,” said Miskin.

Each of a robot’s four legs is formed from a bilayer of platinum and titanium (or alternately, graphene). The platinum is applied using atomic layer deposition. “It’s like painting with atoms,” said Miskin. The platinum-titanium layer is then cut into each robot’s four 100-atom-thick legs. “The legs are super strong,” he said. “Each robot carries a body that’s 1,000 times thicker and weighs roughly 8,000 times more than each leg.”

The researchers shine a laser on one of a robot’s solar cells to power it. This causes the platinum in the leg to expand, while the titanium remains rigid in turn, causing the limb to bend. The robot’s gait is generated because each solar cell causes the alternate contraction or relaxing of the front or back legs. The researchers first saw a robot’s leg move several days before Christmas 2017. “The leg just twitched a bit,” recalled Miskin. “But it was the first proof of concept — this is going to work!”

Teams at Cornell and Pennsylvania are now at work on smart versions of the robots with on-board sensors, clocks and controllers. The current laser power source would limit the robot’s control to a fingernail-width into tissue. So Miskin is thinking about new energy sources, including ultrasound and magnetic fields, that would enable these robots to make incredible journeys in the human body for missions such as drug delivery or mapping the brain.

“We found out you can inject them using a syringe and they survive — they’re still intact and functional — which is pretty cool,” he said.

Source: https://eurekalert.org/

‘Epigenetic’ Gene Tweaks Could Trigger Cancer

March 7, 2019 Uncategorized

You could be forgiven for thinking of cancer as a genetic disease. Sure, we know it can be triggered by things you do – smoking being the classic example – but most of us probably assume that we get cancer because of a genetic mutation – a glitch in our DNA. It turns out that this is not quite the end of the story.

We now have the first direct evidence that switching off certain genes – something that can be caused by our lifestyle or the environment we live in – can trigger tumours, without mutating the DNA itself. The good news is that these changes are, in theory, reversible.

All cells contain the same DNA, but individual genes in any cell can be switched on or off by the addition or subtraction of a methyl group – a process known as epigenetic methylation.

For years, researchers have known that mutations to our DNA – either those passed on at birth or those acquired as a result of exposure to radiation, for example – can cause cancer. But epigenetic changes have also been implicated in cancer because abnormal patterns of gene methylation are seen in virtually all types of human tumours.

For example, a gene called MLH1 produces a protein that repairs DNA damage. It is often mutated in colon cancer tumours, but in some tumour samples the gene is healthy, but appears to have been silenced by methylation. The problem is that it has been difficult to test whether abnormal methylation occurs as a result of a tumour or is a cause of its growth.

“In genetics you can easily delete a gene and see what the consequence is, but it’s much harder to direct methylation to specific regions of the genome,” says Lanlan Shen of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

To get round this problem, Shen and her colleagues used a naturally occurring sequence of DNA, which draws in methyl groups to methylate nearby genes. They call it their “methylation magnet”.

The team inserted this sequence next to the tumour suppressor gene, p16, in mouse embryonic stem cells. These embryos then developed into mice that carry the “methylation magnet” in all of their cells. The team focused on methylating p16 because it is abnormally methylated in numerous cancers.

They monitored the rodents for 18 months – until they reached the mouse equivalent of middle age. Over this time, 30 per cent of the mice developed tumours around their body, including in their liver, colon, lungs and spleen. None of a control group of genetically identical mice developed tumours.

“Some tissues showed faster methylation than others, for example in the liver, colon and spleen, and that’s exactly where we saw the tumours grow,” says Shen. “It seems like methylation predisposed the tissue to tumour development.” She reckons that methylation silences p16, which lifts the break that it normally places on any abnormal cell division.

Source: https://www.newscientist.com/

Self-Sterilizing Microneedles

March 6, 2019 Uncategorized

Vaccinations are the world’s frontline defence against infectious diseases yet despite decades of interventions, unsafe injection practices continue to expose billions of people to serious infection and disease.

Now, new technology from the University of South Australia is revolutionising safe vaccination practices through antibacterial, silver-loaded dissolvable microneedle patches, which not only sterilise the injection site to inhibit the growth of bacteria, but also physically dissolve after administration.

These first generation microneedles have the potential to transform the safe administration of transdermal vaccinations and drug delivery”, explains Lead researcher, Professor Krasimir Vasilev .

“Injections are one of the most common health care procedures used for vaccinations and curative care around the world,” Prof Vasilev adds. “But up to 40 per cent of injections are given with improperly sterilised syringes and needles, placing millions of people at risk of contracting a range of illnesses or diseases. “Our silver-loaded microneedles have inherently potent antibacterial properties which inhibit the growth of pathogenic bacteria and reduce the chance of infection.”

The UniSA study tested the antibacterial efficacy of silver-loaded microneedles against bacteria associated with common skin infections – Golden staph, staphylococcus epidermis, escherichia coli and pseudomonas aeruginosa – and found that the silver-loaded microneedle patches created a 24-hour bacteria-free zone around the patch administration site, a feature unique to the new technology.

The silver-loaded microneedles comprise an array of 15 x 15 needles each 700 micron in length, which pierce only the top layer of the skin without reaching the underlying nerves, making them 100 per cent painless.

The microneedles are made from a safe, biocompatible and highly water-soluble polymer that completely dissolve within one minute of application, leaving behind no sharp waste.

Source: http://www.unisa.edu.au/

New Quantum Sensor Improves Cancer Treatment

March 5, 2019 Uncategorized

A new quantum sensor developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo’s Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) in Canada, has proven it can outperform existing technologies and promises significant advancements in long-range 3D imaging and monitoring the success of cancer treatments.

The sensors are the first of their kind and are based on semiconductor nanowires that can detect single particles of light with high timing resolution, speed and efficiency over an unparalled wavelength range, from ultraviolet to near-infrared.

The technology also has the ability to significantly improve quantum communication and remote sensing capabilities.

Interaction of single incident photon pulses and a tapered semiconductor nanowire array photodetector

“A sensor needs to be very efficient at detecting light. In applications like quantum radar, surveillance, and nighttime operation, very few particles of light return to the device,” said principal investigator Michael Reimer, an IQC faculty member and assistant professor in the Faculty of Engineering’s electrical and computer engineering department. “In these cases, you want to be able to detect every single photon coming in.”

The next generation quantum sensor designed in Reimer’s lab is so fast and efficient that it can absorb and detect a single particle of light, called a photon, and refresh for the next one within nanoseconds. The researchers created an array of tapered nanowires that turn incoming photons into electric current that can be amplified and detected.

Remote sensing, high-speed imaging from space, acquiring long range high resolution 3D images, quantum communication, and singlet oxygen detection for dose monitoring in cancer treatment are all applications that could benefit from the kind of robust single photon detection that this new quantum sensor provides.

The semiconducting nanowire array achieves its high speed, timing resolution and efficiency thanks to the quality of its materials, the number of nanowires, doping profile and the optimization of the nanowire shape and arrangement. The sensor detects a broad spectrum of light with high efficiency and high timing resolution, all while operating at room temperature. Reimer emphasizes that the spectrum absorption can be broadened even further with different materials.

“This device uses Indium Phosphide (InP) nanowires. Changing the material to Indium Gallium Arsenide (InGaAs), for example, can extend the bandwidth even further towards telecommunications wavelengths while maintaining performance,” Reimer said. “It’s state of the art now, with the potential for further enhancements.”

Once the prototype is packaged with the right electronics and portable cooling, the sensor is ready for testing beyond the lab. “A broad range of industries and research fields will benefit from a quantum sensor with these capabilities,” said Reimer.

Source: https://uwaterloo.ca/

The Vatican’s Swiss Guards Are Now Using 3D Printed Helmets

March 4, 2019 Uncategorized

For hundreds of years, the Swiss Guard have worn a distinctive, brightly-colored dress uniform while protecting the Pope and Vatican City, with only a couple of minor changes over the years. This year, they’re making a big change: the traditional, metal helmet — called a morion — is being replaced with ones that are 3D printed.

The uniforms and equipment of the Swiss Guard are imbued with tradition. The modern uniform was introduced in 1914, inspired by Renaissance-era artwork featuring the soldiers. Over the years, the Vatican has retained the traditional elements of the uniform, employing blacksmiths to provide replacement parts for their armor. Last year, the Swiss Guard announced that it ould replace the iconic helmet with one made out of PA-12, which were lighter and cheaper than their metal predecessors. This isn’t a trivial thing — as the soldiers spend a lot of time outdoors in the sun, the helmets would become uncomfortably hot, to the point where they would get burned.
The first batch of 98 of the new helmets (120 were ordered in all) were delivered to the Vatican on January 22nd, on the 513th anniversary of the founding of the Guard. Those new helmets were designed using scans of helmets from the 16th century, and are printed in just 14 hours using an HP 3D printer, as opposed to the older metal ones, which took nearly 130 hours to manufacture. The new morions also considerably lighter (weighting in at 570 grams; the ones they are replacing weighed 2 kilograms), are UV resistant, and incorporate ventilation slots to keep the soldiers’ heads cooler. There’s also no tradeoff on security for the soldiers, according to Swiss Guard spokesman Sergeant Urs Breitenmoser, because they’re used for ceremonial purposes such as papal masses and state visits.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/

New Perovskite Solar Cells Increase Efficiency By 17%

March 1, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers have layered different mineral forms of titanium oxide on top of one another to improve perovskite-type solar cell efficiency by one-sixth. The layered titanium oxide layer was better able to transport electrons from the center of the cell to its electrodes. This novel approach could be used to fabricate even more efficient perovskite-type solar cells in future. While most solar cells are made of silicon, such cells are difficult to manufacture, requiring vacuum chambers and temperatures above 1000 °C. Research efforts have therefore recently focused on a new type of solar cell, based on metal halide perovskites. Perovskite solutions can be inexpensively printed to create more efficient, inexpensive solar cells.

In solar cells perovskites can turn light into electricity—but they have to be sandwiched between a negative and positive electrode. One of these electrodes has to be transparent, however, to allow the sun’s light to reach the perovskites. Not only that, any other materials used to help charges flow from the perovskites to the electrode must also be transparent. Researchers have previously found that thin layers of titanium oxide are both transparent and able to transport electrons to the electrode.

Now, a Japan-based research team centered at Kanazawa University has carried out a more detailed study into perovskite solar cells using electron transport layers made of anatase and brookite, which are different mineral forms of titanium oxide. They compared the impact of using either pure anatase or brookite or combination layers (anatase on top of brookite or brookite on top of anatase). The anatase layers were fabricated by spraying solutions onto glass coated with a transparent electrode that was heated to 450 °C. Meanwhile, the researchers used water-soluble brookite nanoparticles to create the brookite layers, as water-soluble inks are more environmentally friendly than conventional inks. These nanoparticles have been yielded poor results in the past; however, the team predicted that combination layers would solve the issues previously encountered when using the nanoparticles.

“By layering brookite on top of anatase we were able to improve solar cell efficiency by up to 16.82%,” study coauthor Koji Tomita says.

These results open up a new way to optimize perovskite solar cells, namely via the controlled stacking and manipulation of the different mineral forms of titanium oxide.

The team’s study was recently published in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

Source: https://www.kanazawa-u.ac.jp/

How To Hide Hot Objects From Infrared Detection

February 28, 2019 Uncategorized

Hiding an object from heat-sensing cameras could be useful for military and technology applications as well as for research. Efforts to develop such a method have been underway for decades with varying degrees of success. Now, researchers report in ACS Nano that they have fabricated an inexpensive, easy-to-produce film that makes objects completely invisible to infrared detectors.

Several prior systems have been developed to mask the difference in temperature between an object and its surroundings. But each of these alternatives has weaknesses, such as difficulty in making the devices, the need for a power supply, the use of rigid materials or the addition of thick and heavy thermal blankets that can lead to heat buildup. Xuetong Zhang and colleagues wanted to find a better way.

A new, flexible infrared stealth cloak is made of a porous film of Kevlar nanofibers impregnated with polyethylene glycol.

The researchers fabricated an aerogel film made of DuPont™ Kevlar® fibers. By itself, the aerogel turned out to be a good thermal insulator, but the researchers enhanced its capabilities by coating its fibers with polyethylene glycol (PEG) and a protective waterproof layer. PEG stores heat when it melts and releases heat when it solidifies. In simulated sunlight, the composite film covering an object soaked up heat from the sun while only slowly increasing in temperature, just like the surroundings, making the object invisible to a thermal camera.

When the light was turned off to simulate night, the coating gradually surrendered its stored heat energy to match the surroundings. Without the coating, the object heated up or cooled off much faster than its environment, making it visible. In a second type of application, a combined structure consisting of aerogel films and the PEG composite film could hide hot targets from a thermal camera. The researchers say their film performs comparably to other stealth films but is simpler and cheaper to make.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/
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https://cen.acs.org/

Driven by a Desire to Build Smarter Robots

February 27, 2019 Uncategorized

Founded in 2015, CloudMinds’ unique Cloud Robot Service Platform consists of Human Augmented Robotics Intelligence with Extreme Reality (HARIX), Secure virtual backbone network (VBN over 4G/5G), and Robot Control Unit (RCU). HARIX is a highly scalable “cloud brain” that can operate millions of cloud robots of different types and service roles. HARIX features a highly efficient multi-media switching engine, a MMO gaming engine, and a powerful AI Cloud that seamlessly integrates best-of-breed AI technologies developed by CloudMinds and others, such as face and object recognition, voice recognition and NLP, navigation, and motion control (vision controlled robotic grasping and move) as well as third party AI services. With a broad ecosystem of partners,

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CloudMinds’ cloud robotic services are empowering customer engagements in retail, hospitality, real estate, smart city and a wide range of vertical applications.

How to make robots marter? CoudMindsis connecting robots and devices over secure Virtual Backbone Networks (VBN) to Cloud AI. The Human Augmented Robotics Intelligence with Extreme Reality (HARIX) platform is an ever evolving “cloud brain”. It is capable of operating millions of cloud robots performing different tasks. It also empowers robots and devices with Cloud AI capabilities such as Natural Language Processing (NLP), Computer Vision (CV), navigation, and vision-controlled manipulation.

For sure in the vision of CloudMinds initiators, by 2025 helpful humanoid robots will be affordable for the average household.

Source: https://www.en.cloudminds.com/

Have China’s CRISPR Twins Enhanced Brains?

February 26, 2019 Uncategorized

New research suggests that a controversial gene-editing experiment to make children resistant to HIV may also have enhanced their ability to learn and form memories. The twins, called Lulu and Nana, reportedly had their genes modified before birth by a Chinese scientific team using the new editing tool CRISPR. The goal was to make the girls immune to infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Now, new research shows that the same alteration introduced into the girls’ DNA, deletion of a gene called CCR5, not only makes mice smarter but also improves human brain recovery after stroke, and could be linked to greater success in school.

“The answer is likely yes, it did affect their brains,” says Alcino J. Silva, a neurobiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, whose lab uncovered a major new role for the CCR5 gene in memory and the brain’s ability to form new connections.

“The simplest interpretation is that those mutations will probably have an impact on cognitive function in the twins,” says Silva. He says the exact effect on the girls’ cognition is impossible to predict, and “that is why it should not be done.”

The Chinese team, led by He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, claimed it used CRISPR to delete CCR5 from human embryos, some of which were later used to create pregnancies. HIV requires the CCR5 gene to enter human blood cells.

The experiment has been widely condemned as irresponsible, and He is under investigation in China. News of the first gene-edited babies also inflamed speculation about whether CRISPR technology could one day be used to create super-intelligent humans, perhaps as part of a biotechnology race between the US and China.

There is no evidence that He actually set out to modify the twins’ intelligence. MIT Technology Review contacted scientists studying the effects of CCR5 on cognition, and they say the Chinese scientist never reached out to them, as he did to others from whom he hoped to get scientific advice or support.
“As far as I know, we never heard from him,” says Miou Zhou, a professor at the Western University of Health Sciences in California.

Although He never consulted the brain researchers, the Chinese scientist was certainly aware of the link between CCR5 and cognition. It was first shown in 2016 by Zhou and Silva, who found that removing the gene from mice significantly improved their memory. The team had looked at more than 140 different genetic alterations to find which made mice smarter.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/

Sharpen Molecular Scissors And Expand The Gene Editing Toolbox

February 25, 2019 Uncategorized

Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine (WFIRM) scientists have figured out a better way to deliver a DNA editing tool to shorten the presence of the editor proteins in the cells in what they describe as a “hit and run” approach.

CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats) technology is used to alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. CRISPR/Cas9 is an enzyme that is used like a pair of scissors to cut two strands of DNA at a specific location to add, remove or repair bits of DNA. But CRISPR/Cas9 is not 100 percent accurate and could potentially cut unexpected locations, causing unwanted results.

“One of the major challenges of CRISPR/Cas9 mRNA technologies is the possibility of off-targets which may cause tumors or mutations,” said Baisong Lu, Ph.D, assistant professor of regenerative medicine at WFIRM and one of the lead authors of the paper. Although other types of lentivirus-like bionanoparticles (LVLPs) have been described for delivering proteins or mRNAs, Lu said, “the LVLP we developed has unique features which will make it a useful tool in the expanding genome editing toolbox.”

To address the inaccuracy issue, WFIRM researchers asked the question: Is there a way to efficiently deliver Cas9 activity but achieve transient expression of genome editing proteins? They tested various strategies and then took the best properties of two widely used delivery vehicles – lentivirus vector and nanoparticles – and combined them, creating a system that efficiently packages Cas9 mRNA into LVLPs, enabling transient expression and highly efficient editing.

Lentiviral vector is a widely used gene delivery vehicle in research labs and is already widely used for delivering the CRISPR/Cas9 mRNA technology for efficient genome editing. Nanoparticles are also being used but they are not as efficient in delivery of CRISPR/Cas9.

“By combining the transient expression feature of nanoparticle-delivery strategies while retaining the transduction efficiency of lentiviral vectors, we have created a system that may be used for packaging various editor protein mRNA for genome editing in a ‘hit and run’ manner,” said Anthony Atala, M.D., director of WFIRM and co-lead author of the paper. “This system will not only improve safety but also avoid possible immune response to the editor proteins, which could improve in vivo gene editing efficiency which will be useful in research and clinical applications.”

The WFIRM team published its findings in a paper published recently in the journal Nucleic Acids Research.

Source: https://school.wakehealth.edu/

How To Extend The Charge-to-charge Life of Phones And Electric Cars By 40 %

February 22, 2019 Uncategorized

The need to store energy for portable devices, vehicles and housing is ever increasing.The transformation from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources need to be hastened to decrease greenhouse gases and limit global warming. The utilization of wind and solar power requires effective storage system to ensure continuous energy supply as a part of smart grid. Li-ion batteries are considered to be the best route for many advanced storage applications related to the clean electricity due to their high energy density.

The latest lithium-ion batteries on the market are likely to extend the charge-to-charge life of phones and electric cars by as much as 40 percent. This leap forward, which comes after more than a decade of incremental improvements, is happening because developers replaced the battery’s graphite anode with one made from silicon. Research from Drexel University and Trinity College in Ireland now suggests that an even greater improvement could be in line if the silicon is fortified with a special type of material called MXene.

Regarding the present Li-ion batteries, one of the limiting factors in their performance is the anode material that most commonly is graphite. Silicon is a promising material for Li-ion battery anodes: By using silicon instead of graphite, the energy density of a battery cell ccould be increased by 30 %. To achieve this, several obstacles have to be overcome: First, silicon experiences a volume expansion of 300 % when lithiated. During discharging, the particles tend to fracture and lose contact. Secondly, the volume expansion prevents the formation of a stable electrode-electrolyte interface resulting in a continuous decomposition of the electrolyte. These two reasons are main causes for the limited use of silicon in commercial batteries.

The image shows PSi microparticles connected to each other with CNTs to improve the conductivity of the material

Both of the above mentioned problems with silicon material can be avoided by designing optimal porous structures of mesoporous silicon (PSi). Porosity of PSi needs to be high enough for the material to be able to withstand the volume expansion but also low enough so that the volumetric capacity/energy density is still better than for graphite anodes.

Source: https://www.nature.com/

Battery-free Pacemakers Powered By A Patient’s Heartbeat

February 21, 2019 Uncategorized

A new device powered by the heart could finally solve the pacemaker problem. Some 1.5 million Americans have pacemakers implanted to keep their hearts beating steadily. The devices are life-saving, but they don’t last forever. Currently, most pacemaker batteries have to be replaced every five to 12 years, and doing so means invasive surgery each time. Researchers at the National Key Laboratory for Science and Technology in Shanghai, China have developed a tiny device that piggybacks off the heart itself to generate energy – meaning a pacemaker battery would never have to be replaced.

A healthy heart can keep time for itself, by way of an internal pacemaker called the sinus node in the upper right chamber. It fires off an electrical charge some 60 to 100 times a minute, and that electrical energy sets off a series of contractions of heart muscle which in turn pumps blood throughout the body. But as the heart ages or once it becomes diseased, the sinus node takes a hit, too, and may fail to keep the heart beating in time or at all. Fortunately, since the late 1950s, we’ve been able to substitute a small, implantable, battery-powered device to send these electrical signals once the heart can’t any more. Even 60 years later, however, we haven’t figured out what to do about the device’s power supply, however.

Surgery to place the pacemaker and wires that feed its electrical pulses to the heart is complex, requiring doctors to open the chest cavity. The pacemaker itself is tucked away in a ‘pocket’ much closer to the skin surface. Once the battery runs out, usually only a local anesthetic is required to remove the old device and put a new, fully charged one. Still, the procedure is an unpleasant hassle that comes with a risk of infection, and it’s expensive to have done. Depending on the pacemaker, the device itself may cost anywhere from $19,000 to $96,000, according to Costhelper – and that doesn’t include the expenses for the operation.

But the new Chinese-developed device shows promise to end the procedure. The new pacemaker accessory can actually harness the heart’s beats to power a pacemaker. The key to innovation is its flexible plastic frame, which allows the device to capture more energy from the heart than previous hard cases have done. At the device’s center are layers of piezoelectric material, which generates power whenever it is bent. Many materials acquire an electrical charge when force is applied to them, including natural ones in our bodies. Crystals, DNA and even bone are capable of capturing electrical energy. The trick is to apply enough force to a piezoelectric material, then supercharge it, because, on their own, these materials don’t work up all that much energy.

Scientists have long been looking to piezoelectricity as an elegant solution to recapturing otherwise wasted energy, and some have even applied it to the pacemaker before. But, previously, other researchers have not been able to create a device that bends enough to generate sufficient power. Now, the Chinese scientists have shown their device can fuel a pacemaker and keep a pig’s heart beating. The devices frame allows it to flex significantly with as little movement as is created by a heartbeat. While the pacemaker itself is implanted in its usual place, near the collar bone and just under the skin, the new power device is tucked underneath the heart, where the organ’s contractions bend it rhythmically. In tests in pigs, the new pacemaker generated just as much power as a pacemaker, using a completely renewable energy source.

Source: http://pubs.acs.org/
AND
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/

2-D nanoparticles boost Cartilage Regeneration

February 20, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers have developed a new way to deliver treatment for cartilage regeneration. The nanoclay-based platform for sustained and prolonged delivery of protein therapeutics could improve the treatment of osteoarthritis, a degenerative disease that affects nearly 27 million Americans, according to Akhilesh K. Gaharwar, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Texas University A&M. Osteoarthritis is caused by breakdown of cartilage that can lead to damage of the underlying bone. As America’s population ages, osteoarthritis incidences are likely to increase. One of the greatest challenges with treating osteoarthritis and subsequent joint damage is repairing the damaged tissue, especially as cartilage tissue is difficult to regenerate.

One method for repair or regeneration of damaged cartilage tissue is to deliver therapeutic growth factors, a special class of proteins that can aid in tissue repair and regeneration. However, current versions of growth factors break down quickly and require a high dose to achieve a therapeutic potential. Recent clinical studies have demonstrated significant adverse effects to this kind of treatment, including uncontrolled tissue formation and inflammation.

In the study, published in ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Gaharwar’s lab designed two-dimensional mineral nanoparticles to deliver growth factors for a prolonged duration to overcome this drawback. These nanoparticles provide a high surface area and dual charged characteristics that allow for easy electrostatic attachment of growth factors.

“These nanoparticles could prolong delivery of growth factors to human mesenchymal stem cells, which are commonly utilized in cartilage regeneration,” Gaharwar said. “The sustained delivery of growth factors resulted in enhanced stem cell differentiation towards cartilage lineage and can be used for treatment of osteoarthritis.”

Source: https://research.tamu.edu/

This Person Does Not exist

February 19, 2019 Uncategorized

With the help of artificial intelligence, you can manipulate video of public figures to say whatever you like — or now, create images of people’s faces that don’t even exist. You can see this in action on a website called thispersondoesnotexist.com. It uses an algorithm to spit out a single image of a person’s face, and for the most part, they look frighteningly real. Hit refresh in your browser, and the algorithm will generate a new face. Again, these people do not exist.

The website is the creation of software engineer Phillip Wang, and uses a new AI algorithm called StyleGAN, which was developed by researchers at Nvidia. GAN, or Generative Adversarial Networks, is a concept within machine learning which aims to generate images that are indistinguishable from real ones. You can train GANs to remember human faces, as well bedrooms, cars, and cats, and of course, generate images of them.

Wang explained that he created the site to create awareness for the algorithm, and chose faces “because our brains are sensitive to that kind of image.” He added that it costs $150 a month to hire out the server, as he needs a good amount of graphical power to run the website.

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“It also started off as a personal agenda mainly because none of my friends seem to believe this AI phenomenon, and I wanted to convince them,” Wang said. “This was the most shocking presentation I could send them. I then posted it on Facebook and it went viral from there.”

As for the societal impact of this technology, Wang said the more people are aware of it, the better they can be prepared for these images. A powerful enough GAN could be used to create an image of a loved one, which could be used for manipulation, he said. Or a big enough dataset could be used to create all sorts of realistic images, from scratch.

“I think eventually, given enough data, a big enough neural [network] can be teased into dreaming up many different kinds of scenarios,” Wang added.

Source: https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/
AND
https://mashable.com/

3D-Printed On-Demand Drugs

February 18, 2019 Uncategorized

A pharmaceutical scientist at the University of Sussex has published a guide to 3D and 4D printing technology in the biomedical and pharmaceutical arenas. Dr Mohammed Maniruzzaman, a lecturer in Pharmaceutics and Drug Delivery, edited ‘3D and 4D Printing in Biomedical Applications: Process Engineering and Additive Manufacturing’. He also authored sections of the book, alongside an international panel of academic scholars and industry experts. The book, written for pharmaceutical chemists, medicinal chemists, biotechnologists and pharma engineers, covers the key aspects of the printing of medical and pharmaceutical products and the challenges and advances associated with their development. It explores the process optimization, innovation process, engineering and technology behind printed medicine and provides information on biomedical developments such as shape memory polymers, 4D bio-fabrications and bone printing.

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“There are numerous potential applications of this emerging technology. In the future we predict doctors would be able to send a 3D prescription to a Pharmacy, via e-mail or a shared server, and the Pharmacists would then be able to print the required dosage via a 3D printer placed right at the dispensing counter- at the point of need, eliminating the need for paper-based prescriptions. Similarly, we are not far off from when patients would be able to print their own medication on demand by using their small printing unit right at the kitchen or bedside”, explains Dr Maniruzzaman.

“Another example can be that a 3D printer or bio-printer placed right by the operation bed in the operation theatre can print the medical implants required for that patient lying on the bed just right at the point of care. The dimensions and geometry of the implants can be tailored specifically for that patient saving both time and cost for manufacturing. Above all, this would enhance the patient compliance significantly,” he adds.

3D printing has appeared as one of the most promising additive manufacturing techniques across many industries, now including the medical and pharmaceutical arenas. 4D printing is an emerging technology that, simply put, refers to a printed object that transforms over time. It is envisaged this technology will revolutionize biomedical developments.

Source: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/

Ai-Da The Artist Robot

February 15, 2019 Uncategorized

A British arts engineering company says it has created the world’s first AI robot capable of drawing people who pose for it. The humanoid called Ai-Da can sketch subjects using a microchip in her eye and a pencil in her robotic hand – coordinated by AI processes and algorithms. Ai-Da‘s ability as a life-like robot to draw and paint ultra-realistic portraits from sight has never been achieved before, according to the designers in Cornwall. It is the brainchild of art impresario and galleries Aidan Meller.

Named after Ada Lovelace , the first female computer programmer in the world, Ai-Da the robot has been designed and built by Cornish robotics company Engineered Arts who make robots for communication and entertainment.

In April 2018, Engineered Arts created an ultra-realistic robot to promote the Westworld TV show.

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“Pioneering a new AI art movement, we are excited to present Ai-Da, the first professional humanoid artist, who creates her own art, as well as being a performance artist. “As an AI robot, her artwork uses AI processes and algorithms. “The work engages us to think about AI and technological uses and abuses in the world today.” explains Aidan Meller.

Professors and post-Phd students at Oxford University and Goldsmiths are providing Ai-Da with the programming and creative design for her art work. While students at Leeds University are custom designing and programming a bionic arm to create her art work.

Ai-Da has a “RoboThespian” body , featuring an expressive range of movements and she has the ability to talk and respond to questions. The robot also has a “Mesmer” head, featuring realistic silicone skin, 3D printed teeth and gums, integrated eye cameras, as well as hair.

Source: http://fortune.com/
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https://www.mirror.co.uk/

New Revolutionary All-Electric Pickup Truck Accelerates As A Lamborghini

February 14, 2019 Uncategorized

Following the unveiling of the Rivian R1T all-electric pickup truck, we took a closer look at what is becoming one of the most anticipated EVs scheduled to come out in the next two years.As we already reported, the R1T’s specs are unbelievable.

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It’s equipped with 4 electric motors, each a 147 kW power capacity at the wheel, while the total power output can be configured to different levels from 300 kW to 562 kW (input to gearbox). The acceleration from 0 t0 60 MpH takes 3 seconds!

The different power levels match different choices of battery packs, which are another impressive feature since they have the highest capacity of any other passenger electric vehicle out there: 105 kWh, 135 kWh, and 180 kWh. Rivian says that it will translate to “230+ miles, 300+ miles, and 400+ miles” of range on a full charge. They’re talking about a charge rate of up to 160 kW at fast-charging stations and an 11-kW onboard charger for level 2 charging.

The entire powertrain is fitted on a slick modular skateboard platform for the different battery capacity: If this thing can really deliver the specs that Rivian is promising, the vehicle is likely to be a success, but the powertrain is only one part of it. The Rivian R1T is a utility vehicle and it has some great utility features – most of them unique in an electric vehicle. First of all, the truck is a 5-seater and it has a ton of enclosed storage space. The frunk is absolutely huge and Rivian also designed another storage space behind the back seat called a “gear tunnel”:

You can actually sit or stand on the door of the gear tunnel when it’s open and it gives you great access to the roof, which can be fitted with different roof racks. It still leaves plenty of room for the cabin and it doesn’t seem to affect the bed too much — though the size of the bed appears to be the most criticized feature so far.

Amazon and GM are in talks to invest massively in Rivian.

Source: https://products.rivian.com
AND
https://electrek.co/

The Ionocraft, Insect-sized Drone That Flies Without Any Moving Parts

February 13, 2019 Uncategorized

Flying drones can vary in size anywhere from cute little quadcopters that fit in the palm of your hand to giant passenger drones capable of transporting multiple people and their luggage. One thing that almost all of these have in common: the need for moving parts to get them airborne. That’s something a new drone called the ionocraft doesn’t feel the need to adhere to.

Developed by researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, it’s not only described as the smallest flying robot ever made, but one which flies with zero moving parts: meaning no rotors, wings, or similar appendages. Instead, the insect-scale robot relies on atmospheric ion thrusters which allow it to move completely silently.

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“To understand how it works, imagine two asymmetric — [such as] a wire and a plate — electrodes,” said Daniel Drew, currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Mechanical Engineering department at Stanford University. “When a voltage is applied between the two, the electric field will be stronger in the vicinity of the wire as a function of its geometry. If this field is strong enough, an ambient electron can be pulled in with enough kinetic energy to initiate avalanche breakdown through impact ionization. There’s now a stable plasma, glowing purple in the dark, around the top wire. Generated ions will be ejected from this plasma, drifting in the electric field towards the bottom electrode. Along the way, they collide with neutral air molecules and impart momentum, producing a net thrust.”

Source: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/
AND
https://www.digitaltrends.com/

Optical Circuits Up To 100 Times Faster Than Electronic Circuits

February 12, 2019 Uncategorized

Optical circuits are set to revolutionize the performance of many devices. Not only are they 10 to 100 times faster than electronic circuits, but they also consume a lot less power. Within these circuits, light waves are controlled by extremely thin surfaces called metasurfaces that concentrate the waves and guide them as needed. The metasurfaces contain regularly spaced nanoparticles that can modulate electromagnetic waves over sub-micrometer wavelength scales.

Metasurfaces could enable engineers to make flexible photonic circuits and ultra-thin optics for a host of applications, ranging from flexible tablet computers to solar panels with enhanced light-absorption characteristics. They could also be used to create flexible sensors for direct placement on a patient’s skin, for example, in order to measure things like pulse and blood pressure or to detect specific chemical compounds.

The catch is that creating metasurfaces using the conventional method, lithography, is a fastidious process that takes several hours and must be done in a cleanroom. But EPFL engineers from the Laboratory of Photonic Materials and Fiber Devices (FIMAP) in Switzerland have now developed a simple method for making them in just a few minutes at low temperatures—or sometimes even at room temperature—with no need for a cleanroom. The EPFL‘s School of Engineering method produces dielectric glass metasurfaces that can be either rigid or flexible. The results of their research appear in Nature Nanotechnology.

The new method employs a natural process already used in fluid mechanics: dewetting. This occurs when a thin film of material is deposited on a substrate and then heated. The heat causes the film to retract and break apart into tiny nanoparticles.

“Dewetting is seen as a problem in manufacturing—but we decided to use it to our advantage,” says Fabien Sorin, the study’s lead author and the head of FIMAP.

With their method, the engineers were able to create dielectric glass metasurfaces, rather than metallic metasurfaces, for the first time. The advantage of dielectric metasurfaces is that they absorb very little light and have a high refractive index, making it possible to modulate the light that propagates through them.

Source: https://phys.org/

Micromotors Deliver Oral Vaccines

February 11, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers are working on new generations of oral vaccines for infectious diseases. But to be effective, oral vaccines must survive digestion and reach immune cells within the intestinal wall. As a step in this direction, UC San Diego nanoengineering researchers have developed oral vaccines powered by micromotors that target the mucus layer of the intestine.

The work appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters. It’s a collaboration between the labs of nanoengineering professors Joseph Wang and Liangfang Zhang at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering.

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The lack of needles is one reason oral vaccines are attractive. Another reason: oral vaccines can generate a broad immune response by stimulating immune cells within the mucus layer of the intestine to produce a special class of antibody called immunoglobulin A (IgA). The NanoLetters paper documents the team’s efforts to use magnesium particles as tiny motors to deliver an oral vaccine against the bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus. When coated over most of their surfaces with titanium dioxide, magnesium microparticles use water as fuel to generate hydrogen bubbles that power their propulsion.

To develop the oral vaccine, the researchers coated magnesium micromotors with red blood cell membranes that displayed the Staphylococcal α-toxin, along with a layer of chitosan to help them stick to the intestinal mucus. Then, they added an enteric coating that protects drugs from the acidic conditions of the stomach.

The micromotors safely passed through the stomach to the intestine, at which point the enteric coating dissolved, activating the motors. Imaging of mice that had been given the vaccine showed that the micromotors accumulated in the intestinal wall much better than non-motorized particles. The micromotors also stimulated the production of about ten times more IgA antibodies against the Staphylococcal α-toxin than the static particles.

Source: http://jacobsschool.ucsd.edu/

Ruthenium-based Catalyst Outperforms Platinum To Produce Hydrogen

February 8, 2019 Uncategorized

A novel ruthenium-based catalyst developed at UC Santa Cruz has shown markedly better performance than commercial platinum catalysts in alkaline water electrolysis for hydrogen production. The catalyst is a nanostructured composite material composed of carbon nanowires with ruthenium atoms bonded to nitrogen and carbon to form active sites within the carbon matrix.

The electrochemical splitting of water to produce hydrogen is a crucial step in the development of hydrogen as a clean, environmentally friendly fuel (for car or heating system). Much of the effort to reduce the cost and increase the efficiency of this process has focused on finding alternatives to expensive platinum-based catalysts. At UC Santa Cruz, researchers led by Shaowei Chen, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, have been investigating catalysts made by incorporating ruthenium and nitrogen into carbon-based nanocomposite materials. Their new findings, published February 7 in Nature Communications, not only demonstrate the impressive performance of their ruthenium-based catalyst but also provide insights into the mechanisms involved, which may lead to further improvements.

Electron microscopy of carbon nanowires co-doped with ruthenium and nitrogen shows ruthenium nanoparticles decorating the surface of the nanowires. Elemental mapping analysis shows individual ruthenium atoms within the carbon matrix (red arrows, below).

“This is a clear demonstration that ruthenium can have remarkable activity in catalyzing the production of hydrogen from water,” Chen said. “We also characterized the material on the atomic scale, which helped us understand the mechanisms, and we can use these results for the rational design and engineering of ruthenium-based catalysts.”

Electron microscopy and elemental mapping analysis of the material showed ruthenium nanoparticles as well as individual ruthenium atoms within the carbon matrix. Surprisingly, the researchers found that the main sites of catalytic activity were single ruthenium atoms rather than ruthenium nanoparticles.

Source: https://news.ucsc.edu/

Facial Recognition And AI Identify 90% Of Rare Genetic Disorders

February 7, 2019 Uncategorized

A facial recognition scan could become part of a standard medical checkup in the not-too-distant future. Researchers have shown how algorithms can help identify facial characteristics linked to genetic disorders, potentially speeding up clinical diagnoses.

In a study published this month in the journal Nature Medicine, US company FDNA published new tests of their software, DeepGestalt. Just like regular facial recognition software, the company trained their algorithms by analyzing a dataset of faces. FDNA collected more than 17,000 images covering 200 different syndromes using a smartphone app it developed named Face2Gene.

Rare genetic disorders are collectively common, affecting 8 percent of the population

In two first tests, DeepGestalt was used to look for specific disorders: Cornelia de Lange syndrome and Angelman syndrome. Both of these are complex conditions that affect intellectual development and mobility. They also have distinct facial traits, like arched eyebrows that meet in the middle for Cornelia de Lange syndrome, and unusually fair skin and hair for Angelman syndrome.

When tasked with distinguishing between pictures of patients with one syndrome or another, random syndrome, DeepGestalt was more than 90 percent accurate, beating expert clinicians, who were around 70 percent accurate on similar tests. When tested on 502 images showing individuals with 92 different syndromes, DeepGestalt identified the target condition in its guess of 10 possible diagnoses more than 90 percent of the time.

Source: https://www.theverge.com

Self-Healing Coating Protects Metals From Corrosion

February 6, 2019 Uncategorized

It’s hard to believe that a tiny crack could take down a gigantic metal structure. But sometimes bridges collapse, pipelines rupture and fuselages detach from airplanes due to hard-to-detect corrosion in tiny cracks, scratches and dents. A Northwestern University team has developed a new coating strategy for metal that self-heals within seconds when scratched, scraped or cracked. The novel material could prevent these tiny defects from turning into localized corrosion, which can cause major structures to fail.

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“Localized corrosion is extremely dangerous,” said Jiaxing Huang, who led the research. “It is hard to prevent, hard to predict and hard to detect, but it can lead to catastrophic failure.” Huang is a professor of materials science and engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering.

When damaged by scratches and cracks, Huang’s patent-pending system readily flows and reconnects to rapidly heal right before the eyes. The researchers demonstrated that the material can heal repeatedly — even after scratching the exact same spot nearly 200 times in a row.While a few self-healing coatings already exist, those systems typically work for nanometer- to micron-sized damages. To develop a coating that can heal larger scratches in the millimeter-scale, Huang and his team looked to fluid. “When a boat cuts through water, the water goes right back together,” Huang said. “The ‘cut’ quickly heals because water flows readily. We were inspired to realize that fluids, such as oils, are the ultimate self-healing system.” But common oils flows too readily, Huang noted. So he and his team needed to develop a system with contradicting properties: fluidic enough to flow automatically but not so fluidic that it drips off the metal’s surface.

The team met the challenge by creating a network of lightweight particles — in this case graphene capsules — to thicken the oil. The network fixes the oil coating, keeping it from dripping. But when the network is damaged by a crack or scratch, it releases the oil to flow readily and reconnect. Huang said the material can be made with any hollow, lightweight particle — not just graphene. “The particles essentially immobilize the oil film,” Huang said. “So it stays in place.”

The study was published in Research, the first Science Partner Journal recently launched by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in collaboration with the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST).

Source: https://news.northwestern.edu/

A Super Protein Brings The Equivalence Of Meat For Vegeterian Diet

February 5, 2019 Uncategorized

Protein is what’s for dinner, but only if the world’s biggest food companies can keep up. The rise in global appetites for everything from meat to beans and peas is creating what experts call a “perfect storm” for environmental concern, as farmers must increasingly crank out more food with less land and water.

A new startup has one possible solution. called Sustainable Bioproducts, the company sources protein from ingredients found deep inside an unlikely source: the searing volcanic hot springs in Yellowstone National Park. To make the product, the company brews it up using a process similar to that used to make beer.

What comes out, explained CEO Thomas Jonas , is a neutral-tasting, naturally high-protein substance that can either be mixed into yogurt for an alternative to the Greek variety or shaped into patties for the next plant-based burger. Plus, the startup’s product is naturally rich in some of the same key amino acids that the body needs to function. Often found in animal products like eggs, these protein building blocks are especially tough to procure from a vegan or vegetarian diet.

“What we have here is a super protein,” Jonas said. “And it comes from one of the most pristine wild places on the planet.”

On Monday, the startup launched publicly with $33 million in funds from Silicon Valley-based venture firm 1955 Capital and the venture arms of two leading global food suppliers — grain company Archer Daniels Midland and multinational food producer Danone. Based in Chicago, the startup is using the funds to build a production plant and cook up several prototype products.

Key to the startup’s operation, Jonas said, is that it will require a fraction of the natural resources needed for making other proteins like meat and nuts. In place of wasteful factory farms or large parcels of land, all they need, according to Jonas, is essentially a series of brewer’s vats. The company’s core technology is the process it uses to ferment a set of unique microorganisms first discovered in Yellowstone by Montana State University scientist Mark Kozubal nearly a decade ago. Now serving as the startup’s chief science officer, Kozubal came across the organisms as part of a research project supported by grants from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, and NASA. Sustainable Bioproducts also independently received grants from all three organizations.

Source: https://www.sustainablebioproducts.com/
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https://www.businessinsider.com/

How To Eradicate Breast Tumors In 11 Days

February 4, 2019 Uncategorized

Despite unbelievable advances in medical science in recent decades, breast cancer kills. Approximately 1 in 8 American women will develop breast cancer cells during the course of their lifetime.

Finding a cure is imperative, and as such, fervent research continues. At the European Breast Cancer Conference in Amsterdam, scientists presented a pair of drugs with an astounding claim: this treatment can eradicate some types of breast cancer in only 11 days, eliminating the need for chemotherapy.

Chemotherapy, whilst an amazing feat of medical-scientific engineering, is known for its uncomfortable and sometimes debilitating side effects. Women undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer treatment may lose their hair, suffer extreme fatigue, and even loss of cognitive function. Cancers may also recur after long, painful months of chemotherapy treatment.

The new trial, raising hopes across the medical community, is focused upon two drugs: Herceptin and Lapatinib. The drugs, in tandem, target a protein known as HER2, which is instrumental in stimulating the growth of certain cancer cells.

A pair of drugs can dramatically shrink and eliminate some breast cancers in just 11 days, UK doctors have shown.

They both target HER2 – a protein that fuels the growth of some women’s breast cancers. Herceptin works on the surface of cancerous cells while lapatinib is able to penetrate inside the cell to disable HER2.

The study, which also took place at NHS hospitals in Manchester, gave the treatment to women with tumours measuring between 1 and 3cm. But Prof Bliss believes the findings could eventually mean some women do not need chemotherapy.

In less than two weeks of treatment, the cancer disappeared entirely in 11% of cases, and in a further 17% they were smaller than 5mm.

Current therapy for HER2 positive breast cancers is surgery, followed by chemotherapy and Herceptin. But Prof Bliss believes the findings could eventually mean some women do not need chemotherapy.

Source: https://www.bbc.com

How To ConVert Waste Heat Into Electricity

February 1, 2019 Uncategorized

Thermoelectric materials, capable of transforming heat into electricity, are very promising when converting residual heat into electrical energy, since they allow us to utilize hardly usable or almost lost thermal energy in an efficient way. Researchers at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) have created a new thermoelectric material: a paper capable of converting waste heat into electricity. These devices could be used to generate electricity from residual heat to feed sensors in the field of the Internet of Things, Agriculture 4.0 or Industry 4.0.

“This device is composed of cellulose, produced in situ in the laboratory by bacteria, with small amounts of a conductor nanomaterial, carbon nanotubes, using a sustainable and environmentally friendly strategy” explains Mariano Campoy-Quiles, researcher at the ICMAB.

“In the near future, they could be used as wearable devices, in medical or sports applications, for example. And if the efficiency of the device was even more optimized, this material could lead to intelligent thermal insulators or to hybrid photovoltaic-thermoelectric power generation systems” predicts Campoy-Quiles. In addition “due to the high flexibility of the cellulose and to the scalability of the process, these devices could be used in applications where the residual heat source has unusual forms or extensive areas, as they could be completely covered with this material” indicates Anna Roig, researcher at the ICMAB.

Since bacterial cellulose can be home made, perhaps we are facing the first step towards a new energy paradigm, where users will be able to make their own electric generators. We are still far away, but this study is a beginning. We have to start somewhere. “Instead of making a material for energy, we cultivate it” explains Mariano Campoy-Quiles, a researcher of this study. “Bacteria, dispersed in an aqueous culture medium containing sugars and carbon nanotubes, produce the nanocellulose fibers that will end up forming the device, in which the carbon nanotubes are embedded” continues Campoy-Quiles.”We obtain a mechanically resistant, flexible and deformable material, thanks to the cellulose fibers, and with a high electrical conductivity, thanks to the carbon nanotubes,” adds Anna Laromaine, researcher at the ICMAB. “The intention is to approach the concept of circular economy, using sustainable materials that are not toxic for the environment, which are used in small amounts, and which can be recycled and reused,“says Roig.

The study has been published in the Energy & Environmental Science journal.

Source: http://icmab.es/

Invisible Plastic For Super Efficient Solar Panels

January 31, 2019 Uncategorized

Antireflection (AR) coatings on plastics have a multitude of practical applications, including glare reduction on eyeglasses, computer monitors and the display on your smart-phone when outdoors. Now, researchers at Penn State have developed an AR coating that improves on existing coatings to the extent that it can make transparent plastics, such as Plexiglas, virtually invisible.

Plastic dome coated with a new antireflection coating (right), and uncoated dome (left)

“This discovery came about as we were trying to make higher-efficiency solar panels,” said Chris Giebink, associate professor of electrical engineering, Penn State. “Our approach involved concentrating light onto small, high-efficiency solar cells using plastic lenses, and we needed to minimize their reflection loss.”

They needed an antireflection coating that worked well over the entire solar spectrum and at multiple angles as the sun crossed the sky. They also needed a coating that could stand up to weather over long periods of time outdoors. “We would have liked to find an off-the-shelf solution, but there wasn’t one that met our performance requirements,” he said. “So, we started looking for our own solution.”

That was a tall order. Although it is comparatively easy to make a coating that will eliminate reflection at a particular wavelength or in a particular direction, one that could fit all their criteria did not exist. For instance, eyeglass AR coatings are targeted to the narrow visible portion of the spectrum. But the solar spectrum is about five times as broad as the visible spectrum, so such a coating would not perform well for a concentrating solar cell system.

Reflections occur when light travels from one medium, such as air, into a second medium, in this case plastic. If the difference in their refractive index, which specifies how fast light travels in a particular material, is large — air has a refractive index of 1 and plastic 1.5 — then there will be a lot of reflection. The lowest index for a natural coating material such as magnesium fluoride or Teflon is about 1.3. The refractive index can be graded — slowly varied — between 1.3 and 1.5 by blending different materials, but the gap between 1.3 and 1 remains.

In a paper recently posted online ahead of print in the journal Nano Letters, Giebink and coauthors describe a new process to bridge the gap between Teflon and air. They used a sacrificial molecule to create nanoscale pores in evaporated Teflon, thereby creating a graded index Teflon-air film that fools light into seeing a smooth transition from 1 to 1.5, eliminating essentially all reflections.

“The interesting thing about Teflon, which is a polymer, is when you heat it up in a crucible, the large polymer chains cleave into smaller fragments that are small enough to volatize and send up a vapor flux. When these land on a substrate they can repolymerize and form Teflon,” Giebink explained.

“We’ve been interacting with a number of companies that are looking for improved antireflection coatings for plastic, and some of the applications have been surprising,” he said. “They range from eliminating glare from the plastic domes that protect security cameras to eliminating stray reflections inside virtual/augmented -reality headsets.”

Source: https://news.psu.edu/

Metallic Wood

January 30, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers at the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and the University of Cambridge have built a sheet of nickel with nanoscale pores that make it as strong as titanium, but four to five times lighter. The empty space of the pores, and the self-assembly process in which they’re made, make the porous metal akin to a natural material, such as wood. And just as the porosity of wood grain serves the biological function of transporting energy, the empty space in the researchers’ “metallic wood” could be infused with other materials. Infusing the scaffolding with anode and cathode materials would enable this metallic wood to serve double duty: a plane wing or prosthetic leg that’s also a battery. The study was led by James Pikul, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at Penn Engineering.

Metallic wood foil on a plastic backing

“The reason we call it metallic wood is not just its density, which is about that of wood, but its cellular nature,” Pikul says. “Cellular materials are porous; if you look at wood grain, that’s what you’re seeing—parts that are thick and dense and made to hold the structure, and parts that are porous and made to support biological functions, like transport to and from cells.”

The study has been published in Nature Scientific Reports,

Source: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/

Artificial Skin Opens SuperHuman Perception

January 29, 2019 Uncategorized

A new type of sensor could lead to artificial skin that someday helps burn victims ‘feel’ and safeguards the rest of us, University of Connecticut (UConn) researchers suggest in a paper in Advanced Materials.

Our skin’s ability to perceive pressure, heat, cold, and vibration is a critical safety function that most people take for granted. But burn victims, those with prosthetic limbs, and others who have lost skin sensitivity for one reason or another, can’t take it for granted, and often injure themselves unintentionally. Chemists Islam Mosa from UConn, and James Rusling from UConn and UConn Health, along with University of Toronto engineer Abdelsalam Ahmed, wanted to create a sensor that can mimic the sensing properties of skin. Such a sensor would need to be able to detect pressure, temperature, and vibration. But perhaps it could do other things too, the researchers thought.

“It would be very cool if it had abilities human skin does not; for example, the ability to detect magnetic fields, sound waves, and abnormal behaviors,” said Mosa.

Mosa and his colleagues created such a sensor with a silicone tube wrapped in a copper wire and filled with a special fluid made of tiny particles of iron oxide just one billionth of a meter long, called nanoparticles. The nanoparticles rub around the inside of the silicone tube and create an electric current. The copper wire surrounding the silicone tube picks up the current as a signal. When this tube is bumped by something experiencing pressure, the nanoparticles move and the electric signal changes. Sound waves also create waves in the nanoparticle fluid, and the electric signal changes in a different way than when the tube is bumped.

The researchers found that magnetic fields alter the signal too, in a way distinct from pressure or sound waves. Even a person moving around while carrying the sensor changes the electrical current, and the team found they could distinguish between the electrical signals caused by walking, running, jumping, and swimming.

Metal skin might sound like a superhero power, but this skin wouldn’t make the wearer Colossus from the X-men. Rather, Mosa and his colleagues hope it could help burn victims “feel” again, and perhaps act as an early warning for workers exposed to dangerously high magnetic fields. Because the rubber exterior is completely sealed and waterproof, it could also serve as a wearable monitor to alert parents if their child fell into deep water in a pool, for example.

Source: https://today.uconn.edu/

How To Make Fuel From Tree Waste

January 28, 2019 Uncategorized

Might tree roots, twigs and branches one day be used to power cars? That’s what a Swedish researcher is hoping after developing a pulp byproduct that – on a modest scale – does just that.

Chemical engineering scientist Christian Hulteberg, from Lund University, has used the black liquor residue from pulp and paper manufacturing to create a polymer called lignin.

After purification and filtration, that is then turned into a gasoline mixture.

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“We’re actually using the stuff of the wood that they don’t use when they make paper and pulp… It adds value to low-value components of the tree,” he told Reuters.

In environmental terms, he says that gives it an advantage over other biofuels such as ethanol. “A lot of the controversy with ethanol production has been the use of feedstock that you can actually eat,” he said.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Atom-Thin Processor

January 25, 2019 Uncategorized

An international team of researchers has reported a breakthrough in fabricating atom-thin processors — a discovery that could have far-reaching impacts on nanoscale chip production and in labs across the globe where scientists are exploring 2D materials for ever-smaller and –faster semiconductors.

The team, headed by New York University Tandon School of Engineering Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Elisa Riedo, outlined the research results in the latest issue of Nature Electronics.They demonstrate that lithography using a probe heated above 100 degrees Celsius outperformed standard methods for fabricating metal electrodes on 2D semiconductors such as molybdenum disulfide (MoS₂). Such transitional metals are among the materials that scientists believe may supplant silicon for atomically small chips.

The team’s new fabrication method — called thermal scanning probe lithography (t-SPL) — offers a number of advantages over today’s electron beam lithography (EBL). First, thermal lithography significantly improves the quality of the 2D transistors, offsetting the Schottky barrier, which hampers the flow of electrons at the intersection of metal and the 2D substrate. Also, unlike EBL, the thermal lithography allows chip designers to easily image the 2D semiconductor and then pattern the electrodes where desired. Also, t-SPL fabrication systems promise significant initial savings as well as operational costs: They dramatically reduce power consumption by operating in ambient conditions, eliminating the need to produce high-energy electrons and to generate an ultra-high vacuum. Finally, this thermal fabrication method can be easily scaled up for industrial production by using parallel thermal probes.

Source: https://engineering.nyu.edu/

Lead-Free Perovskites Boost Generation Of Electric Current

January 24, 2019 Uncategorized

Lead-based perovskites are quite promising in applications of large-scale photovoltaic technology. However, toxicity is one of the crucial issues in these materials.

In the search for Lead-free perovskite, UNIST scientists have taken a major step forward toward a new generation of solar cells. They have developed new perovskite material that works as a charge regenerator with dye‐sensitized solar cells and have higher efficiency and stability.

Scientists used the vacancy‐ordered double perovskite (Cs2SnI6). They primarily examined the charge transfer mechanism of Cs2SnI6 with the aim of clarifying the function of its surface state.

For this reason, a 3‐electrode system was produced to observe charge exchange through the surface state of Cs2SnI6. “Due to a high volume of electrical charges in organic dyes that show high connectivity with the surface state of Cs2SnI6, more electric current was generated,” said Byung-Man Kim from the Department of Chemistry at UNIST. “Consequently, Cs2SnI6 shows efficient charge transfer with a thermodynamically favorable charge acceptor level, achieving a 79% enhancement in the photocurrent density compared with that of a conventional liquid electrolyte.”

Source: http://news.unist.ac.kr/

Nanoparticle Targets Tumor-infiltrating Immune Cells, Flips Switch Telling Them To Fight

January 22, 2019 Uncategorized

Immunotherapy’s promise in the fight against cancer drew international attention after two scientists won a Nobel Prize this year for unleashing the ability of the immune system to eliminate tumor cells.

But their approach, which keeps cancer cells from shutting off the immune system’s powerful T-cells before they can fight tumors, is just one way to use the body’s natural defenses against deadly disease. A team of Vanderbilt University bioengineers today announced a major breakthrough in another: penetrating tumor-infiltrating immune cells and flipping on a switch that tells them to start fighting. The team designed a nanoscale particle to do that and found early success using it on human melanoma tissue.

“Tumors are pretty conniving and have evolved many ways to evade detection from our immune system,” said John T. Wilson, assistant professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and biomedical engineering. “Our goal is to rearm the immune system with the tools it needs to destroy cancer cells. “Checkpoint blockade has been a major breakthrough, but despite the huge impact it continues to have, we also know that there are a lot of patients who don’t respond to these therapies. We’ve developed a nanoparticle to find tumors and deliver a specific type of molecule that’s produced naturally by our bodies to fight off cancer.”

That molecule is called cGAMP, and it’s the primary way to switch on what’s known as the stimulator of interferon genes (STING) pathway: a natural mechanism the body uses to mount an immune response that can fight viruses or bacteria or clear out malignant cells. Wilson said his team’s nanoparticle delivers cGAMP in a way that jump-starts the immune response inside the tumor, resulting in the generation of T-cells that can destroy the tumor from the inside and also improve responses to checkpoint blockade.

While the Vanderbilt team’s research focused on melanoma, their work also indicates that this could impact treatment of many cancers, Wilson said, including breast, kidney, head and neck, neuroblastoma, colorectal and lung cancer.

The findings are reported in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.

Source: https://news.vanderbilt.edu/

Nanorobots Deliver Drugs Directly To Diseased Tissue

January 21, 2019 Uncategorized

Scientists at EPFL and ETH Zurich in Switzerland have developed tiny elastic robots that can change shape depending on their surroundings. Modeled after bacteria and fully biocompatible, these robots optimize their movements so as to get to hard-to-reach areas of the human body. They stand to revolutionize targeted drug delivery.

One day we may be able to ingest tiny robots that deliver drugs directly to diseased tissue, thanks to research being carried out at EPFL and ETH Zurich.

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The group of scientists – led by Selman Sakar at EPFL and Bradley Nelson at ETH Zurich – drew inspiration from bacteria to design smart, biocompatible microrobots that are highly flexible. Because these devices are able to swim through fluids and modify their shape when needed, they can pass through narrow blood vessels and intricate systems without compromising on speed or maneuverability. They are made of hydrogel nanocomposites that contain magnetic nanoparticles allowing them to be controlled via an electromagnetic field.

In an article appearing in Science Advances, the scientists describe the method they have developed for “programming” the robot’s shape so that it can easily travel through fluids that are dense, viscous or moving at rapid speeds. When we think of robots, we generally think of bulky machines equipped with complex systems of electronics, sensors, batteries and actuators. But on a microscopic scale, robots are entirely different.

Fabricating miniaturized robots presents a host of challenges, which the scientists addressed using an origami-based folding method. Their novel locomotion strategy employs embodied intelligence, which is an alternative to the classical computation paradigm that is performed by embedded electronic systems. “Our robots have a special composition and structure that allow them to adapt to the characteristics of the fluid they are moving through. For instance, if they encounter a change in viscosity or osmotic concentration, they modify their shape to maintain their speed and maneuverability without losing control of the direction of motion,” says Sakar.

These deformations can be “programmed” in advance so as to maximize performance without the use of cumbersome sensors or actuators. The robots can be either controlled using an electromagnetic field or left to navigate on their own through cavities by utilizing fluid flow. Either way, they will automatically morph into the most efficient shape.

Source: https://actu.epfl.ch/

New Cheap Test Boosts Detection Of Diseases

January 18, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers at Queen’s University Belfast have developed a highly innovative new enzyme biomarker test that has the potential to indicate diseases and bacterial contamination saving time, money and possibly lives. The test, developed by scientists at the Institute for Global Food Security at Queen’s, can detect enzyme markers of disease known as proteases in humans, animals and food products.

Proteases are crucial for microorganism growth and are responsible for the progression of many diseases. Levels of proteases can be highly elevated in the urine of patients with diabetic kidney disease, or at the sites of infected wounds. Similarly, in cows, an elevation of proteases in their milk can reveal diseases such as bovine mastitis, a type of mammary gland infection. In food, proteases produced by bacteria contaminated in meat and dairy products can lead to rancidity, as well as decreased shelf life and quality. Current protease detection methods are costly, time-consuming and are not always effective. Scientists at Queen’s Institute for Global Food Security have developed a nanosensor which has resulted in sensitive, fast and cost effective protease detection in milk and urine.

“Not only is the test cheap to produce, but it can be used anywhere and is not reliant on laboratory conditions. Eliminating the need to carry out tests in a laboratory setting is life-changing. As well as being cost-effective, it means faster diagnosis,” says Dr Claire McVey, Queen’s researcher and co-author on the study.

The gold-nanoparticle based nanosensor devised by Queen’s researchers indicates when proteases are present through a visible colour-change reaction. Gold nanoparticles are well known for their capability in speeding up the oxidization of a chemical called tetramethylbenzidine (TMB), visible through a vivid blue-colour formation.

“When we add TMB to the casein-covered gold nanoparticles, we can tell virtually instantly if proteases are present by whether or not the solution turns blue. Normally such testing takes much longer,” explains Dr Cuong Cao, the lead academic on the study.

Using this approach, proteases can be detected within 90 minutes without the need for complicated or expensive laboratory equipment.

The findings have been published in the journal Nano Research,

Source: https://www.qub.ac.uk/

Electronic Braille: Reimagined

January 17, 2019 Uncategorized

The British company Bristol Braille Technology is developing Canute 360, the world’s first multi-line digital Braille e-reader. Developed with, by, and for the blind community, Canute 360 will make reading digital Braille books affordable, practical and enjoyable.

Canute 360 is a standalone desktop multi-line Braille e-reader. Compatible with all six-dot Braille codes, Canute 360 can condense an entire Braille library into one device.

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Features:

360 cells: nine lines of forty characters of Braille
Supports all six-dot Braille codes (including music, maths and foreign languages) and tactile graphics
Dimensions: 36.5 X 18.5 X 8 cm (approx 14 x 7 x 1.5 inches), 2.8KG
2 X USB A; 1 X USB A; Video out; SD Card slot;
3.55mm audio out
3 page navigation buttons
9 line select keys
Contextual help button

Source: http://www.bristolbraille.co.uk

Potential Revolutionnary Treatment For Alzheimer’s

January 16, 2019 Uncategorized

Leaky capillaries in the brain portend early onset of Alzheimer’s disease as they signal cognitive impairment before hallmark toxic proteins appear, new USC research shows. The findings, which appear in Nature Medicine, could help with earlier diagnosis and suggest new targets for drugs that could slow or prevent the onset of the disease.

The number of Americans with Alzheimer’s is expected to more than double to about 14 million in 40 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Five Alzheimer’s drugs are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to temporarily help with memory and thinking problems, but none treats the underlying cause of the disease or slow its progression. Researchers believe that successful treatment will eventually involve a combination of drugs aimed at multiple targets.

USC’s five-year study, which involved 161 older adults, showed that people with the worst memory problems also had the most leakage in their brain’s blood vessels — regardless of whether abnormal proteins amyloid and tau were present.

This image depicts a blood vessel in the brain that has become leaky, or permeable.

“The fact that we’re seeing the blood vessels leaking, independent of tau and independent of amyloid, when people have cognitive impairment on a mild level, suggests it could be a totally separate process or a very early process,” said senior author Berislav Zlokovic, director of the Zilkha Neurogenetic Institute at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. “That was surprising that this blood-brain barrier breakdown is occurring independently.”

In healthy brains, the cells that make up blood vessels fit together so tightly they form a barrier that keeps stray cells, pathogens, metals and other unhealthy substances from reaching brain tissue. Scientists call this the blood-brain barrier. In some aging brains, the seams between cells loosen, and the blood vessels become permeable.

“If the blood-brain barrier is not working properly, then there is the potential for damage,” said co-author Arthur Toga, director of the USC Mark and Mary Stevens Neuroimaging and Informatics Institute at the Keck School of Medicine. “It suggests the vessels aren’t properly providing the nutrients and blood flow that the neurons need. And you have the possibility of toxic proteins getting in.”

Participants in the study had their memory and thinking ability assessed through a series of tasks and tests, resulting in measures of cognitive function and a “clinical dementia rating score.” Individuals diagnosed with disorders that might account for cognitive impairment were excluded. The researchers used neuroimaging and cerebral spinal fluid analysis to measure the permeability, or leakiness, of capillaries serving the brain’s hippocampus, and found a strong correlation between impairment and leakage.

“The results were really kind of eye-opening,” said first author Daniel Nation, an assistant professor of psychology at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. “It didn’t matter whether people had amyloid or tau pathology; they still had cognitive impairment.”

Source: https://news.usc.edu/

How To Drive A Wheelchair With Facial Expressions

January 15, 2019 Uncategorized

Combustible engines. Wind power. Solar power. Now, apparently, we have face power.

A Brazilian startup called HOO.BOX Robotics is developing a wheelchair that’s completely powered by facial-recognition technology. In other words, your pretty smile actually can move you forward in life.
More seriously, the HOO.BOX team envisions this tech-powered wheelchair will be extremely useful for people suffer from conditions that limit the use of their hands and arms, such as cerebral palsy or results of a stroke. The prototype, called Wheelie, was initially developed by researchers at Brazil’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, State University of Campinas (FEEC / Unicamp).

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Wheelie utilizes a laptop and Intel’s RealSense facial-recognition camera to capture and decipher nearly 80 points from person’s face. The software can be programed to recognize facial movements such as a full smile, half smile, wrinkled nose, kissy face, tongue out or puffed-out cheeks and then assign those actions to driving the wheelchair forward, backward, turning left or right, or stopping it.

The trick to making this practical was finding facial cues that were comfortable for, say, stroke patients to perform, while also not so common as to limit the user’s ability to have a conversation while driving.

Source: http://www.hoo-box.com/
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https://www.foxnews.com/

Hyundai’s New Car Has Legs

January 14, 2019 Uncategorized

We’ve all read the studies—or heard our doctors’ diatribes—telling us to stop sitting all day, stand up, and start walking around. The movement has been going on for years. But for the first time, it appears as if the benefits of walking has trickled down from humans to cars.

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At CES Monday, Hyundai introduced Americans to the Elevate, a walking concept vehicle with four robotic, bendable legs and a look made for the movies. (If Transformers director Michael Bay had a “meltdown” over a teleprompter issue at CES in 2014, we wonder what his reaction would have been to these puppies.)

Although Hyundai didn’t present a full-scale prototype, the mock-up design of the Elevate as well as its intended purpose to rapidly respond to natural disasters and humanitarian crises are impressive.

“When a tsunami or earthquake hits, current rescue vehicles can only deliver first responders to the edge of the debris field. They have to go the rest of the way by foot. Elevate can drive to the scene and climb right over flood debris or crumbled concrete,” John Suh, Vice President and Head of Hyundai CRADLE, said in a press release.

“This technology goes well beyond emergency situations. People living with disabilities worldwide that don’t have access to an ADA ramp could hail an autonomous Hyundai Elevate that could walk up to their front door, level itself, and allow their wheelchair to roll right in,” Suh continued. “The possibilities are limitless.”

Source: http://fortune.com/

Cartilage-like Material Boosts Batteries Durability

January 11, 2019 Uncategorized

Your knees and your smartphone battery have some surprisingly similar needs, a University of Michigan professor has discovered, and that new insight has led to a “structural battery” prototype that incorporates a cartilage-like material to make the batteries highly durable and easy to shape.The idea behind structural batteries is to store energy in structural components—the wing of a drone or the bumper of an electric vehicle, for example. They’ve been a long-term goal for researchers and industry because they could reduce weight and extend range. But structural batteries have so far been heavy, short-lived or unsafe.

In a study published in ACS Nano, the researchers describe how they made a damage-resistant rechargeable zinc battery with a cartilage-like solid electrolyte. They showed that the batteries can replace the top casings of several commercial drones. The prototype cells can run for more than 100 cycles at 90 percent capacity, and withstand hard impacts and even stabbing without losing voltage or starting a fire.

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“A battery that is also a structural component has to be light, strong, safe and have high capacity. Unfortunately, these requirements are often mutually exclusive,” said Nicholas Kotov, the Joseph B. and Florence V. Cejka Professor of Engineering, who led the research.

To sidestep these trade-offs, the researchers used zinc—a legitimate structural material—and branched nanofibers that resemble the collagen fibers of cartilage. Ahmet Emrehan Emre, a biomedical engineering PhD candidate, sandwiches a thin sheet of a cartilage-like material between a layer of zinc on top and a layer of manganese oxide underneath to form a battery.

“Nature does not have zinc batteries, but it had to solve a similar problem,” Kotov said. “Cartilage turned out to be a perfect prototype for an ion-transporting material in batteries. It has amazing mechanics, and it serves us for a very long time compared to how thin it is. The same qualities are needed from solid electrolytes separating cathodes and anodes in batteries.”

In our bodies, cartilage combines mechanical strength and durability with the ability to let water, nutrients and other materials move through it. These qualities are nearly identical to those of a good solid electrolyte, which has to resist damage from dendrites while also letting ions flow from one electrode to the other.

Source: https://news.umich.edu/

Cheap Nano-Catalysts For Better Fuel Cells

January 10, 2019 Uncategorized

Researchers at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST) in Korea have developed nano-catalysts that can reduce the overall cost of clean energy fuel cells, according to a study published in the Journal of Applied Catalysis B: Environmental.

Polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) transform the chemical energy produced during a reaction between hydrogen fuel and oxygen into electrical energy. While PEMFCs are a promising source of clean energy that is self-contained and mobile – much like the alkaline fuel cells used on the US Space Shuttle – they currently rely on expensive materials. Also, the substances used for catalysing these chemical reactions degrade, raising concerns about reusability and viability.

DGIST energy materials scientist Sangaraju Shanmugam and his team have developed active and durable catalysts for PEMFCs that can reduce the overall manufacturing costs. The catalysts were nitrogen-doped carbon nanorods with ceria and cobalt nanoparticles on their surfaces; essentially carbon nanorods containing nitrogen, cobalt and ceria. Ceria (CeO2), a combination of cerium and oxygen, is a cheap and environmentally friendly semiconducting material that has excellent oxygen reduction abilities.

The fibres were made using a technique known as electrospinning, in which a high voltage is applied to a liquid droplet, forming a charged liquid jet that then dries midflight into uniform, nanosized particles. The researchers’ analyses confirmed that the ceria and cobalt particles were uniformly distributed in the carbon nanorods and that the catalysts showed enhanced electricity-producing capacity.

The ceria-supported cobalt on nitrogen-doped carbon nanorod catalyst was found to be more active and durable than cobalt-only nitrogen-doped carbon nanorods and platinum/carbon. They were explored in two important types of chemical reactions for energy conversion and storage: oxygen reduction and oxygen evolution reactions.

The researchers conclude that ceria could be considered among the most promising materials for use with cobalt on nitrogen-doped carbon nanorods to produce stable catalysts with enhanced electrochemical activity in PEMFCs and related devices.

Source: https://www.dgist.ac.kr/

How To Reduce Fuel Burn By 60 Percent In Future Planes

January 9, 2019 Uncategorized

Boeing Co unveiled a speedier and higher-flying version of a concept plane on Tuesday aimed at sharply reducing fuel use thanks to its elongated ultra-light wings. The so-called Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) aircraft boasts a 170-foot (52 meter) wingspan that sits atop the fuselage and is braced from underneath by a truss in a design reminiscent of biplanes from the early years of aviation. The world’s largest planemaker and U.S. space agency NASA have been studying the concept plane for nearly a decade as part of the Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research program. Boeing unveiled a reconfigured model or prototype and artist’s rendering at an aerospace conference in San Diego.

Chicago-based Boeing said it tweaked the plane’s designs with an optimized truss and a modified wing sweep that allow it to fly at speeds of Mach .8, or about 600 miles (965 km) per hour, slightly faster than previous designs but on par with current passenger jetliners. Boeing said the jet ideally would reduce fuel burn by 60 percent compared to an aircraft in 2005, but said it did not have final data to compare the fuel savings to present-day aircraft.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

How To Use The Body’s Inbuilt Healing System

January 8, 2019 Uncategorized

Imperial researchers have developed a new bioinspired material that interacts with surrounding tissues to promote healing. Materials are widely used to help heal wounds: Collagen sponges help treat burns and pressure sores, and scaffold-like implants are used to repair broken bones. However, the process of tissue repair changes over time, so scientists are looking to biomaterials that interact with tissues as healing takes place.

Now, Dr Ben Almquist and his team at Imperial College London have created a new molecule that could change the way traditional materials work with the body. Known as traction force-activated payloads (TrAPs), their method lets materials talk to the body’s natural repair systems to drive healing.

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The researchers say incorporating TrAPs into existing medical materials could revolutionise the way injuries are treated.

“Our technology could help launch a new generation of materials that actively work with tissues to drive healing,” said Dr Almquist, from mperial’s Department of Bioengineering.
After an injury, cells ‘crawl’ through the collagen ‘scaffolds’ found in wounds, like spiders navigating webs. As they move, they pull on the scaffold, which activates hidden healing proteins that begin to repair injured tissue. The researchers in the study designed TrAPs as a way to recreate this natural healing method. They folded the DNA segments into three-dimensional shapes known as aptamers that cling tightly to proteins. Then, they attached a customisable ‘handle’ that cells can grab onto on one end, before attaching the opposite end to a scaffold such as collagen.
During laboratory testing of their technique, they found that cells pulled on the TrAPs as they crawled through the collagen scaffolds. The researchers tailor TrAPs to release specific therapeutic proteins based on which cells are present at a given point in time.

This is the first time scientists have activated healing proteins using differing cell types in man-made materials. The technique mimics healing methods found in nature. “Creatures from sea sponges to humans use cell movement to activate healing. Our approach mimics this by using the different cell varieties in wounds to drive healing,” explains Dr Almquist.”

This approach is adaptable to different cell types, so could be used in a variety of injuries such as fractured bones, scar tissue after heart attacks, and damaged nerves. New techniques are also desperately needed for patients whose wounds won’t heal despite current interventions, like diabetic foot ulcers, which are the leading cause of non-traumatic lower leg amputations. TrAPs are relatively straightforward to create and are fully man-made, meaning they are easily recreated in different labs and can be scaled up to industrial quantities.

TrAPs could harness the body’s natural healing powers to repair bone

“TrAPs provide a flexible method of actively communicating with wounds, as well as key instructions when and where they are needed. This intelligent healing is useful during every phase of the healing process, has the potential to increase the body’s chance to recover, and has far-reaching uses on many different types of wounds. This technology could serve as a conductor of wound repair, orchestrating different cells over time to work together to heal damaged tissues,” said Dr Almquist.

The findings are published in Advanced Materials.

Source: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/

Guided Bullet Can Modify Its Course To Hit Moving Target

January 7, 2019 Uncategorized

DARPA’s Extreme Accuracy Tasked Ordnance (EXACTO) program, which developed a self-steering bullet to increase hit rates for difficult, long-distance shots, completed in February its most successful round of live-fire tests to date. An experienced shooter using the technology demonstration system repeatedly hit moving and evading targets. Additionally, a novice shooter using the system for the first time hit a moving target.

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This video shows EXACTO rounds maneuvering in flight to hit targets that are moving and accelerating. EXACTO’s specially designed ammunition and real-time optical guidance system help track and direct projectiles to their targets by compensating for weather, wind, target movement and other factors that can impede successful hits.

“True to DARPA’s mission, EXACTO has demonstrated what was once thought impossible: the continuous guidance of a small-caliber bullet to target,” said Jerome Dunn, DARPA program manager. “This live-fire demonstration from a standard rifle showed that EXACTO is able to hit moving and evading targets with extreme accuracy at sniper ranges unachievable with traditional rounds. Fitting EXACTO’s guidance capabilities into a small .50-caliber size is a major breakthrough and opens the door to what could be possible in future guided projectiles across all calibers.”

The EXACTO program developed new approaches and advanced capabilities to improve the range and accuracy of sniper systems beyond the current state of the art. The program sought to improve sniper effectiveness and enhance troop safety by allowing greater shooter standoff range and reduction in target engagement timelines.

Source: https://www.darpa.mil/

Hydroponic Farming To Address Water Shortage

January 4, 2019 Uncategorized

Saudis are turning to hydroponic soil-free culture technology to grow vegetables, requiring less water and land and offering yields up to ten times the crop grown in an open field.

Mahdi al-Sanabeer hopes to solve the problem with hydroponics technology. He built a greenhouse on the roof of his house and experimented by planting seeds on sponges, without using chemicals fertilisers or pesticides.

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“We save 90 percent of irrigation water and 80 percent of fertiliser. It is also faster to harvest and reduces the use of the pesticides…it is a smart form of farming so there is no need for extra workers. And we get produce of a high nutritional value and delicious taste,“says owner of Smart Rooftop Greenhouse Farm, Mahdi Al-Sanabeer.

Sanabeer spent $4,800 on his set-up and has now helped farmers establish seven other farms in the eastern province.

Where this European variety of lettuce grows well, despite the harsh conditions outside. Consumers are pleased because their produce comes chemical-free.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

The Immune System’s Fountain of Youth

January 3, 2019 Uncategorized

If only we could keep our bodies young, healthy and energetic, even as we attain the wisdom of our years. New research at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel suggests this dream could be at least partly obtainable in the future. The results of this research, led by Prof. Valery Krizhanovsky and Dr. Yossi Ovadya in the Molecular Cell Biology Department, were recently published in Nature Communications.

The research began with an investigation into the way that the immune system is involved in a crucial activity: clearing away old, senescent cells that spell trouble for the body when they hang around. Senescent cells – not completely dead but suffering loss of function or irreparable damage – have been implicated in diseases of aging by promoting inflammation. The researchers used mice in which a crucial gene for this immune activity was missing. At two years (elderly, for mice), the bodies of these mice had a greater accumulation of senescent cells compared with the mice in which the gene for removing these cells was intact. The mice missing the gene suffered from chronic inflammation, and various functions in their bodies appeared to be diminished. They also looked older – and died earlier – than their normal counterparts.

Drug treatment eliminates senescent cells from tissues of old mice. The blue staining shows senescent cells in lung and liver tissue. The amount of the staining is significantly reduced following the drug treatment

Next, the researchers gave the mice a drug that inhibits the function of certain proteins that help the aging cells survive in their senescent state, to see if this would contribute to the removal of these cells from the body. The drugs were administered to mice whose aging was a result of the malfunctions the group had uncovered in the immune system as well as those suffering premature aging from a different genetic error. The treated mice responded exceptionally well to the drug: Their blood tests and activity tests showed improvement, and their tissues appeared to be much closer to those of young mice. The scientists counted senescent cells, finding many fewer of them remaining in the treated mice’s bodies; and when they looked for signs of inflammation, they found that this, too, was significantly lower. The mice treated with the drug were more active and their median lifespan rose.

Source: https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/

Better Treat Salmonella Than Face Cancer

January 2, 2019 Uncategorized

An interdisciplinary team of three Virginia Tech faculty members affiliated with the Macromolecules Innovation Institute has created a drug delivery system that could radically expand cancer treatment options. The conventional cancer treatment method of injecting nanoparticle drugs into the bloodstream results in low efficacy. Due to the complexities of the human body, very few of those nanoparticles actually reach the cancer site, and once there, there’s limited delivery across the cancer tissue.

The new system created at Virginia Tech is known as Nanoscale Bacteria-Enabled Autonomous Drug Delivery System (NanoBEADS). Researchers have developed a process to chemically attach nanoparticles of anti-cancer drugs onto attenuated bacteria cells, which they have shown to be more effective than the passive delivery of injections at reaching cancer sites.

NanoBEADS has produced results in both in vitro (in tumor spheroids) and in vivo (in living mice) models showing up to 100-fold improvements in the distribution and retention of nanoparticles in cancerous tissues.This is a product of Bahareh Behkam, associate professor of mechanical engineering. Collaborators on this interdisciplinary team are Rick Davis, professor of chemical engineering, and Coy Allen, assistant professor of biomedical sciences and pathobiology in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine.

“You can make the most amazing drugs, but if you cannot deliver it where it needs to go, it cannot be very effective,” Behkam said. “By improving the delivery, you can enhance efficacy.”

Humans have noticed, even as far back as Ancient Egypt, that cancer went into remission if the patient also contracted an infection like salmonella. Neither are ideal, but humans can treat salmonella infections more effectively than cancer.

In modern times, Allen said the idea of treating cancer with infections traces back to the late 1800s and has evolved into immunotherapy, in which doctors try to activate the immune system to attack cancerous cells. Of course, salmonella is harmful to humans, but a weakened version could in theory provide the benefits of immunotherapy without the harmful effects of salmonella infection. The concept is similar to humans receiving a weakened flu virus in a vaccine to build immunity.

The work, which combines expertise in mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, chemical engineering, and veterinary medicine, was recently detailed in Advanced Science.

Source: https://vtnews.vt.edu/

The more words the children had heard by age 3, the better they did on tests of cognitive development

January 1, 2019 Uncategorized

Talking is important for building your baby’s brain. In the first 3 years of life, your baby’s brain triples in size. It also becomes much more complex—and this doesn’t just happen without outside help. The brain develops as your baby interacts with the world—seeing what will happen if the baby fusses, giggles, blows bubbles, snuggles up to mom, dad, or grandparents, says “mama” or “dada”—or throws the cereal on the floor.

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Many of your baby’s most important experiments are about communicating with parents and other caregivers. Research has shown that lots of talking with children in the first 3 years of life builds the brain architecture that will be needed later to support reading and thinking skills.Some families are talkative. The parents, grandparents, and other caregivers talk with babies a lot, even before the baby can understand or answer—imitating facial expressions and sounds, giving a “play-by-play” when changing a diaper, telling stories, asking the baby questions, singing, talking about pictures in books, and telling the baby how wonderful the he or she is. Other families don’t talk much with their babies. The parents may not understand how important it is to talk with very young children, or they may not have grown up with that experience, or they may have other things on their minds. Imagine—research has shown that children from talkative families may have heard 30 million more words directed to them by age 3 than children from less-talkative families! And the same research study showed that the more words the children had heard by age 3, the better they did on tests of cognitive development.Those same children from talkative families also did better on reading readiness tests in the third grade. Why? One reason may be that their brains got more stimulation during that important period of brain growth. Learning to read greatly depends on having and hearing a big vocabulary; lots of talking by parents and other adults, especially when combined with reading, is wonderful for building vocabulary. Of course, it’s not only your baby’s brain that we care about! Lots of talk from loving adults also builds healthy relationships and social skills. It’s the relationship that matters—your baby can’t learn language, or much else, from a television set. You are your baby’s first and best teacher in matters of building trust, dealing with emotional and physical needs, and interacting with others in positive ways. All of these skills will be important for your child’s later success in school and beyond.That’s why many organizations serving young families have come together to bring this message to our community: talk with your baby, a lot, during the brain’s most formative first three years, and set your child on a path to lifelong learning

Source: https://talkwithyourbaby.org/

Short Patients Are More Likely To Die In Intensive Care

December 28, 2018 Uncategorized

If you end up in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a hospital or clinic there’s a number of things that can affect your eventual outcome. How healthy you are, your age, and the conditions that you’re suffering from are all obvious factors, but a new study suggests that your height might actually play a role in whether you’re able to pull through or not.

New research published in Intensive Care Medicine suggests that taller patients tend to survive at a higher rate than shorter individuals. The study reaches a rather bold conclusion in that short stature may actually be a risk factor if you end up in the ICU.

The cohort study looked at over 400,000 cases from the UK in total, with 233,308 men and 184,070 women who passed through a hospital intensive care unit. After accounting for anything that could skew the data one way or another, the team crunched the numbers and discovered that shorter people die more often in the ICU by a significant margin.

“Hospital mortality decreased with increasing height; predicted mortality decreased from 24.1 to 17.1% for women and from 29.2 to 21.0% for men across the range of heights,” the study explains. Those are stunning numbers, but why would height affect health outcomes in such a drastic way?

“We can’t say for sure why this is happening,” Dr. Hannah Wunsh, co-author of the study, said in a statement. “It’s speculative that all the things we do to people might in some way be harmful to patients who are smaller.”

Source: https://bgr.com/2018/

Perovskite Solar Panels Go To The Market

December 27, 2018 Uncategorized

Across the globe, a clutch of companies from Oxford, England to Redwood City, Calif. are working to commercialize a new solar technology that could further boost the adoption of renewable energy generation. Earlier this year, Oxford PV, a startup working in tandem with Oxford University, received $3 million from the U.K. government to develop the technology, which uses a new kind of material to make solar cells. Two days ago, in the U.S., a company called Swift Solar raised $7 million to bring the same technology to market, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Called a perovskite cell, the new photovoltaic tech uses hybrid organic-inorganic lead or tin halide-based material as the light-harvesting active layer. It’s the first new technology to come along in years to offer the promise of better efficiency in the conversion of light to electric power at a lower cost than existing technologies.

“Perovskite has let us truly rethink what we can do with the silicon-based solar panels we see on roofs today,” said Sam Stranks, the lead scientific advisor and one of the co-founders of Swift Solar, in a Ted Talk. “Another aspect that really excites me: how cheaply these can be made. These thin crystalline films are made by mixing two inexpensive readily abundant salts to make an ink that can be deposited in many different ways… This means that perovskite solar panels could cost less than half of their silicon counterparts.”

First incorporated into solar cells by Japanese researchers in 2009, the perovskite solar cells suffered from low efficiencies and lacked stability to be broadly used in manufacturing. But over the past nine years researchers have steadily improved both the stability of the compounds used and the efficiency that these solar cells generate.

Oxford PV, in the U.K., is now working on developing solar cells that could achieve conversion efficiencies of 37 percent — much higher than existing polycrystalline photovoltaic or thin-film solar cells.

New chemistries for solar cell manufacturing have been touted in the past, but cost has been an obstacle to commercial rollout, given how cheaply solar panels became thanks in part to a massive push from the Chinese government to increase manufacturing capacity.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/

Using Graphene, Munitions Go Further, Much Faster

December 26, 2018 Uncategorized

Researchers from the U.S. Army and top universities discovered a new way to get more energy out of energetic materials containing aluminum, common in battlefield systems, by igniting aluminum micron powders coated with graphene oxide.

This discovery coincides with the one of the Army‘s modernization priorities: Long Range Precision Fires. This research could lead to enhanced energetic performance of metal powders as propellant/explosive ingredients in Army’s munitions.

Lauded as a miracle material, graphene is considered the strongest and lightest material in the world. It’s also the most conductive and transparent, and expensive to produce. Its applications are many, extending to electronics by enabling touchscreen laptops, for example, with light-emitting diode, or LCD, or in organic light-emitting diode, or OLED displays and medicine like DNA sequencing. By oxidizing graphite is cheaper to produce en masse. The result: graphene oxide (GO).

Scanning electron micrograph shows the Al/GO composite.

Although GO is a popular two-dimensional material that has attracted intense interest across numerous disciplines and materials applications, this discovery exploits GO as an effective light-weight additive for practical energetic applications using micron-size aluminum powders (µAl), i.e., aluminum particles one millionth of a meter in diameter.

The research team published their findings in the October edition of ACS Nano with collaboration from the RDECOM Research Laboratory, the Army’s corporate research laboratory (ARL), Stanford University, University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Argonne National Laboratory.

Source: https://www.arl.army.mil/

CRISPR + Chemotherapy Attack Efficiently Lung Cancer

December 21, 2018 Uncategorized

The CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing system may be able to restore the effectiveness of first-line chemotherapies used to treat lung cancer by deleting or “knocking out” a gene in cancer tumors that helps the tumors develop resistance to the drugs. That was the conclusion of a new study that has been published in the journal Molecular Therapy Oncolytics by scientists from The Gene Editing Institute of the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute at Christiana Care Health System.

The study reports that in both tissue culture and in a mouse, tumor growth stopped and there was a dramatic decrease in the volume of existing tumors when chemotherapy was combined with CRIPSP-Cas9, which was used to disable a tumor gene known as NRF2. Previous studies have shown that the NRF2 gene controls cell functions in lung cancer tumors that helps them thwart the effect of chemotherapies that might otherwise reduce or eliminate them entirely.

“Our goal is to see if CRISPR can be used with chemotherapy to provide a safe, affordable way to give patients who are not responding to treatment at least a fighting chance against this very challenging cancer,” said Eric Kmiec, Ph.D., the principal author of the study and the director of the Gene Editing Institute. “We believe that finding ways to use CRISPR to improve existing treatments will lead to some of the first benefits for patients while we tackle the vital ethical issues around the use of CRISPR for edits that can be passed on through DNA. This is an exciting step in the journey of exploring the health benefits of gene editing.”

The study was led by Pawel Bialk, research scientist at the Gene Editing Institute, the nation’s only CRISPR-focused research initiative situated in a community health care system.

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Dr. Kmiec said there are chemotherapies that have helped patients achieve remission or at least live longer and enjoy a better quality of life by significantly slowing the progress of the disease. But he said some patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, the most common form of lung cancer, are resistant to chemotherapy agents used to treat the disease or develop resistance after being exposed to the drugs.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/

Plastic Waste Desintegrates Into Nanoparticles

December 20, 2018 Uncategorized

There is a considerable risk that plastic waste in the environment releases nano-sized particles known as nanoplastics, according to a new study from Lund University in Sweden. The researchers studied what happened when takeaway coffee cup lids, for example, were subjected to mechanical breakdown, in an effort to mimic the degradation that happens to plastic in the ocean.The majority of all marine debris is plastic. Calculations have shown that ten per cent of all plastic produced globally ends up in the sea. This plastic waste is subjected to both chemical and mechanical degradation. The sun’s UV rays contribute to the degradation, as do waves, which cause plastic waste to grind against stones on the water’s edge, against the sea floor or against other debris.

Is there a risk that this plastic waste disintegrates to the extent that nanoplastics are released? The research community is divided on whether the degradation process stops at slightly larger plastic fragments – microplastics – or actually continues and creates even smaller particles. The researchers behind the study have now investigated this issue by subjecting plastic material to mechanical degradation under experimental conditions.

“We have been able to show that the mechanical effect on the plastic causes the disintegration of plastic down to nano-sized plastic fragments,” says Tommy Cedervall, chemistry researcher at Lund University.

The emphasis of a number of other recent studies from the research community has been on microplastics and their increased distribution among organisms. There are now intense attempts to also identify nanoplastics in the environment. Last year, in an earlier study from Lund University, researchers showed that nano-sized plastic particles can enter the brains of fish and that this causes brain damage which probably disturbs fish behaviour.

“It’s important to begin mapping what happens to disintegrated plastic in nature”, concludes Tommy Cedervall.

Source: https://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/

Megalibrary To Boost Discovery of New Materials

December 19, 2018 Uncategorized

Different eras of civilization are defined by the discovery of new materials, as new materials drive new capabilities. And yet, identifying the best material for a given application—catalysts, light-harvesting structures, biodiagnostic labels, pharmaceuticals and electronic devices—is traditionally a slow and daunting task. The options are nearly infinite, particularly at the nanoscale (a nanometer is one-billionth of a meter) where material properties—optical, structural, electrical, mechanical and chemical—can significantly change, even at a fixed composition.

A new study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) supports the efficacy of a potentially revolutionary new tool developed at Northwestern University to rapidly test millions (even billions) of nanoparticles to determine the best for a specific use.

Laser-induced heating of nanoparticles on micropillars for carbon nanotube growth

“When utilizing traditional methods to identify new materials, we have barely scratched the surface of what is possible,” said Northwestern’s Chad A. Mirkin, the study’s corresponding author and a world leader in nanotechnology research and its applications. “This research provides proof-of-concept—that this powerful approach to discovery science works.”

The novel tool utilizes a combinatorial library, or megalibrary, of nanoparticles in a very controlled way. (A combinatorial library is a collection of systematically varied structures encoded at specific sites on a surface). The libraries are created using Mirkin’s Polymer Pen Lithography (PPL) technique, which relies on arrays (sets of data elements) with hundreds of thousands of pyramidal tips to deposit individual polymer “dots” of various sizes and composition, each loaded with different metal salts of interest, onto a surface. Once heated, these dots are reduced to metal atoms forming a single nanoparticle at fixed composition and size.

“By going small, we create two advantages in high throughput materials discovery,” said Mirkin, the executive director of Northwestern’s International Institute for Nanotechnology (IIN). “First, we can pack millions of features into square-centimeter areas, creating a path for making the largest and most complex libraries, to date. Second, by working at the sub-100 nanometer-length scale, size can become a library parameter, and much of the action, for example, in the field of catalysis, is on this length scale.”

Source: https://news.northwestern.edu/

Jell-O To Make Powerful New Hydrogen Fuel Catalyst

December 18, 2018 Uncategorized

A cheap and effective new catalyst developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can generate hydrogen fuel from water just as efficiently as platinum, currently the best — but also most expensive — water-splitting catalyst out there.

The catalyst, which is composed of nanometer-thin sheets of metal carbide, is manufactured using a self-assembly process that relies on a surprising ingredient: gelatin, the material that gives Jell-O its jiggle.

Two-dimensional metal carbides spark a reaction that splits water into oxygen and valuable hydrogen gas. Berkeley researchers have discovered an easy new recipe for cooking up these nanometer-thin sheets that is nearly as simple as making Jell-O from a box

“Platinum is expensive, so it would be desirable to find other alternative materials to replace it,” said senior author Liwei Lin, professor of mechanical engineering at UC Berkeley. “We are actually using something similar to the Jell-O that you can eat as the foundation, and mixing it with some of the abundant earth elements to create an inexpensive new material for important catalytic reactions.”

The work appears in the print edition of the journal Advanced Materials.

Source: https://news.berkeley.edu/

Berkeley University, catalyst, gelatin, hydrogen fuel, metal carbide, platinum, self-assembly process, University of California, water, water-splitting catalyst

How To Shrink Objects To The Nanoscale

December 17, 2018 Uncategorized

MIT researchers have invented a way to fabricate nanoscale 3-D objects of nearly any shape. They can also pattern the objects with a variety of useful materials, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA.

MIT engineers have devised a way to create 3-D nanoscale objects by patterning a larger structure with a laser and then shrinking it. This image shows a complex structure prior to shrinking.

“It’s a way of putting nearly any kind of material into a 3-D pattern with nanoscale precision,” says Edward Boyden, the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology and an associate professor of biological engineering and of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. Using the new technique, the researchers can create any shape and structure they want by patterning a polymer scaffold with a laser. After attaching other useful materials to the scaffold, they shrink it, generating structures one thousandth the volume of the original.

These tiny structures could have applications in many fields, from optics to medicine to robotics, the researchers say. The technique uses equipment that many biology and materials science labs already have, making it widely accessible for researchers who want to try it. Boyden, who is also a member of MIT’s Media Lab, McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, is one of the senior authors of the paper, which appears in the Dec. 13 issue of Science. The other senior author is Adam Marblestone, a Media Lab research affiliate, and the paper’s lead authors are graduate students Daniel Oran and Samuel Rodriques.

As they did for expansion microscopy, the researchers used a very absorbent material made of polyacrylate, commonly found in diapers, as the scaffold for their nanofabrication process. The scaffold is bathed in a solution that contains molecules of fluorescein, which attach to the scaffold when they are activated by laser light.

Using two-photon microscopy, which allows for precise targeting of points deep within a structure, the researchers attach fluorescein molecules to specific locations within the gel. The fluorescein molecules act as anchors that can bind to other types of molecules that the researchers add.

“You attach the anchors where you want with light, and later you can attach whatever you want to the anchors,” Boyden says. “It could be a quantum dot, it could be a piece of DNA, it could be a gold nanoparticle.” “It’s a bit like film photography — a latent image is formed by exposing a sensitive material in a gel to light. Then, you can develop that latent image into a real image by attaching another material, silver, afterwards. In this way implosion fabrication can create all sorts of structures, including gradients, unconnected structures, and multimaterial patterns,” Oran explains.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/

How To Fight Against Weakened Immune System When Getting Older

December 14, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists pinpoint metabolic pathway behind age-related immunity loss. The elderly suffer more serious complications from infections and benefit less from vaccination than the general population. Researchers have long known that a weakened immune system is to blame but the exact mechanisms behind this lagging immunity have remained largely unknown. Now research led by investigators at Harvard Medical School suggests that weakened metabolism of immune T cells may be partly to blame.

The findings, published Dec. 10 in PNAS and based on experiments in mouse immune cells, pinpoint a specific metabolic pathway called one-carbon metabolism that is deficient in the aged T cells of rodents. The work also suggests possible ways to restore weakened immune function with the use of small-molecule compounds that boost T cell performance.

“We believe our findings may help explain the basic malfunction that drives loss of immune defenses with age,” said senior study author Marcia Haigis, professor of cell biology in the Blavatnik Institute at Harvard Medical School. “If affirmed in further studies, we hope that our findings can set the stage for the development of therapies to improve immune function.”

Source: https://scienmag.com/

Chinese ‘Death Star’ For Submarines

December 13, 2018 Uncategorized

China is developing a satellite with a powerful laser for anti-submarine warfare that researchers hope will be able to pinpoint a target as far as 500 metres below the surface. It is the latest addition to the country’s expanding deep-sea surveillance programme, and aside from targeting submarines – most operate at a depth of less than 500 metres – it could also be used to collect data on the world’s oceans. Project Guanlan, meaning “watching the big waves”, was officially launched in May at the Pilot National Laboratory for Marine Science and Technology in Qingdao, Shandong. It aims to strengthen China’s surveillance activities in the world’s oceans, according to the laboratory’s website.

Scientists are working on the satellite’s design at the laboratory, but its key components are being developed by more than 20 research institutes and universities across the country. Song Xiaoquan, a researcher involved in the project, said if the team can develop the satellite as planned, it will make the upper layer of the sea “more or less transparent”. “It will change almost everything,” Song said.

While light dims 1,000 times faster in water than in the air, and the sun can penetrate no more than 200 metres below the ocean surface, a powerful artificial laser beam can be 1 billion times brighter than the sun. But this project is ambitious – naval researchers have tried for more than half a century to develop a laser spotlight for hunting submarines using technology known as light detection and ranging (lidar). In theory, it works like this – when a laser beam hits a submarine, some pulses bounce back. They are then picked up by sensors and analysed by computer to determine the target’s location, speed and three-dimensional shape.

But in real life, lidar technology can be affected by the device’s power limitations, as well as cloud, fog, murky water – and even marine life such as fish and whales. Added to that, the laser beam deflects and scatters as it travels from one body of water to another, making it more of a challenge to get a precise calculation. Experiments carried out by the United States and former Soviet Union achieved maximum detection depths of less than 100 metres, according to openly available information. That range has been extended in recent years by the US in research funded by Nasa and the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Source: https://www.scmp.com/

How To Nullify Proteins That Allow Cancer Cells To Grow

December 12, 2018 Uncategorized

A physicist in the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University hopes to improve cancer detection with a new and novel class of nanomaterials. Liviu Movileanu, professor of physics, creates tiny sensors that detect, characterize and analyze protein-protein interactions (PPIs) in blood serum. Information from PPIs could be a boon to the biomedical industry, as researchers seek to nullify proteins that allow cancer cells to grow and spread.

Movileanu’s findings are the subject of a paper in Nature Biotechnology (Springer Nature, 2018), co-authored by Ph.D. student Avinash Kumar Thakur. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has supported their work with a four-year, $1.17 million grant award.

A digital illustration of a cancer cell undergoing mitosis

“Detailed knowledge of the human genome has opened up a new frontier for the identification of many functional proteins involved in brief physical associations with other proteins,” Movileanu says. “Major perturbations in the strength of these PPIs lead to disease conditions. Because of the transient nature of these interactions, new methods are needed to assess them.”

Enter Movileanu’s lab, which designs, creates and optimizes a unique class of biophysical tools called nanobiosensors. These highly sensitive, pore-based tools detect mechanistic processes, such as PPIs, at the single-molecule level.

Source: https://news.syr.edu/

Could Spruce Forests Offset Global Warming?

December 11, 2018 Uncategorized

Researchers from the University of Lund in Sweden, are measuring terpene particles emitted by spruce/fir forests, which are believed to have a cooling effect on the climate. They believe that planting more of this type of forest could help offset global warming. Planting spruce forests could increase the carbon uptake. They would release aerosol particles which have a cooling effect on the earth.

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“We saw that in the 1990s there was a big eruption of a volcano called Mount Pinatubo. It released an enormous amount of atmospheric particles into the air. Then the global climate was cooled for two years. And that’s how the atmospheric particles are acting on the climate. That’s one example of how the terpenes can cool the climate via atmospheric particles,” says Adam Kristensson, Nuclear physicist at the Lund University. Various of air samples are being tested through solution reacting with carbon to find out if carbon comes from natural sources or fossil fuel burning.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Artificial Synapses Made from Nanowires

December 10, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists from Jülich together with colleagues from Aachen and Turin have produced a memristive element made from nanowires that functions in much the same way as a biological nerve cell. The component is able to both save and process information, as well as receive numerous signals in parallel. The resistive switching cell made from oxide crystal nanowires is thus proving to be the ideal candidate for use in building bioinspired “neuromorphic” processors, able to take over the diverse functions of biological synapses and neurons.

Image captured by an electron microscope of a single nanowire memristor (highlighted in colour to distinguish it from other nanowires in the background image). Blue: silver electrode, orange: nanowire, yellow: platinum electrode. Blue bubbles are dispersed over the nanowire. They are made up of silver ions and form a bridge between the electrodes which increases the resistance.

Computers have learned a lot in recent years. Thanks to rapid progress in artificial intelligence they are now able to drive cars, translate texts, defeat world champions at chess, and much more besides. In doing so, one of the greatest challenges lies in the attempt to artificially reproduce the signal processing in the human brain. In neural networks, data are stored and processed to a high degree in parallel. Traditional computers on the other hand rapidly work through tasks in succession and clearly distinguish between the storing and processing of information. As a rule, neural networks can only be simulated in a very cumbersome and inefficient way using conventional hardware.

Systems with neuromorphic chips that imitate the way the human brain works offer significant advantages. Experts in the field describe this type of bioinspired computer as being able to work in a decentralised way, having at its disposal a multitude of processors, which, like neurons in the brain, are connected to each other by networks. If a processor breaks down, another can take over its function. What is more, just like in the brain, where practice leads to improved signal transfer, a bioinspired processor should have the capacity to learn.

“With today’s semiconductor technology, these functions are to some extent already achievable. These systems are however suitable for particular applications and require a lot of space and energy,” says Dr. Ilia Valov from Forschungszentrum Jülich. “Our nanowire devices made from zinc oxide crystals can inherently process and even store information, as well as being extremely small and energy efficient,” explains the researcher from Jülich’s Peter Grünberg Institute.

Source: http://www.fz-juelich.de/

AI and Big Data To Fight Eye Diseases

December 7, 2018 Uncategorized

‘In future, it will be possible to diagnose diabetes from the eye using automatic digital retinal screening, without the assistance of an ophthalmologist‘: these were the words used by Ursula Schmidt-Erfurth, Head of MedUni Vienna‘s Department of Ophthalmology and Optometrics. The scientist has opened the press conference about the ART-2018 Specialist Meeting on new developments in retinal therapy. The automatic diabetes screening, has been recently implemented at MedUni Vienna.
Patients flock to the Department to undergo this retinal examination to detect any diabetic changes. It takes just a few minutes and is completely non-invasive

Essentially this technique can detect all stages of diabetic retinal disease – high-resolution digital retinal images with two million pixels are taken and analyzed within seconds – but Big Data offers even more potential: nowadays it is already possible to diagnose an additional 50 other diseases in this way. Diabetes is just the start. And MedUni Vienna is among the global leaders in this digital revolution.

The Division of Cardiology led by Christian Hengstenberg within the Department of Medicine II is working on how digital retinal analysis can also be used in future for the early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases.

“This AI medicine is ‘super human’,” emphasizes Schmidt-Erfurth. “The algorithms are quicker and more accurate. They can analyze things that an expert cannot detect with the naked eye.” And yet the commitment to Big Data and Artificial Intelligence is not a plea for medicine without doctors, which some experts predict for the not-to-distant future. “What we want are ‘super doctors’, who are able to use the high-tech findings to make the correct, individualized therapeutic decision for their patients, in the spirit of precision medicine, rather than leaving patients on their own.”

However, it is not only in the diagnosis of diseases that Artificial Intelligence and Big Data, plus virtual reality, provide better results. “We are already performing digitized operations with support from Artificial Intelligence. This involves projecting a virtual and precise image of the area of the eye being operated on onto a huge screen – and the surgeon then performs the operation with a perfect view “on screen” as it were, while actually operating on the patient with a scalpel.”

Source: https://www.news-medical.net/

How To Heal Arthritis

December 6, 2018 Uncategorized

Osteoarthritis, a disease that causes severe joint pain, affects more than 20 million people in the United States. Some drug treatments can help alleviate the pain, but there are no treatments that can reverse or slow the cartilage breakdown associated with the disease.

In an advance that could improve the treatment options available for osteoarthritis, MIT engineers have designed a new material that can administer drugs directly to the cartilage. The material can penetrate deep into the cartilage, delivering drugs that could potentially heal damaged tissue.

Six days after treatment with IGF-1 carried by dendrimer nanoparticles (blue), the particles have penetrated through the cartilage of the knee joint.

“This is a way to get directly to the cells that are experiencing the damage, and introduce different kinds of therapeutics that might change their behavior,” says Paula Hammond, head of MIT’s Department of Chemical Engineering, a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, and the senior author of the study. Treating rats, the researchers showed that delivering an experimental drug called insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) with this new material prevented cartilage breakdown much more effectively than injecting the drug into the joint on its own.

Brett Geiger, an MIT graduate student, is the lead author of the paper, which appears in Science Translational Medicine.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/

3D Printed Electric Motorcycle

December 5, 2018 Uncategorized

BigRep has revealed the world’s first 3D-printed electric motorcycle with groundbreaking features like airless tires, embedded electronics, and forkless steering.developed by marco Mattia Cristofori and Maximilian Sedlak, part of the german manufacturer’s innovation lab and consultancy NOWlab, Nera features fully 3D-printed parts such as tires, rims, frame, fork, and seat, excluding only electrical components.

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‘The Nera combines several innovations developed by NOWlab, such as the airless tire, functional integration and embedded sensor technology,’ explains Daniel Büning, co-founder and managing director of the lab. ‘This bike and our other prototypes push the limits of engineering creativity and will reshape am technology as we know it.’ For now, the motorcycle has only been launched in the form of a prototype as part of BigRep’s research into the potential of 3D printing.

In building Nera, the engineers didn’t simply adapt existing motorcycle designs, but instead envisioned a bike for large-format FFF technology. Among the many innovations featured in Nera are the airless tires with customized tread; a lightweight rhomboid wheel rim, as well as flexible bumpers (instead of suspension) and the electric engine, which is fitted in a customizable case.

Source: https://bigrep.com
AND
https://www.designboom.com/

Telepathy For Real Within 8 Years

December 4, 2018 Uncategorized

Imagine if telepathy were real. If, for example, you could transmit your thoughts to a computer or to another person just by thinking them. In just eight years it will be, says Openwater founder Mary Lou Jepsen, thanks to technology her company is working on.

Jepsen is a former engineering executive at Facebook, Oculus, Google[x] (now called X) and Intel. She’s also been a professor at MIT and is an inventor on over 100 patents. And that’s the abbreviated version of her resume. Jepsen left Facebook to found Openwater in 2016. The San Francisco-based start-up is currently building technology to make medical imaging less expensive.

“I figured out how to put basically the functionality of an M.R.I. machine — a multimillion-dollar M.R.I. machine — into a wearable in the form of a ski hat,” Jepson said, though she does not yet have a prototype completed.

Current M.R.I. technology can already see your thoughts: “If I threw [you] into an M.R.I. machine right now … I can tell you what words you’re about to say, what images are in your head. I can tell you what music you’re thinking of,” says Jepsen. “That’s today, and I’m talking about just shrinking that down.”

One day Jepsen’s tech hat could “literally be a thinking cap,” she says. Jepsen explains the goal is for the technology to be able to both read and to output your own thoughts, as well as read the thoughts of others. In iconic Google vocabulary, “the really big moonshot idea here is communication with thought — with telepathy,”adds Jepsen.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/

How To Fine-Tune the Gene Scissors CRISPR

December 3, 2018 Uncategorized

When researchers and doctors use the tool CRISPR to correct genetic errors, it may have side effects on the human genome. Now, researchers from the University of Copenhagen have learned how the molecular machinery behind CRISPR works and thus expect to be able to fine-tune CRISPR and remove the undesired effects.

The introduction of the tool for gene editing, the so-called gene scissors CRISPR, in 2007 was a revolution within medical science and cell biology. But even though the perspectives are great, the launch of CRISPR has been followed by debate, especially focussing on ethical issues and the technology’s degree of accuracy and side effects.

However, in a new study published in the scientific journal Cell researchers from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research have described how one of the CRISPR technologies, the so-called Cas12a, works – all the way down to the molecular level. This makes it possible to fine-tune the gene-editing process to only achieve the desired effects.

‘If we compare CRISPR to a car engine, what we have done is make a complete 3D map of the engine and thus gained an understanding of how it works. This knowledge will enable us to fine-tune the CRISPR engine and make it work in various ways – as a Formula 1 racer as well as an off-road truck’, says Professor Guillermo Montoya from the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research.

The researchers have used a so-called cryo-electron microscope to map the technology. The recently inaugurated cryoEM facility at the University of Copenhagen has established the state-of-the-art technology enabling the researchers to take photographs of the different shapes of the molecule when CRISPR-Cas12a cuts up the DNA strand.

According to the researchers, their new findings can explain why CRISPR technology can have side effects on the genome. Once the DNA strand has been cut, the three ‘security checks’ remain open. This can cause the process to last longer than wanted, because the machinery behind gene editing continues to run and can cause genetic changes. However, now the researchers expect their new knowledge to put an end to this. They believe it can be used to fine-tune the gene-editing technology right away.

Source: https://healthsciences.ku.dk/

Electricity Speeds Up Skin Healing

November 30, 2018 Uncategorized

A new, low-cost wound dressing developed by University of Wisconsin–Madison engineers could dramatically speed up healing in a surprising way. The method leverages energy generated from a patient’s own body motions to apply gentle electrical pulses at the site of an injury. In rodent tests, the dressings reduced healing times to a mere three days compared to nearly two weeks for the normal healing process.

“We were surprised to see such a fast recovery rate,” says Xudong Wang, a professor of materials science and engineering at UW–Madison. “We suspected that the devices would produce some effect, but the magnitude was much more than we expected.”

Researchers have known for several decades that electricity can be beneficial for skin healing, but most electrotherapy units in use today require bulky electrical equipment and complicated wiring to deliver powerful jolts of electricity. “Acute and chronic wounds represent a substantial burden in healthcare worldwide,” says collaborator Angela Gibson, professor of surgery at UW–Madison and a burn surgeon and director of wound healing services at UW Health. “The use of electrical stimulation in wound healing is uncommon.” In contrast with existing methods, the new dressing is much more straightforward. “Our device is as convenient as a bandage you put on your skin,” says Wang. “The nature of these electrical pulses is similar to the way the body generates an internal electric field,” explains Wang.

Wang and collaborators described their wound dressing method in the journal ACS Nano.

Source: https://news.wisc.edu/

Want to Sound Like Barack Obama?

November 29, 2018 Uncategorized

For your hair, there are wigs and hairstylists; for your skin, there are permanent and removable tattoos; for your eyes, there are contact lenses that disguise the shape of your pupils. In short, there’s a plethora of tools people can use if they want to give themselves a makeover—except for one of their signature features: their voice.

Sure a Darth Vader voice changing mask would do something about it, but for people who want to sound like a celebrity or a person of the opposite sex, look no further than Boston-based startup Modulate.

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Founded in August 2017 by two MIT grads, this self-funded startup is using machine learning to change your voice as you speak. This could be a celebrity’s voice (like Barack Obama’s), the voice of a game character or even a totally custom voice. With potential applications in the gaming and movie industries, Modulate has launched with a free online demo that allows users to play with the service.

The cool thing about Modulate is that the software doesn’t simply disguise your voice, but it does something far more radical: it converts a person’s speech into somebody’s else vocal chords, changing the very I.D. of someone’s speech but keeping intact cadence and word choice. As a result, you sound like you, but have in fact someone’s else voice.

Source: https://www.americaninno.com/

How To Manipulate And Move Cells With Light

November 28, 2018 Uncategorized

Wits physicists demonstrate a new device for manipulating and moving tiny objects with light. When you shine a beam of light on your hand, you don’t feel much, except for a little bit of heat generated by the beam. When you shine that same light into a world that is measured on the nano– or micro scale, the light becomes a powerful manipulating tool that you can use to move objects around – trapped securely in the light.

Researchers from the Structured Light group from the School of Physics at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, have found a way to use the full beam of a laser light, to control and manipulate minute objects such as single cells in a human body, tiny particles in small volume chemistry, or working on future on-chip devices. While the specific technique, called holographic optical trapping and tweezing, is not new, the Wits Researchers found a way to optimally use the full force of the light – including vector light that was previously unavailable for this application. This forms the first vector holographic trap.

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“Previously holographic traps were limited to particular classes of light (scalar light), so it is very exciting that we can reveal a holistic device that covers all classes of light, including replicating all previous trapping devices,” explains Professor Andrew Forbes, team leader of the collaboration and Distinguished Professor in the School of Physics where he heads up the Wits Structured Light Laboratory.

“What we have done is that we have demonstrated the first vector holographic optical trapping and tweezing system. The device allows micrometer sized particles, such as biological cells, to be captured and manipulated only with light.”

Source: https://www.wits.ac.za/

Lulu And Nana, First Gene-Edited Babies

November 27, 2018 Uncategorized

A Chinese researcher who claims to have created the first gene-edited babies, He Jiankui of the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUST), in Shenzhen, is now facing investigation over whether the experiment broke Chinese laws or regulations. The children have their genomes modified to make them resistant to HIV.

He, who led that effort, later released a video statement in which he said that healthy twin girls, Lulu and Nana, had been born “a few weeks ago.”

He said the girls had been conceived using In vitro fertilization (IVF) but that his team had added “a little protein and some information” to the fertilized eggs. That was a reference to the ingredients of CRISPR, the gene-editing technology he apparently employed to delete a gene called CCR5.

The claim set off a wave of criticism in China and abroad from experts who said the experiment created unacceptable risks for a questionable medical purpose. Feng Zhang, one of the inventors of CRISPR, called for a moratorium on its use in editing embryos for IVF procedures.

Documents connected to the trial named the study’s sponsors as He along with Jinzhou Qin and said it was approved by the ethics committee of HarMoniCare Shenzhen Women and Children’s Hospital.

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/

How To Neutralize Poisonous Carbon Monoxide

November 26, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists from the Nagoya Institute of Technology (NITech) in Japan have developed a sustainable method to neutralize carbon monoxide, the odorless poison produced by cars and home boilers.

Traditionally, carbon monoxide needs a noble metal – a rare and expensive ingredient – to convert into carbon dioxide and readily dissipate into the atmosphere. Although the noble metal ensures structural stability at a variety of temperatures, it’s a cost-prohibitive and finite resource and researchers have been anxious to find an alternative.

Now, a team led by Dr. Teruaki Fuchigami at the NITech has developed a raspberry-shaped nanoparticle capable of the same oxidation process that makes carbon monoxide gain an extra oxygen atom and lose its most potent toxicity.

Synthesis of cobalt oxide particles with complex, three-dimensional, raspberry-shaped nanostructures via hydrothermal treatment. Sodium sulfates functioned as bridging ligands to promote self-assembly and suppress particle growth. The highly ordered and complex surface nanostructure with 7-8 nm in diameter shows good structural stability and high activity in CO oxidation reaction.

“We found that the raspberry-shaped particles achieve both high structural stability and high reactivity even in a single nanoscale surface structure,” said Dr. Fuchigami, an assistant professor in the Department of Life Science and Applied Chemistry at the NITech and first author on the paper.

The key, according to Dr. Fuchigami, is ensuring the particles are highly complex but organized. A single, simple particle can oxidize carbon monoxide, but it will naturally join with other simple particles. Those simple particles compact together and lose their oxidation abilities, especially as temperatures rise in an engine or boiler. Catalytic nanoparticles with single nano-scale and complex three-dimensional (3D) structures can achieve both high structural stability and high catalytic activity.

Th results were featured on the cover of the September issue of the journal, Nanomaterials.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/

The Waterless Toilet Of The Future

November 23, 2018 Uncategorized

U.S. billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates unveiled in Beijing a futuristic toilet that doesn’t need water or sewers and uses chemicals to turn human waste into fertilizer. The Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) co-founder, who a day earlier was one of the high profile guests at a major trade event in Shanghai, also lauded the globalized and free trade systems that made the toilet technology possible.

“So when I talk about components of this toilet being made in China, others in Thailand, others in the United States – you really want to be bringing together all of that IQ so that you’re getting that combination.”

Gates’ trip comes amid trade tension between China and the United States, the world’s two largest economies, which have slapped tit-for-tat tariffs on goods worth billions of dollars. The toilet, which Gates said was ready for sale after years of development, is the brainchild of research projects funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s biggest private philanthropy organization. There are multiple designs of the toilet but all work by separating liquid and solid waste.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Plane Propelled Via Ionic Wind

November 22, 2018 Uncategorized

MIT engineers fly first-ever plane with no moving parts. The silent, lightweight aircraft doesn’t depend on fossil fuels or batteries. Since the first airplane took flight over 100 years ago, virtually every aircraft in the sky has flown with the help of moving parts such as propellers, turbine blades, and fans, which are powered by the combustion of fossil fuels or by battery packs that produce a persistent, whining buzz.
Now MIT engineers have built and flown the first-ever plane with no moving parts. Instead of propellers or turbines, the light aircraft is powered by an “ionic wind” — a silent but mighty flow of ions that is produced aboard the plane, and that generates enough thrust to propel the plane over a sustained, steady flight.Unlike turbine-powered planes, the aircraft does not depend on fossil fuels to fly. And unlike propeller-driven drones, the new design is completely silent.
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A new MIT plane is propelled via ionic wind. Batteries in the fuselage (tan compartment in front of plane) supply voltage to electrodes (blue/white horizontal lines) strung along the length of the plane, generating a wind of ions that propels the plane forward.

“This is the first-ever sustained flight of a plane with no moving parts in the propulsion system,” says Steven Barrett, associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at MIT. “This has potentially opened new and unexplored possibilities for aircraft which are quieter, mechanically simpler, and do not emit combustion emissions.”
He expects that in the near-term, such ion wind propulsion systems could be used to fly less noisy drones. Further out, he envisions ion propulsion paired with more conventional combustion systems to create more fuel-efficient, hybrid passenger planes and other large aircraft.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/

Bioplastics Made From Potatoes

November 21, 2018 Uncategorized

Potato Plastic is a biodegradable material, made of potato starch. This means that it will decompose to nutrients for the soil in only two months when it ends up in the nature. Potato Plastic can be used for products such as cutleries, straws and saltbags. The fast-food industry has for a long time been characterized by plastic products, since plastic is cheap, hygienic, and light but strong. Though, there is an ambiguity in making these products in plastic since it has the capacity to last for 450 years, whereas the period of use is most commonly around 20 minutes. A large percentage of the plastic that is circulating in our environment comes from the fast-food industry’s products, probably since they are grab and go-friendly. This, in combination with their quality, is devastating for the environment.

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Potato Plastic is consisting of only potato starch and water. Regarding of how much fluid is poured into a mold, the material can either become a thick, tough piece, or a thin film. This material is a kind of thermoplastic, which means that it can be molded under compression when it is exposed to heat and moisture. This opens up for many design possibilities, regarding everything from product selection to detailed patterns on the surface of the material. Since no extreme heat is needed, the molds can be made of plastic. This decreases the cost significantly compared to if the molds would be made of metal.

Source: https://www.jamesdysonaward.org/

Blinds Harness The Sun’s Energy

November 20, 2018 Uncategorized

Solargaps, an Ukrainian startup, have created blinds that generate power from windows.

If, like many Kyivans (inhabitants of Kiev), you live in an apartment, and your home doesn’t even have its own roof, there is now a solution. Enter Ukrainian startup SolarGaps, which has created a device that combines solar panels with venetian blinds to allow those who live in apartments to generate their own electricity.

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“It’s not simple to install solar panels on roofs in big cities,” founder Evgeny Eric, 39, told the Kyiv Post. “Our solution helps people produce green energy more easily, cheaply and more accessibly.”
Once installed on a window, the smart blinds with built-in solar panels can generate over 100 kilowatt of energy a month – the average amount of energy consumed monthly by one Ukrainian citizen, Eric said.

Any energy surplus can either be stored in batteries or be sold to the electricity company as green energy – for a higher price – although to do this a two-way electricity meter has to be installed by the local electricity provider.

To absorb as much solar radiation as possible, the panels, which are equipped with a light sensor, follow the light source, automatically changing angle according to the sun’s position. So that a room is bright enough during the day, the blinds automatically open when a person enters the room where they are installed. They also can be controlled via a smartphone application that currently connects to the device via Bluetooth. The latest app version will link to the device via the internet, using Android and iOS smartphones. The first prototype was created six months ago and installed in Eric’s apartment.

“You just plug the blinds into a socket and they compensate for a part of your electricity consumption, that’s it,” Eric said. “We worked out this solution for ourselves, and now we’re offering it to others.”

Source: https://solargaps.com/

Metallic NanoParticles 50 Times More Effective As Catalysts

November 19, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists at Tokyo Institute of Technology produced subnano-sized metallic particles that are very effective as catalysts for the oxidation of hydrocarbons. These catalysts can be as much as 50 times more effective than well-known Au-Pd bimetallic nanocatalysts.
The oxidation of aromatic hydrocarbons is critically important for producing a great variety of useful organic compounds that are used throughout all types of industries. These oxidation processes require the use of catalysts and solvents, which are usually environmentally hazardous. Thus, finding a solvent-free oxidation process using nanosized catalytic particles has attracted considerable attention. Interestingly, sub-nanoscale catalytic particles (subnanocatalysts, or SNCs) composed of noble metals are even better at their job because their increased surface area and unique electronic state results in favorable effects for oxidizing hydrocarbons and also prevents them from getting oxidized themselves. This makes them cost-effective because the amount of metal required for SNCs is lower than for nano-sized catalysts.

A team including Dr. Miftakhul Huda, Keigo Minamisawa, Dr. Takamasa Tsukamoto, and Dr. Makoto Tanabe at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech), led by Prof. Kimihisa Yamamoto, created multiple types of SNCs by using dendrimers, which are tree-like spherical molecules that can be used as a template to contain the desired catalysts. “Dendrimer is expected to provide internal nanospaces that could be suitable for catalytic conversion in the presence of metal particles,” explains Yamamoto . The scientists created various catalysts of different sizes, depending on the noble metal used and the number of atoms of each catalytic particle.

Each dendrimer molecule hosts a subnano-sized metallic particle that allows for the oxidation of aromatic hydrocarbons, such as toluene (left), to produce useful organic compounds, such as benzoic acid (right). Oxygen molecules are represented in red.

They compared their performance to find the best noble metal for making SNCs and then tried to determine the mechanism behind their high catalytic activity. Smaller SNCs were found to be better, while less oxophilic metals (such as platinum) were superior. The team postulated that the surface of platinum SNCs does not oxidize easily, which makes them reusable and results in the highest catalytic performance of the Pt₁₉ SNC that can be as high as 50 times more effective than the common Au-Pd nanocatalysts. The team will continue working to shed light on these catalytic phenomena. “The development of a more detailed mechanism including theoretical considerations is currently in progress,” says Tanabe. The applications of such catalysts could greatly contribute for reducing pollution and enhancing our effective use of Earth’s metal resources.

Source: https://www.titech.ac.jp/

How To Replace The Thick Glass Lenses by 2D Metalens

November 16, 2018 Uncategorized

In optics, the era of glass lenses may be waning. In recent years, physicists and engineers have been designing, constructing and testing different types of ultrathin materials that could replace the thick glass lenses used today in cameras and imaging systems. Critically, these engineered lenses — known as metalenses — are not made of glass. Instead, they consist of materials constructed at the nanoscale into arrays of columns or fin-like structures. These formations can interact with incoming light, directing it toward a single focal point for imaging purposes.

But even though metalenses are much thinner than glass lenses, they still rely on “high aspect ratio” structures, in which the column or fin-like structures are much taller than they are wide, making them prone to collapsing and falling over. Furthermore, these structures have always been near the wavelength of light they’re interacting with in thickness — until now. In a paper published in the journal Nano Letters, a team from the University of Washington (UW) and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan announced that it has constructed functional metalenses that are one-tenth to one-half the thickness of the wavelengths of light that they focus. Their metalenses, which were constructed out of layered 2D materials, were as thin as 190 nanometers — less than 1/100,000ths of an inch thick.

“This is the first time that someone has shown that it is possible to create a metalens out of 2D materials,” said senior and co-corresponding author Arka Majumdar, a UW assistant professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering.

Their design principles can be used for the creation of metalenses with more complex, tunable features, added Majumdar, who is also a faculty researcher with the UW’s Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute and Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems.

Source: https://www.washington.edu/

Gene-editing Tools Will Alter Foods Precisely And Cheaply

November 15, 2018 Uncategorized

The next generation of biotech food is headed for the grocery aisles, and first up may be salad dressings or granola bars made with soybean oil genetically tweaked to be good for your heart. By early next year, the first foods from plants or animals that had their DNA “edited” are expected to begin selling. It’s a different technology than today’s controversial “genetically modified” foods, more like faster breeding that promises to boost nutrition, spur crop growth, and make farm animals hardier and fruits and vegetables last longer.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has declared gene editing one of the breakthroughs needed to improve food production so the world can feed billions more people amid a changing climate. Yet governments are wrestling with how to regulate this powerful new tool. And after years of confusion and rancor, will shoppers accept gene-edited foods or view them as GMOs in disguise?

GMOs, or genetically modified organisms, are plants or animals that were mixed with another species’ DNA to introduce a specific trait — meaning they’re “transgenic.” Best known are corn and soybeans mixed with bacterial genes for built-in resistance to pests or weed killers.

“If the consumer sees the benefit, I think they’ll embrace the products and worry less about the technology,” said Dan Voytas, a University of Minnesota professor and chief science officer for Calyxt Inc., which edited soybeans to make the oil heart-healthy.

Researchers are pursuing more ambitious changes: Wheat with triple the usual fiber, or that’s low in gluten. Mushrooms that don’t brown, and better-producing tomatoes. Drought-tolerant corn, and rice that no longer absorbs soil pollution as it grows. Dairy cows that don’t need to undergo painful de-horning, and pigs immune to a dangerous virus that can sweep through herds.

Scientists even hope gene editing eventually could save species from being wiped out by devastating diseases like citrus greening, a so far unstoppable infection that’s destroying Florida’s famed oranges. First they must find genes that could make a new generation of trees immune.

“If we can go in and edit the gene, change the DNA sequence ever so slightly by one or two letters, potentially we’d have a way to defeat this disease,” said Fred Gmitter, a geneticist at the University of Florida Citrus Research and Education Center, as he examined diseased trees in a grove near Fort Meade.

Source: https://whyy.org/

Double Layers Of Graphene Conduct Current Without Resistance

November 14, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB) have found evidence that double layers of graphene have a property that may let them conduct current completely without resistance. They probed the bandstructure at BESSY II with extremely high resolution ARPES and could identify a flat area at a surprising location.

Carbon atoms have diverse possibilities to form bonds. Pure carbon can therefore occur in many forms, as diamond, graphite, as nanotubes, football molecules or as a honeycomb-net with hexagonal meshes, graphene. This exotic, strictly two-dimensional material conducts electricity excellently, but is not a superconductor. But perhaps this can be changed.

In April 2018, a group at MIT, USA, showed that it is possible to generate a form of superconductivity in a system of two layers of graphene under very specific conditions: To do this, the two hexagonal nets must be twisted against each other by exactly the magic angle of 1.1°. Under this condition a flat band forms in the electronic structure. The preparation of samples from two layers of graphene with such an exactly adjusted twist is complex, and not suitable for mass production. Nevertheless, the study has attracted a lot of attention among experts.

But there is one more, much simpler way of flat band formation. This was shown by a group at the HZB around Prof. Oliver Rader and Dr. Andrei Varykhalov with investigations at BESSY II. The samples were provided by Prof. Thomas Seyller, TU Chemnitz. There they are produced using a process that is also suitable for the production of larger areas and in large quantities: A silicon carbide crystal is heated until silicon atoms evaporate from the surface, leaving first a single-layer of graphene on the surface, and then a second layer of graphene. The two graphene layers are not twisted against each other, but lie exactly on top of each other.

This flat area is a prerequisite for superconductivity but only if it is situated exactly at the so-called Fermi energy. In the case of the two-layer graphene, its energy level is only 200 milli-electron volts below the Fermi energy, but it is possible to raise the energy level of the flat area to the Fermi energy either by doping with foreign atoms or by applying an external voltage, the so-called gate voltage.

The findings have been Published in Science Advances.

Source: https://www.helmholtz-berlin.de/

AI Robot Presents TV News In China

November 13, 2018 Uncategorized

China’s state news agency Xinhua this week introduced the newest members of its newsroom: AI anchors who will report “tirelessly” all day every day, from anywhere in the country. Chinese viewers were greeted with a digital version of a regular Xinhua news anchor named Qiu Hao. The anchor, wearing a red tie and pin-striped suit, nods his head in emphasis, blinking and raising his eyebrows slightly.

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“Not only can I accompany you 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. I can be endlessly copied and present at different scenes to bring you the news,” he says. Xinhua also presented an English-speaking AI, based on another presenter, who adds: “The development of the media industry calls for continuous innovation and deep integration with the international advanced technologies … I look forward to bringing you brand new news experiences.”

Developed by Xinhua and the Chinese search engine, Sogou, the anchors were developed through machine learning to simulate the voice, facial movements, and gestures of real-life broadcasters, to present a “a lifelike image instead of a cold robot,” according to Xinhua.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/

Spy Drone Stays Airborne For One Entire Year

November 12, 2018 Uncategorized

A solar-powered spy drone that can fly for a year without maintenance or fuel could one day carry out missions for the military. The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) uses the sun to power its engines during the day as well as recharge its batteries for overnight operation. Known as Phasa-35, the aircraft could one day be used for surveillance and provide vital communications to remote areas at altitudes of up to 70,000ft (21,000m). Work is already underway to prepare the first drone for flight tests in 2019, according to British defence giant BAE Systems, which is developing the aircraft.

Engineers from BAE and Farnborough-based firm Prismatic announced they would collaborate on the development of the UAV.

‘Phasa-35 has the ability to revolutionise the way we think about Beyond Line of Sight communications. ‘It’s great to have the support of a world leading technology company like BAE Systems. said Paul Brooks, founder and managing director of Prismatic.

So-called ‘High Altitude Low Energy‘ (HALE) aircraft offer a cheaper alternative to conventional satellite technology, according to BAE. Phasa-35 (Persistent High Altitude Solar Aircraft) uses long-life battery technology and ultra-lightweight solar cells to potentially maintain flight for up to 12 months. According to Prismatic, the UAV has a range of potential applications, including defence, security, surveillance and even environmental science imagery.

Source: https://www.baesystems.com/
AND
https://www.reuters.com/

How To Heal Acute Kidney Injury

November 9, 2018 Uncategorized

Each year, there are some 13.3 million new cases of acute kidney injury (AKI), a serious affliction. Formerly known as acute renal failure, the ailment produces a rapid buildup of nitrogenous wastes and decreases urine output, usually within hours or days of disease onset. Severe complications often ensue. Currently, there is no known cure for AKI.

AKI is responsible for 1.7 million deaths annually. Protecting healthy kidneys from harm and treating those already injured remains a significant challenge for modern medicine.

In new research appearing in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, Hao Yan and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and in China describe a new method for treating and preventing AKI. Their technique involves the use of tiny, self-assembling forms measuring just billionths of a meter in diameter.

Yan directs the Biodesign Center for Molecular Design and Biomimetics and is Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences at the Arizona State University (ASU).

Their research demonstrated that the introduction of DNA origami nanostructures (DONs) protected normal kidneys and improved functioning of kidneys damaged by AKI. The beneficial effect of the nanostructures was comparable to the current treatment modality, administration of an anti-oxidant drug known as N-acetylcysteine (NAC). New treatments are being saught because NAC is not easily absorbed in the kidneys. Further examination of stained tissue samples from mice confirmed the beneficial effects of the DONs.

Source: https://biodesign.asu.edu/

Immunotherapy Technique Specifically Targets Tumor Cells

November 8, 2018 Uncategorized

A new immunotherapy screening prototype developed by University of California, Irvine (UCI) researchers can quickly create individualized cancer treatments that will allow physicians to effectively target tumors without the side effects of standard cancer drugs. UCI’s Weian Zhao and Nobel laureate David Baltimore with Caltech led the research team that developed a tracking and screening system that identifies T cell receptors with 100-percent specificity for individual tumors within just a few days.

In the human immune system, T cells have molecules on their surfaces that bind to antigens on the surface of foreign or cancer cells. To treat a tumor with T cell therapy, researchers must identify exactly which receptor molecules work against a specific tumor’s antigens. UCI researchers have sped up that identification process.

“This technology is particularly exciting because it dismantles major challenges in cancer treatments,” said Zhao, an associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences. “This use of droplet microfluidics screening significantly reduces the cost of making new cancer immunotherapies that are associated with less systemic side effects than standard chemotherapy drugs, and vastly speeds up the timeframe for treatment.”

Zhao added that traditional cancer treatments have offered a one-size-fits-all disease response, such as chemotherapy drugs which can involve systemic and serious side effects.

Research findings appear in Lab on a Chip.

Source: https://news.uci.edu/

Ultrathin, Ultralight NanoCardboard For Aerospace

November 7, 2018 Uncategorized

When choosing materials to make something, trade-offs need to be made between a host of properties, such as thickness, stiffness and weight. Depending on the application in question, finding just the right balance is the difference between success and failure. Now, a team of Penn Engineers has demonstrated a new material they call “nanocardboard,” an ultrathin equivalent of corrugated paper cardboard. A square centimeter of nanocardboard weighs less than a thousandth of a gram and can spring back into shape after being bent in half.

Nanocardboard is made out of an aluminum oxide film with a thickness of tens of nanometers, forming a hollow plate with a height of tens of microns. Its sandwich structure, similar to that of corrugated cardboard, makes it more than ten thousand times as stiff as a solid plate of the same mass.

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Nanocardboard is made out of an aluminum oxide film with a thickness of tens of nanometers, forming a hollow plate with a height of tens of microns. Its sandwich structure, similar to that of corrugated cardboard, makes it more than ten thousand times as stiff as a solid plate of the same mass. A square centimeter of nanocardboard weighs less than a thousandth of a gram and can spring back into shape after being bent in half.

Nanocardboard‘s stiffness-to-weight ratio makes it ideal for aerospace and microrobotic applications, where every gram counts. In addition to unprecedented mechanical properties, nanocardboard is a supreme thermal insulator, as it mostly consists of empty space. Future work will explore an intriguing phenomenon that results from a combination of properties: shining a light on a piece of nanocardboard allows it to levitate. Heat from the light creates a difference in temperatures between the two sides of the plate, which pushes a current of air molecules out through the bottom.

Igor Bargatin, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering, along with lab members Chen Lin and Samuel Nicaise, led the study.

They published their results in the journal Nature Communications.

Source: https://phys.org/

Stem Cell Therapy Could Treat Alzheimer’s And Parkinson’s

November 6, 2018 Uncategorized

Rutgers scientists have created a tiny, biodegradable scaffold to transplant stem cells and deliver drugs, which may help treat Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, aging brain degeneration, spinal cord injuries and traumatic brain injuries. Stem cell transplantation, which shows promise as a treatment for central nervous system diseases, has been hampered by low cell survival rates, incomplete differentiation of cells and limited growth of neural connections.

So, Rutgers scientists designed bio-scaffolds that mimic natural tissue and got good results in test tubes and mice. These nano-size scaffolds hold promise for advanced stem cell transplantation and neural tissue engineering. Stem cell therapy leads to stem cells becoming neurons and can restore neural circuits.

“It’s been a major challenge to develop a reliable therapeutic method for treating central nervous system diseases and injuries,” said study senior author KiBum Lee, a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. “Our enhanced stem cell transplantation approach is an innovative potential solution.”

The researchers, in cooperation with neuroscientists and clinicians, plan to test the nano-scaffolds in larger animals and eventually move to clinical trials for treating spinal cord injury. The scaffold-based technology also shows promise for regenerative medicine.

The study included researchers from Rutgers and Kyung Hee University in South Korea. The results have been published in Nature Communications.

Source: https://www.eurekalert.org/

Mapping Genes Of All Complex Life On Earth

November 5, 2018 Uncategorized

In an effort to protect and preserve the Earth’s biodiversity and kick-start an inclusive bio-economy, the World Economic Forum have announced a landmark partnership between the Earth BioGenome Project, chaired by Harris Lewin, distinguished professor at the University of California, Davis, and the Earth Bank of Codes to map the DNA of all life on Earth. The announcement was made at the 48th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

The Earth Biogenome Project aims to sequence the DNA of all the planet’s eukaryotes, some 1.5 million known species including all known plants, animals and single-celled organisms. The ambitious project will take 10 years to complete and cost an estimated $4.7 billion. Of the estimated 15 million eukaryotic species, only 10 percent have been taxonomically classified. Of that percentage, scientists have sequenced the genomes of around 15,000 species, less than 0.1 percent of all life on Earth.

“The partnership will construct a global biology infrastructure project to sequence life on the planet to enable solutions for preserving the Earth’s biodiversity, managing ecosystems, spawning bio-based industries and sustaining human societies,” said Lewin, who chairs the Earth BioGenome Project working group. Lewin holds appointments in the Department of Evolution and Ecology and the UC Davis Genome Center.

Source: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/

AI Lie Detectors Could Reach 85% Accuracy

November 2, 2018 Uncategorized

It’s already nerve-wracking answering questions at the border, and some ports in the European Union are taking it to another, kinda worrying level. They’re installing an artificial intelligence-powered system called iBorderCtrl, which aims to speed up the processing of travellers, but also to determine if they’re lying. A six-month trial will take place at four border crossing points in Hungary, Greece and Latvia.

During pre-screening, users will upload their passport, visa, and proof of funds, then answer questions asked by a computer-generated border guard to a webcam. The system will analyse the user’s microexpressions to determine if they’re lying, and they’ll be flagged as either low or high risk. People will be asked questions like “What’s in your suitcase?” and “If you open the suitcase and show me what is inside, will it confirm that your answers were true?” For those who pass the test, they’ll receive a QR code that will let them pass through. If there’s additional concern, their biometric data will be taken, and be handed off to a human agent who will assess the case.

“We’re employing existing and proven — as well as novel ones — to empower border agents to increase the accuracy and efficiency of border checks,” project coordinator George Boultadakis told the European Commission. “iBorderCtrl’s system will collect data that will move beyond biometrics and on to biomarkers of deceit.”

Of course, there’s the question of how accurate a system like this could be. iBorderCtrl is still in its early stages, and a team member told that early testing provided a 76 percent success rate, but believe this could be raised to 85 percent.

Source: https://mashable.com/

Paraplegics Walk Again With Electrical Stimulation

November 1, 2018 Uncategorized

Three paraplegics who sustained cervical spinal cord injuries many years ago are now able to walk with the aid of crutches or a walker thanks to new rehabilitation protocols that combine targeted electrical stimulation of the lumbar spinal cord and weight-assisted therapy.

This latest study, called STIMO (STImulation Movement Overground), establishes a new therapeutic framework to improve recovery from spinal cord injury. All patients involved in the study recovered voluntary control of leg muscles that had been paralyzed for many years. Unlike the findings of two independent studies published recently in the United States on a similar concept, neurological function was shown to persist beyond training sessions even when the electrical stimulation was turned off.

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“Our findings are based on a deep understanding of the underlying mechanisms which we gained through years of research on animal models. We were thus able to mimic in real time how the brain naturally activates the spinal cord,” says EPFL neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine.

“All the patients could walk using body weight support within one week. I knew immediately that we were on the right path,” adds CHUV neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch, who surgically placed the implants in the patients.

“The exact timing and location of the electrical stimulation are crucial to a patient’s ability to produce an intended movement. It is also this spatiotemporal coincidence that triggers the growth of new nerve connections,” says Courtine.

The STIMO study, led by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV ) in Switzerland, is published in Nature and Nature Neuroscience.

Source: https://actu.epfl.ch/

How To Use Power Plant Carbon Dioxide To Grow Fish Food

October 31, 2018 Uncategorized

Norway is known as a world leader in exporting oil and gas — but it’s also a leading fish exporter. However with global demand growing, feeding all these fish is getting more expensive and challenging. In the first half of this year Norway’s salmon export value reached the highest ever recorded and the value of exported Norwegian salmon to Asia during that time period was up 30 percent year-over-year.

At the same time that demand for farmed fish is growing, the aquaculture industry is facing a shortage of omega-3: the fatty acids used in fish feed. This process could be made more economical and sustainable with a little help from creative technological innovation.

In a new take on the concept of carbon capture, engineers in Norway are now trying to harness the carbon dioxide emitted from power plants and use it to grow fish food. The pilot project by Norway’s Technology Centre Mongstad (TCM) is using captured CO2 to grow omega-3 fatty acid-rich algae for fish feed. Omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for fish growth and are added to feed, are running low in global stocks and finding a sustainable, affordable source is crucial to the industry. The demand for omega-3 fatty acids in the nutrition supplement industry is also causing demand to rise.

The project, which received $1 million in funding from the Norwegian government, will grow algae in tanks in a 300-meter test facility using captured CO2 and heat from a gas-fired power plant. CO2Bio, a collaboration of industrial and research stakeholders including Salmon Group and Grieg Seafood, will operate the plant during the five-year pilot phase. The backers of the project told BBC that a metric ton of CO2 will produce a metric ton of algae, which they believe can yield 300–400kg of fish oil — a figure they hope to improve on by the end of the five-year test to determine economic viability.

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“The need is approximately 100,000 tonnes, and that’s a large scale,” Svein Nordvik, from CO2BIO, told the BBC. “The reason for the test center is to develop the techniques and optimize the production line so we can have a decision on large scale production.”

From a greenhouse gas emission perspective, while pumping the CO2 underground would be better, using it for economically productive industrial practices is better than pumping it out into the atmosphere. The food will feed fish, which will nourish people and the refuse could be composted.

Source: https://thinkprogress.org/

Ultrasonic Comb Kills Lice

October 30, 2018 Uncategorized

The Israeli company ParaSonic is developing a revolutionary home-use ultrasonic device that kills lice and their eggs in a single 5-minute combing treatment. Head lice infestations are a global problem, with 12 million infestations in children and adults every year in the United States alone. It can be very difficult to completely eradicate head lice, and re-infection occurs easily.

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ParaSonic’s revolutionary home-use comb, Xlicer^TM kills lice and their eggs in a single combing treatment that takes about 5 minutes. Ultrasound waves generated by the teeth of the wide-toothed comb destroy lice and lice eggs after exposure of about one second. Xlicer^TM simultaneously sprays a natural solution onto the hair, to augment the efficacy of the the ultrasound and significantly increase the lice and eggs’ mortality. Because there is no use of pesticides, there is no possibility of the lice developing resistance. The comb’s wide-tooth design means no discomfort to the person being treated.

Source: http://para-sonic.com/

Nanotubes Boost Batteries Efficiency

October 29, 2018 Uncategorized

The Rice lab of chemist James Tour showed thin nanotube films effectively stop dendrites that grow naturally from unprotected lithium metal anodes in batteries. Over time, these tentacle-like dendrites can pierce the battery’s electrolyte core and reach the cathode, causing the battery to fail. That problem has both dampened the use of lithium-metal in commercial applications and encouraged researchers worldwide to solve it.

Lithium metal charges much faster and holds about 10 times more energy by volume than the lithium-ion electrodes found in just about every electronic device, including cellphones and electric cars.

Microscope images of lithium metal anodes after 500 charge/discharge cycles in tests at Rice University show the growth of dendrites is quenched in the anode at left, protected by a film of carbon nanotubes. The unprotected lithium metal anode at right shows evidence of dendrite growth

“One of the ways to slow dendrites in lithium-ion batteries is to limit how fast they charge,” Tour said. “People don’t like that. They want to be able to charge their batteries quickly.”

The Rice team’s answer, detailed in Advanced Materials, is simple, inexpensive and highly effective at stopping dendrite growth, Tour said. “What we’ve done turns out to be really easy,” he said. “You just coat a lithium metal foil with a multiwalled carbon nanotube film. The lithium dopes the nanotube film, which turns from black to red, and the film in turn diffuses the lithium ions.”

Source: http://news.rice.edu/

Man With Multiple Sclerosis Walks Again After Stem Cell Transplant

October 26, 2018 Uncategorized

For a decade, Roy Palmer had no control of his legs. The man from Gloucester, England, had multiple sclerosis, or MS, which results in the body’s immune system eating away at the protective covering of nerves, disrupting communication between the brain and the body. Palmer had no feeling in his legs and used a wheelchair. But last year, he received a life-changing treatment that restored his ability to walk — and dance — again,the BBC reports. The dad first heard of the treatment, called HSCT (hematopoietic stem cell transplantation), on the BBC program, “Panorama.”

“Two people on that program went into Sheffield Hospital in wheelchairs and they both came out walking,” Palmer said. “As soon as we saw that, we both cried,” Palmer’s wife told the BBC. According to the National MS Society, HSCT still considered experimental, but Palmer decided it was worth a try.

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“If they can have that done, on a trial, why can’t I have it done?” Palmer said. So last year, the 49-year-old started the grueling treatment, which is potentially risky, the BBC reports. HSCT doesn’t always work and there is a long-term risk of infection and infertility. “They take the stem cells out of your body. They give you chemotherapy to kill the rest of your immune system,” Palmer told the BBC. The stem cells are then used to reboot the immune system. “Let’s hope it works,” Palmer adds in a home video taken just before the treatment. It did. After HSCT, he regained feeling in his left leg within two days. “I haven’t felt that in 10 years,” comments Palmer. “It’s a miracle.” Eventually, he regained feeling in both of his legs and began to walk.

Source: https://www.cbsnews.com/

Cheap High-Performance Catalysts For Hydrogen Electric Car

October 25, 2018 Uncategorized

The industry has been traditionally deploying platinum alloys as catalysts for oxygen reduction, which is for example essential in fuel cells or metal-air batteries. Expensive and rare, that metal imposes strict restrictions on manufacture. Researchers at Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB) and Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung in Germany have discovered an alloy made up of five elements that is noble metal-free and as active as platinum. The catalytic properties of non-noble elements and their alloys are usually rather poor. To the researchers’ surprise, one alloy made up of five almost equally balanced components offer much better properties. This is because of the so-called high entropy effect. It causes multinary alloys to maintain a simple crystal structure.

“Through the interaction of different neighbouring elements, new active centres are formed that present entirely new properties and are therefore no longer bound to the limited properties of the individual elements,” explains Tobias Löffler, PhD student at the RUB Chair of Analytical Chemistry – Center for Electrochemical Sciences headed by Professor Wolfgang Schuhmann. “Our research has demonstrated that this alloy might be relevant for catalysis.”

Headed by Professor Christina Scheu, the research team at the Max-Planck-Institut für Eisenforschung analysed the generated nanoparticles using transmission electron microscopy. RUB chemists determined their catalytic activity and compared it with that of platinum nanoparticles. In the process, they identified a system made of up five elements where the high entropy effect results in catalytic activity for an oxygen reduction that is similar to that of platinum. By optimising the composition further, they successfully improved the overall activity.

“These findings may have far-reaching consequences for electrocatalysis in general,” surmises Wolfgang Schuhmann. The researchers are hoping to adapt the properties for any required reactions by taking advantage of the almost infinite number of possible combinations of the elements and modifications of their composition. “Accordingly, the application will not necessarily be limited to oxygen reduction,” says Ludwig. The research team has already applied for a patent.

The results are published in the journal Advanced Energy Materials.

Source: http://news.rub.de/

How to mass produce cell-sized robots

October 24, 2018 Uncategorized

NanoRobots no bigger than a cell could be mass-produced using a new method developed by researchers at MIT. The microscopic devices, which the team calls “syncells” (short for synthetic cells), might eventually be used to monitor conditions inside an oil or gas pipeline, or to search out disease while floating through the bloodstream.

The key to making such tiny devices in large quantities lies in a method the team developed for controlling the natural fracturing process of atomically-thin, brittle materials, directing the fracture lines so that they produce miniscule pockets of a predictable size and shape. Embedded inside these pockets are electronic circuits and materials that can collect, record, and output data. The system uses a two-dimensional form of carbon called graphene, which forms the outer structure of the tiny syncells. One layer of the material is laid down on a surface, then tiny dots of a polymer material, containing the electronics for the devices, are deposited by a sophisticated laboratory version of an inkjet printer. Then, a second layer of graphene is laid on top.

This photo shows circles on a graphene sheet where the sheet is draped over an array of round posts, creating stresses that will cause these discs to separate from the sheet. The gray bar across the sheet is liquid being used to lift the discs from the surface

People think of graphene, an ultrathin but extremely strong material, as being “floppy,” but it is actually brittle, Strano explains. But rather than considering that brittleness a problem, the team figured out that it could be used to their advantage. “We discovered that you can use the brittleness,” says Strano, who is the Carbon P. Dubbs Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT. “It’s counterintuitive. Before this work, if you told me you could fracture a material to control its shape at the nanoscale, I would have been incredulous.”

The novel process, called “autoperforation,” is described in a paper published today in the journal Nature Materials, by MIT Professor Michael Strano, postdoc Pingwei Liu, graduate student Albert Liu, and eight others at MIT.

Source: http://news.mit.edu/

The Rise Of The Hydrogen Electric Truck

October 23, 2018 Uncategorized

Nikola Motor Company is welcoming everyone to Phoenix April 16-18, 2019 for a new blockbuster event, Nikola World. The first two days, April 16 and 17, are devoted to invite-only Nikola reservation holders, suppliers, media and investors while April 18 will be reserved for the public. On April 16, Nikola will unveil the pre-production hydrogen electric semi-truck, 2.3 megawatt hydrogen station and the Nikola NZT 4X4. April 17 will be dedicated to demonstration drives and hydrogen filling. On April 18, the public is invited to see the latest trucks and NZT in action.

“Not only will our team be unveiling the most advanced production semi-truck the world has ever seen, but we will also be revealing the Nikola NZT all-electric 4×4 vehicle and a massive 2.3 megawatt hydrogen station. This is why we named it Nikola World – we want to create a better place to live where emissions are eliminated,” said Trevor Milton, CEO, Nikola Motor Company.

Nikola World registration will open on December 3, 2018 at www.nikolamotor.com. All the activities will be free. Milton added: “The largest fleets and customers in the world will attend this event and they will see what no other OEM could deliver – a production-ready, zero emission semi-truck, with over 1,000-mile range, 20 percent less operating costs per mile, more horsepower, torque and safety features than any other diesel ever built, and a startup did it. Remember that!”

While diesel engines require high RPM’s to reach peak torque, the Nikola Two™ electric motors hit peak torque almost instantly.
Instant torque combined with all wheel drive give Nikola Two™ the ability to accelerate nearly 2x faster than a stock diesel tractor. There are several factors that give Nikola Two™ the advantage when it comes to fuel economy:

Better aerodynamics
Using energy only when needed (no idling)
Charging batteries via regenerative braking
6X4 four-wheel drive – pulling and pushing at the same time
Up to 95% efficient electric motors
Up to 70% efficient fuel cell
When pulling at max capacity, every pound counts. With nearly 2,000 lbs of weight savings on the chassis, owners can throw more goods on each load.
Every pound after max load may be worth as much as $.50. By saving up to 2,000 lbs, owners could earn approximately $1,000 in extra revenue from every load, every day. Owners that run at full load could see up to $30,000 or more each month in revenue straight to the bottom line.
Nikola‘s Complete Lease Program includes hydrogen fuel, warranty and scheduled maintenance. We get asked about the cost of ownership more than anything else. For this reason the Nikola™ Complete Leasing Program has been created.
Nikola Motor Company wants to create the largest hydrogen network in the world that will cover over 2,000 miles and include 16 stations. Nikola has already kicked off two of the 16 stations and 14 more will follow immediately after installation.

Source: https://nikolamotor.com/

Creating Nanocages With Tunable Properties From DNA

October 22, 2018 Uncategorized

How to create nanocages, i.e., robust and stable objects with regular voids and tunable properties? Short segments of DNA molecules are perfect candidates for the controllable design of novel complex structures. Physicists from the University of Vienna, the Technical University of Vienna, the Foschungszentrum Jülich in Germany and Cornell University in the U.S.A., investigated methodologies to synthesize DNA-based dendrimers in the lab and to predict their behavior using detailed computer simulations.

Nanocages are highly interesting molecular constructs, from the point of view of both fundamental science and possible applications. The cavities of these nanometer-sized objects can be employed as carriers of smaller molecules, which is of critical importance in medicine for drug or gene delivery in living organisms. This idea brought together researchers from various interdisciplinary fields who have been investigating dendrimers as promising candidates for creating such nano-carriers. Their tree-like architecture and step-wise growth with repeating self-similar units results in dendrimers containing cavities, hollow objects with controllable design.

The researchers found a way to create dendrimers rigid enough to prevent back-folding of outer arms even in the case of high branching generations, preserving regular voids in their interior. The nanocages they created, in the lab and studied computationally are DNA-based dendrimers, or so-called, dendrimer-like DNAs (DL-DNA).

Their results are published in the journal Nanoscale.

Source: https://medienportal.univie.ac.at/

Antibodies Are The New Cancer Weapon

October 19, 2018 Uncategorized

Antibody-based imaging* of a particularly aggressive form of breast cancer is undergoing clinical trials worldwide, but the path from trial to application is being hampered by a major obstacle: safety. Concerns stem from inefficient tumor targeting, which can result in accumulation in the bone marrow, liver and kidneys of the radioactive material necessary for the imaging. Recent efforts have focused on nanoscale delivery vehicles with immune components, but these vehicles are often still too large (20 nanometers or larger) for renal clearance after imaging.

Ulrich Wiesner, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Engineering in materials science and engineering, in collaboration with Dr. Michelle Bradbury of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSKCC) and Weill Cornell Medicine, has proposed a novel approach using ultrasmall silica nanoparticles – better known as “Cornell dots” (or C dots) – invented in his lab more than a dozen years ago. Their team – including researchers at pharmaceutical company MedImmune – have equipped the C dots with antibody fragments. Because the resulting conjugates are smaller than 8 nanometers, these C dots allow for renal clearance while achieving the specificity needed for efficient tumor targeting.

They report their discovery in in Nature Communications. Feng Chen, senior research scientist at MSKCC, and Kai Ma, postdoctoral researcher in the Wiesner lab, are co-lead authors. Wiesner said this research creates “a whole new runway” to employ antibody fragments for a number of diseases, cancer in particular, and for diagnostics as well as drug delivery – when combined in a single entity also known as “theranostics.”

A rendering of the Cornell prime dot (left) with an attached antibody fragment (center) binding to a HER2 cancer cell receptor (right). The dot and antibody attachment combined are less than 8 nanometers in diameter, the limit for renal clearance.

“This is the first time we’ve worked with these antibody fragments,” Wiesner said, “thereby harnessing the power of antibodies in the fight against cancer.”

* Cancer imaging is an umbrella term that covers the many approaches used to research and diagnose cancer. Originally used to diagnose and stage the disease, cancer imaging is now also used to assist with surgery and radiotherapy, to look for early responses to cancer therapies and to identify patients who are not responding to treatment.

Source: http://news.cornell.edu/

New Material For New Processor

October 18, 2018 Uncategorized

Computers used to take up entire rooms. Today, a two-pound laptop can slide effortlessly into a backpack. But that wouldn’t have been possible without the creation of new, smaller processors — which are only possible with the innovation of new materials. But how do materials scientists actually invent new materials? Through experimentation, explains Sanket Deshmukh, an assistant professor in the chemical engineering department of Virginia Tech whose team’s recently published computational research might vastly improve the efficiency and costs savings of the material design process.

Deshmukh’s lab, the Computational Design of Hybrid Materials lab, is devoted to understanding and simulating the ways molecules move and interact — crucial to creating a new material. In recent years, materials scientists have employed machine learning, a powerful subset of artificial intelligence, to accelerate the discovery of new materials through computer simulations. Deshmukh and his team have recently published research in the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters demonstrating a novel machine learning framework that trains “on the fly,” meaning it instantaneously processes data and learns from it to accelerate the development of computational models. Traditionally the development of computational models are “carried out manually via trial-and-error approach, which is very expensive and inefficient, and is a labor-intensive task,” Deshmukh explained.

“This novel framework not only uses the machine learning in a unique fashion for the first time,” Deshmukh said, “but it also dramatically accelerates the development of accurate computational models of materials.” “We train the machine learning model in a ‘reverse’ fashion by using the properties of a model obtained from molecular dynamics simulations as an input for the machine learning model, and using the input parameters used in molecular dynamics simulations as an output for the machine learning model,” said Karteek Bejagam, a post-doctoral researcher in Deshmukh’s lab and one of the lead authors of the study.

This new framework allows researchers to perform optimization of computational models, at unusually faster speed, until they reach the desired properties of a new material.

Source: https://vtnews.vt.edu/

Perovskite Could Convert Up To 44% Of Light Into Electricity

October 17, 2018 Uncategorized

Perovskites are a family of crystals that show promising properties for applications in nano-technology. However, one useful property that until now was unobserved in perovskites is so-called carrier multiplication – an effect that makes materials much more efficient in converting light into electricity. New research, led by University of Amsterdam (UvA-IoP) physicists Dr Chris de Weerd and Dr Leyre Gomez from the group of Prof. Tom Gregorkiewicz, has now shown that certain perovskites in fact do have this desirable property. Crystals are configurations of atoms, molecules or ions, that are ordered in a structure that repeats itself in all directions. We have all encountered some crystals in everyday life: ordinary salt, diamond and even snowflakes are examples. What is perhaps less well-known is that certain crystals show very interesting properties when their size is not that of our everyday life but that of nanometers – a few billionths of a meter.

Perovskites – named after 19^th century Russian mineralogist Lev Perovski – form a particular family of materials that all share the same crystal structure. These perovskites have many desirable electronic properties, making them useful for constructing for example LEDs, TV-screens, solar cells and lasers. A property which so far had not been shown to exist in perovskites is carrier multiplication. When semiconductors – in solar cells, for example – convert the energy of light into electricity, this is usually done one particle at a time: a single infalling photon results in a single excited electron (and the corresponding ‘hole’ where the electron used to be) that can carry an electrical current. However, in certain materials, if the infalling light is energetic enough, further electron-hole pairs can be excited as a result; it is this process that is known as carrier multiplication.

“Until now, carrier multiplication had not been reported for perovskites. That we have now found it is of great fundamental impact on this upcoming material. For example, this shows that perovskite nanocrystals can be used to construct very efficient photodetectors, and in the future perhaps solar cells”, says De Weerd, who successfully defended her PhD thesis based on this and other research last week.

When carrier multiplication occurs, the conversion from light into electricity can become much more efficient. For example, in ordinary solar cells there is a theoretical limit (the so-called Shockley-Queisser limit) on the amount of energy that can be converted in this way: at most a little over 33% of the solar power gets turned into electrical power. In semiconductor nanocrystals that feature the carrier multiplication effect, however, a maximum efficiency of up to 44% is predicted.

The paper in which the researchers report on their findings was published in Nature Communications this week.

Source: http://iop.uva.nl/

How To Pilot A Drone Using Virtual Reality

October 16, 2018 Uncategorized

Imagine piloting a drone using the movements of your torso only and leaving your head free to look around, much like a bird. The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) research, in Switzerland, has just shown that using your torso to pilot flying machines is indeed more immersive – and more effective – than using the long-established joystick.

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“Our aim was to design a control method which would be easy to learn and therefore require less mental focus from the users so that they can focus on more important issues, like search and rescue,” says lead author Jenifer Miehlbradt of EPFL’s Translational Neuroengineering Laboratory led by Bertarelli Foundation Chair Silvestro Micera. “Using your torso really gives you the feeling that you are actually flying. Joysticks, on the other hand, are of simple design but mastering their use to precisely control distant objects can be challenging.”

The scientists wanted to observe how people use their bodies to pilot a flying object, in this case a drone, and determine which movements are most intuitive and natural – approaching the pilot problem from a completely new perspective.

They started by monitoring the body movements of 17 individuals thanks to 19 infrared markers placed all over the upper body as well as their muscular activity. Each participant followed the actions of a virtual drone through simulated landscapes that passed-by as viewed through virtual reality goggles.

The results are published in the journal PNAS.

Source: https://actu.epfl.ch/

Fasting Is A powerful Anti-Aging Weapon

October 15, 2018 Uncategorized

A molecule produced during fasting or calorie restriction has anti-aging effects on the vascular system, which could reduce the occurrence and severity of human diseases related to blood vessels, such as cardiovascular disease, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

“As people become older, they are more susceptible to disease, like cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Ming-Hui Zou, senior author of the study, director of the Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine at Georgia State. “Age is the most important so-called risk factor for human disease. How to actually delay aging is a major pathway to reducing the incident and severity of human disease. “The most important part of aging is vascular aging. When people become older, the vessels that supply different organs are the most sensitive and more subject to aging damage, so studying vascular aging is very important. This study is focused on vascular aging, and in old age, what kind of changes happen and how to prevent vascular aging.”

In this study, the research team explores the link between calorie restriction (eating less or fasting) and delaying aging, which is unknown and has been poorly studied. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Cell.

The researchers identified an important, small molecule that is produced during fasting or calorie restriction conditions. The molecule, β-Hydroxybutyrate, is one type of a ketone body, or a water-soluble molecule that contains a ketone group and is produced by the liver from fatty acids during periods of low food intake, carbohydrate restrictive diets, starvation and prolonged intense exercise.

Source: https://news.gsu.edu/

Human Retinas Grown In A Dish

October 12, 2018 Uncategorized

Biologists at Johns Hopkins University grew human retinas from scratch to determine how cells that allow people to see in color are made. The work, set for publication in the journal Science, lays the foundation to develop therapies for eye diseases such as color blindness and macular degeneration. It also establishes lab-created “organoids” as a model to study human development on a cellular level.

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“Everything we examine looks like a normal developing eye, just growing in a dish,” said Robert Johnston, a developmental biologist at Johns Hopkins. “You have a model system that you can manipulate without studying humans directly.” Johnston’s lab explores how a cell’s fate is determined—or what happens in the womb to turn a developing cell into a specific type of cell, an aspect of human biology that is largely unknown. Here, he and his team focused on the cells that allow people to see blue, red and green—the three cone photoreceptors in the human eye.

While most vision research is done on mice and fish, neither of those species has the dynamic daytime and color vision of humans. So Johnston’s team created the human eye tissue they needed—with stem cells. “Trichromatic color vision differentiates us from most other mammals,” said lead author Kiara Eldred, a Johns Hopkins graduate student. “Our research is really trying to figure out what pathways these cells take to give us that special color vision.”

Source: https://hub.jhu.edu/

Molecular Baskets Swallow, Trap And Remove Toxic Compounds

October 11, 2018 Uncategorized

Researchers have developed designer molecules that may one day be able to seek out and trap deadly nerve agents and other toxic compounds in the environment – and possibly in humans.

The scientists, led by organic chemists from The Ohio State University, call these new particles “molecular baskets.” As the name implies, these molecules are shaped like baskets and research in the lab has shown they can find simulated nerve agents, swallow them in their cavities and trap them for safe removal.

In a new study published in Chemistry – A European Journal, the researchers took the first step in creating versions that could have potential for use in medicine.

“Our goal is to develop nanoparticles that can trap toxic compounds not only in the environment, but also from the human body,” said Jovica Badjić, leader of the project and professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Ohio State.

The research focuses on nerve agents, sometimes called nerve gas, which are deadly chemical poisons that have been used in warfare.

In a study published last year in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, Badjić and his colleagues created molecular baskets with amino acids around the rims. These amino acids helped find simulated nerve agents in a liquid environment and direct them into the basket.

Source: https://news.osu.edu/

Antipsychotic Drug Reduces Aggressive Type Of Breast Cancer Cells

October 10, 2018 Uncategorized

A commonly-used anti-psychotic drug could also be effective against triple negative breast cancer, the form of the disease that is most difficult to treat, new research has found. The study, led by the University of Bradford, also showed that the drug, Pimozide, has the potential to treat the most common type of lung cancer.

Anti-psychotic drugs are known to have anti-cancer properties, with some, albeit inconclusive, studies showing a reduced incidence of cancer amongst people with schizophrenia. The new research, published inOncotarget, is the first to identify how one of these drugs acts against triple negative breast cancer, with the potential to be the first targeted treatment for the disease.

“Triple negative breast cancer has lower survival rates and increased risk of recurrence. It is the only type of breast cancer for which only limited targeted treatments are available. Our research has shown that Pimozide could potentially fill this gap. And because this drug is already in clinical use, it could move quickly into clinical trials,” said lead researcher, Professor Mohamed El-Tanani from the University of Bradford

The researchers, from the University of Bradford, Queen’s University Belfast and the University of Salamanca, tested Pimozide in the laboratory on triple negative breast cancer cells, non-small cell lung cancer cells and normal breast cells. They found that at the highest dosage used, up to 90 per cent of the cancer cells died following treatment with the drug, compared with only five per cent of the normal cells.

Source: https://bradford.ac.uk/

How To Treat Congenital Disease Before Birth

October 9, 2018 Uncategorized

For the first time, scientists have performed prenatal gene editing to prevent a lethal metabolic disorder in laboratory animals, offering the potential to treat human congenital diseases before birth. Published today in Nature Medicine, research from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and offers proof-of-concept for prenatal use of a sophisticated, low-toxicity tool that efficiently edits DNA building blocks in disease-causing genes.

Using both CRISPR-Cas9 and base editor 3 (BE3) gene-editing tools, the team reduced cholesterol levels in healthy mice treated in utero by targeting a gene that regulates those levels. They also used prenatal gene editing to improve liver function and prevent neonatal death in a subgroup of mice that had been engineered with a mutation causing the lethal liver disease hereditary HT1 (HT1). HT1 in humans usually appears during infancy, and it is often treatable with a medicine called nitisinone and a strict diet. However, when treatments fail, patients are at risk of liver failure or liver cancer. Prenatal treatment could open a door to disease prevention, for HT1 and potentially for other congenital disorders.

“Our ultimate goal is to translate the approach used in these proof-of-concept studies to treat severe diseases diagnosed early in pregnancy,” said study co-leader William H. Peranteau, MD, a pediatric and fetal surgeon in CHOP’s Center for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment. “We hope to broaden this strategy to intervene prenatally in congenital diseases that currently have no effective treatment for most patients, and result in death or severe complications in infants.”

“We used base editing to turn off the effects of a disease-causing genetic mutation,” said study co-leader Kiran Musunuru, MD, PhD, MPH, an associate professor of Cardiovascular Medicine at Penn. “We also plan to use the same base-editing technique not just to disrupt a mutation’s effects, but to directly correct the mutation.” Musunuru is an expert in gene-editing technology and previously showed that it can be used to reduce cholesterol and fat levels in the blood, which could lead to the development of a “vaccination” to prevent cardiovascular disease.

Source: https://www.pennmedicine.org/

Spheres Trick, Trap and Terminate Water Contaminant

October 8, 2018 Uncategorized

Rice University scientists have developed something akin to the Venus’ flytrap of particles for water remediation. Micron-sized spheres created in the lab of Rice environmental engineer Pedro Alvarez are built to catch and destroy bisphenol A (BPA), a synthetic chemical used to make plastics. BPA is commonly used to coat the insides of food cans, bottle tops and water supply lines, and was once a component of baby bottles. While BPA that seeps into food and drink is considered safe in low doses, prolonged exposure is suspected of affecting the health of children and contributing to high blood pressure. The good news is that reactive oxygen species (ROS) – in this case, hydroxyl radicals – are bad news for BPA. Inexpensive titanium dioxide releases ROS when triggered by ultraviolet light. But because oxidating molecules fade quickly, BPA has to be close enough to attack. That’s where the trap comes in.

Close up, the spheres reveal themselves as flower-like collections of titanium dioxide petals. The supple petals provide plenty of surface area for the Rice researchers to anchor cyclodextrin molecules. Cyclodextrin is a benign sugar-based molecule often used in food and drugs. It has a two-faced structure, with a hydrophobic (water-avoiding) cavity and a hydrophilic (water-attracting) outer surface. BPA is also hydrophobic and naturally attracted to the cavity. Once trapped, ROS produced by the spheres degrades BPA into harmless chemicals.

In the lab, the researchers determined that 200 milligrams of the spheres per liter of contaminated water degraded 90 percent of BPA in an hour, a process that would take more than twice as long with unenhanced titanium dioxide. The work fits into technologies developed by the Rice-based and National Science Foundation-supported Center for Nanotechnology-Enabled Water Treatment because the spheres self-assemble from titanium dioxide nanosheets.

Petals” of a titanium dioxide sphere enhanced with cyclodextrin as seen under a scanning electron microscope. When triggered by ultraviolet light, the spheres created at Rice University are effective at removing bisphenol A contaminants from water.

“Most of the processes reported in the literature involve nanoparticles,” said Rice graduate student and lead author Danning Zhang. “The size of the particles is less than 100 nanometers. Because of their very small size, they’re very difficult to recover from suspension in water.”

The research is detailed in the American Chemical Society journal Environmental Science & Technology.

Source: http://news.rice.edu/

CRISPR-SKIP, New Gene Editing Technique

October 5, 2018 Uncategorized

What if doctors could treat previously incurable genetic diseases caused by errors or mutations in genes? Thanks to new research by American scientists at the University of Illinois, we are one step closer to making that a reality. Published in Genome Biology, their work is based on CRISPR-Cas9, a groundbreaking genome editing system.

Typically, cells in the body “read” DNA to produce the proteins needed for different biological functions. . Scientists can change how the DNA is read using CRISPR gene-editing technology. CRISPR-Cas9 is often used to cut out specific areas of DNA and repair faulty genes. In the current study, the researchers modified existing technology to create CRISPR-SKIP. Instead of breaking DNA to cut faulty genes out, CRISPR-SKIP changes a single base of the targeted DNA sequence, causing the cell to skip reading that section of DNA.

According to the study authors, CRISPR-SKIP can eliminate faulty sections of DNA permanently, allowing for long-lasting treatment of some genetic diseases with one treatment. They successfully tested their technique in cell lines from both mice and humans. The scientists aim to test the method in live organisms in the future.

CRISPR-SKIP has the potential to help treat many diseases such as cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, Huntington’s disease, and Duchenne muscular dystrophy to name a few. Because the method only requires editing of a single base, it is simple, precise, and adaptable to a variety of cell types and applications.

Source: https://news.illinois.edu/
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https://www.medicalnewsbulletin.com/

Highly Stable Catalyst Helps Turn Water Into Fuel

October 4, 2018 Uncategorized

Breaking the bonds between oxygen and hydrogen in water could be a key to the creation of hydrogen in a sustainable manner, but finding an economically viable technique for this has proved difficult. Researchers report a new hydrogen-generating catalyst that clears many of the obstacles – abundance, stability in acid conditions and efficiency.

In the journal Angewandte Chemie, researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign report on an electrocatalytic material made from mixing metal compounds with substance called perchloric acid. Electrolyzers use electricity to break water molecules into oxygen and hydrogen. The most efficient of these devices use corrosive acids and electrode materials made of the metal compounds iridium oxide or ruthenium oxide. Iridium oxide is the more stable of the two, but iridium is one of the least abundant elements on Earth, so researchers are in search of an alternative material.

“Much of the previous work was performed with electrolyzers made from just two elements – one metal and oxygen,” said Hong Yang, a co-author and professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Illinois. “In a recent study, we found if a compound has two metal elements – yttrium and ruthenium – and oxygen, the rate of water-splitting reaction increased.”

The researchers found that when they used perchloric acid as a catalyst and let the mixture react under heat, the physical nature of the yttrium ruthenate product changed. “The material became more porous and also had a new crystalline structure, different from all the solid catalysts we made before,” said Jaemin Kim, the lead author and a postdoctoral researcher. The new porous material the team developed – a pyrochlore oxide of yttrium ruthenate – can split water molecules at a higher rate than the current industry standard. “Because of the increased activity it promotes, a porous structure is highly desirable when it comes electrocatalysts,” Yang said. “These pores can be produced synthetically with nanometer-sized templates and substances for making ceramics; however, those can’t hold up under the high-temperature conditions needed for making high-quality solid catalysts.”

Source: https://news.illinois.edu/

NanoComputers Could Run a Million Times Faster

October 3, 2018 Uncategorized

Transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) possess optical properties that could be used to make computers run a million times faster and store information a million times more energy-efficiently, according to a study led by Georgia State University.

Computers operate on the time scale of a fraction of a nanosecond, but the researchers suggest constructing computers on the basis of TMDCs, atomically thin semiconductors, could make them run on the femtosecond time scale, a million times faster. This would also increase computer memory speed by a millionfold.

“There is nothing faster, except light,” said Dr. Mark Stockman, lead author of the study and director of the Center for Nano-Optics and a Regents’ Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Georgia State. “The only way to build much faster computers is to use optics, not electronics. Electronics, which is used by current computers, can’t go any faster, which is why engineers have been increasing the number of processors. We propose the TMDCs to make computers a million times more efficient. This is a fundamentally different approach to information technology.”

The researchers propose a theory that TMDCs have the potential to process information within a couple of femtoseconds. A femtosecond is one millionth of one billionth of a second. A TMDC has a hexagonal lattice structure that consists of a layer of transition metal atoms sandwiched between two layers of chalcogen atoms. This hexagonal structure aids in the computer processor speed and also enables more efficient information storage. The TMDCs have a number of positive qualities, including being stable, non-toxic, thin, light and mechanically strong. Examples include molybdenum disulfide (MOS₂) and tungsten diselenide (WSe₂). TMDCs are part of a large family called 2D materials, which is named after their extraordinary thinness of one or a few atoms. In this study, the researchers also established the optical properties of the TMDCs, which allow them to be ultrafast.

The findings are published in the journal Physical Review B.

Source: https://news.gsu.edu/

Flying Robot

October 2, 2018 Uncategorized

If your robot doesn’t weigh anything, you don’t have to worry about falling over, Researchers from the University of Tokyo have developed a quadrotor with legs called Aerial-Biped. Designed primarily for entertainment, Aerial-Biped enables “a richer physical expression” by automatically generating walking gaits in sync with its quadrotor body.

Until someone invents a robot that can moonwalk, you can model a gait that appears normal by simply making sure that the velocity of a foot is zero as long as it’s in contact with the ground. The Aerial-Biped robot learns how to do this through reinforcement learning in a physics simulator, and the policy transfers to the robot well enough that the legs can appear to walk as the quadrotor moves.

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The lead author Azumi Maekawa from the University of Tokyo explained: . “We were inspired by bipedal robots that use invisible force to get stability, such as Magdan, created by Tomotaka Takahashi (an electromagnet on the bottom of its feet lets it walk on a metal plate), and BALLU (which uses buoyancy of a helium-filled balloon). The foot trajectory generation method is based on the assumption that one of the key features of walking (or at least the appearance of walking) is that the velocity of the foot in contact with the ground is zero. The goal is to develop a robot that has the ability to display the appearance of bipedal walking with dynamic mobility, and to provide a new visual experience.

Source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/

A self-powered heart monitor taped to the skin

October 1, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists in Japan have developed a human-friendly, ultra-flexible organic sensor powered by sunlight, which acts as a self-powered heart monitor. Previously, they developed a flexible photovoltaic cell that could be incorporated into textiles. In this study, they directly integrated a sensory device, called an organic electrochemical transistor—a type of electronic device that can be used to measure a variety of biological functions—into a flexible organic solar cell. Using it, they were then able to measure the heartbeats of rats and humans under bright light conditions.

Self-powered devices that can be fit directly on human skin or tissue have great potential for medical applications. They could be used as physiological sensors for the real-time or the real-time monitoring of heart or brain function in the human body. However, practical realization has been impractical due to the bulkiness of batteries and insufficient power supply, or due to noise interference from the electrical supply, impeding conformability and long-term operation.

The key requirement for such devices is a stable and adequate energy supply. A key advance in this study, published in Nature, is the use of a nano-grating surface on the light absorbers of the solar cell, allowing for high photo-conversion efficiency (PCE) and light angle independency. Thanks to this, the researchers were able to achieve a PCE of 10.5 percent and a high power-per-weight ratio of 11.46 watts per gram, approaching the “magic number” of 15 percent that will make organic photovoltaics competitive with their silicon-based counterparts.

To demonstrate a practical application, sensory devices called organic electrochemical transistors were integrated with organic solar cells on an ultra-thin (1 μm) substrate, to allow the self-powered detection of heartbeats either on the skin or to record electrocardiographic (ECG) signals directly on the heart of a rat. They found that the device worked well at a lighting level of 10,000 lux, which is equivalent to the light seen when one is in the shade on a clear sunny day, and experienced less noise than similar devices connected to a battery, presumably because of the lack of electric wires.

According to Kenjiro Fukuda of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science, “This is a nice step forward in the quest to make self-powered medical monitoring devices that can be placed on human tissue. There are some important remaining tasks, such as the development of flexible power storage devices, and we will continue to collaborate with other groups to produce practical devices. Importantly, for the current experiments we worked on the analog part of our device, which powers the device and conducts the measurement. There is also a digital silicon-based portion, for the transmission of data, and further work in that area will also help to make such devices practical.”

The research was carried out by RIKEN in collaboration with researchers from the University of Tokyo.

Source: http://www.riken.jp/

Swarm Of NanoRobots Can Improve The Efficiency Of Any Machine

September 28, 2018 Uncategorized

The research team of Prof. Massimiliano Esposito of the University of Luxembourg studied the thermodynamics of nanomachines. All machines convert one form of energy into another form – for example a car engine turns the energy stored in fuel into motion energy. Those processes of energy conversion, described by the theory called thermodynamics, don’t only take place on the macro-level of big machines, but also at the micro-level of molecular machines that drive muscles or metabolic processes and even on the atomic level. The research team of Prof. Massimiliano Esposito of the University of Luxembourg studies the thermodynamics of nanomachines only consisting of a few atoms.

In a paper published in the prestigious scientific journal Physical Review X, they outline how these small machines behave in concert. Their insights could be used to improve the energy efficiency of all kinds of machines, big or small.

Recent progress in nanotechnology has enabled researchers to understand the world in ever-smaller scales and even allows for the design and manufacture of extremely small artificial machines.

“There is evidence that these machines are far more efficient than large machines, such as cars. Yet in absolute terms, the output is low compared to the needs we have in daily life applications,” explains Tim Herpich, PhD student at Esposito’s research group and main author of the paper. “That is why we studied how the nanomachines interact with each other and looked at how ensembles of those small machines behave. We wanted to see if there are synergies when they act in concert.”

The researchers found that the nanomachines under certain conditions start to arrange in “swarms” and synchronise their movements. “We could show that the synchronisation of the machines triggers significant synergy effects, so that the overall energy output of the ensemble is far greater than the sum of the individual outputs,” said Prof. Esposito. While this is basic research, the principles outlined in the paper could potentially be used to improve the efficiency of any machine in the future, the researcher explains.

In order to simulate and study the energetic behaviour of swarms of nanomachines, the scientists created mathematical models that are based on existing literature and outcomes of experimental research.

Source: https://wwwen.uni.lu/

How To Make Concrete Leaner, Greener, Stronger And More Elastic

September 27, 2018 Uncategorized

Rice University scientists have developed micron-sized calcium silicate spheres that could lead to stronger and greener concrete, the world’s most-used synthetic material. To Rice materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari and graduate student Sung Hoon Hwang, the spheres represent building blocks that can be made at low cost and promise to mitigate the energy-intensive techniques now used to make cement, the most common binder in concrete.

The researchers formed the spheres in a solution around nanoscale seeds of a common detergent-like surfactant. The spheres can be prompted to self-assemble into solids that are stronger, harder, more elastic and more durable than ubiquitous Portland cement.

Packed, micron-scale calcium silicate spheres developed at Rice University are a promising material that could lead to stronger and more environmentally friendly concrete

“Cement doesn’t have the nicest structure,” said Shahsavari, an assistant professor of materials science and nanoengineering. “Cement particles are amorphous and disorganized, which makes it a bit vulnerable to cracks. But with this material, we know what our limits are and we can channel polymers or other materials in between the spheres to control the structure from bottom to top and predict more accurately how it could fracture.”

He said the spheres are suitable for bone-tissue engineering, insulation, ceramic and composite applications as well as cement.

Source: https://news.rice.edu/

How To Make Toxic Water Safe And Drinkable

September 26, 2018 Uncategorized

In Australia, UNSW and RMIT researchers have discovered a revolutionary and cheap way to make filters that can turn water contaminated with heavy metals into safe drinking water in a matter of minutes. Recent UNSW SHARP hire Professor Kourosh Kalantar-zadeh and his former colleagues at RMIT showed that nano-filters made of aluminium oxide could be cheaply produced using virtually no energy from a fixed amount of liquid metal gallium.

In a paper published in Advanced Functional Materials, lead author Dr Ali Zavabeti (RMIT) and Professor Kalantar-zadeh explained that when a chunk of aluminium is added to the core of liquid gallium at room temperature, layers of aluminium oxide are quickly produced at the surface of the gallium. The authors discovered that these aluminium oxide nano-sheets were highly porous and went on to prove they were suitable for filtering both heavy metal ions and oil contamination at unprecedented, ultra-fast rates. Professor Kalantar-zadeh, who was recently awarded an ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship soon after joining UNSW‘s School of Chemical Engineering, said that low cost and portable filters produced by this new liquid metal based manufacturing process could be used by people without access to clean drinking water to remove substances like lead and other toxic metals in a matter of minutes.

“Because it’s super porous, water passes through very rapidly,” Professor Kalantar-zadeh said. “Lead and other heavy metals have a very high affinity to aluminium oxide. As the water passes through billions of layers, each one of these lead ions get attracted to one of these aluminium oxide sheets. “But at the same time, it’s very safe because with repeated use, the water flow cannot detach the heavy metal ions from the aluminium oxide.”

Professor Kalantar-zadeh believes the technology could be put to good use in Africa and Asia in places where heavy metal ions in the water are at levels well beyond safe human consumption. It is estimated that 790 million people, or one in 10 of the Earth’s population, do not have access to clean water. “If you’ve got bad quality water, you just take a gadget with one of these filters with you,” he said. “You pour the contaminated water in the top of a flask with the aluminium oxide filter. Wait two minutes and the water that passes through the filter is now very clean water, completely drinkable. “And the good thing is, this filter is cheap.”

There are portable filtration products available that do remove heavy metals from water, but they are comparatively expensive, often costing more than $100. By contrast, aluminium oxide filters produced from liquid gallium could be produced for as little as 10 cents, making them attractive to prospective manufacturers.

Source: http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/

The Sea Floor Is Full Of Minerals Vital in The Manufacture Of Smartphones

September 25, 2018 Uncategorized

From the safety of their research vessel, scientists are exploring one of Earth’s last frontiers – the sea floor – to discover more about valuable minerals vital in the manufacture of smartphones. The researchers, from the University of Bergen in Norway, are sending robots 2,500m down into the waters between Norway and Greenland, to try to understand the environments potentially rich with rare earth minerals.

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“The ocean sea floor on Earth is, for the most part, unknown,” scientist Thibaut Barreyre said. “It’s totally fair to say that we know much more about the surface of the moon and Mars – mapped by satellites and different devices – than we know about our own planet.”

The international team is using technology including autonomous robots and human-piloted submarines to explore the sea’s dark depths where zinc, gold and copper are also found. The scientists hope the explorations will reveal why some areas have minerals and others do not, how much is down there and what damage mining them would have on the environment. A viable new source of rare earths, a group of 17 elements used in the production of smartphone screens, magnets, camera lenses and X-ray machines could be highly lucrative. But it is not that simple, Barreyre explained. “Some of them (waters) are rich in gold, copper, zinc and rare earths. And others have almost none of those. And that’s why it’s very important to us as scientists to understand it,”he commented. The team, which began exploring the area last year, will spend the next five years searching.

Source: https://www.straitstimes.com/

Spray-On Electronic Nano-Antennas For Wearables

September 24, 2018 Uncategorized

The promise of wearables, functional fabrics, the Internet of Things, and their “next-generation” technological cohort seems tantalizingly within reach. But researchers in the field will tell you a prime reason for their delayed “arrival” is the problem of seamlessly integrating connection technology — namely, antennas — with shape-shifting and flexible “things.”

But a breakthrough by researchers in Drexel’s College of Engineering, could now make installing an antenna as easy as applying some bug spray. In research recently published in Science Advances, the group reports on a method for spraying invisibly thin antennas, made from a type of two-dimensional, metallic material called MXene, that perform as well as those being used in mobile devices, wireless routers and portable transducers.

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Spray-applied MXene antennas could open the door for new applications in smart technology, wearables and IoT devices

“This is a very exciting finding because there is a lot of potential for this type of technology,” said Kapil Dandekar, PhD, a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, who directs the Drexel Wireless Systems Lab, and was a co-author of the research. “The ability to spray an antenna on a flexible substrate or make it optically transparent means that we could have a lot of new places to set up networks — there are new applications and new ways of collecting data that we can’t even imagine at the moment.”

Source: https://drexel.edu/

Artificial Hearts Are Now Produced Industrially

September 21, 2018 Uncategorized

Carmat (Paris:ALCAR), the designer and developer of the world’s most advanced total artificial heart project, aiming to provide a therapeutic alternative for people suffering from end-stage biventricular heart failure, has announced the certification of its new manufacturing site situated in Bois-d’Arcy, near Paris. In line with the schedule, the recently opened automated site is perfectly aligned with Carmat’s strategic transformation into an industrial company.

The newly available space will allow the production of up to 800 units per year at full capacity to meet the demands of industrial-pace manufacturing as well as the enrollment ramp up in the ongoing PIVOTAL study. Furthermore, this facility will enable the use of new tools, such as robots, to assemble hybrid membranes on the device and a fully-automated software station to set up the prosthesis parameters. This project has been conducted by a dedicated team with the aim to implement best industrial practices in regards to the organization, processes, and IT systems for maximum efficiency and quality.

Stéphane Piat, Chief Executive Officer of Carmat, commented: “We are delighted to announce the certification of our new manufacturing site based in Bois-d’Arcy, near Paris, which is a true accomplishment as we have achieved it in less than a year from the start of the building construction. Carmat will now be able to manufacture products in both Vélizy and Bois-d’Arcy. In line with our strategy, the new automated site will enable Carmat to become an industrial company with the ability to manufacture up to 800 units a year at full capacity in order to support the demand. Thanks to new processes, we will increase production throughput and more importantly, reinforce the quality of our prostheses to better serve patients across the world.”

Source: https://www.carmatsa.com/
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https://www.businesswire.com/

One Dollar Hand Kit Detects and Diagnoses Diseases

September 20, 2018 Uncategorized

A test kit that can fit into the palm of a hand could be changing the face of disease screening and diagnosis. Developed by a multidisciplinary team of the National University of Singapore (NUS) researchers, the device named enVision (enzyme-assisted nanocomplexes for visual identification of nucleic acids) is a versatile platform that can conduct specific and sensitive screening and detection for a range of diseases, from infectious diseases and high-prevalence infections, to various types of cancers and genetic diseases.

More effective and less costly than existing infection diagnostic methods, enVision, which took about one-and-a-half years to develop, takes between 30 minutes to one hour to detect diseases — two to four times faster — and each test kit costs under $1 — about 100 times cheaper.

“The enVision platform is extremely sensitive, accurate, fast, and low-cost. It works at room temperature and does not require heaters or special pumps, making it very portable. With this invention, tests can be done at the point-of-care, for instance in community clinics or hospital wards, so that disease monitoring or treatment can be administered in a timely manner to achieve better health outcomes,” said team leader Assistant Professor Shao Huilin from the Biomedical Institute for Global Health Research and Technology (BIGHEART) at NUS and NUS Biomedical Engineering.

Source: https://news.nus.edu.sg/

Let Your Skin Play Music

September 19, 2018 Uncategorized

A variety of nanomaterials have been used over the years in loudspeakers and microphones. N anoparticles have replaced permanent magnets in loudspeakers and a thin film of carbon nanotubes has done pretty much the same. And, of course, someone tried to use graphene to reproduce sound for microphones.

Now researchers at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in South Korea have made a nanomembrane out of silver nanowires to serve as flexible loudspeakers or microphones. The researchers even went so far as to demonstrate their nanomembrane by making it into a loudspeaker that could be attached to skin and used it to play the final movement of a violin concerto—namely, La Campanella by Niccolo Paganini.

In research described in the journal Science Advances, the Korean researchers embedded a silver nanowire network within a polymer-based nanomembrane. The decision to use silver nanowires rather than the other types of nanomaterials that have been used in the past was based on the comparative ease of hybridizing the nanowires into the polymer. In addition, the researchers opted for nanowires because the other materials like graphene and carbon nanotubes are not as mechanically strong at nanometer-scale thickness when in freestanding form, according to Hyunhyub Ko, an associate professor at UNIST and coauthor of the research. It is this thickness that is the critical element of the material.

“The biggest breakthrough of our research is the development of ultrathin, transparent, and conductive hybrid nanomembranes with nanoscale thickness, less than 100 nanometers,” said Ko. “These outstanding optical, electrical, and mechanical properties of nanomembranes enable the demonstration of skin-attachable and imperceptible loudspeaker and microphone.”

The nanomembrane loudspeaker operates by emitting thermoacoustic sound through the oscillation of the surrounding air brought on by temperature differences. The periodic Joule heating that occurs when an electric current passes through a conductor and produces heat leads to these temperature oscillations.

Source: https://spectrum.ieee.org/

How To Recreate Memories Of Faces From Brain Data

September 18, 2018 Uncategorized

A new technique developed by neuroscientists at the University of Toronto can reconstruct images of what people perceive based on their brain activity. The technique developed by Dan Nemrodov, a postdoctoral fellow in Assistant Professor Adrian Nestor’s lab at U of T Scarborough, is able to digitally reconstruct images seen by test subjects based on electroencephalography (EEG) data.

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“When we see something, our brain creates a mental percept, which is essentially a mental impression of that thing. We were able to capture this percept using EEG to get a direct illustration of what’s happening in the brain during this process,” says Nemrodov.

For the study, test subjects hooked up to EEG equipment were shown images of faces. Their brain activity was recorded and then used to digitally recreate the image in the subject’s mind using a technique based on machine learning algorithms. It’s not the first time researchers have been able to reconstruct images based on visual stimuli using neuroimaging techniques. The current method was pioneered by Nestor, who successfully reconstructed facial images from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data in the past, but this is the first time EEG has been used.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/
AND
https://www.utoronto.ca/

Robots Help Surgeons To Do The Impossible

September 17, 2018 Uncategorized

Robotic surgery and robotically-assisted surgery have become increasingly widespread in recent years. At the cutting edge of this technology is Eindhoven Medical Robotics, a Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) related start-up.

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Robotics pioneer Maarten Steinbuch, a mechanical engineer by training, is building Eindhoven Medical Robotics with a Jeff Bezos-like 20-year vision … as an enduring business that could redefine this global semiconductor center while revolutionizing the medical world. And he’s hiring with a goal of building EMR into a 1,000-employee company over the next 10 years … but more about that in a minute. At HighTechXL Beyond tech conference and demo day, Steinbuch was one of 10 presenters. His talk was titled “The Future of Medical Robotics,” but he touched on multiple topics including Moore’s Law, emerging technology that will make it illegal for humans to drive cars and the reality of the Robot Revolution. (A hint: The tech behind personal robots is way too expensive right now to be practical, and it’ll be 10 years before you have a robot in your home.) Which was all interesting until he started laying out his vision for building his business.

Steinbuch is a bit like Silicon Valley legend Jim Clark, who founded multiple landmark tech businesses including Netscape and Silicon Graphics. Developing the technology as a professor at Technical University of Eindhoven (TU/e), Steinbuch and his teams of researchers and engineers created Eindhoven’s first startup robotic surgery company back in 2010. TU/e’s Sofie robotic surgery technology competed with da Vinci Surgical Systems, a global phenomenon owned by a Silicon Valley firm, Intuitive Surgical.

He found out quickly that da Vinci “has all the patents” as well as a huge staff dedicated to specifically trying to thwart competitors, Steinbuch told the crowd.

His painful takeaway from that venture: “To do a medical robotics startup, the amount of money you need is beyond imagination if you’re a professor at a university,” at least 10 million to 20 million euros, Steinbuch said. To get back in the game, he had to first figure out which technology could become a viable business. Rather than taking on da Vinci directly, he came up with was a master-slave system that could assist surgeons in operating on the retina, filtering out surgeon’s hand tremors. There are only a few doctors who can suture lymph nodes, for example, at 3 millimetres, “and only in the morning,” Steinbuch said. “We make super surgeons – that’s what we do.”

Source: http://www.medicalrobotictechnologies.com/

First Private Passenger To Fly Around The Moon

September 14, 2018 Uncategorized

SpaceX has signed its first customer to fly on the company’s huge new rocket, the BFR, the company says. The passenger will fly on the monster ship around the Moon, though there are no details yet regarding when the trip will happen.

The BFR, or the Big Falcon Rocket, is the giant rocket that SpaceX is currently developing to send humans to the Moon and Mars. The BFR design, presented by CEO Elon Musk last year, consists of a combined rocket and spaceship, called the BFS for Big Falcon Spaceship. The main rocket will have 31 main Raptor engines and be capable of sending up 150 tons to low Earth orbit, according to that presentation.

In February 2017, SpaceX announced plans to send two passengers around the Moon on the company’s Falcon Heavy rocket, claiming that the flight would happen at the end of 2018. SpaceX never named the passengers, and, ultimately, Musk admitted during the inaugural flight of the Falcon Heavy that the trip probably wasn’t going to happen. “We’re sort of debating whether to do that on Falcon Heavy or BFR,” Musk said that before the launch in February of this year. “It will sort of depend on how well BFR development is going as to whether we focus on BFR for deep-space human flight or whether we do that on Falcon Heavy.”

Source: https://www.spacex.com/

A Wearable Device For Regrowing Hair

September 13, 2018 Uncategorized

Although some people embrace the saying “bald is beautiful,” for others, alopecia, or excessive hair loss, can cause stress and anxiety. Some studies have shown that stimulating the skin with lasers can help regrow hair, but the equipment is often large, consumes lots of energy and is difficult to use in daily life. Now, researchers have developed a flexible, wearable photostimulator that speeds up hair growth in mice.

Affecting millions of men and women worldwide, alopecia has several known causes, including heredity, stress, aging and elevated male hormones. Common treatments include medications, such as minoxidil, corticosteroid injections and hair transplant surgery. In addition, irradiating the bald area with a red laser can stimulate hair follicles, causing cells to proliferate. However, this treatment is often impractical for home use. So, Keon Jae Lee and colleagues wanted to develop a flexible, durable photostimulator that could be worn on human skin.

Shaved mice with flexible vertical LEDs (f-VLEDs) regrows hair faster than no treatment (Con) or minoxidil injections (MNX)

The team fabricated an ultrathin array of flexible vertical micro-light-emitting diodes (mLEDs). The array consisted of 900 red mLEDs on a chip slightly smaller than a postage stamp and only 20 mm thick. The device used almost 1,000 times less power per unit area than a conventional phototherapeutic laser, and it did not heat up enough to cause thermal damage to human skin. The array was sturdy and flexible, enduring up to 10,000 cycles of bending and unbending. The researchers tested the device’s ability to regrow hair on mice with shaved backs. Compared with untreated mice or those receiving minoxidil injections, the mice treated with the mLED patch for 15 minutes a day for 20 days showed significantly faster hair growth, a wider regrowth area and longer hairs.

The findings are reported in ACS Nano.

Source: https://www.acs.org/

Blood Vessels Can Contribute To Tumor Suppression

September 12, 2018 Uncategorized

A study from the Institute of Pharmacology and Structural Biology in Toulouse (France) has introduced a novel concept in cancer biology : Blood vessels in human tumors are not all the same and some types of blood vessels found in the tumor microenvironment (i. e. HEVs) can contribute to tumor suppression rather than tumor growth” (Cancer Res 2011).

A better understanding of HEVs at the molecular level, which is one of the major objectives of the research team, may have an important impact for cancer therapy.

Dendritic cells, which are well known for their role as antigen-presenting cells, play an unexpected and important role in the maintenance of HEV blood vessels in lymph nodes (Nature 2011). In addition, the scientists discovered the frequent presence of HEVs in human solid tumors, and their association with cytotoxic lymphocyte infiltration and favourable clinical outcome in breast cancer. They also showed that IL-33 is a chromatin-associated cytokine (PNAS 2007, 453 citations) that function as an alarm signal (alarmin) released upon cellular damage (PNAS 2009, 312 citations). Inflammatory proteases can generate truncated forms of IL-33 that are 30-fold more potent than the full length protein for activation of group 2 innate lymphoid cells (PNAS 2012, 133 citations, PNAS 2014).

An important objective is now to further characterize IL-33 regulation and mechanisms of action in vivo, through the use of multidisciplinary approaches.

Source: http://www.ipbs.fr/

New Solar Cells Could Harvest 85% of Visible Light

September 11, 2018 Uncategorized

Scientists have developed a photoelectrode that can harvest 85 percent of visible light in a 30 nanometers-thin semiconductor layer between gold layers, converting light energy 11 times more efficiently than previous methods. In the pursuit of realizing a sustainable society, there is an ever-increasing demand to develop revolutionary solar cells or artificial photosynthesis systems that utilize visible light energy from the sun while using as few materials as possible. The research team, led by Professor Hiroaki Misawa of the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University (Japan), has been aiming to develop a photoelectrode that can harvest visible light across a wide spectral range by using gold nanoparticles loaded on a semiconductor. But merely applying a layer of gold nanoparticles did not lead to a sufficient amount of light absorption, because they took in light with only a narrow spectral range.

In the study published in Nature Nanotechnology, the research team sandwiched a semiconductor, a 30-nanometer titanium dioxide thin-film, between a 100-nanometer gold film and gold nanoparticles to enhance light absorption. When the system is irradiated by light from the gold nanoparticle side, the gold film worked as a mirror, trapping the light in a cavity between two gold layers and helping the nanoparticles absorb more light. To their surprise, more than 85 percent of all visible light was harvested by the photoelectrode, which was far more efficient than previous methods. Gold nanoparticles are known to exhibit a phenomenon called localized plasmon resonance which absorbs a certain wavelength of light.

“Our photoelectrode successfully created a new condition in which plasmon and visible light trapped in the titanium oxide layer strongly interact, allowing light with a broad range of wavelengths to be absorbed by gold nanoparticles,” says Hiroaki Misawa.

Source: https://www.global.hokudai.ac.jp/

Amazon to datamine the stars

September 10, 2018 Uncategorized

Amazon.com is in talks with Chile to house and mine massive amounts of data generated by the country’s giant telescopes, which could prove fertile ground for the company to develop new artificial intelligence tools. The talks are aimed at fuelling growth in Amazon.com Inc’s cloud computing business in Latin America and boosting its data processing capabilities.

President Sebastian Pinera’s center-right government, which is seeking to wean Chile’s $325 billion economy from reliance on copper mining, announced last week it plans to pool data from all its telescopes onto a virtual observatory stored in the cloud, without giving a timeframe. The government talked of the potential for astrodata innovation, but did not give details.

Amazon executives have been holding discussions with the Chilean government for two years about a possible data center to provide infrastructure for local firms and the government to store information on the cloud. The talks have included discussion about the possibility of Amazon Web Services (AWS), hosting astrodata.

Jeffrey Kratz, AWS’s General Manager for Public Sector for Latin American, has confirmed the company’s interest in astrodata but said Amazon had no announcements to make at present. “Chile is a very important country for AWS,” he said in an email to Reuters. “We kept being amazed about the incredible work on astronomy and the telescopes, as real proof points on innovation and technology working together.” “The Chilean telescopes can benefit from the cloud by eliminating the heavy lifting of managing IT,” Kratz added.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Machine Learning Techniques Cut Surgical Infections By 74%

September 7, 2018 Uncategorized

By applying predictive analytics and machine learning techniques to patient data and real-time data from operating theatres the University of Iowa Hospital in the US managed to reduce the incidence of wound infections acquired during surgery by 74 percent. The hospital has now spun-off a company, Dash Analytics, to commercialise its technology.

Dr John Cromwell, associate chief medical officer at University of Iowa Hospital, and now also CTO at Dash Analytics, initiated the project in 2012. Speaking at Tibco Live in Las Vegas, he said: “We started work with the hypothesis that if we could predict which patients would get surgical infections we could change the wound management strategies at the time of surgery to reduce the risk of infection.

“Surgical infection in the US is the number one hospital infection and carries the most morbidity,” he said. “It is also the most expensive type of hospital infection to treat.”

(The most recent, 2011, statistics available from the US Center for Disease Control put the annual number of surgical site infections at 157,000 out of a total of 722,000 hospital-acquired infections).

Cromwell explained that a number of factors contributed to the risk of surgical infection: “The patient might be malnourished, or morbidly obese, or they might be on medications that supress the immune system. The duration of the operation influences the risk, and whether you keep the patient warm throughout the entire operation makes a difference.

“We designed a real time tool that uses the medical record data plus the real time data from the operating room to provide some decision support to the surgeon at the time of the operations to change the wound management strategy.” He said surgeons had basically two options at the time of surgery that could be applied to mitigate the risk of infection: Leave the wound open or use a technique known as negative pressure wound therapy where the wound is sealed and a vacuum applied to it.”Negative pressure wound therapy can reduce infections significantly if it is applied to the right patients, but it is not inexpensive so we wanted to be selective. There are different hypotheses as to why it works. “We used the analytic tools to determine which patients should get negative pressure therapy and within two years we had reduced the surgical infections by 58 per cent and in three years by 74 per cent. “We were very surprised. The result was far better than antibiotics. … And we probably saved the hospital between [US]$1.2 million and $2 million per year.”

Source: https://www.computerworld.com.au/

Electric Robo-Taxi

September 6, 2018 Uncategorized

Volvo Cars presented a fully electric robo-taxi on Wednesday, as the Geely-owned Swedish company races to meet an ambitious target for driverless vehicle sales with its Uber supply deal on hold.

Besides city driving, Volvo said the 360c would extend its customer base by tapping into demand from inter-city taxi passengers traveling as far as 300 km (186 miles), allowing it to challenge short-haul airlines and train operators. Volvo, which is weighing a stock market listing, is trying to make headway in self-driving cars as a mid-size luxury player with more limited resources than a BMW or Audi. It expects autonomous cars to account for a third of sales by 2025, with fully electric cars claiming 50 percent.

The world’s largest automakers are developing new types of vehicle such as self-driving passenger shuttles as they look to capture new markets in which direct car sales dwindle as fewer people own them. Tech companies such as Uber and Alphabet’s Waymo are pouring billions of dollars into autonomous car development, while auto manufacturers such as Daimler are testing prototypes.

Few details have yet been announced, however, a year before Daimler and partner Bosch are due to deploy robo-taxis in California’s Silicon Valley. So far, Volvo’s self-driving ambitions have been closely linked with Uber, which was operating a fleet of autonomous Volvo XC90s until a recent fatal collision with a pedestrian brought the program to a halt. Chief Executive Hakan Samuelsson said the Uber partnership remained intact, with Volvo set to supply up to 24,000 cars to the startup over two years.

Samuelsson, speaking to journalists at the launch, said the company was in talks to deliver an autonomous car specially designed for Uber’s driverless program as it sees ride-hailing as the right way for Volvo to make good on its promise to deliver its first autonomous car by the 2020s. “This is a product where we see interest from ride-hailing businesses,” Samuelsson said. R&D head Henrik Green said that Uber was “up and running” with its program again, albeit with humans in the driving seat, and was testing to collect data.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

How To Measure The NanoWorld

September 5, 2018 Uncategorized

A worldwide study involving 20 laboratories has established and standardized a method to measure exact distances within individual biomolecules, down to the scale of one millionth of the width of a human hair. The new method represents a major improvement of a technology called single-molecule FRET (Förster Resonance Energy Transfer), in which the movement and interaction of fluorescently labelled molecules can be monitored in real time even in living cells. So far, the technology has mainly been used to report changes in relative distances – for instance, whether the molecules moved closer together or farther apart. Prof. Dr. Thorsten Hugel of the Institute of Physical Chemistry (University of Freiburg) in Germany is one of the lead scientists of the study, which was recently published in Nature Methods. FRET works similarly to proximity sensors in cars: the closer the object is, the louder or more frequent the beeps become. Instead of relying on acoustics, FRET is based on proximity-dependent changes in the fluorescent light emitted from two dyes and is detected by sensitive microscopes. The technology has revolutionised the analysis of the movement and interactions of biomolecules in living cells.

Hugel and colleagues envisioned that once a FRET standard had been established, unknown distances could be determined with high confidence. By working together, the 20 laboratories involved in the study refined the method in such a way that scientists using different microscopes and analysis software obtained the same distances, even in the sub-nanometer range.

“The absolute distance information that can be acquired with this method now enables us to accurately assign conformations in dynamic biomolecules, or even to determine their structures”, says Thorsten Hugel, who headed the study together with Dr. Tim Craggs (University of Sheffield/Great-Britain), Prof. Dr. Claus Seidel (University of Düsseldorf) and Prof. Dr. Jens Michaelis (University of Ulm). Such dynamic structural information will yield a better understanding of the molecular machines and processes that are the basis of life.

Source: https://www.pr.uni-freiburg.de/

CRISPR Reverses Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Mutation

September 4, 2018 Uncategorized

CRISPR-Cas9 has, for the first time, been tested by systemic delivery in a large animal—and the results are striking. Working in a dog model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), the gene editing not only restored the expression of the protein dystrophin, it also improved muscle histology in the dogs.

“Our technology was developed using human cells and mice to correct the same type of mutation as in these dogs. It was critical for us to test gene editing in a large animal because it harbors a mutation analogous to the most common mutation in DMD patients,” said Eric Olson, Ph.D., professor and chair of molecular biology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and lead author. The researchers wrote that this is “an essential step toward clinical translation of gene editing as a therapeutic strategy for DMD.”

Indeed, Dame Kay E. Davies, Ph.D., professor of anatomy and director of the MRC Functional Genomics Unit at the University of Oxford and a pioneer in the field of DMD research, echoes this sentiment explains, “This is a very exciting paper as it shows that gene editing can be reasonably affective in a large animal model of DMD.”

The paper, “Gene editing restores dystrophin expression in a canine model of Duchenne muscular dystrophy,” appears in the last issue of Science.

Source: https://www.genengnews.com/

AI creates 3D ‘digital heart’ to aid patient diagnoses

September 3, 2018 Uncategorized

Armed with a mouse and computer screen instead of a scalpel and operating theater, cardiologist Benjamin Meder carefully places the electrodes of a pacemaker in a beating, digital heart. Using this “digital twin” that mimics the electrical and physical properties of the cells in patient 7497’s heart, Meder runs simulations to see if the pacemaker can keep the congestive heart failure sufferer alive – before he has inserted a knife.

A three-dimensional printout of a human heart is seen at the Heidelberg University Hospital (Universitaetsklinikum Heidelberg)

The digital heart twin developed by Siemens Healthineers, a German company, is one example of how medical device makers are using artificial intelligence (AI) to help doctors make more precise diagnoses as medicine enters an increasingly personalized age.

The challenge for Siemens Healthineers and rivals such as Philips and GE Healthcare is to keep an edge over tech giants from Alphabet’s Google to Alibaba that hope to use big data to grab a slice of healthcare spending.

With healthcare budgets under increasing pressure, AI tools such as the digital heart twin could save tens of thousands of dollars by predicting outcomes and avoiding unnecessary surgery.

Source: https://www.healthcare.siemens.com/
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https://www.reuters.com/

How Cannabis Component Fights Psychosis

August 31, 2018 Uncategorized

British scientists have unraveled how a non-intoxicating component of cannabis acts in key brain areas to reduce abnormal activity in patients at risk of psychosis, suggesting the ingredient could become a novel anti-psychotic medicine. While regular use of potent forms CBD is the same cannabis compound that has also shown benefits in epilepsy, leading in June to the first U.S. approval of a cannabis-based drug, a purified form of CBD from GW Pharmaceuticals.

Previous research at King’s College London had shown that CBD seemed to counter the effects of tetrahydrocannabinol or THC, the substance in cannabis that makes people high. But how this happened was a mystery.

Now, by scanning the brains of 33 young people who were experiencing distressing psychotic symptoms but had not been diagnosed with full-blown psychosis, Sagnik Bhattacharyya and colleagues showed that giving CBD capsules reduced abnormal activity in the striatum, medial temporal cortex and midbrain.

Abnormalities in all three of these brain regions have been linked to the onset of psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia. Most current anti-psychotic drugs target the dopamine chemical signaling system in the brain, while CBD works in a different way. Significantly, the compound is very well tolerated, avoiding the adverse side effects such as weight gain and other metabolic problems associated with existing medicines.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

How To Wirelessly Charge Electric Cars

August 30, 2018 Uncategorized

The Israelian company ElectReon Wireless Ltd., which develops smart road technology that wirelessly charges electric cars, has signed a cooperation agreement with French-Japanese auto manufacturer Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi (The Alliance). The Alliance is the largest auto maker in the world, and in the same time has sold the greatest number of electric cars. ElectReon will receive an electric car from Renault-Nissan-Mitsubishi, install its system in the car, and adapt it to smart road technology, thereby facilitating travel through wireless energy transfer. ElectReon was founded in late 2013 by chairperson and CEO Oren Ezer and CTO Hanan Rumbak.

“Smart road technology is the next stage in the evolution of global public transportation. It is designed to cut operating costs, completely halt dependence on oil and gasoline, and make the public space cleaner and cheaper. I am confident that this cooperation and other such agreements will make Israel a pioneer in technology-based transportation solutions,” stated Ezer.

ElectReon plans to first use its technology on buses traveling in designated lanes and later in private vehicles. Implementation of the technology also depends on cooperation from regulators (e.g. infrastructure and transportation ministries in Israel and European countries). Last month, ElectReon signed a cooperation agreement with Dan in which an initial public transportation route will be established powered by wireless energy charging. The company has also signed a memorandum of understanding with French company Hutchinson, which is to design and develop a mass production line for the coils infrastructure developed by ElectReon for installation beneath the road surface.

Source: https://www.electreon.com/
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https://en.globes.co.il/

Water On the Moon

August 29, 2018 Uncategorized

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has a vision for renewed and “sustainable” human exploration of the moon, and he cites the existence of water on the lunar surface as a key to chances for success.

“We know that there’s hundreds of billions of tons of water ice on the surface of the moon,” Bridenstine said in a Reuters TV interview in Washington on Tuesday, a day after NASA unveiled its analysis of data collected from lunar orbit by a spacecraft from India.

The findings, mark the first time scientists have confirmed by direct observation the presence of water on the moon’s surface – in hundreds of patches of ice deposited in the darkest and coldest reaches of its polar regions. The discovery holds tantalizing implications for efforts to return humans to the moon for the first time in half a century. The presence of water offers a potentially valuable resource not only for drinking but for producing more rocket fuel and oxygen to breathe.

Bridenstine, a former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and Oklahoma congressman tapped by President Donald Trump in April as NASA chief, spoke about “hundreds of billions of tons” of water ice that he said were now known to be available on the lunar surface. NASA lunar scientist Sarah Noble told separately by phone that it is still unknown how much ice is actually present on the moon and how easy it would be to extract in sufficient quantities to be of practical use. “We have lots of models that give us different answers. We can’t know how much water there is,” she said, adding that it will ultimately take surface exploration by robotic landers or rovers, in more than one place, to find out.

Most of the newly confirmed frozen water is concentrated in the shadows of craters at both poles, where the temperature never rises higher than minus-250 degrees Fahrenheit.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

Air Pollution Harms Your Brain And Your Intelligence

August 28, 2018 Uncategorized

Chronic exposure to air pollution can cause harm to cognitive performance, a new study reveals. Researchers believe that the negative impact increases with age, and affects men with less education the worst. Over four years, the maths and verbal skills of some 20,000 people in China were monitored by the US-Chinese study. Scientists believe the results have global relevance, with more than 80% of the world’s urban population breathing unsafe levels of air pollution.

The study was based on measurements of sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and particulates smaller than 10 micrometres in diameter where participants lived. It is not clear how much each of these three pollutants is to blame. Carbon monoxide, ozone and larger particulates were not included in the study. Described as an invisible killer, air pollution causes an estimated seven million premature deaths a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.

“We provide evidence that the effect of air pollution on verbal tests becomes more pronounced as people age, especially for men and the less educated,” the study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) said.

Pollution also increases the risk of degenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, the study suggests. Exposure to high levels of polluted air “can cause everyone to reduce their level of education by one year…, which is huge,” one of the co-authors, Xi Chen of the Yale School of Public Health, told.

Previous studies found air pollution had a negative impact on students’ cognitive abilities. In this study, researchers tested people of both sexes aged 10 and above between 2010 and 2014, with 24 standardised maths questions and 34 word-recognition questions.

Source: http://www.pnas.org/
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/

Climate Change: How To Forecast Changes In Weather More Accurately

August 27, 2018 Uncategorized

Europe is launching a satellite this week that will use new laser technology to measure the winds sweeping across Earth and help scientists forecast changes in weather more accurately.

The Aeolus mission will provide scientists with data on winds in remote areas, such as over oceans, that they have not been able to get from weather balloons, ground stations and airplanes but which are crucial to predicting changes in weather.

“Forecasting is of course still limited, but then we will certainly be able to understand the processes better that lead to extreme weather phenomena,” Paolo Ferri, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) head of mission operations, told ahead of the launch.

Many scientists warn that global warming will result in more frequent and intense heatwaves, precipitation and storms, causing billions of euros in damage and costing thousands of human lives every year.

Better weather forecasts will allow scientists to warn the population when hurricanes are heading their way and predict weather patterns such as El Niño, which can cause crop damage, fires and flash floods.

The Aeolus mission – named after a character of Greek mythology who was appointed keeper of the winds – is scheduled to blast off from Europe’s space port in Kourou, French Guiana

Source: https://www.reuters.com/

‘WasteShark’, The Aquadrone That Cleans The Ocean Waste

August 24, 2018 Uncategorized

A swarm of autonomous robots that can swim across bodies of water to collect garbage might be the key to saving the oceans. A few years ago, RanMarine Technology, a company from the Netherlands, has introduced WasteShark, an aquadrone that works like a smart vacuum cleaner (essentially, a Roomba for the seas) to gather wastes that end up in waterways before they accumulate into a great big patch in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

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“The operational cost of the vehicle… will be almost nothing. You are basically using compressed air. You are not paying for fuel and also you do not need cooling,” said Mahmoud Yasser, a student who helped design it. The team is now looking to raise funding to expand the project and mass produce the vehicles. They believe they can eventually get the vehicles to top 100 kilometers an hour and run for 100 kilometers before needing to come up for air.

Every year, about 1.4 billion pounds of trash end up in the ocean. Plastics, styrofoam, and other nonbiodegradable materials get dumped into the waters, eaten by fishes and birds or collect into what has become the Great Pacific Garbage Patch — a gyre of debris between California and Hawaii bigger than Alaska. Trash in seas and oceans have become a huge problem, but the WasteShark might be able to help.

RanMarine said that its aquadrones are inspired by whale sharks, “nature’s most efficient harvesters of marine biomass.” The company claims that the vessels can collect up to 200 liters of waste before it needs to be emptied and swim across the water for 16 hours. The WasteShark are autonomous as it can intelligently wade through water and collect trash using sensors. It is equipped with a GPS to track its movements.

Source: https://www.techtimes.com/

How To Stop Influenza Virus

August 23, 2018 Uncategorized

The critical, structural changes that enveloped viruses, such as HIV, Ebola and influenza, undergo before invading host cells have been revealed by scientists using nano-infrared spectroscopic imaging, according to a study led by Georgia State University and the University of Georgia. The researchers found that an antiviral compound was effective in stopping the influenza virus from entering host cells during lower pH exposure, the optimal condition for the virus to cause infection.

Enveloped viruses are among the most deadly known viruses. These viruses have an outer membrane covering their genetic material, and to invade host cells enveloped viruses must first attach to a cell and then open their membrane to release genetic material. Originally, scientists believed this mechanism was controlled by the host cell. In this study, which focused on influenza virus, the researchers examined the structural changes that occur for the virus to open and release its genetic material. They conducted the experiment in the absence of cells and instead simulated the cell environment. When influenza virus infects a person’s body, it goes from a neutral environment outside the cell to a more acidic environment (a lower pH) inside the cell. To simulate the cell environment for this study, the researchers made the environment more acidic. The researchers exposed influenza virus particles to the lower pH and monitored structural changes in the virus.

“What we saw is that even without the cell, if we change the environment, the virus particle will break and release the genetic material,” said Dr. Ming Luo, a senior author of the study and professor in the Department of Chemistry at Georgia State. “So it has a proactive mechanism built into the virus particle. Once the virus particle finds that the environment has changed, it will itself release the material. It doesn’t need the help of the cell membrane. It has to find a sweet spot to release the genetic material, and that sweet spot happens to have a low pH.”

The researchers used nano-infrared spectroscopy, a microscopic imaging system, to observe how influenza virus particles change when their environment changes. During his work at Georgia State, Dr. Yohannes Abate, now at the University of Georgia, adapted the imaging technology to have a new, unique function that allowed them to study virus particles in more detail.

The findings are published in the journal PLoS One.

Source: https://news.gsu.edu/

Portable Machine Harvests Water From Air

August 22, 2018 Uncategorized

Driven by the scarcity of supply, climate change and ground watershed depletion, scientists present a design for a first of its kind portable harvester that mines freshwater from the atmosphere. For thousands of years, people in the Middle East and South America have extracted water from the air to help sustain their populations. Researchers and students from the University of Akron drew inspiration from those examples to develop a lightweight, battery-powered freshwater harvester that could someday take as much as 10 gallons (37,8 liters) per hour from the air, even in arid locations.

“I was visiting China, which has a freshwater scarcity problem. There’s investment in wastewater treatment, but I thought that effort alone was inadequate,” University of Akron professor Shing-Chung (Josh) Wong said.

Instead of relying on treated wastewater, Wong explained, it might be more prudent to develop a new type of water harvester that takes advantage of abundant water particles in the atmosphere. Freshwater makes up less than 3 percent of the earth’s water sources, and three quarters of that is locked up as ice in the north and south poles. Most water sustainability research is directed toward water supply, purification, wastewater treatment and desalination. Little attention has been paid to water harvesting from atmospheric particles.

Harvesting water from the air has a long history. Thousands of years ago, the Incas of the Andean region collected dew and channeled it into cisterns. More recently, some research groups have been developing massive mist and fog catchers in the Andean mountains and in Africa. Wong’s harvester is directed towards the most abundant atmospheric water sources and uses ground-breaking nanotechnology. If successful, it will produce an agile, lightweight, portable, freshwater harvester powered by a lithium-ion battery.

By experimenting with different combinations of polymers that were hydrophilic — which attracts water — and hydrophobic — which discharges water, the team concluded that a water harvesting system could indeed be fabricated using nanofiber technology. Unlike existing methods, Wong’s harvester could work in arid desert environments because of the membrane’s high surface-area-to-volume ratio. It also would have a minimal energy requirement. “We could confidently say that, with recent advances in lithium-ion batteries, we could eventually develop a smaller, backpack-sized device,” Wong said.

Source: https://www.uakron.edu/

Toxic Cocktails Of Harmful Nanoparticles

August 21, 2018 Uncategorized

Nanoparticles, which are found in thousands of everyday products due to their unique properties, can form toxic cocktails harmful to our cells, a study has found. In a study published in the journal Nanotoxicology, scientists showed that 72 per cent of cells died after exposure to a cocktail of nano-silver and cadmium ions. Nanoparticles are becoming increasingly widespread in our environment. For example, silver nanoparticles have an effective antibacterial effect and can be found in refrigerators, sports clothes, cosmetics, tooth brushes, and water filters.

There is a significant difference between how the cells react when exposed to nanosilver alone and when they are exposed to a cocktail of nanosilver and cadmium ions, which are naturally found everywhere around us on Earth, according to the researchers from University of Southern Denmark (SDU). In the study, 72 per cent of the cells died, when exposed to both nanosilver and cadmiun ions. When exposed to nanosilver only, 25 per cent died. When exposed to cadmium ions only, 12 per cent died researchers said.

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The study was conducted on human liver cancer cells. The study indicates, that we need to take cocktail effects into account when trying to ascertain their effect on our health, said Frank Kjeldsen, a professor at SDU.

“Products with nano particles are being developed and manufactured every day, but in most countries there are no regulations, so there is no way of knowing what and how many nanoparticles are being released into the environment,” said Kjeldsen.

Source: https://www.sdu.dk/

World’s First 3D-Printed Housing Complex

August 20, 2018 Uncategorized

The southern Dutch city of Eindhoven plans to unveil the world’s first 3-D-printed housing complex next year, which its inventors believe could revolutionise the building industry by speeding up and customising construction. Printed in concrete by a robotic arm, the project backed by the city council, Eindhoven Technical University and several construction companies aims to see its first three-bedroomed home go up by June 2019. Known as Project Milestone, a housing complex of five homes of various shapes and sizes will be built over the next three to five years, financed by private investors, said Rudy van Gurp, one of the project’s managers.

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“This is just the beginning. It’s revolutionary technology and a new way of building that will develop over time,” he told AFP.

One of the great advantages of 3-D-printing is that the pod-like homes can be completely customised—and even built around natural objects, said Van Gurp. “Everything is possible, we can exactly fit the design to the area. We are guests in nature.”

Apart from speeding up the building process—from months to weeks—3-D-printing also solves another pressing issue: the scarcity of skilled artisans in the Netherlands, which drives up prices. “In a few years we will not have enough craftsmen like masons for example. By introducing robotisation into the construction industry we can make homes more affordable in the future,” commented Van Gurp. Currently the technique is still more expensive than traditional methods, prices are set to come down as 3-D technology improved, he added. Hundreds of potential tenants have already expressed interest in the housing project, with monthly rental set to be between 900 to 1,200 euros ($1,053 to $1,400).

Source: https://www.tue.nl/
AND
https://phys.org/

How To Produce Uranium From SeaWater

August 17, 2018 Uncategorized

For the first time, researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and LCW Supercritical Technologies have created five grams of yellowcake — a powdered form of uranium used to produce fuel for nuclear power production — using acrylic fibers to extract it from seawater.

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“This is a significant milestone,” said Gary Gill, a researcher at PNNL, a Department of Energy national laboratory, and the only one with a marine research facility, located in Sequim, Wash. “It indicates that this approach can eventually provide commercially attractive nuclear fuel derived from the oceans — the largest source of uranium on earth.”

That’s where LCW, a Moscow, Idaho clean energy company comes in. LCW with early support from PNNL through DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy, developed an acrylic fiber which attracts and holds on to dissolved uranium naturally present in ocean water.

“We have chemically modified regular, inexpensive yarn, to convert it into an adsorbent which is selective for uranium, efficient and reusable,” said Chien Wai, president of LCW Supercritical Technologies. “PNNL‘s capabilities in evaluating and testing the material, have been invaluable in moving this technology forward.”

The adsorbent material is inexpensive, according to Wai. In fact, he said, even waste yarn can be used to create the polymer fiber. The adsorbent properties of the material are reversible, and the captured uranium is easily released to be processed into yellowcake. An analysis of the technology suggests that it could be competitive with the cost of uranium produced through land-based mining.

Source: https://www.pnnl.gov/

How To Reverse Congenital Blindness

August 16, 2018 Uncategorized

Researchers funded by the American National Eye Institute (NEI) have reversed congenital blindness in mice by changing supportive cells in the retina called Müller glia into rod photoreceptors. The findings advance efforts toward regenerative therapies for blinding diseases such as age-related macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. A report of the findings appears online today in Nature. NEI is part of the National Institutes of Health.

“This is the first report of scientists reprogramming Müller glia to become functional rod photoreceptors in the mammalian retina,” said Thomas N. Greenwell, Ph.D., NEI program director for retinal neuroscience. “Rods allow us to see in low light, but they may also help preserve cone photoreceptors, which are important for color vision and high visual acuity. Cones tend to die in later-stage eye diseases. If rods can be regenerated from inside the eye, this might be a strategy for treating diseases of the eye that affect photoreceptors.”

Photoreceptors are light-sensitive cells in the retina in the back of the eye that signal the brain when activated. In mammals, including mice and humans, photoreceptors fail to regenerate on their own. Like most neurons, once mature they don’t divide.

Scientists have long studied the regenerative potential of Müller glia because in other species, such as zebrafish, they divide in response to injury and can turn into photoreceptors and other retinal neurons. The zebrafish can thus regain vision after severe retinal injury. In the lab, however, scientists can coax mammalian Müller glia to behave more like they do in the fish. But it requires injuring the tissue.

“From a practical standpoint, if you’re trying to regenerate the retina to restore a person’s vision, it is counterproductive to injure it first to activate the Müller glia,” said Bo Chen, Ph.D., associate professor of ophthalmology and director of the Ocular Stem Cell Program at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York.

“We wanted to see if we could program Müller glia to become rod photoreceptors in a living mouse without having to injure its retina,” added Chen, the study’s lead investigator.

Source: https://www.nih.gov/
AND
https://medicalxpress.com/

Nanospheres Dissolve Clots In A Few Minutes

August 14, 2018 Uncategorized

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have developed a drug-delivery system that allows rapid response to heart attacks without surgical intervention. In laboratory and animal testing, the system proved to be effective at dissolving clots, limiting long-term scarring to heart tissue and preserving more of the heart’s normal function.

“Our approach would allow health-care providers to begin treating heart attacks before a patient reaches a surgical suite, hopefully improving patient outcomes,” says Ashley Brown, corresponding author of a paper on the work and an assistant professor in the Joint Biomedical Engineering Program (BME) at NC State and UNC. “And because we are able to target the blockage, we are able to use powerful drugs that may pose threats to other parts of the body; the targeting reduces the risk of unintended harms.”

Heart attacks, or myocardial infarctions, occur when a thrombus – or clot – blocks a blood vessel in the heart. In order to treat heart attacks, doctors often perform surgery to introduce a catheter to the blood vessel, allowing them to physically break up or remove the thrombus. But not all patients have quick access to surgical care. And more damage can occur even after the blockage has been removed. That’s because the return of fresh blood to tissues that had been blocked off can cause damage of its own, called reperfusion injury. Reperfusion injury can cause scarring, stiffening cardiac tissue and limiting the heart’s normal functionality.

To address these problems, researchers have developed a solution that relies on porous nanogel spheres, about 250 nanometers in diameter, which target a thrombus and deliver a cocktail of two drugs: tPA and Y-27632.

In in vitro testing, the researchers found that the targeted tPA/Y-27632 cocktail dissolved clots in a matter of minutes. While this has yet to be tested in trials, it may work more quickly than surgical interventions, which require time to prep the patient and get the catheter in place. In tests using laboratory rats, the researchers also found that their technique limited scarring and preserved heart function after heart attack better than targeted tPA or Y-27632 by themselves – and far better than a control group in which animals received neither drug.

The paper was recently published in the journal ACS Nano. Trials on larger animals are now being planned.

Source: https://news.ncsu.edu/

Nanoparticles Destroy Dental Plaque, Prevent Tooth Decay

August 13, 2018 Uncategorized

Combine a diet high in sugar with poor oral hygiene habits and dental cavities, or caries, will likely result. The sugar triggers the formation of an acidic biofilm, known as plaque, on the teeth, eroding the surface. Early childhood caries is a severe form of tooth decay that affects one in every four children in the United States and hundreds of millions more globally. It’s a particularly severe problem in underprivileged populations.

Treatment with a nanoparticle and hydrogen peroxide (right panel) left little in the way of bacteria (in blue) or the sticky biofilm matrix (in red), making the combination a potent force against dental plaque

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers led by Hyun (Michel) Koo of the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine in collaboration with David Cormode of Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science used FDA-approved nanoparticles to effectively disrupt biofilms and prevent tooth decay in both an experimental human-plaque-like biofilm and in an animal model that mimics early-childhood caries. The nanoparticles break apart dental plaque through a unique pH-activated antibiofilm mechanism.

“It displays an intriguing enzyme-like property whereby the catalytic activity is dramatically enhanced at acidic pH but is ‘switched off’ at neutral pH conditions,” says Koo, professor in Penn Dental Medicine’s Department of Orthodontics. “The nanoparticles act as a peroxidase, activating hydrogen peroxide, a commonly used antiseptic, to generate free radicals that potently dismantle and kill biofilms in pathological acidic conditions but not at physiological pH, thus providing a targeted effect.”

Because the caries-causing plaque is highly acidic, the new therapy is able to precisely target areas of the teeth harboring pathogenic biofilms without harming the surrounding oral tissues or microbiota. The particular iron-containing nanoparticle used in the experiments, ferumoxytol, is already FDA-approved to treat iron-deficiency, a promising indication that a topical application of the same nanoparticle, used at several-hundred-fold lower concentration, would also be safe for human use.

Source: https://penntoday.upenn.edu/

Electronic Skin To Restore Sense Of Pain

August 10, 2018 Uncategorized

Amputees often experience the sensation of a “phantom limb”—a feeling that a missing body part is still there. That sensory illusion is closer to becoming a reality thanks to a team of engineers at the Johns Hopkins University that has created an electronic skin. When layered on top of prosthetic hands, this e-dermis brings back a real sense of touch through the fingertips.

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“After many years, I felt my hand, as if a hollow shell got filled with life again,” says the anonymous amputee who served as the team’s principal volunteer tester.

Made of fabric and rubber laced with sensors to mimic nerve endings, e-dermis recreates a sense of touch as well as pain by sensing stimuli and relaying the impulses back to the peripheral nerves.

“We’ve made a sensor that goes over the fingertips of a prosthetic hand and acts like your own skin would,” explains Luke Osborn, a graduate student in biomedical engineering. “It’s inspired by what is happening in human biology, with receptors for both touch and pain. “This is interesting and new,” Osborn adds, “because now we can have a prosthetic hand that is already on the market and fit it with an e-dermis that can tell the wearer whether he or she is picking up something that is round or whether it has sharp points.”

The work in the journal Science Robotics – shows it is possible to restore a range of natural, touch-based feelings to amputees who use prosthetic limbs. The ability to detect pain could be useful, for instance, not only in prosthetic hands but also in lower limb prostheses, alerting the user to potential damage to the device.

Human skin contains a complex network of receptors that relay a variety of sensations to the brain. This network provided a biological template for the research team, which includes members from the Johns Hopkins departments of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Neurology, and from the Singapore Institute of Neurotechnology.

Bringing a more human touch to modern prosthetic designs is critical, especially when it comes to incorporating the ability to feel pain, Osborn states. “Pain is, of course, unpleasant, but it’s also an essential, protective sense of touch that is lacking in the prostheses that are currently available to amputees,” he says. “Advances in prosthesis designs and control mechanisms can aid an amputee’s ability to regain lost function, but they often lack meaningful, tactile feedback or perception.”

Source: http://releases.jhu.edu/

Solar Powered Car

August 9, 2018 Uncategorized

The Sion is the first electric car capable of recharging its batteries from the sun. From now on, you’ll have to worry about range a little less. For only 16.000 € excluding the battery (4000 euros or to rent). With the dynamic integration of solar cells in the body work, we set new measures on the road while convincing with an exceptional design concept. The full efficiency of the Sion is guaranteed by the lightweight design. The exterior is mainly made up of rust-proof polycarbonate. It further is scratch-resistant. The most unique feature in the body work are the solar cells, which are located on the roof, on both sides as on the hood and the rear.

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The cockpit uses a very simple design, showing you how fast you are going and the charging level of your battery. On the left side you can see the number of kilometers generated through the viSono System. After 24 hours, these kilometers will be transferred to the right side, where they are added to the total range left. The Sion copes with the requirements of your daily life: A range of 250km, high power rapid charging, and a sophisticated interior concept with an optional trailer hitch.

The Sion is equipped with 330 integrated solar cells, which recharge the battery through the power of the sun. To protect them from harmful environmental influences the solar cells are covered with polycarbonate. It is shatterproof, light and particularly weather resistant. Under proper conditions the solar cells generate enough energy, to cover 30 kilometers per day with the Sion. This system is called viSono. Thanks to the technology of bidirectional charging the Sion can not only generate but also provide energy. This feature turns the car into a mobile power station. Using a household plug, all common electronic devices with up to 2,7kW can be powered by the Sion. You can plug in your electronic devices and power them with the Sions battery. Over a type 2 plug the Sion can provide even more power with up to 7,6 kW.

For air filtering a special moss is integrated into the dashboard. It filters up to twenty percent of the fine dust particles and has a regulating effect on the humidity inside the Sion. No worries, you do not have to water it. It requires no special care at all.

Source: https://sonomotors.com/

3D-Printed Mars Habitat Competition

August 8, 2018 Uncategorized

NASA has selected the five winning designs in the latest stage of its 3D-printed habitat competition, including a pod inspired by the anatomy of a spider and vertical egg-like container. Teams were challenged to come up with a solution that tackled the issues of transporting materials to mars, considering differences in atmosphere and landscape on the red planet. The multi-phase competition challenged designers and engineers to use construction techniques enabled by 3D printing technology. The shelter had to include a thousand square feet of space, enough to accommodate four astronauts on a mission to mars as well as a room to store the necessary machinery. Each team was required to create digital representations of the physical and functional characteristics of a house on mars using specialised software tools. After landing the pod would scanning its surroundings before selecting an optimum print area, assisted by a series of autonomous robots who would gather materials like ice, calcium oxide and martian aggregate, for the 3D printer.

The lander seals to the ground to provide a protected, pressurised environment for the structure to be printed. Once complete, the lander would lift its legs to reveal the structure and move on to the next location to build another, creating a small series of rooms.

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AI spacefactory came in second place, presenting an egg-shaped structure, designed with a double shell to combat the aggressive thermal effects of mars. Like the zopherus habitat, the team envisions the marsha design to use materials sourced from mars including basalt fibre, extracted from martian rock, and renewable bioplastic (polylactic acid) derived from plants that could be grown on the planet.

Source: https://www.designboom.com/

Colorful 3D Printing

August 7, 2018 Uncategorized

People are exploring the use of 3D printing for wide-ranging applications, including manufacturing, medical devices, fashion and even food. But one of the most efficient forms of 3D printing suffers from a major drawback: It can only print objects that are gray or black in color. Now, researchers have tweaked the method so it can print in all of the colors of the rainbow.

THIS BRIGHTLY COLORED DRAGON WAS PRODUCED BY 3D PRINTING, USING GOLD NANORODS AS PHOTOSENSITIZERS.

Selective laser sintering (SLS) printers use a laser to heat specific regions of a powdered material, typically nylon or polyamide, so that the powder melts or sinters to form a solid mass. The printer adds then selectively sinters new powdered material layer by layer until the desired 3D structure is obtained. To reduce the energy requirements of the process, researchers have added compounds called photosensitizers to the polymer powders. These materials, such as carbon nanotubes, carbon black and graphene, absorb light much more strongly than the polymers and transfer heat to them, enabling the use of cheaper, lower-power lasers. However, the carbon-based photosensitizers can only produce printed objects that are gray or black. Gerasimos Konstantatos, Romain Quidant and their coworkers at The Institute of Photonic Sciences (IFCO) wanted to find a photosensitizer that would enable color printing by the SLS method.

The researchers designed gold nanorods to strongly absorb in the near-infrared region of the spectrum while being almost transparent to visible light. They coated them with silica and then mixed them with polyamide powders to print 3D objects. They found that the gold nanorods were much better at converting light from the laser to heat than carbon black, the industry standard. Also, the new photosensitizers could produce much whiter and — when mixed with dyes — brightly colored 3D objects. Importantly, the materials are cost-effective for large-scale production. The researchers have filed several patent applications related to the new technology.

The findings are reported in the ACS journal Nano Letters.

Source: https://www.acs.org/

Electric Car Made Of Flax And Sugar

August 6, 2018 Uncategorized

Noah is an electric city car with two comfortable seats and a spacious trunk, a top speed of 110 kilometers per hour and a range of 240 kilometers. The expected consumption in urban traffic is approximately equal to 300 kilometers to 1 liter of petrol. This is partly due to the low weight. Without batteries Noah weighs 360 kg, which is less than half that of comparable production cars. The car only needs 60 kilos of batteries, whereas regular electric cars need several hundreds kilos. The low total weight of 420 kg enables particularly good road holding. The prototype will soon be certified for use on public roads.

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TU/ecomotive is a student team of TU Eindhoven (Netherlands) that devises and builds a new sustainable car every year. The aim of this year was to show that it is possible to make a car that has a low environmental impact over its entire life cycle, without being Spartan.

A special aspect of Noah is the use of a bioplastic which can be made from sugar. The chassis and the interior are made of particularly strong sandwich panels, made of this bioplastic and flax fiber. The body is made of flax mats that are injected with a bio-based resin. These biological and particularly light materials require up to six times less energy to produce than the usual lightweight car materials such as aluminum or carbon. Still, the students claim that they have the necessary strength, and it is also possible to create a crumple-zone-like structure. Flax is a widely used intermediate crop that is essential to soil enrichment, so its cultivation does not compete with food production.

During the summer months, the team is visiting European car manufacturers, suppliers and universities, among others. The students have no plans to bring the car to market. “It’s about awareness,” says team member Cas Verstappen, a student of Automotive Technology at TU/e. “We want to show that a circular economy is already possible in complex products such as cars.” He does not expect similar cars to come onto the market immediately, but he sees the use of bioplastic panels in the structural parts and the interior as a real option. Not only because of their durability, but also because they are strong and light.

Source: https://www.tue.nl/

Red-Blood-Cell “Hitchhikers” Transport Drugs to Specific Targets

August 3, 2018 Uncategorized

A new drug-delivery technology which uses red blood cells (RBCs) to shuttle nano-scale drug carriers, called RBC-hitchhiking (RH), has been found in animal models to dramatically increase the concentration of drugs ferried precisely to selected organs, according to a study published in Nature Communications this month by researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. This proof-of-principle study points to ways to improve drug delivery for some of the nation’s biggest killers, such as acute lung disease, stroke, and heart attack.