Thompson was referred to the University of Michigan's C. S. Mott Children's Hospital where doctors had to decide
The tool they used to help make that difficult decision--3-D printing. Using a specialized MRI of the fetus in the womb
doctors were able to use a 3-D printer to print models of the fetus face,
The case is outlined in the November issue of Pediatrics.""Based on the images we had, it was unclear
"says senior author Glenn Green, M d.,associate professor of pediatric otolaryngology at U-M's C. S. Mott Children's Hospital."
"This is the first case we are aware of that 3-D printing has helped show how severe an airway risk in a fetus was
in order to make clinical decisions. 3-D printing may be an incredibly valuable tool to help doctors prepare for complex cases ahead of birth."
"The extra information gained from the 3-D printed models helped doctors determine that Conan would not need what's called an Ex Utero Intrapartum Treatment Procedure (EXIT.
so that a surgeon can establish an airway to allow the baby to breathe. Instead, Conan was born via a scheduled C-section."
I didn't need the more complicated and risky surgery and could be awake for the birth of my first baby.
"All procedures were done at U-M's C. S. Mott Children's Hospital. The computer designs for the models were created in the lab of Scott Hollister, Ph d,
. professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering and associate professor of surgery at U-M. The models were printed by Ann arbor-based Thingsmiths.
The lead author of the case report was Kyle V. Vankoevering, M d, . of the U-M division of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. 3-D printing has had many medical applications.
At the University of Michigan, 3-D printed splints have helped save the lives of babies with severe tracheobronchomalacia
which causes the windpipe to periodically collapse and prevents normal breathing. Green and Hollister are leading efforts to design customized medical implants for those and other patients s
#New field of application for versatile helper In Alzheimer's disease proteins clump together to long fibrils causing the death of nerve cells.
Small heat shock proteins can counteract this effect. Scientists, therefore, hope to deploy them as agents in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.
Using the example of a small heat shock protein, researchers at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen have uncovered now how the protein interacts with other proteins.
Small heat shock proteins are the"catastrophe aid workers"of the cell. When exposed to strong heat or radiation
Promising candidate for new forms of therapy The helper proteins are true multi-talents. They can bind large numbers of badly folded proteins
This also includes the potentially disease-causing proteins that collect in the cells of patients with neurodegenerative disorders--for example
Heat shock proteins are associated also with other nervous system disorders like Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Although it is still unclear what role these catastrophe aid workers play in the various ailments,
If the precise mechanisms by which these heat shock proteins hook up to their disease-causing counterparts were known,
scientists could deploy this knowledge to develop agents utilizing these mechanisms to fight disease. Two ways out of the chaos A group of researchers led by Bernd Reif
professor at the Department of chemistry of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and group leader at the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, have succeeded now in uncovering precisely this mechanism.
to identify the sites in the alpha-B-crystallin that attach to the beta-amyloid. It is the first direct structure analysis of a complete heat shock protein during interaction with a bonding partner,
"In close collaboration with his TUM colleagues Johannes Buchner, professor of biotechnology and Sevil Weinkauf, professor of electron microscopy, Reif determined that the small heat shock protein uses a specific nonpolar beta-sheet structure pile in its center
If the newly discovered beta-sheet structure idea could be integrated as building blocks into such artificially designed proteins,
it would improve their ability to attach to the disease-causing fibrils--a first step in the development of new agents against Alzheimer's and other neurodegenerative diseases.
In future work the scientists want to take a closer look at the N-terminal region of the alpha-B-crystallin.
The researchers will be supported by the new NMR Center that is currently under construction at the Garching campus of the Technical University of Munich
A further 5 million euro facility geared specifically to solid-state NMR is currently under construction at the Helmholtz Zentrum in Neuherberg g
#A resonator for electrons More than two thousand years ago the Greek inventor and philosopher Archimedes already came up with the idea of using a curved mirror to reflect light in such a way as to focus it into a point-legend has it that he used this technique to set
or parabolic mirrors are used in a host of technical applications ranging from satellite dishes to laser resonators,
Modern quantum physics also makes use of resonators with curved mirrors. In order to study single atoms for example, researchers use the light focused by the mirrors to enhance the interaction between the light waves and the atoms.
A team of physicists at ETH Zurich, working within the framework of the National Centre of Competence in Research Quantum Science and Technology (NCCR QSIT), have managed now to build a resonator that focuses electrons rather than light waves.
In the near future, such resonators could be used for constructing quantum computers and for investigating many-body effects in solids.
In their experiments the postdoctoral researchers Clemens Rössler and Oded Zilberberg used semiconductor structures in
At one end of that plane there is a so-called quantum dot: a tiny trap for electrons, only a hundred nanometers wide, in which owing to quantum mechanics the electrons exist in well-defined energy states similar to those of an atom.
Such quantum dots are, therefore, also known as"artificial atoms"."At the other end, just a few micrometers away, a bent electrode acts as a curved mirror that reflects electrons
when a voltage is applied to it. Better materialsthe possibility to focus electrons in this way was investigated already in 1997 at Harvard university.
The ETH researchers, however, were now able to work with much better materials, which were produced in-house in Werner Wegscheider's laboratory for Advanced Semiconductor Quantum Materials."
"These materials are a hundred times cleaner than those used at the time, "explains Rössler, "and consequently the electrons can move undisturbed a hundred times longer."
which was not the case in those earlier works. In their experiments, the physicists detect this wave nature by measuring the current flowing from the quantum dot to the curved mirror.
This current changes in a characteristic way as the applied voltage is varied.""Our results show that the electrons in the resonator do not just fly back and forth,
but actually form a standing wave and thus couple coherently to the quantum dot",stresses Rössler, who developed the experiment in the group of ETH professor Klaus Ensslin.
Differently from light waves, the spin of the electrons also causes them to behave as tiny magnets.
Indeed, the researchers were able to show that the interaction between the electrons in the quantum dot
and the electronic wave in the resonator happens through the spin.""In the future, this spin-coherent coupling could make it possible to connect quantum dots over large distances,
"says Zilberberg, who has developed a theoretical model for Rössler's experiment in the group of ETH professor Gianni Blatter.
Suitable for quantum computersfor some time now, quantum dots have been considered as possible candidates for making so-called quantum bits or"qubits,
"which are used in quantum computers. Until now the quantum dots in such a computer needed to be very close to each other
in order to achieve the necessary coupling for performing calculations. This, however made it difficult to control
and read out individual qubits. A long-distance coupling through an appropriately designed resonator could elegantly solve this problem.
Basic science could also benefit from the electron resonators realized by the ETH researchers, for instance in studies of the Kondo effect.
This effect occurs when many electrons together interact with the magnetic moment of an impurity in a material.
With the help of a resonator and a quantum dot simulating such an impurity, the physicists hope to be able to study the Kondo effect very precisely.
Plus, if one needs the opinion of an expert, there is usually one just down the corridor. i
#CWRU researcher lands grant to build stealthy brain tumor treatment A Case Western Reserve University researcher has received a 5-year,
stealth bombs that slip past the brain's defenses to attack an incurable form of cancer.
Efstathios Karathanasis, a biomedical engineer at Case School of engineering, has developed chainlike nanoparticles that can carry drugs across the blood-brain barrier that keeps standard medicines from reaching their target--a highly aggressive brain cancer called
The nanochains will tote bombs of chemotherapy medicine and glioblastoma stem cell inhibitors identified by Jeremy Rich,
MD, chairman of the Department of Stem Cell biology and Regenerative medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner Research Institute.
The researchers expect the chemotherapy will destroy the majority of tumor cells and the inhibitor will eliminate cancer cells that are resistant
and can cause brain tumors to reoccur. Their goal is to develop a treatment that eradicates the cancer with one safe dose."
"The grant enables our labs to integrate our technologies, "Karathanasis said.""We need integration to solve this problem."
"Glioblastoma multiforme is the most common and most malignant tumors of glial cells, which provide structure to the brain.
The median survival rate among adults is just under 15 months, according to the American Brain Cancer Association.
when tumors are present, preventing drugs from crossing from the blood stream into the diseased tissue.
And"surgeons can't go in and cut liberally,"Karathanasis said.""Brain tumor cells are often invasive and spread throughout the normal brain,
and drugs--if they get in--do nothing because of resistance that develops.""To reach inside tumors, Karathanasis'lab developed a short chain of magnetic nanoparticles made of iron oxide
and modified the surfaces so one links to the next, much like Lego building blocks. They link three
and then chemically link a liposome sphere filled with a chemotherapy drug. The surface of the nanochain is modified also to penetrate
and attach to the tumors'vascular walls. When nanochains congregate inside a tumor, the researchers place a wire coil,
called a solenoid, outside near the tumor. Electricity passed through the solenoid creates a weak radiofrequency field.
The field causes the magnetic tails of the chain to vibrate bursting the liposome spheres,
releasing their drug cargo into the brain tumors. In testing with mouse models of aggressive brain tumors, the technology took out far more cancer cells, inhibited tumor growth better and extended life longer than traditional chemotherapy delivery.
The targeted delivery system also used far less drug than used in traditional chemotherapy, saving healthy tissue from toxic exposure.
To treat glioblastoma multiforme, which typically produces cells resistant to chemotherapy, the team will add inhibitors to traditional chemotherapy drugs.
For instance, Rich's lab has shown that inducible nitric acid synthase is a unique signal regulator in glioblastoma stem cells.
The cancerous stem cells depend on the enzyme for growth and to form tumors. Normal neural cells do not.
In testing with mouse models of the cancer, models injected with an inducible nitric acid synthase inhibitor had fewer and smaller tumors compared to control models.
In addition to the grant money, the researchers will have access to the National Cancer Institute's Alliance for Nanotechnology in Cancer,
and will exchange ideas and resources, Karathanasis said. The Karathanasis and Rich labs will work with Mark Griswold, professor of radiology at Case Western Reserve School of medicine,
who will build radiofrequency systems. Ketan Ghaghada, assistant professor of radiology at Baylor College of Medicine, will guide
and oversee the steps taken to translate the research toward clinical trials. Over the next five years
they'll optimize the drug delivery system and mix of chemotherapy drug and inhibitor, study their effects
and effectiveness in mouse models and evaluate the efficacy on human glioblastoma grafts in the models s
#New graphene based inks for high-speed manufacturing of printed electronics A low-cost, high-speed method for printing graphene inks using a conventional roll-to-roll printing process,
like that used to print newspapers and crisp packets, could open up a wide range of practical applications,
including inexpensive printed electronics, intelligent packaging and disposable sensors. Developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Cambridge-based technology company Novalia,
the method allows graphene and other electrically conducting materials to be added to conventional water-based inks
and printed using typical commercial equipment, the first time that graphene has been used for printing on a large-scale commercial printing press at high speed.
Graphene is a two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, just one atom thick. Its flexibility, optical transparency and electrical conductivity make it suitable for a wide range of applications,
including printed electronics. Although numerous laboratory prototypes have been demonstrated around the world, widespread commercial use of graphene is yet to be realised."
"We are pleased to be the first to bring graphene inks close to real-world manufacturing. There are lots of companies that have produced graphene inks,
"Being able to produce conductive inks that could effortlessly be used for printing at a commercial scale at a very high speed will open up all kinds of different applications for graphene and other similar materials.""
""This method will allow us to put electronic systems into entirely unexpected shapes, "said Chris Jones of Novalia."
"Hasan's method, developed at the University's Nanoscience Centre, works by suspending tiny particles of graphene in a'carrier'solvent mixture,
The same method works for materials other than graphene, including metallic, semiconducting and insulating nanoparticles. Currently, printed conductive patterns use a combination of poorly conducting carbon with other materials, most commonly silver
which is expensive. Silver-based inks cost £1000 or more per kilogram, whereas this new graphene ink formulation would be 25 times cheaper.
reducing energy costs for ink curing. Once dry, the'electric ink'is also waterproof and adheres to its substrate extremely well.
which is in line with commercial production rates for graphics printing, and far faster than earlier prototypes.
Through the use of this new ink, more versatile devices on paper or plastic can be made at a rate of 300 per minute, at a very low cost.
Hasan and Phd students Guohua Hu, Richard Howe and Zongyin Yang of the Hybrid Nanomaterials Engineering group at CGC
it could also initiate entirely new business opportunities for commercial graphics printers, who could diversify into the electronics sector."
"The UK, and the Cambridge area in particular, has always been strong in the printing sector,
but mostly for graphics printing and packaging,"said Hasan, a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow and a University Lecturer in the Engineering Department."
"We hope to use this strong local expertise to expand our functional ink platform. In addition to cheaper printable electronics, this technology opens up potential application areas such as smart packaging and disposable sensors,
which to date have largely been inaccessible due to cost.""In the short to medium term, the researchers hope to use their method to make printed, disposable biosensors,
energy harvesters and RFID tags g
#To infinity and beyond: Light goes infinitely fast with new on-chip material Electrons are so 20th century.
In the 21st century, photonic devices, which use light to transport large amounts of information quickly,
will enhance or even replace the electronic devices that are ubiquitous in our lives today. But there's a step needed before optical connections can be integrated into telecommunications systems and computers:
researchers need to make it easier to manipulate light at the nanoscale. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) have done just that,
designing the first on-chip metamaterial with a refractive index of zero, meaning that the phase of light can travel infinitely fast.
This new metamaterial was developed in the lab of Eric Mazur, the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Dean for Applied Physics AT SEAS,
and is described in the journal Nature Photonics.""Light doesn't typically like to be squeezed or manipulated but this metamaterial permits you to manipulate light from one chip to another, to squeeze,
bend, twist and reduce diameter of a beam from the macroscale to the nanoscale, "said Mazur."
"It's a remarkable new way to manipulate light.""Although this infinitely high velocity sounds like it breaks the rule of relativity,
or squished, twisted or turned, without losing energy. A zero-index material that fits on a chip could have exciting applications, especially in the world of quantum computing."
"Integrated photonic circuits are hampered by weak and inefficient optical energy confinement in standard silicon waveguides,
"said Yang Li, a postdoctoral fellow in the Mazur Group and first author on the paper."
"This zero-index metamaterial offers a solution for the confinement of electromagnetic energy in different waveguide configurations
"The metamaterial consists of silicon pillar arrays embedded in a polymer matrix and clad in gold film.
It can couple to silicon waveguides to interface with standard integrated photonic components and chips."
or waveguide to emit photons which are always in phase with one another, "said Philip Munoz,
a graduate student in the Mazur lab and co-author on the paper.""It could also improve entanglement between quantum bits,
""This on-chip metamaterial opens the door to exploring the physics of zero index and its applications in integrated optics,"said Mazur r
#Electronics get a power boost with the addition of a simple material The tiny transistor is the heart of the electronics revolution,
using a new technique to incorporate vanadium oxide--a functional oxide--into the electronic devices.""It's tough to replace current transistor technology
because semiconductors do such a fantastic job, "said Roman Engel-Herbert, assistant professor of materials science and engineering.""But there are some materials, like vanadium oxide,
that you can add to existing devices to make them perform even better.""The researchers knew that vanadium dioxide,
which is just a specific combination of the elements vanadium and oxygen, had an unusual property called the metal-to-insulator transition.
In the metal state, electrons move freely, while in the insulator state, electrons cannot flow.
This on/off transition, inherent to vanadium dioxide, is also the basis of computer logic and memory.
if they could add vanadium oxide close to a device's transistor it could boost the transistor's performance.
and energy efficiency to read, write and maintain the information state. The major challenge they faced was that vanadium dioxide of sufficiently high quality had never been grown in a thin film form on the scale required to be of use to industry--the wafer scale.
In order to create a sharp metal-to-insulator transition, the ratio of vanadium to oxygen needs to be controlled precisely.
The material can be used to make hybrid field effect transistors, called hyper-FETS, which could lead to more energy efficient transistors.
Earlier this year, also in Nature Communications, a research group led by Suman Datta, professor of electrical and electronic engineering,
Penn State, showed that the addition of vanadium dioxide provided steep and reversible switching at room temperature,
and lowering the energy requirements of the transistor. The implementation of vanadium dioxide can also benefit existing memory technologies
"The metal-to-insulator property of vanadium dioxide can ideally enhance state-of-the-art nonvolatile memories by using the material as an augmentation device,
"said Sumeet Gupta, Monkowski Assistant professor of Electrical engineering and group leader of the Integrated circuits and Devices Lab, Penn State.
or writing information on a memory chip is done within a single memory cell, without bleeding over into neighboring cells.
The selector works by changing the resistivity of the cell, which vanadium dioxide does extremely well.
"said Haitian Zhang, Ph d. student in Engel-Herbert's group.""Using this'library'of vanadium-to-oxygen ratios,
This work will be reported at the IEEE International Electron Device Meeting, the leading forum for reporting technological breakthroughs in the semiconductor and electronic device industry, in December."
"We are starting to realize that the class of materials exhibiting these on/off responses can be beneficial in various ways in information technology,
and energy efficiency of read/write and compute operations in memory, logic and communication devices, "Engel-Herbert said."
#Powerful plastic microscope brings better diagnostic care for world's rural poor You can learn a lot about the state of someone's immune system just by examining their blood under the microscope.
An abnormally high or low white blood count, for instance, might indicate a bone marrow pathology or AIDS.
The rupturing of white blood cells might be the sign of an underlying microbial or viral infection.
Strangely shaped cells often indicate cancer. While this old, simple technique may seem a quaint throwback in the age of high-technology health care tools like genetic sequencing
flow cytometry and fluorescent tagging, the high cost and infrastructure requirements of these techniques largely limit them to laboratory settings--something point-of-care diagnostics aims to fix.
In a project funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation's Grand Challenges in Global Health Initiative,
a research team from Rice university has developed recently a plastic, miniature digital fluorescence microscope that can quantify white blood cell levels in patients located in rural parts of the world that are removed far from the modern laboratory."
or sample preparation,"said Tomasz Tkaczyk, associate professor, Department of Bioengineering, Rice university, Houston, Texas."Many systems which work for point-of-care applications have quite expensive cartridges.
The goal of this research is to make it possible for those in impoverished areas to be able to get the testing they need at a manageable price point."
"Tkaczyk's co-authors on this research included Rebecca Richards-Kortum, Fellow of The Optical Society and a professor in Rice's Department of Bioengineering.
Her research today involves translating molecular imaging research to point-of-care diagnostics--describes the fluorescence microscope system this week in a paper published in Biomedical Optics Express, from The Optical Society.
How the Microscope Works The researchers'device identifies and quantifies lymphocytes, monocytes, and granulocytes--three types of white blood cells--in a drop of blood mixed with the staining compound acridine orange.
which consisted of one polystyrene lens and two polymethyl methacrylate aspheric lenses, the researchers used a single-point diamond turning lathe.
The lenses were enclosed then in an all-plastic, 3d printed microscope housing and objective. Once constructed, the microscope provided a field of view of 1. 2 millimeters,
allowing for at least 130 cells to be present for statistical significance when quantifying white blood cells. Additionally
and image sensor, cost less than $3, 000 to construct. At production levels upwards of 10,000 units,
the researchers estimate that this price would fall to around $600 for each unit, with a per-test cost of a few cents.
Future work for Tkaczyk and his colleagues includes developing an automated algorithm for white blood cell identification,
The use of low cost components such as LEDS reflectors, and USB detectors, combined with the all-plastic housing and lenses will allow for future versions of the prototype to be mass-produced d
#How proteins age Physiological processes in the body are in large part determined by the composition of secreted proteins found in the circulatory systems,
Biomedical scientists at UC Santa barbara and the Sanford-Burnham-Prebys (SBP) Medical Discovery Institute have discovered now a mechanism by
and disease, appear today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.""This is a fundamental advance that is broadly applicable
normally undergo molecular aging and turnover,"said senior author Jamey Marth, director of UCSB's Center for Nanomedicine and a professor in the campus's Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental biology."
"When a secreted protein is made, it has a useful life span and then it must be degraded--the components are recycled then basically,"added Marth, also a professor at the SBP Medical Discovery Institute in La jolla, California."
"We can now see how the regulation and alteration of secreted protein aging and turnover is able to change the composition of the circulatory system
and thereby maintain health as well as contribute to various diseases.""This newly discovered mechanism encompasses multiple factors,
including circulating enzymes called glycosidases. These enzymes progressively remodel N-glycans, which are complex structures of monosaccharide sugars linked together and attached to virtually all secreted proteins.
It is the N-glycan structure itself that identifies the protein as nearing the end of its life span.
Marth and colleagues identified more than 600 proteins in the bloodstream that exhibit molecular signs of undergoing this aging and turnover process.
blood coagulation and immunity. Honing in on individual examples, the researchers were able to track each of them through time
"In these studies, we further saw that the different life spans of distinct proteins are accounted for by the different rates of aging due to N-glycan remodeling,
"said lead author Won Ho Yang, a postdoctoral associate at UCSB's Center for Nanomedicine and SBP."
"Altering this aging and turnover mechanism is the fastest way to change the abundance of a secreted protein,
which we increasingly note is occurring at the interface of health and disease, "Marth explained."
"In retrospect from published literature and from studies in progress, we can now see how sepsis,
diabetes and inflammatory bowel disorders can arise by the targeted acceleration or deceleration of secreted protein aging and turnover."
"The discovery of this mechanism provides a unique window into disease origins and progression,"Marth added."
"It has been known that circulating glycosidase enzyme levels are altered in diseases such as sepsis, diabetes, cancer and various inflammatory conditions.
The resulting changes in the composition and function of the circulatory systems, including the blood and the lymphatic systems, can now be identified and studied.
We are beginning to see previously unknown molecular pathways and connections in the onset and progression of disease
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