If you've lost a healthy bone to an accident or illness, or if you were born with bones that aren't the right shape,
what it sees as a foreign object, leading to infections or defective transplants after these operations.
the late American film critic who lost his jawbone to cancer, is autograft. This is basically a euphemism for cutting a piece of bone out of one part of the body
and putting it in another. Autograft is the sort of procedure that needs a euphemism. Though it is surgeons'current best option,
it still isn't that great. The surgery is invasive and destructive. It can leave patients with a whole host of new issues,
including the need for multiple surgeries. Roger Ebert because doctors cut bone out of his hip
and shoulder, suffered a limp for the rest of his life. And with children who need the procedure,
autografts are an even worse option; there's often quite simply not enough bone to go around.
And so, millions of patients need a better solution for bone replacement, and as the population ages and the world globalizes, such musculoskeletal solutions must last a lifetime.
Building bone from your fat cells Inventors are working to meet this need. One emerging technology for skeletal reconstruction is 3d printed synthetic implants made to match the anatomical shape of a patient's defects,
such as those from Mobelife, Oxford Performance Materials and Conformis. Others are developing stem-cell therapies,
such as those from Stempeutics, Novadip or Bonus Biogroup. In this method either cells stored in banks
or those harvested from adult stem cells are used to aid in bone regeneration. At our startup, Epibone, we propose a more radical
A CT SCAN, which is essentially a high-resolution 3d X-ray, so that we can calculate and fabricate a personalized scaffold in the precise 3d shape of the bone we want to engineer;
called a bioreactor, which simulates conditions found inside the Body temperature, humidity, acidity and nutrient composition all need to be just right for the stem cells to transform into bone-growing cells called osteoblasts,
This is an implant that the patient's body hopefully won't reject because it's made from his or her own cells.
Such artificial bones have already been implanted successfully in pigs and other animals, but we still need to demonstrate that this method will work for humans.
Epibone's work builds on the discovery from developmental biology that stem cells can transform into any part of the body.
we might also adapt cells to groundbreaking new uses in other realms of medicine, or even entirely different fields, such as architecture, art and fashion.
What's most inspiring to me about the evolving science of regenerative medicine is how it recasts the role and potential of the body's own cells.
problem-prone bone transplants are statistics from the past. Countless patients, present and future, hope so too o
#Another Fatal Brain Disease May Come from the Spread of'Prion'Proteins A rare and fatal brain disorder called multiple system atrophy (MSA) may be caused by a newly discovered prion, a protein similar to the ones
a progressive disorder that causes symptoms similar to Parkinson's disease and has no cure. What's more, the researchers say that the prion they believe causes MSA,
Eventually, the buildup of misfolded proteins can cause lesions to form in the brain, leading to disease."
and that alpha-synuclein is the first new bona fide prion to be discovered, to our knowledge, in the last 50 years,"the researchers, from the University of California,
Because prion diseases can be transmitted through certain types of contact with infected tissue, the findings suggest a potential concern for doctors
and researchers who work with tissue from MSA patients, the researchers said. 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Brain A new prion Patients with MSA can experience tremors,
The disease is rare: About three out of 100,000 Americans over age 50 are diagnosed with MSA yearly.
and injected that material into mice that had been engineered genetically to have a mutation in the alpha-synuclein gene.
The researchers found that the injections caused the mice to develop progressive neurological disease within about four months,
"We conclude that MSA is a transmissible human neurodegenerative disease caused by alpha-synuclein prions,
when instruments used during brain surgery are cleaned without using certain methods. This is because traditional disinfection methods don't work to get rid of prions.
Although it's not clear if MSA could also be transmitted this way, the researchers said that doctors
and scientists should adopt more-stringent safety protocols when working with tissue from MSA patients,
and even other similar diseases, such as Parkinson's.""We do not yet know whether or not MSA prions exhibit the same ability to stick to surgical instruments,
"like prions from CJD patients do said study researcher Amanda Woerman, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, San francisco."
"Until we have those answers, we encourage a cautious approach to sterilizing instruments used on MSA patients to minimize potential public health concerns."
"Caution on findings However, some experts say that, by some definitions, alpha-synuclein is not a prion,
and that there is no evidence that MSA spreads in the way that other prion diseases do.
Dr. Valerie Sim, of the Centre for Prions and Protein Folding Diseases at the University of Alberta in Canada, said that the traditional definition of a prion is an infectious protein that can transmit disease to another host.
But based on the new study, alpha-synuclein does not meet this definition, because brain tissue from MSA patients did not cause disease in normal mice.
Rather brain tissue from MSA patients caused disease only in mice that were engineered genetically to have a mutant alpha-synuclein protein.
In contrast,"true"prions can cause disease in normal mice, Sim said.)""The problem with branding something a prion is it induces fear,
because people have heard of it as a scary transmissible disease, "Sim said. But the new study,
"if anything, shows MSA is not easily transmissible, "she said. Still, the new findings are important to consider in research and treatment of MSA,
she said. But"we can't start a panic, because there's no actual evidence that human-to-human MSA transmission happens
or can happen,"Sim said i
#Disappearing Ancient Texts Could Be saved by Solar-Powered Device TORONTO A 13th-century text recording the discoveries of a medieval polymath,
a handwritten dictionary that may help decipher ancient texts, a magical text dating back hundreds of years and writings etched on palm leaves that record centuries of history.
All of these and many more are in danger of being lost to the elements. In this race against time, a team of engineers and archivists are developing a solar-powered device to safeguard historical treasures in India.
taking them out briefly to be put on display or for study. However for facilities in the developing world this can be a problem as the energy needed to power dehumidifiers
and air-conditioning equipment may not be available or affordable. The new solar-powered device that researchers are developing may help solve this problem.
Texts are placed in an insulated container with a dehumidifier and temperature-control mechanism. Solar cells power the equipment,
while batteries store power when there isn't enough sunlight. Additionally, when conditions in the container are just right,
the device will automatically power down, conserving energy so that it can automatically turn on when the humidity and temperature rise."
"As long as the documents aren't accessed all day long, the power requirements aren't that hefty, "said Harrison King-Mcbain, an engineering graduate student from the University of Toronto.
India treasures Colin Clarke, the director of the Canadian Centre for Epigraphic Documents, said he became aware of the need for such a device during a trip to Kerala, India, last September.
which is part of the Mahatma Gandhi University. Syriac is a dialect of Aramaic and was used by Christians throughout Asia,
While in Kerala, Clarke examined historical text collections in local churches and monasteries. The libraries had palm-leaf documents,
a polymath who wrote about literature, science, philosophy, religion, history and medicine, Clarke said.""The 13th-century manuscript may have been written by Bar Hebraeus himself,
the owners would not be able to afford the energy needed to operate it. Clarke promised to help.
he contacted King-Mcbain and Michael Cino, a graduate student at Mcmaster University in Hamilton, Canada.
The team has constructed a"proof of concept"device that shows how the device will work,
demonstrating it at the University of Toronto on Aug 19. The team has also found a place in Kottayam
Clarke said that a solar technology firm is needed now to finish development and help with construction.
Clarke asks anyone who can help to contact him through the CCED website. Help required The solar-powered device requires no fuel
the environment in the compartments configured to hold texts made with different materials. However, this would make the design more complex."
The ameba's scientific name means"tissue destroyer, "and refers to its ability to bore through a person's intestines and into the liver and other organs, causing ulcers, internal bleeding and chronic diarrhea.
Ameba is an alternate spelling of"amoeba, "and can be used with organisms that do not belong to the Genus amoeba, as E. histolytica.)
Doctors have only one antibiotic that can treat people with E. histolytica infections, and they fear the parasite will soon develop resistance to it.
"said Dr. William Petri, an expert on parasitic infections and chief of the Division of Infectious diseases & International Health at the University of Virginia.
But a chance meeting between Petri and a bladder cancer expert, Dr. Dan Theodorescu, who is director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center,
Normally, in his research on chemotherapy drugs, Theodorescu used a technique called RNAI, which silences various genes,
or more effective in killing the cancer. Petri merely substituted E. histolytica for a drug.
"This could be the plan B targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease,
and that this could have a broad impact on the field of infectious diseases. The finding was published today (Sept. 8) in the journal Scientific Reports.
or water contaminated with its cysts. The ameba passes into the environment via feces and can survive outside the human body for several weeks in this protective cyst form.
E. histolytica infection is endemic in regions with poor sanitation and improving sanitation has been the primary means to stop infections,
said Chelsea Marie, a postdoctoral fellow in Petri's lab and first author on the report.
The sole antibiotic that is effective in killing E. histolytica is metronidazole, which many patients find hard to tolerate, because of its side effects.
Targeting the potassium-ion channels in the colon, the first organ affected by E. histolytica, represents an entirely new approach in thwarting E. histolytica infection,
Marie said. In the lab, Marie reversed the experiment and found that using chemicals to block potassium efflux made the cells resistant to E. histolytica.
challenges lie ahead in developing medicine for use in humans, she said.""The challenge with developing drugs that target ion channels"such as potassium channels is that these channels are found all over the body,
and could be targeted specifically to prevent cell death during ameba infection, "she said.""This approach also could be informative for colon cancer chemotherapy,
"What's an ameba have to do with cancer, after all?""Theodorescu said. But recently the two were working together, on a hiring committee,
when blocked, would make cells resistant to the infection. He had the cells ready to go.
The ameba's scientific name means"tissue destroyer, "and refers to its ability to bore through a person's intestines and into the liver and other organs, causing ulcers, internal bleeding and chronic diarrhea.
Ameba is an alternate spelling of"amoeba, "and can be used with organisms that do not belong to the Genus amoeba, as E. histolytica.)
Doctors have only one antibiotic that can treat people with E. histolytica infections, and they fear the parasite will soon develop resistance to it.
"said Dr. William Petri, an expert on parasitic infections and chief of the Division of Infectious diseases & International Health at the University of Virginia.
But a chance meeting between Petri and a bladder cancer expert, Dr. Dan Theodorescu, who is director of the University of Colorado Cancer Center,
Normally, in his research on chemotherapy drugs, Theodorescu used a technique called RNAI, which silences various genes,
or more effective in killing the cancer. The 10 Most Diabolical and Disgusting Parasites Petri merely substituted E. histolytica for a drug.
"This could be the plan B targeting the human genes that enable the parasite to cause disease,
and that this could have a broad impact on the field of infectious diseases. The finding was published today (Sept. 8) in the journal Scientific Reports.
or water contaminated with its cysts. The ameba passes into the environment via feces and can survive outside the human body for several weeks in this protective cyst form.
E. histolytica infection is endemic in regions with poor sanitation and improving sanitation has been the primary means to stop infections,
said Chelsea Marie, a postdoctoral fellow in Petri's lab and first author on the report.
The sole antibiotic that is effective in killing E. histolytica is metronidazole, which many patients find hard to tolerate, because of its side effects.
Targeting the potassium-ion channels in the colon, the first organ affected by E. histolytica, represents an entirely new approach in thwarting E. histolytica infection,
Marie said. In the lab, Marie reversed the experiment and found that using chemicals to block potassium efflux made the cells resistant to E. histolytica.
challenges lie ahead in developing medicine for use in humans, she said.""The challenge with developing drugs that target ion channels"such as potassium channels is that these channels are found all over the body,
and could be targeted specifically to prevent cell death during ameba infection, "she said.""This approach also could be informative for colon cancer chemotherapy,
"What's an ameba have to do with cancer, after all?""Theodorescu said. Tiny & Nasty: Images of Things That Make Us Sick
when blocked, would make cells resistant to the infection. He had the cells ready to go.
#Laser weapon Melts Test Drone in Midair A new laser weapon that can burn up targets in just a few seconds recently melted
and destroyed a test drone flying over California. Known as the Compact Laser weapons System, the futuristic, drone-shooting weapon is a smaller, more versatile version of the High energy Laser Mobile Demonstrator (HEL MD),
a system developed by Boeing to be mounted on top of U s army vehicles. Both weapons forgo conventional bullets for"directed energy"a focused beam of energy that heats up
and damages a target. 7 Technologies That Transformed Warfare"Think of it like a welding torch being put on a target,
but from many hundreds of meters away,"Isaac Neal, a Boeing engineer, said in a video about the new weapons system that was posted on the defense contractor's website.
In a recent test, the laser, which is compact enough to carry around in a suitcase,
was able to locate, aim and fire at a small drone flying above a testing facility in Point Mugu, California.
The laser gun acts quickly (it took just 15 seconds for it to shoot the test drone out of the sky) and discreetly, according to Neal.
Speedy reaction times can be important in battles when every second counts.""If you were on the receiving end of laser energy,
you would have no idea where it was coming from or what was even happening,
"Neal said in the video. The Compact Laser weapons System features four main parts that help it turn plain old energy into a deadly force:
It has a battery, a chiller that keeps the system from getting too hot, a 2-kilowatt laser and a"beam director"that points the laser light at the intended target.
Engineers designed the system to be lighter and more compact than its big cousin, the HEL MD,
The first prototype of the Compact Laser weapons System is 40 percent lighter than the vehicle-mounted HEL MD system,
who noted that this lower weight makes the portable laser gun easier to move around than the HEL MD
it's fixed to the top of a vehicle, so it can only go where the vehicle goes.
In the recent test in California, the smaller laser shot down a drone, but Boeing's goal is to develop a compact laser that can also shoot down incoming explosives, such as mortars,
missiles and smaller artillery something the HEL MD has already proved it can do in tests.
The big draw for both laser systems is that they're cost-effective weapons. The only cost associated with operating them is the cost of electricity to power the lasers, according to Boeing,
which did not state exactly how much the U s. military would save by switching to laser guns.
Last year in Washington, D c.,Rear Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research, told reporters that firing the Navy's 30-kilowatt laser weapons system,
or Laws, costs less than a dollar per shot
#Weird Microscopic Animal Inspires New Kind of Glass A really weird, really tiny animal the microscopic tardigrade is the inspiration behind a new material that could improve the efficiency of things like LED LIGHTS and solar cells.
The material under investigation is glass, and tardigrades (sometimes known as"water bears"or"moss piglets")know a thing or two about glass.
These water-dwelling critters, which look like tiny blimps with pudgy bodies and eight stubby legs, are capable of shedding almost all of the water in their cells
when exposed to extreme conditions, such as heat, cold or even the vacuum of space.""When you remove the water,
they quickly coat themselves in large amounts of glassy molecules,"Juan de Pablo, professor of molecular engineering at the University of Chicago and one of the authors of a recent study on the tardigrade-inspired glass, said in a statement.
The glassy molecules help the microscopic animals stay in a deathlike state of suspended animation as they float through harsh environments,
he added. The tardigrade's ability to produce glasslike molecules under a wide range of temperatures they can survive temperatures as high as 304 degrees Fahrenheit (151 degrees Celsius)
and as low as minus 328 degrees F (minus 200 degrees C) led the researchers to experiment with the creation of new glass materials under extreme conditions.
And this, in turn, led to the development of a glass material that is almost as strange as the creature that inspired its discovery.
than regular, crystalline solids. But the new type of glass created by researchers at the University of Chicago
and the University of Wisconsin-Madison defies this definition. Like a crystal, it has a well-defined molecular organization,
de Pablo said in a statement. The new glass, which was described in a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) in March,
was produced using a method known as physical vapor deposition. This is a process in which the molecules that will make up the glass are evaporated inside a vacuum
according to lead study author Shakeel Dalal, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In a post on Reddit's Ask Me Anything (AMA) series, Dalal wrote that, in recent years,
researchers who make organic semiconductors using physical vapor deposition things like light-emitting diodes (LEDS) and solar cells noticed that they could sometimes produce glass-coated devices with structured,
or"oriented"molecules.""Orientation is great for those applications, because by being able to'point'the molecule in a direction,
When building an LED, getting as much of the light that hits the surface to go up
Meanwhile, those who build solar cells want as much light as possible to move"down,"toward the substrate,
Until now, semiconductor researchers weren't sure what caused the molecules in glass in certain instances, to cooperate and point in the same direction.
#Wirelessly Powered Brain Implant Could Treat Depression A wirelessly powered implant the size of a grain of rice can electrically stimulate the brains of mice as the rodents do
The new gadget could help scientists better understand and treat mental health disorders such as depression, according to a new study.
The human brain is the most powerful computer known, an extraordinary assembly of living electrical circuits. To gain greater understanding of how the human brain works
and how to fix any problems with it neuroscientists would like to electrically stimulate the brains of simpler animals as they scurry around,
carry out tasks and respond to their surroundings. Tiny, untethered brain-stimulating devices would permit animals to move,
However, batteries are too heavy and bulky to fit into such small gizmos. Instead, these inventions could be powered wirelessly using magnetic induction,
wherein one coil of wire can transmit energy to another coil using magnetic fields.""Wireless neural stimulation in mice has been demonstrated many times before,
"said study senior author Ada Poon, an electrical engineer at Stanford university in California. However, previous wireless brain-stimulating devices were limited by their power harvesting components.
If these parts were small, power was lost if the animals moved away from the spot where the energy was focused,
which limited how far the animals could roam. On the other hand, if these parts were large, they were typically too big to be implanted.
or used complex arrays of coils paired with sensors to locate the mice and deliver power."
"To us that sounded like a lot of work,"Poon told Live Science.""We were'lazy.''The'laziness'led us to be more creative."
"Now the researchers have created implantable wirelessly powered brain-stimulating devices by essentially using the mouse's body to help collect energy."
"Surprisingly, it works,"Poon said.""Engineers tend to think of complex solutions, but sometimes if we back off a bit
The bodies of the mice are used not to absorb energy, the researchers said. Rather, the mouse bodies interact with surrounding magnetic fields, helping focus energy like a lens from the transmitter to the receiver in the implant.
About one-thousandth of the energy transmitted at the mice gets absorbed by the devices, an efficiency comparable to previous systems,
the researchers said.""We achieve these efficiencies, however, without limiting the area of coverage or requiring large head-mounted antennae,"Poon added.
The scientists could power the implant as the mice roamed across a 6. 3-inch-wide (16 centimeters) chamber lined with a magnetic lattice.
The device was implanted in a region of the mouse brain known the infralimbic cortex, which is implicated in animal models of depression and anxiety."
"This will open the door to a range of new experiments to better understand and treat mental health disorders such as depression,
"Poon said.""In addition, since there is no wire and no protruding structure coming out of the animals,
it will allow experiments with multiple animals in the same space to better understand social interaction in the treatment of chronic pain and mental disorders, for example."
#3d Computer Chips Could Be 1, 000 Times Faster Than Existing Ones A new method of designing and building computer chips could lead to blisteringly quick processing at least 1,
000 times faster than the best existing chips are capable of, researchers say. The new method,
which relies on materials called carbon nanotubes, allows scientists to build the chip in three dimensions. The 3d design enables scientists to interweave memory,
which stores data, and the number-crunching processors in the same tiny space, said Max Shulaker, one of the designers of the chip,
and a doctoral candidate in electrical engineering at Stanford university in California. Reducing the distance between the two elements can dramatically reduce the time computers take to do their work
Shulaker said Sept. 10 here at the"Wait, What?""technology forum hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
the research wing of the U s. military. Progress slowing The inexorable advance in computing power over the past 50 years is largely thanks to the ability to make increasingly smaller silicon transistors,
the three-pronged electrical switches that do the logical operations for computers. According to Moore's law, a rough rule first articulated by semiconductor researcher Gordon E. Moore in 1965, the number of transistors on a given silicon chip would roughly double every two years.
True to his predictions, transistors have gotten ever tinier with the teensiest portions measuring just 5 nanometers,
and the smallest functional ones having features just 7 nanometers in size. For comparison, an average strand of human hair is about 100,000 nanometers wide.
The decrease in size, however, means that the quantum effects of particles at that scale could disrupt their functioning.
Therefore, it's likely that Moore's law will be coming to an end within the next 10 years,
experts say. Beyond that, shrinking transistors to the bitter end may not do much to make computers faster.
Long commute time The main roadblock to faster computers is not flagging processor speed, but a memory problem, Shulaker said.
Big data analysis requires the computer to draw some tiny piece of data from some previously unknown spot in truly staggering troves of data.
Then the computer must shuttle that information via an electrical signal back and forth across the (relatively) vast inches of wire between the computer's memory (typically a hard drive)
and the processors, facing the speed bump of electrical resistance along the entire path.""If you try to run that in your computer,
you would spend over 96 percent of the time just being idle, doing absolutely nothing,"Shulaker said."
"You're wasting an enormous amount of power.""While the Central processing unit (CPU) waits for a piece of data to make the return trip from the memory, for instance,
the computer is still hogging power, even though it's not calculating a thing. Solving the memory-CPU"commute time,
"however, is tricky. The two components can't be put in the same wafer because silicon-based wafers must be heated to about 1, 800 degrees Fahrenheit (1, 000 degrees Celsius),
while many of the metal elements in hard drives (or solid state drives) melt at those temperatures, Shulaker said.
Carbon nanotubes To get around this issue Shulaker and his advisers at Stanford university, Subhasish Mitra and H.-S. Philip Wong, looked to a completely different material:
carbon nanotubes, or miniscule mesh rods made of carbon atoms, which can be processed at low temperatures. Carbon nanotubes (CNTS) have electrical properties similar to those of conventional silicon transistors.
In a head-to-head competition between a silicon transistor and a CNT transistor,"hands down, the CNT would win,
"Shulaker told Live Science.""It would be a better transistor; it can go faster; it uses less energy."
"However, carbon nanotubes grow in a disorderly manner, "resembling a bowl of spaghetti, "which is no good for making circuits,
Shulaker said. As such, the researchers developed a method to grow nanotubes in narrow grooves, guiding the nanotubes into alignment.
But there was another hurdle. While 99.5 percent of the nanotubes become aligned, a few stragglers will still be out of position.
To solve this problem, the researchers figured out that drilling holes at certain spots within the chip can ensure that even a chip with wayward tubes would work as expected.
Another problem is that while most CNTS have the properties of a semiconductor (like silicon),
a few act just like an ordinary conducting metal, with no way to predict which tubes will misbehave.
Those few conducting tubes can ruin an entire chip, and having to toss even a fraction of the chips wouldn't make financial sense, Shulaker added.
As a remedy, Shulaker and his colleagues essentially"turn off"all the semiconducting CNTS, leaving huge jolts of current to circulate through the remaining conducting nanotubes.
The high current heats up and breaks down only the conducting nanotubes, which blow like nanoscale fuses,
Shulaker said. In 2013, the team built a CNT COMPUTER which they described in the journal Nature.
That computer, however, was slow and bulky, with relatively few transistors. Now, they have created a system for stacking memory and transistor layers,
with tiny wires connecting the two. The new 3d design has slashed the transit time between transistor and memory,
and the resulting architecture can produce lightning-fast computing speeds up to 1, 000 times faster than would
otherwise be said possible, Shulaker. Using the new architecture, the team has built a variety of sensor wafers that can detect everything from infrared light to particular chemicals in the environment.
The next step is to scale the system further to make even bigger, more complicated chips s
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