led by Lancaster University and Pisa University in Italy, 55 patients with atypical moles agreed to have monitored their skin by researchers at Pisa University Hospital using a laser Doppler system.
The laser Doppler was used to record the complex interactions taking place in the minute blood vessels beneath their suspicious mole for around 30 minutes.
The fluctuations in recorded signals were analysed then using methods developed by physicists at Lancaster University.
Professor Aneta Stefanovska of Lancaster University said:""We used our knowledge of blood flow dynamics to pick up on markers
"Combining the new dynamical biomarkers we created a test which, based on the number of subjects tested to date,
which means that melanoma is identified in all cases where it is ruled present, and out in 90.9%of cases where it is not."
"Professor Marco Rossi of Pisa University said:""Skin malignant melanoma is a particularly aggressive cancer associated with quick blood vessel growth
which means early diagnosis is vital for a good prognosis. The current diagnostic tools of examination by doctors followed by biopsy inevitably leads to many unnecessary invasive excisions."
"This simple, accurate, in vivo distinction between malignant melanoma and atypical moles may lead to a substantial reduction in the number of biopsies currently undertaken
#Turning breath into words: New device unveiled to give paralysis victims a voice A new device
which transforms paralysis victims'breath into words--believed to be the first invention of its kind--has been developed by academics from Loughborough University.
Billed as a tool to help bring back the art of conversation for sufferers of severe paralysis and loss of speech,
the prototype analyses changes in breathing patterns and converts'breath signals'into words using pattern recognition software and an analogue-to-digital converter.
A speech synthesizer then reads the words aloud. The Augmentative and Alternate Communication (AAC) device is designed for patients with complete
or partial loss of voluntary muscle control who don't have the ability to make purposeful movements such as sniffing or blinking--gestures
Dr David Kerr, Senior Lecturer in the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, and Dr Kaddour Bouazza-Marouf, Reader in Mechatronics in Medicine, said the device learns from its user,
building up its knowledge as it goes. It allows the user to control how he
or she wishes to communicate--effectively enabling them to create their own language by varying the speed of their breathing.
The academics have been joined in the project by Dr Atul Gaur, Consultant Anaesthetist at Glenfield Hospital."
"What we are proposing is a system that learns with the user to form an effective vocabulary that suits the person rather than the machine,
and range from paper-based tools to expensive, sophisticated electronic devices. Our AAC device uses analogue signals in continuous form,
or other speech disorders communicate. In an intensive care setting, the technology has the potential to be used to make an early diagnosis of locked-in syndrome (LIS),
by allowing patients, including those on ventilators, to communicate effectively for the first time by breathing--an almost effortless act
which requires no speech, limb or facial movements.""The trio will be joined by Loughborough mechanical engineering student Robert Green, 20,
who will work alongside them on the device as part of his final year individual project.
Robert is no stranger to AAC devices, having already invented a prototype called the m (eye) DAQ--a low cost digital letter board that allows victims of paralysis to communicate via eye blinks or finger movements s
#New embryo image processing technology could assist in IVF implantation success rates A collaboration between biologists
and engineers at Monash University has led to the development of a new noninvasive image processing technique to visualise embryo formation.
This breakthrough has important implications for IVF (in vitro fertilisation) treatments and pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD.
Dr Melanie White, Research Fellow at the Plachta Lab at Australian Regenerative medicine Institute (ARMI), Dr Yanina Alvarez of University of Buenos aires and Rajeev Samarage, Phd candidate
supervised by Prof Andreas Fouras at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace engineering at Monash University.
the Monash University researchers were able to demonstrate that this model of embryo formation was incorrect.
By altering the tension of the cells using lasers or genetic manipulations, researchers could change which cells move inside the embryo.
or pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) first organise their cells.""If in the future, we can combine our new image processing technique with non-harmful dyes that can label the membranes of human embryos,
we may be able to evaluate embryos used in IVF and decide which ones to implant to have the best chance of success,
"said Dr Melanie White e
#New synthetic tumor environments make cancer research more realistic University of Illinois researchers have developed a new technique to create a cell habitat of squishy fluids, called hydrogels,
which can realistically and quickly recreate microenvironments found across biology. To illustrate the potential of their technique,
the Illinois team mixed breast cancer cells and cells called macrophages that signal cancer cells to spread
and grow into a tumor. They were able to observe how differently cells act in the three-dimensional, gel-like environment,
which is much more like body tissues than the current research standard: a flat, hard plastic plate.
Arraykilian said his team's synthetic microenvironment lies somewhere in the middle of two extremes in the field of modeling biology:
the hard plastic plate, and expensive mouse avatars that are created by injecting human tumor cells into mice."
"This is really the first time that it's been demonstrated that you can use a rapid methodology like this to spatially define cancer cells and macrophages,
then you can ask fundamental biological questions.""Kilian said these questions range from the basic--how macrophages signal to the breast cells--to the more long-term:
Can therapeutics be used to disrupt that communication? What sets the team's model apart from mouse avatars
and hard plastic plates is that it can replicate much more accurately the sizes and shapes of the microenvironment within the patient's problem area.
"Now, researchers can ask more sophisticated biological questions than they could, "Kilian said. And they can do it quickly.
The process the team came up with to produce the synthetic environments takes an estimated 15 minutes,
and finds out they've been diagnosed with some sort of solid tumor, "Kilian said.""You take a biopsy of those cells,
you put it into this device, grow them and see how they respond to different treatments
#Close to the point of more efficient chips More efficient chips based on plasmonics are a step closer to reality through better control of the directional excitation of plasmons in a gold grating.
A*STAR researchers and their collaborators have generated electromagnetic waves known as surface plasmon polaritons in a gold grating
This demonstration is a step toward the development of plasmonic chips, so called because they use plasmons--collective excitations of electrons in a conductor--rather than electrons to transfer
and process data. Such chips promise to be much faster and potentially more energy efficient than current electronic chips.
Joel Yang and Zhaogang Dong at the A*STAR Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, together with colleagues at the A*STAR Institute Of high Performance Computing and other institutes in Singapore, investigated controlling the traveling
direction of plasmons in a gold grating both theoretically and experimentally. In the experiments, they moved the STM tip relative to the edge of the gold grating
and observed the generated light using an inverted microscope (see image).""The STM tip acts as a point source of surface plasmons,"Yang explains."
"When placed on a metal film, electrons that tunnel across the gap can excite plasmons, although inefficiently."
"Yang likens the excitation of plasmons in gratings to dropping pebbles in a swimming pool with swimming lanes demarcated by floats."
"What is interesting is that depending on how far we drop the pebble from the barrier for each lane,
we can get waves that preferentially move away from the barrier and even across lanes.
By adjusting the position just by a small amount--in our case by about 100 nanometers--we can turn on waves that propagate in the opposite direction, namely toward the barrier and beyond."
"This control of direction stems from the surface plasmon polariton reflected from the grating edge interfering with the one at the STM probe.
By modeling this process on a computer, the researchers found a good match with the experimental results.
The result provides point sources of surface plasmon polaritons. This could prove useful for developing ways to replace wires between chips with optical connectors,
which will greatly speed up chip-to-chip communication in integrated circuits based on plasmonics rather than electronics.
The researchers intend to investigate the optical characteristics of the plasmon source when the electrically excited plasmons are coupled to plasmonic waveguides,
opening the way to plasmonic counterparts of electronic components.""Potentially, we hope to achieve logic gates, which underpin all processing circuits,
based on electrically driven plasmons,"says Dong g
#Artificial leaf harnesses sunlight for efficient fuel production Generating and storing renewable energy, such as solar or wind power, is a key barrier to a clean energy economy.
When the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) was established at Caltech and its partnering institutions in 2010,
the U s. Department of energy (DOE) Energy Innovation Hub had one main goal: a cost-effective method of producing fuels using only sunlight, water,
and carbon dioxide, mimicking the natural process of photosynthesis in plants and storing energy in the form of chemical fuels for use on demand.
Over the past five years, researchers at JCAP have made major advances toward this goal, and they now report the development of the first complete, efficient,
safe, integrated solar-driven system for splitting water to create hydrogen fuels.""This result was a stretch project milestone for the entire five years of JCAP as a whole,
and not only have achieved we this goal, we also achieved it on time and on budget,"says Caltech's Nate Lewis, George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry,
and the JCAP scientific director. The new solar fuel generation system, or artificial leaf, is described in the August 24 online issue of the journal Energy and Environmental science.
The work was done by researchers in the laboratories of Lewis and Harry Atwater, director of JCAP and Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials science."
"This accomplishment drew on the knowledge, insights and capabilities of JCAP, which illustrates what can be achieved in a Hub-scale effort by an integrated team,
two electrodes--one photoanode and one photocathode--and a membrane. The photoanode uses sunlight to oxidize water molecules,
Semiconductors such as silicon or gallium arsenide absorb light efficiently and are used therefore in solar panels. However, these materials also oxidize
(or rust) on the surface when exposed to water, so cannot be used to directly generate fuel.
A major advance that allowed the integrated system to be developed was previous work in Lewis's laboratory,
which showed that adding a nanometers-thick layer of titanium dioxide (Tio2)--a material found in white paint
and many toothpastes and sunscreens--onto the electrodes could prevent them from corroding while still allowing light
and colleagues uses such a 62.5-nanometer-thick Tio2 layer to effectively prevent corrosion and improve the stability of a gallium arsenide-based photoelectrode.
Another key advance is the use of active, inexpensive catalysts for fuel production. The photoanode requires a catalyst to drive the essential water-splitting reaction.
Rare and expensive metals such as platinum can serve as effective catalysts, but in its work the team discovered that it could create a much cheaper,
active catalyst by adding a 2-nanometer-thick layer of nickel to the surface of the Tio2.
This catalyst is among the most active known catalysts for splitting water molecules into oxygen
protons, and electrons and is a key to the high efficiency displayed by the device.
The photoanode was grown onto a photocathode, which also contains a highly active, inexpensive, nickel-molybdenum catalyst,
and safety of the new system is the special plastic membrane that separates the gases
while still allowing the ions to flow seamlessly to complete the electrical circuit in the cell.
and work together to produce a high-performance, fully integrated system. The demonstration system is approximately one square centimeter in area,
converts 10 percent of the energy in sunlight into stored energy in the chemical fuel,
"Our work shows that it is indeed possible to produce fuels from sunlight safely and efficiently in an integrated system with inexpensive components,
"Because the work assembled various components that were developed by multiple teams within JCAP, coauthor Chengxiang Xiang,
Enhancing the mobility of liquid droplets on rough surfaces has applications ranging from condensation heat transfer for heat exchangers in power plants to more efficient water harvesting in arid regions where collecting fog droplets on coated meshes provides drinking water
and irrigation for agriculture to the prevention of icing and frosting on aircraft wings.""This represents a fundamentally new concept in engineered surfaces,
"said Tak-Sing Wong, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and a faculty member in the Penn State Materials Research Institute."
"Our surfaces combine the unique surface architectures of lotus leaves and pitcher plants, in such a way that these surfaces possess both high surface area
We have demonstrated for the first time experimentally that liquid droplets can be highly mobile when in the Wenzel state."
"said Birgitt Boschitsch Stogin, a graduate student in Wong's group and coauthor on a paper titled"Slippery Wenzel State,"published in the August 28 online edition of the journal ACS Nano."
Our idea is to solve these problems by enabling Wenzel state droplets to be said mobile
a postdoctoral scholar in Wong's group and the lead author on the ACS Nano paper.
In order to make Wenzel state droplets mobile, the researchers etched micrometer scale pillars into a silicon surface using photolithography and deep reactive-ion etching,
and then created nanoscale textures on the pillars by wet etching. They then infused the nanotextures with a layer of lubricant that completely coated the nanostructures,
resulting in greatly reduced pinning of the droplets. The nanostructures also greatly enhanced lubricant retention compared to the microstructured surface alone.
The same design principle can be extended easily to other materials beyond silicon, such as metals glass ceramics and plastics.
The authors believe this work will open the search for a new, unified model of wetting physics that explains wetting phenomena on rough surfaces such as theirs.
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a Graduate Research Fellowship,
and the Office of Naval Research (MURI award). The researchers performed their work in the Penn State Nanofabrication Laboratory, part of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN), funded by the National Science Foundation.
A U s. provisional patent has been filed for this work. Shikuan Yang, a postdoctoral scholar in Wong's group, also contributed to the work k
#One in a million: Analyzing metabolites in a single cell Based on interactions between silicon nanopost arrays (NAPA) and laser light,
an ionization platform was developed for the ultrasensitive detection of molecules. With detection limits down to the zeptomolar range (a thousand trillionth of a mole,
or about 600 molecules in a sample), this technology can analyze the metabolic composition of individual microbial cells,
as well as detect the presence of extremely low levels of contaminants in the environment. Using the array,
Scientists can use the NAPA to determine changes in cellular metabolite level distributions and metabolic noise upon environmental stress
The NAPA invention was licensed by Protea Biosciences Group, Inc, . and commercialized under the REDICHIP#name in June 2015.
Researchers at the George washington University, working in collaboration with the Center for Nanophase Materials sciences at the Oak ridge National Laboratory,
The NAPA platform consists of an array of silicon nanoposts that exhibit enhanced electromagnetic fields upon interaction with pulses of laser radiation.
the research group has determined the metabolic response of individual yeast cells to oxidative stress. Additionally, the NAPA platform has shown the capabilities to analyze a wide variety of biomolecules
and xenobiotics in a broad class of samples, making it the foundation for matrix-free laser desorption ionization.
Protea Biosciences Group, Inc. exclusively licensed the NAPA platform; in June 2015, the company commercialized the platform under the name of REDICHIP#i
This is the first known demonstration of a bacterial system used to mine ocean-based uranium that reduces the expense
The overall method developed could find broad applications in sequestration and bioremediation of water-soluble uranium and similar transuranic elements.
This biotechnology method could also have similar applications to other low-concentration ions in solution.
Uranium plays an important role in the search for alternative energies to fossil fuels; however, uranium resources on land are limited.
After years of trying to find an efficient and affordable way to extract uranyl, researchers at the University of Chicago, Peking University,
and Argonne National Laboratory turned to biology. There are no naturally occurring proteins known to bind uranyl,
The scientists used the motif to search the Protein Data Bank for proteins that could accommodate
The SUP was confirmed also to contain the computationally designed structural features through examination of the protein crystal structure.
U s. Department of energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic energy Sciences, Chemical sciences, Geosciences, and Biosciences Division, Heavy Element Chemistry Program under contract number DE-FG02-07er15865 to C. H
. and at Argonne National Laboratory (M. J.)under contract number DE-AC02-06ch11357; Dreyfus Foundation Postdoctoral Program in Environmental Chemistry to S. O.;
and Ministry of Science and Technology of China (2009cb918500) and the National Natural science Foundation of China (21173013,11021463) to L. L. This research used the Advanced Photon Source for protein crystallography data collection
Office of Basic energy Sciences under contract number DE-AC02-06ch11357 7
#Super water-repellant coatings can now take the pressure Conventional superhydrophobic coatings that repel liquids by trapping air inside microscopic surface pockets tend to lose their properties
In this work, extremely water-repellant or superhydrophobic surfaces were fabricated that can withstand pressures that are 10 times greater than the average pressure a surface would experience resting in a room.
The surfaces resist the infiltration of liquid into the nanoscale pockets. The extent to which nanometer-size textured,
superhydrophobic coatings can withstand elevated pressures is determined largely by the geometry of the texturing. This work shows that by careful tuning of the nanoscale geometry
substantial gains in the durability and applicability of these structures for solar panels, highly robust, self-healing coatings,
and anti-icing applications could be realized. Superhydrophobic coatings repel liquids by trapping air inside microscopic surface textures.
However, the resulting composite interface is prone to collapse under external pressure. Nanometer-size textures should facilitate more resilient coatings owing to geometry and confinement effects at the nanoscale.
This study uses in situ x-ray diffraction to investigate the extent to which the superhydrophobic state in arrays of 20 nanometer-wide silicon textures with cylindrical, conical,
and linear features persists under pressure. The research revealed that the upper bounds of the superhydrophobic state are reached
This infiltration is modeled quantitatively by accounting for the actual geometry of the texture and macroscopic capillary theory.
Office of Science, Basic energy Sciences in the Materials sciences and Engineering Division and at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials under Contract No.
Financial support is acknowledged from the European union via 7th Framework International Program Research staff Exchange Scheme Marie-Curie Grant No.
The standard approach to squeezing light involves firing an intense laser beam at a material, usually a nonlinear crystal,
or photons, using an artificially constructed atom, known as a semiconductor quantum dot. Thanks to the enhanced optical properties of this system and the technique used to make the measurements,
Professor Mete Atature, a Fellow of St john's College at the University of Cambridge, who led the research,
"If you look at a flat surface, it seems smooth and flat, but we know that
if you really zoom in to a superfine level, it probably isn't perfectly smooth at all,
In the Cambridge experiment, the researchers achieved this by shining a faint laser beam on to their artificial atom, the quantum dot.
This excited the quantum dot and led to the emission of a stream of individual photons.
At its core, however, is a rule known as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. This states that in any situation in which a particle has linked two properties,
By scattering faint laser light from the quantum dot the noise of part of the electromagnetic field was reduced to an extremely precise and low level, below the standard baseline of vacuum fluctuations.
This was done at the expense of making other parts of the electromagnetic field less measurable, meaning that it became possible to create a level of noise that was lower-than-nothing, in keeping with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle,
and hence the laws of quantum physics. Plotting the uncertainty with which fluctuations in the electromagnetic field could be measured on a graph creates a shape where the uncertainty of one part has been reduced,
while the other has been extended. This creates a squashed-looking, or"squeezed"shape, hence the term,"squeezing"light.
#Scientists create designer proteins that control enzyme activity Scientists from the University of Chicago have developed a novel approach to control the activity of enzymes through the use of synthetic, antibody-like proteins known as monobodies.
professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, was able to change the specificity of an enzyme,
widely used in the food industry, without altering the enzyme itself--establishing a new route for enzyme engineering
The findings, detailed online in Nature Chemical Biology on Aug 31, 2015 have widespread implications for a broad range of industrial, scientific and medical applications in
which enzymes are used.""This is the first time that synthetic accessory molecules have been engineered to change the specificity of an enzyme
who also serves as a Scientific Director for the Chicago Biomedical Consortium.""In this paper, we demonstrated their efficacy on sugars,
such as the preparation of foods, dietary supplements, therapeutics and chemical materials. A major goal in biotechnology is to modify enzyme activity
in order to carry out bespoke reactions. Current methods use genetic engineering to physically mutate enzymes. However this is difficult to accomplish
and requires detailed knowledge of enzyme structure and functional dynamics, which can be expensive, time-consuming and inefficient.
Koide and his colleagues approached this problem by leveraging their longstanding expertise in designing monobodies--compact proteins that function as synthetic antibodies.
Like antibodies, monobodies recognize and bind to specific target proteins, serving as a marker or affecting function.
Coupled with their small size (around 15 times smaller than an antibody) and simple structure,
an enzyme widely used in the food industry. One of its major uses is the production of short sugar chains that can serve as beneficial prebiotics.
Starting with a pool of around 10 billion unique monobodies, they used directed evolution techniques to identify a group of monobodies that bound near the active site of beta-galactosidase.
The monobody partially blocks the active site of the enzyme and prevents it from accepting large sugars as a substrate--thereby forcing it to produce only short sugar chains."
and are already in use as a platform for other applications by biotechnology companies. The team is now investigating other enzymes that might benefit from monobody technology,
#DNA-guided 3-D printing of human tissue is unveiled Arraythere are few limits to the tissues this technology can mimic,
said Zev Gartner, Phd, the paper's senior author and an associate professor of pharmaceutical chemistry at UCSF."
we could be taking samples of different components of a cancer patient's mammary gland and building a model of their tissue to use as a personalized drug screening platform.
Another is to use the rules of tissue growth we learn with these models to one day grow complete organs."
keeping the whole biological machine running smoothly. But in diseases such as breast cancer, the breakdown of this order has been associated with the rapid growth and spread of tumors."
"Cells aren't lonely little automatons, "Gartner said.""They communicate through networks to make group decisions.
it sets the stage for cancer.""But studying how the cells of complex tissues like the mammary gland self-organize,
and break down in disease has been a challenge to researchers. The living organism is often too complex to identify the specific causes of a particular cellular behavior.
and manipulate,"said Michael Todhunter, Phd, who led the new study with Noel Jee, Phd,
when both were graduate students in the Gartner research group.""It lets us ask questions about complex human tissues without needing to do experiments on humans."
but also to experiment with specifically adding in a single cell with a known cancer mutation to different parts of the organoid to observe its effects.
or more cells expressing low levels of the cancer gene Rasg12v affected the cells around them.
or structural changes in mammary glands can lead to the breakdown of tissue architecture associated with tumors that metastasize,
"Building functional models of the complex cellular networks such as those found in the brain is probably one of the highest challenges you could aspire to,
"Funders of the work include the Department of defense Breast cancer Research Program, the National institutes of health, the Sidney Kimmel Foundation,
and the UCSF Program in Breakthrough Biomedical Research h
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011