Yale university engineers have found a unique method for designing metallic glass nanostructures across a wide range of chemicals.
with applications for everything from fuel cells to biological implants. t a huge step for nanofabrication, said Jan Schroers, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at Yale,
Schroers and his team at Yale have spent years refining processes for designing metallic glass nanostructures complex,
multicomponent alloys that are constructed at the nano scale within a limited number of alloy systems.
and already are being used in a variety of manufacturing applications, from watch parts to phone casings.
In the new paper, Schroers demonstrates a method for applying metallic glass nanostructures to a broad range of glass-forming alloys.
and composition of alloys at the nanoscale. ontrolling size and reaching the smallest 10 nanometer dimensions 1/10,
000 of the diameter of a human hair is something that we have demonstrated before, Schroers said. owever,
With our new method we can fabricate nanostructures similar in size but with even higher complexity in shape
and realize all this in a very wide range of alloys. Expanding the chemistries of metallic glass also expands the possible uses for the materials,
Manufacturers will be able to optimize the design to a desired electrochemical behavior for a battery or fuel cell, for example.
Or they might alter materials for greater biocompatibility temperature stability, or water resistance. his is like going from building boats only out of wood,
#Gamers feel the glove from Rice engineers Rice university engineering students are working to make virtual reality a little more real with their invention of a glove that allows a user to feel
The Hands Omni glove developed at Rice Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen will provide a way for gamers
and others to feel the environments they inhabit through the likes of three-dimensional heads-ups displays. The prototype glove introduced at the George R. Brown School of engineering Design Showcase
so you can hook this up to a video game and when you reach out and grab a virtual object,
said mechanical engineering student Thor Walker. Other members of the team are mechanical engineering students Kevin Koch, Kevin Gravesmill and Yi Ji and electrical engineering students Marissa Garcia and Julia Kwok.
All are seniors with the exception of Kwok who is a junior. Their faculty advisers are Fathi Ghorbel, professor of mechanical engineering and bioengineering,
and Marcia Oalley, professor of mechanical engineering and computer science. The project won the eople Choiceaward at Rice recent Engineering Design Showcase.
The glove (right-handed only at the moment) is designed to be as unobtrusive as possible, and is wireless to allow the player a full range of motion without having to worry about cables.
The fingers feel pressure from bladders in the glove fingertips that expand and contract as necessary.
but they say programmers should find it fairly simple to implement the glove protocols into their games and other projects.
arms, legs and limbs the maximum weight that is perceptible to users and we came up with 660 grams on the forearm and much less than that on the back of the hand or on the fingers,
and that exactly what wee doing, he said. he user will hardly know it there
#An end to cancer pain? U of T researcher finds the ain trigger A new study led by University of Toronto researcher Dr. David Lam has discovered the trigger behind the most severe forms of cancer pain.
Released in top journal Pain this month, the study points to TMPRSS2 as the culprit:
a gene that is also responsible for some of the most aggressive forms of androgen-fuelled cancers.
Head of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery at the Faculty of dentistry, Lam research initially focused on cancers of the head and neck,
Studies have shown that these types of cancers are the most painful, with sufferers experiencing pain that is immediate and localized,
It was while conducting clinical research at the University of California San francisco though, that Lam noticed something interesting.
and neck cancer patients are men leading him to investigate a genetic marker with a known correlation to prostate cancer,
TMPRSS2. rostate cancer research already knows that if you have the TMPRSS2 gene marker, the prostate cancer is much more aggressive.
Theye also shown that this is androgen (male hormone) sensitive. In his study, Lam, who is appointed jointly as a Consultant Surgeon at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre
and a Clinician at the Mount sinai Wasser Pain Management Centre, ascertained that TMPRSS2 was not only present in patients suffering from head
and neck cancers it was also prevalent in much greater quantities than in prostate cancer.
But was there a link to pain? Visible on the surface of the cancer cells, TMPRSS2 comes into contact with the body nerve pain receptors,
which then triggers the pain. Lam was also able to determine a clear, correlative relationship between the two:
Lam and his fellow researchers followed up this observation by looking at different types of cancers with known pain associations for instance, certain breast and melanoma cell lines.
and labelled for the TMPRSS2 genetic marker. According to clinical data, head and neck cancer is the most painful form of cancer,
followed by prostate cancer, while melanoma, or skin cancer, sits at the bottom of the pain scale.
But what surprised the researchers was that the presence and amount of TMPRSS2 in these cancer cell cultures stood in exact correlation with the known level of pain each cancer causes. t was exactly
what we know clinically about pain association, adds Lam. A New Direction for Drug Research The startling discovery of TMPRSS2 role in triggering cancer pain may lead to the creation of targeted cancer pain therapies that effectively shut down the expression of this gene
or its ability to infiltrate pain receptors in the body. Dr. Brian Schmidt, Professor at New york University college of Dentistry, Director of the Bluestone Center for Clinical Research and a co-author of the study states,
he discovery that TMPRSS2 drives cancer pain demonstrates another way that cancers lead to suffering.
Inhibition of its activity in patients might provide a new form of treatment for cancer pain. ny cancer that is painful before initiating drug treatment we can label the cancer cells for TMPRSS2
and look for this particular marker, explains Lam, who adds that the most effective approach to ending pain would be to target the production and expression of the pain gene.
But there may be other ramifications to the TMPRSS2 study: further research may yet uncover what role the increased expression of TMPRSS2 plays in the aggressiveness and morbidity rates associated with certain aggressive cancers
and whether or not shutting down the pain gene will have any other beneficial side effects than reducing discomfort.
The study also involved researchers from New york University and the Forsyth Institute (Cambridge) t
#Researchers get under the skin to develop new transplant technique James Shapiro, one of the world leading experts in emerging treatments of diabetes, can help
but be excited about his latest research. The results, he says, could soon mark a new standard for treatmentot only for diabetes,
but for several other diseases as well. Shapiro, Canada Research Chair in Transplantation Surgery and Regenerative medicine in the University of Alberta Faculty of medicine & Dentistry,
and Andrew Pepper, a postdoctoral fellow working in his lab, are the lead authors in a study published in the April 20 edition of the journal Nature Biotechnology.
In the study the authors describe developing a new site for islet transplantation under the skin,
which they believe will offer less risk and far greater health benefits for patients. Islet transplantation is a procedure that temporarily allows people with severe diabetes to stop taking insulin. ntil now it has been nearly impossible for transplanted cells to function reliably
when placed beneath the skin, says Shapiro. n these studies, we have harnessed the body natural ability to respond to a foreign body by growing new enriching blood vessels.
By controlling this reaction, we have successfully and reliably reversed diabetes in our preclinical models.
This approach is new and especially exciting as it opens up a new world of opportunities,
not only in diabetes, but also across the board in regenerative medicine. Evolving the Edmonton Protocol The new technique, tested in preclinical models,
is an evolution of the Edmonton Protocol, which Shapiro developed in the late 1990s to treat Type 1 diabetes.
In the Edmonton Protocol, islet cells are transplanted into the liver, granting patients insulin independence for a varying amount of time.
The protocol was hailed as a revolutionary treatment, but Shapiro quickly realized the liver wasn the ideal site for transplantation. hen we put islets in the liver,
most of them get destroyed in a matter of minutes to hours, and we don have a very good way to stop that,
he says. s we turn to the future possibility of transplanting human stem cells in place of islets,
we need a better, safer site to implant experimental cells. The skin offers a remarkable opportunity,
provided we can enrich its blood supply to accommodate the needs of implanted cells. As Shapiro team began testing alternatives,
sites underneath the skin first proved inhospitable for the cells due to a lack of blood vessels needed for the islets to grow
they found that by inserting a temporary catheter tube under the skin, they could induce new blood vessels to grow, making an ideal home for islet transplantation. n the paper,
If we put the cells into a site that been prepared by what we call our evicelessapproach,
then we can get the cells to engraft highly efficiently. his is a promising new procedure of transplanting cells into a site with the body that until now has failed historically,
While the new transplant approach offers several benefits to diabetes patients, the researchers are excited equally by how it may be applied to other illnesses.
if successful, could safely open the door to allow for assessment of emerging stem cell treatments. t opens up the possibility of being able to transplant stem cells into patients in a site that can be removed,
his exciting new approach doesn have to be limited to diabetes. For any area of regenerative medicine that requires replacing old cells with newnd there lots of different disease states where there just one gene defect that could be corrected by a cell transplanthis opens up an incredible future possibility for successful engraftment beneath the skin.
Shapiro has filed a patent for the new transplant technique and hopes to begin human trials in the very near future t
#Engineering the Smallest Crack in the World A new procedure will enable researchers to fabricate smaller, faster,
and more powerful nanoscale devices#and do so with molecular control and precision. Using a single layer of carbon atoms,
or graphene, nanoengineers at the University of California, San diego have invented a new way of fabricating nanostructures that contain well-defined, atomic-sized gaps.
Structures with these well-defined, atomic-sized gaps could be used to detect single molecules associated with certain diseases
and might one day lead to microprocessors that are 100 times smaller than the ones in today computers.
The ability to generate extremely small gaps#known as nanogaps#is highly desirable in fabricating nanoscale structures
which are used typically as components in optic and electronic devices. By decreasing the spacing between electronic circuits on a microchip, for example,
one can fit more circuits on the same chip to produce a device with greater computing power.
A team of Ph d. students and undergraduate researchers led by UC San diego nanoengineering professor Darren Lipomi demonstrated that the key to generating a smaller nanogap between two nanostructures involves using a graphene spacer,
which can be etched away to create the gap. Graphene is the thinnest material known:
it is simply a single layer of carbon atoms and measures approximately 0. 3 nanometers (nm),
said Lipomi. hile most efforts in nanotechnology focus on making materials, wee essentially made nothing but with controlled dimensions.
and then layered on top with a sheet of gold metal. Because graphene sticks better to gold than to copper,
which we can place single-layer graphene between two metals and ensure that it contains no rips,
a graduate student in Lipomi research group who pioneered the technique and is the first author of the study. etal-assisted exfoliation can potentially be useful for industries that use large areas of graphene.
Once the gold/graphene composite is separated from the copper substrate, the newly exposed side of the graphene layer is sandwiched with another gold sheet to produce the gold:
The films are sliced then into 150 nm-wide nanostructures. Finally, the structures are treated with oxygen plasma to remove graphene.
Scanning electron micrographs of the structures reveal extremely small nanogaps between the gold layers. Nanogap applications One potential application for this technology is in ultra-sensitive detection of single molecules,
particularly those that are characteristic of certain diseases. When light is shined upon structures with extremely small gaps,
the electromagnetic field that is confined within the gap becomes enormously enhanced. This enhanced electromagnetic field, in turn, increases the signal produced by any molecule within the gap. f some disease marker comes in and bridges the gap between the nanostructures
you would observe a change in the light scattering from the nanogap that would correspond to
whether the disease was present or not, said Lipomi. While the technique reported in this study can produce nanostructures suitable for optical applications,
it exhibits a major drawback for electronic applications. Raman spectroscopic measurements of the gold nanostructures reveal that small amounts of graphene still remain between the gold layers after being treated with oxygen plasma.
This means that only the graphene exposed near the surfaces of the gold nanostructures can be removed so far.
Having graphene still in the structures is not desirable for electronic devices which require an entire gap between the structures.
The team is working to figure out how to solve this problem. In the future, the team would also like to explore ways to vary the thickness of the well-defined gap between the structures by increasing the number of graphene layers. or optical applications,
#Researchers'"hugely exciting"asthma discovery Cardiff scientists have identified for the first time the potential root cause of asthma and an existing drug that offers a new treatment.
Published today in Science Translational Medicine journal, University researchers, working in collaboration with scientists at King College London
and the Mayo Clinic (USA), describe the previously unproven role of the calcium sensing receptor (Casr) in causing asthma,
a disease which affects 300 million people worldwide. The team used mouse models of asthma and human airway tissue from asthmatic and non-asthmatic people to reach their findings.
Crucially, the paper highlights the effectiveness of a class of drugs known as calcilytics in manipulating Casr to reverse all symptoms associated with the condition.
These symptoms include airway narrowing, airway twitchiness and inflammation all of which contribute to increased breathing difficulty. ur findings are said incredibly exciting
the principal investigator, Professor Daniela Riccardi, from the School of Biosciences. or the first time we have found a link airways inflammation,
which can be caused by environmental triggers such as allergens, cigarette smoke and car fumes and airways twitchiness in allergic asthma. ur paper shows how these triggers release chemicals that activate Casr in airway tissue
and drive asthma symptoms like airway twitchiness, inflammation, and narrowing. Using calcilytics, nebulized directly into the lungs,
we show that it is possible to deactivate Casr and prevent all of these symptoms. Dr Samantha Walker
Director of research and Policy at Asthma UK, who helped fund the research, said: his hugely exciting discovery enables us, for the first time,
to tackle the underlying causes of asthma symptoms. Five per cent of people with asthma don respond to current treatments so research breakthroughs could be life changing for hundreds of thousands of people. f this research proves successful we may be just a few years away from a new treatment for asthma,
and we urgently need further investment to take it further through clinical trials. Asthma research is chronically underfunded;
there have only been a handful of new treatments developed in the last 50 years so the importance of investment in research like this is absolutely essential.
While asthma is controlled well in some people, around one-in-twelve patients respond poorly to current treatments.
This significant minority accounts for around 90%of healthcare costs associated with the condition. According to Cardiff Professor Paul Kemp, who co-authored the study,
the identification of Casr in airway tissue means that the potential for treatment of other inflammatory lung diseases beyond asthma is immense.
These include chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and chronic bronchitis for which currently there exists no cure. It is predicted that by 2020 these diseases will be the third biggest killers worldwide.
Professor Riccardi and her collaborators are now seeking funding to determine the efficacy of calcilytic drugs in treating asthmas that are especially difficult to treat,
particularly steroid-resistant and influenza-exacerbated asthma, and to test these drugs in patients with asthma.
Calcilytics were developed first for the treatment of osteoporosis around 15 years ago with the aim of strengthening deteriorating bone by targeting Casr to induce the release of an anabolic hormone.
Although clinically safe and well tolerated in people calcilytics proved unsuccessful in treating osteoporosis . But this latest breakthrough has provided researchers with the unique opportunity to re-purpose these drugs,
potentially accelerating the time it takes for them to be approved for use asthma patients. Once funding has been secured,
the group aim to be trialling the drugs on humans within two years. f we can prove that calcilytics are administered safe
when directly to the lung in people, then in five years we could be in a position to treat patients
and potentially stop asthma from happening in the first place, added Professor Riccardi. The study was part-funded by Asthma UK
the Cardiff Partnership Fund and a BBSRC parking Impactaward d
#Transparent Armor based on Spinel Could Also Ruggedize Your Smart Phone Imagine a glass window that tough like armor,
a camera lens that doesn get scratched in a sand storm, or a smart phone that doesn dropped break
when. Except it not glass, it a special ceramic called spinel {spin-ELL} that the U s. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) has been researching over the last 10 years. pinel is actually a mineral,
it magnesium aluminate, says Dr. Jas Sanghera, who leads the research. he advantage is it so much tougher, stronger, harder than glass.
It provides better protection in more hostile environmentso it can withstand sand and rain erosion.
As a more durable material a thinner layer of spinel can give better performance than glass. or weight-sensitive platforms-UAVS unmanned autonomous vehicles, head-mounted face shieldst a game-changing technology.
NRL invented a new way of making transparent spinel, using a hot press, called sintering.
It a low-temperature process, and the size of the pieces is limited only by the size of the press. ltimately,
wee going to hand it over to industry, says Sanghera, o it has to be a scalable process.
In the lab, they made pieces eight inches in diameter. hen we licensed the technology to a company who was able then to scale that up to much larger plates
Sanghera says spinel has nique optical properties; not only can you see through it, but it allows infrared light to go through it.
That means the military, for imaging systems, an use spinel as the window because it allows the infrared light to come through.
NRL is also looking at spinel for the windows on lasers operating in maritime and other hostile environments. e got to worry about wave slap and saltwater and things like that,
and gun blasts going offt got to be resistant to all that. And so that where spinel comes into its own,
says Sanghera. Says Sanghera, verything we do, wee trying to push the mission. It designed to either enable a new application,
What is spinel? Spinel can be mined as a gemstone; a famous example is the Black Prince Ruby,
which is actually spinel with a color dopant. NRL chemists have synthesized also their own ultra-high purity spinel powder,
and other synthetic versions are commercially available. he precursors are all earth abundant, so it available in reasonably low cost, says Sanghera.
The spinel NRL makes is a polycrystalline material, or a lot of crystal particles all pressed together.
Whereas with glass, crack that forms on the surface will go all the way through, spinel might chip
but it won crack. t like navigating through the asteroid belt, you create a tortuous path:
if I have all these crystals packed together, the crack gets deflected at the hard crystals:
you dissipate the crack energy. A manufacturing process that transferable and scalable When scientists first started trying to make glass-like spinel,
they were using a crucible instead of a press. big problem with growing crystals is that you have to melt the starting powder at very high temperatures,
over 2000 degrees Celsius, says Sanghera. It expensive to heat a material that high, and additionally, he molten material reacts with the crucible,
and so if youe trying to make very high quality crystals, you end up with a huge amount of defects.
That why Sanghera and his colleagues turned to sintering. ou put the powder in a hot press
you press it under vacuum, squash this powder togethernd if you can do that right,
the spinel will come out flat. ut if I have a ball and socket joint, put the powder in there,
But previous attempts had yielded window where most of it would look cloudy and there would be an odd region here
and that would be drilled core out. So NRL deconstructed the science. They started with purer chemicals. ousy chemicals in,
with the sintering aid they were adding to the spinel powder. t about one percent of a different powder,
and the spinel will come out clear across the press. To further increase the quality of the optic, ou can grind
and polish this just like you would do gems, says Sanghera. This is the most costly part of the process. ne of the things wee looking at is,
He mentions watches and consumer electronics, like the smart phone, as examples. The military in particular may want to use spinel as transparent armor for vehicles and face shields.
A ullet-proofwindow today, for example, has layers of plastic and glass perhaps five inches thick. f you replaced that with spinel,
you reduce the weight by a factor of two or more, says Sanghera. The military also interested in using spinel to better protect visible and infrared cameras on planes and other platforms.
Glass doesn transmit infrared, so today optics are made of xotic materials that are very soft and fragile,
and have multiple layers to compensate for color distortions. o that what wee been doing now,
developing new optical materials, says Sanghera. Spinel windows could also protect sensors on space satellites,
an area Sanghera interested in testing. ou could leave these out there for longer periods of time,
go into environments that are harsher than what theye encountering now, and enable more capabilities, he says.
NRL is also looking at spinel (and other materials) for next generation (NEXTGEN) lasers. asers can be thought of as a box comprised of optics,
passive is just a protective window; active is where we change the color of light coming out the other end.
For passive laser applications, like exit apertures (windows), the key is high quality. hat window, if it got any impurities or junk,
which can cause the window to break. Sanghera and his colleagues have demonstrated, working with ltra high purityspinel powder theye synthesized in NRL clean rooms, spinel incredible potential.
For active laser applications, theye demonstrated how sintering can be used with materials other than spinel to make a laser that xcellent optical quality.
Instead of spinel they use, hings like yttria or lutecia and and dope them with rare earth ions.
NRL has transitioned both types of laser materials and applications to industry. What makes NRL tick is solving problems Sanghera came to NRL in 1988,
after completing his Phd at the Imperial College, London in materials science. ittle by littlealking to people,
asking questions, going to conferencesou find out that what makes this place tick is solving problems, he says. o two days are the same, it very exciting.
and a lot of his success with spinel comes from that heritage of insisting on purity and quality. n optical fiber very long:
His lab also makes lightweight, inexpensive fibers for infrared countermeasures applications on helicopters and other platforms.
his fiber can remote the energy from the laser, which is inside the platform, to a device on the outside,
confuse the missile. He acknowledges, n Dod, we are the premier place for development of fiber lasers.
all the different types of fibers and configurations and materials required to enable these eye-safer and NEXTGEN lasers.
For that, he credits the many different disciplines NRL brings together. e have a lot of smart people,
He also credits a close relationship with industry and with those NRL serves. e talk to the warfare centers,
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