#Cushings syndrome: Researchers characterize new tumor syndrome Scientists at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg have published their findings that mutations in a gene known as ARMC5 promote the growth of benign tumors in the adrenal glands
and on the meninges: ARMC5 appears to belong to the group of so-called tumor suppressor genes.
It is the first time in years that scientists have characterized such a gene. The ARMC5 gene was discovered by independent workgroups studying benign tumors--so-called adrenal adenomas--in connection with Cushing's syndrome.
In this disease the body produces too much of the hormone cortisol. Now for the first time a mutation of ARMC5 has been characterized as the cause behind the growth of meningeal tumors.
The results on this tumor syndrome obtained by the group of Dr. Patrick May and PD.
Dr. Jochen Schneider together with colleagues from Charité Berlin (Dr. Ulf Elbelt) and the Universities of Würzburg (Prof.
Dr. Bruno Allolio) and Cologne (Dr. Michael Kloth) have been published recently in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology Metabolism.
Cortisol is an important hormone. It influences many metabolic pathways in the body and has a suppressing effect on the immune system.
Accordingly it is employed commonly as an anti-inflammatory medication. Prolonged elevated levels of cortisol in the body can lead to obesity muscular dystrophy depression and other symptoms.
To maintain the correct concentration in the blood the body has refined a regulation system: Certain areas of the brain produce the hormone corticotropin as a stimulator of cortisol release;
the actual formation of cortisol takes place in the adrenal glands. As the concentration of cortisol in the blood rises the brain reduces the production of corticotropin.
In search of the causes of Cushing's syndrome scientists recently encountered certain genetic causes of benign tumors of the adrenal cortex.
Growth of these adrenal cortex adenomas is based on a combination of hereditary and spontaneous mutations: It affects people in
whom one of two alternative copies--one of the so-called alleles--of the ARMC5 gene is mutated from birth.
If the second allele of ARMC5 later also undergoes a spontaneous mutation in the adrenal cortex then the gene no longer functions.
What is interesting is that the failure of ARMC5 has no direct influence on cortisol production.
However because the tumor cells multiply faster than other body cells and the number of cells in the tumor increases the blood cortisol level rises in the course of the disease says Dr Schneider.
Then the cortisol level in the body rises and ultimately results in the onset of Cushing's syndrome.
When other scientific workgroups discovered that further benign tumors--in this case meningeal tumors--occur more often in ARMC5-Cushing families the group of Patrick May
and Jochen Schneider sequenced the ARMC5 gene and studied it using bioinformatic techniques. We demonstrated for the first time in a patient with an adrenal cortex tumor
and simultaneously a meningeal tumor that somatic that is nonhereditary ARMC5 mutations are present in both tumors.
This observation suggests that ARMC5 is a true tumor-suppressor gene. It must now be explored Schneider continues to what extent patients with adrenal cortex tumors ought to be screened for simultaneous presence of meningioma and in
which other types of tumor ARMC5 mutations are responsible for tumor growth: Building upon that we can learn
whether the gene and the metabolic pathways it influences offer new approaches for treating the tumor syndrome.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Université du Luxembourg. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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#Ultra-fast charging batteries that can be recharged 70 in just two minutes Scientists from Nanyang Technological University (NTU Singapore) have developed a new battery that can be recharged up to 70 per cent in only
2 minutes. The battery will also have a longer lifespan of over 20 years. Expected to be the next big thing in battery technology this breakthrough has a wide-ranging impact on many industries especially for electric vehicles
which are inhibited currently by long recharge times of over 4 hours and the limited lifespan of batteries.
This next generation of lithium-ion batteries will enable electric vehicles to charge 20 times faster than the current technology.
With it electric vehicles will also be able to do away with frequent battery replacements. The new battery will be able to endure more than 10000 charging cycles--20 times more than the current 500 cycles of today's batteries.
NTU Singapore's scientists replaced the traditional graphite used for the anode (negative pole) in lithium-ion batteries with a new gel material made from titanium dioxide an abundant cheap and safe material found in soil.
It is used commonly as a food additive or in sunscreen lotions to absorb harmful ultraviolet rays.
Naturally found in a spherical shape NTU Singapore developed a simple method to turn titanium dioxide particles into tiny nanotubes that are a thousand times thinner than the diameter of a human hair.
This nanostructure is what helps to speeds up the chemical reactions taking place in the new battery allowing for superfast charging.
Invented by Associate professor Chen Xiaodong from the School of Materials science and engineering at NTU Singapore the science behind the formation of the new titanium dioxide gel was published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials a leading international scientific journal
in materials science. NTU professor Rachid Yazami who was the co-inventor of the lithium-graphite anode 34 years ago that is used in most lithium-ion batteries today said Prof Chen's invention is the next
big leap in battery technology. While the cost of lithium-ion batteries has been reduced significantly and its performance improved
since Sony commercialised it in 1991 the market is fast expanding towards new applications in electric mobility
and energy storage said Prof Yazami. There is still room for improvement and one such key area is the power density--how much power can be stored in a certain amount of space
--which directly relates to the fast charge ability. Ideally the charge time for batteries in electric vehicles should be less than 15 minutes
which Prof Chen's nanostructured anode has proven to do. Prof Yazami who is Prof Chen's colleague at NTU Singapore is not part of this research project
and is currently developing new types of batteries for electric vehicle applications at the Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERI@N). Commercialisation of technologymoving forward Prof Chen's research team will be applying for a Proof-of-Concept
grant to build a large-scale battery prototype. The patented technology has attracted already interest from the industry.
The technology is currently being licensed to a company and Prof Chen expects that the new generation of fast-charging batteries will hit the market in two years'time.
It holds a lot of potential in overcoming the longstanding power issues related to electro-mobility. With our nanotechnology electric cars would be able to increase their range dramatically with just five minutes of charging
which is on par with the time needed to pump petrol for current cars added Prof Chen.
Equally important we can now drastically cut down the waste generated by disposed batteries since our batteries last ten times longer than the current generation of lithium-ion batteries The long-life of the new battery also means drivers save on the cost of a battery replacement
which could cost over USD$5000 each. Easy to manufactureaccording to Frost & Sullivan a leading growth-consulting firm the global market of rechargeable lithium-ion batteries is projected to be worth US$23. 4 billion in 2016.
Lithium-ion batteries usually use additives to bind the electrodes to the anode which affects the speed in
which electrons and ions can transfer in and out of the batteries. However Prof Chen's new cross-linked titanium dioxide nanotube-based electrodes eliminate the need for these additives
and can pack more energy into the same amount of space. Manufacturing this new nanotube gel is very easy Prof Chen added.
Titanium dioxide and sodium hydroxide are mixed together and stirred under a certain temperature. Battery manufacturers will find it easy to integrate our new gel into their current production processes.
This battery research project took the team of four NTU Singapore scientists three years to complete
and is funded by Singapore's National Research Foundation. Last year Prof Yazami was awarded the Draper Prize by the National Academy of Engineering for his ground-breaking work in developing the lithium-ion battery with three other scientists.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Nanyang Technological University. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
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#Balancing renewable energy costs and optimizing energy mix Increasing reliance on renewable energies is the way to achieve greater CO2 EMISSION sustainability and energy independence.
As such energies are yet only available intermittently and energy cannot be stored easily most countries aim to combine several energy sources.
In a new study in EPJ Plus French scientists have come up with an open source simulation method to calculate the actual cost of relying on a combination of electricity sources.
Bernard Bonin from the Atomic energy Research Centre CEA Saclay France and colleagues demonstrate that cost is not directly proportional to the demand level.
Although recognised as crude by its creator this method can be tailored to account for the public's interest-and not solely economic performance-when optimising the energy mix.
The authors consider wind solar hydraulic nuclear coal and gas as potential energy sources. In their model the energy demand and availability are cast as random variables.
The authors simulated the behaviour of the mix for a large number of tests of such variables using so-called Monte-carlo simulations.
For a given mix they found the energy cost of the mix presents a minimum as a function of the installed power.
This means that if it is fixed too large the costs dominate the total and become overwhelming.
In contrast if it is too small expensive energy sources need to be solicited frequently. The authors are also able to optimise the energy mix according to three selected criteria namely economy environment and supply security.
The simulation tested on the case of France based on 2011 data shows that an optimal mix is 2. 4 times the average demand in this territory.
This mix contains a large amount of nuclear power and a small amount of fluctuating energies: wind and solar.
It is also strongly export-oriented. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Springer Science+Business Media.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Lead-free glass decor Whether on baby bottles beer mugs or perfume bottles imprints on glass consist mainly of lead oxide.
Fraunhofer researchers have developed printing inks for glass that do not contain any toxic elements. At the glasstec tradefair from October 21st to 24th in Düsseldorf they are going to present the new imprints.
The perfume bottles seem almost like little works of art: made of stained glass elegantly formed
and decorated with imprints. But the decorative graphics and fonts that are emblazoned on them really make an impression:
They are made of special glasses containing up to 50 percent by weight of lead oxide which can be dangerous to one's health.
To decorate the bottles manufacturers grind these special glasses together with inorganic pigments print them as pastes on the base glass and melt them on.
As a result the colors are just as durable as the glass itself. Beer mugs baby bottles and pharmaceutical glass products such as vials are decorated
and labeled in about like the perfume bottles are. In the future a new EU Directive will banish the potentially unhealthy lead oxide from the logos.
But this is far from simple: in order for the printing inks to hold permanently they have to be made of chemically resistant glass.
However they usually contain a lot of silicon dioxide and therefore have to be melted above 1600 degrees Celsius--a temperature that the base glass would not withstand without becoming deformed.
The added lead oxide lowers the melting temperature to below 600 degrees Celsius thereby creating viable processing conditions.
As a last resort manufacturers are replacing the lead oxide with bismuth oxide. However that too is problematic: Bismuth is dangerous to one's health as well as to the environment.
It also multiplies the price of the imprints. Colorful decor without pollutantsa new development by researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research ISC in Würzburg and the Forschungsgemeinschaft Technik und Glas e. V. FTG can change that.
We have developed lead oxide free decorative paints which do perfectly well without toxic substances says Anika Deinhardt researcher at the ISC.
They are easy to process have high color brilliance and are chemically resistant. In addition they do not contain any rare or expensive elements.
The basis of these novel decorative paints is a glass that consists mainly of zinc oxide.
Further constituents are aluminum oxide boron oxide and silicon dioxide. The researchers gave this basic glass system--almost as a short form of all the elements--the name ZABS.
Zinc oxide ensures that this glass already melts below 650 degrees Celsius. It therefore takes over the task that previously fell to the lead oxide.
Through various other additives we are able to modify ZABS further and adapt it very well to the respective requirements explains Deinhardt.
At glasstec they will present their work along with samples (Hall 15 Booth A33. As the glass so the decorative coloranother point
If the glasses are heated they expand at different rates--experts speak here of the thermal expansion coefficients (TEC) for the respective Glass in order for the imprints to not flake off they have to expand similar to the glass on
This already works for soda-lime glass from which drinking glass and container glass are made for example. The researchers hope that in six months they will also have adapted the new colors to borosilicate glass from
and motives that are anchored in the family environment. Psychiatric illnesses are cited also as a motive
and are described in a stigmatizing manner. More complex language and cautious expressions are also the hallmarks of articles about female suicide.
which study leader Brigitte Eisenwort from the University Department of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at the Meduni Vienna explains as follows:
Psychiatric illnesses can be treated. The suicide risk can be reduced as a result. Journalists should therefore take care to present as correct a view as possible of suicidal tendencies
This ground-breaking study was set up under the leadership of Brigitte Eisenwort together with Thomas Niederkrotenthaler and Benedikt Till (both from the Institute for Social medicine at the Meduni Vienna's Centre for Public health) as well as Barbara Hinterbuchinger from the University
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Meduni Vienna. Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Medical University of Vienna.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference e
#Underground caves: Better water supply in karst areas Drinking water is scarce in the Indonesian region of Gunung Kidul.
Under the IWRM Indonesia joint project funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) hydraulic engineering experts of KIT built an underground cave power station.
For the first time they succeeded in completely filling a karst cave with water. In 2010 they handed the cave power station over to the Indonesian authorities.
The plant can supply 80000 people with water. For the water to reach the households in a clean state via the distribution network a team headed by microbiologist Ursula Obst who directs the partial project for water processing and water quality assurance developed methods for the central semi
-centralized and local processing of water. The water from the cave is filtered first with sand
For this purpose the KIT scientists established a pilot plant at the hospital of Wonosari There bacteria in the water are reduced among others by UV radiation
and hence are suited mainly for urban facilities such as schools and hospitals. In the villages where power is need lacking we much simpler technologies Obst says.
Prior to use the inhabitants filter the water again with the help of a clay pot that is provided with very small holes.
Users take a small water sample and mix it with an enzyme substrate a nutrient that activates certain enterobacteria
Within the framework of another partial project a team of KIT scientists headed by Stephan Fuchs expert for aquatic environmental engineering worked in the area of sewage and waste treatment.
By a pipeline system fecal sludge of the hospital enters a two-stage unaerobic reactor where it is mixed with biowaste.
Bacteria decompose the mixture and produce among others the energy-rich gas of methane. It is used then for the gas stoves in the kitchen of the hospital.
The remaining solid is applied as a fertilizer on the fields in the vicinity. It is our vision for the future that such plants in the urban area are served by tank vehicles
and that we will reach a sustainable sanitary solution Stephan Fuchs says. In the villages there frequently are no septic tanks.
Toilets are located above a pit and are moved if necessary. In case of strong rainfall there is a high risk of the germs entering the groundwater especially in a karst region Fuchs says.
There the organic wastes are converted into biogas and fertilizer within a period of one month. Via a pipeline system the gas is passed directly on to the gas stoves of the neighboring houses.
The remaining sludge is dried and used as a fertilizer. At first we had to work hard to convince the population Fuchs says.
It was not easy to explain that waste or even human feces can be recycled. The KIT scientists also conceived seminars for the operators of the plants and information material and instructions for the population.
The Indonesian technicians who are supposed to operate the plants were provided with manuals in The english and Indonesian languages.
#Nanoparticles can act like liquid on the outside, crystal on the inside A surprising phenomenon has been found in metal nanoparticles:
They appear from the outside to be liquid droplets wobbling and readily changing shape while their interiors retain a perfectly stable crystal configuration.
The research team behind the finding led by MIT professor Ju Li says the work could have important implications for the design of components in nanotechnology such as metal contacts for molecular electronic circuits.
and computer modeling by an international team that included researchers in China Japan and Pittsburgh as well as at MIT.
The experiments were conducted at room temperature with particles of pure silver less than 10 nanometers across--less than one-thousandth of the width of a human hair.
But the results should apply to many different metals says Li senior author of the paper and the BEA Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering.
Silver has a relatively high melting point--962 degrees Celsius or 1763 degrees Fahrenheit--so observation of any liquidlike behavior in its nanoparticles was unexpected quite Li says.
Hints of the new phenomenon had been seen in earlier work with tin which has a much lower melting point he says.
The use of nanoparticles in applications ranging from electronics to pharmaceuticals is a lively area of research;
generally Li says these researchers want to form shapes and they want these shapes to be stable in many cases over a period of years.
For example if gold or silver nanoligaments are used in electronic circuits these deformations could quickly cause electrical connections to fail.
Only skin deepthe researchers'detailed imaging with a transmission electron microscope and atomistic modeling revealed that
while the exterior of the metal nanoparticles appears to move like a liquid only the outermost layers--one
--but inside each particle the atoms stay perfectly lined up like bricks in a wall.
or two monolayers Li says. Everywhere except the first two layers is crystalline. By contrast if the droplets were to melt to a liquid state the orderliness of the crystal structure would be eliminated entirely--like a wall tumbling into a heap of bricks.
Technically the particles'deformation is pseudoelastic meaning that the material returns to its original shape after the stresses are removed--like a squeezed rubber ball--as opposed to plasticity as in a deformable lump of clay that retains a new shape.
The phenomenon of plasticity by interfacial diffusion was proposed first by Robert L. Coble a professor of ceramic engineering at MIT
and is known as Coble creep. What we saw is called aptly Coble pseudoelasticity Li says. Now that the phenomenon has been understood researchers working on nanocircuits
or other nanodevices can quite easily compensate for it Li says. If the nanoparticles are protected by even a vanishingly thin layer of oxide the liquidlike behavior is eliminated almost completely making stable circuits possible.
Possible benefitson the other hand for some applications this phenomenon might be useful: For example in circuits where electrical contacts need to withstand rotational reconfiguration particles designed to maximize this effect might prove useful using noble metals
or a reducing atmosphere where the formation of an oxide layer is destabilized Li says. The new finding flies in the face of expectations--in part because of a well-understood relationship in most materials in
which mechanical strength increases as size is reduced. In general the smaller the size the higher the strength Li says
That crossover he says takes place at about 10 nanometers at room temperature--a size that microchip manufacturers are approaching as circuits shrink.
The work reported in this paper is first-class says Horacio Espinosa a professor of manufacturing and entrepreneurship at Northwestern University who was involved not in this research.
These are very difficult experiments which revealed for the first time shape recovery of silver nanocrystals in the absence of dislocation...
Li's interpretation of the experiments using atomistic modeling illustrates recent progress in comparing experiments
I expect this work to be cited highly. The research team included Jun Sun Longbing He Tao Xu Hengchang Bi and Litao Sun all of Southeast University in Nanjing China;
Yu-Chieh Lo of MIT and Kyoto University; Ze Zhang of Zhejiang University; and Scott Mao of the University of Pittsburgh.
It was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China; the National Natural science Foundation of China;
the Chinese Ministry of Education; the National Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province China; and the U s. National Science Foundation.
Story Source: The above story is provided based on materials by Massachusetts institute of technology. The original article was written by David L. Chandler.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference n
#Bioinspired coating for medical devices repels blood, bacteria From joint replacements to cardiac implants and dialysis machines medical devices enhance
or save lives on a daily basis . However any device implanted in the body or in contact with flowing blood faces two critical challenges that can threaten the life of the patient the device is meant to help:
blood clotting and bacterial infection. A team of Harvard scientists and engineers may have a solution. They developed a new surface coating for medical devices using materials already approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA.
The coating repelled blood from more than 20 medically relevant substrates the team tested--made of plastic to glass
and metal--and also suppressed biofilm formation in a study reported in Nature Biotechnology. But that's not All the team implanted medical-grade tubing
and catheters coated with the material in large blood vessels in pigs and it prevented blood from clotting for at least eight hours without the use of blood thinners such as heparin.
Heparin is notorious for causing potentially lethal side-effects like excessive bleeding but is often a necessary evil in medical treatments where clotting is a risk.
Devising a way to prevent blood clotting without using anticoagulants is one of the holy grails in medicine said Don Ingber M d Ph d. Founding Director of Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and senior author of the study.
Ingber is also the Judah Folkman Professor of Vascular Biology at Harvard Medical school and Boston Children's Hospital as well as professor of bioengineering at Harvard School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS.
The idea for the coating evolved from SLIPS a pioneering surface technology developed by coauthor Joanna Aizenberg Ph d. who is a Wyss Institute Core Faculty member and the Amy Smith Berylson Professor of Materials science at Harvard SEAS.
SLIPS stands for Slippery Liquid-Infused Porous Surfaces. Inspired by the slippery surface of the carnivorous pitcher plant which enables the plant to capture insects SLIPS repels nearly any material it contacts.
The liquid layer on the surface provides a barrier to everything from ice to crude oil and blood.
Traditional SLIPS uses porous textured surface substrates to immobilize the liquid layer whereas medical surfaces are mostly flat and smooth
--so we further adapted our approach by capitalizing on the natural roughness of chemically modified surfaces of medical devices said Aizenberg who leads the Wyss Institute's Adaptive Materials platform.
This is yet another incarnation of the highly customizable SLIPS platform that can be designed to create slippery nonadhesive surfaces on any material.
The Wyss team developed a super-repellent coating that can be adhered to existing approved medical devices.
In a two-step surface-coating process they chemically attached a monolayer of perfluorocarbon which is similar to Teflon.
Then they added a layer of liquid perfluorocarbon which is used widely in medicine for applications such as liquid ventilation for infants with breathing challenges blood substitution eye surgery and more.
The team calls the tethered perfluorocarbon plus the liquid layer a Tethered-Liquid Perfluorocarbon surface or TLP for short.
and lasting for more than eight hours to prevent clots in a pig under relatively high blood flow rates without the use of heparin the TLP coating achieved the following results:
While most of the team's demonstrations were performed on medical devices such as catheters and perfusion tubing using relatively simple setups they say there is a lot more on the horizon.
We feel this is just the beginning of how we might test this for use in the clinic said co-lead author Daniel Leslie Ph d. a Wyss Institute Staff Scientist who aims to test it on more complex systems such as dialysis machines
Reflecting the strong collaborative model of the Wyss Institute the cross-disciplinary team included researchers representing the Wyss Institute SEAS Harvard Medical school and Boston Children's Hospital
whose specialties range from hematology to immunology surface chemistry and materials science. This really could only happen in a place like the Wyss Institute Ingber said.
when physicians and scientists in my group started brainstorming with the SLIPS engineering team who are experts in super-repellency.
What emerged could become a new paradigm for implantable medical devices extracorporeal circuits and more. Story Source:
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