#Thermal Imaging Software for Research and Science Applications FLIR Systems'new version 4. 2 of its Researchir thermal imaging software provides researchers and scientists with a powerful tool for viewing,
acquiring, analyzing, and sharing the thermal data captured with FLIR Scientific and R&d cameras. Researchir Max version 4. 2 gives users direct access to their Matlab scripts within Researchir for the first time.
This will allow users to access their customized Matlab scripts directly in Researchir for specially-tailored image analysis and processing tasks.
Many useful Matlab functions can now be accessed directly from within the platform. In addition the software also provides FLIR Scientific and R&d thermal camera users with Ultramax file support.
Ultramax is a proprietary image enhancement technology available on FLIR Tsc-Series thermal imaging cameras.
It captures a series of thermal images and combines the data into one new image using Researchir 4. 2 software.
The result is an impressive quadrupling of thermal imaging pixels, including full radiometric measurement data.
With this facility images that are captured with a 640 x 480 resolution thermal imaging camera can now be transformed to an ultra-sharp 1,
280 x 960 resolution image using FLIR Researchir. With the new version the thermal imaging software can now be activated either with a USB KEY or directly online.
In addition to these new features, FLIR Researchir already includes a number of features for detailed thermal analysis including multiple analysis tools with user defined settings for detailed data examination;
flexible measurement modes; chart, graph and plot reporting and statistical tables allowing users to view detailed image quantitative data for the image analysis tools.
Researchir Max is a version of the software for advanced users who need more analytical functionality in their research.
FLIR Systems,+32 (0) 3665 5100, www. flir. com o
#Portable Finger-probe Technology Could Help Success of Organ Donations A portable, finger-probe device successfully measured liver function in brain dead adult organ donors,
and save thousands of dollars per transplant, a UCLA study has found. Working with Onelegacy, the nonprofit organ and tissue recovery organization serving the greater Los angeles area, UCLA researchers measured liver function in 53 potential organ donors in a blind study
an assistant professor of surgery in the Division of Liver and Pancreas Transplantation. his device is best single predictor of organ survival in our patients,
The study appears in the early online edition of the Journal of Surgical Research. Although there are accurate and reliable function tests for other donor organs
a surgical team from the recipient medical center is dispatched to the donor location to visually inspect
That team costs thousands of dollars per procedure, Zarrinpar said, and about 10 to 15 percent of the time the organ is deemed unusable.
On the flip side, an organ from a patient with a questionable history or borderline laboratory results may be considered a waste of the surgical team time and the retrieval effort abandoned.
so its use could increase of number of organs used for transplant. lthough the number of transplant candidates continues to grow,
resulting in more patients dying while on transplant waiting lists, Zarrinpar said. his device, which can be used in any hospital,
could help increase the number of donor livers and help save very sick patients waiting for transplant.
The device operates much like a pulse oximeter, which attaches to the finger to measure oxygen in the blood.
In this case the device measures the rate at which a dye, injected into the potential donor bloodstream,
This novel, noninvasive and rapid test successfully predicted which livers would function properly in transplant patients,
A liver transplant may involve the whole liver, a reduced liver, or a liver segment.
Most transplants involve the whole organ, but transplants using segments of the liver have been performed with increasing frequency in recent years.
This would allow two liver recipients to be transplanted from one donor or to allow for living donor liver donation.
Currently, about 17,000 adults and children have been approved medically for liver transplants and are donated waiting for livers to become available,
according to the American Liver Foundation. hese data warrant further exploration in a larger trial in a variety of settings to evaluate acceptable values for donated livers, the study states. t a time
It could also lead to increasing liver graft utilization while decreasing travel risk and expenses.
The research was funded by the Dumont-UCLA Transplant Center and the National institutes of health Source: University of California Los Angele t
#Building a Better Microscope to See at the Atomic Level One of the more famous images in biology is known as"Photo 51,
"an image of DNA that chemist Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling created in 1952 by shooting X-rays through fibers of DNA
and analyzing the patterns they left behind on film. One of the more famous images in biology is known as"Photo 51,
"an image of DNA that chemist Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling created in 1952 by shooting X-rays through fibers of DNA
and analyzing the patterns they left behind on film. That image provided Nobel prize winners James Watson
generally using a technique known as X-ray crystallography. But this method relies on getting proteins to pack tightly together to form uniform crystals,
which is notoriously difficult, especially when it comes to the floppy, dynamic proteins that live in cell membranes.
Yet biologists are interested particularly in these membrane proteins because the membrane is the cell dock, its security checkpoint, its mailbox.
biologists need to zoom in to the atomic level. The proteinsresistance to crystallization, therefore, left scientists in a bind.
and to do so without first having to form crystals. Revisualizing a Classic Technique Known as single-particle cryo-electron microscopy
or CRYO EM, the technique had largely been written off as useless for determining the structure of very small proteins.
and other institutions have made CRYO EM a key tool in structural biology. ryo-EM has made this marked jump in the last three or four years in terms of resolution,
Ph d.,professor and chair of UCSF Department of Physiology. Julius collaborated with Yifan Cheng, Ph d.,associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics,
to use CRYO EM to visualize the structure of the body receptors that sense the spiciness of chili peppers and, in work reported last month, wasabi.
These receptors are involved also in how the body signals pain and the findings are already being used to test new pain drugs that bind to these receptors. y being able to really determine a molecule atomic structure,
you can understand how it works in detail, you can make connections between the biology and chemistry,
and it also provides capability for drug discovery and design, said David Agard, Ph d.,professor of biophysics and biochemistry and a Howard hughes medical institute (HHMI) investigator,
who worked with Cheng to create better cameras and software for CRYO EM. o it really a huge change in what possible. etter Camera, Better Picture Yet for a long time,
scientists didn believe electron microscopy would be useful for imaging proteins and other biological samples at all.
The problem was that electron microscopes work by shooting electrons at the speed of light through a biological sample suspended in a vacuum;
this process often destroyed the raw biological samples researchers were trying to see. Then in the 1970s and 1980s, researchers at Heidelberg European Molecular biology Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory developed a way to protect samples
and also keep them in a dissolved state similar to how they live in the cell:
they rapidly freeze the purified biological samples in a very thin layer of liquid. Yet even when frozen at around-300°F,
which minimizes the damage but leaves the image grainy. To reduce this blur, the team developed a new camera that records a movie of the wiggling sample under the microscope.
At 400 frames per second, the recording provides enough data so the motion correction software developed in Cheng laboratory can correct for the molecular motion and effectively nblurthe image.
Another challenge was that earlier digital cameras used in CRYO EM detected light not electrons. So when the electron passed through the sample the signal had to be translated into light signals,
and resolution was lost in the process. his combination of the bad detector, blurring from the motion and radiation damage,
and scientists at Lawrence Berkeley to build a new detector called the K2 Summit, named after one of the most challenging mountain ascents in the world.
CRYO EM had previously been used to examine larger structures, like ribosomes and viruses, but this was the first membrane protein to
who does CRYO EM research at HHMI Janelia Research Campus, In virginia. Earlier this year, Cheng and Julius determined the structure of another key protein receptor,
for sure, said Cheng. his opens up tremendous opportunities for the field to tackle many challenging problems in structural biology.
The resolution of CRYO EM as used by Cheng and Agard is currently about 3 ångströms;
such as new therapeutics, might bind to them. Cheng plans to use CRYO EM to examine the same molecule that Watson, Crick,
and Franklin probed over 60 years ago DNA and, more specifically, chromatin, the term for DNA in complex with its associated proteins."
"These are extremely difficult targets for X-ray crystallography, and I anticipate that CRYO EM will also play a significant role in this area."
"Source: University of California San Francisc r
#New Sensing Tech Could Help Detect Diseases, Fraudulent Art, Chemical weapons From airport security detecting explosives to art historians authenticating paintings,
society thirst for powerful sensors is growing. Given that, few sensing techniques can match the buzz created by surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS.
Discovered in the 1970s, SERS is a sensing technique prized for its ability to identify chemical and biological molecules in a wide range of fields.
It has been commercialized, but not widely, because the materials required to perform the sensing are consumed upon use,
relatively expensive and complicated to fabricate. That may soon change. An international research team led by University at Buffalo engineers has developed nanotechnology that promises to make SERS simpler and more affordable.
Described in a research paper published today in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces, the photonics advancement aims to improve our ability to detect trace amounts of molecules in diseases,
chemical warfare agents, fraudulent paintings, environmental contaminants and more. he technology wee developing a universal substrate for SERS is a unique and, potentially, revolutionary feature.
It allows us to rapidly identify and measure chemical and biological molecules using a broadband nanostructure that traps wide range of light,
said Qiaoqiang Gan, UB assistant professor of electrical engineering and the study lead author. Additional authors of the study are:
UB Ph d. candidates in electrical engineering Nan Zhang, Kai Liu, Haomin Song, Xie Zeng, Dengxin Ji and Alec Cheney;
and Suhua Jiang, associate professor of materials science, and Zhejun Liu, Ph d. candidate, both at Fudan University in China.
When a powerful laser interacts chemical and biological molecules, the process can excite vibrational modes of these molecules and produce inelastic scattering, also called Raman scattering, of light.
As the beam hits these molecules, it can produce photons that have a different frequency from the laser light.
While rich in details, the signal from scattering is weak and difficult to read without a very powerful laser.
SERS addresses the problem by utilizing a nanopatterned substrate that significantly enhances the light field at the surface and
therefore, the Raman scattering intensity. Unfortunately, traditional substrates are designed typically for only a very narrow range of wavelengths.
This is problematic because different substrates are needed if scientists want to use a different laser to test the same molecules.
and a dielectric layer of silica or alumina. The dielectric separates the mirror with tiny metal nanoparticles randomly spaced at the top of the substrate. t acts similar to a skeleton key.
Instead of needing all these different substrates to measure Raman signals excited by different wavelengths, youl eventually need just one.
Kai Liu. he ability to detect even smaller amounts of chemical and biological molecules could be helpful with biosensors that are used to detect cancer,
Malaria, HIV and other illnesses. It could be useful identifying chemicals used in certain types of paint.
And it could aid in the detection of chemical weapons. The National Science Foundation supported the research in a grant to develop a real-time in vivo biosensing system.
both assistant professors of electrical engineering at UB. Source: University at Buffal S
#South korea Reports its First 2 Deaths From MERS Virus South korea on Tuesday confirmed the country's first two deaths from Middle east Respiratory Syndrome as it fights to contain the spread of a virus that has killed hundreds
of people in the middle East. South korea has reported 24 cases of the disease since diagnosing the country's first MERS illness last month in a man who had traveled to Saudi arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.
Most of South korea's cases have had connections to the first patient-either medical staff who treated him
or patients who stayed near him at the hospital before he was diagnosed and isolated, and their family members.
Tests on a 58-year-old woman who died of acute respiratory failure Monday showed she had been infected with the disease before her death,
the Health Ministry said in a statement. A 71-year-old man who tested positive for the virus last week also died,
it said. The statement said both stayed at the same hospital with the first patient.
Health officials said Tuesday that about 750 people in South korea were isolated at their homes or in state-run facilities after having contact with patients infected with the virus. They said the number could rise
and that depending on their conditions many of the isolated could be banned from leaving the country.
More than 50 schools and kindergartens near a hospital near Seoul where the 58-year-old patient who died was treated have canceled classes from Wednesday to Friday to let children stay home, according to the education agency in Gyeonggi province,
and many people have been seen wearing masks on Seoul streets over the past few days. Last week, the son of one of the patients ignored doctor's orders to cancel a trip to China,
where he was diagnosed later as that country's first MERS case. China isolated the South korean man at a hospital,
and Hong kong authorities said Sunday that 18 travelers were being quarantined because they sat near him,
It belongs to the family of coronaviruses that includes the common cold and SARS and can cause fever, breathing problems, pneumonia and kidney failure.
The virus has spread primarily through contact with camels, but it can also spread from human fluids and droplets.
170 cases of the virus worldwide and about 480 of the patients have died, according to the European Center for Disease prevention and Control.
#Team Develops Transplantable Bioengineered Forelimb in Animal Model A team of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) investigators has made the first steps towards development of bioartificial replacement limbs suitable for transplantation.
which has been published online in the journal Biomaterials, the researchers describe using an experimental approach previously used to build bioartificial organs to engineer rat forelimbs with functioning vascular and muscle tissue.
They also provided evidence that the same approach could be applied to the limbs of primates. he composite nature of our limbs makes building a functional biological replacement particularly challenging,
M d.,of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative medicine, senior author of the paper. imbs contain muscles, bone, cartilage, blood vessels, tendons, ligaments and nerves each
Over the past two decades a number of patients have received donor hand transplants, and while such procedures can significantly improve quality of life,
they also expose recipients to the risks of lifelong immunosuppressive therapy. While the progenitor cells needed to regenerate all of the tissues that make up a limb could be provided by the potential recipient,
The current study uses technology Ott discovered as a research fellow at the University of Minnesota
The research team then cultured the forelimb matrix in a bioreactor, within which vascular cells were injected into the limb main artery to regenerate veins and arteries.
the grafts were removed from the bioreactor. Analysis of the bioartificial limbs confirmed the presence of vascular cells along blood vessel walls
and muscle cells aligned into appropriate fibers throughout the muscle matrix. Functional testing of the isolated limbs showed that electrical stimulation of muscle fibers caused them to contract with a strength 80 percent of
what would be seen in newborn animals. The vascular systems of bioengineered forelimbs transplanted into recipient animals quickly filled with blood
the experience of patients who have received hand transplants is promising. n clinical limb transplantation, nerves do grow back into the graft, enabling both motion and sensation,
We hope in future work to show that the same will apply to bioartificial grafts.
Ott is an assistant professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical school. Bernhard Jank, M d.,of the MGH Center for Regenerative medicine is lead author of the Biomaterials paper.
The study was supported by a New Innovator Award from the National institutes of health. Source: Massachusetts General Hospita e
#British Smartphone Eye-exam App Hoping to Reach Millions of Blind Worldwide Thirty-nine million people are blind across the world.
through proper diagnosis and medical care if it was available. Now, a British team of eye specialists are hoping to attach the diagnostic tools onto an iphone,
in the hope it will reach the people in medically underserved areas of the globe,
EEK, which stands for portable eye examination kit, is a 3-D-printed attachment that can be attached to an iphone,
PEEK provides the basics to diagnose eye defects and disease. It provides an eye chart exam,
The vast majority of the millions of blindness cases worldwide can be treated whether it uncorrected refractive errors, cataracts or glaucoma, according to the World health organization.
The PEEK team, who recently presented their app at a TED Talk, said getting the examination tool to the low-income areas could benefit millions of the sightless. t is incredibly simple,
the hardware lead for the company. The company has started already taking pre-orders for PEEK,
Other diagnostic uses for smartphones have included using them as low-cost microscopes, in settings from the classroom to medically underserved areas r
#Workings of Working memory Revealed Our understanding of how a key part of the human brain works may be wrong.
'But as you start to walk around the house looking for it, your brain also has to process that task.
while the brain works on navigating round the house, then start it again when you see the cup, that more efficient.'
The brain uses around 20 percent of the energy youe burning each day, but it difficult to get that energy into the brain.
Every bit of brain activity is using some of that, so if you can temporarily suspend some activity in your working memory the energy can be applied to an immediately relevant task.'
'This may mean that working memory is closer to long-term memory in the way it functions. You may be able to remember your tenth birthday,
'The team's work has been made possible not only by improvements in the technology for recording brain activity but also the OHBA's approach to the huge amounts of data from dozens of studies,
which enables them to analyse the data faster and more effectively in order to improve our understanding of how the brain works.
Dr. Stokes explained:''The real advance is the analysis approach. Thinking about brain activity as a network of activity patterns, rather than behaviour of single neurons.
Better understanding of how it works could eventually offer strategies for helping those with brain damage manage day-to-day life better.
It could also provide information for the development of artificial intelligence. Source: University of Oxford v
#Data Scientists Find Connections Between Birth Month and Health Columbia University scientists have developed a computational method to investigate the relationship between birth month and disease risk.
The researchers used this algorithm to examine New york city medical databases and found 55 diseases that correlated with the season of birth.
Overall, the study indicated people born in May had the lowest disease risk, and those born in October the highest.
The study was published this week in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association. his data could help scientists uncover new disease risk factors,
said study senior author Nicholas Tatonetti, Ph d.,an assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Columbia University Medical center (CUMC) and Columbia Data science Institute.
The researchers plan to replicate their study with data from several other locations in the U s
. and abroad to see how results vary with the change of seasons and environmental factors in those places.
By identifying what causing disease disparities by birth month, the researchers hope to figure out how they might close the gap.
Earlier research on individual diseases such as ADHD and asthma suggested a connection between birth season and incidence,
but no large-scale studies had been undertaken. This motivated Columbia scientists to compare 1 688 diseases against the birth dates and medical histories of 1. 7 million patients treated at Newyork-Presbyterian Hospital/CUMC between 1985 and 2013.
The study ruled out more than 1, 600 associations and confirmed 39 links previously reported in the medical literature.
The researchers also uncovered 16 new associations, including nine types of heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United states. The researchers performed statistical tests to check that the 55 diseases for
which they found associations did not arise by chance. t important not to get overly nervous about these results
because even though we found significant associations the overall disease risk is not that great, notes Dr. Tatonetti. he risk related to birth month is relatively minor
when compared to more influential variables like diet and exercise. The new data are consistent with previous research on individual diseases.
For example, the study authors found that asthma risk is greatest for July and October babies.
An earlier Danish study on the disease found that the peak risk was in the months (May
and August) when Denmark sunlight levels are similar to New york in the July and October period.
For ADHD, the Columbia data suggest that around one in 675 occurrences could relate to being born in New york in November.
The researchers also found a relationship between birth month and nine types of heart disease, with people born in March facing the highest risk for atrial fibrillation, congestive heart failure,
A previous study using Austrian and Danish patient records found that those born in months with higher heart disease ratesarch through Junead shorter life spans. aster computers
a graduate student at Columbia. e are working to help doctors solve important clinical problems using this new wealth of data.
and immune system that could result in drastic breakthroughs in treatment for diseases, such as Alzheimer. Researchers at the University of Virginia have discovered that blood vessels directly connect the brain to the body immune system.
These blood vessels were thought never to have existed, despite the extensive research done on the lymphatic system. The findings were published online in Nature. his discovery is important
Ph d.,a postdoctoral fellow at the University Of Virginia School of medicine, told Bioscience Technology. ecently, we have seen that the areas that are surrounding the brain are full of immune cells, even in normal conditions,
Louveau discovered the vessels after analyzing the meninges of a mouse. According to reports, the vessels were hidden very well
Louveau told Bioscience Technology. he first question we are addressing is confirming that this structure exists in humans
so our research can be relevant for diseases. The second point we are addressing is the role of the vessels in neurological pathology.
While it is too early to tell, it is possible that these blood vessels could be related to a large number of neurological and developmental conditions from autism to attention deficit disorder (ADD TO multiple sclerosis.
However, Louveau said the biggest focus has been on Alzheimer. think the disease we have written the most about is Alzheimer,
which is characterized by an accumulation of protein in the brain, Louveau said. e think that protein might start to accumulate in the meninges
and block those vessels and that might start the disease progressing. We are still working on it,
but we think these vessels should be involved. Because the discovery is so new scientists do not yet know what role,
and Applied science and California Nanosystems Institute has identified an unexpectedly general set of rules that determine which molecules can cause the immune system to become vulnerable to the autoimmune disorders lupus and psoriasis.
a UCLA professor of bioengineering and chemistry who is affiliated with CNSI, the multidisciplinary team also included Michel Gilliet of Switzerland Lausanne University Hospital and Jure Dobnikar and Daan Frenkel of the University of Cambridge.
Autoimmune diseases strike when the body attacks itself because it fails to distinguish between host tissue
and disease-causing agents, or pathogens. Two such disorders are lupus, which can damage the skin, joints and organs, causing rashes, hair loss and fatigue;
and psoriasis, which causes rashes, lesions and arthritis, and creates an increased risk for cancer and diabetes.
When a healthy person is infected by a virus, VIRAL DNA can activate immune cells via a receptor called TLR9.
The receptor triggers the cells to send signaling molecules called interferons to initiate a powerful defensive response.
In people with lupus or psoriasis, these cells are activated by their own DNA, or self-DNA.
Using synchrotron X-ray scattering and other techniques, researchers determined that a broad range of molecules,
both organic and inorganic, can organize self-DNA into a liquid crystalline structure that binds strongly to the TLR9 receptors like the teeth on either side of a zipper.
This structure protects the DNA from becoming degraded and greatly amplifies the body immune response. Synchrotron X-ray scattering utilizes a particle accelerator to generate X-ray beams that allow researchers to determine how atoms
Wong said. his new knowledge will make it easier to design new therapeutic strategies to control immune responses. athan Schmidt,
and triggering responses in disorders such as lupus and psoriasis. We were able to elucidate something that was understood poorly a key to triggering the immune response is that the molecules must arrange the DNA
so that the receptors bind to them strongly. he research was supported by the National institutes of health, the National Science Foundation, the European commission, the European Research Council, the Slovenian Research Agency, The swiss National Science Foundation and the University of Cambridge.
University of California Los Angele l
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011