Engineers develop a computer that operates on water droplets The computer is nearly a decade in the making,
when he was a graduate student. The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science--an operating clock."
"In this work, we finally demonstrate a synchronous, universal droplet logic and control, "Prakash said. Because of its universal nature, the droplet computer can theoretically perform any operation that a conventional electronic computer can crunch,
although at significantly slower rates. Prakash and his colleagues, however, have a more ambitious application in mind."
"We already have digital computers to process information. Our goal is not to compete with electronic computers
or to operate word processors on this, "Prakash said.""Our goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control
and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed
but physical matter is manipulated algorithmically as well. We have made just this possible at the mesoscale.""The ability to precisely control droplets using fluidic computation could have a number of applications in high-throughput biology and chemistry,
and possibly new applications in scalable digital manufacturing. Arrayarrayfor nearly a decade since he was in graduate school,
an idea has been nagging at Prakash: What if he could use little droplets as bits of information
Eventually, Prakash decided to build a rotating magnetic field that could act as clock to synchronize all the droplets.
and in the early stages of the project, Prakash recruited a graduate student, Georgios"Yorgos"Katsikis,
Computer clocks are responsible for nearly every modern convenience. Smartphones, DVRS, airplanes, the Internet--without a clock, none of these could operate without frequent and serious complications.
Nearly every computer program requires several simultaneous operations each conducted in a perfect step-by-step manner. A clock makes sure that these operations start
and stop at the same times, thus ensuring that the information synchronizes. The results are dire if a clock isn't present.
It's like soldiers marching in formation: If one person falls dramatically out of time, it won't be long before the whole group falls apart.
"The reason computers work so precisely is that every operation happens synchronously; it's what made digital logic so powerful in the first place,
Arraydeveloping a clock for a fluid-based computer required some creative thinking. It needed to be easy to manipulate,
Prakash realized that a rotating magnetic field might do the trick. Katsikis and Prakash built arrays of tiny iron bars on glass slides that look something like a Pac-Man maze.
Then they carefully injected into the mix individual water droplets that had been infused with tiny magnetic nanoparticles.
Next, they turned on the magnetic field. Every time the field flips, the polarity of the bars reverses, drawing the magnetized droplets in a new, predetermined direction, like slot cars on a track.
Every rotation of the field counts as one clock cycle, like a second hand making a full circle on a clock face,
allowing observation of computation as it occurs in real time. The presence or absence of a droplet represents the 1s and 0s of binary code
and the clock ensures that all the droplets move in perfect synchrony, and thus the system can run virtually forever without any errors."
we've demonstrated that we can make all the universal logic gates used in electronics, simply by changing the layout of the bars on the chip,
"said Katsikis.""The actual design space in our platform is incredibly rich. Give us any Boolean logic circuit in the world,
and demonstrates building blocks for synchronous logic gates, feedback and cascadability--hallmarks of scalable computation. A simple-state machine including 1-bit memory storage (known as"flip-flop")is demonstrated also using the above basic building blocks.
Arraythe current chips are about half the size of a postage stamp, and the droplets are smaller than poppy seeds,
but Katsikis said that the physics of the system suggests it can be made even smaller.
Combined with the fact that the magnetic field can control millions of droplets simultaneously this makes the system exceptionally scalable."
and do more number of operations on a chip, "said graduate student and co-author Jim Cybulski."
"That lends itself very well to a variety of applications.""Prakash said the most immediate application might involve turning the computer into a high-throughput chemistry and biology laboratory.
Instead of running reactions in bulk test tubes, each droplet can carry some chemicals and become its own test tube,
and the droplet computer offers unprecedented control over these interactions. From the perspective of basic science, part of why the work is so exciting,
Prakash said, is that it opens up a new way of thinking of computation in the physical world.
Although the physics of computation has been applied previously to understand the limits of computation the physical aspects of bits of information has never been exploited as a new way to manipulate matter at the mesoscale (10 microns to 1 millimeter.
Because the system is extremely robust and the team has uncovered universal design rules, Prakash plans to make a design tool for these droplet circuits available to the public.
to enable everyone to design new circuits based on building blocks we describe in this paper or discover new blocks.
Right now, anyone can put these circuits together to form a complex droplet processor with no external control--something that was a very difficult challenge previously,
computation takes a special place. We are trying to bring the same kind of exponential scale up because of computation we saw in the digital world into the physical world
#How a gut feeling for infection programs our immune response An unexpected finding by an international team of scientists based at The University of Manchester
and National institutes of health in America has shed new light on how immune cells are programs to either repair
It's hoped the discovery will inform the development of better treatments for a range of conditions from inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) to certain cancers.
and Dr Yasmine Belkaid from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious diseases (NIAID) in the USA will be published in the journal Immunity.
Their work focuses on understanding the role of specialised immune cells known as monocytes, which are constantly being made in the bone marrow
These cells are called rapidly to sites of infection and injury and have an amazing ability to change
what they do to suit the situation in which they find themselves. This either involves them protecting the body from an attacking infection
or acting as a repair agent to aid wound healing. However, when these cells choose the wrong function this can result in severe inflammation leading to conditions such as inflammatory bowel diseases and even cancer.
What scientists haven't been able to do is identify how the cells decide which function to fulfil.
It has always been assumed that the programming takes place once the cells arrive at the point of injury
or infection but this has not been investigated well. Using mouse models Dr Grainger and his team looked at how
and where monocytes are programs in response to toxoplasmosis, an infection caused by a common parasite called Toxoplasma gondii.
The parasite infects the gut and is most commonly found in undercooked meat. Pregnant women are advised also to avoid cat faeces due to the risk of infection.
Dr Grainger, a Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Fellow, explains what they found:""Our work shows that very soon after the toxoplasma invades the gut the tissue starts to communicate with other parts of the body to alter the immune system.
One particular cell-type in the gut, the dendritic cell, can act as a beacon sending out long-range signals to the bone marrow where monocytes are produced.
Cells in the bone marrow then pick up the signal and pre-program monocytes with the appropriate function to either protect or repair."
and puts the early signals coming out from the gut at the centre of monocyte programming.
Your initial gut feeling about the infection is literally telling the rest of the system what to do."
At the moment a lot of therapies are focused on the site of infection or injury itself but this data suggests that it's the signals that are being sent out from the gut that are impacting the whole immune system.
It might even be possible to develop drugs to target the programming mechanisms within the bone marrow,
although at the moment we don't know enough about the bone marrow to do this, which is why our research is so important."
"On top of uncovering the long-range signaling mechanisms the researchers were astounded by another aspect of the programming
not only program the monocytes to protect against the infection, but also to change to a repair function
"Dr Grainger and his team are now working with other groups at The University of Manchester to carry out further studies on monocytes, particularly from patients with inflammatory conditions,
and are focused on identifying situations where this gut information system may have gone wrong such as in inflammatory bowel diseases s
#Stem cell discovery paves way for targeted treatment for osteoarthritis Researchers in the Departments of Biology and Physics at York,
working with colleagues at the Erasmus Medical centre in Rotterdam, have identified individual stem cells that can regenerate tissue, cartilage and bone.
or joint tissue opening the way for improved treatment for arthritis. The research which was funded by Arthritis Research UK is published in the latest issue of Stem Cell Reports.
The York team also isolated a rare subset of stem cells in bone marrow that while having no capability for tissue repair appeared to have a prominent role in immune function.
"While stem cell therapy is an exciting new development for the treatment for osteoarthritis, up to now it has been something of a lottery
It will help in the search to develop more targeted therapies for arthritis patients.""Co-Lead author Dr James Fox said"Working with colleagues across the Arthritis Research UK Tissue Engineering Centre will help to bring our discovery closer to patient treatment."
"Director of research at the charity Arthritis Research UK Dr Stephen Simpson added:""There are 8 million people in the UK living with the pain
and disability caused by osteoarthritis. We are fighting to find better treatments and one day, a cure.
This research is exciting and promising. Identifying specific stem cells that could help the damaged joint to repair itself,
takes us a step closer to our aim of developing an injectable, safe, stem cell therapy for people with osteoarthritis
#Cellular mechanism for how the body regulates glucose transport discovered UT Southwestern Medical center scientists have gleaned a key cellular mechanism of how the body adjusts glucose levels,
an important process that when abnormal can promote diabetes, cancer, and rare genetic diseases. The researchers determined that an enzyme called Protein kinase c (PKC) can regulate
whether more or less glucose should be transported into cells, serving as a kind of thermostat to ensure that proper levels are maintained.'
'Precisely controlling glucose transport is critical to health, 'said senior author Dr. Richard Wang, assistant professor of dermatology and a member of UT Southwestern's Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center.'
'This process is defective in a variety of diseases including diabetes and cancer.''Scientists have known how glucose is transported across cells,
but had understood not previously in detail how the body controls the amount of glucose that is transported.'
The researchers further found that the regulation of GLUT1 by PKC was impaired in some patients with a genetic disease called GLUT1 Deficiency Syndrome (G1d.
Patients with G1d have seizures, movement disorders, speech disorders, and developmental delays as infants because insufficient glucose is transported to the brain.'
'With our ongoing studies on the regulation of GLUT1 by phosphorylation, we hope to identify pathways that may improve the diagnosis
and treatment of diseases, including G1d, diabetes, and cancer,'said Wang, whose lab focus includes non-melanoma skin cancer, in
which GLUT1 is expressed highly d
#First live birth after transplantation of ovarian tissue removed and frozen during childhood Arraythe patient, who was born in the Republic of congo,
was diagnosed with sickle-cell anemia when she was five. After emigrating to Belgium at the age of 11,
doctors decided that her disease was so severe that she should be treated with a bone marrow transplant,
the Belgian doctors removed the patient's right ovary when she was 13 years and 11 months old and froze tissue fragments.
-versus-host disease and had to continue with immunosuppressive drugs for 18 months after the transplant.
Her remaining ovary failed and when she was 15, doctors gave her hormone replacement therapy to induce the onset of menstruation.
Ten years later the patient received counselling after expressing a desire to become pregnant. In order to restore her fertility,
doctors led by Dr Isabelle Demeestere, a gynaecologist and research associate in the Fertility Clinic and Research Laboratory on Human Reproduction at Erasme Hospital, Université Libre de Bruxelles (Brussels,
Belgium), stopped the hormone replacement therapy, thawed some, but not all of the frozen ovarian tissue and grafted four fragments on to the remaining left ovary,
and 11 other fragments at other sites in the body. The transplanted tissue started to respond to her hormones
and successfully started growing follicles that contain the maturing eggs. The patient started menstruating five months later
and delivered a healthy boy in November 2014, weighing 3140 grams (6. 9 pounds). Dr Demeestere said:"
When they are diagnosed with diseases that require treatment that can destroy ovarian function, freezing ovarian tissue is the only available option for preserving their fertility."
when hormone replacement therapy is an efficient, standard, and noninvasive alternative for inducing puberty? Should the procedure only be proposed for patients with a high risk of ovarian failure or for those at low risk as well?
and her doctors say there is no reason why she could not have more babies if she wants to."
#Engineer creates origami battery, for five cents Arraythe battery generates power from microbial respiration, delivering enough energy to run a paper-based biosensor with nothing more than a drop of bacteria-containing liquid."
"Dirty water has a lot of organic matter, "Choi says.""Any type of organic material can be the source of bacteria for the bacterial metabolism."
"The method should be especially useful to anyone working in remote areas with limited resources. Indeed, because paper is inexpensive and readily available,
many experts working on disease control and prevention have seized upon it as a key material in creating diagnostic tools for the developing world."
or syringes because paper can suck up a solution using capillary force.""While paper-based biosensors have shown promise in this area,
which a paper-based battery would create enough energy--we're talking microwatts--to run the biosensor.
Choi's battery, which folds into a square the size of a matchbook, uses an inexpensive air-breathing cathode created with nickel sprayed onto one side of ordinary office paper.
The anode is screen printed with carbon paints creating a hydrophilic zone with wax boundaries.
Total cost of this potentially game-changing device? Five cents. Choi, who joined Binghamton's faculty less than three years ago as an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, earned a doctorate from Arizona State university after doing undergraduate work and a master's degree in South korea.
Choi, who holds two U s. patents, initially collaborated on the paper battery with Hankeun Lee,
a former Binghamton undergraduate and co-author of the new journal article. Choi recalls an actual"lightbulb moment
"while working on an earlier iteration of the paper-based batteries, before he tried the origami approach."
"I connected four of the devices in series, and I lit up this small LED,"he says."
"At that moment, I knew I had done it
#First functional, synthetic immune organ with controllable antibodies Arraythe synthetic organ is inspired bio by secondary immune organs like the lymph node or spleen.
It is made from gelatin-based biomaterials reinforced with nanoparticles and seeded with cells, and it mimics the anatomical microenvironment of lymphoid tissue.
Like a real organ, the organoid converts B cells--which make antibodies that respond to infectious invaders--into germinal centers,
which are clusters of B cells that activate, mature and mutate their antibody genes when the body is under attack.
Germinal centers are a sign of infection and are not present in healthy immune organs.
The engineers have demonstrated how they can control this immune response in the organ and tune how quickly the B cells proliferate,
get activated and change their antibody types. According to their paper, their 3-D organ outperforms existing 2-D cultures and can produce activated B cells up to 100 times faster.
is a soft, nanocomposite biomaterial. The engineers reinforced the material with silicate nanoparticles to keep the structure from melting at the physiologically relevant temperature of 98.6 degrees.
The organ could lead to increased understanding of B cell functions, an area of study that typically relies on animal models to observe how the cells develop and mature.
the organ could be used to study specific infections and how the body produces antibodies to fight those infections--from Ebola to HIV.'
'You can use our system to force the production of immunotherapeutics at much faster rates,
Such a system also could be used to test toxic chemicals and environmental factors that contribute to infections or organ malfunctions.
The process of B cells becoming germinal centers is understood not well, and in fact, when the body makes mistakes in the genetic rearrangement related to this process,
blood cancer can result.''In the long run, we anticipate that the ability to drive immune reaction ex vivo at controllable rates grants us the ability to reproduce immunological events with tunable parameters for better mechanistic understanding of B cell development and generation of B cell tumors,
as well as screening and translation of new classes of drugs,'Singh said d
#'Chromosome shattering'seen in plants, cancer Plants can undergo the same extreme'chromosome shattering'seen in some human cancers and developmental syndromes,
UC Davis researchers have found. Chromosome shattering, or'chromothripsis,'has until now only been seen in animal cells.
A paper on the work is published in the online journal elife. The process could be applied in plant breeding as a way to create haploid plants with genetic material from only one parent,
said Ek Han Tan, a postdoctoral researcher in the UC Davis Department of Plant Biology and first author on the paper.
Although plants don't get cancer it might also allow cancer researchers to use the laboratory plant Arabidopsis as a model to study chromosome behavior in cancer.
Chromothripsis involves slicing chromosomes into apparently random pieces, and reassembling it like a broken vase,
often with pieces completely missing or in the wrong place. Generally speaking, this is not a good thing,
although in one recently published case a woman was cured of a genetic disorder when the gene responsible was lost due to chromothripsis.
Han Tan, Professor Luca Comai and colleagues were studying centromeres, the handles by which chromosomes are moved
and allocated to daughter cells during cell division. They discovered that when a variant of the model plant Arabidopsis with weakened centromeres is crossed to a plant with normal centromeres,
the resulting embryos undergo chromothripsis, the cut-and-reassembly process leading to'shattered chromosomes
#Single protein causes Parkinson's disease and multiple system atrophy Typical of neurodegenerative disorders is disrupted the communication between brain cells together with a loss of cells in specific brain regions.
For some brain diseases this phenomenon is linked to a protein known as alpha-synuclein. The exact function of this protein remains unclear,
but it may play a role in the communication between brain cells. However, in the case of specific diseases, including Parkinson's disease, Multiple System Atrophy (MSA),
and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), this protein forms aggregates that cause neurodegeneration.""When alpha-synuclein aggregates accumulate within a brain cell,
they interfere with the normal functioning of the cell. The protein aggregates disrupt the communication between brain cells,
resulting in cell death. Up to now, nobody understood how aggregates of this single protein could induce different pathologies,
"says Professor Veerle Baekelandt from the Research Group for Neurobiology and Gene therapy.""You could compare it to the construction of a house,
"doctoral researcher Wouter Peelaerts explains.""With the same building blocks--in this case the alpha-synuclein protein--you can create many different structures.
In 2013, Professor Ronald Melki and his colleagues from CNRS isolated several forms of fibres called'strains'.
'The two most important strains were shaped cylinder fibres reminiscent of spaghetti and broad ribbons that resemble linguini.
We injected these fibres separately into the brain and blood stream of rats. We noticed that the rats developed different symptoms:
while the'cylinders'induced Parkinson's disease, the'ribbons'caused MSA symptoms.""This clearly demonstrates that distinct diseases result from alpha-synuclein fibres that are structurally different."
"We are gaining more insight into the differences between the diseases. But we suspect that more fibres with different shapes
and effects are waiting to be discovered, apart from the two that we examined in this study.
In any case, our findings open up possibilities for the development of new treatments. A drug that counteracts the development of aggregates could be used to treat a whole range of brain diseases
#Scientists tune X-rays with tiny mirrors Scientists at the U s. Department of energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have created a new way of manipulating high-intensity X-rays,
which will allow researchers to select extremely brief but precise X-ray bursts for their experiments.
The new technology, developed by a team of scientists from Argonne's Center for Nanoscale Materials (CNM) and the Advanced Photon Source (APS), involves a small microelectromechanical system (MEMS) mirror only
MEMS are fabricated microscale devices using silicon wafers in facilities that make integrated circuits. The MEMS device acts as an ultrafast mirror reflecting X-rays at precise times and specific angles."
"This is a premier example of the innovation that results from collaboration between nanoscientists and X-ray scientists."
According to Argonne nanoscientist Daniel Lopez, one of the lead authors on the paper, the device works because of the relationship between the frequency of the mirror's oscillation and the timing of the positioning of the perfect angle for the incoming X-ray."
"If you sit on a Ferris wheel holding a mirror, you will see flashes of light every time the wheel is at the perfect spot for sunlight to hit it.
The speed of the Ferris wheel determines the frequency of the flashes you see, "he said."
"The Argonne team's work is incredibly exciting because it creates a new class of devices for controlling X-rays,"added Paul Evans, a professor of materials science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison."
"They have found a way to significantly shrink the optics, which is great because smaller means faster,
cheaper to make, and much more versatile.""In the future, the MEMS devices could split an X-ray pulse into even tinier, faster,
"The successful application of the MEMS technology to manipulate an X-ray beam at very high frequencies will certainly lead to further,
"This work is a very interesting first step of the MEMS application to X-ray optics. I am looking forward to the progression of the technology
These include newly planned light source facilities such as the Advanced Photon Source Upgrade.""Such small sources and tiny MEMS devices form an ideal combination to make 3-D X-ray ultrafast movies with nanometer resolution,"added Jin Wang, a senior scientist at the APS and one
of the lead authors s
#Vitamin d shows promise for treating Crohn's disease Crohn's disease (CD) is a lifelong chronic relapsing and remitting gastrointestinal condition, characterised by inflammation,
which can involve any portion of the gastrointestinal tract. CD is associated with abdominal pain, diarrhea, fatigue and in many cases can result in a reduction of quality of life, time off work, hospitalisations and surgery.
The exact causes are unknown; however, immune, genetic and environmental factors are thought to be involved. Incidence of CD varies across Europe, with up to 10 cases per 100,000 population per year.
Generally, case rates are higher in northern and Western europe than southern and Eastern europe. There is emerging data that Vitamin d supplementation may prolong remission in CD;
however, the clinical efficacy and underlying mechanisms remain unclear. In this new research, the authors aimed to determine changes in gut barrier function (as determined by intestinal permeability and antimicrobial peptide concentrations) as well as disease markers in CD, in response to Vitamin d supplementation.
In a double-blind randomised placebo-controlled study, the authors assigned 27 CD patients in remission to 2000 IU/day Vitamin d supplementation or placebo for 3 months.
that patients treated with the supplementation were more likely to maintain their intestinal permeability, whereas this deteriorated in the placebo group.
Increased intestinal permeability is considered a measure of gut leakiness which is shown to predict and precede clinical relapse in CD.
"This is the first reporting of effects of Vitamin d supplementation on intestinal permeability and antimicrobial peptide measures in a CD cohort.
Whilst the data requires further confirmation, it broadly supports evidence from previous experimental studies that suggest a role for Vitamin d in maintaining intestinal barrier integrity."
"Whilst the data is promising, the authors highlight that in order to understand its translation into treatment for CD,
UEG's inflammatory bowel disease expert, Dr Charles Murray of the Royal Free Hospital, London, UK comments;"
"This is an exciting development in the treatment of Crohn's disease and we welcome anything new that could potentially help patients with this debilitating condition
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011