#Use Your Smartphone For Biosensing An Australian research team has shown that smartphones can be reconfigured as cost-effective, portable bioanalytical devices, with details reported in the latest edition of the Open Access Journal ensors
The team, from the Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics (CNBP), an Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence, created a simple,
portable and economic biosensing device that allows for immediate diagnostic testing of arthritis, cystic fibrosis, acute pancreatitis and other clinical diseases.
Made up of little more than a tablet, smart phone camera, polarizer and a box, the device is established based on well principles of fluorescent microscopy,
whereby specific substances in a sample are tagged with a dye, which then light up or luorescein a precise manner when xcitedor illuminated with a high intensity light.
Ewa Goldys, CNBP Deputy Director, Professor at Macquarie University and author of the work explained, n this instance,
the process involved the successful testing of biological samples for levels of Trypsin and Collagenase,
clinically relevant biomarkers found in high concentration in many human diseases. he samples were placed on the tablet
a polarizer sat on top of the samples to help separate the tablet light from the emission from the samples.
This was photographed then by the smartphone with the result obtained by analysing the colour and intensity of the image pixels.
The researchers believe that the device has enormous potential for use in point-of-care medical diagnostics,
particularly in remote or developing areas where professional and expensive research laboratory equipment is unavailable.
which costs many tens of thousands of dollars. There is a need to develop easy to use, portable and affordable systems,
Specialised software is required not and setting up the standard commercial tablet and smartphone is very straightforward.
The results can be analysed by simply taking an image and the readout is available immediately.
Goldys believes that we will see rapidly increasing use of smartphone technology in the field of biomedical diagnostics, particularly in resource poor areas.
A free application to convert your smartphone into a bio-sensing readout device will be available for download from the Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics web site www. cnbp. org. au/smartphone biosensing c
#Who needs water to assemble DNA? Non-aqueous solvent supports DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY Scientists around the world are using the programmability of DNA to assemble complex nanometer scale structures.
Until now, however, production of these artificial structures has been limited to water-based environments, because DNA naturally functions inside the watery environment of living cells.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of technology have shown now that they can assemble DNA NANOSTRUCTURES in a solvent containing no water.
They also discovered that adding a small amount of water to their solvent increases the assembly rate
and provides a new means for controlling the process. The solvent may also facilitate the production of more complex structures by reducing the problem of DNA becoming trapped in unintended structures.
The research could open up new applications for DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY, and help apply DNA technology to the fabrication of nanoscale semiconductor and plasmonic structures.
Sponsored by the National Science Foundation and NASA, the research will be published as the cover story in Volume 54, Issue 23 of the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition.
NA nanotechnology structures are getting more and more complex, and this solvent could help researchers that are working in this growing field,
said Nicholas Hud, a professor in Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. ith this work,
we have shown that DNA NANOSTRUCTURES can be assembled in a water-free solvent, and that we can mix water with the same solvent to speed up the assembly.
The assembly rate of DNA NANOSTRUCTURES can be very slow, and depends strongly on temperature. Raising the temperature increases this rate,
This solvent also offers enhanced properties for nanotechnology and for the stability of these nanomaterials in solution.
Gállego had worked in DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY before coming to Georgia Tech, and wasconvinced that alternative solvents could advance this field.
At Georgia Tech he evaluated new solvents for use with DNA NANOSTRUCTURES solvents that had been designed for other purposes.
Structures that fail to completely assemble are a major source of low yields in the DNA nanofabrication process. his solvent could provide a new tool to make more complicated designs with DNA
he added. inetic traps are among the bottlenecks for producing more complicated DNA NANOSTRUCTURES. Glycholine is miscible in water,
A key feature of the new solvent system is that it does not require changes to existing DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY designs that were developed for water. ou can go back
said Gállego. his solvent system preserves the DNA structures that have been developed to work in water.
The solvent system could improve the combined use of metallic nanoparticles and DNA based materials. In the typical aqueous solvents where DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY is performed,
nanoparticles are prone to aggregation. The solvent low volatility could also allow storage of assembled DNA structures without the concern that a water-based medium would dry out.
The research team, which also included Martha Grover from Georgia Tech School of Chemical & Biomolecular engineering, has used so far the solvent to assemble three structures,
including two DNA origami structures. In future work, they hope to use the control provided by water-free solvents to obtain dynamic DNA structural rearrangements that are not possible in water,
and investigate other solvents that may have additional properties attractive for nanotechnology applications. e were confident all along that we would find a solvent that would be compatible with existing DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY, added Hud,
who is also director of the NSF-NASA Center for Chemical Evolution and associate director of the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience,
both at Georgia Tech. hat was surprising was finding a solvent that allows the assembly of structures more easily than in water.
because DNA NANOTECHNOLOGY was developed in water. The research on water-free solvents grew out of Georgia Tech research into the origins of life.
the chemistry necessary to make the molecules of life would be much easier without water being present. his work was inspired by research into the origins of life with the basic question of
while also having applications in nanotechnology. n
#DNA mutations get harder to hide Rice university researchers have developed a method to detect rare DNA mutations with an approach hundreds of times more powerful than current methods.
The technique allows the researchers to find a figurative needle in a haystack that smaller than any needle.
Rice researchers David Zhang, an assistant professor of bioengineering, and lead author and graduate student J. Sherry Wang applied their new molecular tools to 44 DNA samples with known cancer-related single-nucleotide variants.
Their proof-of-principle study located the variants with a high level of accuracy. They view their results
as a significant step toward advancing personalized medicine. The ability to accurately find mutations that are biomarkers for disease will help clinicians determine treatment paths for patients,
Zhang said. It may also help identify rare mutations and subtypes of infectious diseases as well as drug-resistant strains.
A single-nucleotide variant occurs when one of the four basic components that make up DNA
but mutations can leave the body vulnerable to disease, or even be the root cause.
The ability to accurately find rare single-nucleotide mutations is becoming increasingly important as scientists drill down into genomes to find biomarkers for early cancer detection. ee trying to solve the needle-in-a-haystack problem,
how do you detect a very rare mutation in a large pile of healthy DNA molecules?
The needle youe looking for might be a cancer-mutation DNA or bacterial-pathogen DNA,
researchers build a magnet that very good at fishing out the needle, Zhang said. t supposed to bind to the needle,
But that only works to a certain extent, and even the best magnets so far can barely pull one needle from 20 pieces of hay
or so. e decided to add a goat, which goes around and eats hay, so you have a much smaller pile
and how hungry you want your goat to be said, he. ur paper basically shows there a small window in which you can design them to get very high specificity.
We can find, on average, one needle for every thousand pieces of hay. The Rice team tool involves ompetitive compositionsof synthetic reagents that bind to particular gene sequences.
and sink (the goat) are sequence-specific DNA molecules that root out single-nucleotide variant targets in solutions that also include healthy ild-typesequences.
and leave the probes to seek out mutations in the target DNA. Zhang and Wang carried this hybridization technique a step further as they determined the optimal conditions the window for each experiment, based on simulations.
By simulating experiments in computers and observing the results, they were able to design actual chemistry experiments and reagents with much better performance than traditional trial-and-error approaches.
Because the probesspecificity and sensitivity tend to be mutually exclusive except in the narrow Goldilocks zone,
Tests on amplified human genome samples showed excellent accuracy as well, they said. Zhang noted the technique should lead to significant savings,
especially if youe doing a multiplexed assay that checks for a few hundred different target mutations. he real benefit is still being able to do more specific detection,
basically being able to detect mutations at a much earlier phase when there not as much cancer DNA floating around,
he said
#Nearly Indestructible Virus Yields Tool to Battle Diseases By unlocking the secrets of a bizarre virus that survives in nearly boiling acid,
scientists at the University of Virginia School of medicine have found a blueprint for battling human disease using DNA clad in near-indestructible armor.
Edward H. Egelman with the massive Titan Krios microscope that buried in tons of concrete under Fontaine Research Parkhat interesting and unusual is being able to see how proteins
and DNA can be put together in a way that absolutely stable under the harshest conditions imaginable, said Edward H. Egelman of the Department of Biochemistry
and Molecular genetics. ee discovered what appears to be a basic mechanism of resistance to heat,
to desiccation, to ultraviolet radiation. And knowing that, then, we can go in many different directions, including developing ways to package DNA for gene therapy. inding effective packaging for DNA delivery is important
because the human body has many ways to degrade and remove foreign DNA; that how it combats harmful viruses
. But that protective mechanism becomes a major obstacle for doctors seeking to use genes to battle disease.
The research identified surprising similarities between the SIRV2 virus and the spores bacteria form to survive in inhospitable environments. ome of these spores are responsible for very,
very horrific diseases that are hard to treat, like anthrax, Egeleman said. o we show in this paper that this virus actually functions in a similar way to some of the proteins present in bacterial spores. pores are formed also by C. difficile,
which now accounts for approximately 30,000 deaths per year in the U s. and has been classified by the Centers for Disease Control
because many people have felt that this A-form of DNA is only found in the laboratory under very non-biological conditions,
it appears to be a general mechanism in biology for protecting DNA. gelman and his colleagues were able to crack the mystery only because of the remarkable power of U. Va. new Titan Krios electron microscope.
Buried deep below Fontaine Research Park the massive microscope is insulated within many tons of concrete to provide the stability needed to examine biological samples in previously impossible detail.
The microscope is one of only a few of its kind in the world, and was funded, in part, by the National institutes of health.
University of Virgini
#A new kind of wood chip: collaboration could lead to biodegradable computer chips Portable electronics typically made of nonrenewable,
non-biodegradable and potentially toxic materials are discarded at an alarming rate in consumerspursuit of the next best electronic gadget.
In an effort to alleviate the environmental burden of electronic devices, a team of University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers has collaborated with researchers in the Madison-based U s. Department of agriculture Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) to develop a surprising solution:
a semiconductor chip made almost entirely of wood. A cellulose nanofibril (CNF) computer chip rests on a leaf.
Image credit: Yei Hwan Jung, Wisconsin Nano Engineering Device Laboratory A cellulose nanofibril (CNF) computer chip rests on a leaf.
Image credit: Yei Hwan Jung, Wisconsin Nano Engineering Device Laboratory The research team, led by UW-Madison electrical
and computer engineering professor Zhenqiang ackma, described the new device in a paper published on May 26, 2015 by the journal Nature Communications.
The paper demonstrates the feasibility of replacing the substrate, or support layer, of a computer chip, with cellulose nanofibril (CNF), a flexible, biodegradable material made from wood. he majority of material in a chip is support.
We only use less than a couple of micrometers for everything else, Ma says. ow the chips are so safe you can put them in the forest
and fungus will degrade it. They become as safe as fertilizer. Zhiyong Cai project leader for an engineering composite science research group at FPL,
has been developing sustainable nanomaterials since 2009. f you take a big tree and cut it down to the individual fiber,
the most common product is paper. The dimension of the fiber is in the micron stage,
Cai says. ut what if we could break it down further to the nano scale?
At that scale you can make this material, very strong and transparent CNF paper. Working with Shaoqin arahgong, a UW-Madison professor of biomedical engineering, Cai group addressed two key barriers to using wood-derived materials in an electronics setting:
surface smoothness and thermal expansion. ou don want it to expand or shrink too much. Wood is a natural hydroscopic material
and could attract moisture from the air and expand, Cai says. ith an epoxy coating on the surface of the CNF,
we solved both the surface smoothness and the moisture barrier. Gong and her students also have been based studying bio polymers for more than a decade.
CNF offers many benefits over current chip substrates, she says. he advantage of CNF over other polymers is that it a bio-based material and most other polymers are based petroleum polymers.
Bio-based materials are sustainable biocompatible and biodegradable, Gong says. nd, compared to other polymers,
CNF actually has a relatively low thermal expansion coefficient. The group work also demonstrates a more environmentally friendly process that showed performance similar to existing chips.
The majority of today wireless devices use gallium arsenide-based microwave chips due to their superior high-frequency operation and power handling capabilities.
However, gallium arsenide can be environmentally toxic, particularly in the massive quantities of discarded wireless electronics.
Yei Hwan Jung, a graduate student in electrical and computer engineering and a co-author of the paper,
says the new process greatly reduces the use of such expensive and potentially toxic material. e made 1,
500 gallium arsenide transistors in a 5-by-6 millimeter chip. Typically for a microwave chip that size,
there are only eight to 40 transistors. The rest of the area is wasted just, he says. e take our design
and put it on CNF using deterministic assembly technique, then we can put it wherever we want
and make a completely functional circuit with performance comparable to existing chips. While the biodegradability of these materials will have a positive impact on the environment,
Ma says the flexibility of the technology can lead to widespread adoption of these electronic chips. ass-producing current semiconductor chips is so cheap,
and it may take time for the industry to adapt to our design, he says. ut flexible electronics are the future,
and we think wee going to be well ahead of the curve. t
#New Self-Destructing Devices to Lead the Way towards Sustainable Electronics Thanks to falling prices, increasing demand and short lifespans of most consumer appliances,
electronic waste has become a growing problem worldwide. But what if all those devices, currently languishing in the landfill,
could just dissolve away or break down to their molecular components, making them easy to recycle?
With that goal in mind, a group of researchers from the University of Illinois teamed up with their colleagues from the Frederick Seitz Materials Laboratory,
led by Professor John A. Rogers, a Swanlund Chair in Materials science and engineering, have developed a line of heat-triggered,
self-destructing devices, a step toward greatly reducing electronic waste and boosting sustainability in device manufacturing.
In announcing their new technology, which they detailed in the journal Advanced Materials, the researchers also demonstrated a radio-controlled trigger that could remotely activate self-destruction on demand. e have demonstrated electronics that are there
when you need them and gone when you don need them anymore, said Aerospace engineer and team leader Professor Scott R. White. his is a way of creating sustainability in the materials that are used in modern-day electronics.
This was our first attempt to use an environmental stimulus to trigger destruction. The new technique consists of coating magnesium resistors
(or silicon diodes), printed on very thin and flexible materials, in wax that contains microscopic droplets of methanesulfonic acid.
Whenever the device heats up, the wax melts and releases the acid which quickly and completely dissolves the device. his work demonstrates the extent to
which clever chemistries can qualitatively expand the breadth of mechanisms in transience, and therefore the range of potential applications, said Rogers. By tuning the thickness of the wax layer, the concentration of the acid and the applied temperature,
the researchers can control how fast the device dissolves from mere seconds to minutes. The devices can also be made to degrade in steps encasing individual components of the electric circuit in waxes with different melting temperatures could create possibilities for sophisticated devices that can sense something in the environment
and respond to it in a timely manner. Triggering a device of this kind is achieved through a radio-frequency receiver
which the end user manipulates to send a signal to an inductive heating coil within the device that melts the wax and releases the acid.
If a cyclic polyphthalaldehyde (cppa) substrate is used to carry the electronic components, it can be depolymerized by the acid
and the entire device is dissolved without leaving a trace. e took our ideas in terms of materials regeneration
and flipped it 180 degrees, White said. f you can keep using something, whether it obsolete or just doesn work anymore,
we like to be able to bring it back to the building blocks of the material so you can recycle them when youe done,
or if you can recycle it, have it dissolve away and not sit around in landfills.
The team work was supported by the National Science Foundation and DARPA whose Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR) program has been investigating the potential for transient electronics designed to self-destruct on command to prevent classified technology finding its way into enemy hands l
#World first as viral immunotherapy for skin cancer shows patient benefit in phase III trial A genetically engineered herpes virus can halt the progression of skin cancer by killing cancer cells
and sparking the immune system into action against tumours, a landmark clinical trial has shown. It is the first time that a phase III trial of viral immunotherapy has shown definitively benefit for patients with cancer.
The trial was led in the UK by researchers at The Institute of Cancer Research, London,
and The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, and involved 64 research centres worldwide including the University of Oxford.
Researchers randomised 436 patients with aggressive inoperable malignant melanoma to receive either an injection of the viral therapy, called Talimogene Laherparepvec,
or a control immunotherapy. Some 16.3 per cent of the group given Talimogene Laherparepvec known as T-VEC showed a durable treatment response of more than six months,
compared with 2. 1 per cent given the control treatment. Some patients had a response extending past three years,
a mark oncologists often use as a proxy for cure in immunotherapy. Importantly, responses to treatment were pronounced most in patients with less advanced cancers (stage IIIB, IIIC,
IVM1A) and those who had yet to receive any treatment underlining the potential benefits of T-VEC as a first-line treatment for metastatic melanoma
which cannot be removed surgically. Patients with stage III and early stage IV melanoma treated with T-VEC a total of 163 people lived an average of 41 months.
This compared with an average survival of 21.5 months in the 66 earlier-stage patients who received the control immunotherapy.
The trial was funded by the manufacturer of T-VEC, Amgen, and is published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
T-VEC is modified a form of herpes simplex virus type-1 which multiplies inside cancer cells and bursts them from within.
It has been engineered genetically to produce a molecule called GM-CSF, which stimulates the immune system to attack
and destroy the tumour. T-VEC is one of a new wave of virus-based drugs to show benefits in cancer trials,
and is now the first to do so in a major randomised, controlled phase III trial. The virus has been modified to remove two key genes, called ICP34. 5 and ICP47,
because their infection defences are compromised by genetic errors. UK trial leader Professor Kevin Harrington, Professor of Biological Cancer Therapies at The Institute of Cancer Research, London,
and Honorary Consultant at The Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust, said: here is increasing excitement over the use of viral treatments like T-VEC for cancer,
because they can launch a two-pronged attack on tumours both killing cancer cells directly and marshalling the immune system against them.
or some of the other new immunotherapies. ur study showed that T-VEC can deliver a significant, durable benefit for people with melanoma.
It is encouraging that the treatment had such a clear benefit for patients with less advanced cancers ongoing studies are evaluating
if it can become a first-line treatment for more aggressive melanomas and advanced disease. rofessor Paul Workman,
Chief executive of The Institute of Cancer Research, London, said: e may normally think of viruses as the enemies of mankind,
and kill human cells that can make them such promising cancer treatments. In this case we are harnessing the ability of an engineered virus to kill cancer cells
and there is hope that therapies like this could be even more effective when combined with targeted cancer drugs to achieve long term control
#A novel source of multipotent stem cells for the treatment of autologous reproductive tract injury The utility of human fallopian tube mucosa as a novel source of multipotent stem cells for the treatment
and we also compared multipotent stem cells derived from fallopian tubes and fallopian tube mucosa according to their biological characteristics and therapeutic potential for treatment of autologous reproductive tract injury.
which make them a better source of stem cells for the treatment of autologous reproductive tract injury.
#Taking remote control of your electricity Householders may soon be able to keep real-time track of their electricity usage
and remotely switch on and off appliances through their phones, tablets and computers. The technology, known as Eddy, was developed by CSIRO
and in conjunction with Ergon Energy Retail in regional Queensland. Using an online interface on a computer,
smartphone or tablet Eddy keeps track of electricity use, collects and analyses the data, and makes recommendations to help users save money.
It also allows users to remotely control major appliances such as air conditioners hot water systems and pool pumps.
To reduce demand on the grid during peak periods, users can also take part in demand management programs offered by their energy company
and receive rewards in return, such as discounts on their energy bill. his unique tool is all about giving people more control over their energy
and helping them to save money, CSIRO Research Leader Glenn Platt said. sing a simple online dashboard,
people can see how their energy use is tracking and make adjustments to reduce costs. he tool really highlights how easy it is for people to make big savings on their energy bill without impacting on their lifestyle. y viewing
when their home is exporting excess energy to the grid, households with solar PV systems can save additional money by programming their system to run certain appliances
when the sun is shining. ith the option of taking part in demand management schemes, the system can also reward households for using less electricity during peak energy periods.
The technology was developed at CSIRO energy centre in Newcastle, where scientists are working with some of the most sophisticated energy technology found anywhere in the world.
The system uses cloud-based software and mini smart meters that look just like the regular circuit breakers found in your meter box.
The smart meters connect to the cloud via a small internet communication device in the house.
Once connected the appliances linked to the meters can be controlled remotely. The technology is sophisticated based on CSIRO Energy management system,
which has also been adapted for use on King Island Smart grid. e want to give households an energy management tool that is simple to use
and unlocks lasting benefits, Habidapt CEO Stephen Kubicki said. ddy gives households control over their energy
and saves them money. s well as giving households tools to understand and manage their energy,
Eddy lets people participate in the energy market by reducing peak demand in ways that, until now, have only been available to large-scale commercial consumers.
Habidapt is currently trialling the technology in homes with solar PV systems in Perth and is also rolling the system out with Ergon Energy in Townsville,
where it is being offered to customers as omesmart e
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011