#Noninvasive test predicts death risk from heart disease A noninvasive scan that determines the extent of plaque buildup in the heart accurately predicts the likelihood of heart attack or death over a 15-year period,
a research team led by Weill Cornell Medical College investigators reported July 7 in the Annals of Internal medicine.
Doctors can use this information to intervene if a patient is shown to be at risk for heart disease
but not yet showing symptoms. ll high-risk individuals irrespective of their symptom status should be considered for this study.
It is like a mammogram for the heart said Dr. James K. Min, director of the Dalio Institute of Cardiovascular Imaging at Newyork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical center,
and a professor of radiology and of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College. f physicians can accurately predict who is at risk,
they can intervene earlier and more aggressively and hopefully prevent patients from ever having a heart attack.
Heart disease is the No. 1 cause of death in the United states, killing 40 percent more people than all types of cancer combined.
But while there are routine screens for many types of cancer, there isn a universally adopted test used to check for heart attack risk in people who are not exhibiting symptoms associated with heart disease.
The researchers say their findings demonstrate that the coronary artery calcification test, a 5-minute procedure that examines the total amount of calcified plaque buildup in the heart arteries,
should fill that void. his test predicts the risk of heart attacks better than any other diagnostic heart test that we have, especially in asymptomatic patients,
Min said. t embodies the goal of precision medicine, namely, to precisely identify and exclude the patients who have
or do not have disease that places them at heightened risk of heart attacks. While previous studies have connected coronary artery calcification test results and long-term patient prognosis
this study is significant for its size and scope; it looked at the largest patient population over the longest period of time.
In collaboration with researchers from Emory University School of medicine in Atlanta and Cedars-Sinai Medical center in Los angeles, the researchers reviewed medical records of 9, 715 patients in the area surrounding Nashville, Tennessee,
who were referred by their primary care physicians to a single outpatient clinic from 1996 to 1999.
including history of diabetes, elevated cholesterol levels, documented high blood pressure or family history of coronary heart disease.
0, 1-10,11-99,100-399,400-999 and more than 1, 000. ore than 1, 000 is considered the worst-case scenario, with imminent risk,
After collecting this de-identified data, the investigators tracked the status of all participants through the National Death Index, a central computerized index from the National Center for Health statistics.
Based on their time of entering the study, the mean follow-up took place after 14.6 years.
investigators calculated the risk that participants would die for any reason, not just because of a heart attack,
So what do the data mean? n all asymptomatic patients, someone with a score of 0 has a minimal risk that they will die from any disease in the next 15 years,
Min said. t a very long-term warranty period. n the other hand, if a patient has any calcium in his heart,
he continued. e have medicine that saves lives; we just need to identify earlier the right patients
#Nanotech transforms cotton fibers into modern marvel Marcia Silva da Pinto, postdoctoral researcher, works on growing metal organic frameworks onto cotton samples to create a filtration system capable of capturing toxic gas,
as Juan Hinestroza looks on. Juan Hinestroza and his students live in a cotton-soft nano world,
where they create clothing that kills bacteria, conducts electricity, wards off malaria, captures harmful gas and weaves transistors into shirts and dresses. otton is one of the most fascinating and misunderstood materials,
said Hinestroza, associate professor of fiber science, who directs the Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell. n a nanoscale world
and that is our world we can control cellulose-based materials one atom at a time. he Hinestroza group has turned cotton fibers into electronic components such as transistors and thermistors,
so instead of adding electronics to fabrics, he converts the fabric into an electronic component. reating transistors
and other components using cotton fibers brings a new perspective to the seamless integration of electronics
and textiles, enabling the creation of unique wearable electronic devices, Hinestroza said. Taking advantage of cotton irregular topography, Hinestroza and his students added conformal coatings of gold nanoparticles,
as well as semiconductive and conductive polymers to tailor the behavior of natural cotton fibers. he layers were so thin that the flexibility of the cotton fibers is preserved always,
Hinestroza said, ibers are everywhere from your underwear, pajamas, toothbrushes, tires, shoes, car seats, air filtration systems and even your clothes. bbey Liebman 0 created a dress using conductive cotton threads capable of charging an iphone.
With ultrathin solar panels for trim and a USB charger tucked into the waist, the Southwest-inspired garment captured enough sunshine to charge cell phones
and other handheld devices allowing the wearer to stay plugged in. The technology may be embedded into shirts to measure heart rate
or analyze sweat, sewn into pillows to monitor brain signals or applied to interactive textiles with heating and cooling capabilities. revious technologies have achieved similar functionalities,
but those fibers became rigid or heavy, unlike our yarns, which are friendly to further processing, such as weaving, sewing and knitting,
Hinestroza said. Synthesizing nanoparticles and attaching them to cotton not only creates color on fiber surfaces without the use of dyes,
but the new surfaces can efficiently kill 99.9 percent of bacteria, which could help in warding colds, flu and other diseases.
Two of Hinestroza students created a hooded bodysuit embedded with insecticides using metal organic framework molecules,
or MOFS to fend off malarial mosquitoes. Malaria kills more than 600,000 people annually in Africa. While insecticide-treated nets are common in African homes
the antimalarial garment can be worn during the day to provide extra protection and does not dissipate like skin-based repellants.
Other students have used MOFS to create a mask and hood capable of trapping toxic gases in a selective manner.
MOFS, which are clustered crystalline compounds, can be manipulated at the nano level to build nanoscale cages that are the exact same size as the gas they are trying to capture. e wanted to harness the power of these molecules to absorb gases
and incorporate these MOFS into fibers, which allows us to make very efficient filtration systems,
he explains. Hinestroza always looks for new ways to employ cotton as a canvas for creating infinite modern uses. e want to transform traditional natural fibers into true engineering materials that are multifunctional
and that can be customized to any demand, he said. e are chemists, we are material scientists,
we want to create materials that will perform many functions, but have it remain flexible and as comfortable as a t-shirt or an old pair of jeans. c
#Surfing a wake of light When a duck paddles across a pond or a supersonic plane flies through the sky, it leaves a wake in its path.
Wakes occur whenever something is traveling through a medium faster than the waves it creates in the duck case water waves, in the plane case shock waves,
otherwise known as sonic booms. Wakes can exist wherever there are waves, even if those waves are light. While nothing travels faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, light isn always in a vacuum.
For the first time, Harvard researchers have created similar wakes of light-like waves moving on a metallic surface, called surface plasmons,
The discovery, published today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, was made in the lab of Federico Capasso, the Robert L. Wallace Professor of Applied Physics and Vinton Hayes Senior Research Fellow in Electrical engineering at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied science (SEAS).
he ability to control light is a powerful one, said Capasso. ur understanding of optics on the macroscale has led to holograms, Google glass and LEDS,
just to name a few technologies. Nano-optics is a major part of the future of nanotechnology and this research furthers our ability to control
and harness the power of light on the nanoscale. The creation and control of surface plasmon wakes could lead to new types of plasmonic couplers
and lenses that could create two-dimensional holograms or focus light at the nanoscale. Surface plasmons are confined to the surface of a metal.
In order to create wakes through them Capasso team designed a faster-than-light running wave of charge along a one-dimensional metamaterial like a powerboat speeding across a lake.
The metamaterial, a nanostructure of rotated slits etched into a gold film, changes the phase of the surface plasmons generated at each slit relative to each other,
increasing the velocity of the running wave. The nanostructure also acts like the boat rudder, allowing the wakes to be steered by controlling the speed of the running wave.
The team discovered that the angle of incidence of the light shining onto the metamaterial provides an additional measure of control
and using polarized light can even reverse the direction of the wake relative to the running wave like a wake traveling in the opposite direction of a boat. eing able to control
and manipulate light at scales much smaller than the wavelength of the light is said very difficult
Daniel Wintz, a lead author of the paper and graduate student in the Capasso lab. t important that we not only observed these wakes
but found multiple ways to control and steer them. The observation itself was challenging, as urface plasmons are not visible to the eye
or cameras, said co-lead author Antonio Ambrosio of SEAS and the Italian Research Council (CNR).
we used an experimental technique that forces plasmons from the surface, collects them via fiber optics and records the image.
This work could represent a new testbed for wake physics across a variety of disciplines. his research addresses a particularly elegant and innovative problem in physics which connects different physical phenomena, from water wakes to sonic booms,
#Contactless Payments Advancing into Market Just recently Snap chat has enabled online money transfers with a tap.
Contactless payments are becoming a clearer possibility day by day. With mobile payments, becoming a convenient future option for most merchants,
small businesses are open to adopting this varied way of money processing. Photo credit: Visa. comexploring Mobile payment Optionsmobile payment has seen a rise in popularity only recently.
That is the reason that no one peaking service is dominant in the market that allows any customers to make their payment conveniently.
More possibly, even the customers have not yet acquainted themselves with the option of mobile payments, and thus they need to understand more.
Google Wallet Since 2011as of now, the most prevailing mobile payment system is the Google Wallet.
Where the developers themselves agree that many issues still exist in the system design of Google Wallet,
they have high hopes for its future. Google wallet is coming down to its fourth year almost since its emergence in the industry.
The greatness of this mobile payment lies mainly in the security it offers. Rather than carrying a bunch load of plastics
and paper money throughout the day and through all sorts of streets and roads you pass through,
a mobile application that is synced with all your bank accounts sounds very approachable. With this security, it ends the limits on payment speeds.
A click here and a tap there, a smart phone just paid all your bills that is how easy Google wants the payment system to be for you.
And no doubt, Google Wallet is perhaps an amazingly speedy mobile payment method for those who have come to terms with it.
Apple into the Competitionexpect Apple to jump into a technological development stream and not win.
With just months into the distribution of their Apple Pay, Apple has its customers rolling with excitement and anticipation.
Although it has the limitation to be available for users of iphone 6 and iphone 6 Plus only, Apple guarantees secure user authentication with their okenizationmethod.
Pack this with a speedy pply-classyuser experience and we have a star in the world of mobile payment.
As seen, wireless payment has its foundations in security and speed. The emerging developments in the contactless payments have their focus points in both these elements
and thus the digitization of cash stands out as a remarkable phenomenon as compared to the paper cash and plastic payments.
Mobile payments are aimed not only at decreasing the use of paper money but it is predicted to have a revolutionizing effect on the customer behavior as well.
Once given the security and speed, it is going to change the consumer behavior. A spending and saving trend is bound to occur with the prevalence of a sweeping mobile payment system throughout the society.
Patterns of spending will determine how the digitization has been affecting the public and thus adjustments in the systems can be made accordingly.
The mobile payment system, eventually is aimed at benefitting the providers as well as consumers, thus grounding its foundation roots well below.
Written by Syed Irfan Ajma d
#Miniature Technology, Large-scale Impact The postage stamp-sized square of fused silica Kjeld Janssen is holding may not look like a whole lot to the untrained eye,
but inside the clear chip lies the potential to improve how medicine and medical research is done. f you can integrate
and automate an analysis technique into a chip, it opens doors to great applications, said Janssen, a postdoctoral researcher in the Sumita Pennathur Lab at UC Santa barbara. With only a minimal amount of human plasma,
the Omnisense nanofluidic chip he is developing is the heart of a device that can assist in the swift and accurate diagnosis of bacterial
or viral infection in less time than it would take conventional tests and it would cost less as well.
The portability of the technology could be used to enable clinical services and quick on-site screening,
particularly in remote areas where people don have access to a full medical lab, as well as data gathering for clinical trials or epidemiological studies.
For the impact his project will have in the field of translational medicine, the postdoctoral scholar has been awarded the 2015 Lindros Award from the UCSB Translational Medical Research Laboratory (TMRL).
t very awesome, Janssen, a recent transplant from The netherlands, said of the award. It feels like a recognition of his effort,
including late-night and after-hours work, and of his students which is especially gratifying and motivating,
he added. The $10, 000 grant provided by the award will be used in direct support of the development of the Omnisense lab-on-a-chip. he promise and delivery of high-throughput, real-time,
multiplexable detection of viruses and bacteria is one of the most sought-after technologies and methodologies in all of medicine, said Dr. Scott Hammond,
executive director of TMRL. orking with the Pennathur Lab, Kjeld Janssen research is intended to bring real-time detection to the world of medicine.
This technology, said Hammond, allows for the identification of specific DNA markers in an advanced microfluidic device. urther,
so compelling is this research that UCSF, as a part of their partnership with the TMRL, is directly collaborating on this project
in order to provide human physiological samples and access to their world-leading standard of practice, he said.
Janssen, who received his doctoral degree from Leiden University, is no stranger to the sensing of the very small.
As part of his work getting his master degree which he received from the University of Nijmegen in The netherlands he did internships in the country and in France on detecting neurotransmitter secretion from single neurons.
For his postdoctoral work, he studied the downscaling of bioanalytical techniques to the nanoscale, taking
what would normally require tubes or vials of plasma down to technology that would require less than a single drop.
He worked more than two years in industry, developing lab-on-a-chip technology for Medimate B. V, . before crossing the Atlantic to land in Pennathur lab. At UCSB,
Janssen focus is currently on developing a nucleic acid amplification test on a chip, technology that could, in real time,
sense for DNA-based markers in human samples. According to him, the analysis technique to be used in the nanofluidic chip loop-mediated isothermal amplification is suited particularly well for a low-cost device he has planned for this technology. t simple,
he said, explaining that the chip would need less energy and that obtaining results would require fewer steps than other methods.
The benefits in this technology could lead to its deployment of this technology in remote areas of the world and in developing countries,
where the local health care infrastructure might not be able to support the level of research
or medicine necessary to monitor or treat patients. Efforts to study and combat highly infectious diseases,
including Hepatitis C, SARS or MERS, could also benefit from the user friendly chip and its rapid results. is award is truly helping our lab become translational,
said UCSB mechanical engineering professor Sumita Pennathur. t a big step forward in terms of bringing out nanofluidic technology to real biomedical applications of disease diagnosis
. I so excited for him!
#Researchers identify cause of heart damage in sepsis patients Researchers at the University of Liverpool Institute of Infection
and Global Health (IGH) have discovered a common cause of heart damage in patients with sepsis.
Sepsis is the most common cause of death in hospitalised critically ill people and affects up to 18 million people worldwide annually.
The electrical and mechanical malfunctions of the heart have been understood poorly in sepsis, with underdeveloped clinical management strategies,
as a consequence. This new discovery, however, promises to benefit a high number of patients with heart failure or rhythm abnormalities that complicate sepsis.
Extensive cell damage The team discovered that nuclear proteins called histones, induce damage to heart muscle cells when released into the blood circulation following extensive cell damage in sepsis.
Blood levels of histones, however, are robust biomarkers that can predict which patients are more likely to develop heart complications.
Dr Yasir Alhamdi, from the University Institute of Infection and Global Health, said: his new discovery has important clinical implications.
Firstly, we now provide a much-needed explanation for why cardiac injury markers are high in sepsis. econdly,
histone levels in the blood can potentially be used at an early stage to predict which septic patients are at highest risk of developing deadly heart complications.
This can improve overall management of patients with sepsis worldwide. Toxic effects The research team has developed also
and tested specific antibodies that can directly neutralise the toxic effects of histones in the blood circulation
and found that their use can significantly prevent the development of heart complications in sepsis.
Professor Cheng-Hock Toh from the University Institute of Infection and Global Health, said: he translational impact to patients with sepsis can extend beyond biomarker prediction of heart complications,
to novel targeted treatment for improved survival. his discovery could therefore enable us to better stratify patients for more precise and personalised treatment in sepsis
#Bonelike 3-D silicon synthesized for potential use with medical devices Semiconducting silicon spicules engage tissue like a bee stinger.
Researchers have developed a new approach for better integrating medical devices with biological systems. The researchers, led by Bozhi Tian,
assistant professor in chemistry at the University of Chicago, have developed the first skeleton-like silicon spicules ever prepared via chemical processes. sing bone formation as a guide,
the Tian group has developed a synthetic material from silicon that shows potential for improving interaction between soft tissue
and hard materials, said Joe Akkara, a program director in the National Science Foundation materials research division,
which funds this research. his is the power of basic scientific research. The Tian group has created a material that preliminarily seems to enhance soft tissue function.
In a Science paper published on June 26, Tian and his co-authors from UCHICAGO and Northwestern University described their new method for the syntheses and fabrication of mesocopic three-dimensional semiconductors (intermediate between the nanometer and macroscopic scales).
his opens up a new opportunity for building electronics for enhanced sensing and stimulation at bio-interfaces, said lead author Zhiqiang Luo, a postdoctoral scholar in Tian laboratory.
The team achieved three advances in the development of semiconductor and biological materials. One advance was the demonstration, by strictly chemical means, of three-dimensional lithography.
Existing lithographic techniques create features over flat surfaces. The laboratory system mimics the natural reaction-diffusion process that leads to symmetry-breaking forms in nature:
the grooved and notched form of a bee stinger, for example. Tian team developed a pressure modulation synthesis,
to promote the growth of silicon nanowires and to induce gold-based patterns in the silicon.
Gold acts as silicon growth catalyst. By repeatedly increasing and decreasing the pressure on their samples,
the researchers were able to control the gold precipitation and diffusion along the silicon faceted surfaces. he idea of utilizing deposition-diffusion cycles can be applied to synthesizing more complex 3d semiconductors,
said co-lead author Yuanwen Jiang, a Seymour Goodman Fellow in chemistry at UCHICAGO. 3d silicon etching The semiconductor industry uses wet chemical etching with an etch-resist to create planar patterns on silicon wafers.
Portions of the wafer masked with thin film physically block the etching from being carried out except on the open surface areas.
In another advance, Tian and his associates developed a novel chemical method that instead depends upon the uncanny ability of gold atoms to trap silicon-carrying electrons to selectively prevent the etching.
This method also applies to the 3d lithography of many other semiconductor compounds. his is a fundamentally new mechanism for etch mask
The testing showed that the synthetic silicon spicules displayed stronger interactions with collagen fibers skin-like stand-in for biological tissuehan did currently available silicon structures.
and the other silicon structures into the collagen fibers, then pulled them out. An Atomic Force Microscope measured the force required to accomplish each action. ne of the major hurdles in the area of bioelectronics
or implants is that the interface between the electronic device and the tissue or organ is not robust,
#Gene therapy restores hearing in deaf mice Proof-of-principle study takes a step toward precision medicine for genetic hearing loss.
Using gene therapy, researchers at Boston Children Hospital and Harvard Medical school have restored hearing in mice with a genetic form of deafness.
Their work, published online July 8 by the journal Science Translational Medicine, could pave the way for gene therapy in people with hearing loss caused by genetic mutations. ur gene therapy protocol is not yet ready for clinical trialse need to tweak it a bit moreut in the not-too-distant
future we think it could be developed for therapeutic use in humans says Jeffrey Holt, Phd, a scientist in the Department of Otolaryngology and F. M. Kirby Neurobiology Center at Boston Children and an associate professor of Otolaryngology at Harvard Medical school.
More than 70 different genes are known to cause deafness when mutated. Holt, with first author Charles Askew and colleagues at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland, focused on a gene called TMC1.
They chose TMC1 because it is a common cause of genetic deafness, accounting for 4 to 8 percent of cases,
and encodes a protein that plays a central role in hearing, helping convert sound into electrical signals that travel to the brain.
The researchers tested gene therapy in two types of mutant mice. One type had the TMC1 gene completely deleted
and is a good model for recessive TMC1 mutations in humans: Children with two mutant copies of TMC1 have profound hearing loss from a very young age, usually by around 2 years.
The other type of mouse, called Beethoven, has a specific TMC1 mutation change in a single amino acidnd is a good model for the dominant form of TMC1-related deafness.
In this form, less common than the recessive form, a single copy of the mutation causes children to gradually go deaf beginning around the age of 10 to 15 years.
To deliver the healthy gene, the team inserted it into an engineered virus called adeno-associated virus 1,
or AAV1, together with a promoter genetic sequence that turns the gene on only in certain sensory cells of the inner ear known as hair cells.
They then injected the gene-bearing AAV1 into the inner ear, with these findings: In the recessive deafness model, gene therapy with TMC1 restored the ability of sensory hair cells to respond to soundroducing a measurable electrical currentnd also restored activity in the auditory portion of the brainstem.
Most importantly, the deaf mice regained their ability to hear. To test hearing, the researchers placed the mice in a tartle boxand sounded abrupt,
loud tones. ice with TMC1 mutations will just sit there, but with gene therapy, they jump as high as a normal mouse,
says Holt. The force of their jump was measured by a plate on the floor underneath them;
it was detectable at sounds beginning around 80 decibels. In the dominant deafness model, gene therapy with a related gene, TMC2, was successful at the cellular and brain level,
and partially successful at restoring actual hearing in the startle test. Clinical trials on the horizon AAV1 is considered safe as a viral vector
and is already in use in human gene therapy trials for blindness, heart disease, muscular dystrophy and other conditions.
Holt hopes to partner with clinicians at Boston Children Department of Otolaryngology and elsewhere to start clinical trials of TMC1 gene therapy within 5 to 10 years. urrent therapies for profound hearing loss like that caused by the recessive
form of TMC1 are hearing aids, which often don work very well, and cochlear implants, says Margaret Kenna, MD, MPH,
a specialist in genetic hearing loss at Boston Children Hospital who is familiar with the work. ochlear implants are great,
but your own hearing is better in terms of range of frequencies, nuance for hearing voices, music and background noise,
Holt believes that other forms of genetic deafness may also be amenable to the same gene therapy strategy.
Overall, severe to profound hearing loss in both ears affects 1 to 3 per 1, 000 live births. can envision patients with deafness having their genome sequenced and a tailored,
precision medicine treatment injected into their ears to restore hearing, Holt says. Holt team showed in 2013 that TMC1
and the related protein TMC2 are critical for hearing, ending a rigorous 30-year search by scientists.
a mutation in the TMC1 gene is sufficient to cause deafness. However, Holt study also showed that gene therapy with TMC2 could compensate for loss of a functional TMC1 gene,
restoring hearing in the recessive deafness model and partial hearing in the dominant deafness model. his is a great example of how the basic science can lead to clinical therapies,
says Holt. he implications of successful gene therapy are profound, and we are delighted to be associated with this study program,
says Ernesto Bertarelli, co-chair of the Bertarelli Foundation, the primary funder of the research. hese findings mark a defining moment in the way we understand,
and can ultimately challenge, the burden of deafness in humans. The results are testament to the immense dedication of the research team
and their commitment to bringing best-in-class science ever closer to real-world application. n
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