#Researchers Enlarge Brain Samples Making Them Easier to Image New technique enables nanoscale-resolution microscopy of large biological specimens.
The latest generation of so-called uper-resolutionmicroscopes can see inside cells with resolution better than 250 nanometers.
they have discovered a method that enlarges tissue samples by embedding them in a polymer that swells
the researchers say. nstead of acquiring a new microscope to take images with nanoscale resolution,
says Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. Boyden is the senior author of a paper describing the new method in the Jan 15 online edition of Science.
Lead authors of the paper are graduate students Fei Chen and Paul Tillberg. Physical magnification Most microscopes work by using lenses to focus light emitted from a sample into a magnified image.
if you are using blue-green light with a wavelength of 500 nanometers, you can see anything smaller than 250 nanometers. nfortunately,
in biology that right where things get interesting, says Boyden, who is a member of MIT Media Lab and Mcgovern Institute for Brain Research.
Protein complexes, molecules that transport payloads in and out of cells, and other cellular activities are organized all at the nanoscale.
Scientists have come up with some eally clever tricksto overcome this limitation, Boyden says. However, these super-resolution techniques work best with small, thin samples,
or understand how cancer cells are organized in a metastasizing tumor, or how immune cells are configured in an autoimmune attack,
you have to look at a large piece of tissue with nanoscale precision, he says. To achieve this, the MIT team focused its attention on the sample rather than the microscope.
Their idea was to make specimens easier to image at high resolution by embedding them in an expandable polymer gel made of polyacrylate,
using an antibody that binds to the chosen targets. This antibody is linked to a fluorescent dye,
as well as a chemical anchor that can attach the dye to the polyacrylate chain. Once the tissue is labeled,
And the cast itself is swollen, unimpeded by the original biological structure, Tillberg says. The MIT team imaged this astwith commercially available confocal microscopes,
but usually limited to a resolution of hundreds of nanometers. With their enlarged samples, the researchers achieved resolution down to 70 nanometers. he expansion microscopy process should be compatible with many existing microscope designs and systems already in laboratories,
Chen adds. Large tissue samples Using this technique, the MIT team was able to image a section of brain tissue 500 by 200 by 100 microns with a standard confocal microscope.
and are limited in their ability to image large samples by optical scattering and other aberrations. he exciting part is that this approach can acquire data at the same high speed per pixel as conventional microscopy,
contrary to most other methods that beat the diffraction limit for microscopy, which can be 1,
000 times slower per pixel, says George Church, a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical school who was not part of the research team.
MIT researchers led by Ed Boyden have invented a new way to visualize the nanoscale structure of the brain and other tissues.
Unlike traditional microscopy which involves magnifying the image, the new method works by physically enlarging the specimen itself,
in some cases more than five times in each dimension. he other methods currently have better resolution,
and map how they connect to each other across large regions. here are lots of biological questions where you have to understand a large structure,
but also to see where all the nanoscale components are. While Boyden team is focused on the brain,
other possible applications for this technique include studying tumor metastasis and angiogenesis (growth of blood vessels to nourish a tumor),
or visualizing how immune cells attack specific organs during autoimmune disease i
#Gene Breakthrough Sparks Fear of Homemade Morphine Scientists on Monday said they had unlocked a pathway for producing opiates from genetically engineered yeast
but feared the discovery could one day be a bonanza for drug lords. Other experts agreed, saying anyone with basic skills could use such a yeast to churn out morphine,
codeine and drugs using a simple home-brew beer kit. The discovery, published in the scientific journal Nature Chemical Biology, comes on the heels of a study published last month in the journal PLOS ONE.
Together, the papers describe key steps towards bioengineering yeast that would feed on sugar and exude opiates and other therapeutic drugs.
The goal is to provide cheaper and possibly less addictive painkillers from a dependable source as compared to the poppy.
In Monday's study, synthetic biologists at the University of California at Berkeley inserted an enzyme gene from beets to coax yeast into converting tyrosine--an amino acid easily derived from sugar--into a compound called reticuline.
when home-brewing drugs could become a reality, "the researchers cautioned.""We're likely looking at a timeline of a couple of years, not a decade or more,
and basic skills in fermentation would be able to grow morphine-producing yeast using a home-brew kit for beer-making,
users would need to drink only one to two milliliters of the liquid to obtain a standard prescribed dose."
"In addition to tighter lab security and tougher laws, the trio called for yeast strains to be engineered to produce drugs with limited street value,
an MIT professor of biological engineering, was quoted as saying by Britain's Science Media Center.""The information in this paper, combined with DNA synthesis,
The country Center for Research in Legitimacy and Political Protest claims that it has developed a computer program that will sift through social media websites every five minutes looking for signs of organized political opposition.
it alerts law enforcement officials and others via a mobile phone app. The Russian site, Izvestia (via Google translate) says that illegal activity and unauthorized actions,
according to Russian law, includes: Meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets. The software dubbed Laplace Demon after Pierre-Simon Laplace theoretical all-seeing intellect that could calculate the future based on the state of all matter pays particular attention to social media groups known to organize such rallies
and monitors the number of likes and reposts. In this way, it can anticipate when momentum is building
and alert the authorities. Anyone caught participating in such unlawful activity as free speech will be fined up to about $600 (30,000 rubles)
or sentenced to 50 hours of community service. According to the Center director Yevgeny Venediktov, Twitter is the main focus for the software.
He wrote, e conducted a survey and found out that it is precisely this social network is not only the leader among social media on the number of hosted links to extremist content,
but also does not remove them at the request of Roskomnadzor (Russia Federal Service for Supervision of Communications).
Researchers surveying Lake Neuchâtel for evidence of past earthquakes spotted the craters near the lake northwestern shore near the Jura Mountains.
a doctoral student at the ETH Zurich Geological Institute, said in a statement. Reusch and her co-authors found the craters at water depths of 328 feet (100 m) or more.
The team was using ship-based sonar to search for sediment that had been disturbed by earthquakes.
The swiss Alps occasionally shake from earthquakes of up to magnitude 6, studies have shown. Scientists are also investigating the risk of earthquake
-and landslide-triggered tsunamis in Alpine lakes. In the past decade researchers have discovered that tsunamis wiped out villages along the shores of both Lake Geneva and Lake Lucerne in the past 1, 500 years.
But instead of ancient quake or tsunami deposits, Reusch and her colleagues stumbled upon an enormous feature they dubbed Chez-le-Bart crater (razy crater. never expected anything like this,
Reusch said. he craters were so interesting that we simply had to take a closer look at this phenomenon,
she added. No one knows for sure how the craters formed, but the pits appear to occasionally spill over, perhaps violently, the researchers reported.
an underground network of limestone caves and cracks. The same limestone underlies the lake, and the scientists think that groundwater is bubbling up into the craters through cracks in the limestone rock.
At least one crater directly overlies a major earthquake fault. For instance, water inside Crazy crater is 47 degrees Fahrenheit (8. 4 degrees Celsius),
but the surrounding lake water is colder, at just 42 F (5. 8 C). Chemical markers in the local karst groundwater are also a match for water drawn from the craters,
Reusch and her co-authors reported April 21 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters s
#Real-life Hoverboard Breaks World record A hoverboard rider recently soared into Guinness World records after flying a record distance on the futuristic, flying skateboard.
"Duru wrote in a description of a Youtube video of the hoverboard's record-breaking flight.
But since the fictional device only works over land, it may have lifted off the ground by electromagnets,
or electromagnets, that create a magnetic charge when placed over a copper surface. Copper is an inductive material that creates a strong,
repulsive magnetic field that forces the board up into the air and allows it to levitate.
as well as a variety of nonmetal materials that are also inductors, Greg Henderson, the inventor behind this futuristic skateboard, told Live Science in December.
#First-Ever Face recognition ATM Comes to China Some Chinese inventors have been developing high-tech innovations for everyday objects everything from umbrellas to a robot that delivers food to restaurant patrons
Could Your Body parts Replace Credit cards? Credit card security breaches are becoming more and more common, and customers'personal information is being exposed.
Could biometric payment methods replace credit cards altogether? Researchers from Tsinghua University and Tzekwan technology, a financial security protection firm, have announced the first ATM that works with facial recognition capabilities, reports the South China Morning Post.
The researchers stated that this new kind of ATM MACHINE will apply facial recognition technology, high-speed banknote handling,
and an improved capacity to recognize counterfeit bills. Gu Zikun, Tzekwan chairman, said that the machine would soon be available on the market.
At the moment, no information has been released regarding who would manufacture the ATMS and exactly how these machines will collect facial recognition data.
The United states currently does not use this kind of ATM biometric technology but Baltimore Securityplus Federal Credit union did run a trial for a machine that used facial recognition tech
#Wearable device Changes Your Mood Wake up on the wrong side of the bed? Got a case of the Tuesdays?
Did some person a woman you thought you knew really well? did that someone racist post on Facebook really stick in your craw
and leave you peeved all morning, questioning the nature of humanity, until you had to just unfriend said person,
even though youe known her for twenty-plus years? Well, have we got something for you.
It Thync, a wearable device that zaps your brain with low levels of pulsed electrical energy to calm you down
Will Shanklin of Gizmag first tried Thync at the Consumer electronics Show in January 2015 and has written about it again with the company latest announcement that it's now taking.
but after using the head-mounted gadget a couple of times, says he has he wearable batting 1,
me feeling a meditative calm and an inspired energy just as theye supposed to. The Thync System, founded by Jamie Tyler,
and bioengineering and Isy Goldwasser, is a wireless device that pairs with an iphone or ipad via a Bluetooth connection (Android app coming soon).
Using the app, you chose the kind of session, the intensity as well as the length of a session.
The energy mode provide his brain with more clarity. Thync is considered a lifestyle product, as opposed to a medical device,
and therefore hasn undergone any testing, except those required by the Underwriter Laboratory to ensure its electrical safety.
#Tiny Radar Chip Gives Devices Gesture Control In the future, we might not have to touch devices at all to control them.
Google new venture called Project Soli enlists the help of radar to accurately detect minute hand
A sensor tracks the movements of hands, which control the input into a device. The team unveiled the new technology recently during its
I/O developer conference, displaying how users could move their fingers in the air to control objects in the virtual world.
Photosthe radar technology can fit onto a chip the size of a fingernail and can be produced at scale.
Google wants to put the chip into small electronic devices like smartwatches, along with everyday objects. The release date for the API to Soli has not yet been announced yet. via Business Inside n
where guided by magnetic fields it could be used to scout around and deliver medicines to specific locations.
Yes, creepy but also undeniably cool. At the ICRA 2015 conference in Seattle, researchers from MIT and TU Munich presented just such a creation in a presentation titled (cleverly) n Untethered Miniature Origami Robot That Self-folds, Walks, Swims,
The tiny robot is made of pre-cut polystyrene or paper panels which when heated, fold themselves into a very specific and asymmetrical shape.
which its moving by a set of electromagnetic coils underneath. T hose coils generate directional electromagnetic fields that cycle on
and off, causing the robot to oscillate and move in a specified manner determined by the asymmetrical folds.
and eventually attach integrated sensors and communication devices. Sounds great! You first d
#Rat Limb Grown in the Lab In a first step toward engineering replacement limbs in the lab,
it could give future amputees a natural transplant option that doesn require immunosuppressive therapies. The rat limb was grown by a team from the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
They used a technique called ecellularization, which basically strips the cellular materials from a limb of a dead rat,
scientists working in the field of tissue engineering have been unable to construct a basic framework to hold together all of the biological components that make up a leg or arm,
According to the press release, uscle progenitors were injected directly into the matrix sheaths that define the position of each muscle. he leg was left to culture in a bioreactor for five days.
After two weeks, the scientists removed the leg from the bioreactor to analyze it. Tests confirmed the presence of vascular cells along blood vessel walls
and muscle cells growing in fibrous structures. When electrically stimulated, the muscle fibers contracted with a strength 80 percent of
of the MGH Department of Surgery and the Center for Regenerative medicine and senior author of the research paper,
#Facial recognition System Detects Pain It a dilemma that plagued doctors for centuries: When it comes to pain management,
Doctors typically rely on self-reporting, in which patients are asked to rate their pain on a scale of zero to ten.
Researchers at the UC San diego School of medicine are hoping that facial recognition and artificial intelligence systems might help solve the problem.
In a study published this week in the journal Pediatrics, the researchers suggest that the technology can indeed help with accurate pain level assessment.
The research team used specially designed software to analyze the facial expressions of 50 kids, ages 5 to 18 years old, recovering from laparoscopic appendectomies.
The video analysis data was combined then with clinical input by caregivers to determine pain level scores for each patient.
The system was shown to deliver ood-to-excellentaccuracy in assessing pain conditions relative to existing protocols. urrent pain assessment methods in youth are suboptimal and vulnerable to bias and underrecognition of clinical pain,
the researchers write in the study introduction. acial expressions are a sensitive, specific biomarker of the presence and severity of pain,
and computer vision (CV) and machine-learning (ML) techniques enable reliable, valid measurement of pain-related facial expressions from video.
The computer vision techniques used in the study are based on the Facial Action Coding system (FACS),
Nurses might only check on a pediatric patient every few hours whereas a facial recognition system could provide constant monitoring.
And in cases when pain comes in pulses or waves, the system can determine intervals
and provide data for better administration of pain relief solutions
#Needle Injects Healing Electronics into the Brain Researchers have built a tiny mesh-like electronic sensor,
rolled it up into a hypodermic needle and injected it into the brain. The device taking this fantastic electronic voyage may soon be able to zap tumors,
repair damaged spinal cords or even connect parts of the brain like an artificial synapse. The key finding is that the sensor
and mesh combination is so small and bendy that it doesn cause any damage to the surrounding brain tissue, something that often plagues surgical procedures done with a needle, knife or other type of probe.
Could A Brain Implant Cure Depression? f one is thinking of trying to change the way one does long term brain implants,
it could be a really big deal, said Charles Lieber, chemistry professor at Harvard university and lead author on the new paper published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology. ou can promote a positive interaction
versus creating a reactive response which shields the electronics. Lieber said the stiffness of flexible electronic sensor is four to six orders magnitude bigger than current electronics. ells can penetrate through this,
he said. As a result, the sensor doesn provoke a response by the body immune system.
The mesh is made of a polymer material with electronics embedded inside. After an injection several centimeters into the brain of a laboratory mouse
the scientists were able to monitor electronic brain signals. Zhenan Bao, professor of chemical engineering at Stanford university who is also building injectable electronics,
said the experiment was n amazing piece of work. he concept is said ingenious, Bao via e-mail. am impressed that they were able to inject even the nanowire transistors with very high yield.""
""One big challenge with implantable devices is that the implanting procedure can be said very invasive
Bao.""This method makes implanting straightforward and probably almost painless. This is a game changer for implantable devices.
I imagine this concept will be broadly applicable to other applications where a thin electronic sheet needs to be embedded.
Brain-Zapping Implant Could Aid Injured Soldiers The authors of the paper say next step is to use the mesh system to deliver living stem cells that may help repair damaged sections of the brain or perhaps a multifunction electronic device
, according to Lieber. Lieber experiment was done on laboratory mice. Getting approval for such work in the human patients is still a few years away
he said i
#'Wi-fi'Nanoparticles Send Signals from the Brain The problem with talking to our own brains,
directly, is that we don really speak the same language. The brain uses complex electrical fields
and manipulate these fields, in a relatively blunt fashion, with implants and wires. But it like working with oven mitts on.
New findings published in the journal Future Medicine suggest that we may have another way forward.
A medical research team at Florida International University in Miami injected 20 billion nanoparticles into the brains of mice
with the idea of establishing a kind of direct wireless connection to neurons. DNEWS: Brain-To-Brain Networking Takes First Baby Stepsthe agnetoelectricnanoparticles (MENS) injected in the mice have several special properties.
First, theye small enough to sidle up to the neural network itself. Within whispering distance, you might say.
Secondly, the particles can be triggered by an outside magnetic field to produce an electric field when adjacent to individual neurons.
That electric field, researchers say, should be able to communicate directly with the brain electric field. hen MENS are exposed to even an extremely low frequency magnetic field,
they generate their own local electric field at the same frequency, lead researcher Sakhrat Khizroev told New Scientist. n turn,
the electric field can directly couple to the electric circuitry of the neural network. he nanoparticles could be used to deliver drugs to specific parts of the brain.
In fact, the team research has demonstrated already that anti-HIV and anticancer drugs could be delivered and released in this way.
Wearable device Changes Your Moodthe technique could also be used to create a new kind of brain-computer interface.
the nanoparticles could generate measurable magnetic fields in response to the brain electrical fields. Toggle the system back
#Brain-Sensing Headband Helps Users Manage Stress Technology and relaxation don always go hand in hand. However, a brain-sensing headband that reads brain waves
and provides real-time feedback has been developed to help users better focus and manage stress. The Muse headband is lined with seven EEG sensors that detect the brain electrical activity
and sends information about the user state of mind to a smartphone app, Calm, which is available on both ios and Android.
DNEWS: Is The Internet Really Ruining Your Attention span? Users are asked then to participate in a three-minute guided exercise that aims to reduce stress, calm anxiety and increase focus and concentration.
Results are provided through a series of graphs and charts, displaying performance and spikes that represent moments of distraction.
There also an option to track progress over time. Interaxon, the company behind the Muse headband and a Mars venture client, claims that sustained use of the device will train one brain to stay more naturally calm and focused.
Stress Slows Metabolismthe product website explains the benefits of focused attention training: esearch has shown using an app
and starting with 3 to 5 minutes can dramatically help you with mental exercises like meditation. he Muse headband costs $300
and currently comes with a 30-day money back guarantee u
#Printing Color Images Without Ink A new technology creates colorful images by manipulating light rather than applying ink.
The technology, developed by researchers at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, relies on engineered materials known as metamaterials
and was used to create the tiny, 50-micrometer-wide Missouri S&t athletic logo seen above.
DNEWS: Do I See Colors The Same Way You Do? Conventional color printing applies various semitransparent inks on top of each other to produce different hues,
but this technique takes a different approach. Rather than using ink, researchers made extremely small perforations in a structure made of two thin films of silver separated by a film of silica.
Then, the researchers poked minuscule holes into the top layer of silver film, which was a scant 25 nanometers deep.
The holes had different diameters ranging from 45 to 75 nanometers and corresponded to the desired absorption of light at various wavelengths.
When light was shined onto the structure the holes allowed certain wavelengths through at specific locations,
producing the colorful logo. nlike the printing process of an inkjet or laserjet printer, where mixed color pigments are used,
there is no color ink used in our structural printing process only different hole sizes on a thing metallic layer, Dr. Jie Gao,
assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at Missouri S&t told Gizmag. Artists Discover 3-D Printingthe Missouri S&t team believes the mechanical coloring on the silver/silica materials provide a much higher printing resolution than conventional color printing, according to Gizmag.
The researchersfindings were published recently in the journal Scientific Reports. via Gizma v
#Jet Contrails Actually Do Alter the Weather For a long time, those of us who think of ourselves as reality-based have snickered at the conspiracy theorists who argue that contrailshose wispy streams of ice
and pollution particles in the sky left behind by jet aircraftctually are signs of a clandestine government effort to modify the weather.
Pennsylvania State university geography professor Andrew M. Carleton and graduate student Jase Bernhardt studied April data from two weather stations, one in the South and the other in the Midwest,
Then they compared the daily temperature at sites with contrails above them with similar data from places where there weren any of the man-made clouds in the sky.
Otherwise, the sites were basically similar in terms of land use, cover, soil moisture and air-mass conditions. The researchers found that contrails somehow depress the difference between daytime and nighttime temperatures
What It Like to Ride in a Fighter jet? Find Outoddly, the research has a connection to another focal point of conspiracy theoristshe 9-11 attacks.
Hospitals have been on a crisis footing and dedicated heatstroke treatment centres have been set up around the city to treat the tens of thousands affected by heatstroke
Pakistan largest welfare charity and a leading provider of emergency medical care in Karachi, told AFP.
According to figures collected by AFP from hospitals around the city, a total of 1, 079 people have died as a result of the heatwave.
Karachi hospitals have treated nearly 80,000 people for the effects of heatstroke and dehydration, according to medical officials.
the poor and manual labourers who toil outdoors, prompting clerics to urge those at risk of heatstroke not to fast.
Doctor Qaiser Sajjad of the Pakistan Medical Association in Karachi said that a lack of understanding of heatstroke among the public how to spot symptoms
#Floating, Touchable'Fairy Lights'Unveiled A team of researchers from Japan has found a way to use a high-speed laser to create a touchable plasma display in mid-air.
Laser Technique Etches Water Repellence Into Metalthe team of researchers from the University of Tsukuba, Utsunomiya University,
Nagoya Institute of technology and the University of Tokyo believe their laser-induced plasma, which they've dubbed"Fairy Lights,
"has advantages over other 3-D displays. For starters, it doesn require physical matter arranged
Laser-induced plasma can also be controlled precisely. The researchers behind the project believe the technology has several applications,
aerial user interfaces and volumetric images. Laser Levitates Diamondsalthough the displays right now are tiny, at just eight cubic millimeters,
there hope that they will become larger as the technology progresses. Furthermore, lessons from this experiment can also be expanded to other rendering principles such as fluorescence and microbubble in solid/liquid materials, according to the researchers.
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