Rice researchers unveils new method to grow synthetic collagen

“New material may find use in reconstructive surgery, cosmetics, tissue engineering.”

Posted by Biomechanism 

In a significant advance for cosmetic and reconstructive medicine, scientists at Rice University have unveiled a new method for making synthetic collagen. The new material, which forms from a liquid in as little as an hour, has many of the properties of natural collagen and may prove useful as a scaffold for regenerating new tissues and organs from stem cells.

Caption: Rice University researchers Lesley O'Leary (left) and Jeffrey Hartgerink have unveiled a new method for making synthetic collagen, which could prove useful for regenerating new tissues and organs from stem cells. Credit: Jeff Fitlow/Rice University

“Our work is significant in two ways,” said Rice’s Jeffrey Hartgerink, the lead author of a new paper about the research in Nature Chemistry. “Our final product more closely resembles native collagen than anything that’s previously been made, and we make that material using a self-assembly process that is remarkably similar to processes found in nature.”

Collagen, the most abundant protein in the body, is a key component of many tissues, including skin, tendons, ligaments, cartilage and blood vessels. Biomedical researchers in the burgeoning field of regenerative medicine, or tissue engineering, often use a combination of stem cells and collagen-like materials in their attempts to create laboratory-grown tissues that can be transplanted into patients without risk of immunological rejection.

Animal-derived collagen, which has some inherent immunological risks, is the form of collagen most commonly used in reconstructive and cosmetic surgery today. Animal-derived collagen is also used in many cosmetics.

Despite the abundance of collagen in the body, deciphering or recreating it has not been easy for scientists. One reason for this is the complexity collagen exhibits at different scales. For example, just as a rope is made of many interwoven threads, collagen fibers are made of millions of proteins called peptides. Like a rope net that can trap and hold items, collagen fibers can form three-dimensional structures called hydrogels that trap and hold water.

“Our supramolecules, fibers and hydrogels form in a similar way to native collagen, but we start with shorter peptides,” said Hartgerink, associate professor of chemistry and of bioengineering.

With an eye toward mimicking collagen’s self-assembly process as closely as possible, Hartgerink’s team spent several years perfecting its design for the peptides.

Hartgerink said it’s too early to say whether the synthetic collagen can be substituted medically for human or animal-derived collagen, but it did clear the first hurdle on that path; the enzyme that the body uses to break down native collagen also breaks down the new material at a similar speed.

A faculty investigator at Rice’s BioScience Research Collaborative, Hartgerink said scientists must next determine whether cells can live and grow in the new material and whether it performs the same way in the body that native collagen does. He estimated that clinical trials, if they prove warranted, are at least five years away.

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The paper’s co-authors include Rice graduate students Lesley O’Leary, Jorge Fallas, Erica Bakota and Marci Kang. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Robert A. Welch Foundation and the Norman Hackerman Advanced Research Program of Texas.

Mobile phone electromagnetic field affects local glucose metabolism in the human brain

by Biomechanics 

Recent PET-measurements in Turku, Finland, show that the GSM mobile phone electromagnetic field suppresses glucose metabolism in temporoparietal and anterior temporal areas of the hemisphere next to the antenna. 

Thirteen young healthy males were exposed to the GSM signal for 33 minutes.

The study, initiated by Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) at University of Turku, was methodologically unique combining the expertice in brain imaging (National PET-Center and CCN), measurements and modeling of radiation (Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority in Finland, STUK) and measurements of skin temperature (Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, TTL). 

No conclusions concerning health risks can be made based on the result.

The study was financed by Finnish Technology Agency (Tekes) as part of the national Wirecom (wireless communication) research program. The results were published in Journal of Blood Circulation and Metabolism (advance online publication, on 14 September 2011).

A guiding light for new directions in energy production

Posted by Biomechanism 


The science of light and liquids has been intimately entwined since Léon Foucault discovered the speed of light in 1862, when he observed that light travels more slowly in water than in air.

This physical harmony between the two materials is now being harnessed to collect and drive light to where it can be the most useful. October’s issue of Nature Photonics focuses on optofluidics, the study of microfluidics—the microscopic delivery of fluids through extremely small channels or tubes—combined with optics. In a review written by Demetri Psaltis, Dean of EPFL’s School of Engineering, he and his co-authors argue that optofluidics is poised to take on one of this century’s most important challenges: energy.

“By directing the light and concentrating where it can be most efficiently used, we could greatly increase the efficiency of already existing energy producing systems, such as biofuel reactors and solar cells, as well as innovate entirely new forms of energy production” explains Psaltis. “EPFL is the world leader in optofluidics, our institution is in a position to develop truly efficient and disruptive energy sources.”

Sunlight is already used for energy production besides conventional solar panels. For example, it is used to convert water and carbon dioxide into methane in large industrial biofuel plants. Prisms and mirrors are commonly employed to direct and concentrate sunlight to heat water on the roofs of homes and apartment buildings. These techniques already employ the same principles found in optofluidics—control and manipulation of light and liquid transfer—but often without the precision offered by nano and micro technology.

A futuristic example: Optofluidic solar lighting system

Caption: By combining nano technology with optics, bioreactors can have increased efficiency -- opening new doors for clean energy production. Credit: EPFL / Greg Pasche

How can we better exploit the light that hits the outside of a building? Imagine sunlight channelled into the building An optofluidic solar lighting system could capture sunlight from a roof using a light concentrating system that follows the sun’s path by changing the angle of the water’s refraction, and then distribute the sunlight throughout the building through light pipes or fibre optic cables to the ceilings of office spaces, indoor solar panels, or even microfluidic air filters. Using sunlight to drive a microfluidic air filter or aliment an indoor solar panel—which would be protected from the elements and last longer—is a novel way to use solar energy to supplement non-renewable resources.

In such a system, it would be essential to deviate from the secondary devices such as air filtrage and solar panels to maintain a comfortable constant light source for ceiling lighting—the flickering of the light source due to a cloud passing over would be intolerable. In order to modulate these different channels to maintain a constant light source, a system using electrowetting could deviate light from one channel into another both easily and inexpensively. A droplet of water sits on the outer surface of light tube. A small current excites the ions in the water, pushing them to the edge of the droplet and expanding it just enough for it to touch the surface of another tube. This expanded droplet then creates a light bridge between the two parallel light tubes, effectively moderating the amount of light streaming through either one.

Up-scaling for industrial use

“The main challenge optofluidics faces in the energy field is to maintain the precision of nano and micro light and fluid manipulation while creating industrial sized installations large enough to satisfy the population’s energy demand,” explains David Erickson, professor at Cornell University and visiting professor at EPFL. “Much like a super computer is built out of small elements, up-scaling optofluidic technology would follow a similar model—the integration of many liquid chips to create a super-reactor.”

Since most reactions in liquid channels happen at the point of contact between the liquid and the catalyst-lined tubes, the efficiency of a system depends on how much surface area is available for reactions to take place. Scaling down the size of the channels to the micro and nano level allows for thousands more channels in the same available space, greatly increasing the overall surface area and leading to a radical reduction of the size needed (and ultimately the cost) for catalytic and other chemical reactions. Adding a light source as a catalyst to the directed flow of individual molecules in nanotubes allows for extreme control and high efficiency.

Their review in Nature Phontonics lays out several possibilities for up-scaling optofluidics, such as using optical fibers to transport sunlight into large indoor biofuel reactors with mass-produced nanotubes. They point out that the use of smaller spaces could increase power density and reduce operating costs; optofluidics offers flexibility when concentrating and directing sunlight for solar collection and photovoltaic panels; and by increasing surface area, the domain promises to reduce the use of surface catalysts—the most expensive element in many reactors.

________________

Citation: Nature Photonics, Online Publication September 11 • 10.1038/nphoton.2011.209.
Title: Optofluidics for energy applications
Authors: David Erickson, David Sinton, Demetri Psaltis
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vwQ47TLJrA

7 STEP FORMULA TO BUSINESS SUCCESS

Looking for an outline to business success? This neat formula gives quick, easy advice to jumpstart you into a money-making business! Get the formula here!

Top 7 Business shares…

1. Goals are the first step to business success. Jim Rohn believes that “If you go to work on your goals, your goals will go to work on you. If you go to work on your plan, your plan will go to work on you. Whatever good things we build end up building us.”
2. Action should follow your goals. “Don’t be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment.” says Ralph Waldo Emerson.
3. Persistence is also important after your initial burst of action. “You have to put in many, many, many tiny efforts that nobody sees or appreciates before you achieve anything worthwhile.” Brian Tracy
4. Good questions will keep you on the right track say Anthony Robbins.. “Successful people ask better questions, and as a result, they get better answers.”
5. Change with your business or be left behind. “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Charles Darwin
6. Luck and timing will ensure success, so be prepared for luck. “I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity.” Oprah Winfrey
7. Success comes when everyone profits. “I have found no greater satisfaction than achieving success through honest dealing and strict adherence to the view that, for you to gain, those you deal with should gain as well.” Alan Greenspan.

Get more information at Top 7 Business!

Sai Dhun.wmv

108 names of Sri Sathya Sai Baba (Sri Sathya Sai Baba Ashtottaram)

Where Could UARS Satellite Debris Fall?

UARS Satellite Re-entry Crash to Earth

New light shed on schizophrenia

Schizophrenia affects 1 in 100 people and its onset is typically in adolescence or early adulthood. Image: dlerick/iStockphoto Researchers are a step closer to unravelling the genetic underpinnings of schizophrenia following the largest genome-wide association study of the disorder ever undertaken. An international consortium of 190 researchers from 135 institutions, including the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI), found significant associations with schizophrenia for five new and two previously-implicated locations on the human genome. It has long been recognised that schizophrenia is highly heritable. However, this new study has pinpointed novel regions of the human genome significantly associated with disease, and confirmed other recently reported genomic regions that may harbour disease-causing genetic variation. According to Professor Bryan Mowry from QBI, the Queensland Centre for Mental Health Research and UQ's Department of Psychiatry, who initiated and coordinated the Australian contribution to this study, these findings were made possible because of the unprecedented size of the study, with more than 50,000 participants. "It provides a solid foundation for beginning to understand the mechanisms underlying the substantial genetic predisposition to schizophrenia," Professor Mowry said. The research was published in the latest issue of Nature Genetics. Schizophrenia affects 1 in 100 people and its onset is typically in adolescence or early adulthood. Psychosis (comprising hallucinations and delusions) is the hallmark of schizophrenia, but other symptoms such as personal neglect and amotivation are common, as is an increased risk of suicide. Professor Mowry says that gaining a better understanding of the genetic architecture of schizophrenia will ultimately aid the earlier diagnosis and management of the disorder. "If your genetic profile suggests you have a predisposition towards developing schizophrenia, it will be particularly important for you to avoid known environmental risk factors, such as smoking cannabis," he says. "We also expect that understanding the biological mechanisms underlying the disorder will lead to more robust therapeutics in future." The strongest genome-wide association finding in the study was to single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in a region containing numerous immune-related genes, suggesting schizophrenia may be triggered by autoimmune responses or infection. Another SNP in a region linked to neuronal development was also implicated, suggesting a novel mechanism underlying schizophrenia. The study also confirmed genetic overlap between bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, suggesting that these disorders have shared rather than separate roots. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

Legionella ‘more than a parasite’

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY

Legionella bacteria  Image: sidknee23, Flickr CC-licensed Contrary to some scientific beliefs, Flinders University PhD candidate Michael Taylor has literally grown his own evidence to suggest the bacterium which causes the potentially-fatal Legionnaires’ disease is more than just a parasite. Using water tanks, Mr Taylor has created a lab-scale air-conditioning cooling tower – an ideal breeding ground for the legionella bacteria – and cultivated the aquatic organism in ideal temperatures to see whether it only ever feeds off a host, as parasites do, or if it can exist outside the environment and gain nutrients from multiple sources. “There are two mechanisms of survival for legionella,” Mr Taylor, 26, said. “One argues that legionella can only ever exist in a host, such as an amoeba, and the other group suggests it does that when the opportunity arises but it can quite happily live in other environments.” According to his microscopic-based research, Mr Taylor said he had sided with the belief that the organism can actually live without being a parasite. “I took samples of bacterial slime that the legionella was growing in and found clusters that weren’t growing in an amoeba; they actually looked like they had multiplied by themselves outside of a host. “The conclusion I’ve therefore come to is that the organism has multiple survival strategies and doesn’t just live inside a host, there are other ways it can survive and exist.” Discovered in 1976, Mr Taylor said legionella was a relatively new bacteria yet one that has not been the subject of much scientific research. “It doesn’t cause a whole lot of deaths in the realm of disease but the thing that makes it scary is that if you walk into a supermarket and they haven’t cleaned their cooling tower you can breathe it in and get sick – it’s not something you can avoid just by cleaning out your pantry. “It’s also a relatively untouched area of research but if you know specifically how it lives you can understand how to get rid of it more effectively.” A presentation on Mr Taylor’s research was a finalist in Flinders University’s inaugural Three Minute Thesis, a competition which encourages PhD students to explain their research project in plain English, both on paper and in person. Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

World’s smallest nanowire built

World’s smallest nanowire built

SWINBURNE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY

The tiny nanowires leads the way to a 'photonic chip', which can bring faster and more sustainable internet. Image: ahlobystov/iStockphoto Australian researchers have engineered one of the world’s smallest ever nanowires for the next generation of telecommunication technology, bringing them one step closer to the holy grail of optics – the creation of a ‘photonic chip’ which would lead to a faster, more sustainable internet. In a paper published in the journal Nano Letters, researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and the Australian National University, describe how they fabricated a tiny nanowire, which is 1000 times thinner than a human hair, in a special type of glass known as chalcogenide.  According to lead author and Swinburne PhD candidate Elisa Nicoletti, this is a significant step towards the realisation of the photonic chip – the primary goal of the Centre for Ultrahigh bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS), a nation-wide collaborative project involving six universities and over 130 researchers. The new result demonstrates the importance of the research collaboration enabled by the ARC Centre of Excellence scheme. Consisting of countless kilometres of optic fibre cable, the internet is connected by electronic routers. However, these routers work at much slower speeds than the optic cables, which slows the system down. The photonic chip would solve this problem, powering ultra-fast telecommunications networks that transfer information at the speed of light. But the scientists aren’t there yet. The realisation of the chip will rely on a range of factors, including the fabrication of extremely small materials and the researchers’ ability to harness a unique optical property known as the ‘non-linear effect’. This is where the Australian team’s tiny new nanowires come into play. “In order to make the chip small, every component needs to be extremely small,” Nicoletti said. “So we always try to push it that bit further to make our nanostructures as tiny as possible.” Up until now, researchers have only been able to make nanowires of this size in polymers, which don’t have the same unique characteristics as chalcogenide glass. Chalcogenide exhibits non-linearity, which means its optical density changes according to the applied light intensity. “If you pump high density light into an optic fibre made of non-linear material, you can actually change its properties, and therefore change the way other light moves along it,” Nicoletti said. It is this combination of tiny materials and non-linearity, which has brought the researchers one step closer to their ultimate goal. According to Professor Min Gu, who is Director of Swinburne’s Centre for Micro-Photonics and leading the Swinburne arm of CUDOS, the group’s success will not only create a much faster internet, it will also lead to a more sustainable one. “Not many people realise this, but the internet is a major energy consumer. It’s projected that in the next decade it will count for half of the world’s energy use,” he said. “So making it more efficient will make a huge difference to our carbon footprint.” Editor's Note: Original news release can be found here.

First job for Accountant.....(funny)

Fresh out of business school, the young man answered a want 
ad for an accountant. Now he was being interviewed by a very 
nervous man who ran a small business that he had started 
himself.

"I need someone with an accounting degree," the man said. 
"But mainly, I'm looking for someone to do my worrying for 
me."

"Excuse me?" the accountant said.

"I worry about a lot of things," the man said. "But I don't want 
to have to worry about money. Your job will be to take all the 
money worries off my back."

"I see," the accountant said. "And how much does the job 
pay?"

"I'll start you at eighty thousand."

"Eighty thousand dollars!" the accountant exclaimed. "How 
can such a small business afford a sum like that?"

"That," the owner said, "is your first worry.

Researchers Announce a Breakthrough on HIV/AIDS Treatment

A technique that alters T cells has been shown to reduce the amount of virus in infected people.

• BY DEBORAH ERICKSON

Audio »

For the first time, researchers have shown that a cell-based therapy for HIV/AIDS can reduce the amount of virus in infected people. The breakthrough—big news for researchers, who have struggled for decades to create vaccines and cell-based therapies for HIV—was announced on Sunday at the 51st Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy in Chicago. To date, the sole treatment for HIV has been multidrug regimens that prolong life but never eliminate the virus.

Sangamo BioSciences of Richmond, California, says it has found a way to protect the T cells that HIV attacks first, so they can live to fight another day. The approach entails temporarily stopping a patient's antiretroviral therapy and removing T cells carrying the CD4 receptor. This surface protein is the doorway by which the virus gains entry into the cell. The collected T cells are exposed to zinc finger nuclease, an enzyme designed to remove the gene for a coreceptor of CD4 called CCR5. The cells are then reinfused into the patient. Once they're back in the body, the new study shows, the cells persist and travel in the body just like normal T cells.

Sangamo's approach is based on the observation that some people have a naturally occurring mutation in the CCR5 gene that protects them against HIV. Ordinarily, humans have two copies of every gene. It turns out that individuals with a mutation in both copies of the CCR5 gene cannot be infected by the most common HIV strains. In people with the so-called Delta-32 mutation in just one copy of the gene, infection rarely progresses to AIDS. In the U.S., about 1 percent of the population is thought to carry the helpful mutation, which some researchers believe arose as protection against the Black Death.

Previous evidence existed showing that CCR5-negative cells could help AIDS patients. In 2007, an American man with AIDS and lymphoma received, as treatment for the cancer, a bone-marrow transplant from a person with the CCR5 mutation. The marrow recipient has been free of both AIDS and cancer since then. Sangamo's method treats a patient's own cells, with less risk than a marrow transplant.

"The data are very encouraging," says Edward Lanphier, Sangamo's founding CEO. "We are seeing a statistically significant correlation between our treatment and viral load reduction. This is a big step forward toward our goal of developing a functional cure for the disease." Lanphier envisions that someday AIDS patients will not need to be on aggressive antiretroviral therapies because their virus will be well-controlled—or even undetectable, as happened with one subject with a mutation in one CCR5 gene.

Experts unaffiliated with Sangamo and its clinical trials agree that the scientific achievement is impressive, but they question the notion that it could yield a functional cure. Gerhard Bauer, assistant professor in the Stem Cell Program at the University of California, Davis, and director of that school's Good Manufacturing Practice laboratory at the Institute for Regenerative Cures, says, "this is a great move forward, to demonstrate reduction of viral load by pushing in modified T cells. It has never been done before by any company, and I congratulate them 100 percent."

However, Bauer says, he is "not so sure" the company will be able to create a functional cure. T cells don't live forever, he points out.

"This is encouraging," says Ellen Feigal, vice president of R&D at the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, "and it provides supporting evidence for a study we funded that would take the work to the next step." This study, by researchers at City of Hope, a cancer center in Duarte, California, aims to provide patients with a permanent supply of HIV-resistant T cells. The strategy calls for modifying patients' blood-forming stem cells, which produce all future T cells as well as the macrophages and dendritic cells that can also be HIV targets.

Sangamo is also exploring the potential of stem-cell modification with City of Hope researchers, but the company does not concede that modified stem cells will be necessary or any better than T cells. "Yes, T cells turn over," says Geoff Nichol, who joined Sangamo as executive vice president of R&D a few months ago to commercialize the platform, "but there are some very long-lasting subsets that can live for years and years and remember the epitope they came up against. We are feeling bullish about T cells because of our data."

Sangamo's news is "certainly scientifically interesting," observes Warner Greene, director of the Gladstone Institute at the University of California, San Francisco. But, he points out, no cell therapy, whether it involves T cells or stem cells, is a practical approach to treating HIV/AIDS throughout the developing world, where seven out of 10 new infections are occurring. "We really need to be looking for therapies that can benefit the millions of individuals with HIV, not just a select few who might be able to afford cellular therapies."

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Three-Dimensional Design Leads to Better Solar Cells

By borrowing a trick from optical-fiber technology, a startup makes cells that trap light to create more electricity.

• BY PRACHI PATEL

Audio »

A Santa Barbara, California, company called Solar3D plans to make silicon solar cells that are more efficient than conventional cells by borrowing the light-trapping concept behind optical-fiber technology. The company claims that its three-dimensional design will funnel light into silicon and keep it trapped—giving the material more time to convert it into electricity.

Silicon has a theoretical maximum light-to-electricity conversion efficiency of 29 percent, but panels on the market today are only 15 to 18 percent efficient. Solar3D does not have exact efficiency numbers for its design yet, but CEO Jim Nelson says, "We think it's going to approach silicon's theoretical efficiency. We won't get to 29 percent—nobody's going to get that high with silicon—but we're hoping to get as close as possible."

Solar3D's design will tackle two factors that bring down solar efficiency. First, 30 percent of the light hitting solar panels is reflected and lost. Second, many of the electrons created when light hits silicon are reabsorbed by the material before they reach the external circuit.

The new design has channels in its top light-collecting layer, which will be made of silicon dioxide or another similar material; these direct light downward, helping to eliminate reflection, Nelson says. The lower layer is an array of three-dimensional structures, each a few micrometers wide, which trap light by emulating the waveguides used in optical fibers. Optical fibers contain two cylindrical layers with different refractive indices that continuously reflect light back into the core. Nelson says this 3D structure will allow the light to bounce around until the photons have yielded as many electrons as possible. "We'll also put contacts very close to where that happens so that the electrons don't have to travel very far," he says.

Many other light-trapping concepts exist. Another that borrows the technology of optical fibers is a fiber-optic solar cell that Georgia Tech researchers have made by wrapping dye-sensitized solar cells around optical fibers. But, says Nelson, Solar3D's cells use conventional silicon materials, so they could be produced on existing manufacturing equipment and be dropped into existing modules.

Solar3D is at a very early stage and is starting out at a time when venture capitalists are hesitant to fund solar technologies with high startup costs. But the company is not seeking venture capital. Instead, it is funded by private investors, including Nelson, who come from a finance background but have a passion for renewable energy. Analysts say the company's success will hinge on whether its manufacturing costs will compete with conventional crystalline silicon technology. "It's very difficult for new emerging technologies to gain a foothold in the market," says Matthew Feinstein, an analyst with Lux Research. "Bankability is often a major concern, as these technologies don't have a proven track record."

Technologies such as Solar3D's that promise higher efficiencies are good because they will make solar power less expensive, says Georgina Benedetti, an analyst with Frost & Sullivan. However, she says, "one main challenge for the industry in general is competition from Chinese manufacturing." Cheaper solar panels from China combined with troubles controlling costs are what led to the downfall of Solyndra, the Fremont, California, solar-panel manufacturer that recently declared bankruptcy after having been backed by a U.S. Department of Energy loan guarantee.

But Nelson seems undeterred. He is confident in Solar3D's design and its compatibility with existing solar infrastructure. "Our whole approach is made with mass production in mind," he says. "Our whole purpose is to make it competitive." The company expects to have a prototype device made by the end of 2011.