High school senior kills cancer with nanotech, still can't legally drink -- Engadget

High school senior kills cancer with nanotech, still can't legally drink -- Engadget

17-year old medical prodigy Angela Zhang from Cupertino was just awarded the Siemens Foundation grand prize -- a $100,000 payday -- for her work "Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells." It's certainly a mouthful, but this nanotech is what one fellow researcher's calling the "Swiss Army knife of cancer treatment," as her gold and iron-oxide nanoparticle does double duty delivering the drug salinomycin to a tumor site, in addition to aiding MRI and photoacoustic imaging.

BBC News - China and Bill Gates discuss nuclear reactor plan

BBC News - China and Bill Gates discuss nuclear reactor plan

China is set to start work on a novel design for a nuclear reactor with the help of a firm founded by Bill Gates.

Terrapower is working on a design for what is known as a travelling wave reactor. This uses depleted uranium as its power source and is believed to produce less nuclear waste than other designs.

Terrapower is working on a design for what is known as a travelling wave reactor. This uses depleted uranium as its power source and is believed to produce less nuclear waste than other designs.

BBC News - Nanoparticle hollowing method promises medical advances

BBC News - Nanoparticle hollowing method promises medical advances

A process to "carve" highly complicated shapes into nanoparticles has been unveiled by a team of researchers. The researchers added that the technique could also aid drug delivery. "It's a wonderful molecular suitcase," said Prof Puntes.

The research was carried out by the Catalan Institute of Nanotechnology in Bellaterra, Spain and is published in an issue of Science.

However, the professor acknowledged that at this early stage he could only guess at the eventual uses such nanomaterials would have.

"When people first invented plastic they didn't know what to do with it, we knew electricity was around for over a thousand years before we learned how to do something useful with it," Prof Puntes said.

"This creates different materials so they will probably have lots of different properties."

Scientists use inkjet to print scaffolds for growing bones | News | The Engineer

Scientists use inkjet to print scaffolds for growing bones | News | The Engineer

Read more: http://www.theengineer.co.uk/sectors/medical-and-healthcare/news/scientists-use-inkjet-to-print-scaffolds-for-growing-bones/1011092.article#ixzz1fCEBlaiu

Washington State University (WSU) researchers have used a 3D printer to create a bone-like material.

The inkjet printer is reportedly able to generate structures that can be used in orthopaedic procedures and dental work. These same structures could also be used to deliver medicine for treating osteoporosis.

The authors report on successful in vitro tests in the journal Dental Materials and say they’re already seeing promising results with in vivo tests on rats and rabbits.

Susmita Bose, co-author and a professor at WSU’s school of mechanical and materials engineering, said that it’s possible that doctors will be able to custom order replacement bone tissue in a few years.

New state of matter seen on cheap

The state of matter is a plasma like those in conventional nuclear fusion tests, but at higher densities.

The professor behind the demonstration says it can be achieved for a mere £10.

In fact, it's just a water-hammer effect, an impact that shatters the liquid column, creating a trail of bubbles that are clearly visible in daylight. "When the bubbles collapse," Professor Sella explains, "they generate incredibly high temperatures - 10 thousand degrees. That's twice the temperature of the surface of the Sun."

Professor Putterman is emphatic: "We have not yet succeeded - no-one has yet succeeded - in generating nuclear fusion inside these bubbles. However, we're looking around for that trick that could boost our parameters by a factor of 10, to get it to the region of fusion." "I can't wait to tell my nuclear physicist friends, that for a cost of around £10, I'm up in the region that they do for the cost of hundreds of millions of pounds. It's very exciting."

Portable breast cancer detector | Ubergizmo

Portable breast cancer detector | Ubergizmo

Nihon University’s exhibit is tipped to be further refined so that it will see action by being used to perform easy cancer tests at just about anywhere, be it at home or at a public area.

Researchers over at the Nihon University used a technology known as “phase shift method”, where light-emitting and light-receiving elements which rely on LEDs were formed on the surface so that it can be applied to the breast. A light with a wavelength of 850nm is emitted, where light reflected from the breast will be detected. As a cancerous part will reflect a slightly different color, it will be easier to detect any cancer in its early stages.

BBC News - Bionic contact lens 'to project emails before eyes'

BBC News - Bionic contact lens 'to project emails before eyes'

A new generation of contact lenses that project images in front of the eyes is a step closer after successful animal trials, say scientists.

The technology could allow wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images, Terminator-syle.

Researchers at Washington University who are working on the device say early tests show it is safe and feasible.

A new generation of contact lenses that project images in front of the eyes is a step closer after successful animal trials, say scientists.

The technology could allow wearers to read floating texts and emails or augment their sight with computer-generated images, Terminator-syle.

Researchers at Washington University who are working on the device say early tests show it is safe and feasible.

But there are still wrinkles to iron out, like finding a good power source.

Currently, their crude prototype device can only work if it is within centimetres of the wireless battery.

And its microcircuitry is only enough for one light-emitting diode, reports the Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering.
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“Our next goal is to incorporate some predetermined text in the contact lens”

Lead researcher Professor Babak Praviz

But now that initial safety tests in rabbits have gone well, with no obvious adverse effects, the researchers have renewed faith about the device's possibilities.

They envisage hundreds more pixels could be embedded in the flexible lens to produce complex holographic images.

For example, drivers could wear them to see journey directions or their vehicle's speed projected onto the windscreen.

Similarly, the lenses could take the virtual world of video gaming to a new level.

They could also provide up-to-date medical information like blood sugar levels by linking to biosensors in the wearer's body.
Delicate materials

Lead researcher Professor Babak Praviz said: "Our next goal is to incorporate some predetermined text in the contact lens."

He said his team had already overcome a major hurdle to this, which is getting the human eye to focus on an image generated on its surface.

Normally, we can only see objects clearly if they are held several centimetres away from the eye.

The scientists, working with colleagues at Aalto University in Finland, have now adapted the lenses to shorten the focal distance.

Building the end product was a challenge because materials used to make conventional contact lenses are delicate.

Manufacturing electrical circuits, however, involves inorganic materials, scorching temperatures and toxic chemicals. Researchers built the circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometres thick, about one thousandth the width of a human hair, and constructed light-emitting diodes measuring one third of a millimetre across.

Dr Praviz and his team are not the only scientists working on this type of technology.

A Swiss company called Sensimed has already brought to market a smart contact lens that uses inbuilt computer technology to monitor pressure inside the eye to keep tabs on the eye condition glaucoma.

BBC News - Scientists at MIT replicate brain activity with chip

BBC News - Scientists at MIT replicate brain activity with chip

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have designed a computer chip that mimics how the brain's neurons adapt in response to new information.

There are about 100 billion neurons in the brain, each of which forms synapses - the connections between neurons that allow information to flow - with many other neurons.

The MIT team, led by research scientist Chi-Sang Poon, has been able to design a computer chip that can simulate the activity of a single brain synapse.

Neurobiologists seem to be impressed.

It represents "a significant advance in the efforts to incorporate what we know about the biology of neurons and synaptic plasticity onto ...chips," said Dean Buonomano, a professor of neurobiology at the University of California.

"The level of biological realism is impressive," he added.

The team plans to use their chip to build systems to model specific neural functions, such as visual processing.

Such systems could be much faster than computers which take hours or even days to simulate a brain circuit. The chip could ultimately prove to be even faster than the biological process.

Light 'promising' in cancer fight

Light is a "promising" tool in the fight against cancer, say researchers in the US.

A study, published in Nature Medicine, showed how a drug could be created which sticks to tumours, but is then only activated when hit by specific waves of light.

In this study, researchers at the National Cancer Institute, Maryland, used an antibody which targets proteins on the surface of cancerous cells. They then attached a chemical, IR700, to the antibody. IR700 is activated when it is hit by near infrared light. This wavelength of light can penetrate several centimetres into the skin.

Link: BBC News - Light 'promising' in cancer fight

Power from the people

BBC News - Power from the people

Plugging gadgets into a socket in the wall, or loading them with batteries - or maybe even unfurling a solar panel - is how most of us think of getting electricity. But what about plugging them into your body?

It may sound far fetched, but under the shadow of the Alps, Dr Serge Cosnier and his team at the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble have built a device to do just that. Their gadget, called a biofuel cell, uses glucose and oxygen at concentrations found in the body to generate electricity.

Dr Cosnier agrees that there is a lot of room for improvement. "Today we can generate enough power to supply an artificial urinary sphincter, or pacemaker. We are already working on a system that can produce 50 times that amount of power, then we will have enough to supply much more demanding devices," he said.

Implants aren't the only place you may find bio fuel cells in the future. The electronics giant Sony recently announced that it had created a biofuel cell fuelled with glucose and water that was capable of powering an MP3 player. "In 10 years time you may see bio fuel cells in laptops and mobile phones," said Prof Willner.

Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control

BBC News - Real-life Jedi: Pushing the limits of mind control
We are standing in a testing room at IBM's Emerging Technologies lab in Winchester, England.

On my head is a strange headset that looks like a black plastic squid. Its 14 tendrils, each capped with a moistened electrode, are supposed to detect specific brain signals.

In front of us is a computer screen, displaying an image of a floating cube.

As I think about pushing it, the cube responds by drifting into the distance.

Admittedly, the system needed a fair bit of pre-training to achieve this single task. But it has, nonetheless, learned to associate a specific thought pattern with a particular movement.