Self-cleaning coating gets tough

Chemists have devised a better method of coating fabrics with a water-repellent, "self-cleaning" coating.

Super-hydrophobic surfaces have fascinated scientists for years; they are behind the lotus plant's self-cleaning leaves and the gecko's super-dry and thus super-sticky feet.

These surfaces are practically impossible to wet - water beads on them and dirt and particulates do not stick to them, leading to the self-cleaning description. Chemists looking for the next best thing in clothing coatings have tried several tricks in recent years to create a coating with similar properties in the laboratory. Uncoated fibres (top) and fibres coated with multiple layers of silica nanoparticles - the same stuff as sand

The new work hinges on what is known as layer-by-layer self-assembly - basically dipping a fabric into a solution over and over again to deposit multiple layers on it.


The team from the Australian Future Fibres Research and Innovation Centre at Deakin University made their solution with tiny particles of silica.

Source: BBC News - Stain-shedding coating gets tough

BBC News - 3D images of tissue may help spot and treat cancer

Three-dimensional images of tissue samples could help spot cancer early, say researchers.

Scientists from the University of Leeds have created a technique to generate hi-resolution, colour 3D images of a piece of tissue. Cancer Research UK said the technology could help researchers understand how cancer grew and spread, and learn how to treat it more effectively.


The scanner then creates 2D impressions of each cross-section, and this is where the new technology comes into play. The software developed by the Leeds University team generates a three-dimensional shape from these virtual slides, creating a realistic image that a researcher can manipulate and spin around.



Source: BBC News - 3D images of tissue may help spot and treat cancer

BBC News - Self-sculpting sand robots are under development at MIT

Tiny robots that can join together to form functional tools and then split apart again after use might be ready for market in little more than a decade, according to researchers.

A team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says it has developed about 30 prototype "smart pebbles" and the software to run them. Each processor can currently store 32 kilobytes of code and has only two kilobytes of working memory - so the algorithm powering the process had to be kept simple. "The idea is that they sense the border of the original shape - if a module detects it doesn't have a neighbour, it assumes it may be on the border of the shape," Mr Gilpin explained.


"But in 10 years you might see a product on the market that starts to rival traditional manufacturing approaches. I think we might all be surprised at how quickly this advances once people really start looking at the technology."

More details of the project will be presented to the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in St Paul, Minnesota next month.


Source: BBC News - Self-sculpting sand robots are under development at MIT

BBC News - Breast cancer rules rewritten in 'landmark' study

What we currently call breast cancer should be thought of as 10 completely separate diseases, according to an international study which has been described as a "landmark".

The categories could improve treatment by tailoring drugs for a patient's exact type of breast cancer and help predict survival more accurately.

"Breast cancer is not one disease, but 10 different diseases," said lead researcher Prof Carlos Caldas.

The study was funded by Cancer Research UK. Its chief executive, Dr Harpal Kumar, said: "This is the largest ever study looking in detail at the genetics of breast tumors.


Source BBC News - Breast cancer rules rewritten in 'landmark' study

AngelMed Guardian alerts you before a heart attack strikes | Ubergizmo

Heart attacks are scary – you can never know when one might hit you squarely in the chest. The AngelMed Guardian intends to circumvent this potentially fatal situation by warning you beforehand thanks to a self-monitoring alert mode. The downside to it? You will need to be carved open first, as this is an implantable medical device.



Source: AngelMed Guardian alerts you before a heart attack strikes | Ubergizmo

New prostate cancer treatment may reduce side-effects

A new technique to treat early prostate cancer may have far fewer side-effects than existing therapies, say experts.

A 41-patient study in the journal Lancet Oncology suggests targeted ultrasound treatment could reduce the risk of impotence and incontinence. The Medical Research Council (MRC), which funded the study, welcomed the results, which it said were promising. Hashim Ahmed, a urological surgeon at the trust who led the study, says the results, 12 months after treatment, are very encouraging.



Source: BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17726979

Stem Cells from Pelvic Bone May Preserve Heart Function

Stem cells from the pelvic bone may help hearts beat stronger. Doctors and other clinicians at the Orlando Health Heart Institute are researching the use of stem cells from pelvic bone marrow to restore tissue and improve heart function after muscle damage from heart attacks.

"The thought is the body may use itself to heal itself," said Vijaykumar S. Kasi, MD, PhD, an interventional cardiologist, director, Cardiovascular Research, and principal investigator for the clinical trial at ORMC.

The PreSERVE-AMI Study, sponsored by Amorcyte, LLC, a NeoStem, Inc. company (NYSE Amex: NBS), is for patients who have received a stent to open the blocked artery after a specific heart attack history (in part a ST-Segment Elevation Myocardial Infarction, or STEMI, a critical type of heart attack caused by a prolonged period of blocked blood supply, affecting a large area of the heart muscle and causing changes in the blood levels of key chemical markers). The study evaluates the effectiveness and safety of infusing stem cells collected from a patient's bone marrow into the artery in the heart that may have caused the heart attack. About 160 patients will participate in this national study at approximately 34 sites.

Source: ScienceDaily http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120411102434.htm

Huntington's disease 'lowers' cancer risk

People with Huntington's disease, a debilitating brain condition, appear have a "protection" from cancer, according to a study in Sweden.

People with Huntington's disease, a debilitating brain condition, appear have a "protection" from cancer, according to a study in Sweden. Academics at Lund University analysed Swedish hospital data from 1969 to 2008. They found 1,510 patients with Huntington's disease. During the study period, 91 of those patients subsequently developed cancer. The authors said that was 53% lower than the levels expected for the general population. Huntington's is one of a group of illnesses called "polyglutamine diseases". Data from other polyglutamine diseases also showed lower levels of cancer.

The authors said: "We found that the incidence of cancer was significantly lower among patients with polyglutamine diseases than in the general population.

Source: BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17678587

'Grotere overlevingskans longkanker' - Lung cancer

Patiënten met longkanker hebben een grotere overlevingskans door geïndividualiseerde therapie. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van Joline Lind van het VUmc.

Recent onderzoek heeft geleid tot het ontwikkelen van nieuwe doelgerichte therapieën. De belangrijkste voor longkanker zijn de epidermale groeifactorreceptor (EGFR) remmers en de angiogeneseremmers.

De therapieën bleken effectief, maar niet bij alle patiënten. Lind zocht daarom ook naar patiënt- of tumoreigenschappen die voorspellen welke patiënten geholpen kunnen worden met welke middelen.

Source: http://www.nu.nl/gezondheid/2769641/grotere-overlevingskans-longkanker.html

Can you build a human body?

Will we ever grow replacement hands?

It might seem unbelievable, but researchers can grow organs in the laboratory. There are patients walking around with body parts which have been designed and built by doctors out of a patient's own cells. Dr Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at the Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, US, has made breakthroughs in building bladders and urethras.





He breaks tissue-building into four levels of complexity.

1. Flat structures, such as the skin, are the simplest to engineer as they are generally made up of just the one type of cell.
2. Tubes, such as blood vessels and urethras, which have two types of cells and act as a conduit.
3. Hollow non-tubular organs like the bladder and the stomach, which have more complex structures and functions.
4. Solid organs, such as the kidney, heart and liver, are the most complex to engineer. They are exponentially more complex, have many different cell types, and more challenges in the blood supply.

"We've been able to implant the first three in humans. We don't have any examples yet of solid organs in humans because its much more complex," Dr Atala told the BBC.

Of course growing a hand is even more challenging than anything being tried in laboratories so far. Will it ever be possible? "You never say never, but certainly it's something I will most likely not see in my lifetime," Dr Atala concluded.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16679010


Date: 13-03-2012
Is the Six-Million-Dollar Man possible?

Science fiction is littered with the theme of upgrading the human body with machinery like in the 1970s classic TV series The Six Million Dollar Man.

Meanwhile, as we have been discovering in the Bionic Bodies series, bionics are having a transformative role in the real world. Artificial hearts implanted into the chest can keep patients alive until a transplant becomes available. Cochlear implants have restored hearing to people who were once deaf. Bionic eyes are giving sight to the blind and a range of hands, arms and legs are restoring lost movement.

Timescales

Current bionic body part replacements can imitate human function, but considerable technological developments will be necessary before entering an era of enhancement. Dr Anders Sandberg, from the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, told the BBC: "I do think it is possible to reconstruct a body quite easily and get into a six-million-dollar man situation." For the next 10 years, he thinks the field will be at the level of "pretty nice prosthetics", but would then start to be "significantly better" than the real thing. He said: "I think mid-century, I would be rather surprised if there wasn't a lot of implants and enhancements around."

The Japanese company Cyberdyne has already developed a suit called Hal. It can help people who are no longer able to walk to regain their mobility by picking up electrical signals from the nerves which used to tell limbs to move and converting them into instructions for the suit. The other option for Prof Sharkey is devices which can be controlled by thought, but which are not part of the human body.

Source:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16632764
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17153052


Date: 05-Mar-2012
Can you build a human body?

Technology has always strived to match the incredible sophistication of the human body. Now electronics and hi-tech materials are replacing whole limbs and organs in a merger of machine and man.

Later this year a team of researchers will try out the first bionic eye implant in the UK hoping to help a blind patient see for the first time. It is one of the extraordinary medical breakthroughs in the field, which are extending life by years and providing near-natural movement for those who have lost limbs.

Over the coming weeks, BBC news will explore the field of bionics in a series of features. We start with a selection of the latest scientific developments.

The Bionic Bodies series on the BBC News website will be looking at how bionics can transform people's lives. We will meet a woman deciding whether to have her hand cut off for a bionic replacement and analyse the potential to take the technology even further, enhancing the body to superhuman levels. The series continues on Wednesday with a look at some of the earliest prosthetics from ancient Egypt.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17235058

Daily aspirin 'prevents and possibly treats cancer'

Taking a low dose of aspirin every day can prevent and possibly even treat cancer, fresh evidence suggests. The three new studies published by The Lancet add to mounting evidence of the drug's anti-cancer effects.

Prof Peter Rothwell, from Oxford University, and colleagues, who carried out the latest work, had already linked aspirin with a lower risk of certain cancers, particularly bowel cancer.


Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17443454

Pancreatic cancer: Trial drug MRK003 shows promise

Doctors want to improve the prognosis of this aggressive cancer. Scientists say they may have found a new weapon against pancreatic cancer after promising early trial results of an experimental drug combination.

Giving the chemotherapy agent gemcitabine with an experimental drug called MRK003 sets off a chain of events that ultimately kills cancer cells, studies in mice show.

Father-of-two Richard Griffiths, 41, from Coventry, has been on the trial since being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in May 2011. "After six cycles of treatment, a scan showed the tumours had reduced and so I have continued with the treatment," he said.

Professor Duncan Jodrell, who is leading the trials at the University of Cambridge, said: "We're delighted that the results of this important research are now being evaluated in a clinical trial, to test whether this might be a new treatment approach for patients with pancreatic cancer.

BBC News - 'DNA robot' targets cancer cells

BBC News - 'DNA robot' targets cancer cells

Scientists have developed and tested a "DNA robot" that delivers payloads such as drug molecules to specific cells.


The container was made using a method called DNA origami, in which long DNA chains are folded in a prescribed way. Then, so-called aptamers - which can recognise specific cell types - were used to lock the barrel-shaped robot. In lab tests described in Science, the locks opened on contact with cancer cell proteins, releasing antibodies that halted the cells' growth.


"We've been working on figuring out how to build different shapes using DNA over the past several years, and other researchers have used antibodies as therapeutics, in order to manipulate cell signalling, and yet others have demonstrated that aptamers can be used to target cancer cell types," Dr Douglas told BBC News.

"The novel part is really integrating all those different pieces and putting them together in a single device that works."

Dr Douglas said that there was still much optimisation to be done on the robots; for now the team will create a great many of them to be tested in an animal model.

Stem-Cell Studies

01-Nov-2010

BBC News - Miniature livers 'grown in lab'

Scientists have managed to produce a small-scale version of a human liver in the laboratory using stem cells.

The success increases hope that new transplant livers could be manufactured, although experts say that this is still many years away.

The team from Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center presented its findings at a conference in Boston.

Source: BBC News - Miniature livers 'grown in lab'

Update Oct-2011

Geron Starts First Human Embryonic Stem-Cell Study - BusinessWeek: "Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- Geron Corp. used a therapy made from stem cells taken from human embryos to treat a patient paralyzed by a spinal-cord injury in the first U.S.-authorized test of the technology."


Update 24-Jan-2012

Once they were blind, now they see. Patients cured by stem cell 'miracle'.
Two blind people have shown signs of being able to see again – despite having incurable eye disease – following a revolutionary operation involving the transplant of stem cells derived from a human embryo.

"Despite the progressive nature of these conditions, the vision of both patients appears to have improved after transplantation of the cells, even at the lowest dosage," said Robert Lanza, chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology, the Massachusetts company that supplied the cells. "This is particularly important, since the ultimate goal of this therapy will be to treat patients earlier in the course of the disease where more significant results might potentially be expected," Dr Lanza said.

In a separate clinical trial being conducted in Britain by Professor Douglas Bainbridge, a 34-year-old Yorkshire man suffering from Stargardt's disease underwent an embryonic stem cell transplant in his right eye last Friday at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/once-they-were-blind-now-they-see-patients-cured-by-stem-cell-miracle-6293706.html

Update 31-Jan-2012

Skin transformed into brain cells.

Skin cells have been converted directly into cells which develop into the main components of the brain, by researchers studying mice in California. The experiment, reported in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, skipped the middle "stem cell" stage in the process.

Stem cells, which can become any other specialist type of cell from brain to bone, are thought to have huge promise in a range of treatments. Many trials are taking place, such as in stroke patients or specific forms of blindness.

Dr Deepak Srivastava, who has researched converting cells into heart muscle, said the study: "Opens the door to consider new ways to regenerate damaged neurons using cells surrounding the area of injury."

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16788809

Update 15-Feb-2012

Bone marrow stem cells give 'some' heart Hearing

Bone marrow stem cell therapy offers "moderate improvement" to heart attack patients, according to a large UK review of clinical trials.


The report by Cochrane pooled the data from all 33 bone marrow trials which had taken place up to 2011.
It concluded that bone marrow therapy "may lead to a moderate long-term improvement" in heart function which "might be clinically very important".


Lead author Dr Enca Martin-Rendon, from NHS Blood and Transplant at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said: "This new treatment may lead to moderate improvement in heart function over standard Treatments. "Stem cell therapy may also reduce the number of patients who later die or suffer from heart failure, but currently there is a lack of statistically significant evidence based on the small number of patients treated so far."

Prof Anthony Mathur, from Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry, is leading the largest ever trial of stem cells in heart attack patients.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17025593

Update: 15-Feb-2012

Stem cells used to 'heal' heart attack scars

Damage caused by a heart attack has been healed using stem cells gathered from the patient's own heart, according to doctors in the US. The amount of scar tissue was halved in the small safety trial reported in the Lancet medical journal.

Prof Anthony Mathur is co-ordinating a stem cell trial involving 3,000 heart attack patients.

Prof Jeremy Pearson, associate medical director at the British Heart Foundation, said: "It's the first time these scientists' potentially exciting work has been carried out in humans, and the results are very encouraging.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-17012688

BBC News - BAE provides details of 'structural battery' technology

BBC News - BAE provides details of 'structural battery' technology

Torches, drones and an electric Le Mans racing car are all test-beds for a new kind of "structural battery", BAE Systems has said. The batteries use carbon fibre and can form part of the body of a device.

"The beauty of what we've got is that, when it's fully developed, a company will be able to go out and buy what is a standard carbon-composite material, lay out the shape, put it through the curing process and have a structural battery," he said. "You take the nickel base chemistries and there are ways you can integrate that into the carbon fibre," Mr Penney explained.

BBC News - Alzheimer's brain plaques 'rapidly cleared' in mice

BBC News - Alzheimer's brain plaques 'rapidly cleared' in mice

Destructive plaques found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients have been rapidly cleared by researchers testing a cancer drug on mice.

The US study, published in the journal Science, reported the plaques were broken down at "unprecedented" speed.

Clearing protein plaques is a major focus of Alzheimer's research and drugs are already being tested in human clinical trials.

In the body, the role of removing beta-amyloid falls to apolipoprotein E - or ApoE. However, people have different versions of the protein. Having the ApoE4 genetic variant is one of the biggest risk factors for developing the disease.

Scientists at the Case Western Reserve University in Ohio were investigating ways of boosting levels of ApoE, which in theory should reduce levels of beta-amyloid.

They tested bexarotene, which has been approved for use to treat cancers in the skin, on mice with an illness similar to Alzheimer's.

Plaques, in brown, form around brain cells, in blue, which kills parts of the brain

After one dose in young mice, the levels of beta-amyloid in the brain were "rapidly lowered" within six hours and a 25% reduction was sustained for 70 hours.

Its research manager, Dr Anne Corbett, said: "This exciting study could be the beginning of a journey towards a potential new way to treat Alzheimer's disease.

Dr Simon Ridley, head of research at Alzheimer's Research UK, said the findings were "promising" but any effect was still unproven in people.

David Allsop, professor of neuroscience at Lancaster University, said: "I would say that the results should be treated with cautious optimism.

Check-Cap pill looks for cancer from within

Check-Cap pill looks for cancer from within | Ubergizmo

So we have read about NASA’s cancer-detecting nanosensor which is attached to a smartphone, as well as a tiny crab-like robot that fights colon cancer from within, but here is another method to arrest one of the leading diseases of today from within – the Check-Cap.

This pill sized camera needs to be swallowed before it becomes effective, so that a doctor is able to see your innards without carving you up. Not only that, the Check-Cap pill will emit radiation outside the visible spectrum (x-rays) that are able to go through soft tissue and food, resulting in the safe generation of high resolution 3D imagery, so that doctors are better able to detect the presence of colorectal cancer.

Related articles:
Mini crab-like robot fights stomach cancer
Portable breast cancer detector
Detect cancer with an implant

BBC News - Science decodes 'internal voices'

BBC News - Science decodes 'internal voices'

Researchers have demonstrated a striking method to reconstruct words, based on the brain waves of patients thinking of those words.

By studying patterns of blood flow related to particular images, Jack Gallant's group at the University of California Berkeley showed in September that patterns can be used to guess images being thought of - recreating "movies in the mind".

Now, Brian Pasley of the University of California, Berkeley and a team of colleagues have taken that "stimulus reconstruction" work one step further.

The team monitored the STG brain waves of 15 patients who were undergoing surgery for epilepsy or tumours, while playing audio of a number of different speakers reciting words and sentences. They were even able to reconstruct some of the words, turning the brain waves they saw back into sound on the basis of what the computer model suggested those waves meant.

"The development of direct neuro-control over virtual or physical devices would revolutionise 'augmentative and alternative communication', and improve quality of life immensely for those who suffer from impaired communication skills or means."

BBC News - Genetic testing to improve cancer drugs

BBC News - Genetic testing: NHS 'must back revolution'

One of the problems with modern medicine is that some of the definitions of disease are too broad.

Prof Bell told the BBC: "Breast cancer has always been defined because it is a tumour in the breast.

"But if you look at the molecular detail of those cancers, some are much more similar to ovarian cancers than they are to other breast cancers, in molecular terms and in terms of their response to therapy."

Cancer drugs are generally effective in fewer than one in three patients who take them, the report says.

The theory is that by looking at which genes are active inside a tumour, it will be possible to pick the correct treatment.

This is already happening in some cases. Bowel cancer patients with the defective gene K-RAS do not respond to some drugs, while the breast cancer drug herceptin works only if patients have a specific mutation, HER2.

“Innovation in any setting has to deliver a much better product or lower cost, or both, and I think genetics may be one of the things that does both”

Prof Sir John Bell

Chair of Human Genomics Strategy Group

Quantum computer

How much longer before the first Quantum computer will appear. This has the potential to revolutionize the computer world.

Boffin melds quantum processor with quantum RAM • The Register

In his quantum computer, he says, computational steps take a few billionths of a second, which is about the same as you get with a classical computer. But unlike a classical computer, a quantum computer can handle a large number of these calculations simultaneously.

Matteo Mariantoni and his quantum computer

As Mariantoni explains in a video provided by the University of California at Santa Barabara, where he is a postdoctoral fellow, the two central quantum phenomena upon which quantum computing are based are superposition and entanglement.
Quantum computing may still be far from being a viable commercial process, but Mariantoni argues that it's time to get going. "We can ... create something that is very close to a classical processor, and we can use it for implementing pretty complicated quantum softwares," he argues. "My feeling is that, at this stage – and it's really true – industries will be interested in investing money and effort in developing a large-scale quantum computer."
He may be right. With the increasing complexity and cost of shrinking silicon-transistor features in classical computing manufacturing, the possibility of commercial quantum computing is compelling – even if there remains a tremendous amount of work to be done by both researchers and engineers.
Just like there was in the years between Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain's first demonstration of a transfer resistor in late 1947, and Texas Instrument's marketing of the first commercial silicon transistor in 1954.

Update 20-Jan-2011

Quantum computing could head to 'the cloud', study says.

Quantum computing will use the inherent uncertainties in quantum physics to carry out fast, complex computations. A report in Science shows the trick can extend to "cloud" services such as Google Docs without loss of security. This "blind quantum computing" can be carried out without a cloud computer ever knowing what the data is.

Source BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16636580