Could Flying Bikes, Cars Be Next? Toyota and U.S. Army Explore

 

Hoverbikes and boards that lift off the ground are no longer sci-fi. Even the U.S. Army is considering how to use them. Lexus built its Hoverboard, which uses magnets and liquid nitrogen cooled superconductors to lift off the ground, for an ad campaign. Photograph courtesy Lexus Hovering technology, once Hollywood sci-fi, is gaining ground in the real world. The U.S. Army is looking at the “world’s first flying motorcycle,” and Toyota’s luxury brand Lexus has built its own hoverboard. Yet these and other levitating wonders won’t hit the market anytime soon. They still have to undergo safety testing and regulatory scrutiny. And some are simply meant to amuse. Lexus’ new Hoverboard, for example, isn’t the forerunner of a flying car that Toyota says it’s been studying. “It’s definitely something that works, but it’s not something we plan to sell,” says Lexus spokesman Moe Durand of the hoverboard, unveiled this week in a company video. It uses magnets and liquid nitrogen-cooled superconductors to lift a rider off the ground. So far, it only works when magnets are embedded underneath the concrete surface. “It’s really just for an ad,” Durand says, citing the “Amazing in Motion” ad campaign to showcase Lexus’ innovation. Though Lexus didn’t build it as part of a push toward a flying car, he says it could eventually lead in that direction: “Is it dipping our toe in the water? Maybe.” An increasing number of companies, though, are vying to commercialize their hovercraft. Their prototypes may not look like Marty McFly’s board in the 1989 movie Back to the Future II, but they’re aiming to use magnetic levitation to do all sorts of incredible things—transport troops over difficult terrain, move passengers in Elon Musk’s vision of sonic tubular travel, or even lift buildings to avoid earthquake damage. Chris Malloy built a helicopter-like craft in his garage in suburban Sydney, Australia. His website says he “combined the simplicity of a motorbike with the freedom of a helicopter to create the world’s first flying motorcycle.” Now he’s the managing director of Malloy Aeronautics, a company based in the United Kingdom. “We’re doing a feasibility study for them,” Malloy says of the U.S. Army, noting his Hoverbike can do search and rescue missions, cargo delivery, disaster relief, and surveillance. He says his craft, designed to come in manned and unmanned versions, can do what helicopters do—at a lower cost, in tighter spaces, and without pilots. This is the original prototype of the Hoverbike, which has two propellers. The current one is a quad-copter with four propellers. Photograph courtesy Malloy Aeronautics He declined to give specifics about the project. At the Paris Air Show earlier this month, Maryland Lt. Governor Boyd Rutherford announced that Malloy’s company—along with SURVICE Engineering Co., a Maryland-based defense firm—is working to develop the Hoverbike for the U.S. military as a new class of Tactical Reconnaissance Vehicle. Malloy says he developed the Hoverbike for commercial, not military, use. “We’ve had lots of people who want to place orders,” he says, noting he’s not yet taking them. “We don’t want to hurry our product into the market.” Technically, he says the company could begin production now, but he needs to do rigorous testing to prove its safety. He expects that could take at least three to five years, and he doesn’t have the market to himself. “We have competitors,” he says, noting companies in New Zealand and elsewhere with similar prototypes. Simpler hovercraft are emerging, too. In California, Greg Henderson has built the Hendo, a hoverboard that he says uses one fourth as much energy as a helicopter to lift the same weight. (Find out what it’s like to ride one.) In October, his company Arx Pax plans to debut a new version that’s smaller, lighter, and more powerful. The story is part of a special series that explores energy issues. For more, visit The Great Energy Challenge. On Twitter: Follow Wendy Koch and get more environment and energy coverage at NatGeoEnergy.

Minimally invasive heart surgery

 

Definition By Mayo Clinic Staff In minimally invasive heart surgery, heart (cardiac) surgeons perform heart surgery through small incisions in the right side of your chest, as an alternative to open heart surgery. Surgeons operate between the ribs and don't split the breastbone (sternotomy), which results in less pain and a quicker recovery for most people. In minimally invasive surgery, your heart surgeon has a better view of some parts of your heart than in open heart surgery. As in open surgery, minimally invasive heart surgery requires stopping your heart temporarily and diverting blood flow from your heart using a heart-lung machine. Surgeons perform many minimally invasive heart surgeries, including: Aortic valve surgery Atrial septal defect closure, including patent foramen ovale Atrioventricular canal defect (also called atrioventricular septal defect) surgery Heart valve surgery to treat heart valve disease Maze heart surgery to treat atrial fibrillation Mitral valve surgery Saphenous vein harvest (removing a vein from your leg) for coronary bypass surgery Tricuspid valve surgery Your doctor will work with you to determine whether minimally invasive heart surgery is an option. If you've had prior heart surgery or heart disease, you generally aren't a candidate for minimally invasive heart surgery. Your doctor also may perform tests and review your medical history to determine whether you're a candidate for minimally invasive heart surgery. Mayo Clinic offers robot-assisted surgery or thoracoscopic minimally invasive heart surgery. Advantages Minimally invasive heart surgery isn't an option for everyone, but it offers many advantages in those for whom it's appropriate. Advantages may include: Less blood loss Lower risk of infection Reduced trauma and pain Shorter time in the hospital, faster recovery and quicker return to normal activities Smaller, less noticeable scars Risks In people for whom minimally invasive heart surgery is appropriate, risks and complications are rare. You may experience these complications, which also may occur in other surgeries: Bleeding Stroke Wound infection Types Mayo Clinic heart surgeons work with an experienced surgical team to perform minimally invasive heart surgery, including robot-assisted heart surgery and thoracoscopic heart surgery. In both types of procedures, surgeons reach your heart through small incisions between the ribs of your chest. Robot-assisted heart surgery. In robot-assisted heart surgery, the exact maneuvers performed in traditional open chest operation are duplicated by the surgeon using robotic arms, rather than his or her hands. During this procedure, your surgeon works at a remote console and views your heart in a magnified high-definition 3-D view on a video monitor. From the remote console, your surgeon's hand movements are translated precisely to the robotic arms at the operating table, which move similarly to the human wrist. A second surgeon and surgical team assists at the operating table, changing surgical instruments attached to the robotic arms. Thoracoscopic surgery. In thoracoscopic surgery (sometimes referred to as a mini-thoracotomy), your surgeon inserts a long, thin tube (thoracoscope) containing a tiny high-definition video camera into a small incision in your chest. Your surgeon repairs your heart using long instruments inserted through small incisions between your ribs.   June 06, 2015

A new means to killing harmful bacteria

 

Thu, 06/25/2015 - 11:50am Helen Knight, MIT News correspondent In this illustration, phagemid plasmids infect a targeted bacteria. Image: Christine Daniloff and Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT (plasmid illustration courtesy of the researchers) The global rise in antibiotic resistance is a growing threat to public health, damaging our ability to fight deadly infections such as tuberculosis. What’s more, efforts to develop new antibiotics are not keeping pace with this growth in microbial resistance, resulting in a pressing need for new approaches to tackle bacterial infection. In a paper published online in Nano Letters, researchers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and Harvard Univ. reveal that they have developed a new means of killing harmful bacteria. The researchers have engineered particles, known as “phagemids,” capable of producing toxins that are deadly to targeted bacteria. Bacteriophages—viruses that infect and kill bacteria—have been used for many years to treat infection in countries such as those in the former Soviet Union. Unlike traditional broad-spectrum antibiotics, these viruses target specific bacteria without harming the body’s normal microflora. But bacteriophages can also cause potentially harmful side effects, according to James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT’s Dept. of Biological Engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science, who led the research. “Bacteriophages kill bacteria by lysing the cell, or causing it to burst,” Collins says. “But this is problematic, as it can lead to the release of nasty toxins from the cell.” These toxins can lead to sepsis and even death in some cases, he says. A gentler burst In previous research, Collins and his colleagues engineered bacteriophages to express proteins that did not actually burst the cells, but instead increased the effectiveness of antibiotics when delivered at the same time. To build on this earlier work, the researchers set out to develop a related technology that would target and kill specific bacteria, without bursting the cells and releasing their contents. The researchers used synthetic biology techniques to develop a platform of particles called phagemids. These particles infect bacteria with small DNA molecules known as plasmids, which are able to replicate independently inside a host cell. Once inside the cell, the plasmids are engineered to express different proteins or peptides—molecules made up of short chains of amino acids—that are toxic to the bacteria, Collins says. “We systematically tested different antimicrobial peptides and bacterial toxins, and demonstrated that when you combine a number of these within the phagemids, you can kill the great majority of cells within a culture,” he says. The expressed toxins are designed to disrupt different cellular processes, such as bacterial replication, causing the cell to die without bursting open. Precise targeting The phagemids will also only infect a specific species of bacteria, resulting in a highly targeted system, Collins says. “You can use this to kill off very specific species of bacteria as part of an infection therapy, while sparing the rest of the microbiome,” he says. When the researchers monitored the response of the bacteria to repeated reinfection with the phagemids, they did not witness signs of significant resistance to the particles. “This means you can do multiple rounds of delivery of the phagemids, in order to get a more effective therapy,” he says. This is in contrast to repeated infection with bacteriophages, where the researchers found that the bacteria did develop resistance over time. Although Collins acknowledges that bacteria will ultimately develop resistance to any stress that is placed upon them, the research suggests that it is likely to take them far longer to develop resistance to phagemids than to conventional bacteriophage therapy, he says. A “cocktail” of different phagemids could be given to patients to treat an unclassified infection, in a similar way to the broad-spectrum antibiotics used today. But they are more likely to be used in conjunction with rapid diagnostic tools, currently in development, which would allow physicians to treat specific infections, Collins says. “You would first run a fast diagnostic test to identify the bacteria your patient has, and then give the appropriate phagemid to kill off the pathogen,” he says. The researchers are planning to expand their platform by developing a broader range of phagemids. They have so far experimented with a set of phagemids specific to E. coli, but now hope to create particles capable of killing off pathogens such as Clostridium difficile and the cholera-causing bacterium Vibrio cholerea. Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Pointing the way to crack-resistant metals

 

Thu, 06/25/2015 - 11:20am Joe Kullman, Arizona State University. The image shows corrosion of a silver-gold alloy spontaneously resulting in the formation of nanoscale porous structures that undergo high-speed cracking under the action of a tensile stress. It helps demonstrate a discovery by an Arizona State University research team about the stress-corrosion behavior of metals that threatens the mechanical integrity of engineered components and structures.Potential solutions to big problems continue to arise from research that is revealing how materials behave at the smallest scales. The results of a new study to understand the interactions of various metal alloys at the nanometer and atomic scales are likely to aid advances in methods of preventing the failure of systems critical to public and industrial infrastructure. Research led by Arizona State Univ. materials science and engineering professor Karl Sieradzki is uncovering new knowledge about the causes of stress-corrosion cracking in alloys used in pipelines for transporting water, natural gas and fossil fuels, as well as for components used in nuclear power generating stations and the framework of aircraft. Sieradzki is on the faculty of the School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, one of ASU’s Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering. His research team’s findings are detailed in Nature Materials. Using advanced tools for ultra-high-speed photography and digital image correlation, the team has been able to closely observe the events triggering the origination of stress-corrosion fracture in a model silver-gold alloy and to track the speed at which cracking occurs. They measured cracks moving at speeds of 200 mps, corresponding to about half of the shear wave sound velocity in the material. This is a remarkable result, Sieradzki said, given that typically only brittle materials such as glass will fracture in this manner and that gold alloys are among the most malleable metals. In the absence of a corrosive environment these gold alloys fail in the same manner as children’s modeling clay, Sieradzki explained: Roll modeling clay into a cylindrical shape and you can stretch it by a by 100% before it slowly tears apart. In the presence of corrosive environments, silver is selectively dissolved from the alloy causing porosity to form. If this occurs while the alloy is stressed, then the material fails as if it were made of glass. These results provide a deeper understanding of the stress-corrosion behavior of metals such as aluminum alloys, brass and stainless steel that threatens the mechanical integrity of important engineered components and structures. The team’s discoveries could provide a guide for “designing alloys with different microstructures so that the materials are resistant to this type of cracking,” Sieradzki said. Source: Arizona State University

New conductive ink for electronic apparel

 

Thu, 06/25/2015 - 10:45am University of Tokyo Electrodes, wires, and via holes can be printed by a single step printing process. The muscle activity sensor was produced by printing once on each side of the material's surface.  Image: 2015 Someya Laboratory University of Tokyo researchers have developed a new ink that can be printed on textiles in a single step to form highly conductive and stretchable connections. This new functional ink will enable electronic apparel such as sportswear and underwear incorporating sensing devices for measuring a range of biological indicators such as heart rate and muscle contraction. Current printed electronics, such as transistors, light-emitting diodes and solar panels, can be printed on plastic or paper substrates, but these substrates tend to be rigid or hard. The use of soft, stretchable material would enable a new generation of wearable devices that fit themselves to the human body. However, it has proved difficult to make an ink that is both highly conductive and elastic without a complicated multi-step printing process. Now, Prof. Takao Someya's research group at the Univ. of Tokyo's Graduate School of Engineering has developed an elastic conducting ink that is easily printed on textiles and patterned in a single printing step. This ink is comprised of silver flakes, organic solvent, fluorine rubber and fluorine surfactant. The ink exhibited high conductivity even when it was stretched to more than three times its original length, which marks the highest value reported for stretchable conductors that can be extended to more than two and a half times their original length. Using this new ink, the group created a wrist-band muscle activity sensor by printing an elastic conductor on a sportswear material and combining it with an organic transistor amplifier circuit. This sensor can measure muscle activity by detecting muscle electrical potentials over an area of 4x4 square centimeters with nine electrodes placed 2 cm apart in a 3x3 grid. "Our team aims to develop comfortable wearable devices. This ink was developed as part of this endeavor," says Someya. "The biggest challenge was obtaining high conductivity and stretchability with a simple one-step printing process. We were able to achieve this by use of a surfactant that allowed the silver flakes to self-assemble at the surface of the printed pattern, ensuring high conductivity." Source: University of Tokyo

Como Manter-se Motivado Quando Trabalha em Casa

 

O número de pessoas que trabalha em casa está a crescer. No entanto, esta prática é mais difícil do que possa parecer, sendo necessário um alto nível de disciplina e enfrentar o trabalho como qualquer outro. Trabalhar em casa como um profissional – Imagem de Flickr/JeremyOK Segundo alguns estudos estatísticos realizados pela Work From Home Info, existe um elevado número de pessoas que trabalha em casa. Mesmo que esses números sejam relativos aos Estados Unidos, as estatísticas de outros países devem estar próximas dessas, proporcionais à população. Senão vejamos: o desemprego aumenta a olhos vistos e muitas dessas pessoas começam a arranjar soluções por conta própria. No início do processo, é muito provável que tudo comece a partir de casa. Nos Estados Unidos são gerados anualmente 427 biliões de dólares por negócios criados e mantidos a partir de casa e 70% dos americanos preferia ser o seu próprio empregador. Estas são demais razões para considerar o trabalho a partir de casa mais do que um capricho, antes uma realidade. Regras para manter a motivação e produtividade para quem trabalha em casa Trabalhar a partir de casa não é fácil. As distrações existem em maior número comparando com o trabalho tradicional, não existe o contato entre colegas de trabalho (porque muitas vezes não existem colegas de trabalho) e, inclusive, pode não ser uma prática bem vista por familiares e amigos. Por outras palavras, se quer trabalhar a partir de casa tem que ganhar bons hábitos e criar uma reputação, resultados visíveis que comprovem a sua boa escolha. De seguida apresento-lhe um conjunto de práticas que têm como objetivo manter a sua motivação e produtividade em cima quando trabalha em casa. É importante evitar distrações, tratar este trabalho como qualquer outro trabalho, levá-lo a sério e definir horas de verdadeira produtividade. 1. Comece o dia como um profissional Se pensa que por estar a trabalhar em casa não tem um horário e pode fazê-lo de pijama desengane-se. Trabalhar de pijama é depressivo, aos poucos vai sendo cada vez mais difícil tirar da sua cabeça a palavra casa e substitui-la por trabalho. Um bom sinal de que está disponível para trabalhar em casa é cumprir horários e vestir-se como se fosse para o escritório. Crie uma rotina: horas de levantar, pequeno-almoço, vestimenta a rigor, entra às 9 e sai às 5, seja o que for. A história de acordar a qualquer hora, puxar do portátil para a cama e trabalhar não funciona. Se leva o seu trabalho a sério, seja profissional. Artigo Relacionado: Como se Tornar numa Pessoa Madrugadora 2. Maximize o contato com outras pessoas Uma das vantagens do trabalho fora de casa é a possibilidade de conviver com colegas, partilhar opiniões e demonstrar que temos uma voz. Trabalhar a partir de casa tem este senão: vai estar na solidão a maior parte do tempo. Por essa razão, é importante maximizar o contato com o exterior, em termos profissionais, claro. Procure estar perto de clientes e potenciais clientes, outras pessoas que estejam na mesma situação. Se não consegue viver sem socializar, então esta ausência pode ser altamente desmotivadora. Lute contra esse problema e mantenha-se em contato. 3. Agrupe tarefas idênticas Rieva Lesonsky, CEO da GrowBiz Media, aconselha a agrupar tarefas idênticas (aliás, quer trabalhe em casa ou não). “Passar do e-mail para a escrita de uma proposta para uma sessão de brainstorm e voltar novamente ao e-mail vai dispersar a sua energia, uma vez que o seu cérebro tem que realizar mudanças de foco de cada vez que alterna entre tarefas.” Em vez deste vai-vem entre tarefas, agrupe aquelas que são idênticas. “Por exemplo, reserve uma manhã por semana para uma reunião; passe uma hora ao telefone a receber e realizar chamadas; reserve algumas horas para escrever uma proposta. Aos poucos vai entrar no ritmo de cada tarefa que está a realizar e vai ser mais eficaz,” diz Rieva. Artigo Relacionado: “O Multitasking Traz Ineficiência,” diz a Ciência 4. Discipline-se Se trabalhar no escritório pode ser uma tarefa árdua, imagine o que é trabalhar num local que remete para o descanso e paz, para as suas coisas e para o seu espaço, família, etc. O corpo fica mole, as distrações são mais que muitas. Comece a utilizar ferramentas como o RescueTime que lhe permite monitorizar onde gasta o seu tempo para que o possa aproveitar da melhor maneira. É fácil perder tempo a partir de casa – ou são os animais, ou são os filhos, ou cortar a relva do jardim. Não funciona. Trabalhar em casa passa muito por automatizar o cérebro para perceber quando é tempo para trabalhar e quando não é. Se continuar a perder tempo dessa forma nunca o vai conseguir. Artigo Relacionado: 5 Formas de Derrotar a Procrastinação Artigo Relacionado: 5 Práticas Para a Verdadeira Produtividade 5. Faça pausas e exercício Tal como qualquer profissional, as pausas e o exercício são bons catalizadores para o foco. Em casa tem outro benefício: pode aproveitá-las para trabalho caseiro. Se quando trabalha fora de casa as pausas não são mais do que perder algum tempo a não fazer nada, em casa pode tirar o melhor partido delas para realizar outras tarefas. Por outro lado, trabalhar a partir de casa torna a prática de exercício mais facilitada uma vez que evita a perda de tempo entre casa-trabalho e trabalho-casa. Deixou de ter a desculpa da falta de tempo porque o momento exato que serviria para a prática de exercício é precisamente a altura das deslocações. O exercício é benéfico para a sua saúde e para o seu trabalho. Artigo Relacionado: Exercício Físico e Saúde: A Tecnologia à Sua Disposição Se começou agora a trabalhar a partir de casa, ou se tem nos seus horizontes essa possibilidade, fazê-lo é mais difícil do que aparenta. Pelo menos se pretende obter produtividade. Recomendo que crie uma lista com vários pontos relativos ao que deve mudar e implementar para um dia de trabalho em casa bem sucedido. Aos poucos comece a habituar-se a todas essas práticas com disciplina. O truque para o trabalho caseiro é a disciplina.

Experimental therapy restores normal fat metabolism in animals with atherosclerosis

 

In what may be a major leap forward in the quest for new treatments of the most common form of cardiovascular disease, scientists at Johns Hopkins report they have found a way to halt and reverse the progression of atherosclerosis in rodents by loading microscopic nanoparticles with a chemical that restores the animals' ability to properly handle cholesterol. Cholesterol is a fatty substance that clogs, stiffens and narrows the blood vessels, greatly diminishing their ability to deliver blood to the heart muscle and the brain. The condition, known as atherosclerotic vessel disease, is the leading cause of heart attacks and strokes that claim some 2.6 million lives a year worldwide, according to the World Health Organization. A report on the work, published online in the journal Biomaterials, builds on recent research by the same team that previously identified a fat-and-sugar molecule called GSL as the chief culprit behind a range of biological glitches that affect the body's ability to properly use, transport and purge itself of vessel-clogging cholesterol. That earlier study showed that animals feasting on high-fat foods remained free of heart disease if pretreated with a human-made compound, D-PDMP, which works by blocking the synthesis of the mischievous GSL. But the body's natural tendency to rapidly break down and clear out D-PDMP was a major hurdle in efforts to test its therapeutic potential in larger animals and humans. The newly published report reveals the scientists appear to have cleared that hurdle by encapsulating D-PDMP into tiny molecules, which are absorbed faster and linger in the body much longer. In this case, the researchers say, their experiments show that when encapsulated that way, D-PDMP's potency rose ten-fold in animals fed with it. Most strikingly, the team reports, the nano version of the compound was potent enough to halt the progression of atherosclerosis. By contrast, the team's previous research showed the drug was effective in preventing atherosclerosis but not potent enough to stop the disease from advancing. Perhaps, most importantly, the team says, the nano-packaged drug improved physiologic outcomes among animals with heart muscle thickening and pumping dysfunction, the hallmarks of advanced disease. "Our experiments illustrate clearly that while content is important, packaging can make or break a drug," says lead investigator Subroto Chatterjee, Ph.D., a professor of medicine and pediatrics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and a metabolism expert at its Heart and Vascular Institute. "In our study, the right packaging vastly improved the drug's performance and its ability not merely to prevent disease but to mitigate some of its worst manifestations." That added potency, the researchers say, stems from fast uptake by various tissues and organs and from the slow clearance of the encapsulated form of the drug. The team was able to map and track the nanoparticles' movement inside the animals' bodies by tagging them with a radioactive tracer that lit up on a CT scan. Next, to observe how quickly the body broke down the nano-wrapped and the original forms of the drug, researchers analyzed kidney samples from mice treated with either form of the compound. The kidneys are the final stop on most drugs' journey inside the body just before they are cleared through urine. The nano drug remained in animals much longer, around 48 hours, compared with the free form, which was excreted through the kidneys in about an hour. In further experiments, the scientists put mice genetically predisposed to atherosclerosis on a fat-laden diet for several months -- long enough for fatty plaque to accumulate inside their blood vessels. After a few months, a third of the animals began treatment with the nano-packaged compound, one-third with its native version, while the rest got placebo. Mice treated with placebo showed high levels of GSL -- the molecule responsible for altered cholesterol metabolism -- and high levels of bad cholesterol, or LDL. They also had dangerously high levels of oxidized LDL, an especially pernicious type of LDL formed when it encounters free radicals, and elevated triglycerides, another type of plaque-building fat. By contrast, animals given encapsulated D-PDMP had normal GSL and cholesterol levels as did animals treated with free-floating forms of the drug. However, animals treated with the free-floating form of D-PDMP required 10 times higher doses to achieve GSL and cholesterol levels observed in mice given the nano-encapsulated form of the drug. When scientists measured the thickness of the animals' aortas -- the body's largest vessel responsible for carrying oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the rest of the body -- they observed stark differences among the groups, they say. The aortas of placebo-treated animals had grown thicker with fat and calcium deposits. Mice treated with either version of the drug fared better, but animals that got the encapsulated form of the drug had aortas nearly indistinguishable from the aortas of healthy mice fed a regular diet, according to researchers. Most strikingly, they reported, D-PDMP treatment improved heart function in mice with advanced forms of atherosclerotic heart disease, marked by heart muscle thickening and compromised pumping ability. Ultrasound images revealed that both size and pumping ability improved in animals that received treatment with the encapsulated form of the drug, returning to near baseline levels. However, mice given non-encapsulated drug required 10 times higher doses to achieve similar benefits. High cholesterol occurs when the body gets too much of it from food, when it makes too much of it on its own, or due to a defect in the body's ability to ferry it in and out of cells or break it down. Current cholesterol-lowering treatments work either by blocking cholesterol production or by preventing the body from absorbing too much of it. But production and absorption are only two steps in the cholesterol cycle, Chatterjee says, so new treatments that interfere with other glitches in this cycle are badly needed. D-PDMP is one such treatment candidate because it blocks the synthesis of GSL -- the master regulator of multiple pathways involved in faulty fat metabolism, Chatterjee says. Researchers say their next step is to test how the drug performs in larger mammals. Because the nanoparticles carrying D-PDMP are made of a common laxative ingredient and a naturally occurring sebacic acid, researchers say they are completely safe for humans. D-PDMP, long used in basic research to experimentally block and study cell growth and other basic cell functions, is considered safe in animals, but its safety profile in humans is unknown, the investigators say.

Photo selection study reveals we don't look like we think we look

 

Credit: Courtesy of David White; CC BY SA. Be careful when choosing your next passport photo or profile image as a new study suggests we are so poor a picking good likenesses of our face that strangers make better selections. This is one of the findings of a study by Dr David White and colleagues from the UNSW Australia published today, Wednesday 24 June 2015, in the British Journal of Psychology. The study was supported by an Australian Research Council grants and funding from the Australian Passport Office. Dr White said: “In face-to-face encounters with unfamiliar people, it is often necessary to verify that we are who we claim to be. For example, we are asked to prove our identity when processing financial transactions and crossing borders. In these and many other commonplace situations, photo-ID is the most common method for identity verification. However, despite the clear importance of this visual task previous research has shown that we are quite poor when matching photos of unfamiliar faces.” In the study an initial group of over 130 undergraduate students downloaded 10 suitable photos of themselves from Facebook and ranked them in order of the best to worst likeness. These participants took part in a minute long web cam video of their face and two still photos were also taken (one smiling, one neutral). Sixteen participants who did not know the students watched the webcam videos and afterwards ranked the Facebook photos in order of resemblance to the person they had seen in the video. A further 73 participants were then recruited to complete an online face matching test. Results of the study show that the unfamiliar participants chose a different set of ‘good likeness’ images  compared to those that people had selected of themselves. Surprisingly, the images selected by strangers also led to better performance on the online face matching test. The size of the advantage in other-selection over self-selection was quite large – self-selected images were matched seven per cent less accurately compared to other-selected images. Dr White said: “It seems counter-intuitive that strangers who saw the photo of someone’s face for less than a minute were more reliable at judging likeness. However, although we live with our own face day-to-day, it appears that knowledge of one’s own appearance comes at a cost. Existing memory representations interfere with our ability to choose images that are good representations or faithfully depict our current appearance. “Interestingly we also noted there were better results when people were smiling in the photos. It is interesting that current passport guidelines prohibit smiling in photographs because this ‘distorts the normal facial features’. Given that faces are generally pictured smiling, and these images are rated as being more like familiar faces, it may be beneficial to permit expression in passport photographs.” Story Source: The above post is reprinted from materials provided by British Psychological Society (BPS). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. Journal Reference: David White; Amy L Burton; Richard I Kemp. Not looking yourself: The cost of self-selecting photos for identity verification. British Journal of Psychology, 2015 DOI: 10.1111/bjop.12141

Custom Print Your Walls!

 

Posted: 24 Jun 2015 05:15 AM PDT

How often have you thought about painting your favorite superhero or secret fantasy on the wall across your bed? Well, with the innovative Printtex Mobile Wall Printer, peeling wallpapers and boring stencils will be a thing of the past. It has the ability to transfer digital pictures onto your wall, with limitless possibilities. Working on the principles akin to an ink-jet printer, two coordinate-sensors are used to limit the print area.

Controlled with your tablet, laptop or smartphone, you can upload and print your desired design on your wall. The printer aligns and prints within the selected area and prints each color tone separately. The sensors on the edge guide the printer and ensure precise printing.

Like the judges of the 2015 iF Design Awards opine, this design showcases the “Intelligent use of the inkjet technology to make the wall as a sheet of paper.”

Designer: Benjamin Loinger

 

New tech could find tiny RNA cancer beacons in blood

 

Tue, 06/23/2015 - 11:40am Nicole Casal Moore, University of Michigan   University of Michigan researchers have developed a technique that allows them to efficiently identify snippets of genetic information called microRNAs in blood. The advance could one day lead to a way to scan for multiple types of cancer at once with a simple blood test. In this illustration, the red, blue and black strands represent different microRNAs that, in the new technique, attach and detach to DNA, which is gray in the image. The DNA glows fluorescent when an RNA attaches and the particular pattern of blinking tells the researchers which microRNA has attached. Image: MolGraphicsCancerous tumors cast off tiny telltale genetic molecules known as microRNAs and Univ. of Michigan researchers have come up with an efficient way to detect them in blood. The researchers say their approach could open the door to a single, inexpensive blood test to simultaneously screen for multiple types of cancer—eventually perhaps more than 100 different kinds. "This could lead to technology that enables earlier detection in individuals at risk for cancer, earlier detection of recurrences in cancer survivors, and also better and earlier assessment of how well cancer therapies are working in patients," said Dr. Muneesh Tewari, the Ray and Ruth Anderson-Laurence M. Sprague Memorial research professor of internal medicine at the U-M Medical School and an associate professor of biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering. It could be years, if not a decade, before this could be available for routine clinical use. But the researchers have high hopes for their ultrasensitive technique that can pick out a single one of these nanoscale snippets in a speck of fluid. "What we have done is develop a new paradigm, a new principle for detecting any sort of RNA in blood," said Nils Walter, professor of chemistry and biophysics in the U-M College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Walter and Tewari are the senior authors of a study on the work published in Nature Biotechnology. RNA stands for ribonucleic acid, a class of molecule whose members play important roles in building living things from their DNA blueprints. For decades, scientists thought RNA was mainly a messenger: It ferries genetic information from DNA to the sites where cells make proteins—the workhorse molecules that essentially carry out the directions encoded in our genes. But when scientists finished sequencing the human genome around 2003, they learned that 90 percent of it contains directions for making RNA. And most of that RNA is not the messenger kind that helps make proteins. "The field of biochemistry is about 100 years old," Walter said. "And for the longest time, we were focusing on proteins. It is almost as if we were studying the wrong thing. "RNA is profoundly important for understanding and manipulating mammalian and human life, yet it is arguably the least studied genetic material in the mammalian cell. We're just at the beginning of big discoveries of its functions." MicroRNA molecules, for example, are short strands that can bind to the messenger RNA, intercepting the dispatch and preventing bits of genetic code from being put into action. More than 1,000 varieties exist in our bodies. They directly or indirectly control virtually all major life processes, the researchers say. Having too little or too much of a particular microRNA can fuel tumor growth. Cancerous cells are descendent from haywire healthy ones, so they have microRNA in them too. The tiny strands of genetic material have been detected in blood before (though not very efficiently) and scientists have several hypotheses about how they get there. They may be released when a cancerous cell dies and breaks down. And cells, including cancerous ones, may communicate with one another through microRNAs they send into the bloodstream to act as hormones. Blood-borne microRNAs from both mechanisms would be the cancer beacons the new technique could efficiently detect in patients, the researchers say. In their experiments, they coated a glass slide with molecules called "capture probes" that would grab onto microRNAs in their vicinity. Then, in different trials, they dropped onto the slide samples of solutions containing five different microRNAs. In one case, the solution that carried the microRNAs was human blood serum—the fluid component with the blood cells removed. To tell them RNA had been captured by one of the probes, they relied on a third type of molecule—fluorescent DNA strands that bind to the microRNA and emit light when they do. Only specific DNA sequences will bind to particular RNAs, so by varying the arrangement of the building blocks that make the DNA, the researchers engineered strands that would attach to the different microRNAs. What makes their method unique is that the DNA and RNA connect so weakly they don't stay stuck. DNA strings latch onto and detach from RNA in particular rhythms. When the researchers observe this through a super-sensitive fluorescence microscope, it looks like a firefly blinking. They can confirm the capture of different microRNAs based on the blink rate—its "kinetic fingerprint." Although microRNAs have been detected in blood serum before, this approach is more direct and suffers virtually no false positives. Source: University of Michigan