Category Archives: Research

Cancer Scientists Find Worm Link

Cancer scientists find worm link by Matt McGrath:

Now scientists in California have found that when they removed this same protein from the tiny worm C. elegans, the worms lived up to 30% longer than normal.

The scientists deduced that a lack of this protein might mean that humans also live longer, but with an increased risk of getting cancer.

The researchers think the protein’s dual function raises another important question: does the presence of this protein ensure a short but cancer-free existence for some people?

China and USA Basic Science Research

US$425 million to boost Chinese innovation by Fu Jing:

The National Natural Science Foundation of China will provide 3.4 billion yuan (US$425 million) in funding for basic science, it announced last week (25 May).

“The boost has shown the government’s determination for China to become an innovative country by 2020,” said the foundation’s vice-president Zhu Zuoyan. He added that the foundation’s research funding is set to grow by about 20 per cent a year for the next five years.
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According to government plans, China’s total investment in science and technology should reach 2.5 per cent of its gross domestic product by 2020 — a share similar to that spent by industrialised nations.
By that time, China aims to be spending about US$112 billion annually on research and development (see China announces 58-point plan to boost science).

U.S. National Science Foundation Celebrates Opening of Beijing Office

The National Science Foundation is a U.S. government agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering, with an annual budget of $5.58 billion.
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According to the NSF report, Science and Engineering Indicators 2006, China ranked fourth in the world in the year 2000 in research and development, with $48.9 billion in expenditures. Two years later, the country ranked third, behind the United States and Japan, spending an estimated $72.0 billion on R&D.

“It is important for the U.S. scientific community, especially young researchers, to be aware of and consider collaborating with colleagues in China in this environment,” said Beijing office Director William Chang.

The NSF Beijing Office is NSF’s third foreign office. NSF also maintains research offices in Paris and Tokyo.

Seeing Machine from MIT

View from photo: an image (of a staircase) created to approximate the view through a seeing machine

MIT poet develops ‘seeing machine’ by Elizabeth A. Thomson

The work is led by Elizabeth Goldring, a senior fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies. She developed the machine over the last 10 years, in collaboration with more than 30 MIT students and some of her personal eye doctors. The new device costs about $4,000, low compared to the $100,000 price tag of its inspiration, a machine Goldring discovered through her eye doctor.
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The pilot clinical trial of the seeing machine involved visually impaired people recruited from the Beetham Eye Institute. All participants had a visual acuity of 20/70 or less in the better-seeing eye. A person with 20/70 vision can see nothing smaller than the third line from the top of most eye charts. Most participants, however, had vision that was considered legally blind, meaning they could see nothing smaller than the “big E” on a standard eye chart.
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Goldring and colleagues are now working toward a large-scale clinical trial of a color seeing machine (the device tested in the pilot trial was black and white).

Golden Buckyballs

In the hunt for golden buckyballs:

Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland and at the University of Nebraska report in today’s Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they have discovered hollow molecular structures made of pure gold — golden buckyballs.
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“You can put another atom in the center,” Wang said. Depending upon the kind of atom put at the center of the cage, he said, you could create a material with novel chemical, magnetic or even optical properties. “We intend to try that.”

Related:

Entirely New Antibiotic Developed

Potent antibiotic to target MRSA

A potent antibiotic which kills many bacteria, including MRSA, has been discovered. Scientists with Merck, isolated platensimycin from a sample of South African soil and have developed an antibiotic based on that discovery.

If the compound passes clinical trials it will become only the third entirely new antibiotic developed in the last four decades.

Details in the journal Nature reveal the antibiotic works in a completely different way to all others.

It acts to block enzymes involved in the synthesis of fatty acids, which bacteria need to construct cell membranes.

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) is a type of bacteria that is resistant to certain antibiotics, including: methicillin and other more common antibiotics such as oxacillin, penicillin and amoxicillin. Staph infections, including MRSA, occur most frequently among persons in hospitals and healthcare facilities who have weakened immune systems. More information on MRSA is available from the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Related:

Nanoscale Fractal Molecule

Nanoscale Fractal Molecule

Scientists Create the First Synthetic Nanoscale Fractal Molecule by Andrea Gibson:

The molecule, developed by researchers at the University of Akron, Ohio University and Clemson University, eventually could lead to new types of photoelectric cells, molecular batteries and energy storage, according to the scientists, whose study was published online today by the journal Science.

A University of Akron research team led by Vice President for Research George Newkome used molecular self-assembly techniques to synthesize the molecule in the laboratory. The molecule, bound with ions of iron and ruthenium, forms a hexagonal gasket.

Ohio University physicists Saw-Wai Hla and Violeta Iancu, who specialize in imaging objects at the nanoscale, confirmed the creation of the man-made fractal. To capture the image, the physicists sprayed the molecules onto a piece of gold, chilled them to minus 449 degrees Fahrenheit to keep them stable, and then viewed them with a scanning tunneling microscope.

more posts on nanotechnology

Engineering the Boarding of Airplanes

Airlines Try Smarter Boarding

“An airplane that spends an hour on the ground between flights might fly five trips a day,” he explains. “Cut the turnaround time to 40 minutes, and maybe that same plane can complete six or seven flights a day.” More flights mean more paying passengers, and ultimately, more revenue.
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Convinced that there was a statistical solution to the problem, Lindemann approached Arizona State University’s industrial engineering department. “We have a great university in our backyard, and hoped they could help,”
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Professor René Villalobos and graduate student Menkes van den Briel began reviewing boarding systems used by other airlines. “The conventional wisdom was that boarding from back to front was most effective,” says van den Briel. The engineers looked at an inside-out strategy that boards planes from window to aisle, and also examined a 2002 simulation study that claimed calling passengers individually by seat number was the fastest way to load an aircraft.

The two then developed a mathematical formula that measured the number of times passengers were likely to get in each other’s way during boarding. “We knew that boarding time was negatively impacted by passengers interfering with one another,” explains van den Briel. “So we built a model to calculate these incidents.”

Villalobos and van den Briel looked at interference resulting from passengers obstructing the aisle, as well as that caused by seated passengers blocking a window or middle seat. They applied the equation to eight different boarding scenarios, looking at both front-to-back and outside-in systems.
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Villalobos and van den Briel presented America West with a boarding approach called the reverse pyramid that calls for simultaneously loading an aircraft from back to front and outside in. Window and middle passengers near the back of the plane board first; those with aisle seats near the front are called last. “Our research showed that this method created the fewest incidents of interference between passengers,” Villalobos explains, “and was therefore the fastest.”

A nice example of industrial engineering. And a clear example of the benefit of industry higher education cooperation.

Nanospheres Targeting Cancer at MIT

Nanospheres targeting cancer cells

Single-Shot Chemo – Nanospheres that target cancer cells and gradually release drugs could make treatment safer and more effective

Photo – Three prostate cancer cells have taken up fluorescently labeled nanoparticles (shown in red). The cells’ nuclei and cytoskeletons are stained blue and green, respectively. By Omid Farokhzad and Robert Langer at MIT.

A key to the nanoparticles’ effectiveness is the ability of their RNA strands to bind to a cancer cell membrane. The cell then pulls the particles inside. Having the particles inside the cell has two advantages: it gets the drug where it needs to be to kill the cells, and it decreases the concentration of the drug outside the cancer cells, thereby decreasing toxicity to healthy tissue. The fact that the polymer releases the drug gradually also helps — the drug is released over the hours or days it takes for the particles to be pulled into cells, where it continues to be released, killing the cells.
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Eventually, the MIT-Harvard researchers hope to design nanoparticles that can be injected into the bloodstream, from which they could seek out cancer cells anywhere in the body, making it possible to treat late-stage metastasized cancer. “Even though this represents a small percentage of patients that actually have the disease, these are the ones that have no therapeutic option available to them,” Farokhzad says.

More life science related posts and medical related posts.

Singapore woos top scientists with new labs

Singapore woos top scientists with new labs, research money by Paul Elias:

Singapore’s siren song is growing increasingly more irresistible for scientists, especially stem cell researchers who feel stifled by the U.S. government’s restrictions on their field.

Two prominent California scientists are the latest to defect to the Asian city-state, announcing earlier this month that they, too, had fallen for its glittering acres of new laboratories outfitted with the latest gizmos.

They weren’t the first defections, and Singapore officials at the Biotechnology Organization’s annual convention in Chicago this week promise they won’t be the last.

Other Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea and even China, are also here touting their burgeoning biotechnology spending to the 20,000 scientists and biotechnology executives attending the conference.
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In all, the country has managed to recruit about 50 senior scientists — far short of what it needs, but a start for a tiny country of 4.5 million people off the tip of Malaysia.

Another 1,800 younger scientists from all corners of the world staff the Biopolis laboratories, which were built with $290 million in government funding and another $400 million in private investment by the two dozen biotechnology companies based there. Biopolis opened in 2003 and contains seven buildings spread over 10 acres and connected by sky bridges

Sports Engineering

Wind Tunnel at MIT for sports testing

MIT is not the first school to come to mind when discussing athletics. However, the MIT Center for Sports Innovation (CSI) is making news. The CSI mission is to expand the students’ learning experience by involving them in the development of sports technology and products.

One project at the Center is a wind tunnel used for bicycle testing:

The design and construction of the bike test stand was Brian Hoying’s senior thesis project. The data acquisition software upgrade was Mark Cote’s freshman term project. The resulting test system was deemed “the best cycling test system I’ve ever seen” by Phil White, owner of Cervélo Cycles, and sponsor of the CSC professional cycling team.

It is great to see student projects with such success.

Mark Cote, a researcher at the MIT Center for Sports Innovation, has an impressive list of clients — from Tour de France stage winners to some of North America’s leading bicycle manufacturers. Now the wind tunnel specialist plans to use his expertise in fluid dynamics to develop and, he hopes, patent his own advances in aerodynamic cycling gear.

Not bad, considering that Cote, 21, is still an undergraduate.