Turning human spare parts into exports

Professor György K.B. Sándor believes that tissue engineering can become a new global export item.

The goal of his research at the University of Tampere in Finland is to produce bone and cartilage using tissue engineering and to optimize the use of tissue-derived stem cells for bone defects.

With tissue engineering, it is possible to produce tailored, living human spare parts. If the method can be rolled out on a larger scale, it may become the third alternative form of treatment alongside the traditional forms, surgery and pharmacotherapy.

“We have proven with more than 20 clinically successful operations that tissue engineering works,”

http://www.tekes.fi/en/community/News/482/News/1344?name=Turning+human+spare+parts+into+exports

Crowd-sourcing messaging to intelligent life

Lone Signal believes that crowd sourcing messaging to intelligent life (METI) is the ideal approach to establishing a stable, cohesive, and well-resourced interstellar beacon on Earth.

Lone Signal allows anyone with Internet access to compose and transmit messages to strategically targeted stellar systems.

The benefits of radio communication on Earth likely outweigh the potential harms of detection by extraterrestrial watchers; however, the uncertainty regarding the outcome of contact with extraterrestrial beings creates difficulty in assessing whether or not to engage in long-term and large-scale METI.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/crowd-sourcing-messaging-to-intelligent-life

European neuroscience projects to benefit from hybrid supercomputer memory

To handle large amounts of data from detailed brain models used in the Blue Brain Project and the Human Brain Project, IBM Research, EPFL, and ETH Zürich are collaborating on a new hybrid memory strategy for supercomputers.

Given the roughly 70 million neurons in the brain of a mouse, a huge amount of data needs to be accessed for the simulation to run efficiently.

“Data-intensive research has supercomputer requirements that go well beyond high computational power,” says EPFL professor Felix Schürmann of the Blue Brain Project in Lausanne. “Here, we investigate different types of memory and how it is used, which is crucial to build detailed models of the brain. But the applications for this technology are much broader.”

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/neuroscience-to-benefit-from-hybrid-supercomputer-/

A global quantum network

By quantum-mechanically coupling laser-cooled atoms to glass fiber cables, Vienna University of Technology researchers have developed a way to store quantum information over a long enough period of time to allow for entangling atoms hundreds of kilometers apart via fiber cables.

This finding is a fundamental building block for a global fiber-based quantum communication network, the researchers suggest.

By trapping atoms at a distance of about 200 nanometers from a glass fiber (which itself only has a diameter of 500 nanometers), a very strong interaction between light and atoms can be implemented. This allows one to exchange quantum information between the two systems. This information exchange is the basis for technologies like quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation.

Likewise, “quantum repeaters” can be used to link several shorter sections to one long quantum connection. “By using our combined nanofiber-atom-system for setting up an optical quantum network, including quantum repeaters, one might transmit quantum information and teleport quantum states around the world,”

http://www.tuwien.ac.at/en/news/news_detail/article/8244/

How to quickly generate a large quantity of personalized nerve cells

A team under the direction of Stanford cell physiologist and neuroscientist Tom Sudhof, PhD, has shown that in human ESCs or iPSCs, just boosting the level of a single transcription factor results in an abundant and quite pure population of nerve cells within as little as two weeks.

And unlike previous methods, this one seems to generate nerve cells of equally high functional quality regardless of which “starter” cell line was used to get the process underway.

Clearly, if you’re doing regenerative medicine for a stroke or brain-trauma victim etc., you’re going to need a lot of nerve cells, and time is of the essence. So the new method represents a major forward step toward the realization of the dream of personalized regenerative medicine.

http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2013/06/12/youve-got-a-lot-of-nerve-industrial-scale-procedure-for-generating-plenty-of-personalized-nerve-cells/

Drug laws are ‘worst case of scientific censorship in modern times’

Outlawing psychoactive drugs amounts to the worst case of scientific censorship in modern times, leading scientists have argued.

UN conventions on drugs in the 1960s and 1970s have not only compounded the harms of drugs but also produced the worst censorship of research for over 300 years. This has set back research in key areas such as consciousness by decades and effectively stopped the investigation of promising medical treatments, the researchers say.

“The decision to outlaw these drugs was based on their perceived dangers, but in many cases the harms have been overstated and are actually less than many legal drugs such as alcohol,” said Professor Nutt, Edmond J Safra Professor of Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London.

The call for reform has been endorsed by the British Neuroscience Association and the British Association for Psychopharmacology, and the researchers are also seeking support from other academic organizations.

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newsandeventspggrp/imperialcollege/newssummary/news_11-6-2013-10-58-52

A robot that runs like a cat

Thanks to its cat-modeled legs, EPFL’s four-legged “cheetah-cub robot” is small, light and the fastest in its category (small quadruped robots under 30Kg): it can run 5 kilometers per hour (3.1 mph) — nearly seven times its body length in one second. .

Developed by EPFL’s Biorobotics Laboratory (Biorob), biomechanics, the robot will serve as a platform for research in locomotion and biomechanics.

Although not as agile as a real cat, it still has excellent auto-stabilization characteristics when running at full speed or over a course that included disturbances such as small steps. It’s also extremely light, compact, and robust and can be easily assembled from materials that are inexpensive and readily available.

http://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-robot-that-runs-like-a-cat/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UWlzMIl7E48

Good vibes

Imagine a device using tactile vibrations for GPS-provided turn directions.

Jones has built an array that precisely tracks a motor’s vibrations through skin in three dimensions. The array consists of eight miniature accelerometers and a single pancake motor — a type of vibrating motor used in cellphones.

When participants were asked to identify specific locations of motors within the array, they were much more sensitive on the palm than on the forearm or thigh. But in all three locations, people were better at picking out vibrations in the four corners of the array, versus the inner motors, leading Jones to posit that perhaps people use the edges of their limbs to localize vibrations and other stimuli.

Jones sees promising applications for wearable tactile displays. In addition to helping drivers navigate, she says tactile stimuli may direct firefighters through burning buildings, or emergency workers through disaster sites. In more mundane scenarios, she says tactile displays may help joggers traverse an unfamiliar city, taking directions from a buzzing wristband, instead of having to look at a smartphone.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/good-vibes

DNA-carbon nanotube vapor sensor identifies scent of melanoma

According to new research from the Monell Center and collaborating institutions, odors from human skin cells can be used to identify melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer.

The researchers also demonstrated that a nanotechnology-based sensor could reliably differentiate melanoma cells from normal skin cells.

The findings suggest that non-invasive odor analysis may be a valuable technique in the detection and early diagnosis of human melanoma.

“This study demonstrates the usefulness of examining VOCs from diseases for rapid and noninvasive diagnostic purposes,” said Preti. “The methodology should also allow us to differentiate stages of the disease process.”

http://www.monell.org/news/news_releases/monell_led_research_identifies_scent_of_melanoma

Major hurdle to diabetes transplants cleared

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a way to trigger reproduction in the laboratory of clusters of human cells that make insulin, potentially removing a significant obstacle to transplanting the cells as a treatment for patients with type 1 diabetes.

Efforts to make this treatment possible have been limited by a dearth of insulin-producing beta cells that can be removed from donors after death, and by the stubborn refusal of human beta cells to proliferate in the laboratory after harvesting.

“Until now, there didn’t seem to be a way to reliably make the limited supply of human beta cells proliferate in the laboratory and remain functional,” said Michael McDaniel, PhD, professor of pathology and immunology. “We have not only found a technique to make the cells willing to multiply, we’ve done it in a way that preserves their ability to make insulin.”

http://news.wustl.edu/news/Pages/25538.aspx

Tracking people in complex indoor settings

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a method for tracking the locations of multiple individuals in complex, indoor settings using a network of video cameras, creating something similar to the fictional Marauder’s Map used by Harry Potter to track comings and goings at the Hogwarts School.

The method was able to automatically follow the movements of 13 people within a nursing home, even though individuals sometimes slipped out of view of the cameras.

These automated tracking techniques also would be useful in airports, public facilities and other areas where security is a concern. Despite the importance of cameras in identifying perpetrators following this spring’s Boston Marathon bombing and the 2005 London bombings, much of the video analysis necessary for tracking people continues to be done manually, Hauptmann noted.

http://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/2013/june/june11_maraudersmap.html

Spot-welding a graphene nanoribbon to connect into a circuit

Scientists at Aalto University and Utrecht University have created single-atom contacts between gold and graphene nanoribbons.

The most significant discovery is that a single chemical bond forms an electronically transparent contact with the graphene nanoribbon — without affecting its overall electronic structure. This may be the key to using graphene nanostructures in future electronic devices, as the contact does not change the intrinsic ribbon properties.

“Combined AFM and STM allows us to characterize the graphene nanostructures atom-by-atom, which is critical in understanding how the structure, the bonds with the contacts and their electrical properties are related,”

http://www.aalto.fi/en/current/news/view/2013-06-13-002/

Creating magnetic clouds in graphene and switching them on and off

A University of Manchester team led by Dr. Irina Grigorieva has discovered how to create elementary magnetic moments in graphene and then switch them on and off, opening a new avenue towards electronics with very low energy consumption.

This is the first time magnetism itself has been toggled, rather than the magnetization direction being reversed.

Grigorieva and her team have shown that the magnetic clouds can be controllably dissipated and then condensed back. “This breakthrough allows us to work towards transistor-like devices in which information is written down by switching graphene between its magnetic and non-magnetic states. These states can be read out either in the conventional manner by pushing an electric current through or, even better, by using a spin flow. Such transistors have been a holy grail of spintronics.”

http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=10201