Meanwhile in Science 25-4-2016

A New State of Water Molecules was Discovered

We all know the basic states of water: solid, liquid, and gas. These work perfectly in our big world, but strange things happen under more extreme circumstances. In the experiment water was confined into extremely small channels of 5/10-billionth meters across, which is the width of 5 atoms. Under low temperatures the water was in a strange state where the oxygen and hydrogen atoms were at six symmetrical positions at the same time. The discovery will help explain the behavior of water in minerals, cell membranes, or carbon nanotubes. Quantum states of various compounds will become increasingly important as we start manipulating smaller and smaller objects. Knowing the behavior of molecules at these levels will provide developers with a better understanding of what they need to take into account.[Source]

Drug-free but Still Pain-free using Brain Stimulation

Current pain-killers are pretty common, pop a pill and the pain goes away. They work on the brain by blocking the pain signals and they do this pretty effectively. Unfortunately they have a nasty addictive side effect, which is especially troublesome for chronic pain patients. Enter the research team from the University or Arlington, who devised a new way of blocking pain. They created a device that stimulated the Ventral Tegmental Area of the brain using electrical current. The wireless implant reduced the sensation of pain and was able to block pain signals from the spine completely. This opens up a new research line into a brain area previously studied for its role for positive reinforcement, and it creates non-drug opportunities for chronic pain patients.[Source]

Self-assembling Electrical Circuits

Electrical circuits are easy enough, you have a power source, some wire, and the thing you want to power. Connect them all and your lights shine in no time. Now try doing that without the wires, bit trickier isn’t it? Yet, a team from Rice University did just that in a spectacular and sci-fi looking manner. They put carbon nanotubes in the crosshairs of a tesla-coil, the resulting force field polarized the nanotubes coaxing them into wires. The effect looks like something from a movie, where tendrils shoot out of nowhere attaching themselves to each other and a couple of LED lights. Using this technique they created wires of about 15cm with the power course over 30cm away. Currently the technology looks more cool than practical, but in the future the biomedical field might be able to find a lot of use for these self-assembling wires that can be powered from a distance.[Source] [Video]

Super Elastic Self-Healing Electrically Sensitive Polymer

Try saying that three times fast. Stanford University created a material than can stretch up to 100 times its original length, fix damage, and respond to electrical fields not unlike muscles or skin. The material was able to stretch beyond the capabilities of the machine used to test it, the researchers had to do the last bit themselves. This was the result of have long molecular chains linked by organic ligands (ligands have an extra electron pair that can bind to metals, more on that later). The second thing that amazed the team came when it was damaged. It was able to fix itself at room temperature, without solvents or treatment, even after it was a few days old. This ability was introduced by adding metal ions (those bind to the ligands). These metal ions rebuild broken chains when they are put together. The last shock (pun intended) was that it twitched under the influence of electricity, this was also a response from the metal ions attached to the ligands. This new material is a big step towards synthetic skin and muscle that can be used in prosthetics or robots. Its properties would even introduce a sense of touch to the artificial limb.[Source]

Universal Allergy Treatments are here! (sorta)

Allergies are annoying to say the least; some people have a bit of a sniffle while other simply cannot leave the house anymore. Your body reacts to some type of compound like the house is on fire, attacking it with all it has. A new approach uses nanoparticles to tag the allergens and parade them past the immune system, like a buddy system in your body. The experiment was done on mice who were allergic to eggs. An approved dissolvable polymer filled with egg protein was injected into the mouse, because the proteins were carried by a friendly compound the immune system didn’t react. After the treatment the mouse no longer showed a response to eggs and their immune systems even improved. The reason this works is because of the innate immune system, this is the one that tells the body if something is good or bad. In an allergic response this part of the immune system doesn’t get the chance to evaluate the compound, the reaction prevents that. Using the Trojan horse method it is given another chance. Smuggled past the guards the innate immune system tags it as harmless, so future exposure no longer causes the severe reaction. The treatment can be adapted to any allergen, just fill them up with peanut butter or pollen and you’re set. But there is still a way to go, more mouse studies need to be done and human studies after that. Regardless of the early stage it is still very promising, giving hope to people everywhere.[Source]

Hubble Celebrates its 26^th birthday

Back in 1990, on April 24^th the hubble space telescope was launched into orbit using the Discovery shuttle. It didn’t have a very great start and was initially the joke of the scientific community. A big expensive space telescope was shot into space with a flawed mirror, resulting in blurry images. The mirror was too flat by a whole 2,2 micrometers (I know right?!). The blunder was eventually fixed by incorporating the error in reverse into other components, effectively given the telescope glasses. And since that day we’ve been treated to amazing images of our universe, and this week on its 26^th birthday we got another treat. It took a photo of the bubble nebula; a large cloud being blown out by a massive star. It’s 7.100 light years away from us and formed by a relatively young but massive star, so hot and bright it launches its own gasses into space. [Source]

Meanwhile in Science 18-4-2016

Universe expands faster than physics allows

New measurements of the expansion of the universe estimate its speed a little over what was previously thought, about 8% faster. That might not seem like such a big deal, but it messes up the laws of physics and many estimates that were made using them.

The expansion of the universe is currently understood as being driven by dark matter and dark energy, which makes up 95% of the universe. Dark matter, which makes up 27%, tries to slow down expansion. The 68% of dark energy does the opposite and seems to speed it up. The speed of expansion was first estimated using the cosmic background radiation, and it concluded that the speed has been constant over time.

The predictions made using this constant have always been off from the observations made by telescopes, but the discrepancy was small enough to be ignored. The new and most precise measurement on the other hand is more difficult to ignore. It used “standard candles”, which are objects in space thought to emit the same amount of light, to determine the speed of the expansion.

The measurements need to be checked, but if these are valid there is something fundamentally wrong in the way we understand the universe. [Source]

New material, better computers

Physicists from the US department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory made a new discovery in the form of a topological metal. A topological metal doesn’t conduct a current thought itself, rather it carries it along the surface.  The new metal, PtSn4 (Platinum and Tin), allows electrons to travel at the near speed of light. Previous materials only allowed this in small numbers, but PtSn4 conducts electrons in high density. Using this new material would allow improvements in speeds, efficiency and data storage. [Source]

Superhero DNA: Immunity to genetic diseases

Our DNA is complicated; it makes us who we are but also comes with certain risks. A small error can lead to a fatal or debilitating disease. We’ve gotten to the point where we can screen DNA for these errors, giving a nice overview of possible ailments you might get later in life. But the surprising part is that a small portion (13 in 600.000) seem to be immune. The 13 people in question should have developed several diseases but they didn’t, the symptoms should have been present since childhood. There was something in their DNA that protected them from the errors in their DNA. Figuring out what that protections is poses problem, the study was protected so the scientists have no way of contacting these people. It is therefore hard to check the results causing some skepticism, so a fresh replication will be done that allows the scientists to track the participants. [Source]

More light was shed on bacteria that use Iron for metabolism

Humans wat organic matter in the form of vegetables, fruits, or meat. When we metabolize these a whole chain of molecules takes an electron from that organic matter and delivers it to oxygen. The oxygen then binds to hydrogen to make water. Without oxygen we’re in trouble, without it we cannot break down glucose and get the energy. We’ve already known for a century about bacteria that are able to use iron instead of oxygen. These bacteria figured out a way to use Iron for energy in a place where there was no oxygen to work with. Sequencing these bacteria sheds light on how these processes work in evolutionary terms, creating analogies for alien life and open up possibilities to gain energy from organic matter using iron instead of oxygen. [Source]

Gamers help Quantum Computers

Quantum mechanics is just weird, if you think you understand it you probably don’t. Particles pop in and out of existence, they’re in two places at once, and somehow they can communicate without interacting. But humans aren’t as useless in that realm as we thought. A couple of scientists created a game that mimics what a quantum computer needs to do in order to make calculations. The goal is to find the best way to shuttle atoms back and forth. In the game (Quantum Movers) atoms are represented as a liquid that doesn’t move quite as you expect, one wrong move and you have a quantum mess. The player needs to collect and move the liquid around. Amazingly human players and their intuition managed to do this a lot better than the computer algorithms. These results were subsequently fed back into the algorithm to improve it and make the computer think a little bit more like us. [Source] [Game]

Heat on a nanoscale moves at the speed of sound

For the first time ever, using new ultrafast electron microscope techniques, researchers recorded heat traveling at the speed of sound through materials. Heat as a waste energy impacts many areas like electronics, infrastructures, power transmission, and transportation. In a car 70% of the energy is lost through heat, which isn’t very efficient. Studying heat on a nanoscale can help material scientists to make processes more efficient and figure out how to recycle energy lost otherwise. The new technique used an FEI tecnai Femto ultrafast electron microscope, which captures images at one millionth of a billionth of a second. In the experiment it was shown how waves of energy traveled through the material. Heat showed up as ripples in a pond, and understanding these ripples will help future technologies to guide these ripples away from sensitive parts. [Source] [Video]

 

 

Meanwhile in Science 11-4-2016

Programming Living Cells

A team at MIT developed a “Biological programming language” that can design biological circuits in seconds. The language is based on Verilog, a coding language popular for computer chips. The text based language requires the user to create the circuit like you would any other, which it then compiles into a DNA sequence that can be synthesized and inserted into a cell. The language is easy-to-use and doesn’t require knowledge of genetics or biology, in theory a high school student could use it to describe how to detect a toxin and create a DNA sequence for a toxin sniffing germ. The language is currently geared to work for E. coli, but subsequent iterations aim to update it to work with many more organisms. The possibilities are enormous, especially in combination with other techniques like CRISPR. It makes the process of designing custom organisms much faster, effectively removing the evolution component, which shaves off months or years. In the future modified germs could protect crops, help digestion, indicate dangerous substances, break down organic compounds.[source]

Storing Data on DNA

A team of engineers and computer scientists from the University of Washington and Microsoft achieved a worldwide first. They stored and retrieved four images that were stored on DNA. It might sound a bit lame, four measly pictures, but the repercussions are enormous. This storage capacity is analogous to more than 10.000 gigabytes on a pinhead-sized collection of DNA molecules. There were two problems with storing information on DNA. The first is how to convert binary information (one and zero) into quaternary information (Adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine). This was achieved by cutting the digital information up into pieces. The second problem was how to retrieve this data from the sea of DNA once it was stored. They used a “random access” method that labels the data with something comparable to a zip code. By using the labels all the data could be found and ordered without any errors or data loss. The experiment was to prove the method, to show it was possible and make a first step. The costs and efficiency of using this method are still unpractical, but there’s not technical problem of achieving this. It does paint a nice picture of the future, where a warehouse sized server-farm is compacted into the size of a sugar-cube. [source]

Camera Contact-lenses for Smart-eyes

The future is now…well maybe. South Korea granted Samsung a patent for a contact lens with a display and built-in camera. The display and camera in the lenses are controlled by a sensor that records blinking. The data is transmitted through an embedded antenna and processed by the user’s smartphone. The angle of Samsung seems to be the augmented reality market, whereas the google patents is geared towards healthcare. Contacts are more discrete and cover the eye without edges. Some problems might occur with accidental input due to blinking, and possible awkwardness when you see people blinking like crazy in public. The concept described in the patent sounds amazing, but it still is just that, a concept. Patents are filed constantly that never reach the public, but at least it shows that these ideas are still alive and being pursued. [source]

Turning Water into Steam using Sunlight

A new material was developed that turns water into steam using sunlight. The material is made from gold nanoparticles shaped into channels or pores. It absorbs 99% of the light, making it extremely black. It floats on water, when sunlight hits the gold nanoparticles in the pores the electrons start moving around like crazy. This oscillation is called plasmon, which created very localized, intense heat which vaporized the water in close vicinity. The concept is not new, and a 90% efficiency in energy conversion isn’t a record either, but the new process is a lot cheaper to manufacture. The potential applications range from energy generation, steam engines, or fresh water production. [source]

Breaching the Blood Brain Barrier

A study at Cornell reports finding a way to get large molecules across the Blood Brain Barrier using existing agents. The Blood Brain Barrier is a layer of cells that protects the brain from outside compounds, it is selective and only allows necessary molecules to pass through. Amino Acids, Oxygen, Glucose and water are all able to pass through, anything else is blocked. This is a great thing and prevents harmful agents from getting to our most complicated organ. But at the same time the barrier is a problem for healthcare, since medication has to be tailored to pass through the barrier and some compounds simply cannot pass it. The drug Lexiscan activates receptors (more specifically adenosine receptors) on the barrier that opens up a brief window. This is a short time-span, perfect for drug delivery and not long enough to pose any dangers. In the study they managed to deliver chemotherapy into a mouse brain, and an antibody that binds to plaques (those are important causes in Alzheimer’s). The method could potentially be a great new way to treat illnesses that weren’t possible before. [source]

Rare Triple Star System Discovered

A team at the University of Notre Dame captured clear images of a rarely seen star system. The planet is dubbed “hot Jupiter”, as it is a gas giant orbiting very close to its star about 685 lightyears from us. But the parent star had some extra children, two additional stars. The planet is about 1,5 times smaller than our own Jupiter and has an orbit of three days. The two other stars orbit each other every 30 years, and orbit the main star and the planet every 4000 years. The system is special, as it is believed that large gas giants are created far away from the star. Other three star systems share this “hot Jupiter”, hinting at some mechanism that drives the planet closer to the parent star and slows it down into an orbit. As more of these systems are found proper patterns can be investigated. [source]

Meanwhile in Science 5-4-2016

Evidence found for a new quantum state of matter

The first signatures were detected of a fractional particle known as Majorana Fermions. The results matched a 40-year-old theoretical model, the Kitaev Model, that called this state quantum spin liquid. The key characteristic of this state is the splitting of electrons (fractionalization), and it was predicted but not yet observed. The “split” doesn’t refer to the individual electron being ripped in half, but a split in the alignment of the whole. In a typical magnetic material electrons are like magnets with two poles, when cooled down the poles align towards the same direction. In a spin liquid state material this doesn’t happen. Even at absolute zero the electrons don’t align but become an entangled mess due to quantum fluctuations. In the experiment they used neutron scattering to produce a pattern of ripples that is indicative of magnetic properties. In normal good old magnets this results in sharp lines, in the quantum spin liquid Majorana Fermions the pattern was more broad humps instead of sharp lines. This pattern matches up quite nice to the predictions made by the Kitaev Model. Of course this sounds all nice and complicated, but what good is it? Aside from furthering the understanding the weird world of quantum mechanics it also has potential to be used in quantum computers, making computations possible that are out of reach with our current technology. [source]

Stem Cells Repair Spinal tissue

When it comes to healing the body the world looks at stem-cells, these little buggers promise to fix tissue like new. Stem-cells are the progenitors that can become any other cell in the body, but it’s not that easy. True stem-cells are present during development in the womb, those can and will become every cell that makes up the body. Stem-cells used in research aren’t quite there yet. The stem-cells we are able to make at this point are one step further than true stem-cells, they already have some kind of differentiation that determines the type of cell they become and are coax into regenerating tissue of that type. In a recent study researchers managed to coax neural stem-cells into fixing a damaged corticospinal tract in rats. Varies types of stem-cells tried and failed, but the neural stem-cells finally booked success and supported regeneration of tissue. There is still a long road ahead, the rats still need to be tested in order to see how complete the regeneration was. Human trials are even further ahead, not even on the schedule, but we do know that we can fix it. [source]

Self-Cleaning Textile

The days of washing your clothes are over! Well, not yet but that’s the idea. A team in Melbourne dipped textile in a series of copper and silver-based nanostructure solutions. These nanostructures absorb visible light and this energy boost creates “Hot Electrons”. The cool thing about “Hot Electrons” is that they break down organic matter, in tests the textiles were able to clean themselves in about six minutes. The experiment was done with only small pieces of textile and the nanostructure wasn’t completely embedded onto the textile, so it’s still far from self-cleaning shirts. But nonetheless it’s a pretty cool concept. [source]

Cartilage pen

A team of surgeons and researchers from the ARC center of Excellence for Electromaterials Science (ACES) and St. Vincent’s Hospital came up with a brand new way to treat arthritis. Arthritis is a common condition that causes the cartilage in the joints to break down, which causes a lot of pain. Cartilage doesn’t have any blood supply nor nerves, so it doesn’t grow back. Painful procedures with bone drilling or pre-made implants were the only curable option for some patients. The new method uses a mobile 3D printing pen (BioPen) that prints cartilage stem-cells directly into the body. A hydrogel protects the cells while they grow into a 3D scaffold that the body uses to regrow the cartilage. This is but a first step and it is conceivable this method could be used for other tissues like skin or muscle. [source]

Growing Skin

A Developmental Biology team in Kobe used stem-cells (yes those things again) to create all the layers of the skin and transplanted those onto a mouse. The major success was that this mouse was able to grow hair and sweat through this engineered skin. This is obviously good news for people in need for skin grafts, but also a source for testing that now uses animal models. In a larger view it also signifies another success story of fully functional lab-grown organs that in the future will save countless lives. [source]

The pill that lights up Cancer

Cancer is an awful disease and the treatment is no picnic either. Chemotherapy is used to shrink the tumors but in the process weakens the entire body. To see if the chemo works scans are used that require several rounds of chemotherapy. So often there is no effect, but the downside of chemo still remains. But now there’s a pill that releases nanoparticles that turn green when cancer cells die. The best part is that this works in just eight hours, which means that doctors can see if the tumor is resistant to treatment or not much faster. The less time spent on chemotherapy to treat cancer the better for the patient. [source]