Researchers from Texas A&M University, led by Dr. Akhilesh K. Gaharwar, have developed a new way to deliver treatment for cartilage regeneration.
Gaharwar, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M, said the nanoclay-based platform for sustained and prolonged delivery of protein therapeutics has the potential to impact treating osteoarthritis, a degenerative disease that affects nearly 27 million Americans and is caused by breakdown of cartilage that can lead to damage of the underlying bone.
As America’s population ages, the number of osteoarthritis incidences is likely to increase. One of the greatest challenges with treating osteoarthritis and subsequent joint damage is repairing the damaged tissue, especially as cartilage tissue is difficult to regenerate.
Summary: Researchers have identified a previously unknown form of neural communication. They report the findings could help better the understanding of neural activity associated with specific brain processing and neurological disorders.
Source: Case Western Reserve University.
Biomedical engineering researchers at Case Western Reserve University say they have identified a previously unidentified form of neural communication, a discovery that could help scientists better understand neural activity surrounding specific brain processes and brain disorders.
The United States should devote substantially more resources to nuclear fusion research and build an ambitious prototype fusion power plant, according to a new report.
The report is the work of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Its conclusion: it’s more important than ever for the U.S. and the world to explore roads to practical fusion power.
Angular-momentum nanometrology in an ultrathin plasmonic topological insulator film.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-06952-1 “Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) technology has provided a highly sensitive detection platform for high-resolution optical imaging, sensing and metrology. Although the detection of optical beams carrying angular momentum have been explored with nanophotonic methods, the metrology of optical angular momentum has been limited to bulk optics. We demonstrate angular-momentum nanometrology through the spatial displacement engineering of plasmonic angular momentum modes in a CMOS-compatible plasmonic topological insulator material.”
Twisted Light Could Dramatically Boost Data Rates. https://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/wireless/twisted-light-could-dramatically-boost-data-rates “Big deal, you say? It most certainly was. The concept of orbital angular momentum (OAM) has done nothing less than inspire a reimagining of what we’re capable of doing with electromagnetic radiation. Beams that carry OAM can be used to move tiny objects, and they have been used to enhance the resolving power of microscopes.”
What is the internet? 13 key questions answered. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/22/what-is-the-internet-13-key-questions-answered “One measure is the amount of information that courses through it: about five exabytes a day. That’s equivalent to 40,000 two-hour standard definition movies per second. It takes some wiring up. Hundreds of thousands of miles of cables criss-cross countries, and more are laid along sea floors to connect islands and continents. About 300 submarine cables, the deep-sea variant only as thick as a garden hose, underpin the modern internet. Most are bundles of hair-thin fibre optics that carry data at the speed of light.”
How will artificial intelligence, molecular manufacturing, biological engineering and distributed additive manufacturing change the economics of the production of goods and services?
A new chemical process could turn about 90% of the world’s grocery bags, shrink wrap, and other polypropylene waste into clean fuel.
Grocery bags and other trash could be melted down to yield useful products like oil and gas.
The problem: The world’s landfill sites and oceans are being flooded with plastic. A mere 9% of the 8.3 billion tons of plastic produced over the last 65 years has been recycled, according to the United Nations. Over eight million tons of plastic flow into our oceans every year, harming wildlife.
How it works: The technology works on polyolefin waste, the sort of plastic used for grocery bags, toys, and shrink wrap. This sort of plastic accounts for about 23% of plastic waste, according to researchers who describe the process in a paper published in Sustainable Chemistry and Engineering. The new technique uses a process called hydrothermal liquefaction, in which very high temperatures melt pellets of polyolefin and then dissolve them in water. The by-products of this process are oil, gas, or solvents.
The derivation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and the stunning discovery that somatic cells can be reprogrammed into human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) holds the promise to revolutionize biomedical research and regenerative medicine. In this Review, we focus on disorders of the central nervous system and explore how advances in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) coincide with evolutions in genome engineering and genomic technologies to provide realistic opportunities to tackle some of the most devastating complex disorders.
Advances in stem cell biology are paving new paths toward their use in the clinic, especially toward understanding and treating neurological and neurodegenerative disease.
Alvin Retamar, Chief Science Research Specialist and Project Leader of Philippine Earth Data Resource and Observation Center (PEDRO) said some institutions they have been helping are even calling for higher level training in the space sciences.
“In some areas where we are providing support they are already keen on developing aerospace engineering degree programs,” Retamar said.
MANILA — The Philippines has enough brainpower to staff a proposed space agency, officials from the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) said Wednesday.
A bill creating the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) was passed in the House of Representatives last December, while counterpart legislation is pending in the Senate.
In a finding that runs counter to a common assumption in physics, researchers at the University of Michigan ran a light emitting diode (LED) with electrodes reversed in order to cool another device mere nanometers away.
The approach could lead to new solid-state cooling technology for future microprocessors, which will have so many transistors packed into a small space that current methods can’t remove heat quickly enough.
“We have demonstrated a second method for using photons to cool devices,” said Pramod Reddy, who co-led the work with Edgar Meyhofer, both professors of mechanical engineering.
