Electronic skin will help amputees to sense environment

(Cross-posted from Jeeget.blogspot.com)

Scientists from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a sort of electronic skin having flexible sensors operating on low voltage that would help amputees to sense touch, humidity and temperature.

This e-skin could be attached to prosthetic limbs and would help them to sense the environment. It is a major breakthrough as the current devices detect only touch.

In this research, scientists utilized gold particles and a kind of resin that is about 10 times more sensitive to touch than the traditional e-skin devices.

Source:

Mashable

"DNA nanorobots" to treat cancer

Researchers have recently published their findings of successful use of DNA nanobots for the treatment of cancerours cells.

They have published their findings in the journal of Science.

Aptamers have been used to target the particular cells and payloads with drug molecules and antibodies were used to deliver drugs.

From SayPeople,

Scientists have used a method called as “DNA origami” to make the container having DNA chains folded in a prescribed manner. Then they used “aptamers” to lock the barrel shaped robot. Aptamers have the ability to recognize the particular cell types. 

Scientists then used these robots and observed the unlocking of the robot on contact with the cancer cell proteins leading to the release of antibodies that stopped the growth of cells.

According to researchers, these methods could be used for various other diseases where targeting of cells are to be done.

Further Reading:
SayPeople

USB memory stick sized DNA sequencer

Researchers from Oxford Nanopore Technologies have developed a USB memory stick sized platform for the sequencing DNA.

They named it MinION that uses the GridIOn platform developed by the company. GridION has scalable instruments with consumable cartridges having array chips for nano-pore sensing. MinION is a disposable device for sensing experiments such as DNA sequencing and protein and other nanopore sensing.

"The exquisite science behind nanopore sensing has taken nearly two decades to reach this point; a truly disruptive single molecule analysis technique, designed alongside new electronics to be a universal sequencing system. GridION and MinION are poised to deliver a completely new range of benefits to researchers and clinicians," said Dr Gordon Sanghera, CEO of Oxford Nanopore.


Further Reading:
Saypeople

MRI scans showed brain changes in Autistic infants

Researchers have worked on the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) of 92 infants aging from 6 months to 2 years. They have found that there are certain brain connection changes in the infants whose siblings are autistic.

Researchers have published their findings in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

According to researchers, findings of tracking the changes of the brain in the early stages can lead to better developmental outcomes.

Further Reading:
SayPeople

Microchip that can be controlled to deliver drugs

Researchers have successfully developed microchip that can be controlled with the help radio signals to deliver drugs.

Researchers have done this study in Denmark. They have implanted the device containing bone building drugs in 7 older women of ages 65-70 and found that the drug delivery was same as that after injections. The device delivered the drug for 20 days.

They have published this finding in the journal of Science Translational Medicine.

"These data validate the microchip approach to multi-year drug delivery without the need for frequent injections, which can improve the management of many chronic diseases like osteoporosis where adherence to therapy is a significant problem," said study lead author Robert Farra, MicroCHIPS President and Chief Operating Officer. "We look forward to making further progress to advance our first device toward regulatory approvals, as well as developing a range of products for use in important disease areas such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis, cancer, and chronic pain."

Further Reading:
SayPeople

Decoding the words in the brain; Research

Researchers from University of Maryland, UC Berkeley and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland have successfully decoded the words in the brain through latest technology.


Researchers have placed electrical rods on the brains of participants and worked with them while the participants were in conversation. They found that brain processes the information in the speed between one to 8000 hertz.


One of the words reproduced by scientists was "Structure".

Prof Robert Knight, one of the researchers from the University of California at Berkeley, said: "This is huge for patients who have damage to their speech mechanisms because of a stroke or Lou Gehrig's disease and can't speak.

"If you could eventually reconstruct imagined conversations from brain activity, thousands of people could benefit."

Further Reading:

SayPeople

Single GFP-Expressing Cell Is Basis of Living Laser Device

It sounds like something out of a comic book or a science fiction movie -- a living laser -- but that is exactly what two investigators at the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital have developed. In a report that will appear in the journal Nature Photonics and is receiving advance online release, Wellman researchers Malte Gather, PhD, and Seok Hyun Yun, PhD, describe how a single cell genetically engineered to express green fluorescent protein (GFP) can be used to amplify the light particles called photons into nanosecond-long pulses of laser light.

"Since they were first developed some 50 years ago, lasers have used synthetic materials such as crystals, dyes and purified gases as optical gain media, within which photon pulses are amplified as they bounces back and forth between two mirrors," says Yun, corresponding author of the report. "Ours is the first report of a successful biological laser based on a single, living cell."

Adds Gather, a research fellow and the paper's lead author, "Part of the motivation of this project was basic scientific curiosity. In addition to realizing that biological substances had not played a major role in lasers, we wondered whether there was a fundamental reason why laser light, as far as we know, does not occur in nature or if we could find a way to achieve lasing in biological substances or living organisms."

The investigators chose GFP for their exploration of those questions because the protein -- originally found in a species of jellyfish -- can be induced to emit light without the application of additional enzymes. Its properties are well understood, and there are established techniques to genetically program many organisms to express GFP. To determine the protein's potential for generating laser light, the researcher first assembled a device consisting of an inch-long cylinder, with mirrors at each end, filled with a solution of GFP in water. After first confirming that the GFP solution could amplify input energy into brief pulses of laser light, the researchers estimated the concentration of GFP required to produce the laser effect.

Using that information, their next step was to develop a line of mammalian cells expressing GFP at the required levels. The cellular laser was assembled by placing a single GFP-expressing cell -- with a diameter of from 15 to 20 millionths of a meter -- in a microcavity consisting of two highly reflective mirrors spaced 20 millionths of a meter apart. Not only did the cell-based device produce pulses of laser light as in the GFP solution experiment, the researchers also found that the spherical shape of the cell itself acted as a lens, refocusing the light and inducing emission of laser light at lower energy levels than required for the solution-based device. The cells used in the device survived the lasing process and were able to continue producing hundreds of pulses of laser light.

"While the individual laser pulses last for only a few nanoseconds, they are bright enough to be readily detected and appear to carry very useful information that may give us new ways to analyze the properties of large numbers of cells almost instantaneously," says Yun, who is an associate professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School. "And the ability to generate laser light from a biocompatible source placed inside a patient could be useful for photodynamic therapies, in which drugs are activated by the application of light, or novel forms of imaging."

Gather adds, "One of our long-term goals will be finding ways to bring optical communications and computing, currently done with inanimate electronic devices, into the realm of biotechnology. That could be particularly useful in projects requiring the interfacing of electronics with biological organisms. We also hope to be able to implant a structure equivalent to the mirrored chamber right into a cell, which would the next milestone in this research." The study was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the Korea National Research Foundation.

Journal Reference:
Malte C. Gather, Seok Hyun Yun. Single-cell biological lasers. Nature Photonics, 2011; DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2011.99