Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label technology. Show all posts
Tuesday, 1 July 2014
IRAN'S INDIGENOUSLY BUILT STEALTH JET "THE VANQUISHER"
Speaking on the sidelines of its unveiling ceremony on Saturday, Vahidi said the aircraft had a “very low radar cross section” and was capable of conducting operations at low altitudes.
The Iranian defense minister noted that highly-advanced materials and electro-ionic systems had been used in the structure of Qaher-313, adding that the aircraft was capable of carrying advanced armaments.
3-D printed wrist splints for arthritis sufferers
Date:
July 1, 2014
Source:
University of Loughborough
Summary:
A computer software concept has been developed that will enable clinicians with no experience in Computer Aided Design (CAD) to design and make custom-made 3D printed wrist splints for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers. The 3D printed splints are not only more comfortable and attractive but potentially cheaper than the current ones that are 'ugly, bulky, and can make a patients arm sweat'.
A Loughborough University lecturer has developed a computer software concept that will enable clinicians with no experience in Computer Aided Design (CAD) to design and make custom-made 3D printed wrist splints for rheumatoid arthritis sufferers.
Dr Abby Paterson, from the Design School, said: "I wanted to give clinicians the ability to make splints they have not been able to make before. They can improve the aesthetics, the fit, and integrate extra bits of functionality they couldn't do before as a result of our Additive Manufacturing facilities here at Loughborough University. Thanks to our Objet Connex machine, we can integrate multiple materials in a single splint such as rubber-like integral hinges or cushioning features but, more importantly, the specialised software prototype we've developed will enable clinicians to design these splints for their patients."
The 3D printed splints are not only more comfortable and attractive but potentially cheaper than the current ones that are 'ugly, bulky, and can make a patients arm sweat'. As a result patients do not use them as often as they should.
The splints, which provide joint protection, rest, and promote pain relief,could be a major boost for sufferers of rheumatoid arthritis, the second most common type of arthritis in the UK which affects more than 400,000 people.
The splints are made by scanning a patient's arm in the 'appropriate position'. A 3D model splint is then designed based on the scan to generate a computer model.
The 3D printer can then produce as many splints as are needed at the touch of a button. They can be any colour, feature multiple materials, have a lattice design to aid ventilation and any type of fastening the patient requires.
The 3D CAD software prototype was shown to certified splinting practitioners, such as occupational therapists and physiotherapists.
Dr Paterson said: "The practitioners were very excited by new, novel ideas to expand the possibilities available to them, such as integrated rubber borders for increased comfort."
The 3D CAD software prototype is the product of Dr Paterson's PhD and development work is still needed on the software and materials.
Dr Paterson was supervised during her PhD by Dr Richard Bibb and Dr Ian Campbell. Dr Bibb came up with the idea for bespoke wrist splints in the late 1990's.
Dr Bibb and Dr Paterson are currently pursuing opportunities to perform a 'thorough cost analysis' of providing the service.
Dr Bibb says the 3D splints could be cheaper than the current ones because the design and manufacture stages have been separated. He believes they will be cost-effective for the NHS while the 'sky's the limit' in the private sector.
Dr Bibb, Reader in Medical Applications of Design in the Design School, said: "We are in the development phase. The research has proved that this is desirable and the clinicians want it. We know there's lots of potential."
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Loughborough.Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Muscle-powered bio-bots walk on command
Date:
July 1, 2014
Source:
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Summary:
A new generation of miniature biological robots is flexing its muscle. Engineers have demonstrated a class of walking 'bio-bots' powered by muscle cells and controlled with electrical pulses, giving researchers unprecedented command over their function.
A new generation of miniature biological robots is flexing its muscle. Engineers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign demonstrated a class of walking "bio-bots" powered by muscle cells and controlled with electrical pulses, giving researchers unprecedented command over their function. The group published its work in the online early edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Biological actuation driven by cells is a fundamental need for any kind of biological machine you want to build," said study leader Rashid Bashir, Abel Bliss Professor and head of bioengineering at the U. of I. "We're trying to integrate these principles of engineering with biology in a way that can be used to design and develop biological machines and systems for environmental and medical applications. Biology is tremendously powerful, and if we can somehow learn to harness its advantages for useful applications, it could bring about a lot of great things."
Bashir's group has been a pioneer in designing and building bio-bots, less than a centimeter in size, made of flexible 3-D printed hydrogels and living cells. Previously, the group demonstrated bio-bots that "walk" on their own, powered by beating heart cells from rats. However, heart cells constantly contract, denying researchers control over the bot's motion. This makes it difficult to use heart cells to engineer a bio-bot that can be turned on and off, sped up or slowed down.
The new bio-bots are powered by a strip of skeletal muscle cells that can be triggered by an electric pulse. This gives the researchers a simple way to control the bio-bots and opens the possibilities for other forward design principles, so engineers can customize bio-bots for specific applications.
"Skeletal muscles cells are very attractive because you can pace them using external signals," Bashir said. "For example, you would use skeletal muscle when designing a device that you wanted to start functioning when it senses a chemical or when it received a certain signal. To us, it's part of a design toolbox. We want to have different options that could be used by engineers to design these things."
The design is inspired by the muscle-tendon-bone complex found in nature. There is a backbone of 3-D printed hydrogel, strong enough to give the bio-bot structure but flexible enough to bend like a joint. Two posts serve to anchor a strip of muscle to the backbone, like tendons attach muscle to bone, but the posts also act as feet for the bio-bot.
A bot's speed can be controlled by adjusting the frequency of the electric pulses. A higher frequency causes the muscle to contract faster, thus speeding up the bio-bot's progress as seen in this video.
"It's only natural that we would start from a bio-mimetic design principle, such as the native organization of the musculoskeletal system, as a jumping-off point," said graduate student Caroline Cvetkovic, co-first author of the paper. "This work represents an important first step in the development and control of biological machines that can be stimulated, trained, or programmed to do work. It's exciting to think that this system could eventually evolve into a generation of biological machines that could aid in drug delivery, surgical robotics, 'smart' implants, or mobile environmental analyzers, among countless other applications."
Next, the researchers will work to gain even greater control over the bio-bots' motion, like integrating neurons so the bio-bots can be steered in different directions with light or chemical gradients. On the engineering side, they hope to design a hydrogel backbone that allows the bio-bot to move in different directions based on different signals. Thanks to 3-D printing, engineers can explore different shapes and designs quickly. Bashir and colleagues even plan to integrate a unit into undergraduate lab curriculum so that students can design different kinds of bio-bots.
"The goal of 'building with biology' is not a new one -- tissue engineering researchers have been working for many years to reverse engineer native tissue and organs, and this is very promising for medical applications," said graduate student Ritu Raman, co-first author of the paper. "But why stop there? We can go beyond this by using the dynamic abilities of cells to self-organize and respond to environmental cues to forward engineer non-natural biological machines and systems.
"The idea of doing forward engineering with these cell-based structures is very exciting," Bashir said. "Our goal is for these devices to be used as autonomous sensors. We want it to sense a specific chemical and move towards it, then release agents to neutralize the toxin, for example. Being in control of the actuation is a big step forward toward that goal."
The National Science Foundation supported this work through a Science and Technology Center (Emergent Behavior of Integrated Cellular Systems) grant, in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Georgia Institute of Technology and other partner institutions. Mechanical science and engineering professor Taher Saif was also a co-author. Bashir also is affiliated with the Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory, the department of electrical and computer engineering and of mechanical science and engineering, Frederick Seitz Materials Research Laboratory and the Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
Journal Reference:
- C. Cvetkovic, R. Raman, V. Chan, B. J. Williams, M. Tolish, P. Bajaj, M. S. Sakar, H. H. Asada, M. T. A. Saif, R. Bashir. Three-dimensionally printed biological machines powered by skeletal muscle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2014; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1401577111
Monday, 30 June 2014
Noninvasive brain control: New light-sensitive protein enables simpler, more powerful optogenetics
Date:
June 29, 2014
Source:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Summary:
Engineers have now developed the first light-sensitive molecule that enables neurons to be silenced noninvasively, using a light source outside the skull. This noninvasive approach could pave the way to using optogenetics in human patients to treat epilepsy and other neurological disorders.
Optogenetics, a technology that allows scientists to control brain activity by shining light on neurons, relies on light-sensitive proteins that can suppress or stimulate electrical signals within cells. This technique requires a light source to be implanted in the brain, where it can reach the cells to be controlled.
MIT engineers have now developed the first light-sensitive molecule that enables neurons to be silenced noninvasively, using a light source outside the skull. This makes it possible to do long-term studies without an implanted light source. The protein, known as Jaws, also allows a larger volume of tissue to be influenced at once.
This noninvasive approach could pave the way to using optogenetics in human patients to treat epilepsy and other neurological disorders, the researchers say, although much more testing and development is needed. Led by Ed Boyden, an associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, the researchers described the protein in the June 29 issue of Nature Neuroscience.
Optogenetics, a technique developed over the past 15 years, has become a common laboratory tool for shutting off or stimulating specific types of neurons in the brain, allowing neuroscientists to learn much more about their functions.
The neurons to be studied must be genetically engineered to produce light-sensitive proteins known as opsins, which are channels or pumps that influence electrical activity by controlling the flow of ions in or out of cells. Researchers then insert a light source, such as an optical fiber, into the brain to control the selected neurons.
Such implants can be difficult to insert, however, and can be incompatible with many kinds of experiments, such as studies of development, during which the brain changes size, or of neurodegenerative disorders, during which the implant can interact with brain physiology. In addition, it is difficult to perform long-term studies of chronic diseases with these implants.
Mining nature's diversity
To find a better alternative, Boyden, graduate student Amy Chuong, and colleagues turned to the natural world. Many microbes and other organisms use opsins to detect light and react to their environment. Most of the natural opsins now used for optogenetics respond best to blue or green light.
Boyden's team had previously identified two light-sensitive chloride ion pumps that respond to red light, which can penetrate deeper into living tissue. However, these molecules, found in the bacteria Haloarcula marismortui and Haloarcula vallismortis, did not induce a strong enough photocurrent -- an electric current in response to light -- to be useful in controlling neuron activity.
Chuong set out to improve the photocurrent by looking for relatives of these proteins and testing their electrical activity. She then engineered one of these relatives by making many different mutants. The result of this screen, Jaws, retained its red-light sensitivity but had a much stronger photocurrent -- enough to shut down neural activity.
"This exemplifies how the genomic diversity of the natural world can yield powerful reagents that can be of use in biology and neuroscience," says Boyden, who is a member of MIT's Media Lab and the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Using this opsin, the researchers were able to shut down neuronal activity in the mouse brain with a light source outside the animal's head. The suppression occurred as deep as 3 millimeters in the brain, and was just as effective as that of existing silencers that rely on other colors of light delivered via conventional invasive illumination.
A key advantage to this opsin is that it could enable optogenetic studies of animals with larger brains, says Garret Stuber, an assistant professor of psychiatry and cell biology and physiology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
"In animals with larger brains, people have had difficulty getting behavior effects with optogenetics, and one possible reason is that not enough of the tissue is being inhibited," he says. "This could potentially alleviate that."
Restoring vision
Working with researchers at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Switzerland, the MIT team also tested Jaws's ability to restore the light sensitivity of retinal cells called cones. In people with a disease called retinitis pigmentosa, cones slowly atrophy, eventually causing blindness.
Friedrich Miescher Institute scientists Botond Roska and Volker Busskamp have previously shown that some vision can be restored in mice by engineering those cone cells to express light-sensitive proteins. In the new paper, Roska and Busskamp tested the Jaws protein in the mouse retina and found that it more closely resembled the eye's natural opsins and offered a greater range of light sensitivity, making it potentially more useful for treating retinitis pigmentosa.
This type of noninvasive approach to optogenetics could also represent a step toward developing optogenetic treatments for diseases such as epilepsy, which could be controlled by shutting off misfiring neurons that cause seizures, Boyden says. "Since these molecules come from species other than humans, many studies must be done to evaluate their safety and efficacy in the context of treatment," he says.
Boyden's lab is working with many other research groups to further test the Jaws opsin for other applications. The team is also seeking new light-sensitive proteins and is working on high-throughput screening approaches that could speed up the development of such proteins.
The research at MIT was funded by Jerry and Marge Burnett, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Human Frontiers Science Program, the IET A. F. Harvey Prize, the Janet and Sheldon Razin '59 Fellowship of the MIT McGovern Institute, the New York Stem Cell Foundation-Robertson Investigator Award, the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation.
Story Source:
The above story is based on materials provided by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The original article was written by Anne Trafton. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.
