Innovation

Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed tiny gold-studded scaffolds that can be used to build tissue in which cells have a synchronous beat, a possible repair tool for treating heart-attack victims.

In a study reported in Nature Nanotechnology, Daniel Kohane, a professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and colleagues improved the electrical conductivity of scaffolds used to grow cardiac cells.

They devised a new scaffold material but based it on alginate, an organic substance that's already used in tissue scaffolds. They combined the alginate with a solution containing gold nanowires, which are good conductors.

After cardiac cells were seeded on the composite scaffold, the researchers compared the conductivity of the gold-enhanced cells with cells grown on regular alginate. They checked each for the presence of calcium, which helps electrical signals travel in the tissue. … Read more

Optical tweezers have been used by biophysicists since their invention at Bell Labs in the 1980s, and are typically used to study cellular components. But they have a few drawbacks, not least of which are overheating and inefficiency.

So engineers at Harvard have been working on a next-gen model they call plasmonic nanotweezers to solve those and other issues with traditional optical tweezers so that tiny particles such as viruses can be isolated, observed, and manipulated.

Back at Bell Labs, scientists had shined a laser through a microscope lens to focus it tightly. They found that light, made of electromagnetic waves, creates a gradient force at the point of focus that is capable of attracting a tiny particle and holding it in that beam of light until random motion or some other force knocks it out.

The basic limitation of this approach is that a lens cannot focus that beam beyond half the wavelength of light, so if the particle the researchers hope to trap is smaller than the focal spot, they might have trouble trapping it.

Meanwhile, that focal size limit also places an upper limit on the gradient force generated, and yet a stronger force is required to trap nanoscale particles. So for a conventional optical tweezer to capture nanoscale particles, a high-powered laser is required.… Read more

I don't know what kinds of things you see inside your head, but I do worry about it.

As for the things I see inside my head, well, if only I could show you. Actually, there are scientists at UC Berkeley who believe that they can show you.

I haven't let them into the house yet. But I can show you video of their work. I am grateful to the inner brains at Gizmodo, who first revealed this footage to me.

You will, naturally, be wondering whether the scientists created this footage, well, naturally.

In a way. They … Read more

Every once in a while a hilarious idea is actually well executed. Mommy Tummy 8.0 out of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan is looking to be one of those.

The idea is that a pregnancy simulator might help a dude (or a lady who has yet to experience the joys of pregnancy) better empathize with pregnant women.

Even setting aside the obvious issue that the simulator wearer is not experiencing hormonal changes, and that he can take the simulator off at any point (oh, the freedom), there is something downright bizarre about a man who appears to be pregnant. (See video below.)

Get past the oddity and the Mommy Tummy 8.0 is actually an impressive little (and then rather suddenly big) gadget. It comprises a water bag, touch sensor, acceleration sensor, and fetal air actuator to simulate the growth, weight, and even movement of a fetus.… Read more

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara are introducing a novel technique using a form of laser spectroscopy and biotags that help discriminate between cancerous and healthy cells.

While the tech is likely years away from clinical trials, the team hopes it will eventually lead to a microdevice that can predict when prostate cancer will metastasize--which is key, given it is the metastasis throughout the body, not the primary tumor, that kills prostate cancer patients.

"The delay is not well understood," says Gary Braun, biologist and second author of the paper that appears this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. &… Read more

Engineers at the University of Utah predict that, in about five years, a network of wireless transceivers around a bed will be able to measure breathing rates without a single tube or wire being connected to the patient.

The uses of the system, which the team has dubbed BreathTaking, are obvious: patients in post-op, infants at risk of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, or even people with sleep apnea.

And because the technology uses off-the-shelf transceivers similar to ones used in home computer networks, the system could cost less than current breathing monitors, said electrical engineer Neal Patwari, senior author of … Read more

Houston, we have a health problem.

About 30 percent of adults in the U.S. have at least two chronic health conditions. Roughly half of a panel of surveyed patients are not complying with doctor's orders. And more than half of Americans could be obese by 2030.

In the coming years it's going to be more important than ever for doctors' offices to be able to automatically track their patients across a variety of parameters, from age and ethnicity to conditions and diseases, and even to compliance levels. Dallas-based health management firm Phytel is hoping that the platform it's unveiling today … Read more

No one wants to stumble upon the radiation warning sign. But its presence at least indicates that hazardous materials have been detected, and that there might be some form of control of those materials.

In high-risk scenarios without up-to-date signage (war zones, abandoned testing sites, and now airport security lines), it could prove quite handy to have a handheld device that can detect hard radiation--including nuclear weapons.

Chemists at Northwestern University report in the journal Advanced Materials that they are one step closer to developing such a device.

"We have designed promising semiconductor materials that, once optimized, could be … Read more

Today, if a woman is considered to be at high risk for ovarian cancer, surgeons tend to want to preemptively remove her ovaries.

That may sound harsh, but of all the gynecological cancers, ovarian has the lowest survival rate--mainly because, without reliable symptoms, it is difficult to detect early on.

Now, researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of Connecticut have combined three imaging tools to spot tissue irregularities that signal ovarian cancer at earlier stages of its development.

Describing their hybrid device in the September issue of the Optical Society's Biomedical Optics Express journal, the researchers say they have combined photoacoustic imaging for contrast, optical coherence tomography for hi-res subsurface imaging (called OCT, this is the top image at the right), and pulse-echo ultrasound for deep-tissue imaging (second image) to identify malignant tumors.

The superimposed images (at the bottom of the images) enabled the team to spot malignant tissue (indicated with yellow diamond arrows).

They performed their initial tests on surgically removed pig and human ovarian tissue--but with the device measuring just 5 millimeters across, it could potentially be inserted through a tiny slit to image tissue without having to biopsy it.

The researchers were able to confirm that they'd correctly identified malignant cells by staining the tissue and examining it by microscope. Next step: test the device on live patients using minimally invasive surgery.… Read more