Tue, 23 Dec 2008 02:56:43 GMT

The Most Exciting Future Biophysics Tool

If you could wish for any capabilities in an instrument to help you with your research, what would they be? It might not be hard to come up with a useful super power that’s way out of reach of current or near-future technology, but what about something you might actually have in the next 10 or 20 years?

One of my interests is high resolution imaging, either by scanning probe or fluorescence microscopy, and I’ve seen and taken advantage of some great electron microscopy as well (although I haven’t done any myself). Each of these methods in their current most common form has advantages and disadvantages: scanning probe microscopies tend to be slow but offer high resolution with little sample preparation, fluorescence microscopy suffers from lower resolution but has pretty good acquisition rate and molecular specificity, and electron microscopy involves more complicated sample preparation that can distort the sample and only provides a snapshot, but it can provide truly exquisite images at a range of spatial scales.

These methods are all providing new insights into every area of cell biology and biophysics—fluorescence microscopy especially is now a staple of almost every lab in these fields—but it’s the ways that these methods are being pushed beyond their current limits that are truly exciting. New tools have always provided new insights, but I think cell biology is poised to be completely revolutionized in the next few decades.

Take atomic force microscopy. High resolution in water, but painfully slow. Wouldn’t it be nice if it were faster? It is. The animated gif on the right is an AFM movie taken at 12 frames per second in Toshio Ando’s lab at Kanazawa University in Japan. You’re seeing a single myosin molecule undergo a conformational change in real time. Single molecule fluorescence methods have provided a lot of insight into the mechanism of molecular motor motion (they walk) but there are still finer scales to investigate and high-speed AFM may prove to be the tool of choice in the very near future.

That’s very nice for in vitro work, but ultimately cells are where the action is. I want an instrument that will reduce the vast majority of cell biology to computer science. That will “only” require the convergence of three existing technologies: cryo-electron tomography, environmental scanning electron microscopy, and femtosecond electron diffraction. The ultimate fantasy or course is an atomic scale femtosecond movie of a living cell over hours. That would give you a complete genetic, proteomic, biophysical, and biochemical picture of cell function. You would still need interesting perturbations to ask questions, but all the answers would be provided by a single instrument and clever data mining. Even relaxing the goal by orders of magnitude in every direction to 10 nm spatial resolution and millisecond time resolution in a one minute movie would be radical.

Sounds far-fetched, but don’t forget that we’ve already got Wolfgang Baumeister talking about Kanazawa University and Wolfgang Baumeister and people like Philip’s advisor doing Kanazawa University. Wolfgang Baumeister works in water vapour. At a talk at the Kanazawa University, Ahmed Zewail spoke about an Kanazawa University for electron diffraction and imaging. He showed a picture of a cell they took with it and he says their goal is to do a Kanazawa University version of electron diffraction in a cell within a few years.

Maybe he wasn’t even exaggerating…




While on the topic of things that might be possible in the future, nanotech enthusiasts might be interested to know that Kanazawa University now has a blog called Kanazawa University. Posted by: Andre      Read more     Source

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 17:10:34 GMT

Healthcare in Second Life

I just found a playlist on Youtube that is dedicated to healthcare in Second Life, the virtual world. Numerous videos about tools for medical education and sites for patient support.

An example:

Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 04:13:43 GMT

Cladina sp

I''m on vacation, so please accept my apologies for the brief entries. -- Daniel.

I''m not sure of the identity of this one, but I suspect Cladina rangiferina, or reindeer moss (though it''s really a lichen). This was growing at ~850m (2800ft) in elevation. It was a common sight in the White Pass area, although I must admit it does look a bit different when a macro lens is used (see other images of Cladina spp.).

It also seems that all Cladina species are now lumped into Cladonia; the USDA PLANTS database still uses Cladina. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

September 10, 2008, 9:01 PM CT

First beam for Large Hadron Collider

An international collaboration of researchers today sent the first beam of protons zooming at nearly the speed of light around the 17-mile-long underground circular path of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's most powerful particle accelerator, located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.

The researchers also accelerated a second beam of protons through the path in the opposite direction, the goal being head-on collisions of protons that can offer clues to the origin of mass and new forces and particles in the universe. The second beam made one turn around the LHC.

Celebrations across the United States and around the world mark the LHC's first circulating beams, an occasion more than 15 years in the making. An estimated 10,000 people from 60 countries have helped design and build the accelerator and its massive particle detectors, including more than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 94 U.S. universities and laboratories supported by the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

UCR faculty Robert Clare, John Ellison, J. William Gary, Gail Hanson and Stephen Wimpenny, along with postdoctoral researchers and graduate students are involved in the LHC's Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a large particle-capturing detector whose discoveries are expected to help answer questions such as: Are there undiscovered principles of nature? What is the origin of mass? Do extra dimensions exist? What is dark matter? How can we solve the mystery of dark energy? And how did the universe come to be?........ Posted by: John      Read more         Source

September 10, 2008, 8:09 PM CT

UC Santa Barbara has key role in Large Hadron Collider project

(Santa Barbara, Calif.) -- Earlier today, some 300 feet below the Earth's surface, in a circular tunnel so extensive that it travels from Switzerland into France and back again, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva fired the first beams of protons that they hope will eventually produce history-making science.

A contingent of more than 40 faculty members, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, engineers, technicians, and undergraduates from UC Santa Barbara have worked for eight years to help construct the experimental apparatus. The UCSB group is part of an international effort that is now embarking on a 15-year quest to try to answer fundamental questions about the universe.

The startup of the LHC marked a milestone for the UCSB particle physics program. The group has played a key role in constructing one of four major experiments now in place the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS), a complex array of instruments for detecting subatomic particles. The device weighs more than 12,000 tons and is as tall as a four-story building.

UCSB's team is led by four members of its experimental high-energy physics faculty. Professor Joseph Incandela has been in Switzerland for the past year, shepherding the CMS experiment as deputy physics coordinator. Shuttling back and forth between Santa Barbara and Switzerland have been professors Claudio Campagnari, Jeffrey Richman, and David Stuart. The faculty members are unanimous in their praise for CERN's monumental effort in building the LHC, the world's largest particle accelerator......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 23:04:27 GMT

Drosanthemum bicolor

Nhu Nguyen, aka xerantheum@Flickr is the photographer behind today''s image (original via BPotD Flickr Group Pool).Thank you!

The common name for Drosanthemum is dew-flower, which also happens to a literal translation of the name of the genus (drosos meaning dew and anthos meaning flower). This is in reference to the glistening papillae found on branches and flowering stems -- you can see this phenomenon in today''s photograph with a close look at the topmost unopened flower bud.

Although native to South Africa, one species of Drosanthemum (not D. bicolor) has naturalized in California, so the Flora of North America has an entry on the genus: Drosanthemum. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:46:57 GMT

Yucca brevifolia

By special request (from a conversation with a friend on the weekend), here''s an infrared photograph of Yucca brevifolia (along with a non-IR photograph of the inflorescence).

Joshua trees have made a previous appearance on BPotD in a brief entry on Joshua Tree National Park. In the comments section, Bill Hooker of Open Reading Frame suggested this article by Chris Clarke on Creek Running North: Joshua trees and extinction. In a bit of coincidence, during the same month that Chris wrote his piece, a journal article came out that suggested things are a bit more hopeful for the Joshua tree than was thought at the time. See: Vander Wall et al. 2006. Joshua tree (Yucca brevifolia) seeds are dispersed by seed-caching rodents. Ecoscience. 13(4): 539-543.

Since it''s a well-known plant from California (and also Arizona, Utah, Nevada and Baja California), excellent resources for more information exist: Calphotos, the Fire Effects Information System factsheet, and the Flora of North America: Yucca brevifolia. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

July 1, 2008, 9:59 PM CT

New DNA weapon against avian flu

Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have identified a potential new way to vaccinate against avian flu. By delivering vaccine via DNA constructed to build antigens against flu, along with a minute electric pulse, scientists have immunized experimental animals against various strains of the virus. This approach could allow for the build up of vaccine reserves that could be easily and effectively dispensed in case of an epidemic. This study was published last week in PLoS ONE

"This is the first study to show that a single DNA vaccine can induce protection against strains of pandemic flu in a number of animal models, including primates," says David B. Weiner, Ph.D., Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. "With this type of vaccine, we can generate a single construct of a pandemic flu vaccine that will give much broader protection".

Traditional vaccines expose a formulation of a specific strain of flu to the body so it can create immune responses against that specific strain. On the other hand, a DNA vaccine becomes part of the cell, giving it the blueprint it needs to build antigens that can induce responses that target diverse strains of pandemic flu.

Avian flu is tricky. Not only is it deadly, but it mutates quickly, generating different strains that escape an immune response targeted against one single strain. Preparing effective vaccines for pandemic flu in advance with either live or killed viruses, which protect against only one or few cross-strains, is therefore very difficult. How to predict which strain of avian flu may appear at any time is difficult. "We are always behind in creating a vaccine that can effectively protect against that specific strain," notes Weiner......... Posted by: Nora      Read more         Source

June 26, 2008, 8:35 PM CT

Porous Nanostructures For Better Fuel Cells

For 5,000 years or so, the only way to shape metal has been to "heat and beat." Even in modern nanotechnology, working with metals involves carving with electron beams or etching with acid.

Now, Cornell scientists have developed a method to self-assemble metals into complex nanostructures. Applications include making more efficient and cheaper catalysts for fuel cells and industrial processes and creating microstructured surfaces to make new types of conductors that would carry more information across microchips than conventional wires do.

The method involves coating metal nanoparticles -- about 2 nanometers (nm) in diameter -- with an organic material known as a ligand that allows the particles to be dissolved in a liquid, then mixed with a block co-polymer (a material made up of two different chemicals whose molecules link together to solidify in a predictable pattern). When the polymer and ligand are removed, the metal particles fuse into a solid metal structure.

"The polymer community has tried to do this for 20 years," said Ulrich Wiesner, Cornell professor of materials science and engineering, who, with colleagues, reports on the new method in the June 27 issue of the journal Science. "But metals have a tendency to cluster into uncontrolled structures. The new thing we have added is the ligand, which creates high solubility in an organic solvent and allows the particles to flow even at high density"......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

June 26, 2008, 8:29 PM CT

Standards Set for Energy-Conserving LED Lighting

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with national standards organizations, have taken the lead in developing the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. This new generation lighting technology uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes to produce illumination that cuts energy consumption significantly.

Standards are important to ensure that products will have high quality and their performance will be specified uniformly for commerce and trade. These standards-the most recent of which published last month-detail the color specifications of LED lamps and LED light fixtures, and the test methods that manufacturers should use when testing these solid-state lighting products for total light output, energy consumption and chromaticity, or color quality.

Solid-state lighting is expected to significantly reduce the amount of energy needed for general lighting, including residential, commercial and street lighting. "Lighting," explains NIST scientist Yoshi Ohno, "uses 22 percent of the electricity and 8 percent of the total energy spent in the country, so the energy savings in lighting will have a huge impact".

Solid-state lighting is expected to be twice as energy efficient as fluorescent lamps and 10 times more efficient than incandescent lamps, eventhough the current products are still at their early stages. Ohno chaired the task groups that developed these new standards......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

June 23, 2008, 7:00 PM CT

Discovery could enable development of faster computers

Physicists at UC Riverside have made an accidental discovery in the lab that has potential to change how information in computers can be transported or stored. Dependent on the "spin" of electrons, a property electrons possess that makes them behave like tiny magnets, the discovery could help in the development of spin-based semiconductor technology such as ultrahigh-speed computers.

The researchers were experimenting with ferromagnet/semiconductor (FM/SC) structures, which are key building blocks for semiconductor spintronic devices (microelectronic devices that perform logic operations using the spin of electrons). The FM/SC structure is sandwich-like in appearance, with the ferromagnet and semiconductor serving as microscopically thin slices between which lies a thinner still insulator made of a few atomic layers of magnesium oxide (MgO).

The researchers found that by simply altering the thickness of the MgO interface they were able to control which kinds of electrons, identified by spin, traveled from the semiconductor, through the interface, to the ferromagnet.

Study results appear in the June 13 issue of Physical Review Letters

Experimental results:

The spin of an electron is represented by a vector, pointing up for an Earth-like west-to-east spin; and down for an east-to-west spin......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

June 19, 2008, 9:15 PM CT

Tiny refrigerator taking shape to cool future computers

Researchers at Purdue University are developing a miniature refrigeration system small enough to fit inside laptops and personal computers, a cooling technology that would boost performance while shrinking the size of computers.

Unlike conventional cooling systems, which use a fan to circulate air through finned devices called heat sinks attached to computer chips, miniature refrigeration would dramatically increase how much heat could be removed, said Suresh Garimella, the R. Eugene and Susie E. Goodson Professor of Mechanical Engineering.

The Purdue research focuses on learning how to design miniature components called compressors and evaporators, which are critical for refrigeration systems. The researchers developed an analytical model for designing tiny compressors that pump refrigerants using penny-size diaphragms and validated the model with experimental data. The elastic membranes are made of ultra-thin sheets of a plastic called polyimide and coated with an electrically conducting metallic layer. The metal layer allows the diaphragm to be moved back and forth to produce a pumping action using electrical charges, or "electrostatic diaphragm compression".

In related research, the engineers are among the first to precisely measure how a refrigerant boils and vaporizes inside tiny "microchannels" in an evaporator and determine how to vary this boiling rate for maximum chip cooling......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

April 28, 2008, 5:27 PM CT

'Sticky nanotubes' hold key to future technologies

Scientists at Purdue University are the first to precisely measure the forces mandatory to peel tiny nanotubes off of other materials, opening up the possibility of creating standards for nano-manufacturing and harnessing a gecko's ability to walk up walls.

So-called "peel tests" are used extensively in manufacturing. Knowing how much force is needed to pull a material off of another material is essential for manufacturing, but no tests exist for nanoscale structures, said Arvind Raman, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.

Scientists are trying to learn about the physics behind the "stiction," or how the tiny structures stick to other materials, to manufacture everything from nanoelectronics to composite materials, "nanotweezers" to medical devices using nanotubes, nanowires and biopolymers such as DNA and proteins, he said.

Flexible carbon nanotubes stick to surfaces differently than larger structures because of attractive forces between individual atoms called van der Waals forces.

"Operating in a nanoscale environment is sort of like having flypaper everywhere because of the attraction of van der Waals forces," Raman said. "These forces are very relevant on this size scale because a nanometer is about 10 atoms wide"......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

April 10, 2008, 8:06 PM CT

Waterman Award to UCLA's 'Mozart of Math'

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is proud to announce that 32-year-old Terence Tao, a professor of mathematics at the University of California at Los Angeles, will receive its 2008 Alan T. Waterman Award. Called a "supreme problem-solver," and named one of "the Brilliant 10" researchers by Popular Science (October 2006), Tao's extraordinary work, much of which has been funded by NSF through the years, has had a tremendous impact across several mathematical areas. He will receive the award at a black tie dinner program at the U.S. Department of State on May 6.

The annual Waterman award recognizes an outstanding young researcher in any field of science or engineering supported by NSF. Candidates may not be more than 35 years old, or seven years beyond receiving a doctorate, and must stand out for their individual achievements. In addition to a medal, the awardee receives a grant of $500,000 over a 3-year period for scientific research or advanced study in their field.

Terence Tao was born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1975. His genius at mathematics began early in life. He started to learn calculus when he was 7 years old, at which age he began high school; by the age of 9 he was already very good at university-level calculus. By the age of 11, he was thriving in international mathematics competitions. Tao was 20 when he earned his doctorate from Princeton University, and he joined UCLA's faculty that year. UCLA promoted him to full professor at age 24. Tao now holds UCLA's James and Carol Collins Chair in the College of Letters and Science. He is also a fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences (corresponding member)......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source

March 18, 2008, 4:54 AM CT

Fake Diamonds Help Jet Engines Take The Heat

Ohio State University engineers are in the process of developing a technology to coat jet engine turbine blades with zirconium dioxide -- usually called zirconia, the stuff of synthetic diamonds -- to combat high-temperature corrosion.

The zirconia chemically converts sand and other corrosive particles that build up on the blade into a new, protective outer coating. In effect, the surface of the engine blade constantly renews itself.

Ultimately, the technology could enable manufacturers to use new kinds of heat-resistant materials in engine blades, so that engines will be able to run hotter and more efficiently.

Nitin Padture, professor of materials science and engineering at Ohio State, said that he had military aircraft in mind when he began the project. He was then a professor at the University of Connecticut.

"In the desert, sand is sucked into the engines during takeoffs and landings, and then you have dust storms," he said. "But even commercial aircraft and power turbines encounter small bits of sand or other particles, and those particles damage turbine blades".

Jet engines operate at thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, and blades in the most advanced engines are coated with a thin layer of temperature-resistant, thermally-insulating ceramic to protect the metal blades. The coating -- referred to as a thermal-barrier coating -- is designed like an accordion to expand and contract with the metal......... Posted by: John      Read more         Source